Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) — at 36, the youngest lawmaker in California’s congressional delegation — is the granddaughter of Irwin Jacobs, a co-founder and former chair of the technology giant Qualcomm, a venerable California concern whose $121 billion hostile takeover by Broadcom was blocked in 2018 by President Donald Trump, who cited national security risks.
The Congresswoman, who is reportedly worth north of $75 million personally and is often listed as one of the 15 richest people in Congress, does not play down her fortune — instead using it to project her ability to act as an uncompromised conduit for her constituents, independent of lobbying interests.
Jacobs is part of a bipartisan majority in Congress that supports a ban on stock trading by lawmakers while in office, where they are often privy to information that could unethically guide their investment choices. Criticism of the practice has targets in both parties, including liberal lioness Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and one-time MAGA exemplar Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
Jacobs, owning her wealth and using it to emphasize her support for the measure, wrote this week, “As one of the richest Members of Congress, if I can co-sponsor the bipartisan Restore Trust in Congress Act to ban Members of Congress (and their families) from owning and trading individual stocks, then every Member should too.”
As one of the richest Members of Congress, if I can co-sponsor the bipartisan Restore Trust in Congress Act to ban Members of Congress (and their families) from owning and trading individual stocks, then every Member should too. Let’s pass this bill!
— Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (@RepSaraJacobs) November 25, 2025
[NOTE: Jacobs is not unfamiliar with driving legislation that hits her own purse. In July the Congresswoman introduced the “Leveraging Estate Gains for America’s Children and Youth (LEGACY) Act”, a bill that proposes reducing to $14 million the threshold at which families with generational wealth pay taxes on their estates at death, currently set at $30 million. “I think of it as taxing trust-fund kids,” Jacobs said, including herself in the category. The measure would allocate a transfer of 15% of revenue generated from the estate tax to an Early Childhood Education Trust Fund.]