- Sup you beautiful bastards?
Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show,
your daily dive into the news.
We got a lot to talk about today.
So buckle up, hit that like button,
and let's just jump into it.
Starting with, you know,
a lot of the time we talk about violence happening,
it involves guns, which makes sense, we're America.
I mean, hey this will be a fun little game.
In America, when someone is 1 to 18 years old and they die,
what percentage of those deaths
do you think involve a firearm?
I'll give you a second.
Blurt out the first number you think.
It's about one in five, about 19%.
That's what the data showed us in 2021.
Thank you for playing Phil's Sad Trivia.
The story that I wanna talk about outta California today,
involves a different weapon, right?
Because this specific dollar store in California
has been dealing with a chronic thief.
They just keep ignoring the warnings, they keep coming back.
And so after one of the incidents,
the cashier says that she asked the manager
for permission to pursue the man if he came back.
Well they're saying they gave her the green light to do so.
So sure enough, she says the guy comes back,
he leaves the store carrying flowers, chips, donuts, bread,
cheese, bologna, and other items without paying.
And so she hops into her car, she chases him down,
he supposedly says, fuck you bitch.
And a ring doorbell caught what happened next.
Where they're swerving left into his bike,
knocking him to the ground,
and scattering the allegedly stolen goods
all over someone's front yard.
(people yelling) (bleeping)
- And so while he's threatening to press charges,
she's scooping up the goods,
she's trying to put them in her car,
also tossing his bike.
And then after she claims in an interview with TMZ,
that she merely pulled up in front of him to make him stop,
but he kept going and hit her.
But they're also getting emotional
about the injustice of it all.
- Every bone in my body hurts just from working so hard
and you've got this person just stealing stuff.
I loved my job at Dollar General. I did.
I took it seriously, just like everybody said, I did.
I didn't have to go after him, but he just kept,
he's gonna keep doing it, he's gonna keep doing it.
- But for now,
she's reportedly been fired from that Dollar General.
She's also had to take up a job with DoorDash instead,
though that might be for the best,
'cuz clearly her talent's behind the wheel.
But for now, we'll have to wait to see
if there's any further fallout.
And I'll ask you, what are your thoughts with this?
Cause I know we've talked a lot recently about security
and what to do and not to do and the laws around it.
And then AOC thinks Elon Musk is her soulmate,
wants American citizens to print their own money,
and she believes she's the modern day Marilyn Monroe.
Rather, you might think that she thinks that,
because of a viral Twitter account that's parodying her.
An account that has now amassed over 277,000 followers
and one that AOC is not happy about, right?
Because even though it has parody at the very, very end,
the account name is so long,
you can't always see that clearly, right?
It looks near identical to AOCs actual account,
because of Musk's changes, for just $8 a month,
it has that blue check mark,
AOC technically has a gray check mark.
But in addition to the people that are loving
what's really just trolling at the end of the day,
or a number of people who are being tricked
into thinking this is a real account.
I mean even the fucking likes of Mr. Beast was like,
not gonna lie, I actually thought this was real at first.
Not to mention that the account got a ton of visibility
when Elon Musk himself interacted with it,
with him responding to a tweet where fake AOC said,
she had a crush on him with a fire emoji.
And it feels like since then that parody account
has just been plastered all over my for you page.
So with how much this account has blown up,
AOC wasn't pleased, writing,
FYI, there's a fake account on here,
impersonating me and going viral.
The Twitter CEO has engaged it, boosting visibility.
It is releasing false policy statements and gaining spread.
I am assessing with my team how to move forward.
In the meantime, be careful of what you see.
And again, with that non-political people like Mr. Beast,
wondering how is Elon letting this slide?
And so now you have AOC on Blue Sky, a Twitter alternative,
seemingly debating leaving Twitter altogether.
As I'm really wondering about where the line is
to leave the other place.
I am concerned about next year's election,
given Musk putting his finger on the scale in Turkey, etc.
There is a line where the harm of unchecked disinfo
exceeds the benefits of direct, authentic communication.
It's really sad.
And saying, you know,
this goes beyond harassment and trolling.
Writing, right now many of these folks
are sending up test balloons.
Trump's use of AI in the DeSantis video,
Musk's censorship in Turkey for the election.
All of it is precedent setting
and testing waters ahead of '24.
It will get worse.
Question is how to respond when the government overall won't
or may not in time.
And then writers and actors from Lost
are alleging that there was a toxic
and racist work environment on the show's set.
Yes, we're talking about that show Lost,
the show that ended 13 years ago.
The show I got into a fight over
with one of my best friends at the time,
because I was like trying to convince myself
that I was fine with the finale.
I didn't waste all that time for a bullshit ending.
But these reports are just surfacing now,
as Vanity Fair published an excerpt from the book,
"Burn It Down, Power, Complicity,
and a Call for Change in Hollywood,"
which comes from writer Maureen Ryan.
And for this book, several writers and actors spoke to her,
including Harold Perrineau, he played Michael on the show.
And also if you're unfamiliar with Lost,
it had this massive ensemble cast,
with it often highlighting one character in each episode.
And as Harold argued, the story quickly began focusing
more on the white characters
and pushing the characters of color to the side.
Saying, it became pretty clear that I was the black guy,
Daniel Dae Kim was the Asian guy,
and then you had Jack and Kate and Sawyer.
With this he said he tried to reach out
to showrunner, Damon Lindelof,
and executive producer Carlton Cuse about this.
Right to say, hey, I think my character deserves more,
saying, if you're going to use me, let's work.
I'm here to work.
I'm good at my job and I'll be anything you want except be,
quote, the black guy on your show.
But by the time that season two was wrapping up,
Harold was told that his character wouldn't be returning,
with Carlton allegedly saying,
well you said you don't have enough work here,
so we're letting you go.
And some sources claiming that after Harold was let go,
Damon said that the actor quote,
called me racist so I fired his ass.
And that of course is just one of the allegations.
There are other allegations about people from the show.
Like when one staffer was adopting an Asian child,
one person said, quote,
no grandparent wants a slanty-eyed grandchild.
High-level writers would also allegedly
speak fake Korean gibberish that they pretended was Korean
and then they would laugh about it.
On top of that, people allegedly joked
about putting a whites only sign in the office bathrooms,
because the cleaning staff would use them.
You also had writer Monica Owusu-Breen,
seemingly corroborating Harold's claim,
saying the show's staff
really didn't like the characters of color.
And adding that the environment was just toxic overall.
Saying, I can only describe it as hazing.
It was very much middle school and relentlessly cruel.
And I've never heard that much racist commentary
in one room in my career.
And saying she had to speak up to Carlton Cuse,
because he was talking about writing
the death of the character Mr. Echo,
by saying, I wanna hang in from the highest tree.
God if we could only cut his dick off
and shove it down his throat.
So Monica said,
she was clearly very angry about those remarks
and said, you may wanna temper the lynching imagery,
lest you offend.
Other sources saying they felt sick
that this death was being discussed in this way
and there was this gleeful sense about it.
Monica also adding that after this conversation,
she and her writing partner were fired from Lost.
Also with all this, for their part,
both Damon and Carlton did issue responses,
included in the book's excerpt.
Regarding his treatment of Harold Damon,
said he did not recall ever saying
the remark about firing his ass
because he said he was racist.
But also adding,
what can I say other than it breaks my heart
that that was Harold's experience.
And I'll just cede that the events that you're describing
happened 17 years ago
and I don't know why anybody would make that up about me.
With Damon even adding that Harold was right to point out
that the white characters were getting
better, deeper stories and he regrets all that in hindsight,
further adding, my level of fundamental inexperience
as a manager and a boss,
my role as someone who was supposed to model
a climate of creative danger and risk taking,
but provide safety and comfort
inside of the creative process, I failed in that endeavor.
And adding, I have significantly evolved and grown
and it shouldn't have had to come at the cost and the trauma
of people that I hurt on Lost.
Carlton also saying that it broke his heart
to hear of people's bad experiences
and he didn't know that they felt that way at the time.
And so with all this,
I'm gonna leave you with two things.
The first being that I'm gonna link
to the full excerpt below,
where they had much longer responses overall,
there were also more allegations.
I'm just trying to give you the condensed version.
And two, especially if you were a fan of the show,
what are your thoughts hearing these allegations?
And then we're seeing labor movements
in every facet of society right now.
In addition to things,
like the writer strike that's going on,
you have workers everywhere from Amazon to Starbucks
moving to unionize and make demands.
And it turns out eSports is no different, because right now,
we're seeing a huge dispute play out between Riot Games,
the makers of League of Legends,
and the players of its North American tournament series.
With all this leading to a player walk out
and the possibility of the whole thing
just getting canceled.
Also, for those of you unfamiliar with the gaming space,
let alone the competitive gaming space, do not worry,
I'm not gonna leave you behind, right?
So League has become one of the most popular games worldwide
and it's LCS tournament seasons
get hundreds of thousands of views per match.
Lately we've seen eSports as a whole
taking massive hits as investments have dried up,
leaving many teams and leagues to reconsider
how they wanna approach the space.
And in League's case,
you had teams wanting a requirement that was in place
to be dropped,
specifically that they had to work with amateur teams
and Riot agreed to that.
And so as expected,
the pro teams dropped their amateur squads,
and then players from the LCS Players Association
overwhelmingly voted to walk out and protest,
demanding that Riot reinstate the amateur requirements,
but also issuing a list of five demands,
most of which were denied.
Those including things like,
demanding that there would be a better structure
for amateur players to actually get into the Pro League
if they win in the lower division series.
For those of you familiar with different things,
like think of what the English Premier Football League does
or what Riot does with Valorant.
There Riot flatly told them no,
citing the teams in the LCS pay 10 million per year,
just to get a spot.
With really the only arguable win,
being that Riot promised to give $300,000
to the amateur league in order to help jumpstart it.
With that being only a single increment,
which is a far cry from the $300,000 per team per year
that players demanded.
And so that's why with this Riot
has delayed the season by two weeks
to give the two sides a chance to negotiate.
But at the same time,
hanging over the head of all these players
is the threat of losing their spots to scabs.
With Riot reportedly still requiring LCS teams
to field a squad that will play
and lifted all restrictions on who qualifies,
which led to people supporting the LCS Players Association
to beg other players not to take those spots.
But also on top of that,
Riot has the ultimate trump card by threatening
to just cancel the entire summer season,
which would be absolutely massive, because that would mean
that none of the North American teams
would be able to qualify for worlds,
which is the massive tournament that ends the year
and has the largest prize pool.
You know with this,
we've seen a lot of reactions from people in the scene,
both people who are a part of it and people who watch,
with people like Brandon Collamer,
a caster and analyst for amateur leagues in the circuit,
tweeting, not sure it needs to be said,
but if you're a player,
whoever hopes of making LCS, don't be a scab.
The league is still dependent on player vouches and opinions
and you'll ruin your reputation amongst your fellow players.
While Ashley Kang,
who's deeply involved in the Korean League scene,
made fun of the fact that teams are now scrambling
to find players, saying seven LCS orgs opted out of Academy,
a solution for investing, developing,
scouting for new NA talent.
Now the very same teams are running around
trying to find any upcoming NA talent they can.
The irony does exist.
We also have some a little skeptical
of the LCS players association's motivations, right?
Christian Rivera for example,
who makes League content,
and used to be part of the North American
amateur to pro pipeline, tweeted,
just remember that the director of the LCS PA
didn't even know how many teams were in NACL,
even after this whole talk of a walkout started,
and saying he refuses to believe
that their actions are genuine.
They're looking through all this.
Most of the reactions against the players
really haven't come from people
heavily involved in the industry.
But instead it looks like fans having takes like,
LCS players are not hypocritical here.
I mean they stop challenger series because of lack of money,
but they don't have money because LCS players
are mostly overpaid.
And some saying LCS has become a paradise of overpaid pros.
They want guaranteed everything with zero results.
But hey, with that, whether you're an outsider like myself,
or you're someone that loves League,
you're super engaged in this stuff,
let me know your thoughts on what we're seeing go down.
And then you know,
something that I'll admit is that doing the news,
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And then in political news,
we need to talk about the debt ceiling bill
and Kevin McCarthy,
because with such a narrow split in the house,
it's been a fascinating thing to watch.
So the bill,
which includes a range of spending caps and cuts,
but also falls far short of what Republicans
had initially asked for, passed a key hurdle yesterday,
barely squeezing through the House Rules Committee
with a seven to six vote.
And leading up to the vote today,
Democratic and Republican leadership both saying,
they believe they have enough votes
to pass the measure, right,
just requires a simple majority of 218 yeses.
But at the same time we were seeing,
there was an increasing stream of GOP defections,
especially for more far right members,
who think that the deal doesn't have enough spending cuts
and is too favorable for Biden,
though leading up to the vote,
there were no fully locked down numbers, right?
According to a whip list from The Hill,
you had about 30 Republicans saying,
they will not vote for the bill.
We also had Axios reporting yesterday
that GOP leadership has rejected as many as 60 defections,
which is why so much of this has been seen
as a life or death situation for McCarthy,
because not only are we talking about votes
that actually impact a real piece of legislation,
there's a war of optics happening.
The more support he gets from Republicans,
the better it is for him.
It makes him look like a strong party leader,
who has the support of his caucus.
He negotiated a good deal,
but on the flip side, if a lot of his party defects,
it makes him look like a weak leader.
And if you have a situation where there's an outsized number
of Democrats supporting the bill,
it gives more power to the argument among those defectors
that this is a weak deal
and Biden got off with a great break.
Even though progressive Democrats,
like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have said,
they will not support the deal, because of the concessions.
And so in the lead,
if you have a number of Republicans saying,
if this bill passes
with more votes from Democrats than Republicans,
McCarthy's gonna have hell to pay.
With multiple far right members even floating the idea
of taking away his speakership entirely.
So some very high stakes here,
we're gonna see how it plays out tonight,
but obviously with whatever happens,
we're gonna talk about it and break it down tomorrow.
And then in the past 24 hours you may have seen the headline
that Trump's promising to end birthright citizenship
for the children of illegal immigrants
if he's elected president again.
With that being the automatic citizenship
for any child born in the United States,
with him even releasing a video saying,
he would make the move by executive order
on the first day back in office.
But here's the thing, if you're getting a sense of deja vu,
like did this already happen?
Well that's because it did.
He promised this same thing when he ran back in 2016,
with him then proceedings to over the next four years,
not do that.
Or once he got elected,
he just kind of dropped the issue for a while,
with him only bringing it back up
when he was gearing up for the 2020 fight.
And according to Trump himself,
there's no excuse that he didn't do it.
With him telling Axios back in 2018,
that his advisors had informed him
he could do this via executive order
and he promised it's in the process, it'll happen.
But then like with a lot of things Trump said,
it just didn't.
Instead he just continued to float the idea
in speeches on Twitter,
and even as a last minute move
after he lost the 2020 election.
You know, looking into this, that's likely in large part,
because legal experts widely agree
that the president can't just use an executive order
to scrap birthright citizenship,
because it's literally enshrined in the Constitution.
It was established under the 14th Amendment,
which was ratified in 1868, and explicitly states,
all persons born or naturalized in the United States
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
are citizens of the United States.
And in addition to that 125 years,
a Supreme Court precedent have established
that the amendment includes children born in the US,
regardless of their parents' immigration status.
And while yes, precedent really hasn't mattered
with this specific Supreme Court,
any experts say that even with this Supreme Court,
we're talking about an insanely high bar, because again,
in addition to the over a century of precedent,
it is literally a constitutional amendment.
And then there are two ways to look at this.
One, the Federal Court of Appeals
just upheld the longstanding American tradition
of protecting the uber wealthy.
Or two, a multi-billion dollar settlement
has finally been approved
to help those suffering from the opioid crisis.
And that's 'cuz yesterday the US Court of Appeals
for the Second Circuit ruled,
that the Sackler family of Purdue Pharma
will contribute $6 billion to the company's settlement
in exchange for immunity from current and future lawsuits
regarding the opioid epidemic.
But for those unfamiliar
with this specific blight on humanity,
the Sackler family owns Purdue Pharma,
which introduced Oxycontin, a very potent painkiller,
back in the nineties,
and notably advertised it as not addictive.
But of course since then the opioid overdose epidemic
has absolutely exploded,
causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
And with that many pointing an accusatory finger at Perdue,
along with other manufacturers in a pharmacy chain.
So you had thousands of lawsuits against Purdue
starting to roll in,
claiming the company was misleading
in its advertising of the drug,
with Perdue declaring bankruptcy back in 2019,
which put a temporary hold on lawsuits
and other creditors against the company.
But a very key note there,
was that individuals in the Sackler family
did not declare bankruptcy.
So then in September of 2021,
a bankruptcy judge ruled the Sackler family must contribute
4 billion to the settlement
and gave the family extensive legal protections.
But that pissed off a lot of people,
'cuz they were saying the Sacklers received
10 billion in payments from Purdue
and they were getting the protection of bankruptcy
without actually filing it themselves.
So a couple of months later in December,
a US District Judge throughout that proposal.
Perdue then appealed that decision.
And it brings us to now.
with the court arguing that the Sacklers
needed to be shielded to quote,
ensure the fair distribution of the settlement money.
But notably, the family now has broad legal protection
from civil lawsuits regarding the opioid epidemic.
Though I would say a very key thing here,
is the legal protection does not extend to criminal charges,
should any be brought against the Sackler family.
Which again, if the government
actually wants to hold people accountable
and make people not do certain things,
there shouldn't be fines, there shouldn't be settlements,
you should go to fucking jail.
This is a fine, not a punishment.
Now as for what's next,
the settlement money is set to go to victims, survivors,
and state and local governments,
or the money meant to be used
to fight the overdose epidemic.
You had to produce saying in a statement,
our focus going forward is to deliver billions of dollars
of value for victim compensation,
opioid crisis abatement, and overdose rescue medicines.
Our creditors understand the plan as the best option
to help those who need it most.
However, understandably,
there are those that are not happy,
including the Connecticut AG, saying the Sackler family
used the bankruptcy code, quote,
to escape justice and shield their blood money.
But with that, going on to add,
our settlement was both significant and imperfect,
and saying there will never be enough justice
to match the depths of pain and suffering
the Sackler family caused.
But we recognized that we had pushed this as far as we could
and that it was necessary to get communities, victims,
and their families the resolution
and billions of dollars of funding desperately needed
to save lives and fight the opioid epidemic.
And so with there being two drastically different reactions
to this news, I gotta ask you,
what camp are you landed in and why?
And then, Delta Airlines is lying to you.
That is what a new California
class action lawsuit is saying, right?
'Cuz Delta announced their goal of carbon neutrality
a couple of years ago.
A statement that makes you go, but fucking how?
You're planes.
How can you be a carbon neutral airplane company?
And the way they were pursuing this
was by purchasing carbon offsets.
That's when companies buy the right to emit more carbon
by investing in green programs.
And so Delta began advertising
as the world's first carbon neutral airline.
But here's the thing,
the carbon offset market isn't wholly accurate,
and according to the lawsuit,
usually over promises and under delivers
on their carbon impact,
meaning that, according to the suit,
Delta has not been carbon neutral
since making the promise back in 2020.
So Mayanna Berrin is suing Delta
for misrepresenting itself to consumers
and encouraging them to pay higher prices.
And so with that,
arguing that Delta should pay damages to customers,
and her attorney is accusing Delta of greenwashing,
saying consumers can't make informed eco-friendly choices
if companies are misleading them.
And adding, we're not guessing about the science.
The fact is that it has been well-documented,
especially abroad, that there are severe issues
with the offsets that Delta relies upon.
But with that, it should also be noted
that Delta's not the only one at play here.
With, last week, for example,
research from a nonprofit watchdog,
said that 93% of the offsets bought by Chevron
between 2020 and 2022 were worthless.
And reports, noting that another investigation this year,
it said that 90% of rainforest offsets approved by Verra,
the world's leading carbon credit certifier,
and notably used by major companies like Disney and Shell,
were worthless and they could actually be increasing
global heating.
And so when you pair that with the fact
that this market is absolutely booming right now,
we're seeing more and more calls
for this market to get regulated.
But in the meantime,
you have companies like Delta
trying to dispute the claims saying,
hey, we actually plan on achieving net zero by 2050.
And they transitioned their focus
to decarbonizing their operations,
rather than carbon offsets.
And that is where today's show ends.
As always, thank you for being a part
of my daily dive into the news for you.
My name's Philip DeFranco,
you've just been filled in.
I love your faces and I'll see you tomorrow.