 Nebraska State Senator Makayla Kavanaugh promised that if Legislative Bill 574, a ban on gender affirming care for trans youth, moves forward, she was going to inflict massive pain on the entire legislative body until the bill is removed. Here's her threat if you haven't seen it from three weeks ago now. But if this legislature collectively decides that legislating hate against children is our priority, then I am going to make it painful, painful for everyone. Because if you want to inflict pain upon our children, I am going to inflict pain upon this body. And I have nothing, nothing but time. And I am going to use all of it. If people think that they're going to wear me down, if yesterday didn't show you that you can't wear me down, you cannot wear me down. I literally left the floor yesterday, went up to my office, and laid down on the floor. I laid down on the floor, hard floor, and took a 20-minute nap before going to committee hearings. You cannot stop me. I will not be stopped. So if LB574 gets an early floor debate and moves forward, it will be very painful for this body. Yeah. So the reason why we're talking about this again is because she's doing it. Three weeks have passed and she's still going strong, blocking the bill and grinding the entire legislative body to a halt because they have refused to withdraw that piece of legislation. As AP reports, true to her word, Kavanaugh has slowed the business of passing laws to a crawl by introducing amendment after amendment to every bill that makes it to the state Senate floor and taking up all eight debate hours allowed by the rules, even during the week she was suffering from strep throat. Wednesday marks the halfway point of this year's 90-day session and not a single bill will have passed thanks to Kavanaugh's relentless filibustering. Clerk of the legislature, Brandon Metzler, said a delay like this has happened only a couple of times in the past 10 years, quote, but what is really uncommon is the lack of bills that have advanced, Metzler said. Usually, we're a lot further along the line than we're seeing now. Speaker John Ark has taken steps to try to speed the process, such as sometimes scheduling the legislature to work through lunch to tick off another hour on the debate clock. But he noted that the legislature will soon be moving to all-day debate once committee hearings on bills come to an end later this month. But even with frustration growing over the hobbled process, the Republican speaker defended Kavanaugh's use of the filibuster. Now first of all, the Republican speaker gets a little bit of credit for not screeching about this. I mean, she's just using the rules that are available to her. And in a state like Nebraska, you know, you wouldn't necessarily expect the Republicans to be sympathetic towards the minority, but he is. So he gets a little bit of credit for that. But she gets the overwhelming amounts of credit. She is an absolute rock star and her relentlessness is just genuinely astonishing. This needs to be the strategy going forward. If you are a Democratic Party politician and your party's in the minority in a particular state, this is what you do. Mikaela is creating the blueprint for you to follow and it's working. So she's following in the footsteps of Ernie Chambers. This is a former state lawmaker who's a left-leaning politician. And he did a similar thing. And he was reached out for comment on this particular story. And he said, not only is it working, but her strategy might actually pay off because it seems likely that the speaker is going to be forced to pull the bill halting the entire process or the work of the body entirely. So she isn't just winning. She could win entirely, which is incredible. Now, again, I want to recenter this conversation, not just around the strategy, but around why she's doing this and what's at stake. As Julia Conley of Common Dreams explains, they'll let them grow act, the bill in question here, like a number of the approximately 150 anti-LGBTQ-plus bills that have been introduced in other states so far this year would prohibit gender-affirming surgical procedures, hormone therapy, and puberty blockers for minors. Gender-affirming care for minors is supported by the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics with the latter organization noting in a 2018 policy statement that many transgender youths experience fear of discrimination by providers and lack of continuity with providers as a result of limited access to gender-affirming care. A study by the University of Washington found that youths who received gender-affirming care were 73% less likely to experience suicidality and 60% likely to suffer from depression than those who did not obtain care. Kavanaugh also told the Associated Press Wednesday that 58% of transgender and non-binary youths in her state seriously considered suicide in 2020, according to a 2021 survey by The Trevor Project and more than one in five said they had attempted suicide. Quote, the children of Nebraska deserve to have somebody stand up and fight for them, Kavanaugh told the AP. So what she's doing here is of immense importance. She is potentially saving the lives of trans youth in this state. This woman is a hero. She is a strategic mastermind, and she is damn relentless. And I just can't stress again how other democratic lawmakers across the country need to pay attention to this because it's working. Why aren't we seeing every other bill being filibustered to this extent? As the article pointed to, there are 150 anti-LGBT Q plus bills introduced this year, but there are other numbers that say that that has increased a lot more. So why aren't other democratic party politicians following this lead? These bills are getting passed. An anti-drag queen bill just passed in Tennessee. A ban on gender-affirming care was considered. Why are democratic party politicians not resorting to extraordinary measures as Makayla is doing to stop these bills? This is what true allyship looks like right here, where you put everything on the line. You grind the entire process to a halt so nothing gets done until that harmful piece of legislation is repealed. She even did this having strep throat. There is no excuse for democratic party politicians in other states. If she can block this bill, you can do it too. So I just want every single person watching to understand that if there's a will, there's a way. You don't have to just sit back and watch in horror as the GOP does harmful things and inflicts harm on marginalized communities. There are tools at your disposal. It's just a matter of whether or not you're going to use it or not, as Makayla Kavanaugh has shown. So she is single-handedly raising the bar for Democrats across the country and they need to step up because this right here is how it's done. Pay attention, Democrats.