Proposed bill banning stock trading wouldn’t bar Trump from White House

President-elect Donald Trump’s family business dealings could pose ethical conflicts in his second term, but a social media post said the U.S. Senate passed a law that bans him from returning to the White House in January.

"BREAKING: the U.S Senate accidentally passed a bill banning Trump from Becoming President, and (President Joe) Biden is planning to sign it," a Nov. 19 Threads post said.

The Threads post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

The words and image in the Threads post originated in a Nov. 19 X post from PoliticsVideoChannel, a self-described news and media company, whose X profile says, "Facts matter!"

We agree that facts matter and, in this case, the Threads post had not one fact right.

That X post had more than 1 million views by Nov. 20. In a long thread about the bill, it said it referred to the Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks Act, or ETHICS Act for short, and linked to a July 24 news release from Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev.

But neither the Senate or U.S. House has passed the bill, so there is nothing for Biden to sign. And the bill would not prevent Trump from serving as president.

(Screenshot from Threads)

The bill would immediately bar members of Congress, the president and the vice president from buying and selling securities, commodities, futures, options, trusts and other comparable holdings, a Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Senate Committee summary said.

Beginning March 31, 2027, those elected officials — and their spouses and dependent children — will have 120 days to divest from those assets.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on July 24 voted 8-4 to approve a revamped version of S.1171, a bill Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., introduced in April. Merkley, fellow Democrats Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., announced agreement on the revamped legislation July 10. 

The bill has not come up for a vote in the full Senate. The House has not taken action on the original bill.

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A Merkley spokesperson told PolitiFact in an email that the proposed law would not "ban" Trump from becoming president, but would require him to change his financial holdings to be in compliance.

Trump is the largest shareholder in Truth Social, his social media company, and said he has no intention to sell his stock in the company. But nothing in the bill’s language would prevent Trump — or any Congress member — from serving for breaching the law. Instead, there are financial penalties.

If the bill became law, violators would have to forfeit their monthly salaries or pay 10% of the value of each asset, whichever is greater, the bill’s summary said. It would also raise penalties in the 2012 STOCK Act for failure to report holdings from $200 to $500 per violation.

A U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs spokesperson also said individuals would face fines until they comply with the divestment requirements of the law, if it's passed. The Office of Government Ethics would have to assess Trump's assets case by case, the spokesperson said.

A Threads post said, "The U.S Senate accidentally passed a bill banning Trump from becoming President, and Biden is planning to sign it." The X post the claim originated from referred to the Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks Act. 

But nothing in that bill would keep Trump from being president. It advanced from a Senate committee and has not been scheduled for a full Senate vote. If the Senate and the House pass the measure and the president signs it into law, it would prevent members of Congress, the president and vice president from buying, selling and owning stocks. Violators would face financial penalties, but they would not be barred from office.

We rate this claim Pants on Fire!