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According to a motion the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed in Sacramento Superior Court last week, Nguyen and Decker are only two of more than 33,000 Sacramento-area people who have been flagged to the sheriff’s department by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, the electricity provider for the region. SMUD called the customers out for using what it and department investigators said were suspiciously high amounts of electricity indicative of illegal cannabis farming.

Israeli passengers on a cruise ship arriving in Greece on 22 July were unable to disembark the vessel due to a large crowd of pro-Palestine protesters demonstrating against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The MS Crown Iris, owned by Israeli cruise line Mano Maritime, arrived on Tuesday at the Greek island of Syros in the Aegean Sea. The passengers were supposed to disembark for six hours.

However, they were forced to remain on board due to the protests in support of Palestine.

[...]

A group of the Greek island’s residents organized the protest and posted on social media that they “raise their fists in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza,” adding that “it is unacceptable that tourists from Israel continue to be welcomed here while the Palestinians are suffering in the Strip.”

Congressional Republicans have delivered on the pro-Israel organization AIPAC’s wish list in the latest military spending bill, including tens of millions of dollars a year for the Israeli military to develop AI technologies.

Congressional Republicans have delivered on the pro-Israel organization AIPAC’s wish list in the latest military spending bill, including tens of millions of dollars a year for the Israeli military to develop AI technologies.

“Palestinian women and girls carry the promise of the continuity of Palestinian life.”

Reem Alsalem, United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, explains why Palestinian women and girls are deliberate targets for the Israeli army.

In his latest column for the NYT, Bret Stephens tries to excuse a uniquely horrific crime with uniquely horrific journalism.

In his latest column for the NYT, Bret Stephens tries to excuse a uniquely horrific crime with uniquely horrific journalism.

"Student loan forgiveness is a bribe for young voters," shouted Newsweek in 2022. "Harris's call for price controls on groceries is more pandering than policy," declared The Hill in 2024. "Free for all: Democratic socialist’s policy pitches face tough fiscal reality in New York," warned Politico this year.

Every time an elected official or political candidate proposes a policy with even the slightest hint of actual populism, U.S. pundits, analysts and alleged experts line up to tell us that it’s just a scheme to "buy votes." Offering student-debt relief is just cheating. Lowering grocery costs is simply pandering. Eliminating public-transit fares is merely bribing voters. These initiatives aren't developed in good faith in order to improve the lives of the public; they're cynical ploys to help a given politician get ahead.

We know that some policymakers make promises that they'll never fulfill, or chisel away at robust and universal proposals, or backtrack on bold and transformative ideas. This happens all the time. But all too often, media’s default position is to assert that even the most modest of economically populist proposals are mere strategies to buy votes, revealing grim truths about what our media class seems to think the responsibilities of lawmakers and governments are.

On this episode, we examine the media tendency to assume that anything remotely close to populism is somehow cheating, playing the game on "god mode" or "democracy game genie," and ought to be discouraged by Serious People, putting a sinister spin on what is simply Doing Things People Want.

Our guest is FAIR's Janine Jackson.