Schumer tanks popular insider trading ban in Dem effort to derail Republican's agenda ahead of midterms

Senate Democrats shut down Republicans’ bid to deal with two key issues for voters heading into the midterms.

Republicans tried and failed to pass a bill that would marry differing policy issues: banning lawmakers from using their insider knowledge to trade stocks and implementing voter ID policy nationwide — the latter of which the GOP has so far failed to accomplish with their SAVE America Act.

The Stop Insider Trading Act cruised through the House earlier this month, where a majority of House Democrats voted against it. Though voters are highly supportive of both, Democrats in the House and Senate argued that the stock trade ban wasn’t strong enough, while the voter ID element was too aggressive.

But the efforts to shut down the votes appear to build on a growing trend ahead of the November midterms — Democrats don't want to hand Republicans two massive wins going into a must-win election for both parties.

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., argued that Republicans knew the bill would never pass, and that they "designed it that way."

"They don't want this bill to become law," Schumer insisted. "So they put a poison pill in that they knew would tank it."

"It's really trickery. Skullduggery," he added. "If Republican senators really cared about stopping stock trading by members, they wouldn't have loaded it up with a poison pill voter ID bill, which Senate Democrats have defeated already twice."

They are two issues, though worlds apart, that have routinely failed to launch in Congress.

Senate Democrats have blocked voter ID and the SAVE America Act — and its several iterations throughout the year — multiple times, while banning lawmakers from trading stocks has largely been stifled by intraparty quarrels on both sides of the aisle.

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Still, they are issues that Americans overwhelmingly support.

A poll from the University of Maryland published in 2023 found that 86% of Americans on both sides of the political spectrum supported banning lawmakers from trading stocks. And a 2025 poll from the Pew Research Center found that 83% of Americans favored "requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote."

It’s the first of two bills Republicans will try to pass on Wednesday to tackle voters’ concerns heading into the midterms, where President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, and its effect on the economy, could make or break the GOP’s grip on power in both chambers.

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The stock trading bill was pushed by Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., who is in a tightening bid for re-election.

The other bill will create standards for AI companies and data centers to bear the brunt of electricity costs, a key issue that has emerged in this midterm cycle that has candidates in battleground states scrambling to craft policy positions against the hulking, windowless structures.

That bill is being pushed by Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, who is running in one of the most contested races this cycle. Democrats contend that the GOP's attempt to push through the data center bill is nothing more than a political lifeline for Husted's campaign.

"Both pieces of legislation strike at the very heart of issues that the American people care deeply about, passionately about," Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said. "And we'll see if the Democrats are willing to take yes for an answer."