WSJ What’s News - Supreme Court Returns With Culture Wars Front and Center

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

P.M. Edition for Oct. 5. WSJ reporter James Romoser walks us through what to expect from the high court’s term, which opened today with oral arguments on a major climate-change case. A trio of scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for a breakthrough in neuroscience. Plus, WSJ’s Jared Mitovich goes inside Cornell University to examine the fallout from an explosive sexual assault allegation. Sabrina Siddiqui hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Supreme Court begins a new term as culture war issues and Trump's immigration agenda takes center stage. Plus, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to a trio of scientists for a breakthrough in neuroscience. And, Russian authorities are investigating the death of a woman at a remote anti-plague institute in Siberia. When it comes to the Russians, the main concern is that this incident, is being dealt with in a responsible and transparent way.

It's Monday, October 5th. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for the Wall Street Journal, filling in for Alex Osala. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. The Supreme Court kicked off its new term today, opening with arguments over whether local governments can sue oil companies for climate damages.

The Wall Street Journal's Supreme Court reporter James Ramoser says some of the major cases the court's going to take up in the coming months, also involve immigration and gun rights. So this term, the Supreme Court is going to weigh into some really big culture war clashes. Today was the first case, and that was a big dispute over climate change. There's a big case coming up later this fall about gun rights, specifically whether states and cities are able to ban AR-15s and similar semi-automatic rifles. Other cases that I'm really watching challenge the legality of Donald Trump's deportation agenda.

One of those cases is about his aggressive effort to send certain foreigners to countries other than their home country. Countries that these people often have no ties to. And this happens because the person's home country refuses to take the person back, or perhaps he can't legally be deported to that country because he faces a strong risk of being tortured there. And so what the Trump administration has done is expanded third country deportations. And the Supreme Court is going to weigh in on the legality of that push. James says the case that the court heard today could influence other litigation. Today's case, the climate change case, arguably could end up being the biggest case of the entire term.

The justice is considered one such case brought by Boulder, Colorado, against two energy giants, ExxonMobil and Suncor. But there are dozens of other very similar lawsuits percolating around the country. And they threaten many, many, many billions of dollars in liability for the energy sector. This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to three neuroscientists. Carl Dyseroth, Peter Hegemon, and Georg Nogel for their pioneering work in optogenetics, a method of controlling nerve cells with light that makes it possible to study how the brain shapes memories, feelings, and behaviors. Dyseroth is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Stanford, while Hegemon is based at Humboldt

University in Berlin, and Nogel at the University of Wartsburg in Germany. Abdel Almanira, who's a member of the Nobel Committee, this morning credited the trio with opening up a new era in neuroscience. The technology which soon became known as optogenetics transformed neuroscience. Optogenetics was rapidly and widely adopted all over the world. Researchers are now able to establish causal links between the activity of specific neuronal populations and the wide range of complex behaviors.

from parental behavior and aggression to anxiety and fear, as well as fundamental physiological drives such as thirst and water intake. Researchers are now using optogenetics to study autism and schizophrenia with more work coming on Parkinson's and depression. The trio will split the $1.2 million prize. In other health news, Russian authorities are investigating the death of a woman who worked at a Siberian Center for Infectious Diseases called the Anti-Plaug Scientific Research Institute.

Today, the governor of the Irkooks Province said the woman died last Friday after contracting, quote, pneumonia of an unknown cause. Thomas Grove, the Wall Street Journal's bureau chief for Russia, has the latest. Thomas, what are the Russian authorities saying about her death? Why are there concerns about plague? What we see in the public domain

doesn't really tell a very full story, but there was a regional governor of Boriati, which neighbors are Kutsk, and he actually, in his post on Telegram, said that the woman had possibly died from the plague. The reaction of local authorities has been quite muted overall. They've certainly tried to give a sense of urgency to the population that things are taken care of, but not really being very clear about what they're taking care of. So right now we know of the quarantine in the hospital where this worker was hospitalized. They've also taken in for monitoring all of the context that she had.

And what is the overarching concern? When it comes to the Russians, the main concern is that this incident is being dealt with in a responsible and transparent way. Generally, Arakutska is a pretty off-the-grid place. And so I think people are very worried about what's happening in this, you know, relatively small community. That said, the Russian health authorities have not had a great track record of being very transparent.

And COVID-19 was a test that those authorities didn't pass very well. there were a lot of criticisms that the authorities were suppressing the numbers of cases and things like that. The concern is definitely there that this could spread beyond Irkutsk in the surrounding cities. You have neighboring Mongolia and China not far away. So these are areas that I'm sure other countries want to make sure that any potential infectious diseases stay within Russia's borders. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on his way to Iceland earlier today that it was something that the U.S. authorities were monitoring, though they didn't seem particularly upset or worried about it at the time being. That was the Wall Street Journal's Thomas Grove. Thomas, thank you.

Thank you. In markets today, stocks ended a choppy day on a high note, with the NASDAQ leading the major indexes and closing up 1% at a new record. Treasury yields rose too, with a 10-year yield closing at 5.31%, its most recent 24-year high. Meanwhile, in commodities markets, oil prices slipped after the G7 agreed last week to release crude and diesel reserves. Benchmark Brent crude futures dropped 1.9% to just over $100 a barrel. Coming up, we go inside the Cornell campus roiled by rape allegations against fraternity members

and what students are demanding in response. That's after the break. Cornell University is reeling after a former student filed a civil lawsuit last month alleging she was drugged and raped by seven fraternity members in 2024. Local prosecutors had declined to bring charges at the time, but under pressure, they said they'd reopen the case. New York Governor Kathy Hokel has since stepped in and handed the case to State Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor. Back at Cornell, students are staging demonstrations, alumni are threatening to pull donations, and the campus is asking hard questions about how the university handled it all in the first place.

Jared Midevich, a news associate at the Wall Street Journal, was recently on the ground in Ithaca and joins us now to discuss. So Jared, you were just on campus talking to students and others. What was the mood like? It's really hard to shake off the feeling there of tension and emotion over the allegations that have been made by this former Cornell student against these fraternity brothers and, you know, Cornell itself. When I was there, there was a three-hour town hall where student after student testified to their experience at Cornell, whether it be experiencing sexual violence, or going through the university's Title IX processes, it was at times hard to listen to. And since then, we're seeing that activism on campus is only escalating.

Last night, reports came in about vandalism outside Day Hall, which is one of the campus's main buildings. And one of those messages made a point that I've heard made pretty frequently among students, which is this feeling of hypocrisy, wherein Cornell punished protesters during the pro-Palestinian activism following October 7th. But students feel as though Cornell hasn't levied appropriate punishment against the students who are responsible for the alleged assault and rape of Jane Doe. And have we heard anything from the men who've been accused? There's actually one lawsuit by one of the men. He's seeking to expunge his academic record of all mentions of this incident after the

findings of Cornell's investigation process. Attorneys for several of the men accused, have publicly denied criminal wrongdoing. None of the men so far have been criminally charged. Jared, we've been here a few times before with other high-profile cases of sexual assault on campus. One that comes to my mind is the 2015 Stanford University case in which former student athlete Brock Turner was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman after a frat party.

What does accountability look like for students in this case? The content of the allegations here and what is claimed to have occurred on that night in October 2020, have really shaken the campus, just the series of events that took place, the revelations about how the university investigated what they said to police and what the police gave to the district attorney's office. You're really seeing students extraordinarily frustrated, frankly, with the university administration.

The main criticism was that those who were accused were handed light punishments. Our reporting shows that those punishments arranged up to an including exploiting. But students are concerned that they were not immediately barred from campus, that they did not face more severe form of accountability. There's also a range of questions that students have raised about why Cornell police did not hand over additional evidence to the district attorney's office, including the specific claim from Jane Doe that she was raped. People are wondering, are the processes at Cornell sufficient to hold folks accountable when those sorts of allegations are made? So it's a complicated issue. but above all, students just want more information. What does the school said about how they handled the situation in 2024?

Cornell has said that it followed the processes that are outlined when something like this occurs, and they did go through the Title IX process. On Saturday night, the president spoke out in his most extensive remarks to date, Michael Kotlakov, said that the university would be more transparent and forthcoming and sharing what it can about its investigation. But at the same time, he said that due process is important. and the president said that an independent review will be announced later this week by the Board of Trustees into how it handled the incident at the center of the controversy here. That was the Wall Street Journal's Jared Minovich.

Jared, thank you. Thank you. And that's what's news for this Monday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Anthony Bansy with supervising producer Tali Arbell. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with the new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening. Thank you.