The News You Need To Read This Morning

This is an excerpt from Incoming, BuzzFeed News’ morning newsletter dedicated to making sense of this chaotic world we live in. Join the club.

Kansas on Wednesday banned trans women and girls — but not trans men and boys — from school sports from kindergarten through college. With a Republican supermajority, the Legislature broke through Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s third veto of the bill in three years, becoming the 20th state to enact a ban on trans student-athletes.

Though proponents of the HB 2238 law claim it will help promote fair competition among cis women and girls, the actual numbers show that trans female athletes are an extreme minority. According to the Kansas State High School Activities Association, there are currently only three trans girls competing in sports at the high school level.

HB 2238 is slated to go into effect July 1. Many of the law’s opponents have said HB 2238 will not only be discriminatory against trans and gender-nonconforming girls and women, but enforcement will lead to murky ethical issues.

When state Rep. Barbara Wasinger, who introduced the legislation, was asked in February to explain how it would be enforced, the Republican answered that enforcement would happen during a student-athlete’s “sports physical.” However, when pressed further by a Democrat whether that meant a “genital inspection,” Wasinger said she couldn’t recall.

On Tuesday, Kansas also passed SB 180, a bill that includes a ban on transgender people using public restrooms and locker rooms and a prohibition on changing one’s name and gender markers on driver’s licenses. 

Another tornado hits Missouri, killing at least five people

• After weeks of severe tornadoes throughout the South and Midwest, a tornado struck southern Missouri early Wednesday morning. Recovery efforts are expected to take months, according to Missouri Gov. Mike Parson.
• Forecasters anticipate more extreme weather for the US in the coming months. As of midday on Wednesday, roughly 75,000 homes and businesses in the Midwest, Arkansas, and Texas were without power, Reuters reports.

SNAPSHOTS

Bob Lee, the creator of Cash App was stabbed to death in San Francisco. Police said that Lee's death remains an active investigation.

Does paying off student loans make your credit score worse? If you’re wondering why paying off a huge debt like student loans could cause harm, you’re not alone.

If seasonal allergies are eating you alive, these products may help. Climate change is making allergy season longer and more intense. Here's how experts recommend managing.

People are reflecting on Amy Schumer as the original casting for Barbie instead of Margot Robbie. “The studio definitely didn’t want to do it the way I wanted to do it. The only way I was interested in doing it,” Schumer said at the time.

The families of the victims of the 2017 Texas church shooting have reached a $144 million settlement

A judge agreed that the US Air Force should have done more to prevent the Sutherland Springs shooter from buying guns, leading to a tentative settlement between the US government and the families of the victims of the 2017 mass shooting.

The shooting, which was the deadliest in Texas history, at the rural First Baptist Church left 26 people dead and 22 more injured. With a settlement of over $144 million, this is the highest payout for families of victims of a mass shooting. 

More than 75 people sued the Department of Justice in 2018, alleging that if the Air Force had properly updated the FBI's background check system, the shooter wouldn't have been able to legally buy the gun that he used.

The Sutherland Springs shooter had served in the Air Force from 2010 to 2014, and in 2012 he was court-martialed for assaulting his spouse and their child. He then received a bad conduct discharge. A US district judge said in 2021 that if the shooter's criminal history had been logged in the database, "it is more likely than not that [he] would have been deterred from carrying out the Church shooting."

Brooke Shields was raised by a single mother, Teri, a former model who managed her daughter’s career but had an alcohol addiction. Shields got into modeling early — her first gig was an Ivory soap ad at 11 months old — and quickly became her family’s breadwinner, then an icon of classic American beauty. By the time she was 10, she was touring the talk show circuit; by the time she was 16, Time magazine declared her the face of the ’80s. She’s been famous ever since — beloved, reviled, obsessed over, and scrutinized, Izzy Ampil writes.

Now Pretty Baby, a new two-part ABC News documentary streaming on Hulu, gives Shields the chance to reclaim control of her narrative, and she’s eager to offer something more than just her looks. “The entirety of my life, it was, ‘She’s a pretty face,’’’ Shields says. “Over and over and over and over and over. And that always just seared me.” 

In the few moments when Pretty Baby dares to interrupt its own form, a more vivid and imaginative version of the documentary peeks through. But overall, even as Pretty Baby seeks to reveal the human being behind the sex symbol, it can’t help but draw its audiences in with images of Shields’s youthful beauty, thus reinscribing the terms of her worth. The documentary seems to ask: Isn’t she beautiful? Doesn’t she deserve better than this?

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