U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced legislation this week to block social media companies from selling advance access to posts by government officials, directly targeting Trump Media & Technology Group’s new “Truth API” service, which charges Wall Street firms up to $100,000 a month for early access to President Donald Trump’s Truth Social posts. Warner announced the bill in a pair of posts on X, the first published Monday night and the second Tuesday morning, framing the arrangement as a corrupt scheme that lets paying subscribers profit from government information before it reaches the general public.
In his first post, published at 8:26 PM on August 3, 2026, Warner wrote: “NEW: I just introduced a bill that would crack down on Trump’s new $100,000/month fast feed of his market-moving Truth Social posts. We must stand up against his rampant corruption.”
Warner followed up Tuesday morning with a second post at 9:46 AM on August 4, 2026, laying out the timeline and purpose of the bill in more detail: “This past weekend, Truth Social’s $100,000 subscription service for early access to Trump’s posts went live. Last night, I introduced a bill to crack down on this corruption and ensure all Americans have free and equal access to public announcements from government officials.”
The bill referenced in both posts is the No Preferential Release of Federal Information for Transactions Act, or NO PROFIT Act, which Warner’s office formally unveiled in a press release the same day. According to the release, the legislation would make it illegal for social media companies to sell prioritized access to accounts belonging to government employees that communicate material information, and would separately make it illegal for anyone to knowingly trade securities, commodities, swaps, or prediction-market contracts based on material information obtained through that kind of prioritized access.
Warner’s press release states plainly that the bill was written in direct response to Truth API going live over the weekend. “The president’s company selling prioritized access to the president’s market-moving posts is corrupt and erodes public confidence,” Warner said in the release. “Americans should have free and equal access to public statements made by U.S. government officials. My bill would make sure social media companies can’t sell prioritized access to government employees’ accounts and that someone can’t knowingly trade with information obtained through access to those accounts. Early access to government information should not be sold to whoever will pay the price.”
The press release also notes that Warner had already tried to head off the launch before it happened. Last month, he sent a letter to representatives of the financial services industry laying out his concerns with the Truth API announcement and urging firms to steer clear of the arrangement entirely. That earlier warning went unheeded, and Truth API launched as scheduled, prompting the legislative response now on the table.
Background: What Truth API Actually Sells
Truth API is a subscription data feed launched by Trump Media & Technology Group on August 1, 2026, giving paying customers a licensed, real-time stream of posts from the platform’s ten highest-ranking accounts, including the president’s own, delivered ahead of when those same posts appear to the general public. Interim CEO Kevin McGurn described the product at launch as offering “a direct, licensed, real-time feed of the platform’s most market-moving Truths” as part of a strategy to build recurring, high-margin revenue for the company.
The pricing structure drew immediate scrutiny. Reporting indicates the standard rate runs as high as $100,000 a month, with a discounted $60,000-a-month rate available to firms willing to sign three-year contracts, and that at least five firms had already signed on by the time the service went live. Analysts noted the multi-year discount was notable in itself, since it implied Trump Media expects the president’s posts to remain market-moving well beyond his current term.
Trump’s Truth Social posts have repeatedly moved markets in real time. Reporting has pointed to several examples from just the past month, including threats posted on the platform to raise tariffs on Canada, to unwind a nuclear energy agreement with Saudi Arabia, and to widen U.S. involvement in the conflict with Iran — each the kind of announcement that could translate into fast, high-value trades for anyone reading it seconds before the rest of the public.
Reaction from parts of the financial industry itself has been sharply critical. One Wall Street executive, granted anonymity by NPR out of concern over retaliation from the administration, called the arrangement “insane,” adding: “I can say for myself and 200 of my friends in finance, we’re not getting anywhere near this. In another administration, this would be considered criminal.”
Legal experts have raised similar concerns about the service’s footing under existing securities law. Renée Jones, a Boston College law professor and former senior official at the Securities and Exchange Commission, told NPR that selling privileged access to the president’s posts amounts to misappropriated information. “If the president’s Truth Social posts are being monetized, and if some people get special access to them, that’s misappropriated information,” Jones said.
Warner’s Earlier Warnings to Wall Street
Warner’s NO PROFIT Act did not emerge out of nowhere. Roughly two weeks before Truth API’s launch, on July 22, 2026, Warner sent letters to the heads of six major financial industry trade groups — the Bank Policy Institute, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the Managed Funds Association, the Financial Services Forum, the Principal Traders Group, and the American Bankers Association — urging their member firms to publicly reject the product before it went live.
In that letter, Warner wrote that the arrangement “presents a serious risk to market integrity, creates a clear and unacceptable pathway for corruption, and undermines public confidence in the fair dissemination of market-moving government information.”
At the time, banks appeared largely unmoved, at least publicly. Sources at two major banks told reporters their institutions had no plans to purchase the feed, with one noting that doing so would carry a distinct kind of political risk beyond an ordinary market-data subscription, since it would effectively mean paying for early access to a sitting government official’s policy statements.
Trump Media pushed back on the criticism directly. Company spokeswoman Shannon Devine characterized the pressure campaign as hypocritical, saying: “With no apparent sense of irony, certain politicians falsely accuse us of anti-free market behavior while pressuring businesses into boycotting a product.”
Other Democrats Have Also Raised Alarms
Warner is not the only senator to formally challenge the arrangement. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff sent a separate request to the SEC in late July asking the agency to investigate whether Truth API violates federal securities laws, including provisions covering insider trading and market manipulation. The senators described the service as an “outrageous abuse” of the presidency that could hand Wall Street firms an unfair trading advantage over ordinary investors.
Ethics attorneys have also weighed in on the conflict-of-interest questions raised by the president continuing to hold a financial stake in the company whose product profits directly from his own government-related statements. Virginia Canter of the Democracy Defenders Fund noted that the president has an obligation to convey information to the public openly, arguing he is instead “funneling it through a private channel in which he has a private interest as one of its largest shareholders.”
Securities filings made public in December 2024 show Trump transferred what was then a roughly $4 billion stake in Trump Media into a trust controlled by his son, Donald Trump Jr., who reportedly held sole voting and investment power over the stake. Critics have pointed to that arrangement as evidence the president retains a substantial financial interest in the company benefiting from Truth API subscriptions, even if the shares themselves sit in a trust.
What the NO PROFIT Act Would Do
According to the one-pager and section-by-section summary released alongside the bill, the NO PROFIT Act would take several specific steps. It would stop social media platforms from selling preferential access to covered government communications, a category that includes posts from the president, members of Congress, federal judges and justices, and their employees and family members. It would also bar anyone who knows or reasonably should know they received material information through preferential access from trading on it before that information becomes available through a platform’s standard, no-cost interface.
The bill’s trading prohibition is written broadly, covering securities, commodities, futures, options, swaps, and prediction-market contracts, so that firms could not sidestep the restriction simply by using a different financial instrument. It would also prohibit passing prioritized information along to someone else likely to trade on it, closing off an obvious workaround. At the same time, the bill preserves legitimate uses of expedited access, including emergency and public-safety communications, along with ordinary algorithmic ranking and personalized feeds.
Enforcement would be split between two sets of regulators. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission would enforce the trading-related prohibitions using their existing civil-penalty authorities, with potential fines of up to three times the profit made or loss avoided. Separately, the Department of Justice would be responsible for enforcing the ban on platforms selling preferential access in the first place, with violating platforms facing a penalty equal to the total revenue earned from the prohibited conduct.
As of this week, the NO PROFIT Act has not received a Senate floor vote or a formal response from the White House or Trump Media, and it remains unclear whether any Republican senators will co-sponsor the measure. Trump Media shares have fallen sharply over the past year, trading around $9.66 as of late July and giving the company a market value of roughly $2.7 billion, a decline that has fueled speculation about how much revenue the company is actually counting on Truth API to generate going forward.