This week Lauren Leggieri, Cori Cohn, and Jamie Reed have a lot to get through — and we mean a lot. So take a page from the old NPR Saturday playbook: make something, drive somewhere, tend your garden, and let this one unspool over a few days.

We brought three guests, and every one of them earned their seat at the table.

We open with the New York Times story about a man who identifies as transgender and abducted his child to Cuba — and what that story reveals about how sex, parental rights, and media framing collide in ways that should concern everyone who would simple like reading a news story to not need a decoder ring.

Then we get into the big one: the Southern Poverty Law Center. We’ve been watching the SPLC’s reach into the gender medicine debate for a while now, and this week we dig into just how deep that overlap goes — and what it means when a fundraising machine gets to decide who counts as a hate group.

Which brings us to our guests. Elspeth Cypher, Colin Wright, and Jaimee Michell have each been on the receiving end of an SPLC designation or smear — and each of them has a different story about what that costs. Their accounts together paint a picture that’s harder to dismiss than any single data point.

You can find Elspeth at the Women’s Liberation Front on X @ebclaw, at her Substack Before Justice Was Blind at substack.com/@ebclaw, and on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/elspeth-cypher-106623301.

Jaimee Michell is the Founder, President & CEO of Gays Against Groomers. Find her on X @thegaywhostrayd and the organization at gaysagainstgroomers.com.

Colin Wright is an evolutionary biologist and Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Find him on X @SwipeWright and at his Substack Reality’s Last Stand at substack.com/@colinwright.

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