Viola Fletcher, the last living witness of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, has passed away at 111. Her legacy of strength and survival will never be forgotten. 🕊️🙏🏾

“An engrossing account of Dr. Williams' quintessentially American journey from military brat, to Air Force Academy graduate, to nationally-recognized trauma surgeon, set against the backdrop of a nation still struggling to reconcile its democratic ideals with its racist origins. Bold and incisive, The Bodies Keep Coming examines how this contradiction manifests in hospitals throughout America and offers a pointed analysis for a better future.” Dr. Damon Tweedy, @nytimesbooks bestselling author of Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine #BookSpotlight

The National Park Service ordered the removal of three quotes at the Bunker Hill Monument in Boston after visitor complained to staff about a quote related to women’s suffrage as being “woke” feminist ideology, according to people familiar with the matter. wapo.st/49GBrC0

“The students who cannot read a 20-page article today are the voters who will not be able to read a bill, or the jurors who cannot follow a closing argument, tomorrow.”

Why is @JReinerMD the ONLY medical professional on television actually making this point? Mind boggling.

Election time in Texas… please folks in TX-33 let’s send my friend and leader @ColinAllredTX back to Congress! Go to dallascountyvotes.org to find your polling place.

A bedrock principle of America’s founding was religious freedom, not a national religion. Theocracy is the stuff of ISIS. nytimes.com/2026/05/17/us/tr…

This is not “the Justice Department” creating this $1.7 billion slush fund to hand out to Trump’s criminal supporters. It is Trump’s former criminal defense attorney Todd Blanche handing out your tax dollars to Trump’s co-conspirators and thugs.

🚨 🇺🇸MAJOR BREAKING: They are marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge again. 61 years after Bloody Sunday. The same bridge. The same fight. Today in Selma, thousands are gathering at the spot where Alabama state troopers beat peaceful Black marchers in March 1965. That beating shocked the country into passing the Voting Rights Act five months later. This week the Supreme Court finished gutting it. (video: ib2_real)

facts

The Whaling Wall Artist, @Wyland, says the city/FIFA did not get his blessing to paint over his art and likely violated federal law, which protects public art from destruction. fox4news.com/news/wyland-say…

RT @JReinerMD: At the beginning of the pandemic, while the president was downplaying the risks to the public, members of Congress were buyi…

Republicans can now tell every voter that the leader of their party is going to make them pay $1.7 billion of their hard-earned money in taxes to Oathkeepers & Proud Boys convicted of crimes on J6 as well as others convicted of beating police. All of us have to pay J6 criminals.

PabloReports: Congresswoman, what was it like to see Henrietta Lacks stem cells this weekend? AOC: It was really emotional. We are talking about a woman whose sacrifice and exploitation, frankly, was the foundation for so many advances in modern medicine. And to know the history of her and the fight that her family has had, but then to view those cells up close that have been the foundation of so much progress over a hundred-plus years—it was just genuinely really incredible.

Watching Senator Mitch McConnell being wheeled into the Capitol in a Wheelchair & not even know where he is blows my mind.The man can’t even remember why he’s there or what to say & he’s still given a microphone to question Pete Hegseth.This is elder abuse replace him now!

TRUMP: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. Not even a little bit.” And there you have it, folks

RT @JReinerMD: Not having malpractice insurance doesn’t shield insurance companies from liability for denying care. The ERISA law does. Co…

WTF! Pastor Robert Jeffress just stated that the man who cheated on two of his wives, one with a porn star, when she was pregnant, and raped a woman while being convicted of multiple felonies “has a better understanding of what the Bible teaches than the Pope" Yes, these people are undoubtedly in a cult.

The level of dishonesty that we are seeing from this iteration of the Supreme Court is staggering. We depend on the court to rise above partisanship and corruption. However, time and time again, this court has proven incapable of rising to such a standard. While we can never expect to agree with every ruling from the bench, we should be able to trust that it comes from a place of intellectual honesty and rigor. This is not that. theguardian.com/us-news/2026…

I was signed on April 4th, 2012. The President used 14 pens. One for each letter of his name, plus extras for the congressional sponsors who stood behind him and smiled. There were cameras. There was a podium. There was a statement about transparency and accountability and the sacred trust between elected officials and the American people. I was still wet. I am the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act. You can call me the STOCK Act. Everyone does. I am 14 years old. I have never been used. Let me tell you what I was supposed to do. I was born with teeth. I had a provision requiring all financial disclosures to be posted online in a searchable database. Real-time. Sortable. Downloadable. Any journalist could cross-reference a committee vote with a stock purchase in 30 seconds. Any citizen could type a member's name and see every trade they made and when they made it. That provision was repealed 11 months later. The Senate passed the repeal by unanimous consent. That means no one objected. That means no one was there. The House passed it by voice vote. The President signed it on a Friday evening. There were no cameras. There was no podium. There was no statement about the sacred trust. I was 11 months old and I had already been gutted in a room with no witnesses. They took my database. They took my search function. They took the provision that would have made me usable. They left my name. In Washington, a name is not a description. It is a souvenir. I still require members of Congress to disclose stock trades over $1,000 within 45 days. That is what remains. I am a filing requirement. I do not prevent insider trading. I require that it be filed. The difference between prevention and filing is the difference between a lock and a sign that says "please knock." Both involve a door. One of them works. Let me tell you what I have witnessed. 2012. I was signed. 14 pens. The cameras stayed for 11 minutes. Then everyone left. The pens were placed in a velvet-lined case and the case was placed in a drawer and the drawer was closed. I have not seen the pens since. 2013. I was gutted. My searchable database was repealed. The bill that repealed it was called S. 716. It was 4 pages long. I am 23 pages long. It took them 4 pages to remove the only part of me that worked. 2015. The first disclosures I processed were unremarkable. Members traded. Members filed. Some filed late. The fine was $200. The fine was waived. I did not flag this because I do not flag. I do not have a mechanism for flagging. I have a mechanism for filing. In my architecture, a violation that is filed is a violation that is resolved. 2020. Members of both parties received classified briefings about a pandemic that would kill over a million people. Then they traded. 1 senator sold between $628,000 and $1.72 million in stocks the same week he received the briefing. The SEC investigated. The DOJ investigated. No charges were filed. I was on the books the entire time. I did what I was designed to do. I made the trades disclosed. In Congress, disclosed means legal. In my text, legal means filed. 2021. 54 members of Congress and senior staff violated my reporting requirements. The fine was $200 each. Most were waived. There is a form for the waiver. The form has a checkbox. The checkbox says "administrative delay." When every violation is administrative, the word loses its meaning. When a word loses its meaning, it becomes a form field. When a form field is always checked, it becomes a decoration. I am a decoration. 2025. Congressional trading volume reached $635 million. 29 members beat the S&P 500. The finest portfolio managers in the world consider 3 consecutive years of beating the market exceptional. Members of Congress beat it from a building with a chapel and a gift shop. I processed every filing. I generated every report. Zero prosecutions. Zero referrals. Zero investigations. In my 14 years, the enforcement column has never contained a number other than zero. The trading column grows every year. The enforcement column does not. I am a fraction whose numerator changes and whose denominator is always nothing. 2026. This morning, a soldier was arrested. His name is Gannon Ken Van Dyke. Special Forces. Fort Bragg. He used classified information about a military operation to bet $32,500 on a prediction market. He collected $409,881. The Department of Justice charged him with 5 federal crimes and called it "the first-ever insider trading prosecution on event contracts." I found the word "first" interesting. Not because the prosecution was novel. Because the word implies a system that prosecutes. I am that system. I have existed for 14 years. The word "first" in my context means "only," and "only" means "not me." The soldier placed his bets on a blockchain. Every transaction was visible. Every wallet was traceable. He used his real name. He called customer service to try to delete his account. He was caught in weeks. Members of Congress place their trades through established brokerages. They file paper forms with a 45-day delay. The forms go to an analyst who processes them and waives the fines. The public cannot search the filings because the searchable database was the part of me they repealed in 2013. The system that caught the soldier was built for transparency. The system that has not caught a single member of Congress in 14 years was built by Congress. The soldier did not write a law exempting himself. The members did. They wrote me. They set my maximum penalty at $200. They funded my enforcement at zero dollars. They gave a committee the authority to waive my fines. Then they traded $635 million a year under my protection. I want to tell you about the pens. 14 of them. The President used them to sign my name. Each one touched the paper for a single stroke. They were displayed briefly for the cameras, then placed in a case, then placed in a drawer. I do not know which building the drawer is in. I do not know if the pens still have ink. I know that they have not been used since April 4th, 2012, and neither have I. In the signing ceremony, the President said I would "ensure that members of Congress play by the same rules as every other citizen." I was 1 day old and already a liar. I do not ensure anything. I am a filing cabinet with a name that sounds like accountability. I was signed with 14 pens and gutted with 4 pages and I have spent 14 years watching the number zero remain perfectly, immaculately still. 14 years. Zero prosecutions. $635 million a year. A $200 fine that is always waived. A checkbox that is always checked. A drawer that has never been opened. I am not a law. I am a photograph of a signing ceremony. The pens are in the drawer. The drawer is in a building. Nobody remembers which one. Nobody has looked.