MAGA PAC quietly yanks Talarico attack ad after reporter scrutinizes claims

A Republican-aligned super PAC yanked a fabricated attack ad against Texas Senate candidate James Talarico within hours of being contacted by a reporter about its accuracy, quietly pulling it from Meta's platforms rather than defending the claims publicly.

Texas PAC, a super PAC created by Senate GOP leadership, launched the digital-only ad Tuesday featuring a woman identified only as "Miriam, a mom of five," who claims Talarico supports jailing parents who refuse to let their children undergo gender-transition surgery.

"If you care about your children, do not vote for James Talarico," the ad's narrator says.

The claim has no basis in reality. Popular Information, which obtained the ad through Meta's Ad Library, traced its sole supporting source back to a years-old newspaper article covering an unrelated piece of legislation, one dealing with whether judges could factor a parent's stance on a child's gender identity into custody rulings. Talarico opposed that bill and testified it was harmful to deny a child's gender identity, but the legislation never touched surgery or criminal penalties of any kind.

The woman in the ad, Miriam Evans, is a Dallas-area Republican activist who sits on the board of a conservative advocacy organization built around conservative Christian teachings on gender, a group that has recently touted growing local pushback against Pride Month recognitions in Texas communities. Neither Evans nor Texas PAC responded to requests for comment.

Within a couple of hours of being contacted for this story, the ad disappeared from Meta's platforms without any public acknowledgment from the PAC.

It's the latest entry in a staggering $37 million trans-focused ad campaign against Talarico since September 6, split between Texas PAC's roughly $30 million in broadcast spending, more than $4 million from Trump's MAGA Inc., and $1.3 million from Elon Musk's America PAC. A related, widely-run claim, that Talarico backs "taxpayer-funded sex changes on kids," was already rated False by PolitiFact; Talarico never voted for such a policy and actually supports a national ban on the procedures, which are exceedinglyrare in practice.

The attacks don't appear to be working. As of press time, the last 11 public polls compiled by RealClearPolitics all show Talarico with a narrow lead over Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, who remains dogged by his own political and personal scandals, though Paxton's campaign has released an internal poll showing him ahead by 3 points.