By Huge Margin, ExxonMobil Shareholders Vote To Continue Anti-LGBT Discrimination
At today’s meeting in Texas, Exxon Mobil shareholders voted by a huge margin to continue to allow anti-LGBT discrimination in the $467 billion oil and gas giant. 80 percent of shareholders voting chose to continue anti-gay practices, denying LGBT people basic protections, like the right to not be fired for being LGBT.
“ExxonMobil continues to dig in its heels to prove that it is one of the most ardent proponents of LGBT discrimination in the country,” Heather Cronk, GetEQUAL co-director said via a statement:
While ExxonMobil rakes in billions of dollars in federal contracts each year — paid for with taxpayer money — it’s stunning that the company is so actively and blatantly out of step with the three-quarters of the American public who support LGBT workplace protections.”
ExxonMobil (XOM) has considered similar resolutions for 14 years in a row, since Exxon and Mobil merged and Exxon withdrew the LGBT workplace protections that Mobil already had in place. Year after year, ExxonMobil has defied the conventions of other Big Oil companies and has insisted on actively discriminating against LGBT applicants and employees. This year, the shareholder resolution was brought by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. It was defeated by a vote of 81% to 19%.
ExxonMobil is one of the largest federal contractors in the country, having been awarded billions of dollars in federal contracts since 2000. Those federal contracts are paid for with taxpayer dollars, thereby supporting ExxonMobil’s discriminatory practices with public funds. There is currently no federal law making workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity illegal. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2013 (H.R. 1755 and S. 815) was recently introduced in Congress, and faces an uphill battle for passage.
In the meantime, President Barack Obama holds enormous power to stem this tide of discrimination by signing an Executive Order that would bar federal contractors like ExxonMobil from discriminating against LGBT applicants or employees. Executive Orders exactly like this have been issued previously and have never been rescinded by future presidents — especially important was E.O. 11246, which barred federal contractors from discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, and also requires federal contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin.”
And HRC weighed in as well:
“No company has proven itself a worse corporate citizen by betraying its LGBT employees time and again than ExxonMobil,†said HRC President Chad Griffin. “By failing once more to do the right thing, ExxonMobil places itself firmly on the wrong side of history. Fair-minded consumers should take their business elsewhere.â€
Prior to the 1999 merger of Mobil Corp. and Exxon Corp., Mobil prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation and offered health benefits to domestic partners of its employees. When Exxon acquired Mobil, the non-discrimination policy was removed and the domestic partner benefits program was closed to new employees. Since 1999, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation along with other groups such as the New York City Pension Funds, has filed a resolution to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected categories in the company’s EEO policy. In 2011, the shareholder proposal garnered significant support, receiving votes representing over 500 million shares with a market value of more than $42.4 billion.
This year, the resolution to add sexual orientation and gender identity to ExxonMobil’s EEO policy was again sponsored by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. This is the fourth year DiNapoli has sponsored the resolution. In past years, the SEC rejected requests to block the shareholder resolution.
On HRC’s Corporate Equality Index, ExxonMobil received a score of -25. In contrast, oil and gas companies such as Chevron, BP, Shell, and Spectra received scores of 85 or higher. More information on the HRC Corporate Equality Index is available at www.hrc.org/cei.
“Exxon shareholders once again rejected a measure that would simply provide all Americans a fair shot to hold a job no matter who they are or who they love,” Tico Almeida, President, Freedom to Work said in a statement:
Every day, more and more Americans realize that the Golden Rule of treating others as we would like to be treated applies to gay and transgender people too. Exxon remains on the wrong side of history for its business, for its workers and for the American people.
Exxon might make money from fossil fuels but it’s lagging behind most other Fortune 500 companies with Exxon’s fossilized workplace policies.
Now is the time for President Obama to act decisively and make clear that doing business with the American government and the American taxpayer means adhering to the American people’s sense of fairness. President Obama can and should sign an executive order today that bars federal contracts for companies that don’t prohibit discrimination against LGBT Americans. He made this a written campaign promise five years ago, and there are no good excuses for delaying fairness any longer.â€
Image by Freedom To Work 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
