Julie

@SmileyInthewind @ForgiatoBlow47 Yes….which is lesser of two evils. I favored Donald’s for a long period but my first red flag was; why start running for governor a year before necessary especially since he already had a good reputation. My main concern was his absence from a much needed voice in Congress.

Paying attention to all of this and trying to sort the wheat from the chaff, what is real and what is manufactured by political opponents and influencers, shit foreign actors too! If Donalds had done 1/2 of what I have read, he has lost my vote like Salazar has, regardless of endorsement.

Florida’s governor race who’s your pick? A) Donalds B) Collins C) Fishback

Elon Musk just described the most humiliating fraud in American history on Joe Rogan’s podcast. And it’s so simple it sounds fake. The United States government has been cutting checks to Social Security numbers with birthdays that are physically impossible. People listed as 200 years old. People born in the future. Not glitches. Not clerical errors. Hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into identities that cannot exist. Musk: “You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes here.” He’s right. The fix is one database query. A college sophomore could write it on a lunch break. Scan every Social Security number. Flag every impossible birthday. Born before 1850. Born after today. Done. That script could have been running before most of us were born. It wasn’t. Musk: “All you need to do is call the person and say, ‘Excuse me, we seem to have your birthday wrong, because it says you’re 200 years old.’” That’s the entire investigation. A single question nobody in Washington thought to ask while the money bled out year after year. When a system loses hundreds of billions through a hole so obvious a child could spot it and nobody patches it… you’re not looking at failure. You’re looking at architecture. Every dollar that slips through a fake birthday is a dollar no one questions. No one audits. No one traces. That’s not negligence. That’s infrastructure. Musk and DOGE walked into Washington and found what the establishment already knew. The waste isn’t hidden. It’s not buried in classified files. It’s sitting in a spreadsheet with a birthday column that says 1824. And nobody looked. The establishment doesn’t fight reform because the problems are complicated. They fight it because the problems are profitable. The government built GPS. Split the atom. Put men on the moon. But couldn’t check if a 200-year-old was cashing a Social Security check. That’s not incompetence. That’s a confession.

Bill Maher: “Oh, big week for Kings… A weird week for Kings because King Charles of England was here. Spoke to Congress. Got a standing ovation from the people who were—used to be at the ‘No Kings’ rallies.”

@NancyPeep @SmileyInthewind @ForgiatoBlow47 When are the debates?

@SmileyInthewind @ForgiatoBlow47 Leaning strongly towards Collin’s too. Hoping any debates will make me more comfortable.

@NotOnly1Ryan @SmileyInthewind @ForgiatoBlow47 LOL, I definitely did not like Charlie Christ but I definitely did not like Rick Scott either. DeSantis has raised the bar, it’s hard to want to veer from that. Nerve racking picking with the choices we have.

@SmileyInthewind @ForgiatoBlow47 Donalds is a black Charlie Crist. Donalds is a former NY Dem, drug user AND dealer. Wanted FL to raise the limit on stolen merch like CA did so fewer people can be arrested for theft. And then theres his wife who got a 10mil grant to open a charter school but didnt.

@SmileyInthewind @ForgiatoBlow47 Kyle, I’m also a Fl voter, also a non Fishback, I’ve been trying to find if Donald’s has ever addressed the scandals about his wife’s LLC getting taxpayer grant money, building schools that set empty. It looks like a location in Bonita they use to online teach under said LLC?

@ForgiatoBlow47 As a FL voter, I am looking forward to the debates, Fishback is a non starter for me. Donalds has 47th endorsement, but I am also paying close attention to Collins and leaning towards him. Undecided between the 2 today…

@mattvanswol Do better ?? While I agree with this post “do better” is a weak verbiage letter at best.

Just so we are ALL CLEAR on what happened today... Educators and school administrators single-handedly CANCELLED SCHOOL for 700,000 North Carolina students... ...INCLUDING MY SON!!! To wave signs around in the street instead. The signs vary from: a) F**K ICE!!! b) Defeat Trump's Agenda c) Trump is a N*ZI d) ICE OUT!!! e) Protect trans kids f) Refuse fascism g) Stop bombing schools DO NOT TELL ME THIS WAS ABOUT KIDS. IT NEVER WAS. This was ADULTS using 700,000 children, INCLUDING MINE, as political leverage against a president they don't like. That is despicable. You know better... DO BETTER.

NEW: Santa Claus arrested in Florida for trying to meet a 13-year-old for s*x. The man was arrested as part of a sting called "Operation Child Protector VIII" where 19 suspects who were seeking to meet with children were arrested. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said he actually had recently posed for a photo with the man, Thomas Allen Hicks, 68, noting that he was well-respected in the community. Hicks tried paying someone he thought was a 13-year-old girl, which turned out to be a detective, $200 for s*x, saying he "would be gentle." He told detectives that he had been married for 50 years. "Hicks is in marketing for Tri-County Behavioral Health in Polk County, and plays Santa Claus every year at several different events," Judd said. "It's scary because this guy was well-respected in the community."

Imagine a woman fleeing an attacker—and her car won’t start because it thinks she’s impaired. Imagine a farmer injured on the job—his truck won’t start because it thinks he’s drunk. These are the unintended consequences of the Kill Switch mandate. Kill the Kill Switch.

💯

FLORIDIANS, here is your friendly reminder of all dates associated with the Florida Republican Primary Election. Please share this information. Have a plan! Don’t let low voter turnout kill us in the primary. MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired. The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass. A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed. Everything else was improvised. I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76. What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation. I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one. She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure. The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet. The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent. That's priority. The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago. A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced. That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details. I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column. I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously. 188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken. A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

@_LashLeo_ @FloridaVet82 If he doesn’t win it won’t be because he’s black, stop being ignorant. Look at all of the black people in high places. Most of them deserving. Not racist blacks. You’re attitude is as if there are no racist blacks. Like I said, FL is full of them. Donald’s has sketchy going on..

@JTDMRR @FloridaVet82 Keep telling yourself that. He will not win. They will vote for a white Democrat before him.

Floridians…DO NOT VOTE FOR BYRON DONALDS!

@_LashLeo_ @FloridaVet82 You are referring to the blacks being racist correct? Because they are here in the great state of Florida..

@FloridaVet82 He isn't winning, even though he is a Republican. He is still black. Too many racists are here.

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.

In 2017, retired Marine staff sergeant Jose Sanchez, who lost part of his left leg in Afghanistan, ran the entire Boston Marathon carrying an American flag! Thank you for your service 🫡

So Trump is a 32 count felon because of a bookkeeping error of $120K But Omar's $30M error is all good? You see how they work?

I would love to thank @Budget for renting me a vehicle with THREE OPENED BEER CANS under the driver’s seat. I could quite literally spend the night in jail if I got pulled over due to your negligence and failure to clean the car!!!!

Someone inside Kaiser sent me the below internal guidance concerning shots and medications for newborns. It tells Kaiser employees that the "approach to how we introduce and administer routine newborn ... Hepatitis B vaccine" is to " avoid saying ‘it’s optional’ or ‘you can refuse’ unless directly asked” and to tell parents that "we will be giving" instead of asking consent to give. This is the antithesis of informed consent. Yet Kaiser calls it “excellent patient and family care.”

🚨Ft Lauderdale Commissioner John Herbst GOES OFF on attorney hired to negotiate buying a new City Hall. “This is like going to a LOAN SHARK to borrow money. We can borrow at 4%. We're paying them 14%!! That's a 10% delta. Respectfully, I cut my teeth on Wall Street working for Drexel Burnham-Lombert in the 80s. I spent 25 years in municipal finance. This is what I do for a living. This is the WORST financial deal I have ever seen in my life! I have NEVER seen a deal in public finance that's negotiated on a post-tax basis in all the years I've been doing this. If you negotiated this on our behalf, shame on you.”