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
00:00:49.980If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.400Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:04.060Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:05:06.740I know exactly the poster that you're talking about.
00:05:10.360I feel like I knew a lot of girls who had that poster on their walls.
00:05:15.440There 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 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.
00:05:42.860I know that he is a famous Catholic.0.99
00:05:46.140Hello, this app, this faith-based prayer app for Catholics, fun fact, funded by Trump-supporting0.98
00:05:52.740evil gay billionaire Peter Thiel and also J.D. Vance, our backers of this app, here is how0.54
00:06:03.260Though prayer is famously free, the app is a subscription-based service that charges $70
00:06:08.640dollars per year for an annual plan or eleven dollars a month for a monthly option that is a
00:06:14.780lot of money to pray they better they better have some some primo voice talent on there for those
00:06:19.640prices yeah and i had to buy the subscription to get in there which i did immediately cancel but
00:06:25.400it was going to be uh you know i think 69.99 for the year was what they were going to bill me if
00:06:31.700i didn't cancel which is it's a lot to to pray i don't know how much of that makes its way to god
00:06:36.480how much of it makes its way to god how much of it makes its way to mark walberg chris pratt
00:06:42.900and gwen stefani even on the catholic subreddit on reddit a place where catholics gather people
00:06:50.260are very skeptical about this app that is charging that amount of money just to pray
00:06:54.380and basically they're also kind of skeptical about what they call these influential catholics
00:07:00.120being used as a marketing opportunity the general consensus over there is this the whole thing just
00:07:05.780feels like turning people's legitimate faith into a cash grab. And Mashable reports that the CEO,
00:07:13.700Alex Jones, no, not that Alex Jones, a different Alex Jones, is on the record saying that they're
00:07:19.560courting famous religious celebrities. So that is part of their thing. They've done partnerships with
00:07:25.420Wahlberg, as you said, Chris Pratt, newly this week, he released a video about this app,
00:07:31.100Hollywood icon Mario Lopez, which again, I don't know that I should say that I am shocked to hear
00:07:37.620some of these names, but the founder says that he's doing this as a way to reach fallen away
00:07:41.920Catholics or those who are not particularly religious on the social media platforms they
00:07:47.460frequent most. They're just incredible Christians. They're great people of faith, Jones said.
00:07:52.360That actually is interesting to me that they're not going after people who might consider themselves
00:07:57.520as like deeply religious they're just you know you're just scrolling social media and you
00:08:01.840have a particular fondness for mark walberg unfortunately like me you might say oh what
00:08:09.080is this app maybe i'll pay a hundred dollars a year to pray one of the other celebrities they
00:08:13.900talked about reaching out to work with is kevin james paul blurt mall cop
00:08:19.340oh man mike's boyfriend yeah but i could see how that might pull me in i i had never considered
00:08:29.160paul blart malcop's views about theology and the divine you know i might be curious to hear what
00:08:36.180he had to say but i probably wouldn't pay for it you know like i i do feel like there's something
00:08:40.800a little sus about putting up a paywall between people and the divine right like and it just
00:08:50.540seems like a bit of a red flag oh jesus notably loved a paywall you know that was like one of
00:08:55.720his famous sayings in the bible is that'll be eleven dollars a month please right yeah yeah1.00
00:09:03.440That'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.0.99
00:09:18.140Make sure this whole thing is backed by Peter Thiel's capital.1.00
00:09:23.320So 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 parasocial podcasters, Matt Bernstein, from the podcast A Little Bit Fruity, pointed out that the app is not just prayers.
00:09:41.380They also have, I guess I would describe them as almost sort of mean prayers, specifically targeted at people who have gotten abortions.
00:09:51.820These prayers are read by people like anti-abortion activist Lila Rose.
00:09:56.520One 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.
00:10:05.520Every woman know the goodness, gift and beauty of her own life and so be able to receive the gift of her child's life.
00:10:13.220What 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.
00:10:20.840This is just like content. It's interesting to me how, when convenient, this is able to sort of be couched as nonpolitical, not even necessarily overtly religious.
00:10:34.040Then you get into the app and it's like these abortion having women to just have the baby. Am I right, people?0.58
00:10:41.560Yeah. Funny how they always just like kind of sneak that in.
00:10:44.740This is me revealing how Pollyanna I am. I'm a little bit, I was a little bit surprised about Gwen Stefani 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 just, you decide who somebody is, you project who they are, and then you're like, oh, this is who they actually are.
00:11:06.640I 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.
00:11:18.040That was true, but I don't remember it being a holiday album.
00:11:21.920I 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.
00:11:47.980You know, so I'm a little disappointed to find that Gwen Stefani is mixed up in this.
00:11:53.560I shouldn't be, but, you know, she was somebody who I liked as a youth quite a bit.
00:11:57.680But 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, that not just me, but like people dislike him.
00:12:16.080Also, 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.
00:12:35.380but that's how much people don't want to be associated with Chris Pratt and I don't know I
00:12:41.680was thinking what the deal is obviously Chris Pratt really hangs out a lot with RFK so it's in
00:12:48.260the sort of like Maha universe so there are definitely reasons to not like him and not trust
00:12:54.800him but for me it is not even necessarily really his politics or his ideology that I find so
00:13:01.600annoying. One, I feel that he disarmed us when he was on Parks and Recreation. He was sort of
00:13:09.820goofy, lovable Andy Dwyer. People liked him. He was generally inoffensive. Then after that role,
00:13:18.120remember he got jacked? His whole thing was like, oh, hey, I'm Chris Pratt and I'm jacked now.
00:13:23.380I feel that there's something that happens there where it just, there's like an ego thing that
00:13:29.840happens there when you go from being lovable and goofy to then being jacked that you really got to
00:13:35.060keep an eye on with men i'll just put it that way yes we saw jim from the office do the same thing
00:13:40.700right where he rose to stardom as kind of like a a gentle sweet every man uh but apparently lurking
00:13:49.820within was like a desire to be the lead of an action movie don't even get me started aren't
00:13:57.020his movies this is i i'm speaking off the cuff so i don't know and i actually would love to be
00:14:01.320educated on this aren't his movies basically just propaganda for u.s imperialism and the war machine
00:14:09.200basically you've got jim helper in those in those movies is he also doing the jim helper where he
00:14:14.480looks at the camera and makes that little half smile like oh i'm my work at imperialism what
00:14:19.100are you gonna do do you know what i'm talking about well wearing body armor yeah that would
00:14:24.820be pretty good so the thing with chris pratt is that i feel that he does this thing that i can't
00:14:32.940stand where okay we get it you are religious you are catholic you don't want to be too open about
00:14:42.660your politics but your politics are very clear i don't think anybody is confused i'm not confused
00:14:46.940you align yourself with kind of conservative or traditional values but you're also in hollywood
00:14:54.000fine got it totally fine the thing that gets me is i have to be a victim about it right it can't
00:15:02.440just be yes i align myself with all of these traditional conservative values that i also need
00:15:10.320to be talking about it as if i'm a victim for these stances that's what i don't like and also
00:15:16.740i don't like how he is everywhere like he is really overrepresented in media when you compare
00:15:26.500to the actual talent and charisma and the kind of roles that he gets like i don't understand why he
00:15:31.100is everywhere but could you other than the avengers or whatever could you name a role or a
00:15:36.820movie that he's in right now that he that he's in and and and like really crushing i mean i couldn't
00:15:43.920but I don't know anything about movies.
00:15:45.620It was notable when I selected him in the Halo app
00:18:52.040Mark Wahlberg basically never brings up that he was in that movie.
00:18:55.800He 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.
00:19:06.220Now, mind you, this is somebody who went to prison for a hate crime when they were young.
00:19:12.400I hope that he also asked for forgiveness for that behavior.
00:19:16.480but because it's like a movie that is about sex and debaucherous behavior comma things that mark
00:19:23.520walberg in real life is definitely associated with these i don't know why he's like like makes
00:19:27.940it seem like he's above these things he certainly is not but imagine being part of a masterpiece
00:19:34.140and distancing yourself from it i don't even know why because it's like not christian enough or
00:19:40.360whatever i mean i guess he he does like a lot of disney stuff right so maybe maybe he's trying to
00:19:47.000protect the the walberg brand for the the sanitized disney audience yeah i don't know
00:19:54.680because boogie nights is an excellent movie if i was in it i'd tell people oh it mean i never shut
00:20:00.980up about it yeah you weren't even in it and you never shut up about it i wasn't even in it don't
00:20:05.740can't be started on boogie nights fun fact about boogie nights it has the best dvd commentary of
00:20:11.400any dvd commentary because i love it i live for a dvd commentary you know this the best dvd commentary
00:20:17.620i've ever heard pt anderson definitely in my opinion sounds like he had been doing some
00:20:25.180partying while recording that dvd commentary let's put it that way they don't make dvd
00:20:30.160commentaries like that anymore if you have the dvd if you if you've seen this if you're one of the
00:20:36.820handful of people that know what i'm talking about there are a few specific moments where
00:20:40.600you're like wow just a different time in the entertainment industry i guess uh on that dvd
00:20:46.800commentary anyway i've really got off track here yeah let's let's bring it back around to the
00:20:52.460halo app well fun fact about the halo app is that it was actually banned from eu markets a few months
00:20:58.820ago, many suspected that the reason that regulators shut it down in the EU was due to data privacy
00:21:05.200concerns and things like sensitive data being used for ad targeting, including religious
00:21:10.500affiliation, which all that stuff is obviously highly regulated under the EU's Digital Services
00:21:15.380Act. Yeah, just like Jesus intended for your deepest, most intimate religious thoughts and
00:21:22.580connections being used to target you, to sell you more crap. Yeah, totally fine here in the US.0.99
00:21:28.820though like no problem go for it uh make that money target target on religious ideology what
00:21:37.760whatever you want to do have at it have at it y'all in the u.s fucking live free0.95
00:30:14.800uh and so we're used to talking about categories of people who are left out but with the trump
00:30:20.840administration it really feels like it's specific people who are being protected right you can look
00:30:26.860at elon musk he's a big supporter of trump he's donating to republicans uh i i don't know but i
00:30:34.860truly suspect and believe that a big part of the reason the administration is not doing anything
00:30:40.340about any of these egregious crimes that his platform is doing
00:30:44.340is because he's, like, part of their crew.0.91
00:30:46.920You know, we can look at the Epstein files for other examples
00:30:50.280where it's not even, like, categories of people anymore.
00:30:56.660It's specific people who are in power protecting themselves
00:31:01.120and everybody else can just, you know, get bent.
00:31:07.060Pretty much. That's really how it feels.
00:31:10.340404 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 scraped from adult streaming platforms.
00:31:25.460The 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.
00:31:40.140404 tested this, and it actually works.
00:31:43.540Results will show a person's username, the probability of a face match, when they were
00:31:48.980last online, and links to other profiles across platforms.
00:31:52.740The site will even sell you all of the images it has of a given person for $1.
00:31:58.940This database includes women who stopped streaming or doing cam work years ago, meaning there
00:32:04.460is really no expiration date on the exposure risk.
00:32:08.100So 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.
00:32:20.320Now, 404 talked to the creator of this site about privacy concerns, and their point is basically like, hey, if you stream publicly, you are a public figure, deal with it.
00:32:31.100He 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 like legal names and identities separate from their personal lives for safety reasons because people are creeps.
00:32:54.920You know, you don't, 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.
00:33:07.740So there is an opt-out option, but that option only works if the women know the site exists in the first place.
00:33:16.860And 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.
00:33:45.440And that has real meaningful consequences for their safety, for their lives, for their families.
00:33:53.320And 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.
00:34:08.520and that it's kind of fun or a fun challenge to dismantle and erase whatever boundary somebody
00:34:18.740might have put up between their personal and their professional lives. It's kind of a quote
00:34:22.980fun challenge to see how you can trample those. And I think it just goes back to something that
00:34:28.560we talk about on the show all the time. It's just how much of the internet is about exploiting
00:34:34.280and consuming women and i think the fact that these folks are targeting women who do sex work
00:34:41.080is not a coincidence because you know it's not enough that you could pay to have access to
00:34:47.980these performers professional work and call that the end of it it's like no i cannot have them
00:34:55.060control the means by which they they present themselves to the world and to me i need to be
00:35:01.160control of that like it's very it's very much about control to me and profit right like they're
00:35:06.780charging a dollar for these images that they have stolen yeah and i also i don't think that it works
00:35:13.500that oh the information is public so anything goes there are plenty of like if i started an
00:35:22.200only fans tomorrow that is technically public but only fans still has rules that you can't
00:35:28.260screenshot it and share it elsewhere because it's my ip right like that i feel like we have this
00:35:33.920logic particularly when it comes to women and our bodies particularly when women have found a way to
00:35:42.200have agency and economic control over how they want to use their own bodies that says like oh
00:35:47.560well if it's public it belongs to everybody right i i have the right to to quote expose or unmask
00:35:54.420this person as if they're doing something that means that they don't have a right to privacy
00:35:59.500anymore it's it's a it's a very toxic exploitative dynamic that i think is baked into so much of our
00:36:07.340culture and not even really a tech problem necessarily a cultural rot problem totally0.99
00:36:13.140and this cam girl finder is like specifically built for this purpose right like there's there's
00:36:20.620not as far as I can tell there's not a legitimate use of this tool and people are have just found a
00:36:26.960way to use it for this nefarious purpose like this is it this is the sole reason that uh the
00:36:36.180creators of this app built it uh which is just really gross yeah and I'm just so sick of it
00:36:44.660Because 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.
00:36:56.500The creator of Cam Girl Finder says that if privacy is a concern, this kind of job is not for you.
00:37:02.000And 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?
00:37:12.540Elon Musk's platform has a terms of service that explicitly bans doxing, but also has a chatbot that it volunteers people's private personal information that they don't want on the Internet.
00:37:27.120And 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?
00:37:38.000It's our responsibility to opt out of this website that some creep designed. 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.
00:38:02.820as bad as i find all of this i do think the tides are turning because you know as we talked about
00:38:11.840on x grok was being used to generate what the european commission deemed illegal images of
00:38:18.240women and minors at a rate of 6 000 requests per hour while no u.s federal agency or body did
00:38:26.000anything at all about this. Other countries were and are taking it more seriously.
00:38:33.040UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is calling non-consensual intimate images both real and
00:38:38.200AI-generated a national emergency and is actually backing that up with new legislation. So under
00:38:44.220proposed amendments to the crime and policing bill, tech companies like X would have just 48
00:38:50.520hours to remove deepfake nude and revenge porn after those images have been flagged. Or they
00:38:57.260would face fines up to 10% of their global revenue or an outright block in the UK. Talking to The
00:39:04.240Guardian, Starmer said, the burden of tackling abuse must no longer fall on victims. It must
00:39:09.560fall on perpetrators and on the companies that enable harm. So I have a lot of gripes about
00:39:15.940Starmer's government. But in this case, I really think that that is well said. The idea that we
00:39:22.440need to stop blaming victims, stop putting the onus and the responsibility on people who are
00:39:28.860targeted and move that onus and responsibility to tech companies and tech platforms is one of
00:39:34.840the core reasons that I started this podcast. The prime minister went on to say that institutional
00:39:39.320misogyny being, quote, woven into the fabric of our institutions means the problem has not been
00:39:44.780taken seriously enough. Too often, misogyny is excused, minimized, or ignored. The arguments of
00:39:50.540women are dismissed as exaggerated or one-offs. That culture creates permission, Starmer wrote.1.00
00:39:56.740So under these new rules, victims and survivors could report images once, either to the platform
00:40:02.480or to the media regulator in the UK, Ofcom, and that would trigger removal requests across multiple
00:40:08.800platforms simultaneously. Ofcom is also being asked to explore digital watermarking so that
00:40:14.540abusive images can be automatically detected every time that they're reposted. Creating or
00:40:20.680sharing non-consensual digital images would become a, quote, priority offense under the Online Safety
00:40:26.200Act, putting it in the same category as child abuse material or terrorism. Ofcom would then be
00:40:32.300responsible for enforcing the ban on the images with the aim to remove that burden or onus from
00:40:38.400the person targeted to need to report the same image potentially thousands of times as it just
00:40:43.260keeps continually getting reposted. And that was one of the points that I made when talking about
00:40:46.940what was happening with Grok here in the States, is that we actually do have legislation to take
00:40:53.220it down at, which ostensibly you might be thinking, well, why is that not being triggered?
00:40:57.900And one of the reasons is, is that the person targeted has to make a complaint before anything
00:41:04.180happens. And so if nobody makes that complaint, nothing happens. And that really, the burden
00:41:09.660really is on the person targeted to do something to have it taken down.
00:41:12.960So is 48 hours feasible? Are companies going to be able to do this even if they want to comply with this new rule?
00:41:21.220That 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.
00:41:29.000They spoke to Anne Crannon, who researches online misogyny for ISD, who said, I think that 48 hours is certainly possible, to be honest with you.
00:41:37.840The problem is it may not necessarily incentivize a quicker response rate from companies.
00:41:42.960but 48 hours is longer than the time frame for removal of other types of content,
00:43:08.140Exactly. 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.
00:43:20.380And 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.
00:43:32.380And I think that a lot of what people like me and advocates have been warning about, it's here.
00:43:38.820You know, this is what it this is what this is what that looks like when you have a climate where platforms are not being held accountable.
00:43:46.000This is what it looks like. The people who are harmed are women and young people.
00:43:50.960And the people who get to just do whatever they want are billionaires like Elon Musk who are getting rich off of it.
00:43:56.780So I really I really think you're right.
00:49:44.620Then they fed the grant descriptions into ChatGPT
00:49:48.300asking whether or not they were, quote,
00:49:50.660related to DEI, requiring answers in under 120 characters.
00:49:55.480Side note, they couldn't even read more.
00:49:58.900Like 120 characters is so few characters.
00:50:03.600So 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.
00:50:14.520And, you know, it's a whole automated system with different fields where you have to paste stuff in.
00:50:19.180And 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.
00:50:29.480that's that's what like 10 words maybe 15 words it's like a sentence so i have two bones to pick0.97
00:50:37.280with this methodology which is like so stupid but it's like extra extra stupid for two reasons one0.97
00:50:44.620they created a list of words and then needed chat gpt to tell them whether one of those words was0.99
00:50:51.920present in a text string like you don't need chat gpt for that so that's one thing uh and then the
00:50:58.840second is, yeah, why would they use the shortest, what I assume has to be the shortest field,
00:51:05.160this 120-character description? Why not use the abstract, which was probably, you know,
00:51:11.740maybe like 500 characters or something? Just really dumb execution of a dumb strategy.0.98
00:51:20.160Well, I think it's purposeful, right? Because then you would actually have to consider0.99
00:51:26.580the merit of these grants and they don't want to consider the merit of these grants they want to
00:51:31.940cut the grant and so if you did it that way you might actually get a clear or full picture of
00:51:38.340what these of the purpose of these grants and the merit of these grants they're not interested in0.97
00:51:42.980that and so i think it being so stupid and sloppy and blunt is the point they probably put their1.00
00:51:50.060stupidest assholes on it on purpose yeah yeah these were probably like the dumbest guys on1.00
00:51:56.540team doge yes they're like oh yeah we want you to match some text strings see if you can figure1.00
00:52:04.480out how to do it with an llm like the like the stupidity is the point i think and so the grants0.85
00:52:10.780that were flagged by chat gpt were then canceled even though the grants were already awarded0.98
00:52:15.000Experts at NEH who could have provided any kind of context were blocked from pushing back.
00:52:22.060The acting director, whose signature appeared on 1,400 termination emails, sent from a private server.
00:52:29.460You know, you would really expect an email like this coming from an agency director to come from an official agency server.
00:52:37.880In fact, I'm pretty sure there are laws requiring that for, like, records retention reasons.
00:52:45.000So, just one more dumb piece of the execution here, sending it from a private server.
00:52:53.360Well, that acting NEH head later admitted they had no idea which grants were cut and why.0.91
00:53:01.060Basically, I don't know, couldn't even tell you.
00:53:03.700Among 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's 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.
00:53:31.180So 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 humanities experience, and this 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.
00:53:58.980So taking away money that had already already been they'd gone through this rigorous process that had already been doled out.0.98
00:54:05.820You know, as comically stupid as these two guys' execution was, the consequences are quite real, right?0.97
00:54:17.280Like, 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?0.98
00:54:32.300I think it connects with what we talked about last week, the 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.
00:54:53.780that paint white people in anything other than the most flattering picture,
00:54:58.940that give any sort of pause to the idea that America is like the best and pure
00:55:22.200Shout out to one of our listeners, Deb. We will put Deb's call to document signs that you see for the Save Our Signs project in the show notes.
00:55:32.160It's very important to preserve our history, even the history that is uncomfortable or, heaven forbid, paints white people in an unflattering light, despite being absolutely historically accurate and truthful.
00:55:43.520I 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.0.53
00:56:09.040So if you listen to this show, we've definitely talked about shocking cases of discrimination where people have been genuinely harmed.
00:56:18.300Hold on to your hat. You're not going to believe the harm that happened in this case.
00:56:26.960Coca-Cola hosted a two-day networking event for about 250 female employees at a Connecticut casino.
00:56:36.400know get this the men were not invited just perpetuating that girls club smoking cigars
00:56:46.340for too long women have had their boot on the neck of the white american male worker and it's
00:56:53.040high time we did something about it so y'all might remember that back in december the eeoc
00:56:58.180Chair Andrea Lucas posted this video really just explicitly asking white men, do you feel you have
00:57:07.400been discriminated against at your job? Let us know. We will file a lawsuit. So the kind of cases
00:57:14.660that the EEOC typically takes on involve people who have been measurably, clearly harmed by their
00:57:23.360employers because of discrimination, right? We've covered things like pregnant women being fired
00:57:29.940for being pregnant right before giving birth or nursing parents being let go because they need to
00:57:36.200pump on the job. Workers with cancer or MS or diabetes who lost their jobs and subsequently
00:57:43.240their health insurance because their employer would not make reasonable accommodations.
00:57:47.560There are also the agency that sued Tesla for racial discrimination in its factories that was found to be widespread.
00:57:56.840Yeah, they in 2015, they sued BMW and BMW had to pay back one point six million dollars to black workers who were screened out by a background check policy.
00:58:06.540The EEOC successfully argued had a racially disparate impact.
00:58:11.060Right. And so historically, this is what the EEOC has been used for.
00:58:16.840Cases where there has been a clear, measurable harm.
00:58:21.840It is not typical for the EEOC to sue because men were not invited explicitly to a networking event.
01:00:04.680Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
01:00:09.120I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
01:00:13.580I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
01:00:21.200They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
01:00:25.100But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
01:00:28.540They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
01:00:31.660Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:00:40.620If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
01:00:46.560This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
01:00:59.040I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
01:01:06.140I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
01:01:09.720From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
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01:01:32.760Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:01:48.360So 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.
01:02:03.320They're also investigating Nike and Northwest Mutual for allegedly discriminating against white workers.
01:02:09.240And of course, we talked about it on the show, but also demanded DEI policy information from about 20 major law firms.
01:02:16.400This Koch case is kind of being seen as a test for how far the Trump administration is willing to push DEI when it comes to the private sector.
01:02:27.320We talked about this on the show before, but when Trump was reelected, 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.
01:02:40.520Meanwhile, Costco was asked to do the same thing.
01:02:44.400Costco basically said, kick rock, we'll do what we want.
01:02:47.460Diversity and inclusion is making us money, so we're going to continue making money.
01:02:52.780They are not suffering the same kind of economic woes that Target is experiencing.
01:02:57.680I almost wonder how much of this is the Trump administration saying, hey, companies, wouldn't
01:03:03.360it be great if you abandoned all the people who are making you money by publicly backing
01:03:24.040Yeah, it's got to be a pretty tough sell, which, yeah, maybe you're right.
01:03:27.220Maybe that's why they're just coming out and suing these companies to get them to do it.
01:03:31.660Because clearly, as Target has learned, it's not a very financially rewarding way to go.
01:03:39.920So this employment attorney, Daphne Delvaux, that I follow on threads, put it very well.
01:03:44.680She writes, women hold roughly 10 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions, earn less in virtually every occupation and face a wage penalty for having children while fathers get a bonus.
01:03:56.960White men are not a systematically excluded group.
01:04:00.720Individual discomfort is not structural discrimination.
01:04:03.700I 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.
01:04:29.960And 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.
01:04:51.180And 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 that the only thing that matters is the personal comfort of white men working in a Coca-Cola factory in Connecticut.
01:05:14.780It's so, it's tempting to say it's short-sighted, but they know exactly what they're doing.0.52
01:05:21.180Right. Like they are interested in actively perpetuating white supremacy and patriarchy.
01:05:28.400Yes. And that employment attorney, I think she's so right. She exactly put it that way.
01:05:33.720She 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.
01:05:45.200wage theft, pregnancy discrimination, mass layoffs. They chose this that tells you exactly
01:05:51.100who they consider a priority and who they consider a threat. They're so scared of our stories that
01:05:57.460they're suing to stop them. Kevin from accounting missed some appetizers. And that is what the
01:06:03.160federal government decided was worth its litigation power. And it's actually kind of funny because I
01:06:09.800I saw this piece in Bloomberg called White Men Learned the Hidden Costs of Suing for Discrimination,
01:06:15.300all about these white men who kind of had their grievances, their professional grievances,
01:06:23.240nursed by the Trump administration and decided to sue their employers for what they felt was
01:06:28.800discrimination against them as white men. They talked to this newscaster named Vaughn who said
01:06:35.920that, you know, he had been a newscaster and that when they made when the news outlet made
01:06:41.520their video of all the newscasters, he was not featured in it. He didn't get a billboard and
01:06:46.880they did a diversity initiative and then they hired a black newscaster and that black newscaster
01:06:52.740got a billboard. Now, the news outlet is quoted as saying, oh, no, this person was fired for
01:06:58.940cause for documented performance issues. The article reads, if the Trump administration has
01:07:04.380its way, more suits like Vons will come before the courts as the government seeks to redress
01:07:09.080what it sees as discrimination against white men. In December, the EEOC urged white men to come
01:07:15.300forward with complaints about their treatment by employers looking to diversify their workforces.
01:07:20.980However, many of the white men doing so are confronting the same blunt reality as countless
01:07:26.880employees of other genders, races, or sexual orientations who have stood up to corporate HR
01:07:33.220over perceived wrongdoing bringing a lawsuit against your employer may well damage your career
01:07:40.020and so basically this person vaughn says that he cannot find a steady stable job that pays what his
01:07:48.220old job paid after suing his former employer and you know he's a he's in his 60s now and like it's
01:07:55.740a lot harder to find employment and having this he says he does not regret doing the lawsuit but
01:08:00.520the lawsuit is part of, he says, why he is having trouble replacing that work. And basically,
01:08:08.160these white men who are suing their employers are finding out the hard way what women and queer
01:08:14.960folks and trans folks and people of color and pregnant people and other minoritized populations
01:08:21.200have been known that standing up for yourself and suing can hurt your career. Now, it is complicated
01:08:28.880because I do think that just across the board,
01:08:32.040we need better protections for people who speak up around real workplace harm
01:08:36.600and people who blow the whistle on things like abuse and discrimination.
01:08:40.820But it's like these guys want to play the part of being a marginalized, oppressed class
01:08:46.580without actually having realized that, oh, being a marginalized, oppressed person
01:08:51.900comes with real economic disadvantages that we've known about for a really long time.
01:08:57.260women and people who sue their employers for discrimination, they have talked about this kind
01:09:01.460of thing. But these white men are like, oh, I want to say I'm the victim without having to incur
01:09:07.780the actual real costs that we know that victims just have to eat when they speak up. But that
01:09:14.640said, in my opinion, that is not what is going on with these cases, because the piece points out,
01:09:21.080rightly, men still make up 90 percent of chief executive officers at S&P 500 companies, as well
01:09:28.340as about three quarters of all C-suite employees. And the proportion of black men or women who have
01:09:34.040held the top job is extremely small, currently hovering at about one percent. And these white
01:09:40.200men were like, we would like that one percent, too, because equal right. If I don't get that
01:09:45.3201% as well? That's discrimination against me, actually. Actually. I heard they had mini quiches
01:09:51.580at that mixer. I didn't get any mini quiches. Yeah, like you missed the happy hour, dude.
01:09:58.040Calm down. The article also talked to this guy who sued Meta because Meta at the time had an
01:10:04.940apprenticeship program for minority applicants and that ever since he sued Meta, he has had a
01:10:11.240hard time finding work ever since. The article says the program offered ethnic minority workers
01:10:16.980opportunities to shadow professionals and learn new skills. And this guy said that while working
01:10:21.740on a contract job for Metta, one of those apprentices was given a title and a role
01:10:26.620superior to him, even though in his view, that person had less experience. So Metta and other
01:10:34.780defendants said in a legal filing that this person actually never even applied for the role in
01:10:39.700question and was simply not eligible for that program and also lacked the legal standing to
01:10:45.280sue over it. His case was dismissed in 2024 and now is pending appeal. So I think so much of this
01:10:52.660is exactly what you were just talking about, because I am seeing a lot of white men being told
01:10:59.960anytime somebody gets something that they want, it is an injustice. Anytime something doesn't go
01:11:07.320their way, it is an injustice. And I think that's really the crux of the problem, that nobody could
01:11:13.960ever be just more qualified for you or better positioned for a role, especially if the person0.86
01:11:20.580that gets something that you want is Black or trans or queer or otherwise a minoritized person.0.91
01:11:27.880That is an injustice. And we now have a dynamic where that kind of white male grievance is being
01:11:35.640codified into a kind of legitimate public policy. You will have the federal government deciding that
01:11:42.000its legal authority and ability to sue companies and individuals will come down on protecting that
01:11:49.280very fragile white male need to get what they feel they deserve. And I think that's exactly
01:11:56.700what we're seeing play out here. I see the same thing playing out in conversations about who gets
01:12:02.340into college. You can just blame all of your problems or shortcomings, or maybe they're not
01:12:08.800even shortcomings. Maybe they're just things that didn't go your way on this hypothetical,
01:12:14.440mythical, unqualified, minoritized person who got something that you saw was as rightfully yours,
01:12:21.980and now you want to sue about it. And again, I mean, we've talked about this on the show so often.
01:12:28.000they don't give us shit if a black if a let me tell you something if a black woman0.99
01:12:32.140gets into a c-suite people are pissed about it and it's she got there because she earned it1.00
01:12:37.760because she was like better than everybody they don't they would not they would not allow people
01:12:43.400into these positions willy-nilly if we were not qualified and so yeah i just i just hate how
01:12:50.560our current government is allowing for these feelings of grievance we all we all have to
01:12:57.420experience not getting things that we want in life that's life as an adult but telling people
01:13:03.020no anytime you've experienced having to watch somebody get something that you wanted it's not
01:13:09.580just that things didn't go your way you are being discriminated against that's what i think is so
01:13:14.520insidious and that's their whole campaign just encouraging grievance nursing grievances yes it
01:13:22.420It's all about grievance with these people.
01:13:24.560And, you know, last week I was talking about how I took a break from the news roundup because it was just getting me down.
01:13:32.200I'm going to try to be intentional about including a win or a positive story in every episode.
01:13:38.980And we actually do have a positive story as it pertains to the Trump administration and DEI initiatives, because this week the Trump administration agreed to drop its ban on DEI initiatives in public schools nationally, which is great news.
01:13:55.540A federal judge dismissed a case in New Hampshire this week, which then triggered the administration to dropping the ban nationwide.
01:14:02.280We covered a little bit of the fallout of the administration's attacks on anything even remotely related to DEI.
01:14:12.020So New Hampshire's largest teachers union for school districts and civil rights groups like the ACLU sued the Trump administration last year,
01:14:20.640arguing that the ban violated free speech and equal protection.
01:14:24.260This was pretty serious. Schools risked losing federal funding if they did not comply.
01:14:28.720The administration then told the court that it would not withhold federal funding from schools that maintained DEI programs.
01:14:36.160Didn't really give an explanation for why they were pulling this, but a similar challenge in Maryland got the same result.
01:14:43.700Teachers 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.
01:14:59.560According to the ACLU's Giles Bissonette, the lawsuit forced the government to prove the necessity for why they're doing what they're doing.
01:15:07.380And here they certainly could not do that.
01:15:09.660This is a case where teachers and civil rights groups really pushed back and held the line and won and in the process protected classrooms nationwide without the need to have a single trial.
01:15:23.440Two separate New Hampshire state level laws restricting DEI and limiting teaching around racism are still being challenged in court.
01:15:31.600So, 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 given all that we talked about in this episode.
01:15:40.280Absolutely. It's a win. I saw 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.
01:15:56.340And like, yeah, no kidding. The Trump administration is going to like keep looking for ways to push their white supremacy agenda.
01:16:05.040But like this is still a win, right? Like the the fight is going on.
01:16:10.420But this is a big win about something very important. So what a nice thing to end on here.
01:16:18.260And especially in this climate, let's learn to take a W when we get a W, huh?
01:16:23.500Let's not, we don't need, there is so much to be discouraged about.