Nebraska Delegates Take the Lead on Insider Trading
By Gordon Hopkins
Polls indicate trust in the federal government is at an all-time low, having been on a downward slide for many years. Two of Nebraska’s federal delegates have introduced legislature to reverse that trend.
Both bills are intended to address conflicts of interest and keep federal lawmakers from profiting in the stock market by using information gained while in office.
Stop Insider Trading Act
On Wednesday, March 18, 2026, U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE) introduced the Stop Insider Trading Act in the Senate on Wednesday. It is companion legislation to Congressman Bryan Steil’s (R-WI) bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The bill is intended to prohibit Members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children from purchasing publicly traded stocks and mandates a seven-day public notice period before any stock sales can be executed.
PREDICT Act
Another proposal takes matters a step further. Last week, U.S Representative Adrian Smith (R-NE) and Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski (D-IL) introduced the Preventing Real-time Exploitation and Deceptive Insider Congressional Trading Act (PREDICT Act), a bipartisan effort to prohibit senior government officials from participating in insider prediction market trading.
The PREDICT Act covers not just members of Congress but the President, Vice President and political appointees, including individuals serving in Executive Schedule positions. The act would prohibit them from trading on the outcomes of political events, policy decisions, and other government actions on prediction markets. Violations of the PREDICT Act would result in a civil penalty equal to 10 percent of the value of the prohibited transaction, as well as full disgorgement of any profits earned, to be paid into the U.S. Treasury.
Smith said, “Serving the American people is a privilege, not a pathway to profit. Our commonsense, bipartisan bill will give Americans confidence that the decisions of their elected officials are guided by merit, not personal profit. I am proud to partner with Representative Budzinski to ensure that government officials do not profit from the sensitive information entrusted to them.”
“The American people are tired of politicians using their influence for personal gain, and the rise of prediction markets has made those concerns even more relevant. In recent months, we’ve seen instances of little-known traders making massive profits on events ranging from war with Iran to how long a government shutdown will last, raising necessary questions about the use of inside information. I am excited to be working with Representative Smith to close that loophole and ensure that those with access to sensitive information cannot profit from it,” said Budzinski.
STOCK Act of 2012
Concerns about lawmakers profiting from their positions are nothing new. In 2012, Congress passed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, which prohibits members of Congress, their staff, and high-level executive branch officials from using nonpublic information for private profit. It mandates disclosures of financial trades within 30-45 days and bans insider trading based on congressional knowledge.
According to the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), a nonpartisan legal organization, “There is one major problem with this legislation: The penalty for a member of Congress violating the STOCK Act is $200 — a hardly impactful deterrence from the potential millions to be made off the stock market.”
No member of Congress has ever been prosecuted for insider trading under the STOCK Act.
