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For Terrance Cash, a New York prison inmate, it began with a kiss. And then, moments later, a corrections officer was jamming a metal flashlight into his face, threatening Cash with this: “Open your mouth or I’m going to break them teeth.”
That’s the scenario that unfolds in this well-reported story and graphic video produced by WIVB-TV reporters Daniel Telvock and Rob Petree, a report that they were able to construct after obtaining nearly a dozen bodycam videos from the incident.
The story begins in January 2024 at the Erie County Correctional Facility, about twenty miles east of Buffalo. Cash’s girlfriend had come to visit, and as the end was approaching, the pair kissed. Officers suspected she was passing drugs to Cash that way, and they “believed that if he swallowed the suspected narcotics, he could overdose and die,” the sheriff said later.
Officers tried prying his mouth open with the flashlight, and when that didn’t work, a jail chief “instructed officers to squeeze below Cash’s jaw line, and ‘apply pressure, his mouth will open.’” Moments later, an officer shoved the flashlight back into his mouth.
All told, corrections officers spent nearly ten minutes trying to extract unseen drugs from Cash before finally taking him down a blood-splattered hallway to a medical unit where he could be evaluated.
Officers apparently never found drugs on Cash, who was serving a seven-year sentence on drug and weapons charges, nor any evidence that his girlfriend had come equipped with them. First-degree contraband charges against both of them were dismissed. His attorney, who has filed a lawsuit over the incident, told WIVB, “Using a flashlight as a jack in someone’s mouth is something I have never seen.”
A couple of weeks ago, President Trump met with reporters during a visit to the Capitol, and he became particularly annoyed by one very direct question from the press gaggle.
“Who do you work for?” Trump demanded.
“NOTUS,” the reporter answered.
“Who?”
“NOTUS.”
“I don’t even know what the hell that is,” Trump said. “Get yourself a real job.”
It’s certainly possible Trump hadn’t heard of NOTUS, a new site that covers Washington (the name stands for News of the United States) and the brainchild of former Politico publisher Robert Allbritton. But even if NOTUS wasn’t on his administration’s radar before, it should be now, thanks to Emily Kennard and Margaret Manto.
They’re the journalists who broke the story that numerous citations in a recent report from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again Commission were riddled with errors—not just dead links or misspellings, but references to scientific studies that didn’t exist or that misrepresented the actual findings. “The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” said one epidemiologist, upon being told that she was listed in the MAHA report.
The story got a lot of play—including in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NBC News (where, you might notice, they credited NOTUS). And many of the blunders, which had the distinct whiff of having been generated by the cheesiest AI engine on the planet, were soon cleaned up. But not all. Manto and Kennard published a story the next day headlined “The MAHA Report Has Been Updated with Fresh Errors.”
How did this story come about? Sam Stein, an editor at The Bulwark, had the same question when he interviewed Manto last week.
Over Memorial Day weekend, Manto said, “I got a tip that there were maybe some issues with some of those citations,” so she and Kennard “looked at every single one.”
“There’s 522 citations in this report,” Stein responded. “You looked at all 522?”
“We did, yes,” Manto responded with a laugh.
What did it feel like when the tip came in? Said Manto, an MIT alumna who used to be a scientist: “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, there goes my Memorial Day weekend.’
“It was a really fun time.”
Elon Musk is, more or less, gone from his chainsaw role in Washington, but he couldn’t leave without doing one last round of press—making a joint appearance with Trump in the Oval Office, and sitting for a series of interviews that he hoped would restore his reputation as a business and tech genius.
The White House press conference managed to be weird, bad, fascinating, and ultimately futile, because the reporting group includes MAGA adherents who will hijack any effort to get concrete answers.
Reporters aren’t identified in this Roll Call transcript of the conference, but the uselessness of many of their questions shines through. Here’s a brief taxonomy of the questions, which were posed to Musk, Trump, or both:
The Questions That the FDA Should Label as Emetics
- “You had mentioned earlier in the week that DOGE had become a whipping boy.… Was it worth it for you, and what would you change?”
- “So many of the things that you’re trying to do are held up in court right now. If the courts are going to have so much influence over US policy, do you wish you would have just become a judge instead?”
The Question That Never Achieved Liftoff
- “Well, so, there is a New York Times report today that accuses you of blurring the line between…”
The Question That Isn’t Actually a Question
- “The president mentioned that you had to deal with all the slings and arrows during your time at DOGE…”
The Question That Came from Outer Space
- “Mr. Musk, what do you think would be easier, colonizing Mars or making the government efficient?”
The Questions That, in Another Era, Would Seem Perfectly Reasonable
- “Mr. President, are you going to reinstate the tariffs on China?”
- “Mr. President, what message do you like to send to international students? Are they still welcome to study in the United States?”
And, finally:
The One Question That Was on Everyone’s Mind
- “Mr. Musk, is your eye okay? What happened to your eye? I noticed there’s a bruise there.”
Also last week, Musk met for one-on-one interviews with several reporters at his SpaceX headquarters in southern Texas, in advance of another rocket launch.
Clearly, Musk wanted to talk about space. And reporters were generally happy to go along. Almost all of the questions in this Ars Technica interview, for example, were on his preferred topic—e.g., “What does success look like for you with today’s launch?” Only in the final moment was Musk asked about Washington, and even then, it was with the gentlest touch possible: “You’ve spent the last year pretty heavily focused on politics. I’m wondering if you feel like that has slowed SpaceX down or harmed SpaceX?”
Keep in mind the context. A Boston University professor has estimated that the USAID cuts championed by Musk have led to the deaths of around three hundred thousand people. Even if Musk wants to dispute that methodology, we have firsthand reports, such as this one from the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, of children dying due to the suspension of aid. Given that, it is unclear why a news organization—even one devoted to tech coverage—would interview Musk and avoid asking about famine or disease, while sticking to softballs like this one: “Starlink has become really successful. It helped me during a hurricane. And Starship is coming along. As you look out for the next ten years, what are you betting on big now that will really bear fruit for SpaceX a decade from now?”
There was a more consequential interview, conducted by CBS News’s David Pogue. He elicited newsworthy criticism by Musk about Trump’s budget bill, among other bits. In a separate segment, with colleague Errol Barnett, Pogue said he had never agreed to limit his interview to SpaceX: “I had been told by his people that any questions were fine. In fact, we went over the topics I hoped to cover with his people. Somehow that never got back to Elon. I think he wanted to just talk about space.”
Pogue also elicited Musk’s prickly side, particularly when he asked about restrictions on foreign students coming to the US: “I think we wanna stick to, you know, the subject of the day,” Musk said, “which is, like, spaceships, as opposed to, you know, presidential policy.”
Pogue responded, “Oh, okay. I was told anything is good, but…” To which Musk replied, “No, well—no.”
Still, Pogue didn’t push Musk all that hard, and apparently never asked some key questions about the impact of the DOGE cuts on critical government services. (I say “apparently” because I asked CBS for a transcript of the full interview, but the spokesman wouldn’t provide one. This comes as CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, is considering paying Trump $15 million or more to settle a meritless lawsuit related to a transcript of its Kamala Harris interview last year.)
And Pogue couldn’t resist using journalists’ hoary “if both sides are mad” self-praise: “I’ve been beaten up by both the left and the right for being too hard on Musk and too soft on Musk,” he told Barnett. “So I think I’ve threaded the needle.”
To which Barnett replied, “There you go, that’s always how you can tell.”
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