Nicholas Dawes

Trump holds all the cards in New York’s mayoral contest The leading candidates’ flaws will be easy pickings for the president to leverage.

This is a cute, savvy-seeming headline, confirmed by 3 Republican sources, and no-one else. It's also a woefully inadequate way to map the legal, fiscal, and messaging terrain that Trump and the next mayor will battle over.

Federal agents many in masks at Broadway and Canal moments ago questioning a man, a bunch more agents just walked away. "Can i call my mom," the man asks, he's now being loaded into a car and being driven away. More TK @thecity.nyc

Remember when the internet was this resilient, decentralized thing, designed to route around problems?

Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors “With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work.”

wikipedia's data shows that AI is siphoning traffic away from the site, which is a danger to its sustainability. ironically Wikipedia is more important than ever to users who want reliable information instead of slop, and to AI companies that need it for training data www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...

India’s Powerful Turn to Lawfare to Stifle the Press - Nieman Reports A spate of new legislation in India is aimed at curbing free expression, writes Vidya Krishnan for Nieman Reports.

New in @niemanreports.org: Media watchers say recent court orders have given Gautam Adani, the Adani Group's billionaire owner, increasing censorship powers over his critics, representing a grave threat to press freedom in India.

niemanreports.org/india-lawfar...

Anyone from the AI world who thinks ‘agentic AI will replace journalists’ should read this piece. Anyone who thinks ‘public service journalism is dead’ should read this piece (or revise their understanding of ‘public service’)

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Lastly, from a business pov: this is such a dogshit deal. Spending $150 million for a publication that has fewer than 200k paid subs subscribers, no advertising, and revenue about $10 mill a year. This is not a money making business but instead an outrage making business.

And now it’s CBS.

JUST IN: Chicago journalistsa re suing DHS and ICE over force used against reporters:

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN was built for moments like this. When facts are questioned, when trust falters, when division deepens, Look to the voices strengthening democracy through dialogue. Look to the leaders expanding the boundaries of knowledge. Look to the experts turning climate risk into climate resilience. Look to the practitioners delivering healthcare grounded in science and dignity. Look to the innovators advancing technology with a public purpose. When the role of higher education is on trial. Look to the students, faculty, researchers, and alumni transforming a public investment into the public good. This is the university for the solutions the world needs most. Because wherever we go, progress follows. Wherever there's a Wolverine, there's a way forward. For answers. For action. For all of us. Look to Michigan UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN umich.edu/look Look to Michigan

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Peak college application season for high school seniors and their families, and some pretty clear signaling from UMich in this full page ad in the print edition of today's Times.

Such a bizarre piece.

And what has consistently fueled popular resistance to authoritarian leaders from Kenya to Ukraine and beyond? Corruption.

This likely won't be the last deportation for committing an act of journalism, and it is a warning that indiscriminate arrests by local police around protests will be used as tools and pretexts.

Georgian authorities probe press organizations under foreign funding laws - Committee to Protect Journalists New York, October 3, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Georgian authorities to repeal restrictive new laws covering foreign donor grants as Georgian authorities open investigations in...

Georgia (the country) is on the frontlines of resisting Russian style repression. Aggressive tactics targeting the independent media have continued escalating, including the case of Georgian journalist Mzia Amaglobeli (see thread).

cpj.org/2025/10/geor...

October US Jobs Report Consensus estimates suggest nonfarm payrolls rose by about +50K in September, above August’s gain. LinkedIn data points to a similar gain of +55K.

In the absence of BLS data, we are reliant on a patchwork of less rigorous fallbacks, and they aren't any cheerier than the official numbers www.linkedin.com/pulse/octobe...

BREAKING: Our client Mario Guevara, an Emmy-winning journalist detained by ICE in retaliation for livestreaming law enforcement activity, will be deported tomorrow to El Salvador.

Mario and his family are being punished for his reporting. This cruelty is meant to stifle our free press.

Whistle-blower IAS officer transferred for 43rd time, alleges malafide intention | Gurgaon News - Times of India A senior Haryana IAS officer has charged that the state government has "abruptly" transferred him, the 43rd in his career, as a "punishment" for actin

Here is a famously extreme but illustrative case

He couldn't send them quite so far away!

This is what the Indian government does to civil servants it doesn't like and can't fire.

I never do stuff like this but what the heck ... it's the start of a new era in public media ..

ICE agents assault amNewYork reporter at Federal Plaza immigration court; another journalist seriously injured after shove | amNewYork ICE agents assaulted amNewYork's own Dean Moses, and allegedly attacked another journalist, on Tuesday morning as they were documenting the ongoing arrests of

Absolutely clear documentation of assaults on at least two journalists by ICE officers, who also caused a serious injury to a third. There must be accountability for these attacks on reporters and on their first amendment rights.

Trump’s Casino Jackpot With help from Eric Adams, the president’s business is one last step away from making $175 million off the city’s gambling rush.

One likely winner is emerging from the years-long fight to build a casino in New York City.

It's Donald freaking Trump.

nymag.com/intelligence...

It really shouldn't be this way!

Something like this happened to me too: I had my doctor call in a prescription (asthma) but they couldn’t find it initially. They clearly wanted to give me the vaccine but were stumped. I finally suggested they looks at my scripts and they found one for an asthma inhaler. I got my vaccine.

It's a mess!

At my local pharmacy staff were literally making changes on the fly as I stood there. One person who was under 65 but not young, and whose pre-existing conditions weren't on the list was being sent home until someone yelled from the back "No, we can give it to him. The rules have changed".

What to Know About Getting a COVID Vaccine in New York This Fall The confusion around guidelines is making things tough for pharmacists and patients alike.

Kathy Hochul's executive order should make it easy for everyone in New York to get a COVID vaccine without a prescription, and without citing an underlying condition. The reality in local pharmacies is very different. @lauren-hartley.bsky.social has this guide to navigating the uncertainty.

Jared Kushner’s Firm Is Said to Be Part of $50 Billion Buyout of Electronic Arts

This deal should arguably discussed in the same breath as other pro-Trump media acquisitions, adding the gaming giant to a list that includes CBS, Paramount, TikTok and potentially CNN and Warner Bros.

Out of sync, that is