John, we’re not legal experts. We’re just pissed off.

And nobody has to be a law professor to know something is terribly, horribly wrong, but we can’t help but wonder: how can this possibly be legal?!

Members of Congress often have access to privileged information in order to make decisions to benefit the American people. That’s a part of the job that, in theory, should be held with integrity and responsibility — but because those members are allowed to trade stock, they can use that information to enrich themselves, instead.

You read that correctly — our representatives have a direct financial incentive to vote against the interests of their constituents. We’re working to make this illegal.

We wanted to talk to you about a few examples of how our representatives conduct themselves around the issue of congressional stock trading.

First, there are the “good guys” — people like Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) who are leaders in the fight against corruption. Cortez has not traded stock while in office and reports no current holdings. Burchett sold off his singular holding, on principle. Together, they’ve worked across the aisle on legislation to ban the practice entirely.

Then, there are the traders — people like Rep. Dave Min (D-CA) and Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) who have made a handful of small trades, mostly (or all) unrelated to their committee assignments. Although we’re not pleased with them, they’re far from the most egregious, and we believe they’ll be able to step up and do the right thing to pass a ban once it comes to a floor vote.

Now, we have the worst offenders — people whose stock trades and votes seem to match up perfectly, who sell out their constituents to the tune of millions of dollars.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) sits on the House Committee on Homeland Security and bought stock in Palantir. Palantir is a surveillance technology company that offers "predictive policing" tools to “forecast crime patterns” using AI (read: a computer could flag you as a potential threat for factors like where you work, your heritage or religion, or even the route you take to drive home).

So why didn’t she stand up against a private company operating a nightmare surveillance state on behalf of the government? She knew ICE was signing a $30M deal with Palantir, and as soon as that went public, the value of her shares increased. For every dollar she spent, she made $2.30 back.

And it was 100% legal for her to do so. That’s why we’re working to unseat members of Congress who fall into this category.

This still doesn’t answer the question of how congressional stock trading was ever made legal, but we hope you’ll join us in the fight to end congressional stock trading for good. Please, consider joining us today with a donation of just $20, $8, or even just $3 today — because between our digital pressure campaign and our 2026 elections project, there’s a lot of work to do.

Working towards a less corrupt future,

Ban The Trade