The bitter fight over a Texas Senate seat that Democrats believe is within reach for the first time in decades should be ramping up right now.

But in the final push, when campaigns believe most voters are finally tuning in, Democratic state Rep. James Talarico has been off the trail for in-person events in the state for 12 days.

His campaign says he has the flu and is expected to be back in action this weekend.

While he has appeared virtually at a forum, Talarico’s last in-person event in the state was on Sept. 26. He visited New York on Sept. 29 for a private fundraiser, and, according to the virtual remarks he gave to the Hispanic Business Council the next day, he returned to Dallas and visited urgent care.
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Explosive rumors are circulating about the whereabouts of Texas State Rep. James Talarico (D-50th District), and if they prove true, his Senate campaign is over.

Sara Gonzales of The Blaze reported Thursday that she had received a tip she was still working to confirm.
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Gonzales didn't say what the information was, but GOP strategist Caroline Wren did, and what she's hearing, though unconfirmed, is huge.

"James Talarico is straight up missing one month before the election," Wren told Steve Bannon on Real America's Voice.

To recap, Talarico was last seen in Texas at a football game on Sept. 26. Invitations show New York City fundraisers with Robert De Niro on Sept. 28 and Sept. 29. Then, on Sept. 30, Talarico appeared by video at a Hispanic business event he was supposed to have attended in person, and said he had come down with the flu and visited a Dallas clinic. Wren concludes that account would put him in a Dallas medical clinic on the same night he was supposed to have been at a fundraiser in Manhattan.

Nobody has seen him in public since.

After Bannon floated the possibility that Talarico was simply off raising money in New York or Los Angeles, Wren said photos from those events would have surfaced by now.

Then she shared what her sources in Texas are telling her.

"I'm hearing that he checked himself into a mental institution, that he had a full-blown mental breakdown sometime around, I guess, September 29th or September 30th," she said.

Now, to be clear, nobody has verified this. Wren said so herself, and she deserves credit for not dressing up a tip as a confirmed fact. "So, I heard this from someone in Texas," she said. "I have no idea what the truth is." She called on investigative reporters to chase it down, and that's the right call. A claim like this about any candidate, Republican or Democrat, needs proof before anyone treats it as settled.

But the rumor has legs because the Talarico campaign is acting like it’s hiding something, and its public explanations don’t make sense. The official story is the flu. Twelve days of it.

"I've had the flu many times. We've all had the flu," Wren said. "You are not out for 12 days. Like, give me a break — that is not an excuse for this."
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Hallie Shoffner, who is running to unseat Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), defended “undocumented” farm workers as exceptionally hardworking, after previously saying she grew up around “undocumented” farm workers, discussing Mexican H-2A employees on her family farm, defending farmers’ reliance on foreign-born labor, and leading a nonprofit that assisted “undocumented Hispanics.”

“Every farmer will tell you at one point, we did, or still do, employ undocumented immigrants, and it’s absolutely ridiculous that these folks are being rounded up because they’re hardworking people,” Shoffner said on Free Arkansas with host Andy McNeill. “They’re some of the best people we know, and honestly, we’d trade five Americans for just one of them because of how hard they work.”

“And why is it that there’s no pathway for them to work here legally when they’re good workers? We pay them well. They spend money here. They have family here,” Shoffner said.

“We’re acting like all Republicans like what’s happening with ICE, and Tom Cotton’s basically saying you, Andy, if you’re a Republican and you disagree with my position on ICE, or if you’re asking any kind of questions about it, well, you must be anti-American and anti-safety,” Shoffner said. “And I’m like, I have a seven-year-old boy. All I think about is safety.”

Laura Loomer highlighted the interview on X,
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