The David Pakman Show - BONUS FREEBIE: SCOTUS asked to overturn same sex marriage, Ken Paxton wants Beto O'Rourke in jail

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

-- On the Bonus Show: Ken Paxton tries to jail Beto O'Rourke, Supreme Court is asked to overturn same sex marriage, Mike Lee introduces a bill to criminalize porn nationwide, and much more... Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership  Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com/  Buy David's book: https://davidpakman.com/book 

Hey, everybody, David here. What you're about to hear is an episode of the bonus show. We do a bonus show every day for our members. And for a limited time, we will release one of the week's bonus shows on Saturdays exclusively for our audio podcast listeners. If you'd like to get access to all of the bonus shows, simply sign up at join packman.com. Here is that bonus show episode. Welcome to the bonus show. We have a lot to talk about today, but because we sort of left yesterday on a cliffhanger of what exactly are the oranges of Marjorie Taylor Green's Jewish space laser claims. So Pat has taken a look at this. What is the black and white sort of of where this all came from? Oh, yes. After yesterday's bonus show, I spent the entire evening delving into the Jewish space.

laser's controversy, whether Marjorie Taylor Green had said that or not. And after my exhaustive research, what I found is that back in 2018, she posted on Facebook speculating that wildfires in California were due to space-based solar generators that were funded by the Rothschild family, which of course is a Jewish family. So she didn't use the term Jewish space lasers in particular. She didn't say that verbatim, but that is essentially the gist. of what she was talking about. Got it. And she is not claiming that that was like a staff post or anything.

She's just claiming, I never used the term Jewish space lasers. Yeah, she says that it was years ago back in 2018. She since moderated herself. She's still conspiratorial, sure, but she's not as crazy as she was back then. Remember, when she first on the scene, we were all calling her the Q&on Congresswoman. So this was before she started to backtrack on some of the more absurd claims. All right. Well, so that's, those are the oranges of it. We now know them for going forward. Ken Paxton of Texas is asking a judge to throw Beto O'Rourke in jail for fundraising the Texas

walkout, arguing that the group was deceptively fundraising for and illegally supporting the walkout of Texas Democrats in protest over the gerrymandering. the Asco in Texas, Paxton is suing O'Rourke. He's also suing his political group, which is called Powered by the People, and says that they were being deceptive. There was, there were illegal actions there. He was soliciting donations that would automatically, rather repeatedly solicited donations at a rally by urging the crowd to text fight to a number, which would respond to a link to donate and that, uh, They are that this is illegal, that there was an injunction and that he wasn't supposed to be doing that.

But he still did. And people were still being texted this link. And that is the claim. Now, you know what, Pat? When it comes to these injunctions, I'm open to the idea that an activity over which there was an injunction continued after the date of the injunction that that's possible. That needs to be evaluated. The idea that Beto O'Rourke as an individual should be imprisoned for that based on what he

said at a rally seems like a little bit much, although I admit my understanding of Texas law in this particular area is not extraordinarily deep. This seems like a bit much. Absolutely. It seems like it's politically opportunistic. And it's one further step down the road of authoritarianism that we've seen, especially in recent months since Trump took the presidency again, there was already talk about putting or arresting some of the lawmakers that fled Texas. They couldn't do a criminal arrest, but they could do some sort of civil arrest. And that still very much could be in the future. So is it really an extra step to say that Beto O'Rourke could be criminally arrested over what allegedly took place here? I don't think

it's a step too far to assume that that could possibly happen. My sense is that maybe they just want to do this to threaten Beto to make sure that he, stops talking. But this actually could be something that's on the table right now. Yeah. And one of the wildest things about all of this is we've talked before about how if ideas are really good or really bad, my preference is to kind of allow the free market to dictate that. And if what Texas Republicans are doing is a great thing, then they should be able to to just tell people, hey, if you oppose this, here's what you can do. But if the population of Texas goes, why would I oppose this? I think what Texas Republicans are doing is great. You shouldn't

really need the force of the legal system in order to try to sway a political outcome. And as James Talariko said on Fox News yesterday, what they're doing isn't popular. And so the problem that Republicans are having, and I realize I'm zooming out a little bit from Beto O'Rour. and the fundraising specifically. The problem Republicans are having is that people simply hearing about what they're doing creates a problem for them. And that's why they're going through all of these extra measures to try to get in the way of activism that is going to say, we don't think that there should be gerrymandering in this way in Texas. That's really the problem that Republicans have. Where do you think this story ends? Do you think Texas will be able

to successfully redistrict? If so, will California redistrict themselves, will other states like Indiana do the exact same thing? Because right now we're in this standoff, right? Texas is trying to get it approved. Gavin Newsom is moving forward on getting his own redistricting plan put in place. Maybe all sides could back off here or maybe everyone could start redistricting. I don't really see a middle ground though at this point. No.

If Texas decides to shoot the first shot, then California and others are going to follow. So my real answer is I have not. no idea. If I had to make a prediction, I think it's slightly more likely than not that Texas ends up not doing this redistricting. I would say like 55, 45, 45 or 6040, I think Texas ends up not doing it. Yeah. The only issue is people would have to back down these very proud Republicans who feel emboldened, who know they're in a position of power right now, would have to willingly say, let's not do this. And they would need a way to save face if that was the case. Yep. So we will see. But I guess if I had to bet one way or the other, that's kind of where I would

land on it. Here is something that is so not surprising, something we predicted in the least shocking headline ever, 10 years after the Supreme Court extended marriage rights to same sex couples nationally, the Supreme Court justice this fall is going to consider whether to take up a case that is asking them to reverse that decision. Remember, that there is this woman, Kim Davis, the former Kuki Kentucky County Clerk, who was jailed for six days when she, as far as she considered, courageously refused to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple on religious grounds. There was a $100,000 jury verdict for emotional damage and a $260,000 verdict for attorney's fees that went against her. She has filed a certiorari

a writ of Sir Tiorari, where she argues that her First Amendment protection for free exercise of religion immunizes her from any liability for what she did in refusing that marriage license. She says that when the Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges, which extended marriage rights to same couples under the 14th Amendment, that that was egregiously wrong and that it must be corrected. We knew that there would be an effort to overturn same-sex marriage. We knew that after Trump was reelected, he got his picks last time. We knew this was the direction it was going.

I didn't expect it to come specifically through Kentucky County clerk Kim Davis. And my prediction, Pat, is that the Supreme Court is not even going to hear this. Well, it's actually not all that surprising that it would come from Kim Davis because in order to present a lawsuit like this, you need an aggrieved party. And she's probably one of the few plaintiffs who would have standing to present such a case because- You know what's funny about that, Pat. What's so funny about that is after 10 years of gay marriage, they still don't have anyone who's been aggrieved by the ruling.

That's exactly right. So they have to go to Kim Davis to present this lawsuit. We've long suspected this would be their plan. This is exactly what Republicans did with abortion. And ultimately, they were able to succeed in overturning Roe versus Wade. So this could be the game plan for same-sex marriage. And maybe it's not this particular case that succeeds. I think it took a few attempts when it came to abortion before one finally did succeed.

So this may be the first in several attempts that we see from these right-wingers to overturn same-sex marriage. And another thing that I saw is that support for same-sex marriage has actually been declining among Republicans. It peaked out in 2021 at 55 percent. That's Republicans support for same-sex marriage. Now it's at 41 percent, according to Gallup. So Republicans really have backtracked on these social issues. They're getting more authoritarian. They're getting more restrictive.

A lot of them wants to bring in a Christian nationalist point of view in our governance. And we're seeing it manifested with moves like these. Just as like a little side note, whatever the Supreme Court, imagine the Supreme Court takes the case and rules the 2015 decision was wrongly decided. marriage is done, any existing marriages would not be invalidated. And I, again, I don't expect it to go in that direction, but it is still something, I guess, to keep in mind. Do you also think that this is not going to lead to the Supreme Court overturning gay marriage?

Probably not this particular case, but I think it could be the first of many attempts by Republicans, and eventually one could get through. Yep. No, I think that's the concern that if you keep trying, it's sort of like the effort to overturn Roe v. Wade, which eventually, when they got all the right circumstances, it did end up happening. Republican Senator Mike Lee has a bill to make all pornography a federal crime. The first step pushing this forward has happened. That step is advancing the bill to committee to be reviewed. This is called IODA, the interstate obscenity definition act. This would be a blanket ban on

pornography, it would redefine the term obscenity to mean prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion. I guess they're going to ban Twitter. And it's going to depict, describe, or represent actual or stimulated sexual act. I don't know if that's supposed to say simulated. For some reason, they put stimulated. It's everything about this is really weird, Pat, with the objective intent to arouse titillate or gratify sexual desires where taken as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political,

or scientific value. So if there is porn that you could go, no, what's happening here is so interesting, it's scientists are looking at it. Then you could be like, okay, that one's legal, but man, this is so stupid. This is just so stupid. Yeah. And the law is so vague that it could also apply to TV shows and movies, depending on the extent to which they have graphic content.

So, like, Game of Thrones potentially could be banned if this bill was to pass. I know there are always, like, things going on in the country. We can always say, oh, is this really the right time to be focusing on this particular niche issue or whatever the case may be? But you'd have to imagine with so much going on right now with the D.C. police being federalized, with Trump trying to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, worries about the economy when it comes to inflation and jobs, the immigration stuff that's going on. why why this why is this the thing that they want to focus on right now? Why is this a priority for Mike Lee? I mean, I think so first of all, Mike Lee is kind of a weird dude who always seems focused on whatever his pet projects are. And I don't know if there is like Mormon influence over him because he's a Utah senator and there are certainly views on a lot of these things

in Utah, particularly among the Mormon community. So I don't know if that's a factor in some way. But I do think that there, Mike Lee is sort of a traditionalist in the sense of when things aren't going so well economically, try to use social issues to get people together or activated or angry. And this seems like a pretty transparent effort at that. Yeah, that's probably right. And fair or unfair, whenever I hear about a politician putting forth a bill like this or whenever people are really obsessed with this banning pornography issue in general, I just suspect that they may have an issue with it. Like, maybe it's something that they should be doing less of themselves, but they shouldn't try to legislate their morality

and spread that across the country. Like, I get the sense that maybe he's repressed in some way and this is actually kind of telling on himself. That's always the sense I get when I hear about these sorts of proposals. Oh, absolutely. And I guess, one other thing I do want to mention, which is I've been seeing these analyses of how much of Project 2025 has been accomplished so far. And depending on the analyses and depending on how you characterize it, up to half of it has been accomplished, which is terrifying. But Project 2025 does include a pornography ban. And so I guess in that sense to answer the issue you brought up, Pat, which is like, why is he doing this why now sort of thing. It is a priority.

not a top priority of Project 2025. It's in there. Yeah, that suggests if they've already accomplished 50% of what they want to do, then they can now focus on the other 50% for their remaining time that Trump has control of all Congress before the midterms come up. Then they certainly have plenty of time to do it. So, of course, I don't think that this bill is going to pass. You're not going to get 60 votes for it in the Senate. So this is probably going to be something that goes unaccomplished. But just the fact that they're dedicating resources to this issue, the fact that staffers for Mike Lee's office had to spend some time drawing up this piece of legislation, talking about the secretions and simulating versus stimulating. It's just all so wacky.

It's all completely wacky. And the question that is going to be increasingly facing Republicans if this is, of course, if there is a sense that they are not going to do well in 2026, the question will be, what can we try to do? And very often when, you know, even if your economic record isn't good, usually elected officials try to say it is good and they try to defend it, but if it really starts to seem as though this is not going to go well for them next year, which at this point, we're only 15 months from the midterm elections, my guess is you will start to see the laundry list of sort of like, how can we make people afraid type of ideas? And I don't know if the porn ban is really a reaction to something that makes most people afraid, you know,

but I do think you're going to see them start to test a lot of these different things. What can we do to try to get some traction, given that the economic case to be made isn't very good right now? Yeah, they could focus on their successes when it comes to social issues. They can talk about how they rolled back the EI, for example, and got a whole bunch of universities and big corporations to bend the knee to Trump. That's going to be persuasive maybe to the average Republican voter to get them to come back out to the polls for the midterms.

But appealing to independence, that's not going to work when it comes to that group because you have to be focused on the economy and bigger issues, not just these pet projects. Without a doubt. So we're going to follow all of these ideas and see where they land. But that's what Mike Lee is prioritizing right now. So good for him, I guess, even though it seems like a completely pointless waste of time. All right. We'll be back tomorrow with a new show and a new bonus.

This show.