Nevada’s Democratic congressional members support prohibiting members of Congress from trading individual stocks — including those whose family members have a long history of trading stocks.
Rep. Susie Lee has the most extensive trading history among Nevada’s congressional delegation since she took office in 2019, with $10.52 million worth of stock sales and purchases. But her financial disclosure reports have changed significantly since her divorce from Full House Resorts CEO Daniel Lee was finalized in 2024.
In her most recent transaction report filed in 2024, Lee reported only one stock trade: the purchase of stock for a dependent child on May 10, 2024. In her 2023 financial disclosure report filed August 2024, Lee reported assets worth between $8 million and $21 million. Most of those assets were part of her children’s trust.
Members of Congress are allowed to trade stocks, and many do; but they must disclose trades valued over $1,000 within 45 days, including stocks owned by their spouse or children. Legislation seeking to ban the sale of individual stocks by members of Congress have been repeatedly introduced but failed to win approval.
A spokesperson for Lee said she never directed an individual stock trade before her divorce and had no knowledge of trades made in accounts her ex-husband managed. She is in the process of transferring holdings she received following her divorce into Exchange-Traded Funds, index funds and mutual funds, the spokesperson said.
The stock bought on May 10, 2024 is valued between $1,001 to $15,000 and is listed as Rheinmetall AG UNSP, a German arms manufacturer, according to Lee’s periodic transaction report. Lee’s ex-husband manages that account, and their children are the sole beneficiaries, a spokesperson for Lee said. She does not own the account and has no authority to direct any trades on the account.
According to Quiver Quantitative, a finance-technology startup, Lee has an estimated net worth of $14.86 million. In 2021, her net worth was estimated at $33.54 million.
The only other member of Nevada’s federal delegation with a trade history is Sen. Jacky Rosen, who has an estimated net worth of $14.66 million, according to Quiver Quantitative.
Rosen hasn’t bought a new stock since she’s taken office, and she has not sold off a stock in more than five years. Most of her transactions since she was first elected to Congress in 2016 were automatic exchanges, according to her office.
Rosen’s most recent exchanges occurred in January 2023 and were a General Electric Co. Common Stock, according to her most recent transaction report. The automatic exchange took place when GE HealthCare split off from GE.
“Senator Rosen has been a leader in efforts to clean up Washington and ensure lawmakers represent their constituents, not special interests,” a spokesperson for Rosen said in an email. “She does not actively trade individual stocks, and she cosponsored bipartisan legislation to ban Members of Congress from owning and trading individual stocks.”
Stock trades raise concerns
Most members of Congress own stock or investment funds. In the 117th Congress, only 7 percent of members did not own stock or widely held investment funds, according to the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.
Representatives and senators most active in the stock market, including Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, have long been subject of public criticism over a perception that they have knowledge the public doesn’t. Financial tech firms also track their purchases to help the public make their own trade decisions.
Delaney Marsco, ethics director at Campaign Legal Center, said congressional stock trading raises serious questions about whether members of congress are acting in the public’s interest or in their own financial interest. Some members of Congress are sitting on committees that oversee agencies regulating companies whose stock they trade, Marsco said. They’re market movers, where a tweet or a hearing decision could impact a stock, she said.
“They have a lot of access to information that the rest of us simply just don’t have,” she said.
The STOCK Act passed in 2012 bans insider trading, but there are specific elements that must meet the definition of insider trading, according to Marsco. She said violations are hard to find and prove. The bar of unethical behavior with stock trading shouldn’t be set at insider trading, she said.
Different studies come to varying conclusions; with some showing little evidence of informed trading from members of Congress, while others show some seemingly well-timed trades.
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, senators and representatives on both sides of the aisle bought stocks in remote work technologies, telemedicine companies and car manufacturers that were shifting their production to ventilators, Campaign Legal Center found.
A New York Times report from 2022 found 97 lawmakers or their family members traded assets in industries that could be affected by their work in legislative committees.
Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, for instance, regularly bought and sold contracts tied to cattle prices, while the agriculture committee he sat on had been talking about cattle markets, according to the New York Times.
Is a ban likely in the future?
A 2023 study from the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy found broad support for prohibiting members of Congress, the president, vice president and Supreme Court justices from trading stock in individual companies.
Eighty-seven percent of Republicans, 88 percent of Democrats and 81 percent of independents favor prohibiting members of Congress from trading stocks, the study found.
There have been legislative efforts to prohibit members of Congress and their spouses and dependents from selling individual stocks, but it hasn’t gone anywhere.
In 2023, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, and other members of Congress introduced the bill, but it never went for a vote.
In January 2025 those lawmakers re-introduced the legislation, called Bipartisan Restoring Faith in Government Act, and it was referred to the Committee on House Administration and the Committee on Ways and Means.
Nevada’s Rep. Dina Titus co-sponsored the TRUST in Congress Act that requires all current members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children to divest from individual stock holdings and place investments into a qualified blind trust during their time in Congress.
That bill has also been unsuccessful in previous congressional sessions but was re-introduced in January.
Both Rosen and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto joined in sponsoring the ETHICS Act last Congress, that would prohibit members of Congress and their spouses and dependents from purchasing or selling individual stocks.
“Members of Congress should serve their constituents, not their pocketbooks,” Cortez Masto said in a statement to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “I’ll continue to support efforts to pass a ban through this Congress.”
The White House did not return requests for comment on whether President Donald Trump would support prohibiting members of Congress from trading stocks.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R- Texas, has argued against trade bans, saying that members of Congress, whose annual salary is $174,000, haven’t gotten raises since 2008.
“So sure, why not? Don’t let us trade stocks. We’ll just keep whipping ourselves. How about we don’t make any money either? Let’s just cut our paycheck. We haven’t got a pay raise since 2008,” he said in a November 2024 Free Press interview.
Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on X.