In America, there once was an era when a politician could attend church on Sunday, vote his conscience on Monday, and remain unaccused as radical. That era is now rapidly fading.
The political left has spent years marginalizing Christianity in public life—removing prayer from schools, ridiculing traditional morality in media, and treating biblical conviction as a psychological disorder. For millions of faithful Americans, this hostility is no longer subtle; it is brazen.
However, occasionally, a Democrat goes beyond mere criticism and delivers remarks so extreme they demand attention. A Texas state representative running for U.S. Senate recently provided such an example—caught on camera.
During an appearance on Texas Impact’s Weekly Witness, Talarico described legislation restricting gender-affirming care for transgender minors and Texas’s abortion ban as stemming from what he called a “Christofascism movement.”
Read that again: A sitting Texas legislator—a man seeking to represent one of the nation’s most church-going states in the U.S. Senate—branded mainstream conservative legislation as “fascism.” Not misguided policy or an overreach. Fascism.
Protecting children from irreversible, experimental gender procedures? Fascism. Restricting the killing of unborn babies? Also fascism. If you support these laws—and most Texans do—congratulations, James Talarico views you as a brownshirt. He shows no embarrassment about this stance.
This was not an offhand remark at a fundraiser. Talarico has built his personal brand around criticizing Christians who bring their convictions into public life. In a 2023 sermon, he accused believers of turning Jesus into—his exact words—a “gun-toting, gay-bashing, science-denying, money-loving, fear-mongering fascist.”
That is how this man describes the faith of tens of millions of Americans. Not with thoughtful disagreement or pastoral concern, but with open hostility. He has appeared on podcasts claiming Christian nationalism has reared “its ugly head” in Texas, pointing to proposals like displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms and teaching Bible stories in schools as evidence of a creeping theocracy.
The Ten Commandments—a document that shaped Western law and literally hangs inside the U.S. Supreme Court—is apparently too threatening for fifth-graders in Texas. This is lunacy dressed in seminary language.
Strip away the academic jargon and examine the actual policies Talarico labeled fascist: shielding minors from life-altering medical interventions, protecting unborn life, allowing students to see the Ten Commandments, and welcoming chaplains into schools. These are not shadowy proposals from an extremist bunker but laws that passed through the democratic process with strong public support.
When virtually everything your constituents believe in qualifies as fascism in Talarico’s mind, the problem may not be them. He is not offering a sophisticated critique of church-state boundaries; he is vilifying the very voters he claims to represent.
