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DeSantis Chooses Far Right Extremist to Hit Back at Biden for Attacking Florida’s ‘Close to Sinful’ Anti-Trans Policies
Governor Ron DeSantis is hitting back at President Joe Biden, who slammed the Sunshine State’s anti-transgender policies as “cruel” and “close to sinful.” The far-right Florida Republican is using a far-right extremist, one has been accused of promoting stochastic terrorism, to make his point.
In a “Daily Show” interview with former Obama White House aide, actor Kal Penn, President Biden denounced Florida’s anti-transgender policies.
“What’s going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, ‘close to sinful,'” President Biden told Penn. “It’s just terrible what they’re doing.”
“It’s not like a kid wakes up one morning and says, ‘You know, I decided I want to become a man or I want to become a woman,” Biden added. “I mean, what are they thinking about here? They’re human beings, they love, they have feelings, they have inclinations. It’s cruel.”
Governor DeSantis has quickly become an expert at using the powers of his office to target the left and especially minority communities in a massive “culture war” designed to pave the road for a 2024 presidential run.
DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” law has been copied by other far-right states, as it causes a massive reworking of the entire state’s public education system, including school libraries that have pulled all books off the shelves as teachers, librarians, and administrators are terrified of being sued.
In January, The Associated Press reported, a DeSantis survey asked “state universities for the number and ages of their students who sought gender dysphoria treatment, including sex reassignment surgery and hormone prescriptions.”
“The survey was released the same day the university presidents voted to support DeSantis’ anti-woke agenda and to reject ‘the progressivist higher education indoctrination agenda’ and committing to ‘removing all woke positions and ideologies by February 1, 2023,’ according to a Department of Education news release,” the AP noted.
In response, sixteen Democratic state attorneys general denounced the request for information on transgender students, noting that “public reports suggest that you may seek to use the information sought to eliminate funding for necessary gender-affirming health care for students.”
READ MORE: Donald Trump Just Called for Another Coup and Hardly Anyone Even Noticed
One month later, in February, members of Florida’s boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine both – having voted to deny “necessary gender-affirming health care to trans youth,” as The Intercept‘s Natasha Lennard wrote – “responded with a unanimous vote for even tighter restrictions.”
In March, Florida lawmakers filed several anti-LGBTQ bills, upping the total this year in the Sunshine State to 11, according to a tally from the ACLU.
And last year, as GLAAD noted, Gov. DeSantis outright lied about gender-affirming care, saying: “They will actually take a young boy and castrate the boy. They will take a young girl and do a mastectomy, or they will sterilize her because of the gender dysphoria. There is no evidence that this is something that’s effective medical care.”
GLAAD noted: “Longstanding best practices medical care for trans youth does not include surgeries or sterilization on young children. Every major medical association supports gender affirming care as evidence-based, lifesaving care, with growing and consistent research that it improves mental health and wellbeing for transgender and nonbinary youth.”
That’s just a slice of DeSantis’ anti-LGBTQ work in his time as governor.
In response to President Biden saying what’s going on in the far-right governor’s state is “terrible,” “cruel,” and “close to sinful,” DeSantis turned to the Twitter account of Libs of TikTok, an extremist anti-LGBTQ social media influencer that promoted the hate-filled “groomer” attacks (as did DeSantis’ former press secretary).
DeSantis could have grabbed and posted the Daily Show’s video clip of President Biden to send his tweet, but he opted instead to send a message of where he stands on LGBTQ rights.
Retweeting the video via Libs of TikTok, DeSantis also reposted his anti-transgender lies:
“It is not ‘sinful’ to prohibit the mutilation of minors,” he tweeted. “It is not acceptable for the federal government to mandate that procedures like sex change operations be allowed for kids.”
The federal government is not mandating that “procedures like sex change operations be allowed for kids.”
It is not “sinful” to prohibit the mutilation of minors.
It is not acceptable for the federal government to mandate that procedures like sex change operations be allowed for kids. https://t.co/YhPrrU5Poi
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 14, 2023
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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
