BY: ELIANA JONSHON 23 JUN 2026 ---------------------- James Talarico (Danielle Villasana/Getty Images) Texas Democrat James Talarico’s website once promoted his support for “trans kids” and “bold, progressive ideas.” That was then, this is James Talarico running for Senate in a red state, when he’d backed over all that left-wing rhetoric with a semi-truck. Around the time Talarico launched his Senate campaign in a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the upper chamber since 1988, he updated the site to remove the word “progressive” and to take aim at billionaires rather than Republicans, the Free Beacon’s Collin Anderson reports. Talarico’s website got a makeover in early September, when he launched his Senate campaign, according to internet archives. He now brags about fighting “billionaire mega-donors” rather than “Republican extremism,” touts his efforts to “expand job opportunities for young adults” rather than fight for “trans kids” (good call!), and says the “biggest divide in this country is not left vs. right” but “top vs. bottom.” I may have phrased that last one differently. Anyhow, the word “progressive” has vanished. “The revisions reflect the challenges Talarico faces as he attempts to swap a State House seat in the liberal enclave of Austin for a U.S. Senate seat in a state that has not sent a Democrat to the upper chamber since 1988, when Lloyd Bentsen was elected to serve a fourth term,” Anderson writes. “Kamala Harris won Talarico’s Austin district by nearly 50 points in 2024, when President Donald Trump won Texas by nearly 14 points. In his earlier races, Talarico presented himself as a ‘Democrat’ with endorsements from left-wing groups like ‘Liberal Austin Democrats’ who’s ‘fighting back against Republican extremism.’ Now, he says he’s an ‘eighth-generation Texan, former middle school teacher, and Presbyterian seminarian’ running to ‘take his fight against corruption to Washington.’” Talarico secured the Democratic nomination in March and “has spent much of the campaign since then repudiating the left-wing positions that catapulted him to national prominence.” Last month, for example, he told CBS News that his claim that “God is non-binary” was “cringey” and “missed the mark.” Talarico has also said that he opposes sex change surgeries for minors, though he opposed a bill that would have banned the procedures; and that he supports Texas’s enormous oil and gas industry, though he introduced bills in the state House that would have required climate change lessons in Texas public schools and implemented statewide green energy mandates. READ MORE: Texas’s Talarico Scrubbed Website of Statements Supporting ‘Trans Kids’ and ‘Bold, Progressive Ideas’ Ahead of Senate Run } --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RoM6!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcb647390-54db-48cd-83a6-30161806278b_3508x2480.jpeg A screenshot of Poetica's website, R: Dan Goldman (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) The owner of a New York City coffee shop who told a Jewish member of Congress, Democrat Dan Goldman, that his “AIPAC” money was no good there is an Uzbek immigrant who contributed to Graham Platner’s Senate campaign and has complained that his Brooklyn neighbors don’t tip enough, our Jon Levine reports. Parviz Mukhamadkulov’s Poetica Coffee took down its Instagram account after throwing up a post condemning Goldman (D., N.Y.)—who brought his young daughter by the East Village roastery—as a “fascist” and “genocide enabler.” But Mukhamadkulov went back for seconds on LinkedIn, telling one critic, “Pretty simple process if you support genocide we reserve the right not to serve you.” He started the shop in 2020 during the pandemic and has since expanded to eight locations—though he did so while skipping out on paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in state taxes, according to the New York Department of Taxation and Finance, which says Poetica Coffee owes nearly $400,000 in sales tax. In 2023, Poetica was sued for failing to comply with accessibility requirements under the American with Disabilities Act. The company failed to appear, prompting its landlord, Ying Wee Corp, to sue for costs associated with the resulting $18,500 settlement and to secure a $39,000 payout from Mukhamadkulov, records show. The shop’s Brooklyn location has also been dinged by city health inspectors for unsanitary conditions, including “filth flies or food/refuse/sewage.” “On X, Mukhamadkulov identified himself as a proud supporter of Mamdani. And federal election records also show he has also donated to Maine's far-left Democratic Senate candidate, Graham Platner,” Levine writes. “Elsewhere on X, Mukhamadkulov has celebrated the deaths of Israeli soldiers and has accused Israel of being behind Sept. 11, calling the country a ‘nazi nation.’ He has defended vandalism against Jewish students on college campuses.” READ MORE: Angry Coffee Shop Owner Who Smeared Jewish Rep Dan Goldman as a ‘Fascist’ Sipping ‘Genocide Juice’ Is a Graham Platner Donor Cited for ‘Filth and Flies’ ///. . .