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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

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An interesting "false flag" in the transgender culture war: a mystery group is impersonating a transgender group and sending texts and flyers to the wrong people:

https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-politics/texans-receive-texts-impersonating-transgender-advocacy-group/

This week, some Texans reported receiving texts about “gender-affirming care in Texas” and a “complete guide on bathrooms and beyond for trans kids at school.” Those messages included links to the website of the Transgender Education Network of Texas, or TENT.

Questions about gender-affirming care in Texas? Start here. You can get the care you need: https://transtexas.org/resources

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/trans-student-mailers-hit-texas-210015782.html

This week, some Texans reported receiving texts about “gender-affirming care in Texas” and a “complete guide on bathrooms and beyond for trans kids at school.” Those messages included links to the website of the Transgender Education Network of Texas, or TENT.

"This was sent to my home. Addressed to the 'students' of our family from the 'Texas Transgender Student Union.' It coaches minors on what to do if their parents are not supportive of their 'trans' identity and walks them through getting emancipated," Gonzales posted.

As far as I can tell, of course, the transgender groups in question have no disagreement with the contents in these messages, but they have been sent to the wrong people. They want this content to stay on the down low and for parents not to know about it. As on twitter poster put it "The trans people wouldn’t be stupid enough to send this out right before midterms unless they thought you were trans" (emphasis added). The pages on the websites that the pamphlets and texts linked to have been taken down, though archive links show they had content on them previously: https://web.archive.org/web/20261005063417/https://transtexas.org/trans-texas-takeover-tour/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260807023304/https://transtexas.org/resources/ which is a very interesting thing to do for a group that presumably wants people to attend their tour and have access to some resources.

This does reinforce the idea that the trans project is both unpopular and/or secretly transing kids without their parents knowing, as they reacting with horror that parents are being exposed to their message.

This hiding behavior is certainly not standard among all groups. Most groups would be thrilled to get free publicity pointed to their website, even if the messages are coming from an anonymous benefactor (assuming it doesn't get them on a spam shitlist or something). Nevertheless, it does seem like democrat ideology mandates that they support the maximalist trans movement, and their solution is to distance from it.

It's not a difficult mystery at all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_propaganda

The Republican midterm strategy has been to repeatedly yell transgender and immigration over and over and over again at voters like the 9/11 family guy skit, hoping to get people to look past the financial disaster/corruption/etc.

We have motive. We have means. We have opportunity. They seem to be targeting right wing families in particular.

The thing that twinges my antennae a bit is that it was addressed to "Students of the XXX family," where XXX is the family that lived here about 10 years ago, for whom we still get mail from time to time, all sent from super right-wing organizations.

And we have evidence of it being a psyop already given the supposed group has no previous history and the only existing organization it has any attachment to has said it's an unauthorized usage of their name.

  • -20

Black propaganda is disinformation. The things being sent here are actually beliefs of the groups being "impersonated"--they are just being sent to a hostile audience.

Black propaganda is disinformation

The organization isn't a serious one, it was created for the explicit purpose of doing something real activists weren't doing, sending out flyers to students.

The whole thing is a literal psyop.

  • -16

The flyers accurately depicted the beliefs of the real organization. They did not misrepresent the organization's beliefs. The organization didn't authorize the mailings, but a misrepresentation normally means a substantial one, not just any old one. Lying about who sent the flyers, but accurately depicting their beliefs in the flyers, is not a substantial misrepresentation even though in some autistically literal way it's not true.

It's still black propaganda per basically every definition I found.

  • -10

I suspect you'd have no problems with a Democrat false-flag organization sending people to the Project 2025 Website and acting as though it was an official campaign pledge from Republicans.

Nobody wanted to send anyone to the actual project 2025, it's a 900 page policy document full of standard republican priorities scripted out in boring detail. The project 2025 scaremongering relied on people not reading the document, which was easy, because it was long and boring.

Yeah but it also relied on 'The Republicans are full-send on implementing every single thing in the 900 page policy document' when there's plenty in there that even with unlimited power the current Republican body wouldn't actually do.

There's no good argument against "I made up something in my head to get mad about", given you've already proven you'll just make up stuff in your head.

The organization is real and serious, it was created for the explicit purpose of trans advocacy. The OP contains an archive link dated prior to any of this drama, with statements proving that the texts were an accurate representation of their beliefs. The current version of the website contains cope about the texts, has removed any of the previously proudly shared resources, again indicating that the organization is real and pro-trans, rather than a false flag.

The whole thing is a literal psyop.

What specific evidence do you have of this?

The organization is real and serious, it was created for the explicit purpose of trans advocacy.

TENT ("Transgender Education Network of Texas) is real, the "Texas Transgender Student Union" (the ones supposedly behind the letter) is not real outside of an LLC set up last month.

TENT has publicly stated that the TTSU is not an authorized representative.

The TTSU is a fake activist organization.

TENT has publicly stated that the TTSU is not an authorized representative.

And? How is that relevant to the issue at all? How does being unauthorized make anything they said untrue?

You said

The organization is real and serious, it was created for the explicit purpose of trans advocacy.

But TTSU the ones who sent the flyers are not real and serious.

If you reread my comment

The organization isn't a serious one, it was created for the explicit purpose of doing something real activists weren't doing, sending out flyers to students.

I am clearly speaking about TTSU, the flyer sending organization, which is a not real and serious organization.

You confused TTSU with TENT, which is a real organization but did not send the flyers.

How does being unauthorized make anything they said untrue?

Not relevant, "the fake group said true things while pretending to represent a real group" doesn't make them a real organization. The TTSU is fake and was created last month https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/transgender-mailers-22485877.php

Even Republican politicians acknowledge it's not real!

“A legitimate group does not send something like that from a fake address with a fake name, especially on the first day of early voting,” said Dade Phelan, a Beaumont Republican and the former speaker of the Texas House.

I am clearly speaking about TTSU, the flyer sending organization, which is a not real and serious organization.

I'm sorry, I guess I was steelmanning your argument. TTSU being fake is not relevant to the conversation, so I didn't expect you were actually trying to deflect the conversation there.

Not relevant, "the fake group said true things while pretending to represent a real group" doesn't make them a real organization.

It does make TTSU being fake completely irrelevant though.

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