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A vote on legislation to curb lawmakers’ ability to profit from the stock market as well as implementing federal voter ID measures divided House Democrats on Wednesday afternoon.
The two measures were combined in a single legislative package after months of debate in the House of Representatives on both issues. While unrelated, both voter ID and banning congressional stock trading have received overwhelming support in multiple public polls.
A whopping 198 House Democrats, including their top leaders, voted against the bills. Just 13 members of their caucus voted with Republicans to pass the measure 231 to 198.
Despite bipartisan negotiations, particularly on banning members of Congress from trading stocks, a significant number of Democrats still opposed the final package — though it passed.
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Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, one of the key supporters of banning lawmakers from the stock market, argued the two issues “go hand in hand.”
“One, the overwhelming majority of Americans want this. Two, it’s something that we can get passed this week that gets it into the president’s hands before the August return-to-district [period],” Nunn told Fox News Digital.
He said of Democrats’ criticism, “Only in Washington can you have two wins for 90% of Americans, and Democrats will say that’s one win too many.”
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Meanwhile, Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., told Fox News Digital of the stock trading ban specifically, “The American people deserve to know their elected officials are serving the public, not their own financial interests. Members of Congress should be held to the highest standards of transparency and accountability, and this legislation is an important step toward restoring trust in Congress.”
Not all Republicans are on board, however. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., accused his fellow GOP lawmakers of trying to dissuade Democrats from supporting the bill by attaching the voter ID requirement.
“We are voting on a stock trading ban for members of Congress… BUT Republicans added voter-ID in the legislation. Not to get Dems to vote for voter-ID, but to get them to vote against the stock trading ban, so they can use it in the Nov. election,” Massie wrote on X. “If we really wanted to ban stock trading for members of Congress, we would offer stand alone legislation and could get a large bipartisan majority, and the bill would have a chance of passing on the Senate.”
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An August 2025 poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 83% of U.S. respondents favored “requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote.”
But Democrats have argued this week that the voter ID portion goes too far, and the stock trading ban portion does not go far enough.
“I’ve said repeatedly, House Democrats strongly support a stock trading ban for members of Congress. We also support a ban on the president, the vice president and federal judicial officers from trading individual stock as well. But none of that is before us today,” Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the committee charged with elections oversight, said during debate on the bill Monday.
“Rather, this bill is a crude combination of two completely unrelated bills, the so-called Stop Insider Trading Act and the Voter ID Act, the latter of which is already a crude reformulation of at least three other failed Republican voter suppression proposals.”
Democrats are criticizing the voter ID portion for its requirement of identification extending to mail-in voting, which they have argued is a route to suppress Americans’ ability to cast ballots that way.
Left-wing lawmakers have attacked the stock trading bill because it does not require members of Congress to sell their existing stocks but rather bans them from buying more stock in the future.
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Lawmakers must also go through a public disclosure process before selling that existing stock.
While it extends the ban on buying new stocks to lawmakers and their families, it effectively allows them to retain a blind trust. Democrats have also complained that it does not extend to the executive branch, namely, President Donald Trump and his family.
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