The Philip DeFranco Show - The $200k LEGO Thief Scandal is Insane

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Starting point is 00:00:28 That was easy. This $200,000 Lego scandal is literally one of the craziest things I've ever seen. The Nazi misogyny situation that you might not be aware of is getting even worse. And we've got huge news on Trump's gerrymandering wars. We're talking about all of that on today's brand new Philip DeFranco show you daily dive into the news. So buckle up, hit that like button, let's just jump into it, starting with this. Because we have got to talk about what may be the greatest YouTube conspiracy of the decade. You've got corporate Lego thieves, vigilante YouTubers, legal battles, police raids, even the Mormon churches involved.

Starting point is 00:00:59 And it all starts with one of the biggest Lego collections in the entire world. Right, to meet the main guy behind this story, Brian Mansell. And Brian says that his dad, he began collecting Star Wars Lego sets in the early 2000s. He's been racking him up for some 20 years until he had a collection worth up to $200,000. But then in November of 2023, with his dad suffering from health complications, Brian decides, hey, it's time to sell the Legos. And so he goes to a franchise Lego store in Salem, Kaiser, Oregon. It's called bricks and mini figs, and he signs a consignment agreement with its owner, Crystal Law Gorman.

Starting point is 00:01:24 And according to the contract, and this was reviewed by the Salem Business Journal, While Brian would retain full ownership over the Lego sets, Bricks and Minifigs, they'd sell them out of its store giving Brian 65% of the proceeds. But then here's where it gets complicated, right? Because one year later, Gorman was planning to leave the country, so she reached out to Bricks and Minifig's corporate office. And both sides of that exchange, they have wildly different accounts of what happened next. Corporate's chief executive, Amin McNeff?

Starting point is 00:01:45 He claims that Gorman wanted to close the store, but he told her that wasn't an option. She then becomes uncooperative and he terminates the franchise agreement. And since according to him, Gorman owed corporate some $200,000, that allowed him to seize the store's assets to pay off her debts. But in Gorman's telling the story, she says she wanted to sell the store, not just close it, but corporate seized it immediately, then threatened her, wouldn't let her conduct an inventory,

Starting point is 00:02:05 and then forced her out the same night. And she also disputes that $200,000 debt and argues that corporate used it as a pretext to take the entire store. But either way, for Brian, he says that the issue for him was that all the Lego sets that he legally owned were still lining the store's shelves. And so then with all this, you had Gorman releasing what she claims is video footage from the store in which you can hear her telling a corporate representative about Brian's agreement, and you have the rep rep replying that the store's new owners, he'll take it over. These are ones that haven't, he has not been paid his percentage yet.

Starting point is 00:02:31 And if I don't have any tickets, I won't know how much I need to pay. That's a business thing and not necessarily you are taking on the business he kicks on all that. So Brian, he then reportedly sends a letter to the store's new owners, canceling the agreement, demanding the money that he was owed, and asked for any unsold Lego sets back. But according to Brian, the new owners denied any knowledge of that agreement and corporate told him to take it up with Gorman. But of course, he was like, what do you, what do you talk? about, Gorman doesn't own the store anymore. You guys own it and you have my Legos.

Starting point is 00:02:58 But I'm also claiming that this is what happened when he argued with a corporate rep about it. The guy, just looks at me, crosses his arms, and goes, let me tell you what's gonna happen. If we go to court, we're gonna drag this thing out so long, and you're gonna end up spending so much more money than your collection is ever worth or what you ever would have gotten on it,

Starting point is 00:03:17 then it ain't worth it, man. And so that is where YouTuber Ben Schneider, also known as Reckless Ben comes in. And Ben's known for these investigative projects, where he puts on spy glasses and goes into place like the Church of Scientology or Macaamy Manor at that haunted house attraction accused of abuse that Hulu turned into a documentary.

Starting point is 00:03:32 And while his latest project is actually to get Brian his Legos back. But that turned out to be so much more complicated than he ever could have imagined. And I want to preface here just by saying so much of this story that we have is only through Ben's point of view up to this point. So just keep that in mind.

Starting point is 00:03:44 But first, he went to the local bricks and minifig store, but the manager there told him to go to corporate. So then he goes to corporate headquarters, but they tell him to talk to the local store owners. So he then goes back to the store and he tells him what corporate said, but the manager accuses him of harassment,

Starting point is 00:03:57 calls the police, and trespass him for life. And at this point, he wants to talk to the store's owner, Josh Johnson, directly, but he doesn't have the guy's phone number, so he gets a little creative. Right, because in Ben's mind, the Bricks and Minifigs employees were brainwashed, so he decided to create what he called his own Lego cult by brainwashing an employee to join his side.

Starting point is 00:04:12 And to pull this off, he had his friend Victor poses a famous YouTuber who is filming a big video at the store. My name's Victor, we're going to Bricks and Minifigs. Let's go. So Victor, set up a fake competition, then invited the employee who won it to accept her award. She's a Lego Queen! Yes, she's a Lego Queen!

Starting point is 00:04:28 Lego Queen! Lego Queen! Lego Queen! Lego Queen! Then, after getting her trust, they asked her about Brian's Legos. I know some of it. They were gonna reimburse him for everything, and then I think they did, and he's still upset about everything, which I get. They reimbursed him for everything?

Starting point is 00:04:43 Yeah. Yeah, we don't have any of his stuff on the shelves. Really? Yeah, we don't have any of it. We think they've been lying to you. So these were all the sets in the store, and they're all metadata, time stamped. Wait, we do have these ones. Yeah, those are all his.

Starting point is 00:04:54 No, some of them I think we do so have. Yeah, I know you guys do. You showed me one of them when I asked. Did I think? Wait. I thought your, the cops called on you? Yeah, all I did was... Oh my God.

Starting point is 00:05:04 You know what's really funny is after you left, I got a call from my boss and it was like, how do we get them arrested? Dang. And lastly, she apparently gave him the owner Josh's phone numbers. They called him up. But he denied having any knowledge of the Legos and argued that the co-signment contracted nothing to do with him because he wasn't the one who said. signed it. And so Ben's next move was to take bricks and mini figs to court. But he says that

Starting point is 00:05:26 doing it the normal way would have been prohibitively expensive. So instead, he did it the abnormal way, baiting bricks and mini figs into suing him so that the company would cover the upfront cost of going to court. And his method was to create his own business, steal their brand name and make it seem like he changed the tagline to, we steal from old people. But it's where I'm going to make my grand reveal. You see, this entire time, my company name was actually called, we steal from old people Yeah, the words bricks and mini figs, that's just the company tagline. In America, there's no specific law that says whether the tagline has to be above or beneath the company name. So I'm just allowed to do this.

Starting point is 00:06:03 So people are just assuming that the name is bricks and mini figs. We're not really just the tagline of our company, and our company name is actually we steal from old people. Except bricks and mini figs, they don't take the bait. So over the course of this video, he comes up with a number of schemes to try and take this company to court, including reading a lottery to give away some of Brian's Legos, planning to vandalize a store with fake signs and banners, tricking the manager into a contract that says she owes him $5,000 for each time she called the cops on him, which is eight times by this point, deep faking a fake apology video of Brian and exploiting a legal loophole

Starting point is 00:06:32 by having Brian split the ownership of the Legos 10 different ways so that the store can be taken to a small claims court 10 different times. And actually that last trick is what finally worked. The store seems to do everything in its power to dodge getting served, but once it does, they just don't respond to the lawsuits. And it looks like that results in a bunch of summary judgments, but when they go to collect, the store's been closed down. At which point, Ben claims that this is just the latest scheme by the owners to avoid liability and keep the Legos. And that is where the first video ends. Right, after all of this, Ben claims that he was swatted by police, and if everything up until now already did not sound like a spy movie, brace yourself. Because he posted part two on his Patreon where he claims that the police and the Mormon church are essentially colluding with one another to protect each other.

Starting point is 00:07:11 And so we bought it to see what he's actually claiming went down here. And again, and I stress this, keep this in mind that all of this is Ben's presentation of the events. But it begins with him trying to personally sue Josh and Brandon Best. the other owner of that franchise bricks and minifigs location. To do that, the court tells Ben that he needs to first demonstrate a good faith effort to resolve the dispute prior to filing. So they first track down Josh at his house, they stake it out, they monitor him before then confronting him. Though they go to the corporate office and they say they kind of want to give him one last chance to make everything right, but the employees, they call the cops. Ben and his team leave. They

Starting point is 00:07:40 then drive back to Josh's house, except footage shows cops arriving there too. And so suddenly they find themselves stopped by the cops again. And the cops claim that they didn't fully stop at a stop sign, but Ben says that's a complete lie. He even plays footage that he later obtained from the police dash cam that seems to show them coming to a full stuff. But also, either way, this interaction, it goes kind of how you think it would by this point. It devolves into talking about the Lego situation before the cops let the group go. And at this point, Ben really starts hammering in this idea that whatever the cops are doing here, it's meant to protect these men.

Starting point is 00:08:07 But also does not appear to stop him. Ben then tracks down Brandon next, and Brandon also calls the cops who hand Ben a trespass notice, but again, let him go. And then this is where the whole Mormon aspect of it apparently comes into play of Ben saying that he discovers both Josh and Brandon or Mormon, so he ropes in members of their church to talk to them. Right after that, they're stopped by the cops again. And according to Ben, someone reported them for having heroin.

Starting point is 00:08:27 With police searching the car for two hours, Ben saying he has to undergo multiple drug searches, but ultimately the cops don't find anything. They are eventually let go, and long story short, their lawsuits are approved, so they go to serve the papers. Except the cops are called again, twice. And the second time, the cops actually offered to go serve Brandon the papers themselves,

Starting point is 00:08:43 but a few minutes later, they bring them back to Ben and they claim they're fake. And for Ben, this is really where a lot of the collusion claims start coming together. Because Ben hasn't even moved from his spot, and now police start coming up again for a third time and they take the papers from Josh again. With Ben also playing body cam footage that he says he obtained

Starting point is 00:08:57 through legal requests where you can hear an official telling these cops the papers are legit. But after that call, the cops arrest Ben and according to his team, they didn't give him any reason as to why. And while he's eventually released, he never really dives into the details here. But also, this is where Ben goes all in on another front. He reveals that in an earlier call with Brian,

Starting point is 00:09:14 Brian alleged that the cops are part of the Mormon community, with Brian saying, quote, They're like a huge clan that takes care of each other. And Ben outright claims that the justice system is actively protecting the bricks and mini-figs criminals, as he calls them. And so he's just, he's at the end of his rope at this point, feeling like that the only thing that he has the power to do anymore is just kind of raise the money for Brian directly and wash his hands of it.

Starting point is 00:09:31 So he sets up, but go fund me. And as he is hanging a banner for it, at the place where he is staying in Utah, guess who shows up? And then ain't Joseph Smith. Surprise, surprise, it is the cops. They ask one of Ben's team to hand over his phone. He hands it to the officer. And according to Ben and the footage in the video, as that team member goes to lock,

Starting point is 00:09:47 the cops try to snatch it from him before he can. That's also when the officer starts cuffing and arresting that team member. He's then taken away, interrogated, and as the team's waiting to see what happens next, police then descend on the house where they're staying gun-drawn. The cops yelling at Ben don't move like that, but the footage appears to show Ben standing pretty still when he's grabbed, and Ben here actually claims that his shoulder got dislocated by that whole maneuver. As for how the police were able to enter the house, they obtained a warrant to search for stolen Legos.

Starting point is 00:10:11 With Ben noting that at one point previously, Josh has even threatened to accuse him of this. And since this is his second arrest, the cops request that Ben been be held without bail until days later, a judge dismisses that request. But then as soon as he's released, he realizes that there's another warrant out for his arrest and he's been listed as a physical threat to Josh. And so I kid you not, this guy ends the video by saying that he's fled to Mexico so the Utah police cannot get him because otherwise he could face up to five years behind bars. So after all of that crazy, this is where we are right now. You have a lot of online outrage over this whole thing. Bricks and mini figs were responded by saying this is all a complex business dispute

Starting point is 00:10:43 reduced to edited social media clips. Claiming bricks and mini figs was not a party to the unauthorized Salem consignment agreement. And you've got Ben promising a part three. So we wait to see what happens next. I have to pass the question off to you. What are your thoughts here? Thoughts, opinions, reactions, takes, any and all, I would love to hear from you in those comments down below. Because what the actual hell? And then there's more we got to dive into in just a minute. But first, let me thank a sponsor and say, you know, it is wild that one of the most important accounts in your life is probably the one that you think about the least, your email. Because your inbox is basically the master key to your digital life. Password resets, receipts,

Starting point is 00:11:16 travel plans, work conversations, documents, if someone gets into your email. They're not just reading messages. They are getting a map. And that's why today's sponsor ProtonMail makes so much sense to me. Proton Mail is a free email service built around privacy and security from the start. With zero access encryption, your emails are protected in a way that means that even Proton can't read them. So your inbox isn't being scanned to build an ad profile on you and you're not getting quietly tracked every time you open an email. Plus, Proton Mail blocks trackers by default, helps protect against fishing and keeps your email experience cleaner and more secure. You can keep your inbox manageable too with automatic organization, one-click, unsubscribe, and tools to push unwanted emails out of the way.

Starting point is 00:11:50 Also, switching is just so easy. Import your old emails, forward messages from Gmail, or just start fresh with a new email address. If you want your inbox to stop feeling like someone else's datamine, get Proton mail for free. Just go to proton.com. Or scan the QR code. That's Proton.com. combe.com to get started today. But then, diving right back into the news, we've been seeing more and more talk around kind of the blatant disrespect and even hate.

Starting point is 00:12:14 for women that's been making its way into the kind of worst corners of society and fueling violence. And actually one of the most recent example that's being talked about the most that's popped up in the news is last week's attack on a California mosque Because if you don't remember, on May 18th, two teenagers killed three people and then themselves at the Islamic Center of San Diego and after the attack A 75-page manifesto came out showing that the attacker's motive was firmly rooted in far-right neo-Nazi thinking But also there was a significant chunk of that manifesto that was dedicated to ranting against women Or describing them as the quote number one enemy after Jews and with that if you're thinking wow Phil and neo-Nazis, hating women, groundbreaking stuff. Yeah, I mean, you wouldn't be wrong. But this type of misogyny,

Starting point is 00:12:49 it is becoming an essential component for far-right extremism in ways that are kind of all things considered pretty new. Or with Heidi Byridge, the co-founder of the global project against hate and extremism, saying, he just flat-out says he hates women and that they're the devil and they're destroying everything, and this is an important thing

Starting point is 00:13:03 because that kind of misogyny did not exist in white supremacist circles, say 10, 15 years ago. With some experts even drawing parallels between misogy and anti-Semitism, with that including Alex de Bronco, the executive director and co-founder of the Institute for research on male supremacism saying that the same way that anti-semitism is the foundation for white nationalist thinking and it's often rooted in conspiracy theories, misogyny has taken a similar role.

Starting point is 00:13:23 And adding, we've seen similar kinds of conspiratorial thinking about women pulling the strings behind the scenes as well. Debranco even helped develop the framework to study the strain of thought, calling them anti-feminist conspiracies. With another example being the neo-Nazi attack in Norway back in 2011, where 77 people, including dozens of teenagers, were killed at a summer camp. And the guy who did it left behind a bunch of writings outlining his reasoning with DeBronco's saying. That manifesto was very clear as well about the fact that he saw feminism and women responsible for the feminization of the West and of Europe.

Starting point is 00:13:48 They were responsible for what he views as a Muslim invasion. And adding, he adhered to another conspiracy theory called cultural Marxism. He talked about anti-political correctness and all of those things he actually rooted with the idea of feminism of Western women as the key problem. Right, it's the idea of cultural degeneracy, which researchers say has long been connected to femininity and the excessive expression of femininity. And specifically attributing it to the Nazis with the Bronco saying white supremacists, quote, feel like they had a system in which cisgender white men were supreme and had unshaken dominance. And now these other forces, what they call cultural degeneracy, are undermining that control that they felt they had a right to. And that idea found its way to those who are willing to commit violence, with Heidi Byritch saying,

Starting point is 00:14:24 it has completely infected the white supremacist realm. Misogyny is as important, I would argue, as racism or neo-Nazism now to people that traffic in these kinds of ideas and live in these cultures. But one of the problems that these experts are pointing out here about the scholarship and the news coverage of this connection is just it's not keeping up with how fast this problem is spreading. And making it scarier is that far-right terrorism in general's getting kind of the blind eye from our federal government at the moment. Right, just this month, the White House released the 26th United States Counterterrorism Strategy Document, which outlined their plans and priorities for protecting the homeland, and did highlight narco-terrorists, Islamist terrorists, and violent left-wing extremists. But nowhere does it say anything about far-right, neo-Nazi, or white supremacist threats.

Starting point is 00:15:01 With Colin Clark, the executive director of a global security nonprofit saying, Far-right terrorism is alive and well, but you wouldn't know it from reading this document, saying this is an unsurious document written by unsurricular. serious people about a deadly serious subject. And later adding, it's quite dangerous. It makes the country less safe because it shows you what this administration is focused on and what it's not focused on where we're going to dedicate resources and where we're not going to dedicate resources. Right, but then next up from that, we've got to talk about a bunch of major developments in the redistricting arms race that was set off by the Supreme Court last month. Because as you know, the Supreme Court

Starting point is 00:15:31 gutted the remainder of the Voting Rights Act. Made it much easier for red states to eliminate congressional districts where minorities make up a majority of the population. And it set off this insane chaotic scramble in southern state legislatures to quickly pass new maps to gerrymandered to benefit Republicans. And while the number of states have already succeeded, the effort in South Carolina was effectively shut down yesterday, at least for now. Because last week, after facing pressure from Donald Trump, the South Carolina House passed a new map that would eliminate the only majority black seat in the state. Which is then especially wild because nearly a quarter of the population of that state is black. But then yesterday, the Senate defied Trump and adjourned

Starting point is 00:16:01 without taking up the map. Though I will say, before you say, hey, add a boy, you give them a pat on the back. You should know that they didn't reject the map because it diluted black vote. It was that they shut it down because in-person early voting for the stage June 9th primary officially kicked off yesterday. So if they passed that new map, they'd need to set entirely new elections and cancel the votes to tens of thousands of people who had already cast their balance. And according to reports, nearly 45,000 votes had already been cast by 3 p.m. yesterday. So understand, it's basically guaranteed that Republicans are going to try to pass another map after the midterms. And in fact, you had South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster basically saying the quiet part out loud on Twitter. Writing President Trump needs a Republican Congress to continue pursuing conservative policies that make our nation stronger.

Starting point is 00:16:36 And adding, I am confident that one day South Carolina's congressional, congressional delegation will be completely Republican. While adding that he was disappointed, that day has not yet come. But with all that, it'll be interesting if the Republicans there are spared from Trump. Because remember, after seven Republican state senators in Indiana refused his redistricting push,

Starting point is 00:16:50 Trump exacted his revenge by targeting them, backing Maga-aligned primary opponents who successfully ousted five of them earlier this month. So it is very possible that we see the same thing happen in South Carolina Senate, where all members are up for election in 2028. But also, South Carolina wasn't the only state where Republicans faced a major setback yesterday.

Starting point is 00:17:05 He also had a federal court striking down a jerrymandered map in Alabama that had been at the center of a lengthy and complicated legal battle for years now. Because back in 2023, a Supreme Court blocked a Republican drawn congressional map that only included one majority black district despite the fact that nearly a third of the state is black.

Starting point is 00:17:18 But then the Republicans in the Alabama state legislature actively defied the Supreme Court and drew another map that only included one majority black district instead of two. And so a federal court shot down the second version and ordered a special master to draw maps for 2024, which took effect after the Supreme Court declined to pause the lower court's order.

Starting point is 00:17:33 But then after the Supreme Court gutted the voting rights act at Alabama again asking the justices to let them use a second map. And this time, the justice is cleared a path by sending the case back to the federal court. But yesterday, that federal panel, which notably included two Trump-appointed judges, struck down the map again. With the judge's ruling that the map intentionally discriminated based on race and violation of the Constitution.

Starting point is 00:17:51 And their ruling's actually incredibly significant because it's likely gonna be at the center of other challenges to the new wave of gerrymandered maps nationwide. Because for nearly four decades, courts could use the Voting Rights Act to strike down maps that weakened minority voting power. And that was even when they didn't have proof that the maps were intentionally drawn to be discriminatory. But in that decision last month, the Supreme Court ruled that challenges now need to show the state intentionally drew district lines to discriminate against minority voters.

Starting point is 00:18:11 It's a much higher bar. But again, it's not over. You had Alabama's Republican AG immediately saying he would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court and if it agrees to take the case, it will be the first major test of their new standard. And it's really gonna matter because over in Florida we saw a court ruling going the exact opposite way. Florida was one of the first states to impose new maps after the Supreme Court ruling with Governor Ron DeSantis signing a version that could give Republicans as many as four more seats. With voting and civil rights groups challenging the map on a different front,

Starting point is 00:18:34 arguing that it violated a state ban on partisan gerrymandering that was approved by nearly 63% of Florida voters in 2010. Yesterday, a DeSantis appointed judge refused to block the maps from taking effect. Ruling that the groups had failed to prove that their case would succeed because they didn't have direct evidence of illegal intent. And so the maps, they're going to stay in place while the case plays out, and it's expected to go all the way up to the Florida Supreme Court, with six of the seven justices there also being appointed by DeSantis. So the chances of it getting struck down, not great. But of course, anything can happen, and both good and bad. And then there's what we're going to dive into in just a minute, but first.

Starting point is 00:19:04 Let me take a second to thank a sponsor. Because Iran's supreme leader just warned that US military bases will quote, no longer have safe haven in the region. And depending on where you read that story, the framing gets very different. I mean, real fast. Some outlets, they focus on the military threat,

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Starting point is 00:19:31 You can compare headlines, coverage angles, source ownership, and factuality ratings all in one place. One feature I love is the Blind Spot feed, which flags stories heavily covered by one side that the other side's barely touching. And yeah, sometimes those gaps, they're kind of wild. And the vantage plan, the one that I use,

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Starting point is 00:20:00 check it out. Or go to ground. dot news slash DeFranco or scan that QR code to get 40% off unlimited access to the vantage plan. But then diving right back into more news you should know today, remember that viral doorbell intruder? It's one of the weirdest and creepiest doorbell videos I've ever seen. Open this door. Where's your daughter, man? Where's your daughter, man?

Starting point is 00:20:19 What I'm talking about? Where's your daughter? Who's in there with you? Bro. Bro. If you don't need a door. Open this door. I'm breaking a damn.

Starting point is 00:20:28 My name is Harry Dresden, motherfucker. Open the door. This is my neighborhood. Open the fucking door. Now, I will fucking end you. While he may have had a trench coat and kind of a general vibe of interrogation like a detective, his real name is Jason Nichols. And as he was arguing with the homeowner over the ring cam, the homeowner's pregnant wife and five-year-old kid were hiding in the garage. From there, things went from bad to worse when Nichols was actually able to break into the house through his side door. Luckily, the homeowner got back to the house and confronted him before he was able to get to the garage. And after an off-camera altercation left both of them with head injuries, it seems like the homeowner started to think that Nichols was maybe in some kind of mental health crisis. Are you military? Yes.

Starting point is 00:21:13 Okay. Can you help me out? Okay. I understand what you're going through right now. Yes. Can you step outside? Yes, sir. Thank you. Will. Thank you for asking you. There's something gone on this street, bro. Bro. Everything's fine. Please step outside. Right. So Nichols finally walked out of the house right as the police were arriving, which is also when he was arrested in charge with four felonies. First degree burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, criminal threats with intent to terrorize, and vandalism. Bail was said at 250K, and he also ended up being charged

Starting point is 00:21:39 for annoying or molesting a child in a separate incident during this whole process as well. And eventually, his defense raised concerns about his mental health, which led to a psychiatric evaluation where he was found incompetent to stand trial. But notably, reports say that the deputy district attorney opposed that finding, so there's actually a formal competency trial scheduled for July. So at least for now, that leaves Nichols behind bars. If he's found incompetent in that trial, he's likely going to be committed to a state mental health facility as opposed to facing prison time and a normal criminal trial, but we'll have to wait to see. Then in other news we predicted, because we have eyes and ears, MAGA, back Ken Paxton just beat out

Starting point is 00:22:09 Texas Senator John Cornyn with the biggest primary defeat for a sitting U.S. Senator in almost 50 years. And while you have reports saying, you know, this is another notch in Trump's bell that shows the chokehold that he has over the GOP, it could also land them in some kind of murky waters for the midterms. Because even though Texas is Texas, right, it's very conservative. Paxton generally, and also according to the polling, has been seen as the weaker of the two candidates going into a general election, so this risks the Republicans control of the Senate. Right as we've talked about, Paxton's had to get past some scandals to secure this win, including scandals that were just inside of the Republican Party, not just generally. While things were shaky for him in the

Starting point is 00:22:39 beginning, as he started to gain more and more traction, take the lead, Trump's endorsement in the 9th hour, it just kind of pushed him ahead. There was no question. And so now the question is, can James Tilarico beat him in November? With Republicans in Washington saying that it's going to be up to Trump's well-funded political machine to make it all happen. Also, notably in the meantime, while you have the White House and Trump kind of once again sitting back, counting off all the Republicans that he's been able to take down since the primary started, that play is potentially risky, not just for the general, but because Trump is already facing some pushback with that whole ballroom and anti-weaponization fund. And one of the things that we've seen since he ousted Bill

Starting point is 00:23:09 Cassidy, right, who voted to convict him on impeachment charges back in 2021, he has not been voting in Trump's favor. And if Cornyn, he starts doing the same thing, Trump could have a hard time in the Senate for the next several months. Also, separate from the Republicans, we then have to talk about another incumbent that got unseeded. And that's because Christian Menafee beat out Al Green in their house runoff for Houston's 18th district, ending Green's 20-plus year run in Congress. While in party, he's gotten a hit for accepting campaign money from a crypto super pack, he's going to be running up against Republican nominee Ronald Whitfield in November, making him one of the latest Democrats fighting to win back the House after the redistricting war has started.

Starting point is 00:23:37 But then, for the final thing you should know about today, the Trump administration just proposed a government-wide nondisclosure agreement that would keep federal employees from sharing any, quote, confidential government information with the media. The draft notice was published by the Office of Personnel Management and was going to stay open for the next month for public comment. So far, the feedback is that the definition of confidential, it's pretty wide here. The draft says that government employees would be blocked from sharing what it says are non-public confidential or proprietary information and quote Any sensitive pre-decisional or deliberative material that is not currently publicly available and should not be disclosed under applicable law To justify all this, they cited some high-profile media leaks saying information about the US raid in Venezuela got to the New York Times and the Washington Post

Starting point is 00:24:14 Putting the lives of those military officials in danger With that type of risk, you have the OPM director saying in much of the private sector employees handling sensitive business or customer information are routinely required to sign confidentiality agreements and the federal government should not be held to a lower standard. Agencies, they'll apparently have the choice to opt in or out of implementing the NDAs and signing it is voluntary for individual employees. By voluntary, they mean if you don't sign it, you probably are going to get removed from federal service.

Starting point is 00:24:38 So that's why you're seeing a fair share of people saying that these would leave the public in the dark about how the government works, preventing the kind of informed debate that is critical to democratic accountability. And warning that the government can't shroud itself in secrecy in a democracy. And to speak to that worry a little bit that the NDAs would apparently have some protections

Starting point is 00:24:52 for whistleblowers. It doesn't seem like they'll stretch to federal contractors who have been some of the most notable whistleblowers that we've had. The legal experts are worried that they'll just be gag orders for federal employees. And saying the administration's going to have to narrowly define what would be restricted in order not to overly limit speech. And even then, they're saying even if the NDA doesn't impose new restrictions on its face, it could still chill protected speech.

Starting point is 00:25:11 If employees are led to believe they can't discuss anything related to their work. But that, my friends, you beautiful bastards, is the end of your Wednesday, Philip DeFranco show. But if you're not 100% filled in and or you need kind of just a cathartic release, that's going to sound weird. I'd recommend the other big video I released today, and that is the brand new episode of crashing out. We don't open to the Hassan Piker problem and a lot more. But no matter what you do, let me just say thank you for watching.

Starting point is 00:25:33 I love you, Ophases, and I'll see you right back here tomorrow. We can't say things like he's the canary in the coal mine. And then two weeks later, subpoenas drop. No, we're not calling things into existence. We're seeing what's coming. The Secretary of Healthy Human Services is currently acting as a mercenary snake handler. The entire time, it sounds like his wife's like, Bobby, stop it, stop it.

Starting point is 00:25:55 So if I get decapitated, just know that it's because I got too close to the truth. Touch grass, dig into some dirt, escape a little bit.

The Philip DeFranco Show - The $200k LEGO Thief Scandal is Insane

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