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Yahoo
5 days ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Cocooning during this Kansas storm season, I try to avoid the cataclysm outside my window
The spring storm season has brought frequent rain and thoughts of self-preservation, writes opinion editor Clay Wirestone. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector) Each day now in Lawrence, where my family and I live, I watch the clouds roll in and the rains come. The spring storm season thunders and flashes and pours, and the lawns flourish and gutters overflow. I sit here in my home office through the evenings and watch as the lightning casts strange shadows. I hear the rain pelting the roof. Later on, when I take our dog out for a walk, the rains have usually slowed and the neighborhood smells earthy and damp, while the doused roads shine under streetlamps. During these days, my son hangs around the house. School has ended, and summer activities remain a few weeks distant. He plays video games and dotes on the pets. My husband's work has shifted into its busiest season, so some days I only see him toward the end of the day. I seem to live now, for a week or two at least, in a small protected bubble. The rains come and the world rumbles and my son and I stay indoors and wait for the storm to pass. Aren't many of us doing that right now, staying in those kind of bubbles, waiting for the skies to clear? We can create those bubbles in different ways. Some of us watch seasons of old situation comedies, following the adventures of Sam and Diane and Cliff and Norm on Cheers (rest in peace, George Wendt). Some of us watch horror movies (I enjoyed Nicholas Roeg's 'Don't Look Now' the other night). Some of us find escape through exercise or alcohol or other activities that change our brain and body chemistry. It is the season of survival. We endure the weather. It's different for all of us. Here in Kansas, the weather might be a private prison company pressing to reopen facilities to serve Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. It might be a law that denies critical yet misunderstood health care to teenagers. It might be your immigration status if you study at a university. It might be an uncertain economic climate that threatens small business in towns and cities. In uncertain times, we search for comparisons. We judge today's storm against the storms of the past. We survived those, we tell ourselves, so surely we must survive these ones. Those storms may have even been worse, we tell ourselves. We should expect spring rains, Discover Magazine explains, as humid summer air collides with dry winter air. The mixture forms clouds, yields precipitation. We still wait indoors, swaddled in decades-old quilts and drinking hot tea. The metaphor strains. My correspondents will write me email messages insisting that determined Kansans can weatherproof their homes. We can work together to find community and purpose during these dreary, overcast days. We need not — must not — hide from the work ahead of us. I understand these things, agree with them, have written them before. We can both endure and act. The stormy season will pass. These times will end. The clouds will clear and the sun will nudge itself above the horizon, and we will pick up the pieces. I will mow the lawn and pick up the random branches that fell from the giant tree in our front yard. Cleanup awaits, and it will take the whole subdivision pitching in. Yet while spring storm season continues, at least let me have these gloomy evenings. Let me embrace poetry and fiction and imagination leaps. Grant me the time to recharge, to dote on my family, to enjoy distractions for a handful of days. We all deserve time to center ourselves, to feel protected from the inevitable deluge. These moments of grace will steel us for a long, hot summer. 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.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
My son graduated from his Kansas middle school this week. Too bad the world stinks to high heaven.
The columnist's son, Baxter, runs across a field in New Hampshire in September 2013. He just graduated from middle school this week. (Clay Wirestone/Kansas Reflector) My eighth grader graduated from middle school on Wednesday, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. You raise a child, care for them for years as they can barely speak or take care of themselves, and then they go and grow up. Our son now looms over my husband. He's nearly my height. And he shows disturbing signs of independent thought. That's a joke, of course. Still, sitting in a packed gymnasium proved unexpectedly emotional. I was watching my child grow up, along with more than 200 of his peers. I watched for others who couldn't be there. My mother died 14 years ago this June, three months after our son was born. She was so excited to see pictures, to chat via videoconference. At the time, we lived in New Hampshire, while she lived in Kansas. She was never able to meet her grandson in person. And she was never able to tell me how quickly the time passes from late elementary school to the end of middle school — how in the space of three or four years, a little kid transforms into a towering teen. I wish she could be there. But like much that we wish for ourselves and our loved ones and our lives, that's not possible. My brother and sister were there, though, and they supported and congratulated their nephew after the ceremony. We take life's moments as they come, enjoy what we can, and move forward. Scanning social media, a message stood out. Paraphrased, the meme stated that grief encompasses more than sadness after someone passes away. We grieve when we lose something, and that needn't be a life. We can grieve friendships, careers, politics, the passage of time. I have felt so much grief over the past couple of years, grief that at times threatens to overwhelm me. I have grieved watching state politics, as LGBTQ+ Kansans were ruthlessly targeted by lawmakers. I have grieved as institutions once thought unassailable, impervious to tampering, shuddered in the face of dime-store authoritarianism. I have grieved as I realized that I'm no longer the twentysomething who bounced right back from setbacks and disappointments. I have grieved watching others around me mourn the loss of a society they thought they understood. At one time, I believed that age strengthened you. That as the years pass, you grow stronger and better equipped to face the world. I'm not sure that's true. If anything, in recent days I've felt more vulnerable, more fearful, more uncertain. All that mourning makes celebration difficult. My son heads to high school in a profoundly unsettled time, one in which politics and technology and social upheaval pose existential threats. I want to protect him. I want to vanquish these griefs, for his generation if not for my own. Yet as I just write, that's not possible. We live how we live and we have what we have. We can try our best — I can try my best — and the world around us still falls short. Others have departed recently, others whose perspective and wisdom I would have valued. My former colleague at the University Daily Kansan, Andy Obermueller, would have offered dry and cynical takes. My former bosses and friends at the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire, Mike Pride and Mark Travis, would have drawn on their journalistic wisdom. My high school history teacher, Robert Nellis, would have cited battles from World War II. The world would better and stronger if all these men were still in it. But I can't leave this column in a pit of despair. My mother didn't raise me that way. We still live in a nation of wealth and opportunity. We still live in a state packed with caring, creative people of all ages. We can still make changes for the better, even if they do only a fraction of what we imagine. I don't know what the future brings. I do know, however, the love I feel for my son and family. I know how much love my mother, gone these many years, felt for us. Love may not make the world go round. It may not solve societal problems. But our lives don't amount to much without it. Despite my grief these past years, I've also found incredible joy. My husband and child help with that, of course. So do the multitudes of Kansas Reflector readers who have attended our town halls, sent along email messages of support and opened our newsletters every morning. So does the recognition that we all of us share the gift of existence, forming another link on the great chain of human life from the far past to the distant future. An small, ceramic urn of my mother's ashes sits on a bookcase in our living room. When I told my son that I was going to write about his graduation, and that I was sad his grandmother couldn't be there, he replied immediately. 'She could have been there,' he said. 'You just needed to carry her in.' I chuckled, but of course he was right. I could have. I just wasn't looking at the situation the right way. Amid whatever mourning and grief we carry right now, let's find a way to celebrate milestones while remembering those who brought us here. And may that whole ball of emotion, bound together by love, bounce us into whatever future comes. 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.
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Your 2025 Kansas Statehouse session: A belly flop into a swimming pool full of curdled milk
A curtain of clouds sets off the Statehouse dome in Topeka on April 10, 2025, the first day of veto session. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector) Statehouse scraps Opinion editor Clay Wirestone's weekly roundup of legislative flotsam and jetsam. . When do you call failure success? When you have a supermajority of Republicans in the Kansas Legislature. Whatever else you might have heard about the 2025 session, it was a disastrous bellyflop into a swimming pool full of curdled milk. Lawmakers wrapped up their work on Friday, leaving the state crueler, sicker, poorer and weaker. A bill mugging transgender kids made it into law. So did a bill promising tax cuts but threatening fiscal ruin. Public health officials' power to fight illness was restricted. Special education students were left out to dry. It was, as I just wrote, a nauseating catastrophe. But it's just what Republicans wanted. Boasting strengthened supermajorities in their respective chambers, House Speaker Dan Hawkins and Senate President Ty Masterson rode roughshod over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly during the two-day veto session. Few backbench Republicans dared speak up or challenge leadership. On the House side, members apparently met in secret nearly every day, giving and taking marching orders. Committees heard precious little actual debate. Bills speeded through and landed on the floor, where they passed with scant discussion. Meanwhile, the whole affair wrapped up in the middle of April, leaving little time for serious consideration or compromise. You might expect Democrats to raise holy heck about this state of affairs, and some did. But others tried to model reasonableness, while their opponents modeled radicalism. Since returning to Kansas in the summer of 2016, I've endured nine sessions of the Kansas Legislature. Never have I witnessed such a disconnect between what was actually achieved and what members believed they had done. Republican lawmakers gloried in their wins. Everyone else was left in their dust, fearing what might come next. You could witness a hint of unrest, however, in Secretary of State Scott Schwab's emergent campaign for governor. The Republican announced early this year, and he could well face Masterson in the Republican primary. He blasted out a press release Friday that should leave the Senate president at least a bit concerned. 'Leadership repeatedly assured voters that cutting property taxes would be one of the first bills out of the chute in 2025,' the release reads. 'Kansans would receive a reprieve, and taxes would be kept in check. But when it came time to lead, both the governor and leadership came up short. Instead of giving Kansans a break, they gave them a bill backed by Senate leadership. The result? A paltry $25.88 tax break signed by the governor for someone owning a $150,000 home. Not enough to fill the gas tank or have the lawn mowed, let alone make life more affordable for families or seniors on fixed incomes.' Let the man cook. He continued, later in the release: 'Kansans expected better. Kansans expected leadership that would address runaway property tax increases, arrest out-of-control valuations, and restore confidence that they can afford the homes they live in — not rent them from the government.' I've started asking questions aplenty in my Statehouse scraps columns this year, both for my own amusement and to cover further ground. Here's what came to mind over veto session. Have Republicans finally lost their fear of being blamed for a Gov. Sam Brownback-styled fiscal disaster? Or have they just forgotten? After all the drama surrounding Rep. Ford Carr's disciplinary hearings, isn't it interesting how the whole situation seemed to fade away once the panel had to settle on doing something? Will Statehouse Democrats recalibrate before next session? If they have so little legislative power, what do they have to lose by attacking Republicans with a bit more glee? Will Kelly call a special session of April revenue estimates come in under expectations? How much with leadership bellyache if she does so? How on earth could next session be worse than this one? I ask a version of this question every year, and the Legislature seldom disappoints me. Still, how? Hawkins never allowed journalists back into the press box on the House floor. Despite our coverage, and despite the many reporters just doing their jobs at the Statehouse, the speaker decided to put his animus toward facts ahead of serving the public. Over in the Senate, Masterson continued a similar policy unfurled in 2022. More than three years on, he appears to have paid no price for limiting access. Meanwhile, House Republicans met secretly. Reporters were ejected from caucus meetings on multiple occasions, all for the simple act of trying to inform members of the public about what their representatives were doing. You might like what the 2025 Kansas Legislature did. You might, as I do, detest it. At the very least, lawmakers and their leaders should have the courage to do it in the sunlight. With this column, Statehouse scraps wraps its 2025 run. It will resume when the Kansas Legislature does, in January 2026. 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.
Yahoo
22-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Kansas House throws weight behind mutated child care bill with loosened vaccine rules
The Kansas Statehouse greets visitors, lawmakers, advocates and the general public on March 18, 2025. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector) Statehouse scraps Opinion editor Clay Wirestone's weekly roundup of legislative flotsam and jetsam. . Brace yourselves for an especially scrappy version of Statehouse scraps today. I have a mammoth column coming Monday, but I can't ignore my Saturday duties. So let's be quick yet purposeful. First up, from the good folks at Kansas Action for Children, a warning about Substitute for House Bill 2294, a child care bill that passed the House on Thursday. 'While we supported the previous bipartisan compromise, the work by the House Committee on Commerce, Labor and Economic Development made this bill into something we can no longer support,' my former colleagues at KAC wrote on Friday. Why's that? you ask. 'On Monday, the committee added two amendments that loosen vaccination requirements and could lead to deregulation of child care settings.' Oh. Oh, dear. The Immunize Kansas Coalition issued its own statement on the bill Friday. The group was 'very disappointed this provision was not removed from the bill before its passage by the House (this change wasn't even mentioned in the much too brief floor debate!), especially now as Kansas is facing a significant measles outbreak. Our youngest children in child care settings — sometimes too young to be vaccinated yet for diseases like measles — are most at risk for complications from infectious diseases, and they rely on everyone around them to keep them safe.' The bill now heads over to the Senate. It's clearly one to keep watching as the session shifts into overdrive. Looks like we're going to have a dramatic and costly election next year to determine how the state Supreme Court works — and whether abortion remains legal in Kansas. Stung by their failure to ban the widely popular medical procedure, Republicans have decided to target the legal system itself. (National Republicans seem to be doing the same.) The proposed constitutional amendment would switch Kansas to direct elections of justices, a surefire way to make big-money court elections part of the landscape. What a delightful prospect. As you might expect, advocacy groups had a lot to say. 'This is a blatant power grab by extremists who refuse to accept that Kansans have spoken — loudly and repeatedly — for fair courts and personal freedom, including the right to abortion,' said Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes. 'SCR 1611 isn't about judicial integrity; it's about rigging the system to force an agenda that has already been defeated. These lawmakers lost in court and at the ballot box. You don't get to fire the referee when you're losing the game, and Kansans will see this for exactly what it is. We'll dust off our Vote No signs and win again.' 'This is a blatant attack by the legislators on our justices, and it's part of a decades-long pattern of politicians attempting to punish the judicial branch for issuing decisions on education and reproductive freedom that they disagree with,' said Micah Kubic, ACLU of Kansas executive director. 'We are confident that, just as they did in 2022, the people of Kansas will see this attack for what it is — and once again take action to defend their constitutional rights from the power grabs of extremist politicians in Topeka.' Finally, from the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association: 'There have been no issues regarding the Kansas Supreme Court that necessitated the proponents' push for this constitutional amendment. We trust Kansas voters will reject this amendment. We strongly believe that when voters are exposed to the realities of watching our state's Justices having to raise money and campaign for their seats and the negative impact it will have on our state, they will vote no.' Funny, isn't it, that the issues Kansans get to vote on aren't Medicaid expansion or cannabis legalization, but (once again) banning abortion. In the frothy brew of Statehouse news, these questions floated to the top for me this week. A majority of senators voted against increasing special education funding and eliminating continuous eligibility for Medicaid coverage this week. Do they plan on running for office again? Why do so many Kansas officials see open records laws as suggestions rather than, you know, laws? Sure, a black mass might be 'a despicable, blasphemous and offensive sacrilege to not only Catholics but all people of goodwill.' But it's also protected speech under the First Amendment. Right? Quoth state Sen. Virgil Peck about cheap office space for reporters at the Statehouse: 'When I mention this in a forum back home, people come unglued: 'You are only charging $100 a year for the press to write stories about you,' that frequently are inaccurate. Those are my words.' What stories does Peck think are inaccurate? When he suggested shooting illegal immigrants? Or when he talked about 'God's special creation — females' in supporting an anti-trans bill? What department do Kansas Republican lawmakers think works well? If the answer is none, how is that possible given their decades-long hold of legislative power? Apparently, House Speaker Dan Hawkins' dislike of journalists has been taken to a new level in the chamber he oversees. As I tried to visit a House leadership office Friday, I was stopped by guards who said I couldn't even knock on a door or see a secretary. I had to have an appointment, they said, or be called back. No, the fact that I was a journalist made no difference. Let's be clear: Every other representative has an office accessible through Statehouse hallways. On the other hand, House leaders' offices are located at the front the of the chamber and overseen by these handful of brave souls. What about Hawkins' or Majority Leader Chris Croft's constituents? Can they only glimpse the office doors in the distance as well? 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.
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Kansas Statehouse clownery has torn First Amendment to shreds. Who will tape it back together?
According to Kansas Reflector opinion editor Clay Wirestone, a bipartisan coalition of Kansas leaders has shown unrelenting hostility to free speech since the session began this year. (iStock/Getty Images) From the first day of 2025 Kansas legislative session, a bipartisan coalition of leaders has shown unrelenting hostility to free speech. In proposed legislation, during hearings and through executive action, lawmakers have torn down one of our nation's foundational freedoms. That would be the right, as shared in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to freedom of speech, assembly and religion. While advocates have been quick to protest, others have been slow to recognize the wider pattern. That needs to change, or worse will follow. In case anyone has forgotten the point of the First Amendment, it's to protect the right of people to share opinions that others don't agree with. You don't need constitutional protections for innocuous speech. You don't put a clause into your founding document to protect speech with which a majority agrees. The First Amendment only matters — only has force — if it applies to the minority, or to those without hands on the levers of power. Free speech is for transgender-rights advocates at the Statehouse. It's for the Satanic Grotto. It's for those who make lawmakers tense up and grimace when they speak in a committee. It's for those who face general social opprobrium. Here's a list, in reverse chronological order, of affronts to the First Amendment that have occurred only this year at the Kansas Statehouse. : 'The Kansas Senate's budget committee wants to hold $4 million hostage from the administration of Gov. Laura Kelly until state agencies proved they eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion jobs and programs as well as ended use of gender-affirming pronouns in signature blocks of employee emails.' : 'In the counter-complaint taken up by the special committee on Thursday, (GOP Rep. Leah) Howell alleged (Democratic Rep. Ford) Carr should be reprimanded, censured or expelled by the full House for engaging in 'patterns of violent rhetoric, physical violence, intimidating behavior and derogatory language which is unbecoming of any Kansan, much less a member of the Kansas House.' : 'Gov. Laura Kelly intervened Wednesday in satanists' plans to conduct a black mass on March 28 at the Statehouse by declaring they would not be allowed inside.' : Rep. Susan Estes, R-Wichita, 'interrupted and admonished Rabbi Moti Rieber for saying lawmakers were prejudiced toward transgender children. She had Capitol Police forcibly remove Iridescent Roney, who shouted, with a fist in the air, 'Trans rights are human rights.' ' : 'The Kansas Senate on Wednesday passed legislation that would ban school district employees from using names or pronouns other than a minor student's corresponding biological sex or birth certificate without parental permission.' : Senate Bill 63 'also prohibits the use of state funds for psychological treatment for transgender children, bans state employees from promoting 'social transitioning' and outlaws liability insurance for damages related to gender-affirming care.' For more on SB 63's dire free speech implications, read our story about an identical bill last year. : New Statehouse barriers for journalists were limply justified. 'During debate Thursday over an array of new House rules, (House Speaker Dan) Hawkins said he implemented the new restrictions to give his staff a better place to sit. Previously, staff sat on a bench in front of the press box.' : 'Hawkins banned reporting from the House chamber floor in new rules issued ahead of the legislative session, breaking from historical precedent and further exhibiting his disregard for news reporting.' If transgender Kansans and state employees and journalists do not have free speech, no Kansan has free speech. We only have the appearance of freedom if we share an opinion that everyone loves. Kansas leaders should be careful because their actions have played out in front of a national backdrop that shows unprecedented challenges to free expression. The Trump administration has tried to deport activist Mahmoud Khalil for his role in leading protests at Columbia University. Thus far, Khalil has not been accused of violating any law, simply expressing speech that the government disagrees with. Trump also sued media organizations and social networks, reeling in multimillion dollar settlements in constitutionally shaky cases. With this kind of nonsense happening across the nation, you would hope that leaders in Kansas would set an example for their constituents. They could stand up and say that we make a point of respecting everyone's right to make their voice heard, no matter the subject, no matter the controversy, no matter the person speaking. They have shown themselves instead more interested in scoring political points and delivering body blows to the First Amendment along the way. Now it lies bleeding inside the Statehouse, gasping for air as lobbyists and legislators step over its battered body. Who will salve its wounds? Who will rescue our rights? Who will protect the First Amendment — and all of us besides? 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.
