After praising prison abolition advocate Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Talarico repeated one of her central arguments before expanding on it with his own vision.
“Prisons are a catchall solution to our social problems,” he said while referencing Gilmore’s work.
Talarico then proposed redirecting enormous amounts of taxpayer funding away from policing and incarceration.
“Prisons allow us to ignore the consequences of systemic racism and global capitalism. If we took just half of what we spent on wars, prisons, and policing and spent it on education, health care, and jobs, we could make prisons obsolete.”
He continued by encouraging listeners to imagine eliminating prisons altogether, comparing the idea to outdated technology that eventually disappeared.
“It’s hard to imagine a world without prisons. But it was also hard to imagine a world without telegrams and cassette tapes. Just because it was hard to imagine doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. We won’t build it overnight, but dreaming is the first step.”
The comments closely mirror the arguments promoted by activists during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, when calls to reduce police budgets and redirect funding toward social services became a central demand among progressive organizations.
Those remarks now stand in sharp contrast to Talarico’s current campaign messaging.
After Republicans criticized previous statements regarding police officers in schools and questioned whether he supported defunding law enforcement, Talarico’s campaign rejected the accusation.
According to Fox News, his campaign stated that Talarico “opposes defunding the police and has a proven track record voting to send billions of dollars to support law enforcement.”
It is true that Talarico has voted for state spending bills that included funding for police agencies during his tenure in the Republican-controlled Texas House. Critics, however, argue that his own public statements reveal very different priorities if he were in a position to write the budget himself.
During the same 2022 address, Talarico called for replacing traditional criminal justice policies with what he described as a “nonviolent government.”
“If violence is systemic then love must be systemic. What would a nonviolent government look like? Instead of criminalizing, policing, and imprisoning communities, a nonviolent government would refuse to repay evil with evil and instead respond to evil with good.”
Talarico also promoted restorative justice models rooted in Native American peacemaking traditions, arguing they should replace more punitive approaches to crime.
“Restorative justice takes its inspiration from indigenous communities in which the goal of a justice system is to disrupt the spiral of violence, not contribute to it. In a restorative justice model, the question is how to right a wrong, not how to punish a wrong. … Restorative justice is not easy. Throwing people in cages is much easier. But it’s the only way to achieve true public safety. It’s the only way to achieve love in public.”
His campaign reportedly did not respond to requests for comment regarding the resurfaced video.
The prison abolition scholar Talarico cited, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, became one of the country’s leading intellectual voices behind the movement to defund police departments following George Floyd’s death in 2020. Her 2007 book Golden Gulag argues that prison expansion was driven more by political and economic interests than crime itself.
In a June 2020 interview with The Intercept, Gilmore made her position unmistakably clear.
“No abolitionist who is a true abolitionist wants to save money. What, therefore, we’re talking about is divest from police, prisons, courts, and so forth and put those money and human resources into schools, social work, a Green New Deal or Red Green New Deal, economic activity—things that communities, municipalities, states can do.”
Critics also point to Talarico’s financial support for organizations aligned with the defund movement.
In June 2020, his state House campaign donated $2,500 to the Austin Justice Coalition, a progressive organization that advocated reducing the Austin Police Department’s budget to what it described as the “minimum possible” level. Around that same period, MAYA Consulting—where Talarico worked as an “equitable education” consultant—reportedly contributed an additional $5,000 to the same organization.
Talarico has represented one of the bluest legislative districts in Texas since first winning office in 2018. Over the years, he has generated headlines for controversial remarks, including declaring that “God is non-binary,” while also sponsoring legislation requiring large public school districts to employ diversity, equity, and inclusion officers.
As he now seeks a statewide office in Texas—a state President Donald Trump carried comfortably—political observers have noticed a shift in tone.
Reports indicate that around the launch of his Senate campaign, Talarico removed references from his campaign website supporting “trans kids,” promoting “bold, progressive ideas,” and condemning “Republican extremism.” Those statements were replaced with broader populist messaging emphasizing opposition to billionaire donors and arguing that America’s greatest political divide is “top vs. bottom” rather than “left vs. right.”
Whether Texas voters embrace that rebranding remains to be seen. But with video of his previous remarks now circulating widely, Republicans are expected to argue that Talarico’s past statements offer a clearer picture of where he truly stands on policing, prisons, and criminal justice than the moderate image he is attempting to project during his Senate campaign.
