James Talarico emerged from the Democratic primary as his party’s nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas, and the script writes itself. The 36-year-old state representative, once a reliable voice for the progressive left, now races toward the political center with the urgency of a man pursued by his own record.
Yet no amount of rhetorical scrubbing can fully conceal the years of unapologetic advocacy for positions that remain deeply at odds with the values of most Texans.
This is not mere evolution in thought. It is a calculated pivot, familiar in Democratic politics, where primary extremism gives way to general-election moderation. In a state where roughly two-thirds of adults identify as Christian, Talarico’s past declarations present a formidable obstacle. His attempts to reframe those statements as “provocative” or “cringy” only underscore the cynicism at play.
Talarico has spent years positioning himself as a voice against what he calls Christian nationalism while advancing views that many believers see as incompatible with historic Christian teaching. He has questioned the biological reality of two sexes, suggested God transcends binary categories in ways that blur clear scriptural distinctions, and championed policies on abortion, gender, and education that align more closely with secular progressivism than with the faith he claims.
Consider the record. Talarico once proclaimed, “God is non-binary,” later explaining it as an attempt to convey that the divine cannot be confined by human categories. He has argued there are more than two biological sexes and pushed back against restrictions on men competing in women’s sports.
His office pioneered the inclusion of pronouns on staff business cards, and he has described himself as leading a “non-meat campaign” in service of environmental goals. These are not the musings of a moderate seeking common ground. They are the hallmarks of a committed ideologue.
“There are some statements that I’ve made that I certainly regret. There are statements that I’ve made where I’ve missed the mark.”
So said Talarico in a recent interview, attempting damage control. Yet regret without substantive change rings hollow. Texans deserve more than a candidate who dismisses his own words as youthful excess when those words reveal a consistent worldview.
The nominee’s record on abortion stands in particularly stark contrast to the pro-life convictions held by majorities in the state. He has claimed the Bible is silent on the issue, a position that ignores the clear witness of Scripture regarding the sanctity of life in the womb.
His outreach to disappointed supporters of Senator John Cornyn reveals the strategy: appeal to those weary of political combat by offering an “independent” alternative. Talarico highlights bipartisan work on taxes and teacher pay while downplaying his deeper commitments. But voters rarely forget a candidate’s foundational beliefs. As one observer noted, such sentiments are “bizarre and indicative of a polluted mind” in the context of Texas values.
Democrats see opportunity in Texas’s shifting demographics and frustrations with establishment figures. Talarico’s fundraising surge demonstrates enthusiasm from national progressives eager to flip a red seat. Yet enthusiasm in Austin and on social media does not translate to victory in a state still anchored by conservative principles and Christian heritage.
The Lone Star State is not Virginia, where similar strategies have occasionally succeeded before revealing their true nature in governance.
Republicans, led by Attorney General Ken Paxton, will not let these contradictions fade. Paxton’s team has already amplified the most revealing clips, forcing Talarico into perpetual explanation mode. This dynamic favors the incumbent side: when every defense requires contextualizing radical statements, the candidate appears defensive rather than visionary.
Texas Christians face a clear choice. The faith Talarico invokes bears little resemblance to the robust orthodoxy that has shaped the state’s moral framework for generations. It is a faith reimagined to accommodate contemporary cultural demands rather than one that challenges them.
As the Apostle Paul warned the church at Colossae, “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8).
The coming campaign will test whether Texas voters prioritize polished messaging over substantive record. Talarico drags substantial baggage into this race—baggage that no power-wash of moderation can fully erase.
For a state that values authenticity, clarity, and fidelity to principle, this presents more than a political challenge. It is a moment of discernment, where words must be weighed against deeds and rhetoric tested against reality.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.