Marco Rubio Just Voted Against Protecting LGBT Homeless Youth In A Sex Trafficking Bill
Republican Presidential candidate Marco Rubio just cast a vote against LGBT homeless youth that was anything but presidential, fatherly, compassionate, or even humane.
As much of the nation knows, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been holding hostage a vote to confirm Loretta Lynch as the next attorney general of the United States. The Senate Majority Leader’s bargaining chip for the past six months has been an important anti-human trafficking bill that had bipartisan support, until Republicans snuck anti-abortion language into the legislation.
Minutes ago, the anti-trafficking bill passed, 99-0, but not before the Senate voted on several amendments to the bill.
One bipartisan amendment, introduced by Democratic Senator Pat Leahy and Republican Senator Susan Collins would have added language banning discrimination against LGBT homeless youth.
“A recent study found that 1 in 4 homeless youth have been victims of sex trafficking, or traded sex for survival needs, such as food or a place to sleep,” Sen. Leahy said in a statement before today’s vote. “The study also found that 50 percent of homeless youth had been solicited for sex by an adult within 48 hours of leaving home. Let me say that again: half of these homeless kids were solicited for sex by an adult within the first two days of leaving home.  These kids – some as young as 12, 13, 14 years old – have nowhere to go, but we can work to make sure they have a safe place to go. That is what our amendment does.”
Leahy added that the language in his amendment “would prevent discrimination against youth based on their race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability,” and “is nearly identical to a provision contained in the bipartisan Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 which passed the Senate with 78 votes and was signed into law.”
Earlier this afternoon, the Senate voted down the Leahy-Collins Amendment to protect runaway homeless youth, SA 290, by a narrow margin: 56-43. 60 votes were needed for it to pass. It needed just four more.
Among those voting for the amendment that would have protected homeless youth and LGBT homeless youth were 44 Democrats – no Democrat voted against the amendment – along with both Independent Senators, Bernie Sanders and Angus King, and ten Republicans including GOP presidential candidate Rand Paul, whose anti-LGBT views are well documented.
Voting against the amendment were 43 Republican Senators, including U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, whose anti-LGBT views are also well-documented:
LOOK:Â Marco Rubio’s Top 10 Anti-Gay Statements
(A full list of how each Senator voted on the Leahy Amendment is here.)
Apparently, Sen. Rubio would attend the wedding of a gay colleague or family member, but he wouldn’t vote to save and protect an LGBT homeless child.
It’s well-known that between 25 percent and 40 percent of homeless children are LGBT, despite the fact that LGBT children are less than five percent of the nation’s population.
“All life is worthy of protection, and all life enjoys God’s love,” Rubio claims on his presidential campaign website. “I have a record of supporting pro-life policies, and will continue to do so in public and private life.” He adds, “I believe that as a nation we must always come down on the side of life. We must speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves.”Â
Really?
Who is speaking for LGBT homeless youth?
Today, Reuters ran a story with the grossly misleading headline, grossly misleading title, “Presidential hopeful Rubio reaches out to gay Republicans.” As NCRM reported earlier today, that “reaches out” includes only a comment from the Log Cabin Republicans that they have had meetings with Rubio’s staff – not with Sen. Rubio himself. And Rubio’s office would not even admit that the meetings did – or did not – take place.
If this is LGBT outreach, Marco Rubio style, it’s perfectly in keeping with the GOP’s minority outreach efforts.
Oh, and by the way, that Facebook photo at the top of the page of a young Marco Rubio?
When you’re a child with a family who supports you and takes care of your needs, you can dream about playing in the Super Bowl. When you’re a homeless LGBT child or teen, you tend to dream about having a family who supports and protects you and takes care of your needs.Â
The absolute very least we can do is vote to help protect them. It truly is the very least we can do.
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This post has been updated.Â
Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license
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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
