Fact-Checking Key Senate Campaign Claims in Georgia, Alaska, and Texas

Control of the Senate will hinge on a handful of competitive races this November, with nominees of both parties honing talking points to attack their opponents.

In Georgia, Republican congressional candidate Mike Collins has criticized incumbent Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff over immigration policy. In Alaska, Democratic challenger Mary Sattler Peltola has focused on the stock trades and rising personal wealth of Republican Senator Dan Sullivan. Meanwhile, in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton has targeted statements made by Democratic state Representative James Talarico regarding Christianity.

Here’s an examination of these claims:

“He voted against the Laken Riley Act when he had the chance to save lives.”
— Representative Mike Collins, Republican nominee for Senate in Georgia, in a July social media post

“I worked across the aisles to get that done — with the exception of Jon Ossoff, who is the U.S. sitting senator here in Georgia who never lifted a finger to help get the Laken Riley Act across the finish line.”
— Mr. Collins in an August interview on Newsmax

False. Senator Ossoff was among 12 Democrats who supported the final version of the Laken Riley Act in January 2025—the first bill signed into law by President Trump upon his return to the White House. The legislation requires law enforcement to detain and deport unauthorized immigrants accused of specific crimes.

The measure was inspired by the tragic 2024 murder of Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student killed by an undocumented immigrant.

While Representative Collins introduced an earlier version of the bill in 2024 that passed the House, it stalled in the Democrat-controlled Senate at the time. When Republicans gained control in 2025, the legislation moved forward with bipartisan support, though some Democrats raised concerns about due process implications.

A spokesman for Mr. Collins argued that Senator Ossoff didn’t actively support the bill until after Republicans took control of Congress.

Nevertheless, Senator Ossoff ultimately voted in favor of the bill, breaking ranks with most of his party. During Senate debates in 2025, he expressed willingness to work across the aisle, telling CNN: “We have a prospect here of working across the aisle” and acknowledging the urgent need to address border security.

In response to questions about his vote, Senator Ossoff explained during a local radio interview that Riley and her family were his constituents and that her death was preventable.

“I think Georgians and the American public are rightly fed up and frustrated with the non-enforcement of immigration law,” he stated. “Now, there were some changes I would have liked to have seen made. We’re going to have to be vigilant as we move forward, that we defend our borders and enforce our immigration laws, and also be mindful of the human and civil rights of all human beings in our country.”

Mr. Collins’s campaign also pointed to a previous procedural vote by Senator Ossoff.

In 2024, a Republican senator proposed an amendment to an appropriations bill that would have prevented funding from being used to grant immigration benefits to undocumented individuals accused of certain crimes. This proposal differs significantly from the final Laken Riley Act or Mr. Collins’s original version. Senator Ossoff joined all other Democratic senators in voting against the motion.

“Twelve years in the Senate, if you can’t get it done in that amount of time, go home. We don’t want people in there making a career out of quadrupling their personal wealth.”
— Mary Peltola, Democratic nominee for Senate in Alaska, in a campaign video in August

“He’s ballooned his net worth, reporting nearly 100 stock trades while serving in office. He’s quadrupled his personal wealth.”
— Ms. Peltola, during a convention in July

This needs context. Ms. Peltola was referring to Senator Dan Sullivan, her Republican opponent. While Senator Sullivan’s reported asset values have increased since joining the Senate in 2015—and he is indeed among the Senate’s most active stock traders—the precise extent of his wealth growth remains unclear due to reporting methods.

Congressional members must report assets and liabilities annually using broad value ranges. Although Senator Sullivan’s maximum reported asset values nearly tripled between 2014 and 2025, actual growth could be less dramatic due to the nature of range-based reporting.

Senator Sullivan disclosed assets worth $2–$4.7 million in 2014. His most recent financial disclosure, filed in August 2025 for the calendar year, showed assets ranging from $4.1 million to $12.3 million.

His largest holding is stock in RPM International, a chemical company founded by his grandfather and previously led by his father and brother as CEO. The company’s stock price doubled between 2014 and 2025, contributing substantially to his increased wealth. In 2014, he reported owning RPM stock valued between $500,001 and $1 million, which grew to $1–$5 million by 2025.

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Nate Adams, a spokesperson for the Sullivan campaign, noted that several of the senator’s assets were inherited following the deaths of his mother in March 2019, his father in November 2020, and his wife’s parents.

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“That Mary Peltola would twist a family’s loss into a false insider trading smear says everything about the type of candidate she is and the type of campaign she is running,” Mr. Adams said.

Ms. Peltoma raises valid points about Senator Sullivan’s extensive trading activity—he executed at least 120 trades worth between $950,000 and $3.5 million, according to Quiver Quantitative’s analysis of financial disclosures. However, transactions involving RPM stock accounted for roughly one-quarter to one-third of this volume, between $329,000 and $810,000.

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A spokesperson for Ms. Peltoma cited reporting by The Alaska Current that flagged several RPM stock trades by Senator Sullivan as “suspiciously timed,” including sales before the pandemic disrupted global markets and before the company released disappointing earnings reports.

“James Talarico ‘recently said about Christianity — he said that ‘I’m a Christian but I hate Christianity.’ I want you to think about that. Does that make any sense at all? ‘I’m a Christian but I hate Christianity.’ He also said that ‘God is nonbinary.’ Does anybody know what that means?”
— Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, Republican nominee for Senate, in a campaign video in July

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This needs context. Mr. Talarico did make those statements, but within broader conversations about faith rather than as standalone declarations. Mr. Paxton selectively quoted these remarks, potentially creating a misleading impression.

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Mr. Talarrico discussed his first comment during a 2021 podcast hosted by Roberto Che Espinoza, a transgender activist and theologian. They expressed frustration that conservative Christian theology dominated political discourse while they embraced a more “radical faith tradition,” as Mr. Talarico described it.

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Speaking about the nation’s “spiritual crisis,” Mr. Talarico criticized the left for ceding moral language to the right over the past several decades. He argued that many of history’s greatest movements for social change—including the explicitly Christian civil rights movement and Gandhi’s campaign for Indian independence—were deeply rooted in spiritual principles.

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During the conversation, the host observed that much of politics and policy carried a “particular strand of Judeo-Christian theology attached to them,” particularly associated with conservative Republicans.

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Mr. Talarico responded: “Yeah, and you know, I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity. And I always get drawn back into it because nowhere else, in no other political philosophy, in no other economic theory, do I find anything as truly radical or revolutionary as the teachings of that barefoot rabbi, right?”

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JT Ennis, Mr. Talarico’s press secretary, clarified that his candidate did not literally hate Christianity.

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“James is a devout Christian who fights religious and political corruption when he sees it — because there’s nothing Christ-like about powerful people twisting the teachings of Jesus to justify hate, violence and greed,” he said.

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Regarding his second remark, Mr. Talarico spoke during a 2021 speech on the Texas House floor while opposing a Republican bill aimed at restricting transgender youth participation in school sports.

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“The first two lines of the Bible, the first two lines in Genesis use two different Hebrew words to describe God. One is the masculine Hebrew noun for divinity. The second is the feminine Hebrew noun for spirit. God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary. In Genesis 1:26, God speaks of God’s self in the plural, saying, ‘Let us make human beings in our image to be like us.’ That’s the infinite multitude of God, the masculine, the feminine and everything in between. Trans children are God’s children, made in God’s own image. There’s nothing wrong with them, nothing at all.”

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When questioned about the comment in a May interview on CBS, Mr. Talarico acknowledged that he was being “intentionally provocative.”

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“What it means is that God can’t be defined by human categories,” he explained. He admitted some of his past statements “missed the mark” and that he regretted them, but criticized Mr. Paxton for “intentionally clipping my cringey comments to distract from his career of corruption.”

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