WASHINGTON — As recently as last year, Rep. Julie Johnson bought and sold stocks from Palantir Technologies, a contractor with the federal government that has been key to the Trump administration’s efforts to track and deport undocumented immigrants.
Johnson, a Farmers Branch Democrat who was elected in 2024 to represent Texas’ 32rd Congressional District, bought Palantir stock days before President Donald Trump took office for his second term on Jan. 15, 2025, and again on Feb. 12, 2025, according to congressional financial disclosure reports. She sold her shares a few months later in April and June of 2025, the reports show, and for each sale she reported earning between $1,001 and $15,000.
In a statement to the Texas Tribune, Johnson said the stocks were managed through independent third parties and that she started divesting her holdings in March, and that all Palantir holdings were sold by June.
“I came to Congress after years as a small-business owner and attorney with complex, pre-existing financial holdings,” Johnson said. “The law did not require me to divest — but I chose to do so because earning the trust of my constituents matters more than personal convenience.”
Johnson is part of the House Homeland Security Committee, along with its subcommittees on Border Security and Enforcement and Emergency Management and Technology. In her role as vice ranking member, she urged Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to follow the Constitution in the department’s deportation efforts in May, demanding transparency about the Dallas Police Department’s cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in August and pressed Noem again in December about ICE’s conduct in Dallas.
After federal agents fatally shot a second American citizen in Minnesota this weekend, Johnson spoke in opposition to the House Department of Homeland Security funding bill.
“I cannot support funding for a department that has shown repeated disregard for the Constitution, the rule of law and the safety of the people it’s supposed to protect,” she said on the House floor on Thursday. “ICE is terrorizing the American people.”
Johnson is running in a Democratic primary race in District 33, against former Rep. Colin Allred, after Texas GOP lawmakers drew her out of her current district under the state’s new congressional map. She was previously a Texas state representative from 2019 to the start of her congressional term in 2025, when she succeeded Allred in District 32.
No other member of the current Texas congressional delegation has traded Palantir’s stock, according to investment research platform Quiver Quantitative. Palantir’s stock spiked in 2025 and has been traded by members of Congress in states outside Texas, though of the 213 Democrats currently serving in the House, Johnson is one of only six to have traded Palantir stock since 2021, according to Quiver Quantitative.
Palantir’s government contracts nearly doubled between 2024 and 2025, from $541 million to $970 million as the Trump administration directed ICE to ramp up its deportation efforts, according to government spending data. Around the same time, ICE received a huge funding boost from Trump’s major tax legislation bill, which was enacted in July.
A Dec. 3 Washington Post report showed that Palantir was assisting ICE with tracking undocumented immigrants and deporting them. The company also built the agency a custom desktop and mobile app in 2014, which ICE has since stopped using, and a platform that allowed ICE to access federally and privately owned databases containing individuals’ information, according to a September 2025 Guardian article.
Johnson, once one of Congress’ most prolific traders, started divesting from all or parts of her 59 stock holdings last summer, the financial disclosure reports show. Among Texas congressional lawmakers, she’s made the second-highest number of trades behind Rep. Michael McCaul, amassing $4.24 million, according to Capitol Trades, a database created by a German financial data company called 2iQ Research.
She’s since been outspoken against members of Congress trading stocks, including proposing an amendment on Jan. 14 that would have required members of Congress to divest themselves of all their holdings while they are serving in Congress.
Raihan Alam, a doctoral student at the University of California San Diego whoco-authored a study on how congressional stock trading erodes public trust in members of Congress, said there are limited guardrails to prevent members of Congress from using their knowledge and unique position to financially benefit through the stock market.
“Even losing money from doing this still impacts your perception of trust,” he said. “It's not like people are jealous about or resenting members of Congress earning a lot of money. It's about what that process implies for a democracy.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has drawn scrutiny due to her and her husband’s stock portfolios, which have historically outperformed the S&P 500 by a significant margin. Her retirement drew bipartisan calls to introduce legislation with tighter regulations on stock trading, including requiring members of Congress to put their investment in blind trusts so they have no knowledge of what stocks are being traded on their behalf while in office.
House Republicans advanced a bill last week that would bar lawmakers from buying individual stocks, but would allow members of Congress to keep their stock and continue selling it with seven to 14 days notice. It drew criticism from Democrats for having loopholes that would still allow insider trading.
Delaney Marsco, ethics director at nonpartisan legal organization Campaign Legal Center, said this effort could prevent meaningful reform because it doesn’t do enough to prevent conflicts of interest.
“People who, like me, have been working on this issue for years and years, are not happy with this bill,” she said. “It is not a good bill. It is essentially window dressing.”
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.