Candidate Rob Bresnahan promised to ban stock trading by members of Congress (“Bresnahan votes on health care stock trading discharge petitions,” River Reporter, December 2025). It is “wrong and needs to come to an end immediately,” he wrote in a 2024 letter to the Pottsville, PA Republican Herald. 

He knew it was wrong—he said so—yet he became one of the House’s most prolific traders. After being called out for his duplicity, Bresnahan introduced his “TRUST Act,” which appropriated language from existing law and even copied an already-used title. 

Rep. Chip Roy suggested that Bresnahan’s staff “should learn how to Google.” 

At any rate, Bresnahan’s TRUST Act is still just a proposal. Promise not kept.

As your article noted, he did support the Stop Insider Trading Act (SIT Act), though doing so was unnecessary. In 2012, President Barack Obama signed the bipartisan Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (STOCK Act). Before its ink was dry, however, Congress nullified its online public disclosure requirements, thus neutering the bill. Since then, dozens of members of Congress have violated the STOCK Act. None have been prosecuted. 

The Republican’s act approximates Obama’s in that it bans members from purchasing stocks, but, other than needing to publicly disclose their actions—as was required by Obama’s STOCK Act—it does not stop them from selling. Like Obama’s, the new one has penalties for not reporting, but given Congress’s track record, they’re for show. The Senate has not taken up the bill and probably won’t before midterms. Even if it does, it’s unlikely that President Trump, who himself made about 3,700 trades in the first quarter of 2026, will sign it. 

Most Democrats, by the way, rejected the SIT Act, not because they favored insider trading, but because Republicans stuffed it with remnants of Trump’s totally unrelated SAVE Act, his effort to disrupt the upcoming midterms.

Joseph Rogan
Eynon, PA