Flyer warns Texas voters: ‘Don’t make us report you to President Trump!’

“Please don’t make us report you to President Trump!”

Texas Republicans reportedly received a warning through a flyer sent to their homes before Tuesday’s primary runoff election. Viral posts on Reddit indicate that recipients in Victoria and Denton, spanning the opposite ends of Southeast and Northeast Texas, received this mailer.

“We see you haven’t voted yet,” the mailer notes. “Your voting record is public. … Your neighbors are watching and will know if you miss this critical runoff election. We will notify President Trump if you don’t vote. You can’t afford to have that on your record.”

The unofficial election notice claims the group will be “sending an official list of Republicans who fail to vote in the upcoming runoff to President Trump.” The mailer then promises to follow up after the election to ensure people voted.

Texas Republicans were left with this final warning: “President Trump will be VERY DISAPPOINTED.”

Who sent the Trump flyer?

The mailer was sent by a group called the “America First Conservatives Election Department.”

A search of registered political action committees found no records under that name. According to data from nonprofit OpenSecrets, several PACs use a similar name, including the super PACs “Committee to Advance America First” and “Place America First.” Both were registered in 2024. According to public records, neither has contributed money this year. Another PAC, Arizona-based “Protect America First,” was last active in 2022.

Reddit users from Texas speculated that the mailer might have been distributed by a so-called dark money group, which can send political mailers without disclosing who funded them. Several of these groups —Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, Texas Gun Rights, and the Texas Family Project — have been flooding voters with mailers and text messages in the lead-up to the 2024 election season.

Most of the groups’ mailers have attacked incumbent Texas House members whom they’ve deemed too moderate, the American-Statesman has previously reported. Others have relied on xenophobic rhetoric, falsely claiming certain Republicans want to bring sharia law to Texas.

“These hateful mailers represent the increasingly reckless turn our political discourse is taking at the hands of dark money groups and the bigotry they espouse,” Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, who was targeted in an anti-Muslim mailer after members of his chamber took ceremonial votes during last year’s legislative session that celebrated Muslim holidays in the Capitol, such as Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, told the Statesman in February.

Though they claim to act independently of one another, the Houston Chronicle has reported that these dark money groups all have ties to Republican megadonors Tim Dunn, and Dan and Farris Wilks. The trio of oil tycoons have worked to push Texas policies to the far right for decades.

Is the Texas mailer illegal?

It’s unclear whether the flyer would qualify as voter intimidation. The Texas Ethics Commission told USA TODAY it “does not have jurisdiction over claims of voter intimidation.”

A Texas statute says that an action would be considered voter intimidation if an offender “harms or threatens to harm the voter by an unlawful act” in retaliation for failing to vote for a particular candidate.

Even if the flyer isn’t illegal by voter intimidation standards, it could still violate Trump’s own presidential campaign.

In a letter sent to Republican vendors in April, Trump’s campaign cracked down on any unauthorized use of his name, image and likeness. The campaign said vendors can use his likeness in campaign materials only if they agree to send 5% of any donations received to the former president’s reelection campaign.  

The letter said, “Any split that is higher than 5% will be seen favorably by the (Republican National Committee) and President Trump’s campaign, and is routinely reported to the highest levels of leadership within both organizations.”