The KIDS Act Problem is Worse Than You Think & Trump Caught in Tucker Carlson & Affordability Trap
PDS Published 07/02/2026
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Want to apologize in advance.
A lot of the things today kind of got me worked up, and as much as I want this to just be a straight news show and I'm going to give you just the facts today, I also had to share my opinions in places. And right now, it just feels like, metaphorically, everyone can get these hands.
Hey, welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show, your daily dive into the news. Buckle up, hit that like button, and let's just jump into it, starting with:
Might need to show social media companies your ID before you post a meme.
Right. That is now one of the many concerns surrounding the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act, aka the KIDS Act.
That might sound familiar to you because the House just passed it earlier this week by a vote of 267 to 117. But it's also incredibly controversial.
On paper, you might think that it's a bill about kids' safety. That's very hard to argue with. It's seemingly meant to hold tech companies accountable by requiring new safety features and parental controls, restricting the use of minors' data and advertising, and more stuff like that.
But then there is a major, in-your-face car crash into this story, and that centers around privacy concerns.
You've got groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU opposing this bill over fears that it could lead to companies using ID age verification. And while technically the bill itself does not require it, with the EFF noting that some parts even specifically say the bill should not be read to require age verification, once you look at the rest of the bill, to quote the EFF here, "that disclaimer starts to look hollow."
You see, the bill requires special controls, protections, messaging settings, and even more whenever a website knows or should have known a user is a child.
The EFF says that "should have known" wording is a low negligence standard of knowledge, adding that if an online service gets it wrong, it's going to be up to courts and regulators to decide after the fact if an online service should have known a user was under 16.
Adding that to try to avoid liability, services will have to determine which users are teenagers and which are not.
Most won't be able to simply trust their users, and the most likely route is requiring driver's licenses, passports, facial scans, or using age estimation systems that comb through a user's activity.
Very importantly, this isn't just going to impact kids.
Adults will have to prove that they are adults, meaning that information would be demanded from potentially everyone.
And so that's why you've got a lot of people calling it a de facto mandate, with Thomas Massie, for example, even saying it is a Trojan horse bill.
You've got the EFF adding that the bill's requirements come at the expense of privacy, free expression, and the ability of people of all ages to use the internet without revealing sensitive data.
Right, because if you have a situation where the landscape has changed, where every major platform suddenly needs to verify hundreds of millions of people, that means that someone is now sitting on a giant centralized pile of your ID photos, your passport scans, your face data.
You're not new. You know this is a huge target for criminal activity. And there are recent examples to back that up. Honestly, it feels like there's too many to choose from.
Last year, you had a major data leak from the Tea app that exposed government IDs, verification selfies, DMs, and even more.
And that app had actually explicitly promised to delete those verification photos immediately after approving users. But they didn't.
Those photos also retained metadata, including GPS coordinates. And one person reportedly was able to use that information to make a map plotting the locations of the app's users.
That's by no means the only similar case.
There was an ID verification vendor that's been used by X, TikTok, Uber, and more being previously breached, exposing users' names, licenses, and more.
So when you have people saying handing your ID to every website is dangerous, they're pointing to a proven track record of breaches.
But also, I will note this is not the only wave of criticism that the KIDS Act has been receiving.
Because there's actually also backlash from people on the other side of the situation. They think the bill is actually too weak.
Which then, funny enough, may be one of the only reasons it has a tough time in the Senate, where you have some members that are upset that it removed duty of care provisions.
Because the version that passed didn't have harm reduction policies or other requirements meant to limit addiction.
And so that's prompted some Senate Democrats to say that the bill fails to meet the moment.
You end up in this weird situation where you have lawmakers voting against the bill over government overreach, and then others voting against it because it does not reach far enough.
But hey, at the end of the day, it did still pass the House.
And some argue that this is going to be inevitable, that the groundwork for laws allowing digital ID verification has already been laid.
We're already seeing things like California passing a law that will require app stores to verify ages so that kids don't access inappropriate content.
So just last year, the Supreme Court upheld a Texas law requiring age verification for adult content in a 6–3 decision.
Even though there, you had legal scholars saying that the ruling should only be applied to obscene content, you have critics fearing that lawmakers are going to stretch it as far as they can.
While you have many noting that no matter what kinds of laws get enacted, kids are going to find a way around them.
Whether it be kids or adults, reports already found that VPN usage spikes when digital ID laws take effect.
So before I go crashing out in some of the other stories today, I do want to pass a question off to you.
What are your thoughts, opinions, and reactions to a world where you have to upload your government ID or scan your face just to use social media or a number of services out there?
Do you think it makes sense that this is just kind of the inevitable evolution of the internet?
Or do you think this is crazy?
Do you think this is a massive overreach dressed up in a "protect the kids" costume?
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And then next up today, we need to talk about affordability and the just ridiculous reactions we've seen regarding affordability.
When questions are being asked about it, when it's something that's top of mind for a lot of Americans, one, because they can't afford a lot of things, but also now because of some of the just ridiculous on-camera reactions we've gotten from Republicans.
Take, for example, this now-viral, just absolutely insane clip of Representative Troy Nehls.
Reporter: How do House Republicans make the case that you're fighting for affordability when you go back to your districts?
Troy Nehls: Affordability? We talked about it. Well, tomorrow, I'm going over to Fort Worth. I'm going to get me a couple big lobster tails. I'm going to get me some nice ribeyes. I'm going to sit in my backyard with my family, my neighbors, and we're going to be enjoying the Fourth.
But listen, everybody understands you're going to see a little increase in energy prices because of Iran. I'm okay with the increase in fuel because you knew it was going to happen, obviously, with the Strait and everything. But it's temporary. It's a temporary issue.
Reporter: Do you think 60% of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck can afford lobster tails and ribeyes and all of that?
Troy Nehls: Maybe not. Maybe the 60% of America don't work as hard as I do either.
I mean, I don't know.
Yikes.
Okay, so to Nehls' credit, one, at least he's saying the quiet part out loud. He's being honest about what he believes.
But also, two, what an asshole.
He literally gets paid nearly three times the median American salary, and he's like, "Motherfuckers out there are just lazy."
Like, just a few—
No. Maybe 60%. They could never do what I do because I bust my ass.
Let me look at my notes here.
Probably kicking people off of healthcare.
You've also had a number of different reactions like that from Representative Jake Ellzey, who was asked a similar question.
Reporter: Mr. Ellzey, how do House Republicans make the case for affordability when you go home to your districts now?
Jake Ellzey: You'll have to ask the people who made this happen. And I'm not one of them.
Oh yeah. The trifecta. House, Senate, and White House.
And for me, this is another one of those kind of just fun responses, right?
It's unfortunately the classic Republican politician talking point. The deflection that it's actually the Democrats that got us into this affordability crisis.
With that, his answer is essentially, "Well, I didn't create this mess, so I don't need to clean it."
Except, one, even if we say what you're saying is true—that the Democrats created this whole situation—one, it is literally your job to try to represent your people and do good by them.
And two, there is literally nothing standing in your way for you to do your job.
Republicans control the White House, the Senate, the House. They've stacked the Supreme Court.
Then to go back—well, yes, there were issues before the 2024 election. No doubt about it.
They've gotten so much worse since Trump took office and enacted his policies.
According to an April analysis by the Urban Institute, nearly half of all people in American families cannot afford the true cost of living and don't have the resources to cover essential expenses.
And that's as you have 42% of U.S. households that have incomes that are technically too high to qualify for federal and state assistance, but they're not high enough to cover fundamental living costs like food, housing, and healthcare.
Meanwhile, thanks to inflation, which got supercharged by Trump's war of choice with Iran, costs of everyday expenses like energy and transportation, as well as essential goods and services, are rising faster than wages.
Then, as far as things like healthcare, a recent Gallup poll found that just 49% of Americans said they could consistently afford healthcare.
That is the lowest percentage they've seen since they started tracking that.
And again, Trump and the Republicans have only made it so much worse thanks to massive cuts to Medicaid and Obamacare under Trump's so-called "Big Beautiful Bill," which they want to keep trying to call something else because it's become so unpopular.
You've got the Congressional Budget Office estimating that as many as 15 million people are going to lose their insurance in the next eight years because Trump and his Republicans refused to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies.
Premiums have absolutely skyrocketed, making the public insurance plans prohibitively expensive for so many Americans.
In fact, one recent analysis found that five million people dropped ACA insurance.
And that's all on top of the massive economic shocks that we've seen because of Trump's pointless war with Iran.
Actually, with that, you had House Majority Leader Steve Scalise just plain gaslighting Americans.
Yes, pun intended here.
Claiming that the country is actually thriving—that the affordability crisis is over because gas is now down 50 cents.
Steve Scalise: This is a country that's actually experiencing a golden age again. I mean, gas prices are down 50 cents from where they were just a few weeks ago and continuing to go down.
Affordability is back again.
Do you remember how I said these liars were going to do this?
How gas would jump up $1.50, then it would drop 50 cents, and they'd be like, "Look, we fixed it."
People said I was being too cynical.
But gas prices—yes, they've fallen in the last few weeks, with the national average clocking in at around $3.84 a gallon.
That is still nearly a dollar more than it was before Trump started this war.
And because of Trump's war, a third of Americans are now saying that they're struggling to pay for their energy.
And actually, we haven't even gotten to Trump here.
He has repeatedly said that he does not actively care about how the war is impacting Americans' financial situations.
Reporter: Mr. President, to what extent are Americans' financial situations motivating you to make a deal with Iran?
Trump: Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran—they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about Americans' financial situation. I don't think about anybody.
Also, more recently, he's received backlash for his comments on a housing bill that Congress passed with massive bipartisan margins.
That bill has been described as the largest housing affordability bill in decades.
It's aimed at lowering housing costs. It would increase housing stock through a number of different things, including streamlining building regulations and preventing large private investors from buying up single-family homes.
But despite it being very popular, and the fact that Republicans and Democrats miraculously actually came together in such divided times to actually agree on something to address the affordability crisis, Trump then is alone in holding it hostage.
He says he's refusing to sign it until Congress passes his so-called SAVE Act.
That bill that they say is all about voter ID, but is really about killing mail-in voting.
And even though there clearly isn't enough support among Republicans to pass that legislation, Trump has refused to back down.
While speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, he basically said he does not care about this historic housing affordability bill that can help countless Americans.
Reporter: What are your plans for the housing bill, Mr. President?
Trump: I don't know. I think it's so unimportant compared to the SAVE Act.
Here's what I would like to say. Much more than a bill—that big deal. It's a yawn.
Some people say it's wonderful. To me, compared to the SAVE Act, just about everything is a big yawn.
Big yawn from Trump.
It probably does feel boring and unimportant, especially compared to chances where you can enrich yourself and your family by at least $2 billion just in the last year.
But for everyday Americans who can't manipulate and abuse the power of the presidency to line their pockets, the housing affordability crisis is very real.
The median home price is now five times more than the annual income of a typical family.
And the cost of homeownership has hit record highs.
Then there's also a severe housing supply shortage.
The United States is looking down the barrel of a shortfall of millions of homes, and houses are not being built fast enough.
But in the meantime, what you're seeing is that you've got people like JD Vance having the audacity to claim that it's the Democrats who are somehow preventing a solution for the housing affordability crisis.
JD Vance: I would love it if Democrats were willing—not that they are going to agree with Republicans all the time—but if they were willing to work with us on lowering housing prices, on lowering gas prices, on actually making the lives of American citizens better, you know, we could have some real bipartisan compromise.
My brother in Christ—though hopefully not soon—I don't know how you haven't gotten excommunicated by the Catholic Church.
The Democrats did reach a bipartisan compromise on housing affordability.
Trump is literally the only reason it is not law.
And it's absolutely insane to say that Democrats are refusing to reach a compromise on lowering gas prices when the only reason that prices are so fucking high is because of Trump's war—a war that most Democrats have opposed from the start.
And I say most because, you know, there are some that secretly are a fan of it, or initially dragged their feet just to see how things would play out.
But unfortunately, right now, the power lies with the Republicans and this Republican White House with Trump and JD Vance.
And they seem kind of more fixated on gaslighting than actually signing the legislation.
Is their winning strategy right now to just gaslight Americans? To let them know that their lived experience—that's a lie?
You're not actually struggling.
Which I will say is the wildest strategy they could have possibly stolen from a number of establishment Democrats.
Or they seemingly took that and just supercharged it with extra bullshit.
These corrupt, lazy motherfuckers have me crashing out today.
And then there's more we've got to dive into in just a minute.
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Today we've got to talk about Tim Walz getting absolutely slammed right now for issuing what may be one of the most controversial pardons ever.
Because the pardon that you're looking at today is for Tao Vang. He's a 42-year-old immigrant from Laos who came to the U.S. as a child refugee in 1994.
He then became a permanent resident and eventually settled in Minnesota.
But most importantly, in 2005, when he was roughly 18 years old, he was convicted of repeatedly sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl.
While he initially tried to justify his actions, he ended up pleading guilty to avoid prison time, and an immigration judge ordered his deportation to Laos.
But because, at the time, Laos refused to accept deportees in large numbers, many people that would have been sent back ended up staying in the United States under supervised release.
So here he stayed for 20 years.
But then he got swept up in the ICE crackdown in Minnesota back in December, and now he's facing deportation again.
So what he did is that he filed for a pardon from the state, pointing to his decades of having a clean record since his conviction as evidence of his rehabilitation.
He also expressed regret for his actions, saying that he carries a deep shame and that if he could go back and change it, he would in a heartbeat.
But also, what seemed to be the biggest deciding factor here came from his victim.
Because they ended up submitting an unsigned statement asking for the state to grant the pardon, writing:
"What happened to me was wrong, but I have had many years to think about this. I have made peace with it. I forgive him."
So what you got is that the Board of Pardons—a three-person panel including Governor Tim Walz, State Attorney General Keith Ellison, and State Supreme Court Justice Natalie Hudson—granted the pardon.
It essentially wiped Vang's criminal record clean and gave him the chance to fight his deportation.
So as you can imagine, the backlash has been massive.
Among the reactions, you had the Department of Homeland Security saying on Twitter:
"Governor Walz's pardon shielded this child rapist from removal from our nation."
Adding:
"This is the type of disgusting criminal sanctuary politicians are shamelessly protecting."
Anyway, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin reposted it, calling the pardon horrific and accusing Walz of protecting illegal criminal aliens over American citizens.
And personally, I gotta say, kind of damn you, Tim Walz and these other two board members, for putting me on the same side as Markwayne Mullin.
Right.
I understand that they shared that the victim chiming in on Vang's behalf played a major role in their decision.
But one, I'm personally of the opinion that anyone who does something like this—they're a monster in my fucking eyes.
They're a monster for life that can never be trusted.
Then two, just optically...
This is fucking stupid politics.
You have an administration that has been purging the country of so many non-criminals, even though they've said that they're focused on the dangerous criminals.
So you all decide to protect someone who targeted a 10-year-old girl.
And Ellison, I looked at your statement.
You made a less-than-subtle dig at Trump, pointed out that he's throwing pardons around like candy.
Valid criticism.
But what about your fucking pardon?
To my guy?
And overall, in my opinion about this:
Disappointing.
Disgusting.
And it feels like team politics taken to a stupid and dangerous place.
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But then, actually also speaking of team politics, we then have to talk about the news that Tucker Carlson is starting a third party.
Really.
Just officially announced it in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, just weeks after he declared that he was leaving the GOP over Trump's war with Iran and the party's deep support of Israel.
"I would not support the Republican Party. There's no chance I would support the Republican Party. I've been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party. I mean, a very consistent defender. But there's no defending this because it's immoral. And it's exactly the opposite of what a political party in a democracy is charged with doing, which is representing its own voters, its own citizens, its own nation. And they're not doing that. So no, I'm out. And if I'm out, then I think a lot of other people are."
In this new interview with CJR, he echoed a lot of the same points, ragging on Trump and his war in Iran before then saying:
"I'm going to help build a third party. There should be a good-faith effort to figure out what benefits the American people. I mean, if you make $60,000 a year, your life expectancy has gone down, and the promise of your children's lives is likely worse. No one seems to care. It's not even a factor. What about Hamas? I officially do not care about Hamas. The U.S. government should have as its first priority the welfare of its own people."
And he went on to say that Democrats and Republicans are in lockstep solidarity with each other when it comes to war and finance, arguing:
"That's not a democracy. That's a one-party state posing as a democracy, and it needs to be challenged."
Though Tucker also said that he did not want to be a candidate for this future third party.
And this, of course, is kind of just the latest and biggest update around the MAGA civil war that we've been covering for over a year now.
And so far, as far as the reception online, it's been kind of mixed.
You did have a ton of people applauding the move, cheering Tucker on, saying that a new alternative to the GOP is very needed.
You also had some arguing that he could unite both the left and the right if he centers the new party around kind of a big-tent populist platform.
But then you also had plenty of people slamming this move, saying that it would just fracture conservative votes and ultimately make it easier for the Democrats to win.
Then you also had other people saying, really, there's no way that a third party can actually gain any meaningful traction.
And there, as you'd expect, you had a lot of people pointing to Elon.
Whether it was ketamine-induced or ego-driven, Elon famously said that he was going to start his own third party, and then he ultimately backed away from it.
That was around the time where Elon all of a sudden was in that fight with Trump. He started talking about the Epstein files.
He was actually a big part of the reason why that popped back up and damaged Trump.
So, of course, as we've all witnessed, he then cozied back up to him.
But then also, beyond all the other stuff with Tucker, people are questioning his ability to actually build an effective third party, with many claiming that despite his large platform, many of his ideas might be seen as too fringe.
With one person saying:
"I like Tucker, but he can't build a new party because he's all over the place. None of his positions have any consistent underlying philosophy that would allow a solidified policy to take shape."
You also had some on the far right, like Laura Loomer, who raised questions about how the whole thing is going to work logistically, given the current internal politics of American conservatism.
Writing:
"Now the question is, will JD Vance join the third party, or will he finally condemn and confront Tucker Carlson before Tucker torpedoes JD's 2028 GOP presidential campaign?"
That obviously, JD isn't going to join a third party.
So I think it's totally obvious now.
Tucker only says nice things about JD, but he clearly wants to hurt his presidential aspirations.
Would he run a party against JD?
Then here's what I'll say with all this.
No matter your opinion of Tucker Carlson or the belief or disbelief in his ability to craft a new third party in America, what is undeniable is that there is a growing faction of Trump's base who no longer support him and the Republican Party.
And they are being led by some of the most prominent conservative commentators in the country.
All while poll after poll has shown that Trump is losing ground across key demographics of the base that got him elected.
It's a little now, so it might even be worse.
But back in May, a CBS News poll found that 54% of white voters without a college degree now disapprove of Trump's performance.
That's his key base.
He famously said, "I love the uneducated."
Also, a Pew survey from around the same time showed that his approval rating with Latinos hit a second-term low.
And now, according to new data that was released just this week from the Ronald Reagan Institute, two-fifths of GOP voters under 30 say that they do not align with Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement.
So many of those people do not feel like they have a home in either political party.
That their interests are not represented by Democrats or Republicans.
But then that mess...
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It brings us to the final bit of news that I want to talk about today, which is this crazy story out of Indonesia.
Because you just had a couple that was caned for kissing outside of marriage.
And that's after, reportedly, a 22-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman were arrested a few months ago after they kissed in a car during a TikTok livestream that went viral and then prompted reports to authorities.
That kiss took place in the only province in the country that actually enforces a form of Islamic law.
Looking into it, that region has been allowed to enforce religious laws since 2006, and in 2015 they expanded those laws to apply to non-Muslims as well.
And so you've got laws there allowing for up to 100 lashes for morality offenses like adultery, gay sex, gambling, drinking, and more.
And this couple that got caned for the kissing reportedly received 21 lashes from a rattan cane with over 100 people watching.
And apparently the number 21 was actually considered lenient.
Apparently they were set to get 25, but they had a few shaved off because they had already been in prison for four months.
And they weren't alone.
You also had a handful of others caned that day for things like online gambling and adultery.
You even had the AP share images of people awaiting their punishments, including one where a woman needed help getting up afterward.
And while the AP actually spoke to someone who witnessed this and supported the public punishments, who said:
"In my opinion, this caning is entirely justified because it serves as a warning to other residents to be more careful in using social media. It also raises awareness that such actions are unacceptable, thereby educating the public."
Most everyone else who's not a fucking insane person were horrified by this.
Let me just be clear with my opinion.
That included Amnesty International, who condemned it, with a regional director saying:
"Today's public caning of a young man and a woman simply for kissing is a horrifying act of discrimination and a grim reminder of the enduring human rights violations permitted under the Islamic Criminal Code in Indonesia's Aceh province."
And adding:
"Caning is an inherently cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment that frequently crosses the threshold into torture. Indonesia's authorities must end the criminalization of consensual intimacy and repeal all discriminatory bylaws that permit corporal punishment."
And that's as you have them saying that Sharia police in the province appear to be expanding their digital monitoring efforts.
With Amnesty International demanding that Indonesia, as a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council, step in to prevent this province from carrying out these punishments.
Especially because this isn't even the only recent headline about canings in the province.
Earlier this year, you had a woman reportedly faint after being caned 140 times for sex outside of marriage and alcohol offenses.
And less than a year ago, the court sentenced two men for hugging and kissing.
They ended up getting caned 80 times.
And apparently they wanted 85, but they said the men were polite and good students.
Yeah.
I know.
How thoughtful.
But then, my friends, you beautiful bastards, that is the end of your Thursday show.
Thank you for watching, hitting that like button, and subscribing to the channel.
I hope you have a good July 4th.
If you can, enjoy some fireworks, some drone shows, have a little barbecue, touch some grass.
And please don't do anything stupid with something that's supposed to explode.
Like, that is the whole reason that it exists.
I don't want any of you on Monday to be my Douchebag of the Day.
But really, either way, I'll see you then.
