Kansas Attorney General: Mysterious Powder in Letters Contained Rat Poison
TOPEKA, Kan. (KNS) - That white powdery substance sent to 100 Republican officials earlier this month is a mixture of rat poison and another powder. That's according to Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, who was targeted by one of the letters himself. The FBI has taken over the investigation because similar letters have also appeared in Montana and Tennessee. Speaking with News Nation, Kobach said, "It’s interesting looking at Kansas, Montana and Tennessee being the three states targeted. A common thread between those states is that all three either passed legislation dealing with the trans issue or are in litigation dealing with that issue, but that’s just a theory.” Investigators have not made any arrests or released a motive but officials say the letters were a targeted attack against Republican lawmakers and GOP state officials.
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KU Cancer Center Gets $100 Million Gift
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (LJW) - A $100 million gift will help the University of Kansas Cancer Center build a new, state-of-the-art cancer center building on the KU Med Center campus in Kansas City, Kansas. The $100 million gift - the largest gift in school history - comes from the Sunderland Foundation, based in Kansas City. KU Chancellor Doug Girod and state officials announced the news Tuesday. This gift comes on the heels of $43 million in federal funding. The Lawrence Journal-World reports that Kansas Senator Jerry Moran secured the federal funding earlier this year. Last year, the KU Med Center was designated as a Comprehensive Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute.
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Kansas Launches Teacher Apprenticeships
TOPEKA, Kan. (KNS/KMUW) - A new program in Kansas is aimed at making it easier and less costly for people to become teachers. This fall, the state Department of Education will launch a teacher apprentice pilot project. Ten candidates will work in schools and be mentored by experienced teachers while they pursue their teaching degrees, and the state will pick up some of their college costs. Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson says apprenticeships could be one solution to the worsening teacher shortage. “This has the potential to really bring in young people that could not afford to go to college, must go to work after high school, that would be a teacher but can’t leave their community or can’t leave their family," he said. Teacher apprentices would have to meet the same licensing requirements as traditional teacher candidates.
Kansas is facing its worst-ever teacher shortage. State Board of Education member Jim Porter says they need to find more ways to help people become teachers. “The crisis is now," he said. "The crisis needs to be addressed now. This is a way to address part of it. I fully support this, because we need people.” State officials plan to partner with the U.S. Department of Labor to expand the program next year.
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Machinists Recommend Ratification of New Spirit Contract
WICHITA, Kan. (KNS/KMUW) - The Machinists Union is recommending its members approve a new contract offer from Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita. Workers there have been on strike for several days. Union members will vote Thursday on the new contract. Spirit is Boeing’s largest supplier and the largest private employer in Wichita. Under Spirit’s new proposal, all weekend overtime would be voluntary. Only Sundays were voluntary under the previous offer. The union says the new proposal would also increase yearly raises and make no changes to existing health care plans - both of which were key concerns among workers who rejected the initial offer. If workers approve the offer, it will be their first new contract since 2010.
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Nurses Strike at 2 Wichita Hospitals
WICHITA, Kan. (KNS/KMUW) - Nurses at two Wichita hospitals went on strike for one day this week as they negotiate new contracts with Ascension Via Christi. Union nurses at St. Francis and St. Joseph say Ascension is not responding to contract proposals on workplace violence prevention and staff-to-patient ratios. Sara Wilson is a nurse at St. Francis. “They have the resources to fix these problems now, and they’re not doing it," she said. "So, we’re going to continue fighting for our patients and our communities." The negotiations affect nearly 1,000 nurses. Ascension has been hiring temporary nurses to fill in this week. The company says nurses who walked out during the one-day strike will not be allowed to return to work the rest of this week. Nurses as an Ascension hospital in Austin, Texas, also staged a one-day strike this week.
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Number of Kansas Residents Officially Changing Genders Quadrupled This Year Ahead of New Law
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Four times as many Kansans changed their gender on birth certificates and driver's licenses this year ahead of a new state law that prevents residents from identifying themselves differently than the sex assigned them at birth.
The legislation is part of a raft of measures lawmakers across the U.S. have passed to roll back transgender rights. It has provisions meant to restrict transgender people’s use of restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities and applies to a person's identity listed on state documents.
The Kansas law takes effect Saturday, but it’s not yet clear how it will play out in the daily lives of transgender people. The new legislation conflicts with a 2019 federal court order directing the state to allow transgender people to change their birth certificates.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who vetoed the law but was overridden by the Republican-controlled Legislature, hasn’t said whether she will have state agencies continue to allow changes. She has said that she disagrees with the legal opinion of conservative state Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach, who has stated that the law supersedes the judge's order. Kobach also has asked a judge to formally rescind the order.
The attorney general even indicated that the flurry of last-minute changes by transgender people has been for naught: He says the law requires the state to undo any changes that have been made to official documents.
At a Statehouse news conference this week, Kobach said the governor “has a legal and indeed a constitutional obligation to comply with the law.”
Asked whether he would sue Kelly if she doesn't, he replied, “If that were necessary, then absolutely.”
With the legal climate uncertain, the nonprofit legal aid group Kansas Legal Services and LGBTQ+ rights advocates have run seminars for transgender people on how to change their documents. Both birth certificates and driver’s licenses list “sex,” which the new state law defines as a person’s “biological reproductive system” at birth.
“There was a big push ... to try and help people get their gender marker changed before July 1,” said Taryn Jones, vice chair and lobbyist for the LGBTQ+ rights group Equality Kansas.
An average of 58 Kansas residents a month have changed their birth certificates so far this year, compared to an average of 13 from July 2019 through 2022, according to state health department figures released this week.
The state motor vehicle department reported this week that 161 people have changed their gender identity on their driver's licenses so far this year, an average of 27 a month. That's compared to an average of 5 1/2 per month from July 2019 through 2022.
According to the state's data, nearly 80% of the changes in gender on driver's licenses came in May and June, after lawmakers overrode Kelly's veto.
Some birth certificates have been changed by health care providers who incorrectly recorded the sex assigned a baby at birth. Others were for babies born with intersex conditions, such as ambiguous genitals, who were not initially assigned a sex at birth but had their parents later choose one for them.
Jenna Bellemere, a transgender University of Kansas student, said she changed her birth certificate and driver's license last year, believing “this anti-trans stuff” was building.
“I didn’t really want to go throughout my life carrying around a document that really was inaccurate and an ID with a name that no one calls me anymore,” she said.
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Kansas City Man Charged with Murder After Shooting Left 3 Dead, 6 Wounded
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP/KPR) — A 26-year-old Kansas City man originally charged with assault after a shooting that left three people dead and six wounded has now been charged with three counts of second-degree murder. According to court documents, Keivon Greene is one of two suspects in the shooting early Sunday at an auto shop that was known to host after-hours parties. The victims have been identified as 28-year-old Jasity J. Strong, 29-year-old Camden M. Brown and 22-year-old Nikko A. Manning. Police say the six people who were wounded did not suffer from life-threatening injuries. Greene has been charged with second-degree murder in Brown and Manning’s homicides and second-degree felony murder in Strong's death. It remains unclear whether Greene fired the shot that killed Strong but police say he was the person who started the events that led to all three deaths. Jackson County, Missouri, Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker says that makes him accountable for all the deaths. Prosecutors also charged Greene with two counts of armed criminal action. Greene had posted $1,000 cash bond about two days before the shooting on felony charges of resisting arrest and drug possession in Independence, an eastern suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. Baker said the motive for the shooting is under investigation but that it appears it was started by a “small dispute."
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Attorney General: Kansas Will Stop Changing Genders on IDs
TOPEKA, Kan. (KNS) - Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach says the state will stop allowing transgender people to change the gender on their driver's licenses and birth certificates. A new law set to take effect July 1st changes the rules. Trans Kansans have been able to change the gender on their documents since 2019, when a federal judge required the state to grant the changes. Kobach has asked the judge to amend that order because of a new state law that defines sex according to biological characteristics. And he says state agencies will revert any changes already made. “If KDOR has previously modified a driver's license to list a sex other than the person's biological sex at birth, SB 180 requires KDOR to restore the driver's license dataset to its original form," he said. Kobach downplayed ramifications for trans residents’ use of bathrooms and other facilities. The law requires people to use facilities that match their sex assigned at birth, but it doesn’t create a crime for not complying.
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KC Suburb Aims to Protect Employees Who Transition
JOHNSON COUNTY, Kan. (Shawnee Mission Post) - Amid a flurry of new restrictions on transgender rights in Kansas, a Johnson County suburb is instituting a new policy aimed at protecting employees who want to undergo gender transitions. The Roeland Park City Council has unanimously approved what city leaders believe is a first-of-its-kind policy in Johnson County. It addresses how the city can best accommodate employees during gender transitions, including provisions that allow transitioning workers to use bathrooms conforming to their gender identity, as well as what pronouns they may prefer to use in the workplace. The city’s mayor Michael Poppa told the Post that the city believes its new policy does not run afoul of a new state law that ties the state’s legal definitions of male and female to a person’s sex assigned at birth. That law takes effect July 1 but there have been numerous questions about how some of its rules may be enforced.
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Missouri Attorney General Seeks Reversal of Former Detective's Conviction in Black Man's Death
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is asking a court to reverse the conviction or order a new trial for a former Kansas City police detective who shot and killed a Black man in 2019. In a filing Monday with the Missouri Court of Appeals, Bailey said the evidence did not support Eric DeValkenaere's conviction in the death of 26-year-old Cameron Lamb. Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, whose office secured DeValkenaere's conviction, said a motion by the attorney general - the state's top prosecutor - to overturn a conviction was unprecedented. She vowed to continue fighting to secure justice for Lamb and his family.
(Additional reporting...)
Missouri Attorney General Seeks Reversal of Former Detective's Conviction in Black Man's Death
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — In an unusual legal move, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is asking a state appeals court to reverse the conviction of a white former Kansas City police detective who shot and killed a Black man three years ago. In a brief filed Monday, Bailey said evidence presented at a trial in 2021 did not support Eric DeValkenaere's conviction for second-degree involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action in the death of 26-year-old Cameron Lamb on December 3, 2019.
Bailey asked the court to reverse DeValkenaere's conviction or order a new trial. Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, whose office secured DeValkenaere's conviction, said the motion by the attorney general — the state's top law enforcement officer — to challenge a conviction was “unprecedented” and an affront to the people of Kansas City. In a news conference on Monday, she accused Bailey, a Republican who was appointed to the attorney general's office in January, of “attempting to expand his power to that of a judge.” “I can’t say in my time, 25 plus years of being here, that I’ve seen anything like this before," Baker said. Cameron Lamb’s father, Aqil Bey, said at the news conference that Bailey's actions were a miscarriage of justice. He said DeValkanaere had been given every legal advantage, including not having to serve a day in jail since his conviction. “We don't feel good about it. But we are going to continue to let the legal system run its course and we'll see what happens,” Bey said.
DeValkenaere was convicted in November 2021 of killing Lamb, who was shot as he backed his truck into his garage. Police said DeValkenaere and his partner, Troy Schwalm, went to Lamb's home after reports that Lamb was involved in a car chase with his girlfriend on residential streets. Jackson County Circuit Court Presiding Judge J. Dale Youngs, who convicted the former detective after a bench trial, sentenced DeValkenaere to three years for involuntary manslaughter and six years for armed criminal action, with the sentences to run consecutively. But Youngs later ruled that DeValkenaere could remain free while his conviction is appealed.
In his motion, Bailey said Lamb's death was “tragic” and shouldn't have happened. But he argued that DeValkenaere used reasonable force because he believed Lamb was going to shoot Schwalm. The motion, which includes several pages reiterating the police department's version of events, said officers believed they saw Lamb with a handgun inside the truck, and a handgun was found near the truck after Lamb was shot.
Rumors had swirled in the last month that Republican Governor Mike Parson was considering pardoning or granting clemency to DeValkenaere, prompting Baker to send him a letter urging him not to do so. Civil rights advocates warned that releasing the former detective could cause unrest in the city and damage an already tense relationship between police and Kansas City's minority community. Parson said last week that he had not yet decided what action to take and criticized Baker for using the case for political purposes.
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Guardians Manager Terry Francona to Miss Second Game After Being Hospitalized on Road Trip
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Cleveland Guardians manager Terry Francona will not be with the team for a second straight game after being hospitalized when he became lightheaded before a series opener against the Kansas City Royals. Francona, who has had significant health issues in recent years, spent Tuesday night at The University of Kansas Health System and was released Wednesday. The team said tests on the 64-year-old Francona all “came back within normal ranges.” Doctors have advised Francona to rest for the next few days. The team said his status will be determined daily.
General manager Mike Chernoff has joined the team in Kansas City and is expected to provide an additional update on Francona. Guardians bench coach DeMarlo Hale will again handle managerial duties in Francona's absence. Hale served as Cleveland's acting manager for the final 63 games in 2021 when Francona had to step away. The Guardians, who rallied to win Tuesday's game 2-1 after Francona fell ill, are on a six-game trip. After facing the Royals again Thursday, they'll open a three-game series in Chicago against the Cubs before returning home for their final homestand before the All-Star break.
Francona is in his 11th season with Cleveland. Although his contract expired after last season, he has an agreement with the Guardians to stay in place as long as he wants. Francona has dealt with some major health issues the past three years. He only managed 14 games in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season due to gastrointestinal problems, and he stepped away from the Guardians for the second half in 2021 to have his hip replaced and address a staph infection in his toe. In 2017, Francona underwent a heart procedure during the All-Star break and didn't manage the American League squad. Francona had been feeling good this season, and true to form has often poked fun at his sometimes frail state with his customary self-deprecating humor.
Before taking over as Cleveland's manager in 2013, Francona spent eight seasons with the Boston Red Sox. He helped end the team's 86-year World Series drought with a title in 2004 and won a second championship in 2007. Francona played 10 seasons in the majors, breaking in with Montreal in 1981. He was also with the Chicago Cubs, Cleveland and Milwaukee. Francona's late father, Tito, was also a major leaguer.
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This summary of area news is curated by KPR news staffers, including J. Schafer, Laura Lorson, Tom Parkinson and Kaye McIntyre. Our headlines are generally posted by 10 am weekdays and updated throughout the day. These ad-free headlines are made possible by KPR members. Become one today. And follow KPR News on Twitter.