Francis Marion fought his war in the swamps I now call home. He didn't win because he had numbers or supply. He won because he knew the ground, hit what was actually in front of him, and never wasted powder on ghosts.
That's the discipline I want to bring to this.
I spent my Navy years as a Gunner's Mate and the thirteen years since crossing this country — twenty-four countries before that. I've hitchhiked and I've flown private. I've eaten with people who had nothing and people who had everything. I've been homeless. I've buried friends. And in all those miles I have never once met the divided America they sell on television.
I've met Americans who disagree and then help each other change a tire. Charleston is the most unified city I've ever been grateful to live in, and it isn't unique — it's just honest. The division is a product. It's manufactured, packaged, and sold, and it works because while we're watching each other, nobody's watching them.
So let's watch them.
##The Tell
On July 22, the House passed what it called the Stop Insider Trading Act by 232 to 198. Sounds like a win. Read the fine print. Members get to keep the stock they already own and keep selling it. The President is exempt. And Republicans bolted on an unrelated voter ID provision that all but guarantees the thing dies in the Senate — right before everyone went home to campaign on having "banned" congressional stock trading.
Eighty-six percent of Americans support a real ban. Eighty-six. There is no issue in this country with that kind of agreement. And what we got was a press release with a bill attached.
That's not incompetence. That's a business model.
## Follow the money, not the flag
Gallup asked Americans who they think actually moves a congressman's vote. Sixty-four percent said major donors. Fourteen percent said constituents. In April, congressional disapproval hit 86 percent — tying the all-time record.
We are not confused. We can see it.
Here's what the public filings show. Foreign governments spend enormous sums buying access to your government, and almost all of it is legal. Qatar alone has put roughly a quarter of a billion dollars into 88 registered lobbying and PR firms since 2016, and its agents logged 627 in-person meetings with American political contacts between 2021 and 2025 — more than any other nation on earth. Three cabinet-level officials in this administration previously worked as consultants or lobbyists on Qatar's behalf. China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Japan, and yes, Israel-aligned groups all run the same play with different jerseys. Registered foreign agents reported $14.3 million in political contributions across a single two-year window.
Then there's the money aimed straight at our primaries. AIPAC's super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has spent at least $34 million this cycle deciding which Americans get to be on your ballot. In Illinois, three pop-up super PACs funded by UDP dumped over $16 million into Democratic primaries — and under our disclosure rules, voters didn't learn who paid for it until *after* they'd already voted. Reporting this year found that more than a quarter of the pro-Israel PAC money in 2026 was routed through nine partner and shell committees. Not because it's illegal. Because it's harder to trace.
And the same door spins at the Pentagon. GAO found roughly 1,700 senior government officials took jobs in the arms industry within five years of leaving. In one year, the top twenty defense contractors had 672 former officials, officers, members of Congress, and senior staff working as their lobbyists, board members, and executives. Then we wonder why weapons systems run billions over budget while a veteran waits eleven months for a claim.
## Section 219
Now understand what else the House did on July 22.
That same day, the House passed a $1.15 trillion defense authorization bill by four votes — 216 to 212 — with a provision inside it called Section 219. Read it yourself. It creates a United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative and orders the Secretary of Defense to appoint a Pentagon executive agent whose job is to fuse the two countries' defense research, testing, weapons development, and industrial base. Missile defense. Artificial intelligence. Autonomous systems. Cyber and electronic warfare. Quantum. Directed energy. Co-production. Israeli-origin technology written straight into American programs of record.
Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican, put it plainly: this goes well beyond our existing partnerships, well beyond even Five Eyes, which are limited to information sharing and specific joint programs. He and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat, wrote a bipartisan amendment to strike it.
They never got a vote on it. Not a losing vote — *no vote*. The House Rules Committee refused twice to make the amendment eligible for debate. The ranking Democrat on Armed Services pulled his own support and it stayed in anyway. Members of Congress were denied the chance to go on record, by name, on whether to bind our military supply chain to a foreign government's.
And that is precisely the point of doing it this way. Foreign aid is voted on in daylight every year, where you can see it and punish it. Section 219 moves the relationship into procurement, R&D, and industrial integration — places most Americans will never look, structured so a future president or a future Congress would have a devil's time unwinding it. AIPAC published a memo endorsing it. It came out of a bill introduced by two congressmen from opposite parties with two senators carrying it in the other chamber.
I am not describing a rumor. There is no need for one. This is printed legislative text, a public vote count, and a Rules Committee decision in the Congressional Record, and I'd ask every American reading this to go look at all three before taking my word or anyone else's.
I served under an oath. The oath is to the Constitution — not to a party, not to a president, and not to any other nation on this earth. I don't get to tell you what the courts would call a vote like that. Treason is defined narrowly in Article III for good reason, and I'm not a lawyer. What I can tell you is what I call it: a dereliction of that oath. Sovereignty isn't a slogan. It's the whole reason the men who wrote that document put their names on it knowing what the penalty was.
And here's the part they miscalculated. The opposition to Section 219 ran from Massie to Khanna — the two ends of American politics, together. Congress sits at 86 percent disapproval. They didn't block that vote because they were winning the argument. They blocked it because they weren't.
## The colors to run up
Five demands. Ask every candidate on your ballot this fall to answer yes or no, in writing, and publish the ones who won't:
**One.** A real congressional stock ban — full divestiture into blind trusts, covering spouses and dependents, covering the President, with no unrelated riders bolted on to kill it.
**Two.** FARA reform with teeth — close the lobbying-disclosure exemption foreign principals hide behind, fund real enforcement, and put criminal penalties back on the table.
**Three.** Disclosure *before* the vote. If a super PAC spends a dollar in your primary, you learn who wrote the check before you fill out your ballot — not three weeks later.
**Four.** A four-year cooling-off period between senior government service and the contractors you oversaw, written into acquisition regulation, not left to an honor system.
**Five.** Strip Section 219 in conference, and one standard for every nation on earth after that. Ally, adversary, or somewhere in between — the same disclosure rules, the same scrutiny, the same conditions on aid and arms, the same expectation that a sovereign country defends itself. No permanent exemptions. No entanglement of our military, our intelligence, or our technology with any foreign government without a recorded, up-or-down vote of the people's representatives in open daylight. No country whose interests ride in the cabin while ours rides in cargo.
The Senate has its own version of this language, sitting in Section 1217. The two bills go to a conference committee. That fight is not over, and your senator's phone still works.
That last one is not isolationism and I won't let anyone frame it that way. Thomas Jefferson said it in his first inaugural — peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. That's the goal. Trade with everybody. Build with everybody. Sell American goods into every market that will take them and buy what we actually need. Win-win commerce makes peace profitable, and peace is the only foreign policy that ever brought anybody's kid home.
Grown, capable, wealthy nations can carry their own rifles. We have a border to secure, a debt to service, bridges rusting through, towns hollowed out by fentanyl, and veterans waiting on claims. Fix the house first. Then trade with the whole neighborhood.
None of that is red or blue. Not one line of it. Which is exactly why both parties will tell you it's complicated.
## To my fellow Americans
I'm no saint and I've never claimed to be. But I know what it costs to write a check to this country payable up to and including your life, and I know what it looks like when someone cashes that check for a stock tip.
Stop fighting each other. Start fighting *with* each other. I don't care about your party, your race, your religion, your orientation, or who you used to be. If you love this country, you're on my crew.
Marion didn't beat the Crown by out-shouting it. He beat it by knowing the swamp better than they did, and cutting the supply line.
Their supply line is our money. The only thing guarding it is that you're tired, you're busy, and they are betting the house that you won't look.
Go read Section 219.
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About Justin Myers: Justin Myers is a U.S. Navy veteran, entrepreneur, and founder of Pirate Hunter Enterprises. Known as “The Pirate Hunter,” he is a community advocate dedicated to supporting veterans, small businesses, and initiatives that strengthen local communities through leadership, service, and accountability.