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      The Presidential Candidate Who Has His Own Supporters Scratching Their Heads

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      Gov. Doug Burgum’s quixotic presidential campaign has baffled even North Dakotans, but then again, many of the 2024 hopefuls have prompted the same wonder.With Gov. Doug Burgum’s money and his family’s vision, Fargo, N.D., has undoubtedly changed in recent decades. Broadway, its main drag, is packed with restaurants, cafes, retailers and offices lovingly converted from old factories.Parking lots have been turned into public parks. A warehouse saved from the wrecking ball now houses North Dakota State University’s architecture and arts program. With a population of nearly 127,000 — 16 percent of North Dakota’s total population — the largest city for hundreds of miles is growing, in size and diversity, with a liberal tilt.But as a base for a presidential run, Fargo is still the smallest of towns, closer to Winnipeg, in Canada, than to Minneapolis, the nearest American metropolis. The hamlet of Arthur, where Mr. Burgum grew up and where his family’s prosperous, century-old grain elevator dominates the flat landscape, is still more removed from the nation’s political currents. Even North Dakotans who express admiration for their governor’s wealth, business acumen and energy are baffled by his suddenly lofty political ambitions.“He’s a long shot, for sure,” said Brad Moen, 69, of Jamestown, N.D., who has known Mr. Burgum for 60 years and traveled 100 miles for his presidential introduction on Wednesday. “California, New York, Ohio, Florida — they’re the big dogs, not North Dakota.”Of course Mr. Burgum has a plan for winning the Republican nomination: eschewing the culture wars and getting the party back on a business-friendly economic message of low taxes, less regulation and can-do entrepreneurship.Fargo, N.D., with a population of nearly 127,000, is the largest city for hundreds of miles and is growing in size and diversity.Dan Koeck for The New York TimesBut first he’ll face the other new entrants in a G.O.P. field that as of this week seems largely set.Former Vice President Mike Pence has piety and consistent conservatism to remind evangelical Christians of what brought them to politics in the first place. Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, has his tell-it-like-it-is pugilism, as the only candidate willing to take on Donald J. Trump. Tim Scott, the senator from South Carolina, has hope and optimism. Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, has Trumpism without Trump.Yet all these options seem to have done nothing but carve up the Republican primary electorate that is not with Mr. Trump into ever more slender slivers — leaving the former president’s inviolable piece of the pie looking larger and larger with every new candidate.That has North Dakotans asking the same question that many other Americans are: What do these candidates really want — a cabinet post in a second Trump administration, a higher national profile for a future presidential bid, a vanity project after a long career? Mr. Pence is seen by many Republican voters as the ultimate traitor, the man they wrongly believe could have given Mr. Trump a victory in 2020 and declined. Mr. Christie is viewed with hostility by many Republicans because of his outspoken contempt for Mr. Trump — and with suspicion by anti-Trump Republicans because of his loyalty to him until now.As for Mr. Burgum, who knows?“I think that he is genuinely thinking this is a vehicle for promoting North Dakota,” Dustin Gawrylow, a conservative political commentator and activist in the state, said of Mr. Burgum. Or, he suggested, “he may have his eye on a cabinet position.”Tony S. Grindberg, a utility executive and former state senator, was at Mr. Burgum’s rally on Wednesday working through how the governor could pursue his quixotic presidential run and prepare to seek a third term in Bismarck.“Technically, he can,” he concluded, hopefully.Tony S. Grindberg, a former state senator, hoped that Mr. Burgum could pursue his presidential bid while preparing to seek a third term as governor if his loftier bid falters.Dan Koeck for The New York TimesMr. Burgum’s path to the White House seems particularly forbidding. His story is out of central casting: the son of a tiny town who as a teenager lost his father, and then channeled a natural entrepreneurial spirit into enterprises that included chimney sweeping, a business software empire and venture capital — all within the state lines of North Dakota.Mr. Burgum’s status as a billionaire traces back to Microsoft, which bought his company, Great Plains Software, in 2001 in a $1.1 billion stock deal that made him one of the richest men in the Dakotas. All that money will give him staying power in the race, but it cannot get him the 40,000 individual donors or the 1 percent in the polls that he needs to qualify for the Republican debate stage. It won’t make him a household name, and among some of the Republican faithful, it could conjure feverish images of Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder who features in many of the most outlandish far-right conspiracy theories.Even North Dakotans are not sure what to make of their governor. They can squint to see the politician they want to see.Jonathan Melgaard, 29, sees Mr. Burgum as the essence of nonpartisan leadership, an effective entrepreneur and bridge builder inspiring enough to lure him back from Colorado, where he worked for the Aspen Institute to help build a progressive, forward-looking Fargo. To voters like Mr. Melgaard, Mr. Burgum is the investor who promised to make oil-rich North Dakota “carbon neutral,” in part by backing an ambitious pipeline to bring carbon dioxide produced as an unwanted byproduct of ethanol from around the Midwest to the absorbent 300-foot-thick Broom Creek sandstone 7,000 feet under North Dakota’s surface.Jonathan Melgaard said that Mr. Burgum’s leadership drew him back to North Dakota.Dan Koeck for The New York Times“I am not a Republican,” Mr. Melgaard said. “I do not subscribe to conservative governance. I do subscribe to effective governance.”Mr. Moen waved off all that talk of carbon capture and electric vehicles and latched on to Mr. Burgum’s promise to bolster the state’s abundant traditional energy sources, oil and coal.Outside Mr. Burgum’s event, Shelly Reilly, 59, joined a small group of protesters determined to discount the governor’s nonpartisan business pitch and emphasize the bills he has actually signed, which banned gender transition care, abortion and the discussion of L.G.B.T.Q. issues in elementary schools.“I know people who have left because of him,” she said. “They’re leaving in droves.”Even Mr. Burgum doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with his record. He ran on innovation, vowing to diversify the state’s economy beyond agriculture and oil by expanding the technology sector and appealing to educated professionals with distance learning and thriving cities.Fargo shows that promise, but social policy will be Mr. Burgum’s legacy. In a recent interview with Joel Heitkamp, a popular radio host and the brother of former Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, Mr. Burgum acknowledged that the six-week exception for rape and incest in the new abortion ban would be so short that a woman might not know in time whether she was pregnant, but he said that if he had vetoed it, the legislature would have overridden him. He said the same thing about the anti-L.G.B.T.Q. rights bills, even as he insisted most of them codified what was happening in the state anyway.“He was the most exciting person to become governor in my lifetime,” said Earl Pomeroy, a Democrat who was North Dakota’s at-large House member for 18 years before the rising tide of Republicanism swept him out. He voted for Mr. Burgum, Mr. Pomeroy said, “but it’s been years of unspectacular leadership out of the governor’s office.” He added, “He’s been somewhat captive to the crazy legislature.”Fargo’s downtown is now packed with restaurants, cafes, retailers and offices lovingly converted from old factories.Dan Koeck for The New York TimesThe governorship was Mr. Burgum’s first elective office. He spent freely to win his race in 2016 and then spent freely to bolster his support.In 2020, Mr. Burgum clashed with the state House Appropriations Committee chairman, Jeff Delzer, especially over the governor’s prized project, a new Theodore Roosevelt presidential library near the Burgum ranch in Medora, N.D. After the conflict, Mr. Burgum funded a primary challenger running as a “Trump Republican” against Mr. Delzer.The challenger, David Andahl, died of Covid-19 before his name could be taken off the ballot — and won. Then local officials reappointed Mr. Delzer to the seat.The carbon dioxide pipeline, bankrolled by the oil and gas billionaire Harold Hamm, has angered activists on the right and the left.Yet Mr. Burgum’s rally on Wednesday was packed with past and present elected officials.“There are a lot of legislators that outright fear what Doug Burgum will do to them,” Mr. Gawrylow said. “Burgum has shown he is not afraid to put his money where his mouth is, and that is scary.”Mr. Heitkamp takes Mr. Burgum’s presidential ambitions at face value. He acknowledged the rampant speculation that the governor doesn’t actually believe he can beat Mr. Trump to the nomination and then secure the White House. But Mr. Heitkamp thinks Mr. Burgum is a believer.“He’s a nerd, and he looks in the mirror and sees something that others don’t,” Mr. Heitkamp, a former Democratic state senator, said. “When he shaves in the morning, he sees a president.” More

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      Who Is Doug Burgum? 5 Things to Know

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      Elected governor of North Dakota in 2016 in a major upset, Mr. Burgum is seeking an even bigger one in the Republican presidential race. Doug Burgum has at least a couple of things going for him: He is a sitting governor, which is the most common steppingstone to the United States presidency, and he has deep pockets.But Mr. Burgum, the two-term Republican governor of North Dakota, nonetheless entered the 2024 presidential race on Wednesday with a notable disadvantage: The 99.8 percent of Americans who don’t live in North Dakota are unlikely to know much about him.Here are five things to know about Mr. Burgum.His election as governor was a major upset.When Mr. Burgum began running for governor in January 2016, few people in North Dakota knew who he was either.A poll conducted the next month found him running 49 percentage points behind the state attorney general Wayne Stenehjem, who was the chosen candidate of the North Dakota Republican Party, the departing governor Jack Dalrymple and Senator John Hoeven.He ended up beating Mr. Stenehjem in the Republican primary by more than 20 points.“Stand up if you saw this coming,” Mike McFeely, a columnist for The Forum, a newspaper in Fargo, wrote after the primary. “OK, now sit down. Because no you didn’t.”Mr. Burgum, who had never held elected office, benefited from an anti-establishment campaign message — this was, after all, the year that Donald J. Trump showed Republican voters’ appetite for perceived outsiders — and from Democrats who crossed over to vote in the Republican primary, as state law allows.He also benefited from millions of dollars of his own money, which allowed him to significantly outspend Mr. Stenehjem despite only slightly surpassing him in fund-raising.He is a wealthy software entrepreneur.Mr. Burgum was raised in Arthur, N.D., a tiny town about northwest of Fargo, and went on to earn a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford.He then returned to North Dakota and bought a stake in a fledgling financial software company by mortgaging $250,000 of farmland that he had inherited. (His grandparents founded an agribusiness company that is still in his family.)In the mid-1980s, he and his relatives bought out the founders of the company, Great Plains Software, and assumed full ownership. Over the ensuing years, it became a major supplier of accounting and record-keeping software for small and midsize businesses and grew to employ more than 2,000 people.Mr. Burgum took the company public in 1997, and in 2001, Microsoft bought it for about $1.1 billion.Since selling Great Plains Software, Mr. Burgum has founded two more businesses: Kilbourne Group, a real estate development firm, and Arthur Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in software companies.He supports fossil fuels and carbon capture.In 2021, shortly after beginning his second term as governor, Mr. Burgum announced an unusual goal for a Republican: to get North Dakota to carbon neutrality by 2030.However, he rejected transitioning to renewable energy, a central step that climate scientists say is needed to accomplish that goal. North Dakota is a major user of wind energy, but it is also heavily reliant on oil, natural gas and coal, and Mr. Burgum does not want to fundamentally change that. He argues instead that, by using new technology to capture carbon emissions, North Dakota can become carbon neutral while continuing to rely in large part on fossil fuels.That is a politically appealing position in a place like North Dakota. Thanks to the Bakken oil field in the western part of the state, North Dakota is one of the biggest oil producers in the country. It is also one of the largest coal producers, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.But experts say that, while carbon capture may be a useful tool for combating climate change, it is unlikely to be sufficient on its own — in part because high costs have made it hard for the technology to gain traction.Mr. Burgum has taken a number of steps to promote carbon capture, including signing a bill in 2019 that created a tax incentive for a particular form of it. More recently, local leaders and landowners have been fighting over a proposed pipeline that would funnel carbon from other states into underground storage in North Dakota.He has signed eight anti-transgender laws this year.North Dakota legislators have passed, and Mr. Burgum has signed into law, at least eight bills targeting transgender or gender-nonconforming people in recent months. That is more than almost any other state in what has been a record-breaking year for anti-transgender legislation.Mr. Burgum signed a ban on transition care for minors, as more than a dozen other states have done this year. The ban — which runs counter to the consensus of major medical organizations — makes it a misdemeanor to provide puberty blockers or hormones to minors for gender transition, and a felony to provide surgery.He signed one law defining sex as being determined by “sex organs, chromosomes and endogenous hormone profiles at birth”; one defining “male” and “female”; and another prohibiting most sex changes on transgender people’s birth certificates.He signed a measure restricting transgender people’s use of bathrooms and showers in state facilities, and another one allowing public school personnel to misgender students and requiring schools to inform parents of students’ “transgender status.” (He vetoed a bill that would have gone further by mandating that schools misgender many trans students.)He also signed two measures restricting transgender girls’ and women’s participation in sports — one applying to public schools and to private schools that compete against them, and the second applying to colleges with the same public/private criteria.He signed one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans.In April, Mr. Burgum signed a law banning almost all abortions. Exceptions for rape or incest are allowed only in the first six weeks of pregnancy, when many people do not yet know they are pregnant. After six weeks, the only exception is to prevent “death or a serious health risk.”Previously, abortion had been legal in North Dakota through 22 weeks of pregnancy.Like many other states, North Dakota had a “trigger ban” that was set to take effect when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. But that law — under which doctors could have faced felony charges for performing an abortion even to save a woman’s life, and the burden would have been on them to prove an “affirmative defense” that the abortion was medically necessary — was struck down by the North Dakota Supreme Court.The new ban that Mr. Burgum signed, which state legislators passed in response to the court’s rejection of the trigger ban, allows abortions in medical emergencies without the need for an “affirmative defense” — though in practice, fear of prosecution has stopped many doctors from providing abortions for medical reasons even in states whose laws have such exceptions. More

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      North Dakota governor Doug Burgum announces Republican presidential bid

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      Doug Burgum, the Republican governor of North Dakota, has announced his candidacy for the party’s presidential nomination next year.Burgum made the announcement in the the Wall Street Journal newspaper. A campaign event is scheduled for later on Wednesday in the city of Fargo.“We need a change in the White House. We need a new leader for a changing economy. That’s why I’m announcing my run for president,” he said in a commentary on the Journal’s website.The 66-year-old was a software entrepreneur, Microsoft executive and venture capitalist before becoming governor in 2016. He will be a rank outsider in a race dominated by two candidates: former US president Donald Trump and rightwing Florida governor Ron DeSantis.Trump enjoys commanding polling leads, having parlayed unparalleled legal jeopardy, including possible indictments over his election subversion and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress, into a surge of support.DeSantis, a hardline self-styled culture warrior, is a distant second but still well clear of a raft of other candidates including former vice-president Mike Pence, the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, the South Carolina senator Tim Scott, the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur.Burgum has rarely made national headlines but he did so in May 2020, pleading emotionally for North Dakotans to “try to dial up your empathy and your understanding” over the need to wear masks in public during the Covid pandemic.“We’re all in this together and there’s only one battle we’re fighting,” Burgum said. “And that’s the battle of the virus.”In that appearance in Bismarck, the state capital, Burgum also said he “would really love to see in North Dakota that we could just skip this thing that other parts of the nation are going through, that they’re creating a divide. Either it’s ideological or political or something around mask versus no mask.“This is, I would say, a senseless dividing line … If someone is wearing a mask, they’re not doing it to represent what political party they’re in or what candidates they support.”In Trump’s culture war-stoked Republican party, however, masks and other public health measures against Covid quickly became a key political issue.Only recently, Trump and DeSantis swapped campaign-trail barbs about what each said or did not say about Anthony Fauci, then Trump’s chief Covid adviser, in the early stages of the pandemic.Should Burgum pull off a political miracle and win the Republican nomination, another culture war issue would be likely to hurt his chances with the US public.In April, Burgum signed a law banning abortion at six weeks of gestation, when many women do not know they are pregnant, with few exceptions.Burgum said the bill “reaffirms North Dakota as a pro-life state”.In the year since the US supreme court removed the right to abortion, other Republican governors have signed strict abortion bans. DeSantis is among them, having signed a six-week ban in Florida.US public opinion is consistently in favor of abortion rights.Burgum has also signed numerous laws curtailing the rights of transgender North Dakotans and a law banning the teaching of critical race theory in public schools.Last year, Burgum approved a new electoral map which Indigenous leaders said was gerrymandered to reduce their political voice, already challenged by a voter ID law.Though Burgum’s policies include the goal of making North Dakota carbon neutral by 2030, a rare environmental commitment from a Republican governor, he has also been a backer of fossil fuel projects including the Dakota Access pipeline, which has fueled widespread protests. More

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      Doug Burgum, Wealthy North Dakota Governor, Enters Presidential Race

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      As the leader of a deep-red state, Mr. Burgum has promoted staunchly conservative policies, signing into law a near-total ban on abortion.Gov. Doug Burgum, the Republican governor of North Dakota who rose from a chimney sweep to become one of the richest men in the state, announced a campaign for president on Wednesday, entering an increasingly crowded race in which he faces exceedingly long odds.“We need a new leader for a changing economy,” Mr. Burgum wrote in an opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal that focused heavily on his business acumen. He plans to appear at an event around midday in Fargo, N.D.The size of the field signals that former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner, has not scared off many challengers. But he has also yet to fully consolidate support behind his candidacy, and numerous rivals apparently see a path to the nomination, no matter how narrow it might be.As the leader of his deep-red state, Mr. Burgum has overseen a period of significant economic expansion and promoted staunchly conservative policies.This year, Mr. Burgum signed into law a near-total ban on abortion and created significant restrictions on gender transition care, including banning any requirements that teachers or school administrators use a student’s preferred pronouns.He is the second sitting governor to enter the race, after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has staked out aggressively conservative social policy positions and attracted the national spotlight for dust-ups with major corporations like Disney.Yet Mr. Burgum’s aides say he is planning a campaign less focused on social issues and more on his business background and fiscal stewardship of the state, which included cuts to both local property taxes and state income taxes. He is set to emphasize the economy, energy and national security in his early campaigning, viewing the current debate as too focused on social issues and not on voters’ biggest concerns.In a recent interview with the editorial board of The Fargo Forum, a local news outlet, Mr. Burgum said he believed that 60 percent of American voters had been neglected as the fringes dominated political debate.“All the engagement right now is occurring on the edge,” he said. “There’s definitely a yearning for some alternatives right now.”Though his national media appearances have been scarce, Mr. Burgum has been able to break through during debates over energy policy, offering a window into how he might frame his proposals in contrast to those of Republican rivals and of President Biden. In March, he told Fox News that the Biden administration’s economic plan was “disconnected from economics, it’s disconnected from physics and it’s disconnected from common sense.” He argued that Japan and other Asian countries were ripe markets for American energy exports.On Monday, his campaign sought to address his scant national name recognition with a glossy biography video in which the governor tells his life story, set to sweeping vistas of North Dakota bluffs and energy fields. His campaign’s confidence that he can rise from a relative unknown to legitimate candidate derives from his own political career in North Dakota. When Mr. Burgum announced his bid for governor in 2016, he was an outsider with little name recognition outside Fargo, and his main opponent, Wayne Stenehjem, the state attorney general, received the North Dakota Republican Party’s endorsement.But with ample resources and a campaign that ran to the right — Mr. Burgum endorsed Donald J. Trump for president in May 2016 — he cruised to a 20-percentage-point victory that The Bismarck Tribune proclaimed “upended the North Dakota Republican Party establishment.” He has not been seriously challenged in North Dakota since.“There’s a value to being underestimated all the time,” Mr. Burgum told The Fargo Forum. “That’s a competitive advantage.”As the only candidate not from the East Coast and with an upbringing deeply rooted in the rural Midwest, Mr. Burgum is likely to focus most of his efforts in Iowa, a state with an extensive agricultural community. Mr. Burgum grew up in Arthur, N.D., a town of barely 300 where his family owned the only grain elevator.While attending North Dakota State University as an undergraduate, Mr. Burgum began a chimney sweeping service in Fargo out of a friend’s pickup truck. His newfound business attracted the attention of local newspapers, who ran photos of a soot-laden Mr. Burgum clad in a tuxedo hopping from roof to roof, picking up roughly $40 per chimney.Mr. Burgum attached those newspaper clips to his applications for business school, and he soon enrolled in Stanford Business School. After earning his M.B.A. at Stanford, Mr. Burgum joined Great Plains Software, a Fargo company that specialized in accounting software, and quickly rose to chief executive.Far from the more fertile tech hubs of Silicon Valley, Mr. Burgum built Great Plains Software into a major industry player, eventually selling to Microsoft for $1.1 billion. He would then serve as a senior vice president at Microsoft until 2007.Mr. Burgum’s worth stretches into nine figures, certainly enough to help finance a nascent presidential run, and his aides expect his business network to help pull in major donors as well. But as of the start of his campaign, no super PAC or outside group has emerged supporting Mr. Burgum’s candidacy. More

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      North Dakota governor signs law banning nearly all abortions

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      North Dakota on Monday adopted one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the US as the Republican governor Doug Burgum signed legislation banning the procedure throughout pregnancy, with slim exceptions up to six weeks’ gestation.In those early weeks, abortion would be allowed only in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency, such as ectopic pregnancy.“This bill clarifies and refines existing state law … and reaffirms North Dakota as a pro-life state,” Burgum said in a statement.Last year’s US supreme court ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide has triggered multiple state laws banning or restricting the procedure. Many were met with legal challenges. Currently, bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy are in place in at least 13 states and on hold in others because of court injunctions. On the other side, Democratic governors in at least 20 states this year launched a network intended to strengthen abortion access in the wake of the supreme court decision that eliminated women’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy and shifted regulatory powers over the procedure to state governments.The North Dakota law is designed to take effect immediately, but last month the state supreme court ruled a previous ban is to remain blocked while a lawsuit over its constitutionality proceeds. Last week, lawmakers said they intended to pass the latest bill as a message to the state’s high court signaling that the people of North Dakota want to restrict abortion.Supporters have said the measure signed Monday protects all human life, while opponents contend it will have dire consequences.North Dakota no longer has any abortion clinics. Last summer, the state’s only facility, the Red River Women’s Clinic, shut its doors in Fargo and moved operations a short distance across the border to Moorhead, Minnesota, where abortion remains legal. The clinic’s owner is still pursuing a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of North Dakota’s previous abortion ban.It’s expected that this new ban will also be the subject of legal challenges.Republican Senator Janne Myrdal, of Edinburg, sponsored the latest state legislation.“North Dakota has always been pro-life and believed in valuing the moms and children both,” Myrdal said in an interview. “We’re pretty happy and grateful that the governor stands with that value.”Liz Conmy, a Democratic representative, voted against the bill and said she had hoped Burgum would not sign it.“I don’t think women in North Dakota are going to accept this and there will be action in the future to get our rights back,” Conmy said. “Our legislature is overwhelmingly pro-pregnancy, but I think women in the state would like to make their own decisions.” More

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      Pronoun fines and jail time for librarians: Republicans target LGBTQ+ rights with new laws

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      Pronoun fines and jail time for librarians: Republicans target LGBTQ+ rights with new lawsMore than 100 laws targeting LGBTQ+ communities have been filed across the US as attacks persist Several anti-LGBTQ+ laws are being passed or proposed across the US as political attacks against the communities continue.In North Dakota, conservative lawmakers have introduced at least eight laws targeting LGBTQ+ communities, many of which target transgender people.Republican legislators introduce new laws to crack down on drag shows Read moreOne bill, rejected on Friday, mandated people affiliated with schools or institutions receiving public funding having to pay a $1,500 fine for using gender pronouns other than those assigned at birth for themselves or others, the Grand Forks Herald reported.Many in the state’s senate judiciary committee that voted down the bill noted that they agreed with the bill’s intention to limit transgender rights, but they felt that the bill was poorly written and difficult to enforce, according to ABC News.Christina Sambor of the North Dakota Human Rights Coalition testified against the bill on Wednesday, noting that “its very purpose is gender-based discrimination”, ABC reported.In a separate proposal, Republicans lawmakers introduced a bill to ban “sexually explicit” materials from libraries, with possible jail time for librarians that do not comply.Under house bill 1205, public libraries could no longer provide books on a range of topics, including any on “sexual identity”, and/or “gender identity”, the LGBTQ+ magazine Them reported.North Dakota has long been problematic to LGBTQ+ communities. The state was among the last to recognizesame-sex marriage.In the US, several states have filed over 100 laws targeting LGBTQ+ rights, NBC News reported. Such bills have targeted almost all aspects of life, ranging from sports to healthcare to education.Texas has filed the most anti-LGBTQ+ laws, a total of 36. Missouri has introduced or passed 26 bills, followed by North Dakota, and Oklahoma with six.Several states have attempted to limit gender-affirmative healthcare options for transgender people.West Virginia lawmakers advanced a bill last Thursday that would ban doctors from performing gender-affirmative surgery on transgender youth, a proposal that many in the medical community and advocates have decried as transphobic and unnecessary.“This doesn’t help anybody,” the Democratic representative Mike Pushkin said to West Virginia’s state house health and human resources committee. “This is just an insult to people who are already marginalized.”In Mississippi, state house legislators passed a bill that bans physicians from administering gender-affirmative care to people under 18, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported.Last year, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, faced nationwide outrage after instructing the state’s child protection services to investigate any parents providing their children with gender-affirming care, accusing them of “abuse”.Florida has initiated a number of anti-LGBTQ+ laws since the passage of what has been coined as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which bans instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.That state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has targeted gender-affirmative healthcare at Florida universities. The DeSantis administration issued a blanket request to 12 Florida universities, asking for information on the number of students diagnosed with gender dysphoria or receiving on-campus treatments, Politico reported.His office has not elaborated on what will be done with the collected data but noted that it was for “governing institutional resources and protecting the public interest”.Republican lawmakers have also taken actions to crack down on drag shows.Lawmakers in at least eight states have taken steps to either restrict or ban drag shows, with at least 14 states introducing such bills.Drag show performances across the country have faced increasing violence from anti-drag protests. In December, an anti-drag protest with 500 participants targeted a public library in the Queens borough where drag queens were reading books to children, NBC News reported.Cities in Illinois and California reported protests, with participants shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs at drag queens participating in similar story times, according to the Associated Press.TopicsLGBTQ+ rightsUS politicsNorth DakotanewsReuse this content More