Eugene Cawley

Sports Fan and into Politics

[Eugene Cawley @PGHST]

@BobCornelia Is this available on any other platforms like Spotify?

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have two stacks on my desk. The left stack is financial disclosure forms from members of Congress. The right stack is waivers for members who filed their financial disclosures late.

The right stack is always taller.

On Wednesday morning, I watched a soldier get arrested on CNN.

I am a Disclosure Analyst for the House Ethics Committee. I have held this position for eleven years. My job is to receive the forms, verify their completeness, and file them. I do not investigate. I do not flag. I do not refer. I file. I have a lanyard. The lanyard says ETHICS.

The soldier's name is Gannon Ken Van Dyke. He is thirty-eight years old. He was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was Special Forces. In December, he created an account on a prediction market called Polymarket. On January 2nd, he bet $32,500 that the president of Venezuela would be removed from power. On January 3rd, he helped remove the president of Venezuela from power. He collected $409,881.

He has been charged with five federal crimes. Commodities fraud. Wire fraud. Unlawful use of confidential government information. Theft of nonpublic government information. Unlawful monetary transaction. The Department of Justice called it "the first-ever insider trading prosecution on event contracts."

I watched this on the television in our break room. Then I walked back to my desk and processed a late financial disclosure from a member of the House Financial Services Committee who purchased $250,000 in bank stocks eleven days before his subcommittee held a closed-door hearing on proposed capital reserve changes.

The filing was forty-seven days late. The STOCK Act requires disclosure within forty-five days. The penalty for late filing is $200.

I waived it.

I waive most of them. In 2021, fifty-four members of Congress and senior staff violated the reporting rules. The fines were minimal. Most were waived. I have a form for the waiver. The form has a box that says "Reason." I write "administrative delay." In ethics, "administrative delay" means the member's office forgot and then remembered when a reporter called. My approval rate is one hundred percent. In any other field, that number would trigger an audit. In mine, it is called thoroughness.

Let me show you what I processed this year.

January. A senator on the Armed Services Committee sold defense contractor shares worth $1.2 million. Three days later, his committee received a classified briefing that the Iran campaign had exceeded its projected cost by 340%. The stock dropped 8%. He filed the disclosure sixty-one days late. I calculated the fine. $200. His chief of staff asked if it could be waived. He did not ask what the senator traded on. Nobody asks that. The form does not have a field for it. I waived the fine. The senator's portfolio returned 23.4% in 2025. The S&P 500 returned 16.8%.

February. A representative on the Energy and Commerce Committee bought pharmaceutical stocks worth $400,000. Two weeks later, her committee advanced a bill that would extend patent exclusivity for the exact drug class she purchased. The stocks rose 14%. She filed on time. There was no fine. There was no investigation. There was nothing to investigate because buying stocks in companies regulated by your own committee is not illegal. It is legal. The STOCK Act made it legal by making it disclosed. In Congress, disclosed means legal. In my office, legal means filed.

March. A member whose spouse manages a portfolio worth $9.2 million reported forty-three separate transactions in a single quarter. Twelve of them were in sectors directly affected by legislation the member co-sponsored. The timing on eight of those twelve was within a two-week window of committee action. I logged all forty-three. None were flagged. We do not flag. We file.

I asked my supervisor once what would happen if I flagged a filing. She said we do not have a form for that. I never asked again.

In 2020, I processed 847 disclosures. In 2023, 1,211. In 2025, 1,614. The number of enforcement actions in each of those years was zero. The numerator changes. The denominator does not.

I want to tell you about the soldier again.

He made $409,881. He tried to delete his Polymarket account by calling customer service and saying he lost access to his email. He moved his profits into a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then into a new brokerage account. He used his real identity. He placed thirteen bets. Every single one was connected to an operation he personally participated in.

In my eleven years, I have processed disclosures from members of Congress who traded on:

Pending FDA approvals they learned about in committee.
Defense appropriations they voted on.
Trade policy they negotiated.
Pandemic response measures they drafted.
Interest rate decisions they were briefed on before the public.

None of them have been charged. None of them have been investigated by the Department of Justice. None of them have been referred to the SEC. The STOCK Act has produced zero prosecutions since it was signed on April 4th, 2012.

Fourteen years. Five hundred and thirty-five members. $635 million in trades last year alone. Zero cases.

My daughter asked me once what happens when someone breaks the rules. I told her we write it down. She asked what happens after that. I said it depends. She was nine. She is twenty now. It does not depend. Nothing happens after that.

The soldier made $409,881 and faces decades in prison. Nancy Pelosi entered Congress in 1987 with a portfolio worth approximately $785,000. It is now worth $133.7 million. That is a return of 16,930%. The Dow Jones returned 2,300% over the same period. Professional fund managers who beat the market for three consecutive years are considered exceptional. She has beaten it for thirty-seven. If a hedge fund produced those returns, the SEC would subpoena the records on a Thursday. She produced them from a building with a chapel and a gift shop.

She announced her retirement last year. No investigation was opened. No disclosure was flagged. Her filings were on time. In my office, on time means compliant. Compliant means closed.

I want to tell you about the fine.

$200. That is the maximum penalty for violating the STOCK Act's disclosure requirements. $200 for a member of Congress whose portfolio gained $4.7 million in a single quarter. I calculated what $200 represents as a percentage of $4.7 million. It is 0.004%. I could not find a comparison that made it meaningful. It is less than the price of the parking pass in the Rayburn garage. It is less than lunch at the members' dining room if you order the crab cakes, which I am told are excellent though I eat at my desk.

Since 2012, thirty-one bills have been introduced to restrict congressional trading. I keep a list. The list is longer than the STOCK Act itself.

On March 5th, 2026, a representative from Michigan introduced the thirty-second. He called it the "No Getting Rich in Congress Act." The bill would prohibit the President, Vice President, members of Congress, and their spouses from trading individual stocks, cryptocurrency, futures, and commodities while in office.

The bill was referred to committee. The committee has not scheduled a hearing. The committee is chaired by a member whose spouse executed $2.1 million in trades last year.

The bill will be reviewed. In my office, reviewed means read. Read means acknowledged. Acknowledged means a status has been assigned. A status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

The soldier used classified information to make $409,881 on a prediction market. He has been charged with five federal crimes. The Department of Justice announced the case on the same day I processed three disclosures from members who traded on committee knowledge worth a combined $3.8 million.

The difference between the soldier and the members is not what they did. It is the building they did it in. He did it from Fort Bragg. They did it from the Capitol. He used a prediction market. They used the New York Stock Exchange. He bet on a military operation. They bet on the legislation they write.

He did not write the law. They did. They wrote the STOCK Act. Then they funded its enforcement at zero dollars. Then they set its maximum penalty at $200. Then they gave my office the authority to waive it. Then they traded $635 million.

The soldier flew to Caracas. He breached a compound. He put his body between a mission and a bullet. The people who ordered the operation were in a building with a credenza and sparkling water. They did not go to Caracas. They went to their brokerage accounts. The soldier made $409,881 and is now in federal custody. The people who knew what he was going to do before he did it made more and filed less. His prosecution is not a failure of the system. It is the system. One conviction per decade, at the lowest level, so the briefing slides can say enforcement exists. The $409,881 is not the crime. It is the cost of making $635 million look supervised.

In my field, we call this self-regulation.

The soldier's Polymarket account has been frozen. His military career is over. He will spend years in federal prison. My office will process every congressional disclosure filed this year. Every trade logged. Every $200 fine calculated and waived. The system is immaculate.

Fourteen years. Zero prosecutions. $635 million a year. A 16,930% return.

I have not leaked a document. I have not filed a complaint. I have not deviated from the process one single time. The process was written by the people whose forms I process.

As long as the disclosures go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

My lanyard still says ETHICS. In eleven years, nobody has asked me to define the word.

[Martina White @VoteMartinaPA]

The report card from Harrisburg is in and the results are alarming.

Just 12% of Harrisburg High School students are proficient in reading.

Only 2% are proficient in math.

And science proficiency is just 3%.

Our students deserve better. It’s time for Pennsylvania to opt-in to the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit and give families real options at getting a quality education.

[PA House Republicans 🇺🇸 @PAHouseGOP]

It's high time that the people of #PA get to decide the future of property taxes in the Commonwealth.

But instead of putting a Constitutional amendment on the ballot, House Democrats continue to stonewall the effort, taking money from YOUR pocket.

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

This woman flew to Iran and says Americans have no idea what it’s like going into a country under Sharia Law

After the experience, “I’m telling you, the second I land in the United States, I literally bow down. I see an American flag and I start bowing down to it. I'm like, oh baby, I'm home.”

Americans can’t “grasp the concept of a religious government ,what they can do, what it is”

She explains how all the women on the plane as soon as it landed must completely cover up, no skin at all showing

She explains how they treat you and what’s it’s like. She explains going into the capital city

[Sonnie Johnson @SonnieJohnson]

Establishment Democrats offered their base the "dream of Socialism". They didn't really mean it. They just needed to rally the troops.

Now, the base has grown and they want what they were promised. They are holding their party accountable by taking it over.

You don't have to like it...BUT it's how politics are supposed to be played. Imagine if the Republican base, which has been promised "fiscal responsibility", did the same. BUT they don't. They don't organize, build or primary. Just wait for Republicans to Insert Knife Here...

Republicans...have they voted on the Save Act yet? Or...will they ignore your calls because they know they are only online and not in a primary.

[Eugene Cawley @PGHST]

@PaulZeise @dan_kenaan That could be true but doesn’t he also have a lawsuit against the NFL which might be why owners didn’t hire him? I know that is some kind of collusion but let’s not act like that doesn’t happen.

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

This post got 216k Likes. Not a single lie spoken

“You know who white conservatives despise more than anybody else? It's not Black people, it's not Hispanics, it's White liberals

- Because the worst parts of the black community are enabled by white liberal policy
- The worst parts of immigration is a result of white liberal policy
- The worst part of the trans community is enabled by white liberal activists.

Everything that is wrong with our country is the result of liberal policies that are championed and signed off by white liberals.

They destroy everything under the guise of compassion and equality but in reality they enable people to remain inferior and fantasize the black community with taxpayer dollars and incentivize illegal immigrants not only to stay but to keep them comfortable and they don't even know it.

That's the scary part. They don't even realize that they are the problem when they think they are helping.“

[Eugene Cawley @PGHST]

@PaulZeise @dan_kenaan Is it possible he turned down a head coaching offer?

[Eugene Cawley @PGHST]

@MartyGriffinKD So Brave!

[Penn State College Republicans @PennStateGOP]

🚨BREAKING: Radical Leftists at @penn_state post DEATH THREATS against ICE Agents on campus. A student even shared it PUBLICLY on their story.

Conservative students do not feel safe. This violent extremism MUST be stopped!

[Eugene Cawley @PGHST]

@J_Utah1991 @DerrickEvans4WV You forgot to mention China stealing everyone’s technology also.

[JD Vance @JDVance]

This argument is just entirely fake, for two reasons.

1) In the Obama administration, they counted being turned away at the border as a deportation. A person would show up, be sent back, and counted as a deportation. We have to do deportations from the interior of the country because Biden and Harris let them walk in.

2) In the cities that are not sanctuary cities, the deportation process is orderly and normal--like most law enforcement. In Minneapolis and a few other sanctuary jurisdictions, local jurisdictions and a few leftwing agitators have decided to wage war on all immigration enforcement officers.

They are hoping that a little chaos will convince us to give up on immigration enforcement. They are wrong.

[Derrick Evans @DerrickEvans4WV]

🚨 JUST IN: Indiana video sparks a new firestorm after a MAGA man is seen pushing a targeted deportation message—comments are getting wild

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

145,000 Likes in 24 hours. The world is waking up

“Iranian here with another pro tip for anyone who's not from the Middle East. If you have to put up barricades around your Christmas markets or cancel them due to threats of terrorism, that's not multiculturalism and diversity. That's Jihad

This past weekend in Germany, five Muslim immigrants were arrested by German police because they were planning on driving a car into a Christmas market. Three Moroccans, an Egyptian and a Syrian were planning on murdering Christians at a Christmas market for the crime of being Christian.

And for those of you who are constantly believing this jihadi propaganda that all these Islamic terrorist attacks have to do with Israel, a Christmas market attended by Christians in Germany has absolutely nothing to do with what's going on in Israel.

What starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews. And if you think this is only about Israel, you need to wake up because they're already targeting Christians and you might be next.

Maybe it's time to stop importing people into your countries who hate you and want to destroy everything about you and murder you just because you're not Muslim.

Tolerating Islamic terrorism and jihad is not multiculturalism and diversity. It's suicide.“

[TreVeyon Henderson @TreVeyonH4]

Will you stand with them? 🙏🏽 #MyCauseMyCleats

[Eugene Cawley @PGHST]

@MarkMaddenX How many Offensive Coordinators need to be fired before they blame the Head Coach?

[Eugene Cawley @PGHST]

@Vanmore @RepDeluzio I agree with you and I also live in his district.

[Eugene Cawley @PGHST]

@MattRhys63 @RiverhoundsSC Why is there always a rainbow flag flying in the supporters section? It seems odd and not really showing support for the home team.

[Eugene Cawley @PGHST]

@KDPomp Warren has 91 of the 151 and yet isn't on the field on that last drive.