For five seasons, UNINTERRUPTED The Shop has united some of the most influential voices in the world from the sports, music, film, television and business industries to bring us unforgettable, timely conversations that shake up the culture for the better.
But make no mistake, they’re just getting started.
Continuing to push the envelope through a unique lens of unfiltered perspectives and honest dialogue, the Emmy Award-winning series is returning with a new episode that will see 2020 WNBA MVP and 3x All-Star A’ja Wilson join executive producers LeBron James, Maverick Carter and co-creator Paul Rivera, along with fellow special guests: recording artist, author & entrepreneur Rick Ross, Grammy-nominated rapper Gunna, and CEO of UnitedMasters Steve Stoute.
Photo by Akilah Townsend/UNINTERRUPTED
During the layered conversation, A’Ja spoke candidly about the doors she hopes to open for future WNBA hopefuls.
“Going into the league as a rookie, I wanted to be different. I wanted to change it,” she said. “I want to break that glass ceiling. I want the younger generation to know like, “Hey, you don’t have to go overseas to play.”
Responding to a question from Maverick, she also shared what she believes is the biggest hurdle facing WNBA players as the conversation around the problematic pay and opportunity gap between the WNBA and NBA continues.
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“On the men’s side, you make X amount, you score this amount of points, you’re gonna get that next check. But for us [women], even if you do that, you have to be marketable, you have to sound a certain way, you have to look a certain way on social,” she continued. “And it just seems like we can never just break that barrier in itself. It’s like, if I’m not marketable, I can’t make any money. I could be the best player in the league ever, scoring 40-10-5, easy. But, if I can’t go to a Nike or a Pepsi or Mountain Dew and be like, “Hey! Sign me,” it’s nothing. Because that’s where the majority of my money is going to come from, because our league is still building that. That’s the hardest thing; that’s the biggest barrier.”
The group also touched on several other topics, including A’Ja Wilson sharing how believes she can help create change and impact progress within the WNBA, LeBron James revealing what past and present players he’d love to share the court with, Steve Stoute emphasizing the importance of ownership and independence in the music industry, Rick Ross weighing in on why it’s critical for seasoned public figures to share the knowledge they’ve learned with younger generations, Gunna sharing his definition of Pushin P, and much more. Check out the trailer in the video clip above.
The new episode of ‘The Shop’ premieres Friday, April 8 at 9 a.m. PT / 12 p.m. ET exclusively on UNINTERRUPTED’s YouTube channel.
Since taking office about three weeks ago, Donald Trump has issued a blizzard of 200+ executive orders. Among them are two key anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) directives that threaten to roll back decades of progress in expanding opportunities for people of color, women and other historically marginalized groups.
The first executive order eliminates DEI enacted under President Biden, who required all federal agencies to create plans to “address unequal barriers to opportunity” and ensure workplace equity. Trump’s order terminates all DEI, DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility), and environmental justice jobs as well as any programs, grants, or contracts related to its implementation, calling them “forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs.”
The second executive order eliminates all DEI orders from previous administrations, including one by President Lyndon Johnson from 1965, which required federal contractors to provide equal opportunity measures. In rolling back the policies, Trump called DEI “immoral” and “illegal” and painted it as a “corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system” that robbed “hardworking Americans”—implicitly white men—“of opportunities because of their race or sex.”
President Trump also warned of “adverse consequences” for those federal workers who fail to report colleagues who refuse to dismantle DEI policies.
While the order is limited to the federal government, it directs federal agencies to find ways, including potential litigation, to pressure the private sector also to abandon its DEI policies. This threatens to accelerate a corporate anti-DEI trend that has already been in the works. Walmart, which back in 2020 announced a $100 million investment in a center for racial equity, announced several days after Trump’s election that it was dropping the center and would no longer use the terms DEI and Latinx in official communications. McDonald’s, Meta and Target have also dropped their DEI initiatives as reported by Axios.
After the 2023 Supreme Court ruling, which deemed affirmative action in university admissions unconstitutional, attacks on DEI proliferated, and the term became a right-wing bogeyman blamed for almost anything that goes wrong in any workplace. For example, just one day after the tragic plane and helicopter collision over the Potomac River which claimed 67 lives, Trump baselessly blamed DEI policies for the crash—while the investigation into the crash’s cause had barely begun. Language in President Trump’s executive order also portrays DEI policies as inherently dangerous declaring they “threaten the safety of American men, women and children across the Nation by diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work and determination when selecting people for jobs and services in key sectors of American society.”
These statements seem to suggest that DEI exists in opposition to excellence and hard work—and that providing opportunities to non-white people automatically lowers standards.This is false. DEI requires the same standards for everyone and only hires those who fulfill the requirements of a given job, a point echoed by Everett Kelly, National President of the 800,000-member American Federation of Government Employees “The federal government already hires and promotes exclusively on the basis of merit. The results are clear: a diverse federal workforce that looks like the nation it serves, with the lowest gender and racial pay gaps in the country. We should all be proud of that.”
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Black people make up a larger share of the federal workforce (18.6%) than they do of the civilian workforce (12.8%),according to Pew Research. It’s unclear how many people will be affected by the order. Still, the federal government is the biggest employer in the US and Black people, who have the highest unemployment rates, risk greater job loss as a result.
The vagueness of President Trump’s orders have also left agencies struggling to comply and erasing Black history in the process. For example, the Air Force recently removed the Tuskegee Airmen from their training videos, and it was only reinstated after public outcry.
The anti-DEI trend is part of a larger attack on anti-discrimination efforts, sparked by the push for racial progress after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Now that DEI is under fire, the question is—how do we keep these policies alive?
Despite mounting political pressure, companies like Apple, Costco and JPMorgan Chase remain steadfast in their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, refusing to bow to conservative attacks. Additionally, most Fortune 500 companies have not abandoned their DEI policies.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a non-partisan group that fights “government abuse” primarily through lawsuits, counters President Trump’s claim that DEI or DEIA is illegal, saying, “The executive orders attempt to conflate these lawful efforts with discrimination, weaponizing enforcement to bully institutions into abandoning critical programs.” “However, no court has declared DEIA efforts inherently illegal, and President Trump cannot override decades of legal precedent.” The ACLU supported and launched numerous lawsuits against the rollback of DEI during Trump’s first term and have vowed to do so again.
In the meantime, the Civil Rights Act is still the law of the land, and it remains illegal to discriminate against anyone based on race, gender, and other protected characteristics.