- 'Sup ya beautiful bastards.
Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show
And a few things before we get started.
One, welcome to my new office.
We successfully moved over the weekend and by that,
I mean everything outside of this room is in shambles.
But we're getting there, luckily the team
just absolutely killed it over the weekend
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And let's just jump into it.
Starting off with social and entertainment news
we had a wide range of stories.
First up, we've got the three ring circus
and clown show that is Jake Paul in the news.
Many people have been wondering
who he is going to fight next,
especially because near the end of last month
things appeared to be getting more legitimate
with Jake Paul signing a deal with Showtime Sports.
It's a multi fight deal, and so people were going
okay, is he actually going to fight someone that is
one, a boxer or two has ever in their life
knocked someone out with their fists.
I mean, to date in public fights,
Jake Paul has fought and beaten
a YouTuber, a crab, a former basketball player
and Ben Askren who throws punches like this.
And we got the answer and confirmation today
Jake Paul will be fighting Tyron Woodley,
which, hey, yeah he's still picking a UFC fighter,
but Woodley's got hands.
And on one hand you had a lot of people going,
yes, Tyron Woodley is a guy
that has actually knocked out trained killers.
But at the same time, you had a number
of people saying that Jake Paul is picking
kind of one of the safest legitimate fights that he could.
Noting that Woodley has lost his last four fights
and actually has not won since 2018.
Yeah, ultimately we're gonna have to wait and see.
Is Jake Paul overconfident here,
is he biting off more than he can chew,
or is he going to make another person a meme?
Then we had actress Ellie Kemper in the news,
trending on Twitter,
I think a lot of people clicking on that going, oh
is there another season of, or a spinoff of Kimmy Schmidt?
The answer was no, not that.
And instead, a lot of people
on Twitter calling her a KKK princess.
So the way it started is with tweets like this
sharing a photo of Ellie in 1999 as the winner
of the Veiled Prophet Queen of Love and Beauty pageant
when she was 19 years old
and people digging up the ball's old and racist history.
So a lot of people here are referencing a 2014 article
in the Atlantic about the event
which says that it was started in St. Louis
in 1878 by Confederate cavalrymen and local civic leaders
who wanted to make a Mardi Gras like event.
It also involved a secret board
of local elites choosing an anonymous Veiled Prophet
who would then choose a Queen of Love and Beauty.
With the article saying that one of the reasons
that it was started was to enforce the power of the elite
as there was growing labor unrest throughout the city,
saying the primary goal was to take back the public stage
from populist demands for social and economic justice
with it being meant to reinforce the values of the elite
on the working class of the city.
And adding, "In fact to underline the message
of class and race hegemony,
the image of the first Veiled Prophet
is armed with a shotgun and pistol
and is strikingly familiar in appearance to a Klansman."
And in fact, for several decades, neither Jewish people
nor African-Americans were allowed to participate
in the ceremony.
And even in the early years of the event,
there was public backlash against for amongst other things,
racist stereotypes that were portrayed.
And so what we ended up seeing with this is in the nineties,
the name of the event changed to the Fair St. Louis,
but much of the tradition regarding power
structures remained, with St. Louis' own website saying
"the traditional VP celebration has represented
for St. Louisans a perceived link
between different components of the community
in a holiday celebration, while also reinforcing the notion
of a benevolent cultural elite" and noting
that it was created by white male community leaders.
And so while yes, it definitely obviously has racist roots,
reports are also noting that there's no known ties
to the KKK.
And so as far as what all of this has meant
for Ellie Kemper, well, obviously online
there was still a ton of backlash.
You also have people saying things like
"the Ellie Kemper thing is hilarious
but you people don't really think she's
like a secret Nazi agent and not just
from some dumb ass town
where they make you square dance right?"
As well as the likes of Sarah Moldafsky,
a museum educator in St. Louis
doing a huge thread on this event
and adding that while yes, the ball is rooted
in a deeply troubling past,
today, many daughters of wealthy people participate in it
and its roots are clearly left out.
As we know, organizations whitewash history,
so many young teenage girls participate
in this because of family pressures
with no idea of the background.
And adding, "In fact, many St. Louis residents
are unaware" and adding that she was born and raised there,
but didn't know about it
until she started working in the history museum sector.
Then, let's talk about making babies.
Not me though, I'm done.
I got two, got the snip snip,
playing man-on-man defense for life.
But, you know how recently, we talked
about the U.S. birth rate being low,
there being some concern there.
Well, it's not actually just a U.S.-centric problem.
This is an international issue.
The United States has a birth rate around 1.84,
usually uses immigration to help fill those gaps.
With a birth rate of 2.1, or they refer to it
as a replacement rate, which is a weird way
but an accurate way of describing what making children is.
But yeah, 2.1 to keep a population stable.
South Korea, for example, last year
they had a birth rate of 0.84, the lowest in the world.
And then you also have, and it's the focus today,
China who last year had 12 million births
which notably is down 18% annually.
and is the fourth straight year of decline.
With a number of experts saying
they believe the population there will peak in 2025.
And then you potentially have an issue.
Because, as Morning Brew explains,
fewer babies equal fewer future workers.
And it could upend existing systems of support
for the elderly because younger workers' taxes
subsidize public services for retirees.
So because of this growing fear,
China changed their policy on children yesterday.
If you're unfamiliar, back in 1979,
China enacted a one child per household policy
over fears that they didn't have resources
to provide for a growing population.
They then changed that in 2015
so people could have two children,
and now post pandemic with these growing concerns,
they have made it so that
married couples can now have three children.
But, here's the thing, experts think
that it might not actually help out.
When China instituted the two child policy,
that didn't really result in more births.
And, like in a lot of places including the United States,
when you ask young people
why are you not having babies?
A big part of it is: I don't have the time or the money.
You have a 26 year old professional there
in the New York Times saying, "no matter how
many babies they open it up to, I'm not going to have any
because children are too troublesome and expensive."
Also, it's not just direct monetary costs,
but for women in particular
it's the cost of pausing or potentially losing careers.
But also I should note not every place
is worried about lowering birth rates.
You also have places like Africa
whose population is set to double by 2050.
Which is also part of the reason
that the global population is not expected to go down.
It's around 7.8 billion today.
It is expected to be 11 billion by the year 2100.
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Then, in international news,
we should definitely talk about this deeply troubling
and shocking news coming out of Canada.
So if you haven't seen, it was reported
as we were going into the weekend
and that's often how you kind of like miss stories.
In Canada, there was a mass grave found
with the remains of what is believed to be 215 children
reportedly in British Columbia.
It was a school that was set up
to assimilate indigenous people and ended up
being closed back in 1978.
And the details, I mean, it's just an absolute horror show.
As the BBC explained, Canada's residential schools
were compulsory boarding schools run
by the government and religious authorities.
So they were forcing these kids in.
And the Kamloops Indian Residential School
was the largest in the residential system.
It was opened under the Roman Catholic administration
in 1890.
The central government took over in 1969.
According to Roseanne Casimir,
chief of one of the communities there,
"To our knowledge, these missing children
are undocumented deaths" and adding,
"Some were as young as three years old."
Following this news coming out,
you had Justin Trudeau saying
that this was a painful reminder
of that dark and shameful chapter of our country's history.
I am thinking about everyone affected
by this distressing news.
We are here for you.
And while this story is horrifying
and it's heartbreaking on its own,
what's really scary is this is just a small piece
of a much bigger problem than an issue in the past.
From 1863 to 1998, reportedly,
more than 150,000 indigenous children were taken
from their families and placed in these schools.
And while there, the children were often not
allowed to speak their language or practice their culture.
And, many of course were mistreated and abused.
Notably with all of this,
two notable things happened in 2008.
One, the Canadian government formally apologized
for this system, and two, a commission that was launched
in 2008 to document the impacts of this system
found that large numbers of indigenous children
were never returned to their home communities.
And in fact, according to the Missing Children Project,
which documents the death and the burial places
of the children who died while attending these schools
to date more than 4,100 children who died
while attending a residential school have been identified.
So this most recent finding is kind of just the little bit
of the iceberg that's poking out of the water
compared to the whole horrifying situation,
which, I mean is also part of the reason
why you have so many people saying
we need to investigate even further than we already have.
This is just one school out of over 130.
And then finally, today let's talk about news
around President Biden's infrastructure plan.
So like we talked about last week,
Biden proposed a $2.3 trillion plan,
Republicans came back in the 500 billion range,
Biden comes down to 1.7 trillion,
Senate Republicans then release a plan that's 928 billion.
And with that you had the Biden administration
setting a deadline, saying
I want to come to an actual compromise
with Republicans by this weekend,
with that later changing to June 7th
when Congress actually comes back
from the Memorial day break.
And so with that just being six days away,
there's a question of, will we actually see compromise?
It's unclear if they can actually meet somewhere.
So with that question looming
and the deadline getting closer and closer by the second,
I reached out to and talked to
transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg over the weekend.
One of the first questions I asked him is
with their two different plans,
where are Republicans and Democrats actually close
as well as areas where there's still a lot of debate.
- Well, one area that you see a lot of alignment
is the idea that we got to do a lot around,
for example, our roads and bridges.
Our number came in higher than theirs.
We moved a little bit closer to theirs.
There's a lot of work still to be done
for them to be in the same place.
But it's an area where you can tell we started
in a more similar position.
Other areas we're really pushing for
that didn't seem to be a priority for Republicans,
for example, rail and transit.
Very important to this administration.
I think very important to Americans.
So many Americans depend on transit
to get to where they're going.
So our jobs plan calls for us to double the investment
in transit in the United States.
- But, as we talked about last week,
one of the areas that Republicans and Democrats
are furthest apart is how to actually fund this plan.
Biden wants to pay for the plan by raising corporate taxes.
Republicans have rejected that,
instead wanting to spend unspent COVID relief money.
When I asked Buttigieg is this the area where Republicans
and Democrats differ the most, he agreed.
Would you say the area that Democrats and Republicans
are kind of furthest right now
other than that would be funding?
Because it does appear that Republicans have
flatly rejected the plan to raise corporate taxes.
- Yeah, I think it's accurate to say that's probably
where we've been the furthest apart.
Remember, even though this is a big, big plan, right?
We keep, we started at two plus trillion dollars.
He's also laid out how to fund it in its entirety
without asking most ordinary Americans to pay more in taxes.
We think that corporations need to be paying
their fair share.
A majority of corporations or, sorry,
a number of corporations paid zero on billions of taxes.
And you know, that just doesn't make sense.
We're not calling for a very high tax rate.
We're calling for a tax rate
that's lower than it's been most of the time
since we've been alive, but more balanced
than where we are right now.
We've not found a very detailed plan
on an alternative for how to pay for that
that wouldn't require something the president's
not willing to do, which is put it on ordinary Americans.
So clearly a lot of work to do
if we're going to come to terms on
what they call the pay force,
the question of how you're going to pay for all of this.
Now, there are other funding sources
that have come into the discussion.
One that's interesting is financing authorities,
getting some private dollars into the mix
and that has its place, but it's not going to
be able to do all of the heavy lifting here
which is why we think, certainly the president thinks
that what we've put forward is the best route so far
which is to just get corporations to pay their fair share.
And by the way, you know
who benefits a lot from us doing this is corporations
because we become more competitive.
This is good for the American people.
It's also good for business.
- And so regarding the financing
it does appear that Republicans want to finance
almost everything entirely using unused COVID relief funds.
Is that something that the administration would consider
and if not, why not?
- I'd really think twice
before turning to the COVID relief dollars.
Remember, these are dollars going out
to small businesses, rural hospitals, restaurants, cities,
communities that really need those dollars
and they're doing a lot of good.
They're saving jobs today
by creating certainty about tomorrow.
That's what the rescue plan was about.
And you'd really want to think twice before going back
into those dollars and clawing them back,
especially, again, when we don't have to.
- But even beyond funding levels and mechanisms,
top Republican negotiators have repeatedly said
that there is a fundamental disconnect
over what constitutes infrastructure.
While Republicans believe that it needs to be
traditional definitions like roads and bridges,
the Biden administration thinks
that it should go beyond that.
For example, as Buttigieg explained,
- We found that things like having an elderly parent
that you need to stay and take care of
or not being able to afford childcare,
these are actually keeping people out of the workforce.
So I know that sounds pretty far afield
from a construction job, but it may be that
somebody doesn't have a chance to get a construction job
because she or he is stuck taking care of somebody
because of our failed care infrastructure.
That's how these things fit together.
And that's why we think we need to do them all at once.
- But ultimately we're going to have to wait
to see where the negotiations go.
What happens next week?
Will the deadline be met or not?
Personally, I am a cynic,
but ultimately with this story and interview,
or honestly anything else that stood out to you today,
I'd love to know your thoughts in those comments down below
because this is the end of today's show.
As always, thanks for being a part of this little family
watching the videos, liking, subscribing,
all the good stuff.
With that said, of course as always,
my name's Philip DeFranco.
You've just been Phil'd in.
I love yo faces and I'll see you tomorrow.