Congress

Congressional stock trading ban gets Senate panel’s OK

Published

11 months ago

July 30, 2025

A Senate committee voted to advance a bill that would ban stock trading by lawmakers, presidents and vice presidents — over objections from most Republicans and with a carve-out for President Donald Trump.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced the original bill barring members of Congress and their spouses from trading stocks. It was named, to Democrats’ dismay, for Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has come under scrutiny for extensive trading without evidence that she ever did so using insider information from Capitol Hill.

In conjunction with Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Hawley offered an alternative to the panel that would ditch the contentious name and expand the prohibitions to the president and vice president — but only for future administrations.

“We have an opportunity here today to do something that the public has wanted us to do for decades, and that is to ban members of Congress from profiting on information that, frankly, only members of Congress have,” Hawley said.

The committee voted 8-7 with all Republicans on the panel save Hawley voting against proceeding with the bill. The GOP detractors argued it would unfairly punish the wealthy and disincentivize some from serving in Congress. Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, one of the Republican nays, is chair of the Senate Ethics Committee and noted he would be responsible for enforcing the bill should it become law.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) called the effort a “publicity show” and said the committee was moving too hastily to approve the altered legislation. Moreno noted he had co-sponsored the original PELOSI Act with Hawley.

“It is important for us to restore faith in our institutions, but to just put a vote out there, when we have literally no idea what we’re voting for, is gross incompetence,” Moreno said. “This is the most absurd process I’ve ever seen.”

Lawmakers have kept calls to ban member stock trading at bay for years. But pressure is increasingly mounting on congressional leaders to move on the issue. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), for instance, told POLITICO Tuesday she intends to force a floor vote on a member trading ban when the House returns in September.

The debate over the bills also comes less than a week after the House Ethics Committee released a report that called for Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and his wife, Victoria Kelly, to divest from a steel manufacturer, citing the appearance of impropriety.

The panel probed whether Victoria Kelly’s purchase of the holdings was the result of nonpublic information from her husband’s official duties, but the investigation did not yield conclusive evidence that she purchased stock based on her husband’s insider knowledge as a lawmaker.

Several Republicans argued the legislation before the panel was flawed. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he did not see the need for new legislation given the existing rules around insider trading, and he warned it would have unintended consequences. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), meanwhile, accused Hawley of reneging on a promise to work with him to improve the bill.

“I don’t know when in this country it became a negative to make money,” Scott said, describing his own rags-to-riches story. He asked the attendees in the hearing room, “How many of you don’t want to make money? Anybody want to be poor?”

In an apparent attempt to sink the bill among Democrats, Committee Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) argued the legislation should apply to Trump — not just future presidents — and suggested his Democratic colleagues would be voting to protect the incumbent if they supported the revised bill. Paul later called it the “exemption for Donald Trump substitute.”

Democrats ultimately voted to alter the bill to exempt Trump, an apparent concession to appease Hawley and secure its passage.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said she would have preferred not to have the exception for Trump and Vice President JD Vance but added she was “willing to make the good work instead of waiting for the perfect.”

“We all saw Vance and Trump come out against this publicly, but I think it’s important that we at least make a start,” she said.

Congress

GOP leaders cancel Friday votes as House agenda hangs in balance

Published

3 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Republican leaders have canceled planned Friday votes as GOP hard-liners continue threatening to block legislative action over an elections bill that is stalled in the Senate, according to a notice sent to members Thursday.

Members are expected to leave town after a 1 p.m. vote Thursday, and it’s possible they might not return Monday as planned: Speaker Mike Johnson is hoping to discuss the legislative agenda with President Donald Trump at an afternoon meeting in hopes of brokering a solution that will allow the House to resume voting next week.

If not, the House could join the Senate on an extended recess, not returning till mid-July, two people granted anonymity to describe internal conversations said.

Congress

Raskin launches discharge effort to formally block ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’

Published

4 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is launching a campaign to force a floor vote on legislation that would formally block the Trump administration’s $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

The so-called No Carte Blanche Act — a tongue-in-cheek nod to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — also would also explicitly bar payouts from the Judgement Fund, a pre-existing account for settlements with the United States, to people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

While Blanche, who will sit for a confirmation hearing July 15 to run the Justice Department in a more permanent capacity, recently told lawmakers that the administration was abandoning the effort amid bipartisan backlash, he has refused to put that pledge in a written declaration to Congress.

“This is why Congress must act to comprehensively shut down this shameful shakedown once and for all,” Raskin, of Maryland, said in a statement. “The people’s representatives must decide whether to uphold the rule of law and protect taxpayer dollars—or stand aside as this unprecedented corruption spins out of control.”

Raskin is attempting to compel a floor vote on his bill through a discharge petition, where 218 signatures in support will require Speaker Mike Johnson to bring the measure up for a vote. It’s a maneuver members of both parties have deployed with success in recent months due to the GOP’s slim majority — and it’s possible it could work this time, too, with a small number of House Republicans on record opposing the fund.

It would likely face an uphill battle getting the necessary 60 votes in the Senate to become law, however: An earlier attempt from Democrats to block the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” from going into effect failed in a 50-49 vote.

The fund was created out of a settlement from President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the federal government over the leak of his tax returns. While it was purportedly intended to provide financial compensation to individuals deemed victims of “lawfare,” critics worried it was designed to reward Trump’s allies.

Also as part of the settlement agreement, Trump, his family and businesses would be freed from any current audits of their taxes. Raskin’s legislation would also block that provision.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Johnson tries to clean up Trump’s Hill mess

Published

7 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s obsession with the SAVE America Act has hurled Congress into indefinite gridlock.

Senators are gone until July 13 after starting their Independence Day recess a few days early.

Now House Republican lawmakers are looking toward Speaker Mike Johnson, who will Thursday head to the White House to try to convince the president to salvage the GOP’s legislative agenda.

The president’s insistence Congress pass the controversial election security legislation has ground both chambers to a halt.

The deadlock threatens to derail a host of other legislative efforts Republicans and the White House hoped to complete in the coming weeks, including a sweeping reconciliation bill filled with potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in Iran war military funding, billions of dollars in relief for farmers, fiscal 2027 funding bills and the annual defense policy bill.

“I’d like to celebrate victories, not come up with reasons why we failed,” Sen. Kevin Cramer said in an interview, joining other Republicans in venting frustration after Trump scrapped a planned signing of a major housing affordability bill Wednesday.

“We’ve demonstrated a lot of dysfunction lately,” he said.

Wednesday’s explosive lunch with Trump and GOP senators probably didn’t help.

“The president came to the Capitol to do what he thinks Senate Republican leadership can’t do: flip votes on SAVE and nuking the filibuster,” a senior Senate GOP aide told Jordain.

“He left with the same number of votes that existed when he arrived — possibly fewer.”

Now eyes are on Johnson, who has lost control of the floor as hard-liners demand the Senate pass the elections overhaul.

He’s keeping the House in session ahead of his 2 p.m. Trump meeting in hopes of salvaging plans to put several bills on the floor this week — including a pair of fiscal 2027 spending measures.

But if Johnson and Trump can’t reach a compromise, GOP leadership may cancel all votes for the remainder of the week and next week, too.

That would further imperil their plans for another party-line reconciliation bill and the $88 billion supplement funding request the White House transmitted Wednesday.

What else we’re watching:

— JOHNSON’S PITCH FOR RECON 3.0 FALLS SHORT: House GOP leaders are trying to make good on their promise to advance a long-shot, party-line package of conservative priorities by arguing it’s the only chance to pass pieces of Trump’s doomed elections bill. So far, their pitch is falling short. Members who attended a meeting with House Budget Republicans Wednesday argued the REAL ID grant program Johnson proposed was no substitute for enacting the full SAVE America Act. And fiscal hawks on the panel warned they would oppose any budget resolution unless it’s paid for on a yearly basis, and without budgeting gimmicks.

— TRUMP’S $88B ASK FOR IRAN WAR, FARM AID: The White House sent Congress Wednesday a much-awaited request for emergency funding to cover military operations in Iran, farm assistance and disaster assistance. But the proposal could complicate House Republicans’ pursuit of a third party-line spending package, which was supposed to be centered around $350 billion in defense funding that Democrats wouldn’t support. The request for tens of billions of dollars in extra war spending comes as the House Appropriations panel Wednesday advanced a $1.1 trillion base budget plan for the Pentagon. Taken together, the three efforts represent a record-breaking roughly $1.5 trillion military budget, about a 50 percent hike from this year’s level.

Jordain Carney, Mia McCarthy, Meredith Lee Hill, Connor O’Brien and Grace Yarrow contributed to this report.