Sup, you beauty of all bastards. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show you daily dive into the news. Today is Thursday, December 5th.
There is a lot we need to talk about today, but let's start. Let's start with you hitting that like button and talking about the Hawke to a girl controversy. Real name Hailey Welch.
But everyone calls their Hawke to a girl. spit on that thing. Unfortunately, in this situation, the thing that she is apparently spitting on is in people's faces.
Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly.
I'm stealing that from Desus and Mero. So here's the deal. Hawke to a girl is the most recent influencer to launch a crypto meme coin.
called the Hot Coin. It went live yesterday after a lot of promotion. And she even did an interview with fortune about it, claiming that it wasn't just a cash grab.
saying, you know, she used to view crypto as just a scam and an easy way for you to lose money. then claiming that her opinion changed after attending crypto conferences, saying, I don't really see it as like a gambling thing. I think it's like a fun way to get my fans to interact.
their manager then also claiming at the heart token, it'll be different from other previous celebrity crypto endeavors, because they're not telling people to buy and will give free tokens to her followers and people who have purchased merch. with that, also claiming that Hayley, you own 10% of the supply but can't sell for a year. seemingly one of the immediate responses to this coin was a lot of skepticism.
Some saying, you know, it seems like she's maybe going to be talking to a judge. also a huge influencers in the space like coffee zilla adding, please do not put your money in hock to a coin. Meme coins always benefit a insiders b trading bots don't be exit.
Liquidity. then with all of that, Hailey ended up trending this morning, a lot of people discussing how the coin had already plummeted substantially. so with that, some of accused her and insiders of a pump and dump scheme, though Haley's deny that anyone on her team has sold yet and said no leaders were given free tokens.
but according to the independent, at least one investor has already filed a complaint. want to add others online talking about how much money they ended up losing, there I will say it appears that there's like a mishmash if you look online of some people that seem to have legitimately lost money and other people just kind of memeing and making fun of those who did. because really whoever is losing money on this, if you look online, there's not a lot of sympathy for them.
and personally I find myself on the side of those that are not sympathetic here. Because I think that if you lost money on the hock to a girl meme coin, you're either dumb, greedy, or some mixture of the two. Or who's out there going out of everyone in the space Hawk.
Tua is the girl that's figured it out. I looked at her track record of talking enthusiastically about blowjobs and a man on the Street video, and then she took that fame and partnered with Jake Paul's sports betting company to launch a podcast. And I said, this is the one.
with this, I'll say I'm very interested how Hailey Welch is going to navigate this situation, because really, if you look out there and for me personally, to some extent, she has burnt through some goodwill. that in part because how she's dealing with the criticism. Because she and some of the people involved here went live, and they ended up allowing coffee zilla to speak.
And this is how the interactions started. really happy to answer and I find I have questions. I'm raising my hand.
Hey, guys. What coffees? L'm.
Hey. Hey. This is one of the most miserable, horrible launches I've ever seen in my life.
Okay, then why the fuck are you on? I've been tracing it on chain for a while. Oh, Haley.
What are you doing? hey, we'll see what happens if I was a betting man, given my my 18 years in the space, the way I imagine this is going to play out, at least from a PR perspective. people are going to infantilized Haley and allow her to use her ignorance in this space as a shield.
well, she is a young woman. And a lot's been thrown at her. She's not a fucking baby.
obviously social and PR concerns are different than any potential legal fallout. So for now, we'll have to wait and see. of course, in the meantime, I'd love to know your thoughts in those comments down below.
but then we gotta talk about updates around the killing of the CEO of United Health Care. Because, among other things, the social media response has only grown since yesterday. because yesterday we touched on the fact that people online were, let's say, not very sad about the news, to put it politely.
and since then, we've seen outlets like Axios doing a piece, noting that this murder, quote, unleashed a wave of social media fueled rage against health insurers. the outlet adding there. Experts say the lack of sympathy may reflect an inherent truth about Americans and their health plans.
people tend to like their own insurer, but distrust the industry and indeed, the health system at large. that outrage only grew an anthem blue Cross. Blue shield decided that yesterday of all days would be a good day to announce that it was limiting anesthesia coverage in three states.
they will no longer cover the full length of anesthesia if the surgery exceeds a certain amount of time, depending on what the procedure is. with the initial news stating this would impact those in New York, Missouri and Connecticut. the local outlets in Connecticut have since said that at least in that state, the policy was backtracked.
now currently it is not clear if the backtracking will extend to the other states. But the point stands at as the initial news broke, people were pissed, right? You had medical groups slamming the potential decision, as has big political figures like the governor of New York.
but also what we've seen is the biggest response, given the timing of this coming the day of the murder of UHC CEO Brian Thompson is people deciding to share the name of Blue Cross's CEO. right. And so with that, some openly hoping for a take to some saying that disdain for the health insurance industry seems to be the only thing uniting both sides of this country.
I don't think that it's crazy to think, given the reaction we have seen online, that this could spark copycats in the future. right now, it really doesn't look like the response is changing. And if anything, it's really only growing.
As we get new updates into the manhunt for the suspect, we're speaking of, those will touch on some of the big ones. This morning, the NYPD shared new photos of a person of interest, wanted for questioning. Officers have also said that they found shell casings at the scene of the killing that had the words deny, defend and oppose written on them.
well, the gunman is still at large, and the motive is technically unclear, some have started speculating about what those words might mean. with, for example, The New York Times saying that some of those words be a reference to the ways insurance companies seek to fend off claims. during a 2010 book on the topic, delay, deny, defend argues that health insurers claims departments try to increase their profits by not honoring the terms of insurance policies.
the times also reporting that police in the Minnesota town that Thompson lived in actually investigated bomb threats into his residence around 12 hours after he was shot. and while any connection to the killing is still being looked into, NBC news did report this afternoon that the threat may have been a hoax. for now, that's where we are.
And we'll have to wait to see what happens with the suspect in the manhunt in general. This might be hyperbole, but I will let you be the judge. the decision to put leading pretty much everything has to rank is one of the worst things United States did during the 20th century, which is saying something if you know anything about U.
S. history. has led is a neurotoxin that wrecks your brain and poisons nearly every organ system in the body.
mean, there's a reason that the CDC says there is no safe amount of So thankfully, we banned lead paint in 1978, lead pipes in 86 and leaded gasoline in 1996. but what that does it mean is that we are free of its effects. fact, more than half of the current U.
S. population was exposed to adverse lead levels in childhood from leaded gasoline alone. of course, that begs the question, well, what does that actually mean for those people?
How are they really affected? to answer that now, we've actually got a peer reviewed study from researchers at Duke University, Florida State University, and the Medical University of South Carolina answering that exact question. with it.
Analyzing childhood blood lead levels from 1940 to 2015 and singling out the effect of leaded gasoline, in particular. according to their findings, Americans suffered an estimated 151 million excess mental health disorders that they wouldn't have had if they didn't breathe in all those exhaust fumes. though, this is if you were born closer to 1940 or 2015, you have less to worry about, because the brunt of the damage it hit generation X those born between 1966 and 1986.
with people born between 1966 and 1970 getting impacted especially hard since they grew up at the peak of leaded gasoline use. and so for all of them, they could expect higher rates of depression, anxiety and ADHD, as well as altered personalities. the study's coauthor even telling CNN believe that lead exposure makes people a little less conscientious.
less well organized, less detail oriented, less likely to be able to pursue their goals in an organized way and more neurotic. possibly some of your parents and extended family are coming to mind right now. and according to a previous study by the same authors, exposure to leaded gasoline lowered the IQ of half the present day population of the United States.
or more specifically, costing an estimated 824 million IQ points in total, or 2. 6 per person on average. which I would say, you know, for most people probably isn't noticeable on an individual level, but on the population level, it's like we took the entire bell curve of America's IQ and shifted the whole thing to the left.
in specifically for people born in the 60s and 70s, the loss was definitely noticeable them losing up to 6 or 7 IQ points. so you have the study's coauthor telling NBC, we're not at all concerned that we have in any way overestimated the harm. in fact, the estimate might be an undercount since the study didn't measure all possible sources of lead exposure.
because, as mentioned, lead still contaminates water pipes, house paint, children's toys and soil in many parts of the country. plus, this study only considers mental health effects. But physical ailments are a big thing, too.
which is why you're the coauthor saying to CNN, Millions of Americans are walking around with an unknown, invisible history of lead exposure that is likely influence for the worse. How they think, feel and behave. So yeah, it wasn't that a fun thing to learn about?
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And my standing desk is my, my legs are falling asleep. Okay, here we go. so we should talk about Donald Trump and immigration.
Because he's been making some big promises. And so we've talked a little bit about what to expect, but we should really deep dive into it. so to start, we should actually go back to the first time that Trump was elected.
In 2017, he started his presidency pledging to deport millions of immigrants as well. in the end there, he really found that it wasn't that simple. there, all sorts of logistical, financial and legal obstacles.
And finally, there was a public outcry when he began separating migrant families at the border. all the, which eventually led to him reversing course and signing an executive order that ended the practice. here's the thing.
Even though that happened, there's a reason to believe that things will be different this time. why we're seeing people like Legal learn ACLU lawyer who challenged some of Trump's first term immigration policy, saying bad as the first Trump administration was for immigrants, we anticipate it will be much worse this time. this important because not only did Donald Trump when the presidency he has the House in the Senate on his side.
and well, it's true that he had that as well in 2016. The makeup of the Republicans there. It's different.
there are actually a number of Republican senators that push back more. like, for example, nearly a dozen GOP senators once opposed as attempts to use emergency powers to take funds to build the border wall. whereas now it doesn't really seem like we should expect numbers like that to pop up.
And then on top of that, he's also now starting his term with a conservative Supreme Court majority that he was able to put into place near the end of his first term. Supreme Court that is also potentially emboldened Trump with its decision on presidential immunity. and more notably connected to the immigration issue.
Specifically, it ruled in 2022 that lower courts cannot issue injunctions on immigration enforcement policies. that meaning whatever potentially illegal policies Trump implements. can stay in place even as challenges work their way through the system.
notably all of this is a lot of people believe what Trump's been putting out there. Like, according to a recent poll, 64% of Americans wrongly believe immigrants receive more in welfare and benefits than they pay in taxes. similarly, more than half wrongly believe unauthorized immigration is linked to rising crime.
of course this also is people have argued that any extra crime being done by people that are not supposed to be here, that's unacceptable. so with all that, half of Americans reportedly support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, and notably, that includes 42% of Democrats. end, at that point, we've seen that shift at the local and state level as well, especially as border states started bussing migrants from the border to blue cities back in 2022.
Many of them were so-called sanctuary cities. now we've seen them clearing encampments and evicting migrants from public shelters. with that, you have people like Chad Wolf, who is Trump's acting homeland security secretary, claiming that Trump will have more leeway to make major changes, saying voters have repudiated what he called the chaos at the border under Biden and adding, think the American people as a whole are much more open to his policies, because they've seen what's happened over the last four years.
to that point, while Trump is planning a border crackdown. Biden arguably already started one. at least continued what began under Trump before.
and actually in their campaigns, both Trump and Harris were pledging to impose some of the most restrictive immigration, asylum and border policies in decades. the with that one of the big ways that it's going to be different from Trump last time in this time is that he's just way more prepared us, for example, seeing the likes of immigration lawyer Hassan Ahmad saying Trump administration's incompetence during the first term was the silver lining that allowed many of his policies to be stopped and adding, I'm not expecting that to happen nearly as much. During his second term, they eventually figured it out how to program the machine.
with that, the man behind a lot of it is Stephen Miller. he was the primary architect of Trump's first term immigration policy. And will be Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy this time around.
he's not hiding any of his cards. He has told the New York Times that the incoming administration is planning a blitz designed to overwhelm immigrant rights lawyers. saying any activist who doubt President Trump's resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error.
Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown. as far as specifics, Miller said, Trump would move away from the ice practice of arresting specific people of interest instead carrying out workplace raids and other sweeps in public spaces aimed at arresting many unauthorized immigrants all at once. Trump's also reportedly planning to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican run states.
and then with that. Miller is also claimed Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 at the border, enabling the use of federal troops to apprehend migrants. and then just because of the sheer number, right.
The magnitude of arrests and deportations being contemplated, they plan to build a vast holding facility that would function as staging centers. with his also seeing Miller saying that he would try again to overturn something known as Flores settlement. which is a long standing court order that says that the government cannot indefinitely hold children.
and at that point, Trump has repeatedly declined to rule out restoring detention for migrant families. and he hasn't given a clear answer on whether he would again try to separate migrant parents and children, although very notably they're right Trump's new borders are Tom Homan. championed the family separation policy in the first term.
more recently he's talked about expelling the entire families. and then with all this. Right, moving forward.
Trump would reportedly significantly expand a form of Fast-Track deportations known as expedited removal, which denies undocumented immigrants of the usual due process. he's also repeatedly pledged to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which empowered the president to quickly deport foreign nationals without a hearing. that would reportedly be specifically to expel suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs, also without due process.
which were a lot of people on the surface, they're not going to care, right, if they're members of a drug cartel, if they're members of a gang, most people think, fuck them. but the concern and criticism is without due process. How do you make sure that they're actually members of a gang or a cartel?
and this notably, as people say, if you look at the history of the law, it's very telling. Rick is reportedly. It's only been used three times, the War of 1812, World War One, and World War Two when it was employed to justify internment camps where people of Japanese, German and Italian descent.
Or things normally associated with just historical shame for the States? this is people pointed out that Trump has admitted that his plan is to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. That's modeled on the Eisenhower model.
with that, referring to a controversial 1950s deportation program where hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants were rounded up, separated from their families, and sent back to Mexico on busses, planes and boats. Now with all that. You know, Trump and his allies said as far as the priority, that'll be the deportation of criminals and national security threats.
they're you people noting that's already policy. in fact, one former adviser said he expects Trump to repeal Biden's policies that limit deportations, mostly to serious criminals and recent border crossers. and actually, you know, with all that, you have some saying that Trump's efforts here, it's going to make it harder to tackle crime.
and this, because about half of ISIS 21,000 employees are part of its Homeland Security Investigations unit, which is a unit that focuses on transnational crime, things like drug smuggling and child exploitation, rather than immigration enforcement. but several Trump allies said that the unit would need to spend more time on immigration. and notably, that as the unit has reportedly distanced itself from ISIS immigration work in recent years, them saying fear of deportation made it harder for its investigators to build trust in immigrant communities.
and at that point, a recent analysis from the Cato Institute, which is a libertarian think tank, concluded that Trump's agenda might actually make the country less safe, it, saying that it would shift focus away from the removal of immigrants who do commit crimes. and with that, arguing that we already saw that in Trump's first term, claiming that while Trump was prioritizing prosecutions of migrant parents, separating families and banning asylum, it also released criminals, including those who went on to commit crimes. and the institute ultimately arguing that Trump's policies actually led to far more attempted illegal crossings by individuals with criminal convictions.
though, with all that, I do not want to act like nothing is happening at the border. there has been an uptick in border crossings. And that comes with real challenges.
right. For example, unlike past migrant influxes, people coming over the last four years have more often been people without relatives already living in the U. S.
, meaning that they've been relying more on cities and towns to provide shelter and food at a cost of billions of dollars. there's also, as many argue that the more math that you do on this, it actually shows that the immigration is a net positive for the country. with the seeing things like, for example, the American Immigration Council, which I should say is an immigrant advocacy group estimating the cost of deporting 13 million immigrants in the U.
S. illegally. as being $968 billion over a little more than a decade.
Right. Which is just the deportation part. they also argue that there's value that the immigrants bring to the economy.
Right. Trump campaigned on the idea that the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would lead to more jobs and higher wages. but studies of large scale deportations of found that these expulsions actually do the opposite.
with that, a report from the Congressional Budget Office found increased immigration is expected to drive higher economic growth and labor supply, grow federal revenues and shrink deficits over the next ten years. whereas Trump's immigration policies could lead to higher prices, low job growth, lower pay, and threaten funding for social safety nets like Social Security and Medicare, with Robert Lynch, for example, a professor emeritus of economics at Washington College saying 8 million undocumented people are currently earning hundreds of billions and spending hundreds of billions on food, clothing, shelter, and adding. If you remove those people from the economy, American businesses will sell less.
When they sell less, they're going to produce less, and we'll need fewer workers and lay off workers. Incomes will fall. and then, you know, we found that people's big problem isn't necessarily with immigration.
but rather what's considered illegal immigration. Right. 65% of Americans reportedly think that the U.
S. should make it easier for anyone seeking a better life to enter legally, so they don't need to enter illegally. 58% say they support expanding legal pathways for orderly immigration.
this is 46% said asylum seekers should be protected if their cases are legitimate. and while Trump has said that he supports certain legal immigration. Notably, he also may pave the way for the deportation of hundreds of thousands of migrants who are actually authorized to be like his.
His transition team is reportedly considering ending two Biden programs that have allowed more than 1. 3 million immigrants to enter the United States legally. Making those who entered but have not yet received asylum.
Eligible for deportation. But hey, ultimately, here's the deal. January 20th, he is going to be president, and he is going to have the House and the Senate.
we know that moves are going to be made. But how it's going to turn out that remains unknown right now. both sides have been and are currently preparing for this.
for now, we'll have to wait and see. But of course, in the meantime, I'd love to know your thoughts here. as you know, it is a very divisive topic.
And as we discussed, it is a very complicated one as well. but then take a quick breather from the news, you know, are you looking for that cool, practical, special gift that's thoughtful and useful without being boring? we'll enter today's sponsor, Raycon everyday earbuds.
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check it out and treat yourself or somebody else for the holidays. y'all we need to talk about the Memphis police just being on some wild shit. Because I know that this isn't news to anyone that actually lives there, and the rest of us actually got to see for ourselves what was up when the cops beat Tyree Nichols to death during a traffic stop.
but notably, after that, body cam footage of that killing shocked the country. Biden's Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation with the Memphis Police Department. now, 17 months later, the DOJ has revealed its disturbing findings in a 73 page report.
So let's go down the list of allegations, starting with the systemic use of excessive force and violation of people's rights. because reportedly, officers punch kicked and used other force against people who are already handcuffed or restrained. acts which were nearly always approved after the fact by supervisors.
also officers resorted to force likely to cause pain or injury almost immediately in response to low level nonviolent offenses, even when people were not aggressive. they also reportedly fired at moving cars and resorted to intimidation and threats, as well as detaining people without adequate justification and conducting invasive searches of people and cars. and this is what the DOJ saying, they relied on traffic stops to address violent crime and didn't understand the limits of their authority, resulting in dismiss cases and dropped charges.
get even when doing all of that. The department also wasn't even good at solving violent crime, right. They only made an arrest in 14% of the murders last year, compared to 50% on average for the country.
with also this report detailing several specific cases of brutality that exemplify the patterns that they're talking about. for example, when officers hit a handcuffed man eight times in the face and torso with a baton, they pepper sprayed another handcuffed man inside the backseat of a squad car and left them inside with the doors closed. Despite his pleas that he couldn't breathe how about when they pepper sprayed, kicked and tased an unarmed mentally ill man who shoplifted a $2 soft drink from a gas station?
with ultimately nine squad cars and 12 officers responding to the scene, there. with the man reportedly putting the drink down, trying to leave. But then the cop shoved him against a squad car, kneed and pulled him to the ground, and then stunned him with the taser repeatedly.
Even after he was handcuffed. and all of this is the report also concluded that the MPD treated black people more harshly than white people who committed the same crimes. with, findings.
Statistically, the department was 21% more likely to cite black drivers for driving violations and 17% more likely to arrest or cite black people for drug related offenses. and on the notaries, they found that over a nearly six year period, officers arrested 180 black children for curfew or loitering violations, but only for white kids for the same offenses, for disorderly conduct, the ratio of white to black was a staggering 120 to 1. regarding black children specifically, they said that they were in particular experiencing aggressive and frightening encounters with the officers, and there, they pointed to examples like this one eight year old boy with behavioral health issues who had at least nine encounters with the officers over roughly a 20 month period, during which this as he was repeatedly threatened, pushed, handcuffed or thrown.
and so with all this, with the DOJ listing, some potential reforms, including new force training, required documentation of stops and searches, better discipline practices for misconduct, and improved transparency. the agency wants to enforce these changes through a consent decree, which would have to be approved by a federal judge, agreed to by the MPD itself and overseen by an independent monitor. but shocker.
That does not look like it's going to happen, in a letter to the DOJ, the Memphis city attorney said that they would not accept a decree until they could review and challenge the report. her saying from what we understand, consent decrees remain in place for an average of more than ten years, with absolutely no controls to ensure timely completion or consideration for the financial impact of the affected community. Such a proposal is not the right solution for Memphis.
so what she's referring to there, when she mentions the financial impact or the fines that Memphis would have to pay for every violation of the decree. which, notably opponents of this move argue would cost the city tens of millions of dollars and ultimately hurt the poor communities that it's meant to help. But really, either way, what I would say is we should not actually expect anything to happen here.
right. Because the Trump Justice Department is obviously going to be different than the Biden Justice Department. and understand why you really only have to look at recent history.
Right. Obama use decrees, then Trump then and then Biden did. And now Trump is expected not to.
Again, which is going to be incredibly consequential, not just for Memphis, but a dozen other cities under DOJ scrutiny as well. because the feds have already released similar reports detailing systemic police misconduct in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Louisville, Kentucky.
Phoenix, Arizona. Lexington, Mississippi. And Trenton, new Jersey.
probes ongoing and six other police agencies, though none have locked into consent decrees yet. Right. So I guess the point of talking about this is one to know something is happening and to if you wonder why nothing's being done about it, there you go.
It's not the only, but it's going to be one of the reasons. but then we got to talk about what's being described as the worst telecom hack in our nation's history. Because it's very possible that you're someone that's been affected to some degree.
us now seeing the white House confirming that at least eight of the country's telecommunications companies have been infiltrated by a Chinese hacking group dubbed Typhoon. Well. So if you're one of the international folks that watches, this could affect you as well, because companies in dozens of other countries have also reportedly been targeted as well.
so with all that. Right, the details about Seoul Typhoon Cyberespionage campaign actually started coming out a few months ago for example, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and lumen were identified as companies that may have been hacked. although among those companies, you had T-Mobile saying it doesn't believe that hackers got access to customer information, Lumen also saying there was no evidence of customer data being accessed on its network.
But Verizon, on the other hand, said that it became aware that a highly sophisticated nation state actor accessed its and several other companies networks, and adding there that the incident was focused on a very small subset of individuals in government and politics. but now, this is the most substantial public acknowledgment by the government concerning the scale and reach of the operation. it also being the first time officials are confirming the number of U.
S. carriers known to be affected. one senior official also saying that the global tally of countries impacted was currently believed to be in the low couple dozen.
notably adding that the hacking activity dates back to at least a year or two. the unnamed official also not providing specifics about the number of individuals affected, but saying believe a large number of Americans metadata was taken. do not believe it's every cell phone in the country, but we believe it's potentially a large number of individuals that the Chinese government was focused on.
and so with that, let's talk about metadata. requests explained here by the Guardian, the metadata that we're talking about here is sometimes described as the who, what, when and where a phone calls. It doesn't include the content of a call, but it can tell someone who you called how long it lasts in where you made the call from.
so with that, even without the consent, it can reveal a lot about a person's life, work, and intimate relationships, especially if they have a lot of then beyond that, in this case, the metadata reportedly may have been a way of identifying the phone lines of senior government officials. the hackers then targeted to actually steal unencrypted text messages and even listen in on some phone calls. specifically there, it's been reported that Donald Trump, JD Vance and the Kamala Harris campaign have been among the targets.
and this is you had Biden's deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging tech simply saying that the hacking group had gained access to communications of senior U. S. government officials and political figures.
but also adding there that classified communications had not been compromised, notably also saying we do not believe any have fully removed the Chinese actors from these networks. another senior official claiming that it was impossible for the agencies to predict the time frame on when we'll have full eviction. and so with all that, we're seeing the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issuing new guidance to the country's telecom companies to help root out the hackers and prevent attacks in the future.
with that, including tips like ensuring the traffic is end to end, encrypted to the maximum extent possible. also have officials recommending that Americans use encrypted messaging apps to ensure their communications stay hidden from foreign hackers. which, if you're not familiar, some of the most popular messaging apps out there include WhatsApp and signal.
what's really interesting about all this is that the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies, they have long and repeatedly advocated against end to end encryption. They've said that it keeps them from accessing the information they need to prosecute crimes and prevent terrorism. right.
So a bit of a change a tune, we'll call but for now, we're gonna have to wait to see what happens. Right. This issue has been brought before the Senate with them vowing to do something about it.
whatever else there is to do, I mean, that remains to be seen right now. So I don't know if you've noticed, but political chaos seems to be just the name of the game internationally right now the most recent spotlight being on France right now, Right in there. Because yesterday lawmakers there passed a no confidence measure against Prime Minister Michel Barnier, forcing him to resign.
which was a standout thing in general, but also it was the first successful no confidence vote in France in over 60 years, to mention that it made the Prime Minister's three month old government the shortest lived in the history of France's Fifth Republic. to understand this, what triggered the vote was the prime minister of forcing through a budget proposal without the approval of Parliament's lower house. which is an executive power that the Prime Minister is given under article 49 three of the French Constitution.
a so-called nuclear option. it's rarely ever actually use and almost never popular. And this time, it was exactly the excuse of the opponents in the National Assembly.
We're looking for. that notably included both the Assembly's left wing coalition and the far right National Rally party. or they voted together to pass a no confidence vote.
the were also with that. This is especially being seen as a victory for the National Rally party and its leader, Marine Le Pen. She and her father before been fixtures of French politics for decades now.
in the past two presidential elections, he lost to current President Emmanuel Macron both times in the second round. also notably has Le Pen and members of her party are now accused of embezzling millions of euros of European Parliament funds. prosecutors seeking a five year ban on public office that would prevent her from running for president in the next election in 2027.
right. And the verdict there is expected in late March. And so, Le Pen, she may be hoping that the chaos pushes Macron to resign, that, you know, it would be an even bigger win because the next election would happen before the deadline, right before then.
and in fact, last week she was telling journalists, quote, he won't have very much choice but to resign if he's confronted with enough government instability. though also with that you have analysts and those around Macron repeatedly saying that it is unlikely that he will step down. though there's also is there's really no doubt out there that he is as weak as he has ever been.
Is this chaos that we're seeing right now. It didn't just start this week. probably best to look back to last June, for example, where Macron dissolved the parliament and called a snap election, his help there being that his party would win big and prove that the National Rally support was limited, but that clearly backfired.
in fact, what happened being at the National Rally ended up as the single biggest party in the Assembly. although a coalition of left wing parties actually won more seats overall, no one had a majority. so Macron appointed the center right Barnier to try and break the deadlock.
within the left, vowing to bring down Barnier, basically leaving Le Pen with the power to topple the government at any time. something that notably she held off using until right now. And as far as what's next here, Macron reportedly hopes to name a new prime minister before Saturday's unveiling of Notre Dame.
as of making this video, it is not clear who that will be or if anyone will actually be satisfied enough to keep this from happening again. of the biggest concerns being that the deadline to finalize next year's budget is just December 21st. and so now, it appears virtually impossible that the deadline is going to be met because Parliament supposed to have 70 days to examine the budget once it's submitted.
now, that said, the government should be able to roll this year's budget over to 2025. know, temporarily keeping public workers paid and operations running until a new budget can be adopted. but it's places like The Washington Post have explained, there are debatable legal questions about what powers can be used by an overthrown government in an interim role.
It's really like if someone puts up a stinker or wants to cause chaos, this could sink the country even further into so with that and with France's economy growing slowly and burdened with a massive deficit, there is a real concern about the financial and economic fallout as well. Here. then finally today I want to end with a thank you and to talk about yesterday, starting with a massive thank you to everyone that bought up stuff over beautiful.
Bascombe. Over this past week and a half. was easily our biggest and best drop of the year.
I cannot wait to see you guys loving what you get. also say if you haven't got anything yet, there's still some stock available. but with that said, let's talk about yesterday with some comment commentary.
Rick is, unsurprisingly, a lot of the conversation had to do with the killing of that CEO. as mentioned today with the general story and the updates there, there wasn't a lot of sympathy. a seeing things like the suspect is someone who was denied health care.
Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down? well as my sympathies to the friends and families of all the victims of health insurance companies. when insulin cost $10 to make.
And yet they sell it for $700, which results in thousands of preventable deaths, I find it hard to shed tears for these people. Some others, including, sadly for the CEO of United Healthcare, his death due to lead poisoning was deemed a preexisting condition. So they can't pay out the claim.
Okay. Noting CEOs of health care will get more security. Now, instead of addressing the abysmal state of health care in the US.
people also sharing their own stories. Like my grandma's cancer wasn't found until she was a week from passing Results were normal. So they kept throwing antibiotics for utilize.
At over two years, insurance went an authorize, an ultrasound or anything, passed the blood tests. right. And with those comments where you had people sharing their stories, they were their shoulder to shoulder with comments like, thoughts and prayers haven't been authorized yet.
damn that ten K reward was put into play real fast. Almost as fast as insurance claims are denied. the final comment, kind of just summarizing everything, reading the fact that most of the comments aren't thoughts and prayers about the CEO speaks volumes of how Americans feel about health care.
and while all of those comments were not completely universal, they were the overwhelming majority. which I will say, while I do not personally endorse them, they they're not that shocking. There's always a conversation out there regarding, greed and, and economic crimes actually causing real world harm.
with people furious that no one is held accountable. And then. you pair that in the specific realm of health care where if you haven't been fucked in the health care system, you probably know someone who's been fucked because of the system.
cold people are a number a system that thrives when people do not get the healthcare that they need. And while the system as a whole needs to be overhauled and this guy is just going to get replaced by someone else, it's going to very likely just do the same bullshit. think what we're seeing right now are people using him as an outlet for their rage.
yeah. On those notes, that is where today's show is going to end. Thank you so much for watching today and this week.
Also, if you missed any shows this week, YouTube thinks you'll want to watch this one. But hey, I hope you have a fantastic weekend. And really, either way, I'll see you right back here on Monday.
Love you. Faces. See you then.
