Elected to Serve. Selling Out Instead?

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And now, today’s story:

Marjorie Taylor Greene recently made headlines — not for something she said, but for something she bought. Stocks. She spent up to $315,000, snapping up shares right around the time President Trump posted on Truth Social, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY.”

It was a huge set of trades for the congresswoman from Georgia. And then, less than four hours later, Trump announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs. The news of the pause sent the stock market temporarily soaring.

The morning after Trump’s post, Democratic Senators Adam Schiff from California and Ruben Gallego from Arizona wrote to the Office of Government Ethics. Without mentioning Greene, they asked for an investigation into whether Trump’s post amounted to market manipulation. The next day, an even bigger group of Senate Democrats — including Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer — contacted the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). They urged the agency to look into “potential violations of federal securities laws by President Trump and his affiliates.”

When asked by reporters whether she personally made the stock purchases — and whether they had anything to do with her close ties to the president — Greene said, “I have signed a fiduciary agreement to allow my financial advisor to control my investments. All of my investments are reported with full transparency.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wasn’t buying the explanation. “So many of these people are crooks, liars, and frauds, and Marjorie Taylor Greene is, of course, Exhibit A,” he said. “We are seeing corruption unfold before us in real time…we do need to change the law so that sitting members of Congress cannot trade stock. Period. Full stop. And until we get to that point, we obviously have to continue to highlight why this is problematic.”

It’s true that Greene’s stock-buying spree wasn’t a secret. It showed up in a federal disclosure she filed on April 11, something lawmakers are required to do anytime they trade stocks. And Greene isn’t alone. Not even close.

Around 100 members of Congress, people who regularly get access to sensitive government information that most Americans don’t, trade stocks. And in most cases, it’s totally legal. Some of them trade a lot. In 2024, Democratic representative Ro Khanna made almost 4,000 trades, worth more than $67 million. Republican representative Michael McCaul made 1,925 trades, totaling around $168 million.

Some reports say that members of Congress regularly beat the stock market, earning better returns than most investors. Could members of Congress just be getting consistently lucky in the game? Possibly.

Or maybe it’s something else, like being in the room where it happens, rooms where big decisions are made and then using that knowledge to make trades. A 2022 investigation by the New York Times found that nearly one in five members of Congress — both Democrats and Republicans — bought stocks connected to the work they do on congressional committees. (So much for luck.)

For example:

Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, who serves on the Agriculture Committee, reported buying and selling contracts connected to cattle prices — even though, according to Tuberville himself, the committee had “been talking about the cattle markets.” The timing of one trade by the wife of Representative Alan Lowenthal, a Democrat from California, stood out: according to his disclosure form, she sold Boeing stock on March 5, 2020 — just one day before a House committee that Lowenthal serves on released a critical report about Boeing’s handling of its 737 Max jet, which had been involved in two deadly crashes.

Not only are these examples conflicts of interest — they also create opportunities for insider trading. When lawmakers are involved in shaping policies or investigations that could impact a company’s stock price, and they’re also trading in those companies, it raises serious questions about whether they’re using information the public doesn’t have.

Insider trading is when someone makes money in the stock market by using information that the public doesn’t know yet. It’s illegal, and the consequences can be serious. People who get caught can be fined millions of dollars, have to give back the money they made, and can even go to prison for up to 20 years. Companies can also get fined — sometimes up to $25 million — if they don’t do enough to prevent insider trading, even if they didn’t explicitly know it was happening.. This can happen if they didn’t have good systems in place to stop insider trading, didn’t properly supervise their employees, or ignored their own rules.

Martha Stewart went to federal prison for lying to investigators about insider trading, although she still maintains that her prosecution by James Comey, the US Attorney who went after her, was motivated by Comey’s desire for a high-profile “trophy.” Stewart made $51,000 off the sale of ImClone stocks, a drop in the bucket of her billion-dollar fortune. But somehow, members of Congress seem to continually evade the ire of law enforcement.

And social media has taken notice. There are accounts dedicated to tracking the stock trades of politicians and Congress, figuring regular people can make money too, if they buy and sell like the lawmakers cleaning up in the markets. The app Autopilot helps folks do exactly that. Its catchphrase? “Invest like a Politician.”

They see members of Congress raking in millions of dollars and building personal fortunes while supposedly “serving the public” in DC. As of last summer, for the first time in US history, the majority of lawmakers in Congress were millionaires. Of the top 100 richest members, 56 are Republicans, 43 are Democrats, and one is an Independent. A chart showing the net worth of those Top 100 congressional incumbents — divided by the number of years they’ve served — revealed that their average net worth grew by 114% per year. That’s a huge increase, and something most Americans could never hope to accomplish, no matter how hard they work.

The SEC is in charge of investigating suspicious stock trades — including ones made by members of Congress. For example, the SEC looked into former senator Richard Burr after he sold a bunch of stocks right before the COVID-19 market crash. He had just gotten private briefings about the virus, but Burr said he based his trades only on public information. After a long investigation, the SEC chose not to take civil action or refer the case for criminal charges.

Even if suspiciously timed trades by members of Congress do not technically break the law, they still look shady. If members of Congress own stock in a company and then support a law that helps that company’s bottom line, it’s fair to wonder: are they doing what’s right for the public, or just what’s right for their wallet?

At the outset of the 2008 financial crisis, top US officials gave members of Congress a private briefing about just how bad things were. Within days, several lawmakers made big stock trades — moves that looked suspicious, given the timing. Those trades stayed under the radar until 2011, when the news show 60 Minutes aired a story exposing them. The public reaction was strong. This time, Congress couldn’t ignore it.

Legislators tried to address public concern about how they might be profiting from their knowledge by passing a law called the STOCK Act, which stands for “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge.” The idea was to make sure lawmakers couldn’t secretly use inside intelligence to get rich, and to provide transparency so that voters could hold politicians accountable. Instead of waiting months or even years to tell the public about stock trades, members of Congress now have 45 days to report any trade over $1,000. That covers trades made by them, their spouse, or their kids. The law also says they should follow the same insider-trading rules as CEOs and everyday investors.

But breaking the STOCK Act doesn’t come with serious consequences. If lawmakers forget to report a trade, they might have to pay a fine — but it’s only $200, an amount that is often well worth the risk when there are millions to be gained. And in a shocking-not-shocking turn of events, not a single member of Congress has ever been fined.

Most Americans would go beyond the STOCK Act and stop members of Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court from trading individual stocks altogether. These numbers come from a detailed survey by the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy.

Other polls have found similar results. A report from Navigator Research in March said 91% of people support banning members of Congress from trading. It’s one of those rare issues on which people across the country mostly agree.

Congressional reform

The recent news about MTG has made the push for stricter rules even stronger. Some lawmakers are trying to end the trading of individual stocks by members of Congress. Last week, a bill called the TRUST in Congress Act was reintroduced in the House. It’s a bipartisan effort — the bill was introduced by Democratic representative Seth Magaziner and Republican representative Chip Roy.

Under the bill, lawmakers, their spouses, and their kids would have to either sell their stocks upon taking office or put them into something called a blind trust. That means someone else manages the investments and the lawmaker can’t see or control what’s being bought or sold. The goal is to make sure they can’t profit from secret information they get through their job. The bill has 44 cosponsors — most are Democrats, but a few Republicans have signed on too.

Another recent proposal — the End Congressional Stock Trading Act, introduced by Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee — would impose similar requirements.

And back in January, Democratic representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Republican representative Zach Nunn introduced a similar bill, the No Corruption in Government Act. The bill would ban lawmakers from trading stocks, stop automatic yearly pay raises, and make them wait six years — three times longer than the current two — before they can become lobbyists after leaving office.

Americans agree: it’s time for members of Congress to stop trading individual stocks. This isn’t just about money: It’s about fairness. It’s about ethics. And it’s about whether the people in charge are playing by the same rules as everyone else.