James Talarico did not wander into this fight by accident. As a Texas House Democrat, he opposed the state’s effort to keep sexually oriented performances away from minors, headlined a Pride festival that billed an 11-year-old boy as “the absolute cutest & youngest of our drag performers,” told colleagues that denying a child’s “gender identity” is “abusive for sure,” voted against the ban on pediatric transition procedures, and, when asked on camera for his favorite Texas drag queen, named one who publicly describes himself as a performer who works with children. That is not a side issue in a Senate race. It is the record.
He is now asking Texas to forget it. The new lines (two sexes, no surgeries on minors, maybe no males in girls’ sports if fairness is at stake) arrived only after the clips started circulating. A minister at his own church has already explained what those lines are for.
Talarico is a former public-school teacher, Presbyterian seminarian, and state representative from the Austin area running against Attorney General Ken Paxton for the U.S. Senate. He has spent the campaign sanding the edges off his House record of votes and sermons. The votes came first. The cleanup tour came second. The church tape came third.
He fought the law that cited Gays Against Groomers:
Texas SB 12 (2023) never used the word “drag” in its final text. It restricted “sexually oriented performances” (nudity or sexual conduct appealing to the prurient interest) on public property and anywhere a minor is present. Criminal penalties attached to performers; civil penalties attached to venues. Family-friendly lip-sync without the statutory sexual conduct was not the target. Child-facing sexualized performance was.
That is the distinction Gays Against Groomers has drawn for years: adult nightlife is not the same thing as putting children in the audience, or on the stage.
Talarico did not treat it that way. In May 2023 he said Texas produces “some of the best drag queens in the nation” and that he “didn’t want any legislation to target them or hurt that industry.” After explicit drag language was stripped from an earlier draft, he voted “present” at the urging of the House LGBTQ Caucus rather than support the child-protection version that remained. To us, the political meaning was obvious: protect the industry, ignore all boundaries.
The same year, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s opinion in the West Texas A&M drag-show case Spectrum WT v. Wendler cited Gays Against Groomers for the point Talarico’s side prefers to erase: a large share of gay people oppose drag-queen story hours and drag shows involving children. The court noted that when children are in the audience, the First Amendment calculation changes. Gays Against Groomers was in the federal record as evidence that “LGBTQ” is not a monolith and that child-facing drag is not settled community dogma. Talarico’s project was to treat that dissent as the problem.
He shared a stage with an 11-year-old drag performer.
On June 26, 2021, Taylor PRIDE held a fundraiser at Texas Beer Company in Taylor, Texas. Promotional copy named two headliners in the same breath: State Rep. James Talarico and “the absolute cutest & youngest of our drag performers,” an 11-year-old boy performing as Kween Kee Kee. The child was also slated to host “Kee Kee Storytime” with Pride-themed crafts for other children. Adult drag acts were on the same program. Photos and attendee video later showed the boy in a dress, heavy makeup, and a blonde wig, including a splits routine billed as part of a “Youth Drag Show.” Attendee video showed the performance. Talarico spoke and posed with attendees. His campaign has not treated this as something that requires an explanation.
That is the kind of child exploitation through drag culture SB 12 was written to address. Talarico showed up for it, then spent years fighting the statute meant to stop the next one.
His favorite drag queen “works with children.”
In September 2026, at a campaign stop, a man told Talarico he had been there when Talarico “defended the drags,” then asked: “Who’s your favorite drag queen in Texas?” The campaign-stop clip circulated widely.
No pause. “Oh, my gosh. Probably Alyssa Edwards.” The original exchange was captured on video.
Alyssa Edwards is Justin Johnson, a RuPaul’s Drag Race performer who runs Beyond Belief Dance Company in Mesquite and has described himself as a drag performer who works with children. He has advocated for youth drag, shared stages with his dance students at World Pride, and was featured in Netflix’s Dancing Queen. Reporting on the series noted he called a 10-year-old male student his “mini-me,” with the child dressed as Edwards. After Talarico named him, Republicans and Paxton treated the clip as a character exhibit. Edwards answered with an open letter defending his studio and faith. The exchange is not complicated: the Democrat running statewide can instantly name a child-facing drag act as his favorite, and he is proud of it.
The theological and legislative paper trail:
“God is nonbinary.” On October 14, 2021, opposing HB 25 (the bill requiring school sports by sex on the birth certificate), he told the House that Genesis uses masculine and feminine Hebrew words for God, therefore “God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary.” He added that trans children are “perfect,” “beautiful,” and “sacred,” and that using scripture against the bill was a “special kind of sin.” He later called the line “intentionally provocative” and said some remarks “missed the mark.” The original speech was a floor argument against a girls’-sports bill.
Six sexes. In the same period he argued that modern science recognizes multiple chromosomal sex variations and used that to attack a binary sports rule. He has since said he knows there are two sexes and that a small number of people have chromosomal abnormalities who deserve dignity. The later remarks were captured on video. The walk-back arrived when he needed statewide voters.
Denial as abuse. In a 2019 committee hearing he said that denying a child’s gender identity is “incredibly harmful” and “abusive for sure,” and he opposed language that would have ruled that denial out as abuse under Texas law. That is the social-transition pipeline in legislative form: parental skepticism reframed as maltreatment.
SB 14. In 2023 he voted no on the ban on gender-transition procedures for minors. The law prohibits interventions that attempt to transition a child’s sex as determined by sex organs, chromosomes, and endogenous profiles. Talarico now says he opposes surgeries on minors and that he backed amendments to narrow the bill; his current position has also circulated on video. He also said at the time that the ban “infuriates me” and that the fight was “about discriminating against people who are transgender.” The remarks circulated again during the campaign. He was one of 56 House members who voted against final passage. He later fundraised at a Pride event featuring a surgeon who had performed female-to-male chest surgeries on minors before the ban.
Lone Star Scandal
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Sports. He voted against requiring athletes to compete by birth-certificate sex, then in 2026 said he opposes trans-identifying males in girls’ sports “if it endangers safety or fairness.” The sports record became a campaign issue. Same pattern: the vote was the policy; the caveat is the campaign.
“Pregnant individual.” A 2023 abortion bill he worked used “pregnant individual” in place of “woman.” The Austin document provides additional public-record context. Small wording. Same project: erase sex in statute.
The Capitol kids. On a 2023 podcast, asked what he loved besides family and friends, he answered: “the trans children who showed up yesterday at the state Capitol to advocate for their humanity.” The podcast clip later resurfaced. That clip is why this race is a referendum on whether Texas will keep importing this ideology into schools, clinics, and children’s entertainment.
The walk-backs are a part of the campaign makeover.
Treat every new Talarico line on sex, surgeries, and sports as temporary until proven otherwise. That is not a Republican talking point. It is what a minister at his own church said on camera. The undercover footage circulated separately.
Rev. Babs Miller, Minister to Parish at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin (Talarico’s longtime congregation, where she has known him since childhood), was recorded by an undercover Daily Wire journalist after he began telling voters he supports a national ban on gender-transition surgeries for minors and would block trans-identifying males from girls’ sports when safety or fairness is at stake. His campaign comments were also circulated. Miller did not celebrate a change of heart. She treated it as bad advice he should not be taking.
Her words:
“He’s getting some advice that I don’t think he should be following.”
“I can guarantee you that once he gets elected, he’ll change his tune back to where he was.”
On the suggestion that he has to “play this game”: “That’s what his campaign has convinced him of.”
“The Democratic Party is backing off on their stances on trans and all of this, and so his staff is encouraging him to kind of do the same thing, just for the next 50 weeks, whatever days.”
“I think it’s bad advice, personally, but if it helps him win, OK.”
That is the confession. Not from Talarico’s mouth. From the church that formed him, describing the Senate makeover as a staff-driven pause measured in days until the votes are counted.
Commentator @amuse put the tape into the race in those terms: “James Talarico’s (CIS) minister Rev. Babs Miller admits that Talarico has confided that his flip flops on gender, trans surgery for kids, and other far-left issues are only temporary. Talarico is merely lying to get elected.” The caption goes further than Miller’s recorded verbs (“confided,” “lying”), but the substance of the video is the same: the new positions are for the ballot, and the old ones are waiting on the other side. Paxton’s campaign said the quiet part out loud. The pastor “admitted what everyone already knew.” Paxton also responded publicly to the footage.
So when Talarico now says he “knows there are two sexes,” that he “absolutely” supports a national surgery ban for minors, or that he opposes males in girls’ sports if fairness is threatened, put Miller’s guarantee next to the quote. The new positions have circulated alongside his earlier remarks. The House votes, the Taylor Pride child-drag headline, the “God is nonbinary” floor speech, the “abusive for sure” line, and “the trans children” he said he loved are the record. The Fox-friendly cleanup is what his church says the campaign talked him into for a few dozen days.
An exclusive report from The Daily Wire shows Talarico on camera, saying that his transgender views have not changed: “The way I fought for trans kids in the legislature is the way I will fight for them in the U.S. Senate. My position hasn’t changed,” he said confidently. Talarico also raised money in New York City with leaders of the Human Rights Campaign. Several hosts of this week’s fundraiser currently serve on the board of HRC or its foundation, which advocates for access to transgender hormones and surgeries for minors. HRC represents one of the most powerful lobbying arms of the gender industry and has led public campaigns against our organization over our opposition to injecting children with drugs that can cause serious side effects. Its advocacy has consistently prioritized these pediatric interventions over the evidence-based concerns raised by groups like ours.
What AG Ken Paxton did instead:
Gays Against Groomers News Network’s own reporting shows that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is the reality check Talarico can’t preach his way around.
Paxton enforced SB 14. Our team also reported on the enforcement. He sued providers and systems accused of continuing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on minors, including children as young as nine, and of billing Medicaid and CHIP after the ban took effect. He pursued physicians accused of falsifying records or relabeling the same drugs under other codes. Clinics closed. Gays Against Groomers documented clinic closures. Doctors lost the ability to keep the conveyor belt running in Texas.
Child Gender Clinics IMPLODE Across America
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Days after Paxton announced on August 5 that his $10 million settlement with Texas Children’s Hospital had been formally executed, the hospital’s top lawyer, Afsheen Davis, was scheduled to host a Houston fundraiser for James Talarico. The fundraiser had been advertised at a Texas Trial Lawyers Association event; her husband, Josh Davis, sits on the association’s executive committee and runs a personal-injury law firm. The settlement, first announced May 15, requires Texas Children’s to pay $10 million, end prohibited interventions, terminate the privileges of multiple physicians, and establish what Paxton’s office describes as the nation’s first detransition clinic. Texas Children’s denied violating the law, despite mutilating hundreds of kids for profit.
Texas AG Goes NUCLEAR!
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Davis was not just another hospital employee. According to Texas Children’s own biography, she oversees the hospital system’s legal, risk, compliance, audit, and governance functions. Dr. Eithan Haim, the Texas Children’s whistleblower who exposed the hospital’s continued provision of pediatric gender-transition treatments, has alleged in a civil lawsuit that Davis participated in the hospital’s response to his disclosures and was lead counsel when Texas Children’s met with federal agents in connection with the investigation that ultimately targeted him.
Texas AG Strikes Deal Over Girls' Sports!
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AG Paxton also used the attorney general’s office on girls’ sports. After Dallas ISD’s LGBT youth coordinator advised a parent that changing a birth certificate to “female” would get a male child onto girls’ teams, Paxton opened an investigation and extracted a 2025 compliance agreement: Dallas ISD would follow state law, stop the workaround, and drop the fiction that paperwork can rewrite sex. We also covered the Dallas agreement. The coordinator resigned. That is what enforcement looks like in a state that still remembers what girls’ sports are for.
One candidate spent his House years sacralizing child transition, child drag, and the erasure of sex in law, then asked Texas to forget it for fifty days. The other used the attorney general’s office to sue the clinics, close the loopholes, and defend the statutes Talarico voted to kill.
Talarico checks the boxes:
✅️ He treated a child-protection performance law as an attack on “the industry.”
✅️ He headlined an event that advertised an 11-year-old drag performer and a child story hour.
✅️ He can name, instantly, a drag act built around working with children.
✅️ He told the Texas House that questioning a child’s gender identity is abuse and that God underwrites the affirmation model.
✅️ He voted against the pediatric-transition ban and against sex-based sports rules, then rebranded when the Senate map required it.
✅️ A minister at his own church said the rebrand lasts until Election Day.
✅️ Gays Against Groomers was cited in federal court for the proposition he spent his House career denying: gay people are not a bloc in favor of child drag.
Gays Against Groomers Watchlist entries are not personality profiles. They track people who use office, fame, or institutions to move children toward sexualized performance, social transition, or medicalization and then call it love. That is precisely why James Talarico has been added to the list. The phony pivot on pediatric gender surgeries and female-only sports does not erase the pipeline he defended while it was being built. Talarico himself says his position has not changed and that the way he fought for “trans kids” in the Texas Legislature is the way he will fight for them in the U.S. Senate. If elected, he will use his Senate seat to traffic in trans tyranny at the federal level.
Texas voters will decide.
James Talarico’s place on the Watchlist is long overdue.
Leave the kids off the stage.
Check this out: https://nataliegwinters.substack.com/p/revealed-inside-the-plan-to-build?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3382126&post_id=216464424&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=3dimx&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Don't forget Talarico's most famous quote
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/talarico-says-divide-top-vs-bottom-heads-one-americas-richest-donor-enclaves
Ha ha ha.