Something shifted in how the press and the public are allowed to talk about AI in education — not gradually, but in a recognizable break. New York Magazine, Bloomberg, and Slate each arrived at the same unspoken conclusion from different angles: the institutional framing had expired . These outlets weren't coordinating. They were responding to a shared recognition that the careful version of this argument — 'AI cheating is bad, here are the enforcement mechanisms' — had run out of credibility, and everyone could finally say so.