the scariest drag queen in texas teaches dance in mesquite. talarico gave away the trans kids for nothing.

via Fox News, PinkNews, The Advocate and The Daily Beast, with the posts read directly.

The most dangerous man in Texas politics this week owns a dance studio in Mesquite and is, on the record, a tough grader.

Somebody at a campaign event asked James Talarico who his favorite drag queen in Texas was. Fox News has the clip. He did not stall, he did not do the thing where a Democrat looks at the middle distance and buys four seconds. He said: "Oh, my gosh. Probably Alyssa Edwards."

who alyssa edwards is

Alyssa Edwards is Justin Johnson, a Mesquite native who owns and teaches at Beyond Belief Dance Company. The City of Mesquite's own tourism office keeps a page about him, which is the sort of thing that happens when a town is proud of somebody. On it he says "I think I'm a better teacher and choreographer than performer," and the city notes approvingly that "he is not one to sugarcoat a critique." Netflix built a docuseries around the studio. He won the first season of Drag Race Global All Stars.

Naming him as your favorite Texas drag queen is roughly as transgressive as naming brisket as your favorite Texas food. Which is the part the RNC's research account, posting the clip on Monday, could not quite get around. Its framing was that Talarico's pick "has described himself as 'a drag performer that works with children.'" He does work with children. He teaches them to dance, and then the city puts him on a webpage about it.

the vice president's wig

Ken Paxton, the attorney general trying to take the Senate seat, went the weirdness route. He wondered aloud what kind of normal person could produce a favorite drag queen that fast, said that when Talarico is not advocating for children to dress in drag he is watching drag performances, and landed on "too weird and too radical for Texas." Talarico's campaign answered through spokesperson JT Ennis: "James' favorite performer is Ken Paxton — who dresses up as attorney general while giving sweetheart deals to child sex predators."

Then on Tuesday evening the Vice President of the United States quote-posted the clip. He typed nothing. The entire post is one photograph of his own face, mid-smirk. Fifty-five thousand people liked it.

JD Vance has photographs of his own. In 2024 the Daily Beast published images of him at Yale Law School in a blonde wig and a skirt, playing beer pong; a spokesperson declined to deny they were real and offered nothing further. The Advocate ran them too, sourced to a Yale alumnus who said he had supplied them. The two outlets do not agree on the year, 2011 or 2012, which remains the only detail about them anyone has ever contested.

So a man who has worn a wig at a party spent Tuesday evening boosting the idea that having a favorite drag queen should end a Senate campaign. He did it without using any words, which is the correct instinct when there are pictures.

what the surrender bought

Five days before the clip surfaced, Talarico went on Fox News and gave away the trans kids. He said he would oppose trans athletes in girls' sports, said he no longer believes there are six genders, and delivered the rehearsed line about having missed the mark. The day after that, Paxton's campaign put out an AI-fabricated video of a speech Talarico never gave.

He conceded the thing that costs actual children something, and it bought him five days. The attack was never really about what he believes. It was about whether he would answer the question at all, and he answered it in under two seconds, and the answer was a dance teacher from Mesquite.

Round two: Paxton has since made an attack ad about Alyssa herself. We wrote about the viewer warning here.