The Talarico campaign's handling of its candidate's nearly two-week disappearance from the trail has raised plenty of questions, and I don't expect the left to ever admit where those questions lead.
Texas State Rep. James Talarico (D-50th District) blamed the flu for his absence, and that cover story has plenty of problems. After nearly two weeks of radio silence, the campaign only spoke out after rumors that he’d checked himself into a mental health facility spread like wildfire and appeared to be confirmed by audio recordings with the facility. The Talarico campaign suddenly rushed to deny the claims and rolled their candidate out in front of some friendly crowds.
Personally, I think his campaign is in panic mode, and the cuckoo’s nest rumors are only part of the reason. The clearest sign came this week, and it had nothing to do with his health.
On Monday, the campaign released an ad attacking Joe Biden on border security. It opens with a line straight from the candidate.
"I called out Joe Biden for failing us on the border," Talarico says in the ad.
Yeah… there’s just one major problem with this claim: there is zero evidence he ever did anything of the sort.
In fact, when Fox News Digital asked for proof, his campaign couldn't come up with a single instance of Talarico publicly criticizing Biden while Biden was president. Not one.
What does exist is a long record of Talarico trashing border security. Back in 2019, he complained to The Austin Chronicle about the money Texas spent defending its southern border.
"We're also sending about $800 million per biennium to the border with Mexico for 'increased border security,'" Talarico said.
He had other plans for that money.
"I'd rather take that money and put it back into public education and help increase the basic allotment, for instance," he told the outlet.
He didn't stop there. "Putting a bunch of boats, planes and border patrol agents on the physical border is expensive and also does not solve the problem," Talarico argued in the same interview. He also waved off the entire effort as theater. "Everyone will admit it's just political grandstanding. Certain lawmakers want to appease extreme parts of their base. And they do it by pumping money we don't have down to the border."
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It gets worse from there. Talarico has called for dismantling Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declaring it "time to tear down this secret police force." He has referred to illegal aliens as his "constituents," bragged that he "taught a lot of undocumented students," and claimed those students were more patriotic than Americans. He labeled Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's border policies "atrocities" and accused Abbott of "hunting" illegal immigrants.
Now the same guy wants Texans to believe he's a border security hawk?
His sudden conversion arrived only with his Senate campaign, as critics hammer him as too far left to win in a heavily Republican state that also has the highest rates of illegal immigration in the country. The timing is awkward for him in another way, too. According to the Department of Homeland Security, border crossings under President Donald Trump fell to their lowest level in 55 years in 2025 after a string of enforcement measures. So, contrary to Talarico’s claim, enforcement clearly works, and it works exactly as conservatives said it would.
Talarico spent years insisting otherwise.
When asked about the flip-flop, the campaign offered a statement from spokesman JT Ennis.
"James is proud to be the only candidate in this race who has unveiled a border security agenda endorsed by Republican and Democratic border county sheriffs," Ennis said. "James supports stronger border security and immigration enforcement — it's why he's called for more border patrol agents and has said we should be arresting and deporting violent criminals and human traffickers — not moms and babies," he added.
That's a meaningless boilerplate statement, and it doesn't even address the issue. Nowhere does it explain the Biden claim, and nowhere does it explain the 2019 record.
Talarico has never run his campaign as a moderate border hawk Democrat, so why is he pretending to be one now? The answer is obvious. You don't make pivots like this if you think you're ahead.
Candidates who like where they stand run as themselves. The ones who start reinventing themselves only do so because they know they’re in trouble. And the best part is, the same people who have been rushing to defend Talarico’s bizarre two-week absence will be blaming that very absence for Attorney General Ken Paxton’s victory.