Margot Mifflin

First Weekend of Early Voting Shatters Record, as Mamdani Rallies Thousands in Queens Turnout was massive across all five boroughs, with voters telling THE CITY that they were motivated to vote for — and against — the Democratic nominee.

Across the city, more than 164,000 New Yorkers flocked to the polls this weekend for the first two days of early voting, according to the Board of Election, a staggering turnout that nearly matches the entire early voting count in 2021.

One of those "rapists and criminals" we hear so much about.

"Good morning Professor, I apologize for this late notice. The ICE raids in NYC have hit my family and it's been very stressful dealing with multiple things at once. If possible I would like to ask for one more day to submit."

On the first day my composition class, 22 of 25 students said they don’t “follow” the news. So now the class has morphed into a media literacy class.

Some new ICE recruits have shown up to training without full vetting The recruits have had criminal backgrounds or failed drug tests or were unable to meet physical or academic standards, raising concerns about the agency’s rush to hire immigration officers, sources to...

Half of the chuds applying for ICE jobs these days are unable to pass the written part of the application process, even though it’s an open book test.

Media needs to be covering this every day.

What can you do to help? Donate to your local food bank. There are food banks in just about every community in the country, and now they are being used by federal workers who normally have jobs, but are furloughed because of the shutdown.

Sounds fabulous!

A ray of light!

Penn rejects White House proposal for special funding treatment With the decision, Penn becomes the third university to decline the offer.

🚨🚨🚨

And THREE stood up!

Penn has joined MIT & Brown in rejecting Trump’s loyalty oath compact.

When we join together and fight back, WE WIN!

No amount of federal bribery is worth surrendering the freedom to question, explore, and dissent.

LET’S GO!

#DefendHigherEd
@aaup-penn.bsky.social

Cluelessly calling Mamdani ZorHan isn’t helping

Thank you—brilliant!

Pro tip to reporters and protesters: always have swim goggles in your pockets or bags. They’re small, $10 and if tear gas is used, slip them on & no matter how much you cough, you’ll still be able to SEE without burning eyes.

Thank you—solidarity!

Thanks! I’m in NY so will buy one.

Is this a thing? Should we all be carrying whistles?

Harvard Students Skip Class and Still Get High Grades, Faculty Say

I don't think I've ever read anything that made me happier to be a public u prof whose students are everything these aren't: engaged, opinionated, fearless, focused, funny, fun, AND driven. One guy sleeps in class sometimes-bc he works the night shift, for God's sake. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/u...

#USDemocracy
Robert De Niro previews the next day of No Kings protests:
October 18th, 2025.
❌👑 nokings.org

It’s always the people you most expect. Paul Ingrassia is back in the news.

US anti-fascism expert blocked from flying to Spain at airport Rutgers University professor who published book on antifa was informed at boarding gate that his trip was cancelled

👀A Rutgers professor who teaches an anti-fascism class was blocked from leaving the US hours > Trump’s “Antifa” roundtable w/ Jack Posobiec who has called Bray a “domestic terrorist professor.” TPUSA at Rutgers has called him an “antifa member,” a claim he denies. He’s received death threats. 1/

Oooops

The FAA is delaying flights at Newark and Denver airports because they haven’t got enough air traffic control. Burbank has zero ATC from 4.30-10pm.

Lots of controllers who aren’t being paid during the government shutdown are calling in sick.

MOTION' The State of Oregon and the City of Portland, now joined by the State of California, move under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(b) for a temporary restraining order ("TRO"') and stay of the active deployment of federalized members of the National Guard of California in the State of Oregon. In the alternative, the State and the City move under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 62(d) to modify this Court's October 4, 2025, TRO to prohibit the relocation or deployment of any National Guard under Defendants' command (i.e., Title 10 status) within the State of Oregon. The Plaintiffs request that the Court waive the requirement for security or require only a nominal bond. MEMORANDUM OF LAW INTRODUCTION Yesterday, this Court recognized that the legal principles at stake in this case "gol] to the heart of what it means to live under the rule of law in the United States." Opinion & Order Granting Mot. for Temporary Restraining Order ("Order"), ECF 56 at 2. Applying those principles, this Court concluded that Defendants likely lacked authority to federalize Oregon National Guard members and ordered Defendants to halt federalization for 14 days. Defendants filed a notice of appeal last night (Ntc. of Appeal, ECF 57), and they have now asked the Ninth Circuit to stay the effect of this Court's decision. Not content with this Court's or the Ninth Circuit's judgment, Defendants are now in the process of circumventing this Court's Order. After this Court ruled that 10 U.S.C. § 12406 could not justify federalizing the Oregon National Guard to deploy them to Portland, Defendants have deployed members of the California National Guard to Portland-servicemembers who were federalized under that very same Title 10 authority for deployment in Los Angeles. That redeployment is illegal: Setting aside whether the underlying federalization order from August violated Section 12406, the federalization order clearly did not contemplate the use of California

troops for completely unrelated activity in Oregon. "[T]he President's determination was simply untethered to the facts." Order at 23. And, as this Court has already recognized, a National Guard deployment from any state would work irreparable harm on the State and City, and the public interest tips sharply toward temporarily restraining any such deployment. In fact, the harms and public interest considerations here have only become more acute since yesterday, as California, too, is irreparably harmed by Defendants' deployment of its National Guard to a City over 800 miles away from Los Angeles-where they were initially deployed four months ago based on facts not at issue in this case.

Defendants will surely argue that the Ninth Circuit has already concluded that the President likely acted within his authority in federalizing the California National Guard in June, see Newsom v. Trump, 141 F.4th 1032, 1052 (9th Cir. 2025), and so they are now entitled to use those federalized National Guard members for any purpose, including to send them to Portland. But the President's determination to federalize the California National Guard was made nearly four months ago, based on entirely different facts at a different location, and the Ninth Circuit's preliminary determination that § 12406 was met at that time was based only on the facts before it. Id. at 1054. Simply put: the facts have changed. And President Trump's June 7 memorandum is not the blank check Defendants pretend. To the extent that Defendants no longer believe that those servicemembers are necessary in California, they have no statutory basis to continue their federalization and deployment. 10 USC § 12406 requires the mission to match the basis for the federalization by its terms, that narrow congressional authorization allows the president to call up "such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws." Id. (emphasis added); see also Order at 21-22 ("but violence in a different state ... do[es] not provide a colorable basis to invoke Section 12406(3).... In other words, violence elsewhere cannot support troop deployments here[l'). Whatever the purpose for federalizing the California national guard in the first place, the present mission to Portland has nothing to do with it.

Defendants' approach to this situation, if permitted, would allow the Executive Branch to deploy troops any purpose anywhere once they were activated for some lawful purpose somewhere. The limits that Congress set under the Militia Clauses cannot be so easily circumvented. Defendants' decision to send Guard members from California to be deployed in Oregon is thus final agency action that is "not in accordance with law" because it violates Section 12406. 5 USC 706(2)(A). The APA expressly contemplates that military orders of this nature can be reviewed through the APA: it carves out military orders only when "exercised in the field in time of war." 5 USC 551(1)(G). Alternatively, defendants' actions are reviewable and unlawful on ultra vires grounds. See, e.g., Murphy Co. v. Biden, 65 F.4th 1122, 1129- 1131 (9th Cir. 2023). Even accepting arguendo that the California National Guard were properly federalized in Los Angeles in June, that does not give Defendants carte blanche to use those soldiers anywhere, for any purpose, and for any amount of time. Such a reading would read § 12406 out of existence and grant the President unlimited power to use the military as his personal police force indefinitely, so long as he had the thinnest justification at the start of the deployment. And that broad power would run directly counter to the Founders' reservation of powers over the militia to Congress, U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cls. 15-16, and Congress's narrow delegation of that authority to the President in cases of extreme emergencies. The limits that Congress set under the Militia Clauses cannot be so easily circumvented.

CA just joined Oregon’s case against Trump and ask Judge Immergut to update her TRO to block his sending the CA National Guard into Oregon

TRO request:
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Amended Complaint w/ redlined updates: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

About 1 in 4 U.S. adults worry they or someone close to them could be deported About four-in-ten immigrants (43%) say they worry a lot or some, up from 33% in March.

About 1 in 4 U.S. adults worry they or someone close to them could be deported, according to a June @pewresearch.org survey.

MAGA McCarthyism Comes to Texas State In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, a self-described “anti-communist cult leader” used a selectively edited video to falsely accuse labor historian and tenured professor Tom Alter of inciting violen...

jacobin.com/2025/10/texa...

No medicine, no beds, no food or water: inside Gaza City’s main hospital As the Israeli invasion of Gaza City advances, al-Shifa Hospital is facing severe shortages of essential medical supplies, leaving patients untreated and vulnerable. Staff and patients fear an…

As the Israeli invasion of Gaza City advances, al-Shifa Hospital is facing severe shortages of essential medical supplies, leaving patients untreated and vulnerable. Staff and patients fear an imminent Israeli attack.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Dozens of delegates from multiple nations walk out of UN hall as Israeli prime minister prepares to speak.

“The Colquhoun revival is propelled, in part, by a tailwind: the historical revision of the role of female artists in surrealism. It has benefited, too, from the Hilma af Klint effect: an upsurge of popular interest in the conjunction of women’s art and spirituality.”

Truly amazing, and she’s been doing this for years: 5 years ago, she quietly gave us (Lehman College, an HSI in The Bronx) 30 *MILLION* dollars.

Tim Bakken, the longest-ever-serving law professor at the US Military Academy at West Point, has filed a lawsuit in a federal court in New York, accusing the academy of 'censoring and suppressing speech on the basis of its content and viewpoint' reut.rs/429hcsN

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