1. United States
2. Iowa
3. Letter

Presidential Stock Trading Is Corrupting Our Free Markets. It Must Stop Now. I am one of your constituents and I am writing today not as a partisan, but as an American who believes in free markets, equal justice under the law, and government accountability. Recent filings from the Office of Government Ethics reveal that President Trump executed over 3,600 individual stock trades worth between 220 million and 750 million dollars in just the first three months of 2026, roughly 58 trades per market day. He then missed the legally required 45-day STOCK Act disclosure deadlines on tens of millions of dollars worth of those trades. His penalty was 200 dollars. For a man with an estimated net worth of 6.5 billion dollars, a 200 dollar fine is not a penalty. It is the cost of doing business. It is cheaper than a parking ticket. When a fine is so trivially small that it creates no deterrent whatsoever, it is not a law. It is a suggestion. Any law without meaningful enforcement is no law at all, and every American who believes in equal justice should be offended by that. But the fine is not even the most serious issue. This is about market integrity and the kind of government interference in free markets that conservatives have always rightly opposed. The President purchased stock in Dell and then told Americans from the White House to go buy a Dell. Dell stock jumped 14 percent that day. He purchased up to 5 million dollars in Dell shares before making that statement. Any private citizen or corporate executive who bought stock in a company and then went on national television to move that stock price would face immediate SEC investigation. The law does not have a carve-out for the President of the United States. Palantir is arguably more troubling. The President was actively buying Palantir stock throughout early 2026 while the company’s federal contracts, contracts awarded by his own administration, nearly doubled to 970 million dollars. That is not a free market. That is a government official using public power to benefit a private portfolio. Ronald Reagan built a movement on the principle that government should not have its thumb on the scale. This puts the entire fist on it. No previous modern president has actively traded individual stocks at this scale while in office. This is not normal and it is not acceptable regardless of party. I am asking you to take the following specific actions. First, call for a full independent investigation into whether these trades constitute conflicts of interest beyond the STOCK Act violation. Second, support legislation that raises STOCK Act penalties to a level that actually deters violations. A fine must be proportional to the offense and the offender or it means nothing. Third, support legislation closing the loopholes that allow a president to trade individual stocks while exercising the powers of that office. You have an opportunity to stand for something that transcends party. Market integrity, equal justice, and government accountability are not liberal or conservative values. They are American values. The legislators who stood for those principles when it was inconvenient are the ones history remembers well. I respectfully ask for a written response within 30 days. Your constituents are watching.