Congress and Insider Trading: The Rules Don’t Apply When You Make the Rules
7th July 2026
Early in my career, I managed money for a federal judge. She couldn’t hold a single stock. No individual securities, no sector bets, no company-specific exposure of any kind. Any ruling touching a publicly traded company had to be beyond reproach. The appearance of a conflict was enough. She accepted that as a condition of public service.
Members of Congress don’t.
They write laws governing entire industries, receive classified briefings about policy decisions before they’re public, and sit on committees with direct oversight authority over the sectors they’re trading. Most of them keep trading. This is a structural feature of an ethics framework designed by the people it was supposed to constrain.
You will no doubt have noticed, as I have, the campaign in the Narrative Media pointing out that Donald Trump has (clutch pearls) made money while in the White House—but nobody is looking into how Bernie and Fauxcohontas became millionaires.