Watch: Anti-LGBT Right Wing Group Releases Ad Promoting False, Fear-Mongering Trans Bathroom Myth
But Polls Show Voters Favor Equal Rights Ordinance
With early voting less than a week away, supporters and opponents of Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance have released dueling TV ads focusing — naturally — on transgender people using public restrooms, aka, the issue of transgender bathroom use.Â
However, a new poll shows the debunked transgender bathroom myth may have less of an impact on the outcome of the election than the threat of Houston losing the 2016 NCAA Men’s Final Four and the 2017 Super Bowl if voters reject the ordinance. The poll is also the second in as many weeks showing that more Houston voters support the ordinance, which is known as HERO and will appear as Proposition 1 on the ballot, than oppose it.Â
Houston Unites, the coalition supporting the ordinance, released an ad Monday featuring Ed Gonzalez, a former Houston police officer of 18 years.Â
“As a former police officer and father of four girls I’m always in protection mode,” Gonzalez says. “I’ve heard concerns that Proposition 1 could put women and children at risk in restrooms. So I looked into it, and learned that in cities in Texas with similar laws there’s been no uptick in public safety incidences. It’s already illegal for men to go into a women’s bathroom to harm or harass someone. Proposition 1 won’t change that. The facts show that it’ll keep people safe and protect all Houstonians from discrimination. Vote Yes on Proposition 1.”
Campaign for Houston, the conservative coalition headed by Jared Woodfill, a 47-year old attorney and former Chairman of the Republican Party of Harris County, Texas is opposing HERO. The group responded Tuesday with a fear-mongering ad suggesting the ordinance would allow sex offenders to enter women’s restrooms to prey on children.Â
“The ad depicts an uncomfortable situation when a minor female enters a women’s bathroom, only to suddenly find a man using the same facilities,” Campaign for Houston spokesman Jared Woodfill said in an email announcing the ad. “In the TV spot, the female announcer says, ‘Any man at any time could enter a women’s bathroom simply by claiming to be a woman that day. No one is exempt. Even registered sex offenders could follow women, or young girls, into the bathroom.'”
While HERO opponents have built their campaign almost entirely around the trans bathroom myth, a poll released Monday shows only 15 percent of voters who support HERO would oppose the ordinance if they knew it would “allow a man who identifies and dresses as a woman to use a woman’s restroom.”Â
That may seem like a large number, but the same poll showed 24 percent of voters who oppose HERO would support the ordinance if rejecting it would cost Houston the Final Four and Super Bowl.Â
“The rhetoric on the economic argument is quite salient,” Rice University political scientist told The Houston Chronicle. “Particularly among African-American women, that issue really moves voters.”
Overall, the KUHF/KHOU poll found that 43 percent of voters support HERO, 37 oppose it, 18 percent are unsure, and 2 percent refused to answer.Â
Last week, a Houston Association of Realtors poll found that 52 percent support HERO, 37 percent oppose it, and 10 percent are undecided.
Meanwhile, the most recent campaign finance reports showed HERO supporters had raised $1.26 million, more than twice as much as opponents.
After the council approved the ordinance last May, the city rejected a petition seeking to repeal it, saying it didn’t have enough valid signatures. Anti-LGBT activists filed a lawsuit, but a district judge upheld the city’s decision, saying the petition contained widespread forgery. However, HERO opponents eventually obtained a decision from the elected, all-Republican Texas Supreme Court, ordering the city to repeal the ordinance or place it on the ballot.Â
The ordinance would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and 13 other characteristics, including race. Houston is the largest city in the US that doesn’t currently have LGBT protections in employment, housing and public accommodations.Â
Early voting begins Oct. 19.Â
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Image: Screenshot via Campaign for Houston/YouTube
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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
