Senate blocks Republican bill restricting stock trades by US Congress members

The Senate on Wednesday blocked a Republican-backed bill limiting stock trading by members of Congress, with Democrats saying it would let lawmakers keep stocks they already own and was paired with voter ID provisions they termed a "poison pill," The Guardian reported. The vote was 53-47, falling seven votes short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster, Reuters and CNBC reported. The failure came five weeks before the November 3 midterms, The Guardian noted, and was among the Senate's last actions before lawmakers left Washington to campaign, according to CBS News.

The bill, known as the Stop Insider Trading Act, had passed the House in July on a 232-198 vote, CNBC reported, with support from all Republicans and 13 Democrats, according to CBS News. It would have barred members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children from buying individual stocks and required public disclosure of intended sales at least a week in advance, CBS News reported. It would not have forced lawmakers to divest stocks they already own, a sticking point CNBC said drove some Democratic opposition.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the bill "a permission slip for corruption," according to The Guardian, and separately told the Senate floor it was "as ineffective as a screen door on a submarine," CBS News reported. Schumer said Republicans "designed the bill to fail" and that it "isn't a stock-trading ban, it's Republicans' last-ditch effort to save face," per CBS News. Senate Majority Leader John Thune defended the measure as a "common-sense piece of legislation" meant to hold members "to the standards that America should be able to expect of their representatives," CBS News reported.

Sen. Tim Kaine said the proposal showed Republicans do not "take seriously the issue of insider trading," adding, "If you wanted to get a stock ban done, you would put a stock ban on the floor," according to CNBC. Sen. Jon Husted called the measure, along with a related data center bill, "commonsense, bipartisan bills" and accused Senate Democrats of being "the only ones standing in the way of delivering what the American people have asked us to do," CNBC reported.

The Guardian noted a Senate committee had advanced a bipartisan stock-trading ban last year, part of years of failed efforts including a reworked bill from Sen. Josh Hawley that cleared committee 8-7 but never became law after President Trump criticized Hawley on Truth Social. The Guardian also said Senators Elizabeth Warren and Robert Garcia cited disclosures showing Trump made more than 14,000 stock trades worth up to $1.06bn during his first year back in office, while Bloomberg counted nearly 28,700 Trump trades between January 2025 and June 2026 versus 22,200 by all lawmakers combined. The Guardian cited a Common Cause report showing lawmakers from both parties made 13,324 trades worth $635.6m during the past year.

In a separate vote the same day, the Senate also blocked the Ratepayer Protection Act, a bill addressing data center-related energy costs, on a 57-43 vote, according to Reuters and NBC News. That measure had passed the House 417-3 and would have set a federal framework encouraging state utility regulators to make data center developers cover their own water and electricity costs rather than passing them to consumers, NBC News reported. Schumer called it a "fraud" that was merely "optional" for states, per NBC News, while Thune noted its lopsided House passage, saying "AOC voted for it over there. Hakeem Jeffries voted for it over there."