Obama To Attend Religious Event Sponsored By Group Tied To Uganda ‘Kill The Gays’ Bill
President Barack Obama Thursday morning will attend the 61st annual National Prayer Breakfast, sponsored by the Fellowship Foundation, a radically conservative religious right evangelical organization known to many as “The Family.” Members and associates of The Family have been tied to legislation in Uganda, known as the “Kill The Gays” bill of 2009, that mandates the death penalty for the “crime” of being gay.
Members of The Family, past and present, include current and former Republican Senators Chuck Grassley, Jim Inhofe, Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, John Thune, John Ensign, and Strom Thurmond. Other members of The Family include Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, the late Chuck Colson (of Watergate and Manhattan Declaration fame,) disgraced former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, and disgraced former Congressman Chip Pickering.
Members of the Fellowship Foundation, aka, The Family, have been closely linked to the rise in anti-gay hate in Uganda. Popular author Jeff Sharlet has written several books tying the group to religious anti-gay hate.
READ:Â
“David Kato’s Death Result Of Hatred Planted By U.S. Evangelicalsâ€
American Christian Fundamental Extremists Are Behind The Anti-Gay Hatred In Uganda
“The National Prayer Breakfast’s organizer, the Fellowship Foundation, has historically held conservative evangelical positions, and was linked to legislation in Uganda that would make being gay a capital offense,” Time Magazine’s Elizabeth Dias writes today:
The Breakfast is not a White House sponsored event—the National Prayer Breakfast leadership and Congressional offices handle the invitations, and the President just comes to speak. But this relationship has drawn criticism from marriage equality advocates in recent years. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent letters to Congressional leaders urging them to boycott the breakfast in 2010, and that same year gay rights activists organized competing prayer events in 17 cities. Last year, Occupy the Faith held a countering “People’s Prayer Breakfast†with gay rights groups.
The controversy over the breakfast organizers is a perennial one, but this year protests are scarce. Get Equal, co-sponsor of last year’s People’s breakfast, expects to release a statement and focus instead on countering anti-gay legislation in Uganda. CREW did not send letters, but executive director Melanie Sloan did tell TIME that they still urge lawmakers to boycott the event. Overall, the urgency appears mitigated.
READ: Tony Perkins: Uganda President ‘Leading His Nation’ With ‘Kill The Gays’ Bill
Late last year, the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights group, tied American evangelical leaders and at least one anti-gay hate group leader to the Ugandan Kill The Gays bill. Whether or not they’re tied to The Family, they’ll likely be at the National Prayer Breakfast. HRC called out Pastors Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, T.D.Jakes, and others, tying them to Uganda:
HRC has called on American faith leaders to reach out to their influential friends and colleagues in Uganda to urge them to condemn the bill and work to halt consideration. American Christian faith leaders have been active in Uganda for decades and have significant ties to Ugandan political leaders and faith leaders. Such influential American faith leaders, including Rick Warren, T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, and voices from the Trinity Broadcasting Network, have a moral obligation to urge their Ugandan friends and allies to condemn the bill.
President Obama no doubt is in a precarious position. Every president since Eisenhower has attended.
Of course, there’s always a good time to break tradition.
Better yet, the President Thursday morning can use his presence to clearly and forthrightly challenge the expected 3500 religious and political leaders to practice what they preach: God’s love — real love, not their bastardized, twisted definition of it — and stop their anti-gay hate.
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Image: President Barack Obama speaking at the 2009 National Prayer Breakfast, via Wikimedia
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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
