Kansas Legislature Week 5: LEAKED Zoom Call, Roleplaying Political Violence on the House floor, and MORE 🚨

Video Script

Intro

I’m Davis Hammet with Loud Light. Here’s what happened week 5 in the Kansas Statehouse.

Governor Vetoes Gender Affirming Care Ban (SB63)
The Governor vetoed Republican leadership’s bill that would establish a 2-tiered health care system where certain treatments will be legal or illegal based on someone’s gender identity. Additionally, the bill threatens healthcare providers, education professionals, and state employees and goes beyond medical care creating legal restrictions based on how a child acts or their “manner of dress”. Next week, it is expected that Republican leadership will attempt the first veto override vote of the session where they will need ⅔ of the entire House and Senate to force the bill into law. 

3 Day Grace Period Passes House
A leaked video of a private Zoom meeting with Republican leaders including Elections Chairman Pat Proctor revealed a very different narrative about election bills than what legislators have claimed publicly. Rep. Proctor shared that a bill to abolish the 3-day grace period is part of a strategy to “chip away” at voting access in a push to end early and absentee voting options in Kansas. Proctor then told attendees CLIP:“please don’t put this on facebook or in the news.” In the 2010s, postal service delivery time began slowing in Kansas due to USPS facilities closing. Kansas has one of the shortest time frames in the nation between when ballots are mailed out and when they must be received back so in 2017 legislators, including every single Republican at the time, voted to create a 3-day period where mail ballots could be counted if they arrived by Friday and had a postmark proving the ballot was returned to the government by Election Day. Last November, the law protected over 2,000 Kansans from having their votes thrown out because of federal mail delays. Following the 2020 election Republican legislators did a 180 on the policy and began trying to repeal it claiming a variety of shifting justifications for why the policy should end. The bill to abolish the 3-days and begin throwing out thousands of ballots every election already passed the Senate and is expected to receive a final House vote next week.

Republicans block Medicaid… Again 
Republican leaders have blocked proposals to expand medicaid from being introduced and heard this year. In an attempt to overcome leadership’s suppression tactics, House Democrats attempted to bring medicaid expansion up for debate by offering it as an amendment on the floor. The proposal which aims to help working class Kansans access healthcare and prevent rural hospitals from continuing to close was rejected by Republican legislators. Kansas remains one of only 10 states that have refused to expand medicaid which has now cost the state nearly $8 billion dollars in lost healthcare investments.

Roleplaying Political Violence (Youtube Link)
A few months ago Republican officials were outraged and demanded a University of Kansas professor be fired when a video showed the professor saying men who believe women are inherently less intelligent should be shot. The professor was fired. This week during a debate Republicans Rep. Patrick Penn and Rep. Kyler Sweely who both served in the U.S. Army roleplayed on the House floor that they were calling out a firing command to assassinate Sweely’s political opponent, former Democratic Rep. Jason Probst who lost by less than 300 votes in November. So far the Republican legislators involved have refused to apologize for or acknowledge their comments and Republican Majority leadership has refused to take any disciplinary action. Just last year Rep. Penn tried to have a democratic legislator censored for saying information Republicans provided on a bill was incomplete during a debate.

Coming Up
Next week is turn around, where most bills need to pass either the House or the Senate in order to continue moving through the legislative process this year. Monday is the last day for non-exempt bills to pass out of committee and Tuesday through Thursday, legislators will be on the floor all day trying to pass bills before the Thursday turn around deadline. A lot of things will happen and now that the midnight rule is gone, the biggest votes may happen at the darkest hours. Stay tuned, stay engaged, and until next time, thank you so much Kansas!