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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.

In the last 20 years it seems like the political class has drifted far to the left of the public such that both Democrats and Republicans tend to run to the right of where they actually govern.

When’s the last time a Republican ran a centrist campaign and then governed to the right? George W. Bush?

Even Trump I ended up as a milquetoast centrist Presidency despite the rhetorical bombasticity.

But there are lots of examples of Democrats running to the center and masking far left tendencies. Spanberger in Virginia, for example. And Talarico in Texas is running that playbook too.

So, from a Republican perspective, it seems like just advertising the true beliefs of Democratic politicians in their own words is a good campaign trick.

Most 80/20 issues are wins for Republicans.

advertising the true beliefs of Democratic politicians in their own words is a good campaign trick

Indeed and the most powerful election ad from the last presidential election was a video of Kamal explaining how she wants there to be taxpayer-paid sex reassignment surgeries for illegal immigrants in prison. Kamala's campaign could not come up with a response to that despite trying. Potential counter ads didn't poll well with focus groups.