Trade secrets

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., is trying to force the House of Representatives into a vote over whether members of Congress should be allowed to trade or own stocks during their time in office. And she is bucking her own party to do it.

Luna is using a procedural tool called a discharge petition to force a bill to the House floor for a vote that, if successful, can’t be stopped by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.

The effort is the most recent in a string of Republican threats to use discharge petitions to circumvent Johnson’s agenda-setting role. In a narrow, three-seat majority House, where unity is key to passing any Republican priority, it’s a pattern GOP leaders would like to avoid. Procedurally, it’s a longshot tactic that, historically, has been difficult to pull off. But a stock trading ban might attract enough bipartisan support and outside attention to succeed.

Jim Curry, professor of political science at the University of Utah, says Luna’s discharge petition is a direct threat to the speaker even if the speaker agrees with the substance of the petition.

“It’s a threat to his control over the chamber’s floor agenda. Once a precedent is set that it is OK to sidestep leadership to bring anything to the floor, it opens up a whole new can of worms,” Curry said. “I think the speaker will always fight the discharge petition process.”

In the past, Johnson said he personally supports the idea of a stock trading ban for Congress. At a May news conference, he said that lawmakers should avoid “any appearance of impropriety.”

The End Congressional Stock Trading Act, introduced by Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Ky., earlier this year, would prohibit sitting members of Congress from owning or selling stocks. The ban would extend to bonds, stocks, commodities, futures, interests in a hedge fund, options, and other forms of securities. It would also require current members of Congress to divest themselves of any such assets within 180 days of the law’s enactment. The bill would extend that timeline to five years for certain types of long-term investments. New members would have 90 days to divest with a similar five-year exception. Violations would be punishable by up to a $100,000 fine for each violation.

Members would still be allowed to own widely held investment funds as long as they did not create a conflict of interest.

Before the House can vote on the bill, the discharge petition has to mature in committee for 30 days. Then it must receive at least 218 signatures, and it’s unclear how many signatures it currently has. The petition would likely reach the floor sometime after the August recess.

Luna believes that a narrow three-seat Republican majority gives her petition a rare opportunity to overcome party directives.

“If Congress doesn’t do this now with a slim majority, it’s never going to happen,” Luna said in a post to X. “If anyone says I shouldn’t be doing a discharge petition in order to accomplish this, it’s because either they want to maintain control or the status quo.”

Normally, the House speaker decides which bills receive votes. Curry said Luna’s argument about narrow margins makes sense.

“If she gets every Democrat—who will have partisan reasons to sign on—she needs fewer Republicans willing to defect with the narrow majority,” Curry said.

When asked if it’s really necessary for members of Congress to divest themselves of current holdings—and whether such a requirement would create a barrier to entry for prospective candidates with sizable investments—Luna focused on the potential abuses she believes ongoing trades make possible.

“Members of Congress should be banned from trading individual stocks because their access to privileged, nonpublic information creates unavoidable conflicts of interest,” Luna said in a statement to WORLD. “Even if no laws are broken, the appearance of profiting from this access fuels distrust among Americans. The American people do not trust the U.S. government, and this is a step forward to building that trust.”

Luna isn’t known for being a dissenter, but her track record indicates she’s not afraid of being a rebel, either.

In this session of Congress, she’s voted against the majority of her party on 15 occasions, or just over 7% of the time, mostly against bills that would strengthen government size and regulation. She ranks 61st overall in willingness to break with a majority of her party among the chamber’s 435 members, according to analysis by WORLD. Notably, she ties with Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., a far-left leaning member also known for bucking party direction.

While her discharge petition is just the most recent attempt to force a vote, it’s not the only one lawmakers have considered during the 119th Congress.

Earlier this year, Luna almost succeeded in bringing a vote to the floor that would have allowed pregnant or new mothers in Congress to vote via proxy for a time. That effort was foiled when Johnson pitted its success against advancing Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.

A separate petition, spearheaded by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., may force consideration of a congressional resolution mandating the release of the Department of Justice’s documentation on Jeffrey Epstein when lawmakers reconvene in August.

The last discharge petition to succeed passed in 2015, reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank over the objections of then-Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

Curry, the professor from Utah University, noted that discharge petitions are rare for a reason. Procedurally, they are slow and require significant bipartisan support. But more importantly, most members would rather follow the priorities of the party.

“To be clear—most Republicans do not want their colleagues running over to the Democrats to get the votes to bring things to the floor,” Curry said. “If you do that all the time, what’s the point of having the majority?”

Johnson has not yet addressed Luna’s petition or whether he would consider bringing a similar bill to the floor through the normal process.