Just two weeks from Election Day, mysterious messages addressed to transgender children have made their way into Texas voters’ inboxes.
The letters — and text messages — purport to contain help for transgender children preparing for the start of the school year.
The messages includes information about a trans advocacy group — the Transgender Education Network of Texas, or TENT — but the group said it had nothing to do with the messages and the actual origin of the mailers is uncertain.
According to the return address on the letters, the pamphlets were sent by the Texas Transgender Student Union, from an address in an office park area in Meadows Place, outside Houston. But there is no such business registered in Texas, state filings show.
The group appears to be a limited liability company that was created in September in Wyoming, which doesn’t require businesses to disclose who created them.
Transgender rights have been central to this year’s elections in Texas, and the messages caught fire on social media among conservative influencers who received the texts and mailers, which were addressed to “the students” of the family.
“You don’t have to decide about hormones or surgery right now,” reads a pamphlet inside the letter, which includes links to the websites of transgender and civil rights groups. “You don’t have to convince your parents.”
TENT said it did not send the messages and the information within did not represent its official position.
“These text messages and mailers were not authored, authorized, approved, or distributed by TENT and are not affiliated with our organization,” the group said in a statement posted to its website.
Top Republican candidates, including Ken Paxton in the race for U.S. Senate, have made their Democratic opponents’s stances on transgender children in particular a key point of attack.
Voters in Texas, during its most competitive election year in decades, have been inundated by political ads in recent months. Early voting in the Texas election began Monday.
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