The speaker had resisted a ban, which has been championed by lawmakers in competitive re-election races. Now she says she would be open to it if it included the judicial branch.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday said she would accept a ban on the ownership and trading of individual stocks by members of Congress, a potentially important turnaround after her initial opposition helped fuel support among politically vulnerable Democrats looking for ways to distance themselves from their leaders. But in a complicating twist, she said she wanted any stock-trading limitations, including existing disclosure rules on stock ownership and trading that now apply to members of Congress and the executive branch, to also apply to the judicial branch of government, especially the Supreme Court. “It has to be governmentwide,” she told reporters at her weekly news conference, adding, “the judiciary has no reporting. The Supreme Court has no disclosure. It has no reporting of stock transactions, and it makes important decisions every day.” Multiple proposals for a trading ban already exist in the House and Senate, including a new bill unveiled this week by Senators Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Steve Daines, Republican of Montana. The drive was touched off by a spate of revelations in 2020 that senators from both parties had traded health care stocks after closed-door briefings on the then-nascent coronavirus pandemic. It has gathered momentum in recent weeks as Democrats from conservative-leaning districts, eager to demonstrate independence from Ms.
