Brandy Thomason

[Frances Staudt @Frances_Staudt]

Thank you, @Matt_Calkins . I was one of the female athletes you interviewed, and I truly appreciate the way you treated me. You were fair, listened to my story without judgment, and wanted to share my experience—even when The Seattle Times refused to let it be heard.

@seattletimes deserves to be called out. It has become a left-wing rag that suppresses stories and viewpoints that challenge its preferred political narrative. Even at 17, I can see eerie similarities to what we’ve learned in history class about communism, censorship, and the control of information.

To think that a 17-year-old female athlete and her story could be considered a threat to a powerful media machine like The Seattle Times shows that we have them against the ropes. We need to keep punching.

I won’t quit, and I’m asking all of you to help deliver the knockout punch this November: Vote YES on Initiative 638.

Thank you, Matt, for having the guts it takes and standing by your principles, refusing to participate in this censorship, and giving female athletes a voice.

Frances Staudt

[Matt Calkins @Matt_Calkins]

After 11 years as a sports columnist at the Seattle Times, I have decided to resign. It was entirely my choice, and it was not an easy one. The impetus was the Times declining to run a column I wrote from the perspective of two female student athletes who were opposed to competing against biological males. It was one of several pieces of mine that had been spiked, and I no longer felt like I could properly do my job as a columnist. I lay out the situation in greater detail in the link below, but I want to say that I enjoyed my time with the paper, find the talent there to be immense, and have no animosity toward anyone who works there. It was just time for a change.

https://t.co/NAhfUbmaPI

[SEGM @segm_ebm]

🚨 WPATH has conceded in court that its "Standards of Care" is merely an opinion. WPATH says it represents one side of an unsettled scientific debate marked by uncertainty — and physicains & orgs that rely on WPATH as the standard of care must bear "independent responsibility."/1

[Jennifer 🟥🔴🧙‍♀️🦉🐈‍⬛ 🦖 @babybeginner]

I know you won’t go to HeCheated dot org to see this, so I screenshot the first of 200 pages. There are 20,762+ times men have entered women’s competitions. The site has the links too. It’s not 4 athletes. It’s 20,762 events! This is what we all are talking about.

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

Men pretending to be women have somehow convinced feminists to fight for their right to take women’s job. This is the craziest con job of all time, men have convinced women to advocate for their own replacements.

[Gays Against Groomers @againstgrmrs]

Telling children their bodies are wrong, putting them on powerful drugs, and surgically altering healthy organs in the name of becoming their “true selves” is not compassion or affirming. It is abuse.

[Enes Kanter FREEDOM @EnesFreedom]

The @WNBA says a woman is anyone who claims to be one.

So if I say I’m a woman, you have to accept it.

Those are the rules the #WNBA created.

Why does anyone get to decide whose journey is real and whose isn’t?

Who gets to judge?

Rules Are Rules!

#LetFreedomPlay

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

The longer @wnba goes without implementing the same basic gender testing rules as the WTA, the Olympics and the NCAA, don’t you have to ask whether they have men already playing and are afraid of the test results going public and player(s) being kicked out of the league?

[Stacy is Right @PoliticalStacy]

Brittney Griner has no tits because he is a man. The end.

[Normal Gay Psychiatrist @NormalGayPsych]

I’m a gay man and a psychiatrist.
I’ve watched the explosion of rapid-onset gender dysphoria cases, especially in teenage girls.
I’ve seen the desistance data, the comorbidities, the regret, and the sterilizing effects of blockers + cross-sex hormones.
And I have never supported medicalizing children. Not once. Never.
Kids cannot consent to infertility, loss of sexual function, or permanent alteration of healthy bodies.
“Affirmation” is not neutral care — it is an ideological intervention that locks many of them onto a medical pathway most would have grown out of.
Being gay does not require me to pretend that sex is a spectrum or that a distressed 13-year-old girl is actually a boy. It requires the opposite: protecting same-sex attracted and gender-nonconforming kids from a medical fad that pathologizes them.
I will not shut up.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

A soldier used classified intel to make $409K on Polymarket. Arrested. 5 federal charges. Assets seized.

Congress traded $635 million last year. The STOCK Act has produced zero prosecutions in 14 years. Maximum fine: $200. Routinely waived.

The STOCK Act was signed with 14 pens in 2012. Its searchable database was repealed 11 months later by voice vote on a Friday evening. No cameras. No podium. It took 4 pages to remove the only part of the law that worked.

This is not new. The pattern is 60 years old.

Abu Ghraib: 11 enlisted soldiers convicted. The Secretary of Defense who authorized the techniques was never charged. The lawyer who wrote the torture memo got a federal judgeship.

The 2008 financial crisis: 1 banker went to prison. 10 million families lost their homes. The CEO whose bank paid $13 billion in fraud settlements got a 74% raise.

Iran-Contra: A Lieutenant Colonel took the fall. The President pardoned the witnesses 11 days before his own trial testimony.

The institution prosecutes at the lowest rank, at the lowest cost, so the briefing slides can say enforcement exists.

The $409K is not the crime. It is the cost of making $635 million look supervised.

I wrote the full investigation. 33 footnotes. 60 years of receipts.

https://t.co/c6WjID8Tw5

[Rep. Anna Paulina Luna @RepLuna]

If members of Congress are caught insider trading, it’s a small, couple-hundred-dollar fine. If you’re caught doing it in the military, like in MSgt Dykes’s case, you could be facing up to 50 years in prison.

Anyone who cannot see that members of Congress are insider trading is either low IQ or willfully ignorant. Let’s take Nancy Pelosi, for example, it is statistically not possible for her to make a 17,000% return and outperform Warren Buffett without insider information. 🤡

[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.

[Kurt Mahlburg @k_mahlburg]

Finland tracked every gender-referred adolescent in the country for up to 25 years.

Their psychiatric needs didn't improve after 'gender reassignment'. They surged.

A landmark peer-reviewed study just dropped. Here's what it found. 🧵

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

WOW 🚨 Delta Dental is considered a nonprofit but the CEO skyrocketed her pay from $4.5 million per year all the way to $48 million over 4 years

That’s $1 million dollars per month pay for one employee as a nonprofit

“Delta Dental is considered a non-profit, and as such you can be their taxes online. So I got curious in their 2014 filing, the IRS requests for the organization's top accomplishments.

Delta Dental reported that over 95% of claims electronic, online and paper were processed without any manual intervention. That means when your care is denied, there is less than 1 in 10 chance a human reviewed it

— That same year, Delta dished out up to a 30% pay cut on the care that doctors deliver, and for a decade, they did not raise what they pay for your dental care by a single penny.

Meanwhile, their CEO's salary skyrocketed. She went from 4.5 to $15 million a year. From 2014 to 2018, she made off with almost $48 million before leaving her position. That's a million dollars a month. Must be nice. And she's not even a clinician. She's a CPA.

You don't have to be an accountant to do the math. Dr. Pay cuts stagnant reimbursements. They were never about saving patients money on premiums.”

[Hazel Appleyard @HazelAppleyard]

Share if you agree. 💯

[Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok]

Giant male in a MA school injured 3 girls during a girls basketball match. They ended the game early before he can hurt more girls and had to forfeit the game due to injuries.

Every single Democrat Senator just voted against keeping men out of women’s sports.

Democrats don’t care about your daughters’ safety.

[Hazel Appleyard @HazelAppleyard]

Bro destroyed his whole marriage so that he could wear a dress.

Tragic.

[Westerly1 @Westerly110]

What an incredibly ignorant comment.

Go call your mother and apologize for suggesting that being a mother isn’t WORK. That making a home isn’t WORK. That being on call 24/7 isn’t WORK.

And for failing to recognize that parenting would be much more tolerable if mothers didn’t have to ALSO have to maintain a soul sucking empty job to pay bills.

You’re an ungrateful idiot.