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Josh hawley.

• Republican Party

Candidate, U.S. Senate Missouri

2019 - Present

Compensation

November 6, 2018

August 6, 2024

Rockhurst High School

Stanford University

Yale Law School

Official website

Official Facebook

Official Twitter

Official Instagram

Official YouTube

Campaign website

Campaign Facebook

Campaign Twitter

Campaign Instagram

Campaign YouTube

Josh Hawley ( Republican Party ) is a member of the U.S. Senate from Missouri. He assumed office on January 3, 2019. His current term ends on January 3, 2025.

Hawley ( Republican Party ) is running for re-election to the U.S. Senate to represent Missouri. He is on the ballot in the Republican primary on August 6, 2024 . [source]

He defeated two-term incumbent Claire McCaskill (D) and challengers Craig O'Dear (Independent), Japheth Campbell (L), and Jo Crain (G) to win the seat.

At 39 years of age, Hawley was the youngest member of the U.S. Senate during the 116th Congress.

Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, Hawley served as the attorney general of Missouri from 2017 to 2019. He litigated and won two cases at the Supreme Court of the United States . He was the co-counsel on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby . [1]

Hawley was included on President Donald Trump ’s (R) list of 20 potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees released on September 9, 2020. [2] President Trump (R) nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the seat on September 26, 2020. For more information on the 2020 Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 18, 2020, click here .

• 1 Biography
• 3.1 U.S. Senate
• 4.1 Key votes: 118th Congress, 2023
• 4.2 Key votes: Previous sessions of Congress
• 4.3 Key votes: 117th Congress, 2021-2023
• 4.4 Key votes: 116th Congress, 2019-2020
• 5.1.1 Endorsements
• 6.2.1 Campaign website
• 6.2.2 Campaign advertisements
• 6.3.1 Campaign website
• 7 Campaign finance summary
• 8 Notable endorsements
• 9.1 Electoral vote certification on January 6-7, 2021
• 10 See also
• 11 External links
• 12 Footnotes

Hawley graduated with honors from Stanford University. He then attended Yale Law School; while there, he led the Yale branch of the Federalist Society and served as articles editor for The Yale Law Journal . After receiving his law degree, he completed clerkships at the U.S. Court of Appeals, 10th Circuit , and the Supreme Court of the United States . [1] He also served as a litigator in the national appellate practice of Hogan Lovells US LLP in Washington, D.C.

He taught constitutional law at the University of Missouri law school and served as senior counsel to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. He litigated and won two cases at the Supreme Court of the United States and was the co-counsel on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby . [1]

Along with David Kennedy, Hawley is the author of Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness , published by Yale University Press in 2008.

Hawley lives in central Missouri with his wife, Erin—a national appellate lawyer—and their two sons. [1]

Below is an abbreviated outline of Hawley's academic, professional, and political career: [3] [4]

• 2019-Present : U.S. senator from Missouri
• 2017-2019 : Attorney general of Missouri
• 2014-2015 : Founder and president, Missouri Liberty Project
• 2011-2016 : Associate professor at the University of Missouri School of Law
• 2011-2016 : Counsel, Becket Law
• 2008-2011 : Appellate litigator, Hogan Lovells LLP
• 2007-2008 : Clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts of the Supreme Court of the United States
• 2006-2007 : Clerk to Michael McConnell of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
• 2006 : Received a J.D. from Yale Law School
• 2002 : Received a B.A. in history from Stanford University

Committee assignments

U.s. senate.

Hawley was assigned to the following committees: [Source]

• Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
• Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
• Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
• Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight
• Committee on Judiciary
• Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management
• Committee on the Judiciary
• Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism
• Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights
• Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law , Ranking member
• Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law
• Senate Committee on Armed Services
• Committee on Aging (Special)

Ballotpedia monitors legislation that receives a vote and highlights the ones that we consider to be key to understanding where elected officials stand on the issues. To read more about how we identify key votes, click here .

Key votes: 118th Congress, 2023

The 118th United States Congress began on January 3, 2023, at which point Republicans held the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives (222-212), and Democrats held the majority in the U.S. Senate (51-49). Joe Biden (D) was the president and Kamala Harris (D) was the vice president. We identified the key votes below using Congress' top-viewed bills list and through marquee coverage of certain votes on Ballotpedia.

Key votes: Previous sessions of Congress

Key votes: 116th congress, 2019-2020.

See also:  United States Senate election in Missouri, 2024

General election

The primary will occur on August 6, 2024. The general election will occur on November 5, 2024. Additional general election candidates will be added here following the primary.

General election for U.S. Senate Missouri

Doris Canaday and Jared Young are running in the general election for U.S. Senate Missouri on November 5, 2024.

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

• Zack Exley (Independent)

Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for u.s. senate missouri.

Mita Biswas , December Harmon , Lucas Kunce , and Karla May are running in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate Missouri on August 6, 2024.

• Wesley Bell (D)
• Samuel Rutherford (D)

Republican primary election

Republican primary for u.s. senate missouri.

Incumbent Josh Hawley is running in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate Missouri on August 6, 2024.

• Christopher Murphy (R)

Libertarian primary election

Libertarian primary for u.s. senate missouri.

W. C. Young is running in the Libertarian primary for U.S. Senate Missouri on August 6, 2024.

Endorsements

Hawley received the following endorsements. To send us additional endorsements, click here .

• Former President Donald Trump (R)

Josh Hawley defeated incumbent Claire McCaskill , Craig O'Dear , Japheth Campbell , and Jo Crain in the general election for U.S. Senate Missouri on November 6, 2018.

The following candidates ran in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate Missouri on August 7, 2018.

The following candidates ran in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate Missouri on August 7, 2018.

• Camille Lombardi-Olive (R)
• Robert Marshner (R)

Green primary election

Green primary for u.s. senate missouri.

Jo Crain defeated Jerome H. Bauer in the Green primary for U.S. Senate Missouri on August 7, 2018.

Japheth Campbell advanced from the Libertarian primary for U.S. Senate Missouri on August 7, 2018.

Josh Hawley defeated Teresa Hensley in the Missouri attorney general election.

Josh Hawley defeated Kurt Schaefer in the Missouri Republican primary for attorney general.

Campaign themes

Ballotpedia survey responses.

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Josh Hawley has not yet completed Ballotpedia's 2024 Candidate Connection survey. Send a message to Josh Hawley asking him to fill out the survey . If you are Josh Hawley, click here to fill out Ballotpedia's 2024 Candidate Connection survey .

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You can ask Josh Hawley to fill out this survey by using the buttons below or emailing [email protected].

Hawley’s campaign website stated the following:

Campaign advertisements

The following is an example of an ad from Hawley's 2018 election campaign.

Hawley's campaign website stated that his experience as a constitutional attorney, rather than a politician, qualified him for the office. It also stated that incumbent Attorney General Chris Koster (D), who did not run for re-election, allegedly paid excessive fees to trial attorneys contracted by the attorney general's office. Additionally, it stated that Hawley would fight political corruption and federal government overreach, advocate for tort reform, and protect Second Amendment rights. [34]

Hawley also criticized President Obama 's administration for its immigration policy, the Affordable Care Act , climate change policies, and the contraceptive mandate. [35] [36]

Campaign finance summary

Notable endorsements.

This section displays endorsements this individual made in elections within Ballotpedia's coverage and endorsements scopes.

Noteworthy events

Electoral vote certification on january 6-7, 2021.

Congress convened a joint session on January 6-7, 2021, to count electoral votes by state and confirm the results of the 2020 presidential election . Hawley voted against certifying the electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania. The Senate rejected both objections by a vote of 6-93 for Arizona and 7-92 for Pennsylvania.

2024 Elections

• Newsletters

External links

• Search Google News for this topic
• ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 JoshHawley.com , "Meet Josh Hawley," accessed February 9, 2016
• ↑ White House , "Additions to President Donald J. Trump’s Supreme Court List," September 9, 2020
• ↑ Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress , "Joshua David Hawley," accessed February 24, 2021
• ↑ LinkedIn , "Joshua Hawley," accessed February 24, 2021
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.2670 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024," accessed February 27, 2024
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.6363 - Further Continuing Appropriations and Other Extensions Act, 2024," accessed February 27, 2024
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.5860 - Continuing Appropriations Act, 2024 and Other Extensions Act," accessed February 27, 2024
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.3746 - Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023," accessed February 27, 2024
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.J.Res.7 - Relating to a national emergency declared by the President on March 13, 2020." accessed February 23, 2024
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.J.Res.44 - Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives relating to "Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached 'Stabilizing Braces'"" accessed February 28, 2024
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.J.Res.30 - Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to 'Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights'." accessed February 23, 2024
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.3684 - Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act," accessed April 15, 2022
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.1319 - American Rescue Plan Act of 2021," accessed April 15, 2022
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.5376 - Inflation Reduction Act of 2022," accessed January 20, 2023
• ↑ Congress.gov , "S.1605 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022," accessed April 15, 2022
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.7776 - James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023," accessed January 20, 2023
• ↑ Congress.gov , "S.3373 - Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022," accessed January 20, 2023
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.4346 - Chips and Science Act," accessed January 20, 2023
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.3755 - Women's Health Protection Act of 2021," accessed April 15, 2022
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.2471 - Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022," accessed January 20, 2023
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.8404 - Respect for Marriage Act," accessed January 20, 2023
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.6833 - Continuing Appropriations and Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2023," accessed January 20, 2023
• ↑ Congress.gov , "S.937 - COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act," accessed April 15, 2022
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.3076 - Postal Service Reform Act of 2022," accessed January 23, 2023
• ↑ Congress.gov , "S.2938 - Bipartisan Safer Communities Act," accessed January 20, 2023
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.5305 - Extending Government Funding and Delivering Emergency Assistance Act," accessed January 23, 2023
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.Res.24 - Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.," accessed April 15, 2022
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.350 - Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022," accessed January 23, 2023
• ↑ Congress.gov , "S.Con.Res.14 - A concurrent resolution setting forth the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2022 and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2023 through 2031.," accessed April 15, 2022
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.5746 - Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act," accessed January 20, 2023
• ↑ Congress.gov , "H.R.2617 - Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023," accessed January 20, 2023
• ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
• ↑ Josh Hawley for Senate , “About Josh,” accessed September 12, 2018
• ↑ Hawley for Attorney General, "Issues," accessed July 5, 2016
• ↑ Hawley for Attorney General, "Standing Up For Farmers," accessed July 5, 2016
• ↑ Hawley for Attorney General, "Protecting the Unborn," accessed July 5, 2016
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• Former attorneys general
• 2018 Congress challenger
• 116th Congress
• Current member, U.S. Senate
• U.S. Senate, Missouri

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Armed Services panel finalizes roster with three new GOP senators

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Wednesday announced their slate of committee assignments, placing three new members on the Armed Services Committee. The committee will consist of 13 Democrats and 12 Republicans, though the Democratic roster remains unchanged.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., will continue to chair the committee and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi will replace former Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma — who retired last year — as the top Republican on the panel.

“During the most dangerous time since the Cold War, it is crucial to work as partners to enhance deterrence and counter our adversaries for the long haul,” Wicker said in a statement after Senate Republicans revealed their committee assignments.

With Inhofe gone, freshman Republican Markwayne Mullin will continue representing Oklahoma on the panel alongside fellow newcomers Sens. Ted Budd, R-N.C., and Eric Schmitt, R-Mo.

The senior North Carolina and Missouri Republicans, Thom Tillis and Josh Hawley, have left the committee, making way for the junior senators from their respective states. Tillis had previously served as the top Republican on the panel’s personnel subcommittee. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is also leaving the Armed Services Committee, joining Tillis on the Financial Services Committee instead.

The Republican leader on the committee has set an ambitious goal for military spending. Wicker has previously said he would like defense spending at 5% of gross domestic product — amounting to approximately $1.3 trillion.

That sort of massive increase is unlikely to come to fruition with Democrats in control of the Senate and House Republican leaders agreeing to $130 billion in overall spending cuts for the fiscal 2024 budget.

The full Senate will likely ratify committee assignments in the coming days, and subcommittee announcements are expected later this week.

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

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Hawley’s departure from Armed Services draws speculation

In November, Hawley joined Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas in the effort to delay the GOP leadership vote.

“I don’t know why Senate GOP would hold a leadership vote for the next Congress before this election is finished,” Hawley said in a tweet . “We have a runoff in #GASenate — are they saying that doesn’t matter? Don’t disenfranchise @HerschelWalker.”

Ultimately, the vote was not delayed, and McConnell easily defeated Scott.

Earlier this month, Scott blamed McConnell for pulling him and Lee off the Commerce Committee as payback for his bid to replace McConnell.

“He didn’t like that I opposed him because I believe we have to have ideas, fight over ideas. And so, he took Mike Lee and I off the committee,” Scott told Kaitlan Collins on “CNN This Morning.”

Unlike Scott, Hawley did not attribute his removal from the Armed Services panel to McConnell.

“Nobody removed Josh from any committees. Josh decided to remain on the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, and allowed fellow Missourian Eric Schmitt to take his seat on Armed Services so he could move to the Energy Committee,” said Hawley spokesperson Abigail Marone.

Democrats’ 51-49 Senate majority in the 118th Congress meant that Republicans lost seats on committees compared with the previous Congress, which had a 50-50 split. And senators routinely change committee assignments at the start of a new Congress.

The Senate Armed Services Committee has included a senator from Missouri as a member for more than a dozen years. Hawley joined the committee as a freshman senator in 2019.

Schmitt’s seat on the panel will continue Missouri’s streak of representation on the sought-after committee.

Several military installations, including Fort Leonard Wood and Whiteman and Air Force base, are located in Missouri, as well as a Boeing Co. aircraft manufacturing facility. Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and Scott Air Force Base in Illinois are close to Missouri.

Multiple holds

Hawley’s removal was also spurred by his repeated objections to attempts to quickly confirm DOD nominees for the better part of the past year, the sources said.

Hawley said in July that his objections — which hold Pentagon nominees in limbo, unable to receive the confirmation vote needed to begin work — were a way for him to pressure SASC Chairman Jack Reed , D-R.I., to hold public hearings on the August 2021 Abbey Gate attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, and because he could not convince the White House to “stop their cover-up of the events at the gate, and the role they played.”

But Reed pushed back at the time, saying his panel has held three classified hearings on Afghanistan since the attack, and two unclassified hearings.

Reed also pointed to several provisions in the fiscal 2022 NDAA that mandate briefings from the Pentagon on Afghanistan, and a creation of a commission to study the entirety of the war. That commission is expected to soon begin its work, which will take three years.

Hawley currently serves on the Judiciary, Homeland Security, Energy and Natural Resources, and Small Business committees.

This report has been corrected to reflect which states Fort Leavenworth and Scott Air Force Base are in.

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House committee assignments once were the seat of power. Do they matter anymore?

By Zak Hudak

April 15, 2021 / 4:41 PM EDT / CBS News

House Democrats celebrated in early February when they successfully removed Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments. It was a move they thought would neutralize the freshman congresswoman who promoted conspiracy theories about mass shootings and the government when she was a candidate. 

But Greene, who also spread falsehoods about the 2020 election , saw an opportunity. 

"I woke up early this morning literally laughing thinking about what a bunch of morons the Democrats (+11) are for giving someone like me free time," Greene tweeted the following day. 

And she's probably still laughing: in her first three months in office, the congresswoman from Georgia raised $3.2 million from more than 100,000 donors, her campaign said last week.

But without a place on any committees, where the details and language of bills are traditionally hashed out, she is relegated to the far end of the bench as a legislator. Paired with her newfound publicity, Greene has found herself in a paradoxical role that could become more common in Congress. 

Facing allegations of breaking sex trafficking law and having intercourse with a 17-year-old girl, Republican Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida became the latest member at risk of losing his committee assignments. If the allegations are found to be true, House Republicans will kick Gaetz off his committees, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said late last month.

But in Greene's case, the House Republican Caucus voted not to do so. It was  the Democrats who brought a resolution to the House floor and overpowered the Republicans with the help of about a dozen GOP members who crossed party lines. 

It was the first known instance of the majority party voting to overturn the will of the minority party in order to remove one of their members from committees, and Republicans have signaled they're ready for revenge whenever they retake the House. 

This may come to pass soon. Democrats have what is in practice a bare two-seat hold because of vacancies that are unfilled, and the reapportionment from the 2020 census is likely to mean that in the 2020 midterm elections, some Democratic-dominant states will lose seats while more GOP-friendly states gain them.

Still, before the vote, McCarthy said that  "the resolution sets a dangerous new standard" and warned Democrats, "You'll regret this." 

The next month, McCarthy introduced his own resolution to remove Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell from his post on the Intelligence Committee over allegations a Chinese spy raised funds for his campaign a half decade ago. The measure failed along party lines, but the message was clear. 

Committee assignments are important to most members of Congress because they allow them to shape laws and become specialists on particular areas of legislation. After a member introduces a bill, the House Speaker or parliamentarian assigns the bill to one or more committees.

Then it's up to the committee chair, who is almost always a member of the majority party, to decide which bills to consider. At committee hearings, less influential members have the chance to air the concerns of their constituents with a greater authority than they hold on the floor. They also get the chance to question experts and stakeholders about policy. 

Before a bill can reach the floor, a majority of a committee's members must agree on the specifics and language of it. Greene, who had been assigned coveted posts at both the Budget and the Education and Labor Committees, has lost the ability to directly participate in that process. 

"She has been neutered in a sense because the policy that we bring to the floor is so important," said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida who introduced the resolution to remove Greene from her committee assignments.

On the floor, Greene can still debate and vote on amendments to the bill along with the other House members and then vote on the bill in its entirety. But while bills can change drastically after reaching the floor, they are typically most influenced in committees.

A large part of the perfect storm that brought down former Representative Steve King after eight terms was his diminished ability  to legislate, said Sarah Chamberlin, the founder and president of the Republican Main Street Partnership. Chamberlin's PAC spent over $100,000 supporting Representative Randy Feenstra's primary bid against King after the longtime congressman was taken off his committees by his own caucus for speaking in support of white supremacy.

The assignments King lost included one on the Agriculture Committee, where bills critical to the Iowa farming communities he represented are written.

"Whatever you think of Steve King, it's clear that he's no longer effective," a local conservative said in a television ad Main Street ran ahead of the election.

But Georgia voters in the 14th Congressional District are likely to view Greene's removal differently because it came from the opposing party.

"It makes you almost a martyr to the primary voters," Chamberlin said. "We did not hit Steve King on his comments [in support of white supremacy] because we didn't want to make him a martyr. We wanted to stick to business."

Greene also differs from King in that her banishment came with Democrats in control of the House, Senate and White House. Arguably, representation on the committees under these conditions matters less. Republican Representative David Schweikert of Arizona said that true bill authorship has been consolidated within the Democratic party's House leadership.

 "There was always, 'Hey here's our big picture agenda.' And you could, as a member, bust your hump to influence its drafting and design. Now, even the language comes down from on high, not just the concept," Schweikert said. "In many ways, last year and this year, committees have become more theatrical."

Without a chance to take part in those theatrics, Greene makes mischief on the House floor, often delaying proceedings by introducing motions to adjourn that are certain to fail. And even without committee assignments, she can certainly still introduce legislation. Greene recently  recently announced a bill to cut Dr. Anthony Fauci's salary to $0.

While these actions had little tangible results, they're causing concern among Democrats, some of whom want Greene removed from Congress outright. Before the vote to take Greene off her committees, Democratic Representative Jimmy Gomez of California introduced a resolution that would expel her from Congress, but this would require a two-thirds vote rather than a simple majority.

"She still maintains the ability to cause trouble. She maintains the ability to introduce legislation that's bonkers and has no chance of getting passed but feeds her base," Gomez said. "I don't think she ever had an intention of really legislating so removing her [from committees], although punishment, is probably not as severe as it needs to be."

But it's still up for debate whether Greene's position was strengthened or weakened politically by her loss of committee assignments. Under different circumstances, committee shakeups have sparked consolidation along the fringes of the GOP. When a group of far-right Republicans had their assignments changed by party leadership in 2012, Schweikert lost an enviable spot on the Financial Services Committee. He said the Democratic action against Green could backfire.

"It's the law of unintended consequences," Schweikert said. "It was a moment like this that created the Freedom Caucus. Is this a moment where you've created someone who's going to have a national platform?"

• Marjorie Taylor Greene

CBS News reporter covering the House.

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Investors, worried they can’t beat lawmakers in stock market, copy them instead

A loose alliance of investors, analysts and advocates is trying to let Americans mimic the trades elected officials make — but only after they disclose them.

Members of Congress hear a lot of secrets: classified briefings, confidential previews of pending legislation and the private opinions of constituents, regulators, corporate executives and world leaders.

Watchdog groups have long believed that some lawmakers use that information to make money in the stock market. Now a loose alliance of traders, analysts and advocates is trying to let Americans mimic the trades elected officials make, offering tongue-in-cheek financial products — including one named for former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and another that refers to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) — that track purchases and sales after lawmakers disclose them.

Collectively, these investment vehicles have attracted hundreds of millions of dollars. At times, congressional investigators have used them to keep tabs on suspicious trading activity, according to people familiar with these investigations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

“Our mission isn’t to make everyone millionaires — it’s actually to highlight the hypocrisy of congressional trading in an effort to bring more transparency and trust back into our government,” said Christopher Josephs, the founder of Autopilot, an app that allows ordinary investors to mimic the trades of leading politicians, top hedge funders and other famous traders. “Hopefully it’s helping, but our slogan is, if you can’t beat them, join them.”

Members of Congress are permitted to trade on the markets, but a 2012 law, the Stock Act, clarified insider trading restrictions for lawmakers and ramped up reporting requirements. Lawmakers are banned from trading based on material and nonpublic information they learn through their jobs and have 45 days to disclose any trades they or their immediate family members make.

Because the trackers rely on lawmakers’ legally mandated (and delayed) disclosures, they don’t allow the average American to make identical, same-day trades.

Those delays likely cut into users’ returns. That’s not the point, tracker boosters say. Their goal is to shine a light on congressional stock trading.

But the rise of these platforms is an alarming sign of distrust constituents have for their elected representatives, said Delaney Marsco, the director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan government watchdog group.

“A lot more people than we would like” believe lawmakers use information gained from their positions to “make significant gains to their stock portfolios,” Marsco said. “That’s incredibly damaging to the public’s trust.”

A whole new product category

The push to allow ordinary investors to mimic lawmakers’ stock trading began in 2019, when an anonymous social media account called Unusual Whales began publishing reports analyzing politicians’ financial disclosures.

The account spotlighted trades it deemed suspicious, including some lawmakers’ decisions to sell large portions of their portfolios as the coronavirus spread across the globe.

Around the same time, James Kardatzke, an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, started scraping up congressional data. In 2020, he launched one of the first websites that tracked trades disclosed by Pelosi, whose venture capitalist husband, Paul, is a successful investor. (The former speaker has long maintained that she does not personally own any stock and has no knowledge of or involvement with her husband’s investments.)

Quiver Quantitative, the company Kardatzke co-founded that year with his twin brother, Chris, offers a data platform that highlights congressional trades and potential conflicts of interest, including lawmakers’ corporate donors, proposed legislation and net worth.

Josephs’s Autopilot originated as a social investment app called Iris that aimed to make it easier for ordinary investors to mimic their friends’ trades. But after copying famous investors’ trades proved more popular, the company pivoted.

According to Josephs, investors have so far routed some $130 million through Autopilot — $60 million of which has gone toward copying Pelosi, whose portfolio ranks as one of the app’s most popular, alongside Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett.

The Autopilot portfolio that mimics trades disclosed by Pelosi posted a 45 percent gain in 2023, above the S&P 500’s 24 percent gain that year.

Quiver and Autopilot allow ordinary investors to follow lawmakers’ trades and copy them if they choose. But last year, Christian Cooper, a derivatives trader and portfolio manager at Subversive Capital Advisor, partnered with Unusual Whales to launch products to make the process even simpler.

They launched two exchange-traded funds, or ETFs — investment funds that trade like stocks — that allow everyday investors to mimic lawmakers’ investment strategies. Unusual Whales Subversive Democratic ETF (NANC) and the Unusual Whales Subversive Republican ETF (KRUZ) — whose tickers nod to Pelosi and Cruz, a member who is not a prolific stock trader but has high name recognition — hit the market in February 2023.

NANC, which invests in stocks purchased by Democratic members of Congress, outperformed the overall U.S. stock market from its inception through April 30 of this year, according to an independent analysis by Elisabeth Kashner, director of global funds research and analytics at FactSet, a financial data and technology company. KRUZ, which invests in stocks purchased by Republican members, hasn’t done as well, underperforming the overall market. KRUZ ended April with $16 million of assets versus NANC’s $78 million. But Kashner argues that those outcomes should come with a caveat.

“While NANC’s run-up has been impressive, it’s statistically insignificant, meaning that there’s a decent chance that the outperformance to date has been random,” Kashner said. “Ditto for KRUZ’s underperformance.”

A push for further change

The trackers have proved popular. But without quicker, more up-to-the-minute disclosures, investors won’t ever be able to perfectly copy lawmakers’ trades — and anti-corruption advocates will have a harder time pinning down whether a trade was problematic, James Kardatzke said.

Because of this, some members of Congress have come to believe that the decade-old Stock Act is insufficient to restore Americans’ trust that lawmakers aren’t using their access to information for profit.

The penalties for those who violate the law are minimal: Members who are late to disclose stock activity, or sales and purchases of cryptocurrencies, generally face a $200 fine prescribed by the Stock Act. Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Tex.), who failed to disclose 122 transactions valued between $9 million and $21 million in 2021 in a timely manner, paid $600 in late filing fees and corrected the record though he refused to cooperate with the review conducted by the Office of Congressional Ethics.

More problematic, in the view of ethics watchdogs and people familiar with the ethics process in Congress, is that enforcement of the Stock Act lacks teeth and relies entirely on self-reporting.

“There does not seem to be much evidence of the Stock Act being violated, but on the other hand, anyone who truly wanted to violate the Stock Act with any degree of sophistication would be able to do it simply by not reporting it on your financial disclosures,” said a person involved with ethics investigations in Congress who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive and ongoing matter.

An effort to ban lawmakers and their families from owning individual stocks stalled out after Pelosi declined to bring a bipartisan change proposal to the floor at the end of her House speakership in 2022, claiming that she didn’t have the votes to pass it.

“It’s already hard for many members to raise a family and maintain homes in two cities on their salaries,” a senior congressional aide explained of member opposition to a ban, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. “If you make it impossible for a member’s spouse to take a job that includes stock-based compensation, that is another burden that can drive talented people away from public service.”

That has not deterred a string of unusual pairings of politicians, including Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in the House and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in the Senate, from introducing bills that would place stricter limits on congressional trading.

Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), who is leaving Congress in January to run for governor, has been working closely with Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) on another bill, the Trust in Congress Act, which would require members, their spouses and dependent children to put certain investment assets into a blind trust during their term.

Spanberger and Roy are strategizing how best to advance the bill and have discussed the possibility of trying to force a vote on the House floor before the end of this Congress.

“Transparency has created more questions than answers,” Spanberger said, referring to disclosures mandated by the Stock Act. “So now we have a situation where it actually looks like maybe there’s bad behavior when maybe there isn’t — or maybe there is.”

Interest in the bill ebbs and flows “based on the bad or quizzical behavior of our colleagues,” Spanberger said.

Banning lawmakers from owning stock is popular: Eighty percent of voters support a ban on stock ownership by members of Congress, the president, vice president, Supreme Court justices and their families, a poll released last year by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation found.

“There’s no reason we can’t address it,” Roy said in an interview. “It’s not going to be partisan. It’ll be split, and there will be Republicans who are for or against it and Democrats for it or against it.”

Spanberger lobbied House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), the rare member who disclosed no assets in his most recent financial disclosure report, to address the issue at the start of his speakership.

Johnson did not respond to a request for comment. “Mike understands that there’s a problem,” Roy said. “We’re just trying to work through on a bipartisan basis how we can address it.”

Insider-ish trading

Under current law, members rarely pay a real price for trading-related scandals.

The Office of Congressional Ethics concluded in 2021 that there was “substantial reason to believe” that the wife of Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) used nonpublic information obtained through her husband’s official duties to purchase stock in an Ohio steelmaker. OCE investigators found that Victoria Kelly purchased stock in Cleveland-Cliffs a day after her husband learned that Donald Trump’s Department of Commerce was set to grant trade protections to the company.

Then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross informed the Cleveland-Cliffs CEO on April 28, 2020, that the department’s actions would potentially help his company, prompting Cleveland-Cliffs to keep its operations in Mike Kelly’s district open. On April 29, Victoria Kelly made her first individual stock purchase in almost a year, buying between $15,001 and $50,000 in Cleveland-Cliffs stock.

But three years after the ethics office referred what some legal experts deemed a “textbook” case of trading off nonpublic information to the House Ethics Committee — the entity with the power to hold a lawmaker accountable for wrongdoing — the committee has yet to issue a determination as to whether a violation occurred. Tom Rust, the chief counsel and staff director of the committee, declined to comment on the status of the investigation. Mike Kelly’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

In a hyperpartisan environment with threadbare majorities in both chambers, the members of the House Ethics Committee have little incentive to hold other members accountable. The Senate faces even less pressure to investigate its members: It lacks an independent ethics enforcement body like the Office of Congressional Ethics, which has jurisdiction only over the House.

The Senate Ethics Committee has not issued a disciplinary sanction against a senator in over 15 years, even after a stock-trading scandal roiled the upper chamber. Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) came under scrutiny at the start of 2020 after they dumped vast stock holdings ahead of the coronavirus-induced market plunge. Neither the Senate Ethics Committee nor the Justice Department, whose investigators launched probes into the stock sales, pursued charges.

The “clear exoneration by the Department of Justice affirms what Sen. Loeffler has said all along — she did nothing wrong,” a spokesperson for Loeffler said at the conclusion of the investigation, adding that “she and her husband acted entirely appropriately and observed both the letter and the spirit of the law.”

But ethics experts have argued that the problem with lawmakers’ stock trading habits goes beyond the legal issue of insider trading, noting that even the appearance of improper trading can damage the public’s already record-low trust in lawmakers and government.

Members of Congress might not clear the high legal bar for insider trading, which would require making a trade based on material, nonpublic information. But they might still trade on information that the rest of the public doesn’t have meaningful access to, said Marsco of the Campaign Legal Center.

Some members routinely engage in trades that critics see as posing actual or potential conflicts with their committee assignments, where members often are privy to nonpublic — or even classified, sensitive, privileged or otherwise restricted — information. And some have gotten a lot richer — in part due to the gains made through the stock market — during their time in office.

Several trackers have noted that Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) has in recent months disclosed trades of companies that have business before the committees he sits on. Mullin’s net worth has increased from roughly $5.9 million when he was elected to Congress in 2012 to an estimated $63.66 million today.

But Mullin’s case highlights the complexity of the issue. “Over 2 years ago, Sen. Mullin sold several of his companies,” a spokesperson for Mullin wrote in an email. “Any attempts to link an increase in net worth purely to investments outcomes, which are independently managed by a third-party operator, are completely inaccurate.”

Ideally, Mullin and other members of Congress who own stocks would put them in a blind trust, said Kedric Payne, former deputy chief counsel of the Office of Congressional Ethics, who now serves as the vice president of the Campaign Legal Center.

“That way, there’s no way for you to direct your broker to sell that defense contractor stock because you don’t even know you own it,” Payne said.

But the public’s perception of members’ conflicts of interest is the most important issue, Payne added.

“We are now at a new level where the members no longer have to be insider traders to profit — we are at a point where merely publishing what trades a member buys means the price of that stock goes up because other people are following their lead,” he said. “You have a problem that’s very hard to erase.”