Euphoria’s OnlyFans Scandal Exposes a Bigger Problem
PDS Published 05/28/2026
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We need to talk about why the Sydney Sweeney OnlyFans scandal has gotten bigger and the James Talarico-Stephen Miller controversy just exposed a lot, including a bunch of snowflake hypocrites.
Why you now have Texas school police pepper-spraying, tackling, and tasering students left and right. We’re talking about all of that and even more on today’s brand new Philip DeFranco Show.
Your daily dive into the news.
So buckle up, hit that like button, and let’s just jump into it, starting with the school cops in Texas are on some wild behavior.
I mean, so many of the stories you’re about to hear, they’re—
Let’s start with the one you just saw.
And then we’re going to break down why critics say that Texas schools have become prisons and students are treated like inmates.
So meet Annabelle Jaramillo. She was a 17-year-old honor student at Texas City High School when this happened a couple of years ago. The thing that set everything off in motion was pretty simple.
She rang a cheap plastic doorbell outside of a classroom.
It broke off and according to police, she walked away with it. Within the next day, the school suspended her for three days, accusing her of theft.
But then Annabelle, she was like, “What are you talking about? It was an accident. I was afraid of getting in trouble, so I put the doorbell in a nearby trash can.”
So she goes to the assistant principal’s office, right, to Miss Davis, to explain what happened.
But then, when Miss Davis called in the sheriff’s deputies to teach her a lesson about theft, Annabelle texted her mom, prompting Miss Davis to slap on two more days to that suspension for using a cell phone.
With Miss Davis then telling her to leave, Annabelle wouldn’t.
And so the cops were like, “All right, are you going to leave? You have two seconds or I’m gonna make you do it.”
“You’re arresting me?”
Reportedly, one cop grabs her right arm, another grabs her left. Annabelle tries to pull away, and they wrestle this four-foot-eleven girl to the floor, gripping her neck, pushing her face into the carpet, and handcuffing her.
And Annabelle is apparently prone to panic attacks, so that appears to be what happened here, right? You saw her hyperventilating.
But as the cops sternly commanded her to breathe, which is so helpful, Miss Davis reportedly just kind of pointed a fan at her, went back to her desk, and I’m not kidding, just starts eating potato chips.
And so after three minutes of that, Annabelle went still, later saying she passed out there, getting sent to the ER.
And even after all that, she still went to the county jail for theft, where she says she had a second panic attack.
While the charge was ultimately dropped if she took an online course about stealing, her mugshot was still posted online for everyone to see.
And so she ends up finishing her classes from home.
She skips her graduation, saying she’s just traumatized about the whole thing.
And this—and again, remember all of that—it was over a doorbell.
And if after hearing all that and seeing all that, you think that’s ridiculous, you are not alone.
But for many, the reason that these school cops became a whole big thing is kind of understandable. It goes back to the deadliest school shooting in the state’s history, the one at Robb Elementary in Uvalde four years ago, when a gunman murdered 19 kids and two teachers.
And of course, you had families, schools, and state officials wanting to prevent anything like that from ever happening again.
So the following year, lawmakers required each public school to have at least one licensed police officer on campus, actually one of the most ambitious programs of its kind in the country, costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
And while ordinarily their work is pretty mundane, right? The cops guard the building, operate metal detectors, keep hallways free of fights, as you’d expect from any police department.
Sometimes they use force, and sometimes that force is extreme.
And actually, I should get specific when I say “sometimes.” I mean you have The New York Times and San Antonio Express-News finding over 2,600 use-of-force incidents from 2022 to the start of this year.
And that was actually just with them looking at a fifth of the state’s schools, so who really knows what the full number is.
But you had cops grabbing or tackling students hundreds of times, pepper-spraying them dozens more, and tasing them.
At least nine students were even held at gunpoint in four reported incidents.
Yes, I will say, in some of those cases, the kids were being violent.
But in many others, the situations escalated from the smallest things.
Like one time, you had a 15-year-old allegedly swearing in a hallway, and within no time he was getting dragged into a room by a cop.
Then somewhere else, you had another 15-year-old allegedly throwing a cheese stick at another student, so the cop slammed him onto a table after he tried to walk away.
Then another one, you had a 14-year-old allegedly caught with a vape.
And so then the cop restrained him and smashed him into a wall, shouting “Who else?” at the onlookers.
In fact, cops reportedly used physical takedown tactics in about 60 situations where students ignored their commands, talked back, or pulled away.
And it’s not actually just high schoolers. Reporters found about two dozen cases involving elementary school kids, including a six-year-old who was handcuffed.
In one district, a cop actually hogtied a 10-year-old boy with a behavioral disorder three separate times.
Now, in 450 cases reviewed by the reporters, nearly a quarter left students with bruises, scrapes, or other injuries.
And two teens had concussions.
Now in their defense, you have supporters of school cops saying, you know, they’ve broken up fights, confiscated weapons, and even prevented violent plots.
So one of the arguments you see is that even if things sometimes escalate too far, they also serve a genuinely useful role, especially in schools where staff and teachers just can’t handle violent incidents on their own.
But then you also have critics countering that schools are now basically akin to correctional institutions, and discipline has become draconian.
Arguing now, if you violate the dress code, you don’t go to the principal’s office. You go face-first into the floor.
And many argue that it’s easy to see why.
Because most Texas school cops come from regular police agencies, and their use-of-force policies are often copy-pasted straight from those agencies.
And so they receive very little training in dealing with children.
And we’ve seen in many cases that their conduct is less than professional.
They’ve yelled obscenities, insults, and threats at students.
One cop telling a seventh-grade boy to stop crying “like a little bitch.”
Another cop told a student who talked back to him, “Boy, I will hurt you.”
Perhaps one of the most insane incidents: a 17-year-old ran off campus with a vape pen.
A cop then cornered him, pointed her gun at him, and shouted, “Get your fucking hands up before I shoot!”
Meanwhile, the state actually has no oversight authority.
The cops’ supervisors almost always back them up, and when they are held accountable, it’s usually just a verbal warning or extra training.
So whether you support cops in schools or not, it appears that the current system just isn’t working.
Whether it needs to be shut down, tweaked, fixed, or kept the same, that’s obviously up for debate.
And while we’re going to continue to see that play out usually kind of incident by incident, right now I’ll pass the question off to you.
What are your thoughts?
Let me know in those comments down below.
But then that is by no means the only story about outrage and backlash, though this next one is very different because it’s about the HBO show…
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Euphoria and Sydney Sweeney.
In this third and probably final season of the show that’s about to end this weekend, Sydney Sweeney—well, she’s let the world know she has good genes.
She has not often been in jeans this season.
And that’s because while Alexa Demie’s Maddy manages sex workers, Hunter Schafer’s Jules is a sugar baby, and Zendaya’s Rue works as a stripper, Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie is on OnlyFans.
And that plotline’s kind of gotten the most attention this season.
Right? Her character is filmed making content where she’s a dog getting choked on its leash.
She’s posing provocatively while dressed as a baby.
She’s done various other things kind of clearly meant for shock value.
And I don’t just mean sex scenes.
Like there’s this whole thing where she’s a giant woman and her bare breasts break through a roof. It’s a whole thing.
If you don’t watch the show and you have someone describe it to you, they sound crazy.
You know, with all this blowing up, you then also had real-world OnlyFans creators like Sydney Leathers telling Variety, “So much that they have her doing is not even allowed on OnlyFans, and that alone is infuriating.”
The age-play stuff where she’s dressed as a baby and in a diaper, for example.
“Credit card processors have very strict rules that you have to abide by, and the rules are getting stricter all the time.”
With that pointing to a rule in the OnlyFans terms of service that forbids real or role-played activity depicting the exploitation or abuse of minors.
So then also with this, you had another creator, Maitland Ward, telling Variety, “This serves to perpetuate stereotypes that sex workers have no moral compass and that they will do anything for their fans.”
Then also telling TMZ, “They’re saying like, ‘Oh, look at how weird and creepy they are. Look, you can just go on and do whatever you want and you’ll just make money right away,’ which is not the case.”
“It basically says that they’re sort of inviting pedophiles, right? People who would be into that.”
“The reason you wouldn’t be allowed to do that is because you don’t want pedophilia anywhere near pornography.”
“And I think a lot of times OnlyFans creators and porn creators are thought of the same way as, ‘Oh, they’re into all the disgusting taboo stuff like that.’ And we’re not. We want to be as far away from that as possible.”
You’ve also had others taking issue with how lucrative the show makes sex work out to be.
Which isn’t to say that being an OnlyFans model cannot be incredibly lucrative. It definitely can.
But you have some saying that it kind of makes it look immediate and guaranteed.
Right? There are scenes where Sydney Sweeney’s character gains hundreds of thousands of followers and subscribers overnight.
And kind of from the moment that she joins the platform, she just starts making tons of money.
So touching on that, you had OnlyFans creator Gracie Cannon telling Page Six that she thinks there is a danger in romanticizing this job as overnight success.
You had creator Alex Links telling Variety, “It’s portrayed that if you just dress up and do crazy shit, you’ll instantly make money, or you just have to be hot and have big boobs and you’ll instantly cash out, and it doesn’t work like that.”
So you’re seeing an increasing number of people saying that the show just plays into stereotypes, that this is an absurd, ridiculous, and gross career.
Even USA Today putting out an op-ed saying, “Patriarchal, sex-negative society looks down upon women who engage with online sex work and leaves many of them victims of exploitation, abuse, and social isolation. Shows like Euphoria certainly don’t help.”
Saying the show’s creator, Sam Levinson, clearly views OnlyFans as a passive get-rich-quick scheme and belittles anyone who dares engage with it.
And that’s as you’ve seen other articles this season saying that this season of TV is “a celebration of female degradation.”
Some arguing that it comes at the expense of actual sex workers.
That’s because while on Euphoria, Sydney Sweeney is doing all this off-the-wall stuff, in real life they’re constantly being punished for the smallest things.
For example, influencer and OnlyFans star Kayla Jade calling out Euphoria and saying, “We’ve come so far, but yet we still can’t advertise without worrying about our accounts being deleted, like losing a whole income stream overnight.”
Even though you’ve consistently followed the guidelines.
“I’ve lost count of how many accounts I’ve lost and had to restart over.”
Meanwhile, these big production companies can profit off the most toxic, exploitative version of it with none of the risks that real-life sex workers have to deal with.
“It just sucks that that show is kind of obsessed with sex workers, but only in a way that dehumanizes them.”
And the timing of all this, you know, it does stand out, right?
Sex workers right now are dealing with serious censorship.
There is also currently a massive anti-porn movement that’s happening in the country, whether it be generally or actually state-by-state legislation.
Also saying, you know, not everyone thinks that Euphoria is handling it poorly.
Chloe Cherry, for example, who previously worked in adult film and now stars in the show, recently told Interview Magazine, “When I’m watching it, I don’t feel like I see it as glamorized.”
“I don’t want anybody to watch and think, ‘Oh wow, I want to go become a stripper.’ I want people to be like, ‘Oh, strippers are humans too.’”
“That’s what I want people to see.”
“In my opinion, I think Sam is using these young women as a vessel to show how society currently sees young women.”
“I don’t believe that he’s trying to say it’s these young women’s fault that all the world wants from them is for them to just be hot and sexy.”
“I think Sam’s trying to say, ‘Look where we have gotten to in society.’”
Right?
Arguing that the show is not just blatantly sexualizing women or treating them badly for the sake of it, but that this is actually meant to point to issues within our own culture.
But with all that said, as this continues to be fought in the court of public opinion, I then have to pass the question off to you.
Where do you stand on it?
And I especially would love to know your thoughts if you’ve been watching this.
And then we have more we need to dive into in just a minute.
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This James Talarico-Ken Paxton situation is crazy stupid.
It’s part of the reason I hate politics.
But of course we need to talk about it because you may not fuck with politics, but politics will fuck with you.
So in Texas, there’s a big Senate race.
You have Talarico securing the Democratic Party nomination back in March.
And then Paxton, the Trump-backed candidate, clinched the Republican nomination in a runoff this week.
And already they’ve turned their sights on each other. They’ve come out swinging.
Though Paxton and his supporters, they’re seemingly grasping at straws.
Throwing out things like the false claim that Talarico is vegan, trying to insult him and argue that he’s not man enough to represent Texas.
Whereas Talarico, he’s honing in on the various criminal and corruption allegations that have dogged Paxton for years now.
For example, with Paxton in his victory speech slamming what he claimed were Talarico’s extreme positions on gender, immigration, religion, and other issues.
He also seemed to be kind of peer-reviewing various mocking nicknames.
“Some people know him as Tofu Talarico. Some people call him Sixth-Gender Jimmy. I’ve even heard some people call him James Tofu-rito.”
“And others refer to him simply as Low-T Talarico.”
Actually, with that last one, there was an attack ad that launched the next day that was labeled “Talarico: Too Low-T for Texas.”
And you’ve kind of seen a lot of the right-wing voices kind of going all in on this meat-masculinity angle.
“The reason why Democrats are failing is because they’ve given up on masculinity. They’ve given up on testosterone.”
“They’ve given up entirely for effeminate, estrogenic, catty, and totally embarrassing candidates like Beto and Beta here.”
“And most importantly, the American people know what leadership looks like.”
“It looks like President Trump winning 119 out of 119, a 100% endorsement record.”
“Donald Trump is winning across the board.”
“This is not leadership. This baby-lotion-soft child—he does, he looks prepubescent. He looks like such a beta male.”
“He was Beta O’Rourke’s big brother in the after-school program.”
“They nominated someone more effeminate than Beto, and I can’t wait for this race to get underway.”
“Did you know that he looks prepubescent?”
“These are the notes you took?”
“Did you know that he looks like the guy that leaves an apple on the teacher’s desk? That’s this guy.”
“Now, the major factor in this race, Greg, is whether a freak goes vegan.”
What with all this, I think the Democrats just need to continue being on the attack with Paxton, right? Not play defense because that kind of just puts you on your back foot.
And we are going to talk about all the easy things they can talk about with Paxton.
But I did also want to take a moment to talk about things like where the vegan claim comes from.
You did have Talarico claiming during the 2022 Texas House reelection bid that he was running a non-meat campaign because it was existential that we try to reduce our meat consumption.
Apparently that was just for a period of time.
Also, one of the other main attack angles is focused on Talarico’s past comments advocating for transgender rights, including when he said that God is nonbinary during a debate over legislation requiring students to play on K-12 sports teams matching their biological sex.
Then where people were saying that he said there were six biological sexes.
You had Talarico referring to people with chromosomal variations during a committee debate over a similar bill.
So then also a big thing that popped up is that seemingly combining all these attacks together, you had Trump adviser Stephen Miller writing on Twitter, “Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender Senate candidate.”
Which then got a response from the official Democrats account that said, “Shut up, you ugly fuck.”
And actually with this, I do need to go on like a mini bubble rant.
Okay, so I understand this part is a little bit of op-ed.
Following that tweet, you had kind of all the worst right-wingers that you’ve ever seen, right, who have said the craziest shit for years, who have endorsed and supported a president who has said the craziest and most threatening shit for years, all of a sudden clutching their pearls and going, “Oh my God, how horrible, how uncivil, how actually violent this message is.”
You had Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, going onto Fox News to cry about it, while then also at the same time trying to shame a woman who she said was responsible for the post.
With just a chunk of the internet responding that she actually looks like an attractive, fun, smart person.
It turns out she’s actually getting married, so also people started congratulating her for a number of reasons.
You also had Katie Miller saying that liberal women, you know, they have high rates of mental illness. They’re just so sad.
Which—you are probably not the best messenger for this, Katie.
You literally fucked Stephen Miller on purpose.
Like you didn’t lose a bet or anything.
That is the craziest shit I’ve ever heard of.
Talking about mental illness, you got me wanting to stop making this show right now and start marching in the street for healthcare for all so you can get the mental help you seem to need.
But back to the news.
As far as Talarico, he for one firmly rejected the claim that he’s vegan.
“I’m not a vegan. I’m an eighth-generation Texan. I haven’t eaten barbecue since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment, and this campaign basically runs on Texas barbecue.”
“If all they have is lying about me being a vegan, I feel pretty good about our chances this November.”
He then also responded to Paxton’s “Talari-freako” label.
“I think if Ken Paxton is worried about freaks, he should stop giving Epstein-style sweetheart deals to pedophiles.”
And there, that’s actually a very big one.
He is referring to the fact that Paxton’s office offered a plea deal to a man charged with repeatedly sexually abusing a young boy that would have let him serve just one day in jail and avoid registering as a sex offender.
And actually with that, you had Talarico really wanting to keep things in perspective when it comes to the seriousness of the criticism that either candidate is facing.
“There are statements that I’ve made where I’ve missed the mark. I’ll be the first to admit that. But Ken Paxton is intentionally clipping my cringier comments to distract from his career of corruption.”
Actually with that, yeah, we should talk about Paxton’s career.
Because while there is no objective measure to definitively label Paxton the most corrupt politician in America, Talarico’s claims don’t come out of nowhere.
For example, going back to 2015, the same year that Paxton was sworn in as attorney general, Paxton was indicted on charges including securities fraud.
And according to the indictment, the actual crime took place back in 2011 when he was a state representative.
Allegedly, Paxton pushed his friends and colleagues to invest in a tech startup while posing as an investor himself when he was actually being paid by the company.
But his trial was then repeatedly delayed, with prosecutors claiming most holdups were caused by Paxton.
And so he spent nearly a decade serving as the state’s top law enforcement official despite facing those criminal charges.
And even while federal authorities opened another investigation into several other potential corruption crimes committed while in office.
Then famously, in 2023, state representatives, including several Republicans, voted to impeach him on 20 charges.
Charges that included misapplication of public resources, bribery, obstruction of justice, false statements in official records, conspiracy and attempted conspiracy, dereliction of duty, unfitness for office, and abuse of public trust.
Many of those charges stemmed from his relationship with a real estate investor and wealthy donor whom Paxton allegedly helped and protected.
Also, his other charges centered on his retaliation against whistleblowers who reported his conduct.
But then the Republican-dominated Senate acquitted Paxton.
And less than a year later, three weeks away from a trial that could have handed him a life sentence, he ended up striking a deal to have the charges from 2015 dropped.
Actually all he had to do in exchange was complete 100 hours of community service, take a 15-hour course on legal ethics, and pay roughly $300,000 in restitution.
And for Paxton, $300,000 ain’t much.
Because despite living for more than 20 years on the relatively modest salary of a public official, he’s gone from being a middle-class lawyer to a multimillionaire.
That’s thanks to investments, including into a local company that secured a lucrative state contract the year after he first entered office.
An investment, by the way, he reportedly failed to disclose.
But in any case, you know, Paxton has maintained his innocence, calling the deal the conclusion of a decade-long political prosecution.
His attorney emphasizing that the agreement hadn’t been a plea bargain and didn’t represent an admission of wrongdoing.
Also in the final weeks of Biden’s term, the DOJ ended its own corruption investigation, deciding against bringing charges.
With many seeing that as them just knowing that Trump was coming in and was probably going to kill it.
And so now for more than a year, especially with Trump back in office, he’s been a man kind of unencumbered by the threat of consequences for his actions.
And that’s even though the scandals haven’t fully gone away.
There are things like he’s reportedly claimed that three houses are his primary residence, committing what the Trump administration has repeatedly claimed is a serious crime, but only when it accuses its enemies of doing it.
Just last year, right, his wife of 38 years accused him of adultery and filed for divorce on what she said were biblical grounds.
And so while this is still Texas, and I would personally say that Paxton is still the favorite in my eyes because there’s a lot of runway from now until November, whatever the truth of all the many allegations Paxton has faced, even in a post-Trump America, you have many saying that he has a lot of baggage to try to get into the Senate with.
And it’s one of the reasons why you’re seeing Democrats kind of optimistic about this race, especially as the cash has been pouring in.
Where just to give you an idea, Talarico’s campaign reportedly raised more than $3 million in the first 24 hours after Paxton came out as the Republican opponent.
That is the most money the campaign’s raised in a single day.
Which is really saying something because they raised $2.5 million earlier this year shortly after CBS decided not to air that interview with Talarico that he did with Stephen Colbert.
And overall now, they’ve raised $27 million in the first quarter of the year, which is one of the highest totals by a Senate candidate ever.
Whereas Paxton’s campaign and its committees took in $2.2 million over the same period.
And so with all that, you had one GOP consultant telling NBC News that groups supporting Paxton are likely going to have to quadruple their original spending for the race to defend their majority in the Senate.
You have some worried that they’re possibly going to drain resources from other key battlegrounds.
But of course, there’s a long road to November. It’s too early for anyone really to get confident.
We’re going to be here to see what happens.
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Then also, while we’re talking about Republicans, we should talk about Republicans in North Carolina who just proposed a constitutional amendment that would effectively legalize murder to stop abortions.
No, I’m not actually even exaggerating for a punchy intro or clickbait.
This is one of the most extreme bills that we’ve seen in this post-Roe world.
So the proposal in question here was sponsored by two Republican members in the North Carolina State House.
You got Representatives Keith Kidwell and Ben Moss.
And specifically, this legislation would establish that, quote, “a distinct and separate human life begins when the egg and sperm combine during fertilization.”
And as a result, quote, “that human life is recognized by the state as an individual person entitled to the protection of the laws of this state.”
So not only would the measure ban all abortion from the moment of conception, it would also make it so that anyone who tries to get or facilitate an abortion would get charged with attempted murder, and those who succeeded would get charged with first-degree murder.
But then also, the text of this proposed law explicitly states “any person has the right to defend his or her own life or the life of another person, even by the use of deadly force, if necessary, from willful destruction by another.”
Or in other words, it would authorize the use of deadly force to prevent an abortion from happening.
And so unsurprisingly, when this was unveiled, it got a ton of traction and a lot of backlash online, with many arguing that in addition to just being outright fucking insane, it doesn’t even make logical sense.
Or you had some people posting that if someone used deadly force against a pregnant woman getting an abortion and kills her, the fetus would also die.
Regardless of how you might feel about abortion, experts widely agree that a fetus can’t live outside of its mom until 23 to 24 weeks of gestation.
But then that’s also not the only hole in the legislation.
As one person on Twitter wrote, “Oh, so a rapist can impregnate a woman against her will and then legally kill her if she tries to get an abortion?”
Saying Republicans hate women.
And then beyond that, you also had a lot of people arguing that because the language in this bill is so vague, it could jeopardize in vitro fertilization, emergency contraception like Plan B, and even birth control methods like IUDs.
With one journalist claiming on Twitter, “It’s basically a get-out-of-jail-free card for men who want to murder their partners. All they have to do is prove the woman intended to use birth control or have an abortion.”
In fact, the proposal got so much backlash that one of the sponsors, State Representative Ben Moss, actually ended up pulling his support.
Saying in a statement that he was removing his name as a sponsor “after further discussion and feedback from constituents and members of the legislature.”
And while he went on to say that he is still anti-abortion, he believes that “legislation must be written with absolute clarity.”
And “the purpose behind this legislation was to affirm the value and dignity of human life, not to suggest that women should face capital punishment or to create uncertainty surrounding difficult medical situations.”
But adding, “Unfortunately, portions of the bill’s current language have led to significant misunderstandings that distract from the core pro-life message.”
And there you had plenty of people pushing back, saying it’s pretty hard to see how anyone can misunderstand or misinterpret the bill.
Like, we all read what it said.
But regardless, the bill only has one sponsor left, and even before that it was seen kind of essentially as dead on arrival.
For one thing, it’s a proposed constitutional amendment, meaning that it would have to get three-fifths support in the legislature to even make it onto the ballot.
Then the voters, they’d still have to approve it even after that.
But also, you know, you have experts arguing that even if this bill never really had a chance, we should all still take these outlandish pieces of legislation very seriously.
As Jessica Valenti, the author of the Abortion, Every Day newsletter on Substack, put it, “Whether or not a bill has a chance of passing right now is beside the point.”
“In fact, one of our weaknesses as a movement is that we’re stuck on reacting to current threats rather than looking decades ahead.”
“That’s certainly what the anti-abortion movement is doing. They’re laying the groundwork now for laws that they want to pass in 10 or 20 years.”
And adding, “With bills like this, Republicans are giving us a roadmap. Why in the world would we ignore it?”
They’re also going on to argue that this kind of legislation also poses a cultural threat, noting that death threats against clinics and providers doubled in the last year.
And this bill sends the message that violence against providers isn’t just fine, but brave.
You have others noting that with Kidwell, this is following a pattern.
In his first term, for example, he proposed a 13-week abortion ban.
And then took it to the next level in his second term, floating a measure that would ban abortion when a heartbeat was first detected.
And then last year, he introduced a measure that would have classified abortion as a Class B1 felony, the same level as rape and kidnapping.
And this latest bill, of course, went even further.
So the fact that you have elected officials not only talking about this but building legislation around it, it’s something you have to pay attention to.
Especially because, of course, remember not too long ago the idea of overturning Roe v. Wade seemed impossible to so many.
But slowly, through years and years of steady work, packing the courts, taking the long-term approach, conservatives made it happen.
If you think that they’ve switched up the game plan, my only question is: how big was the thing that dropped on your head?
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And then from that, I’ve got more news that you need to know about today.
But first, I’m going to try to convince you to go outside, touch grass, and hang out with me for a little bit.
We just finished a sold-out show here in New York City.
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Phil, it was great.
You had a chant going. It got weird. It got fun. It got crazy.
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Get your tickets now or check the link in both of our bios.
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Get your tickets because even though those 12 dates are actually a few months away, our Seattle show—and I think also maybe Portland—is on low tickets.
But it’s a blast.
You’ll be around other beautiful bastards and you stop doomscrolling for a few hours.
But like I said, there’s still more news you need to know about today because the Trump administration is now actively drawing up plans to cut…
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International flights at major airports in sanctuary cities.
All of this is in retaliation against immigration protests like those we talked about in New Jersey earlier this week.
This with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin saying those international flights shouldn’t be going to cities where, quote, “local radical-left Democrats aren’t allowing us to do our job and enforce federal law.”
Mullin floated this idea back on Fox News last month, explaining:
“Some of these cities have international airports. If they’re sanctuary cities, should they really be processing customs into their airports?”
“We’re asking them to partner with us at the airport, but once they walk out of the airport, they’re not going to enforce immigration policy.”
“Maybe we need to have a really hard look at that because we need to focus on cities that want to work with us.”
“So you’re saying that big cities that are sanctuary cities that have a big airport, they might lose their customs?”
“Well, I’m saying we’re going to have to start prioritizing things at some point.”
And this week, you’ve got them taking aim at Newark.
Right there, protesters have been raging outside of an ICE facility for days now, with reports saying that detainees are on a hunger strike after being kept in poor conditions without the proper medical resources.
With Mullin saying, “If they’re barricading our employees from coming in and out of the facility, then why are we processing international flights into the airport there?”
“They don’t want to enforce immigration, but they want us to process immigration at their facilities. Nothing about that makes sense to me.”
But then you also have others saying that the protests could be the detainees’ only way to let people know what’s actually going on.
“I would posit that in this case, part of our responsibility is simply to bear witness.”
“There are detainees inside that building. They have no criminal record. They are not being treated in a way that is humane.”
“They want the three of us, and they want all of you at home, to know what is happening to them inside that detention facility in our name, with our tax dollars.”
But Mullin, he’s not buying it.
And so if he does pull the trigger here outside of Newark, it could impact airports in LA, Philly, New York, and plenty of others on the Justice Department’s list of sanctuary jurisdictions.
And just to hit on how big this could be, more than 50 million international travelers came through three major New York-area airports alone last year.
That’s not even mentioning how much international cargo you’d have to think about.
And so as you might expect, this isn’t going over well with a lot of people.
“This is just a new level of stupid.”
I mean, even people within Trump’s own administration, like Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, have said, “We shouldn’t shut down air travel in a state that doesn’t agree with our politics.”
Of course, words are words and actions are actions, and the actions we’ve seen from people in the administration are that they do what Dear Leader wants.
But then also, other big news we should talk about…
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You have a former CIA agent who was thrown in jail after agents found $40 million worth of gold in his home that they say he stole from his job.
Right?
Well, there are a lot of unanswered questions right now.
The former agent in question is David Rush.
You have reports saying that he started making requests for, quote, “large amounts of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars” for work-related expenses between November of last year and March of this year.
He was given the money and the gold.
But since then, no one has actually been able to figure out what work expenses he claimed that he needed them for.
With him then apparently keeping some of it at his office and another part at his home.
Because in the investigation, they found 303 gold bars along with $2 million in U.S. currency, along with 35 luxury watches.
I have to note here, some of the stuff that he stole still has not been recovered.
And with that, you have the FBI saying there is probable cause to believe that Rush, quote, “knowingly embezzled, stole, purloined, or knowingly converted a thing of value of the United States for his personal use.”
And so now he’s been charged with stealing public money.
But it also doesn’t stop there.
That’s because the FBI also claims that Rush obtained a fraudulently inflated salary and fraudulently obtained military leave, as well as lied about his credentials.
And there, they say that he lied when he enlisted in the Navy in 1997 by giving them doctored transcripts from Clemson University.
And while he was honorably discharged in 2015, the FBI says that he claimed to still be enlisted, allowing him to get tens of thousands of dollars in compensation for taking military leave.
Then also say that he applied to work for the federal government three times.
And there, he claimed two other degrees from two other places, which also helped him get his security clearance.
By 2018, he also claimed to have graduated from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School to apply for Senior Executive Service positions and claimed to be the director of test for a military weapons test program.
So with all of that stacked against him, he is now sitting behind bars, and his hearing is actually set for Friday.
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But then the final thing that we have to talk about today before you go back into the wild—this is my favorite story.
A cop pulled this woman over claiming that she was using her phone with her right hand.
Except she doesn’t have a right hand.
“You drove past me holding the phone with your right hand, manipulating that phone.”
“I mean—”
So that’s Katie, a Florida influencer who documents her life as a disabled person.
The craziest part of this whole thing is that after he sees her arm, the cop doubles down.
“So you want to just call this a day?”
“I don’t want to call it a day. You had a hand on my right hand.”
“I thought I told you right hand.”
“You don’t have a right hand.”
“I told you you did it with the right hand.”
“Perhaps not, hand to God.”
“You know how funny—”
“Hindu God. The other hand to God. You have one hand, God. Cool.”
My guy. There is no other hand.
But then even after all that, he tickets her.
Also, here’s the thing. This is kind of wild.
Even if she did have a hand to hold the phone, in Florida that by itself is not illegal.
You can’t text or type, but actually looking at something like Google Maps, that’s actually fair game.
Granted, I wouldn’t recommend it. I like you and other people being alive. I’m a big fan of that.
But as far as the ridiculousness of this situation, she ended up taking it to court and surprise, surprise, a judge just dismissed it because of lack of evidence.
Which, yeah. Literally.
But then, my friend, you beautiful bastard, that is the end of your Thursday Philip DeFranco Show.
Dive into the comments down below.
This is actually a very interesting one for me.
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And hey, if you’re not 100% filled in, you want to laugh, you want to rage, you want to feel feelings, definitely check out the brand new episode of Crashing Out that just came out.
It’ll even give you a small taste of what it’s going to be like when you go to CrashingOutTour.com and get yourself some tickets.
Come see us live in a few months.
But with that said, thank you for watching. I love yo face, and I’ll see you right back here next time.
