Today’s Big Story

A Growing LGBTQ Population

U.S. adults who identify as something other than heterosexual increased to 9.3%, from 7.6% in 2023

Everyone knows at least one gay person, right? If you don’t … but you’re reading this newsletter, that one person is me. And the number of U.S. adults who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual is only continuing to rise. On Thursday, a new Gallup poll reported hitting an all-time high, with the percentage of LGBTQ Americans increasing to 9.3%—up from 7.6% in 2023.

Jeff Jones, senior editor at Gallup, told NBC News that he didn’t expect that increase to happen so fast. “I didn’t think we would get to 10% as quickly,” Jones said. “We’re not quite there yet, but it seems like maybe it’s only a few years away, where before I thought it could have been a couple decades or so. We’re getting pretty close to that 1 in 10 figure, which I think would be a notable milestone.”

So how exactly does Gallup get their numbers? Researchers conducted random telephone interviews over the last year with more than 14,000 adults living in all 50 states and found that over 900 identified as LGBTQ. That data was then weighted to ensure that the sample accurately reflects the demographics of the national population, which is how Gallup estimated that 9.3% of U.S. adults are LGBTQ. (The survey reported margins of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points among respondents.)

In a show of progress for how comfortable Americans are being truthful and open about their sexuality, the new statistic is almost triple the 3.5% of respondents who identified as LGBTQ in 2012, the first year Gallup conducted the poll. But, the survey also found that women, Democrats and urbanites are more likely to report they are LGBTQ than their male, Republican or rural peers. Of course, younger generations generally are more likely to identify as LGBTQ when compared to older generations.

Jones noted that one reason more younger people identify as LGBTQ is that they are much more likely than older generations to identify as bisexual. More than half, or 56.3%, of all LGBTQ adults in the U.S. identify as bisexual, according to the new report, but that percentage drops drastically among older people.

IRS Starts Mass Layoffs

Around 7,000 jobs will be cut in the middle of tax season

The Internal Revenue Service on Thursday began firing employees in a massive layoff ordered by the Trump administration, federal workers told the Washington Post, shaking the foundations of the tax agency during filing season. About 7,000 employees were expected to lose their jobs, according to a person familiar with the decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive information. That’s around 7% of the roughly 100,000-person agency. Most of the cuts, about 5,000, came in the enforcement and collections section of the tax service.

Many of the laid-off employees were part of a recent hiring surge meant to improve service and update technology at the agency, which has seen its budget reduced repeatedly since 2010. Taxpayer advocates and Democrats said the loss of several thousand employees could hamstring the agency’s ability to help taxpayers during the filing season, which ends April 15. Losing those workers, critics said, also could jeopardize initiatives that the agency undertook to improve collections, such as increased audits of wealthy people and stricter enforcement of rules governing certain businesses.

“I just shook my head sadly,” Susan Long, who founded a data collection group at Syracuse University that tracks IRS audits, told NPR. “It'‘s just so counterproductive if your goal is to save money and be efficient. This is not what any rational person would do.” Tax experts say any salary savings from the job cuts will be dwarfed by the lost tax revenue that otherwise would have been collected.

“Uber With Guns”

Need a bodyguard? Now there’s an app for that.

The world can be a dangerous place. Maybe you’re feeling a little nervous or simply want to know what it feels like to be a billionaire mogul or an in-demand celebrity for a day. If you’re looking for a bodyguard, a new app has launched to make hiring security as simple as ordering an Uber.

Protector launched this week on the Apple App Store. Its recent surge in popularity is largely due to a pair of TikTok influencers who hyped the service in multiple videos earlier this month. The app promises to send users out into the world accompanied by one or more armed military and/or law enforcement veterans to keep them safe—at a price. The company bills itself as being a personal security service that hopes to capitalize on wealthy individuals who need a secure lift (along with a bodyguard and an Escalade motorcade).

The service is currently only available in New York City and Los Angeles. Protector charges $200 per hour for a bodyguard and a driver, with prices climbing based on the client’s needs—whether extra guards, a full motorcade, or high-level security measures, according to the app’s 25-year-old founder and CEO, Nick Sarath. He told the New York Post, “Ultra high-profile individuals like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have dedicated full-time protection teams, but for most people, navigating security options is more challenging than it should be.”

Real Fur Makes a Comeback

After years of dwindling fur production, dealers say they’re seeing sales of vintage and used coats rise

For the past two decades wearing fur was a faux pas—California eventually banned the sale and manufacture of almost all new fur, and major brands like Prada and Gucci said they’d no longer use it. Celebrities didn’t chance it and stopped pulling on mink, fox and rabbit hides. According to the Fur Free Alliance, global fur production is down 85% in the last decade. Roughly 20 million animals were killed as part of the fur trade in 2023 versus 140 million in 2014.

But, as tends happen with fashion, even the most surprising trends return. Suddenly, some people don’t seem to care—especially if the wearer can assert the mantle of “vintage,” as no animals were freshly killed and upcycling old clothes is more virtuous than buying new. “Vintage fur may be one of the few things still finding fans across the ideological spectrum,” Anthony Barzilay Freund, the editorial director of 1stDibs, said. “For conservatives, the coats can be worn unapologetically as they stride into what they envision to be a post-PC world. For liberals, they’re an enduring symbol of their commitment to retro chic recycling.”

The trend has already hit the red carpet. At the 2024 Grammys, rapper Ice Spice wore a Baby Phat denim set embellished with fur repurposed from a vintage vest. Heading into the stadium for the Super Bowl this month, DeAndre Hopkins, a wide-receiver for the Kansas City Chiefs, went viral for wearing what he said was his late father’s mink coat. And online interest has skyrocketed. According to Trendalytics, which makes trend-forecasting software, views of TikToks about vintage coats have increased 243% over the past year, and Google searches for “vintage fur coats” have gone up 688% since January 2023, while interest in faux fur has remained nearly flat.

A Weekend Pairing

‘Zero Day’ + a Dirty Martini

In Netflix’s new limited series, Zero Day, Robert De Niro plays former President George Mullen, who spends his days swimming and jogging with his golden retriever, wearing U.S. military swag around his sprawling country estate, and ignoring deadlines for his long-gestating memoir. When an unknown group of hackers shut down America’s power grid and communications systems for a full minute, leading to more than 3,000 deaths nationwide in what comes to be known as Zero Day, the current president (played by Angela Bassett) approves putting the Constitution on pause so the Zero Day Commission can do whatever it needs to do to capture the perpetrators, and insists that Mullen lead it.

Like many thriller series that are rooted in the kinds of terrorism that could happen in the real world, Zero Day is both scary and eye rolling. The show certainly isn’t subtle, whether it’s portraying Mullen as a bipartisan consensus builder and what seemed to be the last popular president, or showing just how dangerous the powers the commission he’s leading can be if put in the wrong hands. Of course, that’s the scary part.

We’re all in the same boat.