What James Talarico told a pro-defund the police group in 2020
CNN
Andrew Kaczynski
October 5, 2026
In late summer 2020, as protests over the murder of George Floyd spread across the country, Texas Democratic state Rep. James Talarico told a group of young progressive activists that it was “rich” that “defund the police” was considered taboo when Texas had spent decades defunding public schools and health services.
“As an educator, it’s always rich to me that ‘defund the police’ is considered off-limits in our political debate, when defunding health services, defunding public education has been the stated policy of our state government for decades now,” Talarico told activists with Texas Rising, a progressive advocacy group that at the time was explicitly calling for police departments to be defunded and for greater investment in community-based alternatives.
Talarico, who was responding to a question on how to talk to unfamiliar audiences about the idea of investing in communities instead of policing, acknowledged that the “defund” slogan itself was getting a hostile reaction in his swing district, which he noted had not elected a Democrat since he was a child.
“You know, a hashtag like defund the police is getting people all riled up in my community,” Talarico said. But when people are asked whether armed police officers should respond to minor traffic accidents or mental-health crises, Talarico said, “Most people kind of understand that that’s not what we should be using police officers for.”
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Talarico’s public record and rhetoric on policing is more nuanced than that categorical denial suggests.
From 2019 through at least 2022, Talarico repeatedly backed arguments and policies associated with the broader movement to rethink policing, including limiting police power, investing more heavily in social services and community-based alternatives, and one time explicitly arguing for spending less on policing and prisons. He also proposed sending “highly trained crisis interventionists” to some emergencies.
Many of those comments came at the height of the “defund the police” movement, when the phrase had no single accepted meaning.
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In 2020, then-Sen. Kamala Harris, before she was tapped as Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick, praised the movement for forcing a debate over whether large police budgets reflected the right priorities. Others in 2020, such as Abdul El-Sayed, now the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, made a similar case for redirecting police spending toward public services and explicitly embraced the “defund the police” slogan.
Talarico often made arguments that overlapped with Harris’ interpretation, even as he stopped short of explicitly embracing the phrase itself.
In his 2020 call with pro-defund activists, Talarico praised protesters in the Black Lives Matter movement for pushing elected officials to rethink the role of government and policing.
“We always expect protesters to be nonviolent,” he said on his Texas Rising call. “What happens if we expect our government to be nonviolent? What does that question open up in terms of possibility?” He said “the voices in the street, particularly Black and brown voices” were pushing those in power to “expand our moral imagination” and live up to the country’s “stated ideals.”
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Talarico had questioned greater reliance on police even before Floyd’s death.
In 2019, he criticized efforts to increase police presence in schools without comparable investments in mental health professionals, arguing that more officers could contribute to what he called a “culture of violence.”
His rhetoric became more sweeping in the weeks after Floyd’s murder in May 2020.
In a May Facebook exchange, Talarico said he and other lawmakers would “continue to push anti-racist legislation that limits police power,” while promoting healthcare, education and economic justice in communities of color.
In another exchange on the same post, Democratic state Rep. Shawn Thierry called for police to “put down the weapons & kneel alongside Black citizens” and asked when they would be “brought to heel” over what she described as brutality, killings and abuses of police power. Talarico liked the comment and replied, “I couldn’t agree more,” adding that he was committed to work with Thierry “to make the imagery you described a reality.”
That next month, after the release of footage surrounding the death of Javier Ambler II during a 2019 arrest in Williamson County, Texas, Talarico called for replacing the existing policing system.
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The debate was also playing out in real time in Austin, where city leaders approved a budget in August 2020 that cut roughly $150 million from the police department.
Talarico praised Austin’s local leaders during the same period and criticized Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s efforts to punish cities that reduced police funding. He also praised efforts to end what he called the “over-policing” of communities of color, saying police violence against people of color has its roots in slavery and Jim Crow.
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Talarico’s campaign also contributed $2,500 in June 2020 to the Austin Justice Coalition, which was advocating cuts to Austin’s police budget and redirecting money toward social services and to “defund” the police department.
The donation became an issue in his reelection campaign after Republicans accused him of helping to defund police. Talarico dismissed the attack as “fearmongering” and defended the contribution, describing the Austin Justice Coalition as “a well-respected civil rights organization in our community that champions educational equity, economic opportunity, and police reform.”
In 2021, Talarico campaigned against Austin’s Proposition A, which would have required the city to maintain at least two police officers for every 1,000 residents and would have forced the hiring of hundreds of additional officers. Talarico urged voters to defeat the measure, arguing instead that “true public safety” required investment in communities. Austin voters ultimately rejected the proposal by wide margin.
And in 2022, Talarico connected reduced spending on policing and prisons with greater spending on social programs.
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