get at the nations airports. todd: sky lounge is the name of cheryl's next pet. >> cheryl: i wish i could get into polaris. >> my dog's name is maximus. that's a cool name do you have a dog? todd: i don't but if i did it be a pug. they need to have like funny names like -- >> shimkis. >> cheryl: if carlie is catching, we're sorry. todd: i'll let joe dig out of that one. lovely co-anchor whose eight and a half months pregnant. >> do we bail out of this now? todd: no. >> cheryl: before we get into trouble? todd: i think we let ashley think of his favorite pet name. >> cheryl: puppies and rainbow s, ash, that's what we're sending you today. ashley: thank you, guys i think polaris is the name of a very fancy snowmobile, right?

you know what i'm saying? >> george clooney film. ashley: two dogs baxter and grac ie. it's not polaris. ashley: great stuff as always, thank you, guys, good morning, cheryl and good morning, everybody. yes, i'm ashley webster in in for stu today. now this. the government has announced negative covid tests will be required for passengers traveling from china. it comes as the virus surges in the now-reopened communist country, but there are concerns about the possibility of a new variant. oh, great. take a look at this terrifying video. suspected migrants attempting break into a ranchers home in texas. this is the reality. that homeowner says they were unsuccessful, because she spent thousands to upgrade her security after break-ins that's what's going on close to the border. just two trading days left in 2022 and good riddance, but let's check the markets the dow,

s&p and nasdaq pointing higher in the pre-market we'll see whether that will hold throughout the day and take a look at the 10-year treasury yield very quickly. that had been on the rise the 10 -year yield but now down about a percentage a basis point right now at 3.87%. now this , elon musk is urging his employees not to be buffered by the stock market craziness. nothing to see here, move along. the stock might be getting a boost today but as you can see in the pre-market up 6% but it is down 68% on the year. its taken a real beating since elon musk took over twitter, and yes, the nightmare at southwest continues. another 2,300 flights canceled today. they've got billions, remember, of dollars in taxpayer aid, so the question is, what did they do with all that money? they certainly didn't put it into their computer system. let's just hope stu isn't flying southwest this holiday season, but who am i kidding? stu hasn't flown commercial for years. it is thursday, december 29.

"varney" & company is about to begin. ♪ it's a beautiful day ♪ ashley: it's a beautiful day, says u 2 and yes, indeed. still a festive scene in midtown manhattan on fox square. let's get right to it. the government is instituting new rules for travelers coming in from china. mandatory covid tests are back. good morning, lauren. take us through it. lauren: good morning, this all starts january 5. the u.s. , but some other countries too, are mandating that any traveler, regardless of their nationality, that comes from china show a negative pcr or antigen self- test no more than two days before their departure. okay, some are calling out the white house for hypocrisy.

let's flash back to march of 2020 when then-president donald trump restricted travel from china, and joe biden said this. "stop the xenophobic fear mongering, be honest, take responsibility, do your job." three years later, is this xenophobic, ashley? here is my argument. it's the right move right now. i do not trust any data coming out of china. we do not know what variants are there, if there's something else that is circulating. remember those two flights that arrived from milan to china yesterday? half of the passengers on board tested positive. they're sequencing those tests right now so look, covid is completely overwhelming china. it's estimated 18% of their population there infected this month alone, 250 million people. ashley: and that's because of zero-covid policy. hide from it, run from it.

exactly right, vaccines that are not as effective as those in the west. all right, thank you, lauren. good friend liz peek here to talk about this. liz, good morning. what's your take on this? are we headed back in the wrong direction or is this the right move? >> oh, i think this is the right move, ashley. it's protecting american citizens is the number one job for biden as it was for donald trump, but i think there are a couple of thins that really jump out here. number one, china is lying again and basically not being truthful with the entire world about a virus that they launched from wuhan and that killed 6 million people. i mean, this is almost unconscionable. they are not giving us data about the case spread in china, about deaths in china, or they're also not providing any kind of genomic sequencing information about the infections that have basically ripped through the country, to lauren's point, 50% of the passengers on a plane, is that a

representative of the population we have no idea, but another thing, ashley, that's really interesting here. the cdc is basically saying yes, take a test, or if you've had it recently, provide proof that you have recovered from it, so what does that tell you? all those years that the cdc has basically said that having covid was not the same as having a vaccine, and that we all had to have vaccine tests constantly to prove that we were okay and that we were not going to spread this disease, all that now basically is on the rubbish heap and the cdc is in effect acknowledging that immunities can be just as strong from getting covid as being vaccinated. that's a huge policy decision which really no ones being reporting on. ashley: yeah, that's a very good point. i want to get on to this subject , real debate issue right now. congressman-elect george santos now under investigation by the nassau county district attorney' office

and that district attorney says in a statement, "the numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with congressman- elect santos are nothing short of stunning. the residents of nassau county and other parts of the third district must have an honest and accountable representative in congress." you know, liz, should santos bow out or stand his ground? what say you? >> i don't know. this guy seems to have no shame, no particular embarrassment about this. i think the question is has he done something criminal. i mean, isn't it an embarrassment to the republican party right now? absolutely. is he an embarrassment, ashley, to democrats in new york who basically didn't look into any of his bio before he ran for office and before he won that run? i don't know. i think that the probe is going to look into mainly his financial background. all of a sudden he turns out that he has quite a bit of money

in the last couple of years. where did it come from? there don't seem to be any good answers. there doesn't seem to be any occupation that would reliably provide 700,000 dollars that he lent to his campaign, for example. there's a lot we don't know here and until we do, i think the republican party and that's kind of what's happening, are sort of wise to hold their ammunition. ashley: yeah, there's a whole lot more to this story i think. liz peek, terrific stuff. thanks again as always for joining us, liz, appreciate it. >> thanks happy new year. ashley: same to you, liz, thank you. sam bankman-fried, he is set to appear in court next week, apparently. so lauren, what is expected to happen during that appearance? lauren: so he's expected to appear in court on tuesday to enter a plea on two counts of wire fraud and six counts of conspiracy et cetera, in relation to the epic collapse of ftx. ashley, a plea is not a plea deal. he will likely have difficulty obtaining some sort of plea

bargain, given that he was head of the company and two of his associates already have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with prosecutors. he's insisted i don't bear responsibility or criminal responsibility for the decline of the company. um, i am so curious to see how this plays out in a courtroom. if found guilty on all charges that's 115 years behind bars. ashley: oh, yeah i think we're all waiting to see how this plays out. lauren, thank you very much. let's check the futures now pointing higher. that doesn't mean anything of course in the pre-market long way to go another trading day but we are higher across-the-board. let's bring in adam johnson. adam, great to see you. i was reading through your notes the title of your notes is pessimism peaking? well let me ask you that. is it peaking and what does that tell us about the markets? >> well, ashley, good morning. the options market is telling us that the pessimism is absolutely peaking, and i'll tell you why. there are two types of options as you know, but maybe not all of our viewers do.

there are put options that basically protect your portfolio on the downside, and a call option that allows you to benefit on the upside. nobody is buying calls right now in fact, one of the things that professional investors look at is the ratio of puts-to-calls, and for only the fifth time in five years, ashley, that ratio went to 1.5 times as many puts as calls. in other words, everyone is worried about the downside and very few people are playing for upside. ashley, of the five times that we've seen that kind of peak panic in the past five years, every time the market has rallied within a couple of weeks , and by the way, not just little rallies but it's actually rallied an average of 31% over the next seven months so my point is i think there's a message from the options market and that is that we've all gotten incredibly negative, and it's understandable why we are negative, but when you get that much negativity when the pendulum swings so far to one side, you tend to get a re bound. the pendulum comes back to the

center. ashley: well, that said, adam, where are the buying opportunities in your opinion? >> well, you know, you and stuart and lauren and i have been talking about big cap tech and we're probably all tired of hearing about big cap tech because its cost so many of us so much money but look at some of the names right now that we have on the screen. where we're talking about big cap tech you know the names we all know. apple, amazon, meta, alphabet, microsoft, on and on you could name any of them. all the big stocks in the nasdaq are all down so much. most of them are at two-year lows, ashley so the question is would you rather buy oil at two- year highs or would you rather buy tech at two-year lows and i think this is a moment with the nasdaq down what, 35, 36, 37% depending upon which moment you look at the screen, i think this is a moment where you need to just dig deep and say money is made when you buy in down markets. it's hard to do. it stresses you out, it stresses me out, but i believe it is the

right decision for thoughtful long term investors, ashley. ashley: it takes a lot of fortitude as they say. adam johnson, great stuff. thank you very much appreciate your time. as you can see the futures showing that we will start on the upside when we get going in about 19 minutes from now. we shall see. meantime, coming up, democrat governor of kansas is the latest to ban tiktok on state-issued devices but are we actually doing enough here? i'm going to ask kt mcfarland that question. its been pure chaos at airports ink across country, but turns out, transportation secretary, well he had high hopes for the airlines during the holiday season. oops. listen to what he said back in september. >> do you think this issue will be sorted in time for the holidays? >> i think it's going to get better by the holidays. we're really pressing the airlines to deliver better service. ashley: um, oh, dear. so the question is, can the airlines recover after this? southwest i'm going to ask

travel guy jeff hoffman, and he's next. ♪ you ok, man? the internet is telling me a million different ways i should be trading. look! what's up my trade dogs? you should be listening to me. you want to be rich like me? you want to trust me on this one. [inaudible] wow! yeah! it's time to take control of your investing education. cut through the noise with best-in-class education resources that match your preferred style of learning. learn your way. not theirs. td ameritrade. where smart investors get smarter℠.

♪ ashley: what a beautiful picture that is. you're looking at a shot of surf side beach, south carolina. maybe a little chilly. it's 47 degrees, but, a beautiful picture nonetheless. all right, now this. lawmakers cracking down on southwest airlines as passengers

face yet another day of mass cancellations. lydia hu following the story and lydia, is southwest making any meaningful changes to fix the problems? reporter: not yet, ashley. it appears that the airline is really focused on trying to still recover from this operational meltdown, but the chief operating officer ryan green, he did issue a video apology, the second from the company. watch. >> you know by now, all of the flexibility and planning that we put in place to deal with the storm just wasn't enough, and so we've extended flexibility for self-service travel changes through january 2 reporter: now, the chorus of voices saying this travel meltdown was not a surprise. it's just getting louder. in fact, just four months before this debacle, 38 attorneys general wrote to congressional leaders warning that lax oversight from regulators at the department of transportation led bisect pete buttigieg be a problem. they said the agency "failed to

respond and to provide appropriate recourse to thousands of consumer complaints about airlines, customer service " and they added americans are justifiably frustrated, that federal government agencies charged with overseeing airline consumer protection are unable or unwilling to hold the airline industry accountable. now, pete buttigieg's performance as transportation secretary. it's under a microscope and he's facing criticism for being slow to respond and house transportation committee member nancy mace is pointing to the $7.2 billion the airline received during the pandemic. watch. >> i want to hear pete buttigieg say he's going to audit and figure out where the $7 billion went that southwest received from american taxpayers. reporter: so ashley for today we still have massive cancellations from southwest more than 2,300 flights bringing the total number of flights for the

airline canceled since friday to nearly 15,000 according to flightaware. so far the airline not announcing any cancellations, widespread for tomorrow but we have our eye on that, ashley. ashley: i'm sure you do, lydia hu, thank you very much. jeff hoffman joins me now. jeff? i mean, how does southwest recover from this? we talk about black eyes, but this is an absolute disaster for the carrier. >> it is, ashley, and the problem with recovering, well there's a couple of things. first of all their problem is systemic. a lot of consumers don't understand what happened to southwest airlines and it's really two things. all the major airlines use a hub -and-spoke system which means all the planes and people go back to their connecting hub when they are done. southwest uses point-to-point which means their whole system, their airlines and people were scattered everywhere after the storms and they couldn't recover so even if they catch up from this , the whole systemic problem is they use the point-to

-point system and that be very difficult and time consuming to change, so consumer confidence is really low. one other thing. they have to overcome this problem with consumer confidence. one other thing they have is that southwest doesn't have interline agreements with the other un airlines which means if they can't get you there they can't automatically put you on another airline. all major airlines do that, american will put you on a delta flight so consumers are just learning all this and their confidence in southwest is going very low going forward. ashley: yeah, and jeff some people that are stranded are finding other airlines are actually hiking their prices. is there anything these traveler s can do to get home without essentially breaking the bank? >> well the airlines, all said that they would cap the southwest markets, cap prices, but it turns out they're capping select cities and as you're showing on the screen now, there's no good way home right now. there are many many fares that are extremely high right now, so

unfortunately, in the short-term , there is not good news for travelers that are stranded. people are, if you look on social media, people are reporting they just had to pay four figure fares to get home because they had no other alternative so let's hope all of the other carriers do in fact cap more of these fares. right now we're seeing a lot of really high fares. ashley: what an absolute nightmare and it's fascinating to me, jeff. they knew this huge storm was coming but they just couldn't do enough to plan for it. we'll have to leave it there but jeff hoffman, great information thank you so much appreciate it. >> thanks. ashley: now this. lots of families of course want to visit the happiest place on earth but lauren, we know disney is not exactly cheap. are families going into debt to make the trip? lauren: yes, they are. this comes from lending tree, the financial site, 18% of people who take the family to disney world in orlando say they incurred debt because of it. okay, the bill for a five-day trip family of four, $5,731 on

average. the rising tab making many families say look, we know it's going to be expensive but it is not worth it. park prices 50 years ago is almost comical to say $3.50. let's adjust that for inflation we get it. a park pass should be $25 today adjusted for inflation but it's around $140, so it costs you an arm and a leg and you are going into debt to take the kids to disney world. i haven't done it yet if that was your next question. ashley: well, i was going to ask you that and then i was going to say something like well maybe not the happiest place on earth once you look at your bank account but anyway, lauren, thank you very much. let's take a look at the futures we had the sell-off yesterday, all of the major exchanges lost more than 1%. today, in the pre-market looks like we may gain back a little bit but we shall see. the opening bell is next.

♪ ♪

ashley: the futures point to a positive start to the trading day on this thursday. we shall see. let's bring in dori wiley to join us and talk about what he expects. you know, the themes and i was reading your notes, inflation killing consumers. rate hikes from the fed. earnings taking a hit. is that pretty much what we're looking for in 2023? those major headwinds. >> yeah, those major headwinds, you also have the background headwinds. the same as 2022, right, where does covid lead us, where does china lead us, where does energy supply issues. all these themes with these big three of inflation, rising rates , and whatnot await us in 2023 and in january. ashley: and all the data pointing to a recession, but how bad of a recession? what are your thought? >> well that's the key thing. there's one area to watch on how bad a recession and that's

credit so you have to watch the banking industry, you have to watch the bond markets and as soon as you start seeing failures and defaults on bonds, which we saw some, some issues, right, with this ftx and things like that, if that continues and continues to expand then those are the kind of things that can create a crash versus the gradual decline that the fed has actually done a pretty good job of managing so far. ashley: you mentioned banking. you think that's one of the areas where some opportunities may exist. where else? >> yeah, banks are a fear trade and a leading indicator at the same time so they have fallen off pretty good for the last year, but a couple of banks, i think first thing you have to look for is credit and capital. capital is king for banks. it actually provides the opportunity in a recession to grow, expand, and acquire others and have a green light from the regulators which is the most important so one of those banks be like m &t bank which trades at about a six or

seven pe, pretty low price to tangible book multiple, 3.3% yield but at the same time has a good strong capital position compared to other regional banks ashley: you like energy too. why is that? >> yeah, energy, my favorite there. you could throw a dart and do pretty good in energy i think going forward but pioneer is pretty good. pioneer yields you about 13%. it's held mostly by institutions , retail hasn't really discovered it because the stock price is so high. hopefully they figure out a way to do a stock split but with that kind of yield and low leverage and dominant position in the permian, that stock has a lot of upside. >> [opening bell ringing] ashley: fantastic, dory wiley, the man with the most amazing voice. what a rich voice, thank you so much. appreciate it. as you can see the bells are ringing getting this trading day underway only today and tomorrow

, the last two days of trading in 2022, and as we're seeing earlier good riddance. let's take a look at the big board. the dow up 182 points, up about half a percent. apple, disney, salesforce.com up at the top, nike up there, the only laggard being chevron at the bottom 29 of the 30 stock s starting in the green. the s&p up seven-tenths of a percent at 3,808 and let's take a look at the nasdaq, the nasdaq is down nearly 35% this year. right now though it's up 1% we shall see it's up 107 points and taking a look at those big tech numbers all in the green. apple up more than 1.5%, amazon up more than 1%, meta, alphabet, and microsoft all starting strongly to begin the session. all right, let's look at some of these individual stocks and begin with tesla which has been it managed to snap a losing streak yesterday and up again today, nearly 6%, elon musk says

well it doesn't seem to be very worried about the drop in stock. lauren? lauren: completely dismissed it, right? dismiss the stock market craziness, he writes a letter to employees and shares are up for the second day. so what's the next catalyst for investors? delivery numbers, they come out early next month. this is so important to elon musk, and he told staff and i quote, please go all out for the next few days and volunteer to help us deliver, if you can. analysts expect tesla to deliver 442000 vehicles in the fourth quarter. here is the problem. shanghai is shutting down longer than they usually do, about two days longer. why? because they're opening backup, workers haven't seen their families in years so they can travel back home, hence you have that longer shutdown. it will probably impact the delivery numbers going forward by a little bit. if you're looking at tesla this year you know it's down almost 70%. to put that in market capitalization terms, $720 billion in value wiped out

this year, just like that. remember tesla was a $1 trillion company. ashley: yeah, so elon musk's point, that's pretty hard to ignore, is it not? i want to get into disney. we were talking about how it costs an arm and a leg to go to the parks these days but they had a tough year right? lauren: stocks down 45%, it is a dow stock. the price is up today, avatar: the way of the water, surpassed $1 billion at the global box office that's pretty good. its been out for just two weeks. yesterday was a different story for disney. the stock closed at $84. translation, disney has shed all of their covid gains. actually they hit their lowest price since 2014. i'm highlighting that year, because that was before the release of star wars. so all these booming times for disney, since all the star wars, et cetera et cetera erased in the decline this year of 45% for the share price. ashley: that's remarkable.

let's take a look at amc, a much talked about stock, starting the year at 21 bucks a share and that says it all. it's down to under $4. lauren: and it was 44 during the meme stock frenzy of last year. i think the bottom line is easy. the stock was overvalued, ashley is it worth $3? i don't know, but you see the company getting very creative to boost the stock price, that proposal of the 10- for-1 split. the ceo begging the board, please freeze my compensation. okay, adam aron, that's fine. what about a pay cut, right? take a pay cut. your stock was 44 and now it's 3.89. the companies also saddled with $5 billion in debt and the reality that the movie business has changed. people just are not going to the theaters like they used to. ashley: that is very true. let's talk about electric vehicles. take a look at rivian. president biden's electric vehicle tax credits go into effect in just a few days.

rivian up about 3%. is the credit stuff giving a boost to those stocks? lauren: i think so, because it's leveling out the playing field, so eventually, you can make the price of an electric vehicle similar to that of a gas-powered car or truck. the incentives begin january 1. they are part of the inflation reduction act, and they are pretty good. i mean, $7,500 if you're buying an ev for yourself, $40,000 if you're a company like amazon or fedex, and you're planning your fleet and making that more electric, and you can combine the federal credits with state programs like california and new york pretty generous so yeah, you are seeing nice gains for some of the green and the associated stocks today. ashley: very good. let's talk about the cruise industry. check out carnival. by the way, that company just announcing who will be in charge of the menu on their cruises. stu would say who cares, but it is a big name.

lauren: emeril lagasse, chief culinary officer. does this make you want to go on a carnival ship? i don't know. i think the food is pretty good on cruises and ample in general but anyway, his bistro line is popular on two of carnival ships , now it's going up fleet- wide and then the menu will have, you know, his signature recommended dishes. little fun fact for you. ashley: so many people recently, lauren, have told my wife and i, that we really should check out a cruise. both of us have been very resistant. i think we'll breakdown and have to do it just so we can actually talk about what we know. i can't criticize something i've never taken part in. lauren: it's an easy trip. you don't have to do much. you show up and it's all done for you so that's the nice part about it, but sometimes you don't like the exact port of call. you would maybe go somewhere different if you were planning yourself and then you're around the same people. they might recognize you, ashley , and then you're going to

have fans and stalkers. ashley: oh, i doubt it. oh, well yes, no, we're not you, lauren. let's just move on from here, but who knows. i make breakdown this year and we may decide to give a cruise a try. the big board, we're up 200 points, more than 200 points on the dow good for six-tenths of a percent jump, take a look at some of the dow winners in the extremely early going, apple , walt disney, intel, microsoft, stu will love that, salesforce.com, all moving nicely higher this morning. taking a look at the s&p 500 winners. tesla after such a horrible run gaining back nearly 6%, netflix is in there, paramount and ford too, ford up more than 2.5% and take a look at the nasdaq winner s. we know the nasdaq as an exchange has lost about 35 % this year, but when you look at the winners on the nasdaq well netflix, apple, tesla again up there, some of those names gaining a little ground back in

the early going today. all right, coming up, the mayor of new york city, eric adams, defending his decision to basically flee the city as the big apple braces for a severe winter storm over the holiday weekend. his excuse, that he deserves private time. we'll get into that. see what you think. gas prices are ending the year on the way down, but will they stay down for 2023? gasbuddy patrick de haan will be here to answer that question, and then there's this. kim kardashian is opening up about her relationship with god and faith. take a listen. >> do you pray a lot? >> i do. i mean, i pray every night with my kids. i believe in god, love, i have faith in all of it and he will bring me my perfect person. ashley: and all of it. i'm going to ask theologian jonathan morris what he makes of that. stay with us. ♪

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ashley: republicans are now just a few days away from taking control of the house, and they're looking to take on, among other things, woke invest ing. hillary vaughn joins us from capitol hill this morning and hillary, what is their plan of action for this? reporter: ashley, they are going to look into an investment firms use of esg to guide their investments. the idea that investment groups take an investments climate and social impact into consideration before putting money into an entity, lawmakers think that doing that could be a violation of anti-trust law, so six republicans on the house judiciary committee writing a letter to major investment groups questioning them over esg policies, saying this , "esg is

at its heart radical partisan activism, masquerading as responsible corporate governance. these practices may violate our nations anti-trust laws, and we must be relentless investigating them." the idea behind esg was that it actually protected investors from volatility and risks of investing in things tied to the energy market but bloomberg reporting earlier this month that in 2022, the 10 largest esg funds posted double-digit losses in early december, including blackrock's $20 billion fund and vanguard's $5 billion fund, all underperforming and lagging behind the s&p 500. republicans in the senate also say esg steered investment hurts u.s. energy, dries up money for oil & gas making energy prices higher for everyone else. >> yeah, i mean, that's a very significant issue as well, that the whole esg thing which restrictions financing, dries up the cost of financing. combined with a moratorium on producing energy on federal

lands both onshore and off, the lack of permitting the administration is holding upper mitting, the litigation all those things not only reduce supply but drive up the cost of energy. reporter: but, ashley, with democrats maintaining control of the senate, it's really unlikely that any esg crackdown passes congress. ashley? ashley: exactly. hillary thank you very much. appreciate that. now, this. workers at wall street's biggest banks are now bracing for pay cuts this year. let's bring in our good friend art laffer. art? nearly 72% of these workers said they would consider quitting if their yearly bonuses are cut. how do you respond to that? >> well, i don't know, but i think they are anticipating getting fired as well, maybe and if they are anticipating quitting, just tell me where they are going to go and work and get those bonuses. their pay is very very high. this has been a very bad year for investment bankers, profits are way down, deals are way, way

down. of course their bonuses should be lower and should be substantially lower as part of the overall process and if they are threatening quitting, i think they should tell their bosses that and see what the bosses say. ashley: probably hey, go ahead. okay, i want to get to this issue. the fed, go ahead. >> no, no, i just said the bosses probably would welcome a few quitings. ashley: he probably would, save some money. quickly to this , art. what do you expect from the fed next year? maybe a 50 basis point hike in february and march, but you know , what are you anticipating? >> well, i anticipate the headline inflation number and the consumer price index to decline for the next four, five, or six months, because 12 months ago and on, the numbers were very very large so when they drop-off the headline number, you're going to see that number coming down and if there isn't a substantial increase in

the monthly numbers, and i don't know whether there will be or not in those monthly numbers but if you don't i would expect the fed to ease up on interest rate increases substantially. now, that does not mean, ashley, that inflation is a thing of the past. it really doesn't. these numbers are highly volatile. they come in waves and that could easily return. if that were the case it be really very terrible and i just wish the fed would not try to control interest rates, price controls never work. just let interest rates seek their own level, ashley, and then have the discount rate follow it, not lead it. ashley: you know what? you look younger every year you're the benjamin button of economists, art laffer. we need you back here in nashville, ashley. you're the best representative nashville has in the world. thank you. ashley: you are so kind, art laffer. you read that just as i wrote it happy new year to you, art laffer. thank you very much. all right, coming up, boston

public school parents are at odd s over whether kids need to be masked up for several weeks after returning from winter break. karol markowicz moved her family to florida to escape those student mandates. i wonder what she makes of that. she's here and i'm going to ask her. i think i know what she's going to say. meantime president biden taking a victory lap of his agenda to close out 2022 but his year-end review may not be enough to sway voters. we have that report, next. ♪ -hey there. -hey. -hi. hey there. how are you? i'm with disabled american veterans. i was wondering if you had a quick minute to thank america's veterans

for their service and sacrifices -of course, why not? -oh, sure. -absolutely. -sure. all right. well, come on in here. i'm just going to hit record on this. i would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart. i can't even think of the words of how grateful i am. i want to tell you guys how much, how much we appreciate. but most importantly, i want to thank you for your courage and bravery. wow. thank you. someone here who'd like to say something to you? oh god, you guys are awesome! someone has something they want to say to you. oh my goodness! how's it going? awe! so i will let you know how much appreciate it. how much we appreciate it! just feel honored, for everything you've done. thank you for myself, thank you for everybody. i get to live every day, you know, in peace because of yo a lot of people thank us, but we want to take the time to thank you

honestly, for giving back. and when you gave to dav, you are supporting veterans like dave and myself. so thank you so much. thank you, you guys are amazing. thank you. thank you. you can say thank you to our nation's heroes, by calling the number on your screen right now, and giving your monthly support of only $19. say thank you by going to helpdav.org right now, and give just $19 a month. when you do, we will give you this dav blanket as a thank you and a reminder that you support those who served please call or go online to helpdav.org right now. your support says thank you to our nation's disabled american veterans as a business owner,

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ashley: a new poll reveals what americans are looking for in a potential president. all right, lauren. tell us what do the people want? lauren: so if it were a job ad, it would read like this. wanted: 51-65-year-old governor , with business experience and willing to compromise to get things done, military experience a bonus. so this comes from usa today and suffolk university. ideal characteristics for a

president, age 50% say 51-65. one-third say having been elected and served as a governor is considered ideal experience, but a shocking if we flip the screens here, one-fifth say no political experience is necessary. i guess that's the popularity of donald trump. 55% prefer business experience. 46% prefer military experience, and then is it time for a female president? 55% said gender doesn't matter, ash. ashley: very interesting stuff. all right, lauren, thank you very much. meantime, president biden is taking a victory lap on his legislative victories in 2022 but will that be enough to sway voters? peter doocy is at the white house this morning, and peter, how many americans agree with the president that 2022 was a good year? reporter: um, very few, ashley. we've got two-thirds of

americans in a new fox news poll or recent fox news poll who say that it was a bad year in 2022. we've got the numbers right here only 23% say it was a good year, but that just does not compute here at the white house, where president biden posted a photo showing a huge stack of bills he was signing to close out the year. the text accompanying that image is wrapping up one of the most productive legislative sessions in recent history with one or two or 65 final bills to sign thanks to my friends in congress for making it possible. he's going to need new friends in congress. there's been reporting recently that the white house is looking for some moderate republican partners in the new gop majority , but as expected gop lawmakers are not exactly falling over themselves to work with the biden team. >> we have to show true leadership and trust wordy leadership in america, and for

the rest of the world to see this. i don't think people around the rest of the world can fathom why we have, for example, open borders. why we've let this pandemic go on and on without searching for the truth. why we have people in leadership that are off vacationing when we have a transportation problem. reporter: the last really big thing the outgoing democratic majority in congress did was sign that really really big $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill, rather passed the omnibus spending bill. it hasn't been signed yet but we're told by officials at the white house that bill has been flown to st. croix so that president biden can sign it while he's on vacation down there. he's got to do it by tomorrow. ashley? ashley: it's a working vacation, apparently. he's working on his tan. that's all i can come up with. reporter: a working vacation for whoever got to carry the

bill on that flight down there too. ashley: [laughter] i would have done it personally myself. all right, peter, thank you very much. quick check of the markets. we are moving up, after yesterday's sell-off as you can see the dow up 252 points in the early going, the s&p up more than 1%, nasdaq up 1.75% a little bit more buying today. all right, still ahead on the show, sean duffy, kt mcfarland, mercedes schlapp and karol markowicz. the 10 a.m. hour of "varney" & company coming up next. ♪ ♪

lyrics. sixer.

♪ ashley: little ccr for this thursday morning. empire state building points skyward and partly cloudy skies in new york city this morning. good morning, everyone. we're right coming up to 10:00 eastern and, yes, i'm ashley webster in today for stuart varney.

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