America's Talking - Congressional Conflicts: Lawmakers dump Tylenol stock before autism controversy

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

(The Center Square) — Before President Trump warned pregnant women to avoid taking Tylenol, three members of Congress dumped stock in the Fortune 500 company that makes the popular painkiller -- sell-offs that saved them from incurring sizable losses, an investigation by The Center Square found. The lawmakers sold $1,001 to $15,000 each in Kenvue Inc., a Summit, New Jersey-based consumer products company that spun off from Johnson & Johnson two years ago. The sales are notable also because most investment analysts recommended that investors hold their shares. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Insider trading is illegal in this country, but some experts and some lawmakers say Congress is still doing it. Mark Striss-Hurse looked into it. He's the investigative reporter at the Center Square, covering D.C. and the Northeast, and I'm investigative editor at the Center Square. Mark, what did you find when you looked into some of the lawmakers who decided to dump stock right before the announcement that Tylenol might cause autism? I found that Scott Frankum, a Florida Republican, and two Democrats, Roe Kana from Silicon Valley, California, and Senator Sheldon White House of Rhode Island, sold their stock three months to a month before the controversy broke. The Trump administration's announcement that there is a link, there is a connection. There is a link between the use of Tylenol by pregnant mothers as well as autism. And President Trump urged pregnant women not to use Tylenol and the stock dropped by 10% within a few days.

And the stock overall has been down about 20% since June. It's the first time a lawmaker sold stock in the company, which is called Envu. So there's no direct proof that they knew about it a few months before or a month before the announcement came. So to be fair, they could have just been managing their stock. but you found that most advisors had said before the announcement to hold on to that stock and the fact that one of the lawmakers serves on a key committee. Tell us about that. Right. So investment analysts give their recommendations on stocks. And as of late as June, July and August, 11 of the 12 investment analysts, these are the big investment companies.

they said to hold on do Ken do this San New Jersey based Fortune 500 company, the company that makes Tylenol. It wasn't like they were saying that you should buy the stock, but they weren't saying you should sell it either. But these lawmakers sold the stock just the same. And it could be for many reasons, as you point out. Who knows what exactly happened. But it does raise questions because lawmakers have access to information

that most ordinary people don't, as far as when they were on their legislation. meeting of lobbyists and even constituents. So that could have happened too. So one of the lawmakers that you highlighted serves on a key committee. Yeah, so Scott Franklin, that's forward Republican. He is the vice chairman of a subcommittee that oversees the budget of the Food and Drug Administration, the federal agency that oversees Tylenol. It's kind of oversight of oversight.

So if anyone has access to information about Tylenol, he, he usually, be one of them. Maybe not the even if you think of a main person, but he'd be out there. Okay. Well, just again, to reiterate, we don't know if anything happened, but the timing is somewhat suspicious, according to the experts you talked to. What is the issue? Because for a while, for years, there wasn't even a prohibition. Then there was a law that was passed a few years ago. And now there's another law coming up. Tell us about the legislative debate and the legislative comings of the prevention, trying to prevent people from insider trading and Congress. Right. Well, it's a three-step process. There's a bit of a correction of what you said. In 1978, Congress passed the Ethics and Disclosure Act, which required members to report stocks within a year, within each year that they made the purchases or sales or exchanges. And then 2012, there was a Stock Act that came in, stopped trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, which President Obama signed in the law. And that requires that members report within 30 to 45 days.

And the wording on that is, may have some loopholes as I'm discovering, you and I are discovering now. But that's basically, if you sell stock and say meta, you've got to report it within 30 to 45 days or you get a fee or a fine, a small fine, but a fine none the same. But now there have been so many violations that Congress is considering banning this ownership of stock altogether and bonds and other equities, not neutral, funds because that's off the table. But Americans have said strongly in polls, recently at 86% in a University of Maryland poll, I believe from last year, that they do want members should not be able to even trade, even sell, buyer, exchange stocks in which they, as a number of the Congress. If they do that, they should have an blind trust, for example, or you trade mutual funds of that measure. And so, you know, there's been a lot of controversy that some lawmakers are

beating hedge funds every year by a huge percentage. I think the average person who has looks at their stock portfolio says I'm trading on public information. What's the impact to taxpayers and to voters? Why are they going to be upset about this kind of stuff? I think everybody was why agreement, maybe outside Congress, most of all, that it just makes Congress look bad, that they have access to private information that you and I don't have and that they're able to make money from it. And some lawmakers, like Dan Crenshaw, Texas Republican, is reportedly said in a podcast that trading stocks is one of the best ways that members can improve themselves. So that just makes Congress look corrupt. Congress has been in low opinion for years, not always, but,

so it's the actual fact on taxpayers. Their argument, I guess, is that members are looking out for their own interests. Congresswoman from New York, Alexandria Ocasio Ortez, he makes this argument that by being able to trade stocks on this private information that Congress is really serving themselves rather than the public, which is their job. Well, Mark recently joined the Center Square, and this is his first story, but I think he's going to be spending a lot of time looking at these disclosures and figuring out what these lawmakers are doing with their stock, whether they were reporting them properly, and whether they are the ones who are benefiting from it. Look at a story. It's called congressional conflicts on the center square. And keep on it and join us again for this podcast.