File No. 010 Legislative

Congress Heroically Bans Insider Trading, Except The Part Where They Keep The Stocks

After 14 years of a law with a $200 fine and zero prosecutions, the House finally passed a "ban" that lets members hold everything they own, exempts the president, and comes pre-loaded with a poison pill.

232–198The July 22, 2026 House vote to ‘ban’ its own stock trading — 13 Democrats aboard

Vintage editorial-cartoon illustration of an enormous chained and padlocked bank-vault door hung in a lone freestanding stone doorframe, the bare marble floor running on unobstructed past either end of it. Silhouetted press photographers seen from behind fire flashbulbs at the sealed door while two caricatured officeholders stroll arm in arm through the open space beside it — a slim elderly congresswoman with a silver bob, pearls and a navy suit shouldering one soaring red arrow, and a heavyset president in a long red necktie carrying a bundle of the same arrows under his arm — both with pockets bulging, a faint Capitol dome behind them. — The ban is airtight; the walls, like the enforcement, were left to a future Congress.

The ban is airtight — provided you overlook that members keep every share they already own and get a two-week window to sell.

For fourteen years, Congress has policed itself under the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act — a 2012 law so fearsome that the standard penalty for filing a trade late is a $200 late fee, which ethics committees routinely waive, and the number of sitting members criminally prosecuted under it since passage is, at last count, zero (GovGreed). Congress was so proud of this regime that in 2013 it quietly passed a one-page amendment (S.716) gutting the requirement for a searchable, sortable online disclosure database — by unanimous consent, with no recorded roll-call vote, so nobody could be blamed (OpenSecrets).

The results speak for themselves. In 2024, Democratic members’ portfolios rose an average of ~31% and Republicans’ ~26%, versus the S&P 500’s 24.9% (The Hill). Nancy Pelosi’s household — traded by her husband Paul, a man with an uncanny gift for Nvidia call options — returned roughly 70.9%, nearly triple the market and enough to make Warren Buffett feel like an amateur (Yahoo Finance). These, we are assured, are the fruits of pure instinct.

So on July 22, 2026, the People’s House finally acted, passing the Stop Insider Trading Act 232-198 (NOTUS). Sponsor Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI) declared: “If you want to day trade, there’s a place for that. It’s called Wall Street” (Roll Call). The ban is airtight — provided you overlook that members may keep every share they already own and sell it with a mere 7-14 days’ public notice, generously giving citizens a two-week window to watch and do nothing. It also exempts the president and vice president, which is tidy, since Trump disclosed more than 3,600 buy and sell orders in the first quarter of this year alone (Fortune).

To ensure the bill expires with dignity, Republicans bolted on an unrelated federal voter-ID rider that Democrats, via Rep. Joe Morelle, called a “poison pill” (Roll Call). True bipartisanship at last: both parties get to kill reform while blaming the other.

Which raises the question the House vote was designed to avoid: what happens next door. The answer is almost certainly nothing. The Senate is unlikely to take the bill up at all — it would need sixty votes it does not have, and the voter-ID rider guarantees the Democrats required to get there will not supply them. There are roughly ten weeks of session left before the November 3 midterms. Do the arithmetic.

It is not as though the Senate lacks options. Sen. Josh Hawley’s considerably stronger ban cleared a Senate committee in July 2025 with Democratic votes — a genuinely bipartisan moment — and has sat untouched ever since, with no floor vote scheduled. Sens. Bill Cassidy and Pete Ricketts filed their own version. Others back the End Congressional Stock Trading Act. There is no shortage of bills. There is a shortage of roll calls.

That is the tell, and it is worth stating plainly: a reform with 86% public support, versions filed by members of both parties, and a committee already on record does not die of disagreement. It dies of scheduling.

None of this troubles the 86% of Americans — 87% of Republicans, 88% of Democrats — who have wanted a ban since 2023 (UMD). They can always just invest like their representatives: Wall Street now sells ETFs (NANC and KRUZ) that copy Congress’s disclosed trades (ETF.com). “Elected official” is now a documented investment strategy. Ask Sen. Richard Burr, who sold up to $1.7 million after early COVID briefings; the DOJ closed the case with no charges (Wikipedia). The $200 was presumably waived.

“Elected official” is now a documented investment strategy, sold to the public as an ETF.

Read the file. Now close their account.