• Axios: Clarence Thomas wants SCOTUS to reconsider decisions on gay marriage, contraceptives
• The Guardian: Clarence Thomas scandal deepens with report of rightwing activist’s secret payments to wife – as it happened
• AP News: Justice Clarence Thomas let GOP donor pay child’s tuition
• USA Today: Clarence Thomas accepted luxury gifts from GOP megadonor for decades without disclosing them: report
• WSJ: The Billionaire Who Bought Justice Thomas’s Mother’s House
• MSNBC: New revelations add to Clarence Thomas’ intensifying ethics scandal

Watch the Video

On a Saturday afternoon in August 2019, South Dakota Republican state Rep. Fred Deutsch sent an email to 18 anti-trans activists, doctors, and lawyers with the text of a bill he planned to introduce that would make it a felony for doctors to give transgender children under 16 gender-affirming medical care. “I have no doubt this will be an uphill battle when we get to session,” Deutsch warned the group. “As always, please do not share this with the media. The longer we can fly under the radar the better.”

A DOCTORS’ ORGANIZATION at the center of the ongoing legal fight over the abortion drug mifepristone has suffered a significant data breach. A link to an unsecured Google Drive published on the group’s website pointed users last week to a large cache of sensitive documents, including financial and tax records, membership rolls, and email exchanges spanning over a decade. The more than 10,000 documents lay bare the outsize influence of a small conservative organization working to lend a veneer of medical science to evangelical beliefs on parenting, sex, procreation, and gender.

In 2019, four states banned conversion therapy. Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, and Maine all passed measures at the state level banning the practice in a blow to groups furthering their hateful agenda. New Jersey will be next to join the group. In New Mexico,  and Washington, D.C., they joined 17 states with a comprehensive anti-bullying law inclusive of LGBTQ students.

The work for the LGBTQ community and allies is far from over.  Just a few weeks ago, the Alliance Defending Freedom announced their plans to work with the American Legislative Exchange Council to continue their agenda.  A partnership between ALEC—widely known as an organization that provides state legislatures with model legislation—and ADF means more states will be seeing anti-LGBT measures than ever before.

ADF’s reach and relentlessness is unparalleled. ADF’s annual revenue dwarfs the others, and these superior resources, backing its nationwide networks of attorneys, has enabled it to successfully press legal claims across the country that once seemed too far outside the legal mainstream to succeed. See a copy of ADF Lexicon Guidelines according to emails obtained by TPM and Type Investigations through a public records request, from 2013 through 2015.

These include household names such as Fidelity and Schwab, as well as community-centered, faith-based charities such as the Jewish Communal Fund and the National Christian Charitable Foundation.

The alliance has defended the owners of a wedding chapel in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, who did not want to perform same-sex ceremonies. It has tried to stop a Charlotte, N.C., law that gave transgender people the right to use the bathroom of their choice. It backed the failed attempt by the Arizona legislature in 2014 to allow businesses to cite religious freedom in turning away same-sex couples.

On July 14, 2016, Campaign for Accountability released a new report, Documenting Discrimination, uncovering how national right wing religious groups – working through smaller local groups – are spearheading the movement to legalize discrimination against LGBT individuals through Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) legislation.