Nepal: New Prime Minister Must Keep Promise To LGBTI Community
Last week marked the coming out party for one of the world’s newest heads of state. Baburam Bhattarai, the newly-elected Prime Minister of Nepal, visited New York and Washington, D.C. to meet and greet world leaders, and introduce himself to the United Nations.
Bhattarai has had a lot on his plate since taking office, so leaving the country was a questionable move in the first place. The deadline for Nepal’s new constitution, just two months away, looms on the horizon, and the Constituent Assembly — the 600-some strong body charged with delivering the draft of a new constitution for the Himalayan nation — has been mired in deadlock for nearly a year. In addition, Bhattarai makes this trip on the heels of his first bold proclamation that has human rights groups reeling: he wants blanket amnesty for all crimes committed during the ten-year internal armed conflict that wracked Nepal until 2006. (Bhattarai’s party, the Maoist Party, emerged out of the Maoist rebel group that started the “People’s Revolution,†in which over 10,000 people died.)
But while concerns over transitional justice issues will no doubt be on the agendas of many world leaders as they meet Bhattarai in the U.S., another troubling human rights issue lurks, waiting now four years for proper implementation. To put it simply: Nepal should have some of the most gay- and trans-friendly laws in the world, but it doesn’t. Bhattarai holds the keys to making this happen.
In 2007, Nepal’s leading LGBTI rights activist, Sunil Babu Pant, won a Supreme Court Case demanding full, fundamental equality for all sexual and gender minority citizens. It was a landmark, comprehensive decision. The world watched as Nepal, a traditional and conservative society by many measures, emerged onto the global LGBT rights stage as an example of effective activism and advocacy for sexual and gender minorities.
Bhattarai’s power to implement these laws is crucial. Government bureaucracy in Nepal is thick and chaotic; ministries change personnel so frequently that lobbying them can seem pointless. Since the 2007 Supreme Court decision, for example, four people have served as Home Minister. The Home Ministry is responsible for, among other things, issuing citizenship identification cards, without which many basic services are out of reach for Nepali people.
The Court decision mandated that the government issue ID cards that allow citizens to identify as third gender (the term used in Nepal for transgender or binary gender non-conforming people.) To date, only a handful of people have successfully done this, and all succeeded by putting up a hearty fight.
Nepal
A simple directive letter from Prime Minister Bhattarai could change this for the entire country. Just before the Parliament voted on a new PM, Bhattarai promised to do this while seeking support from CPN (United), a party with five votes in the Parliament, one of which belonged to Pant, who has been a Member of Parliament since 2008. Advocates and activists were encouraged by Bhattarai’s promise.
In fact, Bhattarai, when he was Finance Minister in 2008 under the first Maoist regime, did something no other government of Nepal had ever done: he created a budget line for programs geared toward sexual and gender minorities. Sunil Babu Pant’s non-governmental organization, Blue Diamond Society, has been using some of these funds to build a LGBTI community center in Kathmandu modeled on the New York LGBT Center. It would be the first such community center in South Asia.
In an additional progressive move, the 2011 Nepali census was the first in the world to allow citizens to identify as male, female, or third gender. The process was highly flawed, and the inclusion of the category appears to have been mostly a superficial gesture at this point (the data on people who identified themselves as third gender is not linked to any other demographic numbers), but such steps toward implementation indicate a growing level of acceptance of the LGBTI community in Nepal, and presage the comprehensive reform expected.
As a Member of Parliament and the Constituent Assembly, Sunil Pant sits on the fundamental rights chapter drafting committee in the Constituent Assembly. The fundamental rights chapter is finished, and follows the Court’s orders to be completely inclusive of LGBTI citizens in all rights and protections. Now it sits rotting as a special sub-committee debates the details of power sharing and state structure. Since the constitutional deadline was last extended, Pant has refused to take his salary from the government, saying he cannot take money if no work is being done on the draft.
Whether the constitution drafting process will be completed by the extended deadline – just over two months away – is certainly on Bhattarai’s mind. But in the meantime if he wants to show the Nepali people that he takes human rights and his own judiciary seriously, he has an easy way to do that: a flick of his pen could order all administrative offices across the country to obey the law and recognized third gender citizens.
The Court decision demonstrated substantial progress, but the LGBTI community has been waiting for too long for something real to happen.
On Friday, Bhattari spoke at The New School. I asked him via Twitter when he would keep his promise. He replied: “We have in principal agreed that we will provide citizenship – even our Supreme Court has given a ruling in that context. So the government is committed to implement that.â€
Hari Phuyal, the prominent Kathmandu lawyer who tried the 2007 Supreme Court case says, “the Court decision came at such a crucial time, when the LGBTI community was misused and mishandled by the law enforcement agencies in Nepal.†The violence against LGBTI people has largely ceased thanks to successful advocacy and publicity, but now is another crucial moment, and there is one man who can make the difference.
 (Image: Baburam Bhattarai)
Kyle Knight is a Fulbright Scholar in Nepal where his research focuses on the LGBTI rights movement. He previously worked at Human Rights Watch, where he focused on children’s rights issue. For three years, he worked as a suicide prevention counselor for LGBTQ youth at the Trevor Project in New York City. He currently sits on the Trevor Project’s Advocacy and Public Policy Committee, is the president of the Duke University LGBT Network, and a is lecturer in Gender Studies at Tribhuvan University, Nepal’s state-run university in Kathmandu. You can follow him on Twitter @knightktm.
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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
