Toby Morton has made a name for himself skewering the right with fake websites. Now, he’s set his sights on seven men accused of gang rape

Toby Morton

When news recently broke that a former Cornell University student had accused seven men of drugging and gang-raping her at a fraternity party in 2024, and was suing the university for allegedly failing to protect her, comedy writer and internet gadfly Toby Morton jumped into action. He purchased domains for all the men named in the complaint and launched a website to share the story of the woman known as Jane Doe, her lawsuit, and Cornell’s response. “With the story of what happened, the screenshots of the guys saying, ‘free pussy upstairs,’ you know, I immediately went to GoDaddy,” he tells Rolling Stone, referring to a reported detail from the lawsuit. He also acquired domains connected to university officials; the names will all redirect to the main website, TheCornell7.org.

Morton, who once wrote for South Park, has been snapping up domain names to spoof politicians and other public figures with parody websites since 2020. The furor around his fake campaign website for U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik (tagline: “Let’s Keep It White”) made him internet famous in 2022; he’s since amassed over a million social media followers on Instagram and Threads.

As public outrage rippled across the nation, prosecutors reopened an investigation into the gang rape allegations in response to Doe’s lawsuit; at the time of the alleged incident, no charges were filed. On Sept. 21, five days after Doe filed her complaint with the New York Supreme Court, the university’s student paper The Cornell Daily Sun published an editorial, “Cornell Won’t, We Will,” naming all seven accused and blasting the university for its response. The piece outlines how, according to the lawsuit, after the alleged assault, the accused perpetrators were temporarily suspended and then offered the chance to ‘mitigate their conduct’ by submitting essays to the school. “Tackling sexual assault as an academic matter… offers no respite to the victims who have undergone physical and mental abuse,” the editors wrote. “This is not a dark chapter in Cornell’s history, it’s a morbid pattern.” Cornell did not respond to a request for comment, but denied that essay-writing was the “sole consequence” offered by the university to defendants in a Sept. 21 statement. The university has since agreed to outside review of its response to the alleged rape, according to a post from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

After Morton’s followers alerted him to the story, he launched TheCornell7.org, posting a statement on the website that “accountability should not disappear when the headlines do.” The site — which he says has gotten more than 5 million hits so far — features photos of the seven Chi Phi fraternity members and the details of each man’s role in the alleged drugging and assault as outlined in Doe’s complaint. Morton says former Cornell students have given him names of others in the fraternity group Snapchat, which allegedly was used to invite more men into the room with Doe. He’s in the process of trying to verify them with the help of his lawyer. He plans to post more information, including quotes from the District Attorney who declined to press charges, as it becomes available. So far he has not been in touch with Doe’s team. “The goal is not to be first,” he wrote on the site. “The goal is to build a record that can withstand scrutiny. This will take time. It will be careful. It will be documented. And there will be accountability.”

Morton announced the website on Instagram, where he goes by the handle @wordclown. His post, addressed to the accused men, tells them he owns domains in their names, and that he’s also going after “those employed at Cornell who gave you a break,” buying up URLs of their names, too. The disturbing details of Jane Doe’s alleged drugging and assault convinced him of the need to keep the story in the public eye. He shares pushback on social media, including comments like: “How do you know if [Jane Doe] is telling the whole truth since you’re just a satirist?”

“I’m verifying documents, photographs, timelines, and records,” Morton replied. “You’re typing ‘But what if lady lie?’ into a website contact form… May you someday encounter evidence with the same enthusiasm you currently reserve for doubting women.” In response to messages telling him he’s a satirist, not a journalist, Morton wrote, “This is true. But this makes me more dangerous. I have no limits. No boundaries. Nobody to tell me I’ve gone too far.”

It’s not the first time Morton has caused controversy. He’s made a name for himself stoking outrage with satirical websites that beat people who fail to secure their domain names to the punch. AttorneyGeneralPaxton.com lampoons Texas AG Ken Paxton as a “Criminal – Adulterer – Racist,” with pages dedicated to criminal investigations into the lawmaker, his extramarital affairs, and the significant racial disparities in his prosecutions of Texas voters. StandWithBooker.com mocks New Jersey Senator Cory Booker for being “tone deaf” by promoting his 2026 memoir with a book tour in March and April, when Congress was in session. He parodied televangelist Joel Osteen with OsteenChurch.com: “God is light; In Him there is no darkness… but in Joel there is dimmed lighting, premium seating, and a three-drink minimum.”

Morton started building parody sites to call attention to politicians in a way that would outlast the social media algorithm. “There were a million jokes and angry posts disappearing into everyone’s feeds,” he says. “A website felt more permanent.” He has tapped into fury at MAGA with sites like DraftBarronTrump.com and TheTrumpObituary.com. After launching the latter site last July (tagline: “A Living Obituary and a Future Memorial”), he found himself explaining satire to law enforcement officers who showed up at his door. “They said, ‘There’s concern about your website about the president of the United States,’” Morton recalls. “I guess they sent local authorities because it wasn’t like the big FBI coming from Washington or anything.” The cops left after Morton assured them that he wasn’t predicting Trump’s death, but he was left shaken by the incident. “It was kind of scary because I knew I was protected, and I didn’t do anything wrong, but there was that little feeling in my gut where I was like, shit, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Morton has created sites to drag White House staffer Stephen Miller (“As Racist as Racists Can Be”) and Hilton hotels for accommodating ICE officers (“aligning comfort with authority”). Predicting that Donald Trump would attempt to affix his name to the Kennedy Center, he snapped up TrumpKennedyCenter.org in August 2025, which he says got millions of views (the site is currently experiencing hosting issues). He crowdsources funding for the sites, occasionally digging into his own pocket to pay for his spoof campaigns, often with accompanying billboard installations. In 2023, he targeted Moms for Liberty with a mobile electronic billboard outside the right-wing organization’s Florida conference. “It had the website name and a Hitler mustache, and it just kept driving by as people were waiting to get in.” A QR code on the billboard took people to the site, where Morton was monitoring traffic. “There were tons of people looking at it,” he chuckles.

As his work started getting more attention, Morton’s focus expanded. “It became less specifically about politicians and more about power and accountability, institutions, and people who take advantage of others,” he says. Eventually, that led him toward stories that affected him more personally, “particularly with survivors who felt ignored.” His first public callout of an alleged sexual offender was in 2025, when a 22-year-old former Brigham Young University baseball starter named Candon Dahle pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a young girl over a period of five years. The judge suspended his sentence and placed him on probation. After Morton announced his purchase of Dahle’s domain name on Instagram, he received an anonymous offer of $10,000 from someone trying to buy the domain name to prevent him from building the website (he did not accept the money). He hopes to have it up soon.

Last summer, after Oklahoma teen Jesse Mack Butler pleaded no contest to raping and strangling two teen girls and walked free without serving jail time, Morton purchased JesseMackButler.org. “Everyone Is In Danger While He’s Free,” a banner says on the site, with a summary of the 11 criminal counts lodged against Mack, and a “What Happened?” page that outlines the assaults according to the families of the two girls. That campaign upset some Morton supporters; one messaged him, “I’ve requested my $200 to be returned from Venmo. You’re straying from politics and going after families of rapists who have gone through the court system. Please stick to politics.” Morton posted it along with his reply: “I’ve requested Venmo return your $200 so you can put it toward a helmet. You appear to be navigating nuance without one. Please stick to simpler activities.”

Morton, 55, grew up in Colorado as the youngest of nine kids. He has no experience as a journalist; since a stint as a staff writer and voice actor on South Park in the early 2000s, he’s mostly made a living rewriting scripts for production companies. He’s currently developing a comedy series based on his online persona, “a single dad who goes after powerful people in the dark.” He points to his five-year-old son as a huge reason he’s driven to hold sex offenders accountable. “Someday, I want to be able to show him what his dad did when he saw something he believed was wrong,” he says. “I’m raising a little boy who is watching the kind of man his dad chooses to be. I want to give him an example worth watching.” Another motivating factor is the sheer number of messages he receives from sexual-assault survivors: “I’ve gotten hundreds of emails and DMs from women trusting me with their stories. It’s been incredibly overwhelming, and it’s also a catalyst to really get this [information] out there.”

He’s never been sued for defamation, but he’s pissed plenty of people off. After he launched EliseStefanik2022.com, a spokesperson for the congresswoman complained to the New York Post that his work is “a desperate attempt to gain acceptance from the radical left blue checkmark brigade.” Meanwhile, his social media followers cheer him on. “Fucking finally a man gets it,” one commenter said on a post about the Cornell site. Asked if he is worried about unleashing a mob, he answers simply: “The mob is already unleashed, despite what I do.”

What started as comic relief has morphed into real activism, which Morton says is gratifying. He doesn’t see the Cornell site as a dramatic departure from his political sites. “To me, it’s the same basic idea,” he says, “which is using satire and the internet to put sustained attention on people and institutions that I believe deserve scrutiny.”

Morton says he’s determined to continue exposing wrongdoing as he sees fit; he’s currently working on a site for Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good. “I was making fun of politicians, and as things got more serious in the country, I just kept going; the saviors keeping my sense of humor are the trolls.”

Internet personality Clavicular, the right-wing streamer who turned “looksmaxxing” into a lucrative online persona, is facing criminal charges in Massachusetts stemming from an alleged sexual assault in 2025.

The 20-year-old content creator, whose real name is Braden Eric Peters, was charged with rape, drugging a person for sexual intercourse and providing alcohol to someone under 21, according to Massachusetts court records. The alleged incident took place on May 23, 2025, on Cape Cod, at the streamer's parents' house. Peters is scheduled to be arraigned Oct. 14.

Peters’ representative has pushed back on coverage of the case, saying the streamer had not been formally served and accusing outlets of exaggerating the status of the proceedings. Peters has denied the allegations.

The charges arrive months after another legal dispute involving Peters and influencer Aleksandra Vasilevna Mendoza, who filed a civil lawsuit in Florida alleging battery, fraud and emotional distress. Mendoza alleged that Peters provided her with alcohol while she was underage and later had non-consensual sex with her while she was intoxicated. She also alleged that he injected her with Aqualyx, a fat-dissolving substance, without her consent. Peters’ attorney has denied the allegations and said they remain unproven.

It's been a wild year of legal problems for Peters. In March, he was arrested in Florida after authorities accused him of instigating a fight between two women at a short-term rental and subsequently posting footage of the altercation online. Prosecutors dropped those battery-related charges in July, citing insufficient evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. In April, he suffered an apparent overdose while livestreaming in Florida.

Peters also faced a firearm charge after a March livestream from the Everglades appeared to show him shooting at an apparently dead alligator. He pleaded no contest in May and received six months of probation, 20 hours of community service and mandatory firearms and wildlife-safety courses.

A man places a photograph of Nolan Xavier Wells in front of the podium before a news conference during the 117th NAACP National Convention

A grand jury investigating the death of Nolan Xavier Wells unanimously decided against making any indictments, Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath said in a statement Monday night.

The 18-year-old football player from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, was with friends on Horn Island, a barrier island near the border of Mississippi and Alabama, when he disappeared on July 4. Two days later, a U.S. park ranger found his body on the island where he was last seen. Wells, apparently, had decided to stay on the island after his friends left by boat. He was last seen around 3 p.m. wearing blue swim trunks and sunglasses.

An independent pathologist found the cause of death as “undetermined pending investigation,” and many questioned whether there had been foul play. The first autopsy was conducted on July 7 by a state medical examiner in Mississippi. It found “there was bruising on the back of Mr. Wells’ head, which was not a fatal injury” and found “no evidence of any fatal injury or organic disease.”

“Jackson County, after a thorough and exhaustive investigation, your grand jury met last week concerning the death investigation of Nolan Wells and unanimously returned a no true bill,” McIlrath said in a video statement on Facebook. “In addition to bringing prosecutions against the guilty, the grand jury must also exonerate those who have been falsely accused.”

McIlrath continued, “There is absolutely no evidence to support the allegations that Nolan’s disappearance and death were racially motivated. Nolan’s friends loved Nolan and Nolan loved them. Nolan chose to stay on the island that day, and there is not a scintilla of evidence to contradict that.”

The grand jury report was released on Monday. It indicates that the grand jury issued 132 subpoenas and heard from 43 witnesses, with seven individuals being invited to testify.

“The Grand Jury considered credible evidence concerning the circumstances of how Mr. Wells sustained the injury to the back of his head, but the exact cause of injury remains uncertain,” the report said. “A witness testified under oath that he saw Wells slip awkwardly off the side of a boat around the time of 3:30 p.m. on July 4, 2026, but could not say whether Mr. Wells struck his head during the fall. The witness testified that Mr. Wells continued to socialize after the fall and did not appear injured.”

Former NFL player and activist Colin Kaepernick helped fund the private autopsy which was done on behalf of Wells’ family. During his eulogy at Wells’ memorial, Rev. Al Sharpton offered a $50,000 reward for anyone who brings a tip leading to an arrest or conviction in the case of Wells’ death. Actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry texted Sharpton during the funeral to announce he’d match the reward. Afterwards, it was announced that retired football player Terrell Owens was adding $25,000, bringing the total to $125,000. “He was not on that island by himself,” Sharpton said during his eulogy. “Somebody saw something or knows something.”

Attorney Ben Crump, working on behalf of Wells’ family, released a statement on X following the release of the report. “The public still deserves a clear account supported by records, evidence, and independent scrutiny,” Crump said. “Nolan Wells’ death still demands answers.”

Crump also called the grand jury’s decision an attempt “to close the chapter on Nolan Wells’ death without getting to the truth,” according to CNN. He added, “Nolan’s family will not rest until we know what happened to him, and neither will we.”

Edward Paltzik, an attorney representing the friends who had accompanied Wells on the boat trip, said on X, “We said it all along: Warren Hudson, Jax Pitalo, and Morgan Seymour were always completely innocent. There was never any doubt. They are terrific people.” He added, “I wish to express our deepest gratitude to District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department for their professional, thorough, and unbiased investigation that was unprecedented both in care and scope.”

As anticipation builds for what's gearing up to be one of the most important releases in entertainment this decade, Rockstar Games is giving the music of Grand Theft Auto VI its very own release.

The company announced Thursday that Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album, a 34-track collection of original songs created in partnership with Atlantic Records, will arrive November 19, the same day the highly anticipated game launches.

Six tracks have already been released, offering the first look at the unusually broad roster Rockstar has assembled for the project. The lineup includes Yung Lean with Future and Metro Boomin on "That's It," Travis Scott on "RHYNO," Morgan Wallen on "Last Thing You Need," Rauw Alejandro on "Macacoa 2000" and Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards on "Bright Lights, Big City."

The album also features an unexpected collaboration on "Sexy Magic," which brings together CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso, PinkPantheress, Fred again.. and French electronic producer Etienne de Crécy. Travis Scott's "RHYNO" is produced by Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, the Daft Punk co-founder.

Rockstar says the 34 songs were created to capture the energy of Vice City and Leonida, the fictional Florida-inspired setting of GTA VI. The remaining 28 tracks have not yet been revealed.

Importantly, the album does not appear to represent the entirety of the game's musical universe. Rockstar says more information is still coming about GTA VI's dynamic score and what it calls the "next evolution" of in-game radio. How the 34 original songs will be incorporated into the game has not yet been fully detailed. We also do not know whether the songs we heard in the Netflix exclusive trailer will be featured in the actual game.

The album will be released digitally on November 19, with CD and vinyl editions also available. A limited-edition vinyl set will feature transparent magenta records filled with blue liquid and exclusive artwork.

Has the internet made keeping up with the ever-evolving glossary of new phrases feel borderline impossible? Don’t worry, Merriam-Webster is here to help.

The famed dictionary added 1,400 new words to its dictionary on Wednesday, many focused on internet-first phases and trends. “The new entries reflect words and meanings that have demonstrated widespread use over time, offering a window into the world today,” Merriam-Webster said in a statement, calling the adds a “glow-up” to the dictionary’s historic lexicon.

The new batch of words focus on the worlds of food, social media culture, technology, fashion, and community. These include everything from “shapewear,” “looksmaxxing,” “meme coin,” “parasocial,” “promposal,” “vibe coding,” “cuffing season,” “Sunday scaries,” “crashout,” and “California sober.” Other additions are “Rickroll,” “compute,” “yacht rock,” “whack-a-mole,” and “uncanny valley.”

Merriam-Webster has a long established history of updating its dictionary to include modern phrases and terms introduced and used in pop culture and digital spaces. According to their public guidelines, dictionary editors pick the new additions by using three criteria: frequent use, widespread use, and meaningful use.

With the new words including major additions from the technology and communication worlds, Merriam-Webster might be providing some clues to its word of the year. The frontrunners for the annual tradition haven’t been announced yet, but the winners in years past were “slop,” “polarization,” and “authentic.”

“New words like hashtag and selfie get a lot of attention, but many of the new words we add are new meanings of words that are already staples in our language: think of the recent meanings of mouse and cookie that have nothing to do with rodents or baked goods,” the company says on its website. “The Internet-specific senses of lurk and browse built upon the existing meanings of those terms. A verb that we use every day, access, was first entered in the Collegiate Dictionary in 1973, and a specific reference to computers was added in 1993. These words may not make headlines, but they’re just as important as words that are newly coined.”

There’s a voice in Rachel Accurso’s head. Right now, it’s also coming out of her tote bag — a recorded version of her alter ego’s cheerful tone made tinny by canvas.

“This is so funny,” she says, wrestling with a rainbow-colored plastic toy with her face on it, which is doing the singing in question. “I was walking down the street, and it was like, ‘Hi, friends!’ I don’t know how to shut it off!”

If she donned a pink headband, most people would recognize Accurso as Ms. Rachel, a children’s entertainer who started as an amateur YouTube host and has since crafted an educational universe. She has more than 20 million subscribers, a Netflix deal, a collaboration with Sesame Street, a line of toys available at Target and Walmart, children’s-book tie-ins, and an upcoming debut album, I’m So Happy, out Sept. 25. But there are two people at play here. Yes, there’s Ms. Rachel, a trusted face on the internet using songs to teach tykes how to say “mama,” use the potty, and hop like bunnies. But there’s also Accurso, a 43-year-old Christian mother of two whose conviction to speak out against violence, poverty, and disenfranchisement of children, particularly those in Gaza, has turned her life as a public figure into a melee of controversy.

This duality isn’t immediately obvious in the woman who greets me at her door in New York City with a bulging plastic bag of breakfast food and a wide, open smile. When the construction in the apartment next door makes itself known — clanking and paint smells seeping under the door — our morning at home swiftly turns into a picnic. “Let’s go down to the park,” she says, soft voice carrying only a trace of the singsong intonation that keeps children rapt. “It will be beautiful.”

Originally called Songs for Littles, Accurso started the show in 2019 with her husband, Aron Accurso, a composer and musician who’s worked on Broadway shows like Billy Elliot, Nice Work If You Can Get It, and Aladdin. Ms. Rachel videos, which can run anywhere from 30 minutes to more than two hours, cover a wide range of deceptively simple topics, like playing hide and seek, naming farm animals, or learning how to brush your teeth. But Accurso leans heavily on her master’s degree in early-childhood education, which gives the show a research-backed foundation. The nursery rhyme “The Mama Song,” for example, uses exaggerated mouth movements to encourage babies to mimic the motion. “Icky Sticky Bubble Gum” turns a silly story about gum into a lesson about the parts of the body. The song “Hop Little Bunnies” promotes movement and following instructions like “stop,” “jump,” and “skip.”

Accurso’s show doesn’t contain political material — unless lessons on friendship can be considered dangerous ideals. Nevertheless, Accurso’s activism on her public-facing Ms. Rachel social media accounts has made her and her family a target of harassment, accusations, and even death threats. It’s why, for safety reasons, I cannot share what neighborhood Accurso cheerfully walks me through, stopping to speak to neighbors and pet a fluffy white dog named Daisy dealing with a bout of arthritis. I cannot even describe the park where we set up camp to eat breakfast on the ground. Think being a mom is hard? Try balancing playdates and school drop-offs with security measures and constant vigilance.

On her public Ms. Rachel accounts, Accurso posts anywhere from five to 10 times a day on platforms like Instagram and Threads, calling out politicians, posting fundraisers, and constantly reiterating that children in Gaza deserve the world’s attention. Accurso’s driving belief is that with enough time, enough photos, enough heartfelt pleas, she can change people’s hearts and minds. But that fight comes with a limit — one Accurso is in the process of figuring out.

“‘You’re gonna lose this partnership. You’re gonna lose views.’ That doesn’t faze me because the kids gave me the platform. I’m going to stand with them no matter what,” Accurso says. “People on the ground in Gaza are risking their lives all the time to help kids. I can do it from Manhattan.”

AN IMPROMPTU OUTDOOR BREAKFAST with Accurso involves plenty of food, and what feels like even more apologies. First, Accurso apologizes for not having a picnic blanket. Then, it’s napkins, though she offers pieces of paper, a handful of Ms. Rachel-themed bibs, and at one point, her own tote bag. Then she apologizes for not thinking about dietary restrictions. She’s picked up what feels like every breakfast option, including yogurt, avocado toast and salad, and a fluffy omelet covered in chives. All that’s missing: utensils.

“Oh, my gosh, we are screwed,” Accurso says, laughing. “What are we gonna do?” There’s a shuffle for things we could use to build makeshift forks, but it’s eventually abandoned. Accurso manhandles the omelet, layering the salad on top before folding it in half. “It’s an egg taco!” she says gleefully. When the hand sanitizer I offer her disappears at the bottom of my bag, she waves my empty hands away with a shrug. “I [don’t] care,” she says, ripping a thick slice of sourdough topped with avocado mash clean down the middle. “I [have] a 16-month-old who eats dirt.”

Kids programming has always been an integral part of Accurso’s life. In fact, it probably still would be even if she wasn’t Ms. Rachel. No fewer than six times, she calls Fred Rogers — Mister Rogers — her “hero.” She adores Sesame Street and children’s books like Madeline. Growing up in Maine with a single mother, Accurso’s great love was the theater. She and her older sister — close to three years apart — used to call themselves “Sisteristic” when they put on living-room performances, and were constantly checking ads for community theaters. Accurso was once in a local production of Annie with Anna Kendrick; Accurso was Annie and Kendrick was a precocious voice in the orphan ensemble. (“When she did, ‘I love you, Miss Hannigan,’ she totally stole the show,” Accurso says. “I told her on DM[s] the other day, and then she found the program!”)

Accurso moved to New York in 2009. Soon after, she met Aron at a Unitarian church on the Upper East Side. “It was coffee hour at church. I was about to leave, and I said, ‘Oh, there’s a cute girl.’” Aron says. “When I started talking to her, I realized, ‘What an interesting person.’ Immediately I said, ‘I’ll walk you out.’” (Their first real date was the short-lived Broadway musical In Transit.) The duo are opposites, personality-wise. Aron tends to be quiet and straightforward. Accurso’s mind and mouth run a mile a minute. When an interested squirrel moves to investigate our breakfast, she goes silent midsentence. “I feel like we’re not supposed to feed animals,” she whispers, vocalizing the notes to Snow White’s “I’m Wishing,” hand outstretched. “And it’s so hard because I want to.” But the Accursos share a passion for making music.

“When I was teaching public school, I asked him to make a track because there wasn’t a karaoke [version] for this certain song. I thought he was just gonna sit down and [play],” Accurso says, miming plunking a few solitary keys on a piano. “He was there for hours and hours, adding all these instruments to exactly match the track. I think it’s cool that he [brings] the Broadway level of care and detail to kids’ music.”

The Accursos had their first child, Thomas, in 2018. After his first birthday, Thomas was diagnosed with a severe speech delay that required specialized therapy. It wasn’t cheap — about $175 for every 45-minute weekly session — but the techniques were life-changing. After she realized Thomas remembered more when he was able to watch lessons back on video, Accurso asked her husband to give her a birthday present. “I was like, ‘I want your mouth on a video camera to say cheese or baby,’” she says, curling her lips and baring her teeth to enunciate the syllables. “I’m self-conscious about my teeth. And he’s so nice, he’ll do what I ask. It was [Aron] jumping in right away [that crafted] that first video.”

Ms. Rachel’s popularity wouldn’t be possible without the rapidly developing relationship newer generations have with technology. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, every year, the age at which kids are exposed to screens goes down, and the number of hours they spend in front of screens goes up. And the choices available to them extend far beyond PBS or Disney. The landscape of online children’s content is cluttered with everything from multicolored fruit dancing to EDM to baby influencers, who unpack and play with mountains of toys on camera (à la Ryan’s World) for other kids’ enjoyment. When the Accurso family published their first video in 2019, they offered parents an educational and low-fi alternative. In one of their first videos, “Bubble, Bubble Pop!,” Accurso sings in front of a static underwater background for only two minutes, voice brassy without a professional microphone, before signing off with a cheerful “See you later, alligators!”

“The first things we filmed, we stacked books [to make a] tripod,” Accurso says wistfully. “I didn’t care if it was crooked.” There were also some technical glitches. “I would record a whole show and the mic wasn’t plugged in, and I’d cry.”

But kids were obsessed, as were adults. Parents would leave testimonials praising Ms. Rachel’s videos, saying they helped their children learn new skills, or calmed crying toddlers. There’s even an ongoing TikTok trend where parents play Ms. Rachel’s voice and wake babies out of dead sleep. As the Covid-19 pandemic set in, and millions of Americans became trapped in their homes with no access to mommy-and-me events, toddler classes, or respite, Accurso’s channel hit 1 million subscribers.

IF ACCURSO HAS A SUPERPOWER, it’s invisibility. Groups of screaming preschoolers pass by us in the park, fists clutched tight onto their walking ropes, chubby hands waving hello or pointing to squirrels scampering in their path. “Hi, friends, how are you today?” Accurso calls out as a group stops next to us. Not a single one seems aware that the only thing keeping them from recognizing their biggest idol is a pair of mint-green Lucite glasses and the absence of that signature headband.

“None of them seem to know I’m Ms. Rachel, which is totally great,” Accurso says softly, waving to the group. “Only grown-ups really do. [They] recognize me if they hear my voice. I often wear Mister Rogers socks or a Sesame Street shirt because I love children’s media.” That’s enough to tip people off. “Sometimes I’m not gonna wear the shirt, because I’m doing something with my son and I really want to focus on him. But I love meeting people out and about.”

Accurso describes herself as having an overdeveloped sense of empathy. She says she feels physical pain when someone else is hurting. It’s why she was struck in late 2023 when she saw videos of Palestinian children watching episodes of Ms. Rachel, often with the chaos of a humanitarian refugee camp directly behind them. As videos of the war in Gaza continued to flood in, the images stayed with her. When she saw a video of a starving baby in Gaza wearing a rainbow onesie similar to one her then-infant daughter, Susie, wore, it made her so upset she had to give the item of clothing away.

“When I see a mom who has a baby who is starving and they can’t get any milk, I see that and [think], ‘What if that was me and Susie?’” she says. “With Gaza, I couldn’t not speak out.”

Accurso’s online presence has always been intertwined with politics. In 2020, she shared children’s books about the importance of talking to kids about race, like the Ibram X. Kendi picture book Antiracist Baby. She also posted about the importance of voting in presidential elections. In 2024, she posted a video celebrating Pride Month and LGBTQ+ families (“This month and every month I celebrate you!”) — prompting a boycott from political commentator Ben Shapiro. She lambasted former New York Mayor Eric Adams over proposed cuts to early-childhood education programs in the 2024 city budget. She’s been vocal about the harm poverty and food insecurity can have on developing children, and is quick to condemn racism and homophobia. She remains a staunch critic of the Trump administration’s family detainment practices and xenophobic rhetoric against immigrant children. And she has a demonstrated history of fundraising for kids in war-ravaged areas — including mass displacements in Sudan and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. So she was surprised when her posts about the rising Palestinian death toll were met with aggressive criticism.

When she collaborated with Palestinian war photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, who has called Israel a terror state, she was accused of platforming an antisemitic voice in the movement. When she ramped up her posts about starving Palestinian children, critics said she was ignoring Israeli children targeted in the Oct. 7 attacks. In 2025, watchdog group StopAntisemitism put Accurso in the running for “Anti-Semite of the Year,” claiming Accurso inflated death statistics coming out of Gaza, shared “Hamas propaganda,” and ignored the deaths of Jewish children in Israel. The group also sent a formal letter asking the Department of Justice to investigate whether Accurso was being funded by Hamas for her post. Accurso denies these claims, stating she has only shared statistics shared by verified sources, like the United Nations. Even then, some disputed their veracity. (“I have to realize that people who believe the U.N. is fake — that’s not people I can engage with,” she says.)

In January, Accurso started a firestorm when she accidentally liked an Instagram comment on her post that said “Free America From the Jews.” Accurso apologized — saying she hit the button by accident and removed it once followers brought it to her attention. “I thought I deleted a comment and I accidentally hit ‘like,’” she said in a tearful video. “I’m a human who makes mistakes. Everyone who knows me knows I would never like that.”

Looking back on the last few years, Ac­curso says, “I thought everyone hated me at one point. I remember calling friends and family members, Jewish and not Jewish, and just being like, ‘Why do people hate that I don’t want kids to be killed and starved?’”

Raffi — the famed children’s per­former known for “Baby Beluga” and “Five Little Ducks” — says that Accurso’s work and activism center around spreading joy and working to protect children everywhere. “In her love of the world’s children, she’s a person after my own heart. Her embrace of Palestinian kids is what Fred Rogers would have done,” he says. “Rachel’s courage and compassion is exemplary. I’m happy we’re friends.”

But while close confidants have been supportive, the in-person backlash is also rampant. Last year, Accurso released a special performance of the song “Hop Little Bunnies” with Rahaf, a then-three-year-old from Gaza who lost both her legs in an Israeli airstrike. In the clip, filmed in New York, the two sing together. Rahaf swings her prosthetics to the song, and at one point, wraps her small arms around Accurso’s neck — following the song’s instructions and pretending to be asleep. But when she attempted to rent out a playroom for Rahaf’s visit, Accurso was turned away from multiple businesses, which cited threats and backlash.

“I finally found a place that would let us come. She had the best time,” Accurso says. “I just was like, ‘Let me just be in the moment with her and follow her lead.’ We played and laughed so much. It was beautiful.”

But even this perpetual optimist can’t hide the fact that constant scrutiny has complicated the life she imagined for her children. “I wouldn’t change anything. Well, I would love for people to not send death threats,” she says. “For a while, we had security, and they were like, ‘Don’t do anything predictable.’ And it was just like, ‘Oh, I have to think about what I’m doing and fear for my family.’ That was tough.”

Aron has always been happy for Accurso to be the public face of their show. “It’s a beautiful face,” he says, squeezing her hand. But he had to come up with emotional strategies for dealing with the threats. “I’m very proud of all the work that Rachel’s doing,” he says. “She wants the best for all the children of the world. She genuinely cares. I know that, and she knows that. And everything else is noise.”

Accurso knows her content can upset people. But she doesn’t see any of her advocacy — for Gaza, for Sudan, for immigrant families in the U.S. — as separate from her job as Ms. Rachel. For Accurso, being a voice for children means accepting the moral responsibility to consider their welfare from all angles. She has always said that she started her show to help people. But teaching phonics or manners or even how to say “mama” has an eventual victory. If Accurso wants to teach the world how to have empathy, she’s got to realize it’s a goal with no end in sight.

“When I first started talking about Gaza, some people didn’t connect. I realized I had to humanize the kids. That was what needed to happen for people to get involved,” she says. “There’s so much attacking in our world, and yelling at each other, it pains me when people don’t have that experience, and so they didn’t see [Palestinian children] that way. But I really believe in people’s ability to learn and change.”

THE MS. RACHEL PEOPLE INTERACT with online is almost always smiling. The real Accurso? Well, she’s tired.

I don’t see the effects until a few weeks a­fter our breakfast, when I meet up with Accurso and her husband at the Ms. Rachel studio, housed in a small one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. The two used to live here with their children, but now use it to film the show. The center of the living room is almost completely bare, with two chairs on one side and an upright piano pushed against the o­ther wall. Around it are Broadway posters like The Little Mermaid and Rogers’ autograph in a frame (a gift to Accurso from Aron). To the far left is a Silver Play Button award from YouTube, a plaque gifted to creators after they reach their first 100,000 subscribers.

When Accurso enters the room and sits next to her husband, her face, although smiling, is drawn, like someone has turned down her wattage. The night before, she posted a video on Instagram about an independent U.N. Commission of Inquiry, which found Israel deliberately targeted children in the Gaza Strip, even after the October 2025 ceasefire. “Where have you been, people we look up to? You didn’t want to lose your reputation or your power or your money?” Accurso says in the video, holding back tears. “How can you go to sleep at night knowing you didn’t say anything?”

Today, it seems the lack of sleep is weighing on Accurso. “I’m so excited,” she says softly, sinking into a deep chair and covering her face with her hands. “I’m gonna take nine days off. I haven’t taken a vacation in a long time.” She doesn’t want to share publicly where she’ll be going with her family, but the last “vacation” was the birth of Susie, whom the couple welcomed via surrogacy in 2025. “I didn’t go [anywhere] when she was little.”

It’s a reminder that while Accurso believes her advocacy is her responsibility as Ms. Rachel, it happens in a schedule already packed with rehearsing songs, filming videos, and being a parent. Right now, the big focus is the release of I’m So Happy, Aron and Accurso’s first album. It would have been easy enough to take some songs from the YouTube channel, add a new harmony here and there, and slap on a title. But that’s not how the spirit of Ms. Rachel works.

I’m So Happy is 23 tracks of both popular, public-domain children’s songs like “Old Macdonald” and “The Wheels on the Bus” and Ms. Rachel originals — all rerecorded with professional musicians. “When we did the YouTube versions, I would call up some friends and have them lay down other instruments from their home, and then I would try to mix it myself,” Aron says. “For the album, we wanted to take it to that next level of polish and sparkle. Each song has its own musical world.”

For over a year, Aron led the project, enlisting more than 40 musicians for live recordings in studios in New York and Nashville. Aron himself conducted strings for their heart-wrenching song “I Love a Rainbow.” “I’m really excited for families to experience these songs they already know from our show, and see how we expanded them with bigger versions that have new sections and fuller arrangements,” Aron says. “Kids deserve detailed, rich music. Although they can’t verbalize it, I think that [children] notice the care and detail that goes into the music.”

The whole family helped develop the album. “He played it for Susie all the time, and Susie would dance around and sing to it,” Accurso says, laughing. “Aron would be taking notes and thinking about the tracks while Susie pretended to be a dinosaur.”

Accurso suddenly pops up with a request — she wants Aron to play the piano for us. His good-natured protests don’t move her, and before I know what’s happening, the two are seated side by side on the piano bench, the notes to “I Love a Rainbow” already lifting into the air. Accurso closes her eyes next to Aron, the melody to the song already escaping her lips. She’s happy to be singing again.

There’s a childhood memory Accurso returns to often. When she was in second grade, she read Ludwig Bemelmans’ Madeline, a classic children’s novel focused on a rambunctious girl living in a Parisian boarding house. In the book, Madeline’s adventures are cut short when her appendix bursts and she’s rushed to the hospital. But rather than waiting patiently for Madeline’s return, her classmates require immediate comfort from their minders, believing that they too are deathly ill.

When Accurso read the book, she was immediately struck with pain in her stomach. Her mother hustled her to hospital, only for the doctors to realize Accurso’s active imagination had left her in the same predicament as Madeline’s friends. She was sent home and told that the stinging was in her head, but she couldn’t understand what they meant. The pain felt real. It felt urgent. It demanded action. She was feeling Madeline’s pain. Wasn’t everyone?

“But it hurts,” Accurso remembers saying. “I hurt, too.”

Production Credits

Hair by SAREEN BHOJWANI. Makeup by STEPHANIE POWERS. Photographic assistance: GRANT FLANAGAN and TESSA DILLMAN. Digital technician: FAISAL MOHAMMED.