Without support from a single House Democrat, Republican Wisconsin Representative Bryan Steil’s “Stop Insider Trading Act” passed the House Administration Committee and will move on to the House floor for consideration.

If enacted, the bill would restrict members of Congress from buying individual securities and would require notice seven to 14 days before a sale. Lawmakers would be able to continue to buy index and mutual funds, as well as continue investing dividends in previously purchased securities.

Democrats continue to argue that the bill is not strong enough, with many stating that trading should be banned entirely and that lawmakers should be required to fully divest before taking office.

Throughout the two-hour markup, Democratic House reps proposed amendments. Ranking member Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) proposed requiring “Congress and the President and the Vice President” to fully divest. Rep. Julie Johnson (D-TX) offered a similar amendment that would mandate full divestment without providing relief from capital gains taxes.

Steil pushed back, warning that mandatory divestment could discourage qualified candidates from seeking office.

“Under the amendment offered by our colleague from Texas, that [capital gains tax] would obviously continue to apply … [and] for some people that may be a very significant financial impact,” he said.

He added that the financial burden could lead “some individuals … to not come to Congress — and not because they did anything wrong, but because they had a successful private sector career.”

Chris Josephs, the co-founder of Autopilot, an app that allows average Americans to trade the same stocks Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) trades, previously voiced the same concerns to The Daily Wire about legislation requiring full divestment.

“I think it would demotivate a major class of successful people from running,” Josephs said. “Businesspeople are successful. They know how to run things. They know how to lead. They know how to hire. They know how to create strategies. They know how to execute on those strategies. We should not just say no to those potential candidates just because they own businesses and they’re not gonna sell.”

Josephs told The Daily Wire he suspected that the 2024 election would have looked drastically different with full divestments in place.

“The 2024 election, you got Trump and Vance. Vance is an ex-venture capitalist, ex-business guy. He owns a lot of individual stocks that are private. And then you’ve got Trump, who owns a lot of stuff. On the other side of the ticket, though, you’ve got Kamala, who’s a career-long politician. You’ve got Tim Walz, who proudly doesn’t even own a house. And if that bill were to be passed, just based on how that would work, Trump and Vance wouldn’t be allowed to run unless they sold their stuff, which I doubt they would have.”

After full-divestment amendments were rejected, Rep. Norma Torres (D-CA) introduced an amendment to prohibit the reinvestment of dividends. Republicans voted it down, keeping dividend reinvestment permissible under the bill.

Steil defended the decision, arguing that dividend payments do not pose the same insider trading risks.

“Those dividends are structured within the company with advanced notice, outside of the control of any given member. It doesn’t carry the risk of insider trading,” he said. “Because it doesn’t carry the risk of insider trading, what we allowed for was the reinvestment of dividends.”

He later emphasized the bill’s intent, saying, “The focus here is to prevent members from being able to profit off of insider information — not to make elected officials poor.”

The Supreme Court this week heard major cases on whether men who think they’re women because they’re mentally ill should be able to play sports with women who think they’re women because they’re women. The cases were a chance for the court to explore the question: is it fair for men who feel like women to play women’s sports or are we living in reality where that would be the sort of question only a nerdy nine-year-old boy would ask just before cracking up at his own joke and then making a series of snorting noises that ends with his accidentally blowing snot on his I Heart Stranger Things T-shirt?

In the event, the case was argued before a gathering of fine legal minds and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The trans-athletes were represented by the famous attorney Foster Closterfockolus who was hired by the Roland Dinghead Memorial Fund, which was named in honor of the famous trans-athlete, a girl who identified as male and joined a men’s boxing club, then sadly died.

Mr. Closterfockolus made the argument that — in theory — there are no real advantages to men who play women’s sports, so we should all live in theory instead of on earth where the idea is completely absurd. Judging by their responses to his argument, the justices seemed divided between those justices with IQ’s higher than a bowl of Cheerios and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The highlight of Mr. Closterfockolus’s argument was when he conjured up the cherished memory of transgender athletes from the past, like Abner Skullfog, a girl who identified as male and joined the local men’s ice hockey team, then, sadly, died. Mr. Closterfockolus said that to ban boys who identify as girls from girls’ sports would be to betray the memory of such pioneers who gave the last measure of devotion to free us from the shackles of sanity and common sense. Mr. Closterfockulus actually fought back tears as he went on to tell the story of another historic transgender innovator, Henry Blither, a woman who identified as a man and managed to join an NFL football team, then, sadly, died — though not before breaking through the Steelers’ offensive line to sack Aaron Rodgers.

When Mr. Closterfockolus concluded his arguments, he was peppered with incisive questions by the brilliant justices and one from Ketanji Brown Jackson. Jackson asked, “If a man wears a skirt that’s a really soft shade of pink and has girly pleats with maybe a flower pattern, like little roses weaving in a kind of floaty, dream-like feminine way, and that skirt makes him very attractive to the sort of burly man who walks around with his shoulders and arms swinging, and then suddenly he sees this boy in his pretty pink skirt, and okay, it doesn’t develop into anything, but he takes a second look before becoming disgusted with himself, couldn’t we then say that the first boy is as much a female as that gruff detective on the HBO show about Easttown or is the whole scenario of three different local women getting kidnapped by the same man just too unbelievable?”

The next probing question came from Justice Alito who asked the attorney, “What the hell is that moron talking about and how in God’s name did she get on the Supreme Court?”

Throughout the questioning, the Justices tried to be respectful to the defendants by using their preferred pronouns without giggling, which unfortunately proved impossible.

After the question period was over, the attorney for the states banning men in women’s sports, Joan Dark, stood before the justices and wept quietly for twenty minutes before answering questions, including another intricate inquiry from Alito, who said, “Why couldn’t that dementia-riddled puddlehead of a president find a black woman who had been to law school, or could at least form an English sentence?”

But the final argument startled the justices when it came from a resonant disembodied voice that shook the courtroom, saying, “I created mankind in my image, male and female, and if you’re wondering why I didn’t ask your opinion about it, it’s because I’m omniscient and I knew there would one day be a justice on the Supreme Court who was dumber than a bowl of Cheerios.”

* * *

This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “The Andrew Klavan Show.”

Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fifth installment, After That, The Dark, is NOW AVAILABLE. Follow him on X: @andrewklavan.

The views expressed in this satirical piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.