Talarico (D) Is Just a Letter to Me Now

On September 9, Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico went on Fox News and publicly walked back his support for trans rights. He hedged—moderated—waffled—caved—folded. 

Talarico said that he no longer believes that there are six sexes—a statement he had made previously that intelligently gestured at the actual complexity of “biological sex”—and that he now believes in “two sexes.” Talarico said that he would oppose trans people in sports “if it threatened safety or fairness.” (which honestly, wasn’t as bad a statement as it could have been). Talarico said that he would vote for a nationwide ban on “trans surgeries for minors,” which not only plays into anti-trans myths about the process through which such surgeries are approved, but is a consequential concession on policy, regardless of how rare that kind of surgery is, being that it is generally only approved in severe, life-threatening cases. 

Yes, it’s Texas. Yes, Republican nominee Ken Paxton is far, far worse. Yes, Paxton must be prevented from winning the seat. And yes, that means that everyone who can do so should vote for Talarico. Yes, still.

And yet. Right now, we as trans people are under siege. We are being forced from our homes. We are under sustained attack by Republicans wherever they take power. We’ve seen what’s happened with the Labour party in the UK and with other center-left parties in the world. We’ve seen the fascist right make us a locus of their reactionary assault on liberal democracy and human freedom. So we are deeply reliant on the Democrats to hold the line on trans rights.

And with one heinous exception—a large part of the caucus voting for the NDAA riders that banned youth transition care for trans military dependents—Democrats largely have held the line on trans rights. Democrats have held the line even on sports—precisely the area where we are weakest on public opinion. From “centrist” Abigail Spanberger in Virginia to “progressive” Letitia James in New York to “California” legislators in the Golden State, Democrats—not all Democrats, but most Democrats, across the country—have remained supportive of trans rights.

For James Talarico then to not only publicly walk back his pro-trans positions, but to go on Fox News to do it, has created doubt within my community, and in myself, as a member of that community. It is even more disappointing because Talarico was good on these issues as a state legislator. He pledged to protect trans kids. He put pronouns on his office’s business cards. But where he had framed trans issues as an issue of freedom, now he characterizes some of his uses of inclusive language as “cringey”—he put that message out to the audiences of CBS News.

Now, of course, maybe Talarico is just lying, now. Politicians lie. Barack Obama said explicitly that “marriage is between a man and a woman.” He then proceeded to openly back gay marriage once the political winds had turned. Talarico may also be lying in this manner. Maybe he feels he must lie in this way to win a state like Texas. Less charitably, maybe he believes that the rare incidence of surgery for trans minors allows him to cave there, as an acceptable “triage” measure to help defeat Paxton, while he remains open to other forms of treatment such as hormone replacement or puberty blockers. But beyond the fact that those surgeries are only approved in the worst, most urgent cases of dysphoria—and even allowing these caveats—and beyond the fact that unlike the gay marriage fight, this is an instance of losing rights we already had—we’re tired. Tired of yet another instance of having to eat a bowl of shit, to grin and bear it while our allies throw us under the bus yet again in order to chase after the kinds of voters who have, election after election, brought our republic closer to the brink of destruction.

It is presumed as common knowledge that Talarico ”must” do this in order to have a chance of winning. A big problem for that idea is that prior to these comments Talarico was doing exceptionally well. He has led multiple polls in this contest and was clearly running at least even with Paxton in a state no Democrat has won statewide in over thirty years. 

Given the history and the heartbreak of statewide races in Texas, skepticism that Talarico can win is certainly warranted, but the conditions are far different than in, say, 2018. Talarico is running against the vile and unpopular Ken Paxton, who is not only a notorious, rancid bigot who has made trans oppression his calling card with his Stasi-like bounties for trans people using the bathroom of their gender, but who has shown himself to be an unpopular and corrupt slimeball that has alienated even his own base. Plus, Paxton is attached at the hip to the increasingly unpopular Donald Trump, who is associated with escalating economic hardship, international chaos, and rising costs.

Furthermore, there is very little hard evidence that this kind of “moderation” works. Bill Clinton’s “Sister Souljah moment” is often cited, but any empirical effect that may have had is muted by the structural elements of that election. And in any case, it is totally unclear that such “strategic moderation” works now. There’s a reasonable argument that what matters with regard to this kind of issue, for the kinds of voters Talarico is chasing, isn’t the fine points of policy but is the blunter matter of vibes. Democrats love to think that issues are everything, that locating themselves precisely in issue space is what carries the day in November. But the reality is that few American voters are so plugged into policy wonkery that these minute triangulation strategies have much effect at all—and hardly any such voter is watching Fox News in 2026! Trying to shave an quarter-inch off this and that issue stance isn’t how Donald Trump gets those voters. To get those voters Talarico would have to do something else. 

It’s instructive to compare Talarico’s response to that of his fellow contender for the Senate, Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed was pressed on the same question of “boys in girls sports”—on the same platform, even. But El-Sayed didn’t hedge, didn’t triangulate—he went on the attack. El-Sayed displayed strength and resolve, simply by acting like a winner. And acting like a winner means, for a start, not calling yourself cringe. Whatever Texans think about trans issues, I’m pretty sure they like it more when you blast your opponent to hell than when you explain how recently you were a loser but now you’re not anymore.

Whether or not Talarico’s message reached any Fox News-watching independents, trans people heard it loud and clear. At a time when we need unconditional and unwavering support, we got another round of pandering to the reactionaries who continue to hold back progress for everyone. In the past decade, so many cordons sanitaires have been broken in politics, from ableism, to open racism, and what we have learned is that the breaking of one cordon sanitaire seems to presage the opening of a Pandora’s Box of horrors. And right on cue, we are treated to the horrid spectacle of a current Dem representative, Marcy Kaptur, actively running on how she voted with Republicans (for a bill that would forcibly out trans students to their parents) to “keep transgender ideology out of our schools.” This is language straight out of far-right propaganda, using the insidious framing that transness is an “ideology.” Once again, we are in fear that yet another center-left party, just as in the UK, will abandon human rights to chase the polls.

So for me, at this moment, Talarico is just a letter: specifically, the (D) after his name, to be used in order to defeat the (R) after Paxton’s. 

And that’s why, if you are in Texas, I must repeat and emphasize: I implore you to vote for James Talarico. Talarico winning means Paxton losing. Talarico winning is in fact the only way Paxton can lose, at this point. And I so, so badly want Ken Paxton to lose.

Ken Paxton has blood on his hands. Our blood. One young trans woman nearly died—was nearly murdered—because of this man and his war on gender-affirming care. We know that trans suicidality has gone up in the wake of these measures he and men like him have implemented in conservative states. We know that Texas is one of the largest sources of trans refugees in the country. 

Defeating Paxton will likely not end all of that, unless Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, is also defeated, and of course, his challenger Gina Hinojosa has also stepped into the Gender Of It All with a dumb pronoun joke. A bit of insult to injury. But keeping a monster like Paxton from the upper echelons of power is important all on its own. If you think Nancy Mace was awful, imagine Nancy Mace as a U.S. Senator. Whatever your feelings about Talarico—and you are right to have those feelings—it is better for us that Paxton be defeated. 

While it is an understandable concern that Talarico winning would create a permission structure for transphobia within the Democratic Party—a Paxton win would do that even more. If Paxton wins after making attacks on trans rights and trans lives the centerpiece of his campaign—if Talarico loses after being subjected to swarms of right-wing transphobic attacks, from attacks on his policy record to name-calling like “Talafreako” to depictions of Talarico himself as a trans woman—if, after all of that, Paxton wins—nothing could do more to convince centrist Democrats that they need to throw us trans people under the bus. 

Furthermore, if we abstain and Talarico loses, that will not strengthen our position in the coalition. The fact is that the empirical basis for vote abstention is about as robust as the empirical basis for throwing minority groups under the bus to win elections, which is to say it is thin to non-existent. There is talk that somehow, withholding trans votes from a candidate will somehow cause that candidate, or future candidates, to make different choices—but in reality, coalition members that abstain actually harm their leverage, not help it, because parties become responsive to the people who actually voted. The logic of the strike doesn’t apply when there are literally millions of potential scabs. Abstaining trans voters would simply disappear into the masses upon masses of American non-voters. 

Voting for Democrats does not mean that trans people will take concessions of the Talarico sort lying down. Protest. Make our voice heard. Refuse to donate, refuse to volunteer. There are many options that can and should be employed. But they must be employed from within the tent, because leaving the tent means that we can be ignored, and being ignored is the worst possible outcome. In the American electoral system, that is more likely to produce the exact result we rightly fear.

I no longer care about Talarico as a politician, and anything positive he does for us will be a welcome surprise. Honestly, on a personal, emotional level, fuck James Talarico. Fuck the consultants who refuse to loudly stand up for liberal, progressive values, when the voting base is demanding people who will fight for those values. Fuck the Third Ways and Searchlights of the world, which transmute their obsession with issue triangulation—and, frankly, their compulsion toward cowardice—into “strategic” calls for retreat on human rights. 

I say all this with the caveat that I, personally, can’t vote for Talarico regardless, because I do not live in Texas. But a win in Texas materially changes the balance of power in the United States. Control of the Senate during the rest of Trump’s term will be enormously consequential. If nothing else, it will allow us to put a stop to Trump’s packing of the federal courts with unqualified, hateful wingnuts like Emil Bove or Aileen Cannon. 

It is truly tiresome that the people who are supposed to argue wholeheartedly for human rights must silence their tongues, and once again settle into this defensive crouch and pay obeisance to the reactionary, immoral cultural predilections of the conservative voter. It is tiresome that we live in a society that cannot countenance the equal citizenship of people who are not cisgender white men. And as a Black woman, it has been centuries of this, centuries of a nation that preaches freedom for all while denying it to some. And I do not think that, in this time of violent reaction, the perceived need to coddle the reactionary voter excuses these concessions. To me, the time of normal politics—of treating positions and values as pawns on a chessboard—is over. 

The standard, in my mind, for Democrats, and really, for any self-respecting liberal who values autonomy and freedom, is to hold the line and to continue holding the line. On all fronts, even seemingly less consequential ones like sports, because the right has made clear that they see sports as a wedge to deny the legitimacy of trans people ourselves, to make our allies assert that our genders are a polite fiction, not an ontological reality. For most of the 21st century, the Olympics allowed trans participation. No one cared until the right wing decided to make an issue of us. A compromise on sports won’t “settle a contentious issue,” but rather encourage the right to deepen their attacks.

To stand up to what is not an organic, spontaneous political movement, but a concerted attack driven by right-wing institutions, we need our own institutions. We need to make bodily autonomy core to who liberals are and what liberals believe. And we need Democrats to have our backs.

But Paxton must lose, and the option that makes Ken Paxton lose is the correct one. Talarico is just a (D)—just a letter at this point. And in this binary system we have, the best outcome for us as a people is for any and all Democrats to defeat any and all Republicans. Even the Democrats who go on fascist propaganda outlets to pander to fascists. We need to drag them, kicking and screaming—both them and us—into the winners’ column. And then, with Democrats in power, we must continue to fight to make sure that reactionary centrists in the party don’t get their way. 

Featured image is "James Talarico Press Conference," CC BY-SA 4.0 Antonio Esparza 2025. Updated from the original.