MADISON, Wis. — Yesterday, new reporting from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel details how Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden are complicit in D.C. corruption by greenlighting wealthy politicians’ self-enrichment while in public service. The article also explains how Steil’s bill to stop insider trading is a “watered down” version of Democratic legislation and does not place any regulations on the Vice President or the President, and how D.C. politicians like Derrick Van Orden are running cover for Donald Trump’s financial scandals.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Where Wisconsin’s Delegation Stands on Banning Stock Trades in Congress

By: Valerie Yurk | 9/10/26

Both Democrats and Republicans running to represent Wisconsin in Congress support legislation to limit their own ability to trade stocks. But they’re not all talking about the same bill – and some proposals are stronger than others.

The concept of a stock trading ban in Congress is widely popular, uniting members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus with the far-left Congressional Progressive Caucus and getting a shoutout from President Donald Trump during his State of the Union address. Governance ethics experts count the ban among their top priorities.

“Congress should not be trading in the stock market when they can single-handedly impact a stock’s price by sending a letter, some by sending a Tweet,” said Donald Sherman, president and CEO of nonpartisan group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“The decision to call a hearing on an issue, to invite a particular witness on an issue, to publish or not to publish a deposition transcript … those are things that can have a dramatic impact on a stock price, and members can manipulate not just the market, but whole sectors.”

But U.S. lawmakers split along party lines over who should be covered and what exactly should be prohibited. Earlier this year, the House passed a stock trading ban bill from Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., that Sherman and other ethics experts deemed “unserious.” The Senate has yet to take up that proposal.

Despite the standstill in Congress, the issue keeps cropping up in Wisconsin campaigns. U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who’s running a tight race in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, dedicated a recent press conference to the issue.

Wisconsin Democratic Reps. Gwen Moore and Mark Pocan along with Mitchell Berman, the Democratic candidate running to unseat Steil, held a joint press conference on it Sept. 10 and criticized the Steil legislation.

“It should be unlawful to take advantage of that insider information to become wealthy,” Van Orden said at his campaign headquarters in Lacrosse on Sept. 4. “I’m just not going to do it. I’ve never chased a nickel in my life.”

Currently, a federal law called the STOCK Act requires Congress to disclose their stock transactions and prohibits insider trading, levying a $200 penalty for violations. No member of Congress has ever been prosecuted for insider trading under the STOCK Act.

Which members of Congress own stocks?

According to the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan legal organization, 61% of U.S. lawmakers – both Democrats and Republicans – owned stocks and widely held investment funds at the beginning of the current Congress.

Republican Rep. Tony Wied is the only U.S. lawmaker representing Wisconsin that has regularly bought and sold stocks throughout the 119th Congress.

According to his financial disclosures, Wied sold his stock in companies like Tractor Supply Co. and Canadian National Railway in early 2025, after he was assigned to House committees covering agriculture and transportation. He’s since bought and sold stock in a variety of companies, ranging from Microsoft to telehealth company Him and Hers Health, Inc.

Other members like Van Orden make a point of not owning or trading stocks while in office. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson divested when he joined Congress and U.S. Sen Tammy Baldwin has all of her assets in a blind trust, their offices said.

“We are sent to Washington to do the people’s work and make their lives better, not to use our position of power to trade stocks and make a quick buck,” Baldwin said in a statement. “That’s why I have led by example – never trading a single stock since I have been in the Senate and am fighting to root out corruption and stop members of Congress from enriching themselves while in office.”

What are the differences between stock trading ban bills in Congress? How did it become partisan?

A handful of stock trading ban proposals are floating around Congress, and lawmakers can’t seem to agree on whether the ban should also reach to the White House, among other hang-ups.

The first House measure, called the Restore Trust in Congress Act, would prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, dependent children and their trustees from owning, buying or selling individual stocks, with some limitations, and also requires members to offload their stocks within 90 days of taking office. Van Orden and Pocan are cosponsors of the legislation.

Michael Beckel, director of money in politics reform programs at nonpartisan group Issue One, described the legislation as a “good-faith compromise” that united members across the political spectrum.

But consensus began to crumble after U.S. House Democratic leadership threw its support behind another bill, dubbed the Restore Trust in Government Act, which expanded the ban to the president, vice president and their families.

Critics like Beckel have called Steil’s bill a “watered down” version that gave Republicans “an opportunity to look like they are solving a problem, even if they are not.”

Sherman, who described the measure as an “unserious performance bill,” added that Republicans tacked on highly partisan “poison pill” voter ID requirements to the bill, making it a nonstarter for Democrats.

Beckel and Sherman are advocating for Congress to pass the initial Restore Trust in Congress Act. Steil, meanwhile, says his bill still prevents members from day trading.

“There are an array of proposals that people have on ethics reforms writ large – some folks want members to own nothing, we have actual socialists in the House now,” Steil said in an interview. “This bill, though, is focused on trading stocks and preventing members from profiting off of insider information. It still accomplishes that.”

Wied, the most active stock trader in the Wisconsin delegation, said in a statement that he supports Steil’s bill, “but let’s be real – insider trading is already entirely illegal.”

He instead touted a separate bill he introduced that would ban U.S. Congress members from lobbying or engaging in compensated federal contracting activities for 10 years after they leave the Capitol.

Will any of the bills become law?

The short answer: Probably not this Congress.

The House passed Steil’s Stop Insider Trading Act with support from only a handful of Democrats. The Senate has yet to consider the bill.

Congress’ calendar is not making it easier. The House and Senate are only back in Washington, D.C., for a handful of work days before leaving for the entire month of October to campaign.

After the midterm elections in November, Congress will return for a “lame duck” session, or the time in between an election and swearing in of a new Congress. Productivity tends to dip during this time, and lawmakers focus on big-ticket bills, like government funding.

What are candidates saying about a stock trading ban?

When asked by TMZ about a stock trading ban, Van Orden said he supports banning members of Congress from buying, selling and trading individual stocks but said Trump isn’t doing that.

“You really think Donald Trump is sitting at the resolute desk at the computer pressing buttons? The people who do Donald Trump’s stock trades and all that stuff are independent,” he said. “Me, as a member of Congress, doing individual stock trading, I think, is baloney. The president’s not doing that.”

Haley King, deputy press secretary for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said in a statement that Van Orden is “protecting Trump” and “running cover for Trump’s stock trading scandal.”

Rebecca Cooke, who’s running against Van Orden, said in a post online that he’s “campaigning on a stock trading ban, but he’s complicit in Washington’s culture of corruption.”

Pocan also took aim at Steil’s bill, which he called a “fake Congressional stock ban bill that lets HIM still own stocks.”

Steil contends that his bill is among the most comprehensive measures addressing congressional stock trading passed in Congress. When asked whether the White House should be subject to a trading ban, he said he’s open to the opportunity to review ethics laws for all federal employees.

“I’m always open to communication with my colleague about how to make those types of improvements,” Steil said. “What we did is a meaningful and substantive step forward … this is the most substantive change we’ve seen.”