Jason Sprague

[Rodney Smith Jr @iamrodneysmith]

Dear @WhiteHouse, my name is Rodney Smith Jr., founder of Raising Men & Women Lawn Care Service in Huntsville, Alabama. Through our 50 Yard Challenge, over 6,000 kids across the country have signed up to mow free lawns for the elderly, disabled, veterans, active-duty military, first responders, and single parents. With America celebrating its 250th birthday this year and me also being born on July 4th, I wanted to humbly ask if a few kids from our program and myself could travel to Washington, D.C. to help mow the White House lawn for this historic celebration.

More than anything, I want these kids to see how a simple act of service something as ordinary as mowing a lawn for someone in need can lead to extraordinary places. What better lesson in community service than showing them that helping others can take them all the way to our nation’s capital? I’d also love to bring my American flag-themed mower in hopes that the President might sign it, so I can later auction it off and donate 100% of the proceeds to a nonprofit supporting veterans. It would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to highlight the importance of service, patriotism, and the impact young people can have when they choose to make a difference. 🇺🇸

[Nick Davidov @Nick_Davidov]

In 2021 our portfolio company Fridge No More raised $19M and opened 49 stores in NYC, employed 300 people and was able to deliver goods to your door in under 15 minutes, paying above minimum wage to couriers (they were actually so happy with their jobs they offered to work for free when the company couldn’t get funding). Unlike Mamdani’s store they had to pay rent and taxes.
This is $387K per store including all the R&D, CapEX, and a central processing facility.
Somehow when a socialist politician is trying to do that it’s 100x more and takes 3 years. Remember my words it will not end at $30M. Very soon they’ll ask for more.

[FBI Houston @FBIHouston]

🚨 13 years in prison. $229 MILLION in restitution. One massive healthcare conspiracy.

Houston lab owner Harold "Al" Knowles was recently sentenced for orchestrating a sprawling Medicare fraud scheme. He pushed unnecessary genetic tests, paid kickbacks, and exploited patients through deceptive telemarketing.

FBI Houston, @OIGatHHS, and Texas Medicaid Fraud Control Unit investigated the case. #HouNews

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

She charged $29 million to treat just 84 kids. The boom in autism therapy is Medicaid’s fastest-growing jackpot. https://t.co/zFrlf4uaAY

[Jason Walls @walls_jason1]

Yesterday Mark Cuban reposted my work, DM'd me, and told me to keep telling my story.

So here it is.

I'm a Master Electrician. IBEW Local 369. 15 years pulling wire in Kentucky. Zero coding background. I didn't go to Stanford. I went to trade school.

Every week I'd show up to a home where someone just bought a Tesla or a Rivian. And every time, someone had already told them they needed a $3,000-$5,000 panel upgrade to install a charger.

70% of the time? They didn't need it.

The math is in the NEC — Section 220.82. Load calculations. But nobody was doing them for homeowners. Electricians upsell. Dealers don't know. And the homeowner just pays.

I got angry enough to build something about it.

I found @claudeai. No coding experience. I just started talking to it like I'd explain a job to an apprentice. "Here's how load calcs work. Here's the NEC code. Now help me build a tool that does this."

6 months later — @ChargeRight is live. Real software. Stripe payments. PDF reports. NEC 220.82 calculations automated. $12.99 instead of a $500 truck roll.

I'm still pulling wire. I still take service calls. I wake up at 5:05 AM for work.

But something shifted.

Yesterday @vivilinsv published my story as Claude Builder Spotlight #1. Mark Cuban saw it. The Claude community showed up. And for the first time, I felt like this thing I built in my kitchen might actually matter.

I'm not a tech founder. I'm a dad who wants to coach little league and be home for dinner. I just happened to build something that helps people.

If you're in the trades and thinking about using AI — do it. The barrier isn't technical skill. It's believing you're allowed to try.

https://t.co/cDVdY5mcLv

[david friedberg @friedberg]

why not just raise income tax rates?

because your real intent is not to just “provide healthcare”.

you’re masking that you are proposing the creation of, for the first time in the 250 years of this American republic, an organized government seizure of private property from citizens.

you’re calling it a “wealth tax” or a “billionaires tax” or “millionaires tax” or whatever nom du jour polls well. but at the end of the day, it’s the seizure of private property from citizens by the government. citizens that earned money, paid their fair taxes on those earnings (53% if they live in California) and are now being told they need to hand over after-tax assets because the government has failed to provide promised services with the revenue it’s collected, and are now re-casting their own failure to be a socio-economic inequity that must be justly resolved... a slippery slope that has never gone anywhere good (see economic effects in USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, France and Norway wealth tax etc.)

the American founders fled tyranny in Europe and this amazing nation was populated by immigrants (myself and your parents) from around the world not just looking for a “better life” but for a place where they could have freedom from tyrannical governments that can take what they want from private citizens. a great nation borne of property rights, the rule of law, and endowed freedoms to believe, speak, or act. these principles led to the greatest run of innovations, successes, and widespread increase in prosperity, for all citizens, ever seen.

the citizens, the individuals, not the institutions, delivered this progress. those who invented, who toiled, who bled, who sacrificed, who took risk and persevered, who led, and who changed the world, are not charlatans, kleptocrats, or oligarchs. they’re what made us all better off. prosperity is a measure of america’s success, not its failure.

it is your principle that is so offensive, as evidenced by the broad disdain for your flippant flirtation with the darkest of human fantasy - socialism. you and other neo-socialists have led so many of us to reflect on America’s history and what it is becoming. that now leads so many to consider, so unnecessarily, leaving their homes for a place where everyone stands up to shout down the principle you suggest. because if your ideas are now considered moderate, it’s clear this titanic is sinking.

that a “simple tax” of taking assets that have been earned, through toil and tribulation, rightly taxed, and preserved, should now be unjustly seized, is your solution to a problem of obvious government mismanagement and outright fraud, tells us that your true motivation lies not in giving people healthcare but in cutting down success and deleting the system of prosperity and opportunity for all.

i don’t care, and neither should anyone else, what the sum total market value of a private citizens private assets might be. it is none of my business and should be none of yours. because, again, once you open that pandora’s box, we might as well study Lord of the Flies … there is literally nothing stopping 51% of citizens demanding that their government go out and seize 100% of the private property of the 49%.

want to give healthcare to people in need? do your job and fix healthcare. make it affordable. want to be lazy about it? then do your job lazily and raise income taxes.

want to take private property from private citizens who have paid their fair share of taxes and legally earned their property, then honestly declare that it is envy, not inequity, that you strive to resolve…

[NFL @NFL]

.@Flash_Garrett's late @AggieFootball teammate Luke Laufenberg fought an aggressive cancer with a powerful message: Give 1 percent more.

Myles carries his legacy and mission forward by representing the Luke Laufenberg Fight Fund for #MyCauseMyCleats

[Secretary Marco Rubio @SecRubio]

Effective immediately we are pausing all issuance of worker visas for commercial truck drivers.

The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on U.S. roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers.

[Chef Donny @chefdonnyy]

Making the cut premiers now!

Watch here: https://t.co/A2hdoAfeoW

[Babe Laufenberg @BabeLaufenberg]

A lot of bad days when you are battling cancer, but it was July 12 when we were told Luke had 2-8 weeks to live. Probably worst day of my life, or at least a close second. So what do you do? Well, 5 days later you jump out of an airplane #LiveLikeLuke

[Doug Keegan @doug_keegan]

Amidst the chaos of the unprecedented floodwaters, there were heroes at Camp Mystic.

From the @TexAgs Outdoors Board. Glenn needs to be found and properly recognized.

[Jason Sprague @jsprague145]

@JoshPateCFB @SavFrench I feel like your wedding is for sure the day you should stop recruiting…

[Texas Watch @TexasWatch]

Sign our petition here: https://t.co/fxQSQqp3My

Instead of working to make our roads safer, trucking lobbyists are back at the State Capitol this year, pushing lawmakers for more special privileges under the law.

Tell your lawmakers to OPPOSE SB 39, SB 1135 & HB 4688! #txlege #saferoads #safety #trucking #OpposeSB39

[Boyan Slat @BoyanSlat]

One underappreciated fact about the ocean plastic problem is that plastic pollution is persistent in some places but not in others.

For most of the world's oceans, plastic only persists for a few weeks or months before ending up back on land. In our models, we see that 80% leaves the ocean again within a month and 97% within a year.

What this means is that, when we reduce the amount of plastic flowing into the ocean, we should see an almost immediate reduction in the amount of plastic in the ocean.

It also means that most plastic pollution you see is hyper-local. Unlike something like CO₂, countries and cities therefore have a "selfish" incentive to curb their plastic emissions. For example, want to eliminate plastic pollution in Bali's waters and coastlines? Then stop plastic from leaking from Bali's towns and cities!

Another consequence is that, for most of the world's oceans, there is no need to sweep the ocean surface; it cleanses itself once we stop putting new waste in.

The exception to this is the ocean garbage patches, where currents trap the plastic and keep the trash away from coastlines, preventing it from washing up.

This is why The Ocean Cleanup employs a two-pronged approach: intercepting plastic in rivers to stop inflow and cleaning up the legacy pollution in the ocean garbage patches.

[Zack Golden @CSI_Starbase]

This should hold its place as greatest Space Flight Footage of all time until the first catch attempt for the ship right??

[SpaceX @SpaceX]

Watch Starship's Fifth flight test https://t.co/LVrCnTv797

[SpaceX @SpaceX]

In addition to the thousands (>10k) of Starlink kits we are delivering in response to Hurricane Helene, the @Starlink team and @TMobile activated our Direct to Cell satellites to provide emergency alerts for all phones and carriers of those in affected areas.

The @FCC has also rapidly approved emergency special temporary authority for coverage in Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton.

We have now enabled basic texting (SMS) for those on T-Mobile phones in hurricane affected areas. Text messages have already been sent and received. You can text loved ones, text 911 and continue to receive emergency alerts.

If a phone connects to a Starlink satellite, it will have 1 to 2 bars of signal and show "T-Mobile SpaceX" in the network name. Users may have to manually retry text messages if they don't go through at first, as this is being delivered on a best-effort basis. The service works best outdoors, and occasionally works indoors near a window.

[Tim England @tengland_150]

🚨 Pass It Back Ags 🚨