A morning where Pride loses sponsors, YouTube pays Trump, and a mom strips to make a point

A rough Tuesday turns into a sharp tour through culture’s pressure points—money, speech, and protest—told through three stories that won’t sit quietly. We start with major Florida cities canceling Pride events after sponsor dollars dry up, then trace how DEI rollbacks and reduced grants ripple through organizers, budgets, and community life. From there, we examine YouTube’s $24.5M settlement following Trump’s 2021 account suspension, unpacking what platform enforcement, viewpoint claims, and legal risk mean for creators, campaigns, and the broader public square.

The final act moves into a California school board room, where a parent strips to a bikini to challenge locker room policies. It’s a moment that tests norms around free speech, decorum, and safety while raising hard questions about privacy, inclusion, and how institutions balance competing rights for students. We talk tactics—what makes a protest persuasive versus polarizing—and look for practical policy answers: clearer rules, better facilities, and transparent processes that reduce heat and build trust.

Threading these stories is a single theme: concentrated power shapes what we see, hear, and accept as normal. Corporate sponsorships recalibrate public celebrations. Platform policies filter political speech. Local boards define everyday experiences for kids. We keep it candid and grounded, and we end with a challenge: define your line. Would you protest? How far would you go, and what outcome are you aiming for? If this conversation hit a nerve, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review—it helps more curious people find us and keeps these debates honest.

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Liberty Line each week on Sunday, look for topics on my X file @americanistblog and submit your 1-3 audio opinions to anamericanistblog@gmail.com and you'll be featured on the podcast. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Rough Tuesday Start
• 0:52 Pride Events Lose Funding
• 4:11 Corporate Support Pullback
• 6:34 Trump’s YouTube Settlement
• 9:12 Money’s Destination Confusion
• 9:50 Bikini Protest at School Board
• 10:14 Broader Trend and Other Cities
• 10:18 Listener Question on Protest

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:15

Good morning. It's Tuesday. Hopefully, today will be better than it was yesterday. I tell you what, I got into work yesterday, and it was definitely a Monday. I had one issue after another. But and then I forgot to hit publish on my damn podcast, and I could have sworn I had done that. Alright, we need I've got three stories for you. We're gonna get right to it. I hope they're interesting for you. I don't know. Let's start with major Florida cities cancel LGBTQ Pride events due to loss of sponsor dollars. Hey, maybe some people and corporations are finally getting it. Alright, come on, open up. This is from the Life Site News site. And it's dated September 29th. I realize we are well past June. You know, June is normally their Pride month for the LGBTQ people. So Tampa and Fort Myers won't be holding their yearly LGBTQ Pride events this year due to lack of donor funding, reflecting a national trend of declining corporate support for the celebration of perversion. Again, this is from Life Sight News, so of course it's gonna it is perversion, though. All right. The board of Tampa Pride, the LGBTQ event in the largest city on Florida's west coast, announced in a letter to its president that it would take a year-long hiatus due to a funding shortfall and that it was unable to renew his contract. His contract? Okay. Um, let's see. I wish it would tell us which corporations or which donors are no longer giving money to this. The current political and economic climate, including challenges and corporate sponsorships, reductions in county, state, and federal grant funding, mm-hmm, and the dis discontinuation of DEI programs under Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has made it increasingly difficult for our organization to sustain ongoing operations in 2026. Good stated the board in the letter posted to Facebook. Good, good, good reduction in county, state, and federal grant funding. How about that? The pause in funding, the board said, is needed for the group to regroup, reassess our long-term strategy, uh oh, and identify additional avenues of funding to secure the future stability of Tampa Pride events. Y'all, this is not going away, so just be careful. They're just gonna go out in the hallway and do some push-ups and get stronger. Alright, so you can uh that's on the live site news if you'd like to go read more about that. Because it goes on to talk about New York. Uh, they lost a reported$750,000 in corporate sponsors. Austin Pride lost funding for its festival, and Oklahoma's Bartlett'sville Equality has been canceled entirely as a few examples. Hallelujah and praise the Lord, and I mean it. Oh, this is good news. This is good news. Alright, again, you can go finish reading that if you'd like over at the live site news. I know how many times did I say that? 5,000 times already. Okay, we let's move on to oh, this is good. I I didn't know Trump sued YouTube. Trump likes to sue people, does he not? Well, apparently he sued him and they have to pay him. Uh so start shining the dance floor. This starts off at the New York Post. YouTube to pay$24.5 million to settle Trump's lawsuit over 2021 account suspension. How about that? Good. These people are starting to have to fork out some money and re redo these people's accounts. Good. Good. Well, I mean, I can't even believe we went through that period of time. Joe Biden, what an asshole. Okay, YouTube on Monday agreed to pay. I already read that. Alright, sorry. Trump sued the alphabet-owned video sharing platform in July of 2021, alleging that YouTube unlawfully silenced conservatives' viewpoints after the company suspended his account in the wake of the January 6, 2021 riot in the US Capitol. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. The Trust for the National Mall, the nonprofit group, raising private donations to build the$200 million ballroom. Oh wait, did I skip something? So I guess this money is gone that he won that he won is going to go to the to to build the the ballroom at the White House. That's good. I'm just happy that he sued anyone. He I think he sued on behalf of us. Alright, so let's see. Next up, this next story is kind of amazing to me. I don't know. This is crazy. I don't know that I could do this. I am not this brave. Okay. Woman disrobes at a California school board meeting in protest of locker room policies. Good for this woman. Good. Now she didn't strip down naked. She had a bathing suit on underneath of her clothes. So I'll just state that right up front. It is so funny to watch this video too. Local California woman's rights activist Beth Bourne, I'm gonna have to go follow her, protested the policy allowing transgender students access to girls' locker rooms by stripping down to Bikini at a school board meeting. Bourne, who chairs the Moms for Liberty in YOLO County, took part in the Davis Joint Unified School Board meeting on September 18th, where she highlighted school policies on locker room access. So this shit is still happening. Of course it's California. Of course it's happening in California. She says, I'm a parent in the Davis Unified School District, and I'm here today to talk about the policies you have for the locker rooms in the junior high schools. So Emerson Holmes Harper Junior High, right now, we require our students to undress for PE class. So I'm just going to give you an idea what that looks like when I undress, Bourne said before taking off her clothes to reveal at bikini. She continued, so right now this school district is saying that, depending on a child's transgender identity, that they can pick which bathrooms they want. So we have right now at this school district, we have children self-identifying into different bathrooms just based off there and then it cuts off. Bourne was interrupted by members of the board who ordered her to stop. Huh. I wonder why. I've got to finish my comments. You are violating my First Amendment right, Bourne said. When she pushed back, school board vice president Hiram Jackson called for a recess. After about five minutes, the meeting resumed, and the board allowed Bourne to finish her comments. Bourne again began stripping down to a bikini. Good for her. The board ordered another recess and resumed more than 30 minutes later, moving to a new topic. Fox News Digital reached out to Bourne and said the day whatever. Bourne told CBS News on September 19th that she has attended the school board meetings every month. Good. Good for her. Every month for the past three years to address the let locker room issue and felt she needed to take drastic measures to make her point. Yes, you do. If the adults don't feel comfortable watching someone, and I'm a 50-year-old woman, how can they expect girls to feel comfortable doing that in the locker room? Born said. Yes, ma'am, you did. Good for you. Thank you for doing it for all of us. Trustee Cecilia Oh good I can't even pronounce his name. Cecilia Eskamilla Greenwald told local news publication, the Vanguard, that the police were called after the second recess and that the board is considering next steps. What are you gonna consider? Tell me. What are you gonna do? Press charges for her stripping down to a bikini? Well, if that's the case, then you need to take another look at your locker room policy. We are going to be meeting about this, about what to do in such situations. And we're going to, I know that our superintendent is going to be speaking with counsel to see what can be done because it's very inappropriate for anybody to be coming before the board and behaving in such a manner. Oh fuck off. It's very inappropriate. Well, change your policies and you won't have that. How about that? Okay, we need to move on to the question of the day. Okay, we'll stay on that topic. Have you ever done anything in protest? And if so, what was it? And would you, if not, would you consider now doing something in protest? And how far would you go to do that? What what uh what would be your line in the sand that said, no, I'm not gonna cross over that. I could not do what that lady did. There's no way I could do that. I'd be so scared to do that. I mean, I know she had a bathing suit on underneath, but good for her. I was so glad she did that, and I wish it would get more national attention. All right. All right, I gotta go. Thanks for listening. Bye.