Peter Schweizer and Eric Eggers fill in for Sean, unpacking a new Gallup reading that puts congressional approval at 15 percent and a growing wave of members opting out of 2026 re-election bids. Former House Oversight Chair Jason Chaffetz joins to explain how broken appropriations, abandoned regular order, and endless continuing resolutions leave lawmakers exhausted and ineffective. He makes the case for term limits, restructuring the Speaker's role, even scrapping the Appropriations Committee, and highlights how the end of earmarks has stripped leadership of leverage. The conversation contrasts Democratic unity under Nancy Pelosi with Republican's challenges, notes Donald Trump's unique influence, and touches on proposals like voter ID and the SAVE Act as part of broader structural fixes.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hey, America, it's Peter Schweitzer sitting next to me as Eric Eggers, and we are filling in for Sean.
Join the conversation at 1-800-941-7326, 1-800-941-7326.
I'm looking in front of me some really disastrous numbers.
Latest Gallup poll approval rating for Congress, 15%.
Not 50%, 15%.
I'm also noticing that 53 members of Congress are going to be not seeking reelection in the 2026 midterm elections.
That's pretty devastating for the institution.
So why do you consider that to be devastating news?
Number one, if Congress is so bad that their approval rating is only 15%, then maybe swapping out over 10% of it is not the worst idea.
Maybe we just got to get the roster better.
It's like, you know, the Jets and the Giants have had terrible years.
So I would expect a few of those team members to come back.
But I do think it's telling because, you know, some people are leaving Congress to want to go out and, you know, they're going to run for different offices, right?
Like Chip Roy is running for AG in Texas.
Wesley Hunt's running for Senate.
So is Jasmine Crockett.
But you hear rumors, and we've been hearing it for some time, that there is a growing sense of dissatisfaction in specifically the House GOP caucus.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
You know, it's a very razor-thin majority, and a lot of people are frustrated.
It seems to be dysfunctional.
You've got people like Marjorie Taylor Greene that make noise and kind of disrupt everything.
So we wanted to talk to somebody who's actually been there.
Our good friend Jason Chaffis, he was the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, very powerful committee serving Congress representing Utah.
And he's also a distinguished fellow with the Government Accountability Institute where we work.
Jason, make sense of these numbers.
I mean, why are the numbers 15%, which is historically low?
And why do you think so many people are leaving Congress at this point in time?
You're asking me to make sense of Congress.
Listen, look, honored to be with you.
Happy New Year.
Look, it's a, I think members are very frustrated.
And it's not, it's on both sides of the aisle.
It is not solely a Republican situation.
But members feel like they can't do their jobs.
And people's eyes start to glaze over when you talk about regular order.
But the way the appropriations process is supposed to work is that we have 12 appropriations bills and every member can offer an amendment or a striking amendment and participate in the process.
But the entire eight years that I was there and even the eight years since I've left, never, not once, have they gone through quote unquote regular order.
So I, you know, I joke with people.
I say, you know, it's exhausting doing nothing because what happens is they go through all the process, they go through all the hearings, they go through all the rigmarole, and then they want to craft a bill, and then it just gets superseded by a continuing resolution, and they flush all that good work down the drain.
And that gets, that, that wears on people when you've been away from your family and all the other opportunity costs and people get fed up with it.
No, that actually makes a lot of sense.
And it actually casts the people who are leaving Congress in a positive light.
No joking around because it means like to your point, like, you know, you want your life to matter and you want what you do to do something.
And it also kind of suggests that if given the frustrations you run into on a daily basis of doing that job, then the only reason why you might want to stay in that job is if you're making money doing something else.
And so you then they get rid of the insider trading in Congress, which is something that we expect them to vote on.
What it does is suggest like, hey, like, why are we actually even here then?
Well, look, I think the body has to implement and do and pass into law, it's not a constitutional amendment, to have term limits.
And get out.
The people you should worry about most are the ones that stay there in perpetuity and never ever leave.
They're there decade after decade.
When I left, there were kind of three groups.
There were people there, hey, I got nothing better to do, and it's a cool business card, and it's kind of fun.
Number two is pretty weird.
Like, they're all about the power and maybe doing something that's pretty sketch.
And then the third group, I put myself in there, but there are really good people who wanted to get in, get work done.
You know, and I served with a number of those people, Trey Gowdy and John Ratcliffe, and those types of people.
Tulsi Gabbard was one of those people.
You know, now many of them are in the administration, but they got in, they served, and they got out.
And you've got to kind of force that.
The other thing I would do is get rid of the appropriations committee.
I would just totally flush it down the toilet, get rid of it.
It is totally worthless, top to bottom.
You have all these authorizing committees.
They hold hearings.
They know natural resources.
And then the appropriators come in and, by the hundreds, fund programs that were never authorized by the authorizing committees.
It's the craziest thing you've ever seen.
And so that, again, gets really frustrating.
Hey, we held hearings.
And the other thing Congress never does is flex its muscles.
It never, ever uses the power of the purse.
That's the one thing that Congress can do.
It's like, you know, all these daycare centers in Minnesota and all that.
Well, there should be consequences, but Congress is feckless.
And so members are tired of taking those questions.
And they're like, I can't change it.
Yeah, I mean, Jason, that's really, as I hear you talking about this, and I've known you for a while.
You're sincere in it.
I think your analysis is right.
And then you wonder, like, so is this a problem of leadership, right?
I mean, this problem didn't just sort of like land on people's laps.
Somebody is responsible for this dysfunction.
I'm not saying it's one person.
I'm not even saying it's half a dozen people.
But is this a leadership problem?
I mean, you talked about some structural reforms, getting rid of the committee, et cetera.
But is it a leadership issue?
Do the wrong people rise to the top?
Or why do we get leaders that don't seem to be able to tame this beast and get it to do the things it's supposed to do?
You know, it's interesting because I have long sought to redefine the role of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
I think Mike Johnson is a fabulous person.
He is a man of integrity.
I have nothing but good things to say about him.
He has the most impossible job.
We give him no tools to actually do it.
The expectation is that he can herd all these cats and move them in the right direction.
We got rid of earmarks.
I was proud of the fact that I let a, you know, I played a big role in that in saying, no, we're done with earmarks, even though everybody in the Utah delegation, when I came there, was supportive of it.
And I kind of forced him and shamed him into getting rid of them.
Well, that was the political candy that made everything go down easier.
And so when you get rid of earmarks, what tools does the speaker have to actually cajole and move people?
I don't think you necessarily want to.
The role of the speaker should be totally different.
But the body as the whole and the American people have to force this issue.
And it's not the sexiest thing to say, all right, we're reconfiguring this.
No more appropriations committees, no more, but it's broken now and it needs fixing.
And term limits is, I think, one of the very first steps.
A balanced budget amendment would go a long way.
Voter ID, you know, Mike Lee's, you know, SAVE Act to make sure we have voter identification because you literally have more than a dozen seats in Congress that are essentially illegal aliens that get representation.
So let me see the things I think would make a difference.
Let me ask you this, Jason.
I mean, it seems to me, and everything I've heard about Speaker Johnson is the same, right?
Just high-quality individual.
But it seems to me, you look over the last 20 years, Nancy Pelosi was absolutely had a spine of steel.
She could get all the Democrats to stay in line.
Republicans don't seem to be able to do that.
Why?
She controlled the money.
If you wanted to raise money and have a political future, look at Tim Ryan out of Ohio.
When he went up against Nancy Pelosi, he was done.
We never talk about him anymore.
So she ruled that iron fist and she was darn good at it.
And look, conceptually, they were lemmings.
They really did believe in centralized government where Republicans talk about freedom, liberty, self-determination.
That's just counter to, oh, okay, our leader says we're going over here, so everybody get on board.
The closest I've seen to actual, you know, driving and moving everybody together in the same direction is Donald Trump.
And he does it because he will, when he lets you know that that's what he wants done, he is going to, he is going to make his way known.
But, you know, he's doing it the right way, the political way.
But it's going to probably take the outside groups, maybe some other structural changes, but it is not functional right now.
And it's not serving the American people.
Well, they're showing up in the poll numbers.
We're talking to former member of Congress, Jason Chaffetz.
He's also the former chair of the House Oversight Committee.
Jason, what grade would you give James Comer for the last year?
And if you could request or sort of predict one thing he will do next year, what would it be?
I give him an A.
I think he will ultimately end up running for governor of Kentucky, and I think he'll be a fabulous governor.
He has his hands full.
You know, we transformed that committee.
It used to be a committee nobody wanted on when I was there.
And, you know, after we got done, it's the most popular committee out there.
The frustrating thing, I think, for the American public is they don't give Congress handcuffs.
And so it was a frustration because we point out all the waste, the fraud, the abuse.
You have the hearings.
You got people under oath.
And you make a recommendation.
It goes over to the Department of Justice and it's crickets.
And that's the frustration.
And something's got to get because I think the American people that are doing things right, they're working hard, paying their taxes, got a job, taking care of it.
They feel like chumps right now.
They just feel like they're chumps.
Like, why should I do this?
You know, you see what's going on in Minnesota and other places.
You know who thinks James Comer is doing a lousy job?
Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Right?
I mean, here's a guy, really the first government official who said, we are going to subpoena you, and you are going to sit before the Congressional Committee.
How do you think that's all going to end up, Jason?
Do you think the Clintons are actually going to have to sit before this committee?
I'm not sure they can avoid it.
You know, Trey Gowdy, I think, said it out loud first.
He said, your subpoena is only good as your ability to enforce it.
I went down that path, but I had a speaker in Paul Ryan who's no way going to support that.
You had an attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who told me, if it's Clintons, I'm doing nothing.
You know, that's a large part why I left.
And so, and then prior to that, it was the Obama administration.
So, you know, good luck with, you know, Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder and that crew.
So I think he now finally probably has somebody and a Pam Bondi and a Judge Janine, who's the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, where they're actually going to be able to force the issue.
And that showdown is going to be a big one, but I think they're going to have to come testify, raise their hands and go under oath.
So every two years is an election year, obviously, but this year with this especially tight majority the Republicans are holding, how much does that impact how Congress operates?
Does it impact in terms of like, hey, we're more willing to hold hearings because we think it's better for, you know, there's only 30 seats that are kind of up for grabs.
How much does that impact just the way they do their day-to-day business?
Oh, 100%.
I mean, the last six months of this term, I think, is you're being dishonest if you don't think that that has a big, you know, their political ramifications.
Look, a lot of it depends on the economy.
A lot of it depends on some of these important court rulings, birthright citizenship, those types of things.
There are going to be some really big rulings coming out of the court that will affect that.
But yeah, Congress has got to get its act together to get another shot at reconciliation.
And so, you know, what can they couple together that will make a difference in people's lives?
Yeah, Congress has its hands full because there is nowhere we've come so far in the first, it's hard to believe it's been less than 12 months of Donald Trump here in his term.
But yeah, there's a lot that people want to see in terms of affordability, health care, those types of things.
Well, Jason, we understand why you left Congress.
Kind of wish you hadn't because we need people like you in there.
But we appreciate you joining us.
We appreciate the work you're doing with us at the Government Accountability Institute and also the work you're doing at the Oversight Project.
And we will have to wait and see how the midterms roll out.
So happy new year to you, Jason.
And we will continue to watch this story closely in terms of these midterms and how things are going to turn out.
I don't know, Eric, if you have any thoughts on that.
Well, I like Jason Chaffis.
Not only does he go on TV all the time as a fill-in host for many of these programs, but he's just making news now.
You heard him say he thinks James Comer leaves Congress, joins this groundswell of people trying to get out of Washington, D.C., and runs for governor, Kentucky.
I mean, that's the first time I've heard that.
Do you agree with that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's going to be interesting to see how that shakes out.
It's going to be interesting to see how all this gerrymandering affects the outcome of the elections in November.
I'm Peter Schweitzer.
That's Eric Eggers.
We are filling in on the Hannity Show.
We'll be back right after this break.
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It's Friday, January 2nd.
Welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show.
I'm Eric Eggers.
This is Peter Schweitzer alongside with me.
We co-host a podcast called The Drill Down with Peter Schweitzer, which you can find at thedrilldown.com.
Happy to be filling in for Sean yet again on this first live show of the year 2026.
Peter, I know that you do quite well because you're a best-selling author, but you live in Florida, so you don't have this problem.
If you are as successful as Peter, if you are a billionaire who lives in California, I have terrible news for you.
You are on the hook for some really potentially expensive taxes.
Yeah, you are.
And look, we have to remind ourselves we have a federal system in America.
So Donald Trump's in the White House.
Republicans control the House.
They control the Senate.
But there's a lot of states that are making their own decisions.
So we're going to talk in a little bit here about the proposed wealth tax in California.
This is not a tax on income.
There's not a property tax.
This is you're worth how much money?
We're going to take 5% of it.
And we're going to learn about some other really bizarre woke laws, including ones involving horses coming up in the next segment.
We've got to remind ourselves there's crazy things going on at the state level by the woke mafia, even right now.
We'd love to hear from you.
Give us a call.
Join the conversation 1-800-941-7326.
1-800-941.
Sean will take your calls and tell you crazy things about horses and billionaires right after this.
He's Peter Schweitzer.
I'm Eric Eggers.
This is Sean Hannity Radio Show.
Here's Sean Hannity.
That is Eric Eggers, and I'm Peter Schweitzer, and we are filling in for Sean, who is getting a well-deserved break.
Join the conversation, 1-800-941-7326.
1-800-941-7326.
You know, Donald Trump's done a lot the first year, as we talked about earlier in the segment, changing a lot of things.
But at the state level, there still is a lot of craziness and some things that are really going to affect a lot of people.
We're quite lucky because we both live in the free state of Florida.
And so, you know, we've got people talking about getting rid of property taxes.
Ronda Sands has done a great job.
But other states, to your point, have maybe gone the other way on stuff that kind of falls a little short of conservative fiscal and social policy initiatives.
Yeah, this is a very interesting article by Camden Mulder in the National Review talking about what's going on, some of the blue state laws in 2025.
Some of them are obviously predictable.
California mandates general gender-neutral bathrooms in K through 12 schools.
Mandated.
Mandated, required to have them, whether it is a charter school or a public school.
And by the way, taxpayers will pay for all of those renovations.
But some of them are just downright crazy, if you ask me.
In Washington state, they have now mandated hate crime work leave.
Hate crime work leave.
That is to say, you get to leave work if you've been a victim of a hate crime.
Yeah, if you have experienced a hate crime, your boss is now required to give you ample time off to heal and recover from the experience.
Now, I can certainly understand if you are attacked in the streets, somebody beats you up, you're going to need some time off, but this covers everything.
So, if you are harassed online or on social media or somebody calls you a name in online media, your employer is required to give you the time off without penalty to, quote, get your affairs in order.
You know, the real irony of that is like if you are subjected to a hate crime as a Washington state resident, the odds are that happened because you were goofing off at work online.
You're probably just hanging out on Reddit or something, and then too many of your comments got downvoted, and you're like, I'm triggered, I'm out.
Yes, I'm out.
And I'm taking some time off.
You're rewarded for being a bad employee.
I like that.
Yeah, in the state of Connecticut, they have banned, this is bizarre, they have banned hostile infrastructure that deters unhoused people from sleeping on benches, sidewalks, etc.
So this is Public Act 25-49.
A component of the bill says that unhoused citizens now are allowed to sleep where they can.
And in fact, it bans hostile architecture.
Now, so do you know what that like?
We actually have examples of that in the city that we live in.
There's a lake that's not too far from our office where we're doing the show from.
And they put in benches because there was an unhoused population problem.
Too many people are kind of accosting the families and stuff.
So they put in little bars in the middle of the bench, like a little spiky thing.
It's like a little armrest, maybe.
Yeah.
But it's meant to keep people from sleeping on the benches.
So that would be a crime in Connecticut.
Yeah.
In fact, armrests in the middle of a bench are considered hostile architecture and are now banned in the state of Connecticut.
The bill, of course, passed with no Republican support.
Well, I will say this.
If I'm sympathetic to any of them, I might be sympathetic to that because if you're a homeless person in Connecticut, your problem is not architecture.
Your problem is the cold.
Like I respect to you for being a homeless person in Connecticut.
You're tough.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, so in the state of Illinois, they passed a law that insurance plans now must cover therapeutic horse riding.
So this is in August.
Governor J.B. Prisker signed a Senate Bill 69 into law.
It requires insurance companies to cover hypotherapy.
Now, I'd never heard of hippotherapy.
That's apparently therapy with horses.
But this mandates that insurance plans cover horse therapy for physical or occupational or speech therapy through the interacting with a horse.
Illinois is so corrupt and transactional.
Remember, Rod Bogoevich was like, I have a Senate seat to sell.
I'm about to make so much money off of this.
So when you tell me that, it makes me think that the horse lobby is they got their finger on the pulse of the legislature.
They're like, we got all these horses.
Nobody's trying to ride.
It's too cold in Chicago.
We need to get on the horse therapy game.
Yeah.
And again, people wonder why their health insurance rates go up.
I'm not saying it's just things, but there are a lot of crazy things that get embedded where states require insurance companies to cover things.
Their costs go up.
They're going to raise their prices.
So those are laws that actually passed.
A law that has been proposed is a valid initiative that would impose a one-time 5% tax on anyone in the state of California worth a billion dollars.
The service employers in international union, the SEIU, has proposed this.
Now, of course, it's California, so there's always other stuff going on.
Gavin Newsom seems to loom large over this idea.
What do you think about this proposed one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires?
Well, first of all, one-time.
I mean, come on.
They say it's one time.
If they actually pull it off and they get some revenue, even though a lot of people are going to leave, they're going to do it again.
It's a shakedown.
Once you give into a shakedown one time, you're going to get it more often.
But this is, I think, a major escalation in taxation in America because you're not talking about taxing somebody's home or their commercial real estate and a property tax or an income tax that we've had for the last century in the United States.
You're saying all the money that you've saved up over the course of however long your career is, even if it's a billion dollars, we're going to take 5% of a chunk of that.
And we are going to use it to fix the fiscal crisis that California is in.
Because after all, the problem in California is that people do not pay enough taxes.
And if we just get more tax revenue, things are going to get better in California, right?
Yeah, that's the problem with California.
Not enough revenue.
That's the real problem.
Here's the contrast, by the way.
We live in Florida.
Texas is considering the same thing.
Big states, California's the biggest, but we're in big states.
Our two states, well, in the state of Florida, I should say, we have no state income tax.
They are actually considering eliminating property taxes on your primary residents.
And they say they can do this and there will be no cutbacks.
And yet, California, which has the highest state income tax in the country and has all these fiscal problems, which we don't have in Florida, they're just going to now implement a new tax, apparently, if this thing actually passes as a state initiative.
Well, by the way, the tax on your net worth, it's worth pointing out, would happen because you've accumulated that net worth after paying taxes on your income.
So you're going to be paying taxes again on money that you got to keep after being taxed the first time.
So major problems there.
I would suggest that the reason why California is in this difficult problem, that they need to raise enough money from this proposal, is because of how expensive it is to be in California.
Now, remember this: we've talked about this on a podcast before, but for four years in a row, California had the largest net loss of one-way movers.
Don't take my word for it.
That's U-Haul.
U-Haul is like, no, we literally run out of U-Hauls in California because people are doing too many one-way to get the U-Haul in California.
They take it anywhere else, anywhere else that it's much cheaper.
And so, you know, Gavin Newsom at one point had a $98 billion budget surplus because of all the federal COVID subsidies.
And he managed, Gavin Newsom did.
This is the potential presidential frontrunner for the Democrat Party to turn a $98 billion surplus into a $45 billion budget deficit.
Hey, not everybody has a great year, right?
Yeah.
No, what's going to be interesting to watch in this whole debate is I don't think Gavin Newsom has taken a public position on this tax, which, by the way, is being pushed by the Service Employees International.
What does this have to do with union organizing?
Nothing.
I mean, this is just pure political activism.
But Gavin Newsom's in a dilemma because he's going to run for president.
That seems pretty clear.
He needs the progressives.
They have the energy in the party.
That's clearly the center of gravity in the party.
Anybody who campaigns as a moderate for president is going to have a hard time getting the nomination.
But if you go into Crazyville, right, you go too far to the left, a la Bernie Sanders or Kamala Harris, you're going to lose.
You're going to lose because that's not where the center of gravity of the country is.
So he's got to straddle this.
He doesn't want to offend the progressives.
But on the other hand, he knows this is a stupid idea because the New York Times has reported that already Sergey Brin and Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire investor, made plans last year in 2025 to change their residence in anticipation of this bill.
Because by the way, what's interesting is this is a referendum to be held in November of 2026.
It's retroactive.
So if you live there today on January the 2nd and you've got that kind of money and this thing passes, it doesn't matter where you move.
They're going to come after you.
Well, it turns out the billionaires, part of the reason that they become billionaires is they pay lawyers and accountants.
So I guess they had a bit of a heads up on this.
But I want to follow up on something you just said because you're right.
The center of gravity, the energy for Democrats running for president, the presidential primary certainly is the progressive.
There's no doubt about that.
But so you need them to be successful in a presidential campaign.
But you also need money and you need then the support of progressive billionaires.
So you wrote a book called Extortion and you introduced this idea.
It's brilliant back in the time, came out in 2013.
But it was this idea that members of Congress will introduce legislation that they don't actually intend for it to pass, but they use it as a vehicle to do what?
To extort money, right?
In other words, oh, this real, and I go here where you're going with this, and it's really a great point.
For Gavin Newsome, this is a way to get progressive billionaires to back him because he's the only guy that can stop this, right?
He's the only guy.
It's the classic, you know, the mafia shows up at the corner de in town and they say, oh, it'd be a shame if this place burned down.
I've got fire insurance.
I'll protect you.
That's essentially what the move could be here.
And that's a great point.
I mean, if he's trying to shore up the fundraising for a 2828 presidential campaign, this is the way that Gavin Newsom can get a lot of that back.
And he comes to you and said, listen, I'm the only thing staying between you and a 5% tax on your net worth, California residents.
And so give me 2% of your net worth and you'll come up 3%.
I don't think it's a great idea, but I'm in this weird spot because I'm Gavin Newsom.
I pivoted from having Steve Bannon on podcasts.
And now I'm like, you know, back in support of all these progressive ideas and I'm trolling Donald Trump and I'm, you know, I delivered the biggest actual win in terms of the redistricting initiative in California.
So like people aren't so much concerned about the fact that California is a failed state with multi-billion dollar budget deficits because I did this thing that seems like it's helping to fight Donald Trump.
I just think he's very smart politically.
He is.
And it wouldn't shock me if this is part of his larger plan to position himself.
Because yeah, how can you kind of straddle it?
Hey, look, we want to be, you know, we want to fight against people, but I also need the support.
So I think this is part of his presidential campaign.
Yeah, Bill Clinton had back in the day in 1992, the so-called sister soldier moment.
There was a musical performer, Sister Solja.
I think she was a rapper and some raunchy lyrics, at least back in the day.
And Bill Clinton denounced her and said, this is cultural rot.
We can't have this in the country.
He took criticism from some people in the Democratic Party, but it's sort of centered his reputation as somebody that was prepared to police both sides.
So this would be the move for Gavin Newsom.
And it makes a lot of sense, and it could be very, very effective going up to 2028, at least in terms of getting the Democratic nomination and doing so by not having to go so far to the left that he alienates too many voters in the middle.
It'll be really interesting to see what happens.
And, you know, there's been a lot of talk about the Minnesota Somali fraud.
And we're going to talk to former governor Tim Paulenti in the five o'clock hour about that and just kind of how Minnesota developed into what it's become where you've had one party rule for 20 years.
But Minnesota, I think, is the latest iteration of California.
California was at one point, as you well know, a Republican was governor of California at one point.
And I mean, when was the last time a Republican won statewide office in California?
And for as much talk about the $10 billion in fraud in Minnesota, there's a recent report that it could be $100 billion of fraud in California.
I think eight different agencies failed this audit.
So, I mean, California is like Minnesota, but blown up in a bigger way.
And, you know, that's not a conversation Gavin Newsom wants to have.
But I do think that that's like when you start peeking under the hood, people are going to ask real questions about just how badly it's been run.
Yeah, and here's the thing.
I mean, fraud happens everywhere, right?
Corruption happens everywhere.
But what we're basically arguing, and I think it's true, is that this is politically supported fraud in California and in Minnesota.
I mean, in other words, they kind of have a sense that it's going on.
We're going to be playing an audio tape in the next hour of an audio tape of a 2021 conversation that the Attorney General of Minnesota had with some Somali businessmen that is going to shock you and illustrate this point that we're making.
No, it's absolutely.
Stay tuned for that conversation.
Plus, we'll take your calls.
It's 1-800-941-Sean, 1-800-941-Sean.
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We'll be back right after this.
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Let's take a caller.
Let's go to Lisa, who wants to talk about Mamdani in New York.
Hey, Lisa, how are you?
I'm good.
How are y'all?
We are great.
Happy New Year to you.
Well, happy new year.
So what do you want to tell us about Mamdani?
Well, I happen to be reading some, you know, some information today, and I came across this new act that's being implemented in New York City.
It's called COPA.
C as in cat, O is in orange, P is in Paul, A is in Apple.
COPA Act, which it says, a law that would force homeowners to offer their property to the government or NGOs before they can sell it freely.
Wow.
That's amazing.
That's a huge infringement on property rights.
And I would say that's exactly an example of something you heard Carol Markowitz talk about earlier in this program about, hey, there are some real limits to what Mamdani can do, but then there's some stuff that he can do.
And like that seems like an example of allowing big government to take over potentially in nonprofits.
We've seen this really bizarre relationship between nonprofits and the government in these progressive areas.
We're going to talk to Tim Paulenti, the former governor of Minnesota, about exactly that and what's going on in his former state.