NBC News has reported on a coordinated campaign of phony text messages and glossy mailers sent to households across Texas that impersonate the Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT), an MSG client. The texts went out on October 12 and 13, followed this week by brochures addressed to “students” and bearing TENT’s branding — timed to the first days of early voting in the most competitive Texas election in decades.
Founding partner Mimi Marziani, who represents TENT, told NBC News the materials were “deliberately injected into public conversation right as early voting was taking place.” MSG has issued cease-and-desist demands to the service providers that transmitted the texts and to the “Texas Transgender Student Union,” the entity named as the mailer’s sender, which was anonymously incorporated in Wyoming in September and lists a return address that does not exist.
The campaign has forced TENT to take down its website and pause a planned tour out of safety concerns. As Marziani told NBC, the apparent goal was “to create division and strife and confusion among the Texas electorate.” MSG continues to work with TENT to identify those responsible.