On a company-wide Slack this morning, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announced he has been put on a paid leave of absence.

“And the biggest news: I won't be able to make the ELT tomorrow,” Matt wrote in an Announcement Slack. He continued, writing that Mark Davies, current Automattic Chief Financial Officer, has “conspired” with Automattic Board of Directors members Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider, and Sue Decker “behind my back and they voted to put me on a paid leave of absence. I voted against that.” 

He wrote that Davies was voted to be the new interim CEO. “I received the resolution 50 minutes before the meeting start, and requested repeatedly for time to have it reviewed by independent legal counsel, even a few hours, which was denied,” Mullenweg wrote.

Mullenweg is the founder of Automattic, the company that owns WordPress, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and a host of other popular internet brands and pieces of software. Mullenweg has faced several controversies over his management of the company in recent years.

In the same Slack channel, Davies wrote that Mullenweg would remain a board member and “he will have a voice in setting direction and making decisions.”

"As you have seen from Matt's previous messages, Automattic's board has decided to ask Matt to step away from his CEO role and take a leave of absence,” Schneider wrote following Mullenweg’s message. “We have asked Mark Davies to assume the interim CEO role while Matt is out. We've worked closely with Mark over the years and we're confident he will steer the ship well while Matt is away. I'm sure you will have many questions and Mark and your leadership team will be available to answer them.” 

“I want to thank Matt for his support and I intend to support him, the Board, Automattic, and our customers during this interim situation,” Davies wrote in that Slack channel. “It will take me some time to come up to speed, but we'll move forward with transparency, communication, and teamwork.” He wrote that nothing will change as a result of Mullenweg’s leave.

Mullenweg, Automattic, Schneider, and Davies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

For the last few years, Mullenweg has waged a divisive legal battle with WP Engine, sparing publicly with opponents and peers on social media and in his personal blog. In 2024, he made an “Alignment Offer,” giving Automattic employees who disagreed with his stances the option to take six months of pay or $30,000, whichever was higher, with the stipulation that they would lose access to their work logins that same evening and would not be eligible for rehire.

One hundred and fifty-nine people took the offer and left. He then made another buyout offer, and threatened employees who spoke to the press with termination, saying, “exit gracefully, or be fired tomorrow with no severance.” 

Most recently, Automattic attempted to claim it owns the word “automatic.” 

The number of women who died after an ectopic pregnancy has spiked in recent years, a ProPublica analysis found. The mounting deaths in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data have drawn little scrutiny or response.

Such deaths typically occur in the first trimester, after a pregnancy fails to properly implant in the uterus and begins to develop elsewhere, most commonly inside a fallopian tube. The embryo grows until it causes the organ to rupture, triggering catastrophic bleeding. 

With prompt and appropriate medical care, maternal health experts say, women should not die. Yet ProPublica’s analysis found a stark and baffling increase: Almost 200 women with the condition died from 2020 to 2025, compared with about 100 in the previous six years.

“A death related to ectopic pregnancy should really be a never event,” said Dr. Alice Abernathy, an OB-GYN in Philadelphia.

While chaos and access issues at hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic likely contributed to at least some of the deaths, the surge has persisted, raising serious questions about the role of the most significant disruption to maternal healthcare in the years since: state restrictions on abortion. 

To treat an ectopic pregnancy, which is almost never viable, doctors must terminate it. But lawsuits and federal complaints have alleged that some medical providers are hesitating or flat-out refusing to do that in states where they face criminal penalties for performing an abortion. Patients described their terror. 

“I genuinely thought I was going to die,” said Kyleigh Thurman, whose right fallopian tube ruptured after she struggled to get ectopic care in Texas in 2023.

“There were a few times I asked my husband if I was going to die,” Leitaea Lowrimore of Oklahoma said in a lawsuit after being denied treatment for an ectopic pregnancy at multiple hospitals in February. “I kept thinking about our kids.”

To determine whether these issues go beyond anecdotes, ProPublica analyzed the data collected from every state by the CDC to look for patterns. The analysis shows a growing divide for women in states with strict abortion bans compared with those without.

While the uptick in ectopic deaths occurred nationwide, the climb has been much steeper in states that banned abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. 

ProPublica shared its analysis with more than a dozen maternal health experts, including leaders in the field, who were unaware of the spike; early pregnancy complications are chronically underresearched.

While they cautioned that abortion bans alone can’t explain the national rise, maternal health experts said any examination of the spike should include the documented delays in care caused by the laws, including for ectopic pregnancies. 

In Thurman’s case, despite clear signs of an ectopic pregnancy, two emergency departments sent her home without resolving the complication. Regulators in 2025 found that one of the hospitals, Ascension Seton Williamson, failed to properly screen Thurman for a suspected ectopic pregnancy and did not call in an OB-GYN, in violation of the hospital’s own policies and federal law that requires emergency departments to treat and stabilize patients before discharging them. Thurman has an ongoing lawsuit against Ascension Seton Williamson and the other hospital, Ascension Seton Highland Lakes, for medical malpractice.

Thurman had to have her fallopian tube removed after it ruptured. (Thurman is not related to Amber Thurman, who died in Georgia, which also has an abortion ban, after doctors delayed treating different pregnancy complications in 2022.) 

“I’ve never been in a situation where I didn’t get healthcare when I needed it,” Thurman told ProPublica, comparing the condition to having “a time bomb you can’t control.”

A spokesperson for the Ascension Seton hospitals said in a statement, “When a patient experiences a serious or life-threatening condition during pregnancy, our clinicians provide medically indicated treatment, including treatment for an ectopic pregnancy.” The hospital has denied Thurman’s malpractice allegations in a court filing.

Ectopic pregnancies, while rare, have long been recognized as the leading cause of maternal deaths in the first trimester. The condition impacts up to 2% of pregnancies in the U.S. Because government agencies don’t require hospitals to track or report overall ectopic diagnoses, it is impossible to know whether the condition itself is becoming more common.

While rates for other pregnancy-related deaths also increased during the pandemic, those climbs have largely subsided. 

Experts aren’t sure why ectopic deaths have continued to rise. Ectopic pregnancies are more common among older women, but the increase in deaths has been even more stark among younger women, the analysis showed. 

Anti-abortion groups have suggested that the use of abortion pills prescribed online is leading to more undiagnosed ectopics because telehealth patients don’t receive an ultrasound. But studies have found that ectopic rates are far lower among people who seek medication abortions than in the general population. Telehealth clinics ask questions that filter out patients at higher risk of ectopic pregnancy and follow up with those they treat to screen for symptoms, said Ushma Upadhyay, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies telehealth abortion administration.

Experts told ProPublica that more research is required to determine the role of the abortion bans in the rise of ectopic-related deaths. Many states with bans, which generally provide less Medicaid funding and coverage to low-income women, have long had poorer maternal outcomes. “It’s a real challenge to try and tease out one thing out of the array of factors that undermine women’s health in these states,” said Eugene Declercq, a public health researcher at Boston University.

But experts said ProPublica’s data analysis, along with stories about delays in ectopic care, underscores the need to find out what is driving the deaths.

“Reproductive health is unusual across medicine when we consider how swiftly policy changes affect the care patients can receive,” said Dr. Courtney Schreiber, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology. 

Caitlin Myers, an economist at Dartmouth College who studies abortion policy, said the deaths should be investigated: “This is a potentially profound consequence of the regulation,” she said. 

How Abortion Bans Interfere With Ectopic Care

Many state abortion bans include exceptions for ectopic pregnancies. But experts have worried that doctors are hesitating to offer treatment without an ironclad diagnosis, which clinicians say can take time and increase risks to the mother.

Ectopic pregnancy symptoms often begin with abdominal pain and bleeding, which send women to emergency rooms. There, doctors use ultrasounds to locate where the pregnancy has implanted. 

However, embryos are often not visible on an ultrasound early in pregnancy. That could mean the pregnancy is ectopic, but it may also be a miscarriage or normal pregnancy that’s too small to see. Doctors can also assess whether the pregnancy is likely ectopic through blood tests over multiple days.

If the pregnancy is ectopic, the risk of rupture increases the longer treatment is delayed. In a state without a ban, a patient could decide at any point that that risk is not worth taking and opt to terminate the pregnancy.

In a state with a ban, however, that option may not exist. If doctors can confirm the pregnancy is ectopic through an ultrasound, they can protect themselves from having their decision to terminate questioned, perhaps by a zealous prosecutor. But waiting for this can delay treatment by days or even weeks. 

“Seeing a mass is not the only reason to have high suspicion for an ectopic pregnancy,” said Dr. Rebecca Nerenberg, an emergency medicine doctor in New York and the clinical director at Access Bridge, which educates ER doctors on reproductive healthcare and has released evidence-based guidelines for diagnosing possible ectopic pregnancies.

Experts say that doctors should be able to offer treatment when other symptoms are present, such as plateauing pregnancy hormone levels, bleeding and abdominal pain. Patients can be treated with a procedure or a cancer drug that stops cells from growing.

But for women in states with abortion bans, getting that treatment can be difficult.

Lowrimore, who lives near the state border in Oklahoma, sought care at an Arkansas emergency department in February after experiencing abdominal pain and significant bleeding. She was sent home and told to return for more tests after being diagnosed with a “pregnancy of unknown location,” because an ultrasound could not show where her pregnancy had implanted, according to a lawsuit. 

Lowrimore visited three different hospitals across both states over the following week as she began passing blood clots and the pain intensified, radiating up the left side of her body, according to the lawsuit.

The fact that the states’ abortion bans make exceptions for ectopic pregnancies did not help her, even though doctors acknowledged that was a possible diagnosis. In each visit, they didn’t treat her for that condition. One told her that intervening in her pregnancy could land him jail time — “10 years in the poky,” according to the suit. “I felt like my life was a risk he couldn’t afford,” she said in the lawsuit filing.

After consulting a lawyer, Lowrimore finally drove to a hospital in Kansas, where abortion is legal, and got an injection of the cancer drug called methotrexate within hours of arrival. 

Lowrimore’s lawsuit, in which an OB-GYN and six women who were denied care are seeking to block the Arkansas abortion ban, is ongoing. Lowrimore also filed complaints under the same emergency medicine law as Thurman against the three hospitals. Regulators cited Mercy Hospital in Fort Smith, Arkansas, for failing to provide care during the eight hours Lowrimore waited to be seen. The other two hospitals were not found to have violated that law, and they did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Mercy Hospital declined to comment on the case, saying that, “in tragic situations when a mother suffers from an urgent, life-threatening condition during pregnancy, Mercy provides all medically indicated treatment to save her life.” 

Many experts predicted that ordeals like the ones Lowrimore and Thurman described would occur when abortion bans took effect. To see if more women with ectopic pregnancies are experiencing severe health outcomes, ProPublica analyzed hospital data from Texas, the most populous state to ban abortion.

In this new analysis, ProPublica found that 310 more patients in Texas experienced substantial blood loss after an ectopic pregnancy in 2023 and 2024 compared with 2018 and 2019, an increase of about 29%. Similar to ectopic deaths, the rise appeared to begin during the COVID pandemic, but the rate of complications remained elevated after hospital systems stabilized and the state passed its restrictive law. ProPublica is working to acquire similar data from states without abortion bans.

In response to ProPublica’s reporting on the deadly impacts of Texas’ abortion ban, the state passed the Life of the Mother Act in 2025, which attempted to clarify what kinds of abortions are allowed by the state’s law, explicitly adding ectopic pregnancies to the list. 

But new guidance from the Texas Medical Board includes only a case study with an ectopic pregnancy that can be seen in an ultrasound, remaining silent on the difficulty of early ultrasounds to detect where a pregnancy has implanted. This leaves open the possibility that a prosecutor could question whether such a case was really ectopic, in a state where doctors face up to 99 years in prison for performing illegal abortions.

A spokesperson for the Texas Medical Board said the course is not intended to cover all scenarios and that it “explains that imminent harm is unnecessary and specifically states that physicians who follow evidence-based medicine, standard emergency protocols, and proper documentation face minimal risk.” Asked whether a conclusive ultrasound image is necessary for an ectopic diagnosis, the spokesperson said, “The Board has consistently stated that providing commentary on every possible situation would be impractical.”

But Michelle Maloney, an attorney who represents Thurman and 13 other Texas women or their families who say they were denied care — including seven with ectopic pregnancies — said she still gets frequent calls from women who say they were denied care for pregnancy complications. “I don’t think specific exemptions address the massive gray areas that arise in pregnancy,” she said. 

Solutions are unlikely to come from the states themselves. A previous ProPublica investigation found that states with strict bans are not studying whether their laws are contributing to maternal deaths. And others have not followed Texas in attempting to amend their bans.

Gaps in Research, Training and Awareness 

One of the biggest challenges to reducing ectopic pregnancy deaths nationwide is the lack of awareness, research and data. 

No one, for example, is tracking whether women who experienced ectopic pregnancies also had one or more common risk factors, like a history of ectopic pregnancies, infertility or use of hormonal intrauterine devices, according to ProPublica’s review of maternal health statistics and interviews with experts. 

Nor has any published research addressed the connection between recent ectopic pregnancy death rates and untreated infections like gonorrhea and chlamydia, which increased substantially during the first years of the pandemic before declining again. Those infections can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, which causes fallopian tube scarring and raises the long-term risk of developing an ectopic pregnancy.

It is unclear why the CDC and other federal agencies across two administrations have failed to publicly respond to the increase in deaths despite having access to the same information ProPublica analyzed. But experts say the country’s capacity to respond to it has been greatly reduced under President Donald Trump.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, told Congress in April that improving maternal health outcomes is a priority. But the Trump administration has eliminated much of the staff devoted to researching the topic and cut hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding for healthcare research. 

The CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health, for example, lost most of its 100 employees, according to a lawsuit filed by more than a dozen states’ attorneys general last year. The entire division that ran the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a significant source of data for state and local governments as well as maternal health researchers, is on paid administrative leave. That includes many researchers who would have been responsible for investigating the rise in ectopic pregnancy deaths, according to current and former CDC employees.

“You’re losing the capacity to know what’s going on with pregnant women,” Lee Warner, the former chief of the Women’s Health and Fertility Branch at the CDC, said of the cuts at the division. “It’s going to take decades to build this capacity back.”

Funding cuts have also impacted efforts to raise awareness about the condition. Because ectopic pregnancies usually cause complications before standard prenatal care begins around 10 weeks, patients often rely on emergency departments, where doctors don’t typically have specialized training in pregnancy care. Experts say more training on high-risk early pregnancy conditions could help combat rising maternal mortality rates.

The CDC in 2025 also stopped funding a partnership with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to educate emergency medicine doctors about reproductive healthcare. The initiative, “Obstetric Emergencies in Nonobstetric Settings,” offers resources for emergency departments on caring for pregnant patients with cardiovascular disease, hypertension and eclampsia. An ACOG spokesperson said its foundation now funds the project, and that the organization is working on a set of guidelines for diagnosing and managing tubal ectopic pregnancies in the emergency department.

A spokesperson for HHS said the agency continues to track maternal mortality trends, investigate their causes and provide funding for research. “This important work is being accelerated across the Department to support healthy mothers, healthy babies, and strong families,” the spokesperson said.

The United Kingdom’s response to a similar spike in ectopic deaths during the pandemic shows just how much the U.S. is failing to do. 

Researchers and officials there identified a surge in deaths in 2021 and 2022 in the U.K. and Ireland; 12 women died of an ectopic pregnancy during those years, which, as in the U.S. during this period, represented a near doubling of the death rate compared with previous years.

They investigated the causes and found a range of culprits, including overstretched emergency services and inadequate early pregnancy screenings, says Marian Knight, a professor at the University of Oxford who leads the U.K.’s maternal mortality reporting.

In 2024, Knight co-authored a maternal mortality report that focused on those deaths and offered policy recommendations. Knight worked with policymakers and a U.K. charity to raise awareness and help doctors and the general public recognize ectopic pregnancy symptoms. Officials also changed how patients experiencing ectopic pregnancy symptoms are prioritized when they call for an ambulance, leading to faster response times.

But the first step, said Knight, was identifying and investigating the issue. “If we’re not tracking and not just understanding the numbers, but understanding the why behind the numbers, we have no ability to respond,” Knight said.

The U.S. doesn’t do national maternal mortality reviews, said Boston University’s Declercq, who serves on the Massachusetts Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee. Instead, CDC epidemiologists review death and birth records to establish accurate national totals of pregnancy-related deaths, largely leaving state and local maternal mortality committees to take an in-depth look at individual cases and make recommendations to lawmakers and medical providers.

Declercq said his committee has not identified a notable increase in deaths from ectopic pregnancies in Massachusetts in recent years. In most states, these deaths are sporadic enough that they don’t, in isolation, show a notable trend.

It’s only at the national level that this increase in avoidable deaths becomes visible. 

ProPublica’s analysis “raises concern that young women are dying from a preventable cause at an increasing rate,” Schreiber, the professor of OB-GYN, said. “That is not what we should be seeing in the United States of America.”

The post Ectopic Pregnancy Deaths Have Nearly Doubled. It’s Worse in States With Abortion Bans. appeared first on ProPublica.

TOPEKA — Attorney General Kris Kobach asserted a stabbing death in southwest Kansas could have been averted through compliance with a federal court order for deportation of the man later charged in the slaying.

Kobach, a Republican who is seeking reelection against Democrat Chris Mann, said the tragedy made clear why it was important for city and county law enforcement agencies in Kansas to sign cooperative agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to track down fugitives without the right to be in the United States. Currently, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, 35 counties and 10 cities have implemented collaborative pacts with ICE.

Honduran citizen Erlin Lagos-Gonzales, a 43-year-old resident of Garden City, was accused of voluntary manslaughter in the Aug. 31 killing of Adonis Edgardo Aguilar-Juarez of Lakin. The men were involved in an apparent quarrel at Kansas Dairy Development, a large calf and heifer facility in Deerfield. During the encounter, Aguilar-Juarez sustained life-threatening injuries. He was driven by private vehicle to Kearny County Hospital, where he died.

Lagos-Gonzales was charged Sept. 3 and has been held in Finney County Jail on $500,000 bond. On Tuesday, Lagos-Gonzales made his first appearance in Kearny County District Court. The attorney general said his office would work with the county attorney to prosecute the case.

On July 24, 2025, a U.S. immigration judge issued a deportation order for Lagos-Gonzales, but the directive wasn’t carried out. State prosecutors said they believe Lagos-Gonzales had been living in the United States since 2019 without legal permission.

“This killing never should have happened,” Kobach said. “Erlin Lagos-Gonzales is an illegal alien who received a final order of removal more than a year ago. He should have left the United States then. Instead, he remained in Kansas, continued working, and now stands charged with taking the life of another man.”

Kobach said the case illustrated a nationwide problem in which more than 1.5 million “fugitive aliens” remained at large. The comparable number in Kansas would be in the thousands, Kobach said.

“The problem is too big for ICE alone,” Kobach said. “There is simply no way that the federal officers in ICE can ever remove the 1.5 million fugitive aliens without state and local help.”

Mann, the Democratic nominee for attorney general, said there was no question the perpetrator of the killing had to be held accountable.

He said resources available to sheriffs and police chiefs in Kansas were stretched thin without inserting officers into an immigration enforcement crackdown under the so-called “287g” program.

“Kris Kobach has not taken the time to speak with sheriffs across the state about their decision to sign or not sign a 287g agreement,” Mann said. “I have spoken to dozens of sheriffs, chiefs of police and law enforcement, and what I’ve heard is that they don’t have the resources to take on additional responsibilities, and they need more support — support they are currently not getting from the attorney general.”

Mann said decisions of local law enforcement agencies shouldn’t be dictated by politicians working in Topeka.

“I trust our local sheriffs to make the decision that is best for their community and, as attorney general, I will work with each of them to ensure they have the resources needed to hold violent criminals accountable and keep their communities safe,” Mann said.

Kobach ordered the KBI in early 2025 to acquire 287g authority so the agency could work alongside ICE throughout the state.

Kobach said he expected half the 70 county law enforcement agencies yet to sign 287g deals with ICE to eventually get on board.

As an incentive, the Kansas Legislature enacted a bill guaranteeing the Attorney General’s Office would represent local law enforcement agencies if litigation arose from involvement in the program affiliated with ICE. There had been apprehension in some counties that insurance policies wouldn’t adequately cover that contingency.

“Anyone who thinks that local law enforcement should not collaborate with ICE immigration removals is 100% wrong. Such collaboration saves lives and keeps our streets safe. It will remain a high priority of mine as long as I’m attorney general,” Kobach said.

So far, KBI interim director Robert Jacobs said the KBI’s routine criminal casework had identified 11 people with deportation orders and 14 others ripe for deportation who were on the state’s offender registries.

Brian Hill, the Shawnee County sheriff, said the county’s participation in the 287g program was beneficial. He recalled seven instances in which a person subject to a deportation order was identified through the process of running names through a database.

“I think if local law enforcement is part of this program it does allow them the access to know these people are here illegally and you’re not letting people go back to the community that shouldn’t be there,” the sheriff said.

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on e-bikes, power stations, and how to work anywhere, follow Thomas Ricker. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.

How it started

With a deep breath, I took the cable seething with 800W of solar power and plugged it directly into a standard wall jack in my home. Nothing sparked, nothing smoked, and by the end of that sunny summer day, my electricity bill had dropped to nearly $0.

As unnerving as it sounds to treat a common household power outlet as a power input, these DIY plug-in sol …

Read the full story at The Verge.

In a column four years ago, I wrote about my moral confusion with football. 

On one hand, America swoons for the sport more than ever. 

Witness the tailgate tables in Lawrence this weekend: the Jayhawk tablecloths, the ornate crimson-and-blue cupcakes, and novelty KU cocktails. In Topeka, the state of Kansas doles out tax breaks to the Kansas City Chiefs, desperate for them to move across the state line to build their domed stadium.

As Kansas State head coach Collin Klein said at a Wildcats media day, channeling the mood of many Kansans, football is “the greatest sport in the world.”

On the other hand, I wrote, fans often feel icky because of the specter of football head injuries.

Witness the wide receiver slicing across the secondary. Oblivious to safety in his blind spot, he catches and turns just in time to see the opponent’s helmet filling his field of view. We wince and shush one another in the bleachers. The reverence for a big hit and a concussed kid. The medical staff sprints out before he fully slumps to the turf. 

In that column, I wondered: How can we watch football with a clear conscience? 

Looking back, my confused hand-wringing about being a fan completely missed the point. How self-absorbed to care about my comfort rather than the safety of the players on the field. 

And so we arrive in September: the launch of a new football season paired with gloomy football news. This year, a new study of former NFL players further demonstrates how hundreds of American men are dying, plagued by life-changing neurological injuries caused by football’s cumulative violence to their heads. 

Published by The BMJ, the study delivers dark news about the prevalence of brain injuries among professional players who died between 2016 and 2021. The most optimistic analysis of the data suggests that one in four former NFL players suffers from CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is a progressive neurological disease. 

The most dire possibility? That more than 90 percent of the brains of former pros show signs of such disease. 

The study also documents a strong association between severe CTE and dementia. NFL players whose brains showed the most advanced CTE — labeled stage IV — were radically more likely to be clinically diagnosed with dementia. 

Data like this sends me toward catastrophizing about football. 

As someone ready to lambast the sport on even the flimsiest of evidence, I knew I needed an expert to help me analyze the study. I found one on the University of Kansas campus, where I also teach. 

Thayne Munce started as an associate professor in the Department of Health, Sport, Exercise Sciences last year while also directing the Jayhawk Athletic Performance Laboratory.

“The majority of our research is applied sports science research, where we’re taking measurements of athletes in the field, monitoring them while they’re performing, and trying to generate insights and make observations related to their performance,” Munce said. 

That means outfitting athletes with all kinds of wearable devices. In recent years, for sports associated with head injury risk (such as football, rodeo and soccer), Munce said that researchers used helmets outfitted with electronic monitors. The data they collected described rapid decelerations and accelerations that accompany hard hits.

“But now the accelerometers are in mouth guards,” Munce said. “That allows the work to expand beyond helmeted sports and beyond football.”

I asked him to put the new study into context: does it reveal something new or confirm something that we already knew? 

“I think when you see the headline or even the summary of a study like this, saying that at least one in four — at least 25% of NFL players have CTE — that’s that’s alarming,” Munce said. 

However, that summary omits context, Munce said. First, because these players died recently, their average age was much higher, meaning they were likely to have played in the 1960s and 1970s. The head injury data might be worse or better for current players because the playing atmosphere has changed during the last 50 years. (Conducting a widespread study of CTE in current players is impossible because players must be deceased to allow for an inspection of the brain tissue.)

Munce cautions that the study also does not address the prevalence of CTE among players who played youth, middle school, high school and college football during any era. His current research does show that “the impact severities” in youth football are “nearly identical to what others have reported for high school players.”

“We don’t know what that is compared to the NFL because those studies haven’t been publicly shared or publicly released,” Munce said. “But at least from the youth and middle school, up through college, the median impact severities are very similar.”

Munce’s context doesn’t change the basic conclusion: Between 25% and 95% of professional football players walk away from the sport with degenerative brain injuries. College players are the next most likely to have similar CTE rates because their careers involve more seasons and more impacts.

For the sake of the players, I’d like to think football in 2026 is a kinder game than it was for players during the 60s and 70s, in regards to head injuries. That’s Munce’s point of view. He points out the long list of football reforms: “better surveillance, management, care of brain injuries and concussion in particular, for football players of all ages.”

“In the past, concussions weren’t often recognized or talked about, and it’s very likely that players played through their concussions,” Munce said. “Players are better educated on recognizing the signs and symptoms of a concussion.”

Munce listed other reforms: rule changes (targeting restrictions and new kickoff formats), improved helmets and coaching on safer tackling. 

For the sake of players, I’d like to believe, as Munce does, that football is safer now than it has ever been, but I don’t think so. 

Football seasons are longer today, with more games and more practices in both the NFL and college football. Today’s five-star recruit at nose tackle is likely faster and stronger than generations past as football training, diet and coaching have improved. I imagine today’s 300-pound lineman is just as likely to inflict damage on his opponent’s brain — and more likely to receive it too — as his own strength creates forceful collisions that rebound to him. 

The professionalization of America’s favorite sport means more football and more ferocity in football, which means more damage to players’ brains. If years of cumulative violent hits create CTE, today’s game seems just as brutal or nearly so, even with reforms.

There’s more in The BMJ study, such as an explanation of how rare CTE is in the general population (as low as .6%). However, it’s difficult to imagine the study changing this year’s football season.  

The concern about head injuries comes and goes as studies emerge or catastrophes unfold. Even at the high points of CTE coverage, it seldom rivals the coverage of one player, such as Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. (Munce suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic distracted the public’s concern about football head injuries in 2020 by taking control of the safety conversations surrounding sports.) 

I reviewed every press conference this fall from the three biggest football teams in the region. Listen to the coaches — Andy Reid of the Chiefs, Lance Leipold of KU and Klein from Kansas State — talk to the news media. No mention of head injuries l that I could find. No talk of helmets, concussions, head injuries and certainly not CTE. 

Along with sports gambling, it’s the biggest story in the sport.

And no one is asking about it. 

Journalists treat head injuries in football as a news story, not a sports story. (Let the science reporter handle it.)

We treat it as a story for the preseason, not game day. (Listen in vain for a mention of CTE during an NFL broadcast or college pregame show.)

Sweeping away the talk of head injuries has been the magnificent, Machiavellian project of the NFL and college football conferences. 

The NFL’s playbook? Create a polished arm of the league titled, “Player Health & Safety” that stresses innovations like “the Digital Athlete” and “Helmet Laboratory Testing.” Enact a few reforms to dial back the shocking hits that disrupt games. Publicize flag football for kids. 

At least one NFL player, New York Giants running back Cam Skattebo, believes that the brain condition is fake news.

Say it with me: “The NFL has made important progress in an effort to make football safer – and we remain committed to sharing that progress.”

Yet, the elemental, rumbling threat to player safety remains: the repeated, destructive collisions between players all over the field.

Football’s marketing and our insistent love for the game has convinced America that we fixed football. 

The scientific research suggests differently.

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Sony’s ability to generate anger lately is pretty impressive. After the company announced that there would be no more physical media versions of games made starting in 2027, to the resounding anger of many people, Sony also demonstrated yet again that it’s capable of ripping away the digital “purchases” people had made once its own licensing arrangements expire. While some folks out there understand that in the cases of some digital goods you’re not actually buying a thing, but a temporary license, many others either don’t know that or simply don’t like it, spurring on further anger against Sony across the internet. And that’s leaving aside entirely the subject of game and cultural preservation in all of this.

Sony is bad enough at this that they can manage to piss me off even when I probably agree with them when it comes to a particular lawsuit. Let’s get through the part where I’m on their side first.

There is a lawsuit going on in California, brought against Sony by a group of PlayStation gamers, that is arguing that the platform doesn’t comply with a relatively new California law for digital purchases that has strict rules around disclosing that the nature of the purchase is a license. The suit argues for non-compliance because the PlayStation Store uses the phrases “buy” and “purchase”, which is forbidden by the law.

Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, that’s not the full story. Here’s the relevant section of the law:

(b) (1) It shall be unlawful for a seller of a digital good to advertise or offer for sale a digital good to a purchaser with the terms “buy,” “purchase,” or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good, or alongside an option for a time-limited rental, unless either of the following occur:

(A) The seller receives at the time of each transaction an affirmative acknowledgment from the purchaser indicating all of the following:

(i) That the purchaser is receiving a license to access the digital good.

(ii) A complete list of restrictions and conditions of the license.

(iii) That access to the digital good may be unilaterally revoked by the seller if they no longer hold a right to the digital good, if applicable.

(B) The seller provides to the consumer before executing each transaction a clear and conspicuous statement that does both of the following:

(i) States in plain language that “buying” or “purchasing” the digital good is a license.

(ii) Includes a hyperlink, QR code, or similar method to access the terms and conditions that provide full details on the license.

And here’s what it looks like if you were to make a purchase for a license for a digital game on the PlayStation Store:

So let’s go back to the law. Yes, the page uses the term “purchase”. It also asks for acknowledgement via the “Confirm Purchase” button that the customer understands they’re buying a license (and it’s in plain language), links to the SPLA and TOS which outline the restrictions and conditions of the license, and details the revokable nature of that license. Sony is arguing it’s compliant and I’m compelled to agree.

And if Sony left it at that, I wouldn’t be writing this post right now. But then the company just had to further and say something really stupid.

Now, as reported by Game File, Sony recently filed its response to the lawsuit, claiming that customers are not only told “your purchase of this digital product amounts to a licence”, but that “reasonable consumers” already understand this anyway without having to be told.

Sony’s argument is that because digital copies of games are not a finite resource, and that because multiple people can buy a digital copy of the same game, that means nobody actually ‘owns’ it – if they did, nobody else would be able to have it.

“As plaintiffs admit, Section 1 of the SPLA likewise explains that ‘the Software is licensed to you, not sold’, Sony’s filing reads. “This makes sense. In the digital age, it is not plausible to allege that reasonable consumers believed they were obtaining ‘ownership’ of a digital game.

“Were that the case, then Plaintiff Edward Heycock would not have been able to obtain the game Resident Evil Requiem on February 25, 2026 for $69.99 from the PlayStation Store after Plaintiff Jason Mendoza had obtained Resident Evil Requiem on February 14, 2026, because Mr Mendoza, not Sony, would have owned it then.”

And on this, Sony can fuck all the way off. This is completely wrong on a variety of levels.

Let’s start with the fact that the internet is chockablock with discussions trying to unconfuse many people when it comes to what they bought in a digital purchase. There are Reddit posts asking this question. There are tech blogs that have put out specific articles answering the question of ownership of certain digital goods. Or, if the wider internet doesn’t suffice for you, the FTC has articles on its own website that try to help address ownership rights for the public for digital goods. Here’s a snippet that will help drive home the second reason Sony’s statement is so dumb.

When you buy a physical item, you’ve got it. It’s yours. But when you click the “buy” button on a digital product, it really depends. You may have access to it only while you have an active account with the platform or website that sold it, or only for as long as that platform or website stays in business. Another factor is Digital Rights Management (DRM) software, which is attached to many digital items and is the thing that makes it impossible, for example, for you to play a video game on a different console brand.

Another reason why you might not have full control of your digital product is that what you really got when you clicked “buy” is often merely a license to access the content. This fact is often explained only in fine print in the terms of service — terms that the seller can usually change at will. And if the seller itself has licensing issues with the content you bought, then your own license to use the digital item can become worthless. All things beyond your control.

So all of these entities putting out all of this information to try to educate the public about what the hell they bought with a digital purchase are only speaking to the unreasonable? That’s, dare I say, an unreasonable thing to say.

And in that FTC post, did you happen to notice just how many qualifiers are stuffed into those two paragraphs? It depends. May. Many. Might. Often. So why all of those qualifiers?

Because some digital purchases can and do confer ownership to the buyer. Not everyone is out here selling a license. Some digital goods are sold as permanent ownership.

So, no matter how this particular lawsuit shakes out, Sony needs to either understand their own customers’ sentiments and knowledge far better than they do, or they need to stop saying things that they know are false. I can attest that the general public does not have a firm understanding of their ownership rights and what they’re actually buying with digital purchases. Pretending otherwise is nonsense.