For some couples, surrogacy is a miracle: an opportunity to have a child even if they’re unable to conceive one naturally. But it’s also big business. Not only is surrogacy expensive — think six figures — but it’s also largely unregulated. And that last part is becoming a bigger problem. 

Just last week, a California couple was arrested on child abuse charges after it was revealed that they had over 20 children from different surrogate mothers living in a large mansion in Arcadia, a city near Los Angeles. Many of the surrogates are currently fighting for custody through the courts of the children they carried.

The Arcadia case, however, is only the most recent example of how surrogacy can go wrong. Every case is different, but every one illuminates how opaque — and often ripe for abuse or legal issues — the American surrogacy industry is. 

Emi Nietfeld is a reporter at Washington Sun who writes about surrogacy, IVF, and how we build families. She spoke with Today, Explained co-host Noel King about what’s kept lawmakers from regulating the surrogacy industry, the recent high-profile cases bringing these problems to light, and why more regulation doesn’t necessarily offer a straightforward fix. 

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. 

The United States does not regulate the surrogacy industry seemingly at all. What is going on? Why not?

The lack of federal regulation is both political and financial. Politically, this goes all the way back to the start of IVF. Anti-abortion Republicans were not comfortable with the idea of creating and destroying embryos during IVF, and so they fought against efforts to regulate it. 

People on the left were worried that limiting what kinds of technology you could access would lead to the government controlling who could have families. You still see these arguments today. People who think that IVF is murder don’t want to have any surrogacy. And people on the left don’t want the government saying who can and cannot have a family.

One of the issues raised by the New Yorker story is that there are surrogacy agencies that connect parents and potential surrogates. And it makes you wonder who gets to do that? Who can own and operate a surrogacy agency in the US today?

Anyone.

Oh. Oh no.

Only one state, New York, requires a special license. And everywhere else it’s easier to open an agency than a hot dog stand or a nail salon. This has resulted in the rise of so-called pop-up agencies where businesses come onto the scene, and nobody really knows who owns them or who’s running them. That has led to many people who aren’t experienced, who sign up with these agencies, then feeling like they weren’t prepared or that they were deceived in entering the agreement.

Have we ever tried in the past to regulate this better? Have there been efforts made?

In the 1980s, there was the case of Baby M. That was called traditional surrogacy where Mary Beth Whitehead was the surrogate, but it was also her egg. So the child she delivered was genetically related to her. After she gave birth, she changed her mind. She kidnapped the child, went on the run for several months, and it was a national crisis where this was all over the news. 

Ultimately, a judge in New Jersey ruled that the surrogacy arrangement was unenforceable. Commercial surrogacy arrangements became illegal in New Jersey, and they stayed illegal in New York until 2020.

Part of why regulation looks the way it does is because in 1995, Congress passed a piece of legislation saying that there would be no federal funding for embryo research, which means no federal funding for IVF. That left all of the research, development, innovation up to the free market. And so while that could be seen as an attempt to regulate IVF, it actually meant that those things would no longer be under the government’s purview.

In the US, we’ve seen over the past few years some really high-profile cases that are making lawmakers reckon with the fact that we do not have laws around this. Tell me about some of those cases.

There’s the Mark surrogacy case in California, which is both a really unique case and also illustrates some of the fears around Chinese intended parents coming to the United States to have their kids. This is part of larger geopolitical tensions between the US and China, which are playing out in the surrogacy industry.

There’s the case of Xu Bo, the Chinese video gaming billionaire who is rumored to have more than 100 children via surrogacy in America. His story taps into fears of birth tourism and people from other countries, especially China, coming to the United States to do surrogacy so that their kids are American citizens. 

Republican lawmakers are talking a lot about the idea that people could come from enemy countries, have American citizens, and raise them with the intent that they might one day become spies or president of the United States and be double actors.

In Texas, there’s the case of McKenna West, where she learned at 20 weeks’ gestation that the baby was very sick. The intended parents asked her to get an abortion. She refused to do so. McKenna went to Texas and began fighting for custody to keep the baby while the parents objected. They wanted the baby, and she petitioned the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. 

And finally, there’s the case of Kyla Simpson in Florida, whom I wrote about for New York Magazine, and she gave birth for a single dad in China who wasn’t there for the birth. He hadn’t applied for a visa to come to the United States, and when he did apply, he was rejected. Kyla Simpson tried to adopt the kids and is now fighting for custody in a case that’s still working its way through the Florida courts.

These examples are extraordinary, and they point to just chaos. But how common are they? Are they outliers? Is this going on all the time?

Most of the time things go right. In the academic papers around surrogacy, surrogates are usually happy with their experience. Attorneys and surrogates tell me that it’s absolutely beautiful to hand people the baby that they’ve been working hard for. The issue is that when things do go wrong, there’s often not a lot of recourse or there’s a really big legal mess that parents and surrogates have to go through.

I wonder if there is a case against more regulation. As disastrous as some of these examples are, you said that most of the time, it does go right. And it seems like we could get into tricky territory if we start saying who can and can’t have a kid.

Surrogacy is already really time-consuming. It often takes several years, and it’s expensive, usually costing between $150,000 to $250,000 for a single pregnancy. Regulation tends to make things more expensive and take longer. A lot of people fear that if you introduce more requirements and more burdens, surrogacy will become even more out of reach to people. 

There’s also the fear of government overreach. If you ask the government how many kids a gay couple should have, the answer might be zero. And that libertarian streak is driving a lot of opposition to things that most people might consider common sense. 

For example, there’s a lot of talk around whether intended parents should go through background checks before they have kids via surrogacy. Right now, no state in America requires intended parents to go through a criminal background check before having a kid. Critics of regulation say heteros don’t need a background check to have sex in the back of a car and make a baby the old-fashioned way, so it’s unfair to require that from people who need to do surrogacy to have a family. 

Most people can agree that surrogacy could be better regulated, but like many things in our country, it’s almost impossible right now because of politics.

“In what world,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul asked on Friday, “would the police learn from a victim that she’d been literally gang raped while she was intoxicated by five men in a fraternity house and not elevate those allegations to the district attorney?” 

Hochul was speaking about the case of a former Cornell student who said she was raped by several members of the university’s Chi Phi fraternity in 2024. At the time, the district attorney filed no criminal charges.

The case has rocked the nation and forced a renewed reckoning over how sexual assault is dealt with in higher education. While the district attorney has defended his handling of the case, many politicians and legal experts are now examining whether certain details of the alleged victim’s account were neglected, and prosecutors have reopened the case.

Amy Wang is a staff reporter at the Washington Post who’s been covering the story over the past week. She spoke with Today, Explained co-host Noel King about what allegedly happened on the night in question, what happened afterward, and what we still don’t know. 

Since the two spoke, New York state Attorney General Letitia James has also been assigned to oversee the case and said it is now “an active criminal investigation.” As new information comes to light, further legal action could be taken. 

Below is an excerpt of the conversation between King and Wang, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

In October of 2024, a young woman went to a fraternity house near Cornell University’s campus. Who is this young woman, and why did she go to the frat house that night?

The young woman is only identified in documents as Jane Doe, so we don’t know her name. She was, at the time, 20 years old. She was a sophomore at Cornell. And around 11 pm on the night of October 19, 2024, this Jane Doe goes to a bar on campus, and then, after that, goes to the Chi Phi fraternity house to hang out with a friend. 

She said that she was already pretty intoxicated at that point, and she’d had maybe 10 drinks in about three hours. Her friend at the fraternity house hands her a beer. After that is where she alleges that another member of the fraternity pressured her into taking drugs, specifically ketamine and marijuana, and drinking more alcohol. She alleges that two members of the fraternity assaulted her, and that one of them later sent a Snapchat message out to active Chi Phi members. The message is pretty graphic, but essentially invites them to join in, and several did.

In about three weeks, this young woman was going to go to the Cornell campus police and report what happened that night. But in the interim, what was going on? What was happening?

We now know, based on reporting by the New York Times and CBS News, this young woman was a member of a campus sorority, so she went to a member of her sorority and was trying to make sense of what happened. She was still processing it in real time. She wasn’t using, according to their reporting, the word “rape” or “assault.” And she was also seeing rumors circulating around campus about what had taken place at the fraternity house and was growing concerned about how they portrayed her. 

She, in the interim, also received a text message from one of the seven men at the fraternity essentially apologizing for how things went down the other night. She is not yet accusing them of assault, but is chatting, even seeks to reassure him in that first message. 

On October 22, she then makes an appointment at the campus health clinic because she had what she thought was a UTI and wanted to be tested because she told the doctor that she had gone through a traumatic experience. 

According to the New York Times reporting, you could see her thinking about what happened kind of evolve over those few weeks. She at some point says that this is starting to ruin her life, and she’s sleeping and crying and she’s feeling ashamed. She’s just really grappling with what had taken place, trying to make sense of it. By November 3 is when, according to these investigative documents that were obtained by the Times, she kind of comes to this conclusion that what happened at the party at Chi Phi was assault. 

She texts one of the seven fraternity members and says, “This was not consensual. I was given more ketamine than I can remember,” and that she was uncomfortable. A few days later, November 7th, 2024, according to these documents, she goes to the ER and asks for a rape kit. And the following day is when she goes to Cornell University Police.

When she goes to the police, how does she characterize what happened to the police? What does she tell them?

What she tells the police is that she believes she was assaulted, and she tells the police that it had started out as something that was consensual. And then at the end she says, “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.” She tells police she was extremely uncomfortable and that she kept taking ketamine in part because she thought she might black out and pass out. She had thought of at least two of the men as her friends. After the events of that night, she is then confronted with rumors that were spreading across campus, sort of depicting her as loose and blaming her essentially.

What happens after Jane Doe talks to the police? What do they do?

When she talks to Cornell University Police, they summarize what she said in a six-page statement that she then signs. And that is the statement that is submitted to the Tompkins County district attorney. 

And the district attorney would be the person who would bring charges or decide not to bring charges. What does he decide? 

Yes, so the district attorney decides not to bring charges in 2024 based on, he has said, the sworn statement that she signs to police. 

The DA says no charges for the seven men. Were they disciplined in any way?

We don’t know exactly how each of the men were disciplined. Cornell has said that they faced a range of disciplinary measures, including expulsions and suspensions. One of the details that had gone particularly viral about this is that the disciplinary measures included for some of the students to write essays. Cornell has not denied that, but it has specifically denied that the students only had to write essays as a disciplinary measure. The university has cited privacy laws and said it really can’t release any more specifics about how individual students were punished or not punished. 

What did Jane Doe do after first talking to the police and then learning the DA wasn’t going to press charges?

After she goes to police, we know she remains on campus and she has to continue seeing some of these men. And she also participates in the school’s Title IX investigation, which takes place over several months and concludes at some point in 2025.

I want to ask you about the DA. He is out in public defending his decision to not press charges in 2024. How is he defending himself?

The DA is a big part of the story. This is the Tompkins County District Attorney. His name is Matthew Van Houten. And he has said that in 2024, based on the written statement from Jane Doe, they did not have what they needed to press criminal charges. 

It’s important to note that we, as in the public, we’ve not actually seen a copy of Jane Doe’s sworn statement. The DA issued a press release in which he summarizes that statement. And in that summary, he describes her characterization of this as voluntary and conscious and consensual. That is at odds with some of the investigative documents that we’ve seen reported since then, including that transcript of Jane Doe’s interview with Cornell Police in which she very confidently says that she believes she was raped and even says that she was physically hit during that night.

The DA said that he did not see, before the lawsuit, the screenshot of the Snapchat message where the frat members are talking pretty crudely about the situation, and he also says he didn’t see the transcript of the interview between Jane Doe and police.

We now know the names of the seven men who were there that night. Have they said anything?

The seven men themselves have not publicly said anything, and the lawyers for three of those seven men have publicly denied the allegations. One of them says that his client went into the room, but immediately left and didn’t participate in the assault.

This is a story that is developing very quickly, and it seems like new information is coming out just about every day. What do we know about what happens next?

So there’s at least two things going on here. There is the reopened criminal investigation. 

Separately, there’s the civil lawsuit that Jane Doe filed last month, and that is not dependent in any way on how the criminal investigation goes, but that will also proceed against the university, the seven fraternity members, and the fraternity itself.

At the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, the documentary NAZA received a 25-minute standing ovation. In Israel, it’s all anyone’s talking about, even though few have actually seen it. 

Made by two Israeli filmmakers, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, the movie takes place on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, where 24 anonymous Israeli intelligence agents and soldiers discuss things that they did in Gaza and how they did them.

As Bilge Ebiri writes in his Vulture review of NAZA, “One officer recalls blowing up a building with 500 people in it to go after one target. They admit to knowingly wiping out entire neighborhoods, fully aware of the catastrophic human toll.”Another interviewee agrees that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. 

Since its reception in Venice, the film has faced harsh criticism from the Israeli government — with at least one politician issuing a call to revoke the filmmakers’ citizenship. 

Shany Littman is a journalist for Haaretz in Israel and has been reporting on the film’s reception. She spoke with Today, Explained co-host Noel King about the conversation around the movie in Israel. 

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Have you seen the documentary NAZA?

I haven’t. I asked the PR person of the movie to send me a link and it’s not possible. I mean, considering the huge storm that came out, they’re probably rethinking how to handle the distribution of the film.

What I hear you saying is it’s safe to assume most people in Israel have not actually been able to see the movie. Is that right?

Yes, that’s correct.

But they are aware of what is in it. Let’s talk about the conversation around this movie in Israel. What’s the reaction been like?

You can find many different types of criticism from all sides of a political range. It’s not only right-wing people or people who are supporting the war. The claims are first that maybe the film itself is not verified. They have witnesses that are anonymous that they didn’t verify well enough. But I think most people — they just feel that this is an opportunity for all the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli, and [antisemitic] people in the world to attack Israel. Israelis from all sides are afraid of the way the world is seeing us at the moment. 

Is anybody in Israel saying, “Hey, we’re glad that they did it. We’re glad that they made this movie”?

Yes. There are people who are supporting Yuval and Rachel, the filmmakers, supporting their right to criticize, to investigate. As a liberal country, we should be able to investigate ourselves, to criticize ourselves. They are doing their work as journalists. 

There has also been a reaction from the Israeli government at a more official level. What has the Israeli government said about this film?

“There’s a really long history of films that were criticized, especially by different culture ministers. But I haven’t seen anything like this, like what is happening now. This is really frightening.”

The first person to react was the minister of culture. He said that the nationality of Yuval and the filmmakers should be revoked. That they should not be Israeli citizens anymore. There’s a really long history of films that were criticized, especially by different culture ministers. But I haven’t seen anything like this, like what is happening now. This is really frightening. I’m completely horrified by this. 

I already saw some clips on social media by people who were filming themselves where…you could see a house [in the background] and someone was saying, “You can all come here. This is the house of Rachel Szor’s parents. They live here and you can come and do whatever you want. I invite you all to come here and take revenge.” And there were several clips with the same message. 

I’m guessing they’re not coming back to Israel at the moment. I think it has become really dangerous for them to be here, and it’s a new level. I published an article about this. I didn’t do the movie. I just published an article supporting them in Haaretz and my mother is afraid that someone will attack me. The echoes of this event, they’re going very far now.

Are you frightened for the filmmakers if they choose to return? Do you fear for their safety?

Yes, absolutely. Especially because the elections are coming in a month. Many Israelis see this day as like the red line or the moment where we will be able to know if we can still live in Israel as a democracy, as a liberal democracy, or that the country has changed in a way that many [civil] rights and liberties that we think we have are gone. And that this country is not a democracy anymore. And so I think this is also why the blood is boiling.

This is a very, very tense and fragile moment. And for them I assume it is even more crucial and I hope they will not do anything that will put them in danger.

The data center backlash has entered the midterms conversation. 

Politicians from across the spectrum have changed their minds — or at least their policy positions — about data centers in the past few months as public resistance  to their construction has skyrocketed. A major example is Texas, where just about one year ago, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott was proclaiming that his state was the “epicenter of AI development.” 

Now, after months of grassroots organizing and community outcry, Abbott is pushing to slow the roll of new data centers in Texas. He’s imposed a statewide moratorium on new construction pending an audit over the new connections to Texas’s power grid. While he hasn’t explicitly said the change is tied to his reelection campaign this November, the pause is expected to last through the election.

As dramatic as Abbott’s about-face has been, he’s not alone: Democrats and Republicans alike are following suit.

Jeremy Merrill, a data reporter at the Washington Post, analyzed thousands of social media posts and newsletters to see what elected officials on both sides of the aisle are saying about data centers. He spoke with Today, Explained co-host Noel King about his findings, what they say going into midterm elections, and how the backlash might change the way we think about what politicians owe to their constituents. 

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. 

What did you find?

Data centers didn’t used to be a big deal. And now, almost all of a sudden, they’re a big issue. Candidates are falling over themselves to sound tough about data centers. And data centers are overwhelmingly portrayed as a problem rather than an opportunity or a benefit. 

A great example is Sen. Jon Husted, who’s a Republican senator from Ohio, who’s up for election this November. He used to praise data center projects that were coming to Ohio when he was lieutenant governor because it would help establish Ohio as “an important tech hub in America.”

He said that data centers are essential to our digital lives. And now he’s saying he’s trying to “protect Americans from having to foot the bill for data centers.”

He’s really emblematic of a shift that happened all across the Republican Party in about February of this year. That’s when the bulk of messages from Republicans about data centers flipped from focusing on them as bringing benefits to their states and communities, to talking about their downsides. 

This is really a case of the anger and unhappiness bubbling up from everyday people up to political elites. And that grassroots anger was all across the political spectrum over a whole range of issues: power bills, claims about how much water data centers may use, air pollution, eminent domain, taxes, subsidies, and a generalized, physical manifestation of the anxiety that people feel about what AI is going to do to our society, to our brains, to our kids and to our jobs.

We know that it’s not just one single candidate, maybe even not just a handful, because you reported that the National Republican Senatorial Committee warned that, “Data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck.” 

That’s pretty strong language. Is the National Republican Senatorial Committee admitting that the wrong position on data centers is enough to lose a candidate a race at this point?

I think it’s something that they’re certainly worried about. He’s in a tough race. It’s a tossup. And presumably you’re looking for an edge, or to prevent your opponent from getting an edge over you. 

What about President Donald Trump’s messaging on data centers? He, initially at least, was very bullish on AI investment in the US. What has Trump been saying?

This is a story in two or three parts. As President Trump took office again last year, he was overall trying to portray his second term as president as “inaugurating a golden age for American manufacturing and technological dominance.” 

As part of that, he issued an executive order trying to make it easier to build data centers in the United States. And I think that’s probably why last year most Republicans across the board were talking about data centers as a benefit to the country and to the communities where they were being built — talking about jobs, talking about investment.

But like I said, the tide turned. And so on the one hand, you have President Trump promoting this bill that would protect people from having data centers cause their power bills to go up. But on the other hand, he just wrote earlier this week on Truth Social, “If [communities] want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”

He’s saying if they don’t want data centers, they’re going to “end up being backwards and poor.” So he’s still very pro-data center, which is fascinating.

Let’s talk about the Democrats. Which Democrats in particular are we seeing change their minds?

There are a lot of governors who used to be very positive on data centers in their states because these bring jobs. These bring construction investments, some amount of permanent jobs, some amount of construction jobs. Examples of folks who are now limiting data centers in their states include Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and [Gov.] J.B. Pritzker of Illinois.

The most striking case of a Democrat whose rhetoric has shifted so much is Rep. Ro Khanna of California, whose district actually includes Silicon Valley. In 2025, he was calling for building more data centers in the United States versus overseas. When the Trump administration did an AI deal with the United Arab Emirates, he said, “Why are we putting data centers and research hubs in Dubai?” 

But now he’s more critical, calling for an end to data center extraction, taking communities’ water and jacking up their bills, sucking all the money into the hands of a few tech billionaires.

Is anyone in either party still coming out strong for data centers?

My favorite example of this is Rep. Eric Burlison, who’s a Republican from Missouri. He’s really focused on the need to build data centers in order to compete with China. In June, he wrote, “Ask yourself who benefits when Americans turn against data centers? China does.”

He’s making the point that I think a lot of people in tech are making, which is, “This is coming whether you like it or not.” And part of politics is dealing with reality. 

In this day and age, it seems constituents don’t want to deal with that reality, but clearly there are people who hold office, or who hope to hold office, who are going to maintain the line that this is something we’ve just got to do.

This is a classic political science dispute about what a politician’s job is supposed to be. If you accept the premise that we need data centers to build a wonderful technological future or keep pace with China or whatever the argument is, is the job of a politician to just do what their constituents want, to be their tribune in Washington? Or is it to be the wise, thoughtful leader who’s willing to push back when constituents are missing something important? 

This is one thing I keep in mind when analyzing — particularly some of these governors who shifted more recently — is that they’re talking about the downsides of data centers. They’re talking about mitigating those downsides. They’re saying, “Oh, we need to get data centers to pay their fair share. We need to make sure that data centers don’t screw up our water. We need to make sure they don’t raise your power bills. We need to make sure they give back.”

But then it’s so that we can build them and still reap the benefits while mitigating the costs.

What is it about this issue, do you think, that has got us to this place? We’re polarized, but we’re not polarized in the same way that we’re often polarized.

One possibility is that this is coming from the grassroots so much and bubbling up to politicians and political elites, that everybody got the signal at the same time that this was something that they ought to oppose. 

The other possibility is people have for a while been saying, “Are we living through a generational political realignment in the United States where a lot of things are up for grabs?”

You don’t see a lot of the libertarian-adjacent pro-business, free markets, free trade Republican Party. And so when all these issues are up for grabs, politicians see opportunity in being innovative rather than sticking with the same traditional views of their party.