NY Marriage Equality Update – Breaking News – No News Isn’t Good News
The same-sex marriage equality battle in New York is taking place in Albany, the state capitol, and in New York City, home to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. As of this moment, Senators are conferencing in Albany for the third morning in a row in the marriage equality bill. Rumor has it Cuomo may hold them past their session end date of Monday if other business is not finished, like rent regulations.
The Albany Times-Union just reported that, “as well as the ongoing same sex marriage, rent-regulation/tax cap debate, senators will also likely talk about the unresolved question of how to handle the defunct OTB [Off Track Betting] system in New York City.
“Also undone are the health exchanges which under President Obama’s health care legislation are supposed to be set up this year, with the failure to do so resulting in a potential loss of federal funds.”
NY Mayor Bloomberg has taken a leadership role all of a sudden — demanding of the Republican-majority Senate “to take a vote” –Â and to understand why, you have to understand a few things about New York politics.
First, a long-time history of corruption still hangs over Albany.
Long-time readers know all too well the fact that last year, now-former State Senator Pedro Espada was sued by then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, now Governor Cuomo, for allegedly diverting $14 million to himself, his campaign, friends, and family, from Espada’s Bronx clinic, after years of allegations and investigations into Espada’s campaign finance activity, including his repeated refusal to file campaign finance records.
Espada’s partner in crime, at least in Senate politics, former State Senator Hiram Monserrate, last year became one of the very few New York State Senators ever to be expelled. Monserrate was convicted for criminal domestic abuse, which involved slashing with a broken glass his girlfriend’s face, dragging her by the hair — on video tape — through his lobby, then driving her around town to different hospitals to find one in which he, as a State Senator, would not be recognized.
And then we have Senator Carl Kruger, the man long-rumored to be gay, who was outed by the federal Department of Justice after being indicted in a million-dollar federal bribery scandal — with his boyfriend. Senator Kruger has always voted against marriage equality, but we’re pleased to report that, now he’s been outed, and since he is still a Senator, despite his indictment, he will vote for the bill. Perhaps he and his boyfriend, if convicted, can get married and share a cell in Otisville.
So, now that you know a little about the past, it should come as now surprise that rent control has emerged as a major football in the New York marriage equality battle. Seems rent control regulations mysteriously expired this week — it’s not like there was a specific date and no one in Albany owns a calendar — so now the focus is on arm wrestling over the rent-regulation/tax cap bill.
Of course, Mayor Bloomberg, being the mayor of eight million citizens, has a lot to say about rent regulations. So Bloomberg has been in Albany lobbying and conferencing with the Republican majority in the Senate.
The other football in the marriage equality “game” is the one publicity-hound Senator Greg Ball has been tossing around: so-called religious exemptions. It’s not enough that religious organizations, like the Catholic Church are exempt from having to marry same-sex couples, and that religious, “benevolent” organizations, such as the Knights of Columbus — one of the most anti-gay organizations around — are exempt under the bill, but Senator Ball is demanding that caterers, hotels, and florists — essentially anyone who might have anything at all to do with a wedding, should be exempt from (God Forbid!) having to do business with “the gays.”
Pretty soon David’s Bridal Shops, The Men’s Warehouse, and CVS’s film developing kiosk will also be included as exempt from having to do business with us, along with AT&T (brides and grooms make phone calls, right?) and Amazon.com.
Of course, the religious organizations state-wide are taking this opportunity to get their ransom lists demands in.
“Should the bill pass without adequate protection, it will have potentially far-reaching consequences for our ministries, both in terms of contracts to provide services and potentially to challenges to not-for-profit status,” said Dennis Poust, a spokesman for the state Catholic Conference, the policy and lobbying arm of Roman Catholic bishops in New York,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Religious leaders and some legal scholars are urging the state to include a specific provision for individuals or businesses, like florists or caterers, that refuse to offer services to gay couples. Other states with gay marriage don’t grant such protections, which gay-rights advocates say would open the door to outright discrimination.
“No one is going to lose out because of this. There’s another florist down the block,” said Mordechai Biser, the general counsel of Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox Jewish advocacy group. “We’re not talking about a situation in the South when blacks couldn’t eat at a lunch counter.”
But this, evidently, means we’re making progress. Not long ago, anti-gay bigots were loath to compare the African-America battle for civil rights with the LGBT battle for civil rights.
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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
