Prominent Texas LGBT Voice Joel Burns, Who Gave Hope To Millions, Resigns
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You may not remember Joel Burns. You may not have noticed the handful of stories noting that Burns, a 45-year-old Fort Worth, Texas councilman announced his resignation from civic service earlier this week, noting that he was planning on enrolling in Harvard’s Masters of Public Administration program. You may have wondered why there was any coverage about a Texas pol not named Wendy Davis or Rick Perry, and whether, in light of the recent coverage of Davis’s (conditional) backing of a 20-week ban on abortions, there was much force remaining in Texas progressivism.
Indeed, if there is, it may lie, and return, in Burns. Because while Burns turned down the opportunity to replace Davis on the Texas Senate, his belief in at least one progressive cause is known throughout the state. And it’s likely why his name rings familiar.
Four years ago, Burns sat in a Fort Worth City Council meeting. Donning a pink polo, he adjusted his microphone, and looked out at his colleagues. Flipping on the projector, he began.
“Tonight, I ask my colleagues’ indulgence in allowing my announcement time to talk briefly about another issue that pulls at my heart.”
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A photo of a young boy — Asher Brown, 13 years old — lit the screen. A Houston-area teen, Asher experienced more bullying and intimidation that most kids will know. Bullied for the way he acted. Bullied for the way he was perceived. His parents called and cajoled school officials to help quell the harassment. Nothing. There was nothing done, and nothing put in the way of the bullies and Asher. Years, this continued, without end.
In late 2010, as Burns told his audience, Asher went home. He found his father’s gun, and he killed himself.
Another photo splashed on the screen, and then another, and more teens, and more suicides, piling on top of one another, impacting in their number and threads of similarities. Burns detailed these deaths. These kids. And then he paused. “Teen bullying and suicide has reached an epidemic in our country – especially among gay and lesbian youth, those perceived to be gay, or kids who are just different,” Burns said. Addressing the adults in the room, and those listening at home or online, he added: “There’s a conversation for the adults in this room, and those watching to have, and we will have it – that this bullying and harassment in our schools must stop, and that our schools must be a safe place to learn and to grow.”
But he wasn’t there to talk to the adults. He wasn’t there for the parents, or the administrators, or those shaping the laws and the state. He wanted to address the teens — the teens like Asher, and the others, whose stories he had just shared. “Tonight, I would like to talk to the 12-, 13-, 14-, 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds in … any school in Fort Worth, or anywhere across the country,” Burns continued. “I know that life can seem unbearable, or that the people in your household may not understand you, and that they may even physically harm you. But I want you to know that it gets better.”
It gets better. This, too, shall pass, Burns said. And then he turned inward, and began to share his story. Or tried to. “I’m going to have too hard a time with the next few sentences. I don’t want my mother and father to have to bear the pain of having to hear me say them. …Â The numerous suicides in recent days have upset me so much, and have just torn at my heart. And even though there may be some political repercussions … this story is for the young people who might be holding that gun tonight, or the rope, or the pill bottle.”
Growing as an LGBT Texas teen can be difficult enough in this second decade of the 21st century. Decades prior, it was that much worse. But you’ll get out, Burns said. Beyond that world of forced normalcy and unmitigated bullying. Of backward mores. To those teens listening, Burns said, “There is so, so, so much more.”
Twelve minutes after he’d begun, Burns had created one of the largest — and most surprising — civic bursts of support for LGBT teens this decade has seen. Not only was Burns a councilmember from the most conservative of Texas’s major urban areas, but he was commenting at time when LGBT rights were far from assumed. 2010 can, and does, seem a world away. DOMA remained stuck on the books; only an isolated handful of states had passed same-sex marriage; Pres. Obama’s views on gay marriage were still evolving, and not yet finalized. Four years ago, there was anticipation, but no certainty, that dominoes were set to soon fall. The notions and realities of momentum hadn’t yet solidified.
But to Burns, the status of that momentum didn’t matter. And while his statement didn’t carry any political fallout — he’s remained on the council, now in his sixth year representing the city – there was tremendous risk in his stance. Nor is that risk necessarily lessened now, in Texas. After all, the likeliest candidates for Texas’s lieutenant governor, one of the most powerful offices in the state, have further ensconced themselves into the state’s Christianist wing.
One of the front-runners, Tea Party-backed Dan Patrick, demonized Houston mayor Annise Parker’s recent same-sex marriage, noting, “I am not shocked that Mayor Parker decided to elope to California for a marriage that is unconstitutional in Texas. This is obviously part of a larger strategy of hers to turn Texas into California.”
Texas, though, has been warming to same-sex marriage. And while it remains far further than, say, Oregon or Nevada, hope remains. And it’s a hope that stems from people like Burns. It’s a hope that Burns needed as a teen, and which he hoped to share with those teens in his state, and in Oklahoma, and in Alabama, and anywhere adults and administrators and bullies seek to convince children that there’s only one way, and only one normalcy. Because, as Burns said, things change. Things get better. For them. And for the country.
“To those who are feeling very alone tonight, please know that I understand how you feel,” Burns finished. “That things will get easier. Please stick around to make those happy memories for yourself. It may not seem like it, tonight. And the attitudes of society will change. Please, live long enough to be there to see it.”
Casey Michel is a graduate student at Columbia University, and former Peace Corps Kazakhstan volunteer. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, and Talking Points Memo, and he has contributed multiple long-form investigations to Minneapolis’s City Pages and the Houston Press. You can follow him on Twitter.
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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
