This is an analysis piece from The Patriot Party Texas's conservative, Christian perspective. We report what the record shows, including where critics' claims go further than the record, because accuracy matters more than a good attack line.
One of the most contested issues in the Texas Senate race is how Democratic nominee James Talarico has voted and spoken on gender transition treatment for minors. Here is what the independent fact-checkers and the record show.
The vote. Talarico voted against SB 14 in the Texas House on May 15, 2023, one of 56 lawmakers opposed, PolitiFact reported. The law bars medical professionals from providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries to children under 18 for gender transition purposes and bars public money from paying for them. It passed the House 87 yeas, passed the Senate 31-0 two days later, and took effect Sept. 1, 2023. The Texas Supreme Court upheld it in 2024, according to FactCheck.org. PolitiFact found that Talarico voted for all 18 failed Democratic amendments, including one that would have ended the bill if state health officials found high-quality evidence supporting the treatments for children with gender dysphoria. FactCheck.org reports he also voted for an amendment that would have limited the bill to a ban on surgeries; it failed.
What he said then. In 2023 he said he opposed the bill because he trusts parents and doctors, not politicians, to make decisions for kids, and called it one of the “three most dangerous LGBTQ attack bills” of that session, PolitiFact reported. He also said the law would deny “life-saving healthcare from our trans youth,” per FactCheck.org. In 2021 he opposed bills requiring student athletes to compete by birth-certificate sex, calling the issue a “manufactured problem,” and said in a floor speech that “God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is non-binary,” a remark he later called “provocative.”
What he says now. In September, Talarico told Fox News, “I've missed the mark on some of my past statements,” adding, “There are not six sexes. There are two.” He said he would “absolutely” vote for a national ban on transgender surgery for minors, that he opposed SB 14 because it was “overly broad,” and that he opposes transgender athletes in girls' sports “if it endangers safety or fairness.” On the Texas Tribune's voter guide this month he said, “I do not support gender reassignment surgery for minors.”
Girls' sports. On women's sports, the record is clearer and less favorable to Talarico's current message. In 2021 he opposed SB 29, which would have required public school athletes to compete based on the sex on their birth certificate, calling the issue a “manufactured problem,” and later that year voted against HB 25, which enacted similar restrictions, ABC affiliate reporting on his Fox News interview says. He did not support the restriction when it came to a vote. Today he says, “I oppose trans athletes playing in girls' sports if it endangers safety or fairness.” Critics note that the qualifier “if it endangers safety or fairness” leaves room for the policy he voted against, and that he has not said whether he would now support a law like HB 25 or a federal ban. We could not locate a statement from him addressing that directly; supporters of the 2021 laws argue that fairness and safety in girls' sports are the very reasons for a bright-line rule.
What the ads claim, and the rating. A Texas PAC tied to the Senate Leadership Fund aired an ad around Sept. 11 saying Talarico “supported using taxpayer dollars for sex change surgeries on young children.” PolitiFact rated that claim False, reasoning that his vote was against a broad bill, not for funding surgeries for young children, that such surgeries are rare, and that he has said he opposes them for minors. FactCheck.org called the ads' allegations “flawed,” noting that one ad shows “puberty blockers” on screen while the narrator mentions only surgeries. The Senate Leadership Fund did not respond to PolitiFact. Talarico's spokesman JT Ennis said, “These ads are lies.”
The fair conservative critique. The accurate case against him is not that he backs surgeries on young children; he says he does not. It is that he voted against a law that Texas conservatives support and that the Legislature passed overwhelmingly, which protects minors from puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as well as surgery, and that he described the law in 2023 in terms far from his message this fall. Voters can reasonably ask why his position changed once he was running statewide, and whether his later stance on a national surgery ban is consistent with his earlier objections. For Christian families, who hold that every child is made in God's image and deserves both compassion and protection, those are fair questions to put to any candidate.
Open questions: we have not independently verified the floor-speech quotes beyond the cited reports, and we did not obtain a fresh statement from the Talarico campaign beyond what was published.