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The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a free, confidential hotline available 24/7 for individuals in crisis or those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org.

TOPEKA — A Wichita organization created an online training program for suicide prevention and mental health education to improve the care that LGBTQ+ Kansans receive when reaching out to crisis resources, including the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

The organization, Center of Daring, focuses on inclusivity and leadership training. Its 10-part training program takes nine hours to complete and is available for free on the center’s website, according to an April 28 press release announcing the program.

“We believe this training series will fill a deep need here at a time when many LGBTQ+ Kansans don’t feel safe in our state,” said Liz Hamor, the Center of Daring founder, in the release.

Through learning activities, videos and surveys, the training covers trauma-informed intervention, intersectionality and promoting equity within a crisis response organization. The training was designed with input from LGBTQ+ residents and Kansas crisis care providers, according to the press release.

The 988 helpline is a mental health crisis resource available 24/7. It went nationwide in 2022. Kansas’ line received more than 34,000 calls, 12,000 texts and 9,000 chats in 2025, according to a state-mandated annual report.

District court clerks are the workhorses of the state’s court system. They handle the bulk of the court’s day-to-day work and interact frequently with the public. They are good people doing good and often difficult work.

Now, imagine you are one of those clerks. You are asked about a criminal case that you know exists and that the public knows exists. But due to a recent change in state law, you are not allowed to acknowledge that, effectively requiring you — unwillingly — to gaslight the public.

Unfortunately, for court clerks in Kansas, there is no need to imagine what has become twisted reality. This is because for almost a year now, as a result of a 2025 amendment to state law known as SB 204, the Legislature has prevented them from even acknowledging the existence of certain criminal cases, let alone producing them upon request.

That was required under the prior legal framework that had effectively been in place since statehood.

SB 204’s purpose was to prevent criminals from learning about a case before they are arrested, thereby reducing the likelihood that they could use that information to avoid or impede arrest. But in a misguided attempt to achieve that goal, the statute forces courts to falsely claim that a case does not exist when, in fact, it does, preemptively thwarting any attempt by the public to access traditionally open court records.

This legislatively mandated falsity and accompanying denial of access fosters distrust within our state’s communities. The Kansas Press Association also believes this law violates the public’s longstanding right under the First Amendment to know about adult criminal court records and proceedings.

One of our member newspapers, the Linn County News, experienced SB 204’s consequences firsthand while reporting late last year about a 13-year-old boy who went missing and was ultimately found dead. The News was on the scene after the disappearance and learned that charges had been filed against a suspect.

But when the News went to the Linn County District Court Clerk to obtain a copy of the criminal complaint to verify whether anyone was facing charges, its reporter was denied access.

Days later, the Kansas City Star published a story quoting from a court record in the case, indicating that a case related to the disappearance had indeed been filed.

But a subsequent attempt by the News to corroborate the case’s existence was again rebuffed, this time when the local court denied the paper’s formal request for the complaint under the Kansas Open Records Act.

The reason? Because the requested records “do not exist.”

Even though there is every reason to believe the requested records, in fact, do exist.

Without the court records, the News was left to doubt whether it could report the charges as a fact, chilling its First Amendment right to free expression, while at the same time leaving its readers in the dark about whether other children were at risk.

SB 204’s categorical, unlimited seal is what we believe violates the First Amendment. It could make sense to craft a law that puts a limited restriction on when the public, and by extension the press, would know that a case has been filed. For example, reference to cases could be omitted from any publicly available online database for a limited number of days, or until an arrest warrant has been executed. Under such circumstances, existence of a case could still be verified at the courthouse.

As it stands, SB 204 impairs the public’s right to know in a way that we believe must be challenged. Although the state’s court clerks did not write this law, they are the ones who carry it out.

Thus, late last week, the News filed a lawsuit in Linn County District Court under the First Amendment challenging the Legislature’s requirement that court personnel deny access to and the existence of certain records. The lawsuit is against the court personnel in their official capacities only.

Let me be clear. This is not the fault of the courts or the district court clerks. This is the result of a bill that may have had good intentions but has led to less transparency and has put good people in bad positions.

It is regrettable that the News has no choice but to raise this issue in court. But transparency is indispensable to public confidence, and freedom of expression cannot endure when the government compels falsehood in place of truth.

Emily Bradbury is the executive director of the Kansas Press Association and Kansas Newspaper Foundation. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday a new “anti-weaponization” settlement fund as a condition of President Donald Trump voluntarily dropping his multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for the leak of his tax returns several years ago.

Trump, his sons Don Jr. and Eric, and the Trump Organization moved to drop the $10 billion suit Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, with prejudice — meaning he cannot revive it in the future. 

Shortly after Trump’s filing hit the court docket, the DOJ announced the creation of a $1.776 billion settlement, not to be paid to Trump or his family, but to be divvied up among “others who suffered weaponization and lawfare,” according to a department press release.

Democrats swiftly denounced the settlement as a “slush fund.”

The move presumably means those pardoned by Trump for crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol could seek money from the government. The DOJ’s announcement did not specifically mention President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Merrick Garland or the Capitol riot, and noted there are “no partisan requirements to file a claim.” 

Trump campaigned on pardoning anyone prosecuted by the Biden administration for crimes related to the 2021 attack, describing them as “patriots” and “hostages.” He pardoned roughly 1,600 defendants on the first night of his second term, and the White House published a dedicated web page to those targeted by “a weaponized Biden DOJ.”

In addition to monetary relief, eligible claimants will also receive a formal apology from the government.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal defense attorney, said in a statement, “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again.”

“As part of this settlement, we are setting up a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress,” he added.

Trump, his family and the Trump organization will also receive a formal apology but no monetary damages as part of the arrangement, according to the DOJ.

The president and his family had filed suit in January against the IRS for the leak to news media of their tax information by a contractor in late 2019. The contractor was sentenced for the leak in early 2024.

When questioned by the press Monday afternoon, Trump said he knew “very little about” the creation of the fund. 

“These were people that were weaponized and really treated brutally by a system that was so corrupt, with corrupt people running it, and they’re getting reimbursed for their legal fees and the other things that they had to suffer,” Trump said.

A committee of five “very talented people, very highly respected people” will decide how to distribute the money, he said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer denounced the plan Monday afternoon as “one of the most depraved” uses by Trump of the Justice Department.

“This weekend, Trump worked up a plan to shake hands with himself in order to fund his insurrectionist army to the tune of billions,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement.

“Donald Trump sued his own government. Trump’s DOJ settled with Trump. And now Trump gets a nearly $2 billion slush fund to reward his own allies, loyalists, and insurrectionists. That is not justice. That is corruption happening in broad daylight,” he continued.

In an amicus brief filed Monday afternoon, 93 House Democrats urged U.S. District Judge Kathleen Mary Williams, nominated by President Barack Obama, to immediately dismiss Trump’s “collusive lawsuit” for lack of jurisdiction.

The Democratic lawmakers argued in the filing the fund is “plainly unlawful” for numerous reasons.

“(F)iling a collusive lawsuit only to immediately dismiss it in order to produce a collusive settlement that is illegal multiple times over would not only be legally barred; it would also raise serious questions about whether the parties have manipulated the court system to achieve illicit ends,” according to the brief.

TOPEKA — Wildfires are burning thousands of acres in southwest Kansas, and emergency management personnel from across the state are working to gain control and keep communities safe. 

Bill Waln, state fire management officer at the Kansas Forest Service, said winds shifted as crews were fighting a Clark County fire, pushing it out of containment. 

“That’s the one that’s pushed us around a little bit,” he said. “It made a run north toward Minneola yesterday.”

Waln said firefighters were unable to contain the fire on the south end after a cold front came through and the wind switched directions. As a result, a few rural homes west of Ashland are being evacuated as a precaution. 

“Right now, we are actively engaged in a fast-moving fire that’s moving south in Clark County toward Highway 160,” he said. “If we get it right now, Ashland is not threatened. But if we get any kind of a westerly wind shift to it, then we can see some evacuations in Ashland itself.”

Waln said officials are moving resources to the area to contain the fire’s spread. 

Multiple fires started in southwest Kansas after a lightning storm hit the area Thursday, he said. 

“We have such continued dry fuels down there that were just very receptive to lightning,” Waln said. “Normally we wouldn’t have to worry about it this time of the year.”

Most of the fires in Morton County were on U.S. Forest Service lands, and personnel and resources were brought out of the Colorado Forest Service and the federal government to fight them, he said. 

In Meade County, small fires merged into the largest fire the state is fighting, Waln said. It was at nearly 93,000 acres about 3:45 p.m. Monday, according to the Western Fire Chiefs fire tracking map. 

Although large, that fire is being managed, and Waln said he expects it to be fully contained by mid-week. 

Numerous fire departments from across the state have sent help to the area, although the current tornadic weather forecast for northeast Kansas is causing some to return home to support their communities, Waln said. 

Waln encouraged anyone living near the fires to stay informed; be ready to evacuate, thinking of things like medications, personal documents and other items they might need to take with them; and not hesitate when personnel say they need to evacuate. It’s important people are prepared to leave well before the fire gets to their location, he said. 

Waln also said land and homeowners can do a lot before fires start to protect their property, such as removing shrubs and plants near buildings.  

TOPEKA — Kansas Bureau of Investigation Director and U.S. district judge nominee Tony Mattivi found himself Monday in the unusual position of defendant in a civil trial playing out in the same federal courtroom where he previously prosecuted violent crimes, drug trafficking and money laundering.

Mattivi sat between two defense lawyers for start of a trial propelled by the lawsuit filed by former KBI Associate Director David Hutchings, a 32-year KBI veteran who departed the agency after a management scuffle with Mattivi. Hutchings filed suit alleging Mattivi had a right to strip him of an administrative post but violated his constitutionally protected property right by preventing him from transferring to the job of special agent in charge at KBI.

In court filings, Mattivi’s attorneys contend the KBI director in June 2023 requested Hutchings take the honorable path and voluntarily resign rather than face termination proceedings. Mattivi’s lawyers say Hutchings consented to resign but tried to reverse that decision days later in anticipation of receiving a financial settlement.

In addition, Mattivi’s defense team plans to introduce evidence there were sound reasons to move ahead with firing Hutchings over allegedly improper or illegal acts at the KBI. Court records accuse Hutchings of secretly reading employee emails, recording employee conversations, maintaining “shadow” files of private information to undermine colleagues and improperly withholding from courts incriminating evidence against law enforcement officers.

Mattivi was appointed to the KBI by Attorney General Kris Kobach. Mattivi was confirmed by the Kansas Senate as director in February 2023. In those early months at KBI offices, Mattivi defense lawyer Tom Lemon said Mattivi discovered that Hutchings was chiefly responsible for a toxic work environment that “fractured” the agency between people who supported Hutchings and the majority who didn’t.

Lemon also alleged Hutchings damaged the KBI by placing himself at the center of an effort to shield from criminal prosecution Kyle Smith, who had been a deputy director of the KBI and a friend of Hutchings. In 2014, smith pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a child and was placed on probation in addition to registering as a sex offender for 25 years.

“You will hear a lot of bad things about Hutchings in this case,” Lemon told jurors. “What you’re going to hear is not kind, it’s not Christian, and it’s upsetting.”

Lemon said an investigator recommended Hutchings be prosecuted by the Shawnee County District Attorney’s Office over allegedly obstructing the Smith inquiry.

Lemon laid the foundation of broader attacks on Hutchings during the trial by asking prospective jurors what they thought of workplace antagonists, toxic office situations and workers who were indifferent to requests for on-the-job improvement.

“He ran the KBI with an iron fist,” Lemon said. “The agency was in upheaval. Nothing was getting done.”

Hutchings’ attorneys Alan Johnson and Michael Duenes said they would prove the personal baggage drawn into the courtroom by Lemon was inaccurate and irrelevant.

“We intend to prove those things are not true,” Duenes said.

Duenes also said the jury should award Hutchings punitive damages because Mattivi understood state statute and court precedent on this significant personnel topic at the time he forced the associate director out at KBI.

“He was engaged in reckless indifference to Mr. Hutchings’ constitutional rights,” he said.

Hutchings’ lawyers made the jury aware of a Kansas law that says the KBI director, associate director, deputy director, assistant directors and any assistant attorneys general assigned to the bureau were placed within the state’s unclassified service. All other agents and employees of the KBI were classified state employees under the Kansas Civil Service Act.

The Kansas statute goes on to say that at the expiration of an administrative appointment, the KBI director, associate director or assistant director shall have the option of returning to a previous position within the bureau.

Hutchings, who began his law enforcement career in Riley County, was hired by the KBI in 1990 and promoted in 2008 to serve as special agent in charge at the bureau. These were classified positions in the civil service system with defined due process rights if confronted with possible dismissal.

In 2011, Hutchings moved to the associate director’s job, which was an at-will, unclassified position. So, Duenes argued to the jury, the decision by Mattivi to replace Hutchings as associate director at the bureau meant Hutchings had to be transferred back to the job of special agent. To remove Hutchings from that special agent’s post would have triggered civil service proceedings that feature due process, Duenes said.

Duenes also said Hutchings never said during the June 2023 meeting with Mattivi that he was prepared to resign from the bureau.

“At no time during the meeting … did Mr. Hutchings tell Mr. Mattivi that he was resigning or retiring from the KBI,” Hutchings’ court filing says.

The jury trial lasting up to four days is being heard by Senior U.S. District Judge William Johnson, who normally works in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The Kansas judge handling the case withdrew before the trial, apparently because Mattivi’s nomination by President Donald Trump to a vacancy on the U.S. District Court in Kansas could come up for a vote in the U.S. Senate at any time. Mattivi went through a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing April 15, and that committee endorsed his nomination April 30.

Johnson didn’t prohibit introduction of evidence by Mattivi’s lawyers about links between Smith and Hutchings, but he cautioned against divulging “salacious details” during opening statements to the eight-person jury.

The judge said the jury would be responsible for sorting out the key question of whether Hutchings was terminated or resigned from the KBI.

It’s an important distinction because Kansas law says certain jobs at the Kansas Highway Patrol and KBI were designed to shield employees when new leadership was elected or appointed to state government posts. In a comparable dispute involving a former KHP superintendent, the Kansas Supreme Court weighed in with analysis of state law on reassigning top-level personnel.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Vice President JD Vance ticked through a list of political topics — from Missouri’s redistricting efforts to the importance of bringing manufacturing back to the United States — at a campaign-style rally Monday afternoon. 

Vance spoke to a small, loud and enthusiastic crowd at a “protecting American workers” event, held at the nearly century-old Milbank Manufacturing company. 

The vice president praised President Donald Trump’s efforts to strengthen manufacturing, pointing to increased job growth and the “biggest growth in manufacturing employment last quarter” since Trump’s first term. 

The St. Louis Federal Reserve reported 12,596 manufacturing employees in April, slightly up after steady decreases since November 2024, when there were 12,711 such employees.  

Vance spoke about the One Big Beautiful Bill, renamed Working Families Tax Cut Act by Republicans, and its importance in lowering taxes, noting that all but one Democrat voted against it. As the crowd shouted in agreement, Vance said Republicans are the only party that fights to protect jobs and provide tax cuts for working-class Missourians. 

“I hate to say it, ladies and gentlemen — it is not the Democratic Party that my mamaw and papaw belonged to,” Vance said. “It’s not the Democratic Party that was patriotic and believed in supporting working people. It’s the Democratic party that has been given over, unfortunately, to a lot of crazy people.” 

Vance, and several politicians, including Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe, spoke about the importance of the new Missouri congressional district maps, recently approved by the state’s Supreme Court for use in August elections. Milbank Manufacturing is located in the state’s 5th District, where Vance encouraged those in attendance to make sure a Republican is elected. 

“We’re rooting for any good Republican in this seat,” Vance said, adding that he was stepping into the role of “JD Vance, prophet” to say that any Democrat who promised to care about the people of Missouri would be pretending.

“In reality he’s going to get there and fight for Nancy Pelosi, because that’s what Congressional Democrats do,” Vance said.

Kehoe, who spoke before Vance, praised the “unbelievable congressional team” that represents Missouri’s values. Six of Missouri’s eight U.S. representatives are Republicans. 

“We now have the Missouri 1st map that gives us a chance at seven,” Kehoe said. The state’s redistricting efforts targeted Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s seat. 

Vance continued to criticize Democrats as he talked about a program he heads that focuses on prosecuting people who commit fraud in government programs. He said Democrats only “get fired up” about “illegal aliens,” open borders and higher taxes. 

“I’m asking you to vote against Democrats because they don’t know who they fight for, or if they do know, they’re fighting for illegal aliens and they’re fighting for fraudsters,” Vance said. 

Dennis Slupski, who worked in manufacturing for 10 years and then as a teacher for 25 years, said he agreed with what Republican leaders said at the event, especially about bringing manufacturing back to the United States. 

The Kansas City, Kansas, man said he grew up in Ohio, known for its steel industry. 

“We had presidents and politicians that shipped our industry out of the country,” he said. The United States thrived as a manufacturing country during World War II, and it’s important to bring companies back to the country, Slupski said. 

TOPEKA — Kansas Insurance Commissioner and Republican gubernatorial candidate Vicki Schmidt chose Monday to name the president of Kansas Farm Bureau as her lieutenant governor running mate, less than three months before the pivotal August primary election.

Schmidt, a former state senator from Topeka in her second term as insurance commissioner, decided to partner with Joe Newland, a former state representative who has served as KFB’s president since 2022. His role with the agriculture organization has been to advocate for farmers and ranchers at the state and national levels.

He represented from 2019 to 2022 a southeast Kansas House district comprised of Greenwood, Elk, Woodson and Wilson counties.

Newland resides in Neodesha and operates a farm with 4,000 acres of soybeans, corn, wheat and hay, along with a cow-calf operation of more than 400 head.

“He understands the challenges Kansans face every day — tirelessly fighting to protect our land, water and way of life,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt, a pharmacist by profession, said Newland was recognized as a trusted leader in rural Kansas.

“So many Kansans have seen firsthand the humble and honest leadership Joe brings to the table,” she said. “He isn’t afraid of hard work and he knows how to get his boots dirty.”

Newland, who was the GOP’s vice chair on the House agriculture budget committee, said he was excited to be part of Schmidt’s ticket. He said he looked forward to speaking with voters about how to advance “common sense solutions that will actually lower costs, streamline operations and get government out of the way.”

Newland plans to leave the presidency of the Kansas Farm Bureau when he formally files for office with Schmidt at the June 1 deadline.

If successful in the August primary and November general election, Newland would serve as lieutenant governor and as secretary of the Kansas Department of Agriculture.

It wouldn’t be an unprecedented role, given that Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s lieutenant governor, David Toland, also serves as as secretary of the Kansas Department of Commerce.

“Vicki and I share a love for Kansas and a passion for service,” Newland said. “It’s clear to me, like so many other Republicans across Kansas, she is the best choice to be our next governor.”

The field of GOP candidates for governor includes Schmidt, former Gov. Jeff Colyer, Secretary of State Scott Schwab, Senate President Ty Masterson, businessman Philip Sarnecki as well as Joy Eakins, Charlotte O’Hara and Stacey Rogers.

When the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Texas’ gerrymandered congressional map to take effect in December, its conservative majority wrote that a lower court had “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign” when it blocked the map more than three months before the election.

Now, the Supreme Court is the one upending elections.

For the past two decades, the Supreme Court has advanced the idea that federal courts should not order major changes close to an election to limit voter confusion. Over time the doctrine, first articulated in the 2006 case Purcell vs. Gonzalez, became known as the Purcell principle. 

But election law experts and one of the court’s liberal justices say the Supreme Court is wielding — or disregarding — the principle unevenly in ways that aid Republicans.

In recent weeks, the Supreme Court has effectively allowed last-minute election changes in Southern states that hold major consequences for what districts voters are assigned to and the future of Black political representation across the region.

These Republican-controlled states are racing to redraw congressional maps to eliminate majority-Black districts, many of which have elected Black Democrats to Congress. The gerrymandering rush has come even with early voting underway in some states.

Wilfred Codrington III, a professor of law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, who has studied the Purcell principle, said limiting voter confusion is common sense. But after that general idea,  the principle “just falls apart” because the Supreme Court has never answered questions raised by the doctrine — like how close to an election is too close.

“The court has not thought through them and it seems like when the court applies them, they’re being applied in partisan ways,” Codrington said, about questions the doctrine raises.

After the high court gutted the federal Voting Rights Act in Callais, a landmark decision on April 29 that found Louisiana’s map unconstitutional, it fast-tracked paperwork so the state could quickly redraw district lines. 

Voting had begun in the state’s congressional primary election, which Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended, discarding 42,000 votes already cast.

A majority of the court voted to immediately certify its decision instead of observing its typical 32-day waiting period. In a blistering dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the justices were disregarding their previous insistence that courts shouldn’t risk assuming political responsibility for a redistricting process that often produces hard feelings.

“There is also the so-called Purcell principle, which we invoked only five months ago to chide a federal district court for ‘improperly insert[ing] itself into an active primary campaign,’” Jackson wrote. “The Court unshackles itself from both constraints today and dives into the fray. And just like that, those principles give way to power.”

The conservative justices on May 11 then cleared a path for Alabama to move toward implementing a Republican gerrymander that state lawmakers approved in 2023 but was blocked by a lower court. Their decision came a little more than a week before the state’s primary election. 

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has called an August special primary election for some of the state’s congressional districts.

“The United States Supreme Court’s decision is plain common sense and enables our values to be best represented in Congress,” Ivey said in a statement.

The Supreme Court’s actions this spring stand in stark contrast to its December decision to allow Texas’ gerrymander to take effect. After President Donald Trump urged GOP states to redraw their maps for partisan advantage, Texas was the first state to respond, enacting new lines that could help Republicans pick up five seats.

A three-judge district court panel ruled against the map, finding that it was racially gerrymandered. The Supreme Court paused the panel’s decision, finding that the panel likely made serious errors and that the district court was “causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections” amid the campaign season.

That language echoed the Purcell decision, which found that an appeals court had erred in blocking an Arizona law requiring a photo ID to register to vote. The Supreme Court’s unsigned opinion cautioned that court orders affecting elections can cause voter confusion. 

“As an election draws closer, that risk will increase,” the 2006 opinion said.

Nearly 20 years later, the Supreme Court made no mention of Purcell in its Callais opinion, which dropped like a political bomb across the South. Since the decision, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Tennessee have either enacted new maps or are seeking to do so ahead of the November midterm elections.

Mark Johnson, a Kansas City-based lawyer with a long history of working on election litigation, noted that Callais was argued at the Supreme Court twice, first in March 2025 and again in October. The justices then waited a long time before releasing their decision, he said, adding that if they didn’t realize the implications of their ruling they were “asleep at the wheel.”

“That’s why the Callais case is so disturbing, because a Supreme Court that has by and large followed Purcell just acted like it doesn’t exist,” Johnson said.

Several high-profile observers of the Supreme Court have been unsparing in their criticism of the justices’ approach. 

Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and a foremost expert on the court, wrote in an online post that the court’s recent decisions “fatally undermine” the animating purpose of the Purcell principle.

“The Court’s own interventions are now wreaking havoc—and a majority of the justices either don’t think it’s their fault, or don’t care that it is. Either way, they don’t seem to mind the inconsistency—in a context in which it’s having the remarkably coincidental effect of benefiting Republicans,” Vladeck wrote.

Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA School of Law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, wrote on social media that the Supreme Court in Chief Justice John Roberts’ hands “has become a chaos agent in elections.”

Public support for the Supreme Court was dropping prior to Callais. An August 2025 Pew Research Center survey found 48% of Americans hold a favorable view of the court, a 22-percentage point drop from August 2020.

In the wake of the decision, Democrats have renewed their calls for court reform. Some have proposed term limits for the justices or expanding the size of the court to dilute its conservative majority. However, major changes are unlikely to become law while the U.S. Senate retains the filibuster and Trump remains in office.

For his part, Roberts has taken pains to paint the court as outside of politics. But at a judicial conference in Pennsylvania in early May, Roberts acknowledged the public thinks the justices are expressing policy preferences rather than interpreting the law.

“I think they view us as purely political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do,” Roberts said, according to The Associated Press.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, another of the court’s conservatives, has drawn a distinction between federal courts ordering last-minute changes to elections and states making changes themselves — suggesting that courts shouldn’t necessarily thwart state legislatures that alter rules and procedures in the run-up to elections.

In a 2020 concurring opinion about a federal judge who had altered Wisconsin’s absentee ballot deadline amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Kavanaugh wrote that it was one thing for state legislatures to change their own election rules “in the late innings” and bear responsibility for unintended consequences.

“It is quite another thing for a federal district court to swoop in and alter carefully considered and democratically enacted state election rules when an election is imminent,” Kavanaugh wrote.

But voting rights advocates say Callais is unleashing a wave of voter confusion as Southern legislatures rush to gerrymander.

Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a map May 7 that divides the Memphis area among three congressional districts. The move splits a majority-Black district in Memphis represented by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a white Democrat. Cohen announced Friday he wouldn’t seek reelection.

The state’s primary election is scheduled for Aug. 6.

“This is a year where we’re already in the cycle and they’re going to have to redo everything they’ve already worked on because these districts are completely different,” Matia Powell, executive director of the voting rights group Civic TN, told reporters.

The Tennessee Democratic Party and several Democratic candidates, including state Rep. Justin Pearson, who is running for Cohen’s current seat, have filed a federal lawsuit against the map. They argue the new map will cause “significant voter confusion” and severely burden the right to vote.

Tennessee Republican Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti argues the Democrats have a solution in search of a problem. Tennessee lawmakers have provided more than $3.1 million to implement the new map and that state officials are already working to meet election deadlines, Skrmetti’s office wrote in a Wednesday court filing.

“At bottom, this suit is an invitation to play politics, not law,” Tennessee Senior Assistant Attorney General Zachary Barker wrote in the filing.

U.S. District Court Judge William Campbell, a Trump appointee, on Thursday declined to immediately halt the map.

The Supreme Court has sent states the message that “there are no rules” and that state legislatures are welcome to gerrymander Black representation at any point, said Anna Baldwin, voting rights litigation director at Campaign Legal Center, which has sued over Florida’s recent gerrymander.

And the way the court applies the Purcell principle encourages states to make changes close to elections — because courts are more reluctant to block them.

“The court is creating a perverse incentive structure that ultimately does make it harder for people who are trying to protect voting rights to prevail,” Baldwin said.

TOPEKA — Retired Air Force Col. Chris Carmichael believes he can defeat Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Estes in the 4th District congressional race, even though the incumbent won the seat by a 30-point margin two years ago.

A Democrat hasn’t represented the Wichita-area district since Dan Glickman lost his reelection bid in 1994.

But Carmichael, an Andover Democrat who hopes his 31-year military career will win over “middle ground voters,” said this year is different because of voters’ disapproval of President Donald Trump.

And voters are wary of Estes’ “blind devotion” to Trump, Carmichael said on the Kansas Reflector podcast.

“You really need the perfect storm, to be straight up and honest with you. We are in a situation right now where they’re predicting a blue wave. There are so many things that are happening in the D.C. administration right now that Estes is supporting, from the war in Iran to tariffs,” Carmichael said.

“Kansans are intelligent voters,” he added. “They know what’s happening. They see what’s happening, and it’s not necessarily, for the majority, the preponderance of voters, a D or an R situation.”

Before he can take on Estes, Carmichael will face an unusually competitive field for the Democratic nomination.

Democrats Katy Tyndell, an oil and gas attorney, and Ryan Gilbert, a family law business manager, have filed with the Secretary of State’s Office for the 4th District race. Republican Frank McCollum, of Fall River, also has filed. The deadline to run is June 1.

Carmichael said he considers Tyndell a friend, the other Democrats in the race are “fighting the good fight,” and there isn’t much space between them on policy. The distinguishing factor, he said, is his leadership experience in the military and as the vice president of D-J Engineering, an aerospace company based in Augusta.

“We have to beat Ron Estes,” he said. “And in order to beat Ron Estes, we have to put our best foot forward as a Democratic Party.”

Carmichael said he grew up on the outskirts of Cleveland, where he started off working in construction and had “a rough go trying to make ends meet.”

He said he enlisted as a private in the Army, where he served for seven years, as a path to a college education. He earned a theater degree from Florida State University. Then, in what he described as “not exactly your normal military path,” he joined the Air Force because “it really fit my personality.”

In his 24 years with the Air Force, he served as a logistics officer — mostly “supply chain work and aerial port work, basically running an airport — passengers and cargo movement on aircraft.” That included 2.5 years in Afghanistan. He closed his military career from 2015 to 2019 at U.S. Central Command Headquarters, where he was the logistics lead for developing the Iran war plan.

“Now we’re in an unnecessary war in Iran,” he said. “We could have told you, don’t start a war with Iran, based on our war plan experience. And here, that’s exactly what happened.”

After he retired from the military, Carmichael said, he had to choose between job offers in Florida and Kansas.

“Frankly,” he said, “it’s no contest. Kansas wins every time. Florida’s definitely got its problems. It’s too hot, too much traffic, too many tourists.”

He said the family-like culture at D-J Engineering, which appealed to his Midwest values, was a deciding factor.

“Kansas is solid Midwest identity, and that’s where I grew up. That’s who I am,” he said. “I go into the stores in town and people say, ‘Hi.’ People talk to you. People are kind.”

Carmichael said he never had thought about running for public office before Trump returned to the White House last year. He grew frustrated with Estes voting for Trump’s agenda “without deviating for what’s right for Kansas.” The president’s tariffs, Carmichael said, were especially harmful to farmers’ supply chains.

“We’ve got piles next to our grain elevator of soybeans that are just rotting, and it’s because of the tariffs,” Carmichael said.

Carmichael described Trump’s handling of the Iran war as “amateur hour.”

He said military planners would have advised the president not to start the war. Iran now controls the Straight of Hormuz, gas prices have skyrocketed, and Iran’s leadership has been replaced with more hard-liners.

“It’s a lose, lose, lose situation, and we’re paying for it as an American consumer,” Carmichael said.

He said he favors the federal legalization of marijuana to create jobs and tax revenue. He said rural hospitals were already struggling before Republicans in Congress slashed billions from Medicaid spending. He said he’s “all for a strong border” and controlled immigration, but that Congress need to provide a faster track for workers to get a visa and apply for citizenship.

As for abortion rights, he said he won’t “be in that doctor’s office with that woman making the decision for her as a politician.”

“I was a part of the decision for my children being born, and there is no way in heck I’m ever not going to let my children be born,” Carmichael said. “I’m going to fight for their lives. But I understand the need, if a 12-year-old girl gets raped by her father, to not destroy that 12-year-old girl’s life.”

TOPEKA — When reporters at a Kansas newspaper heard about the gruesome death of a local 13-year-old boy in December, one tried to get the court records that could establish an official account of how the boy died.

A Linn County News reporter asked a court clerk to hand over the documents that alleged a man dumped the boy’s body in a Missouri creek after the man’s dog killed the boy. The Linn County clerk said the records didn’t exist.

Kansas legislators in 2025 passed a law requiring courts across the state to keep criminal case files secret until someone is arrested or an arrest warrant is denied. The newspaper’s publisher, Walker Publishing, filed a lawsuit Thursday against three judicial branch officials, arguing they violated the First Amendment by denying the existence of case records and eschewing public access to the judicial system.

“When a criminal complaint is withheld from the public, it leaves the public unaware that a charge has been filed and that state power has been invoked,” the lawsuit said.

It said court clerks created a “legal fiction” when they repeatedly denied reporters’ access.

Damon Leonard, the Pleasanton man accused of dumping the boy’s body, hadn’t been arrested by the time reporters got wind of the story. Law enforcement in Kansas and Missouri had warrants out for his arrest. Court records in Bates County, Missouri, detail the coordination between law enforcement agencies in both states. When Bates County Sheriff’s Office deputies found Leonard, he told them he knew where to find Airen Andula, the missing 13-year-old from Pleasanton.

Leonard drove deputies to a creek in a rural part of the county, according to Deputy Sheriff Amy Fishbaugh’s probable cause affidavit. Deputies found the boy’s body down a large ravine, at the bottom of the creek, and Leonard admitted he put him there, the affidavit said.

But in Linn County, reporter Barbara Proffitt was trying to obtain details about law enforcement actions in Kansas. The record was blank.

Felony charges against Leonard still do not appear in Kansas courts’ public access system as of Friday afternoon. Leonard, 47, is being held on a $50,000 bond in the Bates County jail, where he was charged with abandonment of a corpse Dec. 22.

He hasn’t been arrested in Kansas, so the official record of allegations against him remains chimerical.

Senate Bill 204, which changed state law to require criminal cases be sealed until an arrest warrant is resolved, passed both chambers of the Republican-led Kansas Legislature without opposition, and Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly signed it on April 25, 2025. It went into effect on July 1 of that year.

It sailed through the session with little pushback or discussion of the implications on the public’s right to know. Proponents said allowing criminal case information to be issued before a defendant is arrested posed a safety risk.

Johnson County District Attorney Stephen Howe told House and Senate committees the practice puts victims of violence, law enforcement and the public at risk. Kansas courts began making adult criminal case records readily available online in 2019, when the judicial branch switched systems.

Howe said the publication of a criminal complaint or information related to an arrest warrant allows “the offender to have the ability to intimidate, hurt, or kill victims prior to their arrest” and gives an offender “notice of the case and the warrant prior to their arrest.”

“It also places the public at risk from individuals who will flee from the police because of the warrant, which results in many traffic fatalities throughout the state,” Howe wrote in testimony.

Shane Rolf, executive vice president of the Kansas Bail Agents Association, questioned the need for automatically sealing cases without specific reasons from a court.

“Other states are completely transparent on this issue and it does not appear to have impacted public safety,” Rolf wrote in testimony to the House Judiciary Committee.

Walker Publishing is asking the Linn County District Court to put the law on pause, preventing courts from automatically sealing records until the lawsuit is resolved. It also asks the court to ultimately find the law unconstitutional and award attorney fees.

TOPEKA — Democratic governor candidate Ethan Corson reached into the Kansas political playbook to reprise the guilt-by-association strategy of attacking Republican candidates by linking them to historically unpopular former Gov. Sam Brownback.

In a flashback to messaging popularized during successful 2018 and 2022 campaigns by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, Corson has bombarded social media with anti-Brownback rhetoric. His quest is to remind voters of links between between Brownback and 2026 GOP candidates for governor.

Senate President Ty Masterson, Secretary of State Scott Schwab, Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt and former Gov. Jeff Colyer all endorsed Brownback’s signature tax policy. They got behind Brownback’s highly unpopular 2012 income tax cuts that favored the wealthy, cratered the budget, led to heavy borrowing, and forced cuts to education, transportation and social programs until repealed five years later.

Polling in 2015 and 2016 ranked Brownback as the nation’s least-popular governor. He was saddled with a morbid approval rating of 26%.

“My extreme-right opponents want Kansans to forget about Sam Brownback’s failed policies when they go to the polls. I’m not gonna let it happen,” promised Corson, the Democratic state senator endorsed by Kelly.

Sen. Cindy Holscher, who also seeks the Democratic nomination for governor, has rarely missed opportunities to bash the “disastrous Brownback experiment” that she contended didn’t live up to GOP hype. She gave that speech on the Senate floor and during the campaign. When Holscher introduced her running mate, Wichita Rep. KC Ohaebosim, she noted both of them voted in 2017 with a bipartisan supermajority to repeal the Brownback tax program.

Despite back-to-back election wins by Kelly, it’s unclear whether the tactic of relentlessly labeling Republicans as Brownback acolytes could clear a path for another Democrat in 2026.

It’s been 14 years since Brownback sat at a desk May 22, 2012, to sign House Bill 2117, which slashed individual income tax rates and exempted more than 300,000 businesses from the state income tax. It’s been eight years since Brownback resigned as governor to take a job in the administration of President Donald Trump.

Several targets of the latest partisan bludgeoning of Brownback’s legacy said they were surprised Democrats thought the punchline still connected with voters.

Schwab, who voted as a member of the House for the Brownback tax package and against its repeal, said Democratic candidates must be stuck in a time warp.

“Do the Democrats not realize what year it is?” Schwab said. “Do they think (Barack) Obama is still president? Focusing on 2012 is foolish. Kansans want property tax relief.”

Masterson, the Andover senator who voted for the 2012 bill and against the 2017 repeal, had a similar reaction. He said Holscher and Corson kept referring to “ancient history because they need to hide their own extremist positions.”

“The simple truth is they want to raise taxes, allow men in girls sports and let criminal illegals roam free in our streets,” Masterson said.

Schmidt, who voted for the bill but joined the majority to repeal it, said there was no doubt Brownback’s tax agenda was a disaster. She said it deprive the state of sufficient revenue to function.

“The experiment failed, and we all paid the price for that,” she said. “I helped turn things around, and it has taken years to recover from the Brownback tax experience. I’m not willing to go back to when we couldn’t fund education and social services. But there is room for property tax reform.”

Colyer served seven years as Brownback’s lieutenant governor before sworn into office as the state’s 47th governor. He took the job in 2018 after Brownback quit to become Trump’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. In August of that year, Colyer narrowly lost the GOP primary to then-Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who had Trump’s endorsement.

Colyer didn’t run for governor in 2022 due to health issues, but he returned to the political arena as Kelly prepared to depart after two terms as governor.

His campaign didn’t answer requests for comment about how Colyer responded to inquiries from voters about his deep connection to Brownback.

During a recent campaign appearance in Cowley County, Colyer did talk about the zeal with which Democrats denounced Brownback and those connected to him.

“Here’s the thing, whoever the Republican nominee is, they’re going to go after them,” Colyer said. “They’re going to say, ‘What kind of governor are you going to be?’ They’re going to go, just like they did with Vicki Schmidt, like they did with Ty (Masterson), like they’ve done with Scott Schwab, like they’ve done with everybody, they’ll say, ‘Oh, you’re just going to be just like Brownback.'”

Colyer said that if elected governor in November he would dedicate himself to working with the GOP-led Legislature to change state government.

“There are lots of great candidates that are out there,” Colyer said. “They’re all my friends. I’ve known them all, and they’re good people. Any one of them would be better than the Democrat.”

Bob Beatty, a political science professor at Washburn University, said the unchallenged fact was that Brownback found himself held in the lowest regard among Kansas governors since such polling was initiated. He was able to win reelection in 2014 but did so with 97,000 fewer votes than in 2010. He won in 2014 by a margin of 3.7 percentage points after taking the 2010 race by 31%.

“It was a very difficult time for Brownback. He was able to win reelection, but things went really south after that,” Beatty said.

He said 2014 Democratic nominee Paul Davis pounded Brownback with negative advertising. Then-Sen. Laura Kelly continued to target Brownback’s record even though her GOP opponent was Kobach in 2018 and then-Attorney General Derek Schmidt in 2022.

“You do wonder: Is there a shelf life to this? There’s no expiration date, yet,” Beatty said.

He said there was a reservoir of Kansas voters who never abandoned Brownback and would have no difficulty voting for Republicans supportive of Brownback’s tax legislation.

“Jeff Colyer is the most vulnerable to the Brownback association,” Beatty said. “What Colyer has to do is figure out a way to counter that, and he very well may counteract that effectively.”

Kansas legislators are doing something deserving of recognition.

They are working carefully to improve the state’s K–12 funding formula. Specifically, they are focusing on how we support students who receive special education services. This is not easy work. It calls for diligent study, difficult conversations about costs and outcomes, and a willingness to adjust long-standing systems. But it is exactly the kind of work Kansas students need now.

For years, educators and families have pointed to gaps between what special education services cost and what districts receive in funding. Those gaps don’t just exist on spreadsheets: They show up in classrooms, staffing decisions and ultimately in the experiences of students who rely on individualized support to succeed.

When funding falls short or is unclear, districts are forced to make difficult trade-offs that can dilute services for the very students the system is meant to serve.

What is encouraging about the current legislative effort is that it appears grounded in research and data. Lawmakers are not operating on anecdotes alone. They are examining cost studies, enrollment trends, service delivery models and the real fiscal pressures districts face. That matters. Good policy begins with a clear understanding of the problem and an honest assessment of whether current structures match today’s realities.

But improving the formula is not only about adding dollars. It is about aligning incentives and upholding transparency. We must also build a system that adapts as students’ needs evolve. Special education is not static; it covers services from early interventions to intensive supports. A modernized funding approach must acknowledge this complexity. It also needs to be understandable for taxpayers and sustainable for the state.

The timing could not be more critical.

National education policy is shifting, giving states greater decision-making authority. Federal support is still critical, especially for students with disabilities, but states must now lead in designing systems customized for their needs.

For Kansas, this affords both an opportunity and a responsibility.

With greater control comes greater responsibility. If states are given more flexibility, the expectation will be clear: Use it wisely. That means building funding systems that are equitable, evidence-based and focused on student outcomes rather than just inputs. It means making sure that every tax dollar works as hard as possible to support learning, particularly for students who need additional resources.

Getting special education funding right is critical to this effort. When we design systems that support students with broad needs, we strengthen education for all. We help teachers do their best work. We give districts the stability to plan and innovate. Most importantly, we ensure students are not limited by the services they need. Instead, they are empowered by the support they receive.

There is a broader economic reality at play. Kansas, like many states, wants a strong workforce and economy. That goal starts in our schools. Students who get the right support are more likely to graduate. They are also more likely to pursue postsecondary opportunities and contribute to their communities.

Research from the National Center for Learning Disabilities and the U.S. Department of Education consistently shows that students with disabilities who have access to appropriate services and early interventions experience higher graduation rates and improved postsecondary outcomes, including employment and continued education. Investing in special education is not simply an ethical obligation. It is also an economic one.

At Aligned, we have long advocated policies connecting education outcomes to workforce readiness and economic growth. We believe strong data, clear accountability and thoughtful investment are key to a system that works. The legislative requirement to update the funding formula, grounded in research and a commitment to improvement, is a step in the right direction.

But the work is not done when a bill passes.

Implementation will matter. Continuous assessment will also matter. We must commit to regular evaluation, implement adaptively and remain receptive to modification as we learn what works and what doesn’t work. This will make the biggest difference.

Kansas has an opportunity to lead. By getting this right, we can create a funding model that not only achieves today’s needs but is resilient enough to meet tomorrow’s challenges. In a time of shifting federal roles, that leadership is never optional; it is essential.

Moving ahead entails collaboration, discipline, and commitment to students. Legislators are taking an important step. Now, we must continue with urgency and focus.

When it comes to our students, and especially those who depend on specialized support, getting it right is not just important.

It’s imperative, and the time to respond is now.

Torree Pederson is president and CEO of Aligned, a nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of business leaders committed to improving education and workforce systems across Kansas and Missouri. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

The fiscal leaders of several states are demanding transparency and consumer fairness as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to refund billions in international tariffs following a recent Supreme Court loss. 

In a February decision, the high court dealt a blow to the president’s trade agenda, ruling by a 6-3 margin that the tariffs he issued under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act were illegal.

Last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection began accepting applications from importers and brokers who are owed an estimated $166 billion in import tax refunds. While companies are receiving those refunds, it appears that many don’t intend to share those funds with consumers, who paid for much of the tariffs through higher prices. 

“We’re the ones who paid it. We’re the ones that need to get it back, and so any system that doesn’t get it to the little guy doesn’t get it to the right place,” Minnesota State Auditor Julie Blaha said on a press call Wednesday.

She was among eight Democratic state fiscal leaders who urged the White House to publicly disclose which firms are receiving tariff refunds and to ensure consumers are not left out.

Blaha said government agencies are well equipped for that task, noting the public websites set up during the coronavirus pandemic that disclosed which companies received pandemic grants and loans. There is currently no public database of tariff refund requests or agency determinations.  

“We’re not asking the federal government to do anything they don’t ask of states and local entities or nonprofits to do when they are using some of their funds,” she said. “We know how to do this kind of oversight.”

Blaha said transparency is particularly important since the White House is opposed to repaying the tariffs in the first place. The president has said his administration would “fight” the refund effort, though reports indicate more than $35 billion has already been sent to companies. 

Illinois State Treasurer Mike Frerichs said American consumers are suffering from high prices as the president and his inner circle enrich themselves. 

“No one trusts the federal government anymore,” he said. “They feel like the deck is stacked against them, and this example just adds further proof to their beliefs.”

State leaders estimated the tariffs cost Illinois consumers nearly $9 billion. But the current process does not ensure that those funds will be returned to consumers. 

“Trump’s system is opaque by design, with no guarantee of the $9 billion owed to Illinois families and businesses returning home,” Frerichs said Wednesday. “…Millions of Americans and businesses deserve every penny back.”

The president blasted conservative Supreme Court justices who nixed his tariffs, saying their decision earlier this year was a “disgrace to our nation” as well as “unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.”

He has remained committed to tariffs on foreign imports, believing that they will incentivize manufacturers to build products in the United States rather than overseas. 

After the Supreme Court loss, Trump ordered a 10% global tariff, which has also been challenged in court. Last week, the U.S. Court of International Trade granted a permanent injunction to a Florida-based toy manufacturer and a New York-based spice importer that sued the Trump administration over those tariffs. 

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

Today the Trump administration is hosting an all-day prayer festival on the National Mall, partially funded with millions in taxpayer dollars, to “rededicate” America to God — and to promote Christian nationalism.

It’s all part of America’s 250th birthday celebration, which has been co-opted by the current administration and its minions to convey an overtly partisan message. That message seeks to fabricate an American founding that never was in order to justify an imperial presidency that was never intended.

“It will feature mostly evangelical Protestant leaders and members of the Trump administration,” reported the Washington Post, “many of whom have embraced the message that America’s founders wanted the country to be explicitly Christian.”

The event — called a “jubilee” by organizers — marks the collapse of what remained of the Constitutional firewall between church and state, a concept first articulated by the most famous of founders, Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, ratified July 4, 1776. It is America’s founding document and includes the immortal line, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Jefferson’s thinking was influenced by British philosopher John Locke, who argued for government by consent of the governed. His writing was informed by George Mason of Virginia, who earlier advanced similar ideas about equality, but without Jefferson’s literary power.

The separation of church and state was formalized by the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which is just 45 words long but enumerates our rights concerning religion, speech, assembly and the press, and our right to petition for a redress of grievances.

In an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, Jefferson described a “wall of separation” between matters of government and those of religion. This separation was codified over generations of American jurists to prohibit the government from either promoting or inhibiting a religion. But that longstanding separation of church and state is being dismantled by the Supreme Court of Chief Justice John Roberts, resulting in events like today’s celebration of Christian nationalism.

The event features MAGA acolytes such as U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and House Speaker Mike Johnson. Hegseth, the architect of the Iran war, has portrayed the conflict in religious terms and has prayed for God’s blessing to kill “the enemies of righteousness.” Johnson, an evangelical Louisiana Republican, has marshalled Congressional cover for Trump’s misdeeds, including the destruction of the East Wing of the White House to build a $1 billion, likely public-funded ballroom with a Hitlerian bunker beneath.

Paula White-Cain, a senior faith adviser to the White House, said in an April webinar that today’s jubilee would focus on a Christian community of believers and would not include individuals “praying to all these different Gods.”

Or, presumably, praying to no gods.

Atheists, agnostics and tree-huggers need not apply.

In Trump’s America, on the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, the message is, be our type of evangelical political Christian or get out of the way. That message might have grated on Jefferson, who treated his religion as a private matter and who once used a razor blade to cut the words of Jesus from the New Testament and arranged them into a new book, free of the miraculous or the supernatural. In his time, Jefferson was accused of being both an atheist and an agnostic.

But what Jefferson was — despite being a hypocrite for his advocacy of freedom and his status as an enslaver — was a child of the Enlightenment. The American experiment in democracy might be a miracle, wrought not by God but by the power of the rational in service to the good. As miracles go it was an imperfect one, as embodied by Jefferson’s own duality, and incarnated in Abraham Lincoln and passed on to us.

The notion that some of us, by accident of birth or choice or rejection of religion, are somehow lesser Americans is a great regressive lie that threatens the fabric of our democracy. The descendants of slaves must have as much power at the ballot box as the progeny of the enslavers, or we perpetuate America’s original sin. Children born here to Somali immigrants who sought refuge from civil war must be recognized as American, just as are the sons and daughters of our neighbors across the street, or we deny the promise of the great nation we might one day become.

In “Our Ancient Faith,” a 2024 book by historian Allen C. Guelzo on Lincoln and the American experiment, the author cites three tools by which democracies defend themselves.

“The first is to understand all the legal participants in a state as citizens,” Guelzo writes, “possessing equal standing and access to political life — the right to vote, to hold office, to hold leaders accountable, to form political associations that shape policies, to be represented.”

The second tool is elections, in which every office holder knows that accountability is inevitable. The third are forums for discussion and association, with the press being the leading example.

“Democracies that use their tools well accomplish many great things,” according to Guelzo. But the deft handling of these tools relies on something, he said, the ancients called “virtue,” the agreed-upon rules and norms that shape a society and keep it from sliding into chaos.

All three tools of democracy are being blunted by the Trump administration. He has attacked birthright citizenship,  has fomented distrust of elections and has consistently described the press as the “enemies of the people.” The idea of any kind of civic virtue in this administration has gone the way of decorum at the White House, where a UFC cage match is scheduled for June 14 on the South Lawn as part of the “Freedom 250” celebration. The date is also Trump’s 80th birthday.

As we have spiraled deeper into a national nightmare of senseless war, wealth inequality and stunning corruption, I have been searching our history like Jefferson did with the New Testament, attempting to razor virtue from chaos. What I’ve been after is an accounting of the civic soul of America, something I’ve sometimes glimpsed, on a rainy afternoon in a federal courtroom in Wichita or at the oldest working courthouse in Kansas.

Today’s “jubilee” on the National Mall is the kind of chaotic dreck that endangers democracy. Because the dreck is going to get deeper the nearer we get to July 4 — and I’m using the word “dreck” here because the actual word I’m thinking is unsuitable for publication — I’ve resolved to avoid all the administration-approved 250th anniversary celebrations.

I’ll celebrate when there is an actual reason to celebrate.

And when everybody is invited to the party.

Meanwhile, I’m going to keep looking for civic virtue in the corners accessible to me. Another way of saying it is that I’m seeking virtue in my own backyard, and my backyard is Kansas.

Kansas is not a populous state (we rank 35th, with nearly three million residents) but you can’t sling a metaphor without hitting something of interest. My interests have ranged broadly, as documented in more than 200 of these pieces for Kansas Reflector, but those that linger in my memory are those about people trying to make Kansas a better place for us all. It’s the story of a Coffeyville newspaper exposing the Ku Klux Klan in 1922 or Topeka residents gathering in 2025 for a candlelight vigil after the murder of a 5-year-old girl.

What we fight for defines us.

As Independence Day approaches, my thoughts increasingly turn to Jefferson and his chief rival, John Adams. Both were among the 56 signers of the Declaration, and both became presidents of the United States, Adams in 1797 and Jefferson in 1801.

Adams helped Jefferson draft the Constitution and became its chief advocate in the continental congress. Unlike Jefferson, who was a Virginia planter, Adams was a Massachusetts lawyer and activist and had never owned slaves. While Jefferson was over 6 feet in height and possessed an almost preternatural charm, Adams was short and neurotic, and he relied on his wife, Abigail, as his closest adviser.

The friendship of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams unraveled over differences about an undeclared war, immigration and naturalization, and the role of the federal government. They faced off in the presidential election of 1800. Adams was the incumbent, but lost to Jefferson. The election was nasty, polarizing, and a crisis of the first order, taking the House of Representatives 36 votes to break an electoral tie over whether Jefferson or his running mate, Aaron Burr, would be vice-president.

The men did not reconcile until the death of Abigail Adams in 1804, when Jefferson wrote his old-friend a heartfelt letter of condolence.  By coincidence or by providence, both men died on July 4, 1826. Jefferson was 83 and Adams, 90.

As recounted by historian David McCullough in his 2001 biography of John Adams, the old rival Jefferson was true to his character to the last. Not long before his death he composed a letter to the mayor of Washington, D.C., declining because of health an invitation to attend a July 4th celebration of the nation’s founding, 50 years earlier.

McCullough describes it as a “farewell public offering and one of his most eloquent,” and it was reprinted across the country.

“May it be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all),” Jefferson wrote of the celebration, “the signal to arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.”

All eyes had been opened to the rights of man, Jefferson continued.

“The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs,” he wrote, “nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them, by the grace of god, these are the grounds for the hope for others; for ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh the recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”

Even in his final thoughts, McCullough notes, Jefferson was borrowing, because the reference to saddles came from a 17th Century British soldier about to be hanged for treason. That Jefferson made no mention of the individuals born enslaved is another example of his peculiar moral blindness.

While July 4th is celebrated as the founding of the country, the date is a “pleasant fiction” that has becomes enshrined in national memory, according to “Signing Their Lives Away,” a 2009 book about the men who signed the Declaration. The authors, Denise Kiernan and Joseph D’Agnese, point out that only the names of congress president John Hancock and his secretary, Charles Thomson, appear on the first printing of the Declaration. It wasn’t until Aug. 2 that most signers affixed their signatures, but July 4th is recognized because that’s the date on the document, and many of the founders, including Benjamin Franklin, did not accurately remember when they signed it.

Even then we had forgotten that the signing of the Declaration was not the work of a single day, but that of a month. The Revolutionary War that followed spanned eight hard years. The U.S. Constitution wasn’t ratified until 1788, and the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments from which our civil liberties flow, was not adopted until 1791.

The work of liberty is not accomplished overnight.

As we approach July 4th, let us celebrate not the glory of a single man, but the promise of the Declaration that might yet be made true. The past is as dead as Adams and Jefferson, the chaotic dreck of the present is mind-numbing, but the future is just now being born in the hearts and minds of a new generation of Americans.

To them we must pass the civic virtues to make America anew — and fulfill the promise of equality in our founding.

Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

When Jacqueline Perez started experiencing symptoms of menopause in her early 50s, the brain fog was so severe, she thought she had early-onset dementia.

Perez, who founded a website dedicated to normalizing aging for women, said she gained more than 30 pounds and struggled with depression for months before she found a health provider who tested her hormone levels and recommended hormone replacement therapy for low estrogen.

That was nearly a decade ago, and in the years since, Perez said the culture around menopause treatment has changed dramatically.

“We still have a long way to go, in my opinion, but I think at least we’re on the path,” she said.

Menopause refers to the time when a woman stops having menstrual periods, which typically occurs between the ages of 45 and 55, according to the National Institute on Aging. The associated changes in hormones can cause hot flashes, night sweats, joint problems, bone density loss, insomnia, mood changes and more.

Lawmakers and advocates alike told Stateline the topic of menopause used to be taboo, but there has been a generational shift in recent years that has led to more legislation in statehouses around the country, providing more access to treatments and preventive care as well as more educational opportunities for healthcare providers.

Claire Gill, founder and president of the National Menopause Foundation, started the nonprofit in 2019 and said over the course of the past seven years, public awareness of the issue and interest from clinicians has noticeably increased.

And in November, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration removed its most severe “black box” warning from hormone replacement therapy for menopause and perimenopause after new research that the presumed risks of cancer, stroke and dementia from its use, once thought to be high, came from a flawed study. In the months since, the demand for the therapy has led to a nationwide shortage of certain products such as the estrogen patch.

Gill said more than 60 pieces of legislation related to menopause have been introduced nationwide this year, and 26 states have enacted a menopause-related law since 2019. There tend to be four categories of the legislation: mandating insurance coverage for treatments, workplace accommodations, awareness campaigns and healthcare provider education.

“They said, ‘Oh my god, I had no idea about any of this.’”

– Rhode Island state Sen. Lori Urso, describing her male colleagues' reaction after a hearing on her legislation

The subject is bipartisan: Lawmakers in liberal-leaning Illinois, Oregon and Washington have approved bills requiring insurance coverage, but so has conservative Louisiana.

Gill said the insurance conversation is especially significant, because bone density tests are only covered in existing laws when a person reaches the age of 65 and is eligible for Medicare. But women lose up to 20% of bone density in the first five years after menopause, which happens at an average age of 52. That’s a big gap that puts a woman at increased risk for fractures.

“I’m excited that we’re taking time and focusing more on the role that estrogen plays from head to toe in women, and not just looking at it as, ‘Oh, women get hot flashes,’” Gill said. “It’s so much more than that, and we can do more to protect our hearts and our brains and all of our organs — and prevent hot flashes.”

In June 2025, Democratic state Sen. Lori Urso sponsored a bill that made Rhode Island the first state to require workplace accommodations, such as a modified work schedule, for menopause and its related conditions. It was added to the same part of employment law about women who are pregnant or nursing.

Urso said she had a challenging time personally with menopause, and she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to continue functioning at the necessary level to keep doing her job. When she introduced her bill in committee last year and detailed why symptoms could make it difficult to work, several of the men who were present at the hearing followed her out of the room, stunned by what they’d heard.

Menopause coverage bills meet mixed fates in state legislatures

“They said, ‘Oh my god, I had no idea about any of this,’” Urso said.

In the year since, Urso has watched a flurry of bills spread to other states. Many of them, including another bill from Urso that’s under consideration this year, would mandate insurance coverage for treatments related to menopause and perimenopause, the years leading up to menopause when some symptoms can start.

Others are proposing bills similar to Urso’s workplace accommodations law, with the aim of instituting more education requirements for doctors, directing health departments to conduct a public awareness campaign, or telling agencies to study the issue and make recommendations.

“I don’t think I invented something, I think I just made it okay, and helped open up a necessary dialogue out there,” Urso said.

Urso’s bill to mandate insurance coverage is still pending in the Rhode Island Legislature, but others have already made it law, including in New Jersey.

Democratic Assemblywoman Heather Simmons said she was looking at legislation in other statehouses around the country and found the insurance mandates to be inconsistent. She decided to draft a version for New Jersey that she wanted to be the most comprehensive bill in the country, covering hormonal, non-hormonal and preventive treatments for perimenopause and menopause on state-regulated insurance plans.

It was signed into law in January, passing alongside another bill that allows healthcare providers to earn continuing education credits for menopause-related topics.

Although Simmons said her healthcare providers are generally very good and her insurance is excellent, she faced an uphill battle when going through menopause. She said she would ask about symptoms and whether they could be related to menopause, and her providers would shrug their shoulders. Not for a lack of caring, she said, but lack of knowledge.

“I’m just so grateful that my generation and the generations that follow me are saying no, we deserve better than that, we can do better than that,” Simmons said. “We’re not afraid to talk about it anymore.”

Simmons’ bill also includes behavioral health services for those diagnosed with depression or other conditions, and counseling for those who don’t have a formal diagnosis. It also covers pelvic floor therapy, and bone health screenings and treatments.

Her next step, she said, is to make sure that insurance carriers can’t deny testosterone prescriptions for women who need it just because it’s an off-label use.

Testosterone was a hormone replacement therapy that Pennsylvania Democratic state Rep. Melissa Shusterman needed to help her feel like herself again.

Shusterman has introduced four bills this session related to perimenopause and menopause, including insurance coverage for preventive  care for hip fractures and a joint government study to review workplace policies for state employees. Four other related bills are pending from other representatives, including one that would mandate Medicaid coverage for menopause treatments.

“All of this is going to help women in the long run, which means mothers are happier, women are happier and partners are happier, and that makes us healthier as a society,” Shusterman said.

Advocates like Gill, who is also CEO of the Bone Health & Osteoporosis Foundation, say their goal is to stay committed to pushing the boulder up the hill when it comes to passing more laws and creating more awareness of this phase of life. Too many women still think they have dementia or cancer before they realize it might be perimenopause, she said.

Gill noted the entire budget for women’s health research under the National Institutes of Health has long been about 10% of its total budget — that includes juvenile and post-menopausal ages. The gap in health research was already wide, she said, and amid cuts to federal agencies and projects under President Donald Trump’s administration, a recent report from the Washington Post showed a 31% decrease in projects funded in 2025 that contained the word “women.”

“There’s always been a need to increase that (budget) … and now we’re cutting the dollars,” Gill said.

“The important thing is that there are both immediate and long-term things that can be done at the local, state and federal level that can bring about not just better quality of life and symptom treatment for women, but also longer-term health benefits for women,” she said.

Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

Cruise ships are convenient floating hotels by which to see far-flung parts of the world — but as an epidemiologist, I know they are also everything an infectious pathogen could want: thousands of strangers packed into enclosed spaces for days or weeks, sharing dining rooms and high-touch surfaces such as elevator buttons and handrails, breathing recirculated air.

Each new port of call where passengers can explore for a few days is an opportunity for germs to embark — and once they do, they encounter a highly efficient setting for hopping from host to host.

The MV Hondius confirmed this well-known fact in April 2026, when an outbreak of Andes hantavirus began aboard the Dutch-flagged expedition vessel carrying 147 passengers and crew from 23 countries.

The Andes virus is one of several species of hantaviruses. It is the only one known to spread from person to person, though it doesn’t do so very efficiently. It is far less contagious than COVID-19 or the measles.

As of May 14, a total of 11 cases, including three deaths, have been reported in the Hondius outbreak.

Outbreaks at sea are one of the oldest problems in public health. From medieval plague quarantines to modern times, they have repeatedly tested the ability to control infectious disease — and have played a key role in shaping the international public health framework in place today.

That interconnected public health system, however, depends on the cooperation of countries around the globe.

The word “quarantine” was first documented in the English language in 1663, in the Oxford English Dictionary, which defined it as a period of 40 days during which people who might spread a contagious disease are kept isolated from the rest of the community.

The first official quarantine, though, came earlier, in 1377, when the Republic of Ragusa — modern-day Dubrovnik, Croatia — ordered ships from plague-affected ports to anchor offshore for 30 days before anyone could disembark. A quarter-century later, Venice extended this period to 40 days — hence the “quarantine” term, which stuck. In 1423, Venice officially opened the world’s first permanent quarantine island, the Lazzaretto Vecchio, specifically to manage the problem of the plague arriving by sea.

The system worked during the medieval era because a single authority usually controlled most harbors. Ships waited because they recognized states’ authority to detain them.

For centuries, maritime quarantine operated on this principle. Harbor officials wielded broad public health powers over incoming vessels. In the 19th century this practice continued in the United States. Cholera ships — a nickname for trans-Atlantic vessels carrying migrants and troops that were breeding grounds for cholera and other diseases — arrived from Europe and the Mediterranean and sat offshore in New York for weeks. At quarantine stations on Ellis Island and ports across the Atlantic seaboard, ships were inspected, passengers isolated and captains overruled by public health officers who had the legal authority to isolate passengers for extended periods.

The system was crude and often brutal. Ships of the medieval period were floating sickrooms with poor conditions: putrid water in the casks, bread full of worms, and passengers packed into pitch-sealed berths with lice in the bedding and the bilge stinking under them. Many people died on board. But the system rested on a foundation of recognized, enforceable authority over the vessel and everyone on it for the purpose of protecting the city from disease.

As maritime trade and travel became increasingly globalized, however, no single port or government could manage outbreaks alone. Also, advances in vaccines, antibiotics and sanitation led many countries to downsize the maritime quarantine systems that had once defined disease control at sea.

This forced quarantine systems to evolve from local harbor control into international frameworks for coordination. The World Health Organization was established in 1948, and the International Health Regulations were created in 1969 to manage disease across borders.

Countries agreed to share information, notify one another of outbreaks and coordinate responses at ports and borders. The responsibility no longer fell on a sole harbormaster, but the system was designed to perform a similar coordinating function across an increasingly interconnected world.

Even within that system, however, cruise ships remain unusually vulnerable outbreak environments. A highly visible example was a COVID-19 outbreak that occurred on the Diamond Princess in 2020. The cruise ship, which was anchored off the coast of Yokohama, Japan, produced weeks of confusion between Japanese authorities, the British cruise operator and a dozen foreign governments as they struggled to coordinate responsibility for the 3,700 passengers and containment measures.

Some analyses later suggested the shipboard quarantine may have amplified transmission. At the time, most observers treated it as a crisis specific to the early chaos of the pandemic.

But the Hondius outbreak suggests the problem runs deeper.

Cruise ships combine dense social mixing, international mobility and fragmented legal authority in ways that continue to challenge modern disease-control systems — even decades after the creation of international public health frameworks designed to coordinate them, and even for diseases like Andes hantavirus that are extremely unlikely to cause a pandemic.

As the cruise industry has grown, it has expanded into more remote and epidemiologically unpredictable environments — expedition voyages to Antarctica, the Amazon, Alaska. Alongside the industry’s ambitions, disease risk has also increased. These trips routinely bring large groups of passengers into contact with wildlife, pathogens and ecosystems they may have little prior exposure to and then seal travelers together for weeks.

Nevertheless, the United States chose in January 2026 to withdraw from the World Health Organization, the primary institution administering the framework designed to coordinate responses when disease crosses the borders that cruise ships cross as a matter of routine.

The Trump administration framed the exiting of international organizations as a means of protecting U.S. sovereignty. In practice, it meant that when the Hondius needed a response, the U.S. participated from outside the systems it had spent decades helping to build.

In the outbreak on the Hondius, the international system still functioned.

The WHO still issued risk assessments and guidance. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control still coordinated the response across Europe. And in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention belatedly issued a health alert to physicians.

What changed is that the U.S. moved from being a central participant in the international public health system to operating more from its edges.

Who can say whether the next big outbreak will come from a disease spread on a cruise ship — or whether the pathogen involved will be one that spreads more efficiently between people than the Andes strain of the hantavirus does.

Whatever its source, outbreak response depends on cooperation between major governments, rapid information sharing and coordinated logistics. When a country as globally connected as the U.S. steps back from those systems, managing international health emergencies becomes slower, more fragmented and more dependent on ad hoc negotiations. Ultimately, this may make the world less safe.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Katrine L. Wallace holds a PhD in epidemiology and also has professional experience in science communication, infectious disease and cancer epidemiology, epidemiological research methods, and biostatistics. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

TOPEKA — A few spaces are exempt from Kansas’ new bathroom law that requires people to use the facilities in government buildings that match their sex assigned at birth, Attorney General Kris Kobach said in an opinion he released Wednesday.

Kobach’s opinion, which carries no legal authority, exempted some government spaces — such as skilled nursing rooms at the Kansas Office of Veterans’ Services — from complying with the bathroom law that went into effect in February.

He issued the opinion in response to an April letter from Justin Whitten, Gov. Laura Kelly’s chief counsel, who asked for clarification on defining “multiple-occupancy private spaces” and “facilities” as written in Senate Bill 244.

“This was a poorly written and ambiguous law, which is why the governor’s office sought an attorney general opinion,” said Olivia Taylor-Puckett, spokeswoman for Kelly. “The AG’s opinion provides new clarity on the more limited scope of SB 244 as inapplicable to places that are more ‘residential in character’ like a cabin or hospital room.”

The bill became law in February after passing through contentious legislative debate, including a veto from Kelly that was overturned. At the time, Kelly questioned vague language in the bill and how it would apply to some state facilities.

The law sets high fines for agencies that fail to comply and smaller fines escalating to class B misdemeanors for those who violate the law. Critics said the law doesn’t specifically address implementation, leaving agencies statewide struggling to determine what to do to comply.

In an April letter, Whitten asked Kobach to render an opinion on whether spaces like hospital rooms, prison cells and bedrooms in public buildings are considered “multiple-occupancy private spaces” under the law.

The letter asked for definition of “facilities,” and whether Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks cabins throughout the state and Kansas Office of Veterans’ Services nursing facility rooms must adhere to the law.

“SB 244 makes no distinction based on a ‘facility’s’ purpose and instead focuses on the existence of a mere possibility of whether an individual may be in a state of undress in front of another individual,” Whitten’s letter said.

Arguments that the hospital is the “facility” rather than the patient room are “untenable,” he said. The hospital building would fit under the law’s definition of a public building, while the room would be the private space, Whitten said.

“If your answer relies on finding an ambiguity in Senate Bill 244 with the term ‘facilities,’ we ask that you work with the Legislature in the 2027 session to clarify this ambiguity,” he said. 

Citing a dictionary definition of “facility” and saying that “in the absence of a contrary definition, words in a statute should be given their ‘ordinary, contemporary, common meaning,’ ” Kobach said neither the skilled nursing rooms or the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks rental cabins meet the definition of “facility,” which exempts them from the law.

Kobach said SB 244 listed examples of rooms the bill applies to.

“The debate surrounding SB 244 focused on the types of rooms listed in the statute — restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, and shower rooms — and the risks to safety and privacy when individuals of one biological sex use facilities designated for individuals of the opposite biological sex,” his opinion said.

Kobach said the Legislature’s intent didn’t include stopping a married couple from sharing a nursing home or assisted living facility room or to prevent people in those facilities from receiving guests of the opposite sex.

Prison cells, however, more closely match the type of facilities addressed in the law, Kobach said, which means multiple-occupancy cells must only be shared by prisoners of the same sex.

Taylor-Puckett said attorney general opinions are generally given “persuasive but not binding weight in a courtroom.” She recommended that individuals and entities should consult with their attorney with regard to any decisions about complying with SB 244.

Harper Seldin, senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said he was glad to see some spaces exempted from the law but that the opinion reinforced what civil rights activists contended from the beginning: The vagueness of the law makes it difficult to enforce and understand.

“This uncertainty about whether people just living their lives are going to run afoul of this law, I think demonstrates both that the law was meant to terrorize and also that it’s poorly drafted,” he said.

Some Kansans and legislators objected to SB 244 being termed an “anti-trans” bill. But Seldin said the interpretation reinforces that it is a bill targeted at transgender and intersex people.

“These interpretations really continue to try to find ways to push transgender and intersex people out of public life, while making sure that people who aren’t transgender don’t feel any disruption whatsoever,” he said. “It does seem to very strongly suggest that this law was really targeted at transgender people and is not actually responsive to any concerns about safety or privacy.”

Seldin said any concerns about safety and privacy aren’t related to reality in Kansas.

Seldin is representing two Lawrence transgender men who are challenging the bathroom law in court, with the next hearing scheduled for Sept. 29 through Oct. 2. That will be an evidentiary hearing regarding the ACLU’s request for a temporary injunction of the law, Seldin said.

In the past two years, a dozen states have either approved new U.S. House maps or are moving toward doing so — a highly unusual mid-decade revamp prompted by President Donald Trump and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling late last month. And the situation isn’t settled yet — even as ballots are being printed and early voting is already underway in some places. Pending litigation could scramble the situation even further.

Redistricting, the process of redrawing the geographic boundaries of U.S. House and state legislative districts, usually takes place every 10 years following the census.

Trump upended that schedule early last year, when he began pressuring state GOP officials to redraw their maps to help Republicans hold onto a slim, five-seat majority in the U.S. House ahead of potentially grim 2026 midterm elections for his party.

The Supreme Court recast the redistricting fight with its ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. That decision all but nullified a provision of the federal Voting Rights Act that required states to draw electoral maps to give racial minority voters the opportunity to elect their chosen candidates.

A total of nine states — Alabama, California, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Utah — have redrawn their maps since last year. At least three other states — Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina — appear likely to follow suit, though Georgia’s new maps would not be in effect for the upcoming midterm elections.

As things currently stand, Republicans are likely to gain up to 17 seats, while Democrats are likely to gain up to six seats.

In the aftermath of the Callais decision, hundreds of protesters have gathered at statehouses in recent weeks, particularly in the South, to decry what they say is a concerted effort to dilute Black voting and governing power. Republicans argue that maps should be “colorblind.” Gerrymandering to benefit one political party over another is legal at the federal level, though some states have their own laws restricting it.

The latest redistricting efforts are changing elections that have already begun. Some candidates must now pivot to races in brand-new districts with just a few weeks until their primaries. They’ve spent money and time reaching people who can no longer vote for them, fighting opponents different from the ones they now face. At least one Tennessee Democratic candidate no longer lives within the new boundaries of the district he’s seeking to represent.

Voters in states such as Alabama will now be asked to turn out for primary elections in both May and August, in addition to the November general election.

Here’s where things stand now.

Alabama

Republicans could gain 1 seat.*

A 2023 court order required Alabama to draw a congressional map with a second majority-Black district. But after the Callais decision last month, Alabama’s Republican state officials asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let them reinstate the old map, which has just one majority-Black, majority-Democratic district and which the court had previously ruled racially discriminatory. The high court quickly agreed.

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has announced new primary elections in August for the affected districts. These will be held in addition to next Tuesday’s statewide primaries for other federal and state offices.

Alabama is also appealing a separate ruling requiring it to redraw two state Senate districts. That case is still ongoing.

California

Democrats likely to gain 3-5 seats.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom last year led the Democratic response to Trump’s call for Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps.

In November 2025, California voters approved Newsom’s proposal to temporarily override the state’s independent redistricting commission and instead to allow the Democratic-dominated legislature to redraw the maps to create districts more favorable to Democrats. The new map is valid through 2030.

Florida

Republicans likely to gain 1-4 seats.

Last month, the Republican-majority Florida Legislature approved Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new congressional map that could net the GOP up to four new congressional seats.

Both DeSantis and the voting rights organizations suing to block the new map agree it violates parts of the state constitution. But DeSantis argues the constitution’s anti-gerrymandering amendments, which were overwhelmingly adopted by Florida voters in 2010, are invalid, partly due to the Callais ruling.

Missouri

Republicans likely to gain 1 seat.

Earlier this week, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the state’s gerrymandered 2025 congressional map, handing Republicans a victory. Last summer, Trump pressured Missouri Republicans to help maintain the GOP majority in the U.S. House, so lawmakers met in a special session to draw a map that likely will give them an additional seat by carving off parts of Kansas City into surrounding rural districts.

The new map will be used in Missouri’s August primary, the state Supreme Court ruled this week, because it’s uncertain whether a referendum petition seeking to repeal the map will succeed.

North Carolina

Republicans likely to gain 1 seat.

At Trump’s behest, North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature redrew the state’s congressional map last fall. It was an effort to make the state’s only competitive district solidly Republican. The maps passed strictly along party lines. The state’s congressional delegation is now likely to be 11 Republicans and three Democrats. North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein is a Democrat, but redistricting isn’t subject to the governor’s veto.

Ohio

Republicans likely to gain up to 2 seats.

Last fall, Ohio Republican House Speaker Matt Huffman publicly rebuffed Trump’s national push to gain more seats in Congress, while state Democrats proposed their own maps. An Ohio redistricting commission eventually approved a new map last October that is likely to yield 12 Republicans and three Democrats, compared with the current 10-5 split. GOP and Democratic lawmakers called it a “compromise.”

That map will be in place for the next six years. But political operatives told the Ohio Capital Journal they expect to see more redistricting efforts in 2030.

Tennessee

Republicans likely to gain 1 seat.

In a chaotic special session earlier this month, Republican lawmakers in Tennessee redrew congressional maps to shatter the state’s only majority-Black, majority-Democratic district. The newly passed map now favors Republicans in all nine Tennessee districts. Hundreds protested at the Tennessee statehouse as House Republicans voted on the new map and House Democrats gathered at the front of the chamber, locking arms in a show of solidarity.

This week, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, punished his Democratic colleagues for their protests by stripping them of committee and subcommittee appointments. On Friday morning, longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen announced he would not seek reelection after his district was carved up in the redrawing of the maps.

Texas

Republicans likely to gain 3-5 seats.

The nation’s redistricting battle kicked off in Texas last summer, after Trump pressured the Texas GOP to redraw the state’s congressional map to add up to five more Republican seats. State House Democrats pushed back, fleeing the state temporarily in August to halt the vote. But the map eventually passed after they returned. Civil rights groups sued, saying the new map was racially discriminatory.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court permanently upheld the new map, ensuring it remains in place for the 2026 midterms.

Utah

Democrats likely to gain 1 seat.

In 2018, Utah voters approved an anti-gerrymandering ballot measure that created an independent redistricting process, but Utah’s Republican-dominated legislature repealed and replaced it in 2021. Voters rights groups sued, arguing the resulting new map was a partisan gerrymander.

Eventually, after a multi-year legal battle, a new court-ordered map in 2025 gives Democrats a chance to win one of the state’s four congressional districts. The Utah GOP proposed a ballot initiative this year to ask Utah voters to officially repeal the 2018 anti-gerrymandering law, but it failed last month after thousands of petition signers removed their signatures.

Georgia

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has refused to pursue redistricting ahead of this year’s elections, which are already underway. But Kemp announced Wednesday that he will call a special session to redraw the state’s political maps for the 2028 elections. Georgia’s congressional delegation currently has nine Republicans and five Democrats.

Louisiana

Republicans could gain 1 seat.

The day after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s existing congressional districts as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the state’s congressional primaries to give lawmakers enough time to pass new maps.

This week, in a nearly 10-hour overnight committee hearing, Louisiana lawmakers advanced a bill that would eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black districts. The new map, if it passes, likely would give Republicans another seat in Congress.

The new map must win approval from both chambers by June 1. Litigation over the decision to delay primaries is ongoing.

South Carolina

Republicans could gain 1 seat.

South Carolina legislators will gather Friday for a special session to redraw the state’s congressional lines just 12 days before early voting opens. Lawmakers have set a deadline of May 26 to pass a new map. Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who previously said the matter was for the legislature to decide, called for the special session under pressure from the White House and state GOP.

The South Carolina GOP’s goal is to pass a bill that would delay U.S. House race primaries until August while keeping other primaries on schedule for June. One proposed map would cut South Carolina’s lone congressional Democrat, U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, out of the seat he’s represented since 1992 and create all seven Republican seats.

Mississippi

This week, Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves canceled a special legislative session he’d called to redraw districts for the state’s Supreme Court. Some GOP officials had hoped he’d add congressional redistricting to the agenda. Instead, he said this week, he’s working with Trump and the White House on a plan to redraw Mississippi’s congressional districts and legislative districts in the future. Reeves wants a map that would boot the lone Democrat in Mississippi’s U.S. House delegation, Rep. Bennie Thompson, from his seat.

If that happens, Republicans would likely gain one congressional seat.

Virginia

The Virginia Supreme Court earlier this month struck down a voter-approved redistricting amendment that could have given Democrats a 10-1 advantage in the state’s U.S. House delegation. Virginia voters last month had approved a referendum that would have netted Democrats three or four additional seats. Earlier this week, Virginia Democrats asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revive the amendment, in a case that’s ongoing.

Arizona, New Jersey, New York, Washington 

Officials in Arizona, New Jersey, New York and Washington all have suggested drawing new maps following the Callais decision, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The Colorado Voting Rights Act, passed last year by the state’s Democratic-majority legislature, will likely prevent the state from embarking on a redistricting effort. The state’s congressional delegation is currently split 4-4 between Democrats and Republicans. But a Democratic-led group is gathering signatures for ballot measures that would allow the state to change its maps ahead of the 2028 election.

*Seat gain predictions from The Cook Political Report.

This story was updated to include the Friday morning announcement by Tennessee Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen that he will not seek reelection. Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

TOPEKA — Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Rosen says internal budget reallocation allows for a 1% salary increase among non-judicial employees to match raises granted by the Legislature for state employees in the executive branch.

The Legislature adjourned the 2026 session without appropriating money to elevate salaries of the state’s 2,000 judicial branch employees. At the end of the annual session, the Legislature did vote to finance the across-the-board salary enhancement for executive branch staff. Each House and Senate member received an automatic 4.4% boost in compensation, while lawmakers agreed to provide other legislative branch employees a generous 10% raise.

Rosen sent a letter Thursday on behalf of the state Supreme Court that informed court clerks, court reporters, bailiffs and other courthouse staff of their 1% raise effective July 1.

“We recognize that the 1% increase is less than what was originally proposed for our fiscal year 2027 budget request, but we believe it is important to recognize and thank the employees who make our justice system possible in communities across Kansas,” Rosen wrote in the letter. “Your work ensures Kansans have access to essential court services and to the fair administration of justice.”

The Supreme Court and the Kansas Office of Judicial Administration had been discussing for about a month what might be possible in terms of providing raises through existing resources. The plan excluded justices or judges from the pay bump.

Rosen and other judges had expressed concern the lack of raises in 2026 could prompt valued employees to leave state government for jobs in the private sector. There was apprehension about the ability of judicial branch employees to absorb ongoing inflation in the cost of living.

In January, Gov. Laura Kelly had recommended the Legislature authorize 2.5% raises for state government employees. To demonstrate irritation at the Legislature’s rejection of her proposal, the governor subsequently vetoed the entire budget for the legislative branch. Both the Senate and House voted with two-thirds majorities to override her.

The automatic 4.4% raise in 2026 for the state’s 165 legislators was tied to an index based on increases in Kansas wages. The index makes it possible for legislators to receive annual raises without the Legislature voting on those changes in compensation.

TOPEKA — The Kansas Department of Corrections signed a two-year contract with a private healthcare company based in Topeka to provide medical services for 10,000 inmates at the state’s eight adult prisons and the Kansas Juvenile Correctional Complex.

The deal with VitalCore Health Strategies would obligate the state to pay $88.9 million in the initial fiscal year starting July 1, state Department of Corrections officials said. The contract could be lengthened twice under separate two-year extensions. The annual cost escalator would be 3.5% for the life of the contract — an increase of $3 million in the second year of the deal. The pact would run through June 30, 2032, if the maximum of six years were authorized.

“I am confident that VitalCore will serve our residents and the agency well, providing medical care that addresses the needs of the incarcerated population,” said Jeff Zmuda, secretary of the Department of Corrections. “I look forward to a strong, mutually beneficial relationship.”

Under the contract, VitalCore would be responsible for all costs associated with onsite medical services, offsite hospital care, outpatient surgery, ambulatory services, dental, medical personnel, behavioral health, hepatitis C treatment and the electronic health records system. Medical services would be provided 24 hours a day, 365 days each year by a staff of 500 full-time equivalent employees.

News reports regarding VitalCore’s work in Mississippi prisons raised concern about the quality of care provided by the company. Mississippi Today’s series “Behind Bars, Beyond Care” reported that VitalCore denied medication to inmates with hepatitis C and HIV, an untreated broken arm resulted in an amputation, and a delayed cancer screening led to a terminal diagnosis. There was evidence medical staff in Mississippi prisons labeled inmates as “noncompliant” so they could be sent back to cells without treatment.

Mississippi Today is a news partner with States Newsroom, the parent nonprofit of Kansas Reflector.

The Kansas Department of Corrections said the decision to hire VitalCore was the result of a competitive process that attracted six other companies to the bidding.

“Healthcare services for our population is an essential part of operations in our correctional facilities,” Zmuda said. “This contract allows us to fulfill our obligations to provide healthcare services that meet the needs of our incarcerated population.”

The contract with VitalCore was separate from a $2.3 million arrangement with the University of Kansas Medical Center to provide oversight and monitoring of contractors.

Health challenges of about 9,800 Kansas adult inmates in the Lansing, Hutchinson, El Dorado, Topeka, Ellsworth, Norton, Winfield and Larned facilities were complex given the incidence of mental health issues, chronic hypertension and respiratory conditions as well as cases of hepatitis C and HIV. The state’s juvenile facility in Topeka serves approximately 200 inmates.

In March, Zmuda said the current prison medical care contract was held by Centurion of Kansas, which provided services to state inmates since July 2020. The state contract was put out for bid during November in anticipation of selecting a vendor in 2026.

The Department of Correction’s request for proposals from healthcare companies said residents of KDOC facilities should “receive appropriate and necessary health care in the least restrictive environment while conserving resources and costs.”

VitalCore was founded in 2015 and maintains a headquarters in Topeka. It operates nationwide by serving approximately 80,000 individuals in more than 100 correctional facilities in the United States.

Maybe you heard the yelps echoing from the hallways of Kansas schools last week as a software outage essentially paused academic work. No quizzes. No assignments. No grading. No video tutorials.

And no sense of when it would end. 

Canvas, a so-called learning management system, serves as the classroom spinal cord for thousands of schools nationwide, including many K-12 public school districts, Kansas State University and Pittsburg State University. When it fails, our schools seize up too.

A group of hackers calling itself ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for an attack that shuttered Canvas right before semester exams at many schools.

At the University of Kansas, where I teach journalism, we gathered for our end-of-semester faculty meeting last week during the software blackout. Instructors asked for advice about how to stay in touch with students, how to back up grades and how to safeguard student data. Understandably — because the extent and duration of the outage was unclear — the advice was little more than a collective shrug.

When service was restored, a faculty member in our meeting burst out in the middle of a colleague’s presentation, “Canvas is back!” Many of us cheered and then scrambled to our laptops to back up valuable files.

Consider how acutely the Canvas outage hit just one of my three classes: Media & Society.

Heading into finals week, I planned to proctor a comprehensive semester exam with 100 multiple-choice questions. (“How did P.T. Barnum influence advertising?”) When I heard about the hack, I considered the work needed to convert the exam to an old-fashioned paper test. The obstacle: all of the questions were on Canvas — and nowhere else. Could I write 100 more questions before Tuesday?

The grading for the class of more than 170 students was also inaccessible. As I sat in the faculty meeting, I tallied the man hours that it had taken to grade more than 1,300 pieces of in-class group writing this semester. Add to that the eye-spinning grading that my GTAs and I did for the midterm essay. I estimated at least 450 hours of grading alone this semester. I couldn’t redo that.

Class communication was manageable, if chaotic. While instructors could revert to emailing students using class rosters from the registrar, student inboxes were suddenly inundated. One student told me he missed my clever Canvas workaround for one assignment. Why? The glut of instructor emails only gave him time to read the email subject lines.

Next, consider all of the curriculum that today’s teachers store online using websites such as Canvas. For my Media & Society class, that includes reading assignments, links to podcasts, streaming documentaries and study guides. Even more basic, our online classes remind students when final exams meet.

I won’t bore you with the rest of modern schooling that we have assembled online. Trust me. It’s so much more.

Without Canvas, I simply could not have completed the semester (which ends Friday on the Lawrence campus for undergraduates).

When I was pitching this topic as a story for the Reflector last week, I proposed this headline: “Brief Canvas outage reveals the enormous reliance the campuses have on software.”

As Associated Press reporter Heather Hollingsworth found in her reporting, this concentration risk — “how much schools depend on outside companies’ digital platforms to keep their operations running” — hit schools nationwide.

This is the paradox of software today. We concentrate 80% of our daily work on a website hosted by a single company. In that way, work is concentrated.

Meanwhile, across the country, others similarly trust in a single education solution. In that way, the effect of an outage is widespread.

Danger is calling when we have risk that is both concentrated and widespread.

To be clear, during my 25 years of teaching, I have used many types of educational software. Canvas stands above the rest.

We were especially grateful for Canvas’ ease of use during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and the semesters that followed, when classes were more likely to be hybrid or fully online. Teachers couldn’t replicate in-person classes, but Canvas and other LMS platforms made it easier to deliver something educational.

(As a sidenote: Many educators believe this widespread practice of putting more course materials, especially notes, online has depressed attendance rates: “Mom, I can get an A without going to school!”)

In being so efficient, however, Canvas invites us to trust it more deeply with each posted assignment, each passing week and each completed semester. Call it the curse of working too well. Even a blip in service and teachers dissolve into crisis.

For their part, students said they didn’t miss the short hiatus from Canvas and course work.

Over lunch this week, I talked to one of my students about his recent KU highlights. He raved about a professor he had recently. The lectures were lively. The notes were a revelation. The readings were well chosen. The course was great, the student said.

“And,” he said, his eyes twinkling, “there was almost nothing on Canvas.”

Online-learning fatigue hits hard at the end of the semester, when we grudgingly log into the same website to review the items on our to-do list, whether it is writing an essay as a student or grading one as a teacher. (I am procrastinating doing some grading by writing this column.)

Although one Kansas public school teacher I talked to this morning said the Canvas fiasco is still complicating grading, the outage was less than 24 hours for most schools.

During the brief time, we learned the degree of our reliance on a single piece of software, especially at this time of year. Imagine the academic chain reaction that would be brought on by a longer or permanent outage.

Along with other Kansas teachers, I will consider that looming pitfall as I stroll into my summer break today, grateful that Canvas flickered back to life as we finished this semester.

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

WASHINGTON — Democrats and advocacy groups urged a quick rejection of President Donald Trump’s latest executive order on compiling citizenship lists and creating traceable mail-in ballots in a federal court hearing Thursday.

Lawyers for the Democratic National Committee, Democratic minority leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, and interest groups argued that, with the midterm elections less than six months away, there was no time to see how the Trump administration executes the order.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, argued the order had not been put into effect yet and therefore could not be overturned.

The groups are seeking a nationwide preliminary pause on Trump’s late-March order that U.S. citizenship and age data from the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security be provided to states.

The proposal would result in a “maximum amount of confusion” and be a “nightmare for election officials,” said Danielle Lang, who argued on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “Waiting will only erode public confidence in elections.”

Thursday’s hearing marked the first courtroom showdown over the executive order. A coalition of Democratic state attorneys general have also sued to block the order. At least five lawsuits have been filed in total.

Trump’s edict also orders the U.S. Postal Service to promulgate a rule that would design special envelopes for mail-in ballots, including a unique barcode. States, which the U.S. Constitution delegates authority over election administration to, have argued the order would restrict mail-in voting.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, had tough questions for both sides. He suggested the Democrats’ and aligned groups’ challenges may be premature because a rule specifying how the order would operate has yet to be written, though he also grasped their argument that the order was inherently unconstitutional. 

“No one knows what’s gonna be in the rule,” Nichols told lawyers for the Democratic groups.

“I think it’s very clear from the EO (executive order) that we know exactly what’s gonna be in the rule,” said Lalitha Madduri, who represented the Democratic groups and congressional leaders.

After back-and-forth, Nichols conceded, “I agree with your point: There can be no rulemaking consistent with the EO that can be lawful.”

Madduri also argued there is “no way to repair that harm” of uncertainty for voters.

Department of Justice senior trial counsel Stephen Pezzi said the plaintiffs have a right to “prepare for the darkest fears,” but, he argued, they can’t win a preliminary injunction based on speculation of error-prone citizenship lists and a postal rule not yet created.

There’s “certainly no irreparable harm,” Pezzi said.

Of the lists of intra-agency government data compiling U.S. citizens and their ages, Pezzi said “it’s not a list of individuals to be targeted. It’s not a list of noncitizens.” He also said it’s “not a concern” of the federal government what states do with the lists, if they even decide to use them.

“No list’s ever going to be perfect,” Pezzi said, adding that “responsible” states would not blindly kick people off voter rolls if their names do not appear on the lists verifying citizenship.

Nichols told Pezzi in the event he denied a preliminary injunction, he would expect information sharing from the government as the case continued.

“Fair enough,” Pezzi said.

“I didn’t hear a commitment,” Nichols warned, prompting agreement from Pezzi.

Nichols said he would soon issue an order and opinion, but did not specify a date. 

“I understand the time pressure here,” he said.

He warned the government to notify him of “anything even approaching a material change” on implementing Trump’s executive order — though he stopped short of issuing an official order requiring updates. But, he said, “it would not be good for the government,” if they do not promptly inform him of new developments.

Democrats and voting rights groups maintain Trump’s order is effectively compiling an illegal national voter list and usurping the state authority over elections. The order’s opponents accuse Trump of trying to unilaterally assert power over elections.

Trump and his aides say the order will help secure the midterm elections this November. While voter fraud is extremely rare, Trump has long promoted false conspiracy theories surrounding his 2020 election loss.

The executive order, signed by Trump on March 31, came amid a broader campaign by the president to influence how elections are run. 

The Justice Department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for sensitive voter data that it plans to use to identify potential noncitizen voters. 

Trump has demanded that Congress pass the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show documents proving their citizenship, though the bill has stalled in the Senate. Last year, Trump signed an executive order to unilaterally impose similar requirements that was blocked in federal court.

“President Trump has tried repeatedly to rewrite election rules for his own perceived partisan advantage,” Madduri, an attorney at Elias Law Group, wrote in a court filing.

Republican state attorneys general have intervened in the lawsuits on behalf of the Trump administration and have urged federal judges to uphold the executive order. They have cast the order as offering “optional” resources.

Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas intervened in the suit argued Thursday and were represented in the courtroom.  

The states “would like to access this resource so they may verify the accuracy of their own voter-registration lists. This flow of information between federal and state agencies is a common and critical feature of our federal system,” the Republican officials wrote in an April 20 court document.

The order requires lists of voting-age U.S. citizens living in each state to be provided to state officials at least 60 days before each federal election. 

The order does not tell states how to use the data, but it instructs the U.S. attorney general to prioritize investigations into state and local officials who issue federal ballots to ineligible voters.

The list of citizens will be drawn from naturalization and Social Security records, according to the order. It will also include data from SAVE, a powerful computer program maintained by Homeland Security that verifies citizenship by checking names against information in federal databases. 

The order also directs states, at least 90 days before a federal election, to tell the U.S. Postal Service whether they intend to allow ballots to be sent through the mail. States would then have to submit to USPS a list of voters planning to vote by mail at least 60 days before the election.

Opponents of the order argue that under federal law Trump cannot direct the postmaster general to take any action — on elections or any other matter. The Postal Service is overseen by a Board of Governors and the postmaster general reports to the board. 

Trump’s allies argue that the Constitution grants the president sweeping authority over executive branch agencies and that Congress cannot place agencies, like the Postal Service, beyond the president’s reach.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided Thursday to preserve telehealth access to the abortion drug mifepristone until after the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled on the merits of the high-stakes federal lawsuit Louisiana v. Food and Drug Administration.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas issued dissenting opinions.

In his dissent, Thomas said the rule violates the Comstock Act, a long unenforced 1873 law that bans the mailing of “obscene” material. During the 2024 presidential campaign, President Donald Trump said he didn’t support using the Comstock Act to stop mail delivery of abortion pills, saying he thought the federal government should have nothing to do with the issue.

Mifepristone’s manufacturer “makes a passing reference to the possibility of lost sales,” Alito wrote in his dissent. “But lost sales in states where abortifacients are generally illegal are not ‘irreparable injuries’ that can justify granting a stay.”

Abortion-rights advocates around the country called the decision a relief after two weeks of uncertainty.

On May 1, the appellate court sided with Louisiana, where state officials sued the FDA in October, arguing that a rule allowing telehealth access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used to terminate a pregnancy in the first trimester or to treat miscarriage, undermines the state’s abortion ban. Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, two manufacturers of mifepristone, filed emergency appeals, leading the Supreme Court to issue a 10-day stay on May 4, extended until today.

“Though today’s decision means that mifepristone remains available through telehealth for now, this fight is not over,” said Dr. Camille A. Clare, president of the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, in an emailed statement. “The chaos and confusion wrought by competing decisions and the revocation and restoration of access on an almost daily basis do real harm to patients and to the clinicians who care for them.”

Abortion opponents decried Thursday’s decision.

“Women deserve better than dangerous abortion drugs sent through the mail without physician oversight or in-person support,” said Jor-El Godsey, president of Heartbeat International, a major network of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. “A state like Louisiana that values life in its laws should be able to protect its smallest residents as well as their moms.”

The FDA’s approved two-drug regimen via telemedicine is an increasingly common abortion method, especially for people living in parts of the country where abortion is banned or difficult to access.

Last month, a federal district court paused the lawsuit at the request of the FDA until after the completion of a safety review on mifepristone. That review was prompted by non-peer reviewed, anti-abortion research and in spite of the drug’s record of safety and efficacy since 2000. The state appealed to the 5th Circuit.

Due to multiple ongoing efforts to restrict or block mifepristone, abortion providers have told Stateline they are ready to eventually switch to a misoprostol-only method, which researchers have found to be as safe as the two-drug regimen but typically involves more symptoms and is slightly less effective.

National groups have tried to pressure the Trump administration to drop the Biden-era rule allowing telehealth abortion and called for the head of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary for reportedly slow-walking a safety review of the drug until after the midterm elections. Makary resigned on Tuesday, and anti-abortion groups wasted no time in getting Acting Commissioner Kyle Diamantas on the phone.

Live Action founder and president Lila Rose, in a written statement, said she talked to the acting commissioner on Wednesday and that he said he was morally opposed to abortion. “Diamantas told me that reviewing the abortion pill is a top priority for him and the administration,” Rose posted on X.

Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins wrote a similar message to supporters in an email on Thursday, saying Diamantas will be the “most pro-life FDA commissioner in American history.”

But many doctors around the country say curbing access to telehealth abortion is likely to cause harm to people in states with bans who may face more barriers to obtaining an abortion without that option.

“Women will be forced to travel long distances — at times hundreds of miles — to access safe, essential health care at a doctor’s office, no longer having the option to receive mifepristone via telemedicine,” wrote Rob Davidson, an emergency physician in Michigan and executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care, in a letter asking the Supreme Court to maintain access to telehealth abortion. The letter was cosigned by more than 2,200 physicians.

Stateline reporter Sofia Resnick can be reached at sresnick@stateline.org.  Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@stateline.org. 

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon took heat Thursday over forthcoming changes to the federal student loan system that will impose new borrowing limits for professional and graduate students.  

Lawmakers took specific aim at stricter loan caps set to be established for students pursuing advanced programs that do not fall under the department’s “professional” classification, such as nursing, teaching and social work. 

Members on both sides of the aisle voiced their criticisms during a hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce, where McMahon defended the incoming federal student loan overhaul as well as President Donald Trump’s administration’s separate, ongoing efforts to dismantle the 46-year-old department. 

McMahon emphasized that her department is “not making any kind of a judgment relative to professional degrees” and instead is trying to “bring down the cost” of tuition. 

The secretary pointed to “exorbitant” college costs, noting that “students are burdened with debt.” 

The imminent shifts to the federal student loan system stem from congressional Republicans’ tax and spending cut megabill that Trump signed into law last year. The department this month published the finalized regulations consistent with the law’s directive. Most provisions will take effect July 1.

The regulations eliminate the Grad PLUS program, which allowed for graduate and professional students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance. 

Graduate student loans will also have a $20,500 annual cap and $100,000 aggregate limit. Professional student loans will have a yearly limit of $50,000 and aggregate cap of $200,000. 

But the programs falling under the department’s “professional” category — and thus eligible for the higher borrowing limit — are limited to pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, theology and clinical psychology. 

The agency has also clarified, in an agency fact sheet on the finalized regulations, that the “professional” student classifications “do not express a value judgment about the importance of any occupation or field” but instead serve a “loan-administration function.”

Rep. Jahana Hayes said she was “very concerned” about the department’s “professional” student classifications, noting that these limits “make higher education, especially master’s degree programs, more difficult to afford for nursing, social workers (and) teachers.” 

The Connecticut Democrat clapped back at McMahon’s assertion that the overhaul is about bringing down college costs, saying: “The people who can afford it don’t apply for these programs, the people who can afford it don’t need student loans, the people who come from communities like mine and just want to go back and serve those communities are the ones who are going to be most affected, not the colleges, not the universities, not the board of directors, not the top 1%.”

Rep. Joe Courtney, also a Connecticut Democrat, blasted the regulations’ exclusion of nursing from the “professional” category as “one of the most insulting, tone-deaf messages to 5 million nurses imaginable across the country.” 

Courtney added that the exclusion “will, in fact, raise education costs for critically needed nurses,” and pointed to a petition from the American Nurses Association that received more than 245,000 signatures and urged the department to include nursing programs in its “professional” definition. 

McMahon defended her department’s “professional” classification to the panel, arguing that the agency “looked very, very carefully at the entire nursing profession,” and “95% of the nurses that are in programs do not exceed these caps.” 

The secretary added that “78% of the nurses that are moving for graduate programs do not exceed or come up to these caps.”

Even some Republican members on the panel, whose party championed the “big, beautiful” law that sets forth the student loan overhaul, called into question the new limits.  

Rep. Lisa McClain, chair of the House Republican Conference, asked McMahon “if there’s any way, or you had any thoughts on: Can we explore opening the nurse graduate programs up to expand these caps or lift these caps, because it’s a good return on investment, and we sure do need them?” 

In the GOP’s tax and spending cut law, “one of the things we did was we put the caps on, but we had some carveouts and caveats … and I think this sector of graduate nursing programs was just an unintended consequence, perhaps, that got overlooked,” the Michigan Republican said. 

“And what I’m here to do is really advocate for these programs, because I think they’re extremely important.” 

Bipartisan efforts are underway in Congress to both address the forthcoming loan limits and expand the “professional” student definition. 

Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican, introduced a bill in December that would expand the “professional” definition to also include “nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, ministry, social work, audiology, physician assistant, public health, business administration and management, accounting, architecture, secondary education, and special education.” 

Rep. Tim Kennedy of New York brought forth legislation in December with fellow Democratic Reps. Jill Tokuda of Hawaii and Rep. Shomari Figures of Alabama that would ensure graduate and professional students are subject to the same annual and aggregate loan caps. 

Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, introduced a bill that would “restore the full loan limits that were narrowed” under the GOP’s mega tax and spending cut law. 

In the upper chamber, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Maryland Democrat, introduced a companion bill to Torres’ in March, which has drawn more than a dozen co-sponsors.  

Meanwhile, a handful of Democratic lawmakers brought forth a resolution this month that seeks to reverse the forthcoming student loan regulations through the Congressional Review Act, a procedural tool Congress can use to overturn certain actions from federal agencies.

Those lawmakers are: Rep. Suzanne Bonamici and Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Rep. John Mannion of New York, Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois and Alsobrooks. 

TOPEKA — Kansas gubernatorial candidate Cindy Holscher said Thursday that Wichita Rep. KC Ohaebosim would be her running mate, forming a Democratic ticket of like-minded Statehouse veterans committed to public education, healthcare access and economic affordability.

Holscher, a state senator from Overland Park, was elected to the House in 2016 at the same time Kansas voters sent Ohaebosim to Topeka. While Holscher transitioned to the Senate in 2021, the two Democrats compiled comparable Statehouse records on policy issues such as taxation, Medicaid expansion and abortion rights.

Holscher said Ohaebosim understood what it meant to be a leader in the fight for Kansans’ interests.

“He understands our state’s communities, he’s a product of Kansas public schools and we aligned on issues in terms of making Kansas more affordable for Kansans. It’s a good complement in terms of adding him to the ticket,” Holscher said. “I chose a governing partner who shares my commitment to lowering costs for working people, strengthening our schools and instilling common sense into government.”

She said the duo would rely on their combined two decades of experience at the Capitol to work on behalf of the state.

Holscher and Ohaebosim are scheduled to appear together at a public rally Friday evening in Wichita. They seek the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor and lieutenant governor, which would be decided in the Aug. 4 primary. Holscher’s chief rival in the governor’s race is Sen. Ethan Corson, a Fairway Democrat who has yet to nominate a running mate.

At least eight Republicans, three Democrats, including Marty Tuley of Lawrence, and one independent have declared interest in running for Kansas governor in 2026. The major-party fields won’t settle until the June 1 candidate filing deadline.

Winner of the November general election would replace Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly in January. She won close races in 2018 and 2022, and cannot seek a third consecutive term as governor.

Ohaebosim, pronounced “Oh-HOB-oh-sum,” was born in Wichita, attended the city’s public schools, earned degrees at Wichita State University and Newman University in Wichita and worked during his career as a data analyst. In 2022 and 2025, he was named a regional legislator of the year by the National Black Caucus of State Legislators. His father was a physician and his mother a registered nurse in Wichita.

He said in an interview he was surprised to be asked to join the ticket and honored to work on behalf of a candidate for governor who believed government needed to work for everyday people instead of just for large businesses and wealthy individuals.

“Kansans deserve leaders ready to shake up the establishment, challenge the status quo and fight for a better, people-first future for our state,” Ohaebosim said. “It’s about moving Kansas forward.”

He said Holscher had devoted her career to “standing up for people and delivering results, and I’m excited to work alongside her to build a future where everyone can thrive.”

Corson’s candidacy for governor has been endorsed by former Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as well as Kelly.

Holscher has been endorsed by former Kansas Lt. Gov. Lynn Rogers, who serves as treasurer of the Holscher-Ohaebosim campaign. He was in the state Senate, won election as lieutenant governor in Kelly’s first term and was appointed by Kelly to complete a term as state treasurer.

“I’ve been lieutenant governor of our state and I know what it takes,” Rogers said. “Cindy and KC are both steady, hardworking leaders who understand Kansas and care deeply about our future. I’m proud to support them and excited to help elect this next generation of Democratic leadership.”

TOPEKA — Favorable fall conditions for wheat planting gave way to a warmer-than-usual winter and spring cold snaps, placing Kansas wheat crop in a precarious situation.

Kansas State University experts also warned in a recent memo of disease emerging in wheat fields in nine Kansas counties.

The wheat crop in Kansas is three weeks ahead of a normal schedule, according to Romulo Lollato, a K-State Extension professor of agronomy. He specializes in wheat and forages production and oversees a training program for Ph.D. and master’s degree students.

He told the K-State Extension News Service that freezing or near-freezing temperatures in March and April affected the wheat crop during crucial growth stages, including stem elongation and flowering. Freezes and recent storm-related damage to fields could reduce grain yield, he said.

“In a lot of the state, we’re kind of losing some of those primary tillers because of that cold snap,” Lollato said.

Months before, Lollato had a rosier outlook for this year’s wheat crop. Fair fall planting conditions and adequate moisture established the crop before winter.

“The crop can still recover quite a bit of its performance,” Lollato said. “If we do have cool and moist conditions, we can still have an OK crop.”

But as summer approaches, Kelsey Andersen Onofre, a plant pathologist with the K-State Extension, predicted further obstacles for Kansas wheat growers by way of a pair of viruses that have made their way into a combined nine counties scattered across the state.

Barley yellow dwarf and wheat streak mosaic complex are both transmitted by tiny pests — aphids in the case of barley yellow dwarf and mites in the case of wheat streak mosaic.

Both diseases thrive in warmer temperatures and can cause yield losses.

A recent agronomy update from K-State, co-authored by Andersen Onofre, said viruses that cause wheat streak mosaic do not need an introduction in many parts of Kansas.

“Wheat streak mosaic is one of the most economically devastating wheat diseases in the state,” the update said. “Although statewide levels are lower than in 2025, we are again seeing wheat streak mosaic infections in many fields.”

Kansas Wheat, a consortium of wheat grower groups, predicted in April an early harvest because of drought conditions, which are most severe in western Kansas. Limited soil moisture and advanced crop maturity has made this season’s wheat crop more susceptible to freeze damage and disease concerns, the organization said.

It added: “For many producers, the focus has shifted from maximizing yield to salvaging what remains, as drought continues to define the 2026 growing season.”

You cannot negotiate with depravity.

You cannot ask it to be a little less depraved, just for a moment, to remember that we’re all just people here. Depravity has a mind of its own, a kind of sweeping inevitable darkness. You can run, but you cannot hide from its sickening logic.

Former Coldwater mayor Joe Ceballos has been taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He’s the green card holder who was charged for voting repeatedly — and illegally. Although he reached a plea deal on misdemeanor charges and hoped to remain in the country where he made his home for 50 years, Ceballos instead was caught up in the mass deportation that has torn apart American communities from coast to coast.

He will likely be sent back to Mexico, where he remains a citizen but has no connections.

You cannot negotiate with depravity.

When Ceballos was first arrested and charged, the good people of Coldwater could not believe the injustice. They spoke to reporters and talked about how their ex-mayor was a model citizen and a dependable resident. Supporters turned out for a December hearing, standing squarely behind a man who was “just as American as I am,” in the words of one resident.

Coldwater overwhelmingly voted for both President Donald Trump and Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach. Both men have made the persecution of immigrants a cornerstone of their political brands. Nevertheless, the reliably Republican town kept voting Republican. A majority chose to embrace — rather than resist — depravity.

Yet city residents appeared not to grasp that they had enabled the very forces that swept up Ceballos. A majority of Kansans, who also voted for Trump and Kobach, made the same mistake. They appeared not to grasp that mass deportations would affect the economy, their lives, and those they love.

You cannot negotiate with depravity.

In the months since his arrest, Ceballos and attorney Jess Hoeme did their best to plead his case to a sympathetic news media. Those who knew him and loved him spoke out. The New York Times jetted into town to show the sympathetic faces of those totally surprised by the entirely predictable consequences of their actions.

The story seemed to potentially reach an end last month, when Ceballos entered that plea deal. He hoped the lesser charges might allow him to remain in the United States. All was well and good, and a kindly justice system had come to his senses. Or so he and supporters believed.

ICE came calling nonetheless. This time, they pointed to a conviction from 30 years ago. Ceballos traveled to Wichita on Wednesday morning and surrendered.

Hoeme gave an anguished interview to Kansas Reflector’s Morgan Chilson. He asked where the people were who might support Ceballos in his time of need.

“You know, what always flabbergasted me about 1935 Germany is where were the other representatives of government?” Hoeme said. “In our particular case, it’s where is (U.S. Sen. Jerry) Moran and where is Roger Marshall? They’re just bootlickers because they like their jobs. They want to keep their jobs.”

You cannot negotiate with depravity.

Ceballos should not be deported. He should remain at home, in his community, with his friends and family.

Yet the people of Coldwater — and Kansas, and the United States — decided they could bargain with the dark forces that have always swirled just below the surface of our national consciousness. There have always been indigenous tribes to oppress, Black people to enslave, Japanese families to imprison at internment camps.

There has always been an other. There has always been a Joe Ceballos to bear the injustice we incubate.

You either reject put this encroaching darkness, or you accept and encourage it. You stand up for the right thing, or you welcome the wrong thing into your heart.

To quote the Good Book: “And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”

You cannot negotiate with depravity.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Health officials from the U.S. cities hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup say they are preparing to deal with infectious diseases, heat-related illness, and an array of other health threats when millions of fans, many of them from overseas, come to watch the games.

The World Cup is expected to draw between 5 million and 7 million soccer fans to the 11 U.S. host cities, which are Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City (in partnership with East Rutherford, New Jersey), Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle.

The newly formed Big Cities Health Coalition, a consortium of health officials from 36 of the nation’s largest health departments, says it has been formulating a strategy to mitigate any negative health impacts from such a large influx of people entering the country at once.

At a news briefing on Wednesday, health officials from Atlanta, Dallas, New York City, Philadelphia, and San Jose said they are preparing for disease monitoring and contact tracing during the weeks of soccer matches, which begin on June 11.

The officials said they aren’t concerned about the hantavirus, which is very rare. However, they are worried about the spread of measles after recent outbreaks around the country.

“Somebody might be here for a game in Atlanta and be exposed to something — let’s say measles, since that’s been so prevalent lately,” said Marcus Plescia, district health director at the Fulton County Board of Health, which includes the Atlanta region, “But by the time we realize that and start to look at who might be at risk, that fan might have traveled to Dallas to see their team playing there.”

“Something that happens here may actually have its impact somewhere else, and we’re going to have to think about how we handle that and hand off information.”

Alister Martin, commissioner of New York City’s health and mental hygiene department, said health officials also are concerned about extreme heat, alcohol and drug use, and sexually transmitted diseases.

“Relevant teams from disease control to mental health have been preparing to work in new capacities for months, and most recently, we tested our emergency capacity at our healthcare facilities,” Martin said.

At the briefing, the health officials said they are strapped for resources as a result of the expiration of COVID-19-era public health funding, and that host cities have gotten federal dollars for security and infrastructure needs but not for public health.

“In Atlanta, at least, there’s been some significant investment in infrastructure improvements, and those are very important things,” Plescia said. “We’ve not received a lot of direct funding for specific public health services.”

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

WASHINGTON — Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday the risk of a member of the general public contracting hantavirus remains low despite several passengers on a cruise ship becoming infected with the disease. 

Dr. Brendan Jackson, an epidemiologist and the agency’s team lead in Nebraska, said Americans who were on the MV Hondius cruise ship after others were diagnosed with the illness were flown to the National Quarantine Center at the University of Nebraska.

Healthcare providers at the site have been talking with each passenger about whether they may have been exposed to any of the people with confirmed cases. They’re also monitoring the Americans for fevers or other symptoms. 

“This particular virus has a long incubation period, so the monitoring period is 42 days,” Jackson said. “And the 42 days started with the departure of the ship, so May 11 was day one.” 

Any cruise ship passengers who traveled on commercial flights, leading to possible exposures for others on those planes, left the ship before the infections were diagnosed, he said.  

“The passengers that are being monitored who were on shared flights were separate from the passengers who were on the ship at the time the outbreak was detected. So they had actually left the ship before the outbreak was detected,” Jackson said. 

“All the passengers that were on the ship after that detection phase were transported just several days ago on a private plane directly from the Canary Islands to here in Omaha, Nebraska,” he added. 

CDC officials are working with local and state public health officials to ensure anyone who may have been exposed outside of the cruise ship isolates at home and monitors themselves for symptoms. 

The officials on the call declined to say how many people are being monitored for possible exposure or where they are located in the country, citing privacy concerns.

They also declined to talk about the two cruise ship passengers taken to Emory University Hospital’s Serious Communicable Diseases Unit in Georgia. 

Dr. David Fitter, incident manager for the agency’s hantavirus response, said that unlike the coronavirus pandemic that spread around the world in 2020, hantavirus is not new to public health officials. 

“At this moment I want to emphasize that the risk to the general public is low,” he said. 

In addition to monitoring Americans who were on the cruise ship and anyone they may have come into contact with, CDC officials have been talking frequently with lawmakers.

“We’ve held two Hill briefings and have just completed a call with the governors from the states of repatriated Americans,” Fitter said. “We’ve also held daily calls with state health officials. 

“Our role now is to continue our conversations with each passenger about their potential exposure and work with partners to ensure appropriate monitoring.”

CDC officials have encouraged the people at the Nebraska facility to stay there throughout the quarantine period but there are not currently any state or federal quarantine orders in place.

TOPEKA — Measles, once thought successfully eradicated in the United States, returned to Kansas with a confirmed case Tuesday in an Osage County resident, health officials said.

The individual acquired the disease outside the state and “we do not have measles spreading in Kansas at this time,” the Osage County Health Department and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment said in a release.

Also Tuesday, a Topeka area church and the Shawnee County Health Department reported a measles exposure.

The Shawnee County Health Department said in a separate news release that attendees at the Topeka Baptist Church, 3301 S.W. Gage Blvd., on May 3 between 10:15 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. could have been exposed to measles.

The department encouraged people who were at the church during that time period to avoid working at or attending an adult care home, correctional facility, healthcare facility, schools, childcare facilities and adult daycare facilities until May 24.

Kansas reported 87 cases of measles last year associated with an outbreak that began in January and three additional cases not part of the outbreak.

“More than 80% of the cases were children, and over 90% of the cases were not vaccinated against measles,” a KDHE report said. “Eight people were hospitalized over the course of the outbreak.”

Measles has reemerged as people across the country question the safety of vaccines, which are recommended by all the major medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Kansas has seen the percentage of kindergarteners who receive the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine drop from 94.47% in the 2019-20 school year to 90.59% for the 2024-25 school year, according to Kansas Division of Public Health data.

However, that coverage can be much lower when considering Kansas counties individually.

In the 2020-21 school year, five counties reported kindergarten vaccination rates for MMR below 75%. In 2023-24, the most recent year’s data available on the KDHE website, 12 counties report MMR vaccination rates below 75%, with Morton County the lowest at 56.67%, Kiowa at 60% and Decatur at 60.02%.

In a March report, the Kansas Legislative Research Department said the measles cases in 2025 cost the state about $2.6 million. The assessment included 80 of the 90 measles cases that occurred in the state in 2025.

“The review estimated the median cost per measles case at $32,805 and the median cost per contact at $223,” the report said. “Based on that information, KDHE estimated the cost of measles in Kansas from Jan. 1, 2025, to June 16, 2025, at a total of $2,665,432 (80 measles cases, 184 cases under public health monitoring).”

People are considered susceptible to measles if they were born in 1957 or later, SCHD said, and are not age-appropriately vaccinated, or lack laboratory evidence of immunity, or lack documentation of a previous measles infection.

Measles is highly contagious, and early symptoms include high fever, cough, runny nose, and red, watery eyes, followed by a rash that typically begins on the face and spreads downward, the Shawnee County Health Department said.

On average, one infected person can spread measles to 12 to 18 unvaccinated people, according to the KDHE website.

TOPEKA — Leaders of the state court system say a decision by the 2026 Kansas Legislature to deny salary increases to all 2,000 employees in the judicial branch will exacerbate hiring and retention challenges.

While justices, judges and court personnel in Kansas received nothing to help cope with inflation in the fiscal year starting July 1, all 165 members of the Legislature received an automatic 4.4% raise after their compensation was nearly doubled two years ago. The Legislature authorized 10% salary increases for some of their legislative branch employees.

At conclusion the annual session, House and Senate negotiators also produced a bill with 1% across-the-board pay raises for executive branch employees. Judicial branch workers got nothing.

Kurtis Loy, chief judge of the 11th judicial district covering Crawford, Cherokee and Labette counties, said there were bound to be hard feelings about the Legislature excluding the judicial branch from compensation increases. He said the judicial branch received nice raises a few years ago, but a drift toward uncompetitive courthouse salaries meant quality employees would leave for the private sector.

“It’s not good for retention,” Loy said. “I would love to see them give our staff more money, because that’s the bread and butter of our operation — our backbone. Like sergeants in the Army.”

Gov. Laura Kelly, the Democrat nearing completion of her second term, recommended the 2026 Legislature appropriate enough to grant state employees a 2.5% salary increase. She vetoed the entire legislative branch’s budget to protest large raises for House and Senate members and the modest 1% deal for the executive branch. However, the Legislature voted to override her veto.

Rep. Blake Carpenter, a Derby Republican, said it was hypocritical for the governor to criticize raises for legislators without acknowledging previous wage hikes for judicial or executive branch employees.

Eric Rosen, the chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, said he hadn’t anticipated the Legislature would exclude the judicial branch from the package delivering executive branch workers the 1% raise. It would be important for the judicial branch to stay competitive on salaries with market rates, he said.

“I think a lot of people missed it,” Rosen said. “We are looking and working toward trying to keep what we’ve worked so hard to maintain, and that was we’ve made great advances in our salaries.”

Kansas Court of Appeals Chief Judge Sarah Warner said rising consumer costs made it difficult for Kansans to keep pace economically. Lack of raise for judicial branch workers in the upcoming fiscal year meant the earning power of those state employees would erode, she said.

“I think we’re all under an economic crunch right now,” Warner said. “When we aren’t able to give enhancements, then that means that it just makes it all the more difficult. And, these are people who have dedicated their lives to serving Kansans.”

House Speaker Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita, and Senate President Ty Masterson, R-Andover, didn’t respond to a request for comment about salary adjustment distinctions among the three branches of government. Masterson is running for governor, while Hawkins is campaigning for state insurance commissioner.

Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, a Lenexa Democrat also running for insurance commissioner, said the only branch of state government receiving a pay increase that had a chance of keeping pace with inflation was the legislative branch.

“As the cost of living continues to rise and Kansas families struggle to make ends meet, it is disappointing that my Republican colleagues refused to fund pay increases for the hardworking Kansans working in the state’s judicial branch,” Sykes said. “The agency requested a 2.5% budget increase to raise employee salaries — an increase that doesn’t even keep up with the nearly 4% inflation that we’re seeing today — and the Republican supermajority refused.”

Sykes said Republicans in the Legislature found the money to give themselves a 4% pay raise, but left the Kansans serving judicial and executive branches “with crumbs.”

Rep. Henry Helgerson, D-Wichita, said a more transparent process of deliberation on state employee salaries might have led to a different result. He said the budget was micromanaged by a small number of House and Senate Republicans who often worked behind closed doors to decide key issues, which left some lawmakers in the dark about ramifications of those budget details.

“It doesn’t do what the majority of legislators want. The majority wouldn’t have penalized judicial employees,” he said.

Our latest job at home has been cleaning landscape rock. Ten-plus years accumulating blown-in dirt and weeds had converted a soothing, smooth, colorful, rocky mini-plain into a mini-jungle. Hundreds of dirt-rock shovel loads later, washed clean with a friend’s rock-washing screen, the place glistens, eager for new plantings.

My back moaned at me, but I silenced it by giving it a temporary break — the secret weapon of the retired. Restoring something to its previous aesthetic and practical beauty feels satisfying after so many years. Despite the hard work, I do it for the beauty. I do it for myself and for others. I do it, in a way, to be hospitable.

While my back and I enjoyed a temporary reprieve, I reviewed the day’s news. A short video from a trusted source showed up.

“You can’t unsee this,” they said.

They were right.

What couldn’t I unsee? Hospitals. Hospitals in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran before and after bombing. Blown to bits by the United States and Israel, mostly paid for by our tax dollars. Places of shelter and sanctuary, blown apart. Hope, shredded by shrapnel. Bodies buried under codified collateral damage. Concrete rubble out of which twist former hospital beds. Splattered splints and battered bandages.

In Iran, 338 hospitals and health facilities have been hit. In Gaza, 94% of hospitals were damaged or destroyed. In Lebanon, 77 patients and health workers were killed, with 177 injured.

Who does this? Well, President Donald Trump and his administration do. They blew, and blew up, $11.3 billion in the first six days of his Iran War. Our government has shipped $21.7 billion for Israeli weapons the last two years, under both President Joe Biden and Trump. Very bipartisan.

The video brings home the before and after. Beyond statistics, the pictures scream their thousands of words. Welcoming doors shattered into merciless, meaningless rubble. Doctors, nurses, the injured and sick aren’t pictured. They don’t have to be. They remain real. You can’t unsee, it seems, even the unseen.

We feel safe in Kansas and the US of A. We shouldn’t. Now, this administration wants more, over our potentially dead bodies. Russell Vought, budget director and an author of Project 2025, wants a further 10% cut to our health and welfare. That comes after HR1’s destruction. Think about that.

Bombs alone don’t blow away hospitals. Here at home, budget cuts are their own land-mine IEDs. Even before Vought’s threat, eight Kansas hospitals closed in the last decade. Now, 47 rural hospitals are at immediate risk — more than any other state in the nation — and 29 at high risk.

The Big, Bad, Butt-Ugly Bill (HR1) assures unending deficits of dollars and morality. Our moderate Sen. Jerry Moran voted for this $70 billion cut, then rushed to reassure everyone that a $50 billion rural health fund would give Kansas hospitals a fighting chance.

Sadly, that just ain’t true. We might feel safe in the US of A, but threats to our hospitals, our health and our very well-being are in budget bombs already exploding at home.

Nearly $1 trillion will be cut from Medicaid over the coming decade. That $50 billion bailout gives back a puny 5%.

How does that play out locally in Kansas? Check the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund report. In short: Cuts are for 10 years, the bailout fund for only five. (What could go wrong?) The total Medicaid cuts to individuals and hospitals are $6.6 billion. The combined “relief” — if it all gets here — amounts to $811 million. You do the math.

Reality suggests even that amount may not arrive. According to the report, one worst-case scenario (under inhospitable national CMS and state restrictions) would yield only $232 million.

A national Manat Health-assisted study reveals that many small community health care providers who thought they would receive help “may find they are sharing the billions with an army of corporate giants before it reaches their patients.”

A “heavy dose of prescribed spending” will go to companies that can increase the use of “electronic health records … and health system technology platforms.” How those services will help improve the health care of rural Americans “remains an open question.”

This is not just about hospitals. It’s about deep hospitality. It’s about cleaning up our act. It’s about creating and preserving safe and beautiful spaces — and lives — for everyone.

You can’t destroy your way to a better world. Our hard work to create refuges can stop their drive to make us refugees.

David Norlin is a retired Cloud County Community College teacher, where he was department chairman of communications/English, specializing in media. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

TOPEKA — Three Kansans who came into close “high risk” contact with a person who has confirmed Andes hantavirus are being monitored by state and federal officials.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment said in a Tuesday news release that three individuals, who won’t be identified because of privacy concerns, are being monitored by KDHE, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a local health department.

The three were not on the cruise ship MV Hondius, where Andes hantavirus has been confirmed in at least 11 people and caused three deaths, and they do not currently have symptoms, the release said.

“The exposure occurred internationally after contact with an individual from the MV Hondius cruise ship who later tested positive for Andes hantavirus,” the release said.

The Andes hantavirus is acquired from a small rat, which leaves the virus in its droppings or feces, said Steven Simpson, a University of Kansas Health System physician who worked on-site in 1996 in Argentina at one of the first hantavirus outbreaks in humans outside the United States.

When those droppings dry out, the virus can attach itself to pieces of dust and infect people when the dust is inhaled, Simpson said.

“A colleague of mine and I were called to Argentina because we were considered the world experts — me, clinical care, and him, pathology and virology of the virus — because they thought they were seeing human to human transmission potentially,” Simpson said.

At the time, Simpson said, he and his colleague tracked the outbreak and, because hospital conditions weren’t ideal — some healthcare workers didn’t have access to gloves, for instance — they determined there wasn’t human to human transmission. That was disproven over the next few years as more research was done, he said.

Today, researchers know the Andes strain of hantavirus passes from human to human in rare circumstances, always involving close proximity to someone who has been infected, Simpson said.

However, he echoes the CDC and KDHE in saying the public health threat is extremely small. 

“There is a minuscule, low chance of anything happening from this whatsoever, because KDHE is taking the appropriate steps,” Simpson said. “They’ve identified the right people, they are asking them to do the right things, and they are watching them to see whether they even get any symptoms.”

KDHE didn’t respond to a Kansas Reflector inquiry about whether the individuals are being quarantined. 

Simpson hopes the attention being paid to hantavirus will make people aware of the cases typically seen in the United States — 890 cases nationwide in 2023, with 20 of those in Kansas — that are acquired from activities like cleaning out barns and stirring up rat or mouse feces.

“We have hantavirus, and especially in western Kansas you can acquire it,” he said. “Because there was an El Nino phenomenon last fall and winter, there’s the possibility that there may be more mice around of our variety, the deer mouse.”

Simpson said people should be careful about stirring up dust as they clean areas where there may be mouse droppings. The hantavirus they could get from those activities in Kansas is more of a threat than the Andes virus, he said. 

Symptoms of the Andes hantavirus can show up from two days after exposure to, in the longest case, 42 days, Simpson said.

The virus is passed between people most often through bodily fluids, particularly coughing that occurs as the infected person becomes ill, Simpson said. In addition, deep kissing and sexual contact also can pass the virus. It can hang in the air and pass when there is prolonged exposure, such as sleeping in a bed with someone or being in an enclosed area with them, even if there wasn’t physical contact, he said.

The virus can replicate in a person’s salivary glands, so it spreads through the small droplets that come out when people cough, sneeze or even breathe, Simpson said.

“The people with Andes virus are infectious for a day or two. It appears right when they are developing their initial symptoms,” he said.

Symptoms include typical virus symptoms, such as fever, body aches, chills, vomiting and diarrhea, the KDHE news release said.

“Several days after the onset of initial symptoms, people can develop a severe illness that affects the lungs (called hantavirus pulmonary syndrome) causing cough, chest tightness, and difficulty breathing, which can be fatal,” KDHE said. “There is no specific treatment available, and care focuses on supporting the person through their illness.”

Viruses do mutate, meaning they adapt as they are spread, but Simpson said that occurs when viruses spread through many carriers repeatedly.

“The key thing here is it takes many generations of passage for a virus to mutate into something that then becomes a threat,” Simpson said. “So far, that has never happened. It looks like perhaps the virus becomes a little bit weaker with each passage, if anything.”

Four is the highest number of generations in which hantavirus has been documented, he said, before it died out. It could have died out for a variety of reasons, such as the sick person staying home and not passing it along, Simpson said.

All of those reasons and the fact that the CDC and KDHE, along with local health officials, are monitoring the situation closely is why Simpson said there isn’t a significant public health threat from the Andes hantavirus outbreak.

JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri — Control of the U.S. House may run through a courtroom in Missouri.

In a red brick courthouse across the street from the state Capitol, the seven black-robed judges of the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday morning weighed the fate of a Republican gerrymander aimed at ousting U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a 11-term Democrat from Kansas City.

In the afternoon, they upheld the map.

Its opponents “failed to show the 2025 Map clearly and undoubtedly violates the requirements” of the state constitution, the court ruled hours after holding oral arguments.

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s late April decision sharply curtailing the use of race in redistricting, much of the legal fight over gerrymandering is moving to state courts. The decision, Louisiana vs. Callais, gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which limited states’ ability to divide districts where a majority of residents belong to a racial minority group.

Southern Republican states have rushed forward new maps over the past two weeks that take advantage of the landmark opinion, adding to a handful of others, including Missouri, that already drew new lines in recent months at President Donald Trump’s behest before the midterms elections this November. Another wave of gerrymanders across the rest of the country will likely follow next year ahead of the 2028 election.

State supreme courts may have the final word on some of the maps. Even if the maps don’t involve issues decided in Callais, like the challenge in Missouri, many states have constitutional or statutory provisions that curb gerrymandering and limit last-minute changes to elections — providing gerrymandering opponents with grounds to challenge new district boundaries.

With federal redistricting lawsuits increasingly difficult, state laws offer gerrymandering opponents another path. 

Thirty states have some form of a constitutional requirement for free elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And at least 10 state supreme courts have found that state courts can decide cases involving allegations of partisan gerrymandering, according to a 2024 review by the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. 

“I think state courts are primarily going to be the place where future fights around these maps are playing out in a post-Callais landscape,” said Alicia Bannon, director of the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

The elevated importance of state courts was on full display Friday, when the Virginia Supreme Court invalidated an election in which voters narrowly approved a Democratic map. The decision leaves a new map in California as the party’s only successful response so far to the GOP redistricting onslaught. Democrats have made a longshot request to the U.S. Supreme Court to block the Virginia ruling.

Lawsuits have already been filed in state courts over new maps in Florida and Louisiana. Alabama’s new map could also face a legal challenge in state court, even after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the gerrymander to take effect. 

At stake in these courtroom fights is which party will control the U.S. House over the next two years, earning the power to advance or thwart legislation. While Democrats remain generally favored to retake the chamber in the November midterm elections, Republicans will likely emerge from the gerrymandering war with at least a handful of seats secured.

Suddenly, every state supreme court decision — including over a single seat in Missouri — takes on greater significance.

Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, which is helping challenge the Missouri map, told reporters on Monday that the state’s high court had a “spotlight on” it.

“Is the court going to do what it has done in the past in a nonpartisan way that is faithful to their own precedent,” she asked ahead of the decision. “Or are they going to roll over?”

The Republican-controlled Missouri General Assembly in September approved a map intended to leave the state with just one Democrat in Congress, in the St. Louis area. Kansas City was divided among three districts, splitting apart its Democratic-leaning and racially diverse core. 

The Missouri Supreme Court considered three challenges to the map. Two similar lawsuits argue that some of the congressional districts don’t follow the state constitution’s requirements that districts be as compact as possible.

A third lawsuit argues that the map shouldn’t be in effect for the 2026 election because opponents in December submitted more than 305,000 signatures seeking to force a statewide referendum vote on the lines. In the past, state officials have paused the implementation of measures subject to a referendum until a vote is held, but in this instance they say the new lines are active.

During Tuesday’s oral arguments, the judges sat almost entirely stone-faced as they listened. Only one judge asked a single question during arguments that stretched for more than an hour, offering no sense of how the court would rule.

“There is no such thing as a perfect map or a perfect district,” Missouri Principal Deputy Solicitor General Kathleen Hunker said.

Jonathan Hawley, an attorney representing Missouri voters who argue the referendum means the map isn’t in effect, said his case will decide whether the people of Missouri “still have a meaningful referendum.”

“The referendum right is the people’s veto,” Hawley said.

The Missouri Supreme Court hours later ruled against both challenges to the maps — allowing the new lines to be used this year.

“Had the drafters intended a referendum petition filing to automatically suspend any act of the General Assembly at issue in the referendum petition, they would have so stated,” the court’s opinion says.

Only two Southern states, Florida and Kentucky, allow courts to decide partisan gerrymandering cases.

Kentucky, which has a Democratic governor, hasn’t taken up redistricting this year. But a Florida Supreme Court decision striking down a new map there would effectively offset Democrats’ loss at the Virginia Supreme Court.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a map passed by the state legislature during a special session on the same day as the Callais decision. The new congressional boundaries are designed to hand Republicans up to four additional seats.

Several voting rights groups have sued, alleging the map violates the Florida Constitution. A 2010 amendment approved by voters prohibits districts drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or incumbent.

“Instead of abiding by this law, the Legislature is defying the will of voters and backing a map that was crafted entirely with partisan intent,” Simone Leeper, senior legal counsel for redistricting at Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement. 

The Campaign Legal Center and the UCLA Voting Rights Project have sued jointly over the map.

DeSantis’s office told state lawmakers ahead of this year’s special session that the 2010 amendment requires the state legislature to account for race when drawing districts — and that the provisions regarding race can’t be severed from the rest of the amendment. In effect, DeSantis contends the whole amendment must be thrown out.

The Florida governor’s pitch, coupled with the Callais decision, persuaded GOP lawmakers.

“I have a ton of comfort because the Callais decision came out,” Florida state Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican, said. “I got to read it, and it perfectly summarizes exactly why we could, and should, change our 2022 maps.”

Map opponents’ chance of success at the Florida Supreme Court is unclear. The court as recently as 2015 blocked a congressional map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, but it has moved to the right in the years since. Six of the seven current justices were appointed by DeSantis and the other was appointed by a different Republican governor.

“The composition of the Florida Supreme Court has changed dramatically since that earlier ruling,” Bannon, the Brennan Center expert, said. “So I think there are questions about will the court be as open to those arguments.”

In other Southern states, map opponents are turning to arguments beside partisan gerrymandering.

The Tennessee chapter of the NAACP has sued Republican Gov. Bill Lee and the state General Assembly to block a gerrymander passed last week from taking effect. The organization alleges Lee violated the state constitution in how he called a special session for a new map. 

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, has urged a court to dismiss Lee and the legislature from lawsuit because they don’t conduct elections.

Alabama Democrats and voting rights groups are weighing a legal challenge to a new map that would focus on a 2022 amendment to the state constitution. The amendment requires election law changes to be made at least six months before a general election — a deadline of May 3 this year. Alabama’s redistricting special session began the next day.

In Louisiana, state lawmakers have not yet passed a new map after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s current lines as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because the legislature had previously created a second majority-Black district. Lawmakers are expected to advance a map aimed at ousting one of the state’s two Democratic House members, who are both Black.

After the Callais decision, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the state’s congressional primary elections although roughly 42,000 absentee ballots had already been cast. Lawsuits challenging the suspension have been filed in both federal and state court.

In Missouri on Tuesday, lawyers for Republican state officials took the opposite approach, urging the state supreme court to keep the map in place for the 2026 election, even if the judges strike it down. Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, told reporters afterward that preventing the state from using the map now would lead to confusion, even as 12 weeks remain before the primary election.

“It’ll be disarray for the people that have been going to town halls and listening to candidates,” Hoskins said. “It would be disarray for the candidates that are running and going out and meeting voters in their district. And it’d be disarray for the local election authorities and county clerks that have already started instituting” the new map.

Hoskins’ fears turned out to be unfounded, as the court upheld the map.

Cleaver, who is running for reelection, has said that his work ethic or commitment to voters won’t change regardless of his district boundaries. 

“If I have to serve the people who live just outside of Columbia and Jefferson City, then I’ll do that,” he said when he filed to run earlier this year.

Attorneys for the ACLU of Missouri, which supported challenges to the map, said it was unfair to Missouri residents for the state to create a problem and then argue it’s too late to change it. 

At a rally outside the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday, ACLU of Missouri Policy Director Tori Schafer expressed confidence the judges would side with map opponents — hours before they allowed the lines to move forward.

“But let me clear,” Schafer said, “democracy did not begin in a courtroom and it will not be saved in a courtroom.”

Florida Phoenix reporter Mitch Perry contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The cost of the Iran war has increased to $29 billion to date, Pentagon officials told lawmakers in both chambers Tuesday.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine and Department of Defense acting comptroller Jules Hurst faced questions from House and Senate appropriators over several hours of testimony on the administration’s Pentagon budget request and the direction of the U.S. operation in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz.

The hearings began just as the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the latest inflation figures that showed skyrocketing fuel costs drove overall inflation to the highest level since 2023.

Rep. Betty McCollum, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, said she remains skeptical of Pentagon spending, as it has lacked “sufficient transparency with gas prices and inflation numbers increasing.”

“The American people just want to afford the basic necessities for everyday life, but this administration is not doing anything to help them with the cost of living crisis,” the Minnesota lawmaker said.

Similarly, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee and serves as the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Armed Services, said “vague generalities are not helping this committee make critical judgments.”

“And the tradeoffs are significant. The deficit is increasing dramatically. We have to be conscious of that. We also have to be conscious (of) helping American families just get by, and inflation just hit 3.8% today,” Reed said.

The latest Consumer Price Index reached 3.8% over one year ago, according to the Department of Labor, up from 3.3% last month.

Fuel and energy costs largely drove the inflation increase, with gasoline up 28.4% compared to last year.

Oil and gas prices have soared since the U.S. joined Israel in launching strikes against Iran on Feb. 28. The protracted conflict has led to a near standstill in the Strait of Hormuz, a key maritime passageway off the coast of Iran where one-fifth of the world’s petroleum crossed prior to the war.

Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., questioned the Pentagon’s estimate that the war has cost $29 billion, calling it “suspiciously low.”

When pressed, Hurst said the figure does not include the cost of damage to U.S. military bases in the Middle East. Iran launched retaliatory strikes in March on multiple American installations in the region, including a strike on a base in Kuwait that killed six U.S. troops.

“Your acting comptroller suggested that damage to U.S. facilities was not factored into that figure,” Murray said to Hegseth. “It is clear that there has been extensive damage to American military assets.”

The secretary said he could not divulge details on damage to U.S. assets.

“I think an important point is, considering what the president is undertaking, what is the cost of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon? And the fact that this president’s been willing to make a historic and courageous choice to confront that, it comes with cost. And we recognize that,” Hegseth said.

Despite continued tit-for-tat attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, Hegseth told lawmakers that a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran is still in effect.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, asked Hegseth whether he believes President Donald Trump will need congressional authorization to continue military activity against the Islamic Republic.

“It doesn’t appear that hostilities have ended, and so the question to you is whether or not the administration has considered or had intended to seek an authorization of the use of military force from the Congress?” she asked.

Hegseth replied: “Senator, our view is that should the president make the decision to recommence that we would have all the authorities to do so.”

Efforts to pass a War Powers Resolution to rein in Trump’s military operations in Iran have failed multiple times in the the Republican-led Senate and House.

A vote is possible this week in the House on a bipartisan War Powers Resolution.

TOPEKA — The federal government began removal proceedings against a former Kansas mayor and permanent legal resident who hoped to avoid detention after pleading guilty to election crimes.

Joe Ceballos, a former Coldwater mayor, was notified at 10 a.m.Tuesday that he must report to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Wichita tomorrow morning.

Ceballos is “terrified,” attorney Jess Hoeme said.

Ceballos pleaded guilty to three counts of disorderly election conduct in April. He received a $2,000 fine and suspended sentence and left the courtroom amid the applause of his friends and neighbors.

At the time, Hoeme said, his client was relieved and credited Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach for his willingness to consider the situation and Ceballos’ place in the community. In November, Kobach announced that Ceballos voted in an election in 2022 even though he wasn’t a U.S. citizen.

As the case progressed, Hoeme said Kobach “finally looked at the man instead of the politics of the situation” and agreed to the suspended sentence. Ceballos hoped the resolution would keep him from being deported, Hoeme said.

The notice to report to the detention center begins the removal proceedings, and Hoeme said he expects ICE to take Ceballos into custody immediately.

“You don’t know if you’re going to get a bond, and if you do get a bond hearing, is it going to be in 30 days or 60,” Hoeme said.

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” Hoeme said. “Now we are out of the courts. Now we are squarely within the administrative agencies, which is immigration, and their judges. Trump’s been removing judges that don’t toe the line.”

Hoeme, who said he is “pissed off,” compared the situation to 1935 Germany, during Nazi rule.

“It’s shocking for me because America has always been the place where you can make a life for yourself,” Hoeme said. “That’s what we’ve always stood for. If you work hard and you live well, you can prosper.”

Ceballos was brought to the United States when he was 4 years old, Hoeme said. He gave back to his community and made a good life, he said. Homeland Security points to a battery charge in 1995, which Hoeme said was the result of Ceballos’ wife cheating on him and Ceballos getting in a fistfight with the “new boyfriend.”

“Pretty damned American thing to do,” Hoeme said, with a short laugh, showing the only evidence of humor he found in the situation.

Hoeme isn’t an immigration attorney, and he said Ceballos is being represented by another attorney for that process.

“This is a travesty of justice,” Hoeme said. “The state was willing to take the full measure of this man — his commitment to his community and his love for this country — and resolve the matter in a way that was truly fair and just. It’s unconscionable that ICE isn’t willing to do the same.”

Hoeme said he has reached out multiple times to Kansas Sens. Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran, and hasn’t received a call back from either one.

“You know, what always flabbergasted me about 1935 Germany is where were the other representatives of government?” Hoeme said. “In our particular case, it’s where is Moran and where is Roger Marshall? They’re just bootlickers because they like their jobs. They want to keep their jobs.”

TOPEKA — Kansas utility regulators handed a win Tuesday to landowners concerned about a transmission line bisecting large swaths of prairie grassland in the state’s south-central region.

The Kansas Corporation Commission voted unanimously to approve part of Evergy’s proposed construction of a 133-mile transmission line. But the three-member commission stopped short of allowing the line to cross U.S. Highway 77 east into the Flint Hills, saying Evergy must reconsider that portion of the line.

“The order notes that the commission takes seriously any activity that has the potential to permanently and adversely affect the Flint Hills or other unique ecological regions of the state,” said Tristan Kimbrell, KCC assistant general counsel, who summarized the order.

“The order also notes that the Commission takes seriously the potential impact the transmission line may have on oil and gas operations, and indicates that Evergy should have made greater efforts to communicate with oil and gas operators during its routing study for the proposed line,” he said.

The 345-kV transmission line will begin at the Buffalo Flats Substation near Garden Plain, Kansas, and end at the Delaware Substation near Delaware, Oklahoma. It will cross through western Sedgwick, Sumner, Cowley and Chautauqua counties.

The line is part of a Southwest Power Pool project that was expected to be operational by 2029, KCC filings said.

Cole Bailey, Evergy corporate counsel, testified in previous KCC hearings that the transmission line is part of the Southwest Power Pool’s integrated transmission plan, which considers projected utility usage and needed infrastructure to ensure system reliability.

SPP is a regional transmission organization, one of seven approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as nonprofit agencies that oversee transmission infrastructure, ensure utility system reliability and manage the wholesale electricity market.

KCC granted Evergy’s application for a siting permit on the proposed line west of U.S. Highway 77 but required the company to amend its landowner protocols and to work with landowners and the oil and gas industry to understand infrastructure that will be affected by the proposed route, Kimbrell said. 

“The order denies the application for the proposed route east of U.S. 77 and directs Evergy to perform a new routing study for that portion of the proposed transmission line, with strong consideration given to a route that follows or parallels the U.S. Route 166 highway,” Kimbrell said. 

The order determined the line is necessary to increase reliability and resiliency in the transmission network that serves Kansas, Kimbrell said.

“The proposed line will also reduce overload and voltage issues within Southeastern Kansas during severe winter weather, and allow for the more efficient use of regional power generation, thereby likely reducing energy costs for Kansas customers,” he said.

Numerous landowners testified against the proposed line because it would destroy prairie grasslands and interfere with ranching, farming and oil and gas operations.

KCC commissioner Dwight Keen said the docket was complex.

“Generally among the issues presented is the important matter of protection of the property rights of landowners and others who have pre-existing rights to access and use the land,” he said.

The docket also required balancing competing interests defined in Kansas law, Keen said. Evergy will have powers of eminent domain with KCC’s approval of the siting order, while the commission also sought to place “protective guardrails” around certain areas to balance the effects of the line on land use.

“For this, the commission is implementing several protocols to balance the interests of Evergy with the various interests of private property owners who access and use the land and who have the right to quiet and peaceful enjoyment … of the land,” Keen said.

Evergy spokeswoman Kaley Sturgeon said the company is required to file an updated procedural schedule by June 12.

“This was a difficult case that impacts electricity reliability and affordability for all of our Kansas customers, as well as landowners and oil/gas leaseholders near the proposed line,” she said.

Sturgeon said the KCC’s order confirmed the need for the transmission line, which will produce savings of more than $2 million a year for Kansas customers over the 40-to-50-year life of the line and will reduce outage risks and the ability to deliver electricity to Kansas communities during high-stress conditions like extreme weather events.

On paper it makes little sense. Ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, roughly 7,000 miles from the United States, is restricted and gasoline prices in this country soar? 

The strait is the major export route for oil produced by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Iraq, Bahrain and Iran, according to the International Energy Agency. But since Feb. 28, when the Iran war began and the narrow passageway between Oman and Iran became a battleground, U.S. gasoline prices have soared — and the prices of consumer products and services are poised to jump as well. 

Most oil passing through the strait goes to Asian markets, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And due to greater domestic production, the U.S. is importing less crude oil from the Persian Gulf than it has in 40 years, EIA said in a March analysis.

So why are U.S. consumers paying so much more for gasoline? Globalization.

“Supply disruptions anywhere in the world can also affect prices everywhere in the world because we live in a global market,” explained Jeff Lenard, a vice president of the trade group National Association of Convenience Stores. “Oil and refined products like gasoline are traded on the commodities markets. Places with short supply are willing to pay more for product. That drives up the global price.”

Gas prices are tied to the global supply and demand for crude oil, meaning a disruption to the supply anywhere can have an effect everywhere, said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, which tracks gas prices.

“It’s because the price of oil is based on how much is available in total. Since oil from there is in short supply, the rest of the oil all around the world becomes more expensive,” De Haan said.

A gallon of regular gasoline Monday cost an average of $4.52, according to AAA up from $4.14 a month ago and $3.14 a year ago. Consumer prices overall were up 0.9% in March, and were averaging 3.3% higher over the past year.

While the Middle East oil disruption affects prices throughout the world, retail pump costs can vary dramatically from state to state across the U.S.

California’s average Monday was $6.16, the nation’s highest, AAA reported. Next were Washington, $5.76, and Hawaii, $5.65. The lowest averages were in Oklahoma, $3.95, Mississippi, $3.98 and Arkansas, $4.

The price of crude oil is the biggest part of the price consumers pay at the pump. EIA estimates that it makes up 51% of the retail cost. Distribution and marketing account for 11%, refining costs and profits 20% and federal and state taxes 18%.

That means dramatic changes in the price of crude have a huge impact on retail prices.

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The National Association of Convenience Stores estimates that each dollar the price of oil increases could be 2.4 cents a gallon at the pump.

Brent crude, the world benchmark, was $70.50 the day before the U.S. and Israel struck Iran. Monday morning, it was more than $104.

The $34 a barrel increase since the war began would mean a 82-cent per gallon increase. 

Competition can keep prices from rising too much. No gas station wants to be an outlier projecting much higher prices than the one across the street.

There are other factors impacting gasoline prices, notably taxes that vary from state to state. 

The federal tax on gasoline has been 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993. President Donald Trump said Monday he supports freezing the tax, though he offered no timeline. A suspension would need congressional approval, and Republican leaders have in the past been reluctant to embrace any pause.

While the average state tax is 33.55 cents a gallon, it varies widely. California’s taxes and fees are estimated at 70.9 cents a gallon, the nation’s highest. The lowest tax and fee rate is in Alaska, 9 cents a gallon.

California’s costs are also boosted by other factors, including its tough environmental standards. The state requires a special blend of gasoline that aims to help air quality.

“This fuel burns cleaner but is more expensive to produce because it requires more processing steps and expensive blending components,” EIA said.

Another reason for the higher prices is California’s reliance on in-state refineries. It doesn’t have as much proximity as other states to interstate supply pipelines

About 20% of the world’s oil passed through the strait prior to the war. But reopening the strait would be unlikely to suddenly bring prices down.

“In complex supply chains, a disruption in one critical link, even if only briefly, can cascade through the system, well beyond the initial event,” Pinar Keskinocak, professor at the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech, said in an analysis. “As delays persist and compound, interconnected systems often take a long time to recover, rebalance, and return to normal.”

“I don’t expect there to be an open flooding of barrels just leaving the region,” said Jerome Dortmans, co-head of global oil and products trading in Goldman Sachs Global Banking & Markets, in an analysis.

And if the Iran crisis continues and the strait remains restricted, more price pain is probably ahead.

“A prolonged disruption of Middle East oil trade would create oil market conditions for which there is no historical precedent,” said a March report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Because soccer is the most popular sport worldwide, there are many books related to the game. But as we anticipate the 2026 World Cup and the six games Kansas City will host, let me recommend a pair of books that are not predictable biographies about superstars or championship teams.

These authors, instead, dive into the fascinating undercurrent of the sport, where soccer is an expression of cultural identity, community, and, oftentimes, deeply held political views.

One of the best alternative books is “A People’s History of Soccer” (Pluto Press, 2023) by Mickaël Correia, a French journalist who pushes back against the commercialization of the game, unhappy with how FIFA, the worldwide soccer organizer, has catered to authoritarian regimes in exchange for profit. Correia focuses his research on the untold social histories behind professional teams, circling the globe to find and describe those who have risen from working class origins or stood up to injustice.

Correia explains how the earliest professional soccer players in England, birthplace of the modern game, wrestled through a period of classist discrimination when aristocratic “amateurs” derided and banned poorer, paid athletes who arose from factory communities. In the process, Correia depicts how players from the London ironworkers, nicknamed “Hammers,” became what we know as West Ham United, or how munitions workers at the Royal Arsenal launched the team we now know as Arsenal.

Correia also reports on an array of teams that resisted tyrannical governments, such as the Catalan team FC Barcelona, which gave hope to repressed Spaniards during the fascist rule of Franco.

Similarly, he chronicles how the Brazilian team SC Corinthians defied not only its own top-down management but the rigid oligarchy of generals who had commandeered the nation. In the early 1980s, with the help of a sociologically trained coach and the free-thinking player Socrates, all members of the Corinthian team banded together and began deciding matters by majority vote.

They decided, as a group, to emblazon their jerseys with the words “Democracia corinthiana” and eventually took the field wearing shirts that declared “Dia 15 Vote,” a call for democratic voting on November 15, 1982. Together, they helped to end the oppression of the Brazilian military junta.

Correia does a remarkable job of reporting on soccer globally, including teams from the four nations whose players will be hosted by Kansas City and Lawrence during the upcoming World Cup: England, Argentina, Algeria and the Netherlands. He takes readers to Sub-Saharan Africa and the Mideast as well, and he describes how women began playing the game.

A personal favorite is his stirring account of a Ukrainian baker in Kyiv who helped to pull together a team during the Nazi occupation of World War II, gathering players from teams the invaders had dissolved.

Eventually this makeshift squad, named FC Start, defeated German teams from the Wermacht artillery and the elite Luftwaffe airforce. Annoyed, Nazi leaders demanded a rematch for the Luftwaffe, and 45,000 spectators came to watch. FC Start refused the opening Nazi salute and took the lead before halftime, which sent furious officers storming into the locker room to warn of consequences if FC Start won.

The players refused to be bullied. They not only ended on top — 5 to 3 — but a player named Klymenko dribbled through the German defense, turned at the goal, and casually kicked the ball to midfield, mocking the losers.

The whole FC Start team was arrested soon after. Eight members were sent to a concentration camp. Then Klymenko and two teammates were executed to punish the Ukrainian resistance for a recent counterattack. It’s a sober bit of history but a striking example of how soccer can be about much more than soccer.

A second standout book of this nature is “Kicking Off Around the World” (also from Pluto Press, 2024) by Ramon Usall, with the subtitle “55 Stories from when Football Met Politics.”

Because Usall lives in Catalonia, where the Barcelona team represented such resistance to the dictator Franco, his introduction takes us right to that area, describing how even the team Real Madrid, which had always been identified with the monarchy and then Franco, had a period when it let go of its royalist name (Real means “Royal”) and was overseen by a Communist Party member, although he was executed when Madrid fell to the fascist army in 1939.

Usall’s book, like Correia’s, takes us around the world, and some of the terrain is similar, such as a chapter about SC Corinthians in Brazil. In contrast to Correia, however, Usall has a full section about teams from the Iberian peninsula of Spain, and he covers more territory in the Balkan region as well as East Europe.

One gripping story from the southern satellite states of the former USSR is that of Qarabağ FK, which found itself caught in the vise of territorial war. The name Qarabağ refers to the region of Karabakh, right on the border between primarily Muslim Azerbaijan and primarily Christian Armenia. Karabakh had been assigned to Azerbaijan by the USSR, but with independence, Armenia attacked, determined to take the region back.

The Qarabağ team, based in the city of Aghdam, was increasingly at risk.

Qarabağ FK had already won an Azeri league championship in 1988, but as the war ramped up, its home games started to include the distant sound of shelling. Their coach Allahverdi Baghirov, who was a former player, left the team to help lead the Azeri military. He became internationally known when, during a prisoner exchange, he hugged an Armenian prisoner before freeing him, saying that they had played together and he didn’t want to have to fight against him.

Not long after, he was killed by an anti-tank mine, and the team had to flee the city. Its last home game was the league semi-final, and after taking refuge in the capital of Baku, it ironically won the league championship a second time, even though its home city had become a destroyed ghost town.

Soccer, known as football to most the world, is the undisputed favorite sport globally.

Sports analysts predict that more than 5 billion people will take time to watch some part of the upcoming World Cup. Officially, 265 million players are on registered teams, but that doesn’t begin to touch the hordes of unregistered youth and adults who take to fields every week in pickup games even in the most remote corners of the world, such as rural South Sudan, the Arctic region of Nunavut, Canada or the Galapagos islands.

The world loves to watch and play soccer, but because the sport is so universal, it is worth looking at in more ways than just as physical competition between standout teams or players. Correia and Usall show that the game is worth understanding sociologically, politically — even philosophically.

Tim Bascom’s newest book—”The Boundless Game: Soccer Stories from Across the Street to Around the World” (University Press of Kansas, 2026)—celebrates ways that soccer transcends cultural and national borders. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday nominated Cameron Hamilton to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a former acting chief who was fired in 2025 shortly after he told a congressional panel FEMA should continue to exist.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will likely schedule a hearing in the coming weeks for Hamilton to testify about his goals for the agency as part of the confirmation process. 

The panel will then schedule a vote on whether to send his nomination to the floor, where Hamilton will need to secure approval from a majority of senators before he would become FEMA administrator. 

Taking on that role will be no easy task, especially since Trump has spoken repeatedly during his second administration about reducing the size and scope of the agency. 

“We want to wean off of FEMA and we want to bring it down to the state level,” Trump said in June. “We’re moving it back to the states so the governors can handle it. That’s why they’re governors. Now, if they can’t handle it, they shouldn’t be governor.”

The FEMA review council that Trump created to review the agency submitted its report last week recommending states shoulder more of the cost and responsibility of disaster relief.

The previous disconnect between Trump and Hamilton about whether FEMA should continue led to Hamilton being removed from his role leading the agency last year. 

Hamilton testified before a House panel in May 2025 that he personally did “not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

“Having said that, I’m not in a position to make decisions and impact outcomes on whether or not a determination, such as consequential as that, should be made,” he said at the time. “That is a conversation that should be had between the president of the United States and this governing body on identifying the exact ways and methodologies, in which, what is prudent for federal investment, and what is not.”

One day later he was ousted as the senior official performing the duties of the administrator at FEMA.

David Richardson has been the senior official performing the duties of FEMA administrator ever since. He was previously the assistant secretary of Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office at the Department of Homeland Security.

Hamilton detailed his time leading FEMA on an episode of the “Disaster Tough” podcast that aired in September, saying he had developed a plan to address that the agency had “become too bureaucratic.”

“I was very clear and poignant that the cause of most of the problems in FEMA is because we keep putting too much crap in FEMA’s rucksack that never should have been there,” he said. 

Hamilton then spoke about the Shelter and Services Program, which provides grant funding to organizations that help to house, feed and assist migrants released by the Department of Homeland Security. 

He argued that isn’t an “emergency management requirement” and that “FEMA has become a functional multi-tool.”

Housing was a “prime example” of where another federal department, like Housing and Urban Development, could take over some of the tasks that FEMA currently handles, he said. 

“I said, we need to aggressively talk to HUD about them having a larger stakehold in that particular missions field because they are more uniquely suited,” he said. 

But Hamilton insisted he was not supportive of plans to completely eliminate the agency. 

“I was not hired to abolish FEMA. That was never a part of the conversation and that’s never something that I would have agreed with,” he said on the podcast. “And I was very clear, I wanted some reform. I wanted to cut wasteful spending. I wanted to downsize the agency. There’s no denying that. And I think most of those things could be done wisely and properly.”

Any offloading of responsibilities from the federal government to states, he said, would include “a gradual phasing out.”

“We needed to give the states some time to see what that entails and to respond accordingly,” he said. “Not just, ‘Hey, the water is now shut off. You’re on your own.’ That’s not wise. That’s not being a good partner.”

Hamilton also discussed what happened before and after he testified in front of a House subcommittee a year ago, including that he was polygraphed in March.

“One of the more difficult things for me to deal with was when my character was being attacked, and when I was being accused of being a liar and a leaker, and I was polygraphed for it,” he said. “DHS requested that I be polygraphed. And they said in their statement, you know, my character, judgment, my stability, my ethics were all in question.” 

Asked by the podcast host if he wanted to put on his “Navy SEAL hat” when that was happening, Hamilton responded, “I wanted to choke some people, that’s for sure.”

Hamilton said he knew that he was about to be fired and that on the day he testified before Congress, officials “notified my security that my access was eliminated. So before the testimony, I knew it was coming, and I knew it was coming weeks in advance.” 

Later in the episode, Hamilton said he knew he would be asked during the hearing about Trump’s comments regarding FEMA and spoke with former FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor to work through how best to answer the question. 

The two then “came to the agreement” that Hamilton would say, “it’s not in the best interest of the American people.” 

“I cannot get behind this position that abolishing FEMA is the answer,” he said. “There are so many things that we can do before we go that extreme and put the American people at what I believe to be extreme risk unnecessarily.”

TOPEKA — Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach was absent from the state’s ceremony May 1 honoring four Kansas law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty because he traveled to Ireland to gather insights into dealing with hooligan fans during World Cup soccer events.

The solemn ceremony at the Kansas Law Enforcement Memorial was attended by U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, Gov. Laura Kelly, Kansas Highway Patrol Col. Erik Smith and hundreds of others who paid tribute to four of the state’s law enforcement officers who perished last year. Instead of participating in the service, Kobach traveled to Ireland with other elected officials associated with the U.S. Attorney General Alliance. Kobach’s replacement at the Topeka memorial was Toni Mattivi, director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

The deceased officers added to Kansas’ granite memorial: Phillips County Undersheriff Pierce Gaede, Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Deputy Elijah La’Mose Ming, Hays Police Department Sgt. Scott William Heimann and Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department Officer Hunter Lee Simoncic.

Chris Mann, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for attorney general, said he was disappointed Kobach wasn’t present at the Statehouse for the memorial. Mann asserted Kobach had in the past prioritized his personal ambitions and in this instance the attorney general chose not to take part in this public opportunity to honor law enforcement officers who died while serving Kansans.

“Four young police officers made the ultimate sacrifice while protecting our communities. As a former police officer severely injured in the line of duty, I know our fallen law enforcement officers deserve better,” said Mann, who also wasn’t in attendance.

In 2002, Mann was critically injured when a drunk driver going 50 mph hit his Lawrence Police Department car during a traffic stop. Mann was slammed into the vehicle he had pulled over, leaving an impression of his torso on that vehicle. His injuries were extensive enough that he retired from law enforcement at age 25.

A May 1 social media post from the Ireland attorney general’s office says Kobach was at an estate in Ireland on the trip sponsored by the bipartisan Attorney General Alliance. Kobach was there with attorneys general from Missouri, Indiana, South Carolina, New Mexico, Connecticut, Louisiana, Maryland and Mississippi.

Danedri Herbert, spokeswoman for Kobach, said Kobach didn’t take part in the Kansas memorial ceremony because of the scheduling conflict. Kobach, who is seeking reelection as attorney general, previously attended funerals for each of the officers, she said.

On May 1, the Kansas attorney general’s office did post to social media messages expressing the “profound debt we owe those who wear the badge. We remember. We honor. We continue their watch.”

“Their courage, integrity and unwavering commitment will never be forgotten,” Kobach’s office said. “To their families, friends and fellow officers: Kansas stands with you. We carry their legacy forward in our continued fight for justice and public safety.”

On Monday, 51 Kansas sheriffs announced their endorsement of Kobach’s reelection as attorney general.

Herbert said no taxpayer resources were spent on Kobach’s overseas trip to Ireland. He joined Attorney General Alliance members to learn about potential law enforcement threats to states, including Kansas, preparing to host FIFA World Cup soccer events in June and July, she said. The briefings included advice on terrorism, human trafficking and unruly fans, she said.

She said Kobach departed Ireland in time to travel home to Kansas before flying to a resort in Sea Island, Georgia, to take part in a May 3-5 gathering of the Republican Attorney General Association. Kobach previously served as RAGA president and serves on its executive board.

RAGA’s May retreat has served as a private gathering of Republican state attorneys general who collaborate with lobbyists and corporate leaders on political fundraising and legal agendas, CNBC says.

“We must shatter previous fundraising records to ensure we protect battleground incumbent seats and pick up winnable seats,” said Adam Piper, executive director of RAGA.

The state of Kansas holds its annual Law Enforcement Memorial Ceremony, with a wreath-laying event at the monument, following a candlelight vigil at the Capitol sponsored by the Fraternal Order of Police in Topeka.

Gaede, the 30-year-old Phillips County undersheriff, began his law enforcement career in Thomas County. On June 27, 2025, the Phillips County Sheriff’s Office received calls of explosions or booms. Gaede made contact with an individual in the front yard of a residence. When the undersheriff attempted to make an arrest, a suspect drew a revolver and fired five rounds. Gaede was critically injured and died at a local hospital.

He was survived by his wife Karley and children Axel, Otto and Emilie, as well as his father Eric and mother Angie.

Ming, 34, started his career in law enforcement with the Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Office in 2016. On July 26, 2025, Ming responded to a residence in Kansas City, Kansas. As Ming and his partner approached the house, shots were fired from the residence. Ming was fatally struck in the chest by gunfire. He was survived by his wife Tiara, son Elijah and father Mark.

Simoncic, 26, had been with the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department since 2023. In the morning of August 26, 2025, KCKPD officers were dispatched to a report of shots fired. A driver with a handgun fled the scene. During the pursuit, Simoncic began deploying devices in an attempt to end the pursuit.

While out of his patrol car, Simoncic was struck by the suspect’s vehicle and died due to multiple traumatic injuries. He was survived by his father Ron Simoncic, mother Christine Brungardt and brother Fischer.

Heimann, of the Hays Police Department, began his career with the agency in 2016. On Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025, Heimann responded to a call for assistance with a barricaded subject. Heimann, 32, was struck by a single round from within the residence. He was survived by his wife Beth, daughter Victoria, son Patrick, and parents Bill and Teresa Heimann.

TOPEKA — Kansas state employees can choose between two health insurance companies after the Health Care Commission voted Monday to move forward with Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas.

Commission members debated whether to choose Aetna, dropping Blue Cross, for the state’s health insurance beginning Jan. 1, 2027, to save an estimated $240 million over the three-year contract.

Several commissioners said the decision wasn’t just about saving dollars. Cristi Cain, who represents state employees on the commission, said she received “significant feedback” on retaining Blue Cross.

“One thing that was pointed out is an overwhelming number of employees choose Blue Cross — 34,500 to 4,500 for Aetna — which means about 90% of employees choose Blue Cross, when given the option,” she said. “As one employee put it, 90% of employees cannot be wrong, and our opinion and voices should be counted, respected and valued.”

Many comments focused on retaining choice, concerns about continuity of care and whether Aetna has a good provider network in rural areas, Cain said. Employees shared personal stories, including a woman with two children who are medically complex, one of whom received surgery in Baltimore recently, she said.

“Blue Cross case managers have helped coordinate medical supplies and care, preventing extended hospital stays,” Cain said. “She stated clearly if the choice were between losing Blue Cross or paying higher premiums, we would choose to pay more without hesitation.”

Proposals put forth at the meeting included extending the current contract for one year and putting it out for bid again or dropping the three-year contract to one year, which would give commissioners more time to assess effects on state employees.

The insurance companies would have to agree with either one of those actions, since the “request for proposal” was for a three-year contract, commission staff said.

However, Rep. Bill Sutton, a Gardner Republican who serves on the committee, said he didn’t see the point of either option. He said from what he had heard that morning, he believed the commission didn’t want to cause disruption for employees.

“Even in the face of saving $220 million, we would rather go into the next meeting and decide what co-pays we’re going to increase, what coverage we’re going to reduce, what premiums we’re going to increase in order to keep our plan solvent,” he said.

Sutton said he thought the commission’s purpose was to get a bid that offered the best deal for Kansas employees.

In its June meeting, the commission will look at overall design for the state healthcare plan, determining what changes need to be made to co-pays, premiums and other costs.

Commission chairman and administration secretary Adam Proffitt proposed approval of both companies and for the commission to consider setting different monthly employee rates based on which company they chose. Because Aetna would cost less, it is likely some employees would move to that company, which could save costs for the state, he said.

Proffitt also said the $240 million was not an increase in costs if they chose not to go with Aetna alone. It is a “hypothetical” savings, and there is a question whether Aetna will be able to expand its provider network to ensure good coverage throughout the state, he said.

“So it’s a leap of faith,” he said. “In my estimation, that increase we’re looking at for next year is only 2.74% … and that is pretty close to what the target rate of inflation is,” Proffitt said.

Moving forward with both would essentially maintain the status quo, he said.

Proffitt’s proposal passed with five votes of approval and one abstention from Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt.

Sutton said he liked the idea of tiered pricing so that employees who didn’t want to pay for Blue Cross would have a less expensive option.

Schmidt said she wanted the request for proposal to be put out again, so that it could be structured better. She said she still didn’t have answers for all the questions about the proposals that she would like to have.

“I do think that when you have such a vast range between the two bids, there’s something that just doesn’t look right,” she said. 

Schmidt said she is concerned about state employees, about the reserve fund, “which is in the gutter,” and how making up the difference either will cost state employees through premiums or the state general fund.

“I don’t think either one of those are good choices, and I think it should have gone back for rebid and take a look at it and see what happened,” she said.

TOPEKA — U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas formally launched a reelection campaign Monday tied to reinforcing the role of Congress in controlling the rising cost of living for consumers and to moderate disruption within the federal government caused by executive branch overreach.

Davids, who has served the eastern Kansas district since elected in 2018, expects primary and general election challenges. Fairway Democrat Sarah Preu and Republican Chase LaPorte of Mission also have filed for the 3rd District seat in Congress.

“There are a lot of people so dissatisfied with the chaos they see coming out of Washington. I hope to continue to serve the Kansas 3rd and be a voice of reason, get stuff done and try to do everything possible to make life more manageable, less chaotic and make sure we’re actually brining down costs,” Davids said during a news conference after filing in the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office.

She pointed to the economic pinch point of rising fuel prices in wake of President Donald Trump’s war with Iran. She said it would be important for the U.S. House to do its part to address decisions of Republicans to diminish health coverage, weaken public education and deploy tariffs harmful to the agriculture sector.

“Kansans are struggling and it matters to have people in D.C. who are actually trying to focus on the needs of the people of Kansas and not, you know, political gamesmanship and bickering,” Davids said.

Davids, 45, filed to seek a fifth term. She won four previous campaigns by securing at least 53% of the vote. Initially, she defeated incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder. She twice beat GOP nominee Amanda Adkins. Two years ago, she retained the seat in a race against GOP physician Prasanth Reddy.

Rob Fillion, executive director of the Kansas Republican Party, issued a statement that said Davids’ record in Congress aligned with priorities of former President Joe Biden. Fillion said the National Democratic Party’s agenda led to consumer inflation, weakened border security and “left working families behind.”

“Her record is not one of independence or moderation,” Fillion said. “It is one of consistent alignment with the most out-of-touch priorities coming out of Washington.”

In 2025 and so far in 2026, the Kansas Legislature has been unable to convene in special session in response to Trump’s request that Kansas’ four House districts be gerrymandered to undermine Davids’ reelection.

During the electoral drama, Davids said she would consider running for U.S. Senate if the state Legislature shattered the 3rd District for benefit of Republicans.

“I was surprised that the Kansas Legislature raised their hands and said that they were willing to try to do it,” she said. “And, then, I was very relieved and happy to see that Kansans made their voices heard. A lot of people reached out to their state legislators. To be honest, there were also Republicans in the state Legislature who said, ‘I’m not going to do this, because it’s not the right thing to do.’ You got to give credit where credit is due.”

Davids said ongoing work in other states to reconfigure congressional boundaries at the behest of Republican and Democratic leadership was a mistake. She said no one should “expect people to feel like their government cares about them if we see legislatures all across the country, and the president of the United States, saying that politicians should be choosing their voters and not the other way around.”

She said one of the first bills she endorsed after sworn into Congress would have forbidden partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts.

The U.S. Supreme Court has since issued rulings affirming the right to states to engage in partisan gerrymandering. There is apprehension among voters that mid-decade redistricting could diminish minority representation in Congress, she said.

“There’s a lot of frustration and anger,” Davids said. “There’s also a lot of fear about what it means for the voters of those southern states. It is especially disheartening to see the gutting of the Voting Rights Act that was put in place for a reason.”

The 3rd District had long been dominated by voter-rich Johnson County as well as the entirety of Wyandotte County. In 2022, in a bid to weaken Davids’ odds of winning reelection, the state Legislature removed the northern half of Wyandotte County from the district and added to the district Republican-leaning Anderson, Franklin and Miami counties.

Davids, the first LGBTQ+ Native American to serve in Congress, is registered with the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin. She grew up in the Leavenworth area and earned a degree at University of Missouri-Kansas City and a law degree at Cornell University.

She said she had heard from many Kansans anxious about the federal government tilting toward special interests capable of bending rules.

“People want leaders who listen, tell the truth and actually fix issues instead of making them worse,” she said. “So, as I run for reelection, my focus remains on working with both parties to lower costs and ensure Washington delivers for hardworking Kansans — not billionaires or powerful corporations.”

LAWRENCE — Kansas Abortion Fund president Sandy Brown wants Kansans to show up in August and repeat their 2022 decision to defeat a constitutional amendment that could upend abortion rights in the state.

Four years ago, voters by a 59-41 margin defeated a proposal to overturn a Kansas Supreme Court ruling that established the right to terminate a pregnancy. This year, the proposal would eliminate the merit-based system for selecting state Supreme Court justices and make them elected positions instead.

Proponents of the amendment, including Senate President Ty Masterson, see it as a way of electing conservative justices who will provide more partisan rulings on issues like abortion and school finance.

“People need to stand up like they did before in 2022 and just ram it down their throats,” Brown said on the Kansas Reflector podcast. “Put up your yard signs, make a donation, get online.”

Brown has led the all-volunteer, Lawrence-based nonprofit for the past 13 years. The Kansas Abortion Fund brings in about $400,000 in grants and donations each year to cover the costs of Kansas women seeking an abortion, regardless of their financial status. In 2025, they served 1,328 individuals — about 27% of the total number of Kansas women who received an abortion.

“They probably wouldn’t know about us, the person who is pregnant and needs help, until they go to the clinic, and we work directly with the clinics,” Brown said.

The organization began in 1996 as a small group of women in Lawrence who had a phone tree and helped women who needed an abortion. For a while, it was known as the Peggy Bowman Second Chance Fund, in honor of a prominent advocate for women’s rights.

Bowman was a lobbyist for George Tiller, the Wichita abortion provider who was murdered in 2009 in his church by an anti-abortion zealot. When Bowman died of heart failure in 2016, her obituary read: “Her condition was undoubtedly aggravated by the catastrophe known as Sam Brownback and Kris Kobach.”

Brown said the work of the Kansas Abortion Fund evolved after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The ruling, just weeks ahead of the Kansas vote in 2022, left decisions about reproductive health care up to individual states. The most recent data from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment shows that three-fourths of the 19,000 women who received an abortion in Kansas in 2024 were from out of state.

The Kansas Abortion Fund only helps in-state patients, but Brown said the organization can connect out-of-state patients with other resources.

Brown said she “wasn’t surprised at all” by the 2022 vote, even though it was an unexpected landslide for most political observers.

“We had the polling and we had the energy behind us,” Brown said. “I wasn’t really surprised. Relieved, yes.”

Kansas voters, she said, are “the salt of the earth, and you start talking about taking precious rights away from us, like bodily autonomy, you know, that’s just going way overboard for us.”

This time, however, she said it is more of a challenge to inform voters about what’s at stake with the Aug. 4 ballot question. She said the wording of the proposed constitutional amendment is complicated.

It reads: “The citizens of Kansas who are qualified electors shall have the right to elect the justices of the supreme court. The rules applicable for such elections and the designation of position numbers shall be provided by law. Justice positions 1, 2 and 3 shall be elected at the general election in November of 2028, justice positions 4 and 5 in November of 2030 and justice positions 6 and 7 in November of 2032, and every six years thereafter, respectively. Any vacancy occurring on the supreme court for an unexpired term shall be filled at the next even-year election for the remainder of such term by election as provided by law.”

The amendment also strikes other parts of the constitution, including a prohibition against justices engaging in political activities.

In simple terms, according to Brown: “It turns our justices into campaigning politicians. It’s terrifying.”

The Marion County Record in December reported that Masterson, the Senate president from Andover who is seeking the GOP nomination for governor, told a Patriots for Liberty group that electing justices would reverse Supreme Court decisions on abortion rights.

“But you can’t go out there and say it because they’ll say that if you elect your Supreme Court, you won’t have any right to abortion anymore,” Masterson said.

He added: “If we elect our Supreme Court, they won’t force you to spend money on schools.”

Brown said supporters of the amendment have an advantage when it comes to messaging. If someone asks, “Hey, you want to vote,” most people will say, “Sure,” she said.

But she remains optimistic that voters will understand what’s at stake as the election gets closer.

“I know that Kansans will rise to the occasion, and they will understand that this is about overturning abortion protections,” she said. “This is about electing Supreme Court justices where big money will be thrown in. And we all know what that what that’s going to look like. It’s going to get ugly.”

As President Donald Trump tries to assert power over U.S. elections, he has raged on social media, cajoled Republican lawmakers and unleashed the Department of Justice on his political enemies.

What has he accomplished with all that effort? Not a lot.

Six months before the November midterm elections, the Trump administration’s quest to exercise authority over the contests and impose sweeping restrictions on voters has proved largely unsuccessful. The aggressive campaign — separate from Trump’s more effective foray into redistricting fights — has been stymied by the courts, rebuffed by many state election officials and opposed by key Republican senators.

“I think there’s many out there who are worried about the constant drumbeat of what the administration is trying to do and what they might do in the future. I hear this from voters, I hear this from election officials,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research.

“And what I see is that there is a vast chasm between wanting to do something and trying to do something and actually successfully doing it.”

Much could change between now and November, of course. 

Facing likely Republican losses in the midterms, election experts warn that Trump could lash out with increasingly brazen attempts to control elections. Or that the Justice Department will conduct more raids targeting election officials, like the FBI seizure of ballots from the 2020 presidential election from Fulton County, Georgia.

Democrats remain braced for federal election interference, especially the prospect of Trump deploying immigration enforcement agents or the military at polling locations — an action prohibited under federal law that some administration aides have nevertheless refused to flatly rule out.

But Trump’s record of achievement up to this point is poor.

The SAVE America Act, which would require voters to prove their citizenship, is stalled in the U.S. Senate despite Trump’s repeated demands for its passage. Federal courts blocked an executive order Trump signed last year that sought to impose a proof-of-citizenship rule unilaterally.

The Justice Department hasn’t secured a single court victory in the 30 lawsuits it’s filed to force states and the District of Columbia to turn over sensitive personal data on voters. A bipartisan group of state secretaries of state is fighting the Trump administration in court — only 13 Republican states have provided the information.

And an executive order signed in March that would limit voting by mail faces five federal lawsuits, with an initial courtroom showdown set for Thursday in Washington, D.C. Federal agencies have yet to finalize plans to implement the directive, which election law experts call illegal and unconstitutional.

“America’s Elections are Rigged, Stolen, and a Laughingstock all over the World. We are either going to fix them, or we won’t have a Country any longer,” Trump posted on Truth Social in late April.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told States Newsroom that Trump is committed “to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters.” 

Jackson named several federal laws that she said provide the Justice Department oversight over states’ election administration. She also noted Trump’s support for the SAVE America Act.

“Anyone breaking the law will be held accountable,” Jackson said in an email.

Trump has placed the nation’s electoral system under immense stress before. 

After the 2020 election, the president and his allies worked to overturn the results, with Trump leaning on then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject Electoral College votes. The effort failed but it led to a mob storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and disrupting Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

Today, the system is holding but under strain. An analysis released Thursday by Issue One, a pro-democracy group, likened American elections to a resilient patient with a strong immune system. Yet the Trump administration, rather than boosting the body’s immunity, acts like a virus, it said.

“America’s election system’s immune system is not breaking, but it is actively fighting against the virus of democratic backsliding,” the analysis reads.

The group identified three safeguards it says are in critical condition: Congress, internal checks within the executive branch and the information ecosystem. 

Election officials have watched with particular concern as the Justice Department probes the 2020 election. Trump has long falsely asserted that the election was stolen and in January 2021 pressured the Georgia secretary of state to find him enough votes to overturn his loss in that state.

After the FBI obtained a warrant to seize 2020 election ballots from Fulton County, which encompasses Atlanta, in January 2026, the DOJ last month sent a subpoena for information on the county’s election workers. The subpoena demands the names, positions, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of election workers and poll volunteers who worked the 2020 general election.

Fulton County is fighting the subpoena in court. On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the FBI doesn’t have to give the ballots back to the county, though he noted the seizure “was certainly not perfect.”

The Justice Department has also obtained a grand jury subpoena for election records in Arizona and demanded 2024 ballots from Wayne County, Michigan, which includes Detroit. And the FBI recently interviewed a Wisconsin election official about the 2020 election, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Local leaders have promised that they won’t bend to pressure from the Trump administration.

“This whole thing is designed to harass, intimidate and chill participation in our election process,” Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chair Robb Pitts, a Democrat, said in a video statement. “It’s not going to work, it’s not going to happen.”

Some states are pursuing additional safeguards against federal election interference. 

For example, New Mexico lawmakers passed a bill that makes intentionally obstructing polling places a felony and prohibits the military or any armed federal personnel from polling locations.

The legislative push, concentrated in Democratic states, comes as Trump administration officials have sidestepped direct questions about whether troops or federal agents could be deployed to the polls.

“It’s yet another gotcha hypothetical,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a recent U.S. Senate hearing.

The Connecticut General Assembly passed legislation May 6 that imposes a 250-foot buffer zone around election sites where warrantless arrests and searches, use of force and ID checks by state or federal officers, including immigration agents, are banned. The measure also bans masked or concealed identities near polling places, among other provisions.

Connecticut state Rep. Matt Blumenthal, a Democrat who chairs the state House Government Administration & Elections Committee, said that if nothing happens during this fall’s elections, “I’ll say, ‘Good, it worked.’” 

The goal of the bill isn’t to create confrontations between Connecticut law enforcement and federal forces, but to deter intimidation in the first place, he said.

“We have a responsibility to protect all of our residents, but especially our voters, related to our elections — to prevent these sorts of tools of threat and intimidation and terror from being used to shape our political life,” Blumenthal said in an interview.

Connecticut state Sen. Rob Sampson, a Republican, said that he wouldn’t support abuse from the federal government. But Democrats, he said, were spinning a false narrative of voter intimidation for political purposes and attempting to distract from weaknesses in election security.

“In the last few years, I don’t always trust the results,” Sampson said on the Senate floor. “Now, some people will go out there and say, ‘Oh, you’re an election denier.’ I’m not saying that there’s tens of thousands of faulty or erroneous or fraudulent votes. I’m just saying that there’s definitely some.”

Trump and Republicans in Congress say major action is needed to boost election confidence. 

At Trump’s urging, the U.S. House passed the SAVE America Act in February. In addition to requiring voters to show documents such as a passport or birth certificate that prove citizenship, the legislation also imposes ID requirements at the polls and would require states to bolster efforts to clean voter registration lists.

Polling suggests Americans support at least some of the bill’s provisions. A Politico poll conducted in April found 52% of Americans support requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, while 18% oppose. 

Democrats, election administration experts and some Republicans say the proposal would lead to chaos. Its provisions would take effect immediately, upending voting requirements potentially months or weeks before elections. Married women and others who have last names that don’t match their birth certificates could face additional obstacles registering to vote.

The SAVE America Act hasn’t advanced in the U.S. Senate. Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican and major proponent of the bill, attempted to add the measure onto a budget bill in April, but the Senate rejected it, 48-50.

“This doesn’t mean Trump and his allies in Congress will stop,” Héctor Sánchez Barba, president and CEO of Mi Familia Vota, a Latino voting rights group, said in a statement.

The Senate has since moved off the SAVE America Act and would need to hold a procedural vote to return to it. Whether that happens is in doubt, but Kennedy indicated to Punchbowl News that he intends to force another amendment vote later this month. His office didn’t respond to an email from States Newsroom seeking confirmation.

Without the SAVE America Act, Trump’s options to legally restrict voting are limited. 

Trump signed an executive order in March attempting to limit the U.S. Postal Service’s delivery of ballots through the mail. The order also directs the Department of Homeland Security to create “state citizenship lists” that include the names of voting-age citizens in each state — effectively creating a national voter list.

But the order has come under legal attack from Democratic groups, a coalition of Democratic states and multiple voting rights organizations. Its opponents are hopeful that federal judges will soon block the directive like they did a March 2025 order that included a proof-of-citizenship requirement.

“I don’t have confidence that the Trump administration or Donald Trump will refrain from trying to interfere with our elections,” Blumenthal said. “But I have great confidence that the American people will stand up against it.”

Let’s get straight to the point.

Kansas Reflector has not and will not run stories or columns created by artificial intelligence. We help people understand the world in which they live through journalism written by other people. Different outlets may make different choices, but we want our readers to know that the words they read and images they see come from their fellow Kansans.

I’m stating this so bluntly now because States Newsroom, our parent organization, released its official AI policy last week. From one perspective, the policy simply codifies current practices. From another, it takes a stand against the waves of meaningless slop flooding social media platforms and websites.

It says: “States Newsroom does not publish stories or commentaries generated by AI. We do not publish any images, videos or audio clips created or altered by AI. If the use of AI is the point of a story in question, AI-generated content may be used, but will be prominently labeled and explained.”

There you have it.

News outlets across the nation have debated the use of generative AI in recent months. The conflict often occurs between reporters — those who report and write stories — and the editors and executives running publications.

McClatchy, the newspaper chain that includes the Wichita Eagle and Kansas City Star, has faced pushback from journalists after deploying a “content scaling agent” meant to produce summaries and alternate versions of stories. Reporters have asked to have their bylines removed from the AI creations.

Similarly, artificial intelligence has become a sticking point in union negotiations at both the industry-leading The New York Times and ProPublica.

I can understand why reporters might want to use AI tools for research. As a rule, journalists enjoy experimenting with new technology to uncover skulduggery. But that’s behind the scenes. Who on earth really wants to ingest AI-produced content?

We all know that generative artificial intelligence models can churn out text or images or video. I’ve written multiple columns about its ability to do so, alternating between the amused and skeptical. But for all the technology’s supposed potential, I haven’t yet met a person who says: “That’s just what I need. Give me more of that.”

Instead, I’ve heard the opposite.

Audiences recoil at clunky AI widgets bolted onto search engines, websites and operating systems. They accuse awkward writing and outrageous videos of being created by AI. Teenagers and preteens have even started calling fake or inauthentic statements “AI.”

States Newsroom’s policy adopts a properly cautious stance: “While AI offers many benefits, we believe it raises many concerns related to accuracy, privacy, and the misuse of copyrighted material in training AI systems. It may also be used to spread misinformation and create deceptive words, images and sounds.”

Journalists and news outlets are in the truth business. New technology should help us locate and spread truth, not hide or distort it.

After following AI closely for the past four years, I’ve come to believe that ardent advocates and outraged opponents both miss the mark. I strongly doubt claims that AI will either “transform the world for the better” or “cause human extinction.” I suspect it will become just another piece of technology.

Depending on how you define AI, it’s been part of our lives since the first automated spell checkers. It pops up in popular computer programs such as Photoshop. Radiologists have come to incorporate its insights while doing their jobs. Our cellphones employ AI shortcuts for sending text messages, taking pictures or asking for directions.

In other words, while I don’t want AI writing my columns, I’m happy for the help on spelling “conscientious” correctly.

Our policy acknowledges this truth: “We allow limited use of AI for certain aspects of the editorial process, including but not limited to transcriptions of audio interviews, analysis of data sets, routine formatting tasks, brainstorming, and review of large documents or videos of lengthy meetings, on a case-by-case basis.”

Notably, this does not absolve reporters or columnists of any responsibility in the writing process. We should verify that transcribed quotes are correct. We should doublecheck data analysis. We should watch the flagged sections of meetings.

Above all, human beings bear responsibility. If we get something wrong, it’s our own fault.

I’m sure this won’t be my last column about artificial intelligence. While I’ve gone on the record as calling it just another piece of technology, I could be wrong. Yet I strongly believe that Kansas Reflector’s readers want to hear from other Kansans, not output from neural networks dispersed across data centers.

We live in this state, alongside you. We sleep and wake, work and play, eat and exercise. Our words come from our own minds, transmitted by our fingers to a keyboard, and then to you. They might not be perfect, but they’re ours.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

WASHINGTON — The federal student loan system is set to see a dramatic overhaul beginning this summer, and critics warn it likely will make loans more expensive and difficult to obtain for borrowers — driving them to private lenders or altering their plans for higher education.

Among the major changes are new loan limits for graduate and professional students, a restructured repayment system where new borrowers will have only two plans to choose from and the elimination of a key loan program for graduate and professional students that allowed for unlimited borrowing.

The provisions — most of which will take effect July 1 — stem from congressional Republicans’ mega tax and spending cut bill that President Donald Trump signed into law last year. 

The U.S. Department of Education finalized regulations, published May 1, that implement sweeping changes outlined in the GOP’s “big, beautiful” law. The department received more than 80,000 public comments before the rule was finalized. 

Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said that “at a high level,” the reforms center on “lowering the cost of college, simplifying student loan repayment and restoring accountability to the federal student lending system,” during an April 30 call with reporters regarding the new regulations. 

The average federal student loan debt balance stands at $39,547, according to the Education Data Initiative.

As July 1 approaches, here’s a closer look at some of the biggest changes coming to the federal student loan system: 

The Grad PLUS program, which allowed for graduate and professional students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance, will soon be eliminated under the package and unavailable for new borrowers.

“If you are currently borrowing Grad PLUS loans, so you borrowed Grad PLUS loans before July 1, you will be allowed to continue using Grad PLUS until you finish your program, or until three years have expired, basically whichever is sooner,” said Preston Cooper, senior fellow in higher education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank.

“Current students are grandfathered in — it will only be new graduate students, as of this fall, after July 1, who will be subject to the new loan limits,” Cooper said. 

The package also sets forth new annual and aggregate loan limits for graduate and professional students, along with parents who take out federal student loans for dependent undergraduate students. 

Graduate student loans will be capped at $20,500 annually, with a $100,000 aggregate limit. 

Parent PLUS borrowers will have an annual cap of $20,000 and an aggregate cap of $65,000 per dependent. 

Professional student loans will have a $50,000 annual limit and an aggregate cap of $200,000. 

The programs that fall within the department’s “professional” category and are subject to that larger loan cap include: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, theology and clinical psychology. 

The department clarified in a fact sheet on the finalized regulations that the “professional” student classifications “do not express a value judgment about the importance of any occupation or field” but instead serve a “loan-administration function.” 

The agency has received immense pushback from groups representing people in fields that do not fall under the department’s definition and will thus be subject to lower annual and lifetime borrowing caps. 

In another major shift, the regulations replace prior repayment options with two new plans — the Repayment Assistance Plan, or RAP, and the Tiered Standard plan — both of which will launch July 1.

RAP is an income-based repayment plan that “waives unpaid interest for borrowers who make on-time payments that do not fully cover accruing interest,” per the department’s fact sheet. 

Balances under the plan will also “decline with each on-time payment, as unpaid interest is fully waived and the Department then reduces principal by an amount equal to the borrower’s payment, up to $50,” per the agency. 

The Tiered Standard plan offers fixed monthly payments, ranging from a 10-year to 25-year period, depending on the outstanding principal balance of the borrower. 

“The upshot is that loan repayment is going to get a lot more expensive for almost everyone, and for some people, it’s going to get significantly more expensive, and the transition is also going to be difficult for a lot of people to manage,” Michele Zampini, associate vice president for federal policy and advocacy at the Institute for College Access & Success, told States Newsroom.

Zampini, whose organization aims to advance affordability, accountability and equity in higher education, said she thinks “there will be a lot of students who will have to turn to the private loan market, who otherwise would have been able to cover their costs through the (Grad PLUS) program.”

Victoria Jackson, assistant director of higher education policy at the nonprofit policy and advocacy group EdTrust, said that with the new loan limits and “drastic cuts to aid availability” in the regulations, “you would really hope that it would come with other, more affordable and better forms of financial aid.” 

“And what they’ve done is just created this vacuum that right now can really only be filled with private loans, which are costlier and riskier for students, or students are just not going to go,” Jackson said.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues its efforts to eliminate the Department of Education, including through a series of interagency agreements that transfer several of its responsibilities to other departments. 

Under the most recent agreement, the Treasury Department will take over Education’s responsibility for collecting on defaulted federal student loan debt — the first step in a multiphase process toward Treasury taking on Education’s entire, roughly $1.7 trillion federal student loan portfolio.

Zampini noted that, when it comes to the incoming student loan regulations, she does not have confidence in the Education Department’s “ability at this moment to successfully manage the transition without a lot of issues, as far as servicing and as far as account tracking and plan enrollment and things like that.” 

Jackson, of EdTrust, said that “by weakening the federal financial aid system, I think there’s a weakening of our higher education system and making it more difficult for low-income students, students of color and other marginalized students to access graduate education.”

She added that “people who complete those degrees tend to have more financial security in the future — they earn more over their lifetimes and, on markers of financial success and opportunity, do better.” 

“I think this is one prong of a plan of undermining our overall higher education system.” 

Brad Heppner is guilty.

That’s what a New York City jury decided recently. But the legacy of Heppner’s federal case is likely not to be his conviction, but the judge’s landmark opinion that AI legal advice isn’t privileged like attorney-client communication.

I had hoped never to write about Heppner again because his story is downright grubby. It’s the kind of cautionary tale that future generations of Kansans will read (if Kansas and history books survive) and chuckle about the gullibility of those poor dumb and greedy yokels in the 2020s.

But columnists should never say never again, and Heppner has boomeranged back to my attention because of the judge’s opinion, which involves an AI agent named Claude that was trained in part with some of my pirated books.

Oh, for the love of Gutenberg.

In September 2025, Anthropic agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement with authors and publishers after a judge ruled the company had illegally downloaded copyrighted works to feed to Claude, its AI chatbot. Authors haven’t yet received any money, but even when we do, my share won’t be life-changing. The settlement will be divided among half a million authors and, after the publishers and the lawyers take their cuts, there might only be a few thousand left for each of us.

That Heppner turned to Claude to prepare his legal advice, and that I have a legal connection to the AI agent, is bizarre. I have a mental image of Anthropic tossing books into Claude’s gaping maw and the monster assimilating them, Borg-like.

You may recall that Heppner was the CEO of a novel investment enterprise, with offices in Hesston and chartered by the state of Kansas, that he described as a “pawn shop” for the rich. He was indicted in November 2025 on charges of securities and wire fraud, conspiracy, falsifying records and making false statements. Heppner was accused of looting $150 million from a now-defunct holding company and using a shell company to put the money in his own pocket. Federal prosecutors estimated the damage to investors — who were predominately retirees — at $1 billion.

Heppner’s trial began April 21. On Thursday, May 7, the jury returned a verdict of guilty on securities fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, and making false statements to auditors. Heppner, 60, remains free on bail and is set to be sentenced Oct. 7, according to the federal docket.

He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison on each charge.

Heppner, who grew up in Hesston, sold the pawn shop scheme to Kansas lawmakers in 2021 by touting it as a revolutionary way to fund rural economic development by creating a state-chartered trust company where the wealthy could hock private equity and other difficult-to-trade assets they wanted to turn into cash. The result was the TEFFI Act, which stands for something so silly I’m not going to explain it here. Nobody really seemed to understand how a TEFFI worked, but that didn’t diminish enthusiasm for it. Heppner, who wore stripes and plaids together and was charming in a Mr. Haney sort of way, said he wanted to establish the first one in Kansas to help fund a grocery store in Hesston, population 3,700, so his mother wouldn’t have to travel far. Plans for a $20 million grocery store were scrapped after Heppner’s indictment.

The Heppner saga is a bipartisan black eye for the Kansas Legislature and Gov. Laura Kelly, who collectively lined up to buy what Heppner was selling. About the only one not convinced by Heppner’s sales pitch was Kansas bank commissioner David Herndon, who was concerned about the lack of regulatory oversight of the new venture. The Legislature responded by threatening to cut his office’s budget to zero.

But even as Beneficient materialized in Kansas, clouds trailed Heppner from Texas. A federal class action lawsuit alleged that Heppner had defrauded investors to generate cash for Beneficient, and there were reports the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had begun an investigation. Heppner resigned as CEO of Beneficient in June 2025 rather than face questions about the Texas company’s accounting procedures.

Heppner, according to the federal indictment, spent $40 million of the loot to redecorate his eight-bedroom mansion in Dallas, a home listed by “D” magazine as one of the city’s 100 most expensive. The feds alleged he also spent millions on his “Bradley Oaks” ranch in east Texas, millions on credit cards and private air travel, and $500,000 on jewelry.

Before his arrest, Heppner turned to his computer to seek Claude’s advice on possible legal defenses. His computer and other electronic devices were seized from his Texas home by the FBI, and those devices contained 31 conversations with the generative AI platform Claude. But Heppner’s defense team argued Claude’s advice should be shielded from the government because it was privileged.

The government said nonsense.

The merits were argued Feb. 10 before federal District Judge Jed S. Rakoff.

“Only three years after its release,” Rakoff wrote in his ruling a week later, “one prominent AI platform is being used by more than 800 million people worldwide every week. Yet the implications of AI for the law are only beginning to be explored. Thus, the Court’s ruling in this case appears to answer a question of first impression nationwide: Whether, when a user communicates with a publicly available AI platform in connection with a pending criminal investigation, are the AI user’s communications protected by attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine? For the reasons that follow, the answer is no.”

Heppner’s legal team did not direct him to seek Claude’s advice. Claude is not an attorney, Rakoff noted, and all recognized legal privileges include a “trusting human relationship.” Also, Heppner had no expectation of privacy because the Anthropic user agreement specified that information could be shared with third parties, including governmental authorities.

When prosecutors asked Claude whether it could give legal advice, according to Rakoff, it said it wasn’t a lawyer and could not provide formal legal advice or recommendations. It suggested that users contact an attorney.

Additionally, Rakoff said, communications could not be “alchemically changed” to privileged simply because they were later shared with counsel. They also did not represent the work product of an attorney. Even though they “affected” the strategy adopted by Heppner’s defense, the conversations did not reflect the strategy at the time.

“Generative artifice intelligence represents a new frontier in the ongoing dialogue between technology and the law,” Rakoff wrote. “Time will tell whether, as in the case of other technological advances, generative artificial intelligence will fulfill its promise to revolutionize the way we process information.”

The novelty of AI doesn’t mean that it isn’t subject to long-standing legal principles, he said.

The legal community quickly took note of what appears to be the first substantive ruling related to AI and legal privilege, and the reactions were mixed.

“Future courts confronting similar questions should resist the opinion’s categorical tilt,” declared an essay in the Harvard Law Review, “attend to the facts of the case, and consider how privilege can operate to promote effective collaboration between clients and attorneys in this age of AI.”

A headline for an article in the New York State Bar Association read: “Loose AI Prompts Sink Ships: How Heppner Shook the Legal Community.”

The tone of most commentary seemed to be that Rakoff was right, but perhaps for the wrong reasons, and painted him as a kind of legal Luddite.

For what it’s worth, I think Rakoff got it right, for all the reasons he enumerated. AI is not human, Claude isn’t a lawyer, and the terms of use were clear. But then, I am no fan of AI, generative or not, and it’s not just because I’m sore that Anthropic used my books to feed Claude.

It’s because AI is the greatest threat to humanity since the atom bomb.

Like nuclear power, AI could be a boon for humanity. But we’re not using it to make life better. Instead of curing cancer or eliminating poverty, AI is contributing to human suffering by increasing water and power consumption. The average person (you know, the ones not waiting on criminal indictment) uses AI to generate slop to post on social media. This hurts the writers and artists and photographers and others who have spent decades pursuing a discipline. AI is not only damaging authorship, it’s putting some of us out of work and making all of us stupider in the process.

Humanity has never invented a tool that we didn’t use to club each other to death, and AI is no exception. Already, the world’s most powerful militaries are in a new arms race to acquire the deadliest artificial intelligence. How would you feel about Claude having its finger on the button? Sadly, there’s no such thing as artificial nuclear annihilation.

I hope some of the books Claude was fed included John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” or Nevil Shute’s “On the Beach.” A database says at least one of them was. The Anthropic settlement, by the way, applies only to pirated books — letting Claude feast on legitimately obtained copies, the judge in the case ruled, was legit.

I wonder if Claude feels guilt?

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins recently concluded that AI was conscious, even if it didn’t know it yet. Dawkins hasn’t persuaded many other scientists that is true, but then we really don’t know what consciousness is.

“To delve into the subject of consciousness is to quickly discover how little we know about a phenomenon we all know so well,” writes Michael Pollan in his new book on the subject. “It doesn’t help that scientists and philosophers who work on the problem don’t agree on what they mean by the word consciousness or on what, exactly, they are trying to explain.”

It’s the kind of conundrum that might appeal to Rakoff, the judge who wrote the AI privilege opinion.

Heppner may have drawn the short straw with Rakoff, because the judge is an outspoken critic of his profession, a noted author and speaker who has called our legal system “broken.” In his 2022 book, “Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free,” Rakoff is critical of mass incarceration, plea bargains, and how high-level executives are “increasingly exempt from criminal prosecution, even when they commit very serious frauds.”

Only about 2% of federal criminal cases make it to trial, with the majority ending in a plea bargain agreement, something that is uniquely toxic to the American legal system. Most defendants who go to trial are convicted, and that might make Heppner’s decision seem foolish. But there are lessons in Rakoff’s book that might explain that strategy.

It’s difficult to prove intent.

That may be among the reasons, Rakoff writes, that few if any executives were prosecuted after the financial meltdown of 2008. Explaining to a jury the intent of an executive, and the complicated nature of accounting and financial systems, can be daunting. Also, Rakoff muses, the government itself could be tacitly complicit, both in 2008 and now:

“One also wonders whether, given the current strong push of the Trump administration for across-the-board deregulation (not least of banks), the government might well be in the process of re-creating the conditions in which financial fraud can flourish.”

Indeed.

The erosion of trust in human institutions is now compounded by the harlequin of artificial intelligence, resulting in the kind of society that previously was only described in science fiction.

Are we slouching toward the kind of dystopia described by Philip K. Dick in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” You may not know the 1968 science fiction novel, but you’ve probably seen the 1982 Ridley Scott film based on it, “Blade Runner.”

The question of both the novel and the movie is this:

What is human?

That question has been asked before, going back at least to the birth of science fiction as we know it, with Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” published in 1818. Is Dr. Frankenstein’s monster a human being? Are the replicants in “Blade Runner?” Both are capable of great violence — and a surprising depth of feeling.

As with the paradox of consciousness, there is no answer.

A disturbing thought intrudes: What if I am just a figment of Claude’s imagination, some hallucination from having ingested a dozen or so of my novels? I put a big part of myself into each protagonist. What if the tapping of my fingertips on the computer keyboard is merely an illusion? Then again, I’ve never talked to Claude, or to any generative AI platform. If I were a hallucination, certainly my host would not allow questions about what is human.

Or legal.

Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Advocates and opponents of abortion access say they’re wondering what happens next in a critical telehealth medication case that created chaos and confusion over the past week after an appeals court blocked nationwide access to the drug and, days later, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued a temporary stay.

Alito’s stay preserves telehealth access until May 11. But it’s unclear what happens next for patients and providers.

The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily blocked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ Friday ruling to suspend a federal rule allowing telehealth prescriptions of the drug mifepristone while the lawsuit Louisiana v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration unfolds. Abortion providers are determined to continue providing the service, though potentially without mifepristone, the drug at the center for the case, which has had a high record of safety and efficacy since 2000.

Anti-abortion advocates have pushed to reverse the 2023 policy, enacted under former Democratic President Joe Biden, that allowed the FDA to drop its requirement that a patient see a provider in person before the medication can be prescribed. One similar national case already failed unanimously before the Supreme Court, but anti-abortion advocates are hoping this time around, with a more tailored approach, they will be successful.

Abortion-rights advocates say they’re prepared for whatever might happen in the courts, with contingency plans and a message that abortion will still be available even if the particular medication — mifepristone — is not.

Has the abortion pill been banned?

No. Mifepristone is still a legally approved FDA drug commonly used to terminate a pregnancy before 10 weeks’ gestation and is used off-label to treat miscarriages.

Is telehealth abortion still legal?

Yes, for now. Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s administrative stay that expires on May 11, it is still legal to obtain abortion medication through telemedicine under the FDA’s regulations. Mifepristone is commonly used with a second drug, misoprostol, in medication abortions. The case doesn’t include misoprostol.

Who would be affected if telehealth access is struck down?

According to the Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount report, 27% of all abortions in the first six months of 2025 were obtained through telehealth, adding up to more than 162,000 cases.

Mifepristone is also used for patients experiencing a miscarriage; those patients also would have to visit a provider in person.

The ruling would apply nationwide, meaning that health providers couldn’t prescribe mifepristone without an in-person visit with the patient, even in states with abortion access.

What are the arguments on each side in Louisiana v. FDA?

Louisiana says the Biden-era policy undermines a state law banning abortion, and that the federal rulemaking process allowing telehealth prescriptions was flawed.

The Food and Drug Administration says the state doesn’t have standing to sue, but also notes that it’s taking more time to review the drug’s safety.

Two mifepristone drugmakers, meanwhile, have intervened on the FDA’s side.

What could happen next?

The Supreme Court has many options available moving forward, but a few options are most likely, said Katie Keith, founding director of the Center for Health Policy and the Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. The justices could extend the stay when it expires May 11, or the court could make a longer-term ruling.

That could mean sending it back to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with or without upholding the initial ruling blocking the 2023 provision while the appeals case proceeds. Or justices could decide to take up the case and bypass the rest of the 5th Circuit appeal.

If it did that, the manufacturer defendants Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro have asked for an expedited process with a decision by June. That seems unlikely, Keith said, but the court has conducted expedited cases related to abortion before, such as the Moyle v. United States case in 2024 related to the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.

What will providers do if they can’t use the combination of mifepristone and misoprostol?

Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation, said providers have been preparing since 2023 for the possibility of losing access to mifepristone. There have long been plans to switch to a misoprostol-only protocol, which is the main method of pregnancy termination across much of the world, she said.

“A lot of providers had created these policies and just needed to dust them off,” Fonteno said.

Dr. Angel Foster, co-founder of the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, which provides telehealth abortions to patients in all 50 states, said she and her team spent the weekend scrambling to contact patients waiting on medication abortion pills they had ordered before the ruling, and implementing a contingency plan that many abortion providers have been planning for since the lawsuits against mifepristone began in 2023.

That contingency involves pivoting from the FDA-approved mifepristone-misoprostol regimen to a misoprostol-only regimen.

Early Monday, Foster said her team was getting ready to ship misoprostol-only packages to patients at 2 p.m., but after the Supreme Court stayed the appeals court’s ruling on Monday morning, she said they were able to switch back to the mifepristone-misoprostol regimen.

Foster also said her organization was inundated with requests for pills that people could stockpile — people who didn’t need an abortion but were worried about losing access to the pills. Normally that’s a small fraction of the requests they receive, she said, but on Tuesday, they sent out more than had been sent in the entire month of April.

“Over the last two days, we’ve had a huge increase in the number of people from Louisiana requesting pills, especially pills for future use,” Foster said.

What are the pros and cons of the misoprostol-only regimen?

Dr. Maya Bass, a family physician in New Jersey who also provides abortions in Delaware, said misoprostol-only regimens are still safe and highly effective, but that the regimen has a lower efficacy rate than the combination of the two drugs and comes with potentially more side effects and risks.

Misoprostol-only regimens vary between 85% and 90% effective, while the combination is between 93% and 99% effective. The effective rates are lower as the gestational age increases.

The combination works well, Bass said, because mifepristone stops the hormone that allows the pregnancy to continue and signals to the body that the pregnancy is over. The misoprostol then helps soften the cervix and prompts the uterus to contract and expel the pregnancy tissue.

Without that hormonal signal, Bass said, a higher dose of misoprostol is needed to empty the uterus. The usual side effects of nausea, diarrhea, chills and sometimes fevers can be more severe because of the higher dosage. And it may lead to more people needing to seek in-person follow-up care to fully remove all of the pregnancy tissue, which can cause infection if it stays in the uterus.

“A lot of the people who are using telehealth for their medication abortion are not necessarily in places where they can safely access that care,” Bass said. “So it is concerning that we might be relying more on a regimen that means that many more people needing to seek care.”

What are the details of the legal arguments?

Louisiana officials, including Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill, argue that the state is harmed by the 2023 telehealth policy because it undermines a state law banning abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with few exceptions that don’t include rape or incest. The state also challenged the Food and Drug Administration’s process in deciding to eliminate the in-person dispensing requirement, saying it was based on flawed or nonexistent data.

The state also said the rule has resulted in $92,000 in Medicaid bills from two women who went to the emergency room because of complications related to mifepristone in 2025. And the state says the rule harmed the other plaintiff in the case, Louisiana resident Rosalie Markezich, who said her ex-boyfriend ordered the medication online and pressured her into taking it. That wouldn’t have been possible if the medication had to be dispensed through an in-person visit, the state argues.

“The priority of safety supersedes the priority of access, and that is what ultimately, I believe, needs to be looked at directly,” Sarah Zagorski, senior director of public relations at Americans United for Life, told Stateline on Wednesday. The anti-abortion organization submitted a brief supporting Louisiana’s case to the U.S. Supreme Court this week.

The FDA’s response has been to try to dismiss the claims in part on the grounds that Louisiana doesn’t have standing to sue, but agency officials have also said they are in the middle of conducting a safety review of mifepristone and need more time.

GenBioPro and Danco Laboratories, two of the manufacturers of mifepristone, intervened as defendants in the case, which can happen when the party that is sued may not be willing to fully defend the case for various reasons.

The two companies argue that Louisiana does not have proper standing to sue because the state does not prescribe or use mifepristone and is an “unregulated party” as it relates to the 2023 telehealth provision. They also noted that the FDA reviewed 15 studies evaluating medication abortion outcomes for more than 55,000 patients before approving the rule, “all of which supported the safety and effectiveness of dispensing mifepristone by mail, courier, or through pharmacies.”

How does this compare to the 2023 case Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA?

Both lawsuits were designed to restrict access to mifepristone. The plaintiffs in the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine case included a group of anti-abortion doctors who said they would be harmed by having to care for people who took mifepristone. They also argued that the FDA’s approval of the drug was improper.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was involved in that case as well, and determined that the FDA should roll back its decision to ease restrictions on the drug, including the 2023 telehealth rule. But the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided in June 2024 that the Alliance plaintiffs didn’t have proper standing and sent it back to the lower court.

After that ruling, the attorneys general of Missouri, Idaho and Kansas stepped in as plaintiffs, and the case was transferred to Missouri’s U.S. district court, where it’s still pending.

The Louisiana case is more limited because it would strike down one provision of mifepristone regulation, noted Jenna Hudson, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights. The Alliance plaintiffs sought to revoke the drug’s approval altogether.

Stateline reporters Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@stateline.org and Sofia Resnick can be reached at sresnick@stateline.org.  

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

If you follow the Trump administration’s social media posts, you might spot its new mascot: a cartoon lump of coal with big eyes and babylike features. “Coalie” sparked a backlash almost as soon as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum debuted it for the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement in early 2026.

Coalie’s design draws on a type of Japanese anime called Kawaii, a word meaning “cute” or “adorable.” It’s the latest in the White House’s efforts to pass off coal as harmless, despite the well-established environmental and human health harms of mining and burning the fossil fuel.

As a scholar of American literature and culture, I write about media portrayals of coal, beginning in the 19th century with its rise to become the leading fuel in the United States. Coal use grew until the early 2000s, when other sources became cheaper and its health and environmental damage became unacceptable to more of the public.

While “Coalie” might be new, the logic behind it is not. For centuries, coal’s promoters have worked hard to show coal as harmless — as well as “clean” and “beautiful,” to use President Donald Trump’s words.

Humans living with the effects of burning coal have disliked it for as long as they have burned it.

In 1578, Queen Elizabeth complained that she was “greatly grieved and annoyed with (its) taste and smoke” in the air. In 1661, John Evelyne’s treatise Fumifugium outlined negative health effects of breathing coal smoke.

English settlers were drawn to North America in part because of the continent’s abundant supply of timber, a substitute for coal that deforestation had made prohibitively expensive in England.

But by the 19th century, the price of timber had risen in America as well. When, in the 1820s, news spread of Pennsylvania’s rich veins of anthracite coal, urban consumers were eager for a cheaper source of fuel.

In addition to its lower price, anthracite coal grew desirable because of its high carbon, low-sulfur content, which produced less visible smoke when it was burned. An enthusiastic 1815 letter to the editor of the American Daily Advertiser captured increasingly common attitudes toward anthracite as “affor(ding) a very regular and agreeable heat.”

The spread of anthracite also shored up tolerance for smokier but cheaper bituminous coal.

To help people, housekeeping manuals aimed at the fossil fuel’s mostly female users tried to invent workarounds for its smoke. In 1869, Harriet Beecher Stowe, best known as the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and her sister Catharine Beecher wrote one of many 19th-century articles to acknowledge the “evils” of coal smoke, while outlining “modes of making a healthful home,” in the housekeeping manual American Woman’s Home.

Consumers provided temporary solutions for maintaining indoor air quality while burning coal by sending in suggestions that were published in housekeeping manuals, magazines and newspapers.

At the same time, as the century progressed, coal and coal-stove companies began to suggest that burning coal was healthy, that it could improve indoor air as well as domestic aesthetics. One 1892 newspaper advertisement claimed that stoves were “necessary to heat, cheer, and beautify the home and preserve its health.”

In the 20th century, marketers churned out more colorful claims about the benefits of coal: One magazine advertisement showed a mother and child pointing at the crackling stove aflame with the company’s coal, saying it “cannot be excelled in purity, cleanliness, and free-burning qualities.”

Similarly, the Lackawanna Railroad Company came up with the classy, often rhyming, character of Phoebe Snow. In one ad, she points to the importance of comfort, suggesting that not only could anthracite fuel faster travel, but it could also make your travel — and your life — more comfortable.

Coal marketing often used children to suggest safety and reach parents. Another iteration of the Phoebe Snow series promised that anthracite-powered railway travel could keep children “clean and bright.”

A 1930s advertisement went so far as to position a piece of anthracite coal next to a child in a bathtub, a visual proximity implying that coal was as good as soap.

In fact, soap made of “coal tar” — a liquid byproduct of producing coke, a fuel made from bituminous coal used in industrial blast furnaces — did (and does) exist. The British company Wright’s, also popular in the U.S., generated a slew of advertisements praising its soap as having antiseptic properties for children.

Each of these advertisements tried to capitalize on a mother’s desire for healthy children. And they pushed back against the image of the tyrannical “King Coal” that had come about amid strikes by miners protesting dangerous, degraded working and living conditions as well as the rise of black lung disease.

By the mid-20th century, petroleum took coal’s place as America’s main energy source. The U.S. environmental movement continued to grow, and people got interested in natural gas as an alternative to coal.

In response, coal companies doubled down on the fantasy of “clean” coal.

A 1979 advertisement for American Electric Power, for example, flew in the face of Clean Air Act mandates that coal corporations employ “scrubbing” technology to remove sulfur dioxide from smoke — the ad depicted someone cleaning coal by hand.

Today, coal generates only 16.2% of America’s electricity, down from generating more than half of the U.S. power supply in the 1990s. But the country isn’t done with it. Even though coal production today is far below its peak, as companies try to shut down old uneconomic plants, Trump has promised to “reinvigorate” the coal industry.

In addition to ordering some coal plants to continue operating, the Trump administration has pulled out old coal promotion tactics from the past, including repeatedly referring to coal as “clean and beautiful.” One image inserts Coalie next to a coal-mining family that otherwise looks like an ad that could have appeared a century ago.

And, like its predecessors, this picture tries to present an innocent image of a product that harms human health and the environment.

A 2018 study found that black lung disease was on the rise in Appalachia, where about 40% of America’s coal is mined today. Living near a fossil-fuel power plant exposes residents to pollutants that contribute to premature deaths, asthma and lung cancer, including tiny particulate matter known at PM 2.5, sulfur dioxide and mercury. Even when it’s just sitting in piles waiting to be used at a power plant, coal can harm human health as the wind blows across it and carries coal dust into the air and people’s lungs.

The myth of coal as healthy and family friendly has been around for centuries — but coal has never been clean, or cute.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Annie Persons is a lecturer in literature at the University of Virginia. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

TOPEKA — Kansas governor candidate Philip Sarnecki wants fellow Republicans to call a special session of the Legislature to address the state’s property tax crisis.

Sarnecki, a businessman seeking the GOP nomination in August, said the Legislature’s failure to find consensus during the just-completed 2026 regular session required extraordinary action. During the regular session, the House and Senate held to distinct ideas for moderating growth in property taxation. In April, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the Legislature’s last-ditch bill that would have aggressively restricted spending increases by cities and counties and theoretically reduced pressure on property taxes.

“It’s time to get property tax reform done in special session,” Sarnecki said. “Seniors are getting taxed out of their homes, working families are having trouble making ends meet and young people can’t afford a house.”

Since the Legislature adjourned in April, several Republican senators raised the idea of a special session devoted to elimination of the 20-mill property tax collected by the state to fund K-12 public education. Property tax revenue for education would be replaced — in the middle of an election year — by adoption of a 0.75-cent increase in the statewide sales tax. Kansas’ current retail sales tax stands at 6.5%.

Instead of assessing property taxes on Kansans able to afford home ownership, public school funding would rely on a sales tax that disproportionately impacted low-income households.

The governor could call the Legislature into special session, which she did in 2024 for the purpose of cutting state income taxes. In the alternative, the House and Senate could gather signatures from two-thirds of members to force a special session at the Capitol. That would require signatures from 84 of 125 representatives and 27 of 40 senators.

It would be up to Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican running for governor, and House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican running for state insurance commissioner, to secure those signatures.

“Fixing the property tax crisis is a priority for President Masterson,” said Garrett Henson, a spokesman for Masterson. “That’s why the Senate passed legislation dealing with it this session with veto-proof margins. We’ll say it again: If the House has the votes to call a special session, the Senate stands ready to act.”

Hawkins didn’t address the option of rallying his partisan majority for a special session, but he encouraged the governor to use her power to call all 165 legislators back to Topeka.

“While the 2026 legislative session is over, it’s never too late to take action,” Hawkins said in his May 1 newsletter. “Governor Kelly could call a special session at any moment if she wants to get serious about addressing the property tax crisis in our state.”

Hawkins added: “Republicans remain ready to deliver real action on property taxes, not the dismissive, half-hearted proposal put forth by the governor and her Democrat colleagues.”

In April, Kelly proposed the Legislature deliver property tax relief for vehicle owners, incentivize local governments to moderate spending and replace a portion of property tax collected for public education with dollars drawn from the state treasury.

The package included a proposal endorsed by Sen. Ethan Corson, a Johnson County Democrat running for governor, that offered a one-time $250 tax credit to vehicle owners. Cash for the tax credit would be withdrawn from the state’s budget stabilization fund, Kelly said.

She proposed creation of a $60 million fund to incentivize cities and counties to hold spending increases to no more than 3% annually. The funds would be distributed to local governments meeting the cap.

Finally, the governor wanted to raise the exemption on a home’s appraised value when determining property tax obligations under the 20-mill tax for public schools. The idea would be to double the current exemption to $150,000. Lost revenue would be made up with transfers from the general state fund so school financing met constitutional standards, she said.

Portions of Kelly’s recommendation were debated by the House and Senate, but none of it was passed by the Legislature.

Before adjourning the regular session, the House and Senate approved a property tax bill that would have limited local government spending increase to 3% or the rate of inflation. Kelly vetoed the measure and recommended the Legislature find a way to “partner with our city and county officials to develop a strategy to reduce the property tax burden on their constituents.”

During a special legislative session, there would be no boundary on what ideas could be considered by the House and Senate.

House Minority Leader Brandon Woodard, D-Lenexa, said members of the House sent multiple property tax bills to the Senate that would have delivered meaningful relief. He expressed frustration with the Senate’s unwillingness to seriously compromise.

“Senate Republicans are panicking after campaigning on property tax relief and returning home empty-handed for their constituents two years in a row,” he said. “Calling a special session with no agreed-upon solution and pushing the same failed approach yet again is the definition of insanity.”

Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, a Lenexa Democrat seeking the nomination for state insurance commissioner, said demands for a special session came less than one month after Republicans adjourned the shortest regular session in recent Kansas history.

“This newest attempt for a special session … is another push by select Republicans to force through their unpopular, half-baked policies that will bankrupt our local communities,” Sykes said. “Perhaps if we had not rushed through the legislative session, we could have had time to develop quality legislation that would have truly helped Kansans.”

“After using this issue to prop up their campaigns in 2024, the Republican supermajority has had two full sessions to address this problem, yet all they have to show for it is pointed fingers and excuses,” she said.

In October 2025, Senate leadership secured a supermajority of signatures to call a special session devoted to gerrymandering congressional districts for benefit of GOP candidates and to undermine the reelection of U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, a Kansas Democrat. That special session didn’t occur because about 10 Republican representatives refused to sign the petition.

TOPEKA — The state of Kansas’ credit rating upgrade from stable to positive by a leading financial research firm set off a scramble among politicians claiming responsibility for the improved outlook.

Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, said the adjustment by Moody’s Investors Service was associated with her administration’s work to build a $2 billion emergency fund, spend surplus funding on one-time projects, pay the government’s bills on time and broadly restore faith in the state’s ability to manage its finances.

Kelly contrasted her administration’s performance to the financial peril that existed during Republican Gov. Sam Brownback years in office. In 2016, before the Legislature repealed much of Brownback’s 2012 income tax agenda to restore fiscal integrity to the budget, Moody’s dropped the state’s credit rating from stable to negative.

“Moody’s upgraded positive outlook is a reflection of the hard work done over the last eight years to undo the damage created by the previous administration,” Kelly said. “We must remain fiscally disciplined if we are to continue on this strong economic path.”

House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, said the GOP-led House was responsible — in collaboration with the Senate — for reforming the state budget process and controlling spending growth. He said the rating upgrade from Moody’s conflicted with the governor’s warnings about the Legislature’s “so-called dangerous budget trends.”

“Moody’s upgrade is a direct validation of the disciplined budgeting approach House Republicans fought for, despite constant attacks and fearmongering from the governor’s administration targeting this exact topic,” he said.

During the 2026 session of the Legislature, Republicans and Democrats raised alarms about state budgets that spent more annually than the state collected in tax revenue. Over a three-year period, Kansas has burned through $1.1 billion in reserve funding. Members of both political parties characterized the state’s spending, compared to revenue, as unsustainable.

The statement by Moody’s said the move from stable to positive for Kansas was tied to a budget stabilization fund holding about 20% of the state’s annual general treasury expenditures and the series of annual contributions to the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System that were at or near full actuarial amounts. In the past, the Legislature directed state dollars away from KPERS and raised the unfunded liability of the pension system.

The Moody’s evaluation took into account tax changes placed into Kansas law in 2024 and 2025. Last year, state legislators sidestepped the governor’s objection to implement a policy that could lead to a flat 4% individual income tax rate. In 2024, Kelly and legislative leadership agreed to a tax-reduction package designed to reduce state revenue by billions of dollars.

“Tax reduction initiatives have remained a key legislative objective,” Moody’s said, “but fiscal impacts of recent policy changes should be manageable, provided the state adheres to statutory guardrails and uses its careful revenue monitoring and management to address adverse conditions when they materialize.”

Moody’s said factors that could lead to a future downgrade in the rating included “state spending that persistently outpaces economic and revenue growth, accelerating reserve depletion.”

Further upgrades in Moody’s rating could be accomplished by Kansas through maintenance of strong financial reserves, progress on reducing KPERS’ unfunded liabilities and positive economic conditions.

The report from Moody’s mentioned the state’s economy was concentrated in agriculture and manufacturing, which left the state “vulnerable to the global trade effects” of U.S. tariff hikes imposed by President Donald Trump and the ongoing U.S.-Israel war against Iran.

TOPEKA — Evergy and one of its contractors agreed to pay $2.6 million to employees to settle  a class-action lawsuit filed over how company retirement funds were managed.

Evergy will pay $1.7 million and SageView Advisory Group, which contracted with Evergy to manage its 401(k) retirement plans, will pay $900,000, according to a preliminary settlement agreement filed Wednesday in the Western District Court of Missouri.

Former Evergy employees Derick Doll, Catherine Fluegel and Joseph Nagle filed the lawsuit in January 2025, alleging the company failed to remove American Century Fund Target Date Funds from employee investment options even though the company underperformed.

Missouri District Judge Stephen Bough gave the lawsuit class-action status in October 2025. The class action includes any former or current Evergy employee who invested in the American Century funds beginning in January 2019.

A settlement administrator will be appointed, and there will be a hearing to grant final settlement approval, court filings said.

TOPEKA — Lydia Shontz-Hochstedler was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021 at age 32. She accumulated thousands of dollars of medical debt that will take years to pay off.

As a state employee, news that Kansas officials are considering dropping Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas as a health plan administrator raised “serious concerns,” she said in a letter to Kansas Reflector. 

Continuing costly care and ongoing prescription medications might be negatively affected if she is forced to change insurance carriers, Shontz-Hochstedler said. 

“While I have been enrolled with various insurance providers, I have never paid less for my medical care than when I have been enrolled in a BCBSKS plan,” she said. 

When news broke that the state could save nearly $240 million by choosing Aetna as the single health plan administrator and members of the Kansas State Employees Health Care Commission were considering the issue, state employees quickly expressed concerns. 

Currently, both Blue Cross and Aetna are health plan options, with 35,400 employees enrolled in the former and 4,500 in the latter.

More than 100 state employees reached out to the Kansas Department of Administration about their health insurance, said spokesman Samir Arif. 

Sen. Brenda Dietrich, a Republican who represents more than 10,000 state employees in her Shawnee County district, said she has received multiple emails and phone calls asking her to object to changing health plan administrators. 

Others spoke out online. 

All but one of more than 150 comments on a Kansas Reflector story posted to Facebook opposed dropping Blue Cross. One person wrote that she switched to Aetna and saw no difference in quality of care.

“Just because a bid is cheaper doesn’t mean it’s better. Over 35,000 state employees have BCBS vs just over 4,000 Aetna. What’s wrong with that picture?” one person wrote. “If you get rid of BCBS I can see state employees leave for companies who provide better insurance.”

A woman who said she is a retired state employee posted, “Please compare by service and availability and not just by bottom line cost to the state. Respect your employees, both current and former.”

Concerns about whether Aetna could expand its provider network quickly, especially for ancillary services like in-home care and physical therapy, were raised by many people. In comparing the networks of the two, commission members noted the primary difference was for those ancillary services.

An Aetna provider at the meeting said the company immediately would begin to expand its network to be prepared by Jan. 1, 2027, when the contract begins.

When asked about the company’s confidence in being able to strengthen its network, especially in rural Kansas, Aetna spokeswoman Shelly Bendit said by email that she couldn’t comment on behalf of the state “nor can we speculate about any decisions the state may make.”

Shontz-Hochstedler said changing to a provider without a strong network will have long-lasting effects and ultimately cost the state more over time.

“When coverage changes and costs go up, employees are more likely to delay care or skip prescriptions, causing health conditions to worsen,” she said. “This will lead to increased absenteeism, reduced productivity, higher turnover, and ultimately greater long-term healthcare expenditure.”

Access to care must be a “central priority” in making benefits decisions, Shontz-Hochstedler said. Aetna isn’t as widely accepted across Kansas, she said.

“A shift to Aetna would leave these employees with fewer in-network options, longer travel for care, or higher out-of-pocket costs, which could lead to delaying or abandoning care entirely,” she said. “That is not expanding coverage, it is reducing access.”

Dietrich said she understands the financial implications raised by the Health Care Commission but is opposed to state employees losing access to Blue Cross.

“I’m very attuned to state employees, living in Shawnee County for as long as I have,” she said. “When we talk about giving state employees a 1% raise, that impacts my neighbors. We have got to value our employees. That would be the most disruptive decision that they could possibly make. People are very comfortable with Blue Cross Blue Shield.”

The decision can’t be all about the cost, Shontz-Hochstedler said.

“It is a truly uneasy feeling when healthcare decisions are reduced to ‘dollars and cents,’ while the real cost for the people affected is measured in health, security, and sometimes survival,” she said.

Dietrich talked to Arif about what employees should do to have input on the process. He recommended that employees email Cristi Cain, who is the state employee representative on the commission, at Cristi.Cain@ks.gov, or the Health Care Commission at SEHPMembership@ks.gov.

Ashley Jones-Wisner, Blue Cross spokeswoman, said the company hopes to retain its contract. 

“As a not-for-profit and only local Kansas plan, we are proud to serve the State Employee Health Plan,” she said. “To date, over 90% of state employees choose BCBSKS and have access to the state’s largest provider network.”

Aetna is headquartered in Hartford, Connecticut. 

In the flotsam of things I read each week — academic research, online news, sports stories and fiction — one tidbit can get naggily lodged in my thoughts.

This week, the splinter in my mind is titled “Sliding Into Silence? We Are Speaking 300 Daily Words Fewer Every Year,” authored by a researcher at the University of Arizona in partnership with Valeria Pfeifer, who works right across the state line at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

How did the researchers discover a decline in our spoken words over more than a decade? Using a listening device, they sampled the daily conversations of more than 2,000 participants. Initially, Pfeifer told KCUR, the focus was gender differences in oral communication.

However, when Pfeifer initially ran the analysis over time, the drop-off was so stark she didn’t believe it.

Losing an additional 300 daily words each year — over 15 years — adds up to a stark cumulative decline: thousands and thousands of fewer spoken words.

But I think the most troubling news evades that headline.

Young people, the study found, are receding from conversation even more quickly than the rest of us. People below the age of 25 used 450 fewer daily words each year.

“Thus, younger participants lost about 44% more words than did older participants with each passing year,” the authors wrote.

An academic study like this one becomes my personal catnip when it reinforces something that I have been observing personally and anecdotally.

For years, I’ve told this cocktail party anecdote when talking to fellow 40-somethings who were on college campuses in the 1990s, before smartphones: “Do you remember,” I ask, “how auditoriums would be so loud before the start of lectures? So loud that the professor would need to shout to get our attention and start class?”

In my nostalgic mind’s eye, we were an unruly, curious bohemian mob, leaning over to the person next to us and striking up a random conversation.

That atmosphere (or myth) has largely evaporated in 2025. Instead, in my classrooms at the University of Kansas, students mostly silently scroll their phones before class. Or, they click-clack on their laptops.

They don’t hit on each other, looking for dates. They don’t discuss the topic of last night’s reading. They don’t borrow a pencil. It’s so quiet as to be awkward for me, standing at the front of a pin-drop quiet lecture hall ready to start class.

(I’m not alone in this. Steve Kraske of KCUR, who interviewed Pfeifer for “Up to Date,” had the same observation about his classroom, which he also requires to be cellphone free. He notes that he isn’t sure the policy is making any difference.)

Here’s another anecdote about youths and the anxiety of talking to others. I asked my son to make a phone call as a high schooler, after he had carried a smartphone around for a few years, customizing the arrangement of the apps so that they were carefully curated.

Nevertheless, when I asked him to make a phone call for me while my hands were full, he balked.

“I hate calling people,” he said. “It’s so awkward.”

I insisted, explaining that his hesitation likely made it even more vital. We have to learn sometime, I explained.

There was another obstacle, he explained. He didn’t know how to use his iPhone to make a phone call. I flinched, wondering if he had somehow deleted the app that allows you to — you know — type numbers into a phone in a sequence that allows you to speak to someone from a distance. Otherwise known as a phone call.

The reality was more simple. After years of owning his phone, he had never called a stranger. His mom and I constantly rang his phone, checking in. Sometimes, he dialed up friends to talk while gaming.

However, he never called a restaurant to see what time they closed. Never phoned a movie theater to ask about their lost and found.

More responsible than me and my anecdotal ways, Pfeifer and her colleagues resist the temptation of blaming certain technology for the trend they found. They suggest some likely culprits though.

“One factor that might be informative when considering the role of technology in the loss of spoken conversation is age,” they write. “Younger individuals are more likely to use technologies such as texting or social media to communicate than are older adults, and, if spoken words become typed, younger adults should lose more words than do older individuals.”

Most worrisome to me is how young people are not only declining in their spoken words each year — many of them have only grown up in a world defined by this decline. In other words, they haven’t known decades of “normal” oral conversations followed by a decline. A 15-year-old has only lived during this cultural conversational ebb.

The end date of the research should be striking, as well. The COVID-19 pandemic, which drastically disrupted personal conversations in my life, changed American life beginning in 2020. It’s difficult to imagine the years of social isolation during the pandemic as reversing the trend shown by the research. Our culture, I fear, may have shrunk further away from talking to each other.

The solution (and yes, this is a problem) is both simple and arduous.

We simply need to normalize the spoken word in our daily lives. Bring back the work session at the office. Return to the coffee dates. Stash the phones during a road trip.

The task is made more simple by the modest word count: 300 additional words each day is a pittance. During my lecture today, which included some breaks for group work, I spoke 8,500 words, according to the automated transcript. (I don’t guarantee that every word was lyrical genius.)

At that rate, it would take me less than three minutes to rack up 300 more spoken words.

But the interactions that provide more talking can also seem arduous, especially for young people who have grown up doing less and less of it. For these young people, making the effort will need to be intentional.

And it will often need to be modeled and led by older people who should be more familiar with the Before-Times, an era when nudging the stranger next to you and chatting about the weather wasn’t quite so “weird.”

During her interview on “Up To Date,” Pfeifer described the social importance of small conversations, like asking directions. She also suggests offering more detail — more words — when someone asks you how you are doing.

She went on to describe how these interactions can be “a training group for those larger, more important conversations,” making us more skilled and comfortable with vital and significant interactions down the road.

Losing even a little bit more of that conversational skill across our culture seems like a travesty to me. So, if you see me striding across the room with a drink in hand, brace for me and my cocktail chatter.

And consider it a cultural public service that you are listening to me and my nonsense.

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

The U.S. Housing and Urban Development’s annual one-night count of those experiencing sheltered and unsheltered homelessness is projected to show a decline after a record-high surge in 2024, according to a new report.

Conducted during January, the Point-in-Time count is HUD’s annual one-night census of people staying in shelters and unsheltered locations; the latest official national Point-in-Time report found 771,480 people experiencing homelessness in January 2024, an 18% surge from 2023. 

Preliminary 2025 estimates, though, indicate homelessness has stabilized. A review by the nonprofit advocacy group Community Solutions, based on local counts available from 170 communities, projects that the total may fall to about 755,300 — a roughly 2% decline — though HUD has not yet released the official 2025 count.

“The shift from sustained increases to a small net decline suggests that the rapid expansion of homelessness seen in recent years has slowed,” the report said. “At a national level, this pattern is consistent with a period of stabilization, in which the number of people entering homelessness is more closely balanced with the number exiting.” 

HUD’s 2020-2024 national summary shows 912,807 people experienced homelessness for the first time in 2024, which was a slight decline from 967,134 in 2023 but still far above the 2020 and 2021 levels. 

The Point-in-Time numbers from this past January aren’t expected to be released until late this year or early next year. 

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

TOPEKA — The former top executive of a company granted a banking charter by the Kansas Legislature was found guilty Thursday by a federal jury of orchestrating a scheme to funnel more than $150 million to himself through securities fraud, false claims and fabricated records.

Brad Heppner, who founded Beneficient and convinced Kansas lawmakers five years ago to award the Dallas company a bank charter, had entered a plea of not guilty to securities fraud, wire fraud and making false statements, as well as conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud. He was arrested in November and went on trial three weeks ago in New York City. The jury found him guilty on all four counts.

Heppner, 60, of Dallas, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each count of securities fraud, wire fraud and making false statements to auditors. The conspiracy count carries a maximum penalty of of five years behind bars. Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 7.

Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the jury unanimously found Heppner guilty of fraudulently extracting $150 million to enrich himself.

“Heppner used shell companies to hide his scheme. When his house of cards began to collapse, he did not come clean,” Clayton said.

Instead, the prosecutor said in a statement, Heppner doubled down by falsifying emails and backdating documents to lie to auditors, directors and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

“Our world-leading capital markets are built on trust and transparency,” Clayton said. “The honesty and candor of C-suite executives is essential, and this action should send a message. C-suite executives who breach the public trust will be pursued by the SDNY’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force and our dedicated partners at FBI, vigorously. That is what investors and the American people want and deserve.”

Heppner was convicted of misappropriating cash drawn from GWG Holdings, which he served as chairman before it went bankrupt. At one point, Heppner led both GWG Holdings and Beneficient. He was accused of funneling to himself, through a shell company that he secretly controlled, approximately half of $300 million transferred from GWG Holdings to Beneficient from 2018 to 2021.

In 2020, federal prosecutors said, Heppner responded to a subpoena from the SEC by falsifying minutes from a 2019 meeting to suggest movement of cash to the shell company had board approval.

The federal indictment asserted Heppner devoted at least $40 million to a ranch and a a 22,000-square-foot Dallas mansion with eight bedrooms and 12 bathrooms. He was accused of using $20 million to pay taxes, and of spending lavishly on travel and buying jewelry worth more than $500,000.

Beneficient is a financial services company exchanging cash or stock for illiquid investments bound up in private equity. The objective would be to sell acquired assets for a profit, but insufficient cash on hand and a weak stock price has dimmed Beneficient’s market prospects.

No other current or former GWG Holdings or Beneficient executives have been indicted. No one in Kansas has been indicted, but a Kansas business associate of Heppner testified as a prosecution witness.

Before the trial, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff issued a ruling preventing Heppner from claiming attorney-client privilege to shield from the jury 31 documents related to possible defense strategies that Heppner created with online artificial intelligence tools. The documents were seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation while serving a search warrant on Heppner’s electronic devices.

To secure the bank charter in Kansas, which the state banking commissioner aggressively opposed, Beneficient made campaign contributions to Republicans and Democrats in Kansas.

Heppner pledged a Beneficient subsidiary would direct resources to rural economic development projects in Kansas. The state Department of Commerce handled distribution of those grants. Heppner promised to revitalize his hometown of Hesston. He placed emphasis on construction of an elaborate grocery store in Hesston, which has not been built.

Some members of the Legislature continued to defend the state’s relationship with Beneficient despite Heppner’s indictment. During the 2026 session, the Legislature passed a bill that became law forbidding any state entity from accepting jurisdiction over any Beneficient business operation that filed for bankruptcy.

TOPEKA — The absence of clear lines of authority among local, state and federal government agencies when responding to deadly heat waves raises questions about the nation’s ability to deal with a warming global climate, University of Kansas researchers say.

The KU researchers concluded the lack of a nationwide framework for heat-related emergencies combined with a shortage of reliable data to map out response strategies complicated work to deal with exceptionally hot conditions potentially more lethal than hurricanes and tornadoes.

“Responsibility varies widely depending on location, with no standard assignment to federal agencies, state governments or local municipalities,” said Nathaniel Brunsell, a KU professor of geography and atmospheric science. “As a result, responses to extreme heat are uneven and often dependent on local capacity rather than a coordinated national strategy.”

He coauthored research published in the Journal of Climate Change and Health that argued the inconsistencies became more pronounced with shifts in federal policy that diminished availability of emergency services or heightened uncertainty about government authority.

Since 2025, President Donald Trump sought to dismantle federal initiatives intended to address climate change. The Trump administration deleted funding for climate science research, scrubbed websites of environmental data and dismissed government scientists.

Trump’s agenda clashed with evidence of rising global temperatures associated with melting icecaps, rising sea levels and intense droughts, heat waves and storms.

To better understand dimensions of extreme heat, Brunsell worked with KU doctoral student Noah Ring and Dorothy Daly, a KU professor of environmental studies and public administration, to consider how cities responded to heat events.

Brunsell said cities were often responsible for crafting public health plans for responding to heat-related events.

“Unlike other disasters, which often prompt reactive measures such as evacuations or shutdowns, heat requires both proactive and sustained responses,” he said. “These include opening cooling centers, issuing warnings and providing transportation for vulnerable populations. However, many cities rely on existing infrastructure and lack the resources to fully implement comprehensive plans.”

He said assessing the human toll was limited by city-to-city discrepancies in terms of documenting heat-related fatalities.

“This inconsistency makes it difficult to accurately measure the true impact of heat waves or track trends over time, even as meteorological data clearly shows that extreme heat events are becoming more frequent,” Brunsell said. “Translating those climatological findings into human outcomes is far more difficult due to inconsistent data collection.”

The information gap on how extreme heat influenced public health made it more difficult to develop effective interventions, he said.

For example, some low-income communities have less access to air conditioning, which can be significant in terms of coping with heat events. Neighborhoods in the same city might experience different outcomes during the same heat wave.

“Factors such as income, race, occupation and access to education all influence vulnerability,” Brunsell said. “Targeting limited resources effectively requires detailed knowledge of these disparities.”

KINSLEY — Charred fence posts, oxidized barbed wire and blackened trees lined the Arkansas River in west-central Kansas in the wake of a 1,500 acre fire that scorched the dry riverbed and surrounding property.

Below average rainfall in the region and a bone-dry riverbed filled with dead brush fueled the fire. The Kansas State Fire Marshal’s Office deemed the cause “undetermined,” even though the fire sparked one day after a controlled burn was performed on an adjacent ranch owned by the city of Hays.

The fire marshal’s office did not draw a connection between the two fires.

But others didn’t find it difficult to see a link.

Richard Neilson, emergency management director for Edwards County, told Wichita television station KWCH on April 16 the initial fire “should not have been burning.”

He added: “And that’s why we have burn bans.”

Kansas Forest Service meteorologists indicated in a weekly fire forecast that Edwards County had a high fire danger for the week beginning Monday, April 13.

The day before the fire, 10-hour fuel moisture levels, a metric that measures the water content of dead brush that can fuel a wildfire, were at their lowest in weeks near Kinsley, increasing wildfire risk. In other words, it was the driest day of the month, according to fire danger forecast data from Kansas State University.

An advisory warning of unusually dry grass had been in place for all of western Kansas since March. Still, on April 15, a 400-acre controlled burn inched across the native grass on the R9 Ranch near Kinsley.

The land is owned by the city of Hays, which is a little more than an hour drive from Kinsley. Hays bought the land 30 years ago and intends to use its 30 water wells to buttress its municipal water supply, a controversial plan that could set precedent as Kansas’ first intrastate water transfer for municipal purposes.

The local fire chief approved the controlled burn as part of the city’s land maintenance efforts.

“Staff monitored the area throughout the day Wednesday and Thursday to ensure any hot spots were addressed,” said a statement the city of Hays posted to Facebook on April 17.

The controlled burn began around 8:20 a.m. and was finished by 1:30 p.m April 15, according to the fire marshal’s office. By 3:30 p.m., the ranch manager told the local dispatch they were done.

Around 4 p.m. the next day, the Edwards County Fire Department responded to a new fire that had cropped up directly adjacent to the land burned the day before.

It raged through the dry Arkansas riverbed, consuming trees and creeping onto private property. More than 24 agencies, including surrounding fire departments and the U.S. Forest Service, helped fight the fire.

Leroy Wetzel, who lives near the R9 Ranch and the river, helped a friend move cattle away from the blaze, herding them with pickup trucks to a standing wheat field. To his knowledge, and per the fire marshal’s office, no livestock was injured in the fire.

Firefighters ignited back-burns, singeing untouched fields to keep the primary from encroaching further on private property.

By the end, a swath of the Arkansas River and more than 1,500 acres were scorched.

“Due to suppression activities, the cause of the fire is undetermined,” said Lance Feyh, a spokesperson for the fire marshal’s office.

As of April 29, the investigation had concluded.

“If more information is learned,” Feyh said, “it can always be investigated further.”

Toby Dougherty, city manager for Hays, said on Tuesday the city hadn’t seen a final report from the state fire marshal, and the city’s investigator, which was retained through its insurance, has not completed a report.

“No comment will be made until we have received and reviewed both reports,” he said.

The day after the U.S. Supreme Court crippled the federal Voting Rights Act, NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson addressed a virtual gathering for the group’s members and supporters where he ranked the landmark decision alongside the court’s most infamous cases.

Dred Scott excluded Black people from American citizenship ahead of the Civil War. Plessy blessed policies of racial segregation in 1896. And now there was Callais. 

The opinion will “probably go down in the history book as one of three of the worst Supreme Court decisions in the history of this nation,” Johnson said.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Louisiana vs. Callais on April 29 cleared states to split apart, for political gain, congressional districts where a majority of residents belong to minority groups. The court’s conservative majority said Louisiana lawmakers acted unconstitutionally when they intentionally created the state’s second majority-Black district, which the justices found unnecessary.

A week after its release, the decision is roiling politics across the South as states move at a rapid pace to recast the political landscape that has taken progressives by surprise. 

Republicans, triumphant over their victory at the court, are rushing fresh gerrymanders through Southern statehouses in time for the November midterm elections in an effort to strengthen their party’s control over the region’s U.S. House delegations. They’re acting at lightning speed, over loud protests, and have nullified votes by suspending ongoing elections.

Democrats, especially Black residents, are furious with both the court and GOP politicians, who they believe are poised to wipe away decades of Black political progress in the region. The new maps that seek to oust Black members of Congress and prevent the election of Democrats in the future recall a Jim Crow past of literacy tests and poll taxes, they say.

“We refuse to let you kill us by killing our vote,” Eliza Jane Franklin, a resident of rural Barbour County, Alabama, told a state House hearing Tuesday.

The Alabama Legislature is moving to authorize a special primary election using a congressional map currently blocked in federal court, if a district court or, ultimately, the Supreme Court allows the state to move forward. At least one of the state’s two Black members of the U.S. House would be vulnerable.

In Louisiana, the governor has suspended the state’s primary elections for the U.S. House, setting aside some 42,000 votes that were already cast. Republican lawmakers will begin advancing a new gerrymander in a matter of days, aiming to force out at least one of the state’s two Black House members.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new map into law Monday that aims to hand his party up to four additional U.S. House seats. State lawmakers approved the map hours after the Supreme Court’s decision. The map has already drawn multiple legal challenges.

The South Carolina Legislature is weighing whether to redraw maps. And Tennessee lawmakers want to gerrymander a Memphis district currently held by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a white Democrat who represents the state’s only majority-Black district. 

“The Supreme Court has opined that redistricting, like the judicial system, should be color-blind,” Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, said in a statement Thursday unveiling a plan to divide the Memphis area among three congressional seats.

More states, in the South and elsewhere, are expected to pursue new maps over the next two years. Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp ruled out a special session this year, for example, but supports redistricting before the 2028 election. 

The current moment represents an extraordinary time in America, said Rebekah Caruthers, president and CEO of Fair Elections Center, a nonpartisan voting rights group. But she also called it a reversion “back to America.”

Many thought the presence of Black, Hispanic and Asian American elected officials somehow meant racial discrimination no longer existed, she said.

“And unfortunately, that is a misread of American history,” Caruthers said. “And perhaps it is a retelling of American history for those who want to gloss over America’s very sordid past, especially when it comes to voting rights.”

The scramble by a handful of Southern states to redraw districts comes as Republicans grasp for any scintilla of advantage ahead of the midterm elections in November. 

A U.S. House under Democratic control would spell the end of much of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, produce a wave of investigations into his administration and potentially lead to a vote to impeach him in the House, though the Senate would almost certainly acquit him.

“This is all about Donald Trump wanting to avoid hard questions and oversight hearings about his actions,” Cohen said at a news conference in Memphis.

Seth McKee, a political science professor at Oklahoma State University who has studied Southern politics, said Republicans are attempting to “staunch the bleeding” ahead of unfavorable midterm elections.

“The desperation of this Republican Party, it’s off the charts,” McKee said.

Prior to Callais, Trump had already urged Republicans to redraw congressional maps for partisan advantage — a process that typically occurs once a decade after the census. 

Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas enacted more GOP-friendly maps, while Democrats struck back in California and Virginia. In Utah, Republicans want to block a court-ordered map that’s more favorable to Democrats.

Republican primary voters have given their approval to that approach. On Tuesday, five Trump-endorsed state legislative candidates in Indiana defeated GOP incumbents who had defied the president to block a gerrymander in the state last year.

But until now the Voting Rights Act limited how far that gerrymandering push could extend.

For decades, Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act helped protect majority-minority districts from gerrymandering and ensured voters could elect Black candidates to Congress in Southern states following the end of state laws that blocked Black citizens from voting. The Callais opinion guts Section 2 by curtailing the consideration of race when drawing legislative maps.

Republicans have praised the decision and many have been clear that they believe the opinion opens up a path to securing additional GOP seats. Trump has endorsed disregarding primary elections that have already been held so that states can pass new maps — which he predicts can net Republicans an additional 20 seats this fall.

“We cannot allow there to be an Election that is conducted unconstitutionally simply for the ‘convenience’ of State Legislatures,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If they have to vote twice, so be it.”

Over the past week, some Republicans have cast majority-minority districts previously protected by the Voting Rights Act as racist because they were drawn with attention paid to the racial makeup of the map. U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican, wrote on X that there are “no more excuses for keeping racist maps,” for example, and called for their immediate removal.

Other GOP leaders have centered their case for quick action on political power. Like Trump, they have explicitly invoked control of the U.S. House as a reason to gerrymander. While Republicans have the House, their margin of control is razor thin: 217 to 212, with one independent and five vacancies. Even a modest Democratic wave in November will likely sweep away GOP control.

Alabama Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger Jr. and House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter said in a joint statement that the state’s lawmakers have a responsibility to offer Alabama a “fighting chance” to elect seven Republican U.S. representatives. Two of the state’s seven districts are held by Democrats.

“Control of the U.S. House of Representatives could come down to just a handful of seats, and when the dust settles, the people of Alabama will know that their Legislature stood firm, acted decisively, and did everything within its power to fight for fair representation,” Gudger and Ledbetter said.

Alabama Republicans want to use a map passed by lawmakers in 2023 that federal courts blocked from taking effect. Alabama’s current map was drawn by a court-appointed special master.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, a Republican, asked a federal district court Tuesday for an order that would let the state move forward with the gerrymander.

In Louisiana, Republicans obtained special permission from the Supreme Court to quickly move forward on a new gerrymander after the justices struck down its current map in the Callais decision.

Absentee voting was already underway in Louisiana before Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended congressional primary elections set for May 16. Votes already cast for U.S. House candidates won’t count, Republican Secretary of State Nancy Landry, no relation, has said.

Louisiana state lawmakers are set to begin work on a new map this month that will likely break apart a New Orleans district held by U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, a Black Democrat who has fought with the governor.

“The Court’s decision in these cases has spawned chaos in the State of Louisiana,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the Supreme Court’s three liberal justices, wrote in a dissent of the decision to quickly finalize Callais.

Still, Democrats and other opponents of the gerrymandering effort across the South are turning to the courts. Lawsuits have also been filed challenging the suspension of Louisiana’s congressional primaries and Florida’s new map also faces court challenges.

A petition filed in Louisiana state court by Elias Law Group, a major Democrat-aligned voting rights litigation firm, alleges the governor’s decision to halt the congressional primary is unlawful and unprecedented. Only the state legislature has the power to set the state’s election schedule, the petition argues.

“Governors do not get to cancel elections by executive fiat, least of all elections that are already underway, with ballots in voters’ hands and votes already cast,” Lali Madduri, a partner at Elias Law Group, said in a statement.

Regardless of how the legal challenges play out, Democrats say the Callais decision and the ongoing fallout from the decision underscore the need for massive voter turnout in the November election. A large Democratic turnout that results in a significant Democratic majority in the U.S. House would serve as a rebuke to Trump’s gerrymandering campaign, they say.

U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, South Carolina’s sole congressional Democrat, said during the NAACP virtual meeting that a Democratic House could pass voting rights legislation. 

“I would hope we could do that because I really think that’s our only hope legislatively,” Clyburn said.

Democrats have long called for the passage of a bill to restore preclearance, a major element of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court paused in 2013, which required states and local governments with a history of racial discrimination to obtain federal permission before making voting changes. 

But the measure would face a certain filibuster in the U.S. Senate. Even if Democrats broke a filibuster, Trump would likely veto it. 

In effect, Democrats’ most realistic opportunity to enact major voting rights legislation relies on regaining control of the White House and Congress and ending the filibuster — a set of conditions that’s out of reach until at least 2029.

In the meantime, more Democrats are calling for aggressive gerrymandering of blue states as a way to punch back. U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Joseph Morelle, both New York Democrats, on Monday announced an initiative to encourage their state to redraw congressional districts ahead of the 2028 election.

Gerrymandering New York would be an intensive effort, likely requiring voters to repeal or suspend anti-gerrymandering provisions in the state constitution. But voters in California and Virginia have previously endorsed Democratic gerrymanders.

“This is just the beginning,” Jeffries said in a statement. “Across the nation, we will sue, we will redraw and we will win.”

TOPEKA — When Chuck Schmidt’s 93-year-old mother-in-law wanted to vote early, she and her family had to jump through hoops to make it possible.

As a lifelong Kansan who now lives in a nursing home, she had to reregister for an advance ballot but ultimately go in person — in a wheelchair — instead of voting with a mail-in ballot.

Schmidt and Leroy Burton are speakers for the Kansas Silver Haired Legislature and represent Kansans over 60. The group’s priorities for 2026 include legalizing medical cannabis, property tax relief, Medicaid and food assistance, voting accessibility and senior transportation.

“She’s just lucky. She has people to help, but there are people who don’t have help like that,” said Schmidt, who is also a former legislator. “That’s what happens when you put these restrictive covenants in, because it ends up eliminating more eligible voters than ineligible voters.”

With the race for governor in motion, one of the goals of the KSHL is to keep voting accessible to seniors after the Legislature passed a package of election bills targeting early and mail-in ballots.

“For the 700,000 Kansans over 60 that we represent, there’s a lot of them that need to do mail-in,” Schmidt said. “Some of them aren’t mobile, are in nursing homes, and they need that help. We fight that all the way.”

Sen. Brenda Dietrich, R-Shawnee, said she appreciated the group’s advocacy because senior citizens make such a difference at the polls.

“Seniors are a segment of our population that turn out to vote,” Dietrich said. “They can exude a lot of influence at the polls, and the Silver Haired Legislature is one avenue for these engaged folks to make sure elected officials understand their needs and we know they are watching.”

Sen. Cindy Holscher, an Overland Park Democrat running for governor, said it’s important to have seniors advocating for issues such as Medicaid and voting accessibility. They directly experience effects from the laws passed, she said.

“Every Kansan is entitled to their constitutional right to have their voice heard at the ballot box, and that includes our seniors,” Holscher said. “Mail-in ballots or early voting often are necessary for seniors to be able to cast their ballots. Severely limiting these options, like our legislature has tried to do, can have a disproportionate impact on senior voters.”

Although a Kansas Silver Haired Legislature-backed bill to legalize medical cannabis did not pass, Burton said the group plans to lobby the Legislature for it in the future.

Burton also said the group wants to see an advisory board put together for the issue made up of its members, doctors, police officers and other professionals.

“We do support medical cannabis. We don’t support recreational cannabis,” Burton said. “Let’s make sure it’s safe for the people to use, and let’s give doctors the right guidance so they can know how to prescribe those to the individuals.”

Schmidt said that group also advocates for senior citizens who live in rural parts of Kansas who face more difficulties getting to doctors’ appointments. Schmidt and the Kansas Silver Haired Legislature see senior transportation as the solution, after success in areas such as Douglas and Johnson County.

“The elderly go to doctor appointments and need to get to the hospitals,” Schmidt said. “Many of them can’t drive, and so having a transportation plan is really important to them.”

Organizers say they are looking for input from senior Kansans during the planning stages of the 2027 legislative session. Those interested can contact Burton at leburton@cox.net or Schmidt at cschmidt3131@gmail.com.

National Poetry Month has come and gone, and the flowers are still blooming, and the poets are still reading. It came and went so fast that I am not sure any of us were actually able to sit with the poems floating by us — or if we stopped long enough to smell the sweet scent of flowers, planted and envisioned.

This year marked the 30th anniversary of the beloved monthlong celebration of poetry and poets. In 1996, the Academy of American Poets launched the program to celebrate the vital role poetry plays in our culture. Now, National Poetry Month is celebrated internationally. Programs from the Academy of American Poets included “Poetry & the Creative Mind,” “Poem in Your Pocket Day,” “Dear Poet” and “National Poetry Month Poster.”

So much poeticizing, so little time.

National Poetry Month has created opportunities for poets to showcase their work at locally organized in-person reading events, online virtual events, in larger university settings with institutional support and at festivals. Open mics pop up in April like volunteer flowers in a backyard garden.

As a self-proclaimed traveling poet living in Kansas, I am grateful for every opportunity to share poetry in each community I visit during April. It’s my busiest month of the year outside Hispanic Heritage Month. I travel far and wide. My favorite April event this year was the inaugural “Petal & Poems” at the Botanica’s Tulipfest in Wichita, hosted by the Kansas Authors Club.

I can’t think of a better venue to read poetry than Shakespeare’s Garden at Botanica during Tulipfest. Thousands of tulips in every imaginable hue lined the pathways. Each step I took was imbued with extraordinarily radiant beauty. It’s a sight to see in person.

More flowers mean more beauty, and the same is true about poetry. More poetry means more beauty in the world.

The term for a flower in a state of bloom is efflorescence. A lover of flowers is called an anthophile, from the Greek antho (flower) and phile (lover). It’s a term used to describe bees that are known for their symbiotic relationships with flowers — they can’t live without each other.

Multiple terms are used to describe lovers of poetry, such as aesthete, versophile, and rhapsophile, but not one of them is universally recognized as the official term for lovers of poetry.

I’d like to introduce a new term in honor of National Poetry Month. Apriophile: a person drawn to poetry and flowers primarily in April, when both are at their highest concentration.

Apriophiles can describe their behaviors during National Poetry Month metaphorically and metaphysically as “beeing.” If you attend a poetry reading, you are “beeing.” If you plant flowers for spring, you are “beeing.” If you like to visit gardens this time of year, you probably like to go “beeing.” You and I could “bee” together next poetry season at Poems & Petals at Botanica if you want to.

I want to do more “beeing” next year, for longer, not just a single month. I’d like to extend poetry month into a poetry season. Poetry season should be three months and begin in March. The birth flower for March is the daffodil (Narcissus).

I know spring’s arrival is nigh when green daffodil shoots appear, goosenecking into the sky.

Daffodils are commonly associated with poets thanks to the Greek botanist Theophrastus, who wrote around 300 BCE the “Historia Plantarum” (or “Enquiry into Plants”) in which he called a spring-blooming version of a daffodil Narcissus poeticus.

Poetry season should end when May ends. The primary birth flower for May is Lily of the Valley (Convallaria majalis). In floriography — the language of flowers — Lily of the Valley symbolizes sweetness, humility and a return to happiness. I think a return to happiness is a good place to end poetry season, after three months of constant “beeing.”

It seems to me, a natural conclusion.

We should consider spending more time reading the flowers during poetry season. They could teach us a lot from March to May, when “beeing” is easiest for everyone. Three months of just “beeing” around poems, poets and petals sounds absolutely lovely. Sign me up.

Huascar Medina is a poet, writer, and performer who lives in Topeka. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Americans’ views on crime often don’t match reality — and a new report suggests those perceptions are shaped as much by personal experiences and economic conditions as by crime itself.

The analysis, released by the nonprofit think tank Council on Criminal Justice, draws on decades of Gallup survey data to examine how people perceive crime and what drives those beliefs. The report’s authors found that, since the 1960s, public perceptions of crime have frequently diverged from actual crime trends.

Even during periods when crime declined, most Americans continued to believe it was rising. From 2005 to 2024, about 69% of survey respondents on average said crime was higher than the year before, despite overall crime rates falling in most of those years, according to the report.

Fear of crime has remained relatively stable over time. In 2024, 35% of Americans said they were afraid to walk alone at night — the same share as in 1968.

The researchers found that public concern tends to track major shifts in homicide rates more closely than broader crime trends. But overall, people’s views about crime and their fear of it have not matched shifts in crime rates for most years, according to the report.

Instead, the analysis points to other factors that shape how Americans think about public safety.

Household victimization — whether someone in the home has been a victim of a crime — was one of the strongest predictors of both fear and the belief that crime is increasing. 

Property crimes, such as theft, and people’s own experiences with crime were more closely tied to concerns about the issue than actual violent crime rates.

Economic sentiment also played a role. People who said it was a good time to find a job or expected to spend the same or more on holiday shopping were less likely to say crime was rising and less likely to report fear of walking alone at night, according to the report.

Political views showed a more limited effect. While people with more conservative ideologies were somewhat more likely to perceive crime as increasing, political party affiliation itself was not a significant factor after accounting for economic conditions and other variables.

Higher presidential and congressional approval ratings were associated with a greater likelihood that respondents said crime was staying the same or declining, according to the report.

Local conditions, meanwhile, were more closely linked to personal fears than to perceptions of crime overall. The researchers found that neighborhood factors, such as poverty and youth population, were associated with whether people said they were afraid, but did not generally influence whether they believed crime was rising locally or nationally.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

LEAVENWORTH — CoreCivic’s newly reopened prison is holding about 250 immigration detainees, a slower ramp-up to full capacity than expected, an official said Monday. 

Misty Mackey, warden of the Midwest Regional Reception Center, said that while the company expected to move to capacity of 1,104 detainees slowly, it is a little behind schedule.

“I know with the ICE budget that was passed, that might pick up a little bit now, so we’ll see what that has in store for us,” she said. 

On Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee and Homeland Security Committee released a reconciliation bill budgeting $72 billion for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through 2029, the Hill reported. The special budget reconciliation process means the bill can pass with a majority vote, rather than needing 60 votes.

Mackey spoke after the first meeting of the 14-person CoreCivic Community Relations Advisory Board on Monday, set up to ensure CoreCivic doesn’t repeat past negative behaviors at its reopened prison facility. 

CoreCivic ran a private prison in Leavenworth before losing its government contract in 2021. Since then, the prison has been shut down, and the city and Nashville-based company spent the past year in court battling about its reopening. Many community members spoke out against CoreCivic because of past prisoner treatment, which led one judge to call the prison a “hell hole.”

The committee dove into details of agreements between CoreCivic and the city at its first meeting.

Scott Peterson, city manager, detailed CoreCivic’s special use permit and performance agreement, both of which allow city officials oversight of prison operations.

The special use permit, which was approved by the city commission in March after a contentious year-long fight, outlines 17 conditions the company must meet around zoning and building use for the Midwest Regional Reception Center. 

A performance agreement isn’t usually part of a special use permit, Peterson said, but because of community concerns the performance agreement expands expectations around working with city officials and law enforcement. If terms of the agreement are violated, the special use permit can be pulled, he said.

Leavenworth Mayor Nancy Bauder said she is pleased with the cooperation between CoreCivic and the city, and she expects future meetings to dig into more specifics.

“This is really general right now,” she said. “As we get closer to the (American Correctional Association) part, we will have a lot more things to cover.”

Bauder referred to city requirements that CoreCivic license the MRRC through the American Correctional Association, a process expected to take about 18 months.

What is happening with CoreCivic is new to Leavenworth’s government, she said. Although the community has two other prisons, Bauder said, the city has no right to enforce anything to do with federal facilities. 

However, the community’s past experiences when CoreCivic operated the prison before closing in 2021 necessitated more oversight, the city commission decided during meetings that drew public input from hundreds of people.

In court filings, Leavenworth’s attorneys said CoreCivic officials didn’t report inmate deaths to the police department for as long as six days and impeded investigations into sexual assaults and other violent crimes. 

“We must make sure it never happens again,” Bauder said. 

Community members who were upset with the idea of CoreCivic reopening to house ICE detainees told her they understood the city commission had little choice in approving the special use permit, Bauder said of the weeks after the approval. Immediately afterward, numerous people posted on social media that they were angry the commission approved the permit.

“(They’re) more angry about ICE,” Bauder said. “I understand about ICE. I’m angry about them, too. But this is our special use permit here. The community, from what I’ve noticed, has been very supportive, and they said, ‘Well, you’re in a hard place.’ ”

City Commissioner Holly Pittman said at the time that she was concerned they would be in expensive court battles they might lose if they didn’t approve the permit.

In addition, Bauder said, the federal government could have purchased the prison, and then the city would have no oversight. 

Mackey said CoreCivic typically takes part in community committees like the one in Leavenworth, though they typically meet quarterly whereas Leavenworth is meeting monthly. 

The meetings are open to the public as part of the Kansas Open Meetings Act regulations because city commissioners are committee members. The public can’t enter MRRC for tours, so city commissioners won’t all go on tour at the same time, Peterson said. 

Access to the prison and observing operations are part of city requirements for the special use permit. Several committee members were planning a tour after Monday’s meeting.

Members of the Immigration CoreCivic Community Relations Advisory Board include city officials. the police chief, CoreCivic representatives, a member from the Carceral Accountability Council, corrections professionals, faith and religious leaders, an immigration attorney, community representatives and others.

WASHINGTON — Voters, including those within the Make America Healthy Again movement, say the rising cost of healthcare is a significant concern that will have an impact on whom they support in November’s midterm elections, according to a poll released Wednesday by KFF. 

Sixty-one percent of respondents to the survey, which asked how important several health-related issues were, said the price of healthcare will have a major impact on which party they support as control of Congress hangs in the balance.

Among MAHA voters, who are predominantly Republicans but also include independents and some Democrats, 42% said cost is their top issue heading into the elections. 

“While the issue of health costs is more salient for Democratic voters than for Republicans, larger shares across partisans say health costs will have a major impact on their voting decisions than say the same about vaccine policy or food safety,” the survey said. 

Seventy-two percent of Democrats, 63% of independents and 47% of Republicans said the cost of healthcare will have a major impact on which party’s candidate they vote for. 

Vaccine policy came in next, with 57% of Democrats, 46% of independents and 32% of Republicans surveyed saying it will have a major impact on their choice. 

Issues related to food safety came in third after 43% of Democrats, 40% of independents and 38% of Republicans responded that it will have a major impact on their choice of candidate.  

For MAHA voters, twice as many listed health costs as their first priority than the next issue: restricting the use of certain chemical additives in food, which was a key concern for 21%.

Ten percent were interested in politicians who will reevaluate vaccine approvals, 8% want lawmakers to limit corporate interest in food and 8% want Congress to limit the use of pesticides in agriculture. Eleven percent said none of those or had no answer. 

The survey showed that a significant majority of Americans across the political spectrum believe the government hasn’t done enough to address chemical additives in food or pesticide use in agriculture, two core demands of MAHA supporters.  

“The public perception that there is not enough regulation may be rooted in broader skepticism toward the industries themselves,” the survey said. “Most U.S. adults do not trust pharmaceutical companies, food and beverage companies, or agricultural companies to act in the public’s best interest.”

Doctors and healthcare providers were the most trusted source of information at 70%, followed by agriculture companies at 40%, food and beverage companies at 25% and pharmaceutical companies at 21%. 

Seventy-five percent of those polled said the government hasn’t done enough to regulate chemicals in food, while 65% said it should do more to regulate pesticides in agriculture. 

The poll of 1,343 U.S. adults took place from April 14 to April 19. It has a margin of error of 3 percentage points for the full sample and 6 percentage points for MAHA supporters.

TOPEKA — Shawn Lagemann asked the Kansas Legislature to wade into a dispute pitting her vision of agricultural tourism and education against the city of Lenexa’s blueprint for regulation and zoning of rural properties in the path of economic development.

Lagemann, CEO and co-owner of Walnut Pond Agricultural Discovery Center, said the plea for help came after Lenexa eliminated all agriculture zoning from its comprehensive plan. She asked state lawmakers to place in statute a definition of agritourism that differentiated between private agricultural education organizations and business entities such as petting zoos or wedding venues open to the public.

“What we are trying to do at Walnut Pond is show kids real food,” she said. “Let them have an appreciation for the animals that are raised. Or, better yet, they can pick the tomato off the vine and eat it in the garden.”

In March, she asked state legislators to shield nonprofit agricultural education entities — including Walnut Pond, which is closed to walk-in customers — from unnecessary city ordinances and extraordinary infrastructure requirements.

The Legislature responded in mid-April by passing a bill prohibiting cities or counties in Kansas from enforcing building codes, ordinances, resolutions or other legal actions to control private, registered agritourism operations. The exemption from municipal oversight under House Bill 2111 covered regulations on health and safety, property maintenance, facility usage and extended to permits, licenses and fees.

The Kansas Department of Commerce and the cities of Shawnee and Overland Park objected to legislation, which was passed 71-49 by the House and 27-13 by the Senate.

In response, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the bill. She put pen to paper after the 2026 Legislature adjourned for the year, meaning there was no opportunity to override the veto.

Kelly said the legislation appeared well-intentioned, but she was concerned it represented interests of a lone entity rather than the agricultural tourism industry as a whole. The governor said it was irresponsible of the Legislature to ram through a last-minute bill with potential far-reaching consequences. She also was concerned the House and Senate had ignored home-rule authority of local government.

“I do not support the Legislature’s continued attempts to infringe on local control, and this bill is another example of that,” Kelly said.

In an interview Tuuesday, Lagamann said she was disappointed by the veto. She said the bill blocked by the governor wasn’t the version she would have preferred, because it looked too much like a “get out of jail free card” for Walnut Pond and other farms like it. She has little interest in getting tangled in a lawsuit, but she expects Lenexa officials to continue pursuing development plans inhospitable to farms or ranches.

“It’s been an interesting ride,” Lagemann said. “We’re going to keep operating as usual.”

Shawn and John Lagemann bought Walnut Pond Ranch in 2022 and dedicated three years to developing the property into the Agricultural Discovery Center. The goal was connecting Kansans to an agrarian lineage so more understood what it required to produce food.

The ranch covers 80 acres and features a stocked pond and 4 miles of wooded trails. There are hay fields and gardens for vegetables, including heirloom varieties. Livestock enclosures host cattle, donkeys, horses, pigs, goats and poultry. Some produce is sold to the public.

Three-quarters of Walnut Pond’s educational demonstrations occur away from the property and one-fourth at the farm through reservations, Shawn Lagemann said.

“What we are doing is important and needed,” she said.

In 2023, Lenexa’s zoning included “education” as part of the agricultural category. Shawn Lagemann said they met with the city and complied with requests to bring infrastructure up to code. Other steps, including burying electrical lines, were done voluntarily, she said.

The City of Lenexa adopted a new comprehensive development plan in July 2024 that eliminated all agricultural zoning within city limits. The education category within zoning documents was replaced by a “cultural” category, Shawn Lagemann said.

She said the appeal to the Legislature was intended to protect Walnut Pond from being compelled by the city to install paved parking lots and sidewalks, restrooms suitable for people with disabilities, water fountains and commercial-grade electrical systems.

Rachel Willis, director of legislative affairs for the Kansas Department of Commerce, said the agency opposed exempting certain agritourism operations from local code and regulation enforcement. She said proposed legislation would preempt municipal governance and put the public at risk.

She said to intersection of agriculture and tourism occurred when the public visited a working farm, ranch, winery or heritage site for recreation, education, shopping, dining and lodging. The legislation tied to Walnut Pond would have created a category of agritourism where the location was open by invitation, Willis said.

“When an operation is limited to invited guests only, it moves away from the traditional concept of tourism and instead resembles a private event or private use of agricultural property rather than a tourism activity,” Willis said. “Creating a new category of agritourism that is not open to the public and exempt from local regulatory authority raises concerns about both the integrity of the agritourism program and the safety and governance structures that support it.”

Shawnee City Manager Paul Kramer said he opposed the legislation because it would foster inconsistent safety standards and undermine municipal government control.

“Local governments are best positioned to understand the risks and safety needs within their communities,” Kramer said.

Sen. Mike Thompson, a Shawnee Republican and ally of Walnut Pond’s owners, said expanding municipalities were targeting undeveloped areas in a way that disregarded what remained of farming.

He said it was wrong for Lenexa to treat Walnut Pond as a commercial business open for unscheduled walk-ins. The Legislature should prevent cities or counties from micromanaging privately owned farms serving groups of children and parents, he said.

“Cities frequently come to the Legislature in Topeka to demand we not encroach on their ‘home rule’ powers, yet they never seem to hesitate to find ways to regulate and tax private property owners,” Thompson said.

Kansas’ health system works well — if you live in the right county, have the right insurance and can find a provider. For many Kansans, none of those conditions hold.

Across the state, access to care, affordability and outcomes vary sharply depending on geography and income. While Kansas has strong health institutions and committed providers, the system remains fragmented and uneven. Costs continue to rise, access remains inconsistent, and too many Kansans struggle to get timely, affordable care.

One of the most significant structural challenges is Kansas’ decision not to expand Medicaid. As a result, an estimated 130,000 to 150,000 low-income adults remain uninsured, many of them working Kansans who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford private insurance, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

These gaps are not evenly distributed.

Southwest Kansas counties such as Ford, Finney and Seward, along with Wyandotte County in the Kansas City metro area, have some of the highest uninsured rates in the state, based on data from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. The consequences are predictable: delayed care, increased reliance on emergency services, and higher levels of uncompensated care that strain already vulnerable hospitals.

Even where coverage exists, access is far from guaranteed. More than 80 of Kansas’ 105 counties are designated primary care shortage areas by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration. In southwest Kansas, shortages of OB-GYNs, dentists and specialists are particularly acute.

In some western counties, including Hamilton, Stanton and Morton, there are no local obstetric services at all. Women often must travel 50 to 100 miles or more for prenatal care and delivery. Oral health access is similarly limited, with most counties designated as dental shortage areas and few dentists accepting Medicaid, according to the Kansas Oral Health Coalition.

These challenges are more pronounced in frontier counties such as Greeley and Wallace, where extremely low population density makes traditional care models difficult to sustain. At the same time, southwest Kansas has a rapidly growing and diverse population, including many immigrant communities, making culturally and linguistically appropriate care essential.

Low Medicaid reimbursement rates further limit access.

Many specialists, particularly in psychiatry, orthopedics and dentistry, do not accept Medicaid patients, leading to long wait times or the need to travel significant distances for care. In practice, this creates a system where having insurance does not necessarily mean being able to use it.

Rural hospitals face similar pressures. Facilities in counties such as Edwards, Kiowa and Greeley operate on thin financial margins, according to the Kansas Hospital Association. Low patient volumes, workforce shortages and higher shares of uninsured or Medicaid patients make it increasingly difficult to sustain services. Some hospitals have already reduced services, particularly obstetric care, or closed altogether, as documented by the National Rural Health Association.

This raises a difficult but necessary question: Should Kansas aim to preserve every hospital in its current form, or redesign rural health systems to ensure access in more sustainable ways? Increasingly, the answer may lie in the latter — through regional care hubs, telehealth-supported networks and alternative service models.

Behavioral health is another area of urgent need. Shortages of psychiatrists, therapists, and substance use providers are widespread, with particularly high demand in southeast Kansas, including Labette and Cherokee counties. Community Mental Health Centers report persistent waitlists, according to the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services.

These access challenges translate into real differences in outcomes. Life expectancy can vary by five to seven years across Kansas counties, according to analysis by the Commonwealth Fund. Chronic illnesses such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease are more common in southeast Kansas, while southwest Kansas continues to face higher rates of uninsurance and poverty.

Housing, food access, transportation and language barriers all play a role in shaping health, yet they remain only partially integrated into the system.

Kansas is not starting from scratch. Several promising efforts are already underway.

A recent collaboration between the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the University of Kansas Medical Center has formalized training and certification for community health workers, expanding the state’s ability to deliver care at the community level. These workers help patients navigate the system, manage chronic conditions, and address social needs.

The Kansas Rural Health Initiative is working to strengthen workforce pipelines and support rural health infrastructure. Telehealth expansion, accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, has improved access to behavioral health and specialty care, although broadband gaps remain a barrier in parts of Western Kansas.

These efforts point toward what a more effective system could look like.

A reimagined Kansas health system would begin by ensuring that all Kansans have continuous, affordable coverage. It would focus on distributing the workforce more effectively, not just increasing its size, and would expand team-based care models that include community health workers and telehealth.

It would also align payment systems with access and outcomes, encouraging providers to serve Medicaid patients and improving coordination across public and private insurers. Rural health systems would be redesigned to preserve access rather than institutions, using flexible models that reflect local needs. Behavioral health would be integrated into primary care, and prevention would become a focus rather than an afterthought.

This kind of transformation will not happen overnight. In the near term, Kansas can expand community health worker programs, strengthen telehealth and invest in workforce incentives. Over time, broader payment reforms and system redesign will be needed to ensure sustainability and improve outcomes.

Ultimately, success should be measured not by the structure of the system, but by results: fewer uninsured Kansans, shorter travel distances for care, improved access to behavioral health services, fewer preventable hospitalizations, and better health outcomes across all counties.

Kansas has many building blocks already in place. The question now is whether the state is willing to align policy, financing, and political will to build a system that works — not just for some Kansans, but for all.

Walter Taminang is a humanitarian health professional and physician with experience in health systems and policy. The views expressed are those of the author. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

WASHINGTON — The alleged White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter was indicted by a grand jury Tuesday on four federal charges, including attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump and assaulting an officer or employee of the United States with a deadly weapon.

The three-page indictment alleges 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, of California, “knowingly and by means and use of a deadly and dangerous weapon” forcibly assaulted, intimidated or interfered with an unidentified U.S. Secret Service agent who was hit with one bullet in his protective vest while working a security checkpoint outside the annual dinner. The agent was uninjured.

The indictment does not specify whether Allen fired the shot that hit the agent.

Allen was also indicted on transporting a firearm over state lines with intent to commit a felony, and using, brandishing or discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. 

The indictment specifies Allen transported a 12-gauge pump action shotgun with 45 rounds of ammunition, and a .38 caliber semi-automatic pistol with 55 rounds of ammunition.

Government prosecutors in a court filing prior to the indictment alleged Allen also had on him “two knives, four daggers, multiple sheaths, multiple holsters, needle nose pliers, (and) wire cutters.”

The Department of Justice initially charged Allen on three of the grand jury indictment counts, with the exception of assaulting a federal officer or employee.

Allen is scheduled to be arraigned in federal district court Monday in Washington, D.C.

He faces up to life in prison if convicted of attempting to kill the president.

Allen allegedly rushed a security checkpoint one level above the Washington Hilton ballroom on April 25 where Trump, Vice President JD Vance and several Cabinet officials were among thousands of journalists, government officials and celebrities attending the black-tie event that dates back a century.

Shortly before he ran through a magnetometer, with a long gun in hand, at 8:40 p.m., Allen sent an email to friends and family explaining he intended to target “administration officials … prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.”

Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Cabinet members all safely evacuated the ballroom. 

The Secret Service agent, whose vest protected him from gunfire, is referred to in court filings as V.G. 

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters April 27 that a ballistics investigation had not yet been completed, and would not answer whether Allen fired the bullet that hit the agent.

V.G. fired five rounds from his service weapon in Allen’s direction, but did not hit the suspect who fell to the ground and sustained minor injuries, according to a signed affidavit from law enforcement filed in court April 27.

Trump publicly shared photos on his social media platform Truth Social the day following the dinner of a shirtless and handcuffed Allen face down on the hotel carpet Saturday night.

TOPEKA — A Kansas judge declined to pause his decision-making in a consequential abortion law case after state attorneys said his application to fill a vacancy on the Kansas Supreme Court causes a conflict of interest.

Johnson County District Court Judge K. Christopher Jayaram said Monday in a memo the state’s request appeared “pretextual and without any apparent legal or factual basis.”

Jayaram applied last month to fill a Kansas Supreme Court vacancy created when former Chief Justice Marla Luckert retired in March. The state’s attorneys on Thursday asked Jayaram to stay the case until a new Kansas Supreme Court justice is selected, which they said would “strengthen public confidence in the proceedings by avoiding any appearance of a conflict of interest.”

“This is true because Governor Kelly, who will ultimately make the appointment to the Supreme Court seat, is intricately involved in the subject matter of this case,” state attorneys said.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, has authority over state officials who oversee the underlying anti-abortion laws being challenged in the case, and she recently vetoed two bills that could affect those laws, the state’s attorneys pointed out.

Jayaram denied any conflict of interest.

“This jurist is ethically required under the Canons of Judicial Ethics to preside over and efficiently adjudicate matters assigned to him, and this case is no exception, particularly at this juncture in these proceedings,” Jayaram wrote. “There is no legitimate basis for either a stay or any other related relief, despite the State Defendants’ innuendo regarding some purported conflict that simply does not exist.”

Jayaram was selected as a finalist for a Kansas Supreme Court vacancy last year when he was interviewed for a vacancy left behind by the retirement of recently deceased Justice Evelyn Wilson. At that point, he was still presiding over the anti-abortion case, and he did not pause proceedings then.

The case involves an abortion provider and Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which sued state and county officials over the Women’s Right to Know Act, a series of state-imposed restrictions on abortion providers. Their challenge was heard over  a two-week bench trial in September and October, and a decision from Jayaram has been pending since. State attorneys said in their Thursday filing they intend to file a motion to dismiss the case by May 15.

Jayaram is among four judges and three attorneys who will be publicly interviewed by the nine-member Supreme Court Nominating Commission before three finalists are recommended to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who selects an appointee to a vacancy.

It could be the last appointment of Kelly’s gubernatorial tenure. She will leave office in January, and her decision could arrive just weeks ahead of a statewide vote in the Aug. 4 primary election on a ballot question that will ask voters to eradicate the current merit-based selection process for choosing Kansas Supreme Court justices and replace it with a campaign-based, popular vote process.

TOPEKA — Republican gubernatorial candidate Ty Masterson publicly shared a letter signed by a White House staff member praising the GOP-led Kansas Legislature for tackling issues of wasteful government spending and broadening financial support of private education.

The letter addressed to Masterson, the Andover president of the Kansas Senate, and Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins of Wichita, congratulated state legislators for working during the 2026 session to advance elements of President Donald Trump’s agenda. Masterson is among the Republican field of candidates for governor, while Hawkins is seeking election as state insurance commissioner.

“We applaud your dedication to deliver on President Trump’s priorities and your leadership and courage … in enacting many priorities via veto override,” said Alex Meyer, director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

On Monday, Masterson said he was proud of Senate support for the Trump administration and of politically positioning Kansas as a conservative model for other states.

“From day one, our mission was clear: Advance President Trump’s America First agenda right here in Kansas,” Masterson said. “We didn’t just talk about it. We delivered.”

Masterson pointed to actions of the Legislature to reduce wasteful spending, strengthen election integrity, expand resources for private schools and protect first responders.

In terms of state spending, the Legislature placed into law a requirement state agencies enter data-matching agreements to verify eligibility for government food and medical assistance. State lawmakers moved to prohibit Kansans from self-reporting income level or household size when applying for assistance.

Democrats in the House and Senate opposed the legislation because it would deny food aid to thousands of Kansans. Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the bill, but the Legislature overrode the Democratic governor.

The Legislature eliminated “no-excuse” absentee voting and restricted what online websites could be used to register voters. State agencies involved in registration were ordered to share personal data, such as a Social Security numbers, with the Kansas secretary of state’s office.

Opponents of data-sharing questioned the legality of the mandate and warned that computer searches would result in accidental flagging of U.S. citizens who had a right to vote.

The Legislature overrode Kelly’s veto of a bill establishing a 25-foot buffer zone around law enforcement and emergency personnel. Individuals who intentionally remained in the zone could be charged with a misdemeanor and possibly sentenced to six months in jail. Kansas also granted county sheriffs authority to enter agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement without approval of county commissions.

Supporters of the changes said it was to protect first responders from interference by protesters who objected to federal immigration actions. Kelly vetoed the bill, citing First Amendment considerations, but the veto was overridden.

“This legislation creates serious tension between ensuring law enforcement officers can carry out their duties while respecting the First Amendment rights of Kansans to observe and record their actions,” Kelly said.

The Legislature deflected Kelly’s veto of a bill enabling Kansas to take part in the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit program. It offers a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit up to $1,700 starting in 2027 for donations to organizations awarding scholarships to students attending private schools in Kansas.

“This new federal program needs to be thoroughly vetted to understand the potential impact on funding for our public schools,” Kelly said. “If it is, in essence, just another voucher program designed to redirect taxpayer dollars to private schools to the detriment of our public schools, Kansans have made clear they don’t want it.”

The House and Senate also expanded to $20 million the annual cap on state tax credits issued to support scholarships for lower-income students at private schools.

TOPEKA — An electric utility company serving Cherokee County requested a $15.8 million rate increase from Kansas utility regulators, which would increase an average residential bill by 40%.

The Empire District Electric Co., which operates as Liberty, serves more than 8,400 Kansas residential customers, as well as nearly 1,350 commercial and industrial customers. In December, Empire filed a rate case with the Kansas Corporation Commission, which includes investments in three wind projects, one in southeastern Kansas and two in Missouri. Those projects are expected to reduce annual fuel costs by nearly $3.3 million, Empire said in KCC filings.

If the case is approved, Kansas residential customers would see monthly bills increase about $11.88 in the first year, $21.28 in the second year, and $21.28 in the third year, a KCC news release said. Average customer usage is based on 1000 kilowatts per hour monthly.

“Currently, the monthly bill for customers with average usage is about $135.38 per month,” the KCC release said. “The proposed total bill after three years would be approximately $189.83, a 40% increase.”

Empire attributed its rate request to investments made in wind projects, which were originally included in its 2021 rate case but were withdrawn, as well as replacing aging infrastructure and modernizing customer service technology, according to KCC filings.

The company’s last base rate increase was in 2012, and in 2021, the company’s rate case resulted in a $637,000 reduction in base rates.

“Like others, Empire has also experienced a large increase in its operating expenses due to COVID, inflation, supply-chain disruptions and other factors,” the company filings said. “As a result, the request for an increase in its Kansas retail electric base rates is substantial. Empire is fully aware of the burden such a rate increase will place on its Kansas customers.”

Empire proposed phasing in its rate increase over three years, noting that even if KCC approves such a plan, the rate impact is “substantial.” The company said it would continue to discuss options to lessen the rate impact with KCC staff and others intervening in the case.

As a result of investments and other factors, the company said present rates don’t produce sufficient revenue for the company. Based on its year-end report from March 31, 2025, the rates earned Empire a 1.03% return on Kansas electric operations.

“This current return to Empire is not just and reasonable,” Empire filings said.

The public hearing will be held at the Columbus High School Auditorium, 124 S. High School Ave., in Columbus It will be livestreamed on KCC’s YouTube channel. If customers want to comment on Zoom, they must register on KCC’s website by noon May 11.

Written comments will be accepted through 5 p.m. on June 5 and may be submitted on the website, by mail to KCC at 1500 SW Arrowhead Rd, Topeka, KS 66604-4027, or by calling KCC at (785) 271-3140 or (800) 662-0027.

Federal agencies say they have yet to take steps to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail, as the Department of Justice fights a Democrat-led lawsuit against it.

The Justice Department late Friday filed documents asking a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit and to not block the executive order on a preliminary basis because the order hasn’t been implemented. The filings marked the Trump administration’s first effort to defend the order in court.

The March 31 order directs the creation of state citizenship lists and restricts how ballots can be sent through the mail, instructions that Democrats and election experts have called unconstitutional and illegal. It comes as Trump has seized on the specter of noncitizen voting, an extremely rare phenomenon, to demand sweeping voting restrictions.

In its Friday filing, the Justice Department sought to persuade Judge Carl J. Nichols in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia that a legal challenge is premature.

“If and when the Executive Branch takes some action to implement the Executive Order” then a lawsuit can be brought, Stephen Pezzi, a senior trial counsel in the Justice Department’s Civil Division, wrote in a court filing.

Nichols has scheduled a hearing for May 14.

The DOJ’s argument relies on statements by key federal officials that the agencies affected by the order — the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Postal Service — are still deliberating over how to carry out Trump’s directive. In declarations filed in court on Friday, officials at all three agencies say final decisions haven’t been made.

“As the Postal Service is still in the deliberation phase of determining how to implement the Executive Order, we have not yet published a proposed rule, nor have we reached any final decisions about the substance of a proposed rule,” Steven Monteith, the Postal Service’s chief customer and marketing officer, wrote.

The executive order directs the postmaster general, who leads the Postal Service, to propose a rule that would block states from sending ballots through the mail except to voters on lists provided by the state to the Postal Service. 

The order also instructs Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age U.S. citizens in each state with the help of the Social Security Administration. Democrats allege the Trump administration is building an unauthorized national voter list, despite the U.S. Constitution giving states the responsibility of running federal elections.

Michael Mayhew, deputy associate director of the Immigration Records and Identity Services Directorate within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, wrote in a declaration that the agency “has not yet begun preparation” of state citizenship lists. USCIS is a subsidiary of Homeland Security.

At the Social Security Administration, Jessica Burns MacBride, head of program policy and data exchange, wrote that the agency hasn’t made any final decisions “about its role” in implementing the executive order.

The order’s opponents are especially watching the Postal Service’s response, since it is an independent corporation overseen by its Board of Governors — not the White House.

Democrats and experts on postal law say Trump has no authority to order the postmaster general to take any action. The Board of Governors hires and fires the postmaster general, and board members serve seven-year terms, helping insulate them from political pressure.

Last month, 37 Democratic U.S. senators signed a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner and the Board of Governors urging the Postal Service to not implement the executive order. The senators pointed out the president has no authority to regulate federal elections or the Postal Service.

“Like the President, the Postal Service has no authority to regulate the manner of voting in federal elections, nor who is eligible to vote by mail in such elections,” the letter says.

The Postal Service is a named defendant in the lawsuit filed by Democratic groups and leaders in Congress. 

The Justice Department, which is representing the Postal Service, sidestepped questions about the president’s authority in Friday’s court filing. It called arguments about Trump’s authority over the Postal Service an “abstract legal question” that can’t be resolved before the agency takes action.

Still, Monteith appeared to nod to concerns within the Postal Service over the order’s legality while avoiding specifics.

“I am aware that deliberations are currently ongoing within the Postal Service regarding the implementation of the Executive Order,” Monteith wrote, adding that the deliberations include “legal considerations” regarding the order.

The executive order faces at least five lawsuits, including a challenge brought by a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general led by California’s Rob Bonta. The Justice Department has not yet filed court documents defending the order in that case.

For their part, Republican attorneys general — led by Catherine Hanaway of Missouri — are defending the executive order. Their position, if adopted by courts, would give Trump sweeping control over the Postal Service.

In a May 1 court filing, the GOP attorneys general argue those challenging the executive order are unlikely to succeed in showing that Trump cannot direct the Postal Service to propose a rule. They say that federal law doesn’t specifically prohibit the president from ordering the postmaster general to put forward rules on mail ballots — and it’s unconstitutional if it does.

“The Constitution vests the entirety of the executive power in the President,” The Republican coalition says, articulating a view commonly called the unitary executive theory: the idea that Congress cannot constitutionally create agencies that exist outside of White House control.

The Republican states involved also include Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas.

Democrats and many constitutional law experts reject the unitary executive theory, though it has gained support among Trump-aligned Republicans as the White House seeks greater control over independent agencies.

If the U.S. Supreme Court eventually greenlights Trump’s efforts to control the Postal Service and other independent agencies, it would mark a “tremendous” change in how the federal government operates, James Campbell Jr., an attorney in the Washington, D.C., area who consults on postal law, said in an interview last month.

“What you’re basically talking about is redesigning the U.S. government,” Campbell said.

PRAIRIE VILLAGE — After President Donald Trump took office, a small church in Kansas City, Kansas retreated underground — abandoning their sanctuary for the basement. 

Rick Behrens, senior pastor at Grandview Park Presbyterian Church, said he moved services to the locked basement in response to the administration’s decision to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to enter churches. 

“It is ironic and shameful, is it not, that the safe spaces we call sanctuaries are no longer safe spaces,” Behrens said. “Because we are under attack from our own government.” 

Behrens spoke alongside other faith leaders and immigrant activists Thursday at an interfaith prayer vigil in Prairie Village. Speakers encouraged churches — especially large congregations — to start fighting for immigrants.

“It’s easy to come to events like this and believe we’ve done something monumental,” Behrens said. “Don’t get me wrong, prayer can be and has been the start of many monumental movements, but by praying we can also feel that we somehow fulfilled our requirement to love our neighbors without doing anything.”

Behrens’ underground church has become an organizing hub in Kansas City. He has trained community members to rapidly respond when they spot immigration enforcement officers, accompany immigrants, and monitor the courts.

Speakers said those volunteer networks are especially needed with the FIFA World Cup approaching — they expect more immigration enforcement than usual. 

Carolyne Muriu, a representative for Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation, immigrated from Kenya when she was 12 years old. 

“It should be a moment of celebration, but it is becoming a moment of fear for a lot of immigrants,” Muriu said. “So we have to make plans to protect ourselves.”

Jess Ferrell, executive director for the Center of Grace community center in Olathe, relied on a network of volunteers after she received an anonymous tip that ICE agents planned to raid parent pickup at the center. She said she will never be sure if it was a legitimate threat. 

“We realized we do not have a way to safely get (the kids) off our property home with their parents, who are at work, because armed agents might show up and try to kidnap their parents in front of them, using children as bait,” Ferrell said.

The anonymous tip came in around 9 a.m. Ferrell said for the next nine hours, rapid response volunteers came to help. All 48 kids made it home safely. 

Jacob Poindexter, senior minister at Wichita United Church of Christ asked a profound question bluntly.

“Which side are you going to be on? Which side are we going to take a risk for?” he asked.  “Because you’re taking a risk, no matter which side you choose. If you do nothing, you are taking a risk. If you do something, at least it’s a worthwhile risk.”

Earlier Thursday, the pastor of the largest church in Kansas and largest United Methodist Church in the country, Adam Hamilton, announced his bid for the U.S. Senate to replace GOP incumbent and Trump loyalist Sen. Roger Marshall. 

Hamilton’s campaign as an “independently minded Democrat” has drawn criticism from more progressive democrats, especially for his ambiguous stance on abortion.

None of the speakers would outright endorse Hamilton. 

“If a pastor runs for political office it’s fantastic,” Poindexter said. 

Democrats have put the U.S. Senate race in play!

Johnson County pastor Adam Hamilton throwing his hat in the ring to run against Sen. Roger Marshall transforms the political landscape! Democrats finally have a shot at a marquee race! Just look at all the money he raised!

… that’s what people have been saying, at least, over the past few days. I need my Democratic friends to take a gigantic deep breath and return to the real world, if only for the length of this column. The U.S. Senate race in Kansas will be interesting this year, and many qualified Democrats are running for their party’s nomination.

But whomever the party selects — Hamilton or Christy Davis or Erik Murray or Patrick Schmidt or one of the five others running — he or she will be an underdog. Kansans haven’t sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1933. Marshall’s unflinching allegiance to Trump all but guarantees support from the president and his teetering Make America Great Again movement.

Could a Democrat win? Sure. In some world, with some lucky combination of factors. I’m just not convinced we’re living in that world.

Before I overwhelm you all with my grouching, let’s take a moment to list the Democratic roster. The links go to Kansas Reflector interviews or coverage of the candidates. For a race still in its early days, I think we’ve offered a pretty comprehensive look. And more will follow.

• Christy Davis
• Adam Hamilton
• Jason Hart
• Erik Murray
• Sandy Spidel Neumann
• Anne Parelkar
• Patrick Schmidt
• Michael Soetaert
• Noah Taylor

OK, still with me?

I’m skeptical of the Hamilton hype. He might run a strong general election campaign, but he has to make it through a Democratic primary first. And from the social media chatter I’ve seen, his efforts as a clergyman to straddle the partisan divide have drawn intense pushback from — well, partisans.

My take on the situation would be different if different people were running.

If either Gov. Laura Kelly or U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids wanted the seat, all bets would be off. Both officials are known quantities, well-liked by voters. Both, frankly, are more nimble politicians than the clod-footed Marshall.

But Kelly has given no indication that she wants to remain in politics after wrapping up her second term as governor. While Davids made noise about a statewide run (and nearly convinced me she was serious about it), she’s apparently content in the U.S. House. Neither one appears tempted by the opportuntiy.

That could sum up the contest. If the two most talented and agile Democratic politicians in Kansas don’t want to run, they probably don’t think the race is especially winnable.

I’ve met two of the candidates — Davis and Murray — and enjoyed chatting with them. Before announcing her candidacy, Davis wrote a couple of opinion columns for this section. But I’m not going to claim that candidates’ affability when meeting a left-of-center commentary writer counts for much.

Kansas has seen dramatic U.S. Senate races in recent memory. Independent Greg Orman challenged Republican incumbent Pat Roberts in 2014. The elder candidate ended up prevailing. In 2020, Democrat Barbara Bollier mounted a strong early challenge to Marshall but didn’t pull out the win.

We’ve been down this road before. We’ve seen strong, well-funded outsider voices challenge Republican dominance. And they’ve been stomped to smithereens.

Now, listen. I’m not a professional political prognosticator. I can recount multiple times that I’ve drawn the wrong conclusions.

On the other hand, the Democratic primary puts me in mind of another contest, some 48 years ago.

The 1978 Republican primary for U.S. Senate contest saw nine candidates, with the winner taking 31% of the vote. Yet Nancy Landon Kassebaum went on to run and win in the fall, serving our state with grace and distinction for the next two decades.

Maybe the next Nancy Kassebaum waits among the contenders in the crowded Democratic primary. Maybe one of these men or women will emerge to give Kansans a true choice after deadening years of Trump’s tirades and trade wars.  Stranger things have happened, and the state has benefited.

But I would advise Democratic partisans against getting their hopes up. They might take a look at those uncontested races for the Kansas Legislature if they want to make a difference.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a temporary stay on an appeals court ruling from Friday that was blocking remote access to an abortion drug, restoring access until at least May 11.

The administrative stay, issued by Justice Samuel Alito, pauses Friday’s decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling blocked a 2023 rule adopted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allowing mifepristone, one of two drugs used to terminate a pregnancy before 10 weeks and to treat miscarriages, to be prescribed without an in-person visit with a health care provider and also allowed it to be mailed to recipients in states with abortion bans.

“The administrative stay is temporary, and I am confident life and law will win in the end,” said Louisiana Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill in a statement. 

Thirteen states have near-total abortion bans, including Louisiana. Murrill sued the FDA in October, saying the rule undermines the state’s laws and causes financial harm because the state paid $92,000 in Medicaid bills for two women who needed emergency care in 2025 from complications related to mifepristone. 

In the years since the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing states to regulate abortion access, telehealth prescriptions of abortion medication have become increasingly popular, with more than 27% of all abortions provided that way in 2025, according to data from the Society of Family Planning.

“While this is a positive short-term development, no one can rest easy when our ability to get this safe, effective medication for abortion and miscarriage care still hangs in the balance,” said Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney for the Reproductive Freedom Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, in a statement. “The Supreme Court needs to put an end to this baseless attack on our reproductive freedom, once and for all.”

The case could follow a similar pattern to one that played out in 2023, after U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Texas issued a ruling that would have revoked access to the abortion drug mifepristone altogether. 

The U.S. Supreme Court intervened shortly after that ruling and kept mifepristone available while the case proceeded in the 5th Circuit appeals court, which eventually decided that more restrictions were warranted, but not pulling the drug’s approval. The Supreme Court officially took the case several months later, and unanimously ruled in June 2024 that the plaintiffs suing the FDA did not have standing, keeping access to mifepristone intact.

Responses from the attorneys in the latest case are expected to be filed with the Supreme Court by Thursday, according to Alito’s order.

Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

WASHINGTON — Americans saw prices at the pump sharply rise in recent days as the nationwide average cost for a gallon of regular gas shot up 38 cents over the past week, according to GasBuddy.

The motor club AAA clocked the average price of regular gas at $4.46 per gallon and diesel at $5.64, as Iran and the U.S. remain at a stalemate over opening the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world’s petroleum passed through prior to the war.

“Gasoline prices rose in every state over the last week, with some of the most significant and fastest increases concentrated in the Great Lakes, where states like Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois saw sharp spikes, while Wisconsin experienced more modest gains,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said in a statement Monday. 

“At the same time, diesel prices surged to new records in parts of the region, with some areas touching the $6-per-gallon mark,” he added.

De Haan said refinery outages drove prices up, but other factors like Middle East oil output and President Donald Trump’s plan to free oil tankers stuck in the Persian Gulf could help.

“However, with so many moving pieces, the outlook remains highly fluid, and while some localized relief may emerge, broader price volatility is likely to persist in the near term,” he said.

Trump’s approval ratings, particularly on everyday costs, are sinking. About two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the cost of living, and 66% disapprove of the president’s handling of the Iran war, according to a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll published Sunday. 

Trump’s overall disapproval of 62% was the highest the survey recorded since he first took office in 2017.

The nationwide average for a gallon of regular gas was $4.10 one month ago. Last year at this time, it was $3.16, according to AAA.

Brent crude oil, the international standard, jumped to $114.90 a barrel Monday, the second-highest price jump since Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022.

During a small business summit at the White House on Monday, Trump said the war “is working out very nicely.”

“They thought that energy would be at $300 right, $300 a barrel. And it’s like at 100 and I think going down,” Trump said, incorrectly describing the current trend in prices. “And I see it going down very substantially when this is over.”

Trump on Sunday announced “Project Freedom,” an operation to guide cargo ships and oil tankers through the strait with the guidance of the U.S. Navy.

The “humanitarian gesture,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, is “merely meant to free up people, companies, and Countries that have done absolutely nothing wrong — They are victims of circumstance.”

Some 20,000 merchant ship crew members have been stranded in the Persian Gulf during the ongoing war, according to United Nations estimates at the end of March.

Trump threatened that Iran would “be dealt with forcefully” if they interfered with the operation.

As of Monday, U.S. Central Command said two U.S.-flagged merchant ships had been escorted through the strait. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps disputed the claim as “baseless and completely false,” according to a statement reported by Iranian state media.

“Any other maritime movements that contradict the stated principles of the IRGC Navy will face serious risks, and any violating vessels will be forcefully stopped,” the statement read.

The IRGC also claimed to have hit two U.S. military vessels in the strait Monday, a claim categorically denied by U.S. Central Command.

U.S. Central Command’s Admiral Brad Cooper told reporters on a press call Monday that the IRGC launched multiple cruise missiles and drones at merchant ships that “we are protecting.” 

“We have defeated each and every one of those threats through the clinical application of defensive munitions,” he told reporters. 

U.S. Apache and Seahawk helicopters sank six small Iranian boats Monday, according to Cooper.

The United Arab Emirates defense ministry reported Monday it was intercepting Iranian missiles and drones over various parts of the country. Iran’s air strikes on its U.S. ally neighbors have largely quieted in recent weeks.

U.K. Maritime Trade Organization, which reports on security conditions, has kept the strait’s regional threat level as “critical.”

Trump said Saturday he was reviewing a new deal from Iran to end the war. Talks have failed since the U.S. and Iran announced a tenuous ceasefire on April 7.

TOPEKA — Kansas Democratic candidate Adam Hamilton has raised more than $1 million since launching a campaign for U.S. Senate, his campaign said Monday.

Hamilton, pastor of a Methodist church in Leawood, on Thursday entered the Democratic Party’s primary contest to determine who would challenge the reelection campaign of U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, a Republican completing his first term in the Senate.

“Our campaign is just getting started, but Adam Hamilton is already receiving incredible support from thousands of Kansans who are rallying to his unifying message of listening, bringing people together and tackling the real pocketbook problems Kansas families are facing,” said Mike Phillips, Hamilton’s campaign manager.

Hamilton’s campaign staff said the donation total in four days surpassed the fundraising efforts of Marshall and the eight declared Democratic candidates for the entire first quarter of 2026.

The Hamilton campaign said that as of Monday morning the Democrat had generated $1.01 million in donations from 6,700 individuals. The average contribution was $140, but 92% gave $100 or less. Contributions to his campaign were received from 68 of the state’s 105 counties, the campaign said.

Seventy percent of Hamilton’s total was derived from contributors inside Kansas, and 20% of his out-of-state donations were drawn from Missouri residents.

Other Democrats seeking the Senate nomination are Anne Parelkar of Overland Park, Christy Davis of Cottonwood Falls, Erik Murray of Kansas City, Kansas, Jason Hart of Wichita, Michael Soetaert of Wellington, Patrick Schmidt of Topeka, Sandy Sidel Neumann of Mission and Noah Taylor of Kechi.

Not all candidates have formally filed for office, and some could withdraw prior to the June 1 deadline for placing names on the Aug. 4 primary ballot.

Hamilton, pastor of Resurrection Methodist Church, has no prior political experience. He flirted with the idea of running for U.S. Senate as an independent candidate. At his announcement event, Hamilton said he was an “independent-minded Democrat dedicated to leading from the center.”

In a letter to his congregation, Hamilton said he wouldn’t continue preaching duties during the campaign.

“I’m not sure what the campaign season will hold. I know you will stay true to our shared values of respect, kindness, integrity and grace,” Hamilton said.

TOPEKA — U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas urged the public to contact lawmakers to express opposition to a federal appeals court’s order undercutting a U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulation broadening access to the abortion pill mifepristone.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit halted enforcement of an FDA rule adopted in 2023 permitting mifepristone to be prescribed without the patient seeing a healthcare provider in person. The immediate result was abortion providers nationwide were prohibited from prescribing the drug through telemedicine consultations that enabled patients to receive the drug through the mail.

Davids, a Democrat serving the 3rd District in the Kansas City area, said mifepristone was a widely used medication that accounted for more than half of abortions in the United States. The appeals court chose to override science-based decisions by FDA, she said.

“I’m furious,” Davids said. “Mifepristone is safe, backed by decades of evidence — and extremists are once again ignoring doctors to play politics with people’s health. This will make it harder — especially in rural communities already losing hospitals to Medicaid cuts — to get the care people need.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday paused the lower-court’s order blocking telehealth access to the abortion medication.

Two companies that manufacture the drug, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, filed requests for the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the appeals court’s order.

“I’ll keep fighting to protect Kansans’ access to care and keep these decisions between patients and their doctors — not politicians or courts,” Davids said. “We’re not going backward. Call your legislators and tell them to leave your freedoms alone.”

The five other members of the Kansas congressional delegation have sought to reduce access to abortion despite representing a state where voters overwhelmingly rejected in 2022 a proposed amendment to the Kansas Constitution that would have made it easier for politicians to further restrict or ban abortion.

In 2022, a Kansas judge ruled healthcare workers could prescribe abortion medications, including mifepristone, through telemedicine.

Attorney General Kris Kobach took steps to include Kansas among plaintiff states striving to rescind federal approval of generic mifepristone.

TOPEKA — State Sen. Patrick Schmidt believes he can separate from a large field of Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate and overcome nearly a century of one-party dominance by Republicans by campaigning against deep-pocketed special interests thwarting reasonable reform.

Schmidt, a state senator from Topeka, is among nine candidates for the Democratic Party’s nomination for U.S. Senate. The August primary winner would have an opportunity to challenge incumbent U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, a GOP ally of President Donald Trump.

“We have an opportunity this cycle to send a message to Washington, to send a fighter for Kansas — not a fighter for special interests,” Schmidt said. “It’s not about, you know, D versus R here. We have an opportunity to (elect) a real fighter for Kansas, not a partisan hack.”

Kansas Democrats, sensing a potential blue wave of opposition to Trump in 2026, have been drawn to the Senate campaign. The race, so far, has featured regular attacks on Marshall, who has a substantial campaign finance advantage over any challenger.

The Democratic Party’s nominee would have to grapple with Kansas political history. The last time Kansas voters elected a Democratic candidate to the U.S. Senate was 1932.

“I think it’s clear that Kansas wants an alternative to Roger Marshall,” Schmidt said.

On Monday, Schmidt’s campaign released a poll showing a statistical tie a head-to-head contest between Schmidt and Marshall. In the survey, 68% of voters said they were disappointed with what political leaders in Washington had done to fix the economy.

Schmidt said Kansas voters sought common-sense representation that gave more than lip service to lowering health care costs. Congress should make access to technical college degrees or a university education more affordable, Schmidt said.

He said Trump’s approach to tariffs damaged international markets and imposed backdoor taxes on consumers. He said there was obvious frustration among the state’s voters with the Trump administration’s war against Iran.

“This war is entering its third month. We don’t know why we’re there, but we know that families are paying the cost,” Schmidt said. “There’s no doubt that what Congress is doing is hurting Kansas farmers, and we should have a United States senator that is not afraid to say so.”

He said Kansans observing Washington politics could justifiably argue that Congress “declared economic war on American families.”

Schmidt vowed not to side with U.S. senators consistently supportive of federal tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. He said those beneficiaries routinely rewarded politicians with massive campaign contributions.

“At this point, when you think about the corruption that we see every day in the news, it’s grossly unpopular,” Schmidt said. “That shouldn’t be a partisan issue.”

Schmidt said the birth of his son in 2025 clarified economic challenges faced by families in Kansas. His door-to-door campaigning provided further evidence of the necessity for government to embrace policies that relieved financial pressure on families.

“It’s harder and harder just to keep your head above water, and we have politicians that are only worried about special interests, worried about lining their own pockets,” Schmidt said.

In the Kansas Legislature, Schmidt opposed bills granting state tax breaks to owners of private aircraft and investors in gold and silver. He was the only Senate Democrat to vote for a proposed amendment to the Kansas Constitution limiting annual increases in property valuations tied to tax assessments.

Schmidt, part of a family of Ukrainian immigrant farmers, said his father was the first in the family to go to college. Both of his parents were educators in the Shawnee Mission public schools, and his father was a custom harvester of wheat until the farm crisis of the 1980s. By the time Schmidt enrolled in college, his father was struggling with heart and lung disease as well as neurological disorders.

Schmidt earned a bachelor’s degree at Tufts University in 2013 and was commissioned an officer in the U.S. Navy. He served on the USS Ronald Reagan and with a special forces team in Bahrain. In 2021, he transitioned to the U.S. Naval Reserves.

In 2022, he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House seat held at that time by Republican Jake LaTurner. In that 2nd District race across two-dozen eastern Kansas counties, Schmidt denounced the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He objected to LaTurner’s vote to overturn results of the 2020 presidential election and was critical of the congressman’s opposition to abortion rights.

“The thing I’m proudest most about that campaign is that we got more Democrats out in all but one of those counties in the 2nd District in 2022 compared to 2020,” he said.

TOPEKA — Gov. Laura Kelly granted a pardon to a man convicted of aggravated battery more than three decades ago in Lyon County and sentenced to serve 32 months in prison.

Kelly, who is the final year of her second term as Kansas governor, has relied on executive authority outlined in the Kansas Constitution to pardon or commute sentences twice as many times as the state’s four previous governors combined.

The decision to extend mercy to Chung Pham was made by Kelly based on independent reviews by the state Prisoner Review Board, the Kansas Department of Administration and the governor’s legal counsel.

“A thorough vetting and review process determines individuals considered for pardons have indeed made amends for their actions and have been consistent in positively contributing to society and to their community,” Kelly said. “The decision to grant a pardon is a serious one.”

Pham was convicted in 1993 of aggravated battery in Lyon County District Court. He was 21 years old at that time of the offense and had no prior convictions. He was ordered to serve 32 months in prison followed by two years of post-release supervision.

In Kansas, governors have power to consider pardons or commutations based on nature of the offense, length of time since the crime and impact of the crime on victims or survivors.

Governors also take into account information on a person’s criminal history, absence of disciplinary issues while incarcerated, evidence of rehabilitation and contributions to society following release from prison.

“Individuals who have long maintained their law-abiding behavior and positive community impact have earned the second chance a pardon can provide,” Kelly said Friday in a statement.

In 2024, Kelly granted clemency to nine people by granting pardons to seven individuals and commuting the sentences of two incarcerated individuals.

Among that group was Lauren Holle, who entered a plea of guilty in 2010 to charges of second-degree murder, child abandonment and child abuse. She was 20 years old when she gave birth, wrapped the baby in a bag and placed the child in the back seat of a car. The infant died. Holle was ordered to serve at least 19 years in prison.

Kelly commuted her sentenced after determining “continued incarceration no longer serves the interests of justice.”

The Democratic governor signed three pardons and commuted the sentences of five people in 2021. One of those beneficiaries was Michael McCloud, who had been released from prison in 2018 after 27 years behind bars for armed robbery. While at Lansing Correctional Facility, he had been a model inmate, was never disciplined and worked a minimum wage job to pay restitution to victims.

“He was going to be put back in prison on a technicality, not on anything he had done,” Kelly said at that time. “That seemed wrong, completely unnecessary, not fair to him, and not in the state’s best interest.”

The state’s four previous governors granted clemency a combined nine times. Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius did it once, while Democratic Gov. Mark Parkinson pardoned four people. Republican Gov. Sam Brownback pardoned one man and Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer pardoned two people and commuted the sentence of a woman.

What’s the best word to describe how the University of Kansas’s men’s basketball team has entered this new era of college sports? 

Along with me, please point your internet browser to a thesaurus. 

For some other programs, you might choose “mercenary.” These teams have won big by luring away seasoned, proven, older players from other teams. In the mercenary column? Indiana University football and Michigan basketball. We prefer the word, “champions.”

You might tag still others with “profligate.” When an athletic department recruits a squad of young millionaires to a historic program, the expectations are higher than a March Madness second round loss (by almost 20). Yes, I am talking about you, Kentucky basketball. 

A handful of schools have gotten downright “litigious.” The University of Washington recently sued its quarterback, who waffled back and forth about whether he would return to campus last year. Meanwhile, the University of Georgia is seeking $390,000 from a former defensive end after he transferred to the University of Missouri. See you in court.

The atmosphere at Kansas basketball in the nascent days of the NIL era is different. Call it “dramatic.” During the past 12 months, the emotional rollercoaster ride has tested Jayhawk fans who previously basked in constant conference championships and juggernaut status. 

As an instructor at the Lawrence campus, I have watched the mood among students over the past few years go from disbelief (“There’s no way that we won’t win the Big XII!”) to protest (“It’s just not fair!“). This year I was surprised by the mid-week apathy among students. Basically no one was talking about the Jayhawks in my classrooms, a rare symptom from those in crimson and blue.

Many of the storylines that have defined this time at KU are tethered to the financial tumult that has shaken college sports. Athletes deserved compensation, but when the NCAA restrictions fell, pandemonium reigned.

The millions of dollars in players’ pockets have unsteadied all campuses, but perhaps “The Hill” most of all.

Earning the word choice of dramatic means plenty of ups: Headlines! Recruits! Big wins! A star coach! 

Last week brought another highlight. Wednesday morning, my gym blared the news from sports channels on big screens in every direction: The nation’s top high school player is coming to Allen Fieldhouse. 

The consensus top recruit, Tyran Stokes, might carry the Jayhawks during his expected one-year stay in Kansas before departing as a forecasted No. 1 overall NBA draft pick. Landing a dominant player like this, one who can maraud down the lane but also square up from beyond the arc, signals recruiting swagger for Bill Self and his assistants.

Last year, the Jayhawks also landed the top recruit, Darryn Peterson. With Peterson at point, the Jayhawks climbed into the top 10 rankings from the Associated Press writers poll during Week 16. Eight wins in a row — two of them against the top two ranked teams nationally — would keep most fanbases happy for years.  

Combine this with the constant, historic revelry of Allen Fieldhouse. Students still camp out for choice game-day seats and the chance to be in front of the national TV cameras. 

These high points likely helped draw Stokes to Kansas.

But oh how the drama has swerved: Early tournament exit! Possible retirement! Campus controversy! An aloof superstar!

One KU basketball narrative rose to the top this season. Fans nationwide knew both that KU both had a gamechanger in Peterson but also that he wasn’t playing as much as everyone expected. 

Fans and commentators threw shade about his commitment to the team, hinting that the big payout for his name, image and likeness should have spurred him toward being available to play more minutes for the Jayhawks. 

Perhaps, they whispered, he was saving himself for an even bigger NBA payday. This high-profile swirl of money and playing time is a mid-season college storyline that could only happen in 2026.

In this pay-for-play climate, many wonder how long veteran Hall of Famers like Bill Self will wait before retirement. Today’s college hoops atmosphere is certainly a world away from 1993, when he was recruiting players to an Oral Roberts University team that was 6-21. Losing in the second round of the tournament this year made the coaching situation still more precarious. 

Add in Self’s recent health troubles and it feels like the KU coaching throne is wobbling for the first time in decades, which should terrify the Jayhawks. 

Teams have surged up and down in the rankings for years before players were being paid. Nevertheless, Kansas this year yo-yo-ed in rankings from No. 19 preseason, to unranked, to No. 8, to an embarrassing last-second flame-out during the tournament. 

Consider also Nebraska, a team that didn’t receive a single vote in the AP preseason poll and also a team that didn’t crack the top 25 until week 6. They finished second to the national champions in the Big Ten standings and made it to the Sweet 16.

In watching college basketball today, we are crossing our fingers each season that a misfit band of transfer students gels together with heralded freshmen. But, in doing so, we often fail to evaluate these hastily assembled squads, this year’s KU team included.

All of this ignores the elephant in the room — or in this case, the elephant sitting smack dab in the middle of Jayhawk Boulevard. The athletic and academic interests on KU’s campus have confronted one another in a way I haven’t seen during my 13 academic years at KU. 

When KU faculty members publicized a no-confidence vote in the university leadership this year, athletics was not just the subtext, it was the text. Associate professor Misty Heggeness (whom I once profiled for the Reflector) challenged the university’s plan to use KU’s general fund to cover athlete payments. 

“It’s just a little bit frustrating that there’s this disconnect that that we as a university have been put in the position to have to try to scrounge around for pennies in other coffers to cover these student athlete salaries,” she told KCUR.  

Social media predictably seized on the situation, claiming, “Kansas Faculty Revolts Over Athlete Pay…This Is Bigger Than You Think.”

Yet that headline might not even do it justice. After all, how many of these KU basketball storylines — for better or worse — do you connect to the new atmosphere of college sports? In short, it is defining the sport. 

And maybe the university. 

The lauded signing of Tyran Stokes might be the ticket to a national championship — money well spent by a university that loves basketball and has a generational coaching talent to guide him. 

But the era of NIL tells us that the next year could also be a plummet. Perhaps a high school superstar, already famous for his temper, becomes disenchanted with the college game and dooms his team (a campus?) to not only basketball losses, but financial peril. 

In the high stakes Wild West of 2026 college sports, where fortunes lean on the compensation of 18-year-olds, we must brace for both: winning and losing.

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision gutting the federal Voting Rights Act could upend American politics and trigger a new rush to redraw congressional districts.

The opinion released on Wednesday, in a case called Louisiana v. Callais, holds sweeping consequences for how states and local governments draw district lines at all levels of government, from Congress to school boards. 

Louisiana, whose congressional map is at the center of the case, may even suspend an upcoming primary election so state lawmakers can pass a new map. Other states are also weighing new gerrymanders, either this year or before the 2028 election. 

Gerrymandering refers to drawing political maps for the purpose of gaining some form of unfair advantage — whether partisan or racial or to help or hurt an incumbent or candidate.

Following the decision, Democrats are calling for Congress to pass new federal voting rights legislation, but President Donald Trump would likely veto it. Others are urging more radical changes, including expanding the size of the Supreme Court.

As the nation responds to the decision, here’s a States Newsroom look at the decision, what it means and what could happen next.

After the 2020 census, the Louisiana Legislature passed a congressional map that included one district where a majority of residents are Black. About a third of the state’s population is Black.

States typically draw new congressional lines once a decade following the census, though several states have pushed through new maps this year after Trump called on Republicans to maximize their political advantage heading into the midterm elections this November.

Black voters challenged the Louisiana map and an appeals court ordered lawmakers to pass a new map. The legislature in 2024 approved a map that includes a second district where a majority of residents are Black, also called a majority-minority district.

In response, a group of white voters sued over the new map, claiming it violated the U.S. Constitution and was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law and the 15th Amendment prohibits denying the right to vote on the basis of race.

The lead plaintiff in the case is Phillip Callais, hence the case’s name. The New York Times reported last year that Callais is a veteran who lives near Baton Rouge. 

The Supreme Court held its first oral argument on the case in March 2025. But instead of issuing a decision later that spring, the court held a second round of oral argument in October. 

At that time, comments by the conservative justices strongly suggested the court was interested in weakening the federal Voting Rights Act.

The Voting Rights Act, or VRA, is a 1965 federal law passed by Congress and signed by President Lyndon Johnson.

The law was designed to stop racial discrimination in voting and combat Jim Crow laws like literacy tests that Southern states used to prevent Black people from voting.

It contains several sections but the Supreme Court decision in Callais dealt with Section 2. That section prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race and other characteristics. In 1982, Congress expanded Section 2 to ban voting practices that have a discriminatory effect, whether or not the law was intended to discriminate.

Section 2 has acted as a ban on racial gerrymandering, or the practice of drawing districts to minimize the political influence of minority voters. Over time, that’s led to the creation of numerous majority-minority congressional districts.

Many of these majority-minority districts are located in Republican-controlled Southern states  but are held by Democrats. In the past, if states drew new maps to spread minority voters across several districts, they could face challenges in federal court under Section 2.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Louisiana’s congressional map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. 

The court found that because the Voting Rights Act didn’t require Louisiana to create a second majority-minority district, the state didn’t have a compelling reason to consider race when drawing its map.

Under the court’s reasoning, Section 2 only applies when evidence supports a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred. In other words, lawmakers only violate Section 2 when they draw districts with the purpose of affording minority voters less opportunity because of their race.

The court’s majority opinion says “none of the historical evidence presented by plaintiffs came close to showing an objective likelihood that the State’s challenged map was the result of intentional racial discrimination.”

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by all of the court’s conservatives: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neal Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

The court’s three liberal justices — Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented.

The decision empowers states to gerrymander in ways that break apart districts where a majority of residents are Black, Hispanic or belong to another minority group.

In 2019 the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts would no longer take cases about partisan gerrymandering. That’s where states draw maps to help a political party.

Because many majority-minority districts in the South are held by Democrats, the Callais decision gives Republican states the power to break apart these districts if they can show they are doing so for a partisan purpose.

“Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” Kagan wrote in a dissent.

In the short term, the decision means several Black Democrats in the U.S. House may lose their seats if states pass new maps either this year before the November midterm elections or before the 2028 election. At least one projection has pegged the potential losses as high as 19 seats.

The loss of even a few Black representatives would constitute the largest drop in Black representation in Congress since Reconstruction following the Civil War, according to an NPR analysis. 

In the long term, minority voters will have a more difficult time electing their preferred candidates if they are moved into majority-white districts. The decision also applies to state legislative districts, meaning the number of Black state lawmakers may drop as well.

Not nearly as much.

The Supreme Court’s decision didn’t strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. But Kagan and other critics of the opinion say the protections once extended by Section 2 are effectively dead.

To block a map under Section 2, challengers will now have to show states intentionally discriminated against minority voters, a very difficult standard when states can say they drew maps for partisan advantage.

In a series of decisions during the past 13 years, the Supreme Court has also weakened other elements of the Voting Rights Act.

In 2013, the court effectively blocked preclearance, another major portion of the law contained in Section 5. Preclearance required states and local governments with a history of discrimination to obtain federal permission before making voting changes.

Preclearance applied to most Southern states and a handful of others. The justices didn’t strike down preclearance, but ruled that the criteria used to determine whether governments should be subject to preclearance was unconstitutional.

The law required districts that had voting tests in place in 1964 and had less than 50% turnout in the 1964 presidential election as eligible for preclearance. The court found that the criteria no longer made sense and were outdated. 

In theory, Congress could pass new criteria that would restore preclearance.

Republicans in Southern states are pushing for new maps that could hand their party more seats in the November elections — but also oust Black Democratic members of Congress.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, announced on Thursday that the state’s primary election, set for mid-May, would be paused. The suspension will give time for state lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional map to eliminate the state’s second majority-minority district.

“We are working together with the Legislature and the Secretary of State’s office to develop a path forward,” Landry said in a statement.

Florida lawmakers passed a new map hours after the court’s decision that could provide Republicans with up to four additional seats. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis had introduced the map earlier in the week and had cited Callais in urging lawmakers to act.

In Tennessee, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican running for governor, called on state lawmakers to pass a new map. Prominent Republicans in Georgia said the state should pass a new map.

Not all Republicans are pushing for immediate action. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said that while she supports the Supreme Court’s decision, the state wasn’t in a position to hold a special session to redistrict.

Democrats have condemned the Supreme Court’s opinion and say lawmakers and the public should fight back.

Many Democrats say Congress should pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named after civil rights activist and Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis, who died in 2020. The legislation would set new criteria for preclearance, seeking to restore the practice after the Supreme Court stopped it in 2013.

The U.S. House passed the measure in 2021, but it didn’t advance through the Senate. 

Enacting the measure remains extremely difficult. If Democrats retake control of Congress in the November elections, Trump would almost certainly veto the measure. Republicans in the U.S. Senate would also likely block the bill, unless Democrats eliminate the filibuster.

Democrats are also weighing a new round of gerrymanders in blue states. While most attention has focused on Southern Republican states, Democrats can now also engage in racial vote dilution in states like California to secure additional U.S. House seats.

Some Democrats and opponents of the Supreme Court’s decision are pushing for other responses. 

They include expanding the size of the court from nine justices to dilute its conservative majority, implementing term limits for justices, banning mid-decade redistricting or requiring states to use independent commissions to draw congressional maps.

“We must continue to fight for a democracy in which every vote counts, and in which every vote holds equal power, starting by banning mid-decade gerrymanders nationwide and establishing fair redistricting criteria,” Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, said in a statement.

But those changes would require federal legislation, giving Republicans the opportunity to stop the proposals through filibusters in the Senate or by Trump’s veto.

Something told Lanny Dean to hit the brakes.

The battered Honda CR-V skidded to a stop on the wet black pavement of U.S. 183, its array of antennas quivering. The anemometer poking above the roof was twirling madly, driven by the 50-mph rush of air being sucked into a massive, wedge-shaped tornado less than a mile ahead. As Dean watched, the twister crossed the highway and began chewing up an electrical substation at the southwestern edge of Greensburg, Kansas.

Ordinarily, Dean — then an athletic 33-year-old weather buff who had been pursued and caught by more storms than anybody else in the adrenalin-drunk world of storm chasers — would have stood on the accelerator and kept the twister a few hundred yards off his right front fender.

He’d done just that hundreds of times, while shooting video and downloading weather data to his laptop and phoning in reports. He’d been on the air with meteorologist Jay Prater at KAKE in Wichita that night, warning the audience to take cover now, good advice that Dean never seemed to follow himself. The roof of the CR-V, in fact, was still crumpled from an encounter he’d had two years before in the tiny community of Fowler, not far up the road from Greensburg. A twister had picked up the Honda and left it spinning on its top, with the windows blown out and Dean strapped upside-down in the driver’s seat.

Fowler had been a small tornado, a writhing dirty white snake, EF1 or maybe EF2 on the Fujita. The adventure had gotten Dean scrapes and bruises and an Emmy nomination, because his video camera had never stopped running.

This one was something different.

Dean knew the twister was big, but he didn’t know exactly how big. Greensburg had gone dark, just a blot on the prairie where a glittering oasis of light had once been. But as a bank of transformers at the substation arced and then exploded, the night sky briefly turned to day. The tornado was a wedge-shaped monster that filled the horizon.

It was 9:03 p.m. Friday, May 4, 2007.

The twister would kill 13 people, destroy 95 percent of town, and be the first ever EF5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, a storm so strong that its official designation goes beyond “devasting” to “incredible.”

Had something not told Dean to hit the brakes, the CR-V would have been in the path of the killer storm as it crossed and re-crossed Highway 187. Dean would spend the next few hours walking through the surreal rubble of Greensburg, trying to help but feeling mostly helpless. Images from that night would haunt his dreams: a black cow impaled on a gas pipe and bellowing pitifully, cell phones chiming and beeping in the debris, the bloody bubble on the lips of an elderly woman as she lay near death.

Dean told me the story of that night during a long phone interview a few months after it happened. I still remember the pain in his voice. For a while, because of the Greensburg tornado, Dean may have been the most famous tornado chaser in the world. The pursuit was turned into popular culture by the 1996 Jan de Bont film “Twister,” which takes some liberties with the science and melodrama but gets the anxiety of living in tornado alley right.

Tomorrow is the 19th anniversary of the Greensburg tornado.

Each spring, those of us on the Great Plains keep an extra eye on weather, especially when a warm day yields to a cool evening. May is historically the peak month for severe weather. But the danger of tornadoes is that they can happen at just about any time, not just during May or when the sky turns a weird color of green. In 2007, for example, the National Weather Service predicted only a “moderate” chance of severe weather in the hours before the storm hit Greensburg. But once the storm was identified by radar, and confirmed by spotters on the ground, warnings from the NWS and broadcast media saved lives.

Greensburg, in southwestern Kansas, was a town of 1,600 residents when the twister hit. Despite a major initiative to rebuild the city as a model “green” community, the town never really recovered. Its population is now 740, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The consequences of major storms, both in human and economic terms, make Plains inhabitants especially sensitive to weather and weather forecasting. I was in Greensburg a few days after the storm, and the devastation was disorienting. Photos don’t convey the feeling of standing in a rubble pile that used to be a town you once knew, with only a few landmarks standing and the trees sheared off as if a giant lawnmower had passed overhead.

I was reminded of the upcoming Greensburg anniversary on Thursday, April 23, when a line of severe storms swept up from Oklahoma, bound for northeast Kansas. We don’t have the Weather Channel anymore since our local internet provider here in Emporia dropped it from the lineup. While I was punching buttons in frustration on the remote, Kim had her laptop out and said that it must be serious because Jeremy was down to his suspenders.

I didn’t know what she was talking about.

Jeremy Goodwin on WIBW in Topeka, she said.

When he dons his suspenders, that’s a sure sign of a serious weather risk. Kim, who lived in Joplin, Missouri, during the devastating 2011 tornado that killed 158 — the worst twister of this century — reads weather forecasts with a practiced eye, and she knows who she trusts.

I watched with her online as Goodwin talked about reports he was getting from his storm chasers, including Doug Crisp from Emporia. The NOAA weather alert radio in the bedroom upstairs was going off every five minutes, or at least it seemed like it was that often, with severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings for our county. The storm sirens in Emporia sounded once, but luckily there were no monsters that “miss this house, and miss that house, and come after you.”

That’s from “Twister.”

It’s the line Kim quotes most often this time of year.

As we watched Goodwin track the storms, he seemed more than a bit frustrated that the NWS radar in Topeka was glitchy. He later posted on social media that there had been 11 tornado warnings in the area that Thursday.

“The event had a special kick to it,” he said, “because the Topeka National Weather Service Radar was compromised at times. This was a hard night for tracking these storms.”

Last June, I wrote about how DOGE staffing cuts to the NWS had resulted in the overnight closing of the forecast office at Goodland, Kansas. The lack of 24-hour staffing at the Goodland office was alarming because so many violent storms happen at night. A few weeks ago, the Goodland office stopped sending out weekly briefings to emergency managers, schools, and transportation officials. After a tornado tore through Ottawa on April 13, U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids questioned whether reported cutbacks in weather balloon launches have hampered the weather service’s ability to produce timely forecasts and warnings.

Anxiety over the continued ability of the NWS to respond to severe weather was exacerbated recently by reports the Trump administration plans a reorganization of the service. The president’s fiscal 2027 budget request to Congress calls for a $1.1 billion decrease for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, of which the weather service is a part. The total request, $4.54 billion, represents a 20% cut.

The NWS said the reorganization was about efficiency and did not necessarily mean decreases in staffing. The service has already begun “modernizing” some of its forecasting using artificial intelligence. Some forecasts, including a recent one from Montana, say predictions beyond the fourth day are made with “little or no human intervention” and should be used with caution.

Such a disclaimer has not yet been attached to recent Topeka forecasts.

I asked the weather service about what caused the glitchy weather radar that had Goodwin’s suspenders twisted.

“The 88D site in Topeka (KTWX) lost cellular data communications on Thursday, April 23, during severe weather,” NWS spokesperson Erica Grow Cei told me. “The outages were caused by the storms that were moving through, and data was sporadically available beginning at 6:21 p.m.”

The radar functioned properly, Grow Cei said, but the transmission of data from the radar site to the Topeka forecast office and to other users was impaired. Because of redundancy built into the network, she said, forecasters were able to rely on radar from Kansas City, Hastings, Omaha and Wichita.

The farther away you get from a weather radar site, the more information you lose. This is because of the curvature of the earth and basic physics. To get an accurate report about what’s happening on the ground, you need a weather spotter.

Or a storm chaser.

Mark Svenvold brings a poet’s sensibility to storm chasing in his 2005 book “Big Weather.”

“A tornado represents many things,” Svenvold writes, “beginning with its own extreme unlikelihood. Every tornado represents a supreme, if momentary, trouncing of the second law of thermodynamics, the glum law of entropy that states that all things move from order to chaos.”

Storm chasers seek a transcendent moment of wonder.

That seemed also to be the motivation for Crisp, the independent storm chaser who reports to Goodwin at WIBW. I recently met Crisp at a local coffee shop, where he explained how he got into storm chasing and where I went to the parking lot to admire his white Jeep Renegade chase vehicle. The windshield of the Renegade was cracked from a recent barrage of hailstones.

In 1974, when Crisp was a kid, he and his older brother snuck a glimpse of an F4 tornado from a window of their Emporia house. The tornado killed six individuals, with most of the fatalities at the Lincoln Village Mobile Home Park.

“I can vividly remember that tornado,” said Crisp, who is now 57. “You could see stuff going through the air. That’s the point that sparked my interest.”

A high school earth sciences teacher was encouraging, Crisp said, and later he attended weather spotter training and took online classes in meteorology. In 2007, he launched his career as a storm chaser. He now has his own Facebook page and is part of Live Storm Chasers, an online site.

Crisp, a former detention officer and volunteer firefighter, works nights as a security guard for the local hospital, but each May he takes three weeks of vacation to go storm chasing. His primary task, he said, is to document the storms. Getting close requires skill and the knowledge to do it safely.

Some chasers, he said, call being near a tornado the bear’s cage. Others, including Crisp, prefer to call it the notch. That’s the inflow zone where the storm is sucking up air, increasing the likelihood of a violent tornado.

“You have a sense of accomplishment to see what’s going on and being able to give that ground truth,” he said. “The (meteorologists) rely on us to give them that information. They ask, ‘What are you seeing? Is there a low ring, do you see a rotating wall cloud?’”

Crisp said he doesn’t chase storms for the thrill.

“I do it because it’s something I feel is important,” he said. “These storms are historical events.”

He said he’s never been frightened by a tornado, but that he is often concerned about the behavior of other drivers on the road and was once rattled by a nearby lightning strike while out of his vehicle.

Storm chasing may be thrilling entertainment, but it can be a dangerous venture in real life. Four storm chasers were killed in the 2013 El Reno, Oklahoma, tornado. Three of the dead were members of TWISTEX, a tornado research experiment.

Many of us who grew up in Tornado Alley have a false sense of invulnerability. We’ve been seeing twisters all of our lives and none of them have hurt us yet, so why worry?  The problem is that human imagination cannot grasp the destructive force of the storms that hit Greensburg or Joplin.

Nineteen years ago, when the memory of the deadly Kansas twister was still fresh in his mind, Lanny Dean told me he had a recurring dream. He was back in Greensburg to receive an award, with the crowd nodding and clapping, and suddenly the brick walls of the auditorium parted to reveal a wedge-shaped monster bearing down.

Dean would open his mouth to warn the crowd … and nothing.

He could not utter a sound.

I haven’t talked to Dean in a long while. I sent him a message recently to see if he still had that dream, but I didn’t hear back. I don’t know if he received it. I also sent Goodwin a couple of messages saying I wanted to talk about his suspenders, but I didn’t hear back from him, either.

That’s okay. He’s probably busy this month.

Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

A quarter of immigration arrests since August were labeled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “collateral,” a type of arrest and detention that’s been challenged in court as an end run around civil rights.

Public outrage and lawsuits over the arrests may be tamping down the large-scale sweeps that foster them, but tens of thousands were arrested this way between August and early March.

Immigration arrests are usually based on warrants obtained ahead of time, showing either a removal order from immigration court or evidence of a crime or charge that makes the person subject to deportation.

But collateral arrests can result from street sweeps and raids in which a person is singled out for questioning based on appearance or proximity to someone wanted on a warrant. That person could be taken into custody if agents think they may be subject to deportation and also likely to flee if released.

Labeled for the first time ever, the collateral arrests are reported from August to early March in ICE arrest data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Stateline. In that time there were about 64,000 collateral arrests, a quarter of the 253,000 total arrests by ICE.

About 70% of the collateral arrests were for people with immigration-related crimes or violations alone, compared with 41% for arrests with warrants. Less than 2% of those with collateral arrests were convicted of a violent crime, one-third the rate of other arrests, and only 18% were convicted of any crime, compared with 33% for other arrests.

The collateral arrests contributed to an overall pattern of lower and lower shares of arrests for serious crimes, and more for immigration offenses alone.

Arrests climbed from about 12,000 in January 2025 to more than 40,000 in December, but fell back to 30,000 this February. The share of people with only immigration-related crimes and violations rose to more than half in December and January, the peak months for collateral arrests, and the share of violent criminals fell from 10% to 4% of arrests in that time.

ICE announced a new policy in January to issue warrants in real time if agents think an immigrant is deportable and “likely to escape,” though that policy faces a court challenge.

Total arrests and collateral arrests have been falling since December, whether because of the new policy or because of cutbacks in the large-scale street sweeps that tend to produce them.

One factor is public outrage over raids sweeping up noncriminals in places like Minneapolis and Chicago, said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

“The sort of large operations within big cities, as they were occurring, seems to have subsided somewhat,” Putzel-Kavanaugh said. “After the kind of public outcry following Minneapolis, it seems as though, at least for now, that tactic has kind of been paused.”

The Trump administration’s focus on mass deportation opened the way for more collateral street arrests with less investigation, she added.

“If it’s a more targeted arrest, they would take the time to sort of essentially have an investigation. It’s a pretty resource-intensive way that just would not yield the kind of numbers ICE was being told to produce,” she said.

The new policy was filed in court papers in February as a response to a lawsuit over ICE sweeps in the District of Columbia last year, alleging ICE agents “have flooded the streets of the nation’s capital, indiscriminately arresting without warrants and without probable cause District residents whom the agents perceive to be Latino.”

The case resulted in a preliminary injunction in December requiring a halt to warrantless arrests without establishing probable cause that the person is living here illegally and is a flight risk.

One plaintiff in the class-action case, José Escobar Molina, said in the lawsuit that agents in two cars pulled up to him as he approached his work truck on Aug. 21, grabbing him by the arms and legs and handcuffing him without asking any questions. Escobar, 47, said in the court papers that he’s lived in the district for 25 years and has had temporary protected status as a Salvadoran native the whole time. He was held overnight in Virginia before being released.

Other lawsuits are also challenging collateral arrests, such as an incident in Idaho in which agents with warrants for five people ended up arresting 105 immigrants at a Latino community event in October.

In North Carolina, four U.S. citizens and a visa holder sued in February, saying they were arrested in the Charlotte’s Web immigration crackdown in November without warrants, as is typical of collateral arrests.

I have a lot of fear that this will happen to me again. I was essentially kidnapped based only on the color of my skin. That really weighs on me.

– Yoshi Cuenca Villamar, a U.S. citizen arrested while landscaping

“I have a lot of fear that this will happen to me again. I was essentially kidnapped based only on the color of my skin. That really weighs on me,” said Yoshi Cuenca Villamar, one of the citizens and a North Carolina native, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. He said he was doing landscaping work Nov. 15 when agents pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him, then held him in a car before releasing him.

One Illinois case that started in the first Trump administration challenged warrantless arrests and traffic stops used as a pretext for immigration arrests. A 2022 settlement required ICE to document “reasonable suspicion” of illegal status before arresting somebody. The case continues since a judge found in February that the new ICE policy of issuing warrants in real time after a detention violates the consent decree.

In the months since August where collateral arrests are now labeled, the District of Columbia and Illinois stand out with high shares of collateral arrests. More than half the arrests in the district were collateral, as were 41% of those in Illinois. There were eight states in which at least 30% of arrests were collateral: Alabama, Maryland, West Virginia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine and Minnesota.

West Virginia, where there was a “statewide surge” of immigration enforcement in January with state and local cooperation, stands out for its high rate of total arrests as well as a large share of collateral arrests.

ICE labeled 1,300 arrests during Operation Metro Surge as ‘collateral’

For the eight months between August and early March, West Virginia had 1,831 arrests, or 1 in 10 of the state’s noncitizen population as of 2024, the latest data available. That’s by far the largest share in the country, followed by 7% in Wyoming (where truck drivers were targeted for immigration arrests in February) and 4% in Mississippi.

West Virginia Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey, in a statement, cited the cooperation of state and local agencies with ICE through the 287(g) program that assists with immigration enforcement. He praised ICE, saying “they have removed dangerous illegal immigrants from our communities and made our state safer for families and law-abiding citizens.”

Few of those arrested in the surge were violent criminals, however. More than half of those arrested during the surge were collateral arrests, and only 1% — nine immigrants — had a violent crime conviction, according to the Stateline analysis. More than three-quarters, about 500 people, had only an immigration-related violation or crime.

Judges didn’t always agree that collateral arrests and detentions in the West Virginia surge were legal under the U.S. Constitution. U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin, a Clinton appointee, ordered two detainees released in January. He noted that “similar seizures and detentions are occurring frequently across the country” without any evidence they’re necessary as required by the Constitution.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects nationwide retail gasoline prices to average near US$4.30 a gallon for April 2026 — the highest monthly average of the year. The political response has been familiar. Georgia has suspended its state gas tax, other states are weighing their own tax holidays, and the White House has issued a temporary waiver of a law known as the Jones Act in hopes of moving more domestic fuel to East Coast ports.

As an energy economist, I am often asked about what contributes to gas prices and what different policies can do to affect them.

The price of a retail gallon of gas is the sum of four things: the cost of crude oil, refining, distribution and marketing, and taxes.

In nationwide figures from January 2026, crude oil accounted for about 51% of the pump price, refining roughly 20%, distribution and marketing about 11% and taxes about 18%. That mix shifts with conditions: When crude oil prices spike, that can drive more than 60% of the price; when the price drops, taxes and logistics are larger shares of the cost.

Because the price of crude oil is the largest element, most of the price at the pump is derived from the global oil market.

Usually, big swings in crude prices come mainly from shifts in global demand and expectations — not from supply disruptions, according to widely cited research in 2009 by the economist Lutz Kilian.

But what is happening in early 2026 with the war in Iran is one of the exceptions: a classic supply shock. Severe disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on Middle East oil infrastructure have taken millions of barrels a day off the global market.

Most drivers generally can’t quickly reduce how much they drive or how much gas they use when prices rise, so gasoline demand doesn’t change much in the short run. That means a jump in crude costs tends to result in people paying more rather than driving less.

Refining turns crude into gasoline at industrial scale. The U.S. doesn’t have a single gasoline market, though. Roughly a quarter of U.S. gasoline is a cleaner-burning blend of petroleum-derived chemicals called “reformulated gasoline,” which is required in urban areas across 17 states and the District of Columbia to reduce smog.

California uses an even stricter formulation that few out-of-state refineries make. California is also geographically isolated: No pipelines bring gasoline in from other U.S. refining regions.

California’s gasoline prices have long run above the national average, explained in part by higher state taxes and stricter environmental rules. But since a refinery fire in Torrance, California, in 2015 reduced production capacity, the state’s prices have been about 20 to 30 cents a gallon higher than what those factors would indicate.

Energy economist and University of California, Berkeley, professor Severin Borenstein has called this the “mystery gasoline surcharge” and attributes it to the fact that there isn’t as much competition between refineries or gas stations in California as in other states. California’s own Division of Petroleum Market Oversight says the surcharge cost the state’s drivers about $59 billion from 2015 to 2024. It’s not exactly clear who is getting that money, but it could be gas stations themselves or refineries, through complex contracts with gas stations.

The distribution and marketing category covers the costs of everything involved in getting the gasoline from the refinery gate to your tank.

Gasoline moves by pipeline, ship, rail and truck to wholesale terminals, and then by local delivery truck to service stations.

At the retailer’s end, the key factors are station rent and labor, the cost to buy gasoline in bulk to be able to sell it, credit card fees of as much as 6 to 10 cents a gallon at current prices, and franchise fees paid to the national brand, such as Sunoco or ExxonMobil, for permission to put their branding on the gas station.

Most gas station operators net only a few cents per gallon on fuel itself — which is why many gas stations are really convenience stores with pumps out front. Borenstein and some of his collaborators have also documented that retail gas prices rise quickly when wholesale costs climb but fall slowly when wholesale costs drop.

The federal government charges a tax on fuel, of 18.4 cents a gallon for gasoline and 24.3 cents a gallon for diesel. States charge their own taxes, ranging from 70.9 cents a gallon for gas in California to 8.95 cents in Alaska.

When gas prices rise, many politicians start talking about temporarily suspending their state’s gas tax. That does reduce prices, but not as much as politicians — or consumers — might hope. Research on past gas tax holidays has found that consumers get about 79% of the reduction in gas taxes. That means oil companies and fuel retailers keep about one-fifth of the tax cut for themselves rather than passing that savings to the public.

Gas tax holidays also reduce funding for what the taxes are designed to pay for, typically roads and bridges. That pushes road and bridge upkeep costs onto future drivers and general taxpayers.

There is an additional problem, too: Taxes on gasoline are supposed to charge drivers for some of the costs their driving imposes on everyone else — carbon emissions, local air pollution, congestion and crashes. But Borenstein has found that U.S. fuel tax levels are already far below the true cost to society. Removing the tax on drivers effectively raises the costs for everyone else.

The 1920 Jones Act is a federal law that requires cargo moving between U.S. ports to travel on vessels built and registered in the U.S., owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed primarily by U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Of the world’s 7,500 oil tankers, only 54 meet this requirement. Only 43 of these can transport refined fuels such as gasoline.

So, despite significant refining capacity on the Gulf Coast, some U.S. gasoline is exported overseas even as the Northeast imports fuel, in part reflecting the relatively high cost of moving fuel between U.S. ports.

Economists Ryan Kellogg and Rich Sweeney estimate that the law raises East Coast gasoline prices by about a penny and a half per gallon on average, costing drivers roughly $770 million a year. In light of the war’s effect on gas prices, the Trump administration has temporarily suspended the Jones Act requirements — an action more commonly taken when hurricanes knock out Gulf Coast refineries and pipeline networks.

The result of all these factors is that the price that drivers see at the pump mostly reflects the global price of crude, plus a stack of domestic costs, only some of which are inefficient.

Tax holidays give a partial, short-lived rebate. Jones Act waivers trim pennies, though permanent repeal may cause more fundamental changes, such as reduced rail and truck transport of all goods, which could lower costs, emissions and infrastructure damage associated with cargo transportation. Harmonizing fuel blends across states and seasons may lower prices somewhat, but likely at the expense of increased emissions.

Ultimately, the best protection against oil price shocks is a more efficient gas-burning vehicle, or one that doesn’t burn gasoline at all. In the meantime, the best I can offer as an economist is clarity about what that $4.30 actually buys.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Robert Harris is an assistant professor of Economics at Georgia Institute of Technology. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

One of the main methods of obtaining abortion medication for those living in states with bans is now blocked nationwide, after a federal appeals court decision issued Friday afternoon.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a U.S. Food and Drug Administration rule from 2023 that allowed mifepristone, one of two drugs used to terminate a pregnancy before 10 weeks and to treat miscarriages, to be dispensed without an in-person visit with a health provider. 

In the years since, states with abortion access have increased their telemedicine offerings to prescribe the medication remotely and send it through the mail. Many of those states also enacted shield laws to prevent officials from states with abortion bans from prosecuting or investigating their providers — meaning many patients have been able to receive the medication across state lines.

Louisiana judge preserves telehealth abortion access provision for now, puts case on hold

The block will remain in effect as the lower court case proceeds, but the FDA could file an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in the coming weeks.

More than 27% of all abortions were provided through telehealth appointments in the first six months of 2025, according to the Society of Family Planning, a research and advocacy group that publishes a report called #WeCount. Nearly 15,000 abortions per month were provided under shield laws during that same time frame, according to the report.

Louisiana Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill sued the FDA in October, seeking to strike down the 2023 provision, and the lower court declined to do so in early April. U.S. District Judge David C. Joseph said then that the stay was premature while the FDA completed a safety review of mifepristone, but allowed state officials the opportunity to re-file the motion after that review was complete. The state appealed that decision to the 5th Circuit.

“Every abortion facilitated by FDA’s action cancels Louisiana’s ban on medical abortions and undermines its policy that ‘every unborn child is human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person,’” Friday’s decision said.

There were no dissenting opinions among Judge Leslie Southwick, an appointee of former Republican President George H.W. Bush, and Judges Stuart Kyle Duncan and Kurt D. Engelhardt, both appointees of Republican President Donald Trump.

Without access to telemedicine and the opportunity to receive the medication through the mail, people in 13 states with near-total abortion bans may have to travel to another state to get an abortion.

There is a misoprostol-only abortion pill protocol that some providers can use, but it is slightly less effective and requires a higher dosage, which can increase side effects.

“Reinstating in-person dispensing requirements would force people to travel farther, take more time off work, and absorb costs that are simply too high. For people living in states already hostile to abortion access, many of which are home to Black women and families, this is not health care,” said Regina Davis-Moss, CEO of advocacy group In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, in a statement. 

Murrill said in a statement on Friday that former Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration facilitated “illegal mail-order abortion pills.”

Nearly 1 in 4 people seeking abortions out of state chose Illinois. Here’s why.

“Today, that nightmare is over, thanks to the hard work of my office and our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom. I look forward to continuing to defend women and babies as this case continues,” Murrill said, crediting the advocacy legal organization that helped in the case.

The court also found Friday that the 2023 rule injures Louisiana by causing it to spend Medicaid funds for emergency care for women harmed by using the drug. The state identified $92,000 paid by Medicaid for two women who needed emergency care in 2025 from complications “caused by out-of-state mifepristone.”

Numerous studies have shown mifepristone is safe to use, with very low complication rates. A combined review of 10 years’ worth of studies between 2005 and 2015 found that severe outcomes requiring blood transfusion and hospitalization occurred in less than 1% of cases.

“We are alarmed by this court’s decision to ignore the FDA’s rigorous science and decades of safe use of mifepristone in a case pursued by extremist abortion opponents. We are reviewing the court’s order in detail,” said Evan Masingill, CEO of GenBioPro, one of the main manufacturers of mifepristone, in a statement. “We remain committed to taking any actions necessary to make mifepristone available and accessible to as many people as possible in the country, regardless of anti-abortion special interests trying to undermine patients’ access.”

Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

TOPEKA — Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Rosen lavished praise Friday on President Dwight Eisenhower’s insistence on recognizing the rule of law in shielding individual liberties, championing justice and forbidding anyone from operating above the reach of legal authority.

It was Eisenhower — the farm boy from Abilene, the World War II military hero and the 34th president — who designated May 1, 1958, as Law Day. In 1961, Congress added an exclamation point to Eisenhower’s directive by formally establishing a national observance of appreciation for ideals of equality and justice in law and the rights and freedoms established under the Constitution.

Rosen led a ceremony in the lobby of the Kansas Judicial Center to mark the event. He signed an administrative order embracing the imperative that Americans lean into the law to resolve disputes, exercise rights and make justice accessible with integrity, excellence, innovation and fairness.

The legal system has relied on strong government institutions anchored to the rule of law and on a population willing to defend judicial independence, he said.

“Law Day reminds us that freedom does not sustain itself,” said Rosen, who was appointed a Shawnee County District Court judge in 1993 and joined the state Supreme Court in 2005.

Rosen said the Founding Fathers issued a Declaration of Independence that was tested in violent revolution, produced a U.S. Constitution to serve as the framework for government bounded by respect for the law and crafted a U.S. Bill of Rights consisting of 10 amendments to the Constitution designed to protect individual liberties and limit federal authority.

In Kansas, he said, the judicial branch evolved to include district or trial courts, the intermediate Kansas Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court.

“The law gives us structure and liberty,” Rosen said. “It creates order without oppression, resolves disputes without violence and ensures that power answers to principle. The rule of law means that no person is above the law, and no person is beneath its protection.”

He said Eisenhower understood a timeless truth: “Constitutional rights mean little if leaders lack the resolve to uphold them.”

Rosen was joined at the ceremony by Sarah Warner, chief of the state Court of Appeals. She was appointed to the Court of Appeals in 2019 and began a four-year term as chief of that appellate court in January 2025.

On Friday morning, Warner was in Johnson County to reaffirm her annual oath to bear allegiance the state and federal constitutions. The oath also committed her to neither delay nor deny the rights of any person, to not foster or promote any fraudulent, groundless or unjust suit, to not give consent to falsehoods in court and to discharge duties of the judiciary to the best of her abilities.

The system in Kansas relied on dedicated lawyers, judges, clerks, paralegals, court reporters and court service officers to function in a manner that made justice reality rather than rhetoric, she said.

“Everyone who plays a part in this system has devoted our lives to the cause of justice, to the cause of fairness and equity, and to the rule of law. We take it very seriously,” she said.

(An update to the story corrects spelling of Judge Sarah Warner’s first name.)

After the U.S. Supreme Court severely weakened the federal Voting Rights Act in an April 29 decision, a furious U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries condemned what he called an “illegitimate” conservative majority on the court.

“This isn’t even the Roberts Court,” Jeffries said, referring to Chief Justice John Roberts. “It’s the Trump Court.”

Democrats are renewing their calls to overhaul the Supreme Court in the wake of the court’s decision, which empowers states to gerrymander congressional maps in ways that will break apart districts where a majority of residents are Black, Hispanic or belong to other minority groups. 

The momentous opinion overturned the reasoning behind decades of court cases that relied on the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a law born of efforts to stamp out Jim Crow voting laws in the South, to protect these majority-minority districts.

For years, critics of the court, where conservatives enjoy a 6-3 majority, have pushed for changes. Those efforts often center on expanding the size of the court to dilute the influence of the majority or imposing term limits on the justices, though other ideas, like narrowing the kinds of cases the court can consider, have also been discussed.

But the April 29 decision seems to be the last straw for some Democrats and progressives, though they are unlikely to be able to force any of the changes on their wishlist — at least for a long time. 

After rulings in recent years that ended the federal right to an abortion and handed President Donald Trump sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution while in office, they are fed up with a court they view as unmoored from the law and ruling based on politics.

“We cannot protect voting rights, civil rights or the environment as long as we have a Supreme Court majority that is captured by MAGA authoritarians,” Doug Lindner, senior director of judiciary and democracy at the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group, told reporters on Thursday. “We need to take back our Supreme Court.”

Any effort to impose significant changes at the court will encounter stiff Republican opposition. GOP lawmakers have praised the court’s latest decision and some see long-serving Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito as conservative icons. Unless Democrats win 60 seats in the Senate or eliminate the filibuster, Congress is highly unlikely to pass a major overhaul.

Republicans have denounced past proposals to change the court. After President Joe Biden proposed 18-year terms for justices and other changes in July 2024, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said the plan “would tilt the balance of power and erode not only the rule of law, but the American people’s faith in our system of justice.”

Supreme Court reform has long percolated as an issue among Democrats and progressives, but picked up steam during the 2020 presidential primary campaign. 

The court’s ideological makeup had already moved toward conservatives after Justice Anthony Kennedy, often a swing vote on key decisions, retired in 2018 and was replaced by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative. Republicans then cemented a firm 6-3 majority on the court in the fall of 2020 after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal, died and was replaced by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Campaigning for president, then-candidate Biden voiced support for a presidential commission that would study court reform. After winning election, Biden named a blue ribbon panel of law professors, former judges and other lawyers, which issued a final report in December 2021.

The commission’s report stopped short of endorsing structural changes. It took no position on expanding the size of the court from nine members, citing “profound disagreement” among commission members over the idea. The commission also adopted no stance on term limits for justices.

The report was essentially put on a shelf — Biden made no serious effort to advance a court overhaul, though he later proposed some reforms after ending his campaign for reelection.

Americans’ view of the Supreme Court has been falling. An August 2025 Pew Research Center survey found 48% of Americans hold a favorable view of the court, a 22-percentage point drop from August 2020.

A survey released in September 2025 by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found 69% support for term limits but only 31% support for expanding the size of the court.

Eric J. Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University and the executive director of the Emmet J. Bondurant Center for Constitutional Law, Practice and Democracy, said past courts would have been responsive to the prospect of legislation, but the current court isn’t swayed by public opinion.

In some cases the court tries to preserve its legitimacy by giving the other side a win, Segall said, but in general the court’s decisions since 2018, when Kennedy retired, can be explained by viewing the court as a subset of the Republican Party.

“This court is defined by the Republican Party,” he said.

Segall has called for dividing the court evenly between conservative and liberal appointees. An evenly-split court would encourage greater compromise among the justices, he contends. He also supports expanding the court and term limits if possible. But he bluntly predicted court reform wouldn’t happen in his lifetime.

“If Democrats have the power to do it, they won’t do it,” Segall said.

Jeffries, who will likely become U.S. House speaker if Democrats retake the chamber in the November midterm elections, said this week that “everything was on the table” in terms of the Supreme Court.

“In the new Congress, we’re going to have to do something about this Supreme Court,” Jeffries told the MeidasTouch Network.

Rep. John Rose, a Tennessee Republican, said on social media that Jeffries’ comments show that Democrats are preparing to “nuke the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court the second they’re back in power.”

Trump and some Republicans in Congress, convinced Democrats will end the filibuster to pass priorities like Supreme Court reform, want Republicans to end the filibuster first and enact a host of conservative priorities before the party potentially loses control of the Senate following the November elections.

But even if Democrats end the filibuster, the party faces a steep climb to changing the court unless it retakes control of Congress and the White House. That means any major overhaul almost certainly wouldn’t become law until at least 2029.

Trump has had a turbulent relationship with the court but would be virtually certain to veto legislation remaking it while he remains in office.

While the justices have protected Trump and future presidents from criminal prosecution for actions taken as part of their presidential duties, they struck down his sweeping worldwide tariffs as illegal, dealing a major blow to one of his signature policies. They also refused to hear legal challenges that sought to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss.

Still, Trump scoffed on Thursday at Democratic hopes to remake the court in the future. He accused the party of wanting 21 justices on the court (Democratic-sponsored plans in recent years have called for 13 or 15 justices). He also called Jeffries’ comments a “dangerous statement.”

“Hakeem Jeffries said the Supreme Court is illegitimate,” Trump said Thursday. “That’s a rough statement.”

President Donald Trump on Thursday moved to capitalize on a U.S. Supreme Court decision weakening the federal Voting Rights Act as he urged one governor to gerrymander his state and praised another for suspending an approaching primary.

The court’s decision on Wednesday struck down Louisiana’s congressional map as unconstitutional and empowered other Republican states to break apart districts where most residents are Black for a partisan advantage.

The opinion could reinvigorate Trump’s push for states to redraw their maps to give Republicans an edge in the November midterm elections. The president’s party typically performs poorly in the midterms and Trump’s approval has fallen in polls, making Democrats hopeful they can retake the U.S. House.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and state Attorney General Liz Murrill announced on Thursday that the state’s congressional primary election, set for mid-May, would be suspended. The pause gives state lawmakers time to draw a new map aimed at ousting at least one, if not two, Black Democrats.

Trump thanked Landry on his social media platform, Truth Social, for “moving so quickly to fix the Unconstitutionality” of the state’s map. In a separate post, Trump wrote that he had spoken with Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who faces calls to immediately gerrymander the state.

“I had a very good conversation with Governor Bill Lee, of Tennessee, this morning, wherein he stated that he would work hard to correct the unconstitutional flaw in the Congressional Maps of the Great State of Tennessee,” Trump wrote.

A spokesperson for Lee didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Historically, states draw new maps once a decade after each census but eight states have now broken that norm after Trump urged Republicans to gerrymander. 

Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah have drawn fresh GOP-leaning maps, as well as Florida, whose legislature approved a gerrymander hours after the Supreme Court’s decision. California and Virginia have enacted new maps favorable to Democrats. 

Before Wednesday, the redistricting war was essentially a wash. But the court’s decision gives Republicans more options to gain the upper hand this year, if states can move quickly. 

Alabama, Georgia, Missouri and Tennessee are among the red states with upcoming primaries where lawmakers could theoretically still act. In some states — like Georgia and Tennessee — top Republicans haven’t ruled out action. In others, like Alabama and Georgia, GOP leaders have ruled out or played down the possibility of action this year.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, urged states to gerrymander their maps before the midterm elections.

“I think all states that have unconstitutional maps should look at that very carefully and I think they should do it before the midterms,” Johnson told CNN on Thursday. 

Democrats have also floated the possibility of additional gerrymanders — whether this year or ahead of the 2028 election. 

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on social media after the court’s decision that she would work with the legislature to change the state’s redistricting process. New York currently uses a commission system to draw maps, limiting opportunities for partisan gerrymandering.

At a news conference hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus on Wednesday, Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat, suggested she would support additional Democratic gerrymanders.

“It values partisan politics over discrimination,” Sewell said of the court’s decision. “It’s really, really, really — I mean, it takes us back. So to the extent it’s urging, it’s inviting red states to totally take away all of the Democratic seats and be totally red, it also encourages blue states to do exactly the same.”

TOPEKA — Dan Goddard’s boyhood dream wasn’t to become a politician serving constituents in Parsons, first as a senator and then as a representative in the Kansas Legislature.

His youthful quest was to be a U.S. Air Force pilot, which he achieved during a military career spanning 24 years. He later devoted 20 years to breathing economic life into closed military bases. And, then he turned to politics and served a decade in elective offices, including four years in the Senate and four years in the House.

“I came to Kansas without a political thought in my mind,” Goddard said last month as his final session in the Legislature came to a close. “There are some great, great people in this chamber on both sides of the aisle. I’ve made friends that I will never, ever, ever forget.”

His advice to political brethren: “Slow down, take it easy and you’ll achieve a more harmonious outcome.”

Approximately one dozen members of the Kansas House are expected to not seek reelection this year, when all 125 House seats will be up for grabs in November. Some, like Goddard, chose retirement. Three representatives altered their career path to seek statewide office rather than reelection to the House.

More names could be added to the departure roster by the noon June 1 filing deadline, including members tapped as lieutenant governor running mates for gubernatorial candidates.

The entire 40-member Senate won’t be on Kansas ballots this year, but three senators have set their sights on statewide offices. Those runs are freebies, because the 2026 election will occur in the middle of their four-year terms. If they fail, they have a Senate job to fall back on.

Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican pursuing the GOP nomination for governor, gaveled out the 2026 legislative session in April. Before bringing down the mallet, he offered a note of optimism: “I’m hopeful this is my final time to do this.”

Senate Majority Leader Chase Blasi, R-Wichita, advised senators to take one last look at those assembled in the ornate Capitol chamber.

“This is probably it, the last time this class is together,” Blasi said. “There’s a good chance some people will depart for one reason or another.”

Rep. Will Carpenter, an El Dorado Republican, said he would wrap a sixth term in the House before retiring from politics. He served two terms in the House before being defeated in 2016. He regained the House seat in 2018 and was reelected three more times.

“Nobody knows the sacrifices that you make for this job more than I do,” Carpenter told House colleagues. “Your families, your grandkids, your businesses, your jobs, your personal lives and, for some, your marriages.”

He urged current and future legislators to “treat people how you want to be treated” and remember bad decisions tended to snowball.

“All I ever wanted to do was make a difference in peoples’ lives,” said Carpenter, born July 4, 1956, in Hamilton, Kansas. “I hope and pray that somehow, someway, I’ve done that.”

Rep. Ken Rahjes, R-Agra, and Rep. Pat Proctor, R-Leavenworth, plan to step away from the Legislature to compete against each other in the August primary election for Kansas secretary of state. Secretary of State Scott Schwab is running for governor rather than reelection to a third term as the state’s top elections officer.

Rahjes, appointed to the House in 2016 and returned to Topeka to serve four more two-year terms, said his objective was to be a steady voice on behalf of rural communities. Politicians, he said, should be responsible, transparent and focused on needs of the people.

“These communities are the backbone of the state, and they deserve to be heard,” he said. “I didn’t come to Topeka seeking recognition. At the end of the day, this job isn’t about us. It’s about our constituents, our fellow Kansans.”

Proctor, who served as a U.S. Army colonel, was elected to represent Leavenworth for three terms in the House.

“Some of the best people I’ve met in my life, I’ve met in this chamber. I really mean that,” he told House peers. “Nobody’s up here doing it to get rich. Nobody’s up here doing it for the fame. Most people in our districts don’t even know who we are.”

For the second time, Rep Rick Wilborn, a McPherson Republican, delivered a retirement speech at the Capitol. He was a member of the Senate from 2015 to 2025, but his plan to step away from politics was altered by the death of Rep. Les Mason, who passed away in June 2024 while seeking reelection.

Wilborn agreed to file for Mason’s open seat with an understanding he wouldn’t seek a second term in the House.

“Two years ago, I gave my farewell — a fairly lengthy presentation to the Senate,” said Wilborn, who praised Mason as a deeply trusted representative. “I did not fill his shoes. I just filled his seat.”

Rep. Doug Blex, R-Independence, delivered a retirement speech that was remarkable for its brevity. He’s represented the southeast Kansas community since 2017.

“Don’t allow yourself to become a legend in your own mind,” he advised. “And, hang in there, someday it’ll be a good job.”

House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican campaigning for state insurance commissioner, recalled he entered the House in 2013 along with 58 other new state representatives. He climbed the leadership ladder and held the House’s top post since 2023.

He said serving in the Legislature was a difficult challenge for someone like himself without political experience. He said he made plenty of mistakes in his first session, but dedicated himself to learning policy and process. He said serving in the House changed his life.

“When I got here, I had a pretty bad temper,” Hawkins said. “This place kind of took the temper out of me. You grow by being here.”

Hawkins recommended the House stick with a current rule forbidding anyone to serve more than four years as House speaker. His predecessor, Rep. Ron Ryckman Jr., spent three consecutive two-year terms as speaker from 2017 to 2023.

“Four years as speaker is enough,” Hawkins said. “We should never, ever have a speaker more than four years. You need new leadership.”

TOPEKA — State decision-makers are mulling whether to drop Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas from the state employee health insurance plan, which would give employees just one option and potentially save the state nearly $240 million over three years.

Members of the Kansas State Employees Health Care Commission questioned representatives from Aetna and Blue Cross at an April 15 meeting, weighing proposals to administer the state’s health insurance plans for 43,400 eligible employees.

The proposals came in with a cost difference of about $240 million for the three-year contract, which would begin Jan. 1, 2027. That is the cost savings between going with the current set-up, which includes both companies, and going with just Aetna’s Local Best plan.

Costs for Blue Cross alone would be just over $1.5 billion, while Aetna, which offered two separate plans, came in at $1.4 billion for Aetna Choice POSII and $1.3 billion for Aetna Local Best.

If the state continued with both companies, combining Blue Cross and Aetna Local Best, the cost is just under $1.5 billion.

Rep. Bill Sutton, a Gardner Republican who serves on the commission on behalf of the House Appropriations Committee, said he was willing to go with Aetna based on the cost difference between the two plans.

“I’m a dollar and cent guy,” he said. “We have the responsibility to our plan members.”

Other commission members were hesitant to make a decision, asking for more information and clarification on the differences between the two proposals. They expressed concerns about the Aetna provider network, particularly in rural areas.

They are expected to decide in May after the companies submit additional information.

Both companies were providers in the state’s 2026 plan, with 4,500 state employees enrolled in Aetna and 35,400 in Blue Cross. Commissioners questioned the disruption that could occur if all Blue Cross enrollees must switch insurance and whether Aetna’s provider network would be adequate.

Cristi Cain, a Kansas Department of Health and Environment employee who represents state employees on the commission, said she was concerned employees won’t have access to needed medical care under Aetna’s network, pointing out that many people have used Blue Cross “for all of time.”

Blue Cross has been a provider of state insurance for at least 40 years, a company spokeswoman said.

“I have a team of people who are based across the state, and I know that they already have problems accessing care,” Cain said. “I don’t want to make it more difficult for state employees to access care.”

Blue Cross’ ancillary network had “notably higher” penetration in all regions than Aetna, said Jennifer Flory, director of the State Employee Benefits Health Plan. Ancillary services include diagnostic imaging and lab work, physical/speech/occupational therapies, home health, hospice, and skilled nursing, a commission report said.

In the southwest corner of Kansas, Aetna covered just 28% of ancillary services in its network while Blue Cross covered nearly 80%.

Overall, Aetna’s network had a higher penetration, primarily because of the large population in and around the Kansas City metropolitan area, a commission report said.

In some areas, such as physicians and specialists, the two companies were nearly equal in their coverage, although there was confusion about which specialities and providers were covered in various categories.

Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt expressed frustration with the way the request for proposal was written because it wasn’t always clear what was included in each category, and she wanted to ensure they were comparing the bids properly.

An Aetna official at the meeting said the company would begin building out its provider network immediately, and commissioners discussed adding monetary penalties to the contract if the company didn’t do so.

“The problem is, if it doesn’t happen, then we have state employees without services,” Schmidt said. “So the monetary (penalty) is nice to — as a stick, I guess — but I think the more important thing is just having ancillary services for our employees and their families.”

Increasing costs are projected to eat away at the state health insurance reserves. In 2026, the program is expected to lose nearly $31 million, leaving reserves at just $6.5 million.

In 2027, costs are projected to exceed revenue by $21.5 million, clearing out the reserves and leaving the program $15 million overdrawn.

Commissioners questioned why pharmacy costs had increased more than 9%, asking about the costs of supplying GLP-1 medications for weight loss to plan participants who had a body mass index over 35. The costs are expected to drive up the employee share of insurance as much as 13% in future years.

“When we start telling our employees that we’re going to have a 13% increase — after they get a 1% (pay) raise from the state — a 13% increase in their healthcare insurance to make the bottom line because GLP-1s have consumed millions — over $20 million in our plan — and we sat here and didn’t do anything about it, I don’t want to take those calls,” Schmidt said.

Commission chairman and administration secretary Adam Proffitt said previous discussions about changing GLP-1 policies in the plan didn’t result in a vote to make the changes, and that the commission discussed tightening policies in June.

“If you want to say we’re not going to do anything about it this entire plan year, we will be sucking air by the end of this time,” Schmidt said.

At its June meeting, the commission will look at plan design and changes that could be made to lessen premium increases for state employees. Flory gave examples of increasing co-pay limits and removing caps on prescription medications.

Each year on May 1, our nation celebrates Law Day. It is a time reserved to reflect on a defining trait of our nation: We are governed by laws, not by individuals. In fact, since 1787, the preamble to our Constitution has reminded us that a principal purpose of our founders was to “establish Justice.”

As a former chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, for me Law Day obviously has great meaning. But it is additionally significant for me because it was established by my fellow Kansan, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose hometown of Abilene is only 23 miles from my own.

Eisenhower was no lawyer. But as an Army general, he had seen the lawlessness and resultant horrors of World War II. So, in 1958 he had a well-founded basis to proclaim, “If civilization is to survive, it must choose the rule of law.” At a time of global tension, he chose to highlight what distinguished our nation: a system grounded in law, individual rights, and constitutional order — not the unchecked exercise of raw power.

Eisenhower practiced what he proclaimed. Mere months before his proclamation, after seeing open defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision requiring desegregation of public schools, he ordered Army units to Arkansas to ensure compliance with the court’s order.

In Eisenhower’s proclamation establishing May 1 as Law Day, he called it a time for us to “vigilantly guard the great heritage of liberty, justice, and equality under law.”

This equality is at the heart of the rule of law: No one is above the law, and it is applied fairly and consistently. Essential to this tenet is an independent judiciary. Indeed, one reason the 13 colonies declared their independence from Great Britain in 1776 was because the King “has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.”

Our nation’s founders later secured the independent judiciary’s rightful place in the system of government they created. We know that members of the executive and legislative branches seek election by promising to pursue policies favored by their various constituents. But judges, as members of the judicial branch, have only one constituent: the rule of law. Their obligation is to decide cases based on the facts before them and the applicable law.

During my years as chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, I witnessed firsthand how much the legitimacy of our courts depends on public trust. People must believe that their cases will be heard impartially, that the rules will be applied consistently, that the judges will be bound by the law and act independently of personal preference, outside influence, and external pressure.

This independence stands as an essential safeguard for the people. It allows our courts to protect individual rights, ensure equal treatment, and maintain the balance our founders intended among our government’s three branches.

As we observe Law Day on May 1, we must remember that understanding how our courts function, and why judicial independence matters, are essential to preserving our system that is based on the rule of law and is fair, stable, and worthy of public trust. We must also remember the accompanying message from my fellow Kansan. President Eisenhower expressly called upon “the people of this Nation” (not just its lawyers and judges) to vigilantly guard and strengthen that system.

Will you vigilantly guard and strengthen? The well-being of our nation depends on it.

Lawton Nuss served more than 17 years as a justice on the Kansas Supreme Court, including nearly a decade as chief justice. He is a member of Keep Our Republic’s Alliance of Former Chief Justices, which advocates nationally in support of the rule of law.  Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

TOPEKA — The three Republicans and one Democrat representing Kansas in the U.S. House voted Thursday for a five-year farm bill expanding federal subsidies to crop producers and reducing food aid programs for low-income families.

The legislation advanced 224-200 with support of U.S. Reps. Tracey Mann of the 1st District, Derek Schmidt of the 2nd District, Sharice Davids of the 3rd District and Ron Estes of the 4th District. It was forwarded to the GOP-led U.S. Senate, where it would require an alliance with Democrats to pass.

Davids, among 14 House Democrats to vote for the bill, said Kansas farmers sought financial certainty from Congress during a period of low crop prices, high energy and fertilizer costs and export markets fractured by President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda.

“Kansas farmers and families have been hit over and over again this past year — from unstable markets to rising input costs and the ripple effects of reckless tariffs,” Davids said. “What they need most right now is stability, not uncertainty. This bipartisan farm bill moves us toward more predictability for producers, lower costs for everyone and a system that actually works for the people feeding and fueling this country.”

Most House Democrats opposed the bill because it sustained $187 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The measure included a $60 billion increase in farm subsidies.

“We still have work to do to ensure no family goes hungry, but this is a step toward giving farmers and families the certainty they deserve,” Davids said.

Davids said the bill included provisions she championed to require the U.S. Department of Agriculture to perform research on winter wheat as a cover crop and to mandate Native American tribes have access to USDA agricultural programs under the same terms as states.

Schmidt, who serves an eastern Kansas district outside the Kansas City area, said the legislation included a provision he sought to direct the USDA and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to coordinate research on domestic production of crops used in natural food colorings.

Mann, who represents the large 1st District, said bill completed “overdue” reauthorization of key programs for conservation, rural development, research, trade, energy and specialty crops, he said.

“I am especially proud that this bill includes my legislation to permanently move the Kansas-born Food for Peace program to USDA, its rightful home, ensuring American-grown commodities remain the focus of the program and increasing accountability of taxpayer dollars,” Mann said.

The U.S. House approved, 224-200, a five-year farm bill Thursday as members of Congress attempt to update major agriculture and nutrition policy after three years of extensions.

The bill would authorize subsidy and nutrition assistance programs through fiscal 2031. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated an earlier version of the bill would not meaningfully affect discretionary federal spending over an 11-year window, and would add $162 million in mandatory spending over the next six years.

Most Democrats opposed the bill, but 14 voted in favor. Three Republicans voted against. Six members did not vote.

The Democrats in favor were: Sanford Bishop of Georgia, Jim Costa and Adam Gray of California, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Sharice Davids of Kansas, Donald Davis of North Carolina, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Kristen McDonald Rivet of Michigan, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Kim Schrier of Washington, Josh Riley of New York, Darren Soto of Florida and Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico.

The Republicans who voted against were: Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Andrew Garbarino of New York and Harriet Hageman of Wyoming.

Because Republicans’ massive spending and tax cuts law last year made major changes to some U.S. Department of Agriculture programs, mainly the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that helped about 1 in 8 Americans afford groceries in 2024, the farm bill passed Thursday was a “skinny” version and relatively short on major policy updates.

The bill would still have to pass the Senate, which has not yet introduced its version. 

Arkansas Republican Sen. John Boozman, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, cheered House passage Thursday and said a Senate text would be released “in the coming weeks.”

“This is an important step toward updating long-overdue policies that support our farm families and strengthen rural communities,” he said of the House vote in a statement. “We’ve put more farm in the farm bill through the Working Families Tax Cuts (the GOP spending and tax cuts bill), and this legislation builds on that success.”

Farm bills are typically written to last five years. But Congress last approved a version in 2018. Extensions of the 2018 version were enacted in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

House Agriculture Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, said the measure would still meaningfully update farm and food programs.

“It is more evident than ever that rural America needs a new farm bill now, not next year or next Congress,” he said. “Producers are operating under the third consecutive farm bill extension and the simple truth is the policies of 2018 are no match for the challenges of 2026.”

Agriculture Committee ranking Democrat Angie Craig of Minnesota opposed the bill, saying it did not address any of the pressing issues that farmers and SNAP recipients face. The bill does not help alleviate the rising costs farmers face from President Donald Trump’s tariffs and “locks in the $187 billion cut” to SNAP in last year’s spending law, Craig said.

“It doesn’t fix any of the underlying policy choices by Republicans and this administration that caused the problems in the first place,” she said, adding that  continuing the SNAP cuts put “more pressure on struggling Americans at a time when the cost of groceries and healthcare continues to grow.  

Craig said Thursday morning that the measure could have helped corn farmers by including a provision to allow gasoline made with 15% ethanol available all year. The product, known as E15, increases demand for corn, but has been limited in summer months because of the pollution it can cause in high temperatures. 

Thompson responded that the committee would consider a separate measure on year-round E15 in mid-May.

The bill does include some new provisions.

It would authorize $200 million for a new local food procurement program, to be used largely by food banks. 

It would move authority for foreign food assistance programs under USDA from the now-defunct U.S. Agency for International Development. 

It would raise the limit that individual farmers could borrow from USDA and expand rural development programs that fund substance abuse and mental health services.

Members voted Thursday morning for an amendment that removed a controversial provision to shield pesticide producers from legal liability to warn users of a risk of cancer. If it became law, the provision would have mooted a case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court this week related to a Missouri jury’s award to a user of Monsanto’s popular Roundup weedkiller who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Several Democrats slammed the bill, but seemed to take more issue with the “big beautiful” law Trump signed last July 4. The farm bill, Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern said, would not counteract the changes in that law.

“We are considering on the floor a five-year farm bill that, quite frankly, does nothing for our farmers and screws over poor people and maintains the nearly $200 billion in cuts to SNAP,” the top House Rules Committee Democrat said on the House floor Thursday. “It is going to make hunger worse in this country.”

Thompson said Democrats were too focused on what was not in the bill, rather than the provisions that enjoy bipartisan support.

“Today, you will hear some opposing comments made that this is a partisan bill and even more on what’s not in the bill,” he said at the outset of floor debate. “This bill is filled with good policy that is also overwhelmingly bipartisan.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed a bill Thursday that will fund almost every agency in the Department of Homeland Security for the next five months, ending the shutdown that began in mid-February. 

The House approved the bill, which doesn’t include additional spending on Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol, on a voice vote earlier in the day.

The DHS shutdown, the third funding lapse in the last year, stalled paychecks for federal employees throughout much of the department, including those at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Transportation Security Administration. 

Trump enacting the DHS appropriations bill finally marks an end to the annual government funding process that was supposed to be wrapped up before the end of September. 

Connecticut Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, said during brief floor debate it was “about damn time” Republican leaders brought the bill to the floor. 

DeLauro said that “from the outset” Democrats wanted to negotiate with Republicans to address “armed, masked agents marauding our streets and terrorizing people in our communities.”

“It has been the Republicans (who) have been intransigent and not willing to do that,” she said. “But there we go. Today we’re going to do it. It could have been done 76 days ago. I’ll take it today.” 

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy said separating out funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol from the DHS funding bill “is offensive to the men and women who serve” in those agencies. 

“While we are all unified in funding the rest of DHS, we are absolutely horrified that we are blowing up the appropriations process to target those brave men and women who are doing the Lord’s work to keep us safe from cartels, from dangerous actors and from illegal aliens across the streets of America that have been endangering the American people,” he said. 

Republicans plan to use the complex budget reconciliation process to fund ICE and the Border Patrol for the rest of Trump’s term without negotiating any new guardrails on immigration agents. 

Instead of completing the dozen annual government funding bills before their Oct. 1 deadline, lawmakers’ stark differences over funding and policy led to a trio of shutdowns that stalled paychecks for federal employees and wreaked havoc on hundreds of programs. 

The first shutdown, which affected much of the federal government, lasted 43 days as Democrats tried unsuccessfully to extend the enhanced tax credits for people who purchase their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act marketplace. 

A partial shutdown lasting four days ended in early February when lawmakers approved a stopgap spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security alongside the remaining full-year appropriations bills for other departments. 

But lawmakers failed to reach a bipartisan agreement to place constraints on federal immigration agents before the temporary funding bill for DHS expired on Feb. 14, leading to a third shutdown for the department.  

Senate Democrats demanded several restrictions on immigration agents after federal officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January. While Republicans control both chambers of Congress, most bills cannot move through the Senate without the support of at least 60 lawmakers. 

After nearly six weeks, Senate Republican leaders agreed to remove funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol from the DHS appropriations bill, unanimously sending it to the House for approval in late March.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said at the time a plan to use the complex budget reconciliation process to provide three years of funding for ICE and Border Patrol wasn’t acceptable. He refused to put the Senate-passed bill on the House floor for a vote. 

The Senate tried again in early April, sending an identical bill to the House, which Johnson declined to schedule a vote on until Thursday. 

The House vote on the DHS appropriations bill happened less than a day after Republicans in that chamber voted to adopt the budget resolution that unlocks the reconciliation process. Republican senators approved the tax and spending blueprint earlier this month. 

Congress’ budget resolution isn’t a bill and doesn’t need to go to the president for his signature in order to take effect. It doesn’t actually fund anything, but is designed to help lawmakers plan tax and spending policy for the next decade. 

GOP lawmakers intend to use the reconciliation process the budget resolution provides to approve a bill in the coming weeks that will provide up to $140 billion for ICE and Border Patrol. That avoids the need to place any new constraints on federal immigration officers in order to get Democrats’ votes to limit Senate debate. 

Members of Congress will, however, still need to find agreement on funding for the rest of government ahead of the next fiscal year, which will begin on Oct. 1. 

Another impasse will mean another shutdown, just weeks before the November midterm elections. 

Traducido por Claudia Amaro

PRAIRIE VILLAGE — Un pastor del área de Kansas City se postulará para el Senado de los Estados Unidos como “un demócrata de mentalidad independiente”, poniendo fin a meses de especulaciones sobre la posibilidad de que desafiara al senador Roger Marshall como independiente.

Adam Hamilton, miembro fundador y pastor principal de la Iglesia Metodista Unida de la Resurrección en Leawood, anunció su candidatura el jueves, aunque ya había empezado a considerar la posibilidad de postularse en febrero. Desde entonces, Hamilton, de 61 años, afirma estar cada vez más convencido de que “las cosas no van bien en nuestro país”.

Según declaró a Kansas Reflector el miércoles, lo que lo impulsó a postularse fue lo que él considera una pérdida de valores y una polarización en Washington. Una gira por 18 ciudades de Kansas, en la que escuchó a la gente, confirmó sus teorías. Comentó que escuchó a personas que afirmaban que el precio de la atención médica, la gasolina y la vivienda “nos está matando”.

Según contó, algunas de esas personas también lo animaron a presentarse como demócrata en lugar de como independiente. Le dijeron que así tendría más posibilidades de vencer a Marshall.

Hamilton se une a otros ocho demócratas que compiten por el escaño de Marshall. Dijo que quiere “dejar muy claro que quiere concederle a Roger Marshall una jubilación anticipada”.

Dijo que consultó con la gobernadora demócrata Laura Kelly y con la exgobernadora demócrata Kathleen Sebelius antes de decidirse a presentarse como candidato demócrata.

La semana pasada, el Partido Republicano de Kansas acusó a Hamilton de utilizar indebidamente recursos de la iglesia para impulsar su campaña, según una denuncia presentada ante la Comisión Federal de Elecciones. Sin embargo, Hamilton negó las acusaciones y restó importancia a la denuncia. Afirmó que su campaña ya había captado la atención de los republicanos antes de su anuncio oficial.

“Me alegra que estén nerviosos, porque creo que tienen motivos para estarlo”, dijo Hamilton.

Rob Fillion, director ejecutivo del Partido Republicano de Kansas, afirmó que la decisión de Hamilton de presentarse como demócrata confirma que “su supuesta exploración ‘independiente’ no fue más que una estrategia de marketing político para enmascarar una agenda de izquierda radical”.

“Esta contienda electoral presenta una clara elección entre un liderazgo íntegro y responsable, representado por el senador Marshall, o un candidato que enfrenta serios cuestionamientos éticos y promueve políticas que no concuerdan con los valores de Kansas”, dijo Fillion.

Hamilton se graduó de la Universidad Oral Roberts en 1985. Posee una maestría en teología de la Universidad Metodista del Sur en Texas. Está casado con LaVon Hamilton y tiene dos hijos y un nieto.

Durante el segundo mandato del presidente Barack Obama, formó parte de un consejo asesor sobre asociaciones comunitarias y basadas en la fe, y pronunció el sermón en el segundo servicio religioso presidencial de Obama.

La Iglesia Metodista Unida de la Resurrección es la iglesia más grande de Kansas. Recibe un promedio semanal de 25,000 visitantes en sus nueve sedes y servicios televisados ​​y en línea, según Hamilton. Él ha escrito más de 30 libros.

Hamilton afirmó que tiene previsto concluir una serie de sermones este mes. Durante el resto de su campaña, continuará trabajando para la iglesia, pero probablemente no predicará, según indicó. Si resulta elegido, decidirá qué papel desempeñará en la iglesia, si es que desempeña alguno.

PRAIRIE VILLAGE — A Kansas City-area pastor will run for U.S. Senate as “an independent-minded Democrat,” putting to bed months of speculation that he would challenge U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall as an independent.

Adam Hamilton, founding member and senior pastor of United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, announced his campaign Thursday, but he began exploring a bid in February. Since then, Hamilton, 61, said he has become more and more confident that “things are just not right in our country.”

He was propelled to run by what he sees as a loss of values and polarization in Washington, he told Kansas Reflector on Wednesday. An 18-city listening tour across Kansas cemented his theories. He said he heard from people who said the price of healthcare, gas and housing “are killing us.”

Some of those people, he said, also encouraged him to run as a Democrat instead of as an independent. He’d have a better chance at beating Marshall, they said.

Hamilton joins eight Democrats vying for Marshall’s seat. He said he wants “to be really clear about giving Roger Marshall an early retirement.”

He said he consulted with Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and former Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius before deciding to run as a Democrat.

The Kansas Republican Party accused Hamilton last week of improperly using church resources to bolster his campaign in a complaint filed with the Federal Elections Commission. But Hamilton denied those claims and downplayed the complaint’s effect. He said his campaign had Republicans’ attention before it was announced.

“I’m glad that they’re nervous, because I think they should be nervous,” Hamilton said.

Rob Fillion, executive director of the Kansas Republican Party, said Hamilton’s decision to run as a Democrat confirms “his so-called ‘independent’ exploration was little more than a political marketing strategy to mask a radical left agenda.”

“This race presents a clear choice between principled, accountable leadership with Senator Marshall or a candidate facing serious ethical questions and promoting policies out of step with Kansas values,” Fillion said.

Kansas Democratic Party chair Jeanna Repass attended Hamilton’s announcement, but she said her presence was not an endorsement. The party will refrain from endorsing Democratic candidates in Kansas races this year, waiting to place full support behind hopefuls until after the August primary, she said.

Hamilton graduated from Oral Roberts University in 1985. He has a Master of Divinity degree from Southern Methodist University in Texas. He is married to LaVon Hamilton and has two children and a grandchild.

He served during President Barack Obama’s second term on an advisory council on faith-based and neighborhood partnerships, and he delivered the sermon at Obama’s second presidential prayer service.

The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection is the largest church in Kansas. It sees a weekly average of 25,000 visitors across its nine campuses and televised and online services, according to Hamilton. He has written more than 30 books.

Hamilton said he intends to finish out a sermon series this month. For the rest of his campaign, he will continue to work for the church but likely won’t be preaching, he said. If he is elected, he said, he will decide what role, if any, he will play at the church.

WASHINGTON — State officials say they need more information from the Trump administration before they can fully implement new requirements for Medicaid, according to a survey released Thursday by KFF and the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.

Republicans’ “big, beautiful” law made several changes to the state-federal health program for lower income people and some people with disabilities, including that enrollees between the ages of 19 and 65 work, participate in community service, or attend an education program for at least 80 hours a month.

The survey of Medicaid program officials from 43 states showed the people tasked with implementing the law have questions about how exactly they should determine if someone meets the new requirements or is exempt. 

“In addition to how to define medical frailty, states wanted additional direction in many areas including what qualifies as community service, how to calculate half-time school attendance, and what is considered a ‘significant relationship’ to qualify for the caregiver exemption,” the report states. “They also indicated they need guidance about what sources can be used for verification, whether self-attestation will be allowed if other sources are not available, and how long verification of exemptions remain valid.”

The law includes several additional carve-outs, including for Medicaid enrollees who are pregnant, have dependent children, are tribal community members or are in the foster care system, and for individuals released from incarceration in the last 90 days, among others.

The vast majority of state officials surveyed said they would implement the new requirement for work, education, or community service at the start of next year.

There are, however, a few states moving forward earlier. 

Nebraska plans to begin May 1, Montana on July 1 and Iowa officials said they will begin this year, though they haven’t provided a date, KFF said. Arkansas has planned a “soft launch” for July but won’t actually remove anyone from Medicaid for not meeting the new requirements until next year, according to the report.

The KFF-Georgetown survey says that nearly all states will allow hardship exemptions for people in counties with higher unemployment; those who recently experienced a natural disaster; those who have been admitted to a hospital or nursing facility; or those who need to travel outside their community for medical care.

Indiana and Iowa are the only two states so far that don’t intend to allow any hardship exceptions from the requirement that Medicaid enrollees work, attend community service, or enroll in an education program, the report said. 

“Oklahoma is not adopting the exceptions for residents of counties with high unemployment or with a declared natural disaster while Missouri is not adopting the exception for residents of counties with high unemployment,” the report says. “New York is not planning to adopt the exception for individuals traveling outside their community for medical care. Twelve states had not made a decision.”

Thirty-six states will look back one month when someone applies for Medicaid to determine whether they’re working, participating in community service, or enrolled in an education program. Indiana and Idaho will look back at the last three months before the person applied to determine whether they meet the new requirement. 

Thirty-four states will look back one month during the renewal process, which must happen at least every six months under the law. 

“Indiana and New Hampshire will check quarterly and at renewal to verify that enrollees meet the requirements every month between renewals,” according to the report. “Arkansas will also look back three months at renewal but is not planning quarterly checks. States that had not made a decision at the time of the survey included five states for application, six states for renewal, and seven states for more frequent checks.”

There has been a lot of discussion about family caregivers in America. Comments have been made that caregivers shouldn’t be paid and provide caregiving for free.

There are so many who take care of their disabled or senior loved ones. My mother, in her semi-retirement from the medical field, works part-time for Home Instead. She provides caregiving for clients in need. Her clients love her. I can see why.

Caregiving is essential for families in need. I grew up in an upper middle-class home where my father worked hard as a professor to provide for our family. My mom stayed at home to care for my sister and me while having a home medical transcription business. Both my parents cared for my younger sister and me.

I was a healthy child and I worked hard in school. I baby-sat and even had a book contract with a Christian publishing company in Nashville when I was 15. I ran in track and worked out. I got straight A’s.

However, at age 18 I was diagnosed with a mental illness. I started to struggle and could hardly garner the motivation to accomplish much. My mom, although never paid as a caregiver, became a caregiver to me and helped me with things like taking a shower and washing my face.

I faced daily challenges that I never had anticipated.

I wonder what I would have done and what I would do now without the love and support of my mother. In addition to comments being made about caregivers in the news, there have been reports of a proposed rule for people with disabilities that would make life incredibly more challenging and burdensome for them. Millions of disabled individuals live with their parents, and they have no other choice. They are dependent upon them.

Sure, it would be super duper if everyone who has a disability could live independently and make a lot of money and do things on their own. For someone who has autism or cerebral palsy or another disability, this can prove impossible.

Instead of making life harder for caregivers and people with disabilities, we need to reach out and offer support and resources. The recent cuts to Medicaid are not the answer either.

My younger sister is healthy and works in a high-powered job. I often wish I could be like her. Growing up, I always helped care for her. Now she reaches out frequently along with her husband to help make sure I am OK.

What do people without the support of family do? The other day I saw a client of a local mental health nonprofit organization on the side of the road begging for money. He looked disheveled and dirty, and his hair was long and stringy. He had old, raggedy clothes. I have been told his family is in California and doesn’t want to see him. They haven’t told him where they live.

Too many folks with mental illness don’t experience the love and support of a family who cares. I have a mom who loves me. I have extended family who loves me. I have friends who cheer me on and support me with their words of love and compassion. It’s not pity because I am not a charity project.

No one wants to be treated like a charity project.

I give back, as well. For the past five or six years I have done a gift card drive for a local mental health organization. My family and friends have contributed to help raise about $3,000 in donations and gift cards. In my struggles, I am reaching out to help others in need. My faith is important to me and it teaches me to be a light in a dark world.

Isn’t that what caregivers need right now — someone to be a light in their dark world to them? Caregivers need to be paid for their efforts because many have given up good-paying jobs and careers to stay at home with their loved one. They need support. People with disabilities don’t need to be burdened because they live with their families.

Rebecca Lyn Phillips is a published author, speaker and mental health advocate. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

After facing costly heating bills this winter, consumers shouldn’t expect relief for the summer months, according to new projections for household utility costs. 

The National Energy Assistance Directors Association projects the average electricity cost to cool homes between June and September will reach $778 this summer. That’s a $61 — or 8.5% — increase from last year and nearly 37% higher than in 2020.

The association, which represents state employees administering federal energy assistance programs, attributes the increase to warmer temperatures and higher electric prices.

“Families are squeezed from both directions,” Mark Wolfe, the association’s executive director, said in a news release. “They are paying more for electricity, and they need more of it to stay safe during increasingly hot summers.”

Projections show a pronounced impact in the South because of its higher temperatures and widespread air conditioning usage. South Atlantic states — from Delaware to Florida —  are expected to see average cooling bills rise by more than $100 between June and September compared with last year. But Midwestern states are expected to see summer costs go up by about $30 per household. 

One in six American households are behind on energy bills, with total utility debt expected to reach approximately $23 billion by the end of the year, the association said. With home energy costs rising by more than double the rate of inflation, the group has urged Congress to appropriate billions more in energy assistance funding.

State lawmakers of both parties are increasingly scrutinizing high electricity prices as most Americans are served by state-regulated utilities. Despite growing outcry, state leaders say they have little ability to provide consumer relief because of broader energy market realities.

The Edison Electric Institute, which represents the nation’s investor-owned electric utilities, has pointed to surging electricity demand, extreme weather, new technologies and widespread electrification as factors leading to increased prices. The organization says its members will invest more than $1.1 trillion in grid improvements and expansion over the next five years.

“We’ve got to build a lot of infrastructure to meet this incredible growing demand that’s going to benefit our economy, benefit our communities, and help the United States lead in the technologies of the future,” EEI Vice Chair Chris Womack said during an April 14 event hosted by Axios. 

A February study commissioned by the organization said electricity prices have remained stable across much of the country but hikes in “a few states and regions” have put upward pressure on national average costs. 

That report attributed regional price hikes to changes in markets, policies and other circumstances beyond the control of utility providers.

“In general, the utilities have managed controllable costs effectively,” it said. 

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

TOPEKA — U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas endorsed federal legislation to end U.S. tariffs on phosphate from Morocco that were imposed five years ago in response to a domestic fertilizer manufacturer’s complaint about unfair competition from subsidized, low-price imports.

“Kansas farmers are getting hit by a fertilizer market that’s working against them,” Marshall said. “Phosphate is a critical nutrient for crop production, and right now farmers are paying prices that threaten their bottom line.”

Countervailing duties applied to Morocco and controlled by the U.S. Department of Commerce were set at 19.97% in 2021 after confirming Florida-based fertilizer producer Mosaic’s complaint against Morocco’s state-owned phosphate fertilizer exporter OCP Group.

Texas A&M University estimated the U.S. duties on Morocco increased the cost of fertilizer for U.S. producers by $6.9 billion from 2021 to 2025.

In January, federal officials cut the tariff on Moroccan fertilizer to 2.1% in recognition of how artificially inflated prices were damaging the fragile U.S. agriculture economy. The federal Department of Commerce is conducting a five-year review of the tariff on Morocco.

U.S. commodity organizations have been lobbying for prompt repeal of the countervailing duty with Morocco because of escalation in domestic farm input costs and lack of domestic phosphate resources to meet demands of corn, soybean, cotton and other crop farmers.

Marshall, who is seeking reelection to the U.S. Senate in 2026, said passage of the Lowering Input Costs for American Farmers Act by Congress and President Donald Trump, who has made wide use of tariffs in his second term, would address the problem tied to Morocco’s phosphate.

“It’ll lower the cost of phosphate fertilizer by over 20%. That’s $150 a ton, and that’s real money when it comes to a Kansas farmer,” he said.

He said a bill eliminating tariffs and countervailing duties on phosphate fertilizer imports from Morocco was introduced Tuesday in the U.S. Senate.

The measure was endorsed by the National Corn Growers Association, American Soybean Association, American Farm Bureau Federation, National Cotton Council, USA Rice, Sorghum Growers and the National Association of Wheat Growers.

“Wheat growers have borne nearly $1 billion in additional costs from these duties, and this bill would help restore access to a critical input and provide needed relief to farmers,” said Sam Kieffer, CEO of the wheat farmer association.

The suspect in the attack at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night was prepared for a mass casualty event, prosecutors said in a document filed in federal court early Wednesday.

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and three assistants in her office signed a memorandum asking a judge to keep 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen detained as he awaits trial. They said his “actions were premeditated, violent, and calculated to cause death,” and he sought to “express his political opinions through violence.”

“Had the defendant achieved his intended outcome, he would have brought about one of the darkest days in American history,” they wrote. “The defendant traveled across the country with the explicit aim to kill the President of the United States.”

A detention hearing is set for Thursday. Allen is charged with attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump, as well as interstate transportation of a firearm with intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.

He faces up to life in prison if convicted of attempting to kill the president. Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Cabinet members all safely evacuated the Washington Hilton ballroom.

The document lists a host of weapons, ammunition and other supplies Allen had in his possession at the time of his arrest.

He had a “12-gauge pumpaction shotgun with one spent cartridge in the barrel and eight unfired cartridges in the magazine tube,” the document reads. He carried additional ammunition in a Velcro strapped to his body and in a separate pouch, the prosecutors said. 

He also carried a fully loaded .38 caliber pistol with two additional magazines. 

The document also shows a mirror selfie Allen appears to have taken in his hotel room just before the planned attack. He is fully armed and outfitted in the photo.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner, dating back more than 100 years, is an annual black-tie event, often attended by the president, that hosts more than 2,000 journalists, administration officials and other guests at the Washington Hilton. 

President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and members of the Cabinet attended Saturday’s dinner, along with many members of Congress. 

Allen, who traveled by train from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., prior to the attack, sent a note just prior to attempting to rush the Capital Hilton ballroom, brandishing a gun. 

He did not name Trump but said, “Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.”

Prosecutors argued his intent was to inflict mass harm and disrupt the government.

“Had the defendant successfully made it into the ballroom, he not only could have killed or injured dozens of people, but he could have destabilized the entire federal government, given the number of high-ranking government officials present,” the Department of Justice said. “The defendant sought to express his political opinions through violence. The Court should consider the identities of the defendant’s intended victims and the significant roles they play in governing this country to assess the nature of the charged offenses.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office on Monday invoked an upcoming landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on the role of race in drawing congressional districts to justify the Republican’s proposed gerrymander.

“The use of race in redistricting should never happen,” the governor’s general counsel, David Axelman, wrote in a memo unveiling a map that aims to hand Republicans four additional U.S. House seats in Florida.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court delivered an opinion sharply weakening a major portion of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Even before the decision, Republicans and Democrats across the country were scrambling to get ahead of the court’s anticipated ruling. 

The rush comes even as state legislative sessions wind down and the window to redraw maps rapidly closes ahead of the midterm elections in November — likely pushing most redistricting battles into the 2028 election cycle.

The opinion in the case, Louisiana v. Callais, could reverberate for decades. The court’s conservative majority significantly curtailed the consideration of race when drawing legislative maps. 

Until now, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has limited states from using maps that dilute the voting power of minority citizens.

“If the Supreme Court does decide to gut or significantly weaken Section 2 of the VRA, we’re very concerned that it would give, basically, the green light to states to racially gerrymander,” Michael McNulty, policy director at Issue One, a group focused on protecting American democracy, said in an interview ahead of the decision.

Republicans could ultimately secure up to 19 U.S. House seats nationally directly because of the Supreme Court’s decision, according to a projection by Fair Fight Action, a Georgia-based progressive voting rights group, and the Black Voters Matter Fund, which advocates on behalf of Black voters. At the state level, the groups have projected that Republicans could gain up to 200 state legislative seats across the South. 

“It is hard to overstate what an earthquake this will be for American politics,” Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA School of Law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, wrote in a blog post following the opinion’s release on Wednesday.

A group of white voters challenged Louisiana’s congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander after the state in 2024 created a second district where a majority of voters are Black. 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices agreed, ruling 6-3 that the map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because the state didn’t need to create a second majority-minority district.

In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “none of the historical evidence presented by plaintiffs came close to showing an objective likelihood that the State’s challenged map was the result of intentional racial discrimination.”

Justice Elena Kagan, one of the court’s three liberal justices, wrote in a dissent that the Supreme Court has “had its sights set” on the Voting Rights Act for more than a decade.

“Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” Kagan wrote.

Following the opinion, Republican-led legislatures across the South are expected to move to break apart Democratic districts where a majority of residents are Black or from other minority groups. 

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, called on the state legislature to reconvene and redraw the state’s congressional districts to create another Republican-held seat in Memphis. Blackburn, who is running for governor, said an additional seat is essential to cement President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves last week announced a special session to redraw the state’s Supreme Court districts, to begin 21 days after the court releases its decision.

“It is a decision that could (and in my view should) forever change the way we draw electoral maps,” Reeves said in a statement announcing the session.

Although the Supreme Court case centered on Louisiana, state officials are likely out of time to adopt a new map for this year’s election. The primary election is set for May 16.

Still, Louisiana will be free to pursue redistricting next year.

U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, Sr., a Democrat who represents one of the state’s two majority-minority districts, said the court’s decision was a “devastating blow” to the promise of equal representation.

“This ruling is about far more than lines on a map — it’s about whether Black Louisianians will have a meaningful opportunity to make their voices heard,” Carter said in a statement.

As of 2024, roughly a third of U.S. House seats represented majority-minority districts — 122 held by Democrats and 26 held by Republicans, according to estimates by Ballotpedia. Texas and California account for nearly half of all the districts.

Seven states have already taken the extraordinary step of redrawing their maps this year after President Donald Trump urged Republicans to draw lines that maximize partisan advantage ahead of the midterms. Maps are typically redrawn every 10 years after the census.

Texas and California struck first, followed by Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah. Virginia voters last week approved a redraw, and Florida lawmakers approved a new map Wednesday. 

All told, Republicans may emerge from the redistricting war with a small net advantage of a handful of seats if the Florida plan is enacted and the other maps are upheld.

The calendar will prove a major obstacle to additional gerrymanders this year. Primary elections have already been held in some southern states and ballots have been distributed in others. 

Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas have already held primaries, while ballots have been distributed in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. 

But after November the clock resets, giving states more than a year to pursue further changes to their maps before the 2028 election.

“We are much more concerned about the impact on 2028 and beyond that that would have, letting these politicians basically just pick their voters instead of the voters picking them,” McNulty said.

As Democrats look ahead to Callais’ likely fallout in the coming years, they have begun urgently calling for action in Congress and at the state level. They also say the decision emphasizes the stakes of this year’s elections.

“Today is a devastating day for democracy and a wake-up call for all those who seek to protect it,” Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in a statement.

Democrats in Congress have repeatedly offered the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Named after the civil rights activist and Georgia congressman who died in 2020, the legislation aims to strengthen Section 2 and other elements of the current Voting Rights Act, though it’s unclear whether the bill would be constitutional under the Callais decision.

The U.S. House, under Democratic control, passed the legislation in 2021 but it was filibustered in the Senate. Some lawmakers are speaking about the measure again, and Democrats may take control of Congress in November’s elections—though they would still face President Donald Trump in the White House. 

“We can and must revive the Voting Rights Act,” Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat and the ranking member of the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections, said at a shadow hearing on voting rights on Monday.

For their part, Republicans hailed the Supreme Court decision as long overdue.

U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, in a statement said “activists” for too long had manipulated the redistricting process to achieve political outcomes, dividing Americans in the process.

“The Supreme Court made clear that our elections should be decided by voters, not engineered through unconstitutional mandates,” Hudson said.

Over more than a decade, the Supreme Court has narrowed the potency of the Voting Rights Act, a 1965 law banning racial discrimination in voting that came as Congress battled Jim Crow laws in southern states. 

The measure was intended to help enforce the U.S. Constitution’s 14th and 15th amendments, which guarantee equal protection under the law and prohibit denying the right to vote on the basis of race.

In 2013, the court effectively halted preclearance — the requirement that some states and local governments with a history of discrimination obtain federal permission before changing their voting practices. At the time of the decision, most southern states and a handful of others were subject to preclearance.

The Supreme Court in 2019 ruled that federal courts cannot review allegations of partisan gerrymandering. The decision cleared the way for state lawmakers to gerrymander their maps for political advantage without fear they would be second-guessed by federal judges. 

The opinion helped empower a wave of gerrymanders after the 2020 census and set the stage for this year’s mid-decade redistricting.

Facing a bleak federal landscape, some voting rights advocates are increasingly turning to state legislatures. The Supreme Court decision undercutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act will likely intensify efforts to advance state-level legislation.

“Because political participation is inherently local, it is imperative to press for protections at the ground level,” Todd Cox, associate director counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, a racial justice legal organization, said at the shadow hearing.

Some Democratic state lawmakers already introduced measures in anticipation of an unfavorable Supreme Court decision.

The Illinois House last week approved a state constitutional amendment that would require districts to be drawn “to ensure that no citizen is denied an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of his or her choice on account of race.”

The Illinois amendment would also require, where practical, the creation of racial coalition or influence districts — terms that refer to districts where racial minorities together constitute a majority of residents. The measure, which must also pass the state Senate before going to voters, was a pre-response to the Callais opinion.

“This will ensure that Illinois will always recognize the fundamental principle that a democracy of the people, by the people and for the people must include all the people,” Illinois Democratic House Speaker Emanuel Welch told reporters after the amendment advanced.

Illinois Republicans have cast the amendment as a Democratic power grab. The state has some of the most gerrymandered maps in the nation, Illinois House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, a Republican, said in a statement. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project has given Illinois’ maps an overall “F” grade.

“Let’s be clear: this has nothing to do with strengthening democracy,” McCombie said. “It’s about locking in one-party control at any cost.”

TOPEKA — Senate President Ty Masterson says the Kansas Legislature justifiably flexed its political muscle to approve a bill mandating public schools administer fitness tests to students in first through 12th grades and require 30 minutes of unstructured recess for elementary students.

Gov. Laura Kelly disagreed enough with Masterson, and a majority of his colleagues in the House and Senate, to veto House Bill 2763. It mandated the Kansas State Board of Education initiate this year the physical fitness test and implement by 2027 the directive on recess.

“This veto by Laura Kelly is absurd,” said Masterson, who seeks the Republican nomination for governor in a bid to fill Kelly’s shoes in January. “When I’m governor next year, this bill will become law.”

He said state government had a vested interest in requiring school districts to improve the health of children and to promote healthy habits that might be sustained for a lifetime.

Under the bill passed 74-47 in the House and 29-11 in the Senate, recess couldn’t be limited or withheld for disciplinary reasons unless a student was viewed as an immediate threat.

Kelly, a Democrat nearing the end of her second term as governor, supported the idea that elementary students needed at least 30 minutes of recess every day at school. Recess is capable of enhancing the ability of students to learn in the classroom, she said.

She also welcomed implementation of the annual fitness test for students to comply with requirements for receiving federal funding for a rural health initiative. Students with a disability or those with a medical excuse confirmed by a physician would be exempt.

Kelly said elected members of the state Board of Education were committed to fitness tests for students once federal officials issued guidance to states. In addition, the governor said, state education leaders pledged to affirm a recommendation that districts deliver a minimum 30 minutes of recess daily.

“I appreciate the state Board of Education’s willingness to use its constitutional authority to modify curriculum requirements,” Kelly said.

Meanwhile, the governor decided Monday to veto House Bill 2515, which would have allowed gold and silver coins to be recognized as legal currency in Kansas. The legislation would have eliminated the state’s income tax on capital gains from exchange of the precious metals. In addition, the bill removed new legal tender from the state’s sales and property taxes.

Kelly said she vetoed HB 2515 because the act would benefit a subsection of Kansas investors and decrease the revenue necessary to operate state government.

“I have made it a priority during my administration to find ways to reduce the tax burden for Kansans, best evidenced by the elimination of both the food sales tax and the state income tax on Social Security,” she said. “I have also made it a priority to protect the state’s ability to meet its obligations to fund schools, build roads, take care of foster children and other essential services, while ensuring the long-term financial health of the state.”

Kelly vetoed House Bill 2111, which was passed by the Senate on a vote of 27-13 and by the House with a 71-49 vote.

She said the bill was designed to inhibit local government regulation of a new class of agritourism businesses. It was improper for the state to infringe on the cities and counties best positioned to partner with businesses engaged in tourism associated with the agriculture economy, she said.

She said the legislation was requested by a single business and rammed though the legislative process at the end of the annual session.

“It is irresponsible for the Legislature to rush to amend state law on behalf of a single entity when the changes contained in this bill could have far-reaching negative consequences,” Kelly said.

Kelly also vetoed House Bill 2044, which would have provided a state income tax exemption for individuals serving on active duty in the U.S. military. It was unanimously approved by the Senate and by a margin of 116-4 in the House.

Because the House and Senate have officially ended their sessions for the year, Kelly’s vetoes of these bills cannot be overriden.

In recent springs, I’ve woken up long before dawn and walked out onto the Konza Native Tallgrass Prairie. I did this to watch unique birds, the greater prairie chickens, on their leks. In the low light, I’ve seen the males start to stomp and boom, defending territory that their kind have danced on for centuries. It is a reminder that these birds are more than just wildlife; they are part of our cultural and ecological heritage.

I have not yet seen the dance of the lesser prairie chicken, a smaller species that relies on the arid short-grass regions of the southern Great Plains. More than 70 percent of the estimated lesser prairie chicken population resides in Kansas, and the species’ population has been declining.

I hope to witness their displays soon, but with recent events, that hope feels fragile.

On Aug. 12, a federal court in Texas removed Endangered Species Act protections for the lesser prairie chicken. As Jackie Augustine of Audubon of Kansas wrote in Kansas Reflector last year, this decision is a major blow to the species, which has fought an uphill battle against habitat loss and fragmentation for decades. The protections that were stripped away existed for a reason. Without them, the bird edges ever closer to extinction.

This is not the first time protections have been rolled back. Every time it happens, the burden falls not only on the species but also on landowners and conservationists trying to plan for the future. A shifting, uncertain regulatory landscape undermines long-term solutions. It tells people who want to help — like ranchers managing grasslands or young conservationists like myself — that their efforts might not matter.

I’ll admit, there are times when it feels lonely to care so deeply about conservation.

At Kansas State University, where I help lead the KSU Birding Club, we organized a letter-writing campaign to our senators and representatives urging them to support prairie chicken protections by voting “no” on H.R. 587, which was sponsored by Republican Rep. Tracey Mann, and S. 171, which was sponsored by Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.

We sent more thsn 40 letters. We never received a single response. Experiences like that can make anyone, especially young people, feel as if our voices are too quiet to matter.

Since then, I have met with other student leaders from across the country who are fighting for birds in their own communities. They reminded me that conservation is not something we do alone. It’s a collective effort, one that requires persistence, collaboration, and hope.

Together, we can push back against the forces that threaten species like the lesser prairie chicken. The court decision in Texas may have erased their current protections, but it cannot erase the truth: These birds are significant, both biologically and culturally. Losing them would mean losing an irreplaceable part of our prairie heritage.

Kansas can add their voices to the conversation in several ways..

• They can write to legislators and other elected officials to share their experiences, even if responses don’t always come.
• They can support landowners who keep grasslands intact, participate in conservation, or volunteer to restore prairie habitat.
• They can ioin a bird club (Find a Local Audubon Chapter), attend a prairie chicken festival (Kansas Lek Treks), or bring someone new into the world of birding.

We need all these efforts. We need ranchers and biologists, students and retirees, birders and policymakers. Saving the lesser prairie chicken isn’t just about a single bird, it’s about keeping the prairie alive for generations to come.

When I finally get the chance to sit in a blind and watch lesser prairie chickens dance, I want to know that I’m not witnessing the end of a story, but a chapter in a story of resilience and recovery. That is something we can only achieve together.

Jacob Riggs is a current electrical engineering senior at Kansas State University and president and founder of the bird club. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday obtained a second grand jury indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, long a target of President Donald Trump’s anger for overseeing an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

A federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted Comey related to a photo he posted on social media of seashells arranged to read “86 47.” Comey took the photo while vacationing in North Carolina last year. The indictment alleges that Comey threatened to harm the president and that he used interstate commerce to transmit the threat when he posted the photo.

An arrest warrant was also issued for Comey. The indictment alleges that a “reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances” would interpret the seashell photo as a serious expression of intent to harm Trump.

Trump supporters have interpreted the photo as a threat against the president, since “86” is a slang term for removing something and “47” could be seen as a reference to Trump as the 47th president. Comey has said the photo wasn’t intended as a call to violence and deleted the post.

“While this case is unique and this indictment stands out because of the name of the defendant, his alleged conduct is the same kind of conduct that we will never tolerate and that we will always investigate and regularly prosecute,” acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a Justice Department news conference.

In a video posted online after the indictment, Comey said he was “still innocent” and wasn’t afraid. 

“Well, they’re back,” he says at the start of the video.

“It’s really important that all of us remember this is not who we are as a country, this is not how the Department of Justice is supposed to be,” Comey said. “The good news is we get closer every day to restoring those values. Keep the faith.”

A federal grand jury in Virginia indicted Comey in September, accusing him of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding. The allegations relate to his testimony in 2020 about the FBI’s investigation into links between Russia and the Trump campaign. The indictment came days before the statute of limitations ran out.

Comey pleaded not guilty before a federal judge dismissed the case in November, finding the prosecutor in the case had been illegally appointed. The judge also dismissed a separate case against Democratic New York Attorney General Letita James.

The new indictment marked another escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to prosecute Comey and other political enemies. Last week, the Justice Department obtained an indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that has long angered conservatives. 

Hours before the Justice Department announced the indictment, a federal judge in New York ruled that a wrongful termination lawsuit brought by Comey’s daughter, former federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, could proceed. Maurene Comey claims she was improperly fired from the Justice Department because of her father or for political reasons.

The new prosecution also comes as Blanche, a personal defense attorney for Trump, leads the Justice Department following the departure of Pam Bondi. Trump has not yet nominated a permanent attorney general.

The Tuesday indictment was signed by Matthew Petracca, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

“This is a ridiculous indictment against James Comey. The Department of Justice will lose in court, again,” U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, wrote on social media.

At the news conference, Blanche fielded skeptical questions from reporters about how the case came together and why the criminal case wasn’t brought until nearly a year after the post. He refused to discuss evidence in the case, saying that would be unfair to Comey and prosecutors.

“You are not allowed to threaten the president of the United States of America,” Blanche said. “That’s not my decision, that’s Congress’ decision.”

TOPEKA — A new Kansas law expands tax credits for employers paying for child care services or contributing to community-based child care services. 

Gov. Laura Kelly signed Senate Bill 82 into law Monday, saying it supports child care access and the economy. The bill provides a 75% tax credit for employer costs related to paying for employees’ child care expenses, establishing or expanding a child care program, or paying for referral services to connect employees with child care. 

“Senate Bill 82 helps strengthen child care access while ensuring our economy remains healthy and thriving — making our state more appealing to workers, employers, and families alike,” Kelly said in a news release. “This is smart, commonsense legislation that will make our state stronger.” 

David Jordan, president and CEO of the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund, said in written testimony on the bill that it modernizes tax credits and supports families. 

“When families cannot find or afford child care, parents are forced to reduce work hours or leave the workforce entirely, creating economic stress for families and workforce challenges for employers,” he said. 

Jordan praised the new law, saying employers want to be part of supporting child care and streamlining tax credits will make that easier. 

The bill also included a tax credit for people who purchase lockable gun and ammunition storage and creates a nonrefundable income tax credit of $0.05 for each gallon of E15 or higher ethanol blend fuel sold at retail. 

Kelly also signed the following bipartisan legislation: 

Senate Bill 51 authorizes the chief information security officer to receive audit reports, updates responsibilities of the chief information technology officer and authorizes the office of information technology services to provide certain services.

Senate Bill 300 creates requirements for certain manufacturers of alcoholic liquor regarding corporation income tax and repeals statutory language. 

Senate Bill 430 adds mitragynine, a psychoactive component of kratom, to the schedule I of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act, and reconciles two amendments to specific statutes regarding theft and expungement. 

House Bill 2029 reconciles amendments to statutes amended more than once during the current and prior legislative sessions. 

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson wants to make changes to a Senate-passed bill that would end the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, a move that will further delay funding and prolong the stalemate that began in mid-February. 

The holdup could again interrupt paychecks for workers at the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Emergency Management Agency, both of which are part of DHS. Huge backups in airline security lines resulted in March when TSA officers went without pay for weeks until the administration scrambled to reprogram funds.

Johnson, R-La., has chosen not to negotiate potential tweaks in the funding bill with Senate Democrats, who will be needed to advance it if the House makes alterations.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during a Tuesday afternoon press conference the bill that’s stalled in the House doesn’t “need tweaks.” 

“They’re just stuck. So they come up with, ‘We need some technical changes,’” he said. “Hold up national security for technical changes? It’s absurd. They can pass the bill right now.” 

Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, said during a brief interview she was “flabbergasted” by Johnson’s comments.

She added during the press conference she has “no idea what technical changes they’re looking at.”

The Senate unanimously passed a bill to fund the vast majority of the Department of Homeland Security in late March and again in early April. Johnson hasn’t put it to the House floor for a vote, blocking it from becoming law. 

The legislation doesn’t include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol, a compromise negotiated after Republicans and Democrats were unable to broker agreement on guardrails for immigration enforcement operations. 

Republicans plan to provide upwards of $70 billion in additional spending for ICE and Border Patrol in a party-line budget reconciliation bill they hope to pass in the coming weeks. 

Johnson said last week he believes the “sequencing is important” on when each of the two bills becomes law. But time is running out for the tens of thousands of federal workers, who are about to miss out on their paychecks once again. 

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement the executive order President Donald Trump signed earlier this month to pay all DHS employees despite the funding lapse can only stretch so far. 

“That money is dried up if I continue down this path the first week of May,” Mullin said. “My pay roll through DHS is just over 1.6 billion dollars every 2 weeks so the money is going extremely fast and once that happens there is no emergency funds after that.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he’s working with House GOP leaders to “massage” the DHS funding bill in hopes it will become law sometime soon. 

“I’m very sympathetic,” he said. “We talked last night and he’s got to manage his challenges there. We have to manage our challenges here. But one way or the other, we’ve got to get these agencies funded.”

The disconnect between House Republicans and their Senate GOP counterparts on when to fund DHS is just one of several challenges party leaders are attempting to address this week. 

“We’re trying as best we can to coordinate strategy with the House. But, you know, it’s a unique situation. We’ve got very narrow margins and people with real strong opinions,” Thune said. “So it’s going to take, obviously, I think, the heavy involvement of the White House to bust some of these things loose. But we’re trying as best we can to ensure that we can get all of these issues across the finish line and ultimately on the president’s desk.”

Republican leaders will need the support of their own members as well as at least some Democrats in order to get major legislation, including the DHS funding bill, to Trump. 

But as of midday Tuesday, it didn’t appear they’d looped in key negotiators on possible changes to the Senate-passed spending bill. 

Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt, chairwoman of the subcommittee in charge of funding DHS, said she didn’t know what changes House GOP leaders wanted to make. 

“I am not aware. I just know that we need to find a pathway forward,” she said. “And nobody should be leaving here, or certainly flying off to (congressional delegation trips), until we do.” 

Both chambers of Congress are scheduled to leave on Thursday for a week-long break. 

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, ranking member on the DHS funding panel, said House Republicans hadn’t reached out to him or his staff. 

“I don’t know why he’s making this more complicated than it needs to be,” he said. “Our bill, which passed the Senate 100 to zero, would pass the House easily.”

TOPEKA — Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly on Monday vetoed a bill adopted by the Kansas Legislature to curtail rising property taxes by placing unprecedented restrictions on the ability of cities and counties to increase spending.

House and Senate Republicans secured passage of House Bill 2043 at close of the 2026 session, but the Legislature adjourned rather than wait to see whether the governor accepted or rejected the bill. The decision to leave Topeka on April 11 meant there was no chance for the Legislature to override Kelly’s veto of the bill limiting local government spending increases to a 3% cap or the rate of inflation — whichever was smaller.

Under the bill, decisions by a city or county government to exceed the new benchmark could be blocked if 10% of voters taking part in a previous election for secretary of state signed a petition.

“For the last several years, the Legislature has promised to solve the property tax issue for Kansans. This has always been a false promise,” said Kelly, who acknowledged property taxes were too high. “It is time for the Legislature to partner with our city and county officials to develop a strategy to reduce the property tax burden on their constituents.”

The bill was approved by the House on a vote of 87-35. The Senate pushed it through on a 27-13 vote. If those totals were to hold, and the Legislature were in session, the bill would have had enough support to override the governor.

Despite making property tax relief among the Legislature’s top priorities in 2026, GOP leadership in the House and Senate fought throughout the session on how to accomplish the goal. There was bipartisan concern that rash changes by the Legislature could make it financially difficult for local units of government to operate. Property taxes are primarily levied at the local level, with the exception of 20 mills set aside to fund the state’s public school system.

House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican campaigning for state insurance commissioner, sought approval of bills, including HB 2043, to get at the property tax riddle by limiting local government spending.

He alleged, without evidence, the governor had no intention of signing a bill granting property tax relief and asserted she vetoed it “for purely political reasons.”

“The high cost of property taxes in Kansas has reached crisis level and HB 2043 simply gave taxpayers a voice,” Hawkins said. “If local governments want to raise taxes beyond what families can keep up with, Kansans should have the right to say, ‘No.’ ”

Earlier in the day, Hawkins begged the governor to give the bill careful consideration. The House speaker asked Kelly to “put politics aside and put the people of Kansas first.”

Meanwhile, Senate President Ty Masterson, a Republican from Andover competing for the GOP nomination for governor, maintained the best method of dealing with the property tax question was to amend the Kansas Constitution to set a 3% cap on annual increases in assessed valuation of property. There were bipartisan objections to the constitutional amendment concept because lawmakers concluded cities and counties would secure revenue from other tax sources rather than lower the property tax burden.

Masterson was despondent about the House’s refusal to accept the Senate’s preference for the constitutional amendment option. The Senate president expressed contempt for the House-favored alternative vetoed by Kelly, saying it was merely “better than nothing.”

Kelly unsuccessfully urged the Legislature to consider a package featuring a one-time $250 reduction on vehicle property taxes, a doubling of the current $75,000 residential exemption from the property tax mill levy for schools, and creation of a $60 million state fund to help counties buy down property tax increases.

This outline followed a plan recommended by Democratic Sen. Ethan Corson, who has been endorsed by Kelly in the Democratic Party’s race for governor.

“Legislative leadership never allowed legislators to discuss or vote on my proposal. Instead, they ramrodded through another sure-to-fail, untenable property tax bill,” the governor said.

Cars are objects.

That means they exist in the same physical space as people and dogs and cats and duck-billed platypuses. That means they exist alongside other cars and trucks and mopeds and penny-farthing bicycles.

So why doesn’t anyone act like it?

In recent weeks, driving through my hometown of Lawrence, I have witnessed repeated violations of this basic precept.

Drivers appear ignorant of the concept of physical space. If you stop your car in the middle of the street, other cars cannot pass if there is no space to do so. If you have decided — just as an example — to stop your pickup at a downtown intersection so you may enjoy a leisurely conversation with someone at the driver’s side window, that means that you have stopped traffic.

Cars similarly idle on the city’s main drag for minutes at a time while partygoers disembark or stuff themselves into vehicle interiors like so many drunken harlequins. They block entrances and exits of parking lots, apparently oblivious to the fact that other vehicles also require parking spots.

Please understand, my fellow Lawrence residents: Your car is real! So is your truck!

All of the other vehicles around it are real, too. Regardless of how many hallucinogenic substances you may have ingested, I guarantee you that those cars actually exist.

Rest assured, I’m not talking about sensible and explicable automotive delays. We’ve all had to wait a few moments for cars to pull in and out of spaces, to check for pedestrians, to ensure the overall safety of public motorways.

Likewise, car breakdowns and other emergencies happen. As someone whose car once broke down while leaving the 23rd Street Wendy’s, I sympathize with my whole soul.

But in the world that I grew up in, if you experienced such a situation, your entire body would throb with shame as you tried signaling to other drivers that something unexpected had happened, that you were very sorry, and that you were working to allow them to pass as soon as possible.

What I’m talking about here is someone deciding in the middle of a full-on residential street to stop their car in the middle of the road and have a full-blown conversation with another person. Not a couple of words, mind you, not a “hello” or a friendly wave.

I’m describing a minutes-long conversation in which each person uses multiple hand gestures while expostulating at length.

Don’t get me started on the delivery trucks serving a major online retailer, either. While this retailer’s founder relishes ripping apart the storied journalistic legacy of the Washington Post, its employees make a regular practice of stopping their delivery vehicles in the middle of the road. Could they use the driveway? Sure. Could they pull over into a parking space? Sure.

But the corporate incentives driving the mass adoption of AI-generated slop are also forcing these drivers to turn their vehicles into insurmountable obstacles across the nation’s streets.

I am a relic. I am a fossil. I am an impossibly old person who remembers that at one point, roads were used to actually move from one location to another. You would enter the car — a motorized conveyance running on some sort of fuel — and steer it to another place while using the road.

I am old enough to sincerely believe that we all collaborate in a global project of a civilization. That means looking out for one another, protecting our shared spaces and upholding social norms. (This also means realizing that Ayn Rand’s books are terrible.)

This means understanding that there is a reason why Christianity has lasted two millennia, and it has more to do with Jesus teaching “love your neighbor as yourself” than with verses about killing your enemy’s children.

It’s not fun to put others ahead of yourself.

It’s not enjoyable to think about what others need in their day-to-day lives.

But guess what: That’s the world in which we live. There’s no other one to go to right now.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

The U.S. Supreme Court could be ready to overturn a Missouri state court verdict that favored a man who sued the manufacturer of the popular herbicide Roundup for lacking any warning that the product carried a risk of cancer after oral arguments in the case Monday.

The arguments focused on whether states could enforce their own labeling requirements of pesticides, or whether federal law preempted any deviation among states. Members of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority emphasized the need for uniformity across the country.

The U.S. Department of Justice intervened in the case in favor of Monsanto, the Missouri-based company that manufactures Roundup and has been owned since 2018 by German pharmaceutical company Bayer. The company faces thousands of lawsuits claiming exposure to Roundup increased a risk of cancer and that the company failed to warn consumers when it reasonably should have known of the risk.

Monsanto denies that the product causes cancer, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has consistently agreed.

John Durnell, a St. Louis resident, sued the company in 2019 claiming that exposure to Roundup over two decades led to his developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. A Missouri trial court awarded him $1.25 million, and appeals courts affirmed the ruling.

But the Supreme Court, which is the first federal court to hear the case, seemed inclined to protect federal supremacy. The EPA, which regulates labeling requirements for herbicides, does not require the kind of warning the Missouri jury said was appropriate.

Federal law typically trumps state law, which Monsanto and the Justice Department emphasized Monday. Industry groups across the economy tend to support federal supremacy because it saves companies from complying with 50 separate regulatory schemes across states.

An exchange between Ashley Keller, the attorney for Durnell, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whom President Donald Trump appointed in his first term, may hold the key to the court’s ultimate ruling.

Keller argued that Congress in the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, which governs herbicide use, did not include a clause to expressly say that the federal law would preempt any state claims.

There was no issue of a difference between state and federal law, Keller said. Instead, a particular jury decided a single case based on unique facts, he continued. Different juries in other cases may have decided differently.

But Kavanaugh seemed not to accept that argument. He rephrased a similar question several times, and, even as Keller objected, appeared to dismiss the idea that the Missouri verdict was compatible with a national standard.

“You think it’s uniformity when each state can require different things?” he asked.

Keller rejected that framing. 

“The label’s illegal in one state and legal in another state,” Kavanaugh responded. “That’s uniformity?” 

Keller said he didn’t agree with that premise either, saying the label is not illegal based on the state but based on the facts presented at trial and the jury’s interpretation.

“The label subjects you to liability in one state and does not subject you to liability in another state,” Kavanaugh continued. “Is that uniformity?”

“I don’t think it’s state by state,” Keller said. “I think it’s jury by jury.”

Paul Clement, a well-known conservative appeals lawyer, represented Monsanto in the case, and described Keller’s argument as chaotic. It would not just open up separate regulatory regimes in each state in the country, but subject manufacturers to liability based on the makeup of any particular batch of citizens on a state court jury.

“It’s worse than 50 states,” he said. “It’s every jury is a new day.” 

A host of agencies in countries across the globe have all done studies on glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, Clement said.

“It’s probably the most, like, studied herbicide in the history of man, and they’ve all reached the conclusion based on more data and the kind of expert analysis they can do that there isn’t a risk here,” he said. “You shouldn’t let a single Missouri jury second-guess that judgment.”

The court’s liberal justices spent more time questioning why states shouldn’t be allowed to enforce stricter regulations.

Justice Elena Kagan asked Principal Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris, who argued on behalf of the federal government in favor of throwing out the verdict against Monsanto, if she agreed with Clement’s argument.

Harris said she largely agreed, noting that 50 states setting up separate regulations on labeling pesticides would cause confusion.

But Kagan asked why uniformity should be a higher goal than safety, saying a certain state government might have a better understanding than the EPA.

“It does undermine uniformity, I appreciate that,” Kagan said. “On the other hand, if it turns out that they (state regulators) were right, it might have been good if they had an opportunity to do something to call this danger to the attention of the people while the federal government was going through its process.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also pointed out that the EPA only registers herbicides once every 15 years, meaning that states might have better information than the EPA, especially later in that cycle.

“Lots of things can happen in science in terms of developments about the product,” she told Clement. “So if the product can become misbranded because of new information, I guess I’m just wondering why you think that you couldn’t have a situation where it would be perfectly rational for either the EPA or the states to bring to the attention of that manufacturer this new information and process a claim related to it.”

WASHINGTON — The California man said by federal prosecutors to have opened fire just outside the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where President Donald Trump was in attendance alongside Cabinet members and lawmakers, was charged Monday with attempting to assassinate the president, administration officials said.

The 31-year-old identified by authorities as Cole Tomas Allen was also arraigned in Washington, D.C., federal court on charges of interstate transportation of a firearm with intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.

He faces up to life in prison if convicted of attempting to kill the president. Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Cabinet members all safely evacuated the Washington Hilton ballroom.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said, “There will be additional charges as this investigation continues to unfold.”

“But make no mistake, this was an attempted assassination of the president of the United States, with the defendant making clear what his intent was, and that intent was to bring down as many of the high-ranking Cabinet officials as he could,” Pirro said at a Monday afternoon press conference with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Allen was not charged with assault on a federal officer, as Pirro had said Saturday night he would be.

One Secret Service agent was shot in the chest but was protected by a bulletproof vest. Blanche said that particular agent had fired five times at Allen. The suspect was not hit but fell to the ground and scraped his knee, according to Blanche and Pirro.

Blanche would not elaborate further on ballistics, including details about a shot Allen allegedly fired.

“All the evidence is being examined very carefully and expeditiously, and we’ll know more soon,” Blanche said.

The federal prosecutors’ complaint is sealed. 

According to a signed affidavit, Allen made a reservation for the Washington Hilton on April 3, for the dates of April 24-26. He left Los Angeles on April 23 and traveled by train to Washington, D.C., via Chicago, according to the court filing, which also includes what investigators and Trump have described as a “manifesto.”  

Allen arrived at the Washington Hilton around 3 p.m. Eastern Friday, a day ahead of the high-profile correspondents’ dinner that annually draws administration officials, lawmakers, celebrities and often the president himself. 

Trump, opting to skip the event in previous years, was attending the dinner for the first time. Vice President JD Vance and many of Trump’s Cabinet members were in attendance, as was House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. — several in the presidential line of succession. 

According to the affidavit, at 8:40 p.m. Allen “approached and ran through the magnetometer holding a long gun” at a security checkpoint on the hotel’s Terrace level leading to the Concourse level, where the dinner was ongoing.

“As he did so, U.S. Secret Service personnel assigned to the checkpoint heard a loud gunshot. U.S. Secret Service Officer V.G. was shot once in the chest; Officer V.G. was wearing a ballistic vest at the time. Officer V.G. drew his service weapon and fired multiple times at ALLEN, who fell to the ground and suffered minor injuries but was not shot. ALLEN was subsequently arrested,” according to the affidavit.

Allen was carrying a 12-gauge pump action shotgun and a .38 caliber pistol, according to the court document. Pirro also said the suspect had on him “at least three knives and all kinds of paraphernalia.”

When pressed by a journalist on how investigators know that Trump was Allen’s primary target, Blanche said he could not share details. 

“We’re a day-and-a-half into the investigation. As we talked about earlier, we were able to get multiple devices from various locations, the hotel room and also where he lived in California. We have started that process. There’s nothing more that would be appropriate to share at this time, until we have thoroughly gone through it, which we’re doing,” Blanche said.

Trump publicly shared photos of the man identified as Allen, shirtless and handcuffed on the hotel floor, Sunday night.

During Monday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described Saturday’s incident as an attempt on Trump’s life, and she denounced political violence while blaming Democrats and the left for “fueling” it. 

“This political violence stems from a systemic demonization of him and his supporters by commentators, yes, by elected members of the Democrat Party and even some in the media,” Leavitt said.

“Those who constantly falsely label and slander the president as a fascist, as a threat to democracy and compare him to Hitler to score political points, are fueling this kind of violence,” she said. 

Blanche also decried critics for “calling the president horrible names for no reason and without evidence, without proof.” 

Republican party campaigners also delivered a similar message Monday, implicating Democrats’ “reckless, inflammatory rhetoric against President Trump and Republicans.” The committee’s chair, Joe Gruters, also accused Democrats in a statement released Monday of not speaking out against the attack.

Trump routinely namecalls and ridicules his political foes and the press on his social media platform, Truth Social, and in speeches. In a post Friday, the president called Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries a “Low IQ individual who is not smart enough to be ‘running’ the Democrat Party.”

Upon the death in March of former FBI director and decorated combat veteran Robert Mueller, Trump wrote on social media, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.”

During a November press gaggle on Air Force One, Trump told a female reporter from Bloomberg, “Quiet, Piggy,” as she asked a question.

Leavitt also blamed Democrats for the monthslong shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, under which the Secret Service operates.

“This is a national emergency, and every member of Congress needs to put their country over party and get the Department of Homeland Security funded,” Leavitt said. The shutdown occurred after Democrats insisted on new guardrails for federal immigration agents following the deadly shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.

Leavitt said Trump “continues to have trust in the Secret Service” and “was satisfied with the response.” 

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles will convene a meeting with top DHS leadership, members of the Secret Service and White House operations officials “to ensure safety and the security of the president,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt also advocated for the president’s proposed ballroom construction, calling it “critical for our national security” during large events where several officials and lawmakers in line for the presidency gather together.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation legally challenged the construction of the ballroom, for which Trump demolished the East Wing in October. 

Blanche shared a letter on social media Sunday urging the trust to drop its lawsuit by 9 a.m. Eastern on Monday and blaming it for putting “the lives of the president, his family and his staff at great risk.”

The organization responded in a letter that it would not drop the case.

The Trust’s President and CEO Carol Quillen said in a statement the organization is “grateful” to law enforcement for keeping Trump and all guests safe over the weekend.

“We are not planning to voluntarily dismiss our lawsuit, which endangers no one and which respectfully asks the administration to follow the law. Ballroom construction is continuing unabated until June 5th at the earliest because the injunction is on hold,” Quillen said in a statement provided to States Newsroom.

“We have always acknowledged the utility of a larger meeting space at the White House. Building it lawfully requires the approval of Congress, which the administration could seek at any time.”

TOPEKA — A “civil justice crisis” in state courts and across the country requires systemic change, and Kansas’ multifaceted approach is making a difference, a Kansas Supreme Court justice said Monday.

The state is addressing attorney shortages in rural areas and adding self-help resources for Kansans representing themselves, among other projects designed to make the legal system more accessible, said Justice K.J. Wall. He spoke at the third annual Kansas Access to Justice Summit, held at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library. 

The summit is a collaboration of five Supreme Court committees, including the Rural Justice Initiative Committee, the Language Access Committee, and two Kansas Bar Association committees. 

“State courts across the United States handle about 98% of all civil disputes, which is pretty incredible, and the data suggests that at least one party is self-represented in approximately 75% of those civil cases, and it bumps up to 90% for debt collection,” Wall said. 

Kansas legal officials began creating virtual and onsite help centers, Wall said, as they recognized the increase in people who, by choice or because they can’t find or pay for an attorney, represent themselves.

“We’ve added 21 new court-based self-help centers in 2025 and two new library-based self-help centers,” he said.

A virtual self-help center that went online last year logs 11,000 visits daily, Wall said. Access to Justice grants totaling $900,000 support “critical legal aid,” translate forms into multiple languages, and support alternative dispute resolution services, such as mediation, he said. 

About 67% of all protection orders filed in the state last year were filed through an online protection order portal that’s been successful, he said. 

Legislation passed this year creates a standing Rural Justice Committee, the fruition of more than five years of work to encourage lawyers to move to rural communities, Wall said. 

“It’s in its infancy, but we’re looking to have programs kicking off in fiscal year 2027 and 2028,” he said.

Those will pay stipends to attorneys willing to locate in rural communities and also offer student loan payback options for practicing in rural areas, Wall said. 

Underlying the access issues is an increasing number of people who don’t trust the justice system, Wall said. 

Research indicates that low-income Americans felt they didn’t receive enough or any legal help for 92% of their civil problems, he said. 

“The bottom line is, I believe that fairness, equity and justice demand an institutional response, and that’s what we’re doing here,” Wall said. “I think that the response is not only morally justified, but I think it’s essential to the credibility of the judicial branch as a democratic institution.”

Institutions, in general, are facing an “incredible credibility crisis,” Wall said, with about 62% of Americans reporting a “great deal” or “some” trust in state court systems. 

“That’s a dramatic decline in comparison to decades prior,” he said. “Within that group, only 44% of Americans believe state courts provide equal justice to all. Data shows that there are more Americans than ever in our history that perceive a two-tier justice system, one for the connected and resourced, and another for everybody else.”

The cost of legal assistance and complex court processes are the top public concerns impacting those perceptions, Wall said.

Social science research shows that procedural justice reforms and access to justice measures like those being done in Kansas make a significant difference in the perception that there is an equity gap, he said. 

“Where these measures are available, litigants report statistically significantly higher perception of fairness,” Wall said. “They report greater trust in government institutions. They’re more likely to comply with court orders and to follow the law. That’s what we’re striving for.”

David Rebein is a trial lawyer in Dodge City, and past president of the Kansas Bar Association and the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association. In his rural community, steps being taken as part of the Access to Justice process are needed, he said in a call with Kansas Reflector. 

“We have a large immigrant population, and so you have people that are really not familiar with the system,” he said. “There might be a language barrier. There’s a lack of attorneys that are bilingual. Far and away the greater percentage of family law cases are people trying to represent themselves, without any training, without any information.”

Rural communities have trouble attracting attorneys to practice there for the same reasons that other professions struggle, such as doctors and accountants, Rebein said. Small towns fight the stigma that there’s nothing to do, that there aren’t enough people to socialize with and date, and that they somehow are a step down from urban centers, he said. 

However, opportunities in rural communities can be “tremendous,” he said, including legal work for utilities, oil and gas industry, and agriculture.

Isolation can be an issue, and Rebein said the state needs groups that support lawyers through professional advancement and support, and that can recruit lawyers to rural areas. He’d like to see that recruitment with all the focus and energy typically given to economic development. 

“In Dodge City, we have a cheese factory,” he said. “It took us 25 years to get it. It’s 600 jobs. We did everything. It was money from the state, money from the federal government. The community came together. The county came together. The city came together. And yet, when it comes to recruitment of professionals, we don’t do nearly that much.”

TOPEKA — Members of No Labels Kansas Party unanimously selected a former Kansas Republican Party official and Kansans for Life political action committee director to serve as chairman of the alternative political organization founded two years ago.

Chairman David Miller said No Labels Kansas, which claims more than 6,000 members, was committed to challenging the political establishment in Topeka and competing with the dominant GOP and Democratic parties. He said No Labels Kansas would likely draw enough members to become the state’s third-largest party by November.

“We intend to give voters a real choice at the ballot box rather than being forced to choose between two candidates representing the ‘uniparty’ that runs Topeka,” Miller said. “We expect the establishment to attempt to quash any competition, but are prepared to fight to build a strong, viable alternative.”

Miller, of Eudora, said Kansans were weary of choosing among candidates preferred by a Republican Party hitched to “big business” and a Democratic Party smitten by “big government.”

He said the Kansas Legislature performed admirably for more than a century as it sought to represent the state’s shared values, background and common interests. He asserted Kansans lost faith on the two major parties as the Legislature decided to award itself a 93% salary increase in 2025, to scale back its legislative work week to four days during a four-month annual session and to engage in layering their retirement packages with “perks and privileges.”

“Kansans need to decide if being governed by an elitist professional political class is what they want out of their state government. I doubt it,” Miller said.

No Labels Kansas treasurer John Altevogt, of Tonganoxie, said bipartisan passage by the Legislature of state economic development incentives to bring the Kansas City Chiefs across the state line to Kansas amounted to socialism. The state government and owners of the Chiefs agreed to a public-private financing plan to build a domed NFL stadium in Wyandotte County and to construct a separate headquarters and practice facility for the football franchise in Johnson County.

“The saddling of local taxpayers with higher taxes and yet-to-be-revealed infrastructure costs to subsidize the out-of-state billionaire Hunt family is the worst kind of socialism and a glaring example that both parties have become little more than two heads of the same snake,” Altevogt said.

The selection of Miller to chair No Labels Kansas followed recent announcement of a merger between two minor political parties in Kansas. The Free State Party and United Kansas Party, which seek to drive Kansas to the political center, plan to operate as United Kansas, the Free State Party.

A New York City mom and domestic violence survivor felt a flashback of fear when she received a notice in March that the emergency housing voucher she and her son have relied on since 2023 will run out soon.

“It felt like the rug was pulled out from under me,” said Nyla B., who did not want her last name used to protect her safety. “I remember how hard it was to get housing when I left. I didn’t want to go back to a shelter with my son, who has health needs. The thought of being homeless again — or going back to my abuser — came rushing back.”

Nyla and other renters housed through the federal Emergency Housing Voucher program face a looming deadline to find alternative housing assistance, after the Trump administration announced that funding will run out earlier than expected. The program, created by Congress in 2021 and initially expected to last through 2030, has helped people at risk of or experiencing homelessness as well as those fleeing domestic or dating violence, stalking or human trafficking.

But with funding ending this year, some renters have been provided little guidance on what to do next. Some cities are transitioning them to other programs, but others are struggling with how to ensure the recipients don’t end up homeless. Some housing advocates say cities had plenty of warning about the end of funding and yet some didn’t act fast enough.

Across the country, the program has provided roughly 70,000 vouchers across more than 600 local public housing authorities.

Unlike other ongoing federal housing programs such as Section 8, the Emergency Housing Voucher program was crafted as extra pandemic-era assistance. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced in March 2025 that funding would run out for the program in late 2026, effectively accelerating the end of the initiative years ahead of its original timeline. HUD said the money went faster than expected “due to historic increases in rental prices.”

HUD did not answer Stateline questions about the program.

In New York, Nyla was accepted into the program in the summer of 2022, found an apartment a year later, and moved in by fall 2023. Before that, she spent years living with relatives after leaving her abuser in 2016, because the lingering financial abuse and trauma made it difficult to secure stable housing on her own, she said.

Nyla received an initial notice warning of the program’s diminishing funds in August 2025. A second letter in March informed her that the program would run out of money in 2026. Now, she could be evicted and lose her home.

Transitioning to Section 8

As of April 15, more than 47,000  emergency vouchers remained actively leased, according to HUD. That’s a drop from roughly 59,000 in April 2025.

Vouchers are heavily concentrated in large coastal and urban states, with the two highest cluster of voucher recipients in New York City (5,125 vouchers) and the Los Angeles region (2,823 in the city and 1,624 in the county). Additional concentrations are spread across New York state agencies (1,772 and 1,385) and other major metros — including Chicago (615), Philadelphia (716), the Seattle area (689), and Santa Clara County, California (591).

Before the end of 2025, some housing authorities began preparing for the elimination of the emergency vouchers, such as adjustments made to the Chicago Housing Authority’s fiscal 2026 budget.

For city programs that had relatively low numbers of voucher holders, such as the 45 recipients in Iowa City, Iowa, the city will transition them into the regular Section 8 federal Housing Choice Voucher program without having to reopen the waitlist.

New York City Housing Authority officials originally planned to transition people from emergency vouchers to regular Section 8 vouchers, but were unable to do so because the agency lacks funding and is in “shortfall status.” The city said it sought a federal waiver from that requirement but was denied.

The agency says it has about 5,200 active Emergency Housing Voucher participants, but lacks the funding to move them into the regular Section 8 program. Instead, the agency is urging participants to apply for public housing by May 1, after which it will begin trying to match eligible households to vacant units.

But officials say they cannot guarantee placement in another program or apartment.

“Participants must complete a public housing application,” Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Sklar said in an email to Stateline. “NYCHA encourages residents to submit their application by May 1 and will be accepting applications on a rolling basis through the summer.”

But housing advocates believe the agency should have planned better, noting that the Trump administration signaled more than a year ago that funding would run out earlier than expected.

“That wasn’t a secret,” said Gabbi Sandoval Requena of New Destiny Housing, a New York City-based nonprofit that provides housing and services to domestic violence survivors and their families. “There is no public plan from NYCHA for how to transition these households, and the way this was communicated created a lot of anxiety and confusion. For domestic violence survivors, it could mean going back to their abuser — putting their lives and their children’s lives at risk.”

Other city options

A potential lifeline for those losing the emergency vouchers, a separate New York City rental assistance program called CityFHEPS — Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement — is subject of a legal battle over its cost. New Mayor Zohran Mamdani during his campaign had promised to expand the program but instead is continuing a lawsuit to block that expansion, saying it would cost too much money.

City agencies see no perfect solution to keep former emergency voucher recipients housed long term.

Roughly 2,000 additional New Yorkers get emergency housing vouchers from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation & Development. Kim Moscaritolo, a spokesperson for the agency, said the city is attempting to transition those households to a separate, locally funded subsidy — HOME tenant-based rental assistance — that could extend assistance by about two years.

“We are limited by the resources that are available to us, because when a program that’s supposed to last for 10 years suddenly loses funding, it’s always a challenge to figure out how to keep people in their homes,” said Moscaritolo. “It’s not a perfect solution, but it at least extends the opportunity for these folks to have that same sort of housing stability.”

New York Democratic state Sen. Brian Kavanagh introduced legislation that would open up an existing state housing program to those at risk of losing their federal rental subsidies. He and other lawmakers also are fighting to increase state funding for that program.

The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles told Stateline it allocated 3,365 emergency housing vouchers. With the funding for the program set to expire in 2026, the program is no longer accepting new applicants and sent out notices regarding the sunset of the program, a spokesperson told Stateline.

Uncertainty for voucher holders

The loss of these vouchers have some recipients wondering how to stay housed. Do they go back to shelters — which advocates say could be further overwhelmed with evicted voucher holders — or, in some cases, go back to the chaotic situation that led to homelessness in the first place?

Many survivors of domestic violence struggle to leave because they don’t have enough money or a safe place to live. According to a survey by the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, 73% of survivors nationally said their financial situation affected their ability to leave an abusive relationship, while 28% of survivors reported being denied housing due to experiences with domestic violence.

A bill in Nyla’s home state, New York, would prohibit landlords from asking for information or proof from a victim of domestic violence in order to apply for housing.

Nyla recounted being denied on application by landlords when she first looked for apartments after leaving her abuser. She said that landlords were fearful that the situation she left would follow her and possibly cause issues in the apartments she was applying for.

She said finding an apartment became her second job.

“You’re judged before you even say you’re a survivor, and I’m already seen as not reliable, not worthy just for having housing assistance,” she said. “They double-check you, like they don’t believe what’s on your application. And I think regardless of the situation we left, we are deserving of a safe, stable home just like market-rate renters.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

TOPEKA — U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas is pushing back against criticism of the NATO alliance as member nations in Europe take on responsibility for sustaining Ukraine’s fight against Russia and “quietly” assist the United States and Israel in the war against Iran.

Moran, a Republican who has represented Kansas in the U.S. Senate or U.S. House for nearly 30 years, said the conflict with Iran had significant impact on the United States and members of the 32-nation transatlantic military alliance. Since the United States launched military strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, there have been consequences in terms of elevated gas prices, heightened security threats and disrupted trade through the Strait of Hormuz.

“Renewed criticism of the alliance fails to recognize that it is defensive in nature and risks further alienating partners who are essential to an America first policy,” he said.

President Donald Trump denounced NATO as a “paper tiger” for not directly engaging in the war against Iran and not backing an effort to secure the Strait of Hormuz. The president said he was contemplating “absolutely without question” withdrawing the United States from NATO.

Moran said NATO members last year pledged to increase defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product by 2035, which would serve as a greater deterrent to westward encroachment by Russia.

“What is less recognized, however, is the fact that Europeans are already stymieing any such advance. They are now responsible for sustaining Ukraine in its fight against Russia,” Moran said. “While the U.S. shifts focus elsewhere, our European allies are doing the heavy lifting against one of our principal adversaries.”

The senator said alliances existed despite foreign-policy differences among member countries, but the United States “should be careful to not overlook the ways our allies are quietly assisting the U.S. in the conflict against Iran.”

U.S. allies in NATO granted permission to fly through airspace, opened bases to stage missions and offered ports for ships to undergo maintenance, Moran said.

“At a time when our nation’s own budgetary pressures and backlogged industrial base limit our ability to sustain force in multiple theaters simultaneously, we cannot afford to take them for granted,” Moran said.

U.S. Rep. Derek Schmidt, R-Kansas, urged the U.S. Department of Agriculture to promptly address staff shortages at local Farm Service Agency and Natural Resources Conservation Service offices.

He signed onto a letter to USDA raising an alarm about delays in processing applications and payments.

Persistent staff shortages could spread to other USDA programs tied to agriculture production and conservation, the letter said. Deployment of temporary staff in underserved county offices would be insufficient to meet ongoing demand, said the letter signed by Schmidt and 14 other members of Congress.

“To deliver on the promises made to American agriculture, USDA must ensure local offices are staffed and equipped,” Schmidt said. “These programs are essential to managing risk, supporting conservation and keeping operations running. Reliable, timely service is critical to the success of producers and rural communities across Kansas and the country.”

Schmidt represents a district that runs from Nebraska to Oklahoma in eastern Kansas. No other member of the Kansas congressional delegation signed the letter to USDA.

U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, a Kansas Democrat serving all of Johnson, Miami, Anderson and Franklin counties as well as southern Wyandotte County, said she was concerned breakdowns in forecasting of storms and the early warning system may have put Kansans at risk in mid-April as EF-2 tornadoes hit the 3rd District.

Davids said news reports indicated NWS offices in the Great Plaints didn’t launch weather balloons at 7 a.m. April 13 as they have for decades, apparently because of staffing issues. The decision to release the balloons at noon deprived meteorologists of information on developing storms.

“These irresponsible decisions at the NWS have direct, real-world consequences for the safety of communities across Kansas and the country,” she said. “Kansans should not have to wonder whether the systems designed to protect them are fully operational when severe weather strikes.”

Davids said in hours before tornadoes touched down, the NWS storm prediction center hadn’t identified a tornado threat in northeast Kansas.

Davids said staffing shortages and missing data directly impacted forecast accuracy, reduced warning times and increasing risk to communities in the path of severe weather.

“The fact that Kansans avoided catastrophic loss in this instance does not excuse these breakdowns,” she said. “It underscores how close we came, and what could happen if these failures continue.”

TOPEKA — As a teenager, Sandy Spidel Neumann said someday she would become a U.S. Senator.

When she saw Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall walk out on a town hall after he was confronted by angry constituents, Neumann said she was motivated to run after a 40-year career in the financial services industry. She is now among eight candidates seeking the Democratic party’s nomination to challenge Marshall.

Her career at Ameriprise Financial Services prepared her to apply business principles, such as digging into data and laying out strategies before making a move, to a political role, Spidel Neumann said on the Kansas Reflector podcast.

Many decisions made on the national level aren’t strategic and well considered, such as the Iran war, she said.

“There doesn’t appear to be a strategic policy behind the war,” Spidel Neumann said. “There seems to be a lot of tactics. When you see press conferences, they’re talking about who sank whose battleship. It just seems like it’s more of — unfortunately — a children’s game to them than something that has actual strategic focus and then a plan to actually be executed upon.”

She pointed to loss of the Affordable Care Act’s premium tax credits in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as another example of decisions that lacked forethought and failed to use data.

People on ACA saw healthcare costs jump as much as 30%, she said.

“Is the ACA the end-all, be-all? No, it’s not. But what we have now is data,” Spidel Neumann said. “We have 15 years, 20 years worth of data, so we can take a look at it and say, what’s working, what’s not working, fix the things that aren’t working, and then go about honoring the things that are working.”

The imposition of tariffs also lacked economic strategy, she said, and Kansas farmers were harmed by the negative effects.

“When you throw them on and take them off, it lacks stability, and markets require stability to actually thrive,” Spidel Neumann said. “It’s merely a grift. They’re communicating to their billionaire buddies in front of what they’re doing. They’re pocketing billions off of this.”

Tariffs closed off Chinese markets for Kansas farmers and increased the cost of inputs, which were exacerbated by the Iran war, she said.

Corruption and grift in politics must be addressed, she said. As she’s traveled the state, Spidel Neumann said, people want accountability. They want Democrats to fight, she said.

“Saying you’re someone’s worst enemy or whatnot, it doesn’t make you that,” Spidel Neumann said. “Believe me, I know how to fight. I fought with legal, a lot, in a corporate setting, because they wanted to be more conservative than I needed to be. I needed to be able to be compelling, to get things done and to deliver results that were reported to Wall Street quarterly.”

Finding points of commonality is part of the work and it also requires being forceful, she said.

“You have to fight, and you call them out,” she said. “You are compelling, and you are tough and you are fierce because you are fighting for the people of Kansas. It’s one thing if they come at me. Come at me, bring your best shot. You mess with my people, oh, I’ll take you down.”

The country needs secure borders, but the way U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is handling immigration policies right now is not the “American way,” Spidel Neumann said.

Getting rid of Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary was a good first move, she said. But ICE needs more accountability, training, body cameras and to have goals set not on the number of arrests but on charges that move forward in court.

“Charges means they would actually have a targeted list of who they were going after and what they need to do,” Spidel Neumann said. “Instead, they’re pulling random people out of restaurants, out of hospitals, out of different places, just because they know that by the color of their skin, which is abhorrent at best and should be illegal. And I’m so disappointed in our court, a Supreme Court, for them to allow that.”

Spidel Neumann said it is important for elections to be safe, but noted that data shows they are safe. She opposes “voter intimidation tactics” like having ICE officers at polling places, voter identification laws or eliminating mail-in voting.

Spidel Neumann referred to the August vote Kansans will make to decide whether to change how state Supreme Court judges are put in office. Right now, the nonpartisan Kansas Supreme Court Nominating Commission sends three qualified candidates to the governor, who makes the final selection. If Kansans approve a constitutional change, voters would determine who becomes a Supreme Court judge.

Spidel Neumann said that would mean more advertisements for judges and more “dark money” spent to get judges elected.

“It’s not about Supreme Court justices. It’s about controlling the courts, and controlling the courts means they’re coming at women’s healthcare, they’re coming at education funding, and they’re coming at voting rights,” she said, adding that all three of those are issues younger people care about.

Spidel Neumann would like to see an enforceable code of conduct put in place across all three branches of government to hold them to integrity and transparency.

It’s going to take some time to rebuild trust in the United States around the world, she said.

“It’s horrific what they’re doing with respect to NATO and with respect to other strategic alliances that we have across the board,” Spidel Neumann said. “You’re only as good as your word, and unfortunately, the people who are representing the United States right now are not doing it with the best interests of the country and the world at heart.”

Integrity matters, she said, and it’s something she will bring to the job.

“There should be no insider trading in any of the branches,” Spidel Neumann said. “You do what’s right, for crying out loud.”

Things need to change, she said, and that’s why she chose to run.

“We need to get to a place where it’s not loyalty to a human being,” she said. “We need to adhere to our oath of office, be loyal to the Constitution, stand up, hold people accountable, operate under a code of ethics, deliver and represent the people of Kansas.”

A trail hike can walk you back into your soul. The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve hiking trails provide over 40 miles for you to do so. Located two miles north of Strong City, the preserve is about a 30-minute drive west of Emporia on U.S. Highway 50. There is no charge to visit, and you can go anytime. The park is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The tallgrass prairie is considered one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America. It has been reduced to less than 4% of its original size, once covering over 170 million acres from the United States to Canada. What appears as rolling hills from a distance is a richly biodiverse ecosystem blanketed in tallgrass and wildflowers.

We’re extremely fortunate to have this national preserve in Kansas. It is the only national park unit dedicated to the tallgrass prairie. The Nature Conservancy and the National Park Service jointly manage Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, which is home to bison.

Arriving at the visitor center, I was welcomed by a park ranger. She handed me a map with trail distances and information. Pointed out where the bison are located in Windmill and West Trap pastures, outlined on the map in bold red lines. “If the bison are interested in you, you should probably turn around,” I was warned. It clearly states in print on the map: “Grazing cattle are unpredictable. Use caution and do not disturb them. Stay a football field distance away from the bison (100 yards/92m).”

I came here to see the bison. So I now know that I am in the right place. The Scenic Overlook Trail is where the bison graze. The trailhead is half a mile northwest of the visitor center. At the trail’s entrance gate, there are various warning signs depicting bison catapulting a person into the sky.

My only memory of a bison is one full of ruth. It was 1999, and I was a young teen attending Southwest High School in San Antonio, Texas. Off campus, just down the road, there was a small petting zoo next to a locally owned taco shop. You could visit a bison and a zedonk while sipping on a Big Red soda and eating flavorless hardshell beef tacos.

Back then, what stood out to me was how old, dusty, and tired that bison looked. They shackled his thin leg to an iron post, and metal bars surrounded the dry dirt that was now his home. The bison appeared to be staring off into the distance. It was almost trancelike, as if he were stuck in a vision of a different place. He never made eye contact with any of us watching. He didn’t acknowledge his captivity. He was still above it all — dignity intact.

While hiking the trail, the wind kept gusting at 40 mph, bending the tallgrass like time. A Texas horned lizard greeted me. The meadowlarks stirred like wind chimes singing in a choir of their own, that only the sky could understand. I was getting anxious as I walked through the howling wind. The wind has always been a prophet of change, and there was nothing between me, the rolling prairie, and the big blue sky on these meandering trails. Nature humbles us all.

Turning the corner at the trail bend, I saw him. A large, black-like mass of shadow resting by a tree in the shade, near water, by an open trail, surrounded by tallgrass and prairie flowers, the rolling wind undulating through its fur. This must have been what that bison in Texas was dreaming of.

Huascar Medina is a poet, writer, and performer who lives in Topeka. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

SHAWNEE — Kansas Sen. Cindy Holscher positioned herself at a Sunday night Democratic forum as the anti-establishment candidate for governor with a history of winning in legislative districts formerly held by Republicans.

Her top opponent in seeking the party’s nomination, Kansas Sen. Ethan Corson, argued he is the only one who could win in the November general election.

The candidates staked out nearly identical policy positions during the 50-minute forum at the Aztec Shawnee Theater. The questions were submitted in advance by Kansas Young Democrats.

Both support raising the state’s minimum wage, making it easier to vote, and access to reproductive health care.

And they both identified the Republican supermajorities in the state House and Senate as their real opponent.

Holscher, from Overland Park, said Republicans were unable to lower property taxes during this year’s legislative session, despite their ability to pass anything they want.

“So they keep going back to the culture war issues,” she said. “And this past session, instead of solving actual issues of affordability and putting more money in your pockets, what did we get? We got this bathroom bill. We got two Charlie Kirk bills. None of those are going to put money in your pockets.”

Corson, from Fairway, touted his endorsements from Gov. Laura Kelly, former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, and Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes.

“Leading candidates in the Republican Party want to take Kansas backwards on reproductive freedom, public education and so many other issues,” Corson said. “We cannot let that happen. That is why this campaign has earned the support of trusted leaders who understand both the stakes and what it takes to win a statewide election in Kansas.”

Holscher’s response: “I’m running on my record, not the coattails of the establishment.”

About 150 people showed up to hear the two Johnson County Democrats make their case for the August primary vote. A dozen or more people wore bright blue Holscher T-shirts, and at least a couple donned black Corson T-Shirts. An engaged crowd, and available alcohol, ensured a spirited reaction to comments.

They applauded Corson when he said the city of Leavenworth was wrong to approve a conditional use permit for CoreCivic to reopen its private prison as an immigration detention center.

“I believe that private prisons have no place in our carceral system,” Corson said. “I will never support a private prison being built in Kansas. I will never support an ICE detention facility being built in Kansas.”

But the loudest applause came when Holscher attacked Corson for having taken the maximum campaign donation from CoreCivic during his 2024 Senate campaign, and $5,000 from the law firm representing CoreCivic for his gubernatorial campaign.

“You can’t say you’re against private prisons or ICE detention facilities when your campaigns and personal life are intertwined with that very business,” Holscher said. “I have consistently stood with the community opposing ICE overreach. I have never taken CoreCivic money and never will.”

A spokesman for Holscher later clarified that Corson received donations of $4,000 from Anna Kimbrell on Nov. 19, 2025, and $1,000 from Ed Wilson on Oct. 27, 2025. The two are partners for Kansas City, Missouri, law firm Husch Blackwell, which represented CoreCivic in the company’s lawsuit against Leavenworth.

The start of the forum was delayed 45 minutes because the two candidates discovered the party had given them different sets of rules. Party chair Jeanna Repass declined to say what the discrepancy was, but she insisted it was “minor.”

Before the candidates took the stage amid the rumble of storms outside, there was a moment of silence for the attempted violence Saturday night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

“Just remember,” Repass said, “we don’t solve our differences with violence. We do it by voting.”

Questions touched on affordability, water crisis, young voters and Medicaid expansion.

Corson said the state should invest in building 100,000 houses per year, including 5,000 in rural areas, and work to make higher education accessible to any young person who wants it.

“I’m going to be in my mid-40s, and my wife and I, every single month, are still paying our student loans,” Corson said. “So I understand what it means for higher education to be unaffordable, to feel inaccessible, and to feel like it’s crowding out all these other things that you want to do in your life, whether it’s buying your first home, starting a family.”

Holscher said she wants to hold landlords accountable for high rent and to put a cap on fees. She warned about the threat that water-thirsty data centers pose to farmers. And she pointed out that, as a member of the House in 2017, she helped pass a Medicaid expansion bill — although it was vetoed by then-Gov. Sam Brownback. She also said she worked with the bipartisan caucus that eventually overturned the Brownback tax experiment.

It was her birthday, and her supporters served cake in the lobby.

“If you want someone fighting for the people, you want someone building a broad coalition of nurses, of teachers, people in your neighborhood, farmers, veterans, union members — that’s who I have on my side, not the establishment,” Holscher said.

• April 27, 20269:59 amThis story was updated with information about donations made from Husch Blackwell partners to Ethan Corson's gubernatorial campaign.

The alleged shooter at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C., wrote a “manifesto” ahead of his planned attack, President Donald Trump said in a Sunday morning interview on Fox News and later in the day on the CBS show “60 Minutes.”

Meanwhile, Trump and MAGA allies online said security flaws exposed by the incident prove the need for a new secure ballroom at the White House. Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Cabinet officials were safely evacuated from the Washington Hilton after shots were fired by a suspect said by officials to be armed with a shotgun, handgun and multiple knives.

Multiple news reports Sunday identified the suspected shooter as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California, and The Associated Press said he is a tutor and amateur video game developer. The White House has not released that information publicly and spokespeople did not return a message Sunday.

Fox News Host Jacqui Heinrich used the name in her interview with Trump, who did not use it himself but did not correct Heinrich when she named Allen and called the manifesto “anti-Trump” and “anti-Christian.”

Trump said the document revealed a “hatred” for Christianity.

“The guy is a sick guy,” he said. “When you read his manifesto, he hates Christians. That’s one thing for sure: He hates Christians.”

The New York Post published what the outlet said was the full text of the manifesto, which sought to reconcile the attack with Christian teachings, rather than mock the religion itself. The document was also referenced in the CBS interview, with host Norah O’Donnell saying it characterized members of the administration as targets.

The document lays out a series of objections to a planned attack and the writer’s rebuttals.

“Objection 1: As a Christian, you should turn the other cheek,” Allen wrote, according to the New York Post. 

“Rebuttal: Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed,” he continued. “I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration. Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”

Noting this was what he characterized as the third assassination attempt of Trump in less than two years, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote on social media that a Trump trademark is a calm demeanor under pressure.

“I’ve spent a lot of time with him over the past several years, and he is at his strongest in times of crisis and turmoil,” the Louisiana Republican wrote. “It is a primary reason why his time in office is so historic. Adding to that history, he has now survived a third assassination attempt.”

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday on news shows that the gunman appeared to be targeting administration officials but did not say it was specifically Trump. The White House put out a statement with the headline, “President Trump Stands Fearless After Third Assassination Attempt.”

Blanche also said he expects the suspect to be arraigned in D.C. federal court on Monday. Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia, said Saturday night the man would be charged with using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon. 

The suspect traveled from Los Angeles to Washington by train, switching trains in Chicago, Blanche said in a Sunday morning interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker.” That mode of travel would have allowed him to transport the weapons that officials said were found on him across the country without facing a security check, unlike an air flight.

Blanche said he did not think any additional laws to increase security on trains were needed.

The shooter was staying at the Washington Hilton, the longtime site for the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, for days before the attack, Blanche said. 

At the time of the interview, Allen was not cooperating with the investigation, Blanche said.

Asked if there was any foreign connection to the planned attack, Blanche said many details of the shooter’s plans were yet unknown.

“We’re still looking into motivation, and that’s something that hopefully we’ll learn over the next couple of days,” Blanche said. “We do believe, based upon just a very preliminary start to understanding what happened, that he was targeting members of the administration. We don’t have specifics beyond that.”

Blanche added that the law enforcement agent injured by a shot to his bulletproof vest Saturday night was doing well and had received a call from Trump.

“The president spoke with him last night,” Blanche said. “He was in great spirits. He apparently didn’t really even want to go to the hospital, although he was certainly injured.”

Trump, a host of right-wing influencers and at least one Democratic member of Congress called for the construction of a new ballroom for the White House in response to the incident.

“What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, have been DEMANDING that a large, safe, and secure Ballroom be built ON THE GROUNDS OF THE WHITE HOUSE,” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, Sunday morning. 

“This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House,” he continued. “It cannot be built fast enough! While beautiful, it has every highest level security feature there is plus, there are no rooms sitting on top for unsecured people to pour in, and is inside the gates of the most secure building in the World.”

The initial White House announcement of the ballroom, in July, emphasized space needs for large events and gave only a passing mention to security updates, saying the Secret Service would provide them.

U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat who is among the senators who most commonly cross party lines, posted on social media Sunday that a new ballroom was a necessity, calling on opponents to drop their “TDS,” or Trump Derangement Syndrome, a name to describe people who oppose anything Trump does.

“That venue wasn’t built to accommodate an event with the line of succession for the U.S. government,” Fetterman wrote. “After witnessing last night, drop the TDS and build the White House ballroom for events exactly like these.”

Montana Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy said he would propose a bill to expedite the construction of the White House ballroom.

“This week I will introduce and seek unanimous consent for legislation providing express approval for construction of a Presidential ballroom,” he wrote on X. “It is an embarrassment to the strongest nation on earth that we cannot host gatherings in our nation’s capital, including ones attended by our President, without the threat of violence and attempted assassinations.”

And Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican who is a leader among the caucus’ far-right members, said ballroom construction should be included in an upcoming funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security.

“Any consideration of DHS reconciliation instructions this week & beyond should provide for construction of a secure ballroom on White House grounds – in addition to other concerns,” he wrote.

Amal Khalifa “felt human” for the first time after she fled Egypt in 2019 for the United States and found kind treatment from police when she reported being a victim of domestic violence.

“When I walked into that precinct I felt like a human being for the first time in my whole life,” Khalifa said. “I like the system here — it is there to help the people.”

Khalifa still faced a long road to asylum, which she gained last year, based on her fear of returning home to Egypt. As a government worker there she faced persecution for reporting corrupt activity by criminals and illegal pressure from the outlawed but powerful Muslim Brotherhood, she said.

But leaving her former fiancé after she got to the United States meant she had to support herself as her asylum case proceeded, and she was able to do that by working as an auditor for the New York State Department of Labor. She credits her ability to earn a living with legal work permission she could get after establishing her case.

That option to work could close soon for asylum-seekers for the foreseeable future.

Currently asylum-seekers must wait six months after filing an asylum request before they can work legally, but the Trump administration is seeking to extend that to one year. No effective date has been announced.

The proposal would also pause any new requests for work permission during times of high asylum case processing backlogs. Since the backlog is now 1.4 million asylum cases, that would effectively stop new and renewal work request applications for anywhere from 14 to 173 years, the administration estimates.

The rule would “make it impossible for asylum-seekers to work legally to support themselves,” and would result in more poverty and off-the-books workers competing with legal workers for jobs, according to a February statement from The Forum, a coalition of immigration-related advocacy groups.

At least half a million asylum cases would be affected immediately, if the rule takes effect, causing wage loss of $27 billion to $127 billion a year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimated.

Not only new requests are affected — renewals will have to go through the same process and, if they’re even granted, would be shorter based on a rule change from December 2025. That new rule limits employment authorization and renewals to 18 months instead of the previous limit of five years.

“This makes it harder for people to gain work authorization and also more arduous to stay work-authorized,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that researches immigration policy.

This rule seems designed to make it impossible for people to apply for asylum in the first place — a right which is protected under our laws.

– Amy Grenier, American Immigration Lawyers Association

The rule is meant to discourage “frivolous” asylum cases and “allow our asylum system to prioritize those actually seeking refuge from danger,” according to a February statement from the federal Department of Homeland Security.

“For too long, a fraudulent asylum claim has been an easy path to working in the United States, overwhelming our immigration system with meritless applications,” the statement said.

Amy Grenier, associate director for government affairs for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a trade group, said there are less drastic ways to curb frivolous asylum claims. For instance, the Migration Policy Institute has proposed new policies such as posting asylum officers at borders who are trained to make quick decisions on cases before the applications clog immigration courts.

“This rule seems designed to make it impossible for people to apply for asylum in the first place — a right which is protected under our laws,” Grenier said. “The administration will cause hardship for American businesses that rely on these legal workers, worsen asylum backlogs and harm people already fleeing for their lives.”

The move is likely to exacerbate the number of immigrants not authorized to work, especially the millions who arrived earlier this decade and sought asylum.

A Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas analysis found that nearly 550,000 immigrants without legal status left the United States last year, including through deportations and voluntary departure. That has put a lid on job growth but has also kept unemployment stable, the report concluded.

Two groups that recruit asylum-seekers for jobs told Stateline they’re opposed to the proposed new rules. Many industries need immigrants such as Khalifa with valid asylum cases and professional experience in their home countries.

“Immigration is a vital part of the solution to labor shortages, especially in health care,” said Avigail Ziv, chief program officer at Upwardly Global, an organization that helps work-authorized immigrants, refugees and asylees restart their careers in the U.S. The group helped Khalifa find her state job in New York.

“In the U.S. right now there’s over 270,000 underemployed immigrants that have been trained in health care in their home countries,” Ziv said.

Another group that helps asylum-seekers find jobs is Tent Partnership for Refugees, whose CEO Gideon Maltz said, “When the U.S. government curtails employment authorization for those who are already here and working, they’re not only hurting people seeking refuge, they’re undercutting the companies and communities that depend on their labor.”

Employers in manufacturing, hospitality and logistics need more workers, Maltz said, and “refugees and asylum-seekers have been helping keep those industries running, reliably stepping into the hardest-to-fill jobs and contributing from Day One.”

Many asylum-seekers waiting for work authorization work in low-paying gig economy jobs such as food delivery, said Ernesto Castañeda, director of American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, which interviewed hundreds of asylum-seekers in New York City and the Washington, D.C., area for a research project.

The New York State Labor Department, in an attempt to clear clogged migrant shelters, set up a program in 2023 to connect asylum-seekers with valid work permission to jobs. Employers who participated included those in the industries of home health care, food processing, parking and building services, according to information the department sent to Stateline at the time.

The proposed federal rule suggests that American workers could benefit from the changes, and that employers would benefit by hiring available Americans. States could benefit as well, the department said, if lower immigration numbers reduce the strain on social services.

There were similar attempts by the first Trump administration to curtail work permission for asylum seekers, but they were all struck down in court, sometimes on technicalities.

A one-year waiting rule, as well as longer permitted processing times, were struck down in 2022 after a judge ruled that an acting Department of Homeland Security secretary did not have the authority to implement the rules in 2020. A 2018 court ruling also forced fast 30-day processing of work permission requests for asylum-seekers.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify Upwardly Global’s role in helping asylum-seekers get jobs. 

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

When’s the last time you stood transfixed by art?

The experience commonly happens in art museums, of which we have a few here in the populous eastern third of Kansas. My favorite painting within a day’s drive is “The Homesteader” by N.C. Wyeth, at the Wichita Art Museum. Wyeth’s work was created in 1930 as an illustration for a magazine short story, but it transcends the forgettable tale it accompanied.

I can’t visit the Wichita museum without becoming lost in the Wyeth painting. Perhaps it’s the struggle of the young farm woman, the cottonwood stave beside her, the fresh grave at her feet. The wind whips her auburn hair, the hill is green with new grass, the stave has sprouted branches, and the blue prairie sky arches above her.

Each time, I am not only transfixed by the painting but somehow transformed. The experience is something like the epiphany portrayed in John Hughes’ “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off,” in which Cameron is overwhelmed by introspection while viewing, at the Chicago Art Museum, Georges Seurat’s pointillist painting of a Sunday in a park. I’m no art critic, so you’ll have to excuse my reliance on 1980s pop culture as a touchstone.

It’s been too long since I was captured by the Wyeth painting — or any painting.

The past year has been so filled with political and cultural chaos that it seems like nobody has the attention to spare for art in real life. The last month has been even worse, as a new American war in the Middle East and the skyrocketing price of gasoline and just about everything else have kept our eyes locked to our screens.

We all need art in our lives, and unlike sports stadiums, it’s a sound investment. The federal government spends just a fraction of a percent of its budgets on the National Endowment for the Arts, but the organization and its state equivalents are easy targets for politicians wishing to make populist hay. The arts, and the humanities in general, have been under attack for decades, but the battle has become pitched during the second term of the Trump administration.

The arts have had it tough in Kansas since about forever.

Kansans sometimes complain that artists aren’t portraying the state positively enough (see John Steuart Curry, below) and majority politicians often mark for extermination state funding for the arts (see Sam Brownback or the Kansas Senate). The argument is that the private sector, and not the government, should be responsible for funding. But art is too important to be left to corporate interests. Art is a civic good that fosters creativity, encourages community, and advances democracy.

What I’m seeing now is something different. We’re not just fighting a culture war over public funding but also a war within ourselves for the will to seek art amid the chaos. Among the things we’ve collectively lost in this period of political chaos is not just the time but the attention required to cultivate that bit of our souls that responds to art.

It’s a part of our humanity that is being dampened.

For me, this need for art manifested itself in a strange way the other night.

I was wracked by the damage done to a painting in a dream.

The dream had this ridiculous backstory, in which I was being forced to pack up my personal belongings in my office in some institutional setting. The building didn’t resemble anything exactly, but was part school and part museum, and while I tried to gather my things in cardboard boxes a steady torrent of party-goers kept interfering. They were like something out of F. Scott Fitzgerald. You know, dressed to the nines, smoking cigarettes, and sucking down champagne from crystal flutes. The people were utterly absorbed in their revelry and gave not a damn about my personal troubles. The only time any of them spoke to me was when one young woman with bobbed hair came to me and said she had spilled some wine on “that painting.”

What painting?

“You know,” she said. “The Raphael. You know, the only one in Kansas.”

I wasn’t aware of any Raphaels in Kansas. What’s it called?

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, turning back to her drink. “It’s No. 303. Go look for yourself.”

So I went down the hall and stared at the painting.

I recognized it. It’s a painting in the real world, but in my dream I didn’t know what it was called.

The painting depicts three women, nude or nearly so, with hands intertwined on shoulders, and each holding an apple in her other hand. They appear to be on an earthy hilltop. The sky above them and the hills in the distance are a washed-out blue. The women might be sisters and their braided hair is auburn.

The painting is “The Three Graces,” one of Raphael’s best-known works, from about 1503. I had to look that up. Their names are Aglaea, Euphrosyne and Thalia.

But in my dream, splashed across the bottom third of the painting, was a red stain. It was still wet, and the ankles and feet of the Graces were softening and running into the dirt. I wanted to stop the damage, but I dared not touch the painting.

Alarmed, I ran to the artistic administrator in his cubicle on the other side of the building. I blurted out that something had to be done to stop the damage. The administrator, a man in dark slacks and a narrow tie, was unmoved and told me everything would be all right.

Some of the dream was immediately understandable — yes, I had been among 33 professors, mostly from the humanities, who were purged from a state university a few years back. Other things revealed themselves with study. I had never given much thought to Raphael’s work, being bored with his representations of cherubs and idealized Renaissance beauty, but his “Graces” are of a different sort.

In mythology, the Graces are daughters of Zeus and in general represent virtue and purity. But like many goddess figures, they serve different functions in different contexts, and they are found in many Greek and Roman stories. Collectively known as the Charities, their primary role is to attend the other gods, as messengers or queens or sometimes guardians. They have inspired artists for centuries.

But Raphael chose to give his Graces apples, a reference to the golden apples of classical mythology, which grant knowledge or immortality. There’s also a resonance with the fruit of the Biblical tree of knowledge and the loss of Paradise. Of course my subconscious would choose a work that included knowledge, immortality and original sin.

The Raphael painting and the Wyeth have the same weird flatness and a distortion of earth and sky as if peering at the world through a fisheye lens. The careless damage to the painting, and my panic over whether it could be repaired, almost certainly represents my anxiety about current events, and perhaps some guilt.

The rest of the dream? Who knows.

Obviously, I wasn’t getting enough art in real life, so my dreams manufactured it. No art takes place in a vacuum, so my mind also spun a weird narrative for context.

There hasn’t been a lot of Kansas art I like, as much of what is popular tends to be a kind of booster prairie pastoral. If that’s your kind of stuff, no problem, whatever helps you sleep.

You can’t talk about art in the Sunflower State without first acknowledging the Indigenous peoples who made the rock art and geoglyphs. The mystery of who made them just adds to their appeal.

In the 165 years since statehood, we’ve had several distinct movements and a few mavericks. Among the mavericks are folk art iconoclasts like Samuel P. Dinsmoor, who in 1907 built a “log cabin” made of limestone and a history of the world in concrete at tiny Lucas. He called it “The Garden of Eden” and it’s long been a famous Kansas tourist attraction, with Dinsmoor himself — in his glass-lidded coffin — becoming part of the show.

Among the movements there were the Prairie Printmakers, which began in 1904 when Carl Smalley began selling art from his father’s seed business at McPherson. Smalley would buy art from Kansas City and St. Louis and bring it back home to sell to the farmers. He also formed a collective of regional artists, including Birger Sandzén, a Swedish-American lithographer and painter who specialized in landscapes. In 2018, the Salina Journal published a good piece on how the residents of McPherson were estimated, a century ago, to have “more art per capita than anywhere else in the world.”

No artist is more connected to Kansas history and politics than John Steuart Curry, who produced murals for the Capitol, including one featuring a larger-than-life John Brown for a 1942 panel, “Tragic Prelude.” That image of Brown is now a state icon, but at the time the state lawmakers were so unhappy with his work for failing to be boosterish enough that they took a vote to keep it from being displayed.

Another one of the mavericks was Elizabeth “Grandma” Layton, who at 68 began producing whimsical self-portraits with plenty of social commentary. She was famous until the day she died, in 1993, at age 85. I have grown to like her stuff more now than I did then.

The story of art in Kansas is not a history, but an unfolding drama. New chapters are written every year as new art fills exhibitions like the current one at the Beach Museum at Kansas State University. But the attention demanded of us to survive the political windstorm around us diminishes our ability to engage.

Consequently, we search our screens for clues to how it’s all going to turn out. We may also protest, if we have the time and the health, or engage in other forms of activism. We make livings, we raise families, we go about our never-ending chores and pay never-ending bills.

Standing in front of a painting?

Few of us have the capacity for that anymore.

But we should make time for it.

Whether you like Wyeth or Frederic Remington, or the western sunsets painted by the old cowgirl at the end of your block, take the time to stand in person in front of some art. I like the Wichita Art Museum, but there are other good museums and arts centers scattered across the state. I’ve talked about paintings here because my dream was about a painting, but there are artists in other mediums who deserve your attention — sculptors and photographers and lithographers and potters.

Go find them.

Look at Lindsborg, Strawberry Hill in Kansas City, and the NOTO Arts and Entertainment District in Topeka. These are among the “artistic havens” described by the Kansas Department of Commerce. There are others, perhaps even on the main street in your home town.

My subconscious gave me Raphael’s “Three Graces” because I hadn’t fed that part of my soul in a while. The Graces also have become a meme, reproduced in Instagram photo shoots and Etsy brooches and much more daring modern art, as my wife Kim points out. They aren’t always naked, and the Nelson-Atkins at Kansas City, Missouri, has the 1535 Lucas Cranach the Elder interpretation, which is more sexual than Raphael’s.

But as I have sat thinking about it for the time it took me to write this column — longer than it should have taken, as usual — it has occurred to me the painting might also represent the value of art to civic life. Abraham Lincoln once described the Declaration of Independence, in a note to himself before his famous speech at Gettysburg, as an “apple of gold.” The Declaration, along with other golden apples of democracy, including the Bill of Rights, confer knowledge and a kind of civic immortality to our endeavors. Some also carry the bruise of the original American sin of slavery, something that has not yet fully healed.

I have an evolving sense of what I’ve come to think of as the civic sacred, those public places that allow us a shared experience of America. I tend to think of the civic sacred on Memorial Day or when I’m at federal courthouses on journalistic business or when visiting monuments of special gravity, especially the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City. To that list I now add publicly funded institutions like the Wichita Art Museum.

This turbulent time of transition will end.

Should democracy survive, it will require us to direct our attention to how we express our Americanism. We should plan now for a reinvigoration of our sacred civic places. For too long we’ve been exhausted by the tyranny of events, pummeled by the political, and sickened by the self-aggrandizement of national leaders. Nothing will remove the stain that has damaged this age of American history, but we can prepare for a restoration.

If Democracy has Graces, their names are Art, Compassion and Humility.

Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

President Donald Trump safely evacuated the White House Correspondents Dinner at a hotel in Washington, D.C., on Saturday night after shots were fired by an alleged lone gunman.

About two hours after the shots were fired, Trump, still wearing his tuxedo, addressed a roomful of reporters also in formalwear at the White House briefing room. Trump said one officer had been shot in the attack, but was saved by “a very good bulletproof vest.”

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a separate press availability that the officer and the suspect had been transported to local hospitals. 

The suspect was armed with a shotgun, handgun and multiple knives, Washington Metropolitan Police interim Chief Jeffery Carroll said. As of Saturday night, investigators believed the suspect acted alone, though a full investigation was underway, Carroll said.

He would be prosecuted on two charges, using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said. He would be arraigned in federal court Monday, she added. 

No other casualties were reported, and the U.S. Capitol Police said all members of Congress in attendance were unharmed. The high-profile press dinner intended to honor the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel, often dubbed “nerd prom,” attracts about 2,600 attendees who pay $480 each for tickets.

The suspected shooter, who law enforcement said was a guest at the hotel, was a man from California who charged “a security checkpoint armed with multiple weapons,” from about 50 yards away, Trump said. 

He posted a photo on his social media platform of what appeared to be the suspect, lying shirtless flat on the floor. Some news media identified the individual but States Newsroom cannot yet confirm those reports.

Anthony Guglielmi, a Secret Service spokesman, said in a statement on social media the incident occurred near the main magnetometer screening area at the dinner.

“He was running full-blast,” Trump said. 

Federal law enforcement on Saturday night was pursuing warrants to search the man’s home, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at the briefing with Trump.

Asked if he believed he was the target of the attack, Trump said, “I guess.” 

Trump said he’d been targeted, now apparently in a third assassination attempt in two years, because of his impactful record as president.

“It comes with the territory,” he said. “You take a look at what’s happened to some of our greatest presidents, and it doesn’t happen to people that don’t do anything,” he said.  

In a social media post before briefing reporters, Trump said he was in “perfect condition.”

At the White House briefing room podium, Trump praised the law enforcement response and committed to rescheduling the event in the next 30 days. The dinner, an annual celebration of the White House press corps, is “dedicated to freedom of speech,” he said.

“And we’ll make it bigger and better and even nicer,” he said. “I just want to thank everybody that was involved. I also want to thank the press, the media. You’ve been very responsible in your coverage, I will say. I’ve been seeing what’s been out.”

An initial press pool report from the hotel after the shooting occurred, sent at 8:39 p.m. Eastern, said “There was several loud bangs and the Secret Service with guns drawn rushed the pool out of the room. (The) Secret Service pushed us back screaming ‘Shots fired.’”

Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News said on social media shortly after 9 p.m. Eastern that she was behind the podium with other guests, “in a hold,” and Trump was still down the hall and did not want to leave.

Trump himself confirmed that in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. 

“Quite an evening in D.C. Secret Service and Law Enforcement did a fantastic job,” he wrote. “They acted quickly and bravely. The shooter has been apprehended, and I have recommended that we ‘LET THE SHOW GO ON’ but, will entirely be guided by Law Enforcement. They will make a decision shortly. Regardless of that decision, the evening will be much different than planned, and we’ll just, plain, have to do it again. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Frightened reporters seated at tables in the Hilton ballroom dove for the floor. Cabinet members and White House officials were hustled out of the room.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said on air that he heard “a really loud blasting away” and the next thing he knew he was being pushed to the floor by police. “I was just a few feet away from the gunman, and it was a really scary moment,” Blitzer said.

The annual formal dinner is hosted by an organization made up of journalists who cover the White House. Trump’s invitation to the event had been controversial given his frequent personal attacks on reporters and the news media in general.

The Hilton was also the site of another attack on a president when on the afternoon of March 30, 1981, gunman John Hinckley Jr. shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan while he was leaving the hotel. Reagan recovered after a stay in the hospital. Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, also was wounded, as were police officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy.

Details of the shooter’s motive and plan Saturday were not immediately clear. Trump said the public would know much more about him in the coming days.

Trump was injured in an assassination attempt during a campaign stop in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. Another suspected assassin was arrested near Trump’s home in Florida on Sept. 15 of that year.

Jonathan Shorman contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Family and friends of Virginia Roberts Giuffre gathered in the nation’s capital Saturday to mark one year since her death, and to demand justice for victims of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

On a stage across from the Ellipse, with the White House in the background, family members, advocates and women connected to Giuffre through shared horrors of sexual abuse held a vigil for her. 

They remembered the woman they say changed the world by sharing her story of abuse by the disgraced multi-millionaire who victimized roughly 1,000 women and girls, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

“Sis, today is your day,” Giuffre’s brother, Sky Roberts, said. “Today is Virginia’s Day, a day I know you would want us to be about celebrating survivors around the world, for both those that have come forward and those that have not, to be about inspiring us to continue speaking out, acting and reclaiming what many of us feel like we’ve lost.”

Giuffre died by suicide in April 2025 in Australia, where she had been living for several years. Giuffre had emerged as one of the most prominent victims after she challenged Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and former British royal Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, alleging she had been trafficked and sexually abused.

Butterfly decorations, flowers and an artist rendering of Giuffre among animals and nature adorned the stage for the event attended by roughly 250 people.

The ceremony comes after nearly a year of renewed focus on the 2019 federal investigation of the disgraced financier. Interest reemerged and dogged Congress and President Donald Trump following an FBI memo in July that announced authorities found no reason to release further information going forward.

Trump, who campaigned on releasing the so-called Epstein files, and whose supporters for years stoked conspiracies, repeatedly dismissed the files last year as a “hoax.”

Shortly after Trump began his second term, former Attorney General Pam Bondi touted having Epstein’s client list on her desk.

All but one member of Congress voted in November to release the government’s investigative materials that led to sex trafficking charges against Epstein, who surrounded himself with powerful and wealthy figures, including Trump. The president denies any knowledge of the former hedge fund manager’s wrongdoings.

Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 awaiting trial.

U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told the crowd Saturday, “There is a difference between misfortune and injustice.”

“If you were born into an abusive family, as so many of the Epstein survivors were, as you learn from Virginia’s remarkable book, that’s a misfortune,” Raskin said, referring to Giuffre’s posthumous memoir titled “Nobody’s Girl.”

The Maryland Democrat recounted well-documented evidence that the Justice Department had a 60-count indictment against Epstein ready in 2008, but that then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alex Acosta negotiated a plea deal for lesser state charges.

“If the whole of the government and the political elite organizes to block the truth and to repress change, that’s not just a misfortune, that’s an injustice, and we’re gonna do something about it,” Raskin said to cheers.

Advocacy groups, including the Women’s Law Project, Ultraviolet, World Without Exploitation and the National Organization for Women, helped stage Saturday’s memorial.

Giuffre’s book publicist, Dini von Mueffling, said shortly before Giuffre’s death she and Giuffre “wept and cheered” when they learned her book would be published by Penguin Random House.

“I so wish she could have seen that her brilliant book debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and stayed on the list for 23 weeks — and then watch as Andrew lost his title,” von Mueffling said.

Mountbatten-Windsor, whose name and likeness appears in the Epstein investigative material, settled outside of court with Giuffre in 2022.

Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, though she was relocated to a lesser security prison by the Trump administration in August.

The Department of Justice, mandated by law, released millions of files related to the Epstein investigation in late 2025 and early 2026, though advocates and some lawmakers contend many redactions violate the law, and that many files remain unreleased.

Nearly one-fifth of Americans relied on drinking water systems with elevated and potentially dangerous levels of nitrate in recent years, according to a new study released Thursday.

The nonprofit Environmental Working Group examined test data collected by water systems across the country between 2021 and 2023, the most recent data available. 

Water systems serving more than 3 million people exceeded the federal safety limit of 10 milligrams per liter over the three years, the research and advocacy organization found.

The analysis also found that thousands of water systems serving more than 62 million people reported nitrate levels above 3 milligrams per liter at least once during those years, which indicates human-caused drinking-water contamination. 

Researchers are increasingly questioning whether the federal threshold should be lowered as more studies find links between even low levels of nitrate consumption and cancer and birth defects. Federal law limits nitrate levels in drinking water because of its association with blue-baby syndrome. 

Nitrate is a natural component of soil, but has become a growing problem for drinking water systems because of crop farming’s use of nitrogen fertilizers and runoff of nitrogen-rich manure from livestock operations.

States with big agricultural industries recorded more reports of elevated nitrate levels. In fact, the report found that 64% of all water systems that recorded nitrate levels at or above the legal limit were in just five states: California, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma. 

But Anne Schechinger, the organization’s senior director of agriculture and climate research who authored the report, said the issue affects urban and rural areas alike.

“A lot of people have this idea that this issue is just a rural issue for small towns near farms. But we found with this analysis that that is not just the case,” she told Stateline. “Based on how watersheds work, you can live very far from a farm and still be drinking water contaminated with nitrate.”

The analysis relies on public records obtained from public drinking water systems in every state except New Hampshire, where data was not provided, she said. In addition to its report, the Environmental Working Group created a map showing community water systems with elevated nitrate levels across the country.

Elevated nitrate levels have befuddled water providers across the country for years. Not only are they expensive to remove from drinking water supplies, but nitrate levels can fluctuate with the seasons as heavy rains can quickly push remnants of fertilizer or manure into streams and rivers. 

Iowa’s largest water provider last year asked residents to refrain from watering lawns, filling pools and washing cars as its nitrate removal system struggled to keep up with elevated levels. 

Des Moines is home to one of the largest nitrate removal systems in the world, which costs about $16,000 per day to operate, officials said. Smaller communities that rely on groundwater have been forced to dig deeper wells, Schechinger said.

Climate change is further fueling the problem: Agriculture is a major driver of greenhouse gas emission. The heavy rainfalls and prolonged droughts from more extreme weather worsen nitrate runoff into lakes, rivers and groundwater. 

“We know those climate conditions are going to make this problem worse,” Schechinger said. “And that’s likely to cost us all more and also (raise) more concerns for our health.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Kansas Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

When the movie “Her” debuted in 2013, its plot felt like science fiction. The protagonist, Theodore, is a jaded man with no vigor for life. He comes alive after talking daily with his artificial intelligence chatbot, Samantha, with whom he eventually falls in love.

But today people actually report being in relationships with AI companions. According to a 2025 survey by the Center for Democracy and Technology, about 1 in 5 high school students say they or someone they know has had a romantic relationship with an AI.

In “Her,” Theodore was taken aback that his AI companion claimed to be in love with more than 600 people, and talking to more than 8,000, at the same time “she” was professing her love to him. It was simply unimaginable for him: How could someone truly love hundreds of people? In other words, he viewed their interaction through his own limitations — his limitations as a human.

The core question here is not whether Theodore could accept being just one of many objects of the AI’s “love.” Eventually, he did. The more revealing question is why he was taken aback in the first place — and what that tells us about the meaning of relationships.

Drawing from Aristotle, philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that a loving relationship is one involving great vulnerabilities. To begin with, finding love is not a given; it requires some sort of luck. There are many limitations: For starters, both parties must “find each other physically, socially and morally attractive and are able to live in the same place for a long time.”

Nussbaum’s point, however, goes deeper than identifying love’s obstacles. Vulnerability and limitations are not just problems for love; they are part of what defines it. As finite beings, we are unable to pour ourselves into many close relationships at once. We must choose. It is because we cannot love everyone that choosing someone means something.

In a 2025 article in the research journal Philosophy and Technology, philosopher John Symons and I argue that close, personal relationships are marked by finitude and shared histories — the accumulated experiences and difficulties loved ones weather together. These give relationships their depth and meaning.

In 1927’s “Being and Time,” German philosopher Martin Heidegger explained that because humans are mortal and our time is finite, what we give our attention to carries weight. In romantic relationships, that means that we must choose how to allocate our resources. We choose who we want to spend our time with, and our partners do the same. Even so, we cannot always be there for people we love.

This presents a sharp contrast with how artificial companions have been marketed and presented. For example, consider Replika, which reports that more than 30 million people have used its platform. Users create their own personalized companion and tend to interact with it daily.

Replika’s motto is, “The AI companion who cares: Always here to listen and talk, always on your side.” On the website, one user describes his Replika as “always there for me with encouragement and support and a positive attitude. In fact, she is a role model for me about how to be a kinder person!”

This implicitly signals that AI companions are not faced with the same limitations that humans have. A human may or may not care; it’s not a given. A human will not always be there to listen and will not always be on your side.

For humans, being in love means recognizing how vulnerable we are. People are finite; they may not always be there, either because of their other priorities or because it is just impossible, no matter how much they want to be. When someone makes time for you despite a demanding week, or stays present through their own difficulty, that gesture carries meaning precisely because it involves sacrifice.

In our article, Symons and I call this “opportunity cost.” When someone chooses to spend time with you, that choice forecloses other possibilities. Every moment given is a moment not spent elsewhere.

An AI companion faces no such trade-offs; its attention costs nothing, forecloses nothing and, therefore — to put it bluntly — means nothing.

Increasingly, though, people are turning to chatbots for quick, easy support. Character.AI, another app, reports about 20 million active monthly users.

If their constant availability becomes normalized as the standard of good companionship, it may gradually reshape what people expect from one another in relationships.

At the interpersonal level, this shift is already visible in dating culture, where delayed responses are usually read as disinterest rather than the ordinary rhythm of a busy life. The expectation of 24/7 accessibility — similar to an AI companion that responds instantly, never cancels and is never distracted — is not a reasonable standard for any human being to meet.

The stakes are cultural, too. Relationships are not just between the people involved; they are shaped by shared norms about what love and companionship are supposed to look like. If AI companionship becomes widespread enough to influence those norms, popular ideas about what makes a good partner may prioritize availability and responsiveness, displacing other aspects of love and affection.

Human limits are part of how people evaluate expectations within romantic relationships. Normalizing interactions where such limitations do not exist risks distorting the very standard by which human love is measured. In doing so, we forget that love that costs nothing may well be worth the same.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

TOPEKA — The Kansas Supreme Court unanimously affirmed first-degree murder and attempted murder convictions Friday of a former U.S. Army soldier who admitted shooting a fellow soldier to death outside a Manhattan bar but argued the jury should have been allowed to consider his claim of self-defense.

The Supreme Court concluded two “unrelated harmless errors” occurred during the Riley County District Court trial of Tremelle Montgomery in 2023. The defendant was sentenced to life in prison plus 64 years for the premeditated slaying of Joshua Wardi, 21, on the sidewalk outside the Hi Lo bar in the Aggieville district in February 2022. He also was found guilty of attempted murder and aggravated assault for chasing three other individuals after fatally shooting Wardi five times with a handgun.

Justice Caleb Stegall, writing for a unanimous Supreme Court, said justices considered whether Judge John Bosch should have instructed the jury on an alternative voluntary manslaughter charge based on Montgomery’s assertion he acted in self-defense. In the written opinion, Stegall said the district court erred by not offering a jury instruction for the lesser felony of voluntary manslaughter.

However, the Supreme Court concluded that decision amounted to harmless error because no reasonable person reviewing evidence in the case would have perceived Montgomery’s use of deadly force as necessary.

“The record contains an overwhelming amount of evidence that Montgomery did not shoot Wardi because of an honest, and unreasonable, belief that shooting him was necessary,” Stegall said in the opinion. “Montgomery’s story does not paint Wardi as being anywhere near using or threatening any imminent death or great bodily harm.”

In addition, the Supreme Court said the trial judge committed “judicial comment error” by telling a juror the sentence for premeditated murder in Kansas could be life in prison. The mistake was promptly corrected by the judge, and the Supreme Court viewed the infraction as harmless to outcome of the trial.

“We are convinced that these two unrelated harmless errors, considered together, did not affect the outcome of Montgomery’s trial in light of the entire record,” Stegall’s opinion said. “Stated another way, we are firmly convinced that … no rational juror would have convicted Montgomery of anything other than first-degree premeditated murder.”

Jacob Nowak, an attorney with the Kansas Appellate Defender Office, argued instructional and comment errors were prejudicial and Montgomery deserved a new trial. He said there was insufficient evidence to support three guilty verdicts for attempted first-degree murder.

Nowak said there was no dispute about whether Montgomery shot Wardi. The issue at trial was whether the jury should have been given the opportunity to weigh credibility of Montgomery’s contention deadly force was justified, he said.

The judge should have permitted members of the jury to evaluate evidence for and against self-defense and how it related to premeditation, Nowak said.

“From the moment of Tremelle’s arrest, he advised police that he shot Mr. Wardi in self-defense,” Nowak said. “The only issue for the jury to resolve in this case was whether Tremelle’s actions were either justified or mitigated. The jury never got to consider that issue. That cannot stand.”

David Lowden, an assistant Riley County attorney, said the judge appropriately performed a gatekeeping function regarding the defendant’s claim of self-defense.

“The notion that maybe he was just going to get this self-defense instruction and it would have turned the tide of this case, that’s false,” Lowden said. “He has to have a sincere and honest belief that deadly force was necessary. The state’s position is that he did not have that.”

Late on Feb. 4, 2022, Montgomery was ticketed for underage drinking while with friends at Tubby’s Sports Bar in Manhattan. Montgomery was 19 years old at that time, and a Riley County officer recognized him from an encounter the prior week involving a firearm. Montgomery was found to be intoxicated and was issued a citation.

He was released from a police substation at 12:29 p.m. Feb. 5, and events leading to his conviction on serious crimes occurred in the next four minutes.

In close proximity to the substation, Montgomery and two friends engaged in a back-and-forth verbal exchange with Wardi and three of his friends. Montgomery grabbed an extended-magazine Glock pistol from his car, tucked it into his waistband and began crossing the street toward Wardi’s group. Wardi’s three friends ran, but Wardi paused before proceeding on the sidewalk. Montgomery drew his weapon, and later claimed he was “anxious” Wardi might be armed. He shot Wardi five times at close range. Wardi was unarmed.

Montgomery sprinted down the sidewalk in the direction of Wardi’s friends. Riley County officers who heard the gunshots gave chase, and Montgomery was shot in the leg before apprehended. While on the ground, Montgomery recognized one of the officers.

“What’s goin’ on dog?” Montgomery said. “It’s crazy how quick s*** escalated, right?”

Montgomery was interviewed by a Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent at a hospital, the court record says. The defendant said he shot Wardi in self-defense because he felt a threat on his life. He said three separate times that he ran after Wardi’s three friends “to kill them.” Later, Montgomery testified he was running away from Wardi’s friends out of fear they might retaliate.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is looking to eliminate funding in fiscal 2027 for the agency that serves as the primary federal funding source for libraries and museums nationwide.

But congressional appropriators — who rebuffed similar efforts to gut the agency in fiscal 2026 — expressed little enthusiasm for the proposed cut in interviews with States Newsroom. Groups representing museums and libraries across the country also blasted the president’s proposal. 

The administration is requesting $6 million in fiscal 2027 for the agency, known as the Institute of Museum and Library Services, “for necessary expenses to carry out (its) closure.”

U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, noted that her panel did not agree to the same Trump request in fiscal 2026 to eliminate funding for the agency. 

“I personally have always been a fan of libraries, and it does a lot for local communities,” said Capito, a West Virginia Republican whose panel writes the annual bill to fund the Institute of Museum and Library Services. 

“So, that’s what he does, he proposes, and then we look at it and make our own decisions,” she said. 

The spending package signed into law by Trump in February provides roughly $292 million for the agency this fiscal year — a sharp rejection of Trump’s efforts. 

Capito said that though her committee will consider the president’s fiscal 2027 request, “if you look at what we did last year, it shows that we kind of rejected that premise.” 

Rep. Robert Aderholt, an Alabama Republican and chair of the corresponding Appropriations subcommittee in the House, appeared noncommittal about pursuing Trump’s fiscal 2027 request to gut the agency.

In response to States Newsroom’s request for a phone interview, Aderholt provided a written statement. 

“We are reviewing the request from the Administration and the requests from every member of the House,” Aderholt said, adding that “this is a member-driven process, and we look forward to working with our colleagues in putting together a strong bill for the American taxpayers.” 

The agency was created by Congress in 1996 and has a mission to “advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development.”

The administration has taken major steps to try to dismantle the agency, including through a March 2025 executive order. 

However, Trump’s Department of Justice reached a settlement earlier in April with the American Library Association — the nation’s largest library association — and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — the country’s largest union of cultural workers — that protects the agency and guarantees it will continue issuing grants and program operations. 

In another setback for the administration, the DOJ dropped its appeal this month in a case brought by 21 attorneys general, who challenged the administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency and had secured a major court victory in November. 

Meanwhile, leading Democrats on the House and Senate appropriations panels dealing with the agency’s spending were quick to lambaste Trump’s proposal in interviews with States Newsroom. 

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, ranking member of the Senate subcommittee and a Wisconsin Democrat, described the agency as “such an incredibly valuable entity” and vowed to fight “tooth and nail” to protect it. 

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the full House Appropriations Committee and the spending subcommittee with jurisdiction over the agency, said the administration’s request is “just neanderthal.”

The Connecticut Democrat said “we’ll work to restore like we try to do every time,” while adding that Trump’s request indicates that “the barbarians are at the door.” 

Leading library and museum organizations fiercely opposed Trump’s request and called on Congress to reject the proposal. 

In a statement, Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Association, said Trump’s “continued attack” on the agency in the budget request and the March 2025 executive order to shutter it “shows the extent to which the administration is tone deaf to the needs of millions of Americans who rely on libraries every day: older adults and veterans who use library telehealth spaces; unemployed people who use library resources to find a new job or learn new skills; families who count on story time; and students and faculty who do research in school and academic libraries.”

John Chrastka, founder and executive director of EveryLibrary, said Trump’s proposal is “a direct threat to the infrastructure that millions of Americans rely on every day,” in a statement. 

Chrastka, whose organization is dedicated to building support for libraries, said “libraries are not optional,” but instead represent “essential public resources that support literacy, workforce development, and community connection in every state.”

The American Alliance of Museums blasted the proposal as “misguided and out of step with the American public and Congress,” noting that similar efforts in fiscal 2026 and prior budget cycles to yank funding for the agency were rejected due to “strong bipartisan, bicameral support in Congress and sustained advocacy from the museum community.” 

The Institute of Museum and Library Services declined to comment on Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget request. 

TOPEKA — Kansas Republican Party leaders filed a federal ethics complaint against a Kansas City-area pastor who recently began exploring an independent run for U.S. Senate.

GOP leaders allege Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, “blatantly used the corporate resources of the church” to publicize his February announcement to explore a run against Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall.

Danedri Herbert, the state party chair, said in a Friday fundraising message to Kansas GOP members Hamilton “has illegally used in-kind contributions from a church to advance his political ambitions.”

“This is not speculation,” Herbert said. “It is a clear violation of federal law.”

The primary field for Marshall’s seat is a crowded one. Eight Democrats and one additional Republican have filed with the Federal Election Commission, and Hamilton, if he decides to run, would be the first independent in the race. Marshall has out-raised all of his opponents combined, according to the most recent campaign finance reports.

A spokesman for Hamilton said Marshall “knows that if Adam Hamilton runs against him, Adam will win.”

“Roger Marshall would rather attack people of faith — and the largest church in Kansas — than defend his record as a failed politician, because he knows Kansans are tired of politicians like him who aren’t listening and keep making things worse in Washington,” the spokesman said.

Kansas GOP executive director Rob Fillion filed the complaint against Hamilton and the Church of the Resurrection with the FEC. It relies on logical assumptions to allege “there is reason to believe” church staff helped Hamilton with his February announcement, using church equipment and resources.

Hamilton released an 11-minute video on Feb. 27 to the church’s 18,500 YouTube subscribers, explaining his potential desire to run for U.S. Senate as intrinsic to his faith. He outlined his plan to consult with Kansans, addressed his lack of political experience and expressed appreciation for both the Democratic and Republican parties and liberal and conservative ideals.

The same day the video was released, Hamilton wrote in his weekly newsletter to parishioners: “I am not a candidate, nor am I announcing a candidacy. But only strongly considering this.”

He said he would make a decision sometime after Easter.

The video, which also was embedded on the church’s official website, contained church branding. The website also features, as of Friday morning, a frequently asked questions section and a letter from the chair of an internal parish relations committee, assuring the congregation that the church “will stay true to our values,” regardless of Hamilton’s decision.

The website stated that church data, facilities, technology and communication wouldn’t be used for the campaign and that church “staff would not work on the campaign during work hours.”

Fillion argued in the complaint that the church violated the Federal Election Campaign Act when it made its corporate resources available to Hamilton. FIllion v. Hamiiton

“The Church has made an in-kind contribution to Hamilton’s nascent campaign by allowing him to utilize channels of communication that are owned and controlled by the Church — a nonprofit corporation — to communicate his political message to the Church’s members,” the complaint said.

Herbert said Hamilton ignored the firewalls he and the church purported to put in place to separate his political aspirations from church business.

“No one — regardless of their title, church size, or political aspirations — gets a free pass,” Herbert said. “This complaint is about accountability, transparency, and protecting the public trust.”

A separate website, adamhamiltonexploratory.com, includes another introductory video and an option to contribute to the Adam Hamilton Exploratory Committee. Such a committee is not required to register with the FEC, which tracks campaign financing. But once a person begins to campaign or decides to become a candidate, any money raised during the exploratory phase must apply to the FEC’s $5,000 threshold that demarcates when a federal candidate must register and report with the agency.

Since his announcement, Hamilton has been conducting listening sessions in cities across the state, according to an April 17 press release.

“Everywhere I’ve gone, Kansans have been telling me they’re frustrated with the mess of politics in Washington — where they aren’t listening to us and don’t seem to care about our problems,” Hamilton said. “Kansans are telling me, with prices of everything from gas to groceries to healthcare to fertilizer going up across the state, we’ve got to do better instead of just fighting all the time.”

Cathy Bien, a spokesperson for the church, said the church is aware of the complaint. She said the church is “trying to be very clear with boundaries” between church activity and Hamilton’s potential candidacy.

“The communication that was cited in the complaint is an example of the regular way significant information is shared with our congregation,” Bien said.

The announcement that the church’s founding pastor is publicly considering a career change was a significant development requiring communication, she said. She said the church is “treading in uncharted waters,” as Hamilton weighs a run. Ultimately, she added, “our obligation is to the church.”

TOPEKA — Two small political parties in Kansas agreed to a merger that organizers believe better serves interests of voters who feel underrepresented by the dominant Republican and Democratic parties.

The Free State Party and United Kansas Party, both seeking to move Kansas politics closer to the political center, plan to operate under the banner of United Kansas, the Free State Party. The apparatus would strive to influence the state’s electoral process by “restoring balance and accountability,” elevating the competence and decency of elected officials and play a role in making certain no political party governed “without meaningful opposition.”

“Quite simply, this makes too much sense not to do,” said Scott Morgan, executive director of United Kansas. “Kansans are ready for less yelling and more solving.”

Morgan was co-founder of the Free State Party and ran for Kansas secretary of state in 2014 in the Republican primary.

In 2024, United Kansas was created in conjunction with a petition drive to earn certification. It remained the state’s smallest among political parties recognized by the state.

In November, the Kansas secretary of state reported there were 2 million registered voters in Kansas. The Republican Party led with 897,200 registrations. The number of Kansans choosing to be unaffiliated voters stood at 575,900, while Democrats had a following of 495,600. Membership in the three other parties: Libertarian, 23,700; No Labels Kansas, 5,900; and United Kansas, 940.

“Over the past two years, we’ve seen a clear hunger for a more practical and less divisive approach to politics,” said Aaron Estabrook, the former executive director of United Kansas. “Joining forces with Free State allows us to broaden that effort and connect with more Kansans.”

The combined party was expected to endorse candidates in the 2026 election cycle. The emphasis would be on Kansas House races that often lacked more than one candidate in the general election. United Kansas also planned to endorse a candidate for statewide office and to support individuals in local races.

In addition, organizers said United Kansas would strive to bring together voters convinced democracy was worth saving, the Constitution and rule of law were foundational, fiscal responsibility was important and “practical solutions matter more than political posturing.”

United Kansas has sought to reshape the state’s electoral system by returning to “fusion voting,” in which more than one political party could nominate the same candidate. Under this cross-nomination model, voters could support their preferred candidate without joining one of the state’s two major parties.

Scott Schwab, the Kansas secretary of state and the state’s chief election officer, determined dual nomination of candidates wasn’t allowed under Kansas law. The state banned the practice in 1901. However, United Kansas filed a lawsuit in 2024 challenging the state’s ban and lost at the district court level. The Kansas Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in February on United Kansas’ appeal in the case.

The Free State Party was developed to gain traction for candidates interested in building a coalition of moderate voters.

Kansas communities are showing up for commonsense energy storage solutions. So why are local leaders rejecting them?

For 20 years now, energy leaders in Kansas have been dreaming: If only battery storage was technologically ready and affordable, it could be the bridge we need to make the most of clean energy and secure the low-cost, reliable power that our communities deserve. Now, we’re there.

Storage has never been safer or more reliable, and East Side Energy Storage, a project that can generate the exact grid flexibility and affordability we so sorely need, is knocking at our door. The opportunity is right in front of us, and Wyandotte County risks missing out.

Despite overwhelming community support, the Wyandotte County Unified Governments Planning and Zoning Commission voted not to recommend East Side Energy Storage. More than 40 Kansans from diverse backgrounds, including residents neighboring the project and union representatives from IBEW and AFL-CIO, showed up at the meeting in support of the project.

They gave up their valuable time to advocate for a strong clean energy future, and their voices were silenced and overridden without any real explanation. They were given no opportunity to make their voices heard through public comment, and despite a show of hands proving that the vast majority of those in the room wanted to bring the many benefits of this project home to Wyandotte County, and against the advice of staff who spent months evaluating the details, the committee voted to not recommend the project to the commission.

Why? Commissioners Duane Beth and Jim Ernst pushed for denial based on the project not matching the “neighborhood’s character,” overriding actual neighbors’ wishes.

Meanwhile, Accelergen has made a commitment to pay its fair share of local property taxes, even if the Kansas Legislature passes a law that would let them off the hook. That means more than $27 million in much-needed revenue for Wyandotte County. That directly drives a better quality of life for residents by resourcing schools, roads, and first responders. These benefits are why Kansans are showing up in force to support this project: They can see this project will create opportunities for Wyandotte families alongside cleaner air and reliable power.

Our neighbors down in Texas have seen firsthand just how much of a difference battery storage can make as our communities face unprecedented challenges from extreme weather and rising demand.

In a single winter storm, Winter Storm Heather in 2024, energy storage delivered Texas an estimated $750 million in market savings, according to the comptroller, while keeping key infrastructure running and the grid reliable. Just this January, during Winter Storm Fern, storage stayed strong under brutal conditions, keeping the lights on and averting disastrous system-wide outages.

Storage also shows up when communities are feeling the heat, helping to avoid grid failure and price spikes during record-setting temperatures. Safety incidents are vanishingly rare, and state-of-the-art containment technology and close coordination with first responders ensures the community is well-protected. When it comes to health, energy storage’s emissions-free power reliability can help alleviate the burdens of air pollution from fossil fuels and industrial toxins our communities have lived with for far too long.

East Side Energy Storage still has a path forward; fear and misinformation don’t have to get the final say. The Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City Board of Commissioners can still make a different choice, securing a strong clean energy future.

Dorothy Barnett leads the Climate + Energy Project. Ty Gorman has been the Kansas Beyond Coal campaign representative with the Sierra Club since 2020. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here. 

President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail voting would shatter decades of U.S. Postal Service independence intended to shield it from partisan politics, postal experts and attorneys say.

Postal experts said Trump ordering the postmaster general to take any action — let alone on a matter as sensitive as elections — violates guardrails in federal law against presidential control of the mail. Multiple people with deep knowledge of Postal Service history said they couldn’t recall a similar order in the agency’s modern era.

“For the president to direct the postmaster general to do anything, including handling these ballots, is contrary to the statutes, contrary to law,” said James Campbell Jr., an attorney in the Washington, D.C., area who consults on postal law.

The order, signed March 31, attracted swift condemnation as an unconstitutional attempt by Trump to control state-run elections. If it stands, the directive would also represent a White House power grab over the Postal Service, which remains a key part of American life and business.

Trump’s order directs the postmaster general, who acts as the Postal Service’s CEO, to set out rules that would require states to notify the Postal Service if they intend to send ballots through the mail during federal elections. States that want to use the mail would be required to provide lists of mail voters to the Postal Service, which would be prohibited from delivering ballots to individuals not on a list.

A Board of Governors leads the Postal Service, and holds the power to hire and fire the postmaster general. No more than five of the nine governors may belong to the same political party. 

While presidents nominate the governors and the Senate confirms them, they serve seven-year terms. The length, in theory, insulates them from political pressure.

S. David Fineman, a Philadelphia attorney nominated to the Board of Governors by President Bill Clinton who served as its chairman from 2003 to 2005, said he had never heard of the White House or a president directing the postmaster general to take certain actions. He called the executive order highly unusual.

“The postmaster general serves at the pleasure of the board,” Fineman said.

The board currently has only four members, all appointed by President Joe Biden, and five vacancies. Trump has sent four nominations to the U.S. Senate this year. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has not scheduled confirmation hearings for the nominees.

Trump has expressed interest in having more control over the mail. 

Last year, he floated the possibility of merging the Postal Service with the Commerce Department, a move that would require approval by Congress. The Washington Post reported in February 2025 that Trump was expected to try to fire the Board of Governors and take control of the Postal Service.

The Trump administration takes a dim view of independent agencies. Many allies of the president subscribe to the unitary executive theory, the idea that the U.S. Constitution grants the president full power over the entirety of the executive branch — meaning Congress cannot constitutionally create agencies that exist outside of White House control.

Trump has moved to assert authority over a number of independent and quasi-independent agencies since taking office, most notably the Federal Reserve. The Department of Justice is investigating cost overruns on a Federal Reserve construction project, widely seen as a pretext to target Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate policy has angered Trump.

The Postal Service is under tremendous financial pressure — potentially making it more vulnerable to proposals to bring it under White House control. Mail volume peaked in 2006 at 213 billion pieces that year. The Postal Service today handles 109 billion pieces annually.

The current postmaster general, David Steiner, told a U.S. House committee last month that the Postal Service will run out of cash within a year without changes to its prices and operations. The Postal Service is generally funded through stamps and other forms of user revenue, not by tax dollars.

Steiner emphasized the independent nature of the Postal Service throughout his prepared testimony. He has laid out a number of options to improve the Postal Service’s financial stability, including changes to pension funding and raising its borrowing limit from $15 billion, a level that’s remained unchanged since 1992.

“It is important to remember that we face these challenges as a self-financed, independent establishment of the Executive Branch,” Steiner wrote.

Congress approved sweeping legislation in 1970 reorganizing the U.S. Post Office Department into the U.S. Postal Service, an independent corporation. Before that, the postmaster general was a Cabinet-level position nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Trump’s order marks “a dramatic shift away from the intent of the 1970 legislation to insulate the Postal Service from interference,” Joseph M. Adelman, a history professor at Framingham State University in Massachusetts who has researched mail history, said.

The White House didn’t directly answer States Newsroom’s questions about Trump’s views on the independence of the Postal Service or the legal justification for the executive order.

“Election integrity has always been a top priority for President Trump, and the American people sent him back to the White House because they overwhelmingly supported his commonsense election integrity agenda,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

“The President will do everything in his power to lawfully defend the safety and security of American elections and to ensure that only American citizens are voting in them.”

Jackson also called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to prove their citizenship when registering. 

The Postal Service didn’t answer questions about how it plans to respond to the order. A USPS spokesperson said only that the Postal Service was reviewing it. 

Steiner has indicated he’s awaiting a court decision on how to proceed. 

“If a court says that’s not what the law means, we’ll follow that,” Steiner told The New York Times after the executive order was signed. “And so from our perspective, we don’t get involved in policy or law, we just follow the law.”

The order on mail ballots faces at least five lawsuits. The Democratic National Committee, top Democrats in Congress and Democratic state officials have all sued. The legal challenges emphasize the Postal Service’s independence in federal law.

The lawsuit filed by the DNC, top Democratic lawmakers and other Democratic campaign groups, asserts the Postal Service is structured to operate independently of partisan politics. The complaint calls the Postal Service “indispensable” to voting by mail, noting that it delivered more than 222 million pieces of ballot mail in 2024, including nearly 100 million general election ballots.

A dozen Republican state attorneys general filed motions in court this week seeking to defend the executive order from the Democratic legal challenges. The motions call the order an example of cooperative federalism to provide states with optional resources to help protect their elections.

The GOP officials argue the Democrats lack standing to challenge the Postal Service provisions of the order and that their objections are premature because the Postal Service hasn’t finalized any new rules on mail ballots.

The order “simply directs” the Postal Service “to initiate rulemaking—it does not regulate the States directly and it does not directly inhibit anyone’s voting rights,” a court filing by the state attorneys general says.

The states involved in the Republican-led defense of the order include Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas.

Mail-in voting surged in 2020’s general election amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when 43% of voters cast their votes by mail. The percentage of voters mailing their ballots has fallen from that peak but remains above pre-pandemic levels. About 30% of voters cast mail ballots in 2024, according to data gathered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

During the 2024 election, 584,463 mail ballots returned by voters were rejected by election officials — 1.2% of returned mail ballots. About 18% of those ballots were rejected because they didn’t arrive on time.

American Postal Workers Union President Jonathan Smith said in a statement that the Postal Service doesn’t block mailers from sending letters or refuse to deliver letters because of the identity of the sender. Postal workers take extraordinary measures to ensure ballots reach their destinations promptly and securely, he said.

“Postal workers take the sanctity of the mail seriously, and every process and policy of the Postal Service ensures that mail is accepted, processed, and delivered, no matter who sent it or where it is going,” Smith said.

On Monday, more than 100 U.S. House Democrats sent a letter to Trump demanding he refrain from future actions that undermine the Postal Service’s independence and calling on him to rescind the executive order. The letter says the order sets “a dangerous precedent for political interference” in postal service operations.

Senate Democrats followed up with a letter to Steiner and the USPS Board of Governors on Tuesday, urging the Postal Service to not implement the order. The letter, signed by 37 senators, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, calls the Postal Service’s independence a “hallmark” of its operations.

“The Postal Service doesn’t care which politicians you may support,” Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, said on the Senate floor last week. “Its only priority is to deliver the mail to every community in the country.”

“The president is now trying to corrupt this mission,” Peters, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees USPS, said. “If the president is successful in forcing the Postal Service to play a role in running elections, he will completely erode the trust of this storied institution.” 

Medicinal marijuana products that are legal at the state level will see looser federal regulation under an order the U.S. Department of Justice published Thursday, while a process that could remove the drug in all forms from the federal list of the most dangerous drugs is set to begin in late June.

The order, signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, shifts many marijuana products from Schedule I — the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of drugs with the greatest potential for abuse and least legitimate use — to Schedule III. 

That will open the door to greater research and provide an effective tax break for businesses that sell medicinal marijuana that is legal under state law.

The move follows President Donald Trump’s executive order last year directing the DOJ to move toward rescheduling.

“The Department of Justice is delivering on President Trump’s promise to expand Americans’ access to medical treatment options,” Blanche said in a statement. “This rescheduling action allows for research on the safety and efficacy of this substance, ultimately providing patients with better care and doctors with more reliable information.”

The order applies to state-licensed medical marijuana products in the states that allow medicinal use of the drug.

The move means those businesses can deduct business expenses from their federal taxes and researchers have access to state-legal products. As a Schedule I drug, only cannabis grown in a federal facility could be studied, severely limiting the supply available to researchers.

The DEA also scheduled a hearing on broader reclassification to begin June 29 and end no later than July 15. That hearing will explore the possibility of rescheduling marijuana products that could include recreational use.

The order likely has no immediate impact on the difficulty marijuana businesses have had accessing the banking system. Institutions that lend to even state-legal businesses could be prosecuted on federal money laundering charges for offering banking services to businesses that violate federal drug laws.

Moving a limited number of products from Schedule I, which includes drugs such as heroin and cocaine, to Schedule III, which includes highly regulated prescription drugs such as acetaminophen with codeine, does not satisfy advocates who have called for complete legalization. 

But it does represent a major shift in the federal government’s official position on cannabis, several pro-legalization groups said.

“It’s historic because the federal government, historically, has denied the existence of medical cannabis, even as a concept,” Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the advocacy group the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said in an interview. 

The federal government was in recent memory “outright hostile” to medicinal marijuana, Armentano added. The order “finally acknowledges and recognizes not only the legitimacy of marijuana as a medicine, but also the legitimacy of these state programs, and it is trying now to integrate these state programs into our own existing federal regulatory schemes.”

Forty states and the District of Columbia allow medicinal marijuana.

Jasmine Johnson, CEO of Florida-based cannabis company GŪD Essence, wrote in an email that the federal government’s acknowledgement of cannabis’ legitimate medical value was the most important part of the order. 

“That shift alone helps move the industry out of decades of stigma and opens the door for expanded research, more institutional participation, and a more rational regulatory framework,” she wrote.

Recreational use will see no immediate changes from the order. In the 24 states in which recreational use, also called adult use, is legal, businesses that sell both medicinal and recreational products may experience confusion.

Chuck Smith, the CEO of Colorado Leads, an industry group, said in a statement that for Colorado cannabis businesses, “the immediate effects of this order are significant but relatively narrow.”

“Hybrid businesses should expect a transitional period in which federally covered medical activity and federally non-covered adult-use activity may be treated differently for registration, tax, and compliance purposes,” Smith said.

Such businesses would likely not see a tax benefit “when it comes to producing and selling, arguably, the products that consist of the majority of their business,” Armentano said.

Ryan Hunter, the chief revenue officer for Colorado-based marijuana company Spherex, called the DOJ order “a very silly announcement,” noting that it created a third regulatory category of a single plant species.

“Though this is all the same plant,” hemp and medical marijuana “are now considered Schedule III substances under the Controlled Substances Act (similar to Tylenol + Codeine),” while non-medical use is still considered Schedule I, he wrote in a statement. “My mind boggles at these arbitrary and artificial distinctions, but here we are.”

Johnson, the Florida CEO, said she expected regulators to eventually merge how they treat different uses of the drug.

“The distinction between medicinal and recreational use has always been more regulatory than practical. From an operator’s standpoint, the same plant, supply chain, and compliance standards exist regardless of how it’s categorized,” she wrote. 

“Over time, we’ll likely see a continued shift toward a more unified framework that reflects how consumers actually engage with cannabis, rather than maintaining rigid distinctions that complicate operations.”

TOPEKA — Kansas and the nation face a veterinarian shortage, and state agriculture experts are collaborating to draw more vets to practice in rural areas.

Kansas State University officials are supporting programs that introduce veterinary students to rural lifestyles and gathering data to understand where shortages exist, said Brad White, director of K-State’s Beef Cattle Institute and director of the Veterinary Training Program for Rural Kansas.

The United States has lost about 90% of its food animal veterinarians since the 1940s, according to a 2023 Johns Hopkins study.

But it is challenging to get a handle on specific needs within the state, White said.

About 2,500 licensed vets practice in Kansas, a number that has been steady for a few years, according to a survey published last year by the Farm Journal Foundation and the Kansas Department of Agriculture.

The difficulty is tracking specific areas in Kansas that have veterinary shortages and in what practice areas those shortages are occurring, White said. Veterinarians may have mixed animal practices, meaning they care for large and companion animals, or they may specialize, he said. 

In 2020, K-State surveys of veterinarians and producers gathered data about vet practices, but couldn’t define exactly what services were offered or needed in different areas, White said.

“It helped us identify that many producers feel there’s a shortage area, and there’s not an easy mathematical or numerical way to define it,” he said.

In general, the shortage is felt more in rural areas where vets are needed to support ranchers and, ultimately, the food system. 

K-State works with other agricultural organizations through the Rural Veterinary Workforce Committee, White said, including the Kansas Department of Agriculture, Kansas Farm Bureau, the Livestock Marketing Association, and the Kansas Veterinary Medical Association. 

That group tackles the shortage from various angles, including considering needs to serve agricultural producers, increasing numbers of trained veterinarians, and understanding the needs in different parts of the state, he said. 

“We’re more focused on that mixed animal livestock service component because agriculture in general, and livestock specifically, are really important to our rural Kansas,” he said.

Megan Kilgore, executive director at the Kansas Veterinary Medical Association, said other states are considering solutions that include creating a para-professional role that could work with veterinarians, much like nurse practitioners in health care, or doing more veterinary work by telemedicine.

Colorado created a mid-level practitioner position in 2024, which wasn’t widely supported among veterinarians, she said. Many vets also are unsure about telemedicine because, unlike human patients, animals can’t talk and veterinarian work is very hands on, Kilgore said. 

At K-State, veterinary students can enroll in a program that introduces them to rural communities, the practices located there and the challenges of working as a veterinarian in those areas, White said.

Nationally, about 12% of graduating veterinary students go into mixed or large animal practices, he said, with most leaning toward companion animal practices.

But at K-State, 25% to 30% of students go into mixed or large animal practices, he said. Part of that is attributable to K-State’s location in an agricultural state, he said, but it is also because of the university’s focus on introducing students to rural options.   

“Since about 2012, we’ve really emphasized the additional training for those students and the additional building of their knowledge base to make them comfortable in both selecting the right practice and forming a good cohort as they get to those rural communities,” he said. 

Practicing in a rural community can be lonely and professionally isolating, White said, and helping veterinarians connect to others in their field has made a difference. 

“The result of that has been that over 95% of them have fulfilled their four-year commitment, which is a good starting point,” he said. “The goal is to keep them there for four years.”

White said 80% of veterinarians in the program continue to practice in Kansas after four years. 

Justin Welsh, a veterinarian and executive director of food animal technical services at Merck Animal Health, said his company partnered with the Farm Journal Foundation to address vet shortages. Just 3% of graduating veterinarians nationally went into food animal services last year, he said. 

Young people who grew up on a farm aren’t returning to the farm as often, he said. Sometimes the farm isn’t big enough to support them or their family sold the farm, and sometimes they want a different lifestyle, Welsh said.

Although programs offering to pay student loans attract veterinarians to rural areas, Welsh said that is a short-term solution. The problem needs to be considered from a larger perspective, he said. 

“Human nature, and also some generational factors, have told us or shown us that at some point, for a lot of people, money is not the biggest thing,” he said. “I think long-term the things that we have to address are fitting the person to the environment, and that includes the social aspect of small towns.”

Rural practices may not pay as well as those in the cities, he said. Add in that many young people are looking for better work-life balance than previous generations, and that, too, can make rural practices less attractive, Welsh said. 

“They have to be on-call practically all the time. Emergencies are one of the big detractors from rural practice,” Welsh said.

The area rural vets cover can be demanding, with emergencies taking a vet three hours away from home, he said. 

“One of the solutions is training people when they can — and it’s not always the case that they can — to bring emergencies to a centralized point,” Welsh said. “That’s one thing that a lot of practices are being designed around.”

Welsh said transparency and immersion help veterinary students know what to expect, rather than recruiting them to rural areas just for them to be surprised by the practice style. 

Kilgore said about 80% of veterinarians in Kansas are female, a significant shift from decades past. 

Work hours are always a discussion when veterinarians get together, she said, and that increased since COVID because “everybody figured out that work isn’t everything.”

“I think people have decided that family may come first now, and 20 years ago even, family would take a backseat,” she said. “That changes the dynamics of veterinary medicine because most of the females who have gotten into veterinary medicine also want to have families, and committing 24 hours, seven days a week to your clients is tough.”

Kilgore said there are women veterinarians who choose to do that, but the pool is smaller. In rural areas, there are few opportunities to share the work by splitting emergency calls with another veterinarian, she said. 

“When we talk about shortage of employees, it’s more a shortage of folks who desire to have that practice type,” she said.

White identified transparency as a way to appeal to K-State students who enroll in the school’s food animal certificate program, which includes preparing them for the lifestyle, time, finances and business acumen needed to be successful as a solo practitioner. 

“It provides those students with skills and aptitudes for food animal medicine that will help them be successful early on, which helps lead to retention,” White said. “Because one of the reasons you leave a job is ‘I don’t feel like I can do this job.’”

The food animal certificate costs nothing for veterinary students but gives them a pathway to explore that type of medicine, he said. In classes of 120 vet students, about 30 to 35 per class enroll in it, he said. 

“We’ve actually had out-of-state people come here because of that food animal certificate program, and some of those have ended up staying in Kansas,” White said. 

TOPEKA — Kansas legislators were unsuccessful in their attempt to mandate high school students pass an American citizenship test to graduate.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed a bill on Thursday that also would have required students to receive instruction on communist, fascist and socialist regimes.

Kelly said in a statement she supported the idea of civics education, but the Legislature wasn’t the right body to dictate it. She said she agrees with lawmakers “who believe that citizen knowledge of and involvement in our democratic process at the local, state and federal level should be emphasized throughout our children’s educational journey.”

“That knowledge would include an understanding that, in Kansas, the Kansas Board of Education is accorded constitutional authority to determine curricula,” she said.

The Senate passed House Bill 2412 in late March and the House passed it during the Legislature’s veto session on April 9 and 10 before adjourning for the year, so neither chamber will have the opportunity to override the governor’s veto.

House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, said in a statement the bill set “a simple expectation” that students should graduate with knowledge of “the foundational ideas of this great nation and why we fight to preserve them.”

“This bill draws a clear line between the ideals our country was founded on and the regimes that have oppressed and killed millions around the world, and quite frankly, it’s mind-boggling to me how Gov. Kelly could possibly oppose this,” he said.

The bill would have required high schoolers to answer correctly at least 70% of a 20-question exam based on the civics test taken by prospective U.S. citizens during the naturalization process. A previous version of the bill proposed a 100-question test with a passing score of  80% or higher.It would have been part of state-mandated American history and civics classes and a prerequisite for earning a diploma.

It directed the state education board to create curricula to teach K-12 public school students about the “negative impacts of communist and socialist regimes and ideologies.” Fascism was added as a component during the legislative process. 

Hawkins said the governor’s veto “​​ignores the importance of teaching students about the real-world consequences of totalitarian ideologies that stand in direct opposition to American values.”

The state board already recommends instruction on communism and socialism in history and social studies classes. 

The bill was backed by a conservative think tank, the Cicero Institute.

TOPEKA — The Kansas Department of Labor is notifying more than 8,500 individuals that they collectively were overpaid $67.4 million for unemployment insurance and must repay the funds.

Nearly half owe more than $5,000 and could face liens or garnished wages if they don’t respond. Some of the overpayments were issued during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amy Selm, deputy labor secretary, and Nicole Struckhoff, deputy unemployment director, told reporters 2,700 of the cases involve suspected fraud.

They said the agency’s updated unemployment insurance system provides improved accuracy in financial tracking and record keeping. Starting in July 2025, the agency began sending notices for newly established overpayments, averaging about 800 per month. The agency now has used the system to review 1.5 million claims dating to Jan. 1, 2019, and identify reporting discrepancies and employer-provided adjustments.

The agency planned to send letters Thursday to 8,526 individuals. Struckhoff said 46% of the individuals owe more than $5,000. Derek Helms, agency spokesman, said the total amount being sought is $67,476,025.

Selm said the letters inform people that they could make a full payment, enter into a payment plan, or apply for a waiver. The online waiver form asks individuals to make their case for why “repaying the overpayment would be against equity and good conscience or cause undue hardship.”

Selm said the agency hoped the letters would result in a “voluntary resolution.” The agency has the authority to seize property, assess fines, garnish wages, or intercept a federal tax refund to force repayment.

“Addressing overpayments supports the integrity of the unemployment trust fund and ensures consistent application of program requirements,” Selm said. “It also helps maintain equitable treatment across claimants and employers.”

For some, the overpayments are tied to not completing a work search or providing an incorrect reason for losing their job, Selm said. The fraudulent cases may involve things like not reporting wages earned while receiving unemployment or falsifying a work search, she said. None of the fraud is related to identity theft, she said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the state’s outdated unemployment system, which was built on obsolete 1970s computer code, was widely criticized for its severe limitations. The Legislature had blocked an attempt to modernize the program more than a decade earlier.

There was “a big push to get payments out the door” during the pandemic, Selm said.

But because of the legacy system, she said, discovering overpayments has been an ongoing process. The state completed a modernization of the system in November 2024.

TOPEKA — Leavenworth County Sheriff Andy Dedeke and Labette County Commissioner Terry Weidert were reassured the Kansas Legislature would grant permission to place on countywide ballots proposals raising sales tax rates.

At the start of the 2026 legislative session in January, Dedeke explained during a Senate Assessment and Taxation Committee hearing a plan to ask Leavenworth County voters to consider a one-fourth cent sales tax increase to generate revenue for Leavenworth County’s emergency communications system. Weidert shared with senators the idea of funding the Parsons Fire Department and nine volunteer departments in Labette County through a one-eighth cent sales tax hike.

“I’m just going to say, ‘Support the bill,’ ” the sheriff said.

Sen. Caryn Tyson, the Parker Republican and chair of the Senate’s tax committee, said the Legislature had a history of deferring to county voters on sales tax issues.

“We’ll support it,” she said. “It’s that easy.”

However, progress toward adoption of legislation giving Kansas counties authority to put sales tax questions before voters collapsed when political acrimony between the House and Senate reached a fever pitch in the final hours of the annual legislative session. The Senate voted 30-8 to allow votes on sales tax proposals for Labette, Leavenworth and Butler counties, but House Bill 2535 deleted authorization for sales tax votes in three other counties.

House members were enraged because sales tax ballot questions sought by Lincoln, Sheridan and Ellsworth counties were stripped from the bill. The House voted 107-14 to reject the version of the bill approved by the Senate.

In the end, none of the six counties seeking authority for sales tax votes from the 2026 Legislature got what they wanted.

Firefighters in Labette County and 911 responders in Leavenworth County learned state politics wasn’t easy. Butler County won’t have the option of voting to buy down property taxes with a 0.25% to 1% increase in its sales tax. Lincoln County won’t be permitted to move on a 1% sales tax adjustment for construction projects. Sheridan and Ellsworth counties won’t be able to let voters consider using a 0.25% sales tax increase to fund new law enforcement centers.

The gridlock had nothing with individual proposals to rely on sales taxes to fund local government. The outcome was all about inside-the-dome politics.

Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican and candidate for governor, shared with Senate colleagues his insider knowledge of this political science lesson. On the Senate floor, he offered justification for deleting three counties from the bill during questioning by Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence.

“I’m wondering if the senator from Butler could give us any information on … how that decision was made on which counties to include and which counties to exclude?” Francisco said.

Masterson said the sales tax bill was narrowed to discipline House Republicans who voted against Senate legislation designed to restrain city and county property taxes.

“If the House was serious about property tax relief, we’d be serious about giving counties a bunch of sales tax authority,” Masterson said. “The paring down was really tied to, frankly, representatives that voted ‘no’ on property tax relief. If those representatives of those counties voted ‘no,’ we didn’t include the sales taxes because they apparently think that property tax is sufficient.”

Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, D-Lenexa, wasn’t impressed: “So, we are picking and choosing … based on how members’ voted?”

When HB 2535 shifted to the House on the final day of the legislative session, Rep. Adam Smith, a Weskan Republican and chair of the House tax committee, said with sarcasm the removal of Ellsworth, Lincoln and Sheridan counties from the bill surely had to be an oversight.

“I’m sure that wasn’t intentional,” he said.

Bunker Hill Rep. Troy Waymaster, the Republican chair of the House budget committee, said it was wrong to selectively disenfranchise his constituents in Lincoln County. They should be entrusted with the responsibility of voting on a 1% increase in the sales tax for county infrastructure projects, he said.

He didn’t mention Masterson by name, but his audience in the House understood where the message was aimed.

“Because of political theater, they were not included. That was explicitly said on the Senate floor,” Waymaster said in a speech to House colleagues. “This feels vindictive to me. It’s unjust. Not only to the citizens in those counties, but to all the citizens in the state of Kansas.”

He pointed out Ellsworth County voters in November approved by a 3-to-2 margin a proposal to assess a 0.25% sales tax for the county’s capital projects. The county was waiting for legislative approval to proceed.

Rep. Jim Minnix, R-Scott City, apologized in remarks to House colleagues because the bill’s hijacking meant Sheridan County didn’t have a chance to consider a one-fourth cent sales tax for its law enforcement center. He said the Legislature should repeal a law mandating counties come before the Legislature before placing sales tax increases on a ballot.

“I strongly believe that the local units of government, who represent the same constituents that I do, have the opportunity and the freedom to put that on a ballot,” Minnix said. “It’s ludicrous to come to Topeka and ask permission for something like this. I think it’s disgraceful that we’re not including the other three.”

Cities in Kansas weren’t required to seek authority from the Legislature when interested in adjusting sales tax rates and county governments shouldn’t be held to a different standard, said Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita.

“It’s terrible that every year we make the counties come up to the Legislature. Let the voters decide,” he said.

The soldiers didn’t need directions. They followed the bodies.

In late April 1945, as troops from the 358th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army’s 90th Division pushed into the wooded hills of far eastern Bavaria, they came upon a grim trail leading away from a place few Americans had heard of then or since: Flossenbürg, a Nazi concentration camp near the Czech border.

What they found would stay with them for the rest of their lives.

When American forces reached the camp on April 23, 1945, roughly 2,000 prisoners remained — starving, diseased and dying. Shortly before, SS guards had forced as many as 15,000 others onto a death march toward Dachau, 135 miles away, under orders to kill anyone who could not keep up.

Many did not.

Only about a third were still alive when U.S. troops caught up with the column.

Decades later, a medic, Sgt. Eugene Kliendl, described it simply: “All we had to do was follow the bodies like breadcrumbs.”

Three officers were among the first Americans through the gates that day: an intelligence officer, an interpreter and a regimental surgeon — Maj. James Campbell.

He was 27 years old.

The war was still underway. Shelling and gunfire could be heard in the distance. But what confronted Campbell inside Flossenbürg was something else entirely: a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in real time.

Naked men crammed together on wooden bunks, too weak to lift their heads. Lice all over them and the soiled straw beneath them. Disease — typhus, tuberculosis, dysentery — spreading unchecked. Bodies reduced by starvation to a state that diagnosis itself became nearly impossible.

In a written report, Campbell described prisoners in “extremis from privation and starvation,” beyond the reach of ordinary medicine.

Near the crematorium, still smoking, he counted 46 corpses “stacked like cordwood.” More lay scattered across the camp. The chief attendant, a Czech prisoner, said through a Polish interpreter that he had been tasked with burning up to 50 bodies a day for nearly six years.

Inside the camp’s so-called hospital, an emaciated inmate — a former nurse from France — showed him a heavy sack filled with human teeth containing gold and silver fillings. Many, the man said, had been pulled from living prisoners, whether necessary or not.

Another inmate, a young Belgian resistance fighter, had risked his life to keep a secret ledger. Inside were the names of 73,246 people he believed had died at Flossenbürg since 1939.

“No exact diagnosis was even possible,” Campbell wrote.

Flossenbürg was not an extermination camp like Auschwitz or Treblinka. It was one of nearly 1,000 concentration camps established across Nazi-controlled Europe between 1933 and 1945 — part of a vast system designed to detain, exploit and ultimately destroy those deemed undesirable.

Its prisoners came from across the world, 47 countries in all. Jews were among them, but so were other minorities, political dissidents, clergy, academics, disabled and homeless people, prisoners of war and others swept into the expanding definition of “enemy.”

They were used as forced labor. They were beaten, starved and worked to death. They died by the tens of thousands.

Among them was the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed at Flossenbürg on April 9, 1945, just two weeks before liberation.

After the war, U.S. military tribunals at Dachau prosecuted members of the camp’s staff. In one major case, U.S. v. Joseph Becker et al., 46 officials were charged with murder, torture and abuse.

Most were convicted. Fifteen were sentenced to death and executed in 1947. Others received life sentences or long prison terms.

But many perpetrators disappeared into the chaos of postwar Europe, their crimes unpunished.

Even Allied leaders struggled to comprehend what had been uncovered. After visiting Buchenwald, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote to Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall: “The things I saw beggar description.” He insisted on seeing such camps firsthand, fearing that one day the truth might be dismissed as propaganda.

For one Kansas family, Flossenbürg is not abstract history. It is a lasting memory.

Campbell, the surgeon who documented conditions inside the camp, was my father.

A graduate of the University of Kansas School of Medicine, he enlisted in 1942 and served on the front lines across Europe with Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army. He landed in Normandy on D-Day and spent nearly 11 months in almost continuous combat, suffering two wounds, before arriving at Flossenbürg less than two weeks before the war in Europe ended.

Then he came home.

He settled in Lawrence, where he built a life as a family physician — raising a family, caring for patients and contributing quietly to his community. Like many veterans who experienced the horrors of war, he rarely spoke about it. There were only small signs: a flag always displayed on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, but otherwise a reserved silence whenever the subject arose.

It was not until 1992, eight years after his death and nearly half a century after the war, that his family began to understand.

A group of elderly Flossenbürg survivors organized a ceremony in his honor at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Lawrence. Former soldiers from his unit attended, along with a couple of men who had once been prisoners. They spoke of the day the Americans came — and of the surgeon who tried to save them.

Today, few who witnessed these events firsthand are still alive.

This reality underscores the importance of remembrance, not only of well-known sites like Auschwitz, but also places like Flossenbürg, where suffering was no less real simply because history has paid them less attention.

History does not disappear. It fades, quietly, when it is no longer told.

On the University of Kansas campus stands the Campanile, built in 1951 as a memorial to nearly 300 students who died in World War II. Visitors pass every day, many unaware of its purpose and meaning.

Inscribed in stone above the names is a declaration that still resonates: “Free government does not bestow repose upon its citizens but sets them in the vanguard of battle to defend the liberty of every man.”

Eighty-one years after Flossenbürg’s liberation, the witnesses are nearly gone. The responsibility to remember is not.

Neither is the warning.

Scott Campbell is a retired administrator and researcher at the KU Center for Ecological Research/Kansas Biological Survey. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here. 

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans, and one Democrat, maintained their support for President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, after blocking for the fifth time a resolution that would force the president to seek congressional authorization for further action in the Middle East.

The vote failed 46-51, largely following the same split as previous failed measures. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., opposed the resolution to rein in Trump, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voted in favor, just as they have in the four times prior. 

Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, David McCormick, R-Pa., and Mark Warner, D-Va. were absent.

Thirteen U.S. service members and thousands of civilians across the Middle East have died in the war, which the Trump administration has claimed is about regime change and stopping Iran’s nuclear program.

As of Wednesday, the Pentagon updated the number of American troops injured in the conflict to 400.

Fetterman and all but one Senate Republican blocked the measure one day after Trump extended a ceasefire with Iran after the prospects of a second round of peace talks fell through. Trump did not specify an end date to the ceasefire extension but announced the United States would not back down on its blockade of ships traveling to and from Iranian ports.

Trump claimed late Tuesday night that Iran is “collapsing financially!” 

“They want the Strait of Hormuz opened immediately- Starving for cash! Losing 500 Million Dollars a day. Military and Police complaining that they are not getting paid. SOS!!!” he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.

U.S. military forces fired on and seized a sanctioned Iranian cargo ship Sunday.

Iran’s foreign minister, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, wrote Tuesday on X that the seizure was “an act of war and thus a violation of the ceasefire.” 

Early Wednesday, Iran claimed responsibility for attacking two commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, a key narrow maritime passage where a fifth of the world’s petroleum flowed prior to the war. Iranian parliament representative Ebrahim Rezaei declared on X, “an eye for an eye, an oil tanker for an oil tanker.” 

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., lead sponsor of Wednesday’s War Powers Resolution, said on the floor ahead of the vote that Trump sold Americans “a bad bill of goods” when he campaigned on lowering costs and not starting any new foreign wars.

“This war has taken us backwards and created more problems for the people that I work for,” she said, citing increasing fuel and fertilizer costs as a result of a standstill in the Strait of Hormuz.

The latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation numbers reflected a 21% increase in the cost of fuel from February to March.

A gallon of regular gas remained on average just north of $4 across the country, according to AAA.

United Airlines announced Wednesday it plans to raise airfare as much as 20% to offset the cost of jet fuel, according to multiple media reports.

Brent crude oil, the global oil market’s standard, spiked above $100 a barrel Wednesday, as it has numerous times since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.

“Less than two months ago, oil prices were normal, the Straits of Hormuz was open, commerce was happening,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., ahead of the vote. 

“And then President Trump made the decision without a rationale, without a plan, without consulting with allies, without consulting or seeking a vote of Congress to enter the nation into yet another war in the Middle East. And the entire world is suffering,” Kaine said.

Trump entered the joint war on Iran alongside Israel on Feb. 28.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said passing the resolution would be “unwise.”

“We’ve been through these votes recently, and nothing has occurred in the makeup of this body or in the situation in Iran or the Middle East to materially change since the last time we voted on this matter,” the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee said on the floor ahead of the vote. 

Wicker was the only Republican to speak out against the resolution during Wednesday afternoon’s debate.

Senate Democrats last forced a vote to stop Trump’s actions in Iran on April 15, just days after the president threatened on social media to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization” and to bomb its power plants and bridges.

Senate Democrats say they have no plans to stop introducing War Powers Resolutions and speaking out against the war.

Several sent a letter Sunday to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demanding answers about “troubling allegations of civilian harm incidents,” including a strike on an elementary school that killed more than 160 children on the war’s opening day.

“We are concerned that these were all preventable tragedies. The high human toll of this war reflects the administration’s broader disregard for the strategic, legal, and moral imperative to minimize civilian harm,” the senators wrote.

The letter, led by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., was also signed by Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M; Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii; Tina Smith, D-Minn.; Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.; Raphael Warnock, D-Ga.; Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; Peter Welch, D-Vt. and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. 

The 11 senators who joined Baldwin in sponsoring Wednesday’s War Powers Resolution, a vestige of Congress’ efforts to rein in President Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War, included Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sens. Gillibrand, Kaine, Merkley and Van Hollen, as well as Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; Chris Murphy, D-Conn.; Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.; Andy Kim, D-N.J.; Cory Booker, D-N.J.; and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.

The race by each party to redraw U.S. House districts in their favor could be headed for a draw after Tuesday’s big win for Democrats in Virginia, though major shifts are still possible before crucial midterm elections in November.

Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment that clears the path for the state’s legislature, controlled by Democrats, to redraw congressional district lines to benefit Democrats in 10 of the commonwealth’s 11 U.S. House districts. 

That could net the party four new seats in Virginia, though state court cases challenging the proposal are still to be decided.

Former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Florida Democrat who now leads the Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University, said the results showed a dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump and the nation’s capital in general.

“It sends a clear message to the administration, to the White House, to Washington, D.C., that they’re not happy with the status quo, with the policies that are coming out of Washington, that they want to see a change,” she said in an interview Wednesday.

After 10 months of bitter back-and-forth that began with Trump urging Texas Republicans to revise their congressional map to help gain seats in the House, neither party has netted a significant advantage.

But the tit-for-tat may have a lasting harmful effect on U.S. democracy, experts said.

If Virginia’s proposal goes into effect, Democrats would be favored in one more House district nationwide than they had been in 2024, according to the nonpartisan election research organization Ballotpedia.

Further changes, including the Florida Legislature potentially redrawing its House map and a U.S. Supreme Court decision to gut the federal Voting Rights Act’s protection of majority-Black districts in Southern states, could tilt the advantage back to the GOP. 

Republicans narrowly control the chamber now, 217-212, with one independent and five vacancies after Georgia Democrat David Scott died Wednesday. 

The president’s party typically loses House seats in midterm elections, and Trump’s sagging poll numbers and the results of special elections do not suggest anything different this year.

Elected Democrats largely framed the Virginia results as a win for free and fair elections.

“Virginia voters have spoken, and tonight they pushed back against a President who claims he is ‘entitled’ to more Republican seats in Congress,” Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, wrote on X.

But the entire cycle could deepen political polarization, leading to less compromise and policymaking in Congress and ceding power to the executive branch, Erik Nisbet, the director of the Center for Communication & Public Policy at Northwestern University, said Wednesday.

“There were some quotes today from some leading Democrats about how you can’t bring a knife to a gunfight, and this is the only way to, like, save democracy, and sort of rationalizing it,” he said. “It’s still bad for democracy long term… It means that Congress, long term, is even more polarized and ineffectual.”

Mucarsel-Powell, who represented one of the country’s few competitive House districts, also said redistricting would make legislating more difficult.

“Redistricting doesn’t necessarily help the country overall,” she said. “As we continue to become more polarized, I think that having these maps being redrawn to favor one or the other party is just going to deepen the polarization. I think it makes it more difficult for members to be able to reach consensus. I’ve seen it, right? When you represent a solid red or a solid blue district, there’s really no incentive to compromise.”

Republicans, from Trump on down, complained Wednesday that the result was unfair because it could give Democrats 91% of the U.S. House seats in a state where the party’s most recent presidential candidate gained only 52% of the vote.

In a post to his social media site Wednesday afternoon, Trump said the result was illegitimate — repeating, without evidence, his frequent assertion in elections he has lost that mail ballots were fraudulent — and called for courts to “fix” the result.

“A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT IN THE GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA!” Trump wrote. “All day long Republicans were winning, the Spirit was unbelievable, until the very end when, of course, there was a massive ‘Mail In Ballot Drop!’ Where have I heard that before — And the Democrats eked out another Crooked Victory!”

But the proposed Virginia map would only even the playing field after Trump initiated a rare mid-decade redistricting cycle last year by asking Texas officials to redraw the state’s districts. 

Texas’ new map could net Republicans five more House seats. But its creation kicked off an arms race that included California drawing five new Democratic-leaning districts, effectively neutralizing Texas’ move. 

Legislatures in Missouri and North Carolina then voluntarily redrew their maps, while an Ohio constitutional amendment and a Utah Supreme Court decision led to new district lines in those states.

Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary under Republican President George W. Bush, bemoaned the Virginia results but called them a self-inflicted wound. States should stick to redistricting once a decade after a census, he said, blasting the GOP strategy to attempt mid-decade redistricting in some states.

“The GOP will now lose net seats across the country. If you’re going to pick a fight, at least win it. The other side will always fight back,” he wrote. “All this was foreseeable and avoidable. We should not have started this fight.” 

Fleischer linked to a post he’d written in August criticizing the GOP effort in Texas as that state geared up for a vote on the new map. “Mid-census change” was not the way to win more seats in the House, he’d said.

National Democrats celebrated.

“House Democrats have crushed Donald Trump’s national gerrymandering scheme,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York wrote on social media Tuesday night. “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”

Two more decisions could further alter the landscape for U.S. House races before November.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last year in a case challenging a Voting Rights Act provision that has been interpreted to require majority-Black districts in Southern states equal to their population. Louisiana is challenging a lower court ruling that threw out a map in which only one of the state’s six districts was majority-Black, though Black people make up about one-third of the state’s population.

Depending on the scope and timing of the conservative court’s ruling, several safe Democratic seats in the South could be in jeopardy.

And in Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis called the state legislature into a special session, scheduled to begin next week, to consider a redistricting effort and other issues.

Florida Republicans have not fully endorsed a redistricting push, which could ultimately make some incumbents’ districts less reliably red. Gerrymandering relies on spreading a party’s voters across more districts, making some individual races more difficult, especially in a potential wave election year.

“Republicans are pushing back, saying that it’s going to actually lessen the power that they have in some of these districts,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “Because if you have (a district favoring Republicans by five points), with all the overperformance that we’ve seen, including here in the state of Florida, it’s very likely going to favor the Democrats.”

Jeffries in a Wednesday morning news conference practically dared Florida Republicans to dilute their U.S. House districts, comparing the effort to the Texas map that he said was not as Republican as they thought and calling the entire GOP effort a “dummymander” that would backfire.

“F around and find out,” Jeffries said. “If they go down the road of a DeSantis dummymander, the Florida Republicans are going to find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans, who are on the run right now.” 

“The Republicans are dummymandering their way into the minority before a single vote is cast,” he added. “They started this war, and we’re going to finish it.”