State ID, Trump in Iowa, anti-LGBTQ+ laws in 2023
- Illinois to provide state ID to newly-released Cook County Jail inmates: The card, already provided to newly-released state prisoners, is being tried at the county level for the first time and is considered pivotal in helping former detainees in re-entry find jobs, take out rental leases, access basic services, and more. (Capitol News Illinois)
- Taking a look back at 2023’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws: Nationwide, state legislatures proposed 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in 2023. Altogether, 15 percent of them (75 laws total) became law. (NBC News).
- Iowa poll shows extremist Trump rhetoric increases support: Iowa Republican caucus-goers are responding favorably to former President Donald Trump’s recent extremist rhetoric promising to use “sweeping raids, giant camps and mass deportations” to change the country’s immigration policy, reports USA Today.
Pregnancy center fraud, “giantess” dominates, and defamation ruling in Georgia
- Illinois’ pregnancy center fraud law stopped: A federal judge stopped the law’s enforcement this week, and Attorney General Kwame Raoul has agreed to rely on the state’s existing consumer fraud law to stop anti-abortion activists from presenting themselves as volunteers at abortion clinics (WTTW).
- “Giantess” revealed as top fetish of 2023: The term is the most searched in more than half the country, reports The Pink News, and replaces “pegging” from 2022 as the top fetish based on internet searches.
- Georgia election workers win defamation ruling against Giuliani: Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and Ruby Freeman are to receive $148 million from Rudy Giuliani for defamatory statements he made about the mother and daughter in 2021 after the presidential election (Reuters).
(photo credit: White House, through Wikimedia Commons)
Â
Â
Conversion therapy ban challenge, Trump’s Iowa lead, horseshoe crab blood
Trump celebrates 19-point Iowa lead in Coralville: Trump chose a stop in Coralville to talk about the latest poll showing that 51 percent of Iowa Republicans support him as their party’s presidential nominee, a month before the state’s caucuses. (News From the States).
Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal of city conversion therapy ban: A psychologist’s assertion that bans on conversion therapy infringe on the rights of private therapists will not be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, which turned down the appeal by a 6-3 vote. Read Central Illinois Proud’s story on the decision.
Synthetic alternatives may lessen toll on horseshoe crabs for vital medication research: After decades of the world’s horseshoe crab population suffering as the species’ blood is drawn for research on pivotal medications, new synthetic alternatives are finally being adopted by the corporations conducting the research and generating the medications, reports The Conversation.
(photo credit: Daniel Tobias, Wikimedia Commons)
Illinois gun ban, Wichtendahl race, and “Write It Out” playwrights
- Illinois semi-automatic ban to remain: The U.S. Supreme Court refused a gun rights group’s request to put the Illinois law on hold pending appeals, reports The Hill.
- Wichtendahl seeks Iowa House seat: She became Iowa’s first-ever openly transgender elected official in 2015 when she was elected to the Hiawatha City Council. Three terms later, Wichtendahl is seeking to be the State Representative for District 80. Read about it in Little Village.
- “Write It Out” showcases HIV+ playwrights: The program produced seven plays, and the program’s annual prize for playwrights went to Matti Mahoski, a “queer, trans, non-binary, neurodivergent, Jewish, artist who lives with HIV,” reports Poz Magazine.
(cover photo courtesy of The Real Mainstream, showing new Iowa State House candidate Aime Wichtendahl marching in the June 2023 QC Pride Parade in Moline, Ill.)
