Cooper says he’d support banning stock trades for top federal officials

Members of Congress, the president and other top federal officials should be banned from trading stocks while in office, former Gov. Roy Cooper said Tuesday.

And if elected to the U.S. Senate next year, he says, he would vote to ban federal officials including the president and members of Congress from buying and selling individual stocks.

Many high-ranking federal officials — from both major political parties — regularly make lucrative stock trades. But the practice is widely unpopular with the general public, research indicates. A 2025 study by researchers at the University of California at San Diego found more than 86% of the voting public would support banning members of Congress from trading stocks, and that the practice has harmed public trust in the government.

Members of Congress are allowed to make individual trades. But the practice often raises allegations that some members make trades based on information that may not be immediately available to the public — ahead of major votes or announcements.

Other critics of congressional stock trading have raised ethical concerns about members of Congress writing laws for industries and specific companies whose success or failure could impact their personal investments.

“It’s wrong,” Cooper said in a video statement Tuesday morning. “It leads to corruption. And it has to stop.”

A small number of members of Congress have pushed for reforms similar to what Cooper is saying he’d support if elected. But the movement appears to face long odds on Capitol Hill. An effort to force a vote on the issue in the U.S. House of Representatives, led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida) has so far garnered support of just 61 of the 435 members of the chamber — including just 15 of the 219 Republicans who currently control a majority in the House.

Cooper’s stance might not win him many fans among fellow North Carolinians in Congress, either. Only one of the 14 North Carolinians in the U.S. House, Democrat Valerie Foushee, has signed Luna’s petition to force a vote on banning congressional stock trades.

Cooper, however, said banning stock trades would be a crucial step. “To regain public trust in Washington, public officials can’t just say ‘Trust me,’” he said. “They have to show they can be trusted.”

Other candidates weigh in

Cooper — who has never lost an election in a political career dating to 1986 a statewide race — is the frontrunner in his party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate seat. Daryl Farrow of Jacksonville and Wilmington attorney Marcus Williams are the other Democrats who have filed to run so far.

Farrow didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Williams said he agreed with the idea of a stock trading ban.

"One should not benefit from the inside knowledge that would invariably become manifest or available in the Senate," Williams told WRAL. "You were elected to serve the public, not your private financial position or account. Such a conflict of interest should not be tolerated."

Republicans seeking the GOP nomination include: former RNC Chairman Michael Whatley of Gastonia, Waxhaw lawyer Don Brown, teacher Elizabeth Temple of Smithfield, Margot Dupre of Charlotte, and business consultant Thomas Johnson of Garner. Whatley and Dupre didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Brown, Temple and Johnson all expressed support for a ban on congressional stock trading, in response to inquiries from WRAL.

Brown said members of Congress should be required to move any stocks they hold into a blind trust they have no personal control over while in office, a measure he said is in line with his goal to "see the Washington swamp drained" to restore public trust.

"The average North Carolinian would get prosecuted for violation of state and federal securities laws if they engaged in the shenanigans that members do," Brown said. "What we saw from both Democrat and Republican members dumping stocks, based on inside knowledge, just prior to significant COVID announcements, exemplifies this legalized corruption. They protected their investments on both sides of the aisle, while average Americans and average North Carolinians lost tons of money."

Johnson's campaign said he'd be willing to work across the aisle with Sen. John Ossof (D-Georgia) who has proposed a stock trading ban in that chamber. That bill would allow members of Congress to keep owning stocks; they'd just have to be managed by a blind trust, similar to the proposal Brown suggested. Johnson said that to further increase transparency and accountability, any stock trades made could be tied to blockchain technology, allowing the public to watch the trades happening in real time rather than seeing disclosures made days or weeks after the fact as the system works currently.

He said that "would give citizens instant insight into members' investments and actions and allow real-time accountability for any member who violates the public trust."

Congressional stock trading

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, has often come under scrutiny for her well-timed trades worth millions of dollars.

And former North Carolina U.S. Senator Richard Burr, a Republican, was investigated but never charged on allegations of insider trading, over trades he made in February 2020 just prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. Burr had access to classified intelligence briefings in the early days of covid’s global spread but said he made his trades based solely on public information. He was cleared in a criminal investigation and in a separate civil investigation.

The same California researchers whose study found widespread public opposition to congressional stock trading also noted that public trust in the federal government has plummeted in recent decades.

They cited polling that found while 78% of Americans in 1958 said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing almost always or most of the time, just 22% shared that sentiment in 2024.

Congressional stock trading isn’t the sole driver of that trend, they wrote, but it does share some of the blame.

“This erosion of trust has profound implications for democratic governance, as perceptions of legitimacy are linked to compliance with authorities, civic engagement, and less crime,” the study found. “One key predictor of trust and legitimacy is perceptions of corruption, which undermine beliefs that authorities act in the public interest.”

There have been efforts previously to rein in the practice. But the most recent was short-lived.

In 2012, President Barack Obama signed a ban on congressional stock trading into law. Obama, a Democrat, was in a hotly contested race for reelection that year as he hosted a highly publicized press conference to sign the bill, flanked by members of Congress from both parties. They celebrated what they all said would be a significant improvement for ethics reform in Washington.

Less than a year later, however, Congress voted to undo much of that ban and let themselves start trading stocks once more.

Obama also signed that repeal into law, a few months into his second term, although he did so without any of the fanfare that accompanied the first bill signing. NPR reported at the time of that 2013 repeal that some members of Congress likely didn’t even realize it was happening, since many of them weren’t present for the vote at all: The Senate and House of Representatives each used parliamentary loopholes to repeal much of the stock trading ban without holding any debate or recorded votes on the measure.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.