🌾 Kansas

• The Kansas House voted 87-37 Wednesday to override Gov. Laura Kelly's veto of a bill requiring public restrooms and locker rooms be designated by biological sex and directing reissuance of driver's licenses and birth certificates to reflect sex assigned at birth, enacting the measure into law. →

• Wildfires fueled by extreme winds burned nearly 283,000 acres across Clark, Seward, Meade, Finney and Comanche counties this week, destroying grassland and cattle feed, forcing evacuations. →

• The Kansas House passed more than 45 bills Wednesday in marathon sessions, advancing consensus measures like a digital right-to-repair act alongside contentious abortion and election bills that passed on 87-37 party-line votes. →

• The Kansas Senate passed pharmacy benefits manager regulation 32-8 Wednesday while defeating a construction wage control bill 12-26, rejecting preemption of local wage authority. →

• The Kansas House nonconcurred with Senate amendments to a school choice bill Wednesday, triggering a conference committee, while the Senate referred a House-rewritten education measure back to committee, signaling refusal to accept substantial changes. →

🇺🇸 US

• The United States has assembled its largest concentration of air power in the Middle East since the 2003 Iraq invasion, with President Trump weighing military strikes against Iran as Brent crude climbed above $71 a barrel. →

• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in a Los Angeles courtroom in the first of 3,000 lawsuits alleging social media companies designed algorithmic features that cause psychological harm to young users. →

• The Congressional Budget Office projects federal debt held by the public will exceed the size of the U.S. economy later this year and reach more than $56 trillion by 2036. →

• Technology companies are constructing private, off-grid power plants—mostly fueled by natural gas—to supply the enormous energy demands of AI data centers across multiple states. →

• Police arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, on suspicion of misconduct in public office for allegedly sharing confidential government information with Jeffrey Epstein. →

Weather

February 19 1847: Donner Party rescued from the Sierra Nevada Mountains

The Sierra Nevada mountains have been claiming lives since at least 1846, when deep snow trapped the Donner Party near present-day Donner Lake, starving 44 of the 89 emigrants and driving survivors to cannibalism before rescue parties arrived months later. Nearly 180 years later and just miles from Donner Summit, an avalanche on Tuesday swept through a group of 15 backcountry skiers near Castle Peak, killing eight and leaving one still missing and presumed dead in what authorities are calling the deadliest U.S. avalanche in nearly half a century.

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