TOPEKA — A New York City-based nonprofit has launched a billboard campaign to support trans Kansans with information about how to access gender-affirming care.

Mayday Health plans to reach 1.2 million people over the course of four weeks with three billboards in the Kansas City area, three in Topeka and one in Wichita. The signs read “God made trans people” and include a link to the nonprofit’s website.

“We thought it was important to put these billboards up as the Kansas Legislature increasingly targets the constitutional rights of trans Kansans,” said Liv Raisner, executive director of Mayday Health, which focuses on reproductive health education. “So we want to express our support and our solidarity and make sure people know that gender-affirming health services are still accessible.”

The Legislature last year banned gender-affirming care for juveniles. This year, the Legislature criminalized bathroom use for trans people and banned changes in gender markers on driver’s licenses and birth certificates.

“Trans people deserve the same freedoms as all Americans,” Raisner said. “They belong everywhere from the halls of government to the bathrooms that align with their identities, and when governments target folks and violate their fundamental rights, Mayday responds, and that’s why we went up with this billboard campaign.”

The gender-affirming care section of the Mayday.Health website lists medical, mental health, financial aid, crisis hotlines and transportation resources.

Raisner said the nonprofit is focused on getting the message out to trans people, but “if folks with fundamental religious views happen to glance over at these billboards because they see a cross sign, then great. We’re glad that they know that people support trans Kansans.”

We’ve been following the saga of Afroman (real name Joseph Foreman) and the Adams County Sheriff’s Office for a few years now, and I’m delighted to report that the defamation trial is currently underway and it is delivering everything you could possibly hope for, starting with this absolutely astounding suit that he’s wearing in court and on the stand (as well as in recent videos):

For those who need a refresher: back in 2022, the Adams County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio conducted a raid on Afroman’s home with a warrant for drug trafficking and — hilariously — kidnapping. (Kidnapping. Afroman.) The search turned up a couple of joints, some legal hemp, and a vape pen. No arrests were made. No charges were filed. The warrant itself appeared to have been sloppily assembled from boilerplate, with the kidnapping allegation looking a whole lot like someone forgot to delete an irrelevant paragraph before submitting it to a judge.

What the deputies did manage to accomplish was breaking Afroman’s door and gate, apparently pocketing $400 in cash (later explained away as a “miscount”), and getting captured on Afroman’s home security cameras doing a series of things that made them look absolutely ridiculous — including, famously, cautiously approaching a lemon cake sitting in a glass container on the kitchen counter.

The deputies, naturally, tried to cut power and unplug the security cameras during the raid — because surely that’s what the good guys do. But they didn’t get to them fast enough. Afroman took that footage and did exactly what you’d hope a musician would do: he turned it into a pair of songs — “Lemon Pound Cake” and “Will You Help Me Repair My Door” — complete with music videos featuring the actual raid footage. The videos went massively viral. In fact, here, watch them again:

And then the deputies did what we’ve come to expect from law enforcement officers who love power but hate the accountability that very occasionally accompanies it: They sued Afroman, claiming his use of their images in his music videos caused them “emotional distress, embarrassment, ridicule, loss of reputation, and humiliation.”

At the time, we noted that this lawsuit was profoundly stupid and predicted it would only make things worse for the deputies. Three years later, the trial has begun, and I am pleased to report: it is making things so much worse for the deputies.

Let’s start with the visuals. As mentioned above, Afroman showed up to court in a full American flag suit. This is a man who understands exactly what kind of stage he’s been handed, and he’s performing brilliantly. If you want to see the entirety of his testimony, that’s on YouTube too, and it’s glorious (click through as they’ve disabled embeds on that one).

Legal reporter Meghann Cuniff has also been posting astounding video clips from the courtroom to Instagram, and they are a gift, so we’ll include a few of the best cuts here.

First, here’s Afroman on the stand making the single most devastating argument in the entire case, which is also the most obvious one: none of this would have happened if they hadn’t raided his house in the first place.

That’s it. That’s the whole case. The deputies created the raid. The raid created the footage. The footage created the songs. The songs created the “emotional distress.” The lawsuit created this trial, which is now creating a whole new wave of viral content about these deputies. Every single thing these officers are complaining about is something they set in motion themselves.

When the plaintiffs’ lawyers kept pushing him about how unfair he was being to these poor deputies, Afroman’s response was wonderful:

Don’t miss the “you’re welcome” at the end of that one.

Then there’s Afroman explaining what should be pretty obvious to anyone who has even a passing familiarity with the First Amendment: this is his freedom of speech, he makes humorous songs for entertainment, and — oh yeah — he needed to pay for the door and gate these deputies broke.

But the real fun starts when the deputies themselves take the stand. Sgt. Randolph Lee “Randy” Walters Jr. managed to admit, on the witness stand, that many of the things people have been saying about him are statements of opinion rather than fact.

For those keeping score at home: opinion is a complete defense to a defamation claim. When one of the plaintiffs in a defamation case casually concedes on the stand that the allegedly defamatory statements are opinion, that’s… not great for the plaintiffs.

And then there’s Deputy Shawn Cooley, who is apparently quite upset that people have been calling him “Lemon Pound Cake.” Yes, a law enforcement officer is in court, under oath, complaining about a nickname derived from the fact that he was filmed treating a dessert as a potential threat during a drug raid that turned up essentially nothing.

But wait, it gets better. Afroman’s defense team called Cooley’s ex-wife to the stand, where she testified that Cooley knew the song was a joke and even made fun of it himself.

So we’ve got a deputy claiming severe emotional distress over a nickname, while his own ex-wife is testifying that he was laughing about it. Outstanding.

As Defector noted in its recap of the trial’s early days:

This suit is certain to just make things worse for the department. Afroman’s videos may have gone viral but they were mostly contained, their reach, outside of the initial wave of virality, more than likely limited to Cincinnati, its surrounding areas, and whatever colleges at which Afroman goes around performing. But the trial has brought all new visibility to these videos, putting Afroman on the brink of going platinum again. There is no winning here for the cops, no matter how many distressed tears you try to pull out of these officers.

We called this three years ago when the lawsuit was filed. The deputies were upset that Afroman’s videos made them look foolish, so they filed a lawsuit that would guarantee far more people would see those videos and learn their names. The Streisand Effect remains undefeated.

There’s a serious point underneath all the absurdity. These are public servants who conducted a search of a private citizen’s home under a warrant, found essentially nothing, broke his property, possibly took his money, tried to disable his cameras, and then — when he had the audacity to use his own security footage to make fun of them — decided to use the legal system to try to shut him up and get paid for their hurt feelings.

The message they were trying to send is the same one law enforcement sends in so many of these cases: we can do whatever we want to you, and if you embarrass us for it, we’ll make your life even harder. It’s the same impulse that leads cops to arrest people for filming them, or to seize phones during protests, or to charge people with “resisting arrest” when there’s no underlying crime. The whole point is to make the cost of accountability so high that people stop trying.

But Afroman showed up in an American flag suit and explained, calmly and clearly, that he makes funny songs, that these officers raided his house for no good reason, that they broke his stuff, and that he has every right to talk about it. And the deputies’ own testimony is undermining their case in real time.

As Defector’s recap put it:

As for Afroman himself, this may not be Uncle Luke on trial or anything, but it is another case in which people must decide how much they actually like freedom of speech, as well as whether or not the police are justified to behave however they like under the auspices of “doing their job.” Actually, he explains it a lot better than I could. It’s a trial about a principle and fighting unfairness, with some funny videos making it all that much more entertaining. Justice the Afroman way is a lot more satisfying than what the system usually gives.

It sure is. The deputies wanted to punish Afroman for making them look bad. Instead, they gave him a bigger platform, a better story, and a courtroom full of cameras capturing every moment of their continued self-own. If you wanted a textbook example of why you shouldn’t use a lawsuit to silence criticism of your own embarrassing behavior, this is it.

Though I suppose we should thank the Adams County Sheriff’s Office for one thing: If they hadn’t filed this lawsuit, we wouldn’t have gotten to watch Afroman testify in an American flag suit while a deputy complains about being called Lemon Pound Cake. Sometimes the legal system truly delivers amazing moments.

A few things on the end of Horizon Worlds, the metaverse that Mark Zuckerberg believed in so much that he renamed his company: 

1) It’s very sad that many of the people who worked on it have been unceremoniously laid off because their leaders appear to have no idea what they’re doing
2) lol 
3) lmao, even

Who could have possibly predicted this? 

When Zuckerberg announced Horizon Worlds not really all that long ago at a batshit livestream in October 2021, I wrote an article called “Zuckerberg Announces Fantasy World Where Facebook Is Not a Horrible Company.” During that livestream Zuckerberg said, “I believe technology can make our lives better. The future will be built by those willing to stand up and say ‘this is the future we want.’” The future Zuckerberg wanted, at that time, was not a future anyone else wanted. But he was bold enough to systematically light roughly $80 billion on fire, not because he was willing to stand up and paint a vision of the future, but because Facebook was mired in various horrendous scandals and because he needed to rebrand his company and needed something shiny to point at to keep Facebook’s stock price up. It is bad when actual economists say that money was thrown “into the toilet.”

Let’s check what I wrote then: “The future Zuckerberg went on to pitch was a delusional fever dream cribbed most obviously from dystopian science fiction and misleading or outright fabricated virtual reality product pitches from the last decade. In the ‘metaverse’—an ‘embodied’ internet where we are, basically, inside the computer via a headset or other reality-modifying technology of some sort—rather than hang out with people in real life you could meet up with them as Casper-the-friendly-ghost-style holograms to do historically fun and stimulating activities such as attend concerts or play basketball.”

Zuckerberg’s bold vision of the metaverse was a place where T-Pain would sell NFTs of imaginary sneakers at concerts attended by people sitting silently in their living rooms with computers strapped to their face, where Wendy’s could do integrated brand deals in which human-shaped avatars without legs could throw baconators at basketball hoops, and where Zuckerberg could pretend to know how to surf. Even on these pitiful metrics, the metaverse failed. “Whatever the metaverse does look like, it is virtually guaranteed to not look or feel anything like what Facebook showed us on Thursday,” I wrote at the time. 

Over the last few years, Zuckerberg has found another thing he can ruin via his trademark process of pouring kerosene on huge piles of money and throwing matches at it (perhaps a fun metaverse game?). Zuckerberg’s current bold vision for the future is one in which social media is not social media at all but is instead a bunch of highly customized AI-generated ads delivered to you via an increasingly creepy algorithm. Alongside this, it is a future in which Reality Labs—the division of Meta that created Horizon Worlds—makes AI camera glasses whose main use appears to be harassing women, traumatizing the underpaid content moderators who watch the footage in developing countries, and fashion statements for federal officials whose current mission is kidnapping undocumented immigrants. 

The complete and utter failure of the metaverse is a reminder not just of the fact that the future Silicon Valley is force feeding us is not inevitable, but that quite often these oligarchs quite simply cannot relate to real people, don’t know how or why people use their products, and very often have no idea what they’re doing. 

I remember the metaverse, crypto, web3 Venn diagram of hype very well—in fact, I remember sitting in meetings where VICE executives proposed renting land in the crypto-focused Decentraland metaverse to build a virtual VICE headquarters (where we all worked before 404 Media). I noted at the time that Decentraland was stupid, and that far fewer people were on Decentraland at any given time than were reading even a failed blog post on the website of our failing company. It didn't matter. The people “willing to stand up and say ‘this is the future we want’” wanted a virtual building in a virtual dead mall, and they got it. Was it because they were so brave and forward looking? Or was it because they were rich and powerful and could say this is the future we, the business people, the business knowers, want?

Toxic chemicals linger at a long-gone dry cleaning business at 103rd Street and State Line Road in Leawood.

Tri- and Tetracholoroethylenes — banned or being phased out because of their links to Parkinson’s disease and certain cancers — have been in the soil and groundwater there since before 2010, spreading east and south toward the Missouri state line and Indian Creek.

But because a state fund to clean up dry cleaning chemicals is so strapped for money, the Leawood site has been on a wait list for years, and, given a relatively low priority ranking, may remain backlogged for an undetermined amount of time.

There’s been no documentation of health problems due to the pollution in the soil. It’s in a commercial area of paved parking lots and served by WaterOne.

Nevertheless, the contamination was concerning enough to impede work on a new county wastewater main recently, adding $153,173 to the project so the tainted soil could be dug out and properly disposed of before the pipe could be laid.

Contamination at 10314 State Line Road — the site of a former Pride Cleaners — came to light recently in county commission discussion of unexpected costs of building two new pump stations and a sewer main.

What we know about the site’s contamination

According to a 2018 report by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, businesses at the State Line Road address used dry cleaning chemicals and equipment from about 1985 to 1995. After that, it was a drop-off site until closing around 2007.

Groundwater preliminary investigations found above-risk levels of tricholoroethylene (TCE), tetracholoroethylene (PCE also known as perc) and dichloroethylene, as well as vinyl chloride.

TCE is an industrial degreasing solvent that has been used in refrigerants, paint removers, spray adhesives and as a spot remover in dry cleaning. It has been linked to Parkinson’s, kidney cancer, liver cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

All uses of TCE have since been banned in the U.S.

The Environmental Protection Agency also issued an order in late 2024 to begin a 10-year phaseout of PCE (though under the Trump administration, the EPA began reviewing that decision last year to potentially reverse it).

Dry cleaning chemicals have been a problem for decades because they tend to stay in the soil and move with groundwater like a slowly spreading stain. That is what is happening with the State Line site.

The report also found that contamination had slowly seeped about 300 feet to the east, almost to the state line, and far enough south to likely impact Indian Creek. The site is a commercial intersection, but there are homes immediately to the west, though the homes are uphill from the former cleaner.

Concerning as that may sound, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment has not given the Leawood site a particularly high priority ranking for cleanup funds.

KDHE officials said last month that the former Pride Cleaner site was ranked 121st of the over 200 sites in their backlog. That ranking can change, based on new listings or new information about existing contaminated sites, according to Jill Bronaugh, communications director at KDHE.

The State Line site is also not even close to being among the largest dry cleaning contamination sites in the state.

The Haysville area south of Wichita experienced one of the biggest plumes of contamination. A dry cleaning facility associated with that contamination closed in 1996, but it wasn’t considered a high priority for cleanup until more information became available in 2016 and 2017, indicating that it had moved into private well water.

How we got here

Prior to the mid-1990s, cleaners could dispose of their wastewater down the drain. But things changed in 1995, as people sought pollution cleanup and the federal government became more involved.

In 1995, the Kansas Legislature set up a trust fund meant to ease some of the expenses of cleanup on small dry cleaning business owners, which can run to millions.

The fund’s money comes from a $100 per facility annual registration fee, fees paid by solvent purchasers (the dry cleaners themselves), a deductible of $5,000 per site for business owners who take advantage of the fund and a surcharge on customers.

Because lawmakers have not adjusted the fees to keep up with inflation, that fund is now running seriously behind what it needs to keep up with pollution mitigation.

According to KDHE figures, the trust fund receipts have plunged since 2007, from about $1.4 million a year to a recent annual average of $721,000.

As a result, cleanup has been slow going. KDHE has only resolved 18 sites since 1995. It now has 226 on its backlog.

Lawmakers try a third time

Now, as the legislature enters its final weeks of regular deliberations this year, lawmakers are trying for a third time to make changes intended to add more money to the fund and hasten cleanup.

Lawmakers on the House Water Committee writing the bill say they are under pressure to do something to beef up the fund because if they don’t, the EPA could step in and run the cleanup itself.

“I don’t think anyone wants that,” said Rep. Lindsay Vaughn, an Overland Park Democrat and the ranking minority member on the water committee.

The bill in question, Senate Bill 184, was proposed as a way to increase the funds, but ran into snags from some lawmakers who worried the tax increases would be too hard on small-business dry cleaners and would cause them to go out of business.

In its original form, SB 184 would have doubled the surcharge customers pay on dry cleaning from 2.5% (or 25 cents for every $10) to 5%. It would also double the deductible for users from $5,000 to $10,000, which KDHE testimony says is close to what it would be if it had kept up with inflation since 1995.

Those two changes would increase the annual fund revenue to $1.39 million, Kate Gleeson, deputy secretary of environment for KDHE told a recent water committee meeting.

Proponents said the bill would benefit business owners who want to clean up their sites as well as developers who hesitate to buy a location with pending contamination issues.

The bill has been negotiated with industry representatives in a way that tries to be fair, Vaughn said, noting that the burden is shouldered by the industry that caused the pollution.

“If we want to be the ones responsible for addressing this contamination then we have to find a way to fund it,” she said.

Rep. Alexis Simmons, a Shawnee County Democrat, said the untreated soil and water can cause other expenses in health problems and cognitive declines that will also drag down communities.

But the Dry Cleaning and Laundry Institute, a trade association representing the industry, urged lawmakers not to pass the bill.

Small mom-and-pop dry cleaners are still reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has reduced dry cleaning demand because of remote work and more casual dressing, said Jon Meijer, director of membership for the institute, in testimony before the committee.

Increasing the surcharge that customers pay could cause more of a loss of customers, he said, noting that he would prefer a higher deductible.

This week, the committee approved a compromise. The surcharge would be raised only from 2.5% to 3% the first year, and then increase by 0.5% increments every two years until it reaches 5%.

Rep. Doug Blex, a Republican from southeast Kansas, said he still disliked raising the surcharge because “we’re punishing people for the sins of the past.” At an earlier meeting, he took the same position.

“We have a real problem of punishing people for events that happened 40 years ago and the environment somewhat heals itself,” he said, adding that he doubts the contamination problems are as bad as they were a few years ago. “You spank people when they’re bad.”

Vaughn said the compromise kept the change incremental while also addressing the problem in the fund.

But Rep. Fred Gardner, a Republican from eastern Kansas, said that with the shrinking dry cleaning industry and the number of sites to clean up, the compromise will only be a partial fix to the problem.

“I think it’s a good step, but I don’t think it’s the total solution,” he said. “Going forward, we’re going to have to come up with another plan.”

The compromise passed out of committee but still has other steps in the House and possibly Senate.

As we wrote just yesterday, the defamation trial brought by seven Adams County, Ohio deputies against rapper Afroman was going about as well for the officers as their original botched raid on his home. Today we can report the inevitable conclusion: the jury sided entirely with Afroman, clearing him of all liability after just hours of deliberation.

To recap briefly: deputies raided Afroman’s home in 2022 with guns drawn, found essentially nothing, filed no charges, broke his door (and his gate!), and got caught on his security cameras doing embarrassing things — including one deputy who appeared to cautiously eye a delicious-looking lemon pound cake. Afroman turned the footage into multiple viral music videos. The deputies, upset about being mocked, sued him for $3.9 million claiming defamation and emotional distress. The jury took just a few hours to say: nah.

The best part might be the closing argument from the officers’ attorney, who told the jury:

“Mr. Foreman doesn’t get to wrap himself in the American flag and say you can’t touch me, I can say what I want, no matter how untrue it is, no matter how much pain it causes people, because I have freedom of speech. He can’t do that.”

Afroman’s lawyer quickly responded that he can, in fact, do exactly that. That’s how the First Amendment works. Especially when talking about public officials. And then the jury agreed. This is especially delicious given that Afroman literally wrapped himself in the American flag for the entire trial, showing up each day in that wonderful suit.

Afroman’s own testimony summed up the whole case more concisely than any lawyer could:

“All of this is their fault, and they have the audacity to sue me.”

And through all of this, Afroman never stopped making music mocking these officers — right up to the trial. Here he is calling out Deputy Randy Walters:

And here he is set to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, reminding everyone that the proof of everything he’s saying is right there on the internet for anyone to see:

So the deputies sued because they were embarrassed by viral music videos, and, in doing so, created a three-day trial that generated a whole new wave of viral content about them, drew national media attention, and ended with a jury telling them they had no case. The Streisand Effect remains undefeated.

As Afroman’s lawyer told the jury in closing, citing NWA’s “Fuck Tha Police” and Richard Pryor’s comedy:

“I’m sorry they feel the way they do, but there’s a certain amount that you have to take as a public official, it’s part of the duties of the job. What chilling effect does that have on the world we live in? You don’t like what a public official does and you make a joke, and you’re dragged into court?”

There’s a serious point underneath all the absurdity. Public officials who raid your home for no good reason, find nothing, and break your stuff don’t get to then use the courts to punish you for talking about it. That’s the whole ballgame on the First Amendment, and the jury understood it perfectly.

Afroman summed it up outside the courtroom saying:

I didn’t win. America won. America still has freedom of speech. It’s still for the people, by the people!

Well said. And I hope the Adams County Sheriff’s Department is looking forward to Afroman’s next release.