A bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced legislation on Wednesday to ban stock trading for members of Congress as pressure has escalated for elected officials to weed out corruption and restore public trust in Congress.
House and Senate lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have long traded stocks or made investments in the market. But there is growing concern that such transactions expose an underlying question that has long dogged Congress: Can lawmakers play the market without generating suspicion their access to information gives them an unfair advantage, or should they ban the practice altogether?
The issue has plagued Capitol Hill, but recent support from President Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has generated fresh momentum.
House GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas and Democratic Rep. Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island have been working behind-the-scenes for months with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to combine various proposals into one bill that would have broad support.
“If you want to day trade, leave Congress. It’s that simple. If you come up here with the trust of the American people, do your job,” Roy said.
Magaziner said lawmakers need to ban the practice of trading stocks because “the opportunity for corruption is just so great.”
The bill introduced in the House comes after GOP Sen. Josh Hawley led a similar effort in the Senate that advanced out of committee in July and is awaiting a Senate floor vote.
One key difference is Hawley’s bill reaches into the executive branch and would impact Trump as a result, while the House bill only addresses Congress. House lawmakers said they would be open to adding other branches of government to the legislation and are in contact with their Senate counterparts, but wanted to start with the legislative branch first.
“What we’re trying to focus on, and I think rightly, is, can we not look in the mirror as the members of Congress and go ahead and decide how we should operate? Start there,” Roy said. “I would say this a year ago with President Biden, President Trump it doesn’t matter. This is not a political issue.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson indicated initial support for the idea but on Wednesday said he is still figuring out the specifics.
“There’s a couple of different ideas on the table and we have to build consensus on that, ‘cause you got to do it responsibly. So some of the ideas that have been put forward, I’m not in love with the details of. But I mean it’s generally a policy I’ve always favored. But we have lots of different opinions on that in the conference and in Congress, so we got to work through it,” he told reporters.
Lawmakers said they would give the speaker until the end of the month to put this bill on the floor through regular order before resorting to other measures to circumvent House GOP leadership and force a vote on the House floor.
“We’ve asked nicely for leadership to put this on the floor. If they don’t, I’m saying timeline is end of month. There is a discharge petition prepared and ready to go,” GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said.
While unveiling the legislation, multiple lawmakers from across the political spectrum said this ban for members of Congress, their spouses and their dependent children, is necessary because the information that lawmakers are privy to creates a real potential for conflicts of interest to emerge.
GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a former FBI special agent, said when he first was elected to Congress, “it confirmed what I already knew, that members of Congress have access to inside information. Period, end of story.”
The group also pushed back on the argument that banning stock trading would create a disincentive for individuals wanting to run for Congress.
“If anyone says, you know, this isn’t fair, I’m going to have to divest all my stocks if I’m going to run for Congress, maybe you should stay home,” Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said.
GOP Rep. Scott Perry argued, “Nobody made you run for Congress. You decided you wanted to serve, and you ran. Well, coming to Washington, DC and serving isn’t about what you can get, it’s about what you can give.”
And Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi stated, “Congress is not a casino. It’s not a stock exchange. It’s not a betting parlor. The only bet we should be making is on the American people.”
One of the prevailing issues that has inhibited lawmakers from successfully banning stock trading in the past is where to draw the line over what is allowed and how to apply it uniformly. It all comes down to what will curtail lawmakers from making decisions based on their own financial interests and instead prioritizing the needs of their constituents.
Amid debate over the issue, some lawmakers have fully divested their stocks upon being elected, some have set up an agreement for an independent, third party to manage their assets and others use a blind trust.
Even lawmakers leading the charge on instituting a ban have had to navigate this issue.
Roy came to Congress in 2019 with a small variety of assets and decided to sell them in 2024.
“I decided to make a one-time transaction to unload what I had into mutual funds,” Roy told CNN. “I never, to the best of my knowledge, actively bought a stock since I’ve been in Congress.”
Democratic Rep. David Min, who was also at the Wednesday press conference unveiling the new legislation, sold the stocks that he had shortly after arriving in Congress earlier this year.
“In his first months in Congress, Representative Min grew alarmed by reports that fellow members and top government officials were trading stocks for personal gain,” Min spokesperson Hannah Rehm told CNN. “That is why he sold his only stock holdings—which he had purchased over 5 years ago—at a loss and made a commitment to never hold or trade stocks as a member of Congress.”
There is also the larger issue of how broad any ban should be. The current legislative proposal narrowly addresses the buying and selling of individual stocks, but that then raises the question of other kinds of financial practices that lawmakers could engage in. As CNN reported earlier this year, stock transactions around Trump’s tariff announcements sparked serious concerns among ethics and legal scholars.
Luna, one of the lawmakers leading the effort to try and ban member stock trading, for example, has reported investments in one of her donors’ companies.
In 2024, Luna reported three investments in an energy firm, America First Natural Resources LLC. Two of the investments range from $50,000 to $100,000 and the third ranges from $100,000 to $250,000. Lawmakers are not required to report exact amounts of their investments.
Bruce Rosenthal, who has donated at least $16,200 to Luna over the years, is listed as a founder of the company on a LinkedIn profile under his name, which also describes it as a private equity firm.
While trading stocks describes buying or selling shares of a publicly traded company, private equity is different from the stock market and involves directly investing in companies that are not publicly traded.
Asked about the congresswoman’s investments, Luna communications director David Leatherwood said there was no conflict of interest, they are not stocks and had been reviewed by ethics lawyers “to ensure their legality.”
“Unlike some establishment types in DC, Rep. Luna is not buying stocks because she knows insider information. She invested in a small oil business to help create jobs and ‘drill baby drill,’” he added.
The effort to ban individual stock trading is gaining momentum, but is not without critics in Congress. Hawley led a bill to ban US lawmakers from stock trading, over the opposition of other Republicans and even drawing the ire of President Donald Trump.
The Senate bill would require elected officials to divest from “securities, commodities, futures, options, trusts and other comparable holdings,” upon starting their next term, meaning that Trump, who is term-limited, would be effectively exempt. A provision in the legislation banning stock trading that would kick in 90 days after the bill became law would apply to all lawmakers, as well as Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
The push for the bill prompted anger from Trump, who lashed out at Hawley, calling him “second-tier.”
“I don’t think real Republicans want to see their President, who has had unprecedented success, TARGETED, because of the ‘whims’ of a second-tier Senator named Josh Hawley!” Trump posted on Truth Social after the bill advanced out of committee. But Hawley later dismissed the dustup with Trump as a misunderstanding.
CNN’s John Towfighi contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional information.
