Kansas Makes Trans People’s Driver’s Licenses Invalid Overnight

Transgender people across Kansas are receiving letters warning them that their driver’s licenses are now invalid due to a new state law.

Senate Bill 244 takes effect Thursday, and requires to transgender people to have licenses corresponding with the sex of their birth. It passed last month, with Kansas legislators overriding Democratic Governor Laura Kelly’s veto. Anyone who receives the letter has to surrender their license and pay for a new one, and if they are caught without a valid license, the penalty is a class B misdemeanor, with a sentence of up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Gender marker changes had been allowed on Kansas licenses since 2007 despite the efforts of Kansas Republicans. That changed with SB 244, which doesn’t just ban gender changes going forward, but invalidates any changes made in the past. And the bill doesn’t come with a grace period lasting months—it’s taking effect immediately upon publication in the Kansas Register, which is updated on Thursdays.

“The Department is working as quickly as possible to notify individuals whose credentials will be affected under SB 244, ensuring they have sufficient time to update their credentials and avoid any disruption,” Zach Denney, a spokesperson for the Kansas Department of Revenue, told The Topeka Capital-Journal. “Letters are being sent to those impacted, and they should begin receiving them soon.”

About 1,500 people in the state are expected to receive letters, although Denney said that number could go down as the department “continues to look through and refine our records.” In addition to requiring new driver’s licenses, SB 244 also bans transgender people from bathrooms that match their gender identity in public buildings, and even goes as far as to create a bounty system giving people the ability to sue transgender people they see using the “wrong” restrooms for at least $1,000. The bill is written vaguely enough to potentially include private restrooms, too.

It’s a bill designed to appease a right-wing panic about transgender people, hiding behind bathroom safety, even though other states have not had any crimes or issues resulting from transgender people using the restroom of their gender. All it’s going to do is make the lives of many Kansans more difficult and make conservatives feel better about a problem that doesn’t exist.

First Lady Melania Trump will preside over the United Nations Security Council on March 2, addressing “Children, Technology, and Education in Conflict.”

“Mrs. Trump’s leadership will mark the first time a sitting U.S. First Lady presides over the Security Council as members consider education, technology, peace, and security,” a press release from her office read.

While the first lady has shown an interest in children’s welfare, particularly in Russia’s war on Ukraine, it’s hard to imagine her address as any more than a symbolic gesture that will look good in a social media post. U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz will be in attendance.

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos will go to the White House Thursday as he looks to push through a merger that even Republicans say presents antitrust concerns.

The proposed deal would see Netflix acquire Warner Bros. Discovery at the cost of $70 billion. Though it’s not clear if Sarandos will be meeting directly with President Donald Trump, he will try to curry favor with his administration, whose Department of Justice has the final say as to whether the merger goes through.

Trump previously said he wouldn’t get involved with the deal, but eventually couldn’t resist trying to leverage his power for political gain. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, he called on Netflix to fire board member Susan Rice, a former Democratic policy adviser.

“Netflix should fire racist, Trump Deranged Susan Rice, IMMEDIATELY, or pay the consequences,” Trump wrote.

Trump’s request was later rejected by Sarandos.

In the meantime, 11 Republican attorneys general have asked the DOJ to block the deal.

The group penned a letter to the DOJ on Wednesday arguing that a Netflix–Warner Bros. merger would give Netflix too much power over its streaming rivals, creating a monopoly that could lead to higher prices and reduced quality.

Adding to the mess is the fact that the chief of the DOJ’s antitrust division, Gail Slater, stepped down recently after feuding with Trump officials. The acting chief is Omeed Assefi, who was previously a criminal prosecutor in the division.

Sarandos tried to downplay the discord in remarks to the BBC. “This is a business deal. It’s not a political deal,” he said.

The U.S. women’s hockey team is telling Donald Trump that they’d love to meet up, they’re just really busy right now.

After both U.S. hockey teams took gold in Milan last week, Trump rhapsodized over the men, personally calling the team up to offer an invitation to his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

As for the women? “I must tell you, we’re gonna have to bring the women’s team, you do know that,” Trump said during the call. “I do believe I probably would be impeached.”

The men’s team erupted in laughter at the remark, but the women didn’t find the mockery too funny, opting not to attend Trump’s address. A spokesperson said that while the women were grateful for the invite, the team would not be attending “due to the timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments.”

Whether he was hurt by the idea that anyone might not enjoy his presence or just trying to save some face, Trump then claimed during his State of the Union address that the women’s team would visit the White House “soon.”

This apparently came as news to the team, who proceeded to give an excellent nondenial denial through a spokesperson on Wednesday: “Players are back competing with their professional and collegiate teams and are in the midst of their season. They’re honored and grateful to be invited and any opportunity to visit the White House as a team will be based on their schedules once their seasons conclude.”

The team has better offers on the table, anyway. Following the Trump kerfuffle, rapper Flavor Flav said he’d throw the team a “real celebration” in Las Vegas for them and all female Olympians and Paralympians. “I’ll host them,” the Public Enemy co-founder wrote on social media. “Do some nice dinners and shows and good times.”

Cuban officials have confirmed that the country’s Border Guard troops killed four people aboard a speedboat registered in Florida Wednesday morning.

The speedboat was one nautical mile from a small island northeast of Cuba when Cuban troops approached the boat, requesting identification for venturing into Cuban territory. As it drew near, occupants aboard the U.S.-registered vessel opened fire on Cuban authorities, injuring the Cuban boat’s commander.

“As a consequence of the confrontation, as of the time of this report, four aggressors on the foreign vessel were killed and six were injured,” reads a statement by Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior. “The injured individuals were evacuated and received medical assistance.”

The identities of those killed or injured were not specified. The ministry did note that the boat’s registration number was FL7726SH, and that it was detected near Cayo Falcones, in the country’s central Villa Clara province.

American boats face significant legal restrictions with regard to travelling in Cuban waters—in no small part because of the regulations imposed by the U.S. government.

The U.S. has maintained a comprehensive embargo on Cuba since 1962, restricting trade and travel between the two countries, a policy that has effectively choked Cuba’s economic growth for more than six decades.

U.S. law prohibits any form of tourism to the island, and boats cannot enter Cuban waters without direct permitting and authorization from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Commerce. Failure to comply with U.S. regulations could result in the government seizure of one’s boat, fines up to $25,000 per day the boat is in Cuban waters, or even imprisonment.

“In the face of current challenges, Cuba reaffirms its determination to protect its territorial waters, based on the principle that national defense is a fundamental pillar of the Cuban State in safeguarding its sovereignty and ensuring stability in the region,” the Cuban statement continued.

The violence comes just weeks after Donald Trump softened an oil trade ban on the island in the wake of the U.S.’s recent ousting of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a Cuban ally, and its subsequent takeover of Venezuela’s oil supply. Washington allowed shipments of Venezuelan oil for “commercial and humanitarian use” after Caribbean leaders claimed the regional economy would be devastated if they were frozen out of the nearby oil reserve.

This story has been updated.

The Trump administration is blocking Congress from seeing the classified intelligence report that prompted a whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Gabbard’s office emailed Democratic congressional staffers on February 13 and said it couldn’t send the unredacted intelligence behind the complaint, which concerns an intercepted conversation two foreign individuals had about President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, “due to the assertion of executive privilege to portions” of the information.

The Journal learned earlier this month about the complaint, which was filed with the DNI’s inspector general back in May. Gabbard’s office was supposed to disclose the complaint to Congress but didn’t for eight months, prompting an attorney representing the whistleblower to write a letter in November accusing Gabbard of burying the complaint, which has reportedly been locked in a safe.

Gabbard’s office eventually relented and shared a redacted version with some members of Congress earlier this month, using executive privilege to justify the redactions. What is known about the complaint is that it accuses Gabbard of limiting the sharing of intelligence for political purposes.

After the intelligence, which partially has to do with Iran, was gathered last year, Gabbard met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. Following that meeting, Gabbard worked to limit who saw the intelligence, unnamed sources told the Journal.

Another part of the complaint is that NSA lawyers failed to report a possible crime to the Justice Department that came up in the conversation between the two individuals for political reasons.

The leading Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, Senator Mark Warner and Representative Jim Himes, are now asking who asserted executive privilege and why, as it is rarely used to prevent sharing intelligence with Congress.

“The request and provision of intelligence reports have been longstanding practice between the [intelligence community] and its congressional oversight committees,” Warner and Himes wrote in a letter to Gabbard’s office Tuesday.

But writing a letter is all Democrats can do as the minority party in the House and Senate. Kushner doesn’t have a formal job in the Trump administration, but he has been involved in its key foreign policy decisions, such as Middle East negotiations, including the rebuilding of Gaza by the new Board of Peace. If he is compromised internationally, then it’s a matter of national security, and the public should know. The cover-up suggests something of that nature that would be publicly damaging to Trump. What does Gabbard know?

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy on Wednesday joined a growing list of federal judges ruling that the Trump administration’s mass deportation tactics are illegal and unconstitutional.

Murphy was the judge for a class action lawsuit filed against the Department of Homeland Security “on behalf of migrants facing deportation to countries not previously named in their removal orders or identified in their immigration court proceedings,” Reuters reported.

The suit contended that DHS was aggressively deporting noncitizens to dangerous areas where they had no connections, in violation of their constitutional rights. On Wednesday, Murphy officially concurred, issuing a scathing write-up of the government’s actions.

“This case is about whether the Government may, without notice, deport a person to the wrong country, or a country where he is likely to be persecuted, or tortured.… The Department of Homeland Security has adopted a policy whereby it may take people and drop them off in parts unknown … and, ‘as long as the Department doesn’t already know that there’s someone standing there waiting to shoot … that’s fine,’” Murphy wrote. “It is not fine, nor is it legal.”

Murphy added that the Trump administration gave him false information twice and ignored one of his court orders when it deported six men to South Sudan in May 2025.

The judge’s ruling will almost certainly be appealed by the federal government to the Supreme Court, which features three Trump-appointed judges and has consistently been sympathetic to the federal government’s actions. “I am well aware I’m not going to be the final voice on this,” Murphy said in December 2025.

The White House’s next immigration target: a pair of Democratic lawmakers and famed actor Robert De Niro.

The Academy Award–winning performer headlined Defiance.org’s “State of the Swamp” counter-address Tuesday evening, speaking to America at the same time that the president appealed to both chambers of Congress. But De Niro’s message of love, unity, and kicking Donald Trump out of office did not sit well with the president.

In a post on Truth Social Wednesday, Trump said that De Niro should be shipped out of the country, alongside Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who protested Trump’s State of the Union address in person the night before.

“They should actually get on a boat with Trump Deranged Robert De Niro, another sick and demented person with, I believe, an extremely Low IQ, who has absolutely no idea what he is doing or saying—some of which is seriously CRIMINAL!” Trump wrote.

“When I watched him break down in tears last night, much like a child would do,” Trump continued, referring to a moment in which De Niro was visibly choked up as he spoke about the amount of hate and distrust that Trump has planted in American communities, “I realized that he may be even sicker than Crazy Rosie O’Donnell, who is right now in Ireland trying to figure out how to come back into our beautiful United States.”

The bombastic alumna of The View moved to Ireland last March to avoid Trump’s glaring attention (the two have shared a vicious public history, in which the president has repeatedly referred to O’Donnell as a “loser,” a “wacko,” a “mentally deranged person,” and a “big, fat pig”). Earlier this month, O’Donnell revealed that she had made a secret sojourn to the U.S. to visit her family, and to see how difficult it would be to navigate in and out of the country, though she noted to SiriusXM’s Chris Cuomo that she did not regret leaving America “at all.”

“The energy that I felt while in the United States … it was scary,” O’Donnell told Cuomo. “There’s a feeling that something is really wrong, and no one is doing anything about it.”

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission revealed that it was investigating The View over whether it had violated the broadcast regulator’s “equal time” rule after James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Texas, appeared on the show.

Trump also took swings at Omar and Tlaib in the same post, condemning their State of the Union protest while describing the progressive duo as having the “bulging, bloodshot eyes of crazy people.”

“LUNATICS, mentally deranged and sick who, frankly, look like they should be institutionalized,” Trump wrote, adding that anyone who behaves like Omar and Tlaib should be sent “back from where they came—as fast as possible.”

The person behind the massive, deeply biased MAGA X account appears to actually be White House staffer Garrett Wade, according to recent reporting from Wired.

Wired revealed that one of Wade’s phone numbers was connected to the “Johnny MAGA” account, and a source later corroborated that information.

The account, which boasts nearly 300,000 followers, is essentially scheduled pro-Trump shitposting. But it never disclosed that it’s actually on the administration’s payroll—raising serious questions regarding ethics and transparency. The account frequently amplifies administration talking points.

“They’re burning the American flag right now in Minneapolis. And they really expect you to believe that ICE shot an innocent civilian,” the account wrote in January, after Renee Good was shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis.

“Gavin Newsom attempts to act hood while meeting Usher in Atlanta,” the account wrote on Tuesday. “Absolute cornball.”

“Democrats are actually refusing to stand for our gold-winning US men’s hockey team,” Johnny MAGA wrote during the State of the Union. “Unbelievable.”

Neither Wade nor any White House staff have commented.

“People have a right to know who is trying to manipulate public opinion, and they have a right to know whether or not they’re experiencing astroturf politics,” University of Pittsburgh media ethics professor told Wired. “This lack of transparency and the conflict of interest surrounding this account and the lack of disclosure all amount to a breach of public trust.”

A guest of Democratic Representative Seth Moulton at Tuesday night’s State of the Union address left midway through the speech after the Department of Homeland Security directly threatened him on social media.

Marcelo Gomes da Silva, 19, was enjoying his time in the visitors’ gallery in the House of Representatives, watching Donald Trump’s speech. But when Trump honored the gold medal–winning U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team, Moulton’s chief of staff, Neesha Suarez, escorted Gomes out of the chamber. She had seen a post from the DHS and worried about Gomes’s safety in a room with a heavy law enforcement presence.

The post on X, part of a thread where the department mentioned the named immigrant guests that Democratic members of Congress brought to the address, called Gomes “an illegal alien who has no right to be in our nation.”

“We are committed to enforcing the law and fighting for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens like him,” the post stated.

Gomes was detained by ICE in June while driving to volleyball practice in Milford, Massachusetts. A high school junior at the time, his arrest sparked protests in the town over the fact that he had no criminal record and took honors classes, played varsity sports, and played the drums in his church band.

The teen legally came to the U.S. from Brazil when he was 6 with his parents, but his visa later expired. ICE said they were looking for his father, claiming that he had a history of speeding in residential areas, including driving over 100 miles per hour. The Boston Globe only found that Gomes’s father ran a stop sign in 2023.

Gomes was released from ICE detention in Burlington, Vermont, a week after his arrest, still wearing his volleyball shorts and Crocs, and was greeted by Moulton and Representative Jake Auchincloss. He then applied for asylum.

Suarez had driven Gomes to Washington and knew that he didn’t have his phone, so she took him to Moulton’s office to watch the rest of the speech. He checked social media, texted his friends, and called his mother.

“I can’t believe they still want to chase after me,” Gomes, dressed in a gray suit, told the Globe. “I’m just disappointed in the ignorance. It’s really inhumane, and there’s a lack of empathy.”

After the speech, Moulton met Gomes in his office and told him to “keep fighting.”

“We’re obviously concerned about it, but sometimes in America, you have to do brave things,” Moulton said, regarding the DHS’s post. “Sometimes when you really believe in freedom, you actually have to risk it.… Sometimes you have to fight hardest for your country when your country lets you down.”

Gomes was happy to be in Washington, spending two days in the city, getting a tour of the Capitol, and meeting politicians such as Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey. Before his arrest, he wanted to be a plumber, but now he wants to be a congressman.

“Things are going so good, and then all of a sudden you remember that you could get taken at any time,” Gomes said. “I truly believe everything in my life is in God’s hands. If he wants me to be here and work for the people and help immigrants as much as I can, I’ll be here. But if he doesn’t, then I’ll go back.”