Some Things To Watch, From Joyce Vance

The Week Ahead

March 15, 2026

Joyce Vance Mar 15, 2026

It’s another week full of legal proceedings. And a little politics, too.

Tuesday: Maduro and Flores hearing

The U.S.-ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured by U.S. forces on January 3 at their Caracas home. They were arrested pursuant to an indictment federal prosecutors had obtained and taken to the U.S. to face those charges. Both pled guilty and are currently detained pending trial. The superseding indictment can be found here. We discussed it at length here.

There was supposed to be a status conference on the case this Tuesday. But the government wrote the Judge, Alvin Hellerstein in the Southern District of New York, requesting a “brief continuance.” The stated reason was to permit discovery to proceed before the parties returned to court, a reasonable request given the likely amount of evidence the government will be turning over to the defense and the time it takes to review it with defendants who remain in custody.

But the government has been busy on the case already, opposing the defendants’ efforts to use Venezuelan government monies to fund their defense. Prosecutors say Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela and hasn’t been considered by the U.S. to be so for several years. Madura and Flores’ lawyers argue the laws and traditions of the country permit it to fund their defense. A Venezuelan official has said they are prepared to do so.

The defendants argue that their inability to access certain third-party funds to pay for their legal fees violates their Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to due process and effective assistance of counsel. The parties have filed their briefs, and Judge Hellerstein is expected to consider the legal fees dispute during the March 26 hearing.

Tuesday: Illinois Primary

Illinois voters head to the polls Tuesday to choose their Democratic and Republican nominees for the open Senate seat being vacated by Dick Durbin, who is retiring after almost three decades. Two members of the House, Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly, have thrown their hats into the ring, leaving their seats up for grabs. Three additional Illinois representatives are retiring: Danny Davis, Jan Schakowsky, and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia.

That means the Illinois delegation will look different, possibly younger, heading into 2027, and we will have new names to learn. Kamala Harris won the state with 54.8% of the vote in 2024, and it’s unlikely Democrats will lose any seats. In Kelly’s district, former representative Jesse Jackson Jr, who pled guilty to misusing campaign funds in 2013 and was sentenced to 30 months in prison (he served a little under two years), is trying to make a comeback, but he is one of 10 Democrats running for the seat. Jackson, who represented the district for over 20 years before going to prison, is up by double digits in two polls.

Everyone expects Governor JB Pritzker to handily win reelection. But as a potential 2028 presidential contender, there will be heavy scrutiny of how he handles himself during the campaign and how well he performs and leads the Democratic ticket. So there’s a lot to see here.

Under Illinois law, only poll workers and poll watchers can be at the polls on election day, and other people may not mill around outside as voters go about their business. Nonetheless, there have been concerns that ICE might show up to intimidate people. But DHS’s Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity, Heather Honey, issued a statement in late February, saying “Any suggestion that ICE is going to be present at polling places is simply disinformation.” She committed that there would “be no ICE presence at polling locations” during a call with voting officials from across the country.

That makes sense and I’m inclined to believe it. But only because doing it now would trigger legal challenges that would likely be decided against the administration. If they’re going to do this, we’ll likely see it for the first time when voters go to the polls in November.

Wednesday: Fulton County.

As you may recall from our earlier discussion, Judge J.P. Boulee sent the Justice Department and Fulton County to mediation in the case filed by the latter over the government’s seizure of voting records. Wednesday is the date by which the parties must let the Judge know whether they’ve been able to resolve the matter voluntarily. If mediation failed, it will be up to the Judge to decide whether the records are due to be returned, which they almost certainly are (the government gets to keep copies), but the administration could face some messy, revelatory testimony in court if the County goes into the unusual decision to have a U.S. Attorney from Missouri take over the matter, rather than the local U.S. Attorney.

The Rest of the Mess

Pam Bondi wants to deprive state bar associations of their ability to consider ethics challenges to federal prosecutors’ behavior.

DOJ has posted a proposed new regulation in the Federal Register that would prohibit state bars from proceeding while DOJ is conducting an internal review. Nothing in the rule would preclude DOJ from engaging in endless delay and short-circuiting state investigations.

In practice, state bar associations have routinely deferred to DOJ to conduct internal ethics proceedings before they act against a Justice Department lawyer. But that was under the old rules, where DOJ took ethics seriously. And as a practical matter, state bars, not Pam Bondi or Donald Trump, decide whether to give a specific lawyer a license to practice law in their state, so it’s difficult to see how the government has a legal leg to stand on here. It would be like Donald Trump deciding who can be a barber in Oklahoma or a cosmetologist in Arizona.

There is a 30-day comment period for the proposed regulations that will close on April 6. Comments will be public. Expect a wide variety of members of the legal profession to weigh in against the administration’s transparent effort to prevent state bar action against DOJ officials who are in ethical trouble. Congress made it clear in a law called the McDade Amendment that government attorneys “shall be subject to State laws and rules … governing attorneys in each State where such attorney engages in that attorney’s duties, to the same extent and in the same manner as other attorneys in that State.” The measure was passed in 1998 amid concerns about overzealous prosecutors. Pennsylvania Republican Representative Joseph McDade (R-PA) championed the measure after he was acquitted on bribery and racketeering charges.

The SAVE Act heads to the Senate for a vote this week.

We’ve been talking about it for months. This appears to be the week the Senate will vote on the SAVE Act. It has already passed in the House. In our conversation at Big Tent last week, Marc Elias opined it would not pass. The Senate would have to abandon the filibuster rule to get it across the finish line. That would be a last-ditch measure that Republican Senators have long argued against, but some seemed to waffle on the issue last week.

Trump tried to get Republican Senators to abandon the filibuster last November. He made that pitch with visiting Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at his side. Orban heads what he has called an “illiberal democracy” in that country. It was quite an image.

The issue last year was the pending government shutdown. Trump called on Senate Republicans to scrap the filibuster rule and allow simple majority votes to prevail on that issue and for most other legislation. They declined, even though, or perhaps because, Trump promised his party that if they did, the GOP would “never lose the midterms and we will never lose a general election” for the foreseeable future. It will be interesting to see if that pitch reemerges this week as Trump tries to pass a measure designed to suppress Democratic votes in the upcoming election.

Senators on both sides of the aisle have long understood the power that honoring the filibuster gives both sides; it’s a form of mutually assured retention of power. But Texas Senator John Cornyn, long a proponent of the filibuster, put out an op ed in the New York Post arguing that the SAVE America Act is more important than it is.

“For many years, I believed that if the US Senate scrapped the filibuster, Texas and our nation would stand to lose more than we would gain … My fellow conservatives and I have proudly used the 60-vote threshold to protect the country from all sorts of bad ideas and dangerous policies. But when the reality on the ground changes, leaders must take stock and adapt…Today, Democrats are weaponizing the Senate’s rules to block the SAVE America Act, defund the Department of Homeland Security and hurt the American people — all to spite President Donald Trump.”

It was quite a reversal of long-held principles in service of Trump from the Texas Republican, who is facing an uphill battle to hold onto his Senate seat. He faced a primary challenge from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Neither candidate reached the 50% threshold necessary for an outright win, so there will be a runoff, which is scheduled for May 26, although there have been whispers of a voluntary resolution. How we are about to find out if other Republican senators want to hold onto any of their institutional power or are willing to throw it away on Trump and a law that has strong arguments against its constitutionality.

Finally, Julie Le, the former government lawyer in Minneapolis who we met in this piece, when she begged a judge to hold her in contempt so she could get a good night’s sleep, has launched a Congressional campaign website. “This job sucks,” she told the judge. Now, it appears she might be looking for a new one, since she was ultimately removed after her outburst in court.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Remember Stormy Daniels?

Here’s an update.

There’s Danger On The Right

Right-Wing Women Discover Misogyny Not As Fun As They Thought Part 378,272,347,230,326

The red pill, it turns out, is filled with rat poison.

Robyn Pennacchia Mar 13, 2026

I realized recently that it’s been a while since we’ve seen an incel mass murderer. Because, really, for a time there, it seemed like something of an endless parade of angry young men going on murder sprees over not being able to get laid. It occurred to me the reason for this may be that, while they’re probably still not getting laid, they’re certainly less alone now. “Incel culture” has become mainstream on the Right. They hate women like incels. They talk like incels. Terms like “foid” (short for “femoid” or “female android”), “looksmaxxing,” “______ mogged,” “the wall” have entered their lexicon. Many of them are straight up turning themselves into incels just by hating women and various other groups of people so much that they are repulsive to women.

These days, they don’t have to go to dark corners of the internet in order to share their insane theories about women, to be told by other men that they are inherently superior to women, that women are crazy and evil and that giving them rights has ruined everything. They just have to go over to X The Everything App or to YouTube or, you know, listen to a sizeable majority of the mainstream male Republican pundits.

There are even more than a few women they can listen to. Women who will gladly tweet and stream and podcast all about how they think feminism and the sexual revolution ruined everything for women as well, who will even claim they want to #RepealThe19th because of how stupid and crazy we all are.

But that sort of pretense isn’t easy to maintain, especially once it’s no longer serving you. Thus, we’ve increasingly seen stories about alt-right women defecting from the movement after they have “seen the light” and suddenly come to realize that these men don’t actually like them, either. This week, we’ve got one in New York mag.

They all have pretty much the same story at this point. They fell into all of it because they were mad about “woke scolds” and thought it was cool and rebellious to embrace far-right ideology, because they enjoyed the attention they got for repeating anti-feminist talking points and maybe even believed that they’d rather be stay-at-home moms — literally nothing wrong with that! No one cares! Go and be well! — or that working instead of raising children was making women “crazy.” Then they realized, at some point — whether because they ended up in a pretty bad domestic violence situation like Lauren Southern, or because their baby daddy let his acolytes post AI child sexual abuse images of them on his social media site as happened to Ashley St. Clair, or because they realized that the Right did not actually allow for differing opinions or criticism, or because they realized that the men they were sucking up to hated their guts as much as they hate ours.

“Anna,” a former “celebrated pundit of the New Right,” anonymously told New York her own version of this well-worn origin story. She was liberal when she was younger and living in a conservative town, but then she left and …

[D]uring college in the mid-2010s, she was exposed to the overweening, haughty moralism of Peak Woke.

“I’m somebody, dispositionally, who likes to have a good time,” she tells me. She found the humorlessness of the contemporary left more alienating than the conservatism of her youth.

She wasn’t attracted to the right by the romanticized aesthetic of “traditional America” — big beautiful houses and bread-making and families with half a dozen children. Rather, she says, “I was in love with the frisson of transgression.” The online right had begun to engage more explicitly with forbidden subjects: nativism, race science, and gender essentialism drawn from evolutionary psychology. “There was an element of gnosticism to it,” she says, “the sense that you know secret things that other people don’t know.”

Ah yes, the “frisson of transgression.” “Gnosticism.” What a fabulously intellectual way to say “I got tingly from being a bigot and didn’t actually care about who I harmed as long as I felt special.” Another woman who spoke to New York said about the same thing.

[Alex] Kaschuta [who hosted the alt-right podcast Subversive], like Anna, says she was initially attracted to the New Right out of curiosity, contempt for woke pieties, and a taste for transgression. “I’ve always liked edgy stuff, unfortunately — that’s one of my problems,” she says, laughing.

We’ve seen a lot of this. People attempting to write off racist, misogynistic or otherwise shitty views as some attempt to “freak out the squares” — as though it’s somehow similar to middle schoolers trying to convince their teachers that they are Satanists just to mess with them. The thing is, you don’t do the latter unless you think it’s dumb that people are freaked out by Satanists (which it is), and you don’t do the former unless you think it’s dumb for people to not want to be harmed by bigotry. This kind of thing doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

Anyway, “Anne” seems to have realized the error of her ways when they started to harm her.

“Over time, the language of New Right misogyny got way more tuned in to red-pill-type stuff,” she says. Among young MAGA men, there ceased to be a huge difference between self-understood trads — Christians who tend to (patronizingly) venerate women’s special contributions to family and religious life — and rageful incels, who see women as conspirators in a plot to deprive them of sex and status. Both groups, Anna says, came to see women as “these objects you can use at will. So if you want a marriage, if you want a lifelong ‘bang maid,’ then you can pursue that. And if you want to just have endless hookups, you can pursue that by using these dating tactics within the red-pill sphere.”

While the language has certainly become more coarse over time, while it’s much more “acceptable” on the Right to now say, as Nick Fuentes does, that you’d like to see women put in concentration camps, this really isn’t anything new. In fact, what many of these women imagined themselves “rebelling” against was the silly feminist notion that these men thought these things and behaved this way in the first place. That the “woke scolds” were imagining all of this sexism and racism that didn’t actually exist anymore. Indeed, the swiftness with which they waver between blatant misogyny and racism and claiming that these things are not a problem in today’s society will give you whiplash.

Now, I am always glad for people to defect from any bad way of thinking, whatever it is that wakes them up. The fewer of these fuckers, the better. That being said, I do think this is all bullshit. I do think that the reason they’re leaving is because they’re being pushed out, not because they are suddenly realizing that right-wing ideology is bad.

The Right has fallen in love with the narrative of “the woke scolds were too much and we were all rebels who would never be any good, so we had to become Nazis!” but that is, and always has been, absolute bullshit. If someone’s instinct is to “rebel” or even simply to be contrarian, they’re not going to be out here demanding that everyone go along with them — because once that happens, you’re not a rebel anymore, you’re not “transgressive,” you’re just like everyone else. Their anger wasn’t ever that they couldn’t use slurs. The power to do so was within them all along. What they were mad about was that it wasn’t socially acceptable for them to do so. That other people weren’t doing it.

Similarly, no one (other than companies that don’t want to pay people enough money to subsist on a single income) has done anything to prevent any of these women from becoming housewives or stay-at-home moms. I’ve been a feminist my entire life. I’ve been a feminist in a professional capacity for over a decade at this point. At no point have I ever heard any feminist disparage “stay-at-home moms.” Literally not once. Ever. This is a narrative that lives exclusively in the minds of paranoid conservatives who live in terror of someone policing their life choices the way they police the life choices of others.

But you know what? Even if they did! Even if absolute legions of feminist writers devoted themselves fully to proclaiming that stay-at-home moms should not exist … other people’s opinions are not the law.

The fact is, both the men and the women who participate in this bullshit are looking for the same thing — validation and self-esteem. They want to be told “you’re better than other people just by being you.” For all the talk of “merit” on the Right, this is what they’re most thirsty for. The men want to be told they’re inherently superior to women — as well as people of color, Jewish people, LGBTQ+ people, etc. depending on their personal identity — and the women wanted to be told they’re “not like the other girls!” or “so based!”

I suppose it is entirely possible that these women spent years in the dark and are just now realizing that the men in their movement really do hate women and really do want to deprive them of rights and that this would be unpleasant for them were it to actually occur — this seems to be what “Anna” feels happened to her.

“You almost don’t realize what’s happening until five years later,” Anna says, “when you look back and you’re like, Oh gosh, I was being used.” She also blames herself: “I was too frivolous with ideas.”

But I don’t think these defections are happening by coincidence at a time when shitty men now feel so “empowered” that they no longer require the permission of pick-me girls willing to say “I agree! Women are terrible and crazy and too emotional and shouldn’t have rights!”

Arguably, these women are no longer necessary to their movement and are being cast aside as such. Conservative men no longer feel like they need to be able to point to a woman and say “Look! She’s okay with it!” because they have gotten to the point where they do not care about that anymore.

This, indeed, is more or less what Kaschuta’s former compatriots had to say about her.

Many attacked her looks (Kaschuta is blond and conventionally attractive) and then attributed her defection to those same insults. Charles Cornish-Dale, a New Right figurehead who goes by the name Raw Egg Nationalist and appeared several times on Subversive, posted on X, “The truth about the whole saga … is that people (i.e., men) started calling Alex fat and telling her they didn’t want to be browbeaten and tone-policed by a woman.” This, he said, was the real reason she had turned against the right, “not principles or ideas.”

At this point in their evolution, they now feel free to denigrate those women just as furiously as they denigrate feminists, if not moreso.

They now take pledges to, as the article notes, “rape, kill and die” for Nick Fuentes (frequently abbreviated “RKD4NJF”). As “Anna” put it, they are “insisting that women subject themselves entirely to male authority, while advertising that male authority will be cruel and vicious and fickle.” They no longer feel the need to pretend that this is meant to be a good time for women as well. They’re just viscerally furious at women for existing and “ruining” everything for them by insisting upon being treated like human beings. They want to see us all punished for this and they no longer want to have to pretend to not hate a few women here and there.

In return, they are gaining power in the Republican Party. A follower of Fuentes’s was just elected as president of the College Republicans of America.

Granted, these defections and even these men outright saying that they want a world in which they get to be horrible to women will probably not deter other women from attempting to join in on all the #RepealThe19th good times. Because sure, they’ll still get a few “so based” and “If only all women were like you!” comments here and there and that will make it all worth it for them — for a while, at least, until they, too, experience the spontaneous revelation that they will have to also accept a much larger dose of disrespect in exchange.

A bunch of The Majority Report Clips on different subjects.

Kansas Legislature plots election suppression, one careful building block at a time

by Robin Monroe, Kansas Reflector
March 11, 2026

Kansas is not rewriting its election system with one sweeping law.

It is doing so in pieces.

A deadline adjustment here. A database requirement there. A repeal of mail-in ballot authority. A restriction on ballot return methods. A new reporting mandate. A rule centralizing constitutional challenges in one county. A provision that repeals advance voting if courts intervene.

Individually, each bill appears technical. Administrative. Procedural.

Collectively, they form a kind of architecture, and architecture is never accidental.

The justification offered repeatedly is election integrity, specifically, noncitizen voting. Yet documented cases of noncitizen voting in Kansas have been counted in the single digits through the decades.

National reviews of millions of ballots have found similarly rare occurrences. The problem, statistically, is exceedingly small.

The legislative response, however, is structurally expansive.

Consider what is being built.

One bill requires certain public assistance agencies to report identifying information about noncitizen recipients to the secretary of state. Another one mandates recurring comparisons between Kansas’s voter registration system and the federal SAVE database.

Others expand the removal triggers to include driver’s license status or database mismatches.

In practical terms, that creates a dubious data pipeline: Public benefits system data is sent to the Secretary of State, where it is cross-referenced against the federal immigration database, then checked against the statewide voter rolls and then returned to the secretary of state, who has removal authority.

Public benefits databases were designed to determine eligibility for food, health care, and housing assistance. The federal SAVE system was designed to verify immigration status for entitlement programs. Kansas’s voter registration system was designed to facilitate elections.

Now, these systems are being interconnected for enforcement.

Even small database error rates become significant when the right to vote is at stake. Federal oversight reports have documented reliability and oversight concerns within SAVE.

Legislative testimony in Kansas has acknowledged audit-tracking issues within the state’s voter system. When automated cross-checking expands and removal authority increases, the margin for error shrinks, and the constitutional risk grows.

At the same time, access pathways are narrowing.

Deadlines for advance mail ballots are shortened. Remote ballot return boxes are eliminated. The statutory authority for certain mail ballot elections is repealed. These changes do not eliminate voting, but they constrict time and space.

When time compresses, errors matter more.

If a voter is flagged incorrectly due to a database mismatch, an outdated record or a clerical error, there is less opportunity to correct the problem. Fewer alternatives. Less flexibility.

Then there is process.

Several of these election bills have moved rapidly through the House, advancing from committee to floor debate to final action within compressed timelines. Emergency procedural tools reduce the space between debate and final vote. Hearings are scheduled even when broad support is thin.

Procedure is not neutral.

When legislative time is compressed, public scrutiny thins. Stakeholder response shortens. Amendments shrink. The result may comply with formal rules, but deliberative depth diminishes.

Finally, litigation itself is being reshaped. House Bill 2569 centralizes constitutional challenges to election laws in Shawnee County. Another contains a provision that would repeal advance voting statutes if courts invalidate certain signature verification requirements. These measures alter the terrain of judicial review, raising the stakes of constitutional challenges.

States unquestionably possess the authority to regulate elections. That authority is granted by the Constitution. But it exists alongside equal protection guarantees, due process protections, and the Voting Rights Act.

The question is not whether Kansas can regulate elections.

The question is whether it should construct an expansive enforcement and restriction architecture in response to a statistically rare problem.

From a social work perspective, policy is not evaluated solely by its stated purpose but also by its impact.

Who is most likely to be flagged incorrectly in database cross-checks? Who relies most heavily on mail voting? Who has the least time and fewest resources to correct administrative errors?

Who bears the burden when access narrows, and timelines tighten? When election administration shifts from facilitation to filtration, those questions matter.

This is not about one bill. It is about the convergence of data centralization, verification expansion, access contraction, procedural acceleration and litigation hardening, all moving in the same direction, creating a cumulative burden on Kansas voters.

Kansas may not rewrite its election system in a single dramatic stroke.

But architecture does not require drama. It requires design. And Kansans deserve to understand the structure being built in their name.

Robin Monroe is a native Kansan living and working in Wichita. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.

Follow-up On KS Anti-Trans Law

(I need to subscribe to Kansas Reflector, so I get these more timely than my phone brings them to me.)

Clergy-led activists block entry into Kansas Senate in protest over bathroom law

By:Anna Kaminski-March 10, 20265:11 pm

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.

Sherman Smith contributed to this story.

Political cartoons / memes / and news I want to share. 3-12-2026

I really thought twice about making a strip about the recent events at the University of Wisconsin, where this fascist encouraged his crowd to harass a trans student, since I know it will inevitably bring me a lot of hate - and you know that I...

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/810748246530113536

https://www.tumblr.com/truth-has-a-liberal-bias/810897690571440128

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/810650716746153984

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/810745326643396608

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/810732738050162688

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/810736383588253696/you-dont-hate-anti-vaxxers-enough

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/810737905733681152/sick-fucks

https://www.tumblr.com/truth-has-a-liberal-bias/810898698069573632

https://www.tumblr.com/truth-has-a-liberal-bias/810898195900203008

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/810737172753874944/fox-news-erased-fallen-soldiers-to-make-trump-look

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/810654731543494656

https://www.tumblr.com/truth-has-a-liberal-bias/810820562267078656

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/810747998169694209

Tumblr: Image

Another Women’s History Post

Short, sweet, and simple, by an artist I have adored since Jr. high and my own radio.

A Post for Women’s History Month

(Well, another one!) I watched part of Sherri Shepherd’s interview of Jayne Kennedy yesterday morning. I didn’t catch the beginning, but recognized the name earlier when I read it. I looked her up, and found the following from BET, and that’s the post. In addition to what’s included, Jayne Kennedy seems to be living with depressive anxiety, from what I gleaned in the Sherri interview. I couldn’t find anything about that, but she’s written a book, Plain Jayne that I intend to read as soon as I can. From this article, I figured out how I recognized her name and her face; I recall when she was in the Miss USA pageant in the late 1970s. Then I recalled she got a job on some sports show, as covered below. Anyway, this woman, aside from being talented and beautiful, is also courageous. Follow the links within for more information.

Women’s History Month: Celebrating Jayne Kennedy, The First Black Woman To Conquer Network Sports

Explore the multifaceted journey of the Emmy-winning trailblazer who transitioned from Hollywood to the NFL, changing the game forever.

By Tamara Brown March 9, 2026

NEW YORK – JANUARY 1: Jayne Kennedy and Brent Musburger on “N.F.L. Today,” on the CBS Sports television network. Circa 1978.

In the late 1970s, the network TV sports was a club where the doors were mostly locked to anyone who wasn’t white and male. But Jayne Kennedy didn’t just knock; she blasted those doors off the hinges.

As we continue our Women’s History Month spotlight, we’re looking back at the woman who, in 1978, became the first Black woman to co-host a major national sports program. When Kennedy stepped into the anchor chair on CBS’s The NFL Today, she did more than just read highlights.

Jayne Kennedy, now 74, held that ground-breaking role from 1978 to 1980, quickly becoming one of the most recognizable faces in the country. Before her history-making run at CBS, the former Miss Ohio USA was already a star. She got her start as a dancer on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and spent years touring with legends like Bob Hope and Dean Martin.

While her Hollywood resume is long, her impact on the sports world is what truly changed the culture. Beyond the NFL, Kennedy remains the only woman to host the long-running series Greatest Sports Legends. She even stepped into the ring as the first female color commentator for men’s professional boxing.

Even now, Kennedy isn’t slowing down. She was a key player in the LA28 Foundation, helping secure the bid for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. She’s also sharing her full story in her new memoir, Plain Jayne, which dives into the grit, faith, and ambition it took to navigate a career filled with hurdles.

By breaking that ceiling nearly 50 years ago, Kennedy didn’t just make a name for herself. She made sure that for the rest of us, the path was already paved with the excellence she brought to the screen every Sunday.

https://www.bet.com/article/kqmmay/womens-history-month-celebrating-jayne-kennedy-the-first-black-woman-to-conquer-network-sports

News On The KS Anti-Trans Law

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:

Kansas AG offers to delay enforcement of anti-trans law until March 26 while judge weighs challenge

By:Morgan Chilson-March 6, 20266:25 pm

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)