Beth Phillips

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[Emma Camp @emmma_camp_]

If you want evidence that capitalism is a force for good, just visit a grocery store.

My ode to the humble American supermarket, for @WSJFreeEx

[Dave Rubin @RubinReport]

Don’t forget, the biggest influencer on the Left was on NY Times podcast THIS WEEK taking about how political violence is rationalized…

[The White House @WhiteHouse]

"In light of this evening's events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts in resolving our differences peacefully." - President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸

[End Wokeness @EndWokeness]

Hasan Piker: "KiII the motherf*ckers. Let the streets soak in their red, capitalist bIood!"

3 days ago, the NYT promoted him

[SaltyGoat @SaltyGoat17]

Members of Congress make on average 600% returns on their stock portfolio having usually never traded a single stock before showing up.

If they get caught insider trading it’s a fine of ~$200

Y’all pissed yet?

[Dan Hill @dandinohill]

Turns out passing a simple law that says if you want to vote in the USA, you must be a citizen of the USA - is too difficult for our Senators.

But on the positive side - most of them are excellent stock pickers.

[Rick D @RickD_GK]

Let me get this right. The service member who bet on Polymarket that Maduro will get captured, made a few bucks, is now looking at 50 years in Prison...
But all of the Politicians that partake in Insider Trading, (most of them), continue to be allowed to violate federal laws, hold their positions and power, without any issue?

I think we are nearing Boston Tea Party 2.0. This is truly diabolical, and a massive slap to the face of us all.

Yes, he should see some penalty, but so should everyone who games the system.
When will this nonsense finally be fixed?

[Nancy Mace @NancyMace]

A U.S. soldier was arrested for insider trading yesterday. The full force of federal law came down on him swiftly and without hesitation.

Meanwhile, Ilhan Omar allegedly married her own brother to circumvent immigration law, a serious federal matter. She arrived in Congress with little. She now reportedly holds a fortune approaching $30 million, built on a $174,000 annual congressional salary. I subpoenaed her immigration records to get to the truth. Republicans buried them.

And members of Congress insider trade routinely, all while telling you they would vote to end it.

I will not be told this is equal justice under law. It is not.

A nation applying its laws selectively has not upheld the rule of law. It has weaponised it. A people willing to tolerate it have already surrendered something they may not easily recover.

The law must be blind, and it must be applied to everyone the same way.

The question is no longer whether a two-tiered system of justice exists. The question is whether anyone in power has the will to end it.

[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.

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 NOW: Rep. Luna says the U.S. soldier who made $400K by betting on his own mission’s success in capturing Maduro should be PARDONED

“So many Members of Congress are engaging in insider trading everyday. For the DOJ to throw the book at Gannon Ken Van Dyke is a RIDICULOUS double standard!”

Luna says the soldier should still have to forfeit the proceeds

[Rep. Anna Paulina Luna @RepLuna]

So many Members of Congress are engaging in insider trading everyday. For the DOJ to throw the book at Gannon Ken Van Dyke is a RIDICULOUS double standard. There is no fair justice when Members are exempt from crimes anyone else would go to jail for.

[Dr. Mehmet Oz @DrOz]

In a paradigm shift for mental health treatment, President Trump’s Executive Order fast-tracks access to psychedelic treatments for 14 million Americans in need. Momentum matters—credit to @joerogan for reigniting the conversation and to @SecKennedy for driving a whole-of-government response. Grateful to work alongside leaders who refuse to accept ‘no’ when lives are on the line.

[The White House @WhiteHouse]

Today, President Donald J. Trump took historic action to remove barriers on psychedelic treatments for serious mental illness — delivering new hope to millions of Americans, especially our veterans. 🇺🇸

[Beth Phillips @bethphillipsnc]

https://t.co/988g1Vnubp

[Secretary Brooke Rollins @SecRollins]

🥚🇺🇸💪

[The White House @WhiteHouse]

A NEW STANDARD FOR AMERICAN MADE. 🥩🥚

The Trump Administration is launching a new "Product of USA" label reserved exclusively for meat, poultry, and egg products made right here in the USA.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

If we’re Making America Healthy Again, government shouldn't be promoting glyphosate and providing liability immunity for corporations making it.

Thank you to @RepCohen for cosponsoring the No Immunity for Glyphosate Act.

[U.S. Senator John Fetterman @SenFettermanPA]

In Iran, life is oppression and brutality.

These courageous women were facing severe consequences, even their families threatened.

How many of the people who criticized our Men’s Hockey team condemned Iran’s treatment of its Women’s Soccer team?

[Levi Leatherberry @Levi_LCL]

🚨👨‍🌾Here's what everyone missed about the Rogan RFK Jr. interview clip making the rounds. 🌱The organic small farmer's view of the whole problem.

We are dying out here guys... to make the change everyone talks about. But the MONEY goes UP - not down to US the farmer.

As a small organic farmer, I see the glyphosate crisis firsthand.

We're investing BILLIONS into treating the diseases it causes, but almost NOTHING into the real solutions.

Small farmers like me are left out of the money to fix it.

We are the solution. Small organic farms that use DIY robots and lasers (I make both and share them open-source to help other older farmers).

If even 1% of the billions in grants went to us every year, we could revolutionize food production, create jobs, and build a sustainable future. 🌱

Instead, all the money goes to Big Ag and Big Pharma—the very companies that created this problem.

They poison the land, workers, and neighbors for generations, while getting rich from slow “fixes” that don’t really fix anything.

Small farmers with real solutions are left out. If we had funding, we could scale, employ more people, and compete with the mega farms. 10,000 small farms would hire 100x the people of just 5 giant farms.

We need to stop funding the multinational cartels that bankrupted our countryside and start investing in people.

The HHS & USDA have the money to unlock a true farming revolution if they shift priorities and support those who never poisoned their communities.

DIY robots that farmers can build, fix, and upgrade cheaply are key to scaling with an aging farmer population and cutting down on pesticides.

The answer is simple: Invest in small farmers, not the corporations that are destroying our land. We can literally solve this problem with light (lasers) and CITIZEN lead projects.

It should be profitable for young people to start farms, not impossible because of land costs, insurance, and rigged crop prices.

Let’s make small farms the backbone of American agriculture again. 💪

[Anna Matson @AnnaRMatson]

Normally I summarize Executive Orders but this MAHA one is just too good- I have to share the whole thing.

It reads:

“Section 1.  Purpose.  American life expectancy significantly lags behind other developed countries, with pre‑COVID-19 United States life expectancy averaging 78.8 years and comparable countries averaging 82.6 years.  This equates to 1.25 billion fewer life years for the United States population.  Six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease, and four in 10 have two or more chronic diseases.  An estimated one in five United States adults lives with a mental illness.

These realities become even more painful when contrasted with nations around the globe.  Across 204 countries and territories, the United States had the highest age-standardized incidence rate of cancer in 2021, nearly double the next-highest rate.  Further, from 1990-2021, the United States experienced an 88 percent increase in cancer, the largest percentage increase of any country evaluated.  In 2021, asthma was more than twice as common in the United States than most of Europe, Asia, or Africa.  Autism spectrum disorders had the highest prevalence in high-income countries, including the United States, in 2021.  

Similarly, autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, and multiple sclerosis are more commonly diagnosed in high-income areas such as Europe and North America.  Overall, the global comparison data demonstrates that the health of Americans is on an alarming trajectory that requires immediate action.

This concern applies urgently to America’s children.  In 2022, an estimated 30 million children (40.7 percent) had at least one health condition, such as allergies, asthma, or an autoimmune disease.  Autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 in 36 children in the United States — a staggering increase from rates of 1 to 4 out of 10,000 children identified with the condition during the 1980s.  Eighteen percent of late adolescents and young adults have fatty liver disease, close to 30 percent of adolescents are prediabetic, and more than 40 percent of adolescents are overweight or obese.

These health burdens have continued to increase alongside the increased prescription of medication.  For example, in the case of Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, over 3.4 million children are now on medication for the disorder — up from 3.2 million children in 2019-2020 — and the number of children being diagnosed with the condition continues to rise.  

This poses a dire threat to the American people and our way of life.  Seventy-seven percent of young adults do not qualify for the military based in large part on their health scores.  Ninety percent of the Nation’s $4.5 trillion in annual healthcare expenditures is for people with chronic and mental health conditions.  In short, Americans of all ages are becoming sicker, beset by illnesses that our medical system is not addressing effectively.  These trends harm us, our economy, and our security.

To fully address the growing health crisis in America, we must re-direct our national focus, in the public and private sectors, toward understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease.  This includes fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety.  We must restore the integrity of the scientific process by protecting expert recommendations from inappropriate influence and increasing transparency regarding existing data.  We must ensure our healthcare system promotes health rather than just managing disease.”

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