You know, what they do to us, they can do to any group of Americans. . . all who read this included.
The Kansas legislature has a Republican supermajority. They passed, over the governor's veto, a law that gender cannot be changed, and thus gender markers on a Kansas license or birth certificate cannot be changed. Anyone who had already gone through the long, expensive, arduous legal process of gender transition on their documents? Those were declared instantaneously invalidated when the law went into effect on February 26th. All trans people in Kansas are required to go get new drivers' licenses on which they are forcibly detransitioned by the state--oh, and you can't even drive to the DMV to get and pay for this license. Anyone caught driving while trans will be fined $1000 and subject to six months in jail for each "offense".
When you think about a driver's license, perhaps driving is the only activity that comes to mind for which you need one. Or perhaps buying a six-pack of beer or going to a club also come to mind. But such a list is missing two huge consequences of this Kansas law. In the US, you need a valid state ID to pick up a range of prescriptions, including pain medications, sleep medications--and testosterone, which so many transmasculine people are prescribed, myself included. So people are suddenly cut off from their gender-affirming medical care. And another major issue: Kansas is one of 38 states that require a valid photo ID both to register to vote, and to cast a vote once registered. Kansas has gone and disfranchised the 1700 trans people it has identified as having legally gender transitioned in Kansas.
The law does more than impact birth certificates and drivers' licenses, as well. It's now a crime in Kansas to use a public bathroom matching your lived gender if that gender doesn't match the binary sex you were assigned at birth. Again, a $1000 fine per violation--only this time, any person who reports a trans person for using a bathroom gets $1000 too.
As immigrants and family members of immigrants and people who are simply brown in the US can tell you, a disturbing percentage of the people around you are delighted to participate in persecuting their neighbors. Perhaps you saw how comedian Ben Palmer set up a fake tipline to report suspected undocumented immigrants, and got a pile of reports, including one by a kindergarten teacher who suspected a child's parents were not citizens and wanted them deported, and a woman outraged that a store employee who correctly helped her find the product she wanted "didn't speak English" seeking her deportation for that "crime." I have friends whose children have been threatened by classmates that they will get them deported if they don't hand over their snack or lose the schoolyard ballgame. And meanwhile, the president is seeking to end birthright citizenship and do the equivalent of detransitioning swaths of American citizens into noncitizens at a stroke.
People tell me this will never happen. People also told me no state would ever invalidate the gender transitions of everyone in it. And then this week Kansas did, and put it into effect overnight.
Perhaps you are neither brown nor trans. But what can happen to us can happen to any group. For your own sake as well as ours, please don't ostrich. Keeping your head down does not keep you safe for long. Stand up! Object. Resist.