Gender markers. Constitution Day. Rabies cases. Courage to care. Interest rates. Social Security.

By Sherman Smith | editor-in-chief

TOPEKA — A Kansas Republican Party officer called the Secretary of State’s Office in July to ask why a new state law that regulates gender markers wasn’t being applied to the voter registration of a transgender Democrat running for a Kansas House seat.

Senior election officials disagreed with his interpretation of Senate Bill 244, the new law that requires bathroom use and gender markers on government documents to align with an individual’s sex assigned at birth.

Clay Barker, general counsel for the Secretary of State’s Office, concluded that while the law requires voter registrations to reflect an individual’s sex assigned at birth, election officers are not responsible for enforcement. He inadvertently revealed his legal analysis in records obtained by American Oversight, a nonprofit government watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., which shared the records with Kansas Reflector.

State officials say gender designations are a nonfactor for voter registration and candidate filings, but the records point to the far-reaching and uncertain implications of legislation passed in haste earlier this year without public input.

TOPEKA — Twelve years ago, 90 third-grade students walked into District Judge Robert Wonnell’s courtroom on Constitution Day to watch a hearing about whether Goldilocks was guilty of trespassing.

Wonnell put the last-minute mock trial together to teach Olathe’s Forest View Elementary School students about how the court system works. Because he loves teaching, he researched how such an event could be conducted every year.

Wonnell’s research led him to an even stronger commitment when he found that it is written in U.S. law, specifically 36 US Code 106, that government officials should offer educational opportunities to the public on Constitution and Citizenship days. The country celebrates Constitution Day on Sept. 17, in honor of the day the Constitution was signed.

TOPEKA — State health authorities warned Kansans to be aware of an increase in encounters with animals that carry rabies, primarily bats.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment issued an advisory Tuesday urging health care providers to be aware of the importance of administering a rabies risk assessment because of increases in rabid animals.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a similar advisory last week because many areas nationwide are reporting increased exposures to rabid or possibly rabid animals.

By Rebecca Phillips

My great-grandma Nonna Bailey, my grandma’s mother, had to quit school in the eighth grade to help her family so they could survive. She knew how to cook like no one else, she could sew anything, and then there was something my mom and dad noticed when they first got married and visited her: She would read the newspaper and knew everything and anything going on.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve raised interest rates Wednesday for the first time in three years as inflation continues to dog the economy, largely driven by soaring gas and fuel oil prices while the war in Iran drags on.

WASHINGTON — Voters are much more likely to support U.S. Senate candidates in the November midterm elections if they have a plan to avoid an automatic cut to Social Security benefits in 2032, according to a poll released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

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