Judges Warn of ‘Judicial Crisis,’ and Universities Reject Trump Offer

0:02From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, October 21st. Here's what we're covering.

0:13A federal appeals court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops in Portland, Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor. Months of protests outside an ICE facility there led President Trump to say the city needed to be protected from domestic terrorists. A lower court judge blocked the guard deployment earlier this month, calling Trump's portrayal of the situation simply untethered to the facts. But in the latest ruling, appeals court judges cited a number of instances where demonstrators had thrown rocks and sticks, attempted to set fires at the ICE building, or shot paintballs at officers.

0:54One judge wrote that that was enough to support the deployment decision, quote, even if the president may exaggerate the extent of the problem on social media. Lawyers for the state have already pushed for an appeal, so the legal wrangling is likely to continue. Meanwhile, the fight over whether the president can unilaterally send troops into U.S. cities is also still playing out in Illinois. Deployments there are currently blocked, but the Trump administration has now asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, on an emergency basis. Just nine months into Trump's term, his administration has made more of those emergency appeals than the Biden White House made in four years.

1:35And the Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration nearly every single time. The rulings, which are part of what's sometimes called the shadow docket, frequently offer little or no explanation for the Supreme Court's decision. And while the orders are technically temporary, they've allowed Trump to take significant actions like deporting tens of thousands of people or slashing government spending, again, often with little or no explanation from the justices. The Times has found that for many lower court judges, that's been confusing and frustrating. We started to wonder, well, can we get a sense of just how widespread these frustrations are?

2:13And so we decided to just start reaching out to judges as many as we could, one by one. Mattathise Schwartz covers the courts for The Times. he sent out a questionnaire to hundreds of federal judges about the flood of emergency rulings. And some of them responded and spoke with Matt on the condition of anonymity, calling the orders troubling and a slap in the face. One said that the courts were in the midst of a judicial crisis. One thing that came across in some of these conversations is how demoralizing the last few months have been for district court judges. writing these 60, 70-page opinions under intense time pressure, and then to see them summarily reversed by emergency orders that provide no reasoning.

2:57I think there's a part of these judges that really wants to see the Supreme Court engage with what they're saying and engage with their interpretation of the law. And 42 of the 65 judges who responded to our questionnaire said they felt that the Supreme Court's use of the emergency docket had caused some degree of harm to the public's perception of the judiciary since President Trump returned to office. And that is a really, really serious statement. They're saying the Supreme Court is hurting the courts as a whole in the eyes of the public, and they're the ones often who have to deal with that because they're the ones on the front lines.

3:43This morning, Air Force Two touched down in Israel as Vice President J.D. Vance arrived to try and hold together the fragile peace deal between Israel and Hamas. His visit comes as several administration officials tell The Times there's growing concern in the White House that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could dismantle the agreement and resume an all-out assault in Gaza. Just a week ago, Trump himself was in Israel to celebrate the first phase of the U.S.-brokered deal to end the war. But after a flare-up in violence in recent days, members of Netanyahu's hard-line government called for the Israeli offensive to restart, quote, at full strength.

4:24When we talk about Hamas, you're talking about 40 different cells. It's disjointed. Some of those cells will probably honor the ceasefire. Many of those cells will not. Ahead of his trip, Vance acknowledged that some fighting was likely to continue despite the ceasefire, suggesting even a best-case scenario would involve what he described as fits and starts between Israel and Hamas, which has so far refused to lay down its weapons. Before we actually can ensure that Hamas is properly disarmed, that's going to require, as we know, some of these Gulf Arab states to get forces in there to actually apply some law and order and some security keeping on the ground.

5:04Under the current proposal for the next phase of the ceasefire, an international stabilization force made up of troops from various countries would come into Gaza to secure the territory and facilitate aid distribution, among other things. But what exactly that force might look like is one of many sticking points in the ongoing negotiations, with some of the countries seen as likely participants saying they won't commit troops just yet out of concern that their soldiers could be in danger or that they could be seen as occupiers of the territory.

5:43Now, three other quick updates on the Trump administration. The Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, is warning that the nation's air traffic controllers are about to get paychecks for zero dollars because of the government shutdown, and that American travelers could feel the effects. I think what you might see is more disruptions in travel as more of them look to say, how do I bridge the gap between the check that's not coming and putting food on my table? And we've heard they're taking Uber jobs. They're doing DoorDash, figuring out ways to keep their families afloat. The White House had previously suggested it might find ways to shift federal dollars around to keep the controllers paid in the same way they've repurposed Pentagon funds for active duty troops.

6:26But Duffy said yesterday that there's no current plan to do that. That is set to add to the stress the controllers are already facing, with many of them pulling overtime shifts to make up for severe staffing shortages. The government has now been shut down for 20 days, and lawmakers on Capitol Hill are no closer to reaching an agreement to reopen it. Also, as of last night, all but two of the nine universities the White House tried to get to sign a so-called compact to steer them towards the president's priorities, have rejected the proposal. The administration had suggested the schools could get preferential access to federal funds if they agreed to statements like academic freedom is not absolute and pledged to potentially shut down parts of their institutions that the administration claims punish or belittle conservative ideas.

7:20While the University of Texas suggested it's open to signing on, other schools, including Brown, Dartmouth, USC, UVA, and the University of Arizona, have now said explicitly that they won't, with Arizona's president writing, quote, principles like academic freedom, merit-based research funding, and institutional independence are foundational and must be preserved. And at the White House yesterday, construction crews demolished part of the East Wing to clear the way for President Trump's 90 ,000-square-foot state ballroom. He said the renovations are necessary to be able to host things like state dinners, which have previously been held under tents on the White House lawn.

8:05In all, the ballroom is expected to cost more than$200 million. And last week, Trump hosted a lavish dinner for dozens of wealthy donors who've agreed to help cover the costs. Representatives from Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other companies attended. leading some ethics watchdogs to allege that the project is basically a pay-to-play scheme to curry favor with the president.

8:37A new study has found that the rate of peanut allergies in American children dropped significantly after new guidelines were put out about when to introduce babies to the food. For decades, experts recommended that parents avoid exposing their babies to common allergens. But after research showed that letting babies try peanuts could cut their chances of developing an allergy, the recommendations changed. Starting in 2017, national guidelines formally recommended the early introduction approach. The new study, published in the journal Pediatrics, shows that in the years after the switch, peanut allergies in children under three plummeted 43 percent.

9:23The study didn't look at what the kids ate, so it doesn't show that the changed guidelines directly caused the decline. Still, experts say the data is promising. Peanut allergies can be lethal, and the majority of kids who have them never outgrow them.

9:47And finally, back in April 1992, the Times ran a front-page article with the headline, Scientists Report Profound Insight on How Time Began. Now, the Times is remembering the Nobel Prize-winning physicist integral to that discovery, George Smoot. He died recently at age 80. Smoot led a team that helped confirm that the Big Bang was the source of the universe. They did it by measuring tiny variations in the temperature of light in space, known as the cosmic microwave background. Stephen Hawking called it the greatest discovery of the century, if not of all time. Smoot went on to share a Nobel Prize for his work, though over his career, some of his colleagues raised concerns he didn't always give credit where credit was due to others who worked on the research.

10:38So I'm thinking, you won the Nobel Prize, what, three years ago? So you must deal with a whole lot of what has Smoot done lately. In his later years, leveraging his space cred, Smoot made appearances on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Let's start with first-grade earth science. And in 2009, in what seems kind of unfair for a Nobel Prize winner, he competed on the game show Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? George, I'm not a gambling man. I'm going to bet on you on this one. All right. Unsurprisingly, he won a million dollars.

11:14Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, Nicole Hannah-Jones on how the Trump administration has upended decades of work around civil rights. You can listen to that in The New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.