A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is accelerating efforts to ban members of Congress from playing the stock market to curb conflicts of interest and defend against insider trading.
But Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields of Louisiana has decidedly not made plans to give up stock trading.
Fields — a member of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations — recently purchased between $200,000 and $500,000 worth of Netflix stock, according to congressional financial documents reviewed by NOTUS.
Fields’ Netflix stock spree occurred on Nov. 20. It builds upon Netflix stock purchases of up to $750,000 that Fields made between Oct. 31 and Nov. 3, according to congressional records.
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And it’s the latest in a series of tech- and financial industry-heavy stock buys Fields has made during 2025, as he’s invested millions of dollars into the shares of companies such as NVIDIA, Alphabet, Apple, Broadcom, Meta, Microsoft, Robinhood, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and defense contractor Palantir.
In October, NOTUS reported that Fields purchased up to $200,000 worth of stock in Oracle just days before Trump affirmed the technology giant would play a leading role in TikTok’s proposed spinoff from Chinese company ByteDance.
In a phone call Wednesday, Fields spokesperson Shalyric Self acknowledged NOTUS’ requests for comment and said she was working to schedule a call with the congressman. Fields’ office did not call back, nor did it respond to emailed questions.
Responding to questions about his Oracle stock purchase in October, Fields told Louisiana television station WAFB that “people get accused of insider trading every time they buy a stock, but I’m going to continue to purchase stocks. It’s something I’ve done, and I encourage young people to do.”
Fields’ latest stock purchase coincides with the entertainment giant’s attempt to acquire rival Warner Bros. Discovery, which has attracted the attention of the Trump administration and President Donald Trump himself, who said he would be “involved in that decision.” Paramount, whose investors include billionaire Trump ally Larry Ellison, has launched its own takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.
Brian Baird, a former Democratic congressman from Washington state and author of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, said Fields’ Netflix stock purchases represent a “blatant conflict of interest” with his House committee work overseeing the nation’s financial industries and stock exchanges.
“I can’t imagine how this is not an outrage to everyone,” said Baird, who joined nearly 100 other former lawmakers earlier this month in demanding House Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to pass bipartisan legislation that would ban lawmakers from trading and owning individual stocks. “He has no business, in that role and on that committee, making stock trades of any kind, especially since he has access to way more information than the average American.”
(NOTUS presented Baird’s criticism to Fields’ office through emailed questions, and they did not respond.)
Baird added that Fields — or any lawmaker of any party — “has an obligation to hold themselves to a higher standard” and that “his sole purpose in Congress should be doing what is in the best interest of his constituents and the people of America, not his stock portfolio.”
Johnson said this week that the House will “continue to go through the process” of considering stock-ban legislation and denied making private promises to advance a bill.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, has filed a discharge petition in hopes of forcing a vote on a stock-ban bill dubbed the Restore Trust in Congress Act.
The U.S. Senate has, for its part, passed its own stock-ban bill out of committee but has yet to schedule a vote of the full Senate on it.
They’re motivated, in part, by dozens of members of Congress — including several in the past few months — who have violated the STOCK Act’s disclosure provisions.
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