The Joe Rogan Candace Owens Situation is Bigger Than You Think

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The Joe Rogan, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk situation and conspiracies, they have hit a new high as you've got huge new Tyler Robinson updates. A Democratic Socialist just won in Florida in an insane upset as far-right candidates there lost. But also, there's something that a lot of people are missing there. Texas Tech is using AI. They're trying to decide what professors can and can't teach and why a bunch of Gandalfs just descended on Peter Thiel's home. We're talking about all of that and even more on today's brand new Philip DeFranco show. You daily dive into the news starting with this. If there was one word to describe last night's primary elections, it's got to be diverse. Because on one end, you had Democratic Socialists and at the other end, you had far-right extremists putting out videos featuring Hitler. And you had primaries in Alaska, California, and Pennsylvania. But by far the most shocking, bizarre, and most talked about elections were in Florida. Because in Florida, of all places, you had yet another Democratic Socialist beating an AI. An establishment-backed moderate Democrat for the nomination. Right, I'm talking about Angie Nixon. She's a state representative and she smacked up Alexander Vindman. And Vindman, of course, is a familiar name because he's the former National Security Aide who testified during Trump's first impeachment trial. The last time you saw me was here, swearing an oath to tell the truth about a president who broke his. In Vindman, he had the name recognition, he had the backing of the establishment of Chuck Schumer, and he also had a ton of money. He had over $16 million, which made Nixon's just under a million look like chump change. He couldn't even really afford to run a single. TV ad, never mind any polls. And actually, there were no public surveys in this race, so really no one had any idea where the electorate was. Or rather, nobody except Vindman himself, because his campaign did run an internal poll, but he didn't spend any money attacking Nixon. So people figured, oh, she must not be a threat. And well, oh my God, if they thought that, they were so wrong. Nixon not only won by 12 points, she beat him in every major metropolitan area except West Palm Beach. She took her own county, Duval, and also Vindman's county, Broward, not to mention Miami-Dade. Now with this, I should note that Nixon is unique. The DSA actually didn't endorse her. And she only joined the organization back in June. But as a state lawmaker for three terms, she's been known as a progressive firebrand. They're interrupting the state house with a bullhorn and then staging a sit-in at Ron DeSantis' office this year to protest his gerrymandered congressional map. And then with her getting arrested and using the court case to boost her campaign. I shouldn't have been the one that got locked up. They should have been the ones that got locked up. Though we should also note that last night wasn't all good news for the further left in Florida. Right, because you had DSA member Oliver Larkin and self-described socialist Elijah Manley losing their House primary races to Jared Moskowitz and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, both moderate pro-Israel Democrats. But also for a lot of people that were further left, Nixon's victory, it really overshadowed any other defeats. So overall, not so great night for progressives. Dog, what are you talking about? It's a little bit here and back. We're talking about a lot of things. We're talking about two districts in the House for 458 seats versus the Democratic Senate seat. You understand that one senator is like infinitely more important than House of Representatives seats, right? This is an out-of-control upset for the left insurgent candidate who did not get any national endorsements. But also, we have a lot of people that are thrilled with this outcome and Vindman saying, you know, he's going to stand by Nixon's side to beat Ashley Moody. You're seeing more moderate Democrats not happy. With many of them arguing that this. The seat was already a long shot for whoever the nominee was going to be, given that it's Florida. But the Cook Political Report has consistently rated the race this year as a solid R. And so the candidate like Nixon, who's on board with everything from Medicare for all to for-profit prison abolition to ending all aid to Israel. The fear is that she's going to be a layup for the Republicans. And with that, you're seeing conservatives already rolling out the talking points that you can expect to hear a lot over the next few months. Quote, I can't wait until Donald Trump is arrested and held accountable. So prisons are racist unless you're throwing the white man in them. That's what she's running. Get whitey. Angie's a one trick pony. At one of her little Zoom rallies, she booked a poet to call the state of Florida, you guessed it, racist. And actually, you had Nixon responding to those criticisms on NBC the other day. The president and Republicans have been very eager to paint the entire Democratic Party as communists and Marxists. Do you worry that those attacks could resonate in a place like Florida, especially considering all the Cuban-American population there? Look, we can. We can argue all day about people's labels. But at the end of the day, I care about the needs of people. And right now, people are suffering and they're hurting. At the end of the day, the people of Florida and this country, they want someone who's going to be open, honest, and transparent. And I'm that candidate. Also, another question that's up in the air right now is whether the Democratic Party is going to throw her the money that she's going to need to compete in the general. Because like I said, at least comparatively, she has very little cash on her own. And her opponent, right, the incumbent Senator Ashley Moody, she's sitting on more than $8 million right now. I think Nixon, who will be my opponent in November, and her comrades want to destroy this country and everything that it is built on. So Ashley Moody can call it whatever she wants, but in November, she will call me Senator. And while you had Nixon's race definitely being the most surprising last night, it definitely was not the strangest. Right, that prize possibly goes to Republican Representative Randy Fine, who's defending his House seat. Because reportedly, he was canvassing for his campaign when he knocked on a door and no one answered. But then. The doorbell cam apparently caught him snooping through the homeowner's mailbox. With many perplexed, some speculating that he was looking for his opponent's flyers. Others guessing that he was probably looking to see if his own campaign's mailers were there. One person even suggested that he was going around the neighborhood stealing people's HelloFresh. But whatever the case, and as weird as that was, he did end up winning his primary with Trump's complete and total endorsement. But also, that race is still worth talking about because it was, uh, we'll call it special. On one side, there was Fine, who among other things has said, If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one. "Islamophobian" is a synonym for evil, and we need more Islamophobia, not less. It's interesting because Islamophobia means fear of Islam, and at this point, we have every reason to have that fear, and we need to not be afraid to say that. And then on the other side, you had Dan Bilzerian, a manosphere influencer, self-described sex addict, and former gambler, who among other things has said, I believe that Jewish supremacy is the greatest threat to America, and I think it's the greatest threat to the world today. I truly believe that. How many do you think were killed in the Holocaust? Um. I don't know, but I would bet my entire net worth that it was under six million. He also posted this AI-generated music video on Twitter that, uh, I mean, I don't know how to prepare you for it. ♪ The fat Jew, oh the fat Jew has got poison to sell ♪ ♪ Should we revisit that Austrian painter's opinion? ♪ I guess I should note for the listeners, uh, the video there had Adolf Hitler wearing a painter's apron. And while it's true that Fine, he won the race by a huge margin, Bilzerian also got a decent chunk. He walked away with 19% of the final tally, which is actually more than any of the other three Republicans challenging Fine. And so even though he lost, you're seeing a lot of people out there that are concerned about the fact that he did as well as he did. Especially among the younger people who are voting, with many wondering about the future of the GOP. With people pointing to the popularity of figures like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes among the under-35 demographic. Where you have people saying, in addition to people being critical of Netanyahu and what the Israeli government is doing, separately, you also have it showing that that's where polls show anti-Semitism has taken root the most. But then also there, you have many pointing out that it seems like the Republican answer to bigotry is then often just an alternative form of bigotry. Right in there, you have people noting that when Bilzerian called him a fat Jew, Fine shot back by attacking his dual Armenian citizenship. Because we don't want this to take root in our party, we don't want Armenians to be able to serve in Congress. In all of this, it's led to places like Vox declaring, "In a year full of ugly primaries across the country, this is without question the ugliest and most hateful." Though that's not to say that it claimed a monopoly on hate. Right, all those Islamophobic comments that Fine made, that's kind of become routine fodder for the Republicans on Capitol Hill. Tommy Tuberville saying Islam is not a religion, it's a cult. Nancy May said every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse. Chip Roy said that there should be no more Muslims in Texas. And Andy Ogle said Muslims don't belong in American society. And so looking at the state of the Republican Party right now, it does seem like it's split between these kind of different factions where, you know, it's at risk of being oversimplified, but you have one group disavowing bigotry of any kind, another loving bigotry of all kinds. And then there's some that are in the middle who kind of like make an exception just for one or the other. But then also all of that brings us to another huge news thing that's dividing folks on the right, and that is the growing conspiracies about who killed Charlie Kirk. Though also before we fully dive into that, we've got to talk about some very important updates with the ongoing case of Tyler Robinson, who of course is the man charged with assassinating Kirk. Because as we talked about last week, Robinson's defense filed court documents arguing that he shouldn't face the death penalty because the shooter only hit the intended target and no one else was put in grave danger. And while very notably here, Robinson has not yet entered a plea and his lawyers have not said that their client was the shooter, they argue the assassin only filed a complaint against the shooter and fired one bullet above, not through the crowd of thousands that came to see Kirk at the University of Utah, claiming that he hit his target with one shot and did not chamber another round. Right, a very specific argument. But now the new updates that you've got today is that prosecutors have now filed a brief hitting back, asking the judge to send Robinson to trial on every charge and make him eligible for the death penalty. And with this, you had them specifically rejecting the defense's claim that the bullet traveled above the crowd, arguing that the evidence actually shows that the shooter intentionally fired towards a crowd of thousands, including several people who were in the line of fire. And they then went on to say that the evidence easily establishes at least probable cause that Robinson knowingly created a great risk of death to others. Beyond that, the attorneys also argued that the evidence shows that the suspect targeted Kirk because of his political beliefs, or which is another aggregating factor that could make Robinson eligible for the death penalty. And you had them specifically pointing to a bullet engraved with the inscription, hey, fascist catch, as well as a text that Robinson allegedly sent about Kirk that said, I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out. At that point, you have experts widely believing that this case is going to go to trial because prosecutors really only need to establish probable cause that Robinson committed the crimes. Though there, you should know pretty soon after oral arguments. And on September 1st. But also, as this case has been playing out in court, we've also been seeing this huge growing debate on the right about the increasing conspiracies that have been swirling around. And Candace Owens, she's probably been one of the biggest and most vocal people in this space. Or they're claiming that Robinson did not actually shoot Charlie and that he's just a patsy set up by the feds and potentially in collaboration with some combination of Israel and people working inside Turning Point USA. But then also adding gas to the fire, you had Joe Rogan recently saying that he is starting to buy into Candace's ideas. The more time goes on, the more I'm leaning towards Candace Owens. What? She's got some very interesting theories about I don't think any story that you hear in the news is accurate. I think there's always none or spin on it. At least there's always some spin. But the whatever the spin is, whatever the spin is about Tyler Robinson, there's some bullshit to it. I don't know how much of how much of his bullshit, but there's some bullshit. And one of the more recent bullshits is they found a photo that they were saying was Tyler Robinson. But then people noticed that the because he's real thin, people notice that the cars in the background, the proportions were distorted. And then they realized that what they had done was taken a guy who's like much wider than Tyler Robinson and shrunk in the perspective. Really? Yep. Yep. And then when you see him for what he really looks like, like, oh, there's no way that's that guy. That guy's big. And then you're like, well, it's mostly true. Like, no, no, no, they they changed. Like, you look at the hood of the cars behind them. They're all like that. Who is that guy? Specifically, you've got Rogan talking about a picture that Candace showed on an episode of her podcast last week that she argued is further evidence for claim that Robinson did not kill Kirk. Right. And that picture in question is a picture of a surveillance video that prosecutors released last month, which shows a man that they claim is Tyler Robinson arriving at a parking garage on campus the morning of the shooting. But you've got Candace claiming that she got exclusive 4K stills that were shown to influencers in the courtroom and present a clearer picture of the person in the footage, arguing that the video shown to the public was distorted. The first thing I'm going to show you from that parking garage is what this person looks like, because if it was less compressed and blurry, which is what we were shown, you might realize that he's kind of a bit broad. Take a look at this. Oh. And I want to be clear, we did not edit these in any way. Okay. This is no editing. We're not making it. It's not compressed. This is this is Tyler Robinson. And it's also claimed the stills indicate that the person in the video was left handed, but Robinson is right handed. Second thing I'm going to show you is, again, he is appears to be left handed. Okay. My guess is that he is left handed. Okay. But I want to be clear, we did not edit these in any way. Okay. Okay. And then puts an earpiece into his left ear. Oh, okay. And you then have her going on to seemingly imply that the prosecution intentionally distorted the version of the surveillance footage that they showed to the public because they somehow wanted to prevent us from realizing that the man might not be Robinson. That's a big uh-oh, actually. It might require you to intentionally degrade and blur footage when you go, ooh, that's not the right hand. And then after that, Candace goes on to list a bunch of other reasons that she thinks that it isn't Robinson. But we're also not going to go into all that because we're going to be talking about the one, it would just take forever. And two, what she's saying appears to be just pure conspiracy, right? Appearing to take a small thing and then making enormous leaps. But of course, at the same time, you've got a ton of people online running with their narrative, claiming that the man in Candace's stills is not Tyler Robinson and accusing the government of distorting the video. But then you also have plenty of others pushing back saying that all of this is predicated on stills Candace Owens produced from some unnamed source and claiming that the pictures were actually AI edited. And that says some of the pushback that you're seeing are coming from big voices on the right, like Ben Shapiro, who slammed Rogan specifically for spreading Owens's conspiracies. So yes, Joe Rogan announced that he is beginning to believe Candace Owens's bizarre theories about Charlie Kirk's assassination. Now, I'm not super shocked by this kind of stuff. Joe Rogan, Joe tends to believe pretty much every conspiracy theory that he can find. Because let's be real, conspiracism is fun. There are two things that make this kind of stuff a problem for America more generally. One, when people start treating this stuff seriously. And two, when politicians start treating this stuff seriously, because people start treating this stuff seriously. There are a bunch of young men who use Joe Rogan, as a sort of political litmus test, which is pretty weird. Or as Joe might say, wild, right? Joe himself would probably argue that you shouldn't follow him that way. Because Joe himself would say that he's not fully formed on much of this stuff at all. But people do that anyway. Again, that's not Joe's fault. It's just a reality. You know, it turns out that young men will follow pretty much anybody. The big problem is when our political leaders decide to follow this group, which takes us to the modern GOP. So top members of the GOP, most prominently the Republican Party, are the ones that have the most power. And then you have Shapiro going on to turn this into a much broader analysis on the direction of the Republican Party as a whole, which just further emphasizes how these divisions have developed and evolved on the right. And then we've got to talk about these crazy situations going down at Harvard and Texas Tech. But first, a quick word from our sponsor. What makes a phone plan actually worth paying for? For me, it's good coverage, enough data, and ideally a price that doesn't feel ridiculous. Today's sponsor, Mint Mobile, I mean, it checks those boxes without making wireless unnecessarily complicated. And switching is so easy. It's all online. So you can skip the whole store, the appointment, the whole why is this taking 45 minutes experience. You can bring your unlocked phone, keep your number, sign up from home, and activate with eSIM in minutes. 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But then diving right back into the news, we've got to talk about how this guy stole human body parts donated to Harvard for medical research. And now, we're going to talk about how he stole human body parts donated to You've got the university paying tens of millions of dollars to settle a class action lawsuit about it. Because this, this is Cedric Lodge, and he used to manage the morgue at Harvard Medical School. And part of his job was looking at the donations submitted through the university's anatomical gift program, which allows people to donate their bodies for medical students' education. And then after the studies are done, their remains are cremated. Except, turns out, he was fired in 2023 because instead of looking after those body parts, he was stealing them and then selling them on the black market. In fact, for nearly five years, starting in 2018, my man Cedric, actually, I don't want to say my man Cedric, that man Cedric would allegedly take body parts with him, including bones, skin, brains, and even entire heads. And he would prosecute her saying that he took the remains without the knowledge or permission of his employer, the donor, or the donor's family, which I fucking hope so. For the more people that knew about this, the worse it sounds. But also, on that note, he would then, working with his wife Denise, ship them out to buyers in other states. And it seemed really across the Northeast, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. And they were bringing in some nice money. They'll also say, I thought it would be more. But I'd imagine that if you were going to do something horrendous and disgusting and illegal, you're putting yourself at risk, you'd want to see a lot of zeros. And with this, they reportedly made roughly $37,000 selling these body parts, which, as it turns out, would then often be sold again. Now, as far as Lodge, in addition to being fired, he got indicted back in 2023. And you had Harvard releasing a statement at the time titled, Abhorrent Betrayal, saying, we were appalled to learn that something so disturbing could happen on our campus, a community dedicated to healing and serving others. The reported incidents are a betrayal of HMS. And most importantly, each of the individuals who altruistically chose to will their bodies to HMS through the anatomical gift program to advance medical education and research. Well, the story, for some of you, it might sound familiar because we actually did a deep dive into it, where he ended up pleading guilty and getting sentenced to eight years in prison last December. We've got updates because for the families of those whose body parts were stolen and sold, that wasn't enough. They still wanted some accountability from Harvard itself, right? People asking, how did this go on for five years and no one at the university caught on? And so they actually started filing lawsuits as soon as Lodge was indicted, alleging negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and infliction of emotional distress. But it seemed like it might be doomed in 2024 because a Suffolk County Superior Court judge threw out a dozen of them. And you had the ruling that the school isn't responsible for an employee's actions and is protected by the that's good faith immunity clause. Except then, you have the mass issues at Supreme Judicial Court, having something different to say. Right, because with the family's argument that Harvard failed to properly oversee the program, you had the SJC saying there was enough to potentially establish pervasive noncompliance with the law. Meaning Harvard, they weren't off the hook and they revived the lawsuits. Which then brings us to the very big news that Harvard has agreed to pay $53 million to settle in order to avoid prolonged litigation. With Harvard releasing a statement apologizing to the family of donors and saying, "These events do not reflect the reverence we hold for the altruistic individuals who selflessly donate their bodies to our program." So that money is gonna get split up and then actually beyond the money, there's actually a scholarship with Harvard saying that they're planning on setting up an annual scholarship to honor the anatomical donors. But then actually jumping from one crazy college story to another, you now have the New York Times reporting that Texas Tech is actively using AI to get rid of left-leaning content in their curriculums. Right, so no more books or other materials that address evil, scary, Republican, boogeyman topics like sexual orientation, gender identity, stuff like that. And reportedly with the faculty being first told about this at a meeting last spring where they were given AI authored reports that basically outlined everything they're not allowed to teach anymore. Right, and that was met with a lot of confusion, a lot of frustration, and you had one professor calling the document AI slump. And while of course on this show, we've talked about schools given into pressure from the Trump administration and changing their policies and content that they teach, using AI to make curriculums more conservative, that is a new messy layer to this whole higher education crisis. And this Texas Tech AI-assisted censorship, it's not just gonna affect what a number of conservatives might call out there Super Bowl content. Or you've got Texas Tech historian Jacob Bell saying he doesn't know how he's supposed to discuss Joan of Arc who was burned at the stake for a few reasons, but partially for cross-dressing. And then you've got a French studies professor worried about her Holocaust in literature course because it mentions that gay and bisexual men were also targets of the Nazis. Where they're telling the Times, now the Holocaust becomes an elective. And so you have the situation where professors, they have no choice but to pretend like parts of history just don't exist because a robot told them so. Now in July, you had the American Association of University Professors in Texas, AAUP, AFT, suing the university, arguing that the course review effort violates the First Amendment. With AAUP president Todd Wolfson saying, "By imposing vague, arbitrary, and AI-driven censorship, the administration is replacing academic judgment with bureaucratic surveillance, undermining constitutionally protected speech, and reducing higher education to a compliance exercise." Saying that's not education, it's ideological control. And as far as where this is coming from, the AI-assisted censorship effort, it's the brainchild of the chancellor of the Texas Tech University System, Brandon Creighton. And you've got Creighton claiming that there's, quote, "Quite a bit of garbage in the curriculum," and that his course review plan will produce the best curriculum in America. He's confident that it will be a national model when we're finished. Also, maybe unrelated, the censorship news is coming a few months after the university invested a whopping $25 million into a major partnership with the tech company, NVIDIA. - The future is right here in front of us, and Texas Tech is building it. - The Texas Tech System is still in the beginning phases of the partnership. It revolves around NVIDIA's new Blackwell Ultra B300 hardware, a chip to power supercomputers. - Yeah, they're building a massive AI factory right on the main campus. And they're actually the first R1 top-tier research institution public university in the country to own and operate a system built for agentic AI. And so the students there are expected to have this new kind of college experience. Now, as far as the reaction to the censorship news has been spreading, those have varied. You had one student group starting a petition to kick Creighton out, saying that he's unfit to serve, with that petition receiving 1,600 signatures in less than 48 hours. But then you also had conservative students, like the ones who participate in the Texas Tech chapter at Turning Point USA, all for Creighton and his new censorship method. And specifically, you had Preston Parsons, the local chapter president of TPUSA, saying, "Mr. Creighton is bringing ideological balance "to a sector that is overwhelmingly liberal." He asked, "Is it necessarily a bad thing "that we have universities that sit a little different "on different issues?" And there you have Parsons referencing that, that longstanding debate about colleges being too woke and creating a culture that caters to progressive students, a subject that, if you've ever taken a peek at pretty much any right-wing content, far-right pundits are endlessly vocal about it. - The reality is that success in American life should not be reliant on receiving a credential from a top university where basically you learn to speak woke, where you learn how to put pronouns in your Twitter bio. - Also, the thing I'll say that's interesting about Creighton, right, the guy who's spearheading the operation, he is a former state lawmaker. And it just so happens that he was recently behind some of Texas' most consequential legislation affecting higher education. He actually wrote the bill, which was enacted last year, that gives the state more power over curriculum and limits the role that faculty members play in governing universities. And then in 2024, he wrote the bill that abolished DEI offices in Texas' public universities. And so Creighton's part of a larger trend that we're seeing with Republican lawmakers that are inserting themselves in higher education spaces to forcibly change the culture and decide what students can and cannot learn about. In fact, at least seven college presidents in Florida, they're former Republican lawmakers. And then over in Virginia, former Governor Glenn Youngkin appointed a bunch of Republican donors and activists to public college and university boards, just to put pressure on faculty who do not fall in line with conservative priorities. Moves that you've had many saying, that's glaring hypocrisy. Saying they're calling out universities for being too one-sided and then just switching them over to the opposite side. But then also putting, at least left versus right politics aside, right? Everything is politics. Creighton specifically, he's also been shouting from the rooftops that AI will completely change the future of higher ed for a while now. And there, at least regarding the broader issue, I will say he is not wrong. We know that AI is getting more capable by the day, whether that be for positive or negative reasons. And it seems inevitable that you're gonna see more of the technology integrated everywhere, including university programs. In fact, you're already seeing that, not just at Texas Tech. You also have Morgan State University building its own AI system for grading assignments and advising. Texas A&M and four other institutions, they're using virtual reality simulations for students to practice teaching with AI-generated student avatars. Georgia Tech has a virtual teaching assistant, Jill Watson, that handles Q&A sessions and classes. And then there's even talk of AI being used in school for progressive purposes, where there was a study with five nonprofits that culminated in the hybrid advising playbook, which offers guidance to combine AI and human advising to create more equitable support systems. And the nonprofits explored using AI to improve advising with a focus on black and Latino student outcomes. So I guess all of that is to say, in addition to the core Texas Tech piece that is very concerning for a number of reasons, this kind of technology is also moving so fast right now that it feels almost impossible to predict what the AI is gonna look like in schools and in the world in the next five, 10, 20 years from now. Right, whether it be things like Creighton starting an AI-assisted college censorship trend that continues to grow, or does it spark a ton of backlash and we then see a different kind of pendulum swing, and where does it land from there? Time will tell, and of course, in the meantime, I'd love to know your reactions. And then there's more that we gotta dive into in just a minute, but first, two things. One, if you haven't already, hit us with a like button. It helps keep us in your feed. Two, if you're new here, definitely hit that subscribe button. I got daily news dives. And three, I'll be right back after a quick word from a sponsor. Here's a mildly terrifying question. Are you building the career you want or just getting better at the job you already have? Right, because it's easy to spend all day answering emails, finishing projects, and putting out fires, and then realize you haven't stopped to ask, "What am I working toward?" And that's where today's sponsor, Strawberry.me, can help. Strawberry.me connects you with a real career coach who helps you figure out your next move and create a plan to make it happen. And one of the hardest things about your career is being objective when you're living it every day. 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Eblis can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to Eblis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Eblis. Before starting Eblis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lilly. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about Eblis and visit eblis.com or call 1-800-LILLY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. You get free nights every night, all year long, plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer. It's a first of its kind plan created for how Texans, actually use energy. TXU Energy, energy for everything. Rep number 1-0-0-0-4. - And then diving right back in, let's cram in some more news you need to know for your final block. Starting with news that feels like a mad lib. A group of Gandalfs just staged a protest at Peter Thiel's home in Buenos Aires. Right, and they committed to the bit with wizard hats, fake beards, and a sign saying, "You shall not pass." And online, you've had them both called Citizens Gandalf and Gandalfs of the South. While it seems like they haven't spoken out about the protest or what led to it yet, people are connecting it to Thiel's growing financial interests in Argentina. Right, Thiel's one of the richest people in the world, partly because he's the co-founder of one of the biggest big brother companies out there right now, Palantir. So that also then gives you an idea why the protestors came in Gandalf costumes, because the name Palantir comes from the seeing stones in Lord of the Rings. And if you haven't seen it yet, which how dare you, long story short, the bad guy uses them to see and manipulate people from far away. And Gandalf's the good guy trying to stop all that. You get it or you don't, I'm not gonna explain nerd stuff to non-nerds. But with all that, Thiel also recently made a $76 million investment into Vista Energy, which is an oil company operating in Argentina. And you've got people saying that he's also been cuddling up to their right wing president as well. at planting roots there after realizing how much they had in common. But the Times noting that they both have an aversion to taxes, socialism, and wokeness. And so while right now we don't know the protesters' specific motives yet, you've got reports noting that this could all be to set the tone around what we'll see if more wealthy tech bros start taking all their money and influence to Argentina. But then from Argentina, we jump back to the United States for news because you have Minnesota AG Keith Ellison suing Texas Governor Greg Abbott to get custody of a former ICE agent before he escapes across the border, potentially. Because this guy, Christian Castro, was working for ICE in Minneapolis back in January when he apparently shot a man in the leg after claiming it. This guy and someone that he was with tried to assault him and the other officers. But then when footage from that night eventually came out, we found out that he and the other officers were lying under oath. So by May, he was behind bars in Texas and he's been there ever since. And so you've had Minnesota officials requesting extradition paperwork for him, worried that when he gets released next week, that he could escape across the border before they get ahold of him. But that, as Governor Abbott, hasn't budged because he's waiting on Minnesota to, quote, "step up" and address their fraud problem, which has also been a big narrative and push from the Trump administration. And you have Abbott saying that he'll ignore their request, quote, "until they do what's right and acknowledge their fault in the fraud that took place and the fraud they committed." Minnesota officials saying that a refusal like this is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, and adding that this is not supposed to be controversial. And all of that, as you have it looking like the only thing that's actually keeping Castro in jail right now, right while all of this plays out, is that their lawsuit includes a restraining order to keep the Cameron County Sheriff's Office from letting him go. But if that doesn't work out in their favor, who knows where the situation goes? And last up today, and actually some positive news, or potentially positive news, it looks like we just made a huge step forward in cancer research, right? Because in a late stage trial with a little over a thousand melanoma patients, researchers found something that could help keep it from coming back or spreading to different parts of the body. But they found that by pairing an experimental vaccine from Moderna with an immunotherapy drug called Keytruda, which is made by Merck, they could essentially use the cancer's DNA against itself. And so the mRNA vaccine is called Entismerin, and the process to make it takes about six weeks. They make what are called neoantigens based on the genetics of the tumor for each specific patient. And those essentially teach the immune system how to attack the cancer. So you can think of it as a personalized cancer vaccine. And then, once the immune system knows what to attack, Keytruda helps to keep the cancer from blocking its response, allowing it to do its job more effectively. They're basically double teaming the cancer from two different angles. So you've got reports describing this as a first step towards transforming cancer care with treatments that are individualized to a person's tumor, and that may ultimately be able to stay ahead of it as it changes. And you actually have cancer experts saying that this might be able to be used in other types of cancer as well. So a lot of doctors are ecstatic saying that people in the cancer research and treatment community, this is what they've been waiting for. But that, my friends, you beautiful bastards, is the end of your Wednesday show. Though I've got two pieces of housekeeping before you can go out there and touch grass again. One, if you're not completely filled in, you should definitely check out today's brand new episode of "Crashing Out." We just released another podcast episode. And then two, whether you're watching or listening to us or not, you should then go to crashingouttour.com and get tickets to see us live. We're actually gonna be in Seattle and Portland this Friday and Saturday. Then next week, we're gonna be in Boston and Philadelphia, seeing all you beautiful faces. Then we've got eight more cities and dates from there. You should check it out. But whether you made the smartest decision you've made in a while or not, thank you for watching. I love yo faces, and I'll see you right back here tomorrow.