It is almost 4 minutes. Watch it when you get a few minutes; not only is it history-making that she still sounds like this at 79, but the screen or screens behind her have their own little history bits. Enjoy! It’s not hard-rocking or loud or anything.
Rabbi Moti Rieber watches law enforcement as they confront protesters March 10, 2026, outside the Senate chamber in the Kansas Statehouse. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
TOPEKA — Rabbi Moti Rieber sat on the tiled floor, legs akimbo, in front of the arched passage leading to the Kansas Senate chamber with at least 20 people behind him and more lining the walls with handmade signs.
“We are here because when injustice becomes law, then resistance is necessary,” Rieber said. “We are here as moral witnesses.”
Clergy members led a sit-in protest Tuesday in opposition to a recently passed anti-trans law. The Republican-controlled Legislature used tactics to avoid public input and overrode the governor’s veto to pass Senate Bill 244, requiring people in public buildings to use the bathroom that coincides with their biological sex and also mandating driver’s licenses include a person’s sex assigned at birth instead of their gender.
Sergeants-at-arms looked on from behind the group, and Kansas Highway Patrol troopers soon joined. But it wasn’t until the group prevented Sen. Tim Shallenburger, R-Baxter Springs, from entering the chamber that troopers grabbed people by the arms to clear a path.
As troopers hoisted activists up from their seats, encouraging them to disperse, the group sang in harmony: “No one is getting left behind this time. No one is getting left behind. No one is getting left behind this time. We get there together or never get there at all.”
At one point, a trooper knocked a woman to the ground as she tried to pass through the crowd, appearing to mistake her as part of the demonstration. Protesters responded with chants of “Shame!”
The woman declined to be identified or comment but told Kansas Reflector she was OK.
Rieber, executive director of Kansas Interfaith Action, said while sitting on the floor, addressing the crowd, that the process to pass SB 244 was “crooked.” (There is a TikTok embedded on the page, linked in the title above.)
The law has already been challenged in Douglas County District Court, where a judge decided Tuesday not to pause enforcement of the law. The state sent letters to 275 Kansans shortly before the law went into effect, telling them their driver’s licenses were invalid. Some experts say laws targeting trans people can harm their mental health and increase the likelihood of discrimination.
The Rev. Mandy Todd, pastor at Messiah Lutheran Church in Lindsborg, said SB 244 is hurtful, targeted and part of a culture war. She said the group is “disgusted by this Legislature’s treatment of trans people.”
The bill stokes fear and anxiety, she said.
Todd, the director of engagement for Kansas Interfaith Action, said trans people in her community have felt the immediate effects of SB 244. The closest driver’s license office is in the next town, which Todd said has hamstrung one Lindsborg woman, who now cannot legally drive to sort out her invalid license.
Pastor Charles McKinzie II of Grace United Methodist Church in Winfield is confident the law, which he said was flawed in process and in substance, will make its way to the Kansas Supreme Court to be overturned.
“In the meantime, people are hurting, and people need to know that they are seen,” McKinzie said.
Conversations about the effects of SB 244 aren’t limited to a courtroom. They are taking place in churches, synagogues and other small group settings across the state, McKinzie said, and the sit-in was meant as a show of nonviolence “to shed light on a violent system.”
About an hour after the protest, Master Trooper Scott Whitsell said that no one from the group had been cited or arrested to his knowledge. The only law the protestors broke was blocking an entryway, he said.
I emailed this to me on Sunday, but have only just gotten back to it to post here. My apologies on that, but it’s been both busy and stormy here! Anyway, I haven’t heard anything about the status of this; I hadn’t heard anything about it at all until I read it in Kansas Reflector. With no further ado:
LAWRENCE — Kansans won’t know until at least Tuesday if a judge will delay implementation of the state’s new “bathroom law,” but a concession by Attorney General Kris Kobach means key components of the law can be delayed until March 26.
Douglas County District Judge James McCabria heard arguments Friday about Senate Bill 244, the controversial new law that forces people to use bathrooms in government buildings and gender markers on driver’s licenses based on sex assigned at birth.
The three-hour hearing focused on technicalities, including whether the law meets any one of five specific criteria that would lead the judge to approve a temporary restraining order and pause enforcement of the law for up to 14 days.
Attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Kansas Department of Administration said the law’s speedy implementation provided no grace period to Kansans needing a new driver’s license and for government leaders statewide to put a system in place for tracking bathroom usage.
The law took effect Feb. 26, a little over a week after the GOP-led Legislature overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto. Kansans who held driver’s licenses with a gender marker that didn’t match their sex at birth were told their licenses were immediately invalidated and government leaders statewide were told they had to immediately enforce the bathroom portion of the bill.
Kobach told McCabria he agreed to give Kansans who needed to update driver’s licenses until March 26 to complete that. He also said he wouldn’t enforce the law’s penalties — which could be as high as $125,000 per day for violations — for cities, counties, municipalities and schools that might violate the bathroom rules, as well.
Harper Seldin, senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, talks to reporters after a Douglas County District Court hearing on March 6, 2026. Seldin asked the judge to place a temporary restraining order on the state to stop implementation of a new law that forces Kansans to use bathrooms and have documentation in their biological sex at birth. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
Harper Seldin, an ACLU attorney representing the two Lawrence transgender men who brought a case against the law under pseudonyms Daniel Doe and Matthew Moe, told the judge the law violates the Kansas Constitution.
SB 244 infringes on the rights of personal autonomy, expectations of privacy, and equal protection under the law, and has other issues, he said.
“The attorney general is incorrect when he says that we’re asking the court to break new ground,” Seldin said. “This is not a novel set of theories that require the government to do anything. The thread through these individual rights claims is that this is about Daniel and Matthew’s right to be left alone by the government.”
Seldin also said the law targets transgender individuals, which can be shown by the results of its implementation even if it’s not stated outright. He said the way SB 244 was implemented violated the Kansas Constitution when the bathroom portion of the bill was “logrolled” into the bill that originally addressed driver’s license and birth certificate gender markers.
Logrolling refers to dropping a bill into an unrelated bill, sidestepping the opportunity for public input. Seldin said cramming two separate subjects into one law violates the Kansas Constitution, which has a “single subject” clause.
Kobach said the two issues are congruent in that they both deal with defining sex within Kansas government.
“It’s this idea that bills should mean what they say and say what they mean,” Seldin said. “There’s a particular perniciousness to a law that hides the law.”
Kobach told the judge that a driver’s license is a government document, used for government purposes, and the state has the right to define the information contained in the document.
McCabria questioned Kobach about briefs included in the plaintiff testimony outlining the negative psychological effects on transgender people being made to use documents that don’t match their gender identity.
“Whatever a person may feel about their need to be perceived by the world in a certain way, what right do I have to compel the government to identify me in that way?” McCabria asked.
Kobach said the driver’s license is a document that records pertinent information, and sex is one of the elements, along with eye color and birthdate, that doesn’t change over time.
Kobach said the bathroom portion of the bill maintains the status quo in Kansas, where he contended residents have always gone to the bathroom that matches their biological sex at birth.
Seldin said trans people in the state have been going to the bathroom without any harms for decades.
Kobach said women who hear a man’s voice or see a man in private spaces could become anxious about their safety.
He acknowledged plaintiff’s assertions about the psychological or emotional harm they may suffer but told McCabria that in a balance of equities, that didn’t outweigh the harms of “99-plus percent of the population.”
When McCabria asked him to substantiate that number, Kobach said he didn’t mean to imply that everyone outside of transgender individuals were harmed by the law.
“Many courts have recognized the fear that ‘biological females’ have when a ‘biological male’ is in the bathroom with them, and that is something that I think any Kansan can identify with, especially a female,” Kobach said after the hearing.
Asked how women would be affected by seeing or hearing a transgender man who now has to use a woman’s bathroom, Kobach said, “All kinds of hypothetical cases are possible.”
McCabria said he had hoped to make a ruling Friday but that he needs more time to study the filings in the case and examine constitutional issues. He said he expects to rule by Tuesday.
“I think most people want to be respectful,” Seldin said after the hearing. “I think most people don’t want to pry into other people’s private lives. I think a law like this suggests the opposite, that Kansans have some prurient interest in other people’s habits and private spaces. And I don’t think that’s right.”
Z Kemp attended the hearing because her partner and many friends are affected. She said the law has caused “a lot of stress and anxiety.”
“That’s just unnecessary because as they’ve stated before, there was — especially with the bathroom situation —- no prior problem,” she said. “It’s only a problem whenever you make it a problem. I don’t think it’s that radical to just let trans people be. Just let them go to the bathroom.”
Avie Fallis said she has been through a lot of physical and legal changes to find herself. She said she is tired of well-meaning people recommending that she leave Kansas, which is her home state where her family and loved ones live.
“I feel like it’s a fire that’s just growing,” she said. “I’m not going to run away from fire. I feel like it should be extinguished.”
Z Kemp, left, and Avie Fallis attended a Douglas County District Court hearing March 6, 2026, about Kansas’ new law because it affects them and their loved ones. The law forces people to use the bathroom related to their biological sex at birth and to put that sex marker on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
Amazing news! We were in the middle of of a zoom press conference about the Gas Suffocation aspect of the planned execution of Sonny Burton in Alabama on Thursday when a reporter put into the chat:
“Did you see that Governor Ivey just commuted Burton’s sentence?”
And with that, the news was broken. Governor Ivey heard YOUR messages, received YOUR petitions, read the articles YOU sent, heard YOU ringing her phone off the hook, heard us tolling our bell outside her house…. and she acted. Amen! THANK YOU!
Once again, this proves, sometimes, our united efforts work!
Congratulations to Sonny and his legal team, his family, and to all who had a hand in creating this moment!
Governor Ivey has declared that “All Life is Precious,” which is why we made sure to bring along our 4×10 foot banner to the 24-hour vigil we helped coordinate in front of her house a few weeks ago. The banner could not be missed from any street-facing window of the Governor’s mansion. We know with certainty that the Governor was there…. NOW we know that she heard our message!
The other good news is that now we don’t have to drive all the way to Alabama. In fact, we had planned to go to Texas fiirst to toll the bell outside the prison in Huntsville at the execution of Cedrick Ricks on Wednesday, which is still on. Without our planned return through Alabama, making such a long drive makes less sense.
As you know, everything we do to support local activists working to halt executions is another expense. It’s not just the costs of being on the road that we must cover, but also the overhead…
The four full time staff and our media consultant who do the behind-the-scenes work.
The costs of the tools and services we use to communicate our message to the world.
The price of existing as an organization that shows up to oppose every execution.
(snip-donation request. You can get there from the page of any of these links.)
Thank you. Yours in the Struggle,
–abe
PS: New execution dates are being set regularly. Click here to oppose every upcoming execution.
This caller is a well know immegration lawyer who calls in often. There has been a long running joke about the buttons on Sam’s shirts so ignore that part. The lawyer talks about what ICE is doing to help the detained people and he describes how horrific the conditions are. The goal is to make it so horrific these people will self-deport willingly. But the government is doing everything possible to hurt and harm the immigrants and detained people because of hate and bigotry of ICE and the white supremacists in the US government. Hugs
President Donald Trump has long treated reality like something that can be bent to his will — declare that everything is under control, insist the operation is flawless and expect the people around him to project the same confidence whether the facts cooperate or not.
But as the war in the Middle East continues to spiral outward, the White House is once again finding that projecting strength and actually convincing people things are under control are two very different things.
President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable discussion on college sports in the East Room of the White House on March 06, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The latest flashpoint erupted after the White House posted a pair of bizarre, Hollywood-style propaganda videos celebrating U.S. missile strikes on Iran — a move critics say only reinforced the growing perception that the administration is treating a deadly war like a movie trailer or video game.
The posts immediately set off fierce backlash online. One video stitched together scenes from blockbuster action films with real footage of U.S. strikes on Tehran, while another blended clips from a video game.
The first video, posted to the White House’s X account on Wednesday, March 4, opens with a clip from Call of Duty before cutting to footage of military aircraft taking off and real U.S. airstrikes on Iran. Upbeat music plays beneath the one-minute-and-five-second montage captioned, “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue.”
Critics say the second video, posted Thursday, March 5, is even more disturbing.
The 42-second montage opens with a scene from Iron Man in which AI assistant J.A.R.V.I.S. tells Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr., “Wake up. Daddy’s home,” before cutting to action-heavy clips from films including “Gladiator”, “Braveheart”, “Top Gun” and “Superman” — all interspersed with real footage of the U.S. attack on Tehran.
Another moment features a line from the television series “Better Call Saul”, when the character Saul Goodman declares, “You can’t conceive what I’m capable of.”
The video is captioned “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY” and ends with a deep, ominous voice declaring, “Flawless victory.”
Some of the footage of the U.S. airstrikes appears to have been pulled directly from posts on U.S. Central Command’s own X account.
But instead of projecting strength or confidence, the videos quickly ignited outrage online — reinforcing the criticism that Trump’s team appears more interested in staging a cinematic show of force than explaining a coherent strategy for a rapidly escalating conflict.
French TV host Alex Taylor in post on X called it, “Quite simply one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen on here.”
“Whatever you think of the awful Iranian régime, the White House treating bombing raids like a cheap video game is gut-wrenchingly shocking America, your country is going to hell,” he declared.
Yahoo readers were similarly “disgusted” by the first post on Wednesday likening war to a video game.
“Just imagine if Obama or Bush or for that matter any other president had spliced together a propaganda video like this?? The GOPed would impeach within minutes of its release,” one reader pointed out.
Trump’s White House is known for posting both vulgar and offensive videos. In October after millions took to the streets in cities across the country for the “No Kings” protests, Trump posted a gross video of himself flying a fighter jet and dumping feces on demonstrators.
Others argued the videos trivialized the human cost of war and only reinforced the growing accusation that there are no adults in the room running the administration.
“RIDICULOUS VIDEO! Real people are dying IRL. Don’t make it like you just reset and no one’s has died.”
“CHILDISHLY INAPPROPRIATE, THOUGHTLESS, JUVENILE, SADISTIC, MEAN, IMMORAL AND SAD! WAR IS NOT A GAME OR A MOVIE,” one user wrote. “There are men, women and children being killed, maimed and left homeless because of the cruel leadership in America and Israel.”
“It is all a game with these creeps,” another commenter wrote. “Fantasy is their truth — men who know nothing about war using sci-fi and movies to sell their real killing.”
Some observers also pointed out the bizarre irony in the White House’s choice of film clips with one X user providing a full breakdown.
“Dumb f***ers didn’t understand any one of these movie plot lines?! That tracks.”
The backlash is unfolding as the war launched by the United States and Israel continues to escalate across the region.
In less than a week, since Trump, along with Israel, launched airstrikes on Iran on Saturday, Feb. 28, six American service members have been killed in an Iranian drone attack on a port in Kuwait.
Iran’s Red Crescent says the death toll in Trump’s bombing campaign inside Iran has reached at least 1,000, according to PBS.
Meanwhile, Trump and his allies have offered shifting explanations for the purpose of the operation.
The president initially suggested the campaign was about regime change in Tehran before later saying it was about preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has framed the operation as an effort to “protect Americans” and destroy Iranian ballistic missile capabilities.
But critics say the administration’s messaging has been anything but clear — feeding the rumor spreading online that the White House may not have a coherent plan for how the conflict ends.
Meanwhile, Iran is signaling it has no intention of backing down.
In an interview with NBC News, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi struck a defiant tone when asked whether Tehran feared a potential U.S. ground invasion.
“No, we are waiting for them,” Araghchi said. “Because we are confident that we can confront them — and that would be a big disaster for them.”
(There’s an embedded video on the page that I can’t bring here. Just click the title above to go to the page. Basically, it’s this story, but with comments from Suzanne Ford that aren’t within the story below.)
A California activist is calling for a boycott of the entire state of Kansas because of a new law.
Last month, the law took effect requiring all transgender people to use the bathroom of their sex at birth. The same law also invalidated hundreds of transgender Kansans driver’s licenses.
San Francisco Pride released a statement calling for a national boycott of the state, saying transgender Kansans are being targeted for simply existing.
North Carolina passed a similar law back in 2016, and economic consequences followed. The NCAA pulled the first weekend of the men’s basketball tournament out of Greensboro, and the NBA moved the All-Star game out of Charlotte because of those laws.
FOX Kansas News at 9 anchor Jack Cooper shares more in the video posted at the top of this page.
Congratulations to Sonny and his legal team, his family, and to all who had a hand in creating this moment!
Scottie's Playtime 