After Trump’s Weekend Ranting, NYAG Dunks On Claims That His Speech Is Being Stifled

How are you going to argue that your speech is being chilled 

when you never shut up?

By LIZ DYE

onFebruary 1, 2022 

44SHARES

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Last night New York Attorney General Letitia James filed her opposition to Donald Trump’s Hail Mary pass to the federal judiciary demanding that it enjoin her investigation and/or force James to recuse herself from all matters Trump-related.

As the AG points out in the first paragraph, this issue is currently being adjudicated by the New York Supreme Court, where Justice Arthur Engoron forced Eric Trump to sit for a deposition and already adjudicated multiple privilege disputes. In fact, the Trump Organization has largely cooperated with the OAG during the 34 months of the investigation, and only decided that it was illegally tainted by bias when Trump, Ivanka, and Don Jr. got subpoenaed late last year.

Trump made the same arguments about Tish James’s supposed bias at the state court, where he lost. So in addition to res judicata, he may have a wee tiny abstention doctrine problem. And good luck arguing that you’ve been deprived of due process when your motion to quash a subpoena for testimony is scheduled for February 17.

How much more process do these people think they’re entitled to? And when did an almost three-year investigation become an emergency requiring judicial intervention — or more judicial intervention, to be precise?

As for the supposed harms, the motion skewers the claim that the OAG is somehow chilling the plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to speak since Donald Trump and his namesake son literally never shut up.

“[I]t is not readily apparent, given Mr. Trump’s frequent public statements and appearances, how Plaintiffs could plausibly establish any such chill,” the OAG writes, dropping a footnote to Trump’s speech Saturday in which he promised riots in the streets if he were ever indicted.

The motion failed to allude to Jr.’s frequent attempts to hold his jaw in place while livestreaming ad hominem attacks on the current president.

He should only be so lucky as to have someone who cared enough to stifle him! And his brother, too, since Eric Trump’s public tantrum about all the subpoenas he was defying is what prompted the OAG to sue in the first place, publicly docketing a motion to compel which outlined the laughable real estate valuations and possible undeclared loan forgiveness which formed the basis of her investigation.

Unfortunately this motion wasn’t full of juicy details like the state filings, including one last week that detailed the sweet deal Ivanka Trump got on her Park Avenue penthouse and described her as “the primary contact for the Trump Organization’s largest lender, Deutsche Bank” from which position she caused “misleading financial statements to be submitted to Deutsche Bank and the federal government.”

But it does include multiple references to “substantial evidence establishing numerous misrepresentations in Mr. Trump’s financial statements provided to banks, insurers, and the Internal Revenue Service.” So much for the claim that the public interest favors enjoining the investigation.

In fact, this case is so transparently ridiculous, that the OAG concludes by reminding the court that there’s a pending motion to dismiss, so if Judge Brenda Sannes, an Obama appointee, wants to yeet this whole stinker off the federal docket at once, that would probably be the most efficient use of time.

Of course, that would deprive ATL readers of the pleasure of making fun of another batguano insane Trump filing, but it seems unlikely that the plaintiffs will point to that as a public interest favoring the continuation of this turkey of a lawsuit.

Trump v. James [Federal Docket via Court Listener]
People v. Trump Org [State Docket]

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Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

SCHADENFREUDE

FOX HOSTS LIONIZED AN EX-STATE TROOPER FOR HIS ANTI-VAX STANCE. THEN HE DIED OF COVID-19.
Robert LaMay was portrayed by Fox as a martyr for defying vaccine mandates, but its hosts haven’t yet acknowledged the rest of the story.


BY CALEB ECARMA

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

Traffic on Sixth Avenue passes by advertisements featuring Fox News personalities, including Bret Baier, Martha MacCallum, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity, adorn the front of the News Corporation building on March 13, 2019

.BY DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

In October, some of Fox News’s biggest stars lauded Washington state trooper Robert LaMay after he resigned from his job in protest over Governor Jay Inslee’s vaccine mandate for state employees. The 22-year veteran of the Washington State Patrol shared a video of his final message on the agency’s dispatch system, claiming that he was “being asked to leave because I am dirty” in a viral clip. (LaMay said he had received a religious vaccine exemption but still resigned.) “This is the last time you’ll hear me in a state patrol car,” he added. “And Jay Inslee can kiss my ass.” During the first week of his retirement, LaMay drew the conservative media spotlight, appearing on Mornings With Maria and receiving praise from The Ingraham Angle, where he was portrayed as a martyr for refusing the jab.

On Friday, almost four months after his triumphant press tour, KIRO radio in Washington reported that the 50-year-old LaMay had died after contracting COVID-19. In a statement, Washington State Patrol chief John R. Batiste wrote that he was “deeply saddened” by the passing of a “former friend and colleague” and offered his prayers to LaMay’s family. But Fox News stars who covered LaMay’s decision to remain unvaccinated—we don’t know the details of his case, but the COVID-19 vaccine is the best protection against serious illness and death—have not expressed similar condolences. Instead, Fox hosts ​​Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo are ignoring the news of his passing, and the network has instead moved on to a new cast of anti-vax patriots to charm their audience of millions. (Fox News did run a story about LaMay's death online.)

Throughout Fox’s Monday night programming, viewers were introduced to a slew of people portrayed as blue-collar mavericks heroically opposing oppressive vaccine mandates imposed on them by liberal elites. Sean Hannity extolled a group of Canadian truck drivers for protesting against “the government’s restrictive COVID-19 mandates,” Ingraham invited on a Washington, D.C., business owner who said he had his liquor license suspended after defying the city’s pandemic safety statutes, and Tucker Carlson spoke with a trucker from the anti-vax “freedom convoy” who conducted his Fox News interview from inside his rig.

In October, when LaMay appeared on Ingraham’s show, the Fox host all but acknowledged her network’s power to elevate and lionize those who oppose COVID vaccines. “What’s next for you—other than being a celebrity now—what’s next for you?” Ingraham asked, to which LaMay said he would continue to be a “spokesperson” for the “thousands, even millions” of Americans opposed to vaccine mandates. At the end of the segment, Ingraham referred to Americans like LaMay as a “sleeping giant” beginning to stir. “We hope that that’s what’s happened here,” she added. “We’ve awakened it slowly but surely. Robert, thank you for joining us. We really appreciate your voice and best of luck to you.”

While LaMay’s passing went largely unaddressed on Fox News, a cable news host on another network did recognize it on Monday: MSNBC's Chris Hayes, who described the LaMay story as a “horrifying tragedy” that embodied America’s current iteration of cultural infighting. LaMay “lived his values…values no doubt informed by right-wing media,” he said, pointing out that Fox’s viewers “only hear the anti-vax talking points that made Robert LaMay a celebrity,” even as the company takes COVID-19 “very, very seriously” behind the scenes. “For their own ratings, for fame, for cynical monetary purposes, that network—which is overseen by CEO Suzanne Scott, you should know her name—has decided to fan the flames of vaccine resistance,” he continued. “And those flames are getting thousands of people killed. And when those people die, they are of course forgotten by Fox News.”

The tragic story of LaMay is not unique: Caleb Wallace, a Texas man who helped organize an anti-mask “Freedom Rally,” died of COVID-19 in August, while Cirsten Weldon, a QAnon influencer who advised her followers not to get vaccinated, also passed away from the virus. Amid last year’s delta wave, several popular anti-vax radio personalities died of COVID-19 within weeks of each other. Still, it seems that such deaths will not stop the conservative media machine from continuing to glorify those who oppose basic public health measures—just don’t expect them to keep telling the story after it ends too soon.

Mom's comics perfectly illustrate the double standard of how society treats mothers and fathers

Tod Perry

02.01.22

via Momlife_comics/Instagram

"Fun" dad versus "lazy" mom.

Last November, Upworthy published a popular story about Chloe Sexton, a mother who went viral on TikTok for a video she made explaining “daddy privilege” or the idea that fathers are applauded for doing things that mothers are supposed to do.

"In my opinion, 'daddy privilege' is that subtle upper hand men sidestep into as parents that allows them to gain praise for simply…being a parent," she said. "You fed the baby? What a great dad! You held the baby while mommy bathed? So considerate of you! You picked up something for dinner? What would your family do without you?! It's all the little ways mothers do exactly what the world expects of them without a second thought and then watch fathers get praised for simply showing up."

Sadly, the post resonated with a lot of mothers, because it's true. Expectations for fathers are so low that men are commended for handling basic parenting tasks. But if a mother falls short of perfection, she faces harsh criticism.

Mary Catherine Starr, a mother living in Cape Cod who owns a design studio and teaches yoga, is getting a lot of love on Instagram for her cartoon series that perfectly explains daddy privilege.

In "An Illustrated Guide to the Double Standards of Parenting," Starr shares this concept by showing that when a man comes home with fast food for his kids he's the "fun dad." But if a mom comes back with a bag from McDonald's she is seen as a "lazy mom."

In the comics, the same double standards apply whether it's how they handle technology or parent at the park.

(Note: Click the arrow on the right-hand side of the image to see the slideshow.)

Starr was quick to point out in the comments that the target of her comics isn’t fathers, but society at large. “This is not a dig at dads, it's a dig at our society—a society that applauds dads for handling the most basic of parenting duties + expects nothing short of perfection from mothers (or even worse, shames them for every decision and/or move they make!),” she wrote.

The comics resonated with a lot of women.

"This hit a nerve with so many women! I was a single mom living in an apartment,” an Instagram user named Saturdayfarm wrote in the comments. “Next door - a single dad. Neighbors felt so bad for him that they helped him with his laundry, brought over food, and babysat. For nothing. I just shakily carried on somehow. And I had so much less money and opportunities.”

"This is exactly part of the why I feel like being ‘just’ a mom isn’t as valuable. Being so run of the mill. But if my husband has the baby in a sling, the toddler in the pram and is out walking the dog, he’s superman for letting me have one hour for zoom work," rebecca_lee-close_yoga wrote.

A father who understands his privilege completely supports Starr’s message.

"It actually annoys me when I get those types of comments / ‘compliments’ knowing it’s totally a double standard," JonaJooey wrote.

Starr’s comics and Sexton’s TikTok videos won't stop the double standards when it comes to parenting, but they do a great job at holding a mirror up to the problem. Where do we go from here? We can start by having greater expectations for fathers and holding them up to a higher standard. Then, we should take the energy we put into praising dads for doing the bare minimum and heap it on mothers who thanklessly go about the most important job in the world.

 

Trans Woman's Suit Alleges Horrific Abuse at Pennsylvania Jail

Shutterstock

The woman says that after a male prisoner tried to assualt her, guards beat and pepper-sprayed her, then transferred her to a filthy cell.

BY TRUDY RING

FEBRUARY 01 2022 

A Black transgender woman is suing officials in Dauphin County, Pa., saying she was groped by another inmate while held in the county jail and then attacked by guards who pepper-sprayed her.

The woman, identified only as Ms. Henderson, filed her suit in November in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania. She was the subject of a lengthy feature published this week in The Patriot-News of Harrisburg.

Henderson was held at the Dauphin County Prison for 10 days in October 2020. She was arrested by police who responded to a report of a disturbance at the Middletown apartment building where she lived with her fiancé.

Police said she was belligerent when they arrived, “but she said the encounter only turned ugly when officers saw her driver’s license that listed her as a male,” The Patriot-News reports. One told her, “Take that [expletive] back to North Carolina,” she said. She had moved to Pennsylvania from North Carolina a few years earlier, and under Pennsylvania law, she wasn’t allowed to get a license identifying her as female.

She was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. The first two charges were later dropped, and she pleaded guilty a third-degree misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge.

When she was taken to the county jail, she asked not to be housed in an all-male area. Now 27, she had lived as a female since age 12, and had been on hormone therapy for almost a decade. She “has the physical appearance of an attractive, young petite woman,” her lawsuit states. But she was “assigned to a bunk bed in a hallway, on an open block with about 100 men,” The Patriot-News reports.

She avoided using the bathroom for two or three days. Then, when she could wait no longer, she used a toilet that was shielded only by a curtain. A male inmate reached through the curtain and attempted to grab her buttocks. She ran back to her bunk while other inmates called for guards to respond to the attempted assault.

But the guards’ response was brutal, according to Henderson. She was sobbing but trying to calm herself when one guard said, “Look, faggot, do not disrupt my pod. Shut your fucking mouth or I’ll spray you,” as quoted in her suit. Then another guard sprayed her with Mace, and others attacked her, dragging her to the ground, slamming her head into the concrete floor, and pulling her hair. They used antigay slurs and told her she deserved the attack, her suit states.

She was then placed in a “suicide cell” that had a toilet covered with another inmate’s feces, so she had to relieve herself in the sink. She had no drinking cup and no utensils to eat with, nor any mat or sheets to sleep on until a guard brought in the Mace-soaked sheets from her previous bunk. She also said jail staff did not provide her hormone medications or the other meds she takes for anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

She was released a few days later when her fiancé posted bail. She went to a hospital, where she was diagnosed with a concussion.

Her suit alleges the prison and its staff violated the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by infringing on her right to bodily privacy; the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection and due process of law, by failing to protect her, failing to provide medical care, and using excessive force; and the Americans With Disabilities Act. She also alleges battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The suit names county government and several guards as defendants, and Henderson seeks a jury trial and compensatory and punitive damages. Depositions are being taken now, and there will be a mediation hearing soon.

“We’re in 2022. We have many different kinds of community members, and they have a constitutional, legal obligation to care for people’s safety,” Leticia Chavez-Freed, Henderson’s attorney, told The Patriot-News. “They’re taking a very vulnerable community member and just putting her in a bunk bed where anything can happen. This is a victim of sexual assault, and their response is to beat her, Mace her.

“It is our hope the next Miss Henderson is going to have proper housing, proper clothing, a proper bathroom for her, use the proper pronouns for her ... that she’s going to be considered a human being who makes it to the judge.”

Penn teammates back transgender swimmer Lia Thomas in public statement

The unsigned statement comes after at least one anonymous member of the Penn women’s swimming and diving team spoke out against Thomas.

University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas at a meet 

with Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on Jan. 22.

Josh Reynolds / AP file

 Feb. 1, 2022,
By Jo Yurcaba

Members of the women’s swimming and diving team at the University of Pennsylvania released a statement Tuesday in “full support” of their teammate Lia Thomas, a transgender woman who has become the subject of debate and transphobic rhetoric since she broke multiple records at a meet in December.

“As members of the Penn Women’s Swimming and Diving team and teammates of Lia Thomas, we want to express our full support for Lia in her transition,” the team members said in the statement, which a Penn spokesperson shared with NBC News by email after it was first reported by ESPN.

“We value her as a person, teammate, and friend,” it continued. “The sentiments put forward by an anonymous member of our team are not representative of the feelings, values, and opinions of the entire Penn team, composed of 39 women with diverse backgrounds,” the athletes said, referring to a recent Fox News interview with an anonymous team member who disagrees with Thomas’ participation on the women’s team.

The athletes added, “We recognize this is a matter of great controversy and are doing our best to navigate it while still focusing on doing our best in the pool and classroom.” ESPN reported that the statement was not signed, and it is unclear how many of the team members supported it.

Thomas’ participation on the women’s team has fueled debate over trans inclusion in sports. At a meet in Ohio in December, Thomas qualified for the NCAA championships after her wins in the 200-yard and 500-yard freestyle. Her times were the best in the country this season, according to Penn Athletics. In the 1,650-yard freestyle at the same meet, she was 38 seconds ahead of teammate Anna Kalandadze, who finished second.

A media firestorm erupted, with some outlets posting pre-transition photos of Thomas and using her previous name, also known as her deadname. She declined an interview and has granted only one interview so far, to the SwimSwam podcast, during which she said she does not engage with the criticism.

“It’s not healthy for me to read it and engage with it at all, and so I don’t, and that’s all I’ll say on that,” she said.

Some of Thomas’ critics have called for her to be barred from competing entirely, while others argue that the NCAA, which oversees collegiate athletics, should adopt stricter rules for trans athletes. To compete on the women’s team, Thomas had to undergo at least one year of testosterone suppression treatment in line with NCAA guidance released in 2011. By the time she began competing, she told SwimSwam, she had been receiving treatment for two years.

The NCAA scrapped the guidance last month, and some advocates said it had “caved” to pressure about Thomas. The new NCAA policy will take a sport-by-sport approach, similar to the International Olympic Committee, and athletes will look to the trans athlete policy developed by their sports’ national or international governing bodies.

Athletes have been divided over Thomas’ participation. Olympic swimmers Donna de Varona and Nancy Hogshead-Makar have criticized her inclusion, arguing that trans women should not be allowed to compete against cisgender women in certain sports in which testosterone suppression does not completely mitigate their competitive advantage.

But Brooke Forde — who is ranked third in the country behind Thomas in the 500-yard freestyle — said last week that she does not have any issue with Thomas’ competing.

“I have great respect for Lia,” she said in a statement read by her father, sportswriter Pat Forde, on Yahoo Sports’ College Football Enquirer podcast. “Social change is always a slow and difficult process and we rarely get it correct right away. Being among the first to lead such a social change requires an enormous amount of courage, and I admire Lia for her leadership that will undoubtedly benefit many trans athletes in the future.”

She continued, “I believe that treating people with respect and dignity is more important than any trophy or record will ever be, which is why I will not have a problem racing against Lia at NCAAs this year.”

Thomas has qualified for the NCAA championships, which are scheduled for March, although it is unclear whether she will be able to compete under the new NCAA guidance. ESPN reported that USA Swimming is working with FINA, the international governing body for swimming, to develop and release a new policy soon.

Without a policy from USA Swimming or FINA, the NCAA guidance says athletes should look to previously established IOC guidance, which required transgender women to have undergone at least one year of hormone therapy and to maintain a testosterone level below 10 nanomoles per liter.

 

Trump Pledges to Ban Trans Women From Women’s Sport, Justifies by Citing Records Not Actually Broken

© REUTERS / Brendan McDermid

Morgan Artyukhina

All materialsWrite to the author

Under Donald Trump’s four-year presidency, the Departments of Education, Justice and Health and Human Services were accused of attempting to “erase” trans people by defining people in terms of sex assigned at birth instead of by gender identity or legal gender.

Trump’s 2024 presidential election campaign saw a “soft launch” last month at a rally in Florence, Arizona, his first public rally in more than six months. He hasn’t formally declared his candidacy, but speaks as though he intends to run, and his fundraising committee “Save America” has amassed more than $100 million, the Federal Elections Committee said on Monday.

At another rally in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday, Trump laid out his criticisms of the Biden administration in the year since Trump left office, touted the accomplishments of his first four-year administration, and named some of the changes he would make if he returned to power in 2024.

Among the measures Trump said he would implement included a ban on trans girls and women from competing on sports teams of their gender, characterizing them as “men.”

“We will ban men from participating in women’s sports,” Trump said. “So ridiculous.”

He went on to attack trans athletes, including Lia Thomas, a swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania who has become a favorite target of conservatives ever since she set two new time records in the 200-meter and 500-meter freestyle races in December.

Trump incorrectly said that Thomas beat the record by 38 seconds; while she won the 1,650-yard freestyle race by 38 seconds, the trans athlete didn’t set a record with that time. Fox News and other conservative outlets have hounded the story for weeks, characterizing Thomas’ win as evidence that trans women competing with cis women is inherently unfair.

Trump also claimed a trans woman easily broke a 20-year weightlifting record, but no such incident has ever occurred. It’s possible he was referring to New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who made history last summer as the first trans woman athlete at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, but Hubbard failed to even qualify to compete for a medal at the games, much less set any kind of record. Like Thomas, Hubbard was for weeks attacked in the right-wing media as having an unfair advantage.

When US President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he issued dozens of executive orders reversing Trump-era policies, including reinstating several civil rights for transgender Americans, such as being able to serve in the military, and eliminating several policies that discriminated against trans people, including by the departments of Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services. Those included defining people by their gender assignment at birth instead of gender identity - a practice that resulted in trans women being placed in men’s prisons or being barred from women’s crisis centers and homeless shelters.

He also ordered them to adopt the US Supreme Court’s ruling from the previous summer, ignored by the Trump administration, that sex-based language in existing civil rights legislation includes LGBTQ people, including Title IX, which guarantees women equal access to educational facilities and programs, such as school sports teams.

Fight Over Inclusion

Inclusion of trans athletes has become a major target of conservative lawmakers and ideologues in recent years, where they can argue that because they were assigned male at birth and their bodies once produced testosterone, transfeminine athletes are inherently physically superior to cisgender women, who were assigned female at birth.

Critics have noted that such claims are based on sweeping generalizations, pointing to athletes like South African two-time Olympic Gold Medal winner Caster Semeyna, who was assigned female at birth but classified by World Athletics rules as insufficiently female to compete as a woman because she has a naturally high level of testosterone. Others have blasted the idea of sex-based standards, saying the idea of sexual dimorphism is false and based in age-old patriarchal ideas of female inferiority.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has tracked 17 bills introduced into state legislatures since the beginning of the year that would ban trans girls from girls’ sports teams, with South Dakota on Tuesday passing its bill, which was championed by Governor Kristy Noem. However, several states have already passed such bans, including Texas. Noem used an executive order last year to implement a trimmed-down version of the bill after the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) suggested that if the ban applied to college athletes, it could harm the state’s chances of hosting a championship game in the future.

Last month, the NCAA adopted a sport-by-sport approach to the issue, following an example set by the International Olympic Committee that allows the national or international governing body of each sport to determine what qualifies as fair while maintaining safety and inclusivity.

Trans athletes have found widespread support amid the right-wing attacks, including by their teammates and by famous female athletes. Thomas’ teammates issued a statement on Tuesday giving her their “full support” in response to an anonymous team member’s comments that aired on Fox News last month. The anonymous colleague accused Thomas of colluding beforehand with a trans male athlete, who was assigned female at birth and who competed against Thomas, to have Thomas lose to him and upend the claim that being assigned male at birth makes one physically superior to someone assigned female at birth.

Megan Rapinoe, who has led the US national soccer team to multiple FIFA Women’s World Cup victories and a Gold Medal in the 2012 Tokyo Olympics, penned an op-ed in the Washington Post last March in which she urged that “all women must stand up and demand that exclusion is not done in our name.”

Public opinion on the issue is hard to define: while one poll from March 2021 by Hart Research Associates and the Human Rights Campaign found that 73% of those polled believed trans kids should play on the team they feel most comfortable, another poll in May 2021 by Gallup found that 62% of Americans believed trans athletes should only be allowed to compete on teams with athletes of their sex assigned at birth.

 

Trump Promises to Ban 'Men' From Women's Sports

Screen Shot

The former president is once again targeting trans people as he gears up for a potential 2024 run.

BY TRUDY RING

FEBRUARY 01 2022 

Donald Trump isn’t through targeting the transgender community.

The man behind the trans military ban and other anti-trans actions is now promising to keep trans women out of women’s sports if he is elected president again.

“We will ban men from participating in women’s sports,” Trump said at a Saturday rally in Conroe, Texas, NBC News reports. “So ridiculous.” By “men,” of course, he meant trans women.

He also denounced Lia Thomas, a trans woman on the University of Pennsylvania swim team who recently broke several records at a meet in Ohio. “Trump misgendered Thomas, referring to her by the wrong pronouns, and then falsely stated that Thomas broke an 11-year-old swimming record by 38 seconds,” NBC notes. Actually, she won one event by 38 seconds but didn’t break a record in that case; she had record times in some other events, but she bested the previous records by only a couple of seconds.

He further claimed a trans woman broke a weightlifting record that had stood for 20 years, but it’s unclear what he was basing it on or if the statement was true.

Trump didn’t say how he’d enact the ban he talked about. He has spoken against trans inclusion in women’s sports previously. At last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, for instance, he said Democratic policies would “destroy women’s sports.”

Barring trans women from women’s sports has become a popular cause among conservative legislators at the state level. Last year, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia passed laws barring trans athletes from competing under their gender identity in K-12 public school sports; some of the laws affect athletes at state colleges and universities as well.

Idaho put such a law in place in 2020, and South Dakota’s governor last year signed executive orders to the same effect; the state is now considering legislation on the matter. Some of the laws are being challenged in court, with Idaho’s and West Virginia’s temporarily blocked by court action. This year, many more states are considering such measures, 17 at the latest count.

The rash of legislation has come even though there is no widespread domination of women’s sports by trans women. Most of the lawmakers behind these bills haven’t been able to name a single instance in which a trans woman’s participation in women’s sports has caused a problem in their state. Backers of the bans claim trans women have an inherent and unfair advantage over cisgender women, but both scientists and activists dispute this. And such legislation further marginalizes trans youth, a population already subject to much discrimination and harassment.

Trump’s event in Conroe, a suburb of Houston, was billed as a “Save America Rally.” It featured appearances by several Trump-supporting and notably anti-LGBTQ+ Republican Texas officials, including Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Attorney General Ken Paxton. They are all up for reelection this year.

Trump has never admitted losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden and instead has spread lies that the election was stolen through widespread voter fraud, a claim for which there is no evidence. Trump hopes to run for president again in 2024, but right now he and his associates are under investigation for their roles in inciting the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol that attempted to stop certification of the electoral vote for Biden. Also, the former president’s business dealings are under investigation by New York City and state authorities.