House Republicans are finally coalescing around a long-promised ban on stock trading by members of Congress. On Monday, they introduced the Stop Insider Trading Act, a leadership-backed bill from Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) that would ban members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependents from making new purchases of individual stocks. It would also require a seven-day public notification before making any stock sales.
However, the bill would leave another major ethical issue untouched. It would allow members to continue holding and profiting from stocks they already own, even in cases when those holdings create direct conflicts of interest with the committees they oversee or the legislation they are in charge of shaping.
The bill is backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and it has been scheduled for a markup session before the House Administration Committee on Wednesday morning. The bill is positioned as the House GOP’s leading reform effort in response to years of public outrage over lawmakers’ suspicious investment decisions. It even has the backing of Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who early this year was threatening to force a vote on a stock trading ban through a discharge petition if Republican leaders refused to bring up such a proposal.
Under the bill, violations of the ban would be punishable by fines of up to $2,000 or 10% of the transaction’s value, plus the forfeiture of any realized net gains. Assets held in a blind trust, diversified investment funds, and interests in small business concerns, would be exempted, and the bill would also not prohibit transactions in cryptocurrencies, non-public corporate securities, real estate, or private equity funds.
Some Democratic reform advocates, including Reps. Jayapal, Magaziner, and Ocasio-Cortez, said in a statement Monday that they were disappointed in the proposal because it would “[protect] the wealthiest members of Congress.”
The proposal also drew criticism from watchdog organization Public Citizen, which says the bill is a “fig leaf” rather than a real solution to congressional insider trading. In a statement, the group's lobbyist Craig Holman said that allowing lawmakers to continue holding individual stocks would leave intact the core conflict that has fueled repeated trading scandals. Holman urged Republican leaders to instead bring up two stricter bills, the Restore Trust in Congress Act and the TRUST in Congress Act, which would require lawmakers to divest their stocks and are “overwhelmingly supported by the public.”
By leaving out mandatory blind trusts or divestments, the bill would allow many powerful senators and representatives to continue making legislative decisions that directly influence companies and industries in which they have personal financial stakes. The partial nature of this approach becomes clear when you look at some of the actual examples of how committee assignments overlap with members’ lucrative investment portfolios.
Here are some of the members of Congress operating with the most glaring stock portfolio conflicts—arrangements that would be preserved by the Stop Insider Trading Act.
Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), whose net worth is estimated to be about $30 million, entered the Senate with a stock portfolio that included hundreds of thousands of dollars in tech shares, including Apple and Microsoft. Over the years, those investments have grown in value to the point where as of his most recent annual disclosure his Apple and Microsoft shares are now both worth as much as $5 million.
Hickenlooper is currently the top-ranking Democratic member of the Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Technology, and Data Privacy, and he previously chaired the subcommittee when Democrats controlled the Senate. In these positions, he has presided over hearings and legislative discussions on data security standards, consumer protections, and emerging technology risks that directly involve the operations of companies like Apple and Microsoft.
While holding these tech stocks, Hickenlooper has not been a strong critic of Big Tech companies like many of his colleagues. For example, he never signed onto a series of antitrust bills designed to go after Apple (i.e. the Open App Markets App) or Microsoft (i.e. the American Innovation and Choice Online Act). His campaign contributors reflect this, with both Microsoft and Apple ranking among his top donors, according to OpenSecrets, which tallies individual donors by employer.
In the House, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) has been rising through the Republican ranks of the House Financial Services Committee since being placed on the committee as a freshman in 2018. The whole time, Norman has held shares currently valued at up to $1 million in SouthState Bank Corporation, plus up to $100,000 each in Bank of America and Truist Financial. This past December, Norman proposed the Rural Depositories Revitalization Study Act, directing regulators to recommend ways to protect rural and community banks against regulatory burdens, and earlier this month he cosponsored the Main Street Capital Access Act, a bill from the committee's chair French Hill (R-Ark.) that would ease capital and regulatory requirements for new community banks. Norman sits on the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions, which oversees the operations of banks like the ones he is invested in.
Freshman Rep. Craig Goldman (R-Texas) was given a seat on the Energy Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee in January despite having a stock portfolio dominated by shares in oil and gas companies. Goldman owns stock in ExxonMobil worth as much as $5.5 million, according to his new-filer financial report. He also owns stock in Diamondback Energy worth up to $1 million. Last July, Goldman introduced the Homeowner Energy Freedom Act, which would repeal Inflation Reduction Act provisions that incentivize home electrification and discourage the use of gas appliances like stoves and heating. The bill advanced through the Energy Subcommittee and full Energy and Commerce Committee late last year. He also authored H.J. Res. 75, which was signed into law in May 2025 and repealed Biden-era energy conservation standards for commercial refrigerators and freezers.
