Billie Eilish Taylor Swift Nudes Problem Exposed Something Worse & Peter Thiel Secret Society Leaks
PDS Published 06/17/2026
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A secret society of billionaires, politicians, tech executives, and podcast pros co-founded by Palantir's Peter Thiel just got exposed.
The AI news problem that centered around Billie Eilish, Sydney Sweeney, Taylor Swift, and more has gotten even worse.
A women's bathroom scandal that blew up and divided the internet, what's really going on, and what everyone's missing with a Georgia gerrymandering fight that just got shaken up. We're talking about all of that and even more on today's brand new Philip DeFranco Show, your daily dive into the news.
So buckle up, hit that like button, and let's just jump into it.
Starting with this huge controversy playing out right now because a dad had the cops called on him after he brought his young daughters into an empty women's bathroom at a rest stop.
The video around this has gone viral, with people on the internet absolutely losing their minds. The dad in question is a man by the name of Tyler Brodsky.
In the caption of his TikTok, which had around 16.7 million views at the time of recording, he explained that he stopped at a rest area so his daughters could use the bathroom during a trip from Florida to Oklahoma, writing:
"The women's restroom was empty, so I took them in. I'd rather do that than bring two little girls into a men's bathroom full of grown men and dirty stalls."
In the video, we see a woman, later identified as the store manager, Melissa, standing in the doorway of the bathroom with a man who is on the phone with the police, going totally ballistic. He is yelling that his wife and her elderly, sick mother are waiting to use the bathroom while Tyler helps his daughters wash their hands. The girls become increasingly upset and openly cry as the man continues to shout.
"I'm standing in the doorway of the ladies' bathroom. My wife says there is a man with his two little girls using the women's bathroom. She is waiting to use the restroom with her mother, who is very ill and on oxygen."
At one point, the man suggests that Tyler should have had the store manager, a complete stranger, help his daughters go to the bathroom.
Melissa responds:
"They're two girls. Wash your hands. Let this lady... She's a woman. She can bring her daughters in here. She's the manager. I'm sure they asked her."
Tyler replies:
"We are in the women's bathroom. They're girls. They go to the women's bathroom. This is ridiculous, man."
Eventually they leave the bathroom, and as they're walking out, the man is still on the phone with the police. That's when things briefly seem like they might become physical.
"You can video me, okay."
"You just put your hands on me."
"I touched you. I brushed your shirt."
"That's ridiculous. I got it on video."
The man then claims he was justified because Tyler took the girls into the women's restroom rather than the men's restroom.
Tyler responds:
"I'm just standing here. You're probably a weirdo that wants to see them in there."
The video ends with the man in the gray shirt saying the police are on their way.
But that is not where it ends.
Tyler later posted an update saying that just a few minutes after the man got off the phone, about three officers showed up.
According to Tyler:
"One of the officers was talking to me and the man and explained that the situation wasn't as black and white as many people may think."
The officers pointed out that taking two little girls into the men's restroom could be viewed just as negatively as Tyler being in the women's restroom with his daughters.
Tyler explained:
"They tried to make sense of it and understand both perspectives, but ultimately there was really nothing they could do. They let me know that I was okay and that I didn't do anything wrong."
After speaking with everyone involved, the officers talked to Melissa and ultimately asked the man to leave the store.
Tyler also gave a shoutout to Melissa:
"Melissa, thank you for helping out in the situation and being so caring with my daughters."
He also thanked the responding officers for speaking with his daughters afterward, reassuring them and making sure they felt safe and protected.
Tyler went on to say that this incident brought something bigger to his attention.
Since the video went viral, thousands of people have reached out to share similar stories.
He added:
"This isn't really about one argument in a gas station. It's about the fact that girl dads and boy moms are often put in situations where there isn't a perfect answer."
"Most parents aren't trying to make anyone uncomfortable. We're simply trying to take care of our children and keep them safe."
"As a dad with two little girls, I made the decision that I felt was best in the moment."
Tyler also said he doesn't want anyone to harass, threaten, or contact anyone involved. He simply hopes the man sees the post, realizes what he did was wrong, and prevents himself and others from doing something similar in the future.
He ended the video by asking other parents and caregivers what they would have done in the same situation.
The response has been absolutely massive across TikTok and other social platforms.
For the most part, many people agreed with Tyler, arguing that he was clearly trying to do what he thought was best for his daughters.
Comments included:
"The dad who took his daughters into the women's restroom but made sure there were no women inside before entering did exactly what he was supposed to do."
"If you can't respect a dad protecting his children, then something is really wrong with you."
Many others shared their own experiences taking children into opposite-gender bathrooms, arguing that this is a very common situation.
However, that was not the universal response.
Plenty of people argued that it was inappropriate for him to be in the women's restroom and that he should have simply brought his daughters into the men's room.
Others defended the man who called the police, saying he was trying to stand up for his sick mother-in-law.
One commenter wrote:
"He could have handled the situation better, but in fairness, he was trying to stand up for that old lady who didn't feel comfortable going into the bathroom with that man in there."
Another added:
"The poor old lady probably has continence issues and can't hold it very long, and it's reasonable for her to feel a little weird about being in there with this much younger man."
So as we watch this court of public opinion play out, I have to pass the question off to you:
What are your thoughts here?
If you were that dad, what would you do?
And if you were that guy in the gray shirt, what would you do?
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But then also, since we're already talking about child safety, we then also have to talk about this disturbing trend with kids and AI. A survey from George Mason University questioning over 550 teenagers, and 33% of them said that a sexualized AI image of them has been shared without their consent. That's on top of the fact that 55% of them admitted that they've used notification apps to create explicit deepfakes.
And if you're shocked by that — yeah, even the lead researcher on this was shocked. They just didn't expect these numbers. But in the end it also kind of made sense. They said to the New York Post: "This crop of kids are genuine AI natives. Since they got their first phones, there's been AI included. And this is the way they're operating across the board — whether it's doing their homework or playing games. Plus, you have everything from camera filters to try-it-on apps that make it normal to take a picture of themselves and have it be altered." They said those are things they grew up with and are native to, which greatly influenced the results.
We live in a time where anyone can be targeted by these kinds of deepfakes. They especially impact teenagers who are just at incredibly vulnerable stages. Some kids leave school after being targeted by their classmates with deepfakes. They deal with bullying. It can upend their lives.
And teens aren't just harassing their peers with this. The Wall Street Journal spoke to an eighth-grade teacher in Indianapolis who dealt with her students making deepfakes of her and then sending them around school and even to her own family. They even used those images to make an Instagram account impersonating her and pretending she was an adult film actress. She ended up having to switch districts, and she shared: "The middle schoolers I taught — the deepfake is them. I am the teacher who was a porn star. That's not the legacy I wanted."
It ends up being incredibly damaging for the people who go through this. Their images and their reputations are getting destroyed.
With this, you have people like one lawyer telling the Journal that the teens creating these things may not understand the damage they're doing to their own lives, saying: "If you think about the high school boy that does this — this is the boy who would have had a Sharpie and drawn boobs on his classmates' yearbook picture. And now he's got a bazooka. He can go to prison. He can be on a sex offender list for the rest of his life. This is devastating for boys who go that route."
I would say it sounds like those kids need help. I see where it's coming from, but it just sounds very defensive of the people that are ruining other people's lives.
But all of this is really just highlighting something that we've seen explode over the last few years. Think about it generally, but also if you've been watching the show — a few years ago these sorts of situations were kind of more niche. They were outliers. It was about a specific public figure here or there. It mainly impacted public figures. It was still incredibly wrong. It was disturbing, but it was more contained. But now, if there is a singular photo of you on the internet, you could be targeted. Though celebrities are still targeted at very high rates.
Even just earlier this year, there was that whole series of Grok making this wave of deepfakes. Newly minted trillionaire Elon Musk even used an AI video of Sydney Sweeney to promote something. We will say in that case, as weird as it was, that video wasn't explicit. But then, surprise surprise, there was this crazy trend of people sending images of very well-known women to Grok and asking the app to undress them, or if not undress them, put them in bikinis or this little outfit here or there. Right now, if you go to Twitter, this stuff is just not hard to find, even though there were supposedly crackdowns. And I will say some stars are definitely more focused on than others. A lot of focus, a lot of creepy focus, is on Billie Eilish — she's constantly being targeted. In the political space, AOC is definitely one of them.
So even though you see things like Grok telling NBC News in April that they "strictly prohibited users from generating non-consensual explicit deepfakes and from using our tools to undress real people," saying X/Twitter has extensive safeguards in place to prevent such misuse — it seems like people have found their own ways around it. Instead of asking for explicit undressing, they find other ways to alter bodies that are still clearly sexual and very non-consensual. Celebrities are having a hard time fighting against this. Imagine just random teenagers. Random people.
Actually, some stars have tried to get creative to fight against this. Not too long ago, Taylor Swift actually filed a series of trademark applications in a move that many believe was made to protect against AI deepfakes. Which definitely makes sense — she's famously been very victimized by AI before. In fact, so much so people forget this: Twitter had to temporarily ban her name from being searched because explicit deepfakes were so widespread. As far as two of her recent applications, it actually covers her voice — one of her saying "Hey, it's Taylor Swift" and another of her saying "Hey, it's me." Right after she did that, you had a lawyer writing a blog post noting that attempting to register a celebrity's spoken voice is a new use of trademark registration that has not been tested in court, but then adding:
"By registering specific phrases tied to her voice, Swift could potentially challenge not only identical reproductions, but also imitations that are confusingly similar — a key standard in trademark law."
And saying theoretically, if a lawsuit were to be filed over an AI using Swift's voice, she could claim that any use of her voice that sounds like the registered trademark violates her trademark. She's not actually alone on this front. Matthew McConaughey filed a trademark for his voice as well.
And then on the legislative front, there's been some action. Under the TAKE IT DOWN Act, which was actually passed earlier this year, in April an Ohio man became the first person to be convicted under it. And then actually in May, two men were again charged under it, specifically for making deepfakes of celebrities — who the DOJ declined to name.
But also because this is a relatively new issue that's growing by the second, you have some saying it's incredibly hard to combat. With all this, I'd love to know your thoughts, and then — has anyone you know, or have you yourself, been targeted by any sort of deepfake? Because I knew it was happening, but I did not realize it was this widespread. Then there's more that we get to dive into in just a minute.
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A secret society of some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful elites just got exposed. And yes, it is at least as weird as you are probably imagining. You've got sex advice, cult-building discussions, a whole lot of talk about the coming apocalypse. And there are famous actors, podcasters, politicians, billionaires — the folks who essentially kind of run the world and try to create narratives with very little democratic input from the rest of us.
It's called Dialog. It was co-founded in 2006 by the far-right tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel. And it's extremely secretive. Everything that is said and done there is strictly off the record. It's invite only. And they kept their members list hidden ever since its founding. Only on a couple of occasions has something leaked — like most recently, when Jeffrey Epstein's invitation to their 2014 retreat surfaced in the Epstein Files. He also wrote in a 2016 email to a Japanese venture capitalist: "Peter Thiel loved the secret society idea. He has done a lot of work on the concept."
Otherwise, for the last 20 years, Dialog has done a surprisingly good job at keeping things under wraps. Until now. Because a Swiss hacktivist — the same one who leaked the U.S. government's no-fly list a few years ago — says that she got tipped off to a vulnerability in Dialog's website. And when I say vulnerability, I mean any random person could just look at the site's HTML code and find a directory with a list of names. Which I have to imagine is just the most ridiculous, embarrassing screw-up for a super secret club created by Palantir tech bros who are supposed to be the best minds in data surveillance and security.
And then on top of that, another source gave Wired the list of people registered to attend this year's Dialog retreat, which is being held at a venue near Dublin, Ireland, and includes 222 names.
I will say it's unclear who's a full member and who's just a guest, but the variety of figures is astonishing. Let's go through some of them: Elon Musk, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, former Harvard president Larry Summers, New York Times commentator Ezra Klein. Also Democratic senator Cory Booker, Republican senator Ted Cruz, Democratic governor of Maryland Wes Moore, former Republican governor of Indiana Mitch Daniels. Fun. Let's keep going. The actor Josh Brolin, podcaster Sam Harris, Scooter Braun — you can think of him as a former talent manager or current boyfriend of Sydney Sweeney. You've also got the chief executives for The Atlantic, YouTube, and the Anti-Defamation League, the co-founder of Intuit, the global vice president for Google, and on and on and on with huge business executives. There are lawyers, economists, journalists, religious leaders — just about every kind of person that you can imagine that has some sort of power, some sort of influence.
One of the things that ties them together might be their answers to the question on the signup form, asking them to predict the future. Because Wired reported that again and again, respondents said that AI would reorder work, war, education and belief within a few years, reporting that several people foresee mass labor displacement and a swing back toward unions and government programs. Others predict an AI winter, domestic terrorism targeting data centers, criminal defendants using AI lawyers over public defenders, or a religious revival provoked by the disruption.
There was also another question asking them to list their talents. A few of them gave some pretty weird answers, writing stuff like funhouse construction, accent imitation, backcountry skiing, urban exploration, and meditative and psychedelic inquiry into the nature of reality. Just say you like doing LSD or mushrooms — like, why be hoity-toity about it? Also one person put compassion and existential dread, while another answered dinner parties, keeping secrets, remembering birthdays.
Also, if any attendants are looking for love, they can enter Dialog's matchmaking service — which apparently is a thing — which offers meaningful connections for exceptional people. But then also at the same time, these exceptional people — there's probably a guide for event moderators that coaches them to model brief introductions to avoid status signaling.
As for the events themselves, they're mostly discussions with titles like Money Does Buy Happiness, Bring Back Nuclear, Navigating World War Three: Battlefield Technology, How Is Your Sex Life?, How to Build a Party, and How to Build a Cult.
But also in addition to the fun stuff about either trying to build a party or reshape society, you have Wired pointing out that there are arguably some serious ethical lines being blurred here. Because not only does Dialog concentrate private and political power all in one place where nobody is allowed to talk about what is going on, it also puts business executives in the same room with the very people who are meant to regulate them.
So for example, you've got Alex Karp and Reid Hoffman — the major data broker who co-founded Dialog with Peter Thiel — listed alongside Trump's Treasury secretary Scott Bessent and senator Ted Cruz, who directly oversees data privacy rules. And then there's Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, whose company contracts with the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, and ICE, listed alongside the army secretary, the general who heads U.S. European Command, and Jim Himes, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee.
Reportedly, every single one of these people registered with personal or corporate email addresses instead of their government accounts, which means none of their involvement in Dialog is subject to public records laws.
And so yeah, another day goes by where I have to apologize to a friend of mine who I thought was just a conspiracy theorist for the past ten years. But hey, maybe it's all aboveboard and there's nothing nefarious going on, and everyone is making sure no ethical lines get crossed.
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Then also, speaking of private companies and government officials getting closer than they probably should be, we have to talk about how a private prison company that's been paid billions of dollars to lock up immigrants for the government asked ICE's rating agency — now run by its former employee — to make it easier for the company to mistreat detainees and make them work without pay. And ICE apparently said yes.
What you should know here is that the number of people held in what are described as detention centers has absolutely skyrocketed under Trump. Roughly 70,000 people are held in facilities all across the country on any given day. These facilities are also recording deaths in record numbers, which rights groups say is not only because of the higher number of detainees, but because some of them are being physically and psychologically abused, denied medical care, deprived of adequate food and water, and otherwise held in dire and inhumane conditions.
It's also not just ICE agents and other federal employees that are running these facilities. The Trump administration has relied heavily on private contractors, including GEO Group, which oversees more than a dozen ICE detention facilities nationwide. A company that has also just been sued by the state of New Jersey for refusing to allow state health inspectors full access to its Delaney Hall facility in Newark, where we've talked about detainees who have staged hunger strikes to protest being fed spoiled and rotten food and denied access to basic hygiene. That's on top of them facing lawsuits in several states over their so-called voluntary work programs, in which detainees help keep the company's facilities running for as little as a dollar a day — which the groups bringing these cases argue amounts to forced labor. And so they're seeking millions of dollars in unpaid wages from GEO Group and other ICE contractors.
But a huge reason that we're talking about this today is, according to new reporting from the Washington Post, GEO Group privately asked ICE for changes that could benefit its business and support its legal position in the lawsuits that it's facing. So for example, they asked ICE to remove text saying that contractors needed to follow state and local laws related to the treatment of detainees. They then also asked that the new standards specify that detainees are not employees of the facilities where they work. And both of those requests were granted in new standards released by ICE, with several references to contractors having to comply with state or local laws having been removed. There is also new language making it crystal clear that despite working, detainees are not considered employees and are therefore not entitled to wages or benefits under applicable wage laws or labor regulations.
And in fact, the new guidelines reportedly even prohibit contractors from paying detainees more than a dollar a day, even if they wanted to. That's huge because that is something that GEO Group could use in the cases it's facing, because the fact that it could have been paying detainees more all along — that's an argument that's been used against the company in court.
And then what makes all of this an even bigger deal is that one of the big takeaways is the extraordinarily close ties between GEO Group and some of the country's top-ranking immigration officials. Talking about people including Border Czar Tom Homan and acting ICE director David Ventura. Homan — ProPublica already found that a former associate of his already tried to cash in on the administration. Then there's also the fact that Homan himself allegedly accepted a $50,000 cash payment in a takeout bag from undercover FBI agents posing as would-be government contractors. Not to mention he reportedly played a key role in bringing on board Ventura.
And Ventura has even more history with GEO Group. He earned millions of dollars overseeing the company's detention business for years, and then he worked as a paid consultant for the firm until January of last year — with them then joining Trump's DHS as a senior adviser less than two weeks later. You had the Trump administration granting him a waiver from a federal ethics rule that generally bars government employees from working on contracts awarded to their former employers for one year. And then last month, he was elevated to ICE's acting director — which is why even before ICE lowered its standards to benefit his former employer, Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren was writing a letter to him last month demanding that he recuse himself from all matters that could directly or indirectly benefit GEO Group, saying:
"Americans should not have to wonder whether ICE enforcement priorities are being driven by the financial interests of politically connected detention contractors."
Now that said, you do have the administration acknowledging that it received input from federal contractors, even admitting that it aimed to, quote, reduce the burden on detention operators. And beyond that, it's not entirely unusual for federal agencies to ask for feedback from the industries they regulate. But besides the fact that the agency heads and the industry players are usually not the same people, there is also typically a public process that's open not only to businesses but also advocacy groups and anyone else that has an interest. With one expert explaining: "The reason we do public commenting is because there are various stakeholders. ICE contractors are probably not the best voice to represent the people who are being detained."
Now, with all this, you did have one public health researcher who studied deaths in ICE custody telling the Associated Press that the new standards include genuine improvements in the realm of suicide prevention standards and mental health care. But that is also kind of trying to find a silver lining, because overall he said that the agency is definitely heading toward weaker standards governing a growing share of the detained population.
And with that, you had a former DHS ombudsman who oversaw detention practices during the Biden administration saying: "One hundred percent it's going to result in deterioration of already problematic conditions," calling it consistent with their general practice, which is to eliminate accountability, and adding: "They are not concerned with people's basic rights or the safety of detainees."
One example there is that the new standards say that private contractors will be barred from refusing to admit any detainee that ICE sends — which reportedly has the potential to keep severely ill or disabled detainees from being quickly moved to hospitals or other facilities. But as far as why they may want it, it could also reduce the company's liability for any deaths that happen as a result.
Also, the new standards allow artificial intelligence to be used for what's described as non-critical communication or informal interactions with detainees. But then also, according to ICE, that might include giving or receiving information to or from detainees when they arrive at a detention facility and responding to their grievances. And so it might get used for critical communication, because one expert explained that detainees' concerns often include very urgent or even emergent information, such as when a patient has been denied life-saving care. That expert also noted that the rule leaves unclear whether assessments meant to flag medical and mental health conditions could be done with AI as well.
So yeah, ultimately, as much as we've already talked about how alarming the conditions are with these detention centers, that does not mean they cannot get worse. And unfortunately, it seems like that's where things are headed based on numerous relationships and some people wanting to make a little more money. And then actually, I've got even more for you in just a minute.
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Let's start with Vice President JD Vance going on The View, and it went kind of how you'd expect. Because while he was there — apparently to promote his new book — he also ended up facing a ton of questions about immigration, Epstein, racial tensions, and more. And for many, Vance is seen as being one of the last people they expected to sit down on The View, because in general they haven't had, let's call it, the best rapport with Trump. The Federal Communications Commission has even investigated the show for possibly violating equal time requirements.
And yeah, they had plenty of Republican voices at the table, but they're pretty left-leaning, with voices like Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar. And well, he did get a few questions about his book — which he said is actually way less political than we might think — but he ended up facing questions like: "What did Black people do to this administration that has allowed it to really stigmatize folks of color?" As well as: "You talk a lot about your Catholic faith, but the Catholic faith says we take in immigrants. How do you justify both?" And: "Why haven't we seen the release of over 2.5 million additional Epstein file documents?"
As far as his response, he said everybody is welcome in their political coalition. He justified his thinking around immigration by saying that his faith allows for borders and the right to protect them. Then as far as Epstein, he claimed that the administration isn't holding anything back as far as the files that they've been able to release, but they're working on it. And in several places you had a lot of groaning and pushback from people saying come on.
So then with that, a lot of the conversation turned into him defending Trump and the decisions that the administration has been making in its second term. There, he claimed that "one of the things I underappreciated about Donald Trump is that so many of the things that people said about him weren't actually true."
In general, I don't think it actually moved the needle for anybody. But at least for his fans, it probably served the purpose of an audience-of-one performance — a Republican defending the president against his perceived enemies, and maybe lining something up for 2028. Also, regarding Trump
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Yesterday's primaries proved that once again his endorsement is the gift that keeps on giving. Unless the Republican running against Trump's pick spends $100 million of his own money on his campaign. Because that is exactly what happened in my home state of Georgia, where billionaire businessman Rick Jackson won the Republican primary runoff for governor, taking out Trump's candidate Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones — making Jones only the second Trump-backed candidate to lose a Republican primary for governor this election cycle.
And that stands out for a number of reasons, because after Trump's loss in Georgia back in 2020, he really started leaning into denying the election results. And then on a similar note, you had State Representative Tim Fleming beating out staunch election deniers Vernon Jones and others in the primary vote for secretary of state. And while Fleming did say that he felt there were some irregularities in 2020, he also said during the race that he wasn't running on conspiracy theories — so take that as you will. Especially because it might have helped his case, because the hard election deniers were having a tough time with voters this cycle.
And then on the other side of all this, as far as Republicans go, you had Jackson being seen as kind of more of a political outsider. But also, it's politics — money gets your face, your name, whatever message — good and bad — out there. So he was able to get the win. "Tonight we did more than win a runoff. Tonight we proved the people of Georgia are in charge."
So Jackson is going to go on to face the Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms. As far as Trump, he tried to spin this as a win even though he endorsed the loser, posting on Truth Social: "Rick Jackson ran a great Trump campaign."
As far as other Trump campaigns, there were a few others that came out on top. Trump landed another win in Georgia with Representative Mike Collins, who is going to be facing off against Senator Jon Ossoff. I will say that could really backfire. Collins is seen as a hard MAGA candidate. That's also why he performed best with voters outside of Atlanta, while his opponent Derek Dooley got the best results from the suburban counties that have kind of helped keep Democrats in office here in Georgia.
And so there's almost like a reverse psychology play — knock off the real threat so that your core voters, and maybe a few independents and crossover Democrats, will be more likely to vote for you in November. Actually, as far as Ossoff, he's already called Collins a notorious bigot, antisemite, and extremist. And you have Collins saying that Ossoff is a far-left liberal who's weak on immigration and crime. But even he has admitted that this race is going to be a tough one.
But then also moving past Georgia — Trump got some people across the line in Alabama with Representative Barry Moore, and in Oklahoma with Representative Kevin Hern. But then also going back to Georgia
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We've got to talk about how Republicans in the state House just shut down their own party's efforts to gerrymander Republican seats ahead of the 2028 elections. Because just this morning, the state House convened for the first day of a special session that Governor Brian Kemp called for following the April Supreme Court ruling that effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act — a decision that famously opened the door for red states, mostly in the South, to redraw districts that could undermine minority voting power, mostly for Black voters, and give Republicans a major advantage.
While you had a lot of states scrambling to see if they could make those changes before the 2026 election, Kemp took a different approach — instead arguing that it was too late because Georgia's primaries had already started when the decision came down. And so he called a special session after the primaries for the legislature to redraw its congressional maps for 2028.
They seemed to really want to get it done before this year's elections, because Democrats could actually flip seats in the state legislature and even potentially the governorship. And again, just to be clear with my bias here — my wife is actually running for state House in Georgia. You can check it out at LindseyFor.com. She's trying to help flip Georgia's House blue. She just learned yesterday she's going to be going against an essentially rubber-stamp Trump incumbent. Given how bad the Republican electeds have been performing and what they've been focusing on, there is a chance to flip what should normally be a red seat.
But as far as the gerrymandering and the redistricting — you had some Republicans reportedly raising concerns ahead of the special session that a redistricting effort could backfire and just energize Democrats even more this November. And to that point, the plan had drawn a ton of opposition. Among other things, you had faith leaders and voting rights groups marching to the Georgia capitol this morning, while civil rights and labor groups held a news conference. You had Black political leaders painting this session as a blatant attempt to erase Black majority districts and roll back decades of progress.
But then today, House Speaker Jon Burns wrote a letter to Kemp informing him that the chamber will not be redrawing maps during the special session. In that letter, which was signed by members of the Georgia House Republican leadership team, Burns specifically argued that the lower chamber's sole focus would be on the policies that matter most to Georgians, writing:
"The House has always conducted redistricting with considerable time for public input, and with careful attention to constitutional requirements and the interest of every Georgian."
With them then going on to note that they still do not understand the scope of the Supreme Court's ruling, and that there are pending cases nationwide about the impact of that ruling — including some that involve Georgia's current and previous maps.
But then he also went on to say that Republican lawmakers are confident that Georgia will prevail in the pending appeals, and looked forward to receiving additional judicial opinions to assist in their future map-drawing efforts.
And so to that point, it is still very possible that Kemp could still call another special session, just later this year. Before they get totally destroyed in the midterms, they might be more willing to try and pass new maps before new electeds take their seats.
But today, this is absolutely huge news. But really in my opinion it shouldn't be seen as anything other than Republicans trying not to tick off people who want to vote them out even more. Because understand that the punch to the back of the head they want to give you as far as your voting rights — it's going to come. They're just trying to see if they can get away with it without getting punished first.
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But then for the last story today, I don't even know where to start. Because a couple just decided that they'll be keeping custody of their child who they had through IVF — which sounds normal enough, until you realize that the baby isn't actually biologically related to them at all.
Because last year, Stephen Mills and Tiffany Scorsone went to the Fertility Center of Orlando to start their IVF journey, and eventually they had their baby girl in December of 2025. But then when the couple realized she didn't look white, they ordered some genetic testing and realized that the baby is 100% South Asian. As it turns out, there was a mix-up. The couple was given the wrong embryo.
From there, they filed a lawsuit against the fertility center. And with that, they started looking for the couple whose embryo they were implanted with. By last April, they found the biological parents. And then with that, Scorsone and Mills' attorney said in court filings last week that they had come to a mutually devised custody agreement with the biological parents that gives Scorsone and Mills permanent custodial rights to the child. And you had the attorney representing the biological parents saying that they intend to remain a part of this child's life while recognizing the impossible situation that both families have been placed in through no fault of their own.
Then as far as what's going on with the fertility center — yes, they faced legal and financial issues from all of this, but then also from another case where you had a woman suing them for allowing her to be a surrogate for her cousin, with her claiming that she didn't fully understand what she was signing up for because she had a long history of severe mental illness. So probably not the most shocking news that they announced earlier this year that they would be closing down.
And that, my friend, is the end of your Wednesday dive into the news. But this also doesn't have to be where it ends. Because it's Wednesday, which means I also just dropped a brand new episode of my podcast, Crashing Out, with myself and Alex. And I'll be honest — if this is your first time watching, it might be a little more off the walls and spicy than usual. But great content. But no matter what you do — thank you for watching. I love your faces. And I'll see you right back here tomorrow.
"The president held a cage fight on the South Lawn of the White House. There was a 92-foot steel structure called the Claw. We live in a freaking circus, Phil. We're clowns. Boy, if you go there, you're co-signing. At least to some degree. We have a series of pyramid schemes stacked on top of each other. No, I won the ability to give away $1 million. We just lost the war. We just lost one. Historically, most people stopped caring about a new war 45 days in. Big Titty Mecca. Hitler is a real thing. It weirds me out that everyone forgot about it so quickly. Crashing Out."
