Activists Slam Dallas Police For Misgendering Trans Murder Victim
A vigil is planned for Wednesday night for 22-year-old Shade Schuler.
As they prepare to stage a vigil for a transgender woman found murdered this summer, LGBT advocates are calling out the Dallas Police Department (DPD) for continuing to refer to the victim as male.Â
A vigil is set for Wednesday night for 22-year-old Shade Schuler (Image, top and below), who advocates say was a black trans woman. Schuler’s badly decomposed body was found in an empty field on July 29, in an area where she’d repeatedly been arrested for sex work, according to police. Schuler was shot to death and found wearing a tube top, shorts, a wig and false fingernails with diamond studs and pink tips.Â
Signs for Wednesday’s vigil
Despite requests from transgender advocates, DPD has declined to change the department’s blog posts about the case, which refer to Schuler as “a black male.â€Â Sr. Cpl. Monica Cordova, a spokeswoman for the department, said the decision is based on interviews with Schuler’s family members and friends, who’ve referred to her as male.Â
“If it were something where the family and friends were referring to Shade as a transgender person, we would have absolutely no problem addressing Shade as a her,” Cordova told The New Civil Rights Movement. “In this case, it’s different, because the family and friends that we have talked to have both said the same thing — referred to Shade as a him, and said he did dress up as a female, but that wasn’t all the time. He didn’t really have a preference as to what he was referred to as.
“He didn’t correct people when they said ‘him,'” Cordova added. “If they referred to him as a him, he was OK with it. If that’s the way he lived his life and didn’t have a problem with how people referred to him, then why should we? I’m just not comfortable changing something because they’re uncomfortable with how we’re referring to someone who wasn’t uncomfortable with it.”Â
Nell Gaither, president of Trans Pride Initiative, a Dallas-based nonprofit, said the community has presented “clear evidence” to DPD that Schuler was trans. Gaither said she personally spoke with two family members who confirmed that Schuler identified as female. Schuler’s family members have declined requests for an interview.Â
“This is simply setting a barrier to avoid accurate description of the person, adding to evidence of cis-centric transphobia in the DPD,” Gaither said. “The DPD likes to point to their dozen-plus years of cultural sensitivity training as evidence that disrespect is impossible, but an increasing number of reports to Trans Pride Initiative are showing that such training, at least around trans issues, may serve as little more than ticking off a check box and providing cover for entrenched transphobia. Reports of things like officers threatening to arrest a trans woman for ‘impersonating a woman’ … show there is little interest in or effort to identify and address possible the transphobia embedded in the culture of DPD.”
Shade Schuler
In response to Gaither’s request, The Dallas Morning News updated its initial report about the murder to indicate the Schuler was transgender.Â
Gaither said misgendering Schuler could hamper DPD’s investigation. She also said the department has declined to change its original report, which means the murder might not be reported properly as a hate crime to the FBI.Â
Cordova said identifying Schuler as male won’t affect the investigation because the department has released her photo and other information. Cordova also said although investigators haven’t ruled it out, there is no evidence to suggest the murder was a hate crime.Â
“From Shade’s record, he was a known male prostitute,” Cordova said. “He was killed in the same are where he was known to hang around and where he had been arrested. I’m not saying that’s what got him killed or anything like that. I’m just saying those are facts that we have.”Â
Gaither said many trans women are forced into sex work for survival due to social stigma and employment discrimination. One recent national survey found that while the overall unemployment rate was seven percent, it was 14 percent for trans people and 28 percent for black trans people.Â
“That is exacerbated by the high social stigma that lowers self-esteem and self-worth, often meaning trans folks take greater risks in survival work than other folks do,” Gaither said.Â
Schuler is among at least 19 trans women who’ve been reported murdered this year, up from 12 for all of 2014, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.Â
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Images of Shade Schuler via MySpace
Image of signs by Trans Pride Initiative via Facebook
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
