R Wooldridge

[R Wooldridge @ryanwooldridge]

@FracturedRTS The GOAT

[R Wooldridge @ryanwooldridge]

@maxwellraybaker Interesting

[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.

[R Wooldridge @ryanwooldridge]

@OrlandoJoe621 I was unclear: I’m referring to the May 20th bricking of older devices

[R Wooldridge @ryanwooldridge]

@NWSGSP a little bit of teeny tiny hail (1/2 the size of a pea) here near the Sandy flat berry patch

[NWS GSP @NWSGSP]

Confidence is increasing that snow will develop across the region beginning Friday evening, continuing into Saturday. Significant accumulations of snow are possible across much of the area, with impacts to travel being the primary concern.

#scwx #ncwx #gawxw

[R Wooldridge @ryanwooldridge]

@MugRootBeer I had a BAD mini can of Mug rootbeer. Was this a known bad batch? It had a bitter aftertaste and was quite unpleasant.

[R Wooldridge @ryanwooldridge]

Dime sized hail near the sandy flat berry patch @NWSGSP

[South Carolina Forestry Commission @ForestryCommish]

STATEWIDE BURNING BAN TO BE LIFTED MONDAY FOR 41 COUNTIES

Greenville, Horry, Oconee, Pickens and Spartanburg counties to remain under ban

The State Forester’s Burning Ban will be lifted for all but five South Carolina counties at 6 a.m. Monday, March 31.

Greenville, Horry, Oconee, Pickens and Spartanburg counties will remain under the burning ban until further notice.

The Forestry Commission is lifting the ban in the other 41 counties because the dangerous combination of low relative humidities and gusty winds that prompted the March 21 outdoor burning prohibition are expected to subside substantially statewide over the next week.

The ban is being left in place in the remaining counties for several reasons. The sheer amount of Forestry Commission and fire department personnel/equipment dedicated to the Table Rock Complex in Greenville and Pickens counties, which includes two wildfires that have grown to a combined 13,000-plus acres, has potential to strain the capacity of local response to new wildfire ignitions.

The ban in Horry County remains in place while Forestry Commission resources continue to focus their efforts on mop-up and strengthening firebreaks around the Myrtle Beach-area Covington Drive Fire, which is now 85 percent contained.

“Burning bans are not intended to be extended, much less permanent, solutions to wildfires,” said SCFC Fire Chief Darryl Jones. “Prescribed burns in particular are necessary tools for forestry and agriculture, but we can’t emphasize enough the importance of using fire prudently and respecting the weather.”

Underlying conditions still warrant the need to be extremely vigilant when burning outdoors, as above-average fire danger and activity is expected through April, which has historically seen the worst, most damaging and costly wildfires in South Carolina. Anyone who burns outdoors and allows their fire to escape will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.
Citizens who may plan to conduct outdoor burning of residential yard debris or prescribed burns must still notify the Forestry Commission before doing so. Notification procedures as well as mandatory precautions for conducting burns may be found on the SCFC website: https://t.co/6tcN0bzPfs

# # #

As the only state agency responsible for wildfire suppression in all unincorporated areas of the state, the South Carolina Forestry Commission protects nearly 13 million acres from wildland fire. More than 500 county, municipal and volunteer fire departments operate more than 1,100 fire stations in South Carolina. The Forestry Commission cooperates with these departments to prevent and control structural and wildland fires, employing highly trained firefighters and specialized equipment when fires burn into forested areas that are difficult to reach.

[R Wooldridge @ryanwooldridge]

@CanucksWontWin @RT_com @dahboo7 Connecting flight, atl is a hub

[R Wooldridge @ryanwooldridge]

@NVIDIAGeForce #GeForceGTX50

[R Wooldridge @ryanwooldridge]

@greg16676935420 Test

[R Wooldridge @ryanwooldridge]

@NWSGSP here is a video of some damage from #Helene we are very close to the Sandy Flat Quarry (on 253)

[The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee]

'I Was Born Into A Middle Class Family,' Explains Wife When Husband Asks Why The Car Is On Fire https://t.co/CgibWWZOx6

[SpaceX @SpaceX]

The fourth flight of Starship brought us closer to a rapidly reusable future

[R Wooldridge @ryanwooldridge]

@NWSGSP does space weather count?

[R Wooldridge @ryanwooldridge]

@Truewerk when are the XP Werkpant with knee pads getting restocked?

[SpaceX @SpaceX]

Falcon Heavy launches SpaceX’s 250th successful mission overall!

[R Wooldridge @ryanwooldridge]

@NWSGSP we’re experiencing a bit of hail (smaller than a pencil eraser) right now near the Sandy flat berry patch