Below is a video of my spoken testimony and Q&A, along with my prepared remarks, for Thursday’s Senate Banking Committee hearing “Examining Insurance Markets and the Role of Mitigation Policies.”

January’s devastating LA fires were the biggest wakeup call yet that California has become significantly more endangered by out-of-control wildfires.

Fortunately, more and more Californians are starting to understand the root cause: a failure to practice climate resilience.

As a longtime resident of Southern California, I have long been frustrated that our leading politicians blame our fire problems on rising CO2 levels, a minor fire factor they have no real ability to affect—while ignoring the major factor they can directly affect: resilience.

The last 100 years show that increasing resilience can more than offset any new dangers from rising CO2 levels. As evidence, the death rate from climate-related disasters has fallen 98%—and damages adjusted for GDP growth have not increased.1

Regardless of climate changes, we could radically reduce wildfire danger through 5 forms of resilience:

1. Crack down on human ignition

2. Reduce fuel load

3. Reduce proximity of homes to fuel

4. Increase fire-resistance

5. Build robust response capacities

We’ve failed at all 5.

California has failed to crack down on human ignition.

Many wildfires—and almost all in SoCal—begin with ignition from arson, accidents (especially from the homeless) and power line failures.2

The first two are easy to crack down on—yet we have failed spectacularly to do so.

California has failed to reduce fuel load.

Whether for dense forest or LA’s chaparral vegetation, reducing the amount of flammable material—through prescribed burns, brush clearing, fire breaks, or logging—dramatically limits fire’s potential.

Yet we let fuel load grow and grow.3

California has failed to reduce the proximity of homes to fuel.

Once a fire starts to spread, a huge factor in its destructiveness is proximity: how much human infrastructure is near flammable areas.

Yet we build more and more infrastructure in flammable areas.4

California has failed to increase fire-resistance.

Once a fire reaches urban areas, a major factor in its destructiveness is how fire-resistant the affected human infrastructure is.

Yet we have not increased fire-resistance to handle the danger caused by our other bad policies.

California has failed to build robust response capacities.

The last line of defense against a fire is effective firefighting that can respond quickly and at scale.

Yet before the recent fires, the LA fire department had a stagnant budget and insufficient water infrastructure.5

Why is California so bad at wildfire resilience? One major reason is “green” policies that prevent the major human impact needed to manage our naturally fire-prone forests and shrublands—such as reducing fuel load. “Green” fire management prohibitions are deadly.

An overlooked cause of California’s fire problems is a lack of free-market fire insurance. In a free market, fire insurance premiums would have risen dramatically in response to California’s failure to practice wildfire resilience—sending a crucial message.

But California shot the messenger.

Many Californians have experienced the situation my wife and I did when, in preparation for the birth of our first child, we bought our first home in Southern California. No private company would sell us fire insurance at any price; we could only get the government’s FAIR plan.

While climate catastrophists pretend that insurers’ withdrawal from California is due to overwhelming climate risk, this is absurd—not just because the major risk is lack of resilience, but because regardless of a risk’s cause, insurers can always profitably insure at some price.

There are many forms of insurance for things far riskier than fires in California—which, in high-risk areas, might be 1% of a home’s cost annually. Other forms of insurance often exceed 5%: athlete disability insurance, high-risk occupational insurance, even AppleCare!

As California’s failure to practice wildfire resilience was rising, we needed insurers to jack up premiums in proportion to the risk—especially for homes in fire-prone areas and/or homes with low fire-resistance. But our government prevented this, covering up its own failures.

California’s “Insurance Rate Reduction and Reform Act”—Proposition 103 from 1988—requires insurance companies to obtain prior approval from the state before increasing rates, and to base their rates only on past losses rather than future loss projections.6

Proposition 103 was voted into law in California specifically to prevent premium hikes in dangerous areas. As a result, predictably, insurance companies left markets where they could not turn a profit because the risk was too high compared to the premiums they could offer.

California also instituted a public FAIR “last-resort” plan, forcibly subsidized by private insurers, which provides insurance to homeowners regardless of risk, at artificially low prices. This directly incentivized home-building in highly fire-prone areas.7

Post-LA fires, California needs to embrace a free market in disaster insurance that will encourage us to increase resilience.

Instead, we have imposed even more restrictions on insurers, dictating which policies they can cancel and forcing them to fund government insurance.8

I will try to convince my government in California that the key to radically reducing wildfire danger—like all climate danger—is increasing resilience, including the free-market disaster insurance that incentivizes it.

But even if California won’t learn its lesson, I hope Congress does.

• Congress should require the Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service to obtain NEPA categorical exclusions for proven wildfire-prevention tools—such as mechanical thinning and prescribed burns—so these lifesaving actions aren’t delayed by onerous, duplicative reviews.

• Congress should direct the Fish and Wildlife Service to exclude wildfire prevention measures from review under the Endangered Species Act, given that wildfires themselves pose a far greater threat to wildlife than the measures to prevent them.

• Congress should direct the Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service to incorporate additional mechanical thinning, prescribed fires, firebreaks, fuel breaks, and logging into their forest and resource management plans.

• Congress should require the US Forest Service to abolish the “roadless forests” category within the national forest system—which unnecessarily restricts wildfire prevention efforts from accessing some of the most fire-prone areas due to lack of permanent roads.

• Congress should direct the EPA to exempt prescribed burns from Clean Air Act air-quality calculations—or at minimum create a swift, automatic waiver—so land managers can use this proven wildfire-prevention tool without jeopardizing state Clean Air Act compliance.

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​In the recent Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the world witnessed a disgraceful display of power-worship, pragmatism, and moral cowardice—antithetical to everything a free nation should stand for. Trump's words and actions during this encounter revealed a complete rejection of proper moral principles in favor of raw, unprincipled deal-making that reduces human life and liberty to mere bargaining chips.​

Trump's repeated insistence that Zelenskyy should be "thankful" for U.S. support is not just grotesque—it is an attempt to subjugate a free nation under the pretense of aid. America has supported Ukraine not out of charity but because defending a nation fighting for its sovereignty against tyranny is in America's rational self-interest. Putin's aggression, if left unchecked, emboldens authoritarianism worldwide, undermining the security and stability necessary for global peace. Yet Trump's stance is not one of principled self-interest but craven submission to brute force.​

Trump's debased assertion that he must stay "aligned with the world" and remain neutral between Russia and Ukraine is a grotesque evasion of reality. Justice demands moral judgment. There is no "neutrality" between a free nation defending its sovereignty and a dictator engaging in mass murder and territorial conquest. To refuse to morally condemn Putin—while mocking Zelenskyy—is not diplomacy; it is appeasement of evil.​

Worse, Trump inverts the nature of gratitude: instead of appreciating that Ukraine is fighting a battle that, if lost, could draw the United States into direct conflict, he demands Zelenskyy bow and scrape before him like a vassal. This is not the posture of a leader who values freedom; it is the posture of a petty tyrant intoxicated by his own arbitrary power.​

Throughout the exchange, Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance rejected any principles in favor of pragmatism, the philosophy that treats all actions as situational and disconnected from moral truth. Vance mocked previous U.S. leaders for "talking tough" about Putin, suggesting that the real path to peace is Trump's vague, undefined "deal-making." But peace is not the mere absence of conflict—it is the presence of justice.​

Zelenskyy rightly challenged this, pointing out that every past agreement Putin has signed was violated—a fact Trump and Vance ignored entirely. The Ukrainian president was the only man in the room making a reality-based argument. His point was simple: Putin's diplomacy is fraudulent, his word worthless, his history a parade of lies and violations. Yet Trump and Vance, instead of answering this with facts or strategy, resorted to schoolyard taunts. "You don't have the cards," Trump sneered, treating the survival of millions as a game.​

This is pure pragmatism unmoored from moral principle. To Trump, nothing matters beyond his personal leverage in a "deal." He does not care who is right, who is wrong, or what justice requires—only who has the most bargaining power. That is not leadership. That is the philosophy of a weak man who grovels before force while pretending to wield it.​

Trump's grotesque admiration for Putin is evident not just in his refusal to condemn Russia, but in his psychological projection onto Zelenskyy. The phrase "you don't have the cards" is repeated like a mantra, as if strength alone dictates morality. This is the essence of the authoritarian mindset: might makes right.​

A proper leader does not bow before power nor demand unearned submission from others. A proper foreign policy is based on mutual self-interest—supporting nations that fight for freedom against tyranny and opposing those that seek to expand dictatorship. Trump rejects this entirely. His view of foreign policy is neither self-interested nor moral—it is the nihilistic, short-sighted pragmatism of a power-luster who views all interactions as dominance struggles.​

Zelenskyy, by contrast, speaks as a man of conviction. He argues from principle. He recounts facts. He challenges the notion that Putin's promises are worth anything. And in response, Trump and Vance gaslight him, demand submission, and frame his plea for justice as disrespect.​

This entire exchange demonstrates why Trump's movement is not about American greatness—it is about servility to power. He does not admire or defend free nations; he reserves his respect for those who wield unchecked force. His moral equivalence between Zelenskyy and Putin is moral cowardice of the highest order—a betrayal of everything America is supposed to stand for.​

Ayn Rand observed that when force is unleashed against the innocent, it is a crime to appease it, and a greater crime to reward it. Trump's position is not just foolish—it is a total moral abdication.​

Zelenskyy stands for his people and their right to exist. Trump stands for nothing but his own whim. You shouldn't have to guess with which leader I stand.​

I was raised Catholic. Easter was solemn and beautiful: incense curling through high stone arches, hymns echoing off high ceilings and stained glass, the quiet dignity of a ritual polished by centuries of repetition. There’s a profound serenity to it—a kind of spiritual aesthetic that, for a time, I took comfort in.

But beauty is not truth. And no amount of pageantry can sanctify a lie.

As an adult committed to reason, I revisited the foundations of my faith—and found them rotten. It wasn’t this passage specifically that broke my faith—but it’s emblematic. One of many verses reflective of a method: the blind belief in absurdity. Matthew 27:52–53:

“The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.”

Let’s pause and look this square in the face.

Matthew claims that when Jesus died, graves burst open, and many dead people—described as saints—got up and walked into Jerusalem, appearing to the population. A small zombie apocalypse, it seems, in the middle of a Roman-occupied city.

And yet: no one else mentions it.

Not Mark, Luke, or John. Not Paul. Not Josephus. Not Tacitus. Not a single Roman record. The Roman Empire, famed for its bureaucracy and deeply anxious about public unrest, supposedly experienced a wave of resurrections in a politically sensitive province—and filed no report?

Let’s imagine what that might have looked like:

To the Esteemed Emperor Tiberius, from your loyal Prefect Pontius Pilate:
There’s been an unusual development. Following the execution of a local religious agitator, several corpses exited their tombs and began strolling around Jerusalem. Eyewitnesses confirm that the formerly dead have appeared to many. Awaiting further instruction on whether this constitutes a threat to order or a religious matter above my rank. Hail Caesar.

No such dispatch was sent. Because no such event occurred.

What did happen is that Matthew—or someone in his tradition—inserted a fantastical detail into an already improbable narrative, and expected his audience to swallow it. And generations of believers have. With eyes closed and minds bowed, they’ve accepted that a literal resurrection parade happened in the middle of a real, historical city, and yet the world somehow forgot to notice.

The epistemological fraud here is astonishing. But worse still is the ethical framework built atop it.

Central to Christian theology is Original Sin—the claim that man is guilty not by action, but by nature. That to be born is to be condemned. That the only redemption is submission.

Ayn Rand saw this doctrine for what it is:

“Original Sin means that man is guilty before he takes the first step, that he must accept guilt as his basic nature. … That is a moral obscenity.”

To accept inherited guilt is to reject justice. To accept faith without evidence is to reject reason. Together, they form the engine of religious morality: don’t question, just obey.

As a child, I took comfort in the ritual. As a man, I could not evade the contradiction: a worldview that demands moral perfection based on metaphysical depravity, that worships truth while denying the mind, that exalts a story so transparently false that thirty seconds of thought reveals it to be absurd.

Blind belief is not a virtue. It is a toxin. No hymn, no incense, no stained-glass light show can change that.

Easter now means something else to me: the resurrection not of a god, but of the self—freed from the chains of inherited guilt, awakened by the uncompromising light of reason. That is what I celebrate. And I need no miracle—only my mind.