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      Money unites: Republicans and Democrats find rare bipartisanship over trading stocks

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      Money unites: Republicans and Democrats find rare bipartisanship over trading stocksDespite wide public support for banning lawmakers from trading stocks, members of both parties have expressed anxiety about the idea Nancy Pelosi probably did not expect to set off such a firestorm with her use of three words: free market economy.When the House speaker was asked in December whether she supports proposals to ban members and their spouses from trading individual stocks, she said no. “We’re a free market economy,” Pelosi said. “They should be able to participate in that.”But Pelosi’s comment sparked ire among government ethics experts and editorial boards, who argued that lawmakers’ ability to glean information from classified briefings and stakeholder meetings raised the possibility of insider trading.Some critics also noted that Pelosi’s husband, Paul, recently netted a gain of more than $5m from trading stocks of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.In the face of backlash, Pelosi has changed her tune on the stock-trading issue, but her hesitation highlighted an uncomfortable truth about how Congresshas responded to the proposal.Despite wide public support for banning lawmakers from trading stocks, members of both parties have expressed anxiety about the idea: a rare moment of bipartisanship in a divided America, but one whose subject – stock-trading politicians – is unlikely to please many voters.Government watchdog groups warn that if Congress fails to act on this issue, it will only intensify many Americans’ concern over how money has tainted their country’s political institutions.The debate over banning members’ stock-trading has been reinvigorated in recent months, after a string of high-profile controversies at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. In February 2020, Republican senator Richard Burr sold hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock before the market suffered a severe setback the next month. While he was overseeing those valuable stock trades, Burr was also publicly downplaying the threat of the virus. The justice department investigated Burr and three of his Senate colleagues – Republicans Kelly Loeffler and James Inhofe and Democrat Dianne Feinstein – for possible insider trading, but ultimately no charges were filed.In response to the outcry over those controversies, both Democrats and Republicans have proposed bills to crack down on members’ stock-trading. One bill, introduced by Democratic senators Jon Ossoff and Mark Kelly, would require members, their spouses and their dependent children to place their stock portfolios in a blind trust controlled by an outside party. Republican senator Josh Hawley has proposed a similar bill, although his legislation does not cover dependent children and would not fine members’ salaries for violations, as the Ossoff-Kelly bill would.Over in the House, Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Republican Chip Roy have introduced a similar bill to the Ossoff-Kelly proposal, and more than 50 members have signed on as co-sponsors to the separate Ban Conflicted Trading Act. That bill, which was first introduced by Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi, would ban members and senior congressional staffers from trading individual stocks.“It has really gotten to a point where it’s getting a little bit too difficult for the rest of Congress to ignore,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a co-sponsor of Krishnamoorthi’s bill, said at a town hall on Tuesday. “The fact of the matter is, we shouldn’t be able to day-trade the companies whose regulation and whose hearings and whose industries and business is before Congress.”A majority of Americans agree with her. According to a January poll from the progressive firm Data for Progress, 67% of US voters say lawmakers should be banned from trading stocks. Another recent survey, conducted by the conservative advocacy group Convention of States Action, found that 76% of voters believe lawmakers and their spouses have an “unfair advantage” in the stock market.It is illegal for members of Congress, or any American, to engage in insider trading. However, insider trading is very difficult to prove, so in 2012, Congress passed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (Stock) Act to address concerns about lawmakers’ financial activities. The law prohibits members from using information gained through work for their own personal profit, and it requires them to disclose stock trades within 45 days.Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have pointed to the existing legislation to argue against banning members from trading stocks. Republican congressman Pete Sessions has described a ban as unnecessary, while one of his Democratic colleagues, Elaine Luria, attacked the proposal as “bullshit”.“Why would you assume that members of Congress are going to be inherently bad or corrupt? We already have the Stock Act that requires people to report stock trades,” Luria told Punchbowl News earlier this month. “So I’m very strongly opposed to any legislation like that.”Advocates for a stock-trading ban were quick to note that Luria and her husband own millions of dollars worth of stocks in Facebook, Netflix and Apple, among other companies.“Honestly, the stock trades by members of Congress just smell bad … Regardless of which party is doing it, it just doesn’t look good,” said RL Miller, the political director of Climate Hawks Vote. Responding to Luria’s comments specifically, Miller added: “Members of Congress expecting that they don’t prioritize companies in which they’re invested is bullshit.”Miller’s group was one of 18 progressive organizations that signed on to a letter urging Congress to hold a hearing on banning stock trades, arguing that the Stock Act and other existing laws “have not served as a sufficient deterrent to this problem”.Enforcement of the Stock Act also appears to have been spotty at best over the past 10 years. No one has ever been prosecuted under the law, and an investigation by Business Insider found that at least 55 members of Congress and 182 senior congressional staffers were late in filing their stock trades in 2020 and 2021. A late filing is supposed to be punished with a $200 fine that increases with subsequent offenses, but Congress does not keep any public record of such fines, and it’s unclear how often they are collected.“The teeth behind the Stock Act are basically non-existent,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, government affairs manager at the Project on Government Oversight. “We’re seeing that reporting and disclosure do not actually act as any kind of a deterrent to doing things that look, at the very least, pretty sketchy.”Government watchdog groups also argue that the Stock Act is now somewhat outdated. They say the legislation does not properly account for how lawmakers can use the 24-hour news cycle and social media platforms to affect markets and specific companies’ share prices.“We have seen countless examples of how members – not just as a body but individual members – can influence the stock market with a range of tools at their disposal,” said Donald Sherman, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “Now we’re at a place in history and on the Hill where an individual member of Congress can influence the stock price with a tweet.”Groups like Crew are hopeful that the momentum for passing a stock-trading ban will soon translate into congressional action. Despite her initial reluctance, Pelosi has now adopted a more open-minded tone about the proposals, and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has said the upper chamber should address the issue.“I think this is sort of an easy win that will have a very positive impact on policy-making and on public-facing democracy,” Sherman said.The enactment of a stock-trading ban could have the additional benefit of boosting the public’s opinion of Congress, which has suffered in recent years. According to Gallup’s January polling, only 18% of Americans approve of how Congress is handling its job. Advocates for the proposed stock-trading ban say the policy would bolster public confidence in one of America’s most important political institutions.“Anything that can restore Americans’ trust in Congress is a good thing,” Miller said. “This would help rebut that appearance of double-dealing and go a long way toward restoring Americans’ trust in their leadership.”For those members who are hesitant to give up their stocks, Hedtler-Gaudette suggested they should reconsider their chosen career.“To become a member of Congress is an extraordinarily prestigious thing. But it is not compulsory,” Hedtler-Gaudette said. “There are a number of sacrifices that you have to make to run for office … If this is a problem, then you are not required to run for Congress.”TopicsUS politicsUS CongressDemocratsRepublicansNancy PelosiStock marketsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Florida man pleads guilty to threatening to kill Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi

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      Florida man pleads guilty to threatening to kill Ocasio-Cortez and PelosiPaul Vernon Hoeffer, 60, also pleads guilty in federal court to threats against Kim Foxx, a prominent district attorney in Illinois A Florida man has pleaded guilty to threatening to kill Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi, two leading Democrats in Congress, and Kim Foxx, a prominent district attorney in Illinois.‘The walls are closing in’: Trump reels from week of political setbacksRead moreThe US attorney’s office for the southern district of Florida said Paul Vernon Hoeffer, 60, entered his plea in federal court in Fort Pierce on Friday.Hoeffer admitted calling Pelosi’s Washington office in March 2019, threatening “to come a ‘long, long, way’ to rattle her head with bullets and cut her head off”.He admitted a call to Foxx on the same day, saying bullets would “rattle her brain”.In November 2020, Hoeffer called the office of Ocasio-Cortez, a leading progressive from New York. This time, the DoJ said, Hoeffer “threatened that he would ‘rip her head off’, and told her to sleep with one eye open”.Citing the plea agreement, NBC News reported that Hoeffer also “warned of ‘all-out war’ and a ‘civilian army’” and made racist remarks in his call to Foxx.Hoeffer made his calls before the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 2021, in which supporters of Donald Trump sought to overturn his election defeat.Some looked for lawmakers to capture or kill. One rioter, from Texas, faces charges including a threat to “assassinate” Ocasio-Cortez. His case has yet to be tried.Capitol police have reported an increase in threats against lawmakers. NBC cited the chief of Capitol police, J Thomas Manger, as saying there were around 9,600 threats in 2021, up from more than 8,000 in 2020.As prominent Democratic women, Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi are common targets for threats, from within the walls of Congress as well as without.Ocasio-Cortez was elected in 2018, as Democrats took the House in opposition to Trump. She quickly became a national star. In 2019, Time magazine began a profile by describing nerves in her Washington office.US man charged with threatening to ‘assassinate’ Alexandria Ocasio-CortezRead more“Every 10 minutes or so,” the magazine said, “someone knocks on the big wooden door of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office on Capitol Hill. The noise makes staffers stiffen.“It’s almost always a harmless fan, one of dozens who arrive each day, leaving neon-colored Post-it notes as devotional offerings.“But in her first three months in Congress, aides say, enough people have threatened to murder Ocasio-Cortez that Capitol police trained her staff to perform risk assessments of her visitors.”This, the magazine said, was “the daily reality for America’s newest human Rorschach test. Wonder Woman of the left, Wicked Witch of the right”.At sentencing in April, Hoeffer will face up to 15 years in prison.TopicsDemocratsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezNancy PelosiUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      DC media makes meal of supposed Sotomayor restaurant sighting

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      DC media makes meal of supposed Sotomayor restaurant sightingNewsletter reports supreme court justice dined with Democrats after incorrectly identifying Chuck Schumer’s wife as the justice

      Ted Cruz seeks to move on from Tucker Carlson mauling
      The most Washington website of all was forced to issue a diplomatic correction on Saturday, in a second recent iteration of perhaps the most Washington story of all: mistaken reporting about diners at Le Diplomate, a restaurant popular with DC politicos.‘When QAnon and the Tea Party have a baby’: Ron Johnson will run again for US SenateRead moreThe website in question was Politico, the capital and Capitol-covering tipsheet which with characteristic capitals informed readers of its Playbook email: “SPOTTED: Speaker NANCY PELOSI, Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER, Sen[ators] AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-Minn) and DICK DURBIN (D-Ill) and Justice SONIA SOTOMAYOR dining together at Le Diplomate on Friday night.”The email also offered readers a “pic from our intrepid tipster”.Alas, it did not show Sotomayor.The “pic” showed French café tables, waiters, diners and a woman turning from her dessert to talk to Klobuchar, who was maskless and sitting opposite a masked-up Durbin. Schumer’s distinctive hairline could be seen next to Durbin and Pelosi could be seen, also maskless, to the right of a dark-haired woman with her back turned: supposedly the supreme court justice.Politico might have paused before pressing send. Not only could the supposed Sotomayor’s face not be seen but only last month another supposed scandal at “Le Dip” proved to be a “le flop”.Then, a former Republican aide tweeted that Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, and his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, had been turned away.In fact, they were being seated outside. Politico covered the slip, reporting: “Within minutes we at Playbook were looped into this seemingly momentous news and were pretty excited ourselves to write about it today. Alas, our enthusiasm was dashed when we heard back from a Buttigieg spox who said there was nothing to it.”On Friday, a Sotomayor sighting would have been news. One of three liberal justices on the supreme court, she had not appeared in person for oral arguments earlier, over Joe Biden’s Covid vaccine mandate for private employers.Furthermore, in that hearing she had made an inaccurate claim about the Omicron-fuelled Covid-19 surge, saying: “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators.”As the Washington Post fact-checker put it, that was “wildly incorrect”, as “according to HHS data, as of 8 January there are about 5,000 children hospitalised … either with suspected Covid or a confirmed laboratory test”.The Politico photo also came amid continuing speculation about when or if another liberal, Stephen Breyer, might retire, thereby giving Joe Biden a pick for the court before possible loss of the Senate. Schumer would shepherd any nominee into place.Alas for Politico, it soon became clear its tipster was wrong. The woman in the picture was Iris Weinshall, the chief operating officer of the New York Public Library, who is married to Schumer. A correction ensued but to make matters worse, Weinshall was initially identified only by her husband’s name. To make matters worse still, Schumer’s office told other outlets that unlike in le grande affaire de Buttigieg, Politico had not called to check on the tip from “Le Dip”.Politico acknowledged the slip and said standards had not been met.“We deeply regret the error,” it said.TopicsWashington DCUS politicsSonia SotomayorUS supreme courtChuck SchumerNancy PelosiAmy KlobucharnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Being tough, being a fighter’: Obama and Biden salute Harry Reid at Las Vegas funeral

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      ‘Being tough, being a fighter’: Obama and Biden salute Harry Reid at Las Vegas funeral
      Two presidents, Pelosi and Schumer address service in Nevada
      Former Senate majority leader died at 82 in December
      Obituary: Harry Reid, 1939-2021
      Two presidents and Democratic leaders in Congress joined on Saturday to commemorate Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader who rose from poverty in Nevada to become one of the most powerful US politicians.Capitol attack panel investigates Trump over potential criminal conspiracyRead more“Being tough, being a fighter was once of Harry’s signatures characteristics,” Barack Obama said, at the service in Las Vegas.“He didn’t believe in high-falutin’ theories or rigid ideologies. Harry knew who he was. In a town obsessed with appearance, Harry had a vanity deficit. He didn’t like phonies. He didn’t like grandstanding.”Reid died on 28 December at home in Henderson, Nevada, at 82 and of complications from pancreatic cancer. He served for 34 years in Washington, leading the Senate through the great recession and a Republican resurgence after the 2010 elections.His work to push Obama’s signature healthcare act through the Senate was prominent among memories expressed at his funeral.Obama credits Reid for helping his rapid rise from the Senate to the White House. He delivered the eulogy.“He was more generous to me than I had any right to expect,” he said. “He was one of the first people to encourage me to run for president believing that, despite my youth, despite my an experience, despite fact that I was African American, I can actually win. At the time, that made one of us.”The turnout at the memorial service testified to Reid’s impact on some of the most consequential legislation of the 21st century.President Joe Biden escorted Reid’s widow, Landra Reid, to her seat before an honor guard bore Reid’s flag-draped casket to auditorium’s well.“Harry would always have your back, like the kids I grew up with in Scranton,” Biden said. “His story was unmistakably American. He was proof that there is nothing ordinary about America, and that Americans can do anything given half a chance.”Remembering a Senate colleague, Biden said America had lost “a giant, an honorable, decent, brave, unyielding man”.For Reid, Biden said, politics wasn’t about power for its own sake. It was about “power do right by people”.“That’s why you wanted Harry in your corner,” he said.Biden also worked with Reid for eight years after the senator from Delaware became vice-president to Obama.On Saturday, Biden spoke of his own decision to run for president in 2016, repeating themes outlined when he declared his campaign to oust Donald Trump from the White House and again last week, on the first anniversary of the Capitol attack.“The idea of America itself is under attack,” he said, “from dark and deepening forces. We’re in a battle for the soul America.”The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, also spoke. Schumer described Reid as a “truly honest and original character” and joked about receiving sartorial advice.Reid’s son, Leif, recalled his father’s well-known habit of abruptly ending telephone conversations without saying goodbye, sometimes leaving the other person – whether a powerful politician or a close family member – talking for several minutes before they realized Reid was gone.In a letter to Reid before his death, Obama recalled their close relationship, their different backgrounds and Reid’s climb from an impoverished former gold mining town in the Mojave desert to leadership in Congress.“Not bad for a skinny, poor kid from Searchlight,” Obama wrote. “I wouldn’t have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn’t have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination.”Trump has birthed a dangerous new ‘Lost Cause’ myth. We must fight it | David BlightRead moreOn Saturday, Obama spoke most clearly of Reid’s contribution to democratic principles. ”He understood we don’t have to see eye to eye on everything in order to live together and be decent toward each other,” he said. “That we can learn to bridge differences of background, race and religion.“He knew that our system of government isn’t based on demanding that everybody think exactly the same way.”In what almost amounted to a requiem for a vanished political era, Obama said Reid presumed to live in a big and diverse country and for people to still work together.“He may have been a proud Democratic partisan,” he said, “and he didn’t shy away from bare-knuckle politics. But what is true is that I never heard Harry speak of politics as if it was some unbending battle between good and evil.”TopicsDemocratsUS politicsUS CongressUS SenateNevadaBarack ObamaJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      Harry Reid: Biden, Pelosi, Schumer and Obama attend Nevada memorial

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      Harry Reid: Biden, Pelosi, Schumer and Obama attend Nevada memorial
      Carole King and Brandon Flowers set to perform
      Former Senate leader died in December at 82
      Obituary: Harry Reid, 1939-2021
      The life of the former Senate majority leader Harry Reid was celebrated by two presidents and other Democratic leaders in Las Vegas on Saturday.Strategy shift: Biden confronts Trump head on after year of silent treatmentRead morePresident Joe Biden, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, were scheduled to speak at a memorial for the longtime Senate leader, who died on 28 December at home in Henderson, Nevada, at 82 and of complications from pancreatic cancer.Barack Obama, who credits Reid for his rise to the White House, was scheduled to deliver the eulogy.“The president believes Harry Reid is one of the greatest leaders in Senate history,” Karine Jean-Pierre, a deputy White House press secretary, said on Friday. “So he is traveling to pay his respects to a man who had a profound impact on this nation.”Biden served for two decades with Reid in the Senate and worked with him for eight years as vice-president.Elder M Russell Ballard, a senior apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was also to speak at the 2,000-seat concert hall about Reid’s 60 years in the Mormon faith. Vice-President Kamala Harris also attended.“These are not only some of the most consequential leaders of our time – they are also some of Harry’s best friends,” Reid’s wife of 62 years, Landra Reid, said in a statement announcing plans for the Smith Center for the Performing Arts event.“Harry loved every minute of his decades working with these leaders and the incredible things they accomplished together.”Reid’s daughter and four sons were scheduled to speak too.In a letter to Reid before his death, Obama recalled their close relationship, their different backgrounds and Reid’s climb from an impoverished former gold mining town of Searchlight in the Mojave Desert to leadership in Congress.“Not bad for a skinny, poor kid from Searchlight,” Obama wrote. “I wouldn’t have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn’t have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination.”Reid spent 34 years in Washington and led the Senate through a crippling recession and the Republican takeover of the House after the 2010 elections. He muscled Obama’s signature healthcare act through the Senate.Reid hitchhiked 40 miles to high school and was an amateur boxer before he was elected to the Nevada state Assembly at 28. He had graduated from Utah State University and worked nights as a US Capitol police officer while attending George Washington University Law School in Washington.In 1970, at 30, he was elected state lieutenant governor with a Democratic governor, Mike O’Callaghan. Reid was elected to the House in 1982 and the Senate in 1986.Reid built a political machine in Nevada that for years helped Democrats win key elections. When he retired in 2016 after an exercise accident at home left him blind in one eye, he picked a former Nevada attorney general, Catherine Cortez Masto, to replace him.Cortez Masto was the first woman from Nevada and the first Latina ever elected to the US Senate.“Most of all, you’ve been a good friend,” Obama told Reid in his letter. “As different as we are, I think we both saw something of ourselves in each other – a couple of outsiders who had defied the odds and knew how to take a punch and cared about the little guy.”Democrats could still salvage Build Back Better – and perhaps their midterm prospects Read moreThe singer-songwriter and environmentalist Carole King and Brandon Flowers, lead singer of the Las Vegas-based rock band the Killers, were scheduled to perform during the memorial.“The thought of having Carole King performing in Harry’s honor is a tribute truly beyond words,” Landra Reid said.Flowers, a longtime friend, shares the Reids’ faith and has been a headliner at events including a Lake Tahoe Summit that Reid founded in 1997 to draw attention to the ecology of the lake, and the National Clean Energy Summit that Reid helped launch in 2008 in Las Vegas. Among other songs, Flowers was scheduled to sing the Nevada state anthem, Home Means Nevada.Those flying to Las Vegas arrived at the newly renamed Harry Reid international airport. It was formerly named for Pat McCarran, a former Democratic US senator from Nevada who once owned the airfield and whose legacy is clouded by racism and antisemitism.TopicsUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsDemocratsJoe BidenBarack ObamaNancy PelosinewsReuse this content More

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      What happens when Nancy Pelosi retires? Politics Weekly Extra

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      Known as one of the most powerful women in US politics, the speaker of the House of Representatives is due to retire in the next few years. Jonathan Freedland and Susan Page look back at the career of one of the longest-serving politicians on Capitol Hill, and what her eventual exit will mean for the Democratic party

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      Archive: PBS Newshour, C-Span, Vox You can find Susan Page’s book here: Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More