There Are No Girls on the Internet - Chris Pratt Is Hawking an Anti-Abortion Prayer App; Elon's Grok Is Doxxing Women; DOGE Bros Let ChatGPT Do Their Job; Trump’s Big DEI Loss – NEWS ROUNDUP

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

In this week's News Roundup, Bridget and Producer Mike cover the tech news stories you might have missed. The story behind Hallow, the Christian app hawked by Gwen Stefani: https://mashable.com/article/hallow-prayer-app-gewn-stefani-jd-vance-peter-thiel  Elon Musk's Grok doxes adult performer on X: https://www.404media.co/grok-doxing-real-names-birthdates-siri-dahl/  Sleazy facial recognition app unmasks cam girls and sells their images: https://www.404media.co/underground-facial-recognition-tool-unmasks-camgirls/  New UK law requires platforms to remove deepfake nudes and revenge porn within 48 hours: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/feb/18/tech-firms-must-remove-revenge-porn-in-48-hours-or-risk-being-blocked-says-starmer  The two DOGE bros in charge of cutting National Endowment for the Humanities grants literally just asked ChatGPT what to do: https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/19/doge-bros-grant-review-process-was-literally-just-asking-chatgpt-is-this-dei/  US civil rights agency sues Coca-Cola distributor for excluding men from casino work trip: https://apnews.com/article/dei-coca-cola-eeoc-lawsuit-andrea-lucas-867fd98ec6d05ab52e7e0a3711e9d492 White Men Learn the Hidden Cost of Suing for Discrimination: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/social-justice/white-men-learn-the-hidden-cost-of-suing-for-discrimination  A WIN FOR DEMOCRACY: Trump admin rescinds rule banning discussion of DEI in schools after losing court ruling. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/department-of-education-backs-down-on-unlawful-directive-targeting-educational-equity  Let us know what you think about these stories by emailing [e-mail] or leaving a comment on Spotify!  Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.socialSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Yeah, this is just like the banter between Chris Pratt and Mark Wahlberg on the Halo app. The Hallow app is wild to me. So it is a prayer app where celebrities like Mark Wahlberg, like Chris Pratt is the newest one this week, Gwen Stefani are basically hawking. It is a prayer app for Catholics. I knew about Gwen Stefani because I had seen that a while ago. I did not know about Mark Wahlberg, although that totally tracks.

Is he also a celebrity affiliated with this Catholic prayer app? He's in there, yeah. He's actually a major investor and partner. Oh, that makes so much sense. I was actually watching, for some reason, him on the View on Wednesday morning, which was Ash Wednesday. Obviously, he had to book an interview to talk about any random thing just to show off his ashes. I went to Catholic school. I have had my fair share.

of Ash Wednesday ashes smudged on my forehead. Back when I would get it, it would just be like a little smudge that would be gone. You would get it during Mass and it would be gone by lunchtime. Mark Wahlberg's ashes look like somebody put grease paint on his forehead. I think that they're doing the ashes more intense so that notable Catholics can go on TV and have their faith be this big, large badge on their forehead. I think he booked an interview to talk about any rambles. random thing, just so that he would have an opportunity to show off these ashes.

So yeah, not surprising that Mark Wahlberg is pulling out the big guns to promote the Halo app. I was curious. So I created an account, logged in, and it was a pretty long onboarding. He asked me a bunch of questions about myself, had a couple choice quotes from various saints and disciples. and then it invited me to select the, what was they, celebrity guides that I wanted to hear from.

Mark Wahlberg was like top left guide to choose. Did you choose him? Number one position. Of course I did. I mean, I knew you would be interested and want me to report back about your boyfriend. Oh, shut up. I was a kid. Okay, listeners, Mike is teasing me because he knows a shameful secret of mine,

which I will reveal, but please. don't tell anybody. This is just between me, Mike, Joey, who edits this, and I guess whoever is listening, which is that when I was young, I had such the hots for Mark Wahlberg. I had a Marky Mark. You might be too young to know this. Mark Wolberg used to be Marky Mark with the funky bunch. That was his group, which was awful. But I had one of his Calvin Klein posters on my wall when I was a kid. I used to write him letters. I was so obsessed with him. I thought he was So hot. This is when I was a child, by the way. So not, not currently, not now. I know exactly the poster that you're talking about. I feel like I knew a lot of girls who had that poster

on their walls. There was a movie that Mark Wahlberg was in that it's called Fear. There is a specific scene from the movie Fear that, let's just say it really made an impression on me when I saw it when I was like 11. And it, I, I, I, what can I say? I have terrible taste. What can I say? But I guess it doesn't surprise me now. Like Mark Wahlberg is a scumbag for so many reasons. We could talk so much about all the scumbag stuff. I know that he is a famous Catholic. Hallow this app, this faith-based prayer app for Catholics. Fun fact, funded by Trump supporting evil gay billionaire Peter Thiel and also J.D. Vance are backers of this app. Here is how this. them described it. Though prayer is famously free, the app is a subscription-based service that charges $70 per year for an annual plan

or $11 a month for a monthly option, that is a lot of money to pray. They better have some Primo voice talent on there for those prices. Yeah, and I had to buy the subscription to get in there, which I did immediately cancel, but it was going to be, you know,

I think $6999 for the year was what they were going to bill me if I didn't cancel, which it's a lot to pray. I don't know how much of that makes its way to God. How much of it makes its way to God? How much of it makes its way to Mark Wahlberg, Chris Pratt, and Gwen Stefani? Even on the Catholic subreddit on Reddit, a place where Catholics gather, people are very skeptical about this app that is charging that amount of money just to pray. And basically, they're also kind of skeptical about what they call these influential Catholics being used as a marketing opportunity. The general consensus over there is the whole thing just feels like turning people's

legitimate faith into a cash grab. And Mashable reports that the CEO, Alex Jones, no, not that Alex Jones, a different Alex Jones, is on the record saying that they're courting famous religious celebrity. So that is part of their thing. They've done partnerships with Wahlberg, as you said. Chris Pratt newly this week he released a video about this app. Hollywood icon Mario Lopez,

which again, I don't know that I should say that I am shocked to hear some of these names. But the founder says that he's doing this as a way to reach fallen away Catholics or those who are not particularly religious on the social media platforms they frequent most. They're just incredible Christians. They're great people of faith, Joan said.

That actually is interesting to me that they're not going after people who might consider themselves as like deeply religious. They're just, you know, you're just scrolling social media and you have a particular fondness for Mark Wahlberg, unfortunately, like me, you might say, oh, what is this app? Maybe I'll pay $100 a year to pray. One of the other celebrities they talked about reaching out to work with is Kevin James, Paul Blart, Mall Cop, Mike's boyfriend.

Yeah, but I can see how that might pull me in. I had never considered Paul Blart-Malkop's views about theology and the divine. You know, I might be curious to hear what he had to say, but I probably wouldn't pay for it, you know? Like, I do feel like there's something a little suss about putting up a paywall between people and the divine, right? Like, and it just seems like a bit of a red flag. Oh, Jesus notably loved a paywall. You know, that was like one of his famous saying. and the Bible is that'll be $11 a month, please.

Right, yeah. Yeah. It's why he went into the temple and the money changers and was like, make sure you have a good system for only allowing people with money to get in here because we don't want those riffraff. Make sure this whole thing is backed by Peter Thiel's capital. That is in the Bible. So when Gwen Stefani last year was hawking this app, one of my favorite people, or not that I know this person, but one of my favorite parasycial podcasters, Matt Bernstein from the podcast a little bit fruity, pointed out that the app is not just prayers.

They also have, I guess I would describe them as almost sort of mean prayers specifically targeted at people who have gotten abortions. these prayers are read by people like anti-abortion activist Lila Rose. One of the prayers is, Jesus, we pray for every woman who is considering abortion and in a special way for those who are pregnant from acts of rape or incest. Every woman know the goodness, gift, and beauty of her own life and so be able to receive the gift of her child's life. What I find interesting about this is that Alex Jones,

the CEO of the app, was like, oh, we're not even targeting people who are religious. This is just like content. It's interesting to me how when convenient this is able to sort of be couched as non-political, not even necessarily overtly religious. Then you get into the app and it's like these abortion having women to just have the baby. Am I right, people? Yeah, funny how they always like kind of sneak that in.

This is me revealing how Pollyanna I am. I'm a little bit, I was a little bit surprised about Gwen Devon. on this one, based purely on the Girl Power songs that she was making when I was in sixth grade. I think maybe adulthood is about, is like learning who people actually are. You know, when you're a kid, you decide who somebody is. You project who they are. And then you're like, oh, this is who they actually are. I also remember not that long ago, I don't know if this is true or not,

but reading that Gwen Stefani had put out a holiday album that was available to buy exclusively at Cracker Barrel, which I feel said a lot. That was true, but I don't remember being a holiday album. I guess it wasn't her solo album, but she's featured on Blake Shelton's 2016 album, If I'm Honest, which was sold at Cracker Barrel locations. Blake Shelton is her husband. What is this Cracker Barrel collab couple?

A CCC. It's back before Cracker Barrel went woke too, so it was acceptable for them to be there. Pre-logue change, Cracker Barrel. You know, so I'm a little disappointed. to find that Gwen Stefani is mixed up in this. I shouldn't be, but, you know, she was somebody who I liked as a youth quite a bit.

But Chris Pratt, nobody is surprised this week to find that Chris Pratt made an ad for this prayer app. You know, I was really having a big think about it, about what it is about Chris Pratt, why it is that I, not just me, but like people dislike him. Also, I do love that our super producer, Joey, their last name is Pat. The first time that Joey and I spoke,

I was like, oh, Joey Pratt. And they were like, actually, it's a pat. Actually, my whole social media vibe is Pat not Pratt to distinguish from Chris Pratt, which I respect immensely. But that's how much people don't want to be associated with Chris Pratt. And I don't know. I was thinking what the deal is.

Obviously, Chris Pratt really hangs out a lot with RFK, so it's in the sort of like Mahat. universe. So there are definitely reasons to not like him and not trust him. But for me, it is not even necessarily really his politics or his ideology that I find so annoying. One, I feel that he disarmed us when he was on Parks and Recreation. He was sort of goofy, lovable Andy Dwyer. People liked him. He was generally inauthentive. Then after that role, remember he got Jack? His whole thing was like, oh, hey, I'm Chris Pratt and I'm jacked now. I feel that there's something that happens there where it just,

there's like an ego thing that happens there when you go from being lovable and goofy to then being jacked, that you've really got to keep an eye on with men. I'll just put it that way. Yes, we saw Jim from the office do the same thing, right? Where he rose to stardom as kind of like a gentle, sweet, every man. but apparently lurking within was like a desire to be the lead of an action movie. Don't even get me started. Aren't his movies?

This is, I'm speaking off the cuff so I don't know and I actually would love to be educated on this. Aren't his movies basically just propaganda for U.S. imperialism and the war machine basically? You've got Jim Halper. In those movies, is he also doing the Jim Helper where he looks at the camera and makes that little half smile? like, oh, on my work at imperialism, what are you going to do? Do you know what I'm talking about? Well, wearing body armor, yeah, that would be pretty good. So the thing with Chris Pratt is that I feel that he does this thing that I can't stand,

where, okay, we get it. You are religious, you are Catholic. You don't want to be too open about your politics, but your politics are very clear. I don't think anybody is confused. I'm not confused. You align yourself with kind of conservative or traditional values, but you're also in Hollywood. Fine. Got it.

Totally fine. The thing that gets me is I have to be a victim about it, right? It can't just be, yes, I align myself with all of these traditional conservative values. I also need to be talking about it as if I'm a victim for these stances. That's what I don't like. And also, I don't like how he is everywhere. Like, he is really overrepresented in media when you compare to the actual talent and charisma and the kind of roles that he gets. Like, I don't understand why he is everywhere.

But could you, other than the Avengers or whatever, could you name a role or a movie that he's in right now that he's in and like really crushing? I mean, I couldn't, but I don't know anything about movies. It was notable when I selected him in the Hallow app as a guide that I wanted to hear from that they did not mention Parks and Rec. They listed Guardians with the Galaxy and some other movie that I didn't know but probably should.

But it seemed like a notable omission. Yeah, I just feel like if you are an actor and you're not really that charismatic and you're not really that talented and you're not really getting like great role after great role after great role, why do I have to be hearing about you so much? Why do I have to know so much about your faith?

You know, there are plenty of entertainers or performers that I don't personally like. But if I'm like, oh, well, they're in the conversation. I'll give you a great example. Sidney Sweeney, I don't personally enjoy her work. I did really like her in the movie reality, which if you've not seen that on HBO, she actually is a great job with that. She was great in Euphoria, but that was a pretty minimal role. She is someone that I'll say, I don't like that I'm hearing from her often,

but also like she's in the conversation. She is in a lot of movies. I'll concede that she is being interviewed a ton because she is like in the conversation. I don't have to like it, but there she is. I'll tolerate it. I don't get the deal with Chris Pratt.

I don't get why I'm hearing about him constantly. I think I might cut this, but just so that you are aware of how I feel about Chris Pratt. Sure. Well, I mean, I think we could put Marky Mark in that same category. Don't make me, I, hate. Oh, you know. I do know. I do know. Listen, Mark Wahlberg, he is a scumbag. He has a history of violence toward minoritized people from his youth. Look it up. It's like horrifying. I hate, I hate and cannot

help how much I was obsessed with him when I was young. He stars in my favorite movie of all time, Boogie Nights. Um, I don't know. I don't, we do hear about it. We do hear from him. too much. I will say that. We do hear from him a lot compared to, it's not commiserate with his with the actual like his, the footprint that he takes up at Hollywood. I guess I'll put it that way. Does that make sense? It does make sense. And if you want to compare acting skill, I mean, I guess he's been, he's, he's a pretty good actor. But in the, uh, the reading that him and Chris were doing in the Halo app, he was really phoning it in. Like it was clear that Chris was giving it his all.

Mark was definitely reading from a script. I think he was doing like a big batch of clits that were going to be used for a bunch of things. You know, like they were not in conversation. They were recording separately. He was being edited together. He was really phoned that one in. You can hear the note, like, is that good?

That good enough. God is love. Is that good? I was trying to do a Boston accent because he's from Boston. Yeah, fun fact about Mark Wahlberg. So you know that I think P.T. Anderson's Boogie Nights is the best movie of all time. It's a masterpiece. Mark Wahlberg basically never brings up that he was in that movie.

He has said in interviews that he regrets doing boogie nights and said that he actually has prayed to God for forgiveness for having done boogie nights. Now, mind you, this is somebody who went to prison for a hate crime when they were young. I hope that he also asked for forgiveness for that behavior. But because it's like a movie that is about facts and debauchous behavior, comma, things that Mark Wahlberg in real life is definitely associated with these. I don't know why he's like makes it seem like he's above these things. He certainly is not. But imagine being part of a masterpiece and distancing yourself from it.

I don't even know why because it's like not Christian enough or whatever. I mean, I guess he does like a lot of Disney stuff, right? So maybe he's trying to protect the Wahlberg brand for the sanitized Disney audience. Yeah, I don't know because Boogie Nights is an excellent movie. If I was in it, I'd tell people. Oh, I mean, I never shut up about it. Yeah, you weren't even in it and you never shut up about it. I wasn't even in it.

Don't give me turned on Boogie Nights. Fun fact about Boogie Nights, it has the best DVD. commentary of any DVD commentary, because I love it. I live for a DVD commentary. You know this. The best DVD commentary I've ever heard, P.T. Anderson, definitely, in my opinion, sounds like he had been doing some partying while recording that DVD commentary. Let's put it that way. They don't make DVD commentaries like that anymore. If you have the DVD, if you've seen this, if you're one of the handful of people that know what I'm talking about, there are a few specific moments we were like, wow, just a different time in the entertainment industry, I guess,

on that DVD commentary. Anyway, I've really got off track here. Yeah, let's bring it back around to the Halo app. Well, fun fact about the Halo app is that it was actually banned from EU markets a few months ago. Many suspected that the reason that regulators shut it down in the EU was due to data privacy concerns and things like sensitive data being used for ad targeting, including religious affiliation, which all that stuff is obviously highly regulated under the EU's Digital Services Act. Yeah, just like Jesus intended for your deepest, most intimate, religious thoughts and connections

being used to target you to sell you more crap. Yeah, totally fine here in the U.S. though. No problem. Go for it. Make that money. Target on religious ideology. Whatever you want to do, have at it. Have at it, y'all.

In the U.S., fucking live free. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guide. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel,

help an acapella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group.

The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt. They're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. One erection.

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and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear.

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at our back. Speaking of stuff that should be cracked down on in the U.S., but weirdly is not, let's talk about GROC because 404 media has this new report that GROC is being used to uncover private information about porn performers. So we talked about how GROC was being used to undress women and minors, according to the European Commission, in ways that are illegal. That's not me saying that. That's them saying that.

Well, it just gets worse from there. because porn performer Siri doll basically has spent over a decade and lots and lots of money trying to protect her legal identity from the internet. And Grok basically just destroyed that when a user on X tagged Grock

asking, oh, who is this person in this clip? Grock wasn't just like, oh, here is Siri doll. Here is this porn performer's performance identity. Grock volunteered Siri Doll's full legal name and birthday, mind you, this person was not asking for this information. The user just asked, who is this performer because they wanted to find more of this performer's work, public-facing work. So what you might have expected is for GROC to generate this person's stage name. No, no, no, no. What was actually generated was their full legal name and birthday,

which happens to be information that this performer has been trying to keep from the internet for many years. As soon as this happened, harasser started opening Facebook accounts in her real name, porn leak site started posting her content using her legal name instead of her stage name, and people started asking Grock for her car, her address, and her location. Scary stuff. And what makes this particularly kind of scary and painful is the collateral damage because she says that the reason why she is trying to guard her legal name is to protect her family, which, you know, it's probably no surprise to anybody that it is common practice for

harassers to find somebody's parents' phone numbers and call them or email somebody's family and friends. And so now she has to warn her family and put all of these defensive plans in place thanks to X's chatbot volunteering this information about her unprompted. It is ostensibly against X's own terms of service, which explicitly prohibit doxing calling it a serious safety risk. But here is X's own chatbot, Grock, actually volunteering this information about somebody.

That is really scary. Like, how terrible for this performer. And you have to wonder, how does Grock know her name and her birthday? Is it just that good at facial recognition? is like what percentage of Americans would GROC be able to identify? That's kind of a scary thing to think about. Yeah, and I think it fits into a broader pattern of GROC-related abuses and harms,

which we're going to continue talking about both in this episode and just generally, as long as I'm fucking alive and I'll have a beating heart, I'm going to continue talking about it, because I genuinely cannot believe that not more is being done. In the United States, federally, nothing is being done. Zero, nothing. We have a collection of state attorneys generals trying to do something, but there is no federal regulating body in the United States

that is taking any action whatsoever against this. And mind you, we're talking about sex crimes against minors here. We're talking about crimes against kids. regulators from other countries are stepping in because federally in the United States, essentially nothing is being done. And as the 404 piece really points out well, in all the debate about Internet safety, in all these conversations that we have about the need to regulate and censor the Internet to protect kids,

it is worth asking who is actually being protected and who keeps being left exposed to harm. I think stories like this one really, illustrate what's going on here. Totally agree. And I think something that's becoming clear over this past year is that the types of answers to those questions,

who's being protected and who's being harmed, I think are really changing. You know, over the years, as we've been doing this show, we've talked about categories of people who were not being protected, right? We talk about the ways in which black women face multiple threats, challenges, you know, are disproportionately harmed by a lot of the abuses that happen online.

We talk about how trans people are being disproportionately and unfairly targeted. And so we're used to talking about categories of people who are left out. But with the Trump administration, it really feels like it's specific people who are being protected, You can look at Elon Musk. He's a big supporter of Trump. He's donating to Republicans. I don't know, but I truly suspect and believe that a big part of the reason the administration is not doing anything about any of these egregious crimes that his platform is doing is because he's like part of their crew. You know, we can look at the Epstein files for other examples where it's not even like categories of people anymore.

or it's specific people who are in power protecting themselves and everybody else can just, you know, get bed. Pretty much. That's really how it feels. 404 also reported on a site called Cam Girl Finder, which has been quietly operating for years, that uses facial recognition technology to let anybody search a database of over 2 billion faces scrape from adult streaming platforms.

The premise and the threat is very obvious. You just take a photo of a woman from her personal Instagram or social media, upload it, and you can use that to find out if she does sex work and if so, where. 4-4 tested this and it actually works. Results will show a person's username, the probability of a face match, when they were last online, and links to other profiles across platforms. The site will even sell you all of the images it has of a given person for $1. This database includes women who stopped streaming or doing cam work years ago,

meaning there is really no expiration date on the exposure risk. So if you did streaming or cam work once years ago, it can still be used to find you across the internet, and it will still allow whoever to buy your image. Now, 404 talked to the creator of this, this site about privacy concerns. And their point is basically like, hey, if you stream publicly, you are a public figure, deal with it.

He compared people who do sex work to politicians or YouTubers. Never really talked about what I think is like the obvious difference, which is that people who perform in adult content might want to keep their actual legal names and identities separate from their personal lives for safety reasons. because people are creeps. You know, it doesn't take a genius to imagine why it might not be good to have your actual legal identity and family and name attached to the work that you do professionally because it's not safe for you. So there is an opt-out option, but that option only works if the women know the site exists in the first place. And I wanted to sort of put these two stories, the one about Siri Dahl having her real name be exposed on X.

And this story, I wanted to sort of put them in conversation with each other because I do think that they're sort of the same accelerating problem, that these tools can be used to very easily, cheaply and quickly strip away the separation that a sex worker might put between their personal and their professional identity. and that has real meaningful consequences for their safety, for their lives, for their families. And I think it's really two stories about the same thing, that we have a tech infrastructure that treats people's safety and privacy as like a public resource to be dismantled, not a right to be protected. And that it's kind of fun or a fun challenge to dismantle. and erase whatever boundary somebody might have put up between their personal and their professional lives,

it's kind of a, quote, fun challenge to see how you can trample those. And I think it just goes back to something that we talk about on the show all the time. It's just how much of the Internet is about exploiting and consuming women. And I think the fact that these folks are targeting women who do sex work is not a coincidence because, you know, it's not enough that you can. could pay to have access to these performers professional work and call that at the end of it.

It's like, no, I cannot have them control the means by which they, they present themselves to the world and to me. I need to be in control of that. Like, it's very, it's very much about control to me. And profit, right? Like, they're charging a dollar for these images that they have stolen. Yeah. And I also, I don't think that it works that, oh, The information is public, so anything goes. There are plenty of, like, if I started an OnlyFans tomorrow, that is technically public, but OnlyFans still has rules that you can't screenshot it and share it elsewhere because it's my IP, right? Like, I feel like we have this logic, particularly when it comes to women and our bodies,

particularly when women have found a way to have agency and economic control over how they want to use their own bodies that says like, oh, well, if it's public, it belongs to everybody, right? I have the right to, quote, expose or unmask this person as if they're doing something that means that they don't have a right to privacy anymore. It's a very toxic, exploitative dynamic that I think is baked into so much of our culture and not even really a tech problem necessarily, a cultural rot problem. Totally. and this cam girl finder is like

specifically built for this purpose, right? Like there's not, as far as I can tell, there's not a legitimate use of this tool and people have just found a way to use it for this nefarious purpose. Like this is it. This is the sole reason that the creators of this app built it, which is just really gross.

Yeah. And I'm just so sick of it because it just doesn't feel, as you were saying, it doesn't feel that we have a system that is invested meaningfully in whether or not people get hurt. The creator of Cam Girl Finder says that if privacy is a concern, this kind of job is not for you. And gets to dictate how and who shows up to this work as opposed to the performer dictating how they show up to that work, right? Elon Musk's platform has a terms of service that explicitly bans doxing, but also has a chat bot that it volunteers people's private personal information that they don't want on the internet.

And I just feel that until we have some sort of real accountability, and right now in the United States, we don't really have that. The burden is going to continue falling on women, right? It's our responsibility to opt out of this website that some creep design It's our responsibility to report, to warn families, to spend all of this money like this porn performer did on data removal services that AI can undo in like one single reply. I'm just really sick of that. I'm sick of living in a world where we are made to shoulder this burden. As bad as I find all of this, I do think the tides are turning because, you know, as we talked about on. X, GROC was being used to generate what the European Commission deemed illegal images of women and minors at a rate of 6,000 requests per hour. While no U.S. federal agency or body did anything at all about this, other countries were and are taking it more seriously. UK Prime Minister Kier Starmor is calling non-consensual intimate images, both real and AI generated, a national emergency, and is actually backing that up,

with new legislation. So under-proposed amendments to the crime and policing bill, tech companies like X would have just 48 hours to remove deep fake nude and revenge porn after those images have been flagged. Or they would face fines up to 10% of their global revenue or an outright block in the UK. Talking to the Guardian, Starmor said, The burden of tackling abuse must no longer fall on victims. It must fall on perpetrators and on the companies that enable harm. So I have a lot of gripes about Starmer's government, but in this case, I really think that that is well said.

The idea that we need to stop flaming victims, stop putting the onus and the responsibility on people who are targeted, and move that onus and responsibility to tech companies and tech platforms is one of the core reasons that I started this podcast. The Prime Minister went on to say that institutional misogyny being, quote, woven into the fabric of our institutions means the problem has not been taken seriously enough. Too often misogyny is excused, minimized, or ignored. The arguments of women are dismissed as exaggerated or one-offs.

That culture creates permission, Starmor wrote. So under these new rules, victims and survivors could report images once, either to the platform or to the media regulator in the UK, offcom, and that would trigger removal requests across multiple platforms simultaneously. Ofcom is also being asked to explore digital watermarking so that abusive images can be automatically detected every time that they're reposted. Creating or sharing non-consensual digital images would become a, quote, priority offense under the Online Safety Act, putting it in the same category as child abuse material or terrorism. Offcom would then be responsible for enforcing the ban on the images with the aim to remove that burden or onus from the person targeted to need to report the same.

same image, potentially thousands of times as it just keeps continually getting reposted. And that was one of the points that I made when talking about what was happening with GROC here in the state is that we actually do have legislation to take a down act, which ostensibly, you might be thinking, well, why is that not being triggered? And one of the reasons is that the person targeted has to make a complaint before anything happens. And so if nobody makes that complaint, nothing happens, and that really, the burden really is on the person targeted to do something to have it taken down. So is 48 hours feasible? Are companies going to be able to do this even if they want to comply with this new rule? That is a great question. The Guardian spoke to

the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which I should say, I did a bunch of work with in my former job. They spoke to Anne Cranon, who researches online misogyny for ISD, who said, I think that 48 hours is certainly possible, to be honest with you. The problem is, it may not necessarily incentivize a quicker response rate from companies, but 48 hours is longer than the time frame for removal of other types of content, such as terrorist content, in the EU. She added that there are already existing initiatives to use hash matching to protect victims of intimate abuse, although it can be challenging to get different tech platforms to coordinate among themselves so that an abusive video uploaded to, say, Facebook, for example, is automatically then detected on Reddit.

She's really careful to talk about the ways that hash matching is not perfect technology and can be circumvented. Terrorist groups, for example, often add small alterations to videos that have already been hashed as terroristic content or, like, they'll add an emoji, and that will then make them unrecognizable to hatchmashing systems. There's also the problem of AI tools and AI deepfakes to just make everything worse, allowing non-consensual intimate images and other content to be altered really quickly and then spread across different pockets of the internet, which makes it a lot easier to evade attempts to detect it quickly with tools like hatchmashing. I really think that that is a big part of why it seems like things are becoming so bad so

rapidly is just AI allowing these pre-existing structural harms to happen so much faster and on such a wider scale so quickly. Exactly. And then you add to that the fact that you've got platforms that are private or encrypted like Signal or WhatsApp where content is able to be traded and passed around in ways that are harder to get a sense of. And then the fact that you've got rogue websites or fringe platforms that fall outside of the reach of legislation like the Online Safety Act. It's just tough. And I think that a lot of what people like me and advocates have been warning about, it's here. You know, this is what it, this is what happened. This is what that looks like. When you have a climate where platforms are not being held accountable, this is what it looks

like. The people who are harmed are women and young people. And the people who get to just do whatever they want are billionaires like Elon Musk who are getting rich off of it. So I really, I really think you're right. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier.

This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. There's that more singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation.

The group. The yard herds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you. get your podcast. Hum me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. radio and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-heart to get started. That's 844-8-4-8-4-I-heart. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind.

Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions,

the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context and ask the questions everybody wants answered.

Sports Slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slices Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games.

Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

let's get right back into it. So speaking of stuff that I hate on the internet, I have to quickly talk about this, frankly, absurd. It would almost be funny if it wasn't so enraging insight into how Doge decided what humanities programs were DEI and thus needed to be cut. And it was being done by two totally unqualified bros who literally just,

asked chat GPT. This is one of those stories created in a lab to make me angry and piss me off. Mission accomplished. Now, bear in mind that we are talking about federal grants that were already approved after the whole rigorous application and review process. So if you're doing some interesting, important work in the humanities, You write a vigorous grant application. It's submitted to the federal government.

The federal government, it's no joke. I've done it and I've never gotten one of these grants. It is no joke. It takes a long time. They really, there's very rigorous. Your application is approved. The money is approved. It just takes two bozos using chat GPT to say,

up, uh, uh, uh, we're taking it back. So these grants were terminated by these two random inexperienced Doge Bros, based on whether or not Chad GPT could explain in under 120 characters that they were, quote, related to DEI. We know this thanks to a newly released complaint from the Authors Guild against the government, which reveals how Doge actually decided which national endowments for the humanities grants to kill after those grants had already been awarded. So TechDirt reports two young Doge operatives, Nate Kavanaugh, comma, a college dropout. Love that little ad, TechDirt, great detail.

And Justin Fox, a junior private equity associate, were given access to the National Endowment for the Humanities and tasked with cutting grants. Their method, Fox built a keyword detection list with words like LGBTQ, tribal, bi-PAC, and immigrants. Notably absent were words like white, Caucasian, or heterosexual. Then they fed the grant descriptions into chat, GPT, asking whether or not they were, quote, related to DEI, requiring answers in under 120 characters. Side note, they couldn't even read more,

like 120 characters is so few characters. So I'm guessing that there's a field, like when you submit for one of these grants, because I've never applied for a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant, but I've applied to other federal agencies. And, you know, it's a whole automated system with different fields where you have to paste stuff in. And I'm guessing that there was like a description field

that was limited to 120 characters, which is just the absolute shortest you could imagine. Because that's what, like 10 words, maybe 15 words? It's like a sentence. So I have two bones to pick with this method. which is like so stupid, but it's like extra, extra stupid for two reasons. One, they created a list of words and then needed chat GPT to tell them whether one of those words was present in a text string.

Like you don't need chat GPT for that. So that's one thing. And then the second is, yeah, why would they use the shortest, what I assume has to be the shortest field, this 120 character description? why not use the abstract, which was probably, you know, maybe like 500 characters or something. Just really dumb execution of a dumb strategy.

Well, I think it's on, it's purposeful, right? Because then you would actually have to consider the merit of these grants. And they don't want to consider the merit of these grants. They want to cut the grant. And so if you did it that way, you might actually get a clear,

or full picture of the purpose of these grants and the merit of these grants, they're not interested in that. And so I think it being so stupid and sloppy and blunt is the point. They probably put their stupidest assholes on it on purpose. Yeah. Yeah, these were probably like the dumbest guys on Team Doge. They're like, oh, yeah, we want you to match some text strings. See if you can figure out how to do it with an LLM.

Like the stupidity is the point, I think. And so the grants that were flagged by ChatGPT were then canceled, even though the grants were already awarded. Experts at NEH who could have provided any kind of context were blocked from pushing back. The acting director whose signature appeared on 1,400 termination emails sent from a private server. You know, you would really expect an email like this

coming from an agency director to come from an official agency server. In fact, I'm pretty sure there are laws requiring that for like record retention reasons. So just one more dumb piece of the execution here sending it from a private server.

Well, that acting N.E.T. had later admitted they had no idea which grants were cut and why. Basically, I don't know, couldn't even tell you. Among the grant casualties were grants on the Colfax massacre that happened in 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana, wherein a group of 62 to 153 black men were murdered while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the KKK, Jewish women slave labor during the Holocaust, Native American boarding schools,

and the women pilots of World War II who were denied entry because of their race. So this discovery came through a lawsuit by the Authors Guild, and the details are as bad as you would imagine, just like two guys with absolutely no humanity's experience. And this is a culture war key list that somebody cooked up asking Chad GPT to make funding decisions that actual experts had spent months reviewing. And again, this money had already been awarded. So taking away money that had already been, they'd gone through this rigorous process, but it had already been dulled out. You know, as comically stupid as these two guys' execution was,

the consequences are quite real, right? Like those grants were canceled, and these important, if uncomfortable histories are not being studied or told or whatever the purpose of these grants was, right? I think it connects with what we talked about last week to save our signs campaign because this is right in lockstep

with the administration's larger efforts to erase all of these aspects of American history that they don't like, that paint white people in anything other than the most flattering picture. that give any sort of pause to the idea that America is like the best and pure and has never made any mistakes. And it's such a dangerous thing to try to do to erase that history rather than try to learn from it and move forward. That is a good reminder. Shout out to one of our listeners, Deb.

We will put Deb's call to document signs. that you see for the Save Our Science Project in the show notes. It's very important to preserve our history, even the history that is uncomfortable or heaven forbid paints white people in unflattering light despite being absolutely historically accurate and truthful. I have a related story, which is that the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is the Federal Civil Rights Agency that is supposed to sort of represent workers who have been legitimately discriminated against, has filed its first DEI-related lawsuit of the Trump

era, and that is against a Coca-Cola bottler in New England. So if you listen to this show, we've definitely talked about shocking cases of discrimination where people have been genuinely harmed. Hold on to your hat. You're not going to believe the harm that happened in this case. So this is the allegation. Coca-Cola hosted a two-day networking event for about 250 female employees at a Connecticut casino. Get this. The men were not invited. Just perpetuating that girls club.

Smoking cigars. For too long, women have had their boot on the neck of the white American male worker, and it's high time we did something about it. So y'all might remember that back in December, the EEOC chair, Andrea Lucas, posted this video really just explicitly asking white men, do you feel you have been discriminated against at your job? Let us know we will file a lawsuit. So the kind of cases that the EEOC typically takes on involve people

who have been measurably, clearly harmed by their employers because of discrimination, right? We've covered things like pregnant women being fired for being pregnant right before giving birth, or nursing parents being let go because they need to pump on the job. Workers with cancer or MS or diabetes who lost their jobs and subsequently their health insurance because their employer would not make reasonable accommodations. There are also the agency that sued Tesla for racial discrimination in its factories that was found to be, widespread. Yeah, they, in 2015, they sued BMW, and BMW had to pay back $1.6 million to black workers who were screened out by a background tech policy. The EEOC successfully argued had a

racially disparate impact, right? And so historically, this is what the EEOC has been used for. Cases where there has been a clear, measurable harm. It is not typical for the EEOC. For the EEOC, see to sue because men were not invited explicitly to a networking event. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier.

This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. There's that more singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation.

The group. The yard herds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get. your podcast. Human me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, Iheart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think Iheart. radio and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-heart to get started. That's 844-8-4-Ehart. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind.

Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves,

their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context and ask the questions

everybody wants answered. Sports Slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slices Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged.

It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. So this first lawsuit under the Trump administration's sort of new focus around this is claiming that a diversity-focused workplace program is itself unlawful. They're also investigating Nike and Northwest Mutual for allegedly discriminating against white workers. And of course, we talked about it on the show, but also demanded DEI policy information from about 20 major law firms. This Koch case is kind of.

of being seen as a test for how far the Trump administration is willing to push DEI when it comes to the private sector. We talked about this on the show before, but when Trump was to be elected, a lot of companies just Trump administration did not ask them to do this yet, but they just immediately pulled their DEI initiatives, companies like Target. Meanwhile, Costco was asked to do the same thing. Costco basically said, kick rock, we'll do what we want. Diversity and inclusion is making us money, so we're going to continue making money. They are not suffering the same kind of economic woes that Target is experiencing. I almost wonder how much of this is the Trump administration saying,

hey, companies, wouldn't it be great if you abandoned all the people who are making you money by publicly backing away from DEI initiatives? Don't you want the opportunity to be as financially and economically uncertain as Target right now? Don't you, don't you look at the CEO of Target and think, that should be me. Well, get in line and do what we say. Yeah, it's got to be a pretty tough sell, which, yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe that's why they're just coming out and suing these companies to get them to do it. Because clearly, as Target has learned, it's not a very financially rewarding way to go.

So this employment attorney Daphne DelVoe that I follow on threads put it very well. She writes, women hold roughly 10% of Fortune. 500 CEO positions, earn less in virtually every occupation and face a wage penalty for having children while fathers get a bonus. White men are not a systematically excluded group. Individual discomfort is not structural discrimination. I think that's such a good point to make that the reason the EEOC exists is to address structural discrimination, right?

It came out of the civil rights era as a way to... address some of these entrenched structural factors and forces that were systematically disadvantaging certain groups of people. And a lot of those disadvantages still exist. You know, you just mentioned leadership positions. We could also look at wages, right? Like there is still a big pay gap. That is why the EEOC is supposed to exist to eliminate,

practices that are perpetuating that wage gap. And the Trump administration just fundamentally acts as if things like the wage gap or the leadership gap at the top of Fortune 500 companies doesn't exist. And the only thing that matters is the personal comfort of white men working in a Coca-Cola factory in Connecticut. It's so, it's tempting to say, It's short-sighted, but they know exactly what they're doing, right? Like they are interested in actively perpetuating white supremacy and patriarchy.

Yes. And that employment attorney, I think she's so right. She exactly put it that way. She says, this is about discouraging women from gathering. Because when women gather, we compare notes, we identify patterns, we realize our collective power of everything this administration could have chosen to prosecute, wage theft, pregnancy discrimination, mass layoffs, they chose this that tells you exactly who they consider a priority and who they consider a threat. They're so scared of our stories that they're suing to stop them.

Kevin from accounting missed some appetizers, and that is what the federal government decided was worth its litigation power. And it's actually kind of funny because I saw this piece in Bloomberg called, white men learned the hidden cost of suing for discrimination, all about these white men who kind of had their grievances, the professional grievances, nursed by the Trump administration, and decided to sue their employers for what they felt was discrimination against them as white men. They talked to this newscaster named Vaughn who said that, you know, he had been a newscaster and that when they made, when the news outlet made

their video of all the newscasters, he was not featured in it. He didn't get a billboard and then they did a diversity initiative and then they hired a black newscaster and that black newscaster got a billboard. Now, the news outlet is quoted as saying, oh, no, this person was fired for cause for documented performance issues. The article reads, if the Trump administration has its way, more suits like Vons will come before the courts as the government seeks to redress what it sees as discrimination against white men. In December, the EEOC urged white men to come forward with complaints about their

treatment by employers looking to diversify their workforces. However, many of the white men doing so are confronting the same blunt reality as countless employees of other genders, races, or sexual orientations who have stood up to corporate HR over perceived wrongdoing. Bringing a lawsuit against your employer may well damage your career. And so, basically this person, Vaughn says that he cannot find a steady, stable job that pays what his old job paid after suing his former employer. And, you know, he's a, he's in a 60s now. And like, it's a lot harder to find employment and having this, he says he does not regret doing the lawsuit, but the lawsuit is part of, he says, why he is having trouble replacing that work. And basically,

these white men who are suing their employers are finding out the hard way what women and queer folks and trans folks and people of color and pregnant people and other minorities have been known that standing up for yourself and suing can hurt your career. Now, it is complicated because I do think that just across the board, we need better protections for people who speak up around real workplace harm and people who blow the whistle on things like abuse and discrimination. But it's like these guys want to play the part of being a marginalized oppressed class without actually having realized that, oh, being a marginalized oppressed person comes with real economic disadvantages that we've known about for a really long time. women and people who sue their employers for discrimination, they have talked about this kind of thing. But these white men are like, oh, I want to say I'm the victim without having to incur the actual real costs that we know that victims just have to eat when they speak up. But that said, in my opinion, that is not what is going on with these cases. Because the piece points out rightly, men still make up 90% of chief executive officers at S&P 500. companies as well as about three quarters of all C-suite employees.

And the proportion of black men or women who have held the top job is extremely small, currently hovering at about 1%. And these white men were like, we would like that 1% too because equal right. If I don't get that 1% as well, that's discrimination against me, actually, actually. I heard they had mini-kishes at that mixer. I don't get any mini-kishes. Yeah, like you missed the happy hour. dude, calm down. The article also talked to this guy who sued META because META at the time had an apprenticeship

program for minority applicants and that ever since he sued META, he has had a hard time finding work ever since. The article says, the program offered ethnic minority workers opportunities to shadow professionals and learn new skills. And this guy said that while working on a contract job for Meta, one of those apprentices was given a title and a role superior to him, even though, in his view, that person had less experience. So Meta and other defendants said in a legal filing that this person actually never even applied for the role in question and was simply not eligible for that program and also lacked the legal standing to sue over it. His case was dismissed in 2024 and now is pending appeal. So I think so much of this is exactly.

what you were just talking about. Because I am seeing a lot of white men being told, anytime somebody gets something that they want, it is an injustice. Anytime something doesn't go their way, it is an injustice. And I think that's really the crux of the problem, that nobody could ever be just more qualified for you or better positioned for a role, especially if the person that gets something that you want is black or trans or queer or otherwise a minorized person, that is an injustice. And we now have a dynamic where that kind of white male grievance is being codified into a kind of legitimate public policy. You will have the federal government deciding that its legal authority and ability to sue companies and individuals will come down on protecting

that very fragile white male need to get what they feel they deserve. And I think that's exactly what we're seeing play out here. I see the same thing playing out in conversations about who gets into college. You can just blame all of your problems or shortcomings. Or maybe they're not even shortcomings. Maybe there are just things that didn't go your way on this hypothetical, mythical, unqualified, minorized person who got some, that you saw was as rightfully yours and now you want to sue about it. And again, I mean,

we've talked about this on the show so often. They don't give us shit. If a black, let me tell you something. If a black woman gets into a C-suite, people are pissed about it. And it's she got there because she earned it because she was like better than everybody. They don't, they would not, they would not allow people into these positions willy-nilly if we were not qualified. And so, yeah, I just hate how our current government is allowing for these feelings of grievance. We all have to experience not getting things that we want in life. That's life as an adult. But telling people no, any time you've experienced having to watch somebody get something that you wanted,

it's not just that things didn't go your way. You are being discriminated against. That's what I think is so insidious. And that's their whole campaign, just encourage. Grievance, nursing grievances. Yes, it is all about grievance with these people. And, you know, last week I was talking about how I took a break from the news roundup because it was just getting me down. I'm going to try to be intentional about including a win or a positive story in every episode.

And we actually do have a positive story as it pertains to the Trump administration and DEI initiatives because this week, the Trump administration, to drop its ban on DEI initiatives in public schools nationally, which is great news. A federal judge dismissed a case in New Hampshire this week, which then triggered the administration to dropping the ban nationwide. We covered a little bit of the fallout of the administration's attacks on anything even remotely related to DEI. So this is very positive news. So New Hampshire's largest teachers union for school districts and civil rights groups like the ACLU sued the Trump administration last year, arguing that the ban violated free speech and equal protection. This was pretty serious. Schools risked losing federal funding if they did not comply. The administration then

told the court that it would not withhold federal funding from schools that maintained DEI programs. Didn't really give an explanation for why they were pulling this, but a similar challenge in Maryland got the same result. Teachers at this point were saying that this ban had them afraid to teach, basic American history because they were worried that lessons on things like racism or discrimination could trigger an investigation and potentially cost schools their funding. According to the ACLU's Giles Bisonet, the lawsuit forced the government to prove the necessity for why they're doing what they're doing, and here they certainly could not do that. This is a case where teachers and civil rights groups really pushed back and held the line and

one, and in the process, protected classrooms nationwide without the need to have a single trial. Two separate New Hampshire state level laws, restricting DEI and limiting teaching around racism are still being challenged in court. So like, I don't want to give the impression that the fight is entirely over. But I'm going to take this as a win,

given all that we talked about in this episode. Absolutely, it's a win. I saw on, I was on blue sky when this happened. And it was so interesting to me that so many people seem to want to, like, diminish the importance of this win and be like, oh, well, they're just going to find some other way to do it. And, like, yeah, no kidding, the Trump administration is going to, like, keep looking for ways to push their white supremacy agenda. But, like, this is still a win, right? Like, the fight is going on, but this is a big win about something very important. So what a nice thing to end on here.

And especially in this climate, let's learn to take a W when we get a W, huh? Let's not, we don't need, there is so much to be discouraged about. I don't know. I'm taking my wins when I get them. Hell yeah. Well, Mike, thank you so much for being here.

Where can folks stay in touch with all the stuff that we're doing on the show? Thanks for having me here, Bridget. People can leave us comments on Spotify. A lot of people have been doing of that and it's been great to get that feedback. Please keep it coming. You can send us an email at hello at tangoity.com.

You can follow Bridget on Instagram or TikTok at Bridget Marie in D.C. And you can follow the show on YouTube or Blue Sky at There Are No Girls on the Internet. Thanks so much for listening, y'all. I will see you on the internet. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoati.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.

It's a production of IHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. Edited by Joey Pat. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, write and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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