maria: welcome back. time for "the big buzz" of the morning. what rihanna announcing her pregnancy at the super bowl last night, at the half time show. a lot of people were speculating about it, joe. >> yup. i apologize. listen, real quick. this is about as pro-life as it can be right? a woman on top of the world with her career and highlighting her baby, it's beautiful. maria: it's a beautiful thing. congratulations, rihanna and thank you so much everybody for joining us we'll sue eagain tomorrow, joey jones, john lonski, ashley webster is in for stu. take it away. ashley: thank you, maria. good morning to you, good morning, everyone i'm ashley webster indeed in today for stuary varney. let's get right to it. what a game. i'm tired this morning and i stuck with it the whole way. how could you not.

the kansas city chiefs celebrat ing a big super bowl victory after defeating the philadelphia eagles. quarterback patrick mahomes coming up clutch in the comeback what a game that was. now, to more serious news. the white house says another object has been shot down. this time near lake huron in the great lakes region. it's the fourth object to be shot down in a little over a week. what's going on? americans are concerned about this , so do we need to hear from our commander-in-chief? congressman mike waltz says absolutely we do and he'll be here to make his case. senate majority leader chuck schumer says we need to look into banning tiktok across the country. tommy harry reed en will be here to talk about that and let's take a look at the markets as we kickoff another busy week. rather flat stock futures showing very little in the pre market, the dow and s&p essentially flat and the nasdaq up a third of a percent and let's take a look at the 10 year yield, getting the cpi number tomorrow, in the meantime the 10

-year treasury yield at 3.74%. again, pretty flat. meanwhile bitcoin, let's take a look at bitcoin these days hovering around 21,000 up just $ 15 at 21, 600. now, this question. is the washington post elon musk 's next target? interesting. he says they need a thorough house cleaning. interesting again. we'll let joe concha have at that. we've got a big show for you, as always. congressman mark green, charlie hurt, merit garland an a devine and kevin o leary will be here. it is monday, february 13, 2023. "varney" & company about to begin. we are the champions, my friend ♪ ashley: we are the champions,

the kansas city chiefs of the super bowl champions they defeated the eagles 38-35. good morning to you, lauren simonetti. did you stay up for it? are you blurry-eyed this morning lauren: i missed the good stuff at the end. i made it through the half time show, ashley, but it was a game for the ages. you had two brothers playing against each other for the first time ever in a super bowl. a philadelphia offense that looked unstoppable and the kansas city chiefs team with an injured quarterback that came out on top. so, things looked rough right before half time when patrick mahomes limped to the sidelines in pain. the chiefs were trailing at that point, but then the second half of the game different story. look at his face. he played through that. he could not be stopped and answered everything that the eagles threw at them. so in the end, you had one of the best games we've ever seen, and a mom who congratulated on son and consoled the other but how about mahomes.

he's 27, two kids, regular season mvp super bowl mvp. he can't be stopped. ashley: he can't be stopped but we have to mention jaylen hurtz. three td's he was remarkable, but two great quarterbacks and a game for the ages. lauren thank you very much. a fourth unidentified flying object was shot down over the weekend over lake huron, and now the top democrat on the house intelligence committee is calling out the white house for not being more transparent on what's going on. take a listen. >> they have real concerns about why the administration is not being more forthcoming with everything that it knows. the one thing troubling me here is a see a pattern as i looked at social media this morning, massive speculation about alien invasions and additional chinese actions or russian action. in the absence of information, people's anxiety leads them into potentially destructive areas so i do hope that very soon the

administration has a lot more information for all of us on what's going on. ashley: tell us what's going on? rachel campos-duffy here this morning on this monday. rachel great to see you. we do need to hear from the president, don't you think? rachel: yeah, well, at least our members of congress and representatives and those sitting on those high level intelligence committees that they don't know is very troubling, they say they are getting their information from the tv, from all of us, so yeah, frightening. look i'll tell you what i'm worried about. i'm worried about high altitude electromagnetic nuclear attack. that could happen and we heard senator johnson speaking with maria bartiromo yesterday saying listen, if that were to happen, that would of course knockout, you know, our whole grid. we are not hardened and we're not prepared for that kind of attack and ashley, that's kind of shocking when you think that we just spent a trillion dollars on a so-called infrastructure bill that we now know was actually the green new deal, went to, you know, racist roads,

and we're not hardening and preparing for these kinds of potential attacks? that's scary, and the other thing that's scary to me is, you know, who joe biden thinks are his enemies. it's very clear at this point that china is preparing for something, for war against us, and i've spoken on fox & friends with, you know, all kinds of chinese experts who say absolutely this is what they are preparing for. preparing for war with us, and our president has no idea who his real enemies are. he's going after using our government and weaponizing it against americans who are opposed to his policies whether at school boards or traditional catholics who oppose many of his social policies. he's infiltrating those communities with the fbi. i mean, this is a man who doesn't, one, understand who our true enemy is and is potentially compromised and maybe can't defend us but also, whose not

taking his oath as a president seriously, because his oath is to protect us from exactly this kind of foreign invasion, and it's over our skies. there's an 800% increase of chinese nationals coming across our southern border. ashley: right. rachel: this is crazy stuff. ashley: it is. and a little transparency be nice. rachel, we're already out of time but thank you for covering that. we do appreciate it on this monday. rachel, thank you. michigan governor gretchen whitmer is coming to the defense of president biden. lauren, the president is unpopular even among his own party so how is governor whitmer trying to spin it? lauren: with enthusiasm. she said support for the president will eventually catch up to his many achievements, especially once he has a contender. watch here. >> listen, six months ago there were people who were writing political obituaries for a lot of democratic governors.

we won overwhelmingly with a great mid-term and i thank the white house for that and president biden was a large part of that. he has delivered for the american people. he's got a record of delivering for people at this point. polls are just you like him or don't like him. it's not a matchup. when we see a matchup, people see this president has delivered and that's why you see so many of my colleagues get ready to help him win re-election. lauren: so she's saying if and when he does announce that he's running again, it's expected democrats will just get behind him? we'll see , but the polls, we ran them all last week, 37% say he should run again. that's it. ashley: uh-huh, all about the spin. next one for you, lauren. this is interesting. larry summers is warning about how markets are handling the issue of inflation. what's he worried about? lauren: that it hasn't cooled off that much and pulled a football an a analogy. watch here. >> the consensus has become substantially too complacent

about inflation, even after reductions we have seen, inflation today is at levels that would have been unimagin able for inflation two years a.g. ago. we're getting closer with the red zone with respect to inflation so i think the gains in terms of further reduction are going to come harder. lauren: so disinflation is transitory. he spoke about that bounce-back inflation. example gas prices have come backup, used car prices, they fell. they're starting to increase again, so the fed as a result, because inflation is still with us, and sticky, is going to have to stick on their path to higher rates and holding them there longer. ashley: interesting stuff. lauren, thank you. let's take a look at the pre- market the futures showing us a bit flat right now in this monday morning. let's bring in david nicholas. good morning to you, david. first question is larry summers right. have we become too complacent on inflation? is it going to take more to cool

it off? >> you know, ashley, i think he's right here. i think the market is cheering that the feds have won in their fight against inflation but that's premature. if you look at the game last night, the end of the first quarter it was 7-7. no team was cheering victory. the market is essentially cheering victory after the first quarter, and i think the fight that the fed has against inflation is far from over and we're going to see the cpi report this week and that'll help prove larry summers point but i think the market is way ahead of itself here and i do think that the near term risk is that inflation is going to be ticking up, where the market is not going to want to see especially when we see it later this week. ashley: does that portend a difficult 2023, there are those that believe hey in the second half of this year we'll be able to make a comeback the fed will take its foot off the gas pedal? it's seeming more and more that's not going to be the case. watt say you? >> well look the market is so skewed because we've been in a low interest rate environment for so long that now good news

is bad news. we saw 500,000 job report last month. that's great news for the economy, but it's bad news when it comes to the market ultimately because the better economic news we have meaning the better labor market that we have, that means wages are going up. when you have that many jobs you don't see wages coming down. that means we have sticky inflation, so, you know, ashley just means for the market this year a lot of the growth for the market has already happened, so this is why you want to maintain defensiveness but you want to be buyers on pullback because i think long term investors can win. you just have the guts to buy when the volatility i think could be coming later this year. ashley: all right, very good stuff, david. of course all eyes on as you say that cpi number. actually it comes out tomorrow. we shall see. david nicholas thank you very much. coming up, take a look at this op-ed. thank you. it reads florida governor ron desantis is the gop's sunshining future. miranda devine wrote that and she will be here with her reasons why.

kevin o'leary was a major fish all investor in ftx but mr. wonderful says disgraced founder would not have struck a deal on the hit show "shark tan" it's interesting isn't it? kevin o leary will be here to talk about it. good stuff. the u.s. shot down at least three more high altitude flying objects over canada and alaska just days after taking down a large chinese spy flight off the atlantic coast, so will this complicate our relationship with china? house homeland security committee chairman mark green is here to talk about that, next.

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edward lawrence is at the white house this morning, and edward, what have we officially learned so far about these objects? reporter: yeah, ashley, not much about where they came from. we learned it's also not funny anymore. of the four objects that were shot down in total, one of those has been confirmed as a chinese spy airship. the other three they are trying to figure out. those other ones were flying much smaller size, and flying between 20,000 and 40,000 feet. >> we have national security issues all over the country. the northern borders illegal crossings has increased from 4,000 a year to 100,000 a year, and we have the southern border that is wide open. it's not just the 4 million people that we've had encounters with. it's the 1 million people that we have not had encounters with that we have no idea who they are, and now, the chinese are sending data collection devices across our nation. this administration better wake up. reporter: so today the chinese

foreign ministry spokesperson says the u.s. sent more than 10 high altitude objects into its air space in the past year. then the nsc spokes american from the white house says that china is the one with the high altitude program. not the u.s. , adding this. this is the latest example of china scrambling to do damage control. it is wrongfully claimed the surveillance balloon it sent over the u.s. was a weather balloon and has failed to offer any credible explanations for its intrusion into our air space and air space of others. now in a one on one interview after the first chinese confirm ed airship president joe biden brushed off the incursion saying it's not a major breach that airship flew at 60,000 feet and the object floating at lower altitudes represent a threat. >> again, as you well know, civilian aircraft operate at a variety of ranges up to 40 to 45,000 feet, so again, there was a reasonable concern that this could present a threat to or potential hazard to civilian air traffic. reporter: and the u.s. military

involved in trying to get all four of those objects, the debris put together and back for processing. back to you, ashley. ashley: fascinating stuff. edward lawrence thank you very much. senate majority leader schumer claims that russia has been humiliated by our actions against some of these flying objects. watch this. >> the bottom line is until a few months ago we don't know of these balloons. they are intelligence and our military did not know. this one went as far back as president trump at least three times. look the chinese were humiliated and caught lying and i think it's a real step-back for them. yes, i think they are going to have to, i think they probably have to get rid of it or do something because they look really bad. ashley: well congressman mark green republican from tennessee joins me now. great to have you here this morning, congressman. is senator schumer right about china being humiliated? >> yeah, i think in a lot of ways there's a strategic loss

here. there's clearly a strategic win in one sense that some of our allies are going, wait a minute, you let this thing traverse all across the united states but the other side of that is we now know about the program and very clearly the american people are pissed off and that's a bad thing for china. ashley: how concerned are you about these objects? what kind of threat? we don't know exactly what they are but the fact they now seem to be cropping up on a regular basis has to be disturbing does it not? >> yeah, absolutely. obviously, our filter systems on the radars we've been using have been focused, have been set to look for aircraft and so they filter out jet stream speed things and now, we've changed those settings and we're going to see a lot more of these kinds of things. the question is as we go back and look at the old tapes how long has it been going on, that kind of forensic analysis is going on right now and they are

doing that at the pentagon. these last three objects, the term object is kind of weird , but, you know, balloon or whatever, they are lighter than air. we have to know where they came from, and if they came from china, i mean, if this is now four, you know, air devices from china, that's a big, big deal, and we need definitive action from the white house on that one ashley: all right quickly i want to change subjects on this bill that you've introduced to secure the southern border and our cyber borders for that matter. what exactly do you want to see done? >> well we realized in the covid virus that we were far too dependent on chinese manufacturing, and then you have these incidents which show us china's not our friend. they are our enemy and so what we need to do is motivate businesses to leave china. those that can come back to the

united states, we actually onshore those manufacturing, that be awesome and i have legislation for that too. in terms of near shoring though, if we can move those businesses that can't necessarily manufacture in the u.s. because of labor costs to latin america, we create jobs in latin america and that decreases pressure on our southern border. to use vice president harris' word root causes, they keep talking about root causes. the proposed a plan on any of that. this actually addresses the root cause of migration as one way of helping us secure our southern border. ashley: very good. we'll have to leave it there. congressman, thanks for joining us this morning we do appreciate it. >> thanks for having me. ashley: our pleasure. senator ron johnson is slamming president biden's handling of the chinese spy craft. what's he saying lauren? lauren: bottom line the chinese smell weakness. listen. >> they see weakness in america right now. every action this president has

taken has weakened this country and again i don't know all of the ways that joe biden has compromised in terms of foreign financial entanglements but the chinese communist government knows. russia knows. iran knows, and that's why we need to get to the bottom of this. lauren: he called biden dilution all. that's a quote, about the threat that china is posing, and we're unprepared for it. senator johnson says americans should be alarmed by this , and that's a word that's resonated with me since the china spy balloon. i mean, how much you want to panic people but how much do you want to make sure they are aware , right? congressman mark green just said americans are waking up to this and they might not like it. ashley: yup. no, alarm is a good word. we'll have to leave it there. lauren thank you very much. checking the stock futures looking flat as we head towards the opening bell, which by the way, is coming up next so stay with us. ♪

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ashley: well the stock futures look rather flat this morning on this monday. the dow flat exactly, the s&p up a tenth, nasdaq up about a half a percent. good time to bring in keith fitz-gerald. good morning to you, keith. look, we've got cpi tomorrow. what happens to markets if that number comes in hot? does everyone run for the exit? [laughter] >> this is going to be gainsman ship of the highest order and that's an excellent question. if the number comes in super-hot , then everybody is going to predict that the fed is going to hike rates into o believe yonkers. you and i both know that won't happen but that's what the headlines will say. if the number comes in cold, it's going to be like goldilocks where you'll watch tech take off , because the assumption is maybe there's a pivot in the works. ashley: all right that said, what stocks do you like in particular? i notice you like jpmorgan,

tesla, lockheed. let's start with jpmorgan. >> absolutely so one of the things that jamie dimon is exceptionally good at is thinking forward. i like the fact he and his folks are already in ukraine talking about rebuilding it because it means they are looking beyond the conflict. ashley: yeah, tesla. its been on a terror. >> unbelievable. i think this is $300 within 12 months and i think the charging network that everybody is so focused on now was a stroke of genius because it predicted once again that elon musk was way ahead of the federal government here. private industry does it better than public government every time. ashley: and i'm not surprised you picked lockheed martin. there's a lot of talk about what's going on with china so you like a defense stock. >> well, i mean, having spent a lot of time in mainland china, you know, the ufo's unfortunately are not going to prove to be ufo's for much

longer. my guess is they find american chip sets or chips that have english imprinted on them because china operates by strategic deception so defense stocks are logical here. ashley: yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? and of course, volatility, because every piece of data we get , every word we hear from a fed head and the markets go up and down and i don't see that changing anytime soon. do you? >> i don't either and it brings up a very interesting point, ashley. i think that they should take the microphone away from everybody except the chairman, period. >> [opening bell ringing] ashley: i think that's a great idea but i don't think it'll happen. keith fitz-gerald, thank you so much appreciate your time on this monday. there we go, pushed the button. we are off and running. it was a losing week last week all of the three major indexes, the dow, s&p, nasdaq, all lost ground last week, so what can we expect this week? well we know we've got cpi coming out tomorrow, so a lot of data dependent issues to look ahead to, so there you go there

is the dow 30 board. microsoft, salesforce.com, at the top, at the bottom we have johnson & johnson and caterpillar, the index itself up 41 points on the dow. let's take a look at the s&p if we can. the s&p, what last week about 1% i believe yeah, it was down 1.1% today it's up very marginally up seven points at 4,098 and then let's take a look at the nasdaq. the nasdaq up about four-tenths of a percent in the very early going the nasdaq last week lost nearly 2.5%. let's take a look at the big tech names as we always like to do. mixed bag, meta, microsoft, apple moving higher. meta and microsoft up one and three-quarters percent but alphabet down slightly, amazon down about half a percent. all right let's single out meta if we can announcing a new round of job cuts. good morning to you, susan li. do we know how many jobs are on the line? >> yeah, so this is a report in

the financial times. we have no specific numbers right now but the fte is reporting that meta is delaying sets budgets because they are thinking of another round of layoffs and this is after the 11,000 that were announced last year. that was 13% of headcount and this is a year of efficiency as mark zuckerberg called it and that's why the stock is up 44% so far this year. it's only eight weeks in. now meta also reportedly telling some managers, get back to making things, or just leave the company. you know, meta is currently going through performance reviews according to this report and trying to cut out the middle managers and get back to actually making stuff and things that people want to use and actually drives revenue. ashley: yeah, the knives are out at meta. want to get into the ai tech stocks if we can. let's take a look at these. looks like the rally is continuing lots of green on the screen, certainly microsoft, nvidia as well. >> and meta would say that they

are also trying to drive up artificial intelligence. every company is talking about a i. it's the hottest topic in silicon valley and on wall street so microsoft itself is up 6% just in the past month on this artificial ai intelligence hype and raising the price target on microsoft to $290 stu would like that so last week we know microsoft together the wrap s off its new bing search engine infused with chatgbt a $10 billion investment over microsoft 10 years and google also introduced its competitor bard which didn't go as well and didn't answer the question correctly, and people i think sold $100 billion worth of google value on the back of that, but also, jpmorgan says the main beneficiaries of those ai push will be the chipmakers i think of nvidia, broadcom, marvel, all benefit the most from this frenzy, and by the a, making up some of the fast advanced chips are needed used

for ai and also cloud so jpmorgan calling nvidia a 220 stock, marvel is worth 72 in their view. that could double. that stock could double from here. ashley: yeah, all right, let's move on to crypto. what is this about the sec suing the trust company over the binance stablecoin, what's that about? >> i've spoken to paxos in the past and you can really see there's a circle enclosing around binance, which is the world's largest crypto exchange and binance largely operates offshore. they do have a u.s. unit but they don't offer as many derivatives trading or sophisticated crypto trading products here but you also see more regulation being imposed after the ftx implosion so the sec wants paxos to stop issuing the binance stablecoin and it's called binance usd. now, stablecoins i'll explain to our viewers, most crypto traders move their money around different exchanges and different countries in order to buy and sell crypto. so they think crypto is still

largely unregulated that's why you can't really trade traditional banks, and binance u sd is a $16 billion stablecoin, not the largest out there because we know tether is worth about $90 billion and that implosion by the way of luna last year was $40 billion so paxos and binance usd is small comparison but the biggest talking point in the crypto world is you saw elon musk last night wearing a dogecoin t-shirt to the super bowl and he also tweeted dogecoin in response to a question about what he and ruppe rt murdock were discussing at the super bowl and that was a joke, but still, this is an impact that elon musk has. he's an influencer and dogecoin rallied 5% and reaction to that tweet and that t-shirt can you believe that? ashley: i can actually. would love to be a fly on the wall. we'll move on.

nichola, the electric vehicle people, they're making new hydrogen plants. what's going on there? >> yeah, so nichola is a troubled hydrogen power car maker. they are teaming up with plug power to start building hydrogen plants to start fueling the network so think of tesla when they start building and start building those charging stations and nikla is much smaller only worth $1.5 billion compared to tesla and its founder was convicted of securities fraud which led that milton faked the truck demos to get investors to put money into the company and we know that hindenberg is focused on the billionaire and that stock is down 10% this morning already losing 50% of the wealth which is accusing of manipulating stocks and false accounting. also want to note since we are on this to talk about electric cars and green power.

did you watch the super bowl last night and the gm spot? ashley: i did. >> i want to note that general motors, mary bara, the ceo, says it will catch tesla, that's realistic, in sales by 2025. ashley: anything will farrell does i just love. i'm a guy. >> i hear you. ashley: very quickly, pinduoduo ran an ad during the super bowl talking of which that's pretty rare for a chinese firm to do that? >> yeah, i'm not a guy and i love will farrell as well so yes last night you saw this commercial twice by a company, discount retailer called timu, owned by china's tech giant pdd. why should you care? well think about this. a $7 million a pop for 30 seconds they ran this ad twice, and timu has quietly been the number one most downloaded app in the u.s. the past two months, more popular than tiktok in any other social media apps, but here is the thing is they

spent $1 billion to break into the market and you wonder if they are going to, if tiktok isn't welcome here what about a company like pdd and temu. ashley: exactly. susan thank you very much. coming up by the way, now multiple state governments and congress have already banned tiktok from government devices because of security concerns. senate majority leader chuck schumer said that might not be far enough. listen. >> it's something that should be looked at. we do know there's chinese ownership of the company that owns tiktok and so there's some people in the commerce committee that are looking into that right now. we'll see. ashley: so, the questions should we have a national ban on tiktok tomi lahren will be along to take that on. president biden making deficit reduction a center piece of his budget. coming up next month, so what's ahead for taxpayers? we've got that report, right

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ashley: president biden is pushing his plan to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthy by claiming it will help reduce the deficit. all right, grady trimble is on capitol hill this morning. grady? he's getting fact checked on his claims about the deficit, so give us the story. reporter: hey, ash. president biden has repeatedly claimed that in his first two years in office, he's cut the deficit by nearly $2 trillion. he says that wealth tax will help keep the deficit going in the right direction down. >> he takes his fiscal responsibility very seriously, and he is going to continue to find ways to build an economy

that doesn't leave anybody behind but also is fiscally responsible. reporter: the deficit has fallen drastically since president biden took office but the committee for responsible federal budget says biden shouldn't be taking credit for that. the real reason they say is that we're no longer writing huge checks for covid relief programs and as you can see from this chart, our nations debt is still growing at what many economists say is an un sustainable rate. >> debt is about as large as the economy. that's only been true one-time in our history and that was just after world war ii and unlike after world war ii, all projections that seem from anyone show debt is just going to keep rising and probably reach a new record within five years or so. reporter: and that is why republicans here on the hill say we need to stop spending more than we're taking in, ashley. we will see if that's the case when president biden puts his budget forward in a month.

ashley: grady, thank you very much. we need an economist, and guess what, peter morici is here. peter, good morning to you. what do you make of president biden's plan to push his wealth tax as a way to address the deficit? >> wealth taxes don't work very well. they slow the economy, which makes the debt that we have more difficult to carry, and wealth has a way of fleeing, finding other places where it won't be taxed. ashley: well don't you think the wealthy already pay more than their fair share? what is it the top 10% pay 70 something percent of all taxes? >> that's absolutely right, and if you look at a state like new york or california, the burden is so unbearable that people are fleeing to florida. you know, growing up in new york , i know that i like to visit florida, but i wouldn't want to be there in july; however, folks are going there because the wealth taxes in new york are so terrible.

ashley: that's the beauty of air conditioning, peter. let's move on. we get the latest read on inflation tomorrow. what are you watching for? do you think it'll come in hot? >> yes, i do. gas prices rose in january and i ran the numbers that gives a nice shot to inflation. what's more china coming back on stream is going to create a lot of inflationary pressures probably add to one percentage point to global inflation this year so my feeling is that the lower readings are over, you know, these month-to-month readings that we've had a string that haven't been very high, will probably come in at 4.4 or 4.5 tomorrow which translates into an annual rate of about 5% or 6%. that's very disturbing and indicates we need more rate increases. ashley: last one for you. there are new reports that show the average u.s. household has nearly $7,500 in credit card debt. that's up 29% from a year ago. i mean, peter, are people

setting themselves up for failure by piling up the credit card debt? >> well absolutely. they have been handling the higher cost of living by putting groceries on their credit card. that's like eating your seed corn. you can't do that forever. my feeling is that as the fed continues to raise interest rates, the consumer, the bottom half of the consumer ladder is going to cut back dramatically. there's not only pain for joe biden's higher prices. they are going to be paying off this credit card debt and some folks are going to default. ashley: yeah, they are. we'll have to leave it right there. peter morici, thank you so much for joining us this morning. we do appreciate it. >> take care. ashley: all right thank you. you too. a non-profit is now tracking how likely it is for a company to go woke. all right, lauren. which companies are at the highest risk according to this tracker? lauren: yeah, so the tracker is the non-profit. it's called 1792 exchange, and at the companies they looked at they found half are at risk of

going woke, 12% at high risk including youtube, godaddy, amazon, etsy, salesforce, bank of america, gofundme and jpmorgan. what's the risk, you ask? well canceling you, the customer , or denying you service based on their esg principles embedded in their corporate culture, so the non-profit says well what can you do about this and they suggest why don't you go into in the banks circumstance a branch and ask politely, hey, in what circumstances can you cancel me because my money doesn't align with your values? and i would just love to see the conversations that follow if anybody does do that because the manager be like what are you talking about? but it is happening. we report these stories all the time. ashley: yeah. i know. you're right. all right, got another one for you. the controversial facial recognition technology that's being used at madison square garden now being used to stop

shoplifters. tell me more. lauren: yeah, at grocery stores and drug stores in new york. they are using the software, or in some cases, robots that can rome the aisles. so they track your face and know if you're a repeat offender and they even can detail how many items are pulled from a shelf so thieves often take a lot. if this is alarming they will alert the staff but that's the problem. you don't want your employees, even your security guards, confronting thieves, so maybe what happens is i can't believe i'm going to say this , a security staffer, through the robot, talks to that shoplifter and says hey, what are you doing? i mean, i would love to see this in action. does the thieve then throw down the items and run out of the store? probably not but it shows the desperation by so many merchants, because theft is on the rise and it's ripping them of their profits. ashley: you are right. nothing makes my blood boil more than watching those people just scoop all of those items into a shopping cart and then stare people down. they should be thrown into jail.

lauren thank you very much. coming up house intelligence chair mike turner is calling out the administration over the lack of briefings. listen to this. >> this is particularly annoying about this administration that the biden administration needs to stop briefing congress through our television sets and actually come and sit down and brief us. ashley: yeah, what an idea. we'll get into that. also, 1,400 illegal pot shops in new york city are wreaking havoc thanks to lax enforcement laws but now, mayor adams and d. a. brag says they are cracking down on the pop pedalers. we've got that report next. ♪

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ashley: new york city is looking to shutdown hundreds of pot shops that have been operating illegally. madison alworth is on this story this morning, and madison these shops have been a problem for a while now. so has the city failed in trying to shut them down? reporter: ashley, absolutely. the city will cite these shops, the police will raid them, and then within a couple weeks they

are back open again, and you would have no idea that new york city only has three licensed retailers, because there are shops like this one behind me in this neighborhood alone has dozens of them. that's why they are trying to crack honduras. so far it's difficult. the one in particular is involved in an nypd lawsuit officers a edge hadding they saw them selling cannabis without a license so i want to show you the map of the four retailers that the nypd are going after. looking to shut them down as un licensed establishments, under the city's nuisance abatement law, for selling weed without a license but so far all four, they are up and running. so another thing that we're trying to do here in the city is the manhattan d. a. is targeting 400 shops in manhattan alone that are operating illegally, but here is the catch. because there is no clear cut way to prosecute those that are illegally selling weed, they have to go through other creative channels, so the d. a. 's office is using the real property actions and proceeding law. what that means is landlords

have to evict tenants if they are engaged in illegal trade or business, so they can't actually just go after them for selling weed. so other ways they are trying to do this is go after shops like the ones behind me if they are selling unlicensed or excuse me, untaxed tobacco, and if they are selling to minors, but that means they aren't prosecuting them for just weed so those we have spoken to said they need to figure out how to get at the weed itself, just like if you were at a restaurant selling liquor without a liquor license. ashley? ashley: yeah, big problem, clearly. madison thank you very much. interesting. all right, coming up, still ahead florida congressman mike waltz, joe concha, miranda devine and kevin o'leary, oh, my the 10 a.m. hour of "varney" & company is next. ♪

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♪. ashley: the skyline of new york city on this beautiful