Julie Johnson Filed Dozens of Late Stock Reports. Her 2 Trades Both Beat the Market.

NOTUS reported dozens of late STOCK Act filings from the Texas Democrat who just lost her seat. Blind Trust tracked her two most recent trades — Abbott and Accenture, both sold May 12 — and both cleared with positive alpha.

By Beltway Alpha · Edited by Sean Baptiste · Published 2026-08-07

NOTUS reported Thursday that Rep. Julie Johnson of Texas's 32nd district violated the STOCK Act by filing dozens of late stock disclosures, the kind of transparency failure the law was specifically designed to prevent. Johnson lost her reelection bid earlier this year, but the paper trail she left behind is still very much alive. Blind Trust tracked two trades she filed in the last 90 days. Both were sales. Both cleared on the same day. And both, per the alpha record, beat the market.

The Violation

The STOCK Act requires members of Congress to disclose stock trades within 45 days. It passed in 2012 with bipartisan fanfare. The penalty for a late filing is $200 per trade — which, for a member sitting on the House Committee on Homeland Security while trading a portfolio, works out to somewhere between a parking ticket and a rounding error.

NOTUS found dozens of late disclosures from Johnson. Not one. Not a handful. Dozens. The law has exactly one enforcement mechanism, and it cost her less than a dinner at a Capitol Hill steakhouse each time she tripped it.

Members are required to disclose. They are not required to divest, recuse, abstain, or blush.

What Blind Trust Knows

Here's what Blind Trust knows about Johnson's financial record in the last 90 days: two trades, both filed on the same date, May 12, 2026. Both sales. Both in the $1,001 to $15,000 range, which is the disclosure band Congress designed to be as uninformative as legally possible.

The first sale: Abbott Laboratories ($ABT). The second: Accenture ($ACN). Neither ticker sits in the jurisdiction of any committee Johnson served on. Homeland Security covers border enforcement and emergency management — not pharmaceutical devices or global consulting firms. No committee-overlap angle exists here. They're just trades.

What makes them notable: both beat the S&P 500 in the 30 days after the sale. The Accenture sale generated 2.3 percent in 30-day alpha. The Abbott sale added 0.2 percent. Across both scored trades, Johnson ran a 2-for-2 record with a mean 30-day alpha of 1.3 percent. Paired with a disclosure record that NOTUS describes as spanning dozens of late filings, the question of whether Johnson was in a rush to file — or simply not bothered to — writes itself.

The Bluesky Reaction

Johnson's stock activity had already become a campaign issue before NOTUS published. Social chatter, running at 14 posts on Bluesky as of Thursday, includes references to her Homeland Security committee seat and her trading activity in the same breath. One post noted her personal investments became a major issue in her unsuccessful reelection bid. Another described her as a multi-millionaire who used her position to trade stocks with defense exposure. A third suggested she retire rather than run again in 2028.

Bluesky is not a court. The disclosures just took longer to arrive than the law required.

The Votes

Johnson's recent vote record doesn't generate a conflict-of-interest angle against her trades. Abbott and Accenture don't overlap with any bill she voted on. The vote-trade overlap table, per Blind Trust's data, is empty.

Still, the vote record has context worth noting. On July 21, Johnson voted Yea on the Main Street Capital Access Act, which passed. On July 14 she voted Nay on the Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act, which passed anyway. Neither bill lands in Homeland Security's remit.

She also voted Nay on an NDAA amendment that would have authorized cleared investment professionals to assess potential investment opportunities through a Defense Department program — a provision that sounds, at minimum, like something a member who trades stocks might have an opinion about. That amendment failed.

The Actual Problem

The STOCK Act passed because Congress decided that members trading stocks while legislating created an appearance problem significant enough to require sunlight. The disclosure requirement was the minimum viable version of accountability. Dozens of late filings are the minimum viable version of ignoring it.

Johnson is no longer in Congress after losing her primary. The trades are now historical. But the NOTUS report drops on a day when her name is trending, when her stock activity is already embedded in the narrative of how she lost, and when Bluesky posts are circulating about whether she should try again in 2028.

The receipts are public. Make of them what you make of them.

Blind Trust — Congress trades. We keep the box score.

Blind Trust tracks every public stock-trade disclosure filed by a member of the United States Congress under the STOCK Act of 2012. Each trade is scored on a 0–100 Heat Index, flagged when its timing overlaps a committee vote or sector-moving news event, and surfaced in a daily editorial digest under the Beltway Alpha byline.

Every receipt on this site links to a public filing. We don't have anonymous sources. We don't write "sources tell us." If a chart can't be pointed at — a Periodic Transaction Report, a roll-call vote, a committee roster, a published poll — we don't make the claim.

What you can do here

News desk — daily editorial pieces on the highest-scoring trades, vote-trade overlaps, and STOCK Act enforcement gaps. Articles cite the underlying filings by hyperlink.
Power Rankings — every current House and Senate member, ranked by trade win rate, average alpha, and Heat Index counts over the trailing 12 months.
Roll-call votes — 119th Congress vote record overlaid with stock-trade activity around each vote.
STOCK Act late filers — disclosures filed past the 45-day window mandated by the STOCK Act, ranked by gap length and frequency.
Supreme Court justices — annual financial disclosures for the nine sitting US Supreme Court justices.
Fantasy Congress — free fantasy-sports game where you draft a roster of US Congress members and score on their real public STOCK Act disclosures. No real-money wagers.

How the Heat Index works

The Heat Index combines five inputs: (1) the 30-day forward alpha of the traded ticker versus the S&P 500, (2) the politician's committee-jurisdiction overlap with the company's sector, (3) the recency of a relevant roll-call vote, (4) the size of the disclosed trade range, and (5) the gap between trade date and disclosure date. Blazing trades score 70+. Warm trades score 40–69. Cold trades score below 40. Full scoring methodology →

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Julie Johnson Filed Dozens of Late Stock Reports. Her 2 Trades Both Beat the Market.

NOTUS reported dozens of late STOCK Act filings from the Texas Democrat who just lost her seat. Blind Trust tracked her two most recent trades — Abbott and Accenture, both sold May 12 — and both cleared with positive alpha.