Phil Abbess

[Brian Heywood - That Damn Mormon @bkheywood]

Olympia created a warrior. @Frances_Staudt has already been tested in fire and she is not afraid to speak truth to power. She is right, she is on the right side of history. AG Brown is wrong.

Stand up for Frances — protect girls sports

[Frances Staudt @Frances_Staudt]

AG Brown, it’s easy to post a polished graphic declaring yourself on the right side of history. It’s harder to sit across the table from the girls whose concerns you’ve dismissed.

You call protecting girls’ sports “discrimination.” Many Washington families, including mine, call it common sense. There is nothing discriminatory about standing up for girls, advocating for fairness, and asking leaders to listen to the athletes and families directly affected by these policies.

There is nothing dismaying about the courts reaching this decision. What I do find dismaying is that politicians such as yourself, Senator Jamie Pedersen, Governor Bob Ferguson, and Superintendent Chris Reykdal continue to oppose protections for female athletes. I also find it dismaying that three women serving on the Supreme Court ruled in a way that turned away from biological reality, truth, and the interests of female athletes.

If you’re so confident your position is right, then meet with the athletes, parents, and coaches who disagree with you. Listen to the girls who have been directly affected instead of speaking for them.

I’m happy to have that conversation anytime.

Are you?

We all know AG Brown isn’t going to change his views or suddenly decide to protect me and other female athletes.

Now is the time to get to work.

I’m calling on every Washington voter to pay attention to what the politicians in Olympia are trying to push. I believe it’s radical gender ideology—not biological reality—and it’s affecting girls across our state.

If you believe girls deserve fair competition, equal opportunities, and privacy in their own spaces, I urge you to vote YES this November.

I may be too young to vote, but I’m not too young to fight.

I won’t stop until girls and women are protected in their sports and private spaces.

And when we look back on this moment, I am confident that I will be the one on the right side of history.

-Frances Staudt

[FOX Sports @FOXSports]

“Never seen anything like this in American soccer.” 🇺🇸

@RobStoneONFOX x @CarliLloyd x @clint_dempsey x @AlexiLalas

[Susan Shelley @Susan_Shelley]

Late-arriving ballots in Los Angeles County are overwhelmingly and consistently in favor of raising the sales tax from 9.75% to 10.25%. (Many cities are already higher; Lancaster and Palmdale would go to 11.75% with the passage of this measure.) Update on June 7:

[Darren Rovell @darrenrovell]

On Friday, a bettor wagered $30 on Riley Greene, Coby Mayo, Jesus Sanchez, Bryce Harper, Nick Kurtz and Jazz Chisholm Jr. all to hit homers.

They did.

Won $1.86 million.

Longest odds seven figure parlay payout in @HardRockBet history.

[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.

[Zeek Arkham 🇺🇸 @ZeekArkham]

Dear Chuck Schumer,

Hi. Black dude here. I can trace my family ancestry to slavery. I even know where they were slaves. My mom experienced Jim Crow. I think I’ve watched every episode of “Eyes On the Prize” when I was younger.

With that said…

Can you directly explain to me how the SAVE Act is “Jim Crow 2.0?” Literally every black person I know has ID. Literally every black person I know has a car or at least a ride. Literally every black person I know knows how to vote (well… except the ones with felonies… but they don’t count).

With your advanced white liberal thinking, you must know more than me. Apparently, as I experience daily on this app, white liberals are experts on being black; even more so than actual black folks. Perhaps you could explain it like I’m five. I’d look it up on the internet, but Kathy Hochul has already told me I don’t know what a computer is and Joe Biden said I can’t navigate it, anyway.

Looking forward to your answer.

No hugs.
Zeek

[We Heart Seattle @weheartseattle]

We lost 30,000 souls to death by overdose in the State of Washington over the last 13 years and tax funded PHRA thinks it’s cute to make valentines normalizing illegal drug use and paraphernalia (pipes/foil are also paid for by @KCPubHealth) @KCCouncil defund this program. 👇🏼

[Aaron Schatz 🏈 @ASchatzNFL]

A lot of responses to Seattle's DVOA this year have been "the Seahawks are not an all-time great team, so DVOA must be garbage."

A small thread on all-time great teams. (1/4)

[Jack Andrade @RealJackAndrade]

The @Seahawks defense had more sacks (9) and takeaways (4) in 2 games at Levi's Stadium this season than the 49ers did in their 8 home games combined (7 sacks, 3 takeaways)

Kenneth Walker III also had more runs of 20+ yards (3) than the whole SF team (2) in that stadium

[Nike @Nike]

Sweet sweet victory.

[Michaela Marie @Michaela_1776]

Follow her. She knows her stuff. 👇

[Rob Schneider 🇺🇸 @RobSchneider]

Well, this seems to be advancing 👇🇺🇸

[MAZE @mazemoore]

2010. President Obama shoots down the whole "stop deportations and just let the illegal immigrants be" argument that the Democrat party is currently pushing.

[McNeil @REFLOG18]

“I Don’t know if it’s catchable”
-Dean Blandino

[Future 42 @future42org]

King County cannot account for $1.8 BILLION with a B from the Department of Community and Human Services Grants program after a recent audit.

Fraud, misuse, or bad accounting...it is simply gone.

Really puts their $150 Million budget shortfall into context.

Paul Guppy | @WAPolicyCenter

[Hater Report @HaterReport]

Marshawn Lynch was WILDING live on TV and they had to censor 90% of what he was saying 🤣🤣

[ᴅᴏxx ⚡️ @new_era72]

“They went to laughing in our face and they thought this shit was over with”

- Ernest Jones #FuckLA