Imagine a congresswoman whose family runs a small dairy farm. She's not on the agriculture committee, but she checks the stock price of a local feed company before deciding whether to expand her herd. Under a blanket ban, she'd be forced to sell that stock or put it in a blind trust, just because she holds public office. That's a huge overreach. Here's the thing: insider trading is already illegal. Public officials are already subject to the STOCK Act and ethics rules that punish using nonpublic information. So the real question isn't whether to ban all trading—it's whether we trust our existing laws to catch actual wrongdoing. And most officials aren't trading on secrets. They're ordinary investors with savings, retirement accounts, or family businesses. A blanket ban treats every single public servant like a criminal. It also discourages good people from running for office, because they'd have to give up financial freedom for no proven benefit. Instead of banning everything, we should enforce the rules we already have. That's the fair, targeted solution.

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