Hinz: When the government was buying vaccines, Rep. Newman traded in vaccine makers' stocks

Locked into a tough primary race for re-election, U.S. Rep. Marie Newman has signed on to legislation that would ban the increasingly controversial practice of members of Congress trading stock in individual companies.

But Newman's conversion to that issue is recent - very recent. Only in the last month have Newman and husband voluntarily ceased the practice themselves, this after trading stock worth $5.8 million in 2021. That was enough to rank her ninth among the 535 members of the House and Senate, right behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is eighth.

According to disclosures tracked by the Washington website Capitol Trades, they bought or sold tens of thousands of dollars of stock in Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, the three pharmaceutical firms whose anti-COVID vaccines were purchased in large numbers by the federal government after receiving approval from Congress.

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