March 3, 2026 ❧ Some military leaders see biblical end times in Iran, an extreme anti-trans bill in Kansas, sex workers unionize, and caribou snack on their horns!

Plus: The Peace Corps launches “Tech Corps,” Greece prosecutes author of Technofeudalism on frivolous charge, big loop holes in the GOP anti-corporate landlord bill, Argentina passes a very anti-labor labor law, and the culture war comes to power grids.

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Now, the news. 

❧ Deep Dive: Kansas’s attack on trans people ❧

Politicking on the MAGA right has turned into a one-up-manship of bigotry. Last week, the Kansas legislature took the lead in one of the right’s most coveted categories: assaulting trans rights. Overriding the governor’s veto, and with some questionable legislative maneuvers, the state passed SB 244, a bathroom bill on steroids.

The persecutorial legislation includes the following: 

• Forbids trans people from using multi-occupancy bathrooms, dorm rooms, hospital rooms, and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.
• Allows people who are “aggrieved” by a trans person using a same-sex, multi-occupancy space that aligns with their gender identity to sue for up to $1,000. The provision echoes Texas’s abortion legislation that lets private citizens file civil lawsuits against anyone who obtains or aids an abortion, with the opportunity for a $10,000 reward. 
• Allows opposite sex individuals to enter a same sex space where they suspect a trans person might be illegally. So, because of a bill that is ostensibly meant to keep men out of women’s bathrooms, men can now legally … enter a women's bathroom … if they think a trans woman is in there. 

Reverts reissued drivers licenses and birth certificates to a person’s biological sex at birth. This provision went to effect immediately with no grace period.

Trans people in Kansas have started receiving letters invalidating their drivers licenses. Those who have changed their birth certificates are anticipating letters, too. These individuals now cannot access social or medical services, or interact with the police, without outing themselves. 

“Even if we get them updated, we’ll be forced to carry an identification that doesn’t match who we are, which subverts the idea of a form of identification,” writes Kansas Rep. Abi Boatman, who is transgender, in MS NOW. “This creates unnecessary delays and confusion for everyone around us. We’ll either be accused of fraud or immediately outed, putting us at risk of harassment and violence. This doesn’t make lines move faster or our public spaces safer. It does the opposite.  […] and it certainly won’t help families put food on the table, pay their medical bills or afford their children’s day care.”

Lyft has begun offering 50 percent discounts in Kansas with the code “TRANSJOY,” and the American Civil Liberties Union has sued on behalf of two trans Kansans.

SB 242 comes on the heels of a Supreme Court ruling that will allow schools to out transgender students to their parents if they attempt to socially transition at school.

❧ In Other News ❧

❧ GREECE PROSECUTES FAMOUS LEFT-WING POLITICIAN FOR BEING COOL 30 YEARS AGO. Yanis Varoufakis, friend of Current Affairs and author of Technofeudalism, has been charged with “promoting and advertising drugs” after admitting on a podcast to liking cannabis and using ecstasy once—36 years ago in Australia, after celebrating Mardi Gras. If youthful experimentation with psychoactive substances is now illegal in Greece, they should lock up every person between the ages of 18 and 32 on vacation in Mykonos. And most probably more! Of course, the prosecution is not about the drugs, but about Varoufakis’s criticism of the country’s conservative government. Varoufakis, who is 64, co-founded the left-wing, pan-European, pro-democracy MeRA25 party. If convicted, he faces up to €50,000 in fines and a prison sentence of at least six months.

Art from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 5, Issue 1

❧ U.S. WILL SEND “TECH CORPS” TO BOOST AMERICAN AI ABROAD. The Peace Corps has a new branch and it has nothing to do with peace. Intimidated by the popularity of cheaper Chinese AI models in the Global South, a new Tech Corps will boost American AI companies abroad, identifying places like schools and farms where AI might be adopted and then helping to implement it. I’m imagining a group that looks something like Latter-day Saints missionaries, but with a Macbook instead of a Book of Mormon. No mention of whether the tech corps will promote Anthropic, which Trump ordered the Pentagon to phase out after the company refused to assist in mass surveillance of Americans and the development of fully autonomous weapons. The kerfuffle did make Claude the number one app in the iPhone app store, though.

Art from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 5, Issue 1

❧ AS PREDICTED, REPUBLICANS ARE NOT ACTUALLY STOPPING CORPORATE LANDLORDS. Trump promised to stop institutional investors from buying up single-family homes and driving up rent. Now, congressional Republicans are circulating bill drafts to accomplish this goal in name, but not necessarily in action. Many of the bills do ban some version of corporate landlords, barring them from owning more than 100 homes, but they are full of loopholes. For example, one version of the legislation prevents states from enacting their own local restrictions on corporate landlords, and another exempts homes that are built specifically to be rented.

CURRENT-EST AFFAIRS

What’s new in the magazine this week?

What Hospitals Do After Tragedy—And Police Should Too

“When the family of Jabez Chakraborty called 911 in Queens on January 26, they asked for an ambulance,” opens this piece by Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing, and Dr. Eric Reinhart, a political anthropologist and psychiatrist. “Jabez, a young man who has lived with schizophrenia for many years, was in crisis. What arrived instead were police officers. Within minutes, Jabez had been shot four times in front of his family.” Typically, this kind of tragedy would generate a media cycle of outrage, then fizzle. Even New York City’s newest mayor, Zohran Mamdani, initially fell into the familiar motions, offering little more than political niceties and gratitude to NYPD officers after the shooting. (A little eye-browing raising for a man who campaigned on creating a non-police crisis response department.) A better response to police shootings, Vitale and Dr. Reinhart argue, is what is done in a hospital after a patient incurs avoidable harm: not asking who had the errant scalpel in hand, but a thorough, non-punitive evaluation of the systems that allowed a fatal cut to be made. Such a review for the police would start not with what the police did, but why they were sent to the scene in the first place. Read the piece here.

“... focusing political attention on individual blame ensures ongoing collective failure. As long as police remain the default responders to mental health crises, and as long as crisis response alone—rather than a focus on investing in preventative community care programs—remains the limit of our imagination for preventing violence, shootings like this will continue, no matter how many investigations follow.”

- Alex Vitale & Dr. Eric Reinhart

❧ The War (Regime Change) Room ❧

❧ The U.S. and Israel are bombing Iran, killing significant members of its leadership, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Within the military, some American leaders see the war as the approach of the biblical end times, with one combat unit commander telling noncommissioned officers that Trump is “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” Highly regarded (at least by us) ex-News Briefing writer Stephen Prager writes that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received 110 complaints—since Saturday. 

❧ Of course, Israel has used the attack as an excuse to restrict aid to Gaza, just after declaring that they have a measure of control over all of the West Bank, even those areas under Palestinian jurisdiction. The New Republic calls the actions not “outright annexation, but they are great leaps toward it.” Israel is investigating a Polymarket user who made $430,000 by predicting when the U.S. would start dropping bombs. The user's name: Magamyman.

❧ Democrats and some Republicans are pushing a war powers resolution to rein in Trump’s bombing—it probably won’t pass. 

❧Trump, who you think might be busy elsewhere, said he is considering a “friendly takeover” of Cuba. The U.S. has pushed Cuba to the brink with a blockade on oil sales to the country. Nothing friendly about that. 

❧ But hey! Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna proposed a five percent federal tax on billionaires that would be used to fund a $3,000 payment to every person making less than $150,000 a year, among many other good things. And Texas, Arkansas, and North Carolina are holding primary elections today that could be consequential for the left.

Art from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 8, Issue 5

❧ In More News ❧

❧ SEX WORKERS START UNION DRIVE AT A NEVADA BROTHEL. A majority of the 74 sex workers at Sheri’s Ranch, a legal brothel in Pahrump, N.V., are moving to unionize under the Communications Workers of America after being asked to sign away their intellectual property rights and power of attorney to their employer. Employees are worried they will lose the right to adult films or OnlyFans content they produce, and that Sheri’s Ranch may use their likeness to make AI content. Sheri’s Ranch has not taken the news of organizing well, and has already fired three people. The success of the union drive will depend on whether or not the workers can prove they are employees, not independent contractors. If they do succeed, they will be the first sex workers to unionize in U.S. history.

Art from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 5, Issue 1

❧ RED STATES WAGE CULTURE WAR ON POWER GRIDS. Some red states don’t want energy if it's from some liberal clean, green power. Utah, which prefers coal, successfully pressured the utility company PacifiCorp to stop serving customers in Washington as the state pursues greener energy. The move was about more than policy: Utah House Speaker Mike Shultz said, “We want a divorce from … states that don’t look like Utah. This is the first step forward.” Republicans believe that green energy, like Washington’s, is driving up their electricity bills. In reality, the price hikes probably have something to do with data centers and aging coal plants that Trump won’t allow to close. 

Art from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 5, Issue 1

❧ ARGENTINA PASSES LABOR LAW THAT IS TERRIBLE FOR WORKERS. A product of President Javier Milei—Argentina’s quirked up, Elon-aligned leader—the new law extends the work day from eight to 12 hours, reduces severance and overtime pay, makes workers easier to fire, restricts striking of sectors deemed “essential” like aviation and education, lets companies go over unions’ heads and negotiate directly with employees, and gets rid of national labor courts. Milei’s administration said the bill will help revive employment, but you can’t revive employment by killing the employee. Unions have responded with a general strike, and leading up to the bill’s passage, clashes broke out between protesters and police.

ANIMAL FACT OF THE WEEK

Caribou eat their horns!

Caribou are the only female deer that grow antlers. Recent research, per Scientific American, reveals that these horns might be a kind of homemade post-natal supplement. Days before giving birth, caribou shed their antlers and eat them, as well as their placentas, as they nurse their new babies. It’s a logical snack: bones are nutritious, full of calcium, phosphorus and protein. Even in humans, bone broth is all the rage right now. Plus, the Kardashians have been known to eat their placentas, too. Caribou chic.

"Caribou in Gates of the Arctic National Park" by AlaskaNPS is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Writing and research by Emily Carmichael. Editing and additional material by Alex Skopic, Emily Topping and Nathan J. Robinson. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.

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