Teha Delaruelle #

Introduction #

Teha Delaruelle is a transgender activist from Wisconsin who served briefly as a volunteer on Democratic congressional candidate Katrina deVille’s campaign in the state’s 8th Congressional District — and lost the position days after videos surfaced in which Delaruelle called for violence against Republicans and vowed “trans jihad.” In one of the posts, Delaruelle sat in front of a dry-erase board scrawled with “kill your local Republican” and urged viewers to help make that message “the moderate position for the state of Wisconsin.” deVille told the New York Post that Delaruelle volunteered for a “very short while” but was removed once it became apparent she was “deeply troubled” and “actively creating a dangerous situation around my campaign.” The videos then spread rapidly across X on July 1, 2026, where they were shared with tags directed at the FBI.

Background Information #

Delaruelle built a small public profile as a Wisconsin-based trans activist, posting under the Instagram handle tehabbygal_ — the account credited for the videos at the center of the controversy — and writing multiple Substack posts about Wisconsin politics and what Delaruelle called “trans jihad.” The New York Post described Delaruelle as “a biological male who identifies as female,” while the Daily Wire reported that both Delaruelle and deVille identify as transgender women. The campaign connection was to Katrina deVille, a Democratic Socialist vying in the Aug. 11 primary against two other Democrats for the chance to unseat GOP incumbent and staunch Trump ally Rep. Tony Wied. Delaruelle’s role there was short — a volunteer for a “very short while,” in deVille’s later account — and it ended not with a public announcement but with removal and a block from all of the candidate’s accounts and pages.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation #

The posts surfaced at the turn of June and July 2026 and consisted of a series of social-media videos, along with written posts carrying the same theme. In one video, Delaruelle sits in front of a dry-erase board scrawled with “kill your local Republican” in black marker and says, “We’re going to make this the moderate position for the state of Wisconsin,” before adding, “But I need your help, because we have one month do to this, so let’s do it,” and flashing a double thumbs-up. The Post treated the one-month deadline as presumably a reference to deVille’s Aug. 11 primary. In another video, Delaruelle declared, “Just a reminder, we are doing trans jihad,” with a superimposed trans flag in the foreground featuring an outstretched arm holding a rifle with what looked like Arabic writing above it. “It’s about making the oppressor, the bigots, the animals that make up MAGA, for example, right? So for decades, everyone else, all the marginalized, minorities, we’ve had to be the ones that walk down the streets with anxiety, with fear, but no, no more,” Delaruelle says in the recording, before pledging: “We’re gonna do the reverse. We’re gonna make it so that they will be the ones that have to walk down the streets in fear, anxiety and worry… No, this is their new reality. And it’s never gonna change.” The video ends with Delaruelle ponderously holding up two fingers and saying “peace.” In a Substack post along the same theme published earlier the previous month, Delaruelle bemoaned what the post called an ongoing “genocide” against “trans and queer folk” and said the only way to meet the threat was to wage war: “Society desires nothing less than our total extermination, therefore we must destroy their society. We must answer this call to a [sic] existential struggle, our jihad, our Trans Jihad.”

Public Reaction and Consequences #

The videos detonated on X on July 1, 2026, where user Dustin Grage reposted them with the caption “We are doing Trans Jihad,” tagging the FBI and its director. Condemnation from Wisconsin Republicans came quickly: the Republican Party of Brown County stated, “The Republican Party of Brown County rejects all political violence and threats,” and Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Republican running for Wisconsin governor, responded to the videos on X with, “Just sick all around.” deVille, reached by email by the Post, denounced the calls for violence: “I want to be clear that I do not accept or condone violence or threats toward anyone and do not encourage violence, hate, or threats of any kind.” She added that the fallout had reached her own doorstep: “The threats she has posed have also made my life more dangerous, and I understand first hand how awful this is, how awful it feels, and how absolutely unacceptable any of this is.”

Current Status #

As of the days immediately after the posts surfaced, Delaruelle had been removed from deVille’s campaign and blocked from all of the candidate’s accounts and pages, a step deVille said was taken because Delaruelle was “actively creating a dangerous situation around my campaign.” Delaruelle did not respond to the Post’s requests for comment, and neither outlet’s reporting includes any public statement from Delaruelle explaining or defending the videos. No arrest or criminal charge connected to the videos or the Substack post had been reported by either the Post or the Daily Wire — the documented consequences so far were professional and reputational rather than legal.

Impact on Their Career/Life #

For a volunteer with no independent platform beyond an Instagram account and a Substack, the fallout landed on the one political affiliation Delaruelle had: the deVille campaign tie was severed outright, and the candidate — herself a transgender woman running in a contested primary — spent her first public comments on the matter distancing her campaign from the posts and condemning them. The national spread of the videos, amplified on X with tags aimed at the FBI, turned a local campaign staffing footnote into a story picked up by both the New York Post and the Daily Wire, making the “kill your local Republican” board and the “trans jihad” vow the defining record of Delaruelle’s public name. deVille closed her statement on a note that doubled as the episode’s only open question: “I also hope that she is able to get help and find peace, and that no one becomes hurt or endangered from this senseless situation.”