During the highly partisan few months in the House since President Donald Trump took office, an unlikely group of members has met weekly for meetings on an issue they agree on: a congressional stock trade ban.
For months, members from the Right, Left, and center have met weekly to discuss the best way to make progress on banning stock trading for members of Congress, a longtime popular issue on both sides. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Joe Morelle (D-NY), Seth Magaziner (D-RI), Tim Burchett (R-TN), Chip Roy (R-TX), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) are part of the group seeking to forge a path forward.
“This is not a liberal or conservative issue,” Magaziner told the Washington Examiner. “If you just think about the people who are in the room, it’s Burchett and Roy on the Right, it’s Fitzpatrick and I guess myself in the middle, AOC and Jayapal on the Left.”
“The real dividing line here is not liberal versus conservative, it’s business as usual versus people who want to shake things up, so that’s made it a fun project to work on,” he continued.
The last few months in the House have been troubled by partisan fighting as Republicans have charged forward with a budget process called reconciliation that unlocks Trump’s agenda. Through one mega bill, which was passed by the House early Thursday morning, the Republican-led House passed a renewal of Trump’s 2017 tax law alongside his priorities on energy, defense, and the border.
Democrats have continuously slammed the bill throughout the process, with their messaging centered on Medicaid cuts. The bill includes trimming the popular entitlement program by adding work requirements.
While many fights have gotten messy, these weekly meetings have remained calm, respectful, and even “refreshing,” as Ocasio-Cortez put it.
“I think that we’ve been able to do this and also have such positive and productive meetings during what is also a very bitter reconciliation fight has actually been quite nice,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Washington Examiner after the passage of Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill.”
These weekly meetings have fostered a different environment than the one these members often encounter. In committee hearings, they are often fighting over partisan legislation as the party in the minority plays defense. But these weekly meetings have been a place to work together, allowing for open communication and relationship building.
According to a Pew Research Center survey, less than half of the public thinks there is common ground between the parties in Washington. Americans see less common ground in 2024 than in 2023, showing that the belief that there is bipartisanship is rapidly decreasing.
But this issue is a light in the darkness.
“From the Democratic side of the aisle, it feels good to have a project that’s not just defense — because we’re playing a lot of defense,” Magaziner said.
“It definitely has been one of the very, very, very few bright spots in terms of productive bipartisan work, and I feel very encouraged that in this area of legislating, there’s been just a lot of really good-faith, thoughtful conversations between both Democratic and Republican counterparts,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“It’s been a great group to work with. Nobody talks down with anybody. Nobody cares who gets credit. We’re just trying to pass a bill,” Burchett told the Washington Examiner.
Many of the members who participate in these meetings are happy with the relationships they have made and remain “hopeful” they will translate into better work.
“You don’t vote bills up here; you vote people,” Burchett said.
“This is about relationships, and we’re developing those, and it’s a good thing, and America wants that. They say they don’t, but they really do,” he said.
“Sometimes we’ll be exchanging barbs on issues, but at the end of the day, I think that for some of us — certainly I feel this way about those in the room — that we also know how to put those things aside, and so it would be great if we’d be able to use this coalition for other things, especially related to good governance,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Washington Examiner.
This longtime issue received support recently after Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) all endorsed a ban.
“I think it was a big moment a few weeks ago when Hakeem Jeffries became the first leader of either party to come out in favor of a stock trading ban for members of Congress,” Magaziner told the Washington Examiner.
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Just a few weeks later, Johnson expressed his support for a stock trade ban for the first time.
“I’m in favor of that because I don’t think we should have any appearance of impropriety here,” Johnson said at a press conference earlier this month.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), whose husband is a multimillionaire investor who regularly makes large trades, previously opposed such legislation, saying we live in a “free market economy.” However, in 2022, she softened her opposition against the measure, saying she would be “OK with it” if that’s what Democratic lawmakers wanted.
Members from both political parties have been known to make money off of stock trades and inside knowledge. Recently, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) allegedly bought tens of thousands of dollars in stock the day before and the day of Trump’s pause on his sweeping tariffs. Greene defended herself, saying she has “a fiduciary agreement with my portfolio manager” and that she does not “place my buys myself.”
“That’s something that my portfolio manager does for me, and he did a great job. Guess what he did? He bought the dip,” she said.
The members of this group have each introduced different versions of stock ban legislation at some point and are now using their weekly meetings to make one bill as a compromise of each of their separate bills.
Burchett told the Washington Examiner the hang-up in the group is what the punishment will be for members who do not follow the law. The Tennessee lawmaker said he “wants to throw the book at folks,” adding that he thinks they will land on something that is “enforceable.”
This issue has had many pushes but has never been fully successful. The STOCK Act, signed into law in 2012, prohibits members from acting on insider information and requires them to report their trades within 45 days, but the law acts more as a slap on the wrist. The penalty is a mere $200 fine, and members have not been punished for said violations.
Last year, a group of bipartisan senators, including Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Gary Peters (D-MI), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Jacky Rosen (D-NV), introduced legislation that passed out of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to ban stock trading for sitting Congress members, marking the first time a bill with this language passed out of committee. Ossoff and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) reintroduced legislation in the Senate on Thursday in another push for a congressional stock trading ban.
“I think we’re all sick of that finger being pointed at us because we are doing something that I think we are doing is wrong,” Burchett said.
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Senior GOP House staffers told the Washington Examiner that one of the biggest hurdles moving forward with scheduling a vote like this is the position it puts many members in leading into the midterm elections.
”Going into a midterm election with a three-vote majority, do you want to have vulnerable members of your conference casting votes on the record on banning stock trading? Probably not politically,” one staffer said.
Hailey Bullis contributed to this article.