A Quick Message To Readers About The New Civil Rights Movement
Regular readers know that almost never do we interrupt you with site-specific news, information, or requests, but we’re going to do just that very quickly right now.
LGBT blogger Pam Spaulding last night on Twitter told an avid reader and supporter — whom I know and am very grateful to for her advocacy — “Blogging doesn’t pay the bills and I cannot clone myself.” To be frank, it really struck a chord, and I thought I’d use it as a jumping off point to share a few thoughts.
As you probably assume, the only income The New Civil Rights Movement receives is from advertising, and quite frankly, it’s so small it doesn’t even pay the rent. Not even half the rent.
I mention this only because for us to continue to deliver high-quality news and opinion, that you often will find either here first or no where else, we need advertisers to continue to want to support us with their business.
(By the way, if you’re new here, or just want to know a little more about the site, please visit our media page.)
And despite the small amount of space we have available for ads, we want to stay true to our mission: to be of service to our community.
Recently, we’ve run several ads free of charge, because we believe in the causes the ads represent. And it’s not the first time we’ve done that.
Gay Marriage USA is a Facebook page that was created by the same person who created Gay Marriage For New York, which attracted almost 150,000 fans in a fairly short period of time. They’re doing a great job advocating for the same thing we are — marriage equality — and I hope you’ll “like” both pages. (This ad expired Tuesday but the pages are very much active on Facebook. Please visit them!)
Keep Education FAIR is an ad that’s running free of charge too because I’m personally very concerned about the future of SB 48, California’s FAIR Education Act. You should be too. I reached out to Equality California, GLSEN, and the GSA Network and asked how I could help. Hopefully we’ll be doing more to help ensure SB 48 stays the law in California. I hope you will be too.
And Lemon Sky is a great and important off-Broadway show here in NYC that just started previews last night. Lanford Wilson, a gay playwright who died earlier this year, wrote the show, and we wanted to support the production. And, on a personal note, my fiancé is the assistant director, and so we wanted to support the show even more because of that, but we would have run the ad regardless.
The other ads on the site are important too, like “The Missing link,” and the ad that reads, “Shocking Meat Video,” both of which have very generously helped support us the past few months.
Another word about ads. We don’t blindly accept ads. There are plenty of ads we’ve rejected, because we won’t support their mission, or because we felt they were inappropriate and would degrade the quality of the site overall.
Some ads, mostly those via Google, may occasionally upset you. Once in a while we get emails asking why we’re running ads for, say, Michele Bachmann. It’s not by choice — Google serves ads based upon content and based upon your browsing habits. If you see an ad that upsets you, please email us and let us know the site the ad goes to so we can ask it be blocked.
Lastly, as I said, the only income we receive is via ads. Not totally accurate.
If we write a piece that mentions a book, often we’ll link to the book at Amazon, and on the rare chance you buy the book through that link, we make a tiny amount of money. To date, that amount has been $11.79.
Also, on the bottom right hand side of the page, you’ll notice a yellow “donate” button. A few generous souls over the past few years have used it to show their gratitude for our work. While we don’t usually mention it, of course, we’d be most grateful if you found yourself wanting to use it.
In fact, at some point soon we may be forced to actively campaign for donations, perhaps much like PBS does now. We’ll see. Delivering high-quality content isn’t free, nor is it easy.
You can help keep us running and help us get our message of equality out. Donations are one way. Bringing more visitors is another.
If you like an article here, please, share it with your friends, family, and co-workers. Tweet it, Facebook it, Google+ it, Reddit it, Fark it, Digg it. The more people who visit, the more we can focus on delivering high-quality news, information, and opinion to you.
I wanted you, our loyal readers, to know a little bit more about what we’re doing here and why.
Questions? Thoughts? Answers?
Drop a comment below, or email me directly: [email protected]
Thank you for your loyalty.
David
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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
