Rep. Sam Liccardo, D-Calif., is probing whether the nation’s top financial regulators are examining a number of trades placed moments before President Donald Trump provided a major update on the Iran war.

In a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig being sent Friday and shared exclusively with CNBC, Liccardo said he wrote to “express alarm over recent reporting that indicates large trades were made on crude oil prices and S&P 500 E-mini Futures right before the President announced action, or lack thereof, in Iran.”

“The timing indicates bets were placed by those with advance knowledge of the President’s action, strongly suggesting illicit trading on insider information, in violation of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936, and the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012,” Liccardo wrote.

A Reuters report on April 8 said that a major bet on oil was placed just hours before a U.S.-Iran ceasefire, resulting in a lucrative payout.

“This activity marks the latest in a series of well-timed, large-volume trades made right before the President announced the next actions of the United States in the Iran war,” said Liccardo, a member of the House Committee on Financial Services, which oversees securities and exchanges.

Several other trades amid the Iran war effort have prompted scrutiny. On March 23, a flurry of activity in S&P 500 e-Mini futures on CME recorded a sharp and isolated jump in volume. A similar trend emerged in oil markets.

The trades came about 15 minutes before Trump posted to Truth Social that the U.S. and Iran had held talks and that he was postponing expected attacks on civilian infrastructure. The market rallied after that and oil futures tumbled.

U.S. regulators are now reportedly probing the trades, with the CFTC leading the effort. Liccardo, in the letter, urged the SEC to also open an investigation.

Liccardo also took aim at prediction markets, saying “astoundingly well-timed large wartime bets made on prediction markets tied to equities trading, and on equities options prior to President Trump’s tariff announcements, strongly suggests a pattern of insider corruption.”

Liccardo said that a recent White House memo instructing officials not to partake in insider trading activity on prediction markets “provides little comfort.”

“No one in federal service needs to be ‘reminded’ of the blatant illegality of personal financial enrichment from their exploitation of confidential information garnered through public service,” he wrote.

Liccardo asked Atkins whether the SEC has opened an investigation into the…

President Donald Trump on Tuesday stepped up a feud with Democratic leaders of Maryland, Virginia and Washington over a massive sewage spill into the Potomac River, and it’s turning into a messy political battle.

More than 200 million gallons of wastewater gushed into the Potomac in recent weeks. A pipe collapsed in January on the Potomac Interceptor sewage line alongside the Clara Barton Parkway in Maryland, just outside of the District of Columbia. The pipe and the sewage line are managed by DC Water, an independent utility that serves the capital area and is managing the disaster.

Trump on Tuesday demanded regional Democratic leaders ask him for help in fixing the spill, seemingly backtracking after he announced on Monday that his administration would be taking over the recovery effort.

“The two Governors and the Mayor of D.C. must act, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, referring to Democratic Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, also a Democrat. “If they can’t do the job, they have to call me and ask, politely, to get it fixed. The Federal Government is not at all involved with what has taken place, but we can fix it.”

Trump on Monday singled out Moore in another Truth Social post on the spill, saying it is a “result of the Gross Mismanagement of Local Democrat Leaders, particularly, Governor Wes Moore, of Maryland.”

The sewage spat comes amid a series of feuds the president is waging with state executives, especially Moore, who is seen as a potential Democratic presidential contender in 2028. It’s also the latest example of Trump leveraging the bully pulpit of the presidency to bludgeon his political rivals, including Moore.

Moore responded in a post on X to Trump’s post saying the spill is “basically contained” and asking the White House to instead help with emergency funding to help the state recover from flooding last year.

Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for Moore, said it’s Trump, not Maryland, who is responsible for the Potomac Interceptor and accused the president of shirking responsibility.

“Since the last century, the federal government has been responsible for the Potomac Interceptor, which is the origin of the sewage leak,” Moussa said in a statement. “Apparently the Trump administration hadn’t gotten the memo that they’re actually supposed to be in charge here. Where the president has failed to act, Maryland has played its part to protect residents, protect drinking water, and ensure…

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., on Tuesday slammed Democrats for conditioning Homeland Security Department funding on a requirement that federal immigration agents must obtain judicial warrants to carry out key enforcement activities.

Johnson, in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” called that proposal “completely unworkable.” But it’s Democrats’ top demand for funding DHS, which is set to lose funding by the week’s end if Congress can’t pass an appropriations bill.

Johnson said he hopes Congress can pass another stopgap measure to buy time, but suggested Democrats have been unreasonable in negotiations so far.

“They want to defund DHS just like they want to defund police,” Johnson said of his political opponents. DHS includes the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, whose deportation efforts have grown especially controversial after an aggressive surge in Minnesota stirred national unrest.

Democrats “want to make it almost impossible for ICE to do its job,” Johnson, a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said.

“Of the 10 demands, probably the most obnoxious is they want to require judicial warrants, which is completely unworkable,” he said.

“Our immigration laws have always been enforced by the executive branch, through administrative law judges. We have, again, literally millions of cases that need to be adjudicated. Our Article Three courts simply can’t handle that, and Democrats know it,” Johnson said.

Democrats have rejected arguments that requiring judge-signed warrants to enter private property — as opposed to administrative warrants issued by federal agency officials — would overburden the system.

The White House sent a counterproposal to Democrats’ demands, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in a statement late Monday called it “incomplete and insufficient.”

Johnson also defended ICE agents wearing masks and obscuring their faces, accusing Democrats of wanting extreme political activists to “dox” agents.

“Democrats want to make sure that ICE can’t use masks. Why is that? Because they want their activists to be able to dox them and put their families at risk.”

He warned that a shutdown would cause real harm, noting that the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Transportation Security Administration would be defunded if DHS appropriations lapsed. Other parts of the department are already funded through previous legislation.

“They’re really playing with fire here,” Johnson said.