5+ day, 19+ hour ago (480+ words) The so-called ceasefire might seem like a good excuse to bury the hatchet and enjoy a quieter family dinner, but it's not. To be clear, if two years of livestreamed annihilation have failed to shift your loved ones' support away from the Israeli ethnostate, I doubt there is anything a dinner table argument could do to persuade them. There can be no reasoning with a worldview that forecloses seeing Palestinians as fully human. I navigate this with pro-Israel members of my own British Jewish family. It's painful, and I don't have any good advice. Whatever your approach with your family, there can be no pretense that the genocide in Gaza is over. I'll be thinking of another family this Thanksgiving: that of my student from Gaza. Families like mine, divided over Israel, are not the important ones here. For my…...

6+ day, 17+ hour ago (529+ words) The anti-woke Wikipedia alternative aims to create a parallel version of the truth for the right wing. LK Seilling, an AI researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute, describes Grokipedia as "cloaking misinformation." "Everyone knows Wikipedia. They're an epistemic authority, if you'd want to call them that. [Musk] wants to attach himself to exactly that epistemic authority to substantiate his political agenda," he says. It's worth paying attention to how Grok frames a few key issues. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution was established after World War II to ensure that no German leader tries to overturn the country's constitution again. But Grokipedia subtly casts doubt on the institution's legitimacy arguing that it is "downplaying" the AfD's achievements. According to Seiling, who is German, Grokipedia is attempting to undermine the authority of German institutions created to prevent another Hitler....

1+ day, 8+ hour ago (740+ words) By the first World AIDS Day of his second term, Trump gutted LGBTQ+ employment globally and put humanity at greater risk of AIDS. On World AIDS Day 2025, humanity should be celebrating that there is a new shot available which offers six months of protection against the transmission of HIV, the virus which has already infected approximately 40 million living people and taken the lives of 44 million more. Instead, public health workers are reeling from how President Donald Trump has helped HIV to circulate in more humans this year than last. The lethal ways the current U.S. health policy is harming the health and wealth of LGBTQ+ people worldwide will be felt for years, if not decades. That's because on the first day of his second term, Trump issued a stop-work order for all foreign aid and several orders that jeopardized the health…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago (484+ words) An FBI procurement document requests information about AI surveillance on drones, raising concerns about a crackdown on free speech. The FBI is looking for ways to incorporate artificial intelligence into drones, according to federal procurement documents. On Thursday, the FBI put out the call to potential vendors of AI and machine learning technology to be used in unmanned aerial systems in a so-called "request for information," where government agencies request companies submit initial information for a forthcoming contract opportunity. The FBI is in search of technology that could enable drones to conduct facial recognition, license plate recognition, and detection of weapons, among other uses, according to the document. The pitch from the FBI immediately raised concerns among civil libertarians, who warned that enabling FBI drones with artificial intelligence could exacerbate the chilling effect of surveillance of activities protected by the…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago (1827+ words) Years before the police killing of Breonna Taylor brought "no-knock" raids into the national spotlight, the NYPD mistakenly raided Alberta Spruill's home " and literally scared her to death. Despite repeated warnings that these reckless raids would end in tragedy, few listened. This episode of Collateral Damage, hosted by Radley Balko, explores how Spruill's death catalyzed the political rise of Eric Adams, a young Black NYPD officer who would later become mayor. It also examines how promises of reform quickly faded, and the NYPD returned to business as usual. Radley Balko: On an early spring morning in Harlem, 57-year-old Alberta Spruill was getting ready for work. She had worked for the City of New York for nearly three decades. And at the time, she worked in the personnel office of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. Joel Berger: Alberta Spruill was…...

4+ week, 6+ hour ago (1009+ words) The tech giant deleted the accounts of three prominent Palestinian human rights groups " a capitulation to Trump sanctions. A documentary featuring mothers surviving Israel's genocide in Gaza. A video investigation uncovering Israel's role in the killing of a Palestinian American journalist. Another video revealing Israel's destruction of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank. YouTube surreptitiously deleted all these videos in early October by wiping the accounts that posted them from its website, along with their channels' archives. The accounts belonged to three prominent Palestinian human rights groups: Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. The move came in response to a U.S. government campaign to stifle accountability for alleged Israeli war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinian groups' YouTube channels hosted hours of footage documenting and highlighting alleged…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago (602+ words) Progressive Rep. Danny Davis rejected AIPAC cash at the end of his career. Now the Israel lobby is coming for his seat. Pro-Israel donors have picked a candidate to replace Rep. Danny Davis in Chicago. Jason Friedman, one of 18 candidates vying to replace Davis in the March Democratic primary next year, has pulled ahead of the pack in fundraising. His campaign reported donations totaling over $1.5 million in its October filing with the Federal Election Commission. AIPAC has not said publicly whether it's backing a candidate in the race, but more than 35 of its donors have given money to Friedman's campaign. Among them, 17 have donated to the United Democracy Project, and eight have donated to both. Together, the Friedman donors have contributed just under $2 million to AIPAC and UDP since 2021. Reached by phone, the pro-Israel donor Larry Hochberg told The Intercept…...

3+ day, 17+ hour ago (255+ words) After J. Edgar Hoover cast the civil rights leader as a "liar," NYPD's spy unit heeded the call. Joshua Clark Davis is a historian at the University of Baltimore. On their face, the images are mundane. King emerges from a car, greeted by two men in suits. In another, King stands with family and confidants, including his wife, the activist Coretta Scott King; his mother, Alberta Williams King; and his friend and adviser Bayard Rustin, organizer of the March on Washington. In a third shot, Coretta shakes hands with Wagner. These surveillance tactics are of more than just historical significance. Local police continue to deploy weapons of political espionage against movements for justice to this day. In Trump's first term, police in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Portland, and Chicago surveilled the same racial justice activists disparaged by the president. Words matter. Federal…...

1+ day, 18+ hour ago (891+ words) An aid agreement template would require countries to share vast amounts of health data, including on abortion, to receive funds to combat HIV and other infectious diseases. The Trump administration plans to condition global health assistance on foreign countries sharing significant amounts of health data with the United States, including on abortion, according to a template for an aid agreement obtained by The Intercept. The template agreement, which references the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR " but also applies funding to fight malaria, tuberculosis, and other pathogens " would require countries that receive global health assistance to share a broad range of health care and pathogen data for the next 25 years. The model document would also require foreign governments to provide the United States with "any data access or information needed to monitor compliance" with the Helms Amendment, which…...

4+ week, 5+ hour ago (674+ words) Italy's Nova news agency confirmed it let reporter Gabriele Nunziati go for asking a European official about Israel at a press conference. An Italian journalist who asked a European Commission official why Israel shouldn't pay for the reconstruction of Gaza was let go by his news agency. Gabriele Nunziati, a Brussels-based reporter who covered the EU for Rome's Nova news agency, told The Intercept he received a notice that he would lose his job barely a month after he became a correspondent. The move, which was first reported by the Italian news website Fanpage, came after he asked Paula Pinho, the European Commission's chief spokesperson, about Gaza's reconstruction on October 13. "You've been repeating several times that Russia should pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine," Nunziati, who is a contractor with Nova, said at a press conference. "Do you believe that…...