Incumbent CD-3 Republican House Rep. Jeff Hurd is running campaign ads via TV and text messages boasting that he voted for a bill to stop members of Congress from trading stocks. But that message is deceptive, and Hurd is likely hoping his constituents don’t look too closely at what was actually inside the bill.
Hurd did vote “AYE” on the “Stop Insider Trading Act” on July 21, 2026, but what he isn’t telling his constituents is that buried inside the bill was a completely unrelated, strict voter ID provision requiring voters to show a very narrow set of approved government photo IDs in order to cast a ballot — a provision that would functionally end mail-in voting.
The bill also failed to actually end stock ownership or sale of stocks by members of Congress outright, only limiting the practice. The bill he voted for also did nothing to address rampant insider stock trading by Trump, his family and other members of the administration, like cabinet appointees.
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey called the Stop Insider Trading Act that Hurd voted for a “sham stock trading bill” and “bogus legislation.”
Meanwhile, a competing bipartisan bill with far more support that has been in the works since 2025 called the “Restore Trust in Congress Act” (H.R. 5106 / S. 3649) had 141 co-sponsors, including 34 Republicans, and offered a more direct, comprehensive and simpler ban without including added voter restrictions.
Colorado House Rep. Joe Neguse (D-District 2) said,
“There’s a clear way to go about banning members of Congress from trading stocks, and that’s by passing a bill that bans a member of Congress from trading stocks.”
The Restore Trust in Congress Act does just that. It prohibits members of Congress and their spouses and dependents from owning or trading stocks, without any carve-outs, exceptions, tricky stuff, or any anti-voting provisions slipped into it.
Hurd belatedly signed on as a co-sponsor of the Restore Trust in Congress Act on August 10, 2026, only after first voting for the flawed legislation that would hurt his constituents and only nominally limit stock trading by members of Congress.