By JOEY CAPPELLETTI, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two senators from opposite parties are joining forces in a renewed push to ban members of Congress from trading stocks, an effort that has broad public support but has repeatedly stalled on Capitol Hill.

Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Republican Sen. Ashley Moody of Florida on Thursday plan to introduce legislation, first shared with The Associated Press, that would bar lawmakers and their immediate family members from trading or owning individual stocks.

FILE -Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., speaks during the confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee for Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s choice to be director of the FBI, at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

It’s the latest in a flurry of proposals in the House and the Senate to limit stock trading in Congress, lending bipartisan momentum to the issue. But the sheer number of proposals has clouded the path forward. Republican leaders in the House are pushing their own bill on stock ownership, an alternative that critics have dismissed as watered down.

“There’s an American consensus around this, not a partisan consensus, that members of Congress and, frankly, senior members of administrations and the White House, shouldn’t be making money off the backs of the American people,” Gillibrand said in an interview with the AP on Wednesday.

Bipartisan support but no consensus

Trading of stock by members of Congress has been the subject of ethics scrutiny and criminal investigations in recent years, with lawmakers accused of using the information they gain as part of their jobs — often not known to the public — to buy and sell stocks at significant profit. Both parties have pledged to stop stock trading in Washington in campaign ads, creating unusual alliances in Congress.

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In the House, for example, Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida is trying to bypass party leadership and force a vote on her own stock trading bill. Her push with a discharge petition has 79 of the 218 signatures required, the majority of them Democrats.

House Republican leaders are supporting an alternative bill that would prohibit members of Congress and their spouses from buying individual stocks but would not require lawmakers to divest from stocks they already own. It would mandate public notice seven days before a lawmaker sells a stock. The bill advanced in committee on Wednesday, but its prospects are unclear.

Gillibrand and Moody, meanwhile, are introducing a version of a House bill introduced last year by Reps. Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, and Seth Magaziner, a Democrat from Rhode Island. That proposal, which has 125 cosponsors, would ban members of Congress from buying or selling individual stocks altogether.

Magaziner and other House Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, wrote in a joint statement Wednesday that they “are disappointed that the bill introduced by Republican leadership today fails to deliver the reform that is needed.”

The Senate bill from Gillibrand and Moody would give lawmakers 180 days to divest their individual stock holdings after the bill takes effect, while newly elected members would have 90 days from being sworn in to divest. Lawmakers would be prohibited from trading and owning certain other financial assets, including securities, commodities and futures.

“The American people must be able to trust that their elected officials are focused on results for the American people and not focused on profiting from their positions,” Moody wrote in response to a list of questions from the AP.

The president would be exempt

The legislation would exempt the president and vice president, a carveout likely to draw criticism from some Democrats. Similar objections were raised last year over a bill that barred members of Congress from issuing certain cryptocurrencies but did not apply to the president.

Gillibrand said the president “should be held to the same standard” but described the legislation as “a good place to start.”

“I don’t think we have to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good,” Gillibrand said. “There’s a lot more I would love to put in this bill, but this is a consensus from a bipartisan basis and a consensus between two bodies of Congress.”

Moody, responding to written questions, wrote that Congress has the “constitutional power of the purse” so it’s important that its members don’t have “any other interests in mind, financial or otherwise.”

“Addressing Members of Congress is the number one priority our constituents are concerned with,” she wrote.

Making a law or campaign fodder?

It remains to be seen if the bill will reach a vote in the Senate. A similar bill introduced by Gillibrand and GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri in 2023 never advanced out of committee.

Still, the issue has salience on the campaign trail. Moody is seeking election to her first full term in Florida this year after being appointed to her seat when Marco Rubio became secretary of state. Gillibrand chairs the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm.

“The time has come,” Gillibrand said. “We have consensus, and there’s a drumbeat of people who want to get this done.”

By MARCIA DUNN, Associated Press Aerospace Writer

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An ailing astronaut returned to Earth with three others on Thursday, ending their space station mission more than a month early in NASA’s first medical evacuation.

SpaceX guided the capsule to a middle-of-the-night splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego, less than 11 hours after the astronauts exited the International Space Station. Their first stop was a hospital for an overnight stay.

“Obviously, we took this action (early return) because it was a serious medical condition,” NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman said following splashdown. “The astronaut in question is fine right now, in good spirits and going through the proper medical checks.”

It was an unexpected finish to a mission that began in August and left the orbiting lab with only one American and two Russians on board. NASA and SpaceX said they would try to move up the launch of a fresh crew of four; liftoff is currently targeted for mid-February.

NASA’s Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke were joined on the return by Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov. Officials have refused to identify the astronaut who developed the health problem last week or explain what happened, citing medical privacy.

While the astronaut was stable in orbit, NASA wanted them back on Earth as soon as possible to receive proper care and diagnostic testing. The entry and splashdown required no special changes or accommodations, officials said, and the recovery ship had its usual allotment of medical experts on board.

The astronauts emerged from the capsule, one by one, within an hour of splashdown. They were helped onto reclining cots and then whisked away for standard medical checks, waving to the cameras. Isaacman monitored the action from Mission Control in Houston, along with the crew’s families.

NASA decided a few days ago to take the entire crew straight to a San Diego-area hospital following splashdown and even practiced helicopter runs there from the recovery ship. The astronaut in question will receive in-depth medical checks before flying with the rest of the crew back to Houston on Friday, assuming everyone is well enough. Platonov’s return to Moscow was unclear.

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NASA sends 4 astronauts back to Earth in first medical evacuation

NASA stressed repeatedly over the past week that this was not an emergency. The astronaut fell sick or was injured on Jan. 7, prompting NASA to call off the next day’s spacewalk by Cardman and Fincke, and ultimately resulting in the early return. It was the first time NASA cut short a spaceflight for medical reasons. The Russians had done so decades ago.

Spacewalk preparations did not lead to the medical situation, Isaacman noted, but for anything else, “it would be very premature to draw any conclusions or close any doors at this point.” It’s unknown whether the same thing could have happened on Earth, he added.

The space station has gotten by with three astronauts before, sometimes even with just two. NASA said it will be unable to perform a spacewalk, even for an emergency, until the arrival of the next crew, which has two Americans, one French and one Russian astronaut.

Isaacman said it’s too soon to know whether the launch of station reinforcements will take priority over the agency’s first moonshot with astronauts in more than a half-century. The moon rocket moves to the pad this weekend at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, with a fueling test to be conducted by early next month. Until all that is completed, a launch date cannot be confirmed; the earliest the moon flyaround could take off is Feb. 6.

For now, NASA is working in parallel on both missions, with limited overlap of personnel, according to Isaacman.

“If it comes down to a point in time to where we have to deconflict between two human spaceflight missions, that is a very good problem to have at NASA,” he told reporters.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

It’s January. It’s cold. It’s easy to cocoon inside and skip eating out.

But I’d like to challenge you to visit your favorite restaurant this month — it’s often the hardest one for these small businesses.

If you need some inspiration, or if the holidays were hard on your pocketbook, my husband and I have been checking out some date-night specials around town.

Here are three places that we thoroughly enjoyed.

Crasqui

Farro risotto from Crasqui on St. Paul’s West Side. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)

The Wednesday date-night special at this fabulous Venezuelan restaurant gets you a three-course meal for $55 apiece. And bonus: Bottles of wine are half off.

Everything chef Soleil Ramirez is putting on a plate is worth your attention, so it’s best to order two different dishes from the choices offered for each course and share.

We started with both a silky, savory-sweet butternut squash soup and a fresh, bright arugula salad, and transitioned into crisp, corn-dough empanadas stuffed with melty cheese and black beans and a succulent goat-meat dumpling.

For our final course, we savored a tender, well-seasoned New York Strip steak served atop a rich, leek beurre blanc sauce with some melt-in-your-mouth potatoes and a veggie-packed, filling and nourishing farro risotto.

Though we definitely didn’t need dessert, I couldn’t resist one of my favorite sweet treats in town, cocotero — a coconut cake mixed with coconut flan and topped with an airy coconut cream. It’s worth every calorie.

Crasqui: 84 S. Wabasha St., Suite 3, St. Paul; 952-600-5578; crasquirestaurant.com

Tongue in Cheek

A fried chicken bun from Tongue in Cheek on St. Paul’s Payne Avenue. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)

This East Side gem is one of my favorite places to go when I’m craving vegetables, because chef Leonard Anderson has a way of making the most healthful plate so delicious you forget it’s good for you.

Bonus: They have an excellent date-night special that’s available every single day they’re open. For $99 you get two drinks, two teasers (tasty amuse-bouche-type bites), four shareable small plates and one dessert. It’s the perfect amount of food, and great for a date night because who doesn’t love to share with their sweetie?

We loved everything we ordered — from corn ribs (now out of season) to a fresh, deeply umami daikon pad thai to crisp smashed potatoes smothered in a zippy horseradish aioli and fried chicken in a steamed bun (you know, for balance).

It’s a choose-your-own-adventure dinner that is affordable enough to repeat regularly.

Tongue in Cheek: 989 Payne Ave., St. Paul; 651-888-6148; tongueincheek.biz

Whiskey Wednesday at Emmett’s Public House

Food and whiskey pairings on Whiskey Wednesday at Emmett’s Public House on St. Paul’s Grand Avenue. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)

OK, this one isn’t labeled as a date-night special, but it made such a fun night that I had to include it here.

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The restaurant pours four different whiskeys and pairs them with four small portions of food, served on a cute little shamrock board, all for just $40 apiece. The portions (both whiskey and food) are generous enough that we probably could have shared one order, too. As it was, we ended up bringing almost half of the food home.

We tried Connemara Peated Single Malt, Bushmills Black Bush, Bushmills 10-year Single Malt and Powers John’s Lane 12-year Single Pot Still, four whiskeys that we probably wouldn’t have ordered on our own. The restaurant gives you little cards for each whiskey, so you can suss out the tasting notes for each. In addition, you get a menu that tells you why each food pairs with each whiskey. Our favorite pairings were fish and chips with the Bushmills 10-year and a rich shepherd’s pie with the Powers John’s Lane.

When you go, the menu and the whiskeys will be different, which is part of the fun!

Emmett’s Public House: 701 Grand Ave., St. Paul; 651-225-8248; emmettspublichouse.com