As America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, it’s not so much “taxation without representation” at issue as it is the question of what modern taxation represents – For some, a chance to strike a blow against wealth disparity while pursuing a socialist dream of expansive government. Nowhere is that more evident than in California and a ballot initiative which, if approved by voters in November, would impose a 5% “wealth tax” on the Golden State’s resident billionaires – 90% of the proceeds going to state healthcare programs. Joshua Rauh, the Hoover Institution’s George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics and an expert on California-style taxation, discusses America’s current fascination with socialism and economic class warfare as well as all that’s at stake in the Golden State. Will a voter-approved wealth tax prompt billionaires to flee California for the likes of Austin and Nashville, taking with them needed tax revenue? Would the one-time tax lay waste to Silicon Valley as an incubator of innovation (and revenue stream)? Moreover, if the promised revenue doesn’t materialize, is California likely to apply the tax to millionaires as well (and perhaps expand it beyond a five-year period, as happened a decade ago when the Golden State extended a “temporary tax” on California’s upper earners)?

Recorded on June 29, 2026.

This week’s bombshell news in Sacramento: California Gov. Gavin Newsom announcing that he and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom are under federal investigation reportedly for tax and financial improprieties – Newsom claiming he’s the victim of a political vendetta as a critic of President Trump, but the story also a window into the unseemly practice of “behested payments” that special interests use to curry favor with elected officials, especially sitting governors. As the June primary results are closer to being finalized, why did former reality-tv “villain” Spencer Pratt, billionaire Tom Steyer, AOC-clone Saikat Chakrabarti, and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan all fail to advance to the general election? Finally, as legislators race to finish a new state budget before its July 1 deadline, will Gov. Newsom, his political allies, and a powerful California labor union cut a deal to keep a billionaire wealth tax off the November ballot?

Recorded on June 18, 2026.

On the eve of the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, how has the nation’s Declaration of Independence – drafted, debated and signed in a world shaped more by royalty than republicanism – managed to stand the test of time?

They quibbled over the language and the provisions, but in the end America’s Founding Fathers produced a 1,320-word document establishing a newborn republic’s belief in natural rights and self-governance. Were the founders who debated and ultimately signed the Declaration of Independence true visionaries or merely smart and realpolitik enough to find a new way to express the colonists’ longstanding desires for self-governance and liberty? Michael Auslin, a historian and the Hoover Institution’s Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow, discusses his acclaimed new book National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America. Among the topics discussed: the interplay between Thomas Jefferson and the committee tasked with producing what the author calls “a big bang of declaration”; the document’s various compromises required to attain unanimous consent; how the Declaration survived future wars; plus why other nations (revolutionary France in particular) drafting their own declarations fell short of the American standard.

Recorded on June 1, 2026.