In September and October 2026, U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, a Democratic Texas state representative, received treatment at a mental health facility in Ohio.
In October 2026, a rumor spread that U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, a Texas Democrat, had received treatment at a mental health care facility in Ohio.
The claim erupted after Talarico, a state representative, disappeared from the campaign trail for nearly 10 days. On Oct. 11, the candidate told Dallas NBC affiliate KXAS’s Phil Prazan in a video interview he’d been lying low at home due to a bout of influenza (archived).
Still, social media posts claiming he had actually been hospitalized at a mental health facility the whole time multiplied on Facebook and X, where one post said, for example, “the flu thing was a BIG FAT LIE” (archived):
Many Snopes readers emailed, asking us to verify whether the rumor was true.
As we outline below, we found no credible evidence to support the claim Talarico had received treatment at a mental health facility. Both the facility named in these rumors and Talarico himself denied the claim on social media. In addition, the timing of his alleged discharge didn’t match Talarico’s schedule.
For these reasons, we rate the claim false.
Two conservative influencers, Nick Sortor and Rhein Amacher,
Both Talarico and the Lindner Center of Hope denied he had ever been treated there.
We reached out to Sorter and Amacher, as well as to Talarico and the Lindner Center of Hope, for clarity and we will update this report should we receive a response.
The rumor originated on X
The rumor spread less than a month before the election, at a time when almost all polls in Texas showed Talarico narrowly ahead of his Republican opponent in the race, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
On Oct. 11, Sortor and Amacher posted a short audio recording on X of a phone conversation between a male voice asking for “James Talarico” and a female voice, allegedly that of someone who worked at Lindner Center for Hope, appearing to say he was discharged earlier that evening.
Sortor (archived) and Amacher (archived) posted within minutes of each other, just after 1 p.m. Eastern time. Both claimed Amacher had had the exchange with the purported employee. In his post, Amacher wrote that a person who he understood to be an employee of the center said Talarico had been discharged “within the previous 24-48 hours”:
I personally contacted @LindnerCtrHope in Mason, Ohio, to determine whether Talarico was or had previously been a patient.
During my recorded call, an individual identifying themselves as a female facility employee reportedly stated that Talarico was no longer a patient and had been discharged within the previous 24–48 hours.
In the recording, however, the person tells Amacher the patient was “just discharged this evening.” The recorded exchange went as follows:
ALLEGED EMPLOYEE: I do not find anyone with that name for the last four days that’s been discharged, and they’re not here in the building.
AMACHER: OK, so nothing for James Talarico?
ALLEGED EMPLOYEE: Um… let’s see, looks… well… this is what it’s today… Looks like he was just discharged this evening. That’s why I don’t have it.
Amacher’s post included a purported screenshot of a call log showing he had attempted to contact the facility three times that day: at 8:53 p.m., 8:56 p.m. and 8:59 p.m.
A subsequent X post by Amacher on Oct. 11 indicated the exchange took place “yesterday” — Oct. 10. We reached out to him for more details.
Talarico’s whereabouts on Oct. 9 and 10
On Oct. 9 — the day before Amacher’s alleged call — Talarico made an appearance at the Austin City Limits festival, as photographs on the reputable image bank Getty Images show.
The evening of Oct. 10, Talarico attended Kacey Musgraves’ concert in Dallas, according to a post by Talarico’s campaign at 2:30 a.m. Oct. 11, indicating the video had been shot in the hours before (archived):
(An earlier post by another X account confirmed Talarico was at the concert.)
Musgraves played in Dallas Oct. 10 and 11, according to the website of the venue, the American Airlines Center.
In a seeming attempt to justify the discrepancy between the time the alleged employee told him the patient was discharged and Talarico’s appearance in Austin the day before, Amacher posted again on X saying that the time of a patient’s discharge could be registered some time after the person has left the facility (archived):
Mental health facility denies Talarico was a patient
On Oct. 11, in response to the rumors, the Lindner Center of Hope posted on X to say Talarico had never been a patient (archived):
Talarico shared the post, adding that he has never been to Ohio (archived):
Further, Talarico spokesperson JT Ennis posted on X that the claim was a “lie” to “promote a pathetic conspiracy theory” (archived):
Lastly, Snopes obtained visual evidence of Talarico being at home every day from Oct. 1 to 8, the day before he went to the music festival in Austin.
Talarico has long been open about having Type 1 diabetes, a condition that increases the risk of complications when the person comes down with the flu, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For further reading, Snopes has covered several rumors about Talarico, including the claim that he is vegan.
