House Passes Stock-Trading Ban That Warren Says Won't Survive Senate

The US House voted Wednesday to bar its members from buying individual stocks, passing the measure 232 to 198 and sending it to a Senate where one of its loudest allies has already called it dead. The Stop Insider Trading Act, from Wisconsin Republican Bryan Steil, would stop lawmakers, their spouses and their dependent children from buying securities in publicly traded companies. It does not touch what they already own.

That gap is the whole fight. Existing holdings can stay, and they can be sold, as long as the owner files public notice between seven and 14 days before the trade with the clerk of the House or the secretary of the Senate. Steil frames the advance warning as a deterrent: a planned sale goes public before it clears, inviting scrutiny of any government action tied to the company. Break the rule and you owe $2,000 or 10% of the investment's value, whichever is higher, plus any profit from the trade.

The Senate problem

The Senate got the bill Thursday. Elizabeth Warren soured on it the same day. "The bill has major loopholes," the Massachusetts Democrat wrote, calling the language "not gonna fly in the Senate." She wants lawmakers barred from owning, buying or selling individual stocks at all, not just handed rules for how to exit. Steil called the vote "a major step forward for ethics reform on Capitol Hill," and noted the chamber had never before gotten a comparable vote.

Crypto's stricter draft

The stock bill reaches fewer people than the crypto ethics language moving through the CLARITY Act. Steil's text covers Congress and immediate family and leaves the president and vice president out. The revised 616-page Digital Asset Market Clarity draft goes harder: covered officials, the president and vice president among them, plus lawmakers and federal judges, could not issue or sponsor digital assets through Jan. 20, 2029, and crypto intermediaries could not list any asset created in violation. Those limits expire in 2029. Steil's stock rules would be permanent.

Betting on the job

Steil is running a parallel play against prediction markets. His Stop Lawmakers from Predicting Act, introduced June 18, would block the same relatives from wagering on political or policy outcomes on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, with identical penalty math. The worry is concrete. One soldier reportedly cleared more than $400,000 on contracts tied to the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by US forces in January, and a former Trump teleprompter operator reportedly made more than $90,000 on Kalshi contracts keyed to words in the president's speeches.

The two bills are now on different clocks. The stock ban sits in the Senate with Warren's objection hanging over it. The prediction-market measure is still early. Arizona did not wait, tightening its own rules on state employees using nonpublic information to place bets after the reported windfalls came to light.