To be clear:

LA County has declared a state of emergency BECAUSE OF the federal government.

The Feds, LA County is (correctly) saying, have CAUSED the emergency.

This is a striking political moment of internal collapse. Local govts feeling compelled to protect their ppl from … their own govt.

The only reason to get rid of interlibrary loan is that you prefer ignorance and illiteracy.

Indiana University has fired the staff director of the student newspaper, after disputes in which university leadership tried to pressure him to prevent students from publishing news.

The Trump administration's sweeping Education Department layoffs have cast doubt on a pair of decades-old promises from Congress: ensuring disabled students receive a free and appropriate education and protecting all pupils from discrimination in schools. nyti.ms/4n4yFKq

A cartoon by Barry Blitt.

“Instead of stalking our ex-boyfriends online, we started a newspaper.”

Founded in 1966, during the Vietnam War, the original 'Rag' emerged out of a sense that free speech was under fire. It's back again. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/ut-underground-newspaper-the-rag-revived/

***Job Opportunity***

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, Modern Europe: Urban History, Fordham University

76/

careers.historians.org/jobs/2173026...

POLITICO: “.. They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies .. and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

@politico.com
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

In his statement, Alter said Texas State University's allegations against him "do not stand up to the facts."

good morning, i am at westheimer and taft in montrose, where council members abbie kamin, mario castillo, county commissioner rodney ellis and county attorney christian menefee will have a press conference on the slated removal of the rainbow crosswalk

Very bad: OSU unilaterally cancelled the registration of grad students attending the joint conference of the National Society of Black Physicists and the National Society of Hispanic Physicists. And OSU won't fund recruiting at the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.

I’m a doctoral student at TXST.

The feeling on campus is worse than you imagine. Faculty afraid to speak, grad students feel like they could lose their entire futures if they draw the university president’s ire, undergrads openly worrying about the complete loss of a fundamental right.

The world's richest man, and owner of one of the largest social media platforms, is funding white supremacists seeking to undermine democracy everywhere he can. www.huffpost.com/entry/tommy-...

The entire incident is infuriating and terrifying. She’s a Latina woman who was working a service job. On her way home late at night, with her headphones in, she was detained for an hour by masked federal agents who wouldn’t give her their names.

this is an incredibly ominous beginning to a future with a largely carved out federal emergency response system

Student government leaders of MIT, UVA, U of AZ, Dartmouth, UPenn, Brown, and Vanderbilt united in their opposition to the "compact" proposed by the Trump administration.

If you make "controversial statements" outside of classroom, that the President of the university dislikes, you can be summarily fired even if you are tenured.

After getting zero firm commitments to this point from the first nine invitees, the Trump administration is extending its proposed compact to all colleges. Expect some red-state publics to say yes.

Pope Leo quotes Hannah Arendt:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."

www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

Somehow I'm guessing the usual suspects who crow about "religious freedom" when it comes to bakers not wanting to bake cakes for queer weddings, will have nothing to say about religious freedom here. www.fox32chicago.com/news/faith-l...

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

I have rounded up everything going on re: rainbow crosswalks in Texas. Galveston became the first city to remove theirs this week. Houston and Austin say they'll get rid of theirs, and San Antonio and Dallas are holding firm: www.chron.com/culture/arti...

United States Congressman calls for the deportation of all Muslims from the US.

All Jewish groups should join together to denounce this.

ICE secretly kidnap autistic boy during bathroom break—never notify parents.

Mother reported him missing a week ago—turns out ICE had him detained the whole time.

He was helping sell fruit and asked to go to the restroom—by the time she was done helping a customer he was gone.

Houston, Texas