Two States With Zero LGBTQ Lawmakers Are Rapidly Passing Anti-Queer Laws

Idaho and Mississippi have zero openly LGBTQ elected officials, despite major advances in queer representation in U.S. politics, a new report found.

The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, an organization that works to get LGBTQ people into public office, found that the number of openly queer elected officials increased by 13.6 percent from June 2022 to May 2023.

In its annual Out for America report, the group also found that the number of queer people of color elected jumped by 23.2 percent in the past year. But while this progress is heartening, LGBTQ elected officials still only make up less than a quarter of a percent of all U.S. officials.

That discrepancy is particularly noticeable in Idaho and Mississippi, which have no LGBTQ elected officials. Those two states, along with Louisiana and West Virginia, also have zero LGBTQ state legislators.

The situation in Idaho and Mississippi should come as no surprise, though. Both states have been aggressive in pushing legislation to curb LGBTQ rights since the start of the year. Mississippi lawmakers introduced at least 31 anti-LGBTQ bills at the start of the session alone.

Both states have banned gender-affirming care for transgender minors, with Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signing the measure in February and Idaho Governor Brad Little following suit in April.

The Idaho House also passed two bills in February targeting drag performances. One bill banned drag in public, and the other prohibited state agencies from sponsoring nongovernmental organizations and events such as Pride celebrations. Both those measures stalled in the state Senate.

Donald Trump, whose trademark 2016 motif was demanding Hillary Clinton be locked up for deleting emails, apparently admires that the emails were deleted, and wishes his legal team was up to snuff to do that kind of thing.

The former president has been impeached twice, criminally indicted, and found liable for sexual abuse and defamation. And now, as he faces 37 criminal counts for mishandling classified government documents, absurd details of his behavior reveal both how tough a case this will be for him to crack and how almost too hypocritical he is.

“He said, he said that it—that it was him. That he was the one who deleted all of her emails, the 30,000 emails, because they basically dealt with her scheduling and her going to the gym and her having beauty appointments,” Trump said to his lawyers, an unnamed lawyer (widely assumed to be Evan Corcoran) told the special counsel. “And he was great. And he, so she didn’t get in any trouble because he said that he was the one who deleted them.”

Trump shared the story on May 23, in the immediate aftermath of being issued a subpoena for the trove of classified documents he had taken from the White House. He apparently reiterated the story more than once, perhaps insinuating to the lawyers that they ought to be prepared to participate in some covering up themselves.

The difference between what Trump says in public versus what he says in private echoes the broader contradiction of him, for years, repeatedly calling for the lengthy imprisonment of those who mishandle classified information. Meanwhile, he had conceded he could not declassify things after leaving office (while sharing classified documents with people without security clearances).

The absurdity is embodied just as well by him sharing the classified documents with someone from his super PAC and hiding the documents in his shower, a Mar-a-Lago ballroom, and a bathroom with a signature Trump-style chandelier.

Donald Trump allegedly kept hundreds of classified documents, including on how best to attack the United States, from seven different government agencies, the indictment against him reveals.

Trump is now the first former president ever to be federally charged. Of the 37 total charges against him, which were unsealed Friday, 31 are for willful retention of national defense information. He is accused of keeping an array of classified national security material after leaving the White House, despite being unauthorized to do so.

The documents had come from the CIA, the Defense Department, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Department of Energy, and the State Department and its Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

And a look at what was in the classified documents is quite damning.

The materials Trump kept included information on “potential vulnerabilities” to military attack for the United States and its allies, as well as details on the U.S. nuclear program. “The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods,” the indictment said.

The documents also contained plans for possible retaliatory attacks on foreign nations. One such document detailed a plan to attack Iran. Prosecutors obtained recordings of Trump admitting he had the document and that he knew he couldn’t declassify it because he was no longer president. That document has not yet been recovered.

Donald Trump was so loose with secret government documents, he was showing them to someone from his super PAC and hiding them in his shower.

After being impeached twice, criminally indicted, and found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, the former president has now received 37 criminal counts for mishandling classified government documents.

The indictment, released Friday, lays out wild details about how Trump handled the documents, even being “personally involved” in packing up the boxes full of the classified information as he left the White House.

After transporting the classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, Trump apparently hid the boxes in a Mar-a-Lago ballroom, bathroom and shower, an office, his bedroom, and a storage room.

At the Bedminster Club in New Jersey, in August or September 2021, Trump allegedly showed a representative of his PAC—who did not have security clearance—“a classified map related to a military operation and told the representative that he should not be showing it to the representative and that the representative should not get too close.”

All told, Trump allegedly retained classified documents from seven agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, National Security Agency, and State Department.

Also at the Bedminster club, Trump showed a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff—none with security clearance—a “plan of attack” that was apparently prepared for him by the DOD and a senior military official. He called it “highly confidential” and “secret,” adding, “As president I could have declassified it,” and, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.” Previous reporting indicates this may have been a Pentagon document on a plan to attack Iran.

In the August Mar-a-Lago FBI search alone, out of the 102 documents recovered, 17 were classified as “Top Secret,” 54 were “Secret,” and 31 were “Confidential.”

Before said raid, and after Trump was issued a subpoena in May, one of Trump’s attorneys had recounted that Trump apparently said, “I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t,” and “Well what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?” and even “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

Note, again, while others, including Joe Biden and Mike Pence, have been found to have possessed classified documents from previous administrations, each have complied with inquiries and in returning documents expeditiously, something Trump demonstrably did not do and has actively obstructed.

Donald Trump received 37 criminal counts in the special counsel’s investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Trump became the first former president ever to be federally indicted late Thursday. He was also previously impeached twice, criminally indicted, and found liable of sexual abuse and defamation. He is still under investigation for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has unilaterally rejected every accusation leveled against him, including in the special counsel investigation—and before it was even announced what those charges would be.

The charges were unsealed Friday afternoon. Trump was charged with 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, for keeping classified documents related to national security despite being unauthorized to do so. He was also charged with one count of making false statements and representations, for claiming he had returned all the documents.

Trump and his body man, Walt Nauta, were both charged with one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice for moving boxes of classified documents and hiding them from Trump’s legal team. They were charged with one count of withholding a document or record, one count of corruptly concealing a document or record, one count of concealing a document in a federal investigation, and one count of a scheme to conceal.

Nauta was also charged with one count of making false statements and representations, separate from the claims Trump made. Nauta had helped move boxes of classified material from a storage room. He told investigators he did not know what was in the boxes or how they had gotten there in the first place.

Read through the 49-page indictment here.