John Oliver Gets Paid Maternity Leave Trending

John Oliver thinks it’s ridiculous that the United States doesn’t guarantee paid maternity leave, and he’s using his platform to let the world know it. The award-winning satirical newscaster devoted a blistering segment on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight to exposing the hypocrisy of lawmakers who publicly celebrate their mothers on Mother’s Day but oppose paid leave policies. As he put it: “You can’t go on and on about how much you love mothers and then fail to support legislation that makes life easier for them.”

The clip was chock-full of information about maternity leave that might be unfamiliar to a mainstream audience. Oliver cited the fact that the U.S. is one of only two countries in the world that doesn’t provide paid time off for mothers, and explained that the current system forces many women to return to work much sooner than they’re ready for financial reasons. He also described the success of the paid leave law California implemented in 2002, calling it “like having hockey on in the background at a bar: it’s not hurting anyone, and a couple of people are actually really into it!”

After the show aired, there were over 1.8 million tweets about it—John Oliver isn’t one of TIME’s most influential people in the world for nothing. Here’s hoping the attention he brought to the issue made more people aware that these laws need to change, and fast.

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