This week, Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico pulled a screeching U-turn on his support of trans people, retreating behind the concept of “fairness.” He went on Fox News to say, “I oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it endangers safety or fairness.” He added, “Every sport has to be safe and fair. As a former public school teacher, I care a lot about our student athletes. I care a lot about our students.”
It’s a move we’ve seen before and continue to see with Democrats from Gavin Newsom to Amy Acton. It’s the quiet hope that they can ditch trans people’s rights to participate in school sports and competitive sports as a small compromise to Republicans to win some votes. It’s not a small compromise. It’s the canary in the coal mine, and it will spark the death of trans rights.
Related
So, let’s address the double round of misinformation in there. There is no evidence that trans participation in sports is a threat to safety. While there have been stories, they usually seem to be exaggerated or fabricated. The fact that such safety concerns are raised alongside the idea of “men playing in girls sports” is designed to conjure the image of a six-foot man tackling a 7-year-old. We’re talking about school sports, often in situations where trans girls haven’t gone through a male puberty.
When it comes to the fairness argument, as was argued in US Supreme Court case of West Virginia v. B.P.J., when a male puberty hasn’t taken place, there’s no supposition of advantage. Additionally, studies have found that trans women do not have an athletic advantage over cis women, and may even have a disadvantage.
Dive deeper every day
Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues
The gravest long-term threat to transgender Americans is not just the Republican Party. It is also the campaign to strip support for transgender people out of all parties.
Talarico falling into “fairness and safety” misinformation claims is particularly frustrating given that he’s handled those issues so well in the past. In 2021, he opposed HB 4043 in Texas as part of the state’s House of Representatives. Talking to the committee, Talarico said, “What part of your love of freedom moves you to ask the government to police people’s private parts? Some things are more important than perfectly fair competition in sports.”
Then, earlier this year in a New York Times interview, he spoke about his rejection of that bill and the push against trans inclusion in sports, saying, “Instead of allowing local sports officials and school district officials to make decisions, the Republican legislature passed a bill that would ban it in every instance in every age group. Even before kids hit puberty. I was speaking out against that kind of extremism because it wasn’t actually trying to solve a problem.”
Earlier this year, Talarico also suddenly said that he opposes gender-affirming care for minors. So why the sudden shift in Talarico’s messaging on trans rights? The answer might be revealed by the fact that his position on trans inclusion in sports first appeared not from him, but in a statement from someone in his campaign. This is entirely a shift in political messaging based on advisors hoping to win a Texas US Senate seat.
Democrats like to keep treating it as if barring trans people from sports is a modest proposal that is just giving a little bit of ground for some of those swing voters. But it’s the first step in giving in on trans rights, and it will create a landslide that will affect gay rights and the rights of cis women down the mountain.
There has been a growing pushback to the idea of “vote blue no matter who,” and that sentiment is particularly strong in parts of the trans community. Trans people and their allies are trapped in an unwinnable situation: they can help to elect a Democrat who is willing to ditch their rights, or they can risk Republicans gaining further control and power, who will willingly burn their rights to the ground.
There are a lot of trans people who don’t want to send the message that you can abandon trans people “just a little bit” and still get their vote. There’s a (reasonable) fear that it will become a habit and we’ll have to take loss after loss on our rights in the name of keeping Republicans from doing it in one fell swoop. You can see a snapshot of that debate happening on Reddit.
Erin Reed, the trans journalist behind Erin in the Morning, just put out a guide to anti-trans democrats running in the 2026 elections. In it, she suggests the gravest long-term threat to transgender Americans is not just the Republican Party. It is also the campaign to strip support for transgender people out of all parties. She has also highlighted the struggles that equality organizations are going through in deciding how to handle all of the anti-trans Democrats while still endorsing some of them.
These sorts of messages from Democrats have a high chance of being a losing strategy. And yet, we’re already seeing a setup for trans people to be blamed for not voting and providing tacit approval for Democrats’ anti-trans messages over keeping Republicans out of office — just as we saw with the 2024 election.
We shouldn’t be in a position where we have to vote for someone while we hold our noses, in the hopes that our rights will be stripped away slowly rather than quickly.
The winning strategy can only be for all Democrats to forcefully push for trans rights, because we know for a certainty that when it comes to stripping away people’s rights, trans people are just the first target: it won’t stop there.
Same-sex marriage is already being eyed by some Republicans as the next target. We’re going to see precedent set in cases that deny gender-affirming care for trans minors applied to prevent women from receiving other care. And we only have to look to the response from the Heritage Foundation to the West Virginia v. B.P.J. case to see how they want to use that as an avenue to push women out of competitive sports and force them into doing yoga instead.
Talarico knows how to not to let these questions bait him into giving anti-trans answers and how to shoot back at those who question supporting trans rights. We know that, because we’ve seen him do it before.
The worst of this is that Talarico had the opportunity to be a massively important figure in trans rights. He is running against Ken Paxton, one of the leading anti-trans actors in the United States. Paxton was the first person we knew of who was making a list of trans people in his state.
And Talarico actually has a shot at winning and turning a US Senate seat blue in Texas. On top of Paxton being so loathed, seemingly by his own party, Talarico got a great bump before the primaries when the FCC threatened CBS over his interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and it was posted to YouTube where it received millions of views, more than it would have if the FCC had not intervened. Now, Talarico is receiving the exact same treatment from Jimmy Kimmel and the FCC again.
Talarico could win and become a Democratic senator in Texas — we really need that seat. But trans people and our allies deserve Democrats we’re excited to vote for. We shouldn’t be in a position where we have to vote for someone while we hold our noses, in the hopes that our rights will be stripped away slowly rather than quickly. We really need that seat, but if he’ll give ground on trans rights, then that seat may come at too high a cost.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.