• Silvio Pfeufer uses Saltz to save time on food procurement at his Michelin-starred restaurant, Matthias.
• Saltz uses agentic AI to modernize a typically complicated process between food buyers and sellers.
• For independent eateries, the streamlined process can reduce costs and increase access to high-quality ingredients.

When Silvio Pfeufer first got into cheffing, he was surprised by the amount of administrative work involved.

“It’s not only the evening, sending nice plates to guests. There’s a lot of stuff to do to make that happen,” Pfeufer told Business Insider. He took long phone calls from food suppliers and producers that kept him away from the kitchen.

Sourcing and buying food is a process riddled with disorganization, since farmers, wholesalers, logistics providers, and restaurants communicate in different ways — by phone, email, text message, and PDF blast — starting as early as 4 a.m. The cost and availability of products are constantly in flux, so sellers issue frequent updates: The price of wild-caught fish could change three times a day, for example.

When Pfeufer opened his own restaurant in 2024, he wanted to streamline his food procurement process. At Matthias, which pays homage to his late grandfather, Pfeufer uses an AI-assisted platform for food business owners called Saltz to speed up food procurement and reduce phone calls.

The time savings are critical, said Pfeufer, a co-owner and head chef at the Berlin-based eatery. Using AI agents, Saltz connects restaurants directly to suppliers via a marketplace that brings together disparate catalogs, transactions, and logistics so restaurants can compare and buy fresh, high-quality, and specialty products more quickly than with traditional food procurement processes.

The platform’s standardized, real-time food data can be a game-changer for independently owned and operated restaurants like Pfeufer’s, given their limited purchasing power. Saltz said that thousands of buyers and hundreds of suppliers use its technology, though it didn’t share exact numbers. It said around 80% to 90% of its buyers are independent restaurants.

Connecting with high-quality and specialty suppliers

Pfeufer said he chose Saltz because he liked how the platform modernized old processes. In the two years he’s used it, it’s allowed him to discover new suppliers, order outside business hours, and gain better oversight on pricing, he said.

Founded in 2022, the startup uses AI agents to ingest PDFs, emails, and text messages that food sellers send to Saltz, standardize and enrich all the data, and consolidate it into a single platform. Its AI agents automatically update each seller’s listings on the platform, eliminating the need for manual updates.

Buyers, meanwhile, see once-disparate product options, information, and up-to-date prices in one place. They can also order food at a time that’s convenient for them and track their deliveries. “On a Sunday, at night, or in the morning, I can do it by myself, and don’t have to have all these calls,” Pfeufer said.

At Matthias, which was awarded its first Michelin star in 2025 after 10 months of service, meals must meet a high standard every day, and products have to be of the freshest quality. Pfeufer orders vegetables, milk, and other items from Saltz every week, plus fresh fish twice a week. Before using Saltz, the quality of his products wasn’t necessarily worse, he said, but access to new or specialist suppliers was more limited and supply chains were longer.

“The fish is now often sourced directly from the trader or farmer, without the need for intermediate storage. This allows us to avoid additional storage times that could negatively affect freshness,” Pfeufer said, adding that more oversight into the supply chain — and it being shorter — means his food is more consistently high quality.

“We’ve definitely been able to connect with better suppliers,” he told Business Insider. The chef added that he still works directly with certain local farmers, as he is often on the hunt for rare items that aren’t on the platform.

For Pfeufer, using Saltz also allows him to see more costs upfront, so he can better plan how much to charge for new dishes. “It makes all the calculations much easier, which is very important for us,” he said.

Agentic AI acts as a foundational tool

Saltz was founded by brothers Andrius and Thomas Šlimas, who previously built the Shopify-acquired dropshipping platform Oberlo. After spending four years inside Shopify’s supply chain machine, the brothers teamed up with industry veteran Reinis Štrodahs. Their goal: modernize the $9.8 trillion food procurement industry.

“It’s impossible to make sense or structure that chaos of information which lives in different places and has no common structure,” Andrius said.

The Šlimas brothers said that previous unsuccessful attempts to modernize food procurement took two approaches: either trying to force suppliers and buyers onto a single platform, which required them to change how they work, or taking on the time-consuming task of manually inputting every PDF, email, and text message.

With Saltz, AI agents upload and update product listings for sellers, so individual stakeholder workflows don’t have to change. Making agentic AI foundational to the process, Tomas said, gives their platform an edge.

“That gives us a speed advantage, and in this market, speed compounds into market share.”

• Two internet relics are rising from the dead this week: Friendster and Vine.
• DiVine, backed by Jack Dorsey, launched a decentralized version of the short-form video app, Vine.
• Friendster, an early social network, is back with a new founder and a different experience.

It’s time to welcome back two social networks we once loved: Friendster and Vine.

After shutting down in the 2010s, the two social media platforms are rising from the dead this week.

Both of the apps, however, are Frankenstein versions of their predecessors. Neither is being resurrected by its original founders, and the app design and experiences differ from the original platforms.

Nostalgia for a simpler internet, especially for those who remember the early days with rose-colored glasses, is partially fueling this resurgence.

Evan Henshaw-Plath — who goes by Rabble — is the early Twitter employee behind the Vine reboot, DiVine.

He said that “people look back” at the era of social media before everything got so darn big. People not only miss the features and feel of these old apps, but also that time period.

“It’s very telling that in the beginning of the year, people were looking back to 2016,” he said, referring to a social media trend of people romanticizing that year.

Vine officially shut down in 2017 after being acquired by Twitter in 2012, paving the way for the rise of TikTok and other short-form feeds.

Its remake, DiVine, revived hundreds of thousands of old Vine videos from digital archives. Users can post new Vine-style six-second videos. The content must be filmed directly within the app, and DiVine has a firm anti-AI-slop stance. The project is also decentralized and built on Nostr, an open-source protocol not owned by a single company.

DiVine is funded by And Other Stuff, a nonprofit that received a $10 million grant from Jack Dorsey.

Meanwhile, Friendster, a social network that predated Myspace and Facebook, was rebuilt by startup founder Mike Carson as a no-frills mobile social app for your real-life friends. For example, users can only add new friends by tapping their iPhones in person. (So far, I have a grand total of one friend: Business Insider’s Katie Notopoulos, who told me she was an OG Friendster fan.)

Carson told Business Insider that he paid about $30,000 for the Friendster domain and trademark.

After being overtaken by the rise of Myspace and then later Facebook, Friendster rebranded as a gaming company in 2011. By 2015, it shut down its website.

The new app — which doesn’t resemble the former version much other than its shared name — quickly jumped to No. 12 in Apple’s App Store social networking category on Thursday.

Unlike DiVine, the new Friendster doesn’t have access to any of the prior version’s data or content.

What’s old is new again on the internet

I’m not old enough to be on the original Friendster, but I remember the Vine days well. I’m also not alone in feeling nostalgic for the earlier days of the internet (or particularly, the 2010s).

Carson wrote in a Medium post this week that while today’s social networks “foster a lot of negativity,” he remembers the original days of Friendster as “a positive and enjoyable experience.”

DiVine and Friendster aren’t the only internet relics that have been resurrected recently.

Last year, Digg, once a rival to Reddit, was revived by its original cofounder, Kevin Rose, and Alexis Ohanian (a cofounder of Reddit). In March, however, the company said it was downsizing its team and rethinking its strategy.

Building any new social platform is an uphill battle, even if you have a recognizable name from a previous era.

People are loyal to the platforms they’ve already dug their heels into, and getting them to migrate can be challenging, Digg’s CEO Justin Mezzell wrote in a letter shared to the platform’s website.

Friendster and DiVine could face similar challenges.

What’s abundantly clear is that there’s an appetite among founders to build alternative social platforms — especially those that strike a nostalgic chord. Newer startups, like Perfectly Imperfect or Cosmos, are leveraging nostalgia to build platforms that feel reminiscent of Tumblr.

The big question: Can they actually build a community?

Tech founders can build new spaces, or reimagine old ones, but getting users to stay, return, and create a culture is what gives an app life (or breathes life back into one).

“It is not the software, it is not the founder, it is not the team,” Henshaw-Plath said. “It is the community of users that makes these things work.”

• Senators advanced a bill that would give prosecutors more time to bring pandemic fraud cases.
• They cited Business Insider’s reporting on potential misuse of Shuttered Venue Operators Grant funds.
• The Small Business Administration says 69% of the $14.6 billion SVOG program may have been misspent.

Lawmakers just came closer to giving US prosecutors more time to pursue billions of dollars in suspected pandemic-aid fraud tied to restaurants and live entertainment — and cited Business Insider’s investigation into how those funds were used by celebrities.

Senators passed a long-delayed bill on Wednesday night that would extend the statute of limitations for fraud tied to two relief programs: the $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund and the $14.6 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant.

The bill would put the programs on the same legal footing as bigger, better-known pandemic aid packages that lost as much as $200 billion to fraud, like the Paycheck Protection Program. If it becomes law, prosecutors will have 10 years to bring charges of defrauding the programs, instead of the usual five.

Earlier this week, the Government Accountability Office reported that as much as $10 billion from SVOG funds may have been improperly paid out, which is more than 200 times larger than a fraud estimate the Small Business Administration published three years ago.

Business Insider previously reported that hundreds of millions of dollars were paid out to successful artists like Lil Wayne, Post Malone, metal legends Alice in Chains, and DJs including Steve Aoki and Marshmello. They used the money on private jets, luxury clothes, and payments to themselves, according to the investigation.

Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican who has been the bill’s main advocate, invoked that reporting in remarks on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

“For fraudsters, time flies when you’re having fun,” she said. “Look no further than rapper Chris Brown, who exploited the SVOG program to pay for his lavish $80,000 birthday party and paid himself $5 million in the process.”

Lawyers and representatives for Brown didn’t respond to requests for comment. Previously, in response to Business Insider’s late 2024 investigation, an attorney for the accounting and wealth management firm that helped Brown’s company get a federal grant, NKSFB, called Business Insider’s questions “uninformed” and didn’t answer them.

COVID fraud cases get more time

The bill passed with an amendment that would require enforcement to be “carried out in a nonpartisan manner,” said Sen. Ed Markey, the top Democrat on the small-business committee that Ernst chairs.

The SBA has said that 70% of the restaurant support funds paid out by the RRF program were proper, but that it’s “unknown” whether the remaining $8.7 billion was legally paid to eligible recipients. The agency’s inspector general previously said more than $6 billion was paid out without doing enough to verify that recipients qualified for the money.

The agency has previously defended cutting checks under the shuttered venues program to “loan-out companies” used by big-name artists to ink performance deals.

Recipients included Broadway shows, arts companies, and cultural institutions that asked Congress for help paying bills they’d run up during the year-plus when public gatherings were limited because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The law also allowed payments to lesser-known groups, like talent agents.

There was no requirement that recipients be on the brink of bankruptcy. One Texas concert promoter received a $10 million grant in July 2021. About four months later, he bought a home for $2.1 million in cash.

The law creating SVOG allowed grant recipients to use the money for a broad range of purposes, including expenses deemed “ordinary and necessary” as well as compensation to the owners of for-profit businesses that received the money.

The new estimate of $10 billion in payment errors amounts to about two-thirds of the program’s entire budget. SBA officials said that $4.5 billion of that was overpayments to businesses that “did not align with the established statutory guidelines” for payment. They also found errors with the monitoring of recipients’ spending.

In 2023, the Biden administration said that one-third of 1% of the entertainment grants were “likely fraudulent.” Government watchdogs say only some “improper payments” amount to fraud, so the new number isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison with the 2023 figure.

More than 2,000 people have been sentenced for defrauding pandemic aid programs. The SBA inspector general has said many more cases are pending.

• King Charles III has met 10 US presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower to Donald Trump.
• Richard Nixon tried to set Charles up with his daughter Tricia, and he grew close to Nancy Reagan.
• On Monday, Charles visited Donald Trump during the first British state visit to the US since 2007.

For decades, royal family members and US presidential families have visited each other’s residences, hosted state dinners in each other’s honor, and corresponded during times of celebration and mourning, a testament to the “special relationship” between the two countries.

Queen Elizabeth II met 12 US presidents during her lifetime. Her son and successor, King Charles III, has met 10.

Photos show how Charles’ relationships with US presidents have developed and changed through the years.

Charles was 10 when he met President Dwight Eisenhower at Balmoral Castle in Scotland during a laid-back visit in 1959.

The New York Times described the visit as informal, with the Queen driving Eisenhower around the estate and treating him to a picnic lunch on the shores of a lake.

He greeted President Richard Nixon at Buckingham Palace in 1969 during the president’s first foreign trip in office.

Nixon met with Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, Charles, and Anne, who hosted a luncheon at the palace in his honor.

The following year, Charles visited the Nixons at the White House.

Nixon gave Charles and Anne a tour of the balcony of the South Portico.

Charles later revealed that Nixon tried to set him up with his daughter, Tricia.

Charles and Tricia Nixon toured the Washington Monument and attended a baseball game together.

“That was quite amusing, I must say,” Charles told CNN in 2021 of Nixon’s matchmaking efforts.

He met President Jimmy Carter at the 1977 G7 Summit.

The third G7 Summit was attended by the leaders of Canada, France, Italy, West Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US.

President Ronald Reagan called Charles “a most likable person” after meeting with him at the White House in 1981.

Reagan wrote in his diary that White House ushers committed the faux pas of serving the prince tea from a tea bag rather than loose-leaf tea, according to The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute.

“It finally dawned on me that he was just holding the cup and then finally put it down on a table. I didn’t know what to do,” Reagan wrote.

Charles welcomed the Reagans to the UK during an official visit in 1982.

The Reagans became the first US presidential couple to stay at Windsor Castle, according to the National Archives, and they attended a black-tie dinner at the castle as well.

The Reagans returned the favor in 1985 by hosting then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana at a White House state dinner.

Diana famously danced with John Travolta during the event.

Charles later wrote in a letter to Nancy Reagan: “Diana still hasn’t got over dancing with John Travolta, Neil Diamond and Clint Eastwood in one evening, not to mention the President of the United States as well!”

Charles became particularly close with Nancy Reagan, and they kept in touch through letters until her death in 2016.

In one letter to the first lady, Charles opened up about his doomed marriage to Diana.

“One day I will tell you the whole story,” he wrote in a letter dated June 21, 1992, People magazine reported. “It is a kind of Greek tragedy and would certainly make a very good play!”

Charles attended Ronald Reagan’s funeral in Washington, DC, in 2004.

Charles was accompanied by former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and then-Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Charles first met George H.W. Bush while he was serving as Reagan’s vice president.

Charles and Diana dined with then-Vice President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush at the British Ambassador’s Residence in 1985.

They reunited in 1989 during Bush’s own presidency.

Charles joined the Bushes for dinner at Camp David.

Charles and Bush continued to see each other at official events even after Bush was no longer president.

In 2002, both Bush and Charles attended a rededication ceremony for the American Air Museum of Great Britain in Cambridgeshire.

Charles attended George H.W. Bush’s funeral in 2018 on Queen Elizabeth’s behalf.

Charles, who was greeted by then-Vice President Mike Pence at the National Cathedral, was seated next to former British Prime Minister John Major during the service.

President Bill Clinton and Charles were both in attendance at Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral after his assassination in 1995.

Charles and Clinton were seated in the front row alongside leaders from France, Germany, Egypt, and the Netherlands.

While serving as first lady, Hillary Clinton represented the US at Diana’s funeral in 1997.

Bill Clinton did not attend the service since it was not an official state funeral, CNN reported.

Charles also worked with Hillary Clinton in her role as secretary of state.

In 2009, Hillary Clinton attended a meeting with world leaders hosted by Charles at St James’s Palace to address environmental issues and the global climate crisis before the G20 summit.

President George W. Bush attended banquets with Charles during his state visit to the UK in 2003.

The Bushes’ visit marked the first time a US president was hosted by the royal family since the Reagans’ trip in 1982.

They attended a state dinner at Buckingham Palace and hosted a banquet in return at Winfield House, the American ambassador’s residence, to thank the royal family for their hospitality.

Two years later, the Bushes hosted Charles and Camilla for a state dinner at the White House.

The state dinner menu included buffalo tenderloin, a salad with Vermont camembert cheese and spiced walnuts, and petit fours cake for dessert, according to the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.

In his remarks, Charles said that returning to the White House brought back “many fond and happy memories” of his first visit with Anne in 1970, “when the media were busy trying to marry me off to Tricia Nixon.”

Charles first met President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama at a 2009 reception for G20 leaders at Buckingham Palace.

The G20 leaders discussed responses to the global financial and economic crisis.

Charles met with Obama at the White House in May 2011 ahead of the president’s state visit to the UK.

During the US visit, which occurred shortly after Prince William and Kate Middleton’s royal wedding, Obama congratulated Charles and joked that he wouldn’t have been able to handle the pressure of such a large ceremony since his 1992 wedding to Michelle Obama had just 300 guests.

Charles spent more time with the Obamas during their UK state visit a few weeks later.

Charles and the Obamas met at Winfield House and attended a state dinner at Buckingham Palace in May 2011.

At a commemorative D-Day ceremony in 2014, Obama appeared to salute Charles in his military uniform, eliciting a chuckle from the then-Prince of Wales.

The ceremony marked the 70th anniversary of D-Day.

During another White House visit in 2015, Obama was overheard telling Charles that Americans like the royal family “much better than their own politicians.”

“I don’t believe that,” Charles was heard replying in footage captured by CBS News in the Oval Office.

Charles encountered President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump at social events in New York City long before they entered politics.

Charles was photographed chatting with the Trumps in 2005 at a reception hosted by the Museum of Modern Art.

As president, Trump met with Charles at Clarence House during a state visit to the UK in June 2019.

In a June 2019 meeting at Clarence House during a state visit, the two leaders discussed the climate crisis.

Trump told ITV that his meeting with Charles was scheduled to last 15 minutes, but went on for an hour and a half.

Charles “did most of the talking,” though Trump did say that he told the then-Prince of Wales that the US “has among the cleanest climates there are.”

“He is really into climate change, and I think that’s great. I totally listened to him,” Trump told ITV.

Trump continued: “What he really wants, and what he really feels warmly about, is the future. He wants to make sure future generations have climate that is good climate, as opposed to a disaster. And I agree.”

In her memoir, “I’ll Take Your Questions Now,” former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham wrote that, after the meeting, Trump had rolled his eyes and complained that their “terrible” conversation consisted of “nothing but climate change.”

A Clarence House spokesperson told CNN that Trump and Charles had developed a “good working relationship” following another meeting in December 2019.

The Trumps stopped by Clarence House for another short visit while in the UK for a NATO summit.

President Joe Biden got to know Charles while serving as Obama’s vice president.

Biden joined Charles and Camilla in the Oval Office during their 2015 visit to the US.

After Queen Elizabeth’s death in 2022, Biden assured the new king that his late mother would “be with him every step of the way.”

The Bidens paid their respects by visiting the Queen’s coffin at Westminster Hall, signing the official condolence book at Lancaster House, and attending her state funeral.

“Our hearts go out to the royal family — King Charles and all the family,” Biden told reporters. “It’s a loss that leaves a giant hole. And sometimes you think you’ll never overcome it. But as I’ve told the king, she’s going to be with him every step of the way — every minute, every moment. And that’s a reassuring notion.”

In May 2023, Jill Biden attended Charles’ coronation without her husband — no US president has ever attended one.

Trump blasted Biden as “very disrespectful” for skipping Charles’ coronation, but US presidents have historically sent delegations and never attended the event themselves.

During a state visit to the UK in July 2023, Biden met with Charles at Windsor Castle to discuss the climate crisis.

Biden and Charles met privately before holding a larger gathering with investors and philanthropists to discuss renewable energy and deforestation, among other issues, the White House said in a statement.

Biden appeared to break royal etiquette rules by touching the king’s arm and putting his hand on his back during a ceremonial welcome at Windsor Castle, but Charles didn’t appear to mind and returned the gesture.

Upon returning to the White House for a second term, Trump spent time with Charles during a rare second state visit to the UK in September 2025.

US presidents serving a second term aren’t usually invited for a second state visit to the UK, but Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivered a surprise invitation to Trump while visiting the White House in February 2025.

The royal family pulled out all of the stops for Trump’s visit. Trump rode with Charles in the royal family’s gilded Irish State Coach, where he and Melania Trump were welcomed with a Guard of Honor. The two leaders also sat next to each other at the state dinner held at St. George’s Hall.

In April 2026, the Trumps returned the favor by hosting Charles and Camilla at the White House ahead of America’s 250th anniversary.

Charles and Camilla’s trip marked the first British state visit to the US since 2007, and Charles’ first as monarch.

The president and first lady hosted Charles and Camilla at the White House for afternoon tea, a ceremonial military review, and a state dinner. Charles also met with Trump in the Oval Office and addressed a joint session of Congress.

• Briell Decker grew up in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
• When she was 18, she married the FLDS leader Warren Jeffs. She was his 65th wife.
• Decker escaped after multiple attempts in 2012. She now helps other survivors rebuild their lives.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Briell Decker, 40, a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and the 65th wife of its former leader, Warren Jeffs. She married Jeffs in 2004 at 18 in an arranged marriage. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was born and raised in the FLDS faith. From the time I was a child, my days were structured around religious instruction.

I spent at least four hours a day in sermons — in the morning with my family, at school, after lunch, and again before bed.

I believed everything I was told by my parents and Warren Jeffs, who became the prophet for the FLDS in 2002 and was presented as the closest person to God on Earth.

Growing up, no one asked me what I wanted to be, it was expected that I would become “a mother in Zion.” The Yearning for Zion Ranch was the main FLDS compound in Texas.

At 18, my father wrote a letter and recommended me for marriage to Warren Jeffs. I said yes, even though I was afraid and did not love him.

Women could technically refuse marriage, but the consequences could be severe. Losing your family, your community, and your place in the church was always a possibility.

Looking back at that moment when I agreed to marry Jeffs, it felt like standing on the edge of a cliff without a way to turn around.

Jeffs had a way of making everything he did seem right, even when it was wrong. He used The Book of Mormon to justify his actions. That’s what makes me believe the FLDS was a cult. (Multiple organizations, documentaries, and other former FLDS members have also described the FLDS as a cult.)

Once, I was brought into one of Jeffs’ group sessions (aka orgies). He was bringing underage brides into the room with adult wives, and it was a very bad situation. I did not want to be part of it, and afterward, I asked for more time to adjust so I wouldn’t have to go back. I never had to.

I was married to Jeffs for two years before he went to prison, and I remained in the FLDS as part of his group for many years until I escaped in 2012. I never consummated the marriage.

Control shaped everything — where I lived, what I ate, and how I thought

Jeffs controlled nearly every part of my life and the lives of everyone in the church.

For example, he had the titles of everyone’s houses in a legal trust and used that to control housing. He decided where people lived, and could move families at any time.

The women in his family, including me, weren’t allowed to leave our homes freely. We couldn’t go outside. Food, which Jeffs selected for us, was brought to the house. And in some places, there were cameras and caretakers watching us. There was really no exit route.

Over time, restrictions tightened, especially in the mid-2000s when Jeffs was under police investigation. We got rid of televisions and internet access. I think that was to help hide the truth from the people.

I tried to escape again and again, but each attempt made it harder

I tried to escape about 10 times before I succeeded. The more I tried, the tighter the control around me became.

In one early attempt, I made contact with the police and thought I might be able to leave for good. But they told me they wanted to place me in a shelter that was near the FLDS compound, and that didn’t feel safe to me.

It was my first time trying to explain what was happening, and I didn’t know how to communicate why being that close to the compound still felt dangerous. I ended up going back to my family in the FLDS in Short Creek, an area along the Arizona-Utah border, because I couldn’t see how the police’s plan was going to work.

After that, I started trying to plan more quietly. I would look through phone books or try to figure out where I could go, but I was often seen before I could get far. People were expected to report anything suspicious, so it didn’t take much for someone to notice.

At one point, after I tried to leave, the room I was in was physically altered. They put screws into the window so it wouldn’t open fully, and they turned the doorknob around so I couldn’t unlock it from the inside.

Even calling for help was risky. In some areas, calling 911 could connect you to people affiliated with the FLDS, so it didn’t feel like a safe option. There wasn’t a clear path to outside support, and I didn’t have access to information that could help me navigate it.

The day I escaped

On May 23, 2012, I escaped.

That morning, I tried to leave and was caught on the main roads and brought back. Later that day, I was in a room and I noticed that one of the screws on the window was loose.

I found some scissors and worked at it until it came completely loose. Eventually, the screw broke.

Someone in the house noticed and tried to stop me, but I kept going. I climbed out the window and ran.

This time, I avoided the main roads. I went through back paths and a creek until I reached a house of former FLDS members who had turned against the church.

By the end of the day, they had driven me out of town to safety.

Leaving was only the beginning

After I left the FLDS, I stayed in shelters and worked to rebuild basic parts of my life. I changed my name and my Social Security number. I opened my first bank account. I eventually got married again — this time by choice — and began building a life that was mine.

I saw the ocean for the first time on my honeymoon in Santa Monica, something I never thought I would experience. Later, I saw the Statue of Liberty, which felt especially meaningful because it represents freedom, and I was finally free.

I eventually learned that I had rights to Jeffs’ 45-room property in Short Creek. I applied for ownership in February 2016 and was awarded the house later that year.

I started giving free tours in it to raise awareness and connect with people who might help turn it into something bigger. Through those connections, I partnered with a nonprofit called the Dream Center, which agreed to take over operations and turn the property into a recovery center.

Today, it serves as a place where people — especially those from the FLDS and other polygamous groups — can find housing, support, and resources as they rebuild their lives.

Warren Jeffs was sentenced in 2011 to life in prison plus 20 years for sexually assaulting two underage girls, unrelated to Briell Decker. His defense — led by several attorneys — argued that his religious freedom had been violated.

• The second round of Trump administration attacks on Disney, ABC, and Jimmy Kimmel has played out differently than the one we saw last fall.
• This time, Kimmel has stayed on the air. And Disney says it doesn’t think Trump’s FCC will take away its broadcast licenses.
• But Trump’s threats will still weigh on new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro, which is the point.

The federal government says it’s going to review ABC’s broadcast licenses — a move that came a day after Donald and Melania Trump both called on ABC to punish Jimmy Kimmel.

What does that mean for Kimmel and everything else that airs on ABC?

For now, nothing. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.

Unlike last fall, when Donald Trump and his administration also went after Kimmel, his show remains on the air. (Kimmel responded directly to the Trumps during his Monday night show, but didn’t reference the license review during his Tuesday night monologue.) Everything else on ABC remains unchanged.

And if you zoom out, there are decent odds that things stay that way. Media and legal observers think Disney, which owns ABC, has a strong legal case against Trump’s Federal Communications Commission, which is telling Disney it needs to renew its licenses for the eight broadcast stations it owns now, instead of waiting until 2028 when they’re officially due for review. It would be difficult, they say, for the FCC to permanently revoke those licenses in a way that would withstand court challenges.

And Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed head of the FCC, knows all of that. But he also knows that using his power to drag Disney and ABC into a regulatory and legal fight is the whole point. The end result doesn’t matter as much as the signal it sends.

As Tom Wheeler, who held Carr’s job during the Obama administration, told the Guardian, that signal is pretty clear: “There’s a message to every licensee of the FCC that says, ‘I can do this to you too.'”

It’s a message that Carr has been broadcasting for some time, with his repeated assertions that broadcast licenses aren’t a right and can be revoked. Ditto his existing investigations into Disney and Comcast, which are, in theory, about their previous embrace of DEI policies.

Yes, there’s a theoretical chance that Carr’s orders and investigations will eventually lead Disney or Comcast to lose broadcast licenses. That would be bad for both, though not catastrophic, because owning broadcast stations isn’t core to either company’s business. (Contrary to what Donald Trump often suggests, big media companies don’t own a single overriding license that lets them distribute programming — it’s individual broadcast stations that have licenses. Some of those stations are owned by big broadcasters like ABC, but the majority are owned by outside companies.)

But that still means Disney will have to spend time and money pushing back against the federal government.

The bigger problem for Disney, or any other media company in the Trump administration’s sights, is that losing a license is just one bad outcome the administration could engineer. For instance, the FCC could try to pressure other broadcast station owners not to carry Disney’s programming, which is effectively what Carr was pushing last fall, when he applauded Sinclair and Nexstar, two very big station groups, for their decision to temporarily drop Kimmel.

And the administration can also weigh in, or threaten to, when it comes to other things media companies want to do. It blessed Larry and David Ellison’s purchase of Paramount, for instance, only after the Ellisons had agreed to steps like appointing an ombudsman with conservative credentials to monitor complaints about CBS News.

Which is why any real changes the investigation spurs may never result in some kind of documented, formal change about the way Disney or ABC does business. You may simply have to wonder why ABC canceled a particular show or promoted another one. Is that something they would have done if Donald Trump weren’t in office?

We’re two days into this one, and so far, there’s no sign that new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro has made any moves to appease Trump and Carr. Kimmel is still on the air, and Disney has put out a statement saying it deserves to keep its licenses and assumes it will. (I’ve asked Carr and Disney if they have anything else to add.)

The problem is we don’t really know what the real effect this pressure has — just that it’s something D’Amaro and his employees have to think about, at the very least. And that’s something that should worry anyone who cares about the government’s influence on what we watch.