{"id":187123,"date":"2026-03-02T19:17:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T19:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/187123\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T19:17:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T19:17:07","slug":"how-the-issue-of-stock-trading-became-central-to-a-competitive-texas-primary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/187123\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Issue of Stock Trading Became Central to a Competitive Texas Primary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colin Allred and Julie Johnson were once something like political allies. In 2024, Allred, a U.S. congressman, endorsed Johnson<\/a>, a state representative, to succeed him in filling the Dallas-area seat he was giving up to run for U.S. Senate. Things have changed. Allred lost his bid for Senate, dropped out of a second one in 2026, and is seeking to reenter the U.S. House. Now vying for the same congressional seat, he and Johnson are locked in a bitter feud. In early February, Allred released a TV ad<\/a> taking aim at his opponent: \u201cWashington corruption is everywhere you look.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was referencing Johnson\u2019s stock trading while in Congress. Johnson, in response to Allred\u2019s attacks, has emphasized that she divested last year and now supports banning congressional stock trading entirely. The conflict shows how the politics of the issue have shifted rapidly in the past few years, leaving both parties rushing to keep pace.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Washington, support for banning congressional stock trading has transcended party lines. More than three-quarters of House Democrats have signed on to a discharge petition<\/a> to force a vote on a congressional stock trading ban. President Donald Trump called for Congress to pass the GOP\u2019s version of the proposal, which is narrower, during his State of the Union address Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The momentum has been building since 2012, when Congress passed the STOCK Act and began requiring members to file disclosures of their stock trades within thirty days. The momentum accelerated over recent years due to the increased volatility of the market and key events that shed unflattering light on members\u2019 trades, such as the COVID-19 pandemic<\/a>. \u201cEvery time a member of Congress follows the law and discloses their trade, the public is going to ask the question, \u2018Why did you trade that stock then?\u2019\u200a\u201d said Kedric Payne, the ethics director at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan government-watchdog group. \u201cAnd it may be a very innocent answer\u2014like they read about something in The Wall Street Journal\u2014but there also is the possibility that they received info [from being] in Congress or in some other negative way that makes the public not trust their elected officials.\u201d<\/p>\n

Allred\u2019s record on the matter also provides an illustration of how the politics have changed: In 2022, long before the issue went mainstream, he declined to sign a letter<\/a> in support of banning stock trading by members of Congress, according to an email obtained by Texas Monthly. \u201cLet\u2019s stay off the letter regarding stock trading for now,\u201d Allred wrote to his staff on January 19, 2022. \u201cI don\u2019t want to antagonize the Speaker.\u201d The Speaker at the time was Nancy Pelosi, who has received perhaps the most scrutiny<\/a>\u00a0 since the issue took off.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Allred\u2019s campaign argues that he has been consistent in believing members should not trade stocks. Nearly two years before sending that email, he posted an article on Twitter<\/a> about the controversy surrounding North Carolina Senator Richard Burr\u2019s stock trades during the pandemic, writing, \u201cAnd this is why I don\u2019t own any stocks.\u201d In 2024 he cosponsored legislation<\/a> to require lawmakers to divest their holdings or move them into qualified blind trusts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Allred and Johnson are facing each other in a primary due to a complex set of circumstances. Republican state lawmakers redrew Johnson\u2019s current district, the Thirty-Second, to be a GOP stronghold, so she\u2019s instead seeking reelection in the adjacent Dallas\u2013Fort Worth Thirty-Third District, where the incumbent, Democratic Congressman Marc Veasey, decided not to run for reelection.<\/p>\n

In Johnson, Allred had a helpful foil on the issue of stock trading, given that she was one of the most prolific traders in Congress<\/a> until recently, according to online news outlet NOTUS, which said she was \u201cin the top 2% of traders in all of Congress.\u201d He wasted little time highlighting how she traded stocks from Palantir Technologies<\/a>, a key player in President Donald Trump\u2019s migrant-deportation efforts, despite her rhetoric against Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Johnson has called ICE<\/a> a \u201crogue agency\u201d and an \u201cexistential threat\u201d to the country under Trump.<\/p>\n

She has emphasized<\/a> that her assets were managed by independent third parties and that she started fully divesting her portfolio in March 2025. But Allred has continued to press the issue<\/a>, questioning her divestment timeline and the genuineness of her commitment to banning stock trading by members of Congress.<\/p>\n

In response to a list of questions for this story, Johnson reiterated that she began the divestment process in March 2025 and that she \u201cwas divested from all accounts that were actively trading\u201d by the end of the year. The divestment included more than four hundred individual holdings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI came to Congress after years as a small business owner and attorney, with investments built over time,\u201d Johnson told Texas Monthly. \u201cThe law did not require me to divest, but I chose to because earning the trust of my constituents matters. You can nitpick the timeline. You can\u2019t argue about the result.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson cosponsored<\/a> the current Democratic proposal to ban congressional stock trading in December and sought to further shore up her credentials on January 14, when she introduced an amendment<\/a> to strengthen the GOP proposal. A week later, she signed on to the discharge petition seeking a floor vote on the issue. Hers was the fifty-second signature among Democrats; the number is now up to 184.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an issue on which her thinking has apparently evolved since her days as a state legislator. In 2023, she authored a bill in the Texas House to streamline reporting requirements for members\u2019 personal financial statements, including by eliminating requirements to report certain information about stock trades. The legislation passed the House<\/a> with bipartisan opposition from 47 members. It died in the Senate.<\/p>\n

Johnson stood by her motivation for introducing the bill in her responses to Texas Monthly, calling the Texas reporting system \u201cconvoluted and overly complicated.\u201d But she added that she has \u201cdetermined the most straightforward way to remove any conflicts at the federal level is a full ban.\u201d
Fast-forward to today, and Allred believes he has a much simpler case to make. \u201cColin Allred refused to trade a single stock during his six years in Congress,\u201d Allred campaign spokeswoman Sandhya Raghavan told Texas Monthly, \u201crejected corporate PAC money, and cosponsored legislation to ban stock trading by members of Congress altogether.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Next<\/p>\n