13 Dems Help House GOP Pass Stock Trading Ban That Includes Trump Attack on Voters

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday held a series of key votes, including one in which over a dozen Democrats helped Republicans pass a purported congressional stock trading ban, even though the GOP tacked on a voter suppression provision demanded by President Donald Trump.

The chamber passed the Stop Insider Trading Act (HR 7008) in a 232-198 vote. The Democrats who voted in favor are Reps. Kathy Castor (Fla.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Don Davis (NC), Jared Golden (Maine), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Marcy Kaptur (Ohio), Susie Lee (Nev.), Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), Chris Pappas (NH), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), Darren Soto (Fla.), and Derek Tran (Calif.).

Taking aim at Trump on Wednesday, Congresswoman Sydney Kamlanger-Dove (D-Calif.) said that "the Stock Trader in Chief made 21,000 stock trades in his first year back in office. I 100% support a stock trading ban for Members of Congress AND the president and VP. But the bill Republicans brought to the floor was only about appeasing Trump."

"It caters to Trump's election conspiracy theories by enacting haphazard voter ID restrictions, and it conveniently excludes him and JD from the ban," she added, referring to Vice President JD Vance. "I voted no."

Many other House Democrats joined voting rights advocates in opposing the bill in the lead-up to Wednesday's vote, with Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke (D-NY) denouncing it as "a Trojan horse—using the premise of congressional ethics reform to advance a broader effort to restrict access to the ballot box."

In a letter to Congress earlier this week, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) warned that "the Voter ID Act—which mostly mirrors a section of the deeply unpopular SAVE Act—aims to impose onerous new requirements on voting. It would demand Americans provide ID to cast a ballot but only accept an unreasonably narrow list of acceptable types of documentation. It excludes widely held and reliable forms of ID that young people and voters of color disproportionally rely on, while failing to account for the diversity of tribal identification practices."

As for the stock portion of the bill, CLC wrote, it "would not actually ban lawmakers from trading stocks or stop members from unduly profiting from their official positions," and "contains exceptions that regrettably swallow the few new rules it does try to enact."

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) on Wednesday renewed her call for passing the bipartisan Restore Trust in Congress Act.

In addition to HR 7008, the House on Wednesday passed an annual military spending package and a budget reconciliation framework that includes $10 billion for election-related grants.

By adding SAVE America Act provisions to unrelated measures, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is trying "to placate Mr. Trump and far-right House Republicans who are furious that the voting restriction bill has run aground in the Senate," The New York Times noted. "The moves are unlikely to budge Senate Republicans; they consider the bill dead, given that it cannot draw the 60 votes needed to move forward in that chamber."

As for the chamber's Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) and his party's Election Protection Task Force on Wednesday brought together various experts, including Ian Bassin of Protect Democracy, former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen, lawyer Marc Elias, Vanita Gupta of New York University School of Law, and Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward.

"We all know that Donald Trump wants to steal America's elections, plain and simple. And Democrats won't let it happen," Schumer said. "We are looking at every very way to prevent him from stealing the elections. He's desperate. He's made life harder, more difficult for Americans. He wants to steal the election because he knows he can't win the election. Our job is to stop it. And so, we are doing many things. This month we're talking about Trump's corruption."

"But one of the things we are doing is a tabletop exercise where some of the experts on election reform will challenge us with certain scenarios that Trump might use. We're looking at things he would do to undo elections before Election Day, on Election Day, and after Election Day," he explained. "And we had one tabletop exercise three, four weeks ago. And it greatly strengthened our knowledge and ability to anticipate what he might do and how to thwart him. That's what we're doing here today. And whatever he does, we will be ready to respond."