Trailing In Polls, Houston Equal Rights Opponents Continue Desperate Anti-LGBT Ad Campaign
Equal Rights Fight Heats Up Houston As Early Voting Begins
Trailing in the polls as early voting begins, opponents of Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance are continuing a barrage of seemingly desperate anti-LGBT ads promoting the transgender bathroom myth, which was thoroughly debunked yet again by Media Matters last week.Â
The anti-LGBT organization Texas Values Action released a cartoon-style ad Monday depicting a hypothetical Houston gym owner — presumably the group couldn’t find a real one — who’d be required to open female restrooms to transgender women if the ordinance passes. (The ad, which includes recycled clips from this 2012 series, currently has 1 Like and 35 Dislikes on YouTube.)
“It is critical for the future of Texas, and for our nation, that we defeat Houston Mayor Parker’s Proposition 1 Bathroom Ordinance,” Texas Values Action President Jonathan Saenz wrote in an email above the ad. “Houston’s Proposition 1 would allow biological men to enter women’s bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms and then would criminalize local business owners and organizations who simply insist that people use the bathrooms that correlate to their biological gender.”Â
The Texas Values ad reportedly was paid for in part by Citizenlink, the public policy partner of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. And Saenz, of course, is best known in LGBT circles for the fact that his wife left him for a woman in 2012.Â
In any case, the coalition supporting the ordinance, Houston Unites, countered Monday with statements in support of HERO from an African-American newspaper, a national veterans group, the AARP and the Greater Houston Partnership, which is the local chamber of commerce.Â
Jon Soltz, an Iraq War veteran and chairman of VoteVets.org, ripped NFL team owner Bob McNair. McNair owns the Houston Texans and last week contributed $10,000 to HERO opponents. In addition to sexual orientation and gender identity, the ordinance would prohibit discrimination based on 13 other categories, including veterans’ status, in employment, housing and public accommodations.Â
“It’s beyond the pale that conservative donor Bob McNair is funding efforts in Houston to take away protections for veterans,” Soltz said. “We would remind Mr. McNair that it is veterans in Houston and around the country who have made the ultimate sacrifice and should not be discriminated against in employment when they come home. … Supporting our veterans means more than just bringing them out on the field before a football game.”
HERO opponents seized upon McNair’s contribution in an effort to counter the argument that voting down the ordinance could cost Houston the 2017 Super Bowl.Â
“The HERO supporters have tried to scare people into believing that we would lose the Super Bowl,” former Harris County GOP chair Jared Woodfill told The Houston Chronicle. “Obviously, if there were any truth behind that, Bob McNair wouldn’t be donating to the folks that are opposed to the ordinance.”
McNair, a billionaire and frequent GOP donor, told the newspaper he believes the ordinance has become too divisive, and should be rewritten and submitted to voters next year. However, when it comes to the city’s major financial power brokers, McNair finds himself increasingly in the minority.Â
Last week, 44 Houston business leaders signed a full-page ad (below) supporting the ordinance from the Greater Houston Partnership that appeared in the Chronicle. They included representatives from United Airlines, BBVA Compass, the Houston Association of Realtors, JP Morgan Chase, UnitedHealthCare, Rice University and the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors’ Bureau. The ad followed an op-ed in support of the ordinance published earlier in the week by the vice president of Dow Chemical Co.
Meanwhile, a third consecutive poll found that a majority of voters say they plan to support the ordinance. The poll from KPRC 2 News found that 45 percent of respondents back Prop 1, 36 percent oppose it, and 20 percent are undecided.
Â
Image: Screenshot via Texas Values Action/YouTube
Enjoy this piece?
… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.
NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.
Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.
 |
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
