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The Intercept
In No Labels Call, Josh Gottheimer, Mike Lawler, and University Trustees Agree: FBI Should Investigate Campus Protests
During a call hosted by the centrist political group No Labels, Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., spoke with close to 300 attendees, including trustees from several universities, about how Congress could help crack down further on student protesters — and how the FBI could get more involved.
Let’s Check In on AIPAC’s Assault on the Squad
In the weeks after October 7, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee took aim at members of Congress who expressed vocal opposition to Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Focusing on the so-called Squad, the Israel lobby is spending millions to push out members of Congress they view as a threat to the U.S.–Israel relationship. But Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., among the Squad members who called for an early ceasefire and whom AIPAC had been hoping to take out, cruised to victory in April. Now the lobby group’s sights are set on Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York’s 16th Congressional District and Rep. Cori Bush in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District.
AIPAC Is Secretly Intervening in Portland’s Congressional Race to Take Down Susheela Jayapal, Sources Say
In April, a super PAC ostensibly committed to supporting “pro-science” candidates began dropping eye-popping sums of money on a Portland, Oregon, congressional race. 314 Action Fund, which is not known for spending big in congressional primaries, has spent $1.7 million in support of a single candidate in the 3rd Congressional District’s open Democratic primary, according to federal filings. That sum is equal to what the political action committee spent on independent expenditures supporting or opposing candidates during the entire 2022 election cycle.
NYC Mayor Smeared a Grandmother as an “Outside Agitator” to Justify NYPD Assault on Columbia
Nahla Al-Arian has been living a nightmare for the past seven months, watching from afar as Israel carries out its scorched-earth war against her ancestral homeland in the Gaza Strip. Like many Palestinian Americans, the 63-year-old retired fourth-grade teacher from Tampa Bay, Florida, has endured seven months of a steady trickle of WhatsApp messages about the deaths of her relatives.
AIPAC’s Next Top Target? Rep. Jamaal Bowman
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is expected to launch its first ads in the coming weeks against its next top target this cycle: Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York’s 16th Congressional District. AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, is expected to run new ads against Bowman, a member...
From UCLA to Columbia, Professors Nationwide Defend Students as Politicians and Police Attack
Fireworks launched into a group of students. Mace. Vicious slurs and unabated assault. A pro-Israel mob enacted this and more upon the pro-Palestine encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles on Tuesday night, as the police stood by and let it happen. The scenes inspired outrage across the country,...
I’ve Covered Violent Crackdowns on Protests for 15 Years. This Police Overreaction Was Unhinged.
A lone Trash can lay on its side at the intersection of W. 139th St and Amsterdam Ave in Harlem, in front of the gates of the City College of New York. At around 11 p.m. on Tuesday night, this was the extent of damaged property that I witnessed outside the college campus. At the same time, New York Police Department officers in riot regalia had amassed in their hundreds, including members of the Strategic Response Group — a unit dedicated to public unrest and “counterterrorism.”
Israeli Weapons Firms Required to Buy Cloud Services from Google and Amazon
Google and Amazon are both loath to discuss security aspects of the cloud services they provide through their joint contract with the Israeli government, known as Project Nimbus. Though both the Ministry of Defense and Israel Defense Forces are Nimbus customers, Google routinely downplays the military elements while Amazon says little at all.
Judith Butler Will Not Co-Sign Israel’s Alibi for Genocide
Last month, the famed American philosopher and gender studies scholar Judith Butler was thrust into the center of a controversy after remarks Butler made about the October 7 attacks in Israel. A longtime critic of Zionism and Israel’s war against the Palestinians, Butler had condemned the attacks in the immediate aftermath. But at a March roundtable in France, Butler offered a historical context for the Hamas-led operations and stated that the attacks constituted armed resistance. The blowback was swift, and Butler was criticized in media outlets across Europe and in Israel. This week on Intercepted, Butler discusses the controversy and their position on Hamas, Israel, and crackdowns on student protests.
Cable News Viewers Have a Skewed Attitude Toward Gaza War, Survey Finds
This article was originally published as a newsletter from Ryan Grim. Sign up to get the next one in your inbox. Americans who get their news primarily from cable are the only people who believe that Israel is not committing a genocide in Gaza, according to according to a new survey that examined the relationship between attitudes toward the war and news consumption habits.
Biden Says He Told Nigeria to Kill Fewer Civilians — but Nigeria Keeps Killing Lots of Civilians
A Nigerian airstrike this month on a village in the country’s northwest killed 33 people, according to four residents and a local traditional leader. It is the latest in a long-running series of attacks on civilians by the government of Nigeria, one of the United States’ closest allies in Africa and the recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. weapons and military assistance.
QAnon Was Born Out of the Sex Ad Moral Panic That Took Down Backpage.com
Americans adore a moral panic. During the Red Scare, we believed that Soviet agents were everywhere, having secretly infiltrated all levels of society. In the 1950s, the U.S. government banned switchblades over unfounded fears that we were in the throes of “West Side Story”-style knife violence. The Satanic Panic convinced Americans of the 1980s that absurd claims of ritual abuse and sacrifice were somehow credible. Around the same time, there was “stranger danger” — which was debunked like other moral panics, but never went away entirely.
“Tell the World What’s Happening Here,” Say Patients in Gaza
“There were kids in the ICU that had bullet wounds to the chest or bullet wounds to the head,” Dr. Mohammed “Adeel” Khaleel recounts the harrowing scenes from his recent medical mission in Gaza to Ryan Grim on Deconstructed this week. An orthopedic spine surgeon hailing from Dallas, Texas, Khaleel witnessed firsthand the crushing toll on human life amid the rubble of decimated hospital infrastructure. Despite the overwhelming challenges, Khaleel highlights the unwavering dedication of medical personnel committed to providing whatever aid they can through the devastation. He returned back to the U.S. with a message from patients and doctors in Gaza: “Don’t forget us.”
“Little Home Market”: The Connecticut Company Accused of Fueling an Execution Spree
The Intercept has uncovered new details about the small family business in Connecticut identified as having sold a lethal drug to the Federal Bureau of Prisons for use in the Trump administration’s unprecedented execution spree. Beginning in July 2020, the administration killed 13 people in the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana, over the course of six months.
House Responds to Israeli-Iranian Missile Exchange by Taking Rights Away from Americans
Civil liberties groups are raising alarms about a bill making its way through Congress that applies pressure for a ban on travel to Iran for Americans using U.S. passports. The rights groups see the bill as part of a growing attempt to control the travel of American citizens and bar Iranian Americans in particular from maintaining connections with friends and loved ones inside Iran.
“Kill All Arabs”: The Feds Are Investigating UMass Amherst for Anti-Palestinian Bias
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation into the University of Massachusetts Amherst in response to a complaint that alleges that the school took months to address the harassment of Palestinian and Arab students. In the previously unreported civil rights complaint, 18 students said...
Biden’s Indifference to Palestinian Lives Is Sending the Middle East Into the Abyss
In the face of growing international pressure, the Biden administration has continued to double down on a policy of blanket support for Israel, even as it presses ahead with a possible military offensive against the town of Rafah that many observers have warned could trigger the largest humanitarian crisis of the war so far. This week on Intercepted, co-hosts Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain discuss the Biden administration’s approach to the conflict with Thanassis Cambanis, director of the foreign policy think tank Century International. Cambanis explains how Biden’s policy toward Israel is pushing the entire Middle East to the brink of a regional war that could inflict far greater suffering than we have seen to date, in an area which U.S. policymakers claim to be trying to exit.
U.S.-Trained Burkina Faso Military Executed 220 Civilians
Burkina Faso’s military summarily executed more than 220 civilians, including at least 56 children, in two villages in late February, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. “We saw the bloody corpses riddled with bullets. We were able to save a 2-year-old child whose mother was killed...
As Biden Cheers TikTok Ban, White House Embraces TikTok Influencers
As Congress and the national security state continue their quest to ban the TikTok social media platform in the United States, President Joe Biden has been courting TikTok influencers to help him shore up youth support for his reelection. While the administration has been publicly casting TikTok as a grave threat to American security, the White House has quietly hosted a number of influencers to pitch them on pro-Biden content.
Chuck Schumer Privately Warns Pakistan: Don’t Kill Imran Khan in Prison
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned in a conversation with Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington that the safety of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan was a high priority of the United States, multiple sources familiar with the exchange told The Intercept. The warning issued late last month by Schumer,...
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