Chuck Schumer just told the country that banning congressional insider trading is fine, so long as nobody has to show a photo ID to vote. When Republicans put both ideas in the same bill, every Senate Democrat voted no.
The Stop Insider Trading Act died Wednesday on a 53-47 party-line vote. Sixty votes were required to beat the filibuster. Every Republican voted to advance it. Every Democrat voted to kill it. That is not a complicated story, no matter how many times Schumer says the word “skullduggery.”
What the Bill Actually Did
The House already passed the measure in July as H.R. 7008. The tally was 232-198. All House Republicans voted yes. Thirteen Democrats and one independent joined them. One hundred ninety-eight Democrats voted no. House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil of Wisconsin sponsored it. Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska carried it in the Senate.
The text was not mysterious. Members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependent children would have been barred from buying publicly traded stocks. Sales of stock they already owned would have required public notice a week in advance. Violators faced a fine of at least $2,000 or 10 percent of the trade, whichever was greater. It was a tightening of the 2012 STOCK Act, which everyone in Washington pretends solved the problem and nobody in the country believes did.
Republicans also attached nationwide voter ID language drawn from the SAVE America Act. In-person voters would show photo identification. Mail ballots would include a copy of that ID. Democrats have blocked that requirement all year. They blocked it again by calling it a poison pill and walking away from the ethics half of the bill they claim to want.
“They don’t want this bill to become law. So they put a poison pill in that they knew would tank it. It’s really trickery. Skullduggery.”
That was Schumer on the floor. He also called the stock language “Swiss-cheese legislating” and “as ineffective as a screen door on a submarine,” because members could keep what they already own and because private-company holdings were not swept in. Fine. Then vote to strengthen it. Instead the entire caucus used voter ID as the excuse to vote against both.
The Polls Schumer Pretends Not to See
A 2023 University of Maryland poll found 86 percent of Americans, across both parties, want lawmakers banned from trading stocks. A 2025 Pew survey found 83 percent of Americans favor requiring government-issued photo identification to vote, including a large majority of Democrats. Those numbers have been sitting in public for years. Senate Democrats treated them like a rumor.
They have spent 2026 calling the SAVE America Act “Jim Crow 2.0,” a “dagger to the heart of our democracy,” and one of the “most anti-election democracy things that’s ever been proposed.” Schumer said that last part himself. He has also said MAGA does not want poor people or people of color to vote. The country still has to show ID to board a plane, cash a check, buy a beer, and pick up a package. Voting, we are told, is the one civic act too sacred for a driver’s license.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune put the pairing in plain English. Both pieces of legislation, he said, “strike at the very heart of issues that the American people care deeply about, passionately about.” Then he added the line Democrats hate most. “We’ll see if the Democrats are willing to take yes for an answer.”
They were not.
Steil thanked the 53 senators who voted to ban the trades and blamed the other side for the rest. “No lawmaker should be able to profit off of insider information,” he said. “Unfortunately, Senate Democrats filibustered this commonsense ethics reform.”
Ricketts called the House vote bipartisan and said it was discouraging that the Senate could not match it. Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota was blunter on X. Democrats blocked a bill to stop insider trading by government officials and to require legal ID to vote. North Dakotans support both. Democrats said no.
The Real Objection Is Not Loopholes
Just the News and the Washington Examiner both noted what everyone in the building already knew. The stock language was the popular wrapper. The voter ID language was the reason the bill was never going to get 60 votes. Republicans have failed to pass SAVE America on its own. So they stapled a piece of it to something Democrats claim they cannot oppose, and Democrats opposed it anyway.
That is not trickery. That is a record. If a party will not vote for an 86-percent ethics bill because it also asks a citizen to prove who he is at the ballot box, the ethics talk was always a costume.
Schumer says Republicans designed the bill to fail. Maybe some of them did. The more honest read is simpler. Republicans wanted Democrats on camera choosing loose elections over clean markets. Democrats obliged. They also spent the same Wednesday blocking a companion bill from Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio that would have forced AI companies and data centers to carry more of their own electricity costs. Two test votes. Two filibusters. One midterm calendar.
None of this required a seminar in Senate procedure. The House passed a stock ban. The Senate needed seven Democratic votes to even debate it. Zero showed up. The same caucus that lectures the country about corruption decided that photo ID was the hill. He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much, and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.
Americans already know how to show an ID. Congress still does not know how to stop trading on what it hears in closed rooms. Wednesday proved which problem Senate Democrats are willing to live with.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
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