By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Rep. April McClain Delaney has cosponsored a bill that would ban members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependent children from owning or trading individual stocks. Her own financial disclosures show repeated trading in a dependent child’s account during her time in office.
The Potomac Democrat represents Maryland’s 6th District and sits on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee and the House Agriculture Committee. Since taking office in January 2025, she has repeatedly filed Periodic Transaction Reports with the House clerk, the disclosures required under the STOCK Act. MDBayNews pulled and reviewed six of those filings directly from the clerk’s public disclosure site, spanning October 2025 through a report disclosed this month. Every transaction in the filings reviewed carries the owner code “DC,” the House’s designation for a dependent child’s account, not the member’s own holdings or her spouse’s.
That distinction matters for the politics of this story, not just the mechanics. H.R. 5106, the Restore Trust in Congress Act, which Delaney cosponsors, would extend its ban to exactly this kind of account. A dependent child’s trading is the trading the legislation is written to stop.
“A dependent child’s trading is the trading the legislation is written to stop.”
What the family account has been buying
The filings show frequent, small-dollar trades. In one report covering May 2026 and signed June 5, the dependent account bought and sold stock in more than a dozen companies, including:
- TransDigm Group (TDG), an aircraft parts manufacturer, bought five times in May, each purchase between $1,001 and $15,000.
- Entegris (ENTG), a semiconductor materials supplier, bought three times in May, also in the $1,001 to $15,000 range each time.
- BWX Technologies (BWXT), which builds nuclear reactor components for the Navy, bought four times between May 7 and May 15, in amounts ranging from $1,001 up to $50,000 each. Quiver Quantitative, a firm that tracks congressional trading, noted the first of those purchases landed the same day BWX Technologies announced more than $1.4 billion in new Navy nuclear propulsion contracts.
The BWXT position kept moving. A filing disclosed Sept. 9 shows the account sold between $100,001 and $250,000 of BWX Technologies stock on Aug. 25, the largest single BWXT transaction MDBayNews found in the filings reviewed.
“None of this is illegal, and there’s no public evidence tying any of it to inside information.”
None of this is illegal, and there’s no public evidence tying any of it to inside information. Members of Congress and their dependents are allowed to trade individual stocks under current law as long as they disclose it, which is what these filings are. Outside trackers put Delaney’s total disclosed trade count anywhere from the high 200s to over 400, depending on how each service counts amended and partial-sale line items. MDBayNews isn’t publishing a single total; the underlying filings are public, and the count depends on the method used.
She also voted no on a different stock bill
There’s a second piece of her record worth putting next to the first. On July 22, 2026, the House passed H.R. 7008, the Stop Insider Trading Act, 232-198. According to the official roll call, Delaney voted no.
That vote is more complicated than it might look. H.R. 7008 combined new stock-trading restrictions on members of Congress with an unrelated voter photo-ID requirement, and nearly every Democrat in the chamber voted against it as a package; only 13 crossed over, while all 218 voting Republicans supported it. Some Democrats and government-ethics groups have also argued the bill itself was weaker than the Restore Trust in Congress Act, since it let members keep stock they already owned and allowed continued dividend reinvestment. Rep. Chip Roy, the Republican who leads the Restore Trust bill Delaney cosponsors, voted for H.R. 7008 anyway while saying he preferred his own broader version.
“It’s not clear from the public record alone whether her opposition was about the stock provisions, the voter-ID provisions, or the bill as a package.”
Delaney’s office hasn’t addressed the H.R. 7008 vote publicly as of this writing, and it’s not clear from the public record alone whether her opposition was about the stock provisions, the voter-ID provisions, or the bill as a package.
The district question
Delaney lives in Potomac, and that address falls in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District, not the 6th District she represents. That’s been publicly reported since before she ran; Bethesda Magazine noted it in 2023, reporting her home sits more than 10 miles from the 6th District’s boundary after redistricting pushed the line north toward Gaithersburg.
It isn’t disqualifying. The Constitution requires only that a House member live in the state they represent, not the specific district, and her husband and predecessor, former Rep. John Delaney, represented the same seat for six years from a home in the same area.
A text message circulating this summer separately describes her house as having 12 bedrooms and 16 bathrooms. MDBayNews could not verify that figure through Maryland property records or any other public source and is not reporting it as fact.
Where the race stands
Delaney faces two challengers on Nov. 3: Republican nominee Robin Ficker and Green Party candidate Moshe Landman. Ficker won a three-candidate Republican primary in June with 41.8% of the vote, ahead of Chris Burnett’s 37.4% and Mariela Roca’s 20.8%, according to official results from the Maryland State Board of Elections. Ficker, 83, is a former one-term state delegate and perennial candidate who has sought numerous local, state, and federal offices since the 1970s.
Text messages promoting Ficker’s campaign and attacking Delaney’s trading record have linked to a WinRed donation page, the Republican Party’s fundraising platform. It’s not clear from the messages themselves whether they were sent by Ficker’s campaign directly or by an outside group.
What to Watch
Whether Delaney’s campaign or office responds to questions about the dependent-child trading account or the H.R. 7008 vote. Whether H.R. 5106 gets a committee markup before Election Day. Whether the Senate takes up H.R. 7008, which it received on July 23 and placed on its calendar Aug. 6. And whether the broader Senate companion, S. 3649, introduced by Sens. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., advances out of committee before the current Congress ends.
Sources: Periodic Transaction Reports for Hon. April McClain Delaney filed with and published by the U.S. House of Representatives Clerk’s Office (disclosures-clerk.house.gov), reviewed directly by MDBayNews, including filings signed Nov. 2025 through June 2026 and a filing disclosed Sept. 9, 2026; House Roll Call Vote 280, July 22, 2026, on passage of H.R. 7008, and H.R. 7008’s Senate receipt and calendar placement, via Congress.gov and GovInfo.gov; H.R. 5106 and S. 3649 text and cosponsor data via Congress.gov and GovInfo.gov, and a Jan. 15, 2026, press release from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s office; committee assignments via the House Clerk’s official member page; additional trade context from Quiver Quantitative (June 8, 2026) and MarketBeat (Sept. 11, 2026); district residency reporting from Bethesda Magazine, Oct. 25, 2023; official primary results and general election candidate list from the Maryland State Board of Elections (elections.maryland.gov); H.R. 7008 vote context from The Hill, Legis1 and 5calls.org, and a statement from Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass.
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