The Philip DeFranco Show - Virginia's New Map Just Changed Everything

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Starting point is 00:00:34 Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show. You daily dive into the news. The longest run a news show on the internet. It is Wednesday, and there's a lot we've got to talk about today. But first, I am losing my mind that I get to finally announce this. It's finally happening. I'm going on tour to a city near you, or we're going on tour to a city near you. And also, if it's not, you can get together, you can demand, and we'll try to add more.

Starting point is 00:00:52 But right now, we're doing 12 cities, and I would just love to see y'all's beautiful faces. So get y' y'all's tickets right now at crashingouttor.com presale code. crashing. Right now we're going to Seattle, Portland, Boston, Philly, the city, and not my house, San Francisco, Phoenix, Denver, my hometown show of Atlanta, Chicago, St. Paul, D.C., and Pittsburgh. And in these trying times, we can have an amazing time. We can crash out together. We can have some fun together. We can make some memories together. So get your tickets at crashingoutor.com. I got a link in the description. Boom. Even a QR code on screen. Man. But with that said, we've got a lot to talk about today starting with this. Virginia just voted yes on a new redistricting

Starting point is 00:01:26 map that could hand Democrats up to four additional house seats, enough to flip Congress, block Trump's agenda, and reopen the door to investigation or impeachment. And so you've got Republicans, furious Trump's call in a power grab, and none of their arguments, very interestingly, seem to match up with the ones that they were making when they started this. But starting with the specifics in Virginia, here was the breakdown. Right now, Virginia has 11 House Representative, six Democrats, five Republicans. But under the new map, Democrats get eight strong districts with two more leaning blue and only one red. And so that means, especially with how bad Trump and Republicans are polling right now, that

Starting point is 00:01:56 Democrats could realistically win 8 to 10 of Virginia's 11 house seats in November. And if Democrats even just pulled that off, they could hand them control the House, which then would make Trump's agenda significantly harder to push and reopen the door again to real congressional oversight, including investigations or impeachment. So the stakes here, they're enormous. And Republicans, I mean, they were already pissed before the results even came in. It's terrible. It is true, John. It's nobody's ever said anything like it. It's so unfair.

Starting point is 00:02:18 The whole thing is ridiculous. If the Democrats, look, if they get additional house seats, at some point, if they get these additional seats, they're gonna be making changes at the federal level. But now you also have Trump baselessly calling the whole thing rigged because of mail-in balance. You also have Laura Lumer opposing the Democrats are stealing the state compliments of Barack Hussein. Richard Hudson of the NRC said Virginia Democrats can't redraw reality and added. This close margin reinforces that Virginia is a purple state that shouldn't be represented by a severe partisan gerrymander, which yeah, sure. I'll be the first person to say,

Starting point is 00:02:49 I think that we need a nonpartisan commission for all 50 states to make sure that things are fair and as representative as possible. But let's compare what they're saying. now to what Republicans were saying when they were kicking this whole thing off. This party is delirious and the Republican Party has to take full advantage at this point. We have to kick the illegals out of the country, we have to kick them out of the census, and we have to gerrymander to the tilts. They have to be have a permanent minority. So to be clear, when Republicans do it, it's strategy. When Democrats do it, it's stealing the state. That's just how it works in their eyes. It's not fair unless the Democrats show up to the gunfight

Starting point is 00:03:25 with a wiffle ball bat. And I also want to stress something that is very much worth noting. Virginia voters actually chose this. This was a referendum. This is the will of the people and Governor Abigail Spanberger pointed that out directly saying, unlike other states, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, it was up to the voters whether we chose to move forward with redistricting. Which is more than you can say for Texas, where the legislature kicked off this whole gerrymandering arms race by redrawing the map for five more likely Republican seats with no voter referendum. And it's so funny how certain people forget that Trump literally said, I won Texas. I got the highest vote in the history of Texas.

Starting point is 00:03:55 as you probably know, and we are entitled to five more seats. Right, in Trump's eyes, he's entitled. He got 56% of the vote. He called up Greg Abbott said, give daddy what he wants, and Abbott was a good little boy. Meanwhile, you had Virginia seeing a 73% voter turnout in 2024, and Trump actually lost that state 52% to 46%. So different, but still relatively close,

Starting point is 00:04:15 so I guess entitled to more seats is a pretty situational argument. So now you have Trump calling the Virginia referendum a, quote, blatant power grab that nobody's really ever seen. Except, we have seen it, repeatedly. from him for over a year. And the Dems, they get to essentially be like that old PSA. They get to be like, Who taught you how to do this stuff?

Starting point is 00:04:33 You, alright? I learned it by watching you. And hey, this part, it's my opinion, and you can call it bias. But in my eyes, this gerrymandering, it is very different if you start it versus you are responding in kind. Because if the Democrats do not do this,

Starting point is 00:04:46 and the people that voted for it understand this, then you all but guarantee ruin and failure if you don't play by the same rules of those you're going against. Now, with that said, as far as the Democrats, they're treating this as a, a significant win, right? Virginia House Speaker Don Scott saying, Tonight, Virginia sent a message heard across the country, we will not let Donald Trump or MAGA Republicans rig our democracy. And former Virginia Governor Terry McCollive saying,

Starting point is 00:05:05 Virginia stared down Trump and didn't blink and saying that they crushed his midterm cheating scheme that he started in Texas. And he then had Governor Spanberger who, of course, pushed for the referendum saying that the slim win was exactly what she expected, but also years where things get complicated. First of all, the win came with a $100 million price tag, which is actually four times what Republicans spent fighting it. And also, it's causing some voters and strategists to question whether meeting the GOP's gerrymandering with more gerrymandering was really the right call, especially as Spanberger's approval numbers have already been sliding. I think just everybody counter-moving everybody is not the way to go.

Starting point is 00:05:36 I don't think there's any bipartisanship much anymore. I just want to be even like Democrats and Republicans. Now Spanberger, she said that she wants to return to a more bipartisan map after the next census, but that pledge also is probably not going to fix her current numbers. Though also, some of the reporting suggesting that her problem really isn't about spending, but it's more about credibility. She's actually been criticized for not being as loud and aggressive in this fight as someone like Gavin Newsom, which left some Democratic voters wondering, you know, how committed she really is.

Starting point is 00:06:00 You mentioned the referendum. Are you really totally behind? What can you assure Democrats who are saying that maybe you're not doing enough? Right, so this could end up being a win for the Democratic Party, but also not a personal win for her. And then also another huge thing is that this is by no means the end of the story. There is a potential time bomb waiting for Democrats. Ron DeSantis is expected to move on new maps in Florida that would favor Republicans. So there, you have House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries not really sounding worried, saying that they're just going to leave Democrats with more prime pickups in the House.

Starting point is 00:06:26 And then the thing that could just really change the game is what's happening with the Supreme Court. Because there's talks of a Supreme Court ruling that could let Republicans keep the gerrymandering game going. But also, the reporting there suggests that that would not affect the midterms. And so, yeah, Democrats, they have a win. It may be short-lived. But also, the midterms aren't even over until you step into the polls in November. And also, you know, I suspect that we're going to see court appeals and more political maneuvering before any of this actually settles. And so either way, no matter what, one of the most important things you can do between now and November is vote.

Starting point is 00:06:52 That's just the reality. of how the system works. And as I always say with this, you know, you may not fuck with politics, but politics will fuck with you. So it is always best to get out there and vote and try to be the change you wanna see in the world.

Starting point is 00:07:01 And actually on that note, while Republicans are fighting toothed and nail to hang on to power in the house, they're also taking aim at one of the country's oldest civil rights organizations and accusing them of defrauding their donors and giving money to the same extremist groups that they're supposed to be fighting against.

Starting point is 00:07:13 Because I'm talking about how Trump's DOJ just charged the Southern Poverty Law Center with 11 counts including bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. With the Trump administration saying that they were manufacturing the extreme extremism, they claim to oppose. Though the SPLC, they say that the payments were to informants who risk their lives infiltrating the KKK. And so right now, really, depending on what outlet you're reading or where you get in your information,

Starting point is 00:07:33 this is either a major fraud scandal or political persecution. And so, you know, let's talk about this 11 point indictment from Trump's Department of Justice. Because according to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid more than $3 million to at least eight individuals working inside of groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the national socialist movement. Now, the prosecutor's claim that the money was used by extremists to carry out other crimes, but notably, they didn't offer any specific example. But still, you had blanche framing it as the SPLC, manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred. But then, you have the SPLC telling a very different story,

Starting point is 00:08:05 where their interim president and CEO, Brian Fares, so that those payments were to informants who risk their lives going undercover into these groups, gathering intelligence and protecting SPLC staff. And actually, the indictment itself points to examples that support the SPLC's version. So, for example, the SPLC paid a million dollars to an informant, inside of the neo-Nazi group National Alliance, which is an informant who stole 25 boxes of records that were used to publicly expose the group in 2014. When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the

Starting point is 00:08:31 civil rights movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system. There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives. And also while the SPLC ended that program a while ago, that didn't satisfy the the Trump DOJ. And so the indictment argues that the SPLC defrauded donors by failing to disclose that it was using funds this way, with Blanche saying that nonprofits have legal transparency obligations about how donor money is used and what their mission is. Also, as far as this whole situation, it's important to look into the background, right, because this indictment didn't come out of nowhere. And the core accusation's been that the SPLC colluded with the Biden administration to unfairly target Christian and conservative groups by labeling them as extremists.

Starting point is 00:09:11 And that criticism also blew up after Charlie Kirk's assassination, because you see the SPLC at named turning point USA, the epitome of the hard right in a 2024 report on hate and extremist groups. And actually back Back in October, Cash Patelka ties between the FBI and the SPLC, accusing it of having long abandoned civil rights work and becoming a partisan smear machine. You see of this indictment landing right in the middle of years of Republican grievance against the organization, which is also why the SPLC itself is framing this as political retaliation. Today, the federal government has been weaponized to dismantle the rights of our nation's most vulnerable people, and any organization like ours that tries to stand in the breach. We stood in the vanguard then, and we stand in the vanguard. today. We will not be intimidated into silence or contrition, and we will not abandon our mission

Starting point is 00:09:57 or the communities we serve. And see a fair saying that the SPLC plans to defend itself and its work. And of course, we're going to need to see how this plays out. One of the most interesting aspects of this whole situation is how it's being covered. Because again, depending on where you're getting your news, you're reading two completely different stories. On one side, you have the DOJ and conservative outlets leaning hard into the paying extremist group's angle with the DOJ's announcement on Twitter reading, Our indictment alleges SPLC secretly funneled more than three million in funds to members of white supremacist and extremist groups. And then on the other side, you have outlets like the Washington Post leading with the informant angle. Where the post's headline is DOJ charges Southern Poverty Law Center over paid informants.

Starting point is 00:10:31 And so on both sides, you're seeing a lot of things that have the same facts, but two completely different stories and the reactions have also followed suit. On the right, you've got people like Matt Walsh posting that SPLC is a criminal organization that funded right-wing hate groups and organized fake right-wing protests so that it could then turn around and fundraise off of them and use them as a pretext. to crack down on conservatives nationwide. Alex Jones called it a much needed victory. It's the heart of the global, it's hard Democratic Party. This is amazing. More.

Starting point is 00:10:56 Please let the nightmare in. Please let Trump get back on track. Please, I am impressed. On my face, not restored, but I'm starting to pay attention. And then on the other side of critics calling this political prosecution and saying that the whole situation's being misrepresented. So for example, one post read, SPLC paid informants to help infiltrate extremist groups

Starting point is 00:11:15 and learn about their operations. Not only is that why some of their programs were so effective, but the DOJ knows fine well. Most of that information was shared with law enforcement as well. This is entirely a political prosecution. And another saying, the SPLC has been at the forefront of exposing some of America's most notorious hate groups like the KKK. The fact that the Trump admin feels threatened by that speaks volumes. And so while right now, you know, we have to see what's going to happen and you have a lot of people, it seems like really, maybe intentionally misrepresenting the situation.

Starting point is 00:11:40 One of the big questions for you, maybe, or just people in general, is, you know, if the SPLC, it paid informants to infiltrate these white supremacist groups, and those informants gathered intelligence that led to public exposure of those groups, do you see that as a civil rights victory or a federal crime? And then also, does the answer change based on whether you think the SPLC has been fair in how it labels conservative groups as extremists? Because those are two genuinely different questions. You can believe that the SPLC is overreached in some of its classifications

Starting point is 00:12:04 and also still believe that paying informants to infiltrate the KKK is not the same as funding a hate group. And you can also believe that the SPLC has done genuinely important civil rights work and also still think that donor transparency questions are worth answering. But also, a Trump DOJ charging a civil rights organization with 11 counts, including money laundering after years of political grievance from the president's allies, it's gonna be hard to separate from politics. And then, you know, however, this ends up playing out in court, it is going to reshape how civil rights organizations operate moving forward.

Starting point is 00:12:30 So yeah, again, I'd really love to know your thoughts here. You know, while we wait to see how this is gonna play out in a courtroom, and also in the court of public opinion, we should then also talk about another high stakes legal battle that's happening right now. Or because apparently, the government can legally force public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments and that's not a violation of church and state. That is literally what a federal appeals court ruled yesterday in an incredibly narrow nine to eight decision. And as you might imagine, this case centers around a Texas law that was passed last year that would require posters of the

Starting point is 00:12:53 Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms. Now notably here, the law does not require schools to use taxpayer dollars to purchase the posters. It just says that they have to accept donations of them. But one, obviously there's been a concerted effort among Christian organizations to donate enough posters and two, some schools still reportedly have spent money on. Rain is for the reasoning here you have supporters and the Republicans who approve the bill, arguing that the teachings of Christianity are an important part of U.S. history and that the messages in the commandments may be useful for children in school to see. But almost immediately, you had the ACLU challenging the law on behalf of families from a range of different faith backgrounds, including

Starting point is 00:13:22 Christians, arguing that it clearly amounts to government endorsement of religion that violates the separation of church and state as protected under the First Amendment. And you had an ACLU lawyer arguing that the law is religiously coercive and that it violates the Constitution by giving preference to one religion. In this case, Christianity over others, while also undermining the religious rights of students and their parents to decide how their families engage with faith. And actually in two separate rulings last year, federal judges in Texas, they agreed, arguing that the law likely violated the First Amendment and blocked it from being enforced in parts of the state covered by their jurisdiction. But then, the state appealed it, and yesterday that Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal struck down the lower court decisions, ruling at the law stands. And in their decision, the justices pointed to a Supreme Court ruling in 2022 that allowed a public school football coach to pray at midfield after a game because it amounted to protected free expression.

Starting point is 00:14:01 And they argued that the decision had effectively gotten rid of a specific legal standard for testing church and state cases that have been used for half a century. A standard that very notably was used to block a similar Kentucky law in 1980 that also required the posting of the Ten Commandments. But because the Supreme Court tossed that standard, the appeals court majority said that the other forms of religious expression that were previously considered unconstitutional now can be permitted. And then they also argued that the law does not require schools to teach the Ten Commandments, nor does it, quote, force teachers to proselytize students who ask about the displays or contradict students who disagree with them. While this matters on its own, I mean, the implications of this ruling goes way beyond just Texas. I mean, one thing is that the 17-member panel of the Fifth Circuit Court initially heard the Texas case at the same time as a similar suit in Louisiana over a nearly identical law that would require the commandments to be posted in

Starting point is 00:14:41 classrooms. But back in February, the court ruled that it was too soon to decide whether the Louisiana law was constitutional because it hadn't taken effect yet, a decision that both cleared the way for the law to be enacted and opened the door for families to challenge the law again once that happened. Now, this Texas ruling all the guarantees that any future challenges to the Louisiana law, it's going to go the same way. And then even beyond that, it's all but certain that the Texas case is going to eventually make its way up to the Supreme Court, where the ultra-conservative majority is continually chipped away at the separation of church and state. And so if that trend continues, Depending on the scope of the future ruling,

Starting point is 00:15:09 I mean, we're gonna be talking about something that could have national implications for all of America. And then there's more we're gonna dive into in just a minute, but first let me thank his sponsor and say, you know, Spring is just around the corner and the events, they're ramping up. We've got basketball, baseball tours for Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, BTS, Zach Bryan,

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Starting point is 00:15:55 and then use code Phil10 for 10% off your purchase on CKKK, whether you're a new customer or not. And then, this is key, add code DeFranco to your CKKK account. That gets you $10 off at any ticket and enters you for your chance to win the weekly $500 giveaway, no purchase necessary. And for the C-Geek vets, right, you use C-Geek already, that applies to you as well. You just add code DeFranco to your account and you're entered. So, hey, scan that QR code or click the link below and use code Phil10 and DeFranco and make some memories. But then, diving right back

Starting point is 00:16:18 into the news, Donald Trump, after saying that he wouldn't, has extended the U.S. ceasefire with Iran, which then responded by attacking and apparently seizing commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. But with still no date set for talks, it's unclear what's actually going to happen next, right? I mean, the American and Iranian negotiating teams, they were meant to be meeting in Pakistan today for a second round of talks. But throughout the date, but throughout the day yesterday, it became increasingly clear that that wasn't going to happen. Right, you had Trump claiming that he didn't want to extend the ceasefire and expected to continue bombing Iran if a deal wasn't reached after he had previously threatened to blow up every single

Starting point is 00:16:47 bridge and power plant in the country without an agreement. But of course, Trump has also repeatedly backtrack, backed down, and contradicted himself on nearly every aspect of this war, from the status of negotiations to the whereabouts of his lead negotiator. So it actually wasn't all that surprising last night when you had him taking the truth social to reveal that the ceasefire would be extended until, quote, such time as Iran's leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal and such time as their proposal is submitted and discussions are concluded one way or the other. He also claimed that his decision was in response to a request from the Pakistani government, and you actually also soon after had Pakistan's prime minister expressing his thanks to Trump for,

Starting point is 00:17:18 quote, graciously accepting his government's request to extend the ceasefire to allow ongoing diplomatic efforts to take their course. But maybe one of the most notable things is that Trump claimed that his decision to extend the ceasefire until Iran could present a unified proposal was based on the fact that the government of Iran is seriously fractured. We talked about the divides believed to exist within the regime yesterday, but also apparently they may go even deeper than previously believed, especially thanks to Israel's assassination of the man who had been Iran's de facto leader. Or even one US official reportedly telling Axios that without this guy bridging the gap,

Starting point is 00:17:45 the IRGC generals now running the country are openly at odds with the negotiating team, saying we saw that there is an absolute fracture inside Iran between the negotiators and the military, with neither side having access to the supreme leader who is not responsive. And according to them and other sources, this division became more clearly known on Friday

Starting point is 00:17:59 when the country's foreign minister announced the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, but the IRC refused to go along. And so yesterday, J.D. Vance apparently had his bags, fact, he was ready to go to Pakistan, but he found himself just waiting for the IRGC generals to let Iran's negotiating team travel to meet him, which obviously never happened. And now, if those reports are true, it's unclear how long the two factions will actually have to get on the same page. If we're taken at face value, Trump's announcement seems to suggest that the ceasefire is extended indefinitely. But you also had one of those officials speaking to Axios saying that it isn't open-ended, claiming.

Starting point is 00:18:26 Trump is only willing to give another three to five days of ceasefire to allow the Iranians to get their shit together. But even if all that's true, some of Iran's leaders may see this as the latest example of just Trump bluffing and backing down, possibly confirming. to them that they're more ready to weather the pain of this war and the current economic standoff in the strait-hore moves than Trump is. And you had one expert explaining, the Iranian regime only cares about its survival, not about its people suffering, and it does still see this as an existential battle with the United States. And adding, that's why it's not going to blink, regardless of how much the Iranian people suffer. And so with that, the first response to Trump's ceasefire extension from Iran appeared to come from an advisor to the country's Speaker of Parliament,

Starting point is 00:18:57 who said, the extension of the ceasefire by Donald Trump has no meaning. The losing side cannot set the terms. And a short time later, the UK Maritime Trade Operations Center reported that an IRGC gunboat attacked a container ship off the coast of Oman. But then another few hours passing before the organization reported that a second cargo ship had come under attack about eight nautical miles west of Iran. And then you had a semi-official Iranian news outlet reporting that these attacks were part of an enforcement operation by Iranian authorities. And saying of the second ship, it appears this container ship did not heed warnings from the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran and was therefore targeted. The IRGC Navy, claiming around the same time that it had seized two cargo vessels and was directing both ships to Iran's coast after they attempted to navigate, quote,

Starting point is 00:19:33 without the necessary permits and adding, disrupting the order and security of the Strait of Hormuz is our red line. And overall, it seems like this might be a tit for tat response to American forces seizing an Iranian flagship in the Arabian Sea on Sunday and boarding an oil tanker in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday, especially as you had a top Iranian lawmaker writing on Twitter,

Starting point is 00:19:49 we will not remain silent against the Epstein pirates. An eye for an eye, an oil tanker for an oil tanker. But with all that, as there does appear to be people on both sides, at least interested in making a deal, we gotta talk about what that deal might actually look like. And very notably there, Trump's reportedly authorizes negotiating team to consider an agreement involving similar trade-offs to the one that was negotiated under Barack Obama. Again, even though as recently as the beginning of this week, Trump repeated his

Starting point is 00:20:10 claim that the agreement was one of the worst deals ever made having to do with the security of our country, with him then also adding, it was a guaranteed road to a nuclear weapon. And so, you know, as one example, you had Trump repeatedly criticizing the Obama administration for unfreezing tens of billions of dollars worth of Iranian assets and sending Iran $1.7 billion in cash to settle a decade's old legal dispute over an unfinished arms deal. But now, Trump's reportedly open to the possibility of unfreezing Iranian assets worth around $20 billion, and that money serving as a bargaining chip to secure Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium. And a key thing is that Iran only built up that stockpile of highly enriched uranium in the years after Trump pulled out of the Obama deal.

Starting point is 00:20:44 And then the other big issue that you have right now is what Iran would be willing to agree to in terms of restrictions on future enrichment. Or with one expert saying, they're running into the same fundamental hurdle that shaped the long decade plus of negotiations that finally led to the Obama deal, which is that the Iranians are completely immovable on the question of enrichment. And so then the other question might be whether Trump is completely immovable on his desire to permanently bar Iran from enriching to any level. And actually on that front, you have some saying that he could compromise and still play it off as a win. Or because Iran, they've reportedly been open to a complete ban on enrichment for a limited amount of time. So you had Wendy Sherman, who is the lead U.S. negotiator with Iran under Obama telling the Washington Post,

Starting point is 00:21:16 if he gets a suspension of 10, 15, 20 years of enrichment, that will be more than we got on that element. But then she also added, but how will it be verified? It's totally unclear to me or anybody probably to him. What will Trump have to give in return? Well, we're going to have to wait to find that out, what's definitely. clear is that this war, it's already come with a cost. I mean, as we know, at least 13 U.S. service members have been killed, and that doesn't even include the injured, the casualty count. And then on the Iranian side, out of more than 3,600 people who have reportedly been killed,

Starting point is 00:21:39 at least 1,700 have been civilians, according to the human rights activist news agency. And that's not even counting the thousands of other deaths in the region, most in Lebanon as a result of Israel and Hezbollah's war there. Also, billions have been displaced, and the war has sent energy prices skyrocketing, with that now translating into higher prices in other areas as well. Various petroleum-derived products like clothes and crayons, for example. They're expected to get more expensive. And companies in every sector from consumer goods to travel and mining, their warning and quarterly earning statements that the war is driving up costs, potentially leading to higher prices. I mean, even had the world's top condom maker saying it plans to raise prices by 20 to 30 percent and possibly

Starting point is 00:22:11 more if supply chain disruptions continue. But also all of that, it feels small compared to the projections that this fallout could plunge tens of millions into poverty and hunger. Also in the meantime, it's probably the Iranians who are feeling the most economic pain as things were already bad before the war in the U.S. blockade. And while Trump and others, they've sometimes defended the war by highlighting the crimes and the brutality of the Iranian regime. I mean, the reality is is that the same regime remains in power and Trump's now trying to make a deal with them. And a huge thing is that the people he's talking to now might be even more extreme than some of those that ran the country before that he killed. Which is also saying something since the pre-war leadership oversaw the massacre of thousands of protesters earlier this year. And since then, there's also been speculation that the war has actually provided cover for a new crackdown and dissent, possibly involving a surge in executions. And even beyond all that, there's the potential impact this war will have had on American and European defense readiness. You have Reuters reporting recently that American officials have let some of their European counterparts know that previously agreed upon weapons deliveries are likely to be delayed because of the war. And in fact, you've got CNN now reporting that the military stockpile is some key missiles, that there is a near-term risk of running out of some of them if the U.S. is involved in another conflict in the next few years. While the Pentagon signed several contracts last month to boo's missile production, it may still take years to replenish those stockpiles.

Starting point is 00:23:15 And in fact, you have an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies arguing that, in the meantime, the U.S. is now even worse prepared to take on what it described as a peer competitor, such as China. But then, the last thing that we've got to talk about today is that if you were born in the UK in 2009 or later, you will, at least as it stands now, never be able to buy tobacco products legally in your home country. And I'm not just saying that because I'm your daddy. But rather, because Parliament approved a law yesterday that permanently bans a sale of tobacco products for people who are currently 17 and younger, and it intends to keep it that way for all future generations. Right, because specifically under the legislation, the age of legal sale for tobacco products, it will rise over time as the targeted group gets older and older.

Starting point is 00:23:50 Right, in this measure also includes new licensing and registration requirements for retailers as well, as imposing product information mandates, advertising, and promotion controls, and additional restrictions on smoking and vaping in public spaces. And while the law, it technically has to be approved by the King, that's basically a formality. And once it takes effect, it will cover all of the UK, so England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. New of lawmakers saying that the goal here is to try and block the use of tobacco products altogether while also reducing the stress that smoking-related illnesses have put on the UK's publicly funded health system.

Starting point is 00:24:15 And that is a big strain. According to reports, smoking leads to 400,000 hospital emissions and 64,000 deaths a year, just in England alone. And treatments for tobacco-related diseases cost government three billion pounds or around four billion US dollars. Some estimates even put the total economic impact at between 21.3 and 27.6 billion pounds a year in England, mostly lost through productivity. And you have lawmakers arguing that this policy will break the cycle of addiction, raise a smoke-free generation, and potentially create a tobacco-free society altogether. But then,

Starting point is 00:24:40 of course, the big question here is, will it actually work? Because first of all, it's been reported that it would be illegal for someone not covered by the ban to buy tobacco products and give them to someone who is included, but the law doesn't criminalize possession, so it wouldn't be illegal for someone to possess tobacco once they become 18, regardless of what year they were born in. And so when the people that are born in or after 2009 come of age, they can legally buy tobacco products in other countries like somewhere else in Europe. And then, of course, it's basically just inevitable that there's going to be a black market that's going to pop out. Right. And then there's also just the possibility that the law doesn't stick. I don't know if you remember this, but

Starting point is 00:25:08 New Zealand actually passed the world's first generational smoking ban back in 2022, but that law was reversed when a new government took over. Which, yeah, that could just be political parties, but also you had some speculating that the policy was abolished thanks to the outsized influence of the tobacco industry, which then raises a concern to some supporters that something similar may go down in the UK. But also regardless of what happens, the fact that there was actually enough support to pass this law in the first place is incredibly significant by itself. And it'll be very interesting to see if more countries follow suit in the future. But with that, in the meantime, I got to ask, what are your thoughts here, especially if you're a British beautiful bastard? But that, my friends, you beautiful bastards is the end of your Wednesday, Philip DeFranco's show.

Starting point is 00:25:40 Again, two things. One, I'm going on tour soon. I can't wait to see you. Go to crashing outtore.com. pre-sale code crashing. I haven't done a public event or a show like this in too long. It might have been a decade plus. And then secondly, whether you get tickets or not, a brand new episode of crashing out just came out today. Links in the description. If you're on YouTube, you can click or tap. But that said, thank you for watching. I love yo faces.

Starting point is 00:25:59 And I'll see you right back here tomorrow.

The Philip DeFranco Show - Virginia's New Map Just Changed Everything

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