Transphobic ads flood Texas Senate race as Paxton targets Talarico

As James Talarico campaigns for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas, his race against Ken Paxton has been swallowed by a stream of transphobic and homophobic attacks—from Stephen Miller’s remarks to AI deepfakes and a new six-figure ad buy by a Trump-aligned group—w

Austin woke up to another week in Texas politics where the argument isn’t really about ideas—it’s about identity, and who gets treated as a threat.

In the 2026 U.S. Senate race in Texas. Republican nominee Ken Paxton’s campaign has thrown itself into a gendered. culture-war fight against Democratic state Representative James Talarico. The attacks have landed with a blunt mix of homophobia and transphobia. and they’ve escalated from online ridicule to synthetic media—pushing a contest over policy into something uglier. faster.

The smear effort has been helmed by figures and allies outside the usual campaign lane. Stephen Miller. a longtime Trump administration adviser. has called Talarico the Democrats’ “first transgender Senate candidate who is clearly transitioning into a female.” Elsewhere. the attacks have mocked Talarico’s facial hair. superimposing Talarico’s face onto Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s head. and circulating an AI-generated deepfake video that depicts Talarico dressed as Maria from “The Sound of Music.” In that deepfake. the video shows a transgender-reassignment-surgery–obsessed parody of “My Favorite Things.”.

A new salvo landed when the Trump-aligned organization Citizens for Sanity announced it was dropping a six-figure ad buy in the Texas Senate race. The ad is a 15-second clip of an AI-generated James Talarico singing a “trans kids” rendition of “Favorite Things.”

These attacks. Talarico’s critics argue. are rooted in something he once said and in what his opponents want voters to believe about what that means now. In 2021. right-wing publications zeroed in on comments Talarico made during a Texas House Public Education Committee meeting about a proposal to ban transgender students from girls’ school sports. Talarico acknowledged genetic sex chromosome variations and argued the bill would hurt transgender kids. The bill died in committee by one vote, though a revived version passed the following legislative session.

In 2022. during a speech to the Texas Humane Legislation Network. Talarico said he was running a “non-meat campaign” backed by local vegan businesses for his third Texas House run. adding that eating less meat was “necessary to fight climate change.” Critics say those comments revived the “burger ban” talking points Republicans favor and aligned him with the far-right’s “soy boy” insult—an attack aimed at liberal men the right claims are more feminine due to soy lowering testosterone.

But the core of the fight. even as the claims jump around. is less about food or fashion and more about forcing a narrative. The campaign framing repeatedly turns on performance—portraying masculinity as something voters should be able to test, punish, and deny. It’s a tactic built to make it harder for supporters to see their opponent as a public official and easier to see him as a caricature.

That dynamic matters because Paxton himself is not simply the opposing candidate. He is also the lightning rod for everything Republicans claim to hate and yet. in his case. have continued to excuse. The article that has circulated around the race describes Paxton as an indicted alleged securities fraudster whose charges were dropped along with $300. 000 in restitution. It says he was impeached by the Texas House for corruption and bribery allegations, and that the Senate acquitted him. It also describes his wife filing for divorce after his reported infidelity.

The argument being made by Talarico’s side—and by critics of the smear strategy—is that when Paxton’s record makes it difficult to sell a positive case. the race becomes a contest over who can most effectively distract voters. If Republicans can’t beat Talarico on priorities and policy. the thinking goes. then they can keep would-be supporters away by maligning his character. criticizing him for not meeting suffocating expectations of masculinity. and keeping moral panic simmering.

Even routine moments have been turned into fodder. On May 13. Talarico visited the Austin restaurant Taco Joint with Texas Representative Gina Hinojosa. the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. and President Barack Obama. The reporting says Talarico ordered breakfast tacos with potatoes, egg, and cheese. Online, Texas Republicans and out-of-state food critics attacked the meatless taco combo. After the taco incident. the reporting says Paxton—now the Texas Republican Senate nominee—called the Democrat “Tofu Talarico.” Donald Trump also posted about the Democrats’ “weird candidate. ” adding “Six genders. a real hit on Jesus.… Texas doesn’t like vegans.”.

Talarico’s political identity. too. has been pulled into the mud in ways that his opponents say are meant to land. The smear campaign repeatedly tries to connect him to queerness and “trans” politics as a threat to American life. In that framing. Talarico’s support for trans students becomes not just a policy position but a symbol of what critics claim is an attack on children.

Some of the rhetoric has sharpened during Texas primaries. where “transing the kids” has been used as an accusation even among more conservative candidates. The reporting cites former Texas representative Mayes Middleton. who won the Republican primary for Texas attorney general over Representative Chip Roy. saying Roy “sided with the trans lobby to allow child transgender surgeries. ” while Middleton “banned men” from girls’ sports and supported “kicking perverts” out of women’s restrooms. It also cites Senator John Cornyn’s campaign ads. which accused Paxton of approving funding for a center that offers “gender programs for children” and “child-accessible drag shows.”.

The dispute described here is also not limited to campaign ads. This month. Paxton sued the city of Denton. Texas. over its plans to provide gender-neutral changing rooms during a private Pride swim party at a public pool. The lawsuit, as described, cited a violation of Texas’s bathroom ban law that went into effect last year. The reporting says the Pride event organizers scrapped their gender-neutral changing-room plans before the suit was filed. but that Paxton later declared “a major victory for the privacy and safety of women and children.”.

Against that backdrop, the race has converged on a single vulnerability: Talarico’s record on trans issues, and whether he can keep from sounding like he’s surrendering to the right.

The turning point may have come during his campaign’s response to a direct accusation. In a recent appearance on a podcast hosted by Houston attorney Dan Cogdell. the reporting says Cogdell asked Talarico to respond to the claim that he is “pro-sex surgery for minors.” Talarico answered: “Well. just on that particular accusation. I oppose gender reassignment surgeries for minors.”.

The complaint from critics of that response is that it doesn’t match the more careful reality of how gender dysphoria treatment for kids is commonly handled. and that it gives the opposition a clean opening to keep the narrative on surgery rather than on the broader question of care and safety. The reporting says Talarico could have answered with education. emphasizing that treatment for kids with gender dysphoria rarely involves gender-affirming surgery and more often focuses on socially transitioning. Instead, his critics say he chose to mollify right-wing detractors at the expense of trans kids.

The text also places the dispute alongside ordinary civic life in central Texas—where Pride is not abstract. Earlier this month, the city of Round Rock, Texas, celebrated its fifth annual Pride festival. Mayor Craig Morgan. the reporting says. told attendees he’d received critiques demanding he renounce Pride. and he said. “As long as I am mayor. there will be a [Pride] proclamation.” It adds that Round Rock is where Talarico was born and where the two people were raised. and it describes classmates who worked on his earlier political campaigns. The reporting notes they are both graduates from the University of Texas at Austin and that their college days were fueled by breakfast tacos.

That personal detail is used to frame a question that hangs over the Senate race: if courage is being demanded of political rivals. why is the louder version of it still missing from Talarico’s campaign response to the most harmful line of attack?. The reporting argues that Paxton’s trans slander will persist regardless of how Talarico handles trans rights. and that the only real way to counter it is to advocate for marginalized Texans rather than trying to satisfy transphobic detractors.

Whether voters will view that as conviction or as a misstep may decide the outcome in November. when the reporting expects Paxton to face the political cost he has been forced to carry—losses and humiliation of a kind his opponents believe he can’t shake. But the immediate reality is simpler: in Texas. the Senate race has become a referendum on whether gender and sexuality will be weaponized as politics. and the ads are already proving how willing the contenders—and their allies—are to go there.

Texas Senate race James Talarico Ken Paxton transphobia AI deepfake Citizens for Sanity Stephen Miller gender-neutral changing rooms Denton Round Rock Pride