If you've been anywhere near Facebook lately, you've heard a lot about James Talarico, mostly from Ken Paxton and his friends. We went through every claim, one at a time, and wrote down who checked it. Some are flat false. Some are half a quote with the good part cut off. A few deserve a straight answer.
What's false
"He was in an Ohio mental hospital." Not true, say Fox News, PolitiFact, Snopes and the AP. The Lindner Center of Hope says he has never been a patient. He was home with the flu, and people saw him in public in Texas on the days it was claimed.
"A former student says he abused him." Researchers at Clemson, NewsGuard and Graphika say a Russian disinformation group made that video with AI. The real man it copied told Lead Stories it isn't him.
"He supports taxpayer-funded sex change surgeries for kids." PolitiFact looked at his vote against SB 14. It wasn't a vote to spend public money on surgery. Surgery for young children is exceedingly rare, and it needs a parent's consent. CNN found the ads misleading too, because he voted for amendments that would have banned surgery for minors.
"He wants parents arrested if they won't transition their kids." KPRC went through the ad's own sources and says it isn't true. A Republican, Jay Dean, wrote the 2019 bill. Talarico never said parents should be arrested, and the ad cut off his sentence right before "That's where some of us have concerns." The same goes for "he wants to force sex changes on kids." No bill, vote or quote says that, and care for transgender minors requires parental consent.
"He hates voter ID." On CNN he said, "I am for fair voter ID," and asked that the rules treat every kind of ID the same way.
"He wants an open border." Paxton's ad quoted "a giant welcome mat" and cut the next words: "and a lock on the door." PolitiFact rated it Mostly False.
"He's a vegan who throws up after eating meat." PolitiFact found nothing to back it up. Snopes says he isn't vegan. His campaign has posted him eating tacos, steak and a turkey leg.
"Paxton's ad shows him defacing a Bible." That video is AI. FactCheck.org says it leaves out context.
The Fling.com thing
It's thinner than the headline. Talarico's lawyers answered in writing, and Townhall printed part of it. Somebody made the account with an email address that had already been hacked and exposed, one he had stopped using. The account was created and last used 54 seconds apart, so nobody ever used it. The birth date and zip code on it aren't his. A 2016 Vice report found the site let anyone sign up with anyone's email without clicking a verification link, and the data is full of identical bot accounts. Townhall's own story confirms the 54 seconds and the wrong birth date and zip code. No messages, no meetings, no activity. That's the whole scandal.
What he did say
Yes, he said "God is nonbinary." It was 2021, in a debate over a Texas bill, and he was arguing from the Hebrew words for God in Genesis that scripture describes God beyond human categories. He later said he was being provocative. He's said he "missed the mark" on some past statements about gender, and he told CNN he opposes surgery for minors. Disagree with the phrasing if you want. Judge him on what he says and does now.
Then there's the "six sexes" line. In 2021 he told a House committee there are six common chromosome patterns: XX, XY, X, XXY, XYY and XXXY. He was talking about intersex people, who are born with variations in their chromosomes or anatomy, and he called them variants, not a separate set of categories. Some of those kids are born with differences that need medical care, and they deserve treatment and love. He's since put it plainer: two sexes, and a small percentage of people born with genetic variations.
Donors and drag
Hoffman gave a super PAC $10 million, and by law Talarico can't coordinate with it. Elon Musk gave $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, which passed $158 million to the Texas PAC that ran the ads PolitiFact rated false. KPRC went through the FEC filings.
CAIR Action put Talarico on a list of 306 "Preferred" candidates. Meanwhile Trump took a $400 million Boeing 747 from Qatar. His family company is building a $5.5 billion golf resort there and has licensing deals in Dubai and Jeddah. The Wall Street Journal reported that Jared Kushner's fund took in over $3.5 billion from Saudi, Qatari and Emirati-backed funds. In 2017 Trump himself said, "The nation of Qatar unfortunately has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level."
A 2009 State Department cable signed by Hillary Clinton and published by WikiLeaks said donors in Saudi Arabia were the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide. It named Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE too. In 2014 the Treasury Department's top terrorism finance official, David Cohen, called Qatar and Kuwait "permissive" environments for extremist fundraising. Saudi Arabia and Qatar both deny it. And that money doesn't bother them?
And the drag outrage? Lady MAGA, a drag character played by Ryan Woods, has shown up at Trump rallies and at CPAC. In 2000 Rudy Giuliani, later Trump's personal lawyer, dressed in drag for the Inner Circle show in New York, and Donald Trump nuzzled him in the skit. NBC News and Mother Jones both covered it.
Paxton's own record
The Texas Tribune reported that he told his own staff about an affair in 2018. In July 2025 his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce on "biblical grounds," and her petition alleged adultery.
This next one should bother anybody, red or blue. Paxton's office cut a plea deal for a former Waco lawyer charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony. Two misdemeanors, time served plus one day in jail, no sex offender registration. A judge refused the one-day deal and ordered 60 days. Republican state Rep. Jeff Leach called the terms "incomprehensible." That's a Republican talking.
In 2020 senior aides took bribery and abuse of office concerns about Paxton's donor Nate Paul to the FBI. One of them was David Maxwell, a longtime Texas Ranger who ran Paxton's law enforcement division. Maxwell says Paxton ended his career for it. Paxton says he did nothing wrong.
Then came the impeachment, and the part that smells like a backroom at the county fair. The Republican-run Texas House impeached Paxton 121 to 23 in May 2023. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick presided over the Senate trial. Patrick's campaign had loaned Paxton $125,000 that was never reported repaid, and in June 2023 Patrick took $3 million from Defend Texas Liberty PAC, which Public Citizen calls pro-Paxton. Legal experts told the Houston Chronicle that a defendant who owed the judge money wouldn't get a trial in a normal court. Patrick said he'd stop taking donations during the trial and didn't give the $3 million back. The Senate acquitted Paxton that September.
The Republicans who said no
More than 20 current and former Republicans formed Republicans for Talarico. Among them:
- Steve Bartlett, former Dallas mayor and congressman
- Tom Phillips, retired Texas Supreme Court chief justice
- Deborah Hankinson, retired Texas Supreme Court justice
- Adam Kinzinger, former Republican congressman from Illinois
David Maxwell, the Texas Ranger, is with Talarico too. So is Dan Cogdell, the lawyer who defended Paxton at his impeachment trial. Wayne Thorburn, a former head of the state Republican Party, and Neil Bush have said they voted for Talarico.
Where Talarico stands
All of this comes from his campaign site. He wants tax cuts for working families and small businesses: a bigger Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, tariff rebates, and a cap on credit card interest. He says closing the loopholes that let the biggest corporations pay zero federal income tax would cover it. On costs, he points to the $25 monthly insulin cap he passed through a Republican legislature and a bill to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. He wants data centers to pay for their own power infrastructure instead of passing the bill to your electric meter. In Washington he'd ban members of Congress from trading stocks and ban super PACs and corporate PACs, and he says he hasn't taken a dime of corporate PAC money since 2017.
On the border he says it should have a welcome mat and a lock on the door. That means more Border Patrol agents, a crackdown on the cartels, scanning technology at ports of entry where over 90 percent of fentanyl comes in, and deporting criminals, gang members and human traffickers first. A Republican sheriff endorsed that plan. He also wants police and prosecutors to have the resources and training to go after crime, more support for crime victims, and parents with more control over their kids' social media.
For rural Texas he'd protect ranchers from foreign beef imports and from cuts to the screwworm program, remove tariffs on tractors and fertilizer, keep rural hospitals open and bring broadband and clean water to every corner of the state. His energy plan is all-of-the-above: protect oil and gas jobs, fix the grid after the deadly winter storm, speed up permitting and add geothermal. For veterans he wants the VA fully funded, not privatized, shorter mental health wait times and the PACT Act fully carried out. For families it's phonics and one-on-one tutoring, higher teacher pay, universal pre-K, paid family leave and affordable child care. On Iran he'd keep them from getting a nuclear weapon without another forever war, and he'd stand with our allies, including Ukraine and Israel's right to defend its people.
He talks about his faith the way he talks about the whole campaign: love God, love your neighbor, and don't let the billionaires divide us.
Here's what sticks with me. The folks who sat across the table from Paxton, a Texas Ranger, his own impeachment lawyer, a former head of the state Republican Party, are the ones saying no thanks. You don't have to love Talarico. Just know what they know.
Sources: Fox News, PolitiFact, Snopes, AP, CNN, KPRC/Click2Houston, FactCheck.org, Lead Stories, NewsGuard, Graphika, Townhall, Vice, Texas Tribune, Houston Chronicle, KXAN, Public Citizen, Newsweek, The Hill, KUT, Austin Chronicle
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