Fake Mailers Impersonating Texas Transgender Groups Surface Before Election Day

Somewhere in Texas this month, a teenager opened the mail and found a pamphlet addressed to them by name. It called itself an LGBTQ+ Student Resource Guide and included a QR code, a list of organizations, and a return address for the Texas Transgender Student Union. Nearly everything about it was real except the sender.

The pamphlets appeared around the state near the start of early voting for the November 3 midterms, and the organizations named inside say they had nothing to do with them. On October 17, the Transgender Education Network of Texas said the mailers and accompanying texts “were not authored, authorized, approved, or distributed by TENT and are not affiliated with our organization.” OutYouth, the Montrose Center and Resource Center, all listed on the reverse side, each told the fact-checking outlet Lead Stories they had no part in it. For a community that has spent decades being spoken about more than spoken to, a story about who gets to speak in whose name lands in a familiar place.

A Trail That Stops at a Mailbox

The Texas Transgender Student Union has no website and no social media. CBS News Texas reported that the return address on the flyer, on West Airport Boulevard in Meadows Place, does not appear to be valid; Lead Stories traced the suite number to a mailbox at a UPS Store. A company by that name was registered with the Wyoming Secretary of State on September 2, about seven weeks before the pamphlets appeared, at a registered agent’s office on North Gould Street in Sheridan — an address The Sheridan Press found is shared by nearly 300,000 Wyoming LLCs. Wyoming filings do not disclose who owns a company, so the paperwork ends there.

The texts went out on the evenings of October 12 and 13 and linked to TENT’s own site. On October 14, the group sent cease-and-desist letters to two messaging companies, Peerless Network and Infobip, demanding they stop an unnamed client from impersonating it and name who it was. TENT says it has since absorbed what it called an onslaught of hate and threats, and that staff photographs were used in the materials.

The trail goes one step further and stops again. The Texas Tribune had a Postal Service employee run mailer identification numbers from two pamphlets; they matched SnailWorks, a Maryland mail-tracking firm. SnailWorks said it “does not design, write, print, prepare, or send mail, and has no role in its content,” and could not identify its client. Federal Election Commission records show the National Republican Congressional Committee paid SnailWorks $57,300 for “list rental” over two years, a description SnailWorks disputes. The NRCC said it had no involvement with the pamphlet. Ken Paxton and James Talarico’s campaigns have said the same.

Two Arguments, Running Past Each Other

Among advocacy groups, the reading is that the impersonation was timed to early voting, meant to make trans organizations look as though they were reaching past parents to their children. No document proving motive has surfaced.

The reaction on the right has taken a different shape. Conservative commentators have focused less on who mailed the pamphlet than on what it says. The BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales posted on October 18 that it arrived at her home, “addressed to the ‘students’ of our family.” The Daily Signal and Texas Scorecard emphasized passages on emancipation for minors, hormones and gender-affirming care, and out-of-state services. Their argument is that unsolicited material like that, mailed to a minor, is troubling no matter whose name sits at the top.

State Rep. Jeff Leach has made both arguments in sequence. After the texts went out, he asked the attorney general’s office to investigate TENT for circumventing state law. On October 19, he sent a follow-up letter noting the messages “may not originate from the group whose name it was sent under” and asked investigators to identify the sender. Texas has spent this cycle litigating drag performance restrictions and watching both parties quarrel over transgender policy, as voters elsewhere decide ballot measures.

What stays with me is the envelope. A kid opened a letter that seemed to come from people glad to help. Instead, it came from a company formed seven weeks earlier that nobody will claim. Whoever sent it had something to say about trans people in Texas. They didn’t want to say it themselves.

Say the Quiet Part With Someone Else’s Name On It

I have been writing about this community for twenty-five years, and I have watched a lot of campaigns throw elbows. This is something else. Borrowing the name of the people who spend their days helping frightened kids so the help itself looks like grooming isn’t hardball. It steals the one thing a small nonprofit actually owns: trust.

And it is not a one-off. In the same stretch of October, in Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign confirmed it produced a video featuring the estranged mother of his opponent, Amy Acton, calling her daughter a liar and questioning her mental health. The campaign said it would spend $4 million to push it.

Here is what that mother’s household was. Acton has said she was removed from it at twelve for severe abuse and neglect, and sexual abuse. Police and court records obtained by the Associated Press show her stepfather was arrested in 1978 and indicted for raping his twelve-year-old stepdaughter. He never stood trial. He skipped his hearing, stayed a fugitive for years, and died without ever answering for it. The children were taken out of their mother’s custody after the indictment. Acton has not seen her since a courtroom in 1978.

Someone looked at that and saw an opportunity. Someone budgeted four million dollars for it. The ad went out without the “paid for” disclosure the law requires, which is the same instinct as a flyer with a return address that leads to a rented mailbox. Say it; just do not sign it.

Credit where it is due: not everyone went along. A Republican who ran against Ramaswamy in the primary called the video pretty damn low and said he would vote for Acton. Meghan McCain called it dastardly. A Senate strategist deleted his post sharing it. The vice president’s contribution was to say he was disgusted by Republicans whining about it.

Both of these things work the same way. A child trusts a letterhead. A daughter trusts that her own abuse is not campaign material. The tactic is to find where trust lives and use it as the delivery mechanism, because trust is what gets the envelope opened. That it works at all is the ugliest part, and the reason to name it every time.

The CBS News Texas I-Team reported the documentary trail.

Last thoughts on the 

In closing, I would offer that anyone supporting this MAGA GOP and looking past such disgusting behavior and words by its leaders — from candidates all the way up to the Oval Office, pretending to be Christians– are hypocrites and charlatans. If you’re truly a believer in Christ, and only support this movement because you dislike gay or trans people in your society, and agree we should make it illegal for a woman to seek an abortion — even when the fetus is nonviable, or the life of the mother is at risk –, and turn a blind eye to everything else, take a long look in the mirror and recognize who you really are; not who you pretend with righteousness to be.