As the House’s budget reconciliation fight heats up, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is quietly closer than ever to advancing its own big, beautiful bill: a congressional stock trading ban.
The effort to prevent members of Congress from using inside information to game the stock market — or at least the appearance of nefarious activity — has been in the works for years with little traction. But this term, the House’s leading progressives, conservatives and centrists are finally finding some momentum as they band together to craft legislation.
“I’m hopeful,” former Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal told NOTUS. “I’m actually hopeful.”
The group — led by Republican Reps. Chip Roy, Brian Fitzpatrick and Tim Burchett as well as Democratic Reps. Seth Magaziner, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jayapal — is tentatively planning to unveil a unified bill in the next couple weeks, or whenever the GOP conference wraps up its work on a massive budget reconciliation bill that has consumed leadership’s time and attention.
The group has held two meetings in the last week to merge the leading stock trading ban proposals into a consensus piece of legislation.
“Two 45-minute meetings and we’re like 90% of the way there,” Magaziner said.
The group is working fast to take advantage of new momentum. President Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries both recently endorsed a ban on stock trading. It also comes as several members, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have come under fire for stock purchases made during Trump’s sweeping tariff announcement and his swift pause.
Even House Speaker Mike Johnson said this week that he’s not opposed to the idea of a ban if there’s consensus around it.
“Even compared to January, February, March, it was hard to get people interested in this,” Magaziner said. “Now, in the last month, people are asking me about it every day, inside the building and outside the building, so it does feel like there’s a surge of momentum here.”
He added that he knew momentum could be “fleeting.”
“So that’s why we’re moving aggressively, because we want to be able to try to capitalize,” Magaziner added.
Previous attempts to prevent insider trading have found middling success in the last decade. The last major legislation on the issue, the STOCK Act in 2012, required members of Congress to file public reports when they traded stocks. But one in seven members of Congress violated the law in the 117th Congress alone, and at least 97 members of Congress bought or sold stocks and other financial assets that intersected with their congressional work between 2019 and 2021.
Leaders on the issue are now focused on a total ban on members buying or selling individual stocks, requiring instead that certain assets be handled by a qualified blind trust.
Of course, not every House lawmaker is on board. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously slow-walked progress as her husband traded individual stocks. But the current issue for a congressional stock trading ban isn’t that there isn’t enough enthusiasm; it’s that there is too much.
In weekly meetings, multiple members told NOTUS that the discussion has centered around combining several similar proposals into one piece of legislation. But recent political pressure to associate with the issue has led to some members stepping on each other’s toes.
Take freshman Rep. Rob Bresnahan.
The Pennsylvania Republican campaigned against members of Congress trading individual stocks, but as The New York Times reported last month, when he arrived on Capitol Hill, he was one of the House freshman class’ more prolific stock traders, reporting 264 trades since January and selling over $3 million.
(His spokesperson said at the time Bresnahan does not personally “handle his own stock trading.”)
On Monday, Bresnahan introduced a bill called the Transparency in Representation through Uniform Stock Trading Ban Act, which — confusingly — abbreviates to the “TRUST” Act. Not to be mistaken for Roy and Magaziner’s bill, introduced in January, called Transparent Representation Upholding Service and Trust in Congress Act, more commonly known as the “TRUST in Congress” Act.
Both pieces of legislation would require lawmakers and their spouses to put certain assets into a blind trust, though Roy and Magaziner’s also applies to dependent children. Bresnahan’s bill, however, wouldn’t go into effect until January 2027 and would not apply to a member’s existing stocks, unlike its counterpart, which would go into effect 180 days after passage.
There are a few other distinctions, including whether previous stock holdings are — as Bresnahan put it — “grandfathered in” when a member is sworn in.
The similarities, however, have ruffled feathers. Asked about Bresnahan’s new proposal, Roy told NOTUS, “I’ll leave that alone.”
“I think his staff should learn how to Google,” Roy added.
Magaziner added that he welcomes “anyone who supports the issue, regardless of how much they may lack creativity in their choice of their name for their bill.”
For his part, Bresnahan told NOTUS Wednesday the similarities were “hyperbole” and said he recently had talked to Roy about his bill, and Roy “commended” him for his interest. He also called the name overlap a “day 123 issue,” referencing the amount of time he’s been in Congress.
“It’s important for your people back in the district and the people that elected you to have total trust in what you’re doing here,” he said. “That you’re not doing it for ulterior motives.”
Bresnahan has notably been forthcoming that he isn’t currently in compliance with his own legislation, though he is working with the House Ethics Committee to move his personal holdings into a blind trust.
Members in the two meetings — which did not include Bresnahan — said there’s only a few small details left to address, the major one being how to penalize members for not complying with the ban. Leaders are leaning toward a financial penalty on a sliding scale for the severity of the violation.
One proposal still on the table is to remove members from leadership positions if they violate the rule. Still, some lawmakers have suggested they’d prefer financial penalties for violations.
Rep. Tim Burchett told NOTUS that if there was a “tough fine” for violating a stock trading ban, that would probably suffice.
“Just stick a dadgum fine on them, hit the pocketbook, and that’ll do it,” he said.
Other details being ironed out are whether members who are newly elected to Congress should be required to sell their existing stocks, and if there should be any exceptions to the rule, such as spouses who are given stock options from their employer.
But with top party leaders increasingly warm to the idea of a congressional stock trading ban, leaders told NOTUS they’re optimistic about progress soon.
“We’re not going to get to unanimous support ever, that’s not our goal,” Magaziner said, “but I think getting to a small majority is very feasible.”
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Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS. Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.