Super Bowl-winning Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers keeps injecting himself into controversies lately, and on Sunday, which is the NFL’s opening weekend, he was back at it again. Appearing on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast, which will drop Sunday evening, Rodgers blasted California pandemic policies and claimed the state was in a serious backslide.

The state’s going to s**t, but I’m hanging on. I grew up in a small town, very little cases up in Chico, California, but all the small businesses? F***ing gone.

According to Daily Mail, capacity limits, mask mandates, lockdowns, and vaccine requirements cost the state over 40,000 businesses, the highest figure in any state in the nation, so he’s not wrong.

Rodgers then went on to complain about awful bill AB 2098, a measure soon to go to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk which, as I reported, would muzzle health professionals by limiting their ability to speak their minds. Once it passes, the state medical board can decide if a doctor has disseminated COVID “misinformation” or “disinformation,” and he or she could have their license revoked. Rodgers asked the right question: “based on whose standard of misinformation?” The bill faces clear First Amendment issues and is already being challenged in court.

Journalist Katy Grimes wrote in the California Globe about the “chilling” effects of the law:

Many medical professionals have called this definition “medical tyranny.” Imagine if cancer was treated the same by this Legislature. Is there “contemporary scientific consensus” on treatments, and are physicians threatened with the loss of their licenses if they try new treatments or medications for cancer patients?

🎯👍>Speaking to Bill Maher on his Club Random podcast, out Sunday, Rodgers called out the state's tough COVID-19 rules saying: 'State's going to s*** but I'm hanging on.<https://t.co/yR8nYO4IcU

— 👁️BigBroKnows👁️ (@panos941) September 11, 2022

This isn’t the first time Rodgers has trashed the state, appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast in late August.

Joe Rogan and Aaron Rodgers shred @SheilaKuehl, @GavinNewsom, and California’s COVID response that closed beaches and killed 10s of thousands of small businesses. pic.twitter.com/3N73VOS5ss

— Kevin Dalton (@KevinForBOS) August 29, 2022

The pair discussed the paddle-boarder arrested in Malibu for violating the state’s stay-at-home order, with Rodgers joking:

He’s passing COVID to the dolphins or what?

Joe, they closed the beaches in California. They closed the beaches where I live in California and all around the coast.

The quarterback may have been joshing, but LA Public Health is in fact now doubling down on their insanity by testing pets for COVID. Truly. Rodgers also mocked the Governor’s appearance at the uber-expensive restaurant the French Laundry in 2020 as the rest of the state was under strict lockdowns and mask mandates.

Rodgers has always been an interesting guy, but he’s sure not going to please everyone with this Maher interview. The HBO host has been notoriously left-leaning for years but lately has surprisingly been intellectually consistent about positions classic liberals used to hold, like freedom of speech and the ridiculousness of wokeness. Still, he tried to provoke Rodgers into condemning Trump, but the athlete wouldn’t take the bait.

Rodgers says he’s neither Democrat nor Republican. “I’m a rational thinker. I’m not on one side or the other,” he told Maher. He says he leans pro-life but doesn’t think the government should tell you what to do with your body. Someday, he’ll figure that one out and realize that the body being aborted doesn’t get a vote.

Rodgers can be remarkably confounding. However, his willingness to speak up against California’s crazy one-party rule and disastrous COVID policies is important because he’s a prominent national figure, and we need more voices like that to continue exposing the destruction of the once-golden state.