Unearthed Clip Shows Talarico Calling Parents ‘Abusive’ for Denying Kids’ Gender Identity
A resurfaced clip from a 2019 Texas House committee hearing shows Rep. James Talarico (D-TX) telling fellow lawmakers that parents who refuse to affirm a child’s gender identity are engaged in abuse — “whether or not we label it with the term abuse, it’s abusive for sure,” he said, on the record, in a public hearing.
Fox News Digital published the clip on Sept. 14, 2026 — seven years after the hearing, and in the same week Talarico enters the general-election stretch of Texas’s open U.S. Senate seat. He won the Democratic primary in March, and now faces Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX) in a race both parties rate a toss-up.
The remarks were not a one-off soundbite. Talarico returned to the theme three separate times in the same hearing — and, six years later, cast one of 59 votes against a bill that wrote the opposite conclusion into Texas law.
- April 3, 2019 date of the Texas House Juvenile Justice & Family Issues Committee hearing on HB 1910 — Texas Legislature Online
- 85–59 the Texas House vote passing HB 1106 in 2025; Talarico voted among the 59 nays — Texas Legislature Online, May 14, 2025
- 63.8% Ken Paxton’s share of the May 26, 2026 GOP Senate runoff vote over Sen. John Cornyn — Ballotpedia
- Nov. 3, 2026 general election date; Talarico vs. Paxton is rated a toss-up — Ballotpedia
The setting was routine: the Texas House Committee on Juvenile Justice & Family Issues, meeting on April 3, 2019, to take public testimony on House Bill 1910. The bill, authored during the 86th Legislature, would have barred Texas courts from treating a parent’s refusal to acknowledge or affirm a child’s gender identity as evidence of child abuse in a custody dispute. It never made it out of committee that year — but the hearing record survived, and Fox News Digital resurfaced it this month.
Talarico, then in his first term representing House District 50 in Round Rock and Williamson County, spoke against the bill. His argument was direct: ruling out abuse findings by category, he said, would leave courts unable to protect children in the cases where non-affirmation genuinely was harmful.
It is a serious legal argument, made in the venue where lawmakers are supposed to make it. But it rests on a premise — that a parent’s non-affirmation can itself be “abusive” — that Talarico stated flatly, more than once, without qualification about how often that would actually apply.
“I think there are some folks that would think that if you deny your child's gender identity, that's incredibly harmful. And whether or not we label it with the term abuse, it's abusive for sure.”
Rep. James Talarico (D-TX) · House Juvenile Justice & Family Issues Committee, April 3, 2019
He did not stop at one comment. Later in the same hearing, Talarico expanded on the point, describing an unwillingness to affirm a child’s gender identity as conduct some lawmakers were prepared to treat as abuse outright — and warning that writing HB 1910’s carve-out into law risked leaving vulnerable kids without protection.
“Some of us I think really do consider this abusive behavior… an unwillingness to identify, acknowledge a child's gender identity. We consider that abusive to the child, abusive and destructive.”
Rep. James Talarico (D-TX) · same hearing, April 3, 2019
He closed the point by framing it as a matter of institutional risk — that stripping courts of the discretion to find abuse in these cases could leave the state’s most vulnerable children exposed.
“My concern is ruling it out as not being abuse, I think, is dangerous and could certainly harm some of our most vulnerable kids in the state.”
Rep. James Talarico (D-TX) · same hearing, April 3, 2019
The bill: HB 1910 would have categorically barred courts from counting non-affirmation as evidence of abuse in a custody case.
Talarico’s position: he opposed that categorical carve-out — arguing judges needed the discretion to find abuse case-by-case, not that every non-affirming parent is automatically abusive.
The accuracy note: we quote him precisely rather than flatten his floor argument into a blanket claim he did not make. The bill died in committee in 2019 without a vote.
HB 1910 stalled without a committee vote, and it was never reintroduced under that exact language. But the fight it started — over whether Texas law should treat non-affirmation as a form of abuse — did not end there. It resurfaced, more sharply drawn, six years later.
Six years later, the Texas Legislature settled the question HB 1910 never resolved — in the opposite direction Talarico had argued for. House Bill 1106, authored by Rep. Nate Shaheen (R-Plano) in the 89th Legislature, amends the Texas Family Code to state plainly that a parent’s refusal to affirm a child’s gender identity or sexual orientation does not, by itself, constitute child abuse or neglect.
The Texas House passed HB 1106 on May 14, 2025 by a vote of 85–59. Talarico, consistent with the position he laid out in 2019, voted among the 59 nays. The Senate passed the bill on May 28, 2025, and Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) signed it into law on June 20, 2025. It took effect Sept. 1, 2025 — the law of the state Talarico now wants to represent in the U.S. Senate.
Texas is not alone in litigating this question. A number of states have taken up similar bills in recent years, on both sides of the affirmation debate, as custody disputes involving a child’s gender identity have become one of the more contested fronts in family law nationally. HB 1106 puts Texas firmly on one side of that split — and puts Talarico’s 2019 floor argument on record against the outcome his own state ultimately chose.
Talarico, a fourth-term state representative and former Teach For America teacher who earned a Master of Divinity from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in 2025, won the March 3, 2026 Texas Democratic Senate primary outright, defeating Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) and Ahmad Hassan. He now heads a general election against Ken Paxton (R-TX), the sitting Texas Attorney General, who unseated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in a May 26, 2026 GOP runoff by a wide 63.8–36.2 margin after a late endorsement from President Trump.
The Democratic primary itself had already been unusually public. Then-Rep. Colin Allred, who ran statewide in 2024, dropped his own Senate bid in December 2025 to run instead for Texas’s 33rd Congressional District — and later endorsed Crockett over Talarico after the two clashed publicly during the primary. Talarico won anyway, setting up a race both parties now treat as central to which party controls the Senate.
The 2019 clip is not the first Talarico comment Republicans have circulated this cycle. He has separately faced questions over a past remark describing God as “nonbinary,” which he addressed directly when confronted on-camera, and the Washington Examiner’s Byron York has chronicled a broader pattern of Talarico walking back or re-explaining earlier statements once they draw national attention.
NEW: James Talarico defends saying 'God is non-binary' to defend child gender mutilations. 'If someone's got a problem with that ... they should take it up with the Apostle Paul.'
RNC Research, the national party’s opposition-research arm, has recirculated Talarico’s gender-identity remarks repeatedly through the summer and fall of 2026, part of a running effort to frame the Democratic nominee as out of step with Texas voters ahead of November.
James Talarico, now the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, on record calling a parent's refusal to affirm a child's gender identity 'abusive for sure.' This is who Texas Democrats picked.
The RNC’s public reaction to the resurfaced clip went well beyond a policy critique. RNC spokesperson Zach Kraft told Fox News Digital in a statement: “Only perverts and pedophiles think about what is in little kids’ pants as much as James Talafreako.” It is an inflammatory line, and a real, on-the-record statement from the national party, reproduced here exactly as given.
Talarico’s campaign responded on the record as well. Spokesperson JT Ennis told Fox News Digital: “James believes parents have the most important say in decisions about their children, which is why he sponsored a bill to protect parental rights and ensure parents are responsible for the upbringing of their own kids. While James has fought for Texas parents and families, Ken Paxton has endangered them by allowing pedophiles back on our streets.”
Neither side disputes what Talarico said in 2019 — the hearing record is public and unedited. What’s contested is what it means for a Senate candidate seven years later, in a state that has since written the opposite rule into its Family Code, and in a race both parties are treating as close enough to decide the Senate’s balance of power.
In an April 2019 committee hearing, James Talarico (D-TX) said three separate times that a parent’s refusal to affirm a child’s gender identity is “abusive,” while arguing against a bill that would have barred courts from ever finding it so. Texas passed that bill’s successor anyway in 2025, over his vote. He is now the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, facing Ken Paxton (R) in a toss-up race on Nov. 3, 2026.
