In journalism, a “man bites dog” story is one that subverts expectations. Dogs bite people every day, but why would a person bite a dog?

Recent headlines suggest a similar question: Why would Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) support the PELOSI Act?

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This bill, which was the basis behind the one the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee moved forward on Wednesday, doesn’t just ban members of Congress and their spouses from trading individual stocks, a practice that has helped Pelosi boost her net worth to over $400 million. It also alludes to possible corruption of the Pelosi family by name.

The family of the California congresswoman has done plenty to earn her reputation as the queen of congressional insider trading.

To take just one example of many, her husband, Paul, sold 2,000 shares of Visa stock last July. This trade came just three weeks before Biden’s Justice Department launched a bogus antitrust lawsuit, which accused the company of monopolizing debit transactions but failed to account for the plethora of alternative payment options or the fact that federal law mandates two debit networks for every debit card.

News of the lawsuit caused Visa stock to plunge 5.4%, costing investors around $30 billion. But not the Pelosis, who pocketed a cool half million.

This lucrative history of stock trading didn’t stop the 20-term congresswoman from throwing her support behind the bill the same day it passed committee. “The American people deserve confidence that their elected leaders are serving the public interest — not their personal portfolios,” Pelosi wrote in a statement.

To be fair, it’s not actually called the “Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments Act” anymore. Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who introduced the legislation back in 2023, changed its name to the Honest Act to win support from committee Democrats. Its scope was broadened to include the president, vice president, and their spouses (but not until the next administration).

Pelosi even joked about the bill’s original name in her press release. “While I appreciate the creativity of my Republican colleagues in drafting legislative acronyms, I welcome any serious effort to raise ethical standards in public service,” the statement reads.

What the statement doesn’t mention is why Pelosi changed her mind on this issue. As recently as 2021, she opposed a ban on congressional stock trading, telling reporters that America has “a free market economy.”

So the question remains: Why does Pelosi suddenly want to outlaw a practice that made her rich by backing a bill that called her a crook? 

The answer is obvious: She’s already made her money. She may linger for another term or two, but the 85-year-old California Democrat knows she’ll soon exit the stage and (to mix metaphors) doesn’t mind pulling the ladder up after her. It’s easy to do the right thing when there’s no cost to you.

She knows what she’s doing. We know what she’s doing. She knows that we know what she’s doing. And we know that she knows that we know. 

The fact that she’s doing it anyway is a massive middle finger to the same people she claims to have spent the last four decades serving.

Perhaps the best way to judge a politician is by what he or she does just before leaving office. That’s when we find out what was genuine principle and what was insincere pandering. That’s when we learn the true extent of the contempt in which our elected representatives hold us.

Pelosi used “free market” principles to justify trading stocks, then banned others from doing the same on her way out the door.

Former President Joe Biden insisted that no one was above the law, then pardoned his whole crooked family on his way out the door.

Former President Obama campaigned as a civil libertarian critic of the George W. Bush-era security state. Then, just days before leaving office, he updated an executive order to expand the intelligence community’s access to data collected through warrantless surveillance.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, in the final months of his final term, closed the state’s beaches during a government shutdown, then took his family for a pleasant day at the otherwise-deserted shore.

Such last-minute revelations of selfishness and hypocrisy have become a venerable tradition in American politics. But perhaps technology can provide a solution.

TRUMP ACCUSES SCHUMER OF ‘POLITICAL EXTORTION’ AMID NOMINATIONS BLOCKADE

Here’s my proposal to “raise ethical standards in public service”: put every elected official in America in an Inception-style simulation and tell them it’s their last week in office. 

Anyone whose behavior noticeably changes gets impeached or expelled immediately.

Steve Cortes is president of the League of American Workers and senior political adviser to Catholic Vote. He is a former senior adviser to President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance and a former Fox News commentator.