Renegade Republican rips his ‘not serious’ party over new election chicanery

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) took to X on Wednesday to slam the House GOP’s cynical move to deliberately tank a ban on congressional stock trading just to make Democrats look bad.

Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican who sponsored legislation to release the Epstein files, has long frustrated his party with key votes against major legislation backed by leadership. He was ousted in his primary earlier this year in favor of a Trump-backed challenger.

“Congress is not serious,” wrote Massie. “We are voting on a stock trading ban for members of Congress… BUT Republicans added voter-ID in the legislation. Not to get Dems to vote for voter-ID, but to get them to vote against the stock trading ban, so they can use it in the Nov. election.”

Massie is referring to provisions from the SAVE America Act, a controversial piece of legislation that Trump has become obsessed with passing despite facing a total dead end in the Senate. The bill would impose proof-of-citizenship measures so strict that even a driver’s license wouldn’t qualify in most states just to register to vote.

“If we really wanted to ban stock trading for members of Congress, we would offer stand-alone legislation and could get a large bipartisan majority, and the bill would have a chance of passing in the Senate,” Massie added. “But today we have political theater cooked up by 25-year-old staffers.”

This comes shortly after Massie dinged GOP leadership for trying to trick the caucus by renaming a spending and defense bill to sound similar to the SAVE America Act.

Massie isn’t alone; Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) issued a similar warning about the combined stock trade legislation on Tuesday.