Transgender Kansas residents have begun receiving letters from the state’s department of motor vehicles notifying them that their driver’s licenses will be invalid beginning Thursday, as a new law goes into effect that demands that forms of identification must now reflect the credential holder’s “sex at birth”.
The bill, known as SB 244, also bans transgender people from using bathrooms in public buildings that match their gender identity, and creates a sort of bounty hunter system, in which citizens can sue transgender people they encounter in restrooms for $1,000 in damages.
The state law was rushed through the state legislature using an expedited procedure known as “gut and go”. This means the text of one bill can be taken out and substituted for entirely new language or provisions, bypassing standard committee vetting and speeding through the voting process, which is legal in Kansas.
Governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, arguing that SB 244 was “poorly drafted legislation”, but her veto was overridden by the state legislature’s Republican supermajority.
Special Interest Glance
Newly released records show a US citizen was shot and killed in Texas by a federal immigration agent last year during a late-night traffic encounter that was not publicly disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Over the span of four years, 50-year-old Fidda Mohammad Naasan and her family have been violently uprooted from their homes and lands in the occupied West Bank, not once but twice. Now, after relocating for a second time they continue to face relentless, daily attacks and abuse from Israeli settlers and soldiers determined to force them off their lands yet again.
A federal judge on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to block New York’s so-called Green Light Law, which allows the state to issue driver’s licenses to people without requiring proof that they’re in the country legally.





























