A US Army soldier was arrested for insider trading after being accused of making prediction-market wagers on the timing of the military's capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Army soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke made a profit of nearly $410,000 by making bets on Polymarket, and he was indicted on charges of unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction, the Department of Justice announced yesterday.

"As alleged in the indictment, Van Dyke participated in the planning and execution of the US military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro, called 'Operation Absolute Resolve,' and Van Dyke used his access to classified information about that operation to personally profit," the DOJ said.

Van Dyke, a 38-year-old North Carolina resident stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, has been an active-duty soldier since 2008 and a master sergeant with US Army Special Forces since 2023, according to the indictment. He was bound by nondisclosure agreements forbidding him from revealing classified or sensitive military information.

Van Dyke allegedly started making bets about a week before the January 3 capture of Maduro. He was charged in US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

"Van Dyke won his wagers on those contracts," and "profited approximately $409,881," the DOJ said. He later "sent most of his proceeds to a foreign cryptocurrency vault before depositing them into a newly created online brokerage account," and "took steps to conceal his identity as the trader in the Maduro- and Venezuela-related markets," the DOJ said.

Trump: It's like "Pete Rose betting on his own team"

The DOJ described the bets as follows:

As alleged, on or about Dec. 26, 2025, Van Dyke created a Polymarket account, funded it, and began trading on Maduro- and Venezuela-related markets. In total, Van Dyke made approximately 13 bets from Dec. 27, 2025, through the evening of Jan. 26. Those bets all took the “YES” position on “US Forces in Venezuela... by January 31, 2026”; “Maduro out by... January 31, 2026”; “Will the US invade Venezuela by... January 31,”; or “Trump invokes War Powers against Venezuela by... January 31.” Van Dyke bet a total of approximately $33,034 on those outcomes while in possession of classified nonpublic information about Operation Absolute Resolve.

President Trump was asked about Van Dyke at the White House on Thursday, and responded by comparing the wagers to "Pete Rose betting on his own team," according to CNBC. “Pete Rose, they kept him out of the Hall of Fame because he bet on his own team," Trump was quoted as saying. "Now, if he bet against his team, that would be no good, but he bet on his own team. I’ll look into it.”

CNBC wrote that when "a reporter noted there have been other allegations of insider trading on prediction markets about the Iran war, Trump said, 'You know the whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino.'" Trump also said that he is "not happy with any of that stuff."

Polymarket said in a statement yesterday that it "identified a user trading on classified government information," and "referred the matter to the DOJ and cooperated with their investigation. Insider trading has no place on Polymarket. Today's arrest is proof the system works."

Trump Jr. firm invested in Polymarket

Polymarket last year announced an investment from a venture capital firm backed by Donald Trump Jr., and added Trump Jr. to its advisory board. The investment was reportedly at least $10 million. Trump Jr. is also a strategic advisor for Kalshi, another major prediction market.

Some US states have tried to impose stricter regulations on prediction markets, but are facing pushback from the Trump administration. The US won a court ruling finding that the federal government's jurisdiction over prediction markets prevents New Jersey from enforcing laws that prohibit betting on college sports and require licenses to offer other types of sports wagers.

Van Dyke became involved in the planning and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve on or about December 8, 2025, the indictment said. Van Dyke "possessed material nonpublic information about that operation at the time of each and every trade he placed in Maduro- and Venezuela-related markets," and had received that information "under a duty of trust and confidence to maintain the confidentiality of such classified information and to not use it for personal matters or gain," the indictment said.

The indictment said that hours after Maduro's capture, a photo was taken depicting Van Dyke "on what appears to be the deck of a ship at sea, at sunrise wearing US military fatigues, and carrying a rifle, standing alongside three other individuals wearing US military fatigues." The photo was uploaded to Van Dyke's Google account, the indictment said.

Shortly after the Maduro operation, "reports of unusual trading in Maduro-related contracts on Polymarket appeared in the press and on social media," the DOJ said. The agency alleged that Van Dyke reacted to the reports by trying to conceal his trades.

"On or about January 6, 2026, for example, Van Dyke asked Polymarket to delete his Polymarket account, falsely claiming that he had lost access to the email address to which the account had been associated," the DOJ said. "That same day, Van Dyke changed the email registered to his cryptocurrency exchange account to an email address that was not subscribed to in his name, and which he had created on or about Dec. 14, 2025."

Van Dyke also faces CFTC lawsuit

The DOJ press release said the combined maximum penalty of the charges is 60 years in prison, but noted that the maximums "are prescribed by Congress and provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the judge."

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) separately filed a civil complaint against Van Dyke, also in the Southern District of New York. The agency said it is seeking "restitution, disgorgement, civil monetary penalties, trading and registration bans, and a permanent injunction against further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations."

Van Dyke "was entrusted with confidential information about US operations and yet took action that endangered US national security and put the lives of American service members in harm’s way," CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said.

The case is "the first time the CFTC has charged insider trading involving event contracts, and the first time the CFTC has used the so-called ‘Eddie Murphy Rule’ to bring charges based on the misuse of government information," the agency said. The Eddie Murphy rule is named after the actor because of the insider trading scheme depicted in Trading Places, which involved futures contracts for frozen concentrated orange juice.

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Howdy folks,

I have some good news, which is that, after seven months, I’ve finally recovered from Long Covid. This is not something I particularly want to talk about in depth but it was the worst thing that ever happened to me! Anyway, sorry for the long period without posting that much, but I hope this amazing house (both laudatory/derogatory, that’s dialectics, baby) will make up for the three months I went AWOL.

BEHOLD:

Not to be over-exuberant, but I genuinely think this is the best McMansion exterior of all time. That includes all the messed up castles, the Mediterranean-style cult complexes, the Staten Island weirdness. Nothing, to me, epitomizes just how uniquely wacky these houses can be. The oversized broken pediment with the fat fake corinthian columns, the lawyer foyer transom window, the ultra-nub, the 45-degree angle, it is all there and it is all hellish, and none of it will ever happen ever again. Anyway this house is $2.5 million dollars and 10,000 square feet. Someone should buy it and give house tours to young people for whom this way of live will soon be unimaginable.

There is nothing so bold to me as the idea of a canted lawyer foyer flanked by two equally huge windows. The fact that the house is more populated by vases than people…something something a vessel for wealth, ah!

Someone on TikTok is going to find this house and set all the pictures to that terrible vaporwave nostalgia song. “tuscan kitchen [black heart emoji]” (as is their right, just like blogging is my right)

If you were a rich person muralist, please get in touch with me (patreon@mcmansionhell.com) I want to hear YOUR stories!!!!

I mean, if I had a giant mysterious wardrobe I, too, would be fernmaxxing (I am 32 years old and will not be talking like this. I am getting generationmogged and have to draw the line somewhere.)

If someone says to you “we should go to Venice in May” ABORT ABORT ABORT. you WILL pay 15 euros for gin and tonic. you WILL get pickpocketed or puked on by British people. you WILL be eaten by mosquitoes. Go in November when no one’s around and you can have a good cry about how everything dies, sinks into the ocean, one might say, and how futile it is to try keeping it alive on horrible wooden stilts. The gondolier will tell you wistfully about how the dolphins returned to the lagoons during the pandemic lockdown. Then he will look at you because their leaving again is your fault.

I hate putting the word “cuck” in this blog. Ten years ago, that would warrant an angry parent email. Now children say cuck to each other in elementary school because they learned it from a Charlie Kirk assassination fancam.

This is kind of like one of those 19th century galleries but for 400,000aires who mostly think of art as a piece of furniture.

I used to not believe in the mobbed up pizza place (no one likes an ethnic stereotype) but there was one I went to in Coastal New Jersey that was unmistakably mobbed up. Guys coming in and out of the back in suits, cash only, no GrubHub, no delivery. It wasn’t called Vito’s though. That would be stupid of me to disclose.

It’s so funny that for a month we collectively pretended that every man alive cared about the roman empire. Just the kind of cute thing we used to do online before cultural microphenomena became primarily driven by incel forums.

That’s right, folks, McMansion Hell is TEN YEARS OLD this year, and there WILL be a party in Chicago in July. (More details later.) Anyway, heinous back facade. What were they thinking.

If you like this post and want more like it, support McMansion Hell on Patreon for as little as $1/month for access to great bonus content including a discord server, extra posts, and livestreams. (Don’t worry! This doesn’t adjust for inflation! Now’s the perfect time to join!) By the way: new subscribers can buy a year of McMansion Hell for just $12!

Not into recurring payments? Try the tip jar! (I would seriously appreciate any and all tips because I am now, like, $3000 in medical debt from having Long Covid, a disease doctors and insurance companies famously believe in and cover. If you are the woman who hacked up a lung next to me on my flight to New Mexico, not even an N95 could beat your germs and I feel entitled to financial compensation.)

Anyway! See you next month!

Apple fixed a security bug that made it possible for cops to access content from deleted Signal messages.

Vulnerable users hoping to evade law enforcement surveillance often use encrypted apps like Signal to communicate sensitive information. That's why users felt blindsided when 404 Media reported that Apple was unexpectedly storing push notifications displaying parts of encrypted messages for up to a month. This occurred even after the message was set to disappear and the app itself was deleted from the device.

404 Media flagged the issue after speaking to multiple people who attended a hearing where the FBI testified that it "was able to forensically extract copies of incoming Signal messages from a defendant’s iPhone, even after the app was deleted, because copies of the content were saved in the device’s push notification database." The shocking revelation came in a case that 404 Media noted was "the first time authorities charged people for alleged 'Antifa' activities after President Trump designated the umbrella term a terrorist organization."

On Wednesday, Apple confirmed that it had fixed a bug allowing the FBI to access this content. Affected users concerned about push notifications can update their devices to stop what Apple characterized as "notifications marked for deletion" that "could be unexpectedly retained on the device."

According to Apple, the push notifications should never have been stored, but a "logging issue" failed to redact data.

On Bluesky, Signal celebrated the update, saying it was "very happy" that Apple did not delay fixing the bug.

"We’re grateful to Apple for the quick action here, and for understanding and acting on the stakes of this kind of issue," Signal's post said. "It takes an ecosystem to preserve the fundamental human right to private communication."

In their post, Signal confirmed that after users update their devices, "no action is needed for this fix to protect Signal users on iOS."

"Once you install the patch, all inadvertently-preserved notifications will be deleted and no forthcoming notifications will be preserved for deleted applications," Signal said.

Ars could not immediately reach Apple or Signal for additional comments.

User panic remains

On Signal's thread, however, users debated whether the update was sufficient, with some urging that best practice is likely still to disable message previews entirely to limit device access to sensitive chats. Previously, Signal president Meredith Whittaker had posted on Bluesky to remind users that they can update Signal settings to "Show 'No Name or Content'" in push notifications and avoid privacy concerns. Some users agreed that enabling message previews on any kind of device—not just Apple's—seemed unwise in light of 404 Media's reporting.

"By having message previews in notifications, you're giv[ing] the OS access to that content without being sure how it will handle those messages," a Bluesky user "LofiTurtle" wrote. "This patch removes one known method, but for full assurance you should just turn off previews so the OS never sees it in the first place."

Another Bluesky user, "Alexndr," speculated that Apple's update suggested there may be other concerning content stored in ways that might frustrate other app users.

"The notification content surviving app deletion is the wild part," Alexndr wrote. "Glad it's patched but makes you wonder what else is sitting in iOS notification caches."

Somewhat defending Apple, a Bluesky user, "Coyote," emphasized that Apple's blog made it clear that it wasn't a caching issue, but a logging issue.

"Notification content wasn’t supposed to make it into diagnostic logs but sometimes did," Coyote suggested. "Specifically happened when you get a notification the phone can’t handle, like when the app it is for has been deleted."

For Apple users, questions likely remain since governments seem keen to access encrypted chats however they can. Apple made headlines last year for pulling end-to-end encryption in the United Kingdom to avoid complying with a law that made it easier for government officials to spy on encrypted chats. 404 Media noted that globally, law enforcement has increasingly relied on "push notifications more broadly as an investigative strategy." Last year, Apple caved to legal demands that "gave governments data on thousands of push notifications," 404 Media reported.

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By Lindsay Whitehurst, Associated Press

The Supreme Court will hear from Catholic preschools that say Colorado violated their religious rights by excluding them from a state-funded program over their admission policies.

The court agreed on Monday to take up the appeal from St. Mary Catholic Parish, which is supported by the Republican Trump administration.

Joined by the Archdiocese of Denver, the facilities argue it’s unconstitutional to bar them from a taxpayer-funded universal preschool program because of their faith-based restrictions on admission of LGBTQ+ families and kids.

The state said that religious schools are welcome to participate but are required to follow nondiscrimination laws. The program was created by a 2020 ballot measure and provides public funding for free preschool at centers selected by parents.

It’s the latest religious rights case for the conservative-majority court, which has backed other claims of religious discrimination while taking a more skeptical view of LGBTQ+ rights.

As part of the case, the court will consider narrowing a landmark 1990 decision over the spiritual use of peyote, a cactus that contains a hallucinogen called mescaline. That opinion, written by conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia, found religious practices don’t create exemptions from broadly applicable laws.

The justices declined a push from the schools, along with a Catholic family in Colorado, to overturn the ruling.

The case will be heard in the fall.

A bill that would require colleges and universities in Colorado to provide access to abortion medication is moving through the state legislature after passing its first committee on Thursday.

This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at kunc.org.

The abortion medication included in the bill consists of two pills, mifepristone and misoprostol, taken over the course of one to two days. The drugs are widely considered safe and effective by major medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the World Health Organization.

Colorado colleges and universities often already provide other reproductive health care services, like birth control and testing for sexually transmitted infections, but many don’t provide access to abortion medication.

The measure, House Bill 1335, backed by a group of Democrats, aims to change that by requiring higher education institutions with student health centers to make abortion medication available to enrolled students.

Schools with an on-site pharmacy would need to keep the drugs in stock, while those without one would still be required to prescribe the medication and send prescriptions to an off-campus pharmacy. The bill would apply to public and private schools, but those with religious affiliations could opt out if the requirements conflict with their beliefs.

If passed, the legislation would take effect immediately upon being signed into law.

The House Education Committee voted along party lines to advance the measure.

The proposal is part of broader efforts by Democratic lawmakers in recent years to protect and expand abortion access in Colorado. In 2024, voters approved Amendment 79, which enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution, let state Medicaid dollars pay for the procedure, and allowed health insurance plans for tens of thousands of state and local government employees to include abortion coverage.

State Rep. Lorena Garcia, D-Adams County, a main sponsor of House Bill 1335, said women shouldn’t have to leave campus to get care.

“Why should they be forced to go to a different place to access a constitutional right?” Garcia said. “They should be able to access the full breadth of their health care right there on campus when they’re already doing so for other things. Abortion care should not be something that someone has to go to some other clinic to access.”

Providers say students can face barriers even when care is available, such as difficulty finding providers and accurate information.

“Students still struggle finding that correct information and finding a provider that’s going to offer them compassionate, medically accurate care,” said Kathia Garcia, public affairs manager at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains.

Supporters testified during Thursday’s committee hearing that those challenges mean easily-accessible campus health centers often become students’ critical access point for care, especially for those who are far from home.

“When I moved to Colorado three years ago, I had no loved ones within 1,000 miles of my new home,” Stephanie Schmidt, a student at the University of Colorado Boulder, told the committee. “The Campus Health Center was crucial… it became my pharmacy, drugstore and provider for all care because I was isolated from what is familiar.”

Opponents raised concerns during the hearing that the policy would be overburdensome for schools and would infringe on individuals’ religious freedoms.

“There is no requirement to give women information on adoption or that abortion drugs can be reversed,” said Colleen Enos, director of government relations for Christian Home Educators of Colorado. “There is nothing in the statute to affirm a health care worker’s right to refuse to provide abortion pills or prescriptions according to their deeply held religious beliefs.”

The bill now awaits consideration by the full House.

This story was produced by the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS, and The Colorado Sun, with support from news outlets throughout the state. Startup funding for the Alliance was provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.