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Senate GOP Support for Same-Sex Marriage Bill May Be Higher Than Thought – but It’s a ‘Waste of Time’ Says Marco Rubio
Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed to put the same-sex marriage protection bill to a full floor vote quickly, after it passed the House Tuesday by a strong 267-157 margin, including 49 Republican votes. While there aren’t currently enough votes in the Senate to pass the bill, at first glance it’s looking like it may become possible. The legislation, which does not make same-sex marriage the law of the land, protects existing marriages at the federal and state level.
Reporters are polling GOP Senators, and finding more support than some may have originally anticipated.
“As of today, only 4 Republicans expressed support/openness for codifying protections for gay marriage,” reports HuffPost senior politics reporter Igor Bobic. He says the four Senators are Susan Collins (ME), Rob Portman (OH), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Thom Tillis (NC).
But Bobic also talked to Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), who serves in Republican Senate leadership. She suggested she might be a yes.
“Ernst says she hasn’t seen the House bill but is ‘keeping an open mind.’ Asked if she supports gay marriage, Ernst said: ‘I have a good number of very close friends that are same-sex married.'”
Bobic reports Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota said “he doesn’t think House gay marriage bill is necessary,” but quotes him saying: “I think there’s a difference between matrimony as a sacrament and a legal marriage and so if someone wants to do that type of a partnership, I’m not opposed.”
Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri “says he supports gay marriage but wants to look at the House bill. He noted it’s currently protected by the court.”
Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) is “noncommittal,” Bobic reports.
“Given the fact that the law is settled on this,” Romney said, “I don’t think we need to lose sleep over it unless there were a development that suggested the law was going to be changed.”
When Romney was the Governor of Massachusetts that state became the first in the nation to make same-sex marriage legal. Romney was reportedly opposed to meeting with LGBTQ activists but finally did, and reportedly was surprised to learn why they wanted marriage to be legal.
“I didn’t know you had families,” Gov. Romney told the gay parents in 2004.
While the Supreme Court has not overturned its 2015 Obegefell ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas stated in his concurring opinion overturning Roe v. Wade that rulings finding constitutional rights for same-sex marriage, same-sex relations, and contraception were wrongly-decided “errors” that should be “reviewed.”
READ MORE: Tennessee Republicans Voting to Bypass Obergefell With Bill That Creates All-Age Marriages
Ernst, Blunt, and Rounds could bring the number of Republicans to seven. Ten would be needed to avoid a filibuster, assuming every Senate Democrat votes yes.
Bobic notes Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is a no.
“I will support the Defense of Marriage Act,” he said, referring to the law the Supreme Court overturned, which barred the federal government from recognizing legal same-sex marriages and allowed states to not recognize them as well.
Meanwhile, CNN’s Manu Raju reports Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is a hard no.
“Marco Rubio told me that he is a NO on House’s same-sex marriage bill, calling it a ‘stupid waste of time.'”
Rubio ran for re-election after losing the 2016 GOP nomination for president and after promising if he was not elected president he would never run for any elected office ever again. He reneged on that promise in the days after the Pulse nightclub massacre, which he cited as the reason he was needed back in the Senate. At the time it was the the deadliest anti-LGBTQ hate crime in America, the second-worst mass shooting by a single gunman in American history, and the second deadliest terror attack in America, after the 9/11 attacks.
Sen. Rubio has not advanced any gun safety legislation nor has he voted for any LGBTQ civil rights bill. In fact, Rubio voiced strong support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” bill. And last month he voted against the Senate’s gun safety bill that passed with a bipartisan majority of 65-33.
Senator Rubio late last week announced legislation that would require men to provide child support from the moment of conception, effectively making the law of the land that fetuses are full human beings afforded all the rights of every other person in America.
Pulse nightclub survivor Brandon Wolf, now the press secretary for Equality Florida, blasted Sen. Rubio.
“The man who used the murders of 49 mostly-LGBTQ people of color to revive his flailing political career says codifying marriage equality is a ‘stupid waste of time’? Marco Rubio’s career disgraces those whose backs he stepped on to get there.”
UPDATE: 2:29 PM ET –
After publication CNN’s Manu Raju reports: “Growing expectation in Senate that there will be 60 votes to break a filibuster on gay marriage. While 10 Rs haven’t said they would vote YES, it’s clear momentum is moving in that direction based on interviews. Thune, who is undecided, thinks it may pass.”
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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
