Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico gushed in 2022 about a far-left, nonbinary transgender operative who he said inspires him to “keep going” when he’s “feeling kind of hopeless” in his far-left crusades. Talarico praised his transgender role model, Ash Hall, for rallying opposition to state bans on men in women’s sports and sex changes for children.
“The Capitol is not a safe place for a lot of marginalized people,” Talarico told the Go Behind the Ballot Podcast. “So, that’s part of the thing that keeps me going when I’m getting discouraged or I’m getting upset or I’m feeling kind of hopeless. I look at people like Ash Hall and I’m like, if Ash can do this much harder thing than I’m doing, then I have to keep going.”
Hall, who looks remarkably similar to Talarico, graduated just two years after Talarico did from the University of Texas at Austin and uses they/them pronouns. Hall works for the ACLU, according to LinkedIn, and last year won the Monica Roberts Trans Activist of the Year Award.
“One of the best organizers at the Capitol is an activist named Ash Hall,” Talarico said on the podcast. “Ash does a lot of the work for the trans community in Texas and is an outspoken advocate for trans kids in particular.”
Talarico, who’s recently sought to reframe himself as a moderate on youth gender issues as he wages a surprisingly competitive Senate campaign in deep red Texas, was a hardline supporter of the transgender lobby four years ago. In the podcast interview, he accused Republican legislators in the state of “marginalizing and discriminating against” transgender children.
Hall led opposition to state legislation that prohibits boys from competing in girls’ sports and men from using women’s bathrooms. Hall also vehemently fought bills that ban sex change treatments for minors and define biological sex as strictly male or female based on reproductive anatomy. Those policies that Hall opposed are increasingly popular among Americans, according to the latest polling, and bans on sex changes for minors are now law in a majority of states. The Supreme Court last year struck down a challenge to the state bans on sex changes for minors.
On the podcast, Talarico, who has served in the Texas state House since 2018, then lauded Hall for doing great work during the “horrible debate” around a bill that “discriminated against trans kids in sports.” One of the interviewers then commended Talarico for those comments, noting that she has a nonbinary 11-year-old child and that certain legislation has caused her family to fear for its safety.
Talarico, despite polls that show a tight race against the Republican state attorney general, Ken Paxton, remains under siege for prior remarks on children and transgenderism. Talarico, for example, previously said God is “nonbinary,” that the thing he loves most, excluding his family, is trans kids, and that there are six sexes.
Talarico has attempted to walk those comments back by admitting that he has “missed the mark” with past statements and that Republicans are intentionally clipping his most “cringey” comments. He also flatly claimed in June that he opposes gender transition surgeries for minors (he voted against legislation that would ban such surgeries three years prior).
Hall, Talarico’s inspiration whose X handle is @LGBTActivist, is anything but moderate. In 2017, Hall testified before the Texas state Senate, arguing against legislation barring men from using women’s bathrooms and saying that “locking us out of the bathroom” will not end “rape culture.” While that bill failed, an updated version only impacting government-owned facilities, including public schools and universities, ultimately passed last year. Hall said the new bill was “unconscionable” and would encourage “gender policing.” “This bill is bad for trans and intersex people, bad for cisgender people, bad for business, bad for public health and safety, and bad for Texas,” Hall said.
In 2021, Hall emerged as a leading voice opposing a bill requiring youth athletes to play on school sports teams that match the sex listed on their original birth certificate. In a social media post at the time, Hall described participating in 10 hours of testimony about the bill at a legislative hearing and posted a selfie with a transgender child who Hall said “cried over transphobia” during the hearing.
Hall claimed after the bill passed that just debating it caused an increase in suicide hotline calls and that it would ultimately “put the lives of our kids in danger.”
In 2023, Hall was outspoken in advocating against legislation that prohibits doctors from providing gender transition-related treatments to anyone under the age of 18, a bill that the state supreme court upheld one year later.
“Our government shouldn’t deprive trans youth of the health care that they need to survive and thrive—while offering that exact same health care to everyone else,” Hall said after the High Court’s decision. “Texas politicians’ obsession with attacking trans kids and their families is needlessly cruel.”
And last year, Hall accused the Texas legislature of attempting to “erase trans, nonbinary, and intersex Texans from public life” after it passed a bill that defines biological sex as strictly male or female based on reproductive anatomy for government recordkeeping purposes. “It threatens to further strip away legal protections that shield us from discrimination,” Hall said.
In addition to being an activist on transgender-related legislation, according to LinkedIn, Hall has worked for Texas state Democrats and on Democratic campaigns, including as a political manager for the Washington, D.C.-based LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, which supports “out LGBTQ+ elected officials at all levels of government.”
In a 2022 interview, Hall disclosed having been hired as the school board organizing director by the progressive Texas Blue Action Democrats. In that role, Hall said the mission was to “defend the school board members” statewide from “conservative concerned parents who will be acting in ways that are very racist and transphobic.”
Hall was then active on social media endorsing progressive school board candidates during the following election and posted a photo while canvassing for such candidates. “Our kids deserve safe, inclusive schools where teachers can teach the truth!” Hall wrote.
Talarico’s alignment with Hall, meanwhile, puts him at odds with the majority of Americans, who increasingly support more protections for minors, women’s sports, and women’s bathrooms. According to a Pew Research poll conducted last year, 66 percent of Americans support policies that require athletes to compete on teams corresponding with their sex; 56 percent support policies banning doctors from providing gender transition surgeries on minors; and 49 percent support policies requiring people to use bathrooms that correspond with their sex, compared with just 26 percent who oppose such policies.
The Talarico campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Ash Hall did not respond to requests for comment.
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