Forgot Your Password?

New to The Nation? Subscribe

Print subscriber? Activate your online access

.nation-small__b{fill:#fff;}

How Toxic Masculinity Took Over the Texas Senate Race

The battle between James Talarico and Ken Paxton has been overwhelmed by demagogic gender politics.

Austin—As the 2026 election cycle unfolds, the Republican Party and its allies are honing strategies to malign their Democratic opponents. In Texas, this mission has taken on a pointedly homophobic and transphobic tone, meant to humiliate Democratic state Representative James Talarico in his campaign for the US Senate.

The attacks span from merely disturbing to fully deranged. We’ve had Stephen Miller calling Talarico the Democrats’ “first transgender Senate candidate who is clearly transitioning into a female.” A joke about Talarico needing to paint on his facial hair. An image of Talarico’s face superimposed on New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s head. An AI-generated deepfake video showing Talarico dressed as Maria from The Sound of Music, singing a transgender reassignment surgery–obsessed parody of “My Favorite Things.”

NEW: The Trump-aligned org Citizens for Sanity is dropping a six-figure ad buy in the Texas Senate race. The ad is a 15 second clip of AI-generated James Talarico singing a "trans kids" rendition of “Favorite Things." Obtained first by @DailyCaller: pic.twitter.com/JNY8vxYueG— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) June 9, 2026

NEW: The Trump-aligned org Citizens for Sanity is dropping a six-figure ad buy in the Texas Senate race. The ad is a 15 second clip of AI-generated James Talarico singing a "trans kids" rendition of “Favorite Things." Obtained first by @DailyCaller: pic.twitter.com/JNY8vxYueG

It’s all part of a familiar playbook for Republican men, denigrating an opponent by aligning his performance of masculinity with femininity and queerness, and plotting it outside this grid of gendered expectations in which he’s expected to perform.

At their core, these attacks are responding to (and distorting) Talarico’s previous support for transgender kids, some of which he’s backpedaled on in response to the increased right-wing clip-farming. In 2021, right-wing publications zeroed in on comments Talarico made during a Texas House Public Education Committee Meeting regarding a proposal to ban transgender students from girls’ school sports, during which Talarico acknowledged genetic sex chromosome variations and insisted that the bill would hurt transgender kids. (The bill died in committee by one vote, though a revived version of the bill passed the following legislative session.)

This is a brutal ad against Talarico. Brutal. pic.twitter.com/fzKOf1YNtP— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) May 22, 2026

This is a brutal ad against Talarico. Brutal. pic.twitter.com/fzKOf1YNtP

And in 2022, while delivering a speech to the Texas Humane Legislation Network, Talarico stated that he was running a “non-meat campaign” supported by local vegan businesses for his third Texas House run, and that eating less meat was “necessary to fight climate change.” Besides reigniting the “burger ban” talking points favored by Republicans, the comments neatly aligned Talarico with the far-right’s insult of “soy boy,” a jab made at liberal men who the right claims are more feminine because their soy consumption lowers their testosterone (I will save you the Google search—it’s plainly false).

In truth, the mudslinging has nothing to do with whether Talarico is vegan, or gay, or trans (not even Talarico’s lengthy heterosexual dating history can convince conspiracists against the latter). It’s a convenient way of allowing Republicans to continue discriminating against queer people while also decrying Talarico’s candidacy, reinforcing the narrative that gay and trans people are a threat to American life.

Even the most mundane situations trigger these kinds of frenzies. On May 13, for instance, Talarico visited Austin restaurant Taco Joint with Texas........

© The Nation