Sample Ballots
Sample Ballots

Update

Nov 6, 2025

You may wish to look at the following videos

 

  • October 15, 2025 Brennan Center for Justice Briefing entitled, Paying for Power. Speakers: Jane Mayer, Staff Writer, The New Yorker, Daniel I. Weiner, Director, Elections and Government Program, Brennan Center. Host, Michael Waldman. A replay is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSRrjfbJA70

 

  • October 21, 2025 The Court of History’s Sidney Blumenthal & Sean Wilentz were joined by acclaimed historian and journalist Jill Lepore to discuss her book We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution. A replay is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv2qy–hnow

 

 

 

You may wish to look at the following recent court documents:

 

  • October 21, 2025 Notification of Docket Entry by the United States District Court of Northern Illinois extending the court’s TRO for deployment of National Guard troops in Illinois in accord with an agreement by the parties until there is a final judgment on the permanent injunction. The parties agree that should the Supreme Court issue any ruling in this case, they will submit a joint status report within 24 hours.

 

You may wish to look at the following items:

 

  • October 17, 2025 Law Fare column by Stratos Pahis entitled, The IEEPA Tariffs Are Based on Pretext  The author concludes that
    • [T]he U.S.’s trade deficit in goods is a broad, chronic, foreseeable, and foreseen trade-off of 80 years of U.S. trade strategy. Identifying it as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” is a transparent attempt to reverse that strategy and “eviscerate[]” the laws that establish it.  It begs disbelief that Congress intended IEEPA to be used this way. The Supreme Court should make clear that it did not.

 

  • October 20, 2025 One First podcast by Steve Vladek entitled, 184. The Massive Stakes of Trump v. Illinois. The key paragraphs of the posting are
    • But the upshot is that, more than any of the first 28 applications from the Trump administration, Trump v. Illinois is a make-or-break moment for this Court. For the Supreme Court to issue a ruling that allows the President to send troops into our cities based upon contrived (or even government-provoked) facts, even if it does so in a way that avoids formally upholding such conduct as a matter of law, would be a terrible precedent for the Court to set—not just for what it would allow President Trump to do now, but for the even more grossly tyrannical conduct it would allow him and future presidents (assuming we have any) to undertake later. If factually and legally unpersuasive domestic deployments of troops aren’t going to be a red line for the Supreme Court, what the heck will be?
    • As has often been the case with the Trump administration’s emergency applications, the filing in Trump v. Illinois tells a very different story of the facts than the lower courts. One needn’t get past page 1 of the application to find the government claiming that immigration officers’ enforcement efforts have been “met with prolonged, coordinated, violent resistance that threatens their lives and safety and systematically interferes with their ability to enforce federal law.” Not to repeat myself, but the lower courts here expressly found to the contrary—both as to the nature of the protests and their effects. The application briefly asserts that the district court’s factual findings here were clearly erroneous, but its support for why that is so are the very affidavits and declarations that the district court found to be not reliable. (The application somehow fails to note the discredited assertion that the Federal Protective Service had requested troops to protect the federal courthouse.)

 

 

 

  • October 21, 2025 Harvard Crimson report by William C. Mao and Veronica H. Paulus entitled, Harvard FAS Cuts Ph.D. Seats By More Than Half Across Next Two Admissions Cycles.  The authors report
    • But Harvard’s budget troubles are not over. The University reported last week an operating loss of $113 million in its fiscal year 2025 financial report, which reflects the fiscal year through June. Harvard pointed to “political and economic disruption,” including the Trump administration’s freezes on its federal funds, as a cause of its first budget deficit since 2020.
    • The Faculty of Arts and Sciences slashed the number of Ph.D. student admissions slots for the Science division by more than 75 percent and for the Arts & Humanities division by about 60 percent for the next two years.

 

 

 

  • October 22, 2025 The New Republic report by Mary Papenfuss entitled, How Ordinary People Might Become Unwitting Trump Collaborators. Key paragraphs include
    • This weekend’s protests were inspiring—that they inspired this grotesque reaction from Trump could count as a measure of success. But there is still much work to be done. It remains to be seen if the teeming masses can dent the president’s power—or shake more people from the torpor of the daily news to propel them into a sustained new activism. It’s here at the apex of our exultation that we should pause, take stock, and stay on our guard, because one of the biggest enemies of the sustained momentum the anti-Trump movement needs, it turns out, is human nature.
    • Amid the now-daily onslaught of Trumpian shock and awe, many of us now just hear, digest, and move on. There’s a familiar feeling of exhaustion and paralysis in the face of the deluge; it’s hard to imagine a substantial response to any one of Trump’s misdeeds when we know that more are on the way. Trump really has to work hard to stun in the way he once did. Many American brains seem to be powering down into a dazed lethargy, benumbed by a relentless onslaught of the outrageous that we cannot entirely shut out.
    • While “normalization” of deviance may be the most powerful, and insidious, manner of steering a nation off his cliff, Trump has also utilized more obvious and familiar strategies in his battles against thought. Borrowing a familiar political playbook from our earlier ominous history, Trump has relentlessly vilified an “out group” as scapegoats for all the evils of the world while cultivating a separate supportive clique of “in-crowd” humans who imagine themselves both special and put-upon.
    • Social “normalization of deviance means that people within an organization become so much accustomed to a deviant behavior that they don’t consider it as deviant, despite the fact that they far exceed their own rules for elementary safety,” [Columbia University sociology professor Diane] Vaughan warned in a 2008 interview. A “common pattern” of organizations that slip into “deviance” includes a “long incubation period filled with early warning signs that were either missed or misinterpreted or ignored,” she added.
    • Here, [Yale Prof. of cognitive science and philosophy Joshua] Knobe cautions against knee-jerk pessimism. While daily events may seem overwhelming—or even enraging—the future is constantly being forged. Knobe emphasizes that humans have made tremendous strides in history, but often over decades—Trump’s may simply be an incendiary presidential administration that’s ultimately a feeble blip in time. He points to revolutionary changes in our perspectives on issues like racism, sexual harassment—and slavery. While these sensibilities are under constant attack, they’ve proven to be enduring values, not easily erased.
    • “If you lived in 1850 and saw someone with a slave, you might think, ‘How awful,’ but there’s little you could have changed about it, and it was widely viewed as acceptable,” Knobe said. “Now, we would be horrified.”