james talarico gave away the trans kids on wednesday and ken paxton deepfaked him on thursday anyway

via KERA News and The Advocate, whose second piece has the video.

James Talarico went on Fox News on Wednesday and gave it away.

what talarico said on fox

The Texas state representative running for Senate, the one a lot of people had decided was the good one, said this: "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. And so I will oppose trans athletes playing in girls' sports if it risks safety or fairness." Then the softening line that tells you it was rehearsed. "I missed the mark on some of my past statements, I'll be the first to admit it."

what he used to say

The past statements are a matter of record and they were better than this. In 2021, arguing on the floor of the Texas House against HB 4042, Talarico said, "Some things are more important than perfectly fair competition in sports." He described the bans as the government policing people's private parts. He compared the fairness argument to what used to be said about Black athletes. He voted no, twice, on bills restricting trans kids in sport, and in 2023 he voted no on SB 14.

Asked on Wednesday whether he still believed there are six genders, something he said in an April 2021 committee debate, he answered: "No." And then: "There are not six sexes, there are two."

Brad Pritchett, chief executive of Equality Texas, said his organization expects better, and asked the question worth keeping: "When did people of moral standing decide to use Texas children as a political football?"

Here is the part that should end the argument that any of this buys you anything.

paxton deepfaked him anyway

The next day, Ken Paxton's campaign put a video on YouTube called "King James." It is an AI fabrication of Talarico delivering a speech he never delivered. In it he says "In the beginning, God was nonbinary." He claims God created six genders. He calls Jesus a radical feminist. He describes himself as a Christian who hates Christianity. A narrator says he is wrong for Texas and wrong for America, and Paxton approves the message. The Advocate found no disclosure labelling any of it as generated, asked Paxton's campaign why they manufactured footage instead of using real clips, and got no answer. Talarico's campaign would not comment either.

Paxton also went after him for flip-flopping, and pointed at those two old votes. Of course he did. Both things at once: punished for the votes he cast, and slandered with a speech he never gave. There is nothing to concede that makes the machine stop, because the machine never needed him to say anything. It can build the clip.

So the trade was: surrender a group of children who cannot vote for you, on national television, and receive in exchange a fake video of yourself, within twenty-four hours.

Trans kids in Texas are not a position to hold or drop. They were the only people in this story with nothing to trade.