Held within the long and winding Constitutional amendment ballot question a phrase that deserves more attention than it’s been getting…

“Provided by Law.”

From the ballot question:

“The citizens of Kansas who are qualified electors shall elect the justices of the supreme court. The rules applicable for such elections and the designation of position numbers shall be provided by law.

And

“Any vacancy occurring on the supreme court for an unexpired term shall be filled by election as provided by law.

”

It essentially means the rules haven’t been written.

Much like the so-called “Value Them Both” amendment in 2022, this language sets up a scenario that gives the Kansas Legislature broad authority to write the rules and regulations however they’d like. And change them over and over again whenever they feel like it.

The same dynamic exists here.

In this case, the ruling party in the Kansas Legislature hopes that Kansans will change the Kansas Constitution by approving a blanket statement to elect justices, rather than relying on the current nominating commission that’s been in place since the 1950s.

But how those elections will be handled, the rules that will govern those elections, restrictions on how Judicial candidates can raise money and campaign - not one bit of that has been written or decided yet. Likewise, there are no rules set on how vacancies will be filled if this direct election method is approved. The legislature will have the authority to write those rules however they see fit.

More concerning might be the fact that future legislatures can’t be bound by the decisions of past legislatures. Just ask your local governments who missed out on 20+ years of statutorily mandated property tax relief payment. They know better than anyone that just because a law is on the books, it doesn’t mean anyone in Topeka is going to follow it.

One year, the legislature might draft some rules about how a Supreme Court Justice can’t also be the Chair of a state political party. Seems reasonable that there’s some conflict of interest there. But a few years later, there might be a group of lawmakers who feel that’s just fine.

It might seem nearly impossible now, but there even could be a time when those lowly, communist, socialist, (insert the slur de jour here) Democrats might even have control of the legislature. I can’t imagine the rules they’ll write then will be very favorable to Republicans.

I guess if you think the Kansas Legislature is doing some pretty good work, what with its 20-year tax breaks for data centers and taxpayer funded corporate welfare for billionaires, then go ahead and vote to give them a blank check to get whatever they want in the judicial branch.

But based on what I’ve witnessed over the years, I’m gonna go ahead and vote “No.”

Another little bit worth noting.

I’ve seen some posts, mostly by Republican House leadership, crying foul that so many groups they don’t like have lined up against this Constitutional Amendment, and ‘gasp’ spent money to help educate voters. Sure seems that this group doesn’t like it when people do what they’ve been doing all along. And I’ll be curious to see if the money totals for team “yes” holds. There are some sneaky devils there who are crazy good at hiding money they spend.

Anyway, it’s funny to me because it’s not like those groups proposed the change. Republican Leadership, and the various groups aligned with them, pushed this ballot question through and insisted on trying to get this change. These groups are simply defending against that action. We have got to stop letting these folks do questionable/abusive/shady things and allow them to play the victim when people stand up and defend themselves against it.

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An Ounce of Prevention will be an up-close conversation about public health with Candace Davidson and Kara Bunce, who both work in the field every day with the Reno County Health Department.

In this first episode, we talk about the history of public health in the United States. It reaches back to the 1940s, when one of its earliest missions was to combat the growth of malaria. During that conversation, I realized how fortunate I’ve been in my life to not worry daily about contracting the mosquito-borne illness - which is prevalent and fatal in many parts of the world.

We explore the ways in which public health has touched individual lives across the country, in Kansas, and here at home in Reno County. As I went back to listen to the final cut, I realized how much I learned during this interview with Kara and Candace. It’s really a treat for me to sit down with people who understand a topic far better than I ever could - and are willing to share their knowledge with me. I guarantee that you’ll learn something in this episode, and find the conversation engaging and informative.

Look for an Ounce of Prevention to hit your streaming service on the 4th Thursday of each month!

An Once of Prevention is made possible through a Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas Pathways to a Healthy Kansas grant. Our theme music is Never Going Home by Charlie Lewis, Free Music Archive, licensed CC BY-NC-SA

You can listen to Rooted with HutchRec anywhere you listen to podcasts, or you can find it at Salt City Podcasts.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

And on Spotify

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I’m running to represent Hutchinson and the 102nd District in the Kansas House of Representatives.

Success will depend on you.

Everything is going to be different this time around. I’m the challenger. I’m the underdog candidate. The state-level Democrat Party has written off Hutchinson as lost. The Governor’s leverage and resources will be deployed in other races that seem more winnable on paper.

The ruling party in Topeka and the lobbyists who support them do not want to see me in the legislature. They know that I think independently and ask tough questions. They know I’m not moved by their money. They know that I have a long history of exposing the ways they exploit and enrich themselves from a system that’s supposed to work for you.

And if they haven’t figured it out, I’ll make it very clear: I am not running to get along, play nice, or to help keep things the way they’ve always been. I am running to disrupt - because it’s time to stop pretending that this system functions for Kansans.

I am running because the Kansas legislature never has money for the policies that would enrich or improve the lives of Kansans - but they always have money for their lobbyist friends’ pet projects and government handouts. I’m running because I’m tired of hearing excuses from the people in charge - people who keep running on the promise to lower taxes and make your life better, while throwing your hard-earned money at billionaires and wealthy corporations.

I’m running to represent this community and the people who live here.

Depending on who wins the Aug. 4 primary election, I’ll be up against either Tyson Thrall or the incumbent Kyler Sweely. I hope Tyson is successful in the primary. He’s a good and honest man. And though we don’t align on many of our policy ideas, I like and respect him. He’s dedicated to his family, his faith, and his community, and he’s transparently authentic about who he is, what he believes, and where he stands. Hutchinson Republicans would be in far better hands sending Thrall to Topeka than it is with the current incumbent.

Kyler Sweely came into Hutchinson under a cloud of suspicion about his residency and his character, raised even among members of his own party - and those questions persist still today. He is financed by big business, high-dollar lobbyists, and all the dark money he needs to win his election. In my view, he’s never been authentic or truthful with Hutchinson about who he is, where he is on anything, or what he stands for. From what I’ve seen, he produces little more than the list of talking points provided to him by leadership in Topeka and Washington, D.C.

My support will come from you - Kansans who believe that we can be something better. Who have watched our state fall further and further behind under an entrenched, self-serving establishment system and politicians who forget who they serve.

Over the next several months, I will share my values and ideas with voters. Concrete ways we can offset the costs of property taxes, and ideas to develop lasting changes to the property tax code. You’ll hear how your tax dollars could be spent differently in your community - instead of throwing it away in the name of “economic development” for things like data centers. We’ll talk about ways to curb excessive government surveillance on law-abiding citizens, the need to prevent corporations from price-gouging Kansans through practices like dynamic pricing, and the tools we could deploy to better support small business.

It’s also quite likely if the incumbent wins the primary on Aug. 4, that you’ll be bombarded with dark money ads and mailers using AI-produced images and misleading, inaccurate, and deceitful information. It’s the favorite tool of politicians without their own ideas, identity, or any sense of moral clarity.

I can’t outspend these groups and their networks. That’s why I’ll need all the help you can lend. If I’ve ever helped you in any way in the past, now’s the time I need you to return the favor.

• First, put Aug. 7 on your calendar! We’ll be hosting a Campaign Kick Off Party from 6:30 to 8 p.m. - At Jason’s House. In Hutchinson. Where he lives. Look for more information on this in the coming days! But be sure to save the date!

• I will need volunteers. A lot of them. I guarantee you that there is a way you can help - even if it’s talking with your neighbors or putting one of our signs in your yard. There will be a job for you - and your help will be the difference between winning or losing.

• In fact, one of the simplest and most impactful ways you can help is by talking with your friends, neighbors, and acquaintances about who I am and my love for our community. You can sign up to volunteer here.

• Campaigns also need money to help get our message out to voters. Anything you can give will be greatly appreciated. Our first fundraising deadline is coming up on July 23 - the max contribution this cycle is $1,000, but you can give again following the Aug. 4 primary election.

There are a lot of ways to donate.

• Act Blue

• DonorBox

• You can also mail a check to PO Box 3262, Hutchinson, KS 67504

Your help will be more important than ever this year - and our community, our state, and our country are on the line.

Thank you for your help, and your continued support.

Ad Astra per Aspera.

Paid for by Vote Probst, Leslie Shea, treasurer

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Follow the link, and you’ll land on a site that declares that it exists to provide “Facts on Kansas’s Top Topics.”

Click on the “About” page, and you’ll see this

The site claims to be a fair and neutral examination of the Kansas Constitutional Amendment Vote that you’lll be asked to vote on August 4.

Some reasonably well-respected Republican lawmakers promoted the site as the “the best I’ve found so far” for an “unbiased source, side-by-side” comparison” on the issue.

This site, however, isn’t unbiased at all - and neither are the people who started it.

The first hint of bias comes from the home page, which paints Kansas in dramatic red - an effort to highlight that Kansas stands alone in the way it selects justices with its “Bar Controlled” method.

Less biased maps can be found at State Court Report, a project of the Brennan Center for Justice. This map reveals that partisan elections of Supreme Court justices - as proposed under the proposed amendment is among the least favored method in the U.S. Kansas falls under a merit selection process, which is used in 14 states. Non-partisan elections are used in 14 states, 4 states use a hybrid model, 9 states rely on a Governor’s appointment, 2 states rely on legislative appointment and 7 states rely on partisan elections.

Kansas is hardly an island of Judicial misfit toys.

Additionally, the Kansas Information Network site omits that Kansas is among 24 states that rely on a judicial nominating committee to select Justices in their initial term, and in a group of 19 states that allow consistent retention votes after the initial term.

I’d invite you to go to this site and explore for yourself. It’s such good source information, even the Kansas Information Network referenced it, though failed to provide a direct link for its readers.

The narrative on the Kansas Information Network, though framed as neutral and unbiased is anything but. Yet its bias is subtle enough that many people would likely be fooled and take the information as a fair and honest explanation.

The next hint of bias and political skullduggery is that there is absolutely zero information on the site about who is responsible for its creation, financing, or management.

It costs money to be a consistent top search result. People and groups aren’t generally in the habit of spending money to show up in search engines out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s an investment, and someone is hoping to get something in return

In the case of this vote, I’d reckon it’s the right to have some influence over who gets to sit on the bench of the Kansas Supreme Court - ideally someone who is more likely to see the world their way, and maybe pretty keen on the newfound world of dark money that will surely make its way to the election of Supreme Court Justices.

I mean, it’s not like billionaires have ever tried to buy themselves a Justice before.

Look up the Kansas Information Network, and you’ll see that the person who incorporated it is Josh Ney. The name might not mean much to most Kansans, but nearly everyone in Kansas politics knows exactly who, and what, he is. Josh Ney is well-known, well-connected, and a very familiar name and face in Republican circles.

Josh Ney is a partner at KN Law Group. The K used to stand for Ryan Krieghauser, who defended Kyler Sweely in the ethics case regarding his residency, filed against him by fellow Republicans. He’s also spouse of Christi Krieghauser, who is VP of Political Affairs for the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, which plays a major role in just about every terrible policy decision that has affected Kansans for the past 20 years.

Ney (and Krieghauser before his appointment as U.S. Attorney) is sort of the go-to attorney for Republicans anytime they get themselves in a pinch. He’s been heavily involved in working to change campaign finance laws in Kansas in a way that allows higher corporation contributions to political action committees, and wiped away many regulations around campaign coordination. He even sought to eliminate the requirement that PACs file ethics reports or register with the state at all by creating an “advocacy” loophole.

Wait. We don’t call it ethics anymore because that hurt some lawmakers feelings.

Sure feels pretty woke to me.

On the issue of Judicial selection, Ney offered testimony in support of SCR 1611 - which is the resolution that resulted in the amendment vote on Aug. 4, 2026.

The Kansas Information Network earlier this year booked about $264,000 in ads for what it called a “Right to Vote” campaign.

Ney has a documented bias - which is his to have. Yet he’s formed an information sharing platform that is shielding his very publicly stated positions - and ad buys -behind a mask of neutrality. All while other people who directly supported the Constitutional change are likewise promoting it as fair and neutral.

I think voters ought to ask themselves why. Why would big money groups care so much? Care about you? Do they make these investments to change electoral outcomes for the good of the people of Kansas? Or is there something else at play?

I man, there’s nothing wrong with asking questions, right?

I’ll offer my completely biased - but well informed - hot take.

The truth is that the ruling power in Kansas - and that’s been Republicans for the past 40-plus years - have an iron-clad grip on Kansas government.

They have super majorities in the House and Senate.

They can legislatively do anything they please.

They can override the Governor at will - and sometimes brag about how easily and often they do it.

They have absolute control.

NOTE: I hope you all remember this when they tell you this election season that they simply couldn’t do any more to help lower or offset property taxes. They 100 percent could - if they really wanted to.

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The only thing that checks their unmitigated power of single-party rule is the judiciary - and altering the makeup of the Kansas Supreme Court has been a Republican and corporate fever dream since back when Sam Brownback was governor.

That’s why they’re willing to spend so much money, align so many powerful groups, leverage the whole of Kansas government, and craft biased advertising campaigns disguised as fair, and completely devoid of any politics at all.

I’d ask you to ask yourself why.

But while we’re asking questions here, I have one more I’d like voters to consider.

If our lawmakers and these big power groups care so deeply and passionately about your right to vote on everything that affects our state, why don’t they support with such vigor - and with their money - your right to vote in public referendums or initiatives? After all, the vast majority of states have one or the other, or a mixture of both. Yet, anytime we’ve raised the idea of handing over this power to voters, the people you elect in Topeka, supported by special interests, immediately reject the notion.

My completely biased guess is that the people, groups, organizations, and corporations, who actually run the show in Topeka with their money and influence aren’t really interested in your right to vote on what matters to you - things like legalizing marijuana, lowering property taxes, reforming healthcare.

But they are quite interested in ensuring the Judiciary must exist under the same sort of electoral, partisan, political, and financial control they’ve held over the legislature for a generation or more.

That Podcast in Hutch has partnered with the Hutchinson Recreation Commission to present a new Podcast - Rooted. It’s series of conversations that focus on how HutchRec builds community through its programming, events, and sports activities in Hutchinson and Reno County.

We’ll be exploring a different topic related to the world of recreation each month - and along the way we’ll share behind-the-scenes stories and examples of how HutchRec’s history in our community has made us richer, healthier, and more vibrant.

In this first episode, I visited with HutchRec executive director Tony Finley, and Assistant executive director Amy Conklin about HutchRec’s history, and how the organization has adapted to the changing landscape of entertainment and recreation over the years.

But we also visit about how recreation is more than recreation. It’s about connecting people, building community, and creating spaces where people can come together for shared experiences that create stronger bonds, and build bridges.

Rooted will air the second Tuesday of each month, so be sure to subscribe where ever you listen to your podcasts and watch your notifications for updates.

I’m excited to present the inaugural episode of Rooted - a story about the important role HutchRec plays in building a rich community. I learned a lot about the history of recreation in our community, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did!

You can listen to Rooted with HutchRec anywhere you listen to podcasts, or you can find it at Salt City Podcasts

You can listen to Rooted on Apple Podcasts

On Spotify

And YouTube

Author’s note: This is the first in a multi-part series about Edmund G. Ross, who served as a Senator for Kansas in the U.S. Congress from 1866-1871. I plan to publish a new part each day during the July 4th weekend marking America’s 250th birthday. I hope you’ll take the time to read each part of this important story about our state’s history - and share it with others. I think it’s an important story that speaks to our own moment in our nation’s future history.

You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

The Trial

The House articles of Impeachment against President Andrew Johnson advanced from the House with a vote of 126 to 47. A trial was later set in the Senate.

Up to this point, Ross is a well respected member of the free state movement - a strong Republican who held the passionate views of equality under the law, and the preservation of the Union. His constituency, however, was more radical, with people who hoped to see the South harshly punished for its rebellion.

The editor of Kansas State Record - a paper once owned by Ross - expressed grave concern that the junior Senator from Kansas had lost his zeal, influenced by his former commander Thomas Ewing who had been a contender for Johnson’s cabinet, and with whom Ross had a good relationship.

Indeed, Ross’s view was moderating, as this excerpt detailed in the book Edmund G. Ross:

During the Senate Impeachment Trial, there was an expectation that every Democrat would vote to acquit Johnson and every Republican would vote for conviction. There was a group of Republicans who made it known that they considered voting to acquit, and they were “relentlessly stalked and warned that their future was grim if they didn’t vote to convict.”

It seems some things never change.

Ross kept his leanings to himself, though that worried his fellow Republicans, including the Senior Senator from Kansas, Samuel Pomeroy - who had greeted Ross when he first arrived in Kansas with his family and a band of dedicated abolitionists.

Some of the arguments in the trial sound very familiar to some of the arguments we hear today. There was conflict between Constitutional powers granted to Congress and those granted to the President, and that was at the heart of the impeachment trial.

The prosecution, led by Lincoln ally Thaddeus Stephens, argued that Johnson had openly violated his oath of office.

“When Andrew Johnson took upon himself the duties of this high office he swore to obey the Constitution and take care that the laws be faithfully executed. That, indeed, has always been the chief duty of the President of the United States. The duties of legislation and adjudicating the laws of his country fall in no way to his lot.”

Johnson’s defense, however, argued that the Constitution didn’t provide any mechanism to settle disagreements about the legality of those laws - except to violate them and involve the Supreme Court. He stated that the President has as much authority to question the constitutionality of a law as Congress did to enact it.

“The President is not a ministerial office. His function is not merely to execute laws, but to construe them as well…When, therefore, this tenure-of-office act came to be considered by the President in reference to his purpose to remove Mr. Stanton from office, he had a right and it was his duty to decide for himself whether the proposed removal of Mr. Stanton was or was not forbidden by the act. As yet that act had received no construction by the judicial department, nor had the President any authority to send the act to the Supreme Court, and require the judgement of the court upon its true meaning. The Constitution gave him no right to resort to the judges for advice.”

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During the preliminary hearings on Johnson’s trial, Ross had voted in most instances to allow all evidence and arguments from both the defense and prosecution into the record. That wasn’t the case with some of his colleagues - but it’s an important distinction. Ross believed that the evidence ought to be seen and heard, and that it was unfair to build a case in such a heavy trial without allowing the President to freely present his arguments and evidence.

The Vote

Pressure intensified on Ross ahead of the impeachment vote on May 16, 1868.

On May 14, Ross and Pomeroy received a telegraph from Daniel R. Anthony, who claimed to represent “1,000 others” and said “Kansas has heard the evidence and demands the conviction of the President.”

At midnight before the day of the vote, one Senator beat on the Ream family home, where Ross rented a room. He stayed until 4 a.m., demanding to see the absent Ross and tormenting Vinnie, a teenage girl who lived there, with accusations that she was hiding him.

On the morning of May 16, Thaddeus Stephens and Samuel Pomeroy met Ross as he entered the Senate chambers. Pomeroy warned Ross that a vote for acquittal would see his political death and that bribery and corruption charges against him would come forthwith.

Ross also faced his physical death - having received a number of assassination threats, as well as a plot to kidnap him.

If seven Senators voted for acquittal the case against Johnson would fail. When the question came to Ross, the six known dissenters from the Republican party had already voted for acquittal.

In that moment, Ross had a profound choice to make. He could go along with the demands of his party and make an easy choice for his future. Or he could do what he believed to be right, the more difficult path.

Ross was the seventh Republican vote for acquittal. It was the vote that spared Andrew Johnson’s presidency.

Near the end of May 1868, Ross spoke in the Senate about the reason for his vote. It is a timely warning that we seemingly have forgotten in many ways.

The Fallout

Immediately after the vote, Pomeroy followed up on his previous threats. He promised Ross that every sliver of his life would be exposed and exploited unless “he redeemed himself of his corrupt apostasy, a chain of circumstantial evidence would be fastened about him.”

Immediately after the verdict, the House authorized an investigation into whether corruption had influenced the Senators who voted for acquittal.

Ross explained his vote in later speeches and in a book he published 30 years later. He felt removing the President without real cause would both weaken the office long into the future, and, since Johnson was a Southern, reignite the flames of rebellion.

Ross was accused of corruption and bribery, and faced an investigation and immense harm to his reputation. A newspaper editorial in the Leavenworth Conservative wrote:

Such thoughts were repeated throughout the Kansas Press.

Ross even received a telegram directly from Kansas Supreme Court justice L.D. Bailey:

Naturally, the attention on Ross’s vote and reputation affected his family. They wrote to reassure Ross, and he did the same for them.

Shortly after the vote, Ross wrote a letter to his wife, Fannie.

Ross never completely shook the harm to his reputation, his standing did improve over time. (While Ruddy’s book tends to paint Ross in a positive light, another historian, David O. Stewart, argued in his book “Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy” that Ross’s political patronage connection to wealthy Kansas trader, and eventual white collar criminal, Perry Fuller was too strong to ignore.)

He lost his re-election bid in 1871, and left the Republican Party in 1872. He ran as a Democrat for Kansas governor in 1880, before moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1882. He served as territorial governor of New Mexico from 1885 to 1889, where he reportedly served with respect and honor.

John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage best explains the latter years of Ross’s life.

Just before his death, Congress granted Ross a special pension for his service to the country during, and after, the Civil War. The newspapers that once called for his public haranguing now recalled him more softly, praising him for his stand against “legislative mob rule.”

Author’s note: This is the first in a multi-part series about Edmund G. Ross, who served as a Senator for Kansas in the U.S. Congress from 1866-1871. I plan to publish a new part each day during the July 4th weekend marking America’s 250th birthday. I hope you’ll take the time to read each part of this important story about our state’s history - and share it with others. I think it’s an important story that speaks to our own moment in our nation’s future history.

You can read Part 1 here.

Southern Democrat of Tennessee, Andrew Johnson, became President after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April, 14, 1865.

The combining of a Republican and Democrat onto a single Unity ticket was something Lincoln wanted - as did the conventioneers who made the selection of Johnson as Vice President at the Baltimore Convention in 1864.

The arrangement, as explained in Richard Ruddy’s book on Edmund Ross:

The Convention advanced Johnson’s nomination, and outlined the platform of the National Unity Party - using the first three resolutions to send a message that this ticket was about bringing the Union together. Partisan politics, for a moment, had faded behind the existential threat to our Nation.

That sense of unity began to fade, however, when Johnson ascended to the presidency.

While Johnson believed in saving the union, he was an “old-fashioned Southern Jacksonian Democrat” who favored the view of state’s rights to do largely as they please. And he was a southerner of the times - racist, and strongly opposed to the idea of equality for the recently freed slaves.

“This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men,” Johnson wrote in 1866.

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But he supported an end to slavery and never called for Southern Secession. As a Senator from Tennessee he retained his seat even as his state left the union. The North viewed his act as heroic; the South viewed him as a traitor.

With the war over, and Lincoln in the grave, Johnson quickly went to work on his version of reconstruction while Congress was in recess.

He handed out thousands of pardons to southern rebels, so long as they’d take a loyalty oath to the Union. Men of wealth and position, however, had to secure a special pardon directly from the President. He allowed southern states to set up “black codes” that effectively permitted continued slavery under a different name. Johnson even appointed provisional governors throughout the south who are tasked with implementing his reconstruction plan.

Congress returned in 1866, livid to see so many rebel leaders still in positions of authority, feeling that these men must be punished for their crimes - not rewarded. They took swift action to limit Johnson’s powers - passing an extension of the Freedmen’s Bureau which worked to assist freed slaves (and poor white families) who had been displaced after the war, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution - granting full rights to anyone born in the United States, which was just upheld by the Supreme Court in June 2026.

Johnson vetoed the Freedmen’s legislation and the Civil Rights Act, but Congress, for the first time in American History, overrode a presidential veto on meaningful legislation.

The Radical Republicans in Congress further restricted Johnson by passing a number of measures designed to limit Presidential power, including the Tenure of Office Act - which outlined that any federal official confirmed by the Senate couldn’t be removed from office without the consent of the Senate.

Johnson was incensed and vetoed what he viewed as unreasonable restrictions on his administration. Congress again overrode the president’s veto - setting up the stage for Johnson’s eventual impeachment trial and Edmund Ross’ pivotal role in History.

In the summer 1867, Johnson decided to replace Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, whom Johnson believed had conspired with Radical Republicans to undermine his reconstruction efforts and his administration. Johnson replaced Stanton with Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant.

Congress returned in January 1868, and refused Stanton’s removal. In turn, Johnson refused to accept the Senate’s refusal. He appointed Lorenzo Thomas as acting secretary, thus avoiding Senate approval.

Impeachment proceedings began in a few days’ time.

Though the impeachment articles built a case around Johnson’s violation of the law, time and reflection has revealed that Johnson’s trial was rooted more in politics than in legitimate Constitutional claims. The Tenure of Office Act was so onerous that in 1887 Grover Cleveland successfully lobbied for repeal of the law, and in 1926 the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to require Senate approval for removal of certain officials.

By May of 1868, Edmund Ross would find himself tasked with casting his vote on the matter, fully aware of the heavy consequences it carried. In 1957, then Senator John F. Kennedy spoke about Ross during the University of Kansas Convocation.

“I feel a great sense of privilege and responsibility in appearing in this State – for this is the home of a great United States Senator of the past who has long been an inspiration to me and who consequently played a major role in my book, Profiles in Courage,” Kennedy said. “I refer, of course, to one of this state’s earliest Senators some ninety years ago, the man who performed…“the most heroic act in American history,” and who for a time made his home in this city. His name – which I shall never forget – is, of course, Edmund G. Ross.

Coming soon - Part 3: Ross pressured within and without to toe the party line.

Author’s note: This is the first in a multi-part series about Edmund G. Ross, who served as a Senator for Kansas in the U.S. Congress from 1866-1871. I plan to publish a new part each day during the July 4th weekend marking America’s 250th birthday. I hope you’ll take the time to read each part of this important story about our state’s history - and share it with others. I think it’s an important story that speaks to our own moment in our nation’s future history.

There was once a time when Kansas raised up men of profound courage.

Men who refused to trade their values for temporary gain. Men who resisted forceful efforts to bend their will, who stood resolute despite attacks from the power of the majority. Men willing to stand firm in their ideals and suffer harm to their life, livelihoods, reputation, and wellbeing.

We’ll celebrate America’s 250th birthday this weekend, yet it’s a day that might never have happened at all, but for the men and women throughout our history who held in their souls the courage to stand against the prevailing winds of their day.

Our founding document - the Declaration of Independence - is a statement of overt defiance of the customs and norms of the time. It is a courageous statement in the idea that the moment must be met head-on, despite the risks, the dangers, or the unknowns.

To throw off the yoke of the British Empire, to say aloud one’s view of the world and its future, and to issue a direct warning to the crown violated every law and norm that existed in 1776. It was, in effect, treason. Yet our founders remained steadfast in their belief that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

That the United States still exists 250 years later is owed to countless men and women throughout our history who wielded America’s spirit of defiance - who stood against overwhelming opposition, norms, expectations, and dire threats.

We don’t owe our existence to people who did the easy thing, the popular thing, or the most self-serving thing. We don’t owe our rich history to those who said this is how it’s always been done, nor to people who see public service as a gateway to grift and personal gain. Our strength and power never came from those who cowered, who complied, who abandoned their own souls so they might readily adopt the identity of another person, or group, upon which to stand.

We owe our continued existence - and our future if we’re to have one - to the people with courage to stand on their principles and convictions - especially when everyone says they were wrong.

We owe it to people like Kansas Senator Edmond G. Ross.

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Kansas wasn’t yet a state but it already played a monumental role in the nation’s struggle over slavery. The term Bleeding Kansas described the violent skirmishes between Missouri and Kansas - rooted in the fight over whether future admissions to the Union would be free or slave states.

Sara Robinson, who became the first First Lady of Kansas, helped tell our story in her book “Kansas: Its Interior and Exterior Life, including a full view of its settlement, political history, social life, climate, soil, productions, scenery, etc.”

Published in 1856, it was considered among the most important books about the abolitionist movement. Its powerful language highlighted Kansas as the front line against the forces of slavery….

“Most of us have come to this far-away land, with a mission in our hearts, a mission to the dark-browned race, and hoping here to stay the surging tide of slavery, to place the barrier which utters, in unmistakable language, “Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.” This unlocks our hearts to each other, and at once we recognize a friend actuated by like sympathies and hopes.”

Ross lived and worked as a printer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but his fierce belief in abolitionist movement, and likely reading Robinson’s words, compelled him to uproot his family and start anew in Topeka, Kansas in 1856 - bringing other like-minded folks to make the move with him. He published the Topeka Tribune from 1856-1859 and established the Kansas State Record in 1859.

He quickly became an early leader in Kansas, and pivotal to its story. He came to Kansas specifically to serve the free state movement. Ross was a member of the Kansas Constitutional Convention from 1859-1861, and served as a director for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, which connected him well to other Kansas leaders.

Ross also entered the Union Army in 1862, leaving with the rank of Major in 1865. He fought in several significant battles, including Westport and Mine Creek.

On July 19, 1866, Ross continued his service to Kansas as a U.S. Senator. Ross, a Radical Republican, was selected to replace Sen. James Lane after his death. Ross entered the Senate on the heels of the Civil War - a time when there was much contention, contempt, and lingering bitterness.

Ross was described as a somewhat quiet man who wasn’t inclined to rabble rouse or otherwise cause much trouble. He was well-liked and respected, dedicated to his work and service to Kansas and the cause of abolition, which defined the Radical Republican wing of his party.

Ross’s vote on May 16, 1868, to acquit President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, in his impeachment trial changed the course of the United States, and profoundly affected his life.

By 1871 Ross would be voted out of office, disgraced, accused of corruption, patronage, bribery, infidelity, any number of wrongdoings - all because he put the wellbeing of the United States above his political identity, his reputation, his safety, and his future. Because he disregarded the threats and intimidation, and refused to place loyalty to party above his duty to country, as the Republican party bosses commanded.

Ross explained his position and his vote in a speech later that May.

“But I saw, or thought I saw, in the conviction and removal of the president upon inadequate testimony, and upon accusations mainly of a partisan character, the establishment of a precedent which would render every future President liable to successful impeachment whenever he found himself in a minority in Congress.”

Look for Part II - Ross Navigates the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

I faced one big thing I had long before agreed to do - the Annual Reno County Extension Garden Tour - and another big thing that I desperately wanted and needed to do, Biking Across Kansas.

And the required preparation and deadlines to make both of those things happen at all - let alone well - seemed impossible.

Some of my close friends offered their help, and got me moving in the right direction by clearing out some areas that I hadn’t invested much energy into. That helped me see both how much work needed to be done, and that it was possible.

Kathy, the team leader for my stop on the tour, clearly saw my concern and worked to assure me that everything would come together just fine.

But it was my daughter who really understood my anxiety and first helped figure out the solution that got through worry about what I saw as a looming crisis.

Erica calmly and boldly offered that I should focus on training and getting ready for BAK, since that’s where my heart was at, and that she’d put in extra effort to make sure my garden was ready for visitors. I followed her instructions and advice (she’s a Master Gardener, too, so she’s my go-to on all things plants), and did what I could - but largely I focused my effort on training for BAK.

She worked alongside a dedicated team of Master Gardeners, who spent a lot of hours and much effort to clear out much of the mess time and neglect had helped create - all while I spent the week traversing the state on my bike.

I left for Johnson City, Kansas, on June 5, and my daughter and her family returned home from a trip on June 5. The Garden Tour was set for Saturday, June 13, which was the same day that I rode from Baxter Springs to Pittsburg, Kansas, for the final leg of BAK.

By the time I arrived home Saturday evening, roughly 300 people had explored my backyard and enjoyed some of the beauty that I get to enjoy in it every day. And that makes me feel really happy. I received a lot of nice comments, and even some cards in the mail thanking me for opening up my home to the community.

But I can’t really take much credit for any of it - that belongs to the Master Gardener team assigned to my home, my daughter, and the extra volunteers who gave of themselves to restore the space.

And to Millie Reed, who has played an outsized role since I was a kid in 4th or 5th grade.

I inherited her garden when she left to be closer to her children and grandchildren. She spent more than 20 years transforming a somewhat neglected rental house into an urban oasis.

The garden is wild. It lacks the order one expects to see in traditional gardens. Every season, every day, is a surprise - with something new growing into bloom. In Millie’s garden, seeds are spread by wind, by bird, and by hand. Its wildness feels intentional. Not controlled or curated, but guided by nature’s impulses and caressed by someone who understands them.

It’s what drew me to her home when it became available.

Often, I think, we can feel as if the challenges we face are ours alone. That it is impolite, burdensome, or otherwise inconsiderate to ask for the help we need. The lore of so much American life is that of the rugged, determined, individual who overcomes all the adversity of the world against the odds, with the wind in our faces, alone against those who would stop us.

That happens less than I think we’d care to admit.

In reality, our best strength lies in community. It’s where we can share ideas and test solutions. It’s where we can build a plan, divide and assign tasks, and put our collective efforts to work. It’s where we can accelerate growth.

A healthy community gives us permission to ask for the help we need. When we do that, we accomplish more, grow stronger together, and nurture the growth that’s still to come.

My goal for the first year in Millie’s house was to not kill what she had built. I largely managed that, even if at times it seemed a little on the edge. I felt overwhelmed, and unsure of what to do next.

The people, this community, came to help and didn’t ask or expect anything in return. They cleared out brush and weeds, added new life to empty areas, and came up with clever ways to showcase the area.

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To everyone who helped restore Millie’s Wild Wonder, - Thank You. It’s humbling to know how much work so many of you put into making this place, and that day, special. Not just for me, but for the hundreds of people who visited.

What a gift you’ve given to our community by sharing your time, your creativity, your knowledge, and your work - year after year, throughout Hutchinson and Reno County.

What they’ll get, in addition to my appreciation, is a renewed hope and focus to preserve and respect the work they so generously offered to me. I have now moved beyond the “just don’t let things die” phase. This past weekend, my son Mitch helped me lay down a big truckload of mulch, with plans to do more in coming weekends. (I sorely underestimated how much mulch I’ll need). There are ideas and conversations about additions that might complement the garden spaces.

The overwhelming moved to reachable, and the reachable moved to successful - and it’s inertia creates belief in what is yet possible.

I think that’s how growth really happens.

In gardens and communities.

And a father.

Much of it, I suspect, is coming from people who haven’t properly answered that question for themselves. I suspect anyone who is looking for answers from today’s Man-O-Sphere is likely getting bad information, or at the least, information that’s designed to inflame mens’ worst tendencies.

I’ve wondered for some time how the culturally popular version of the idea man has morphed so much over the years. Reach back to that time when people seem to think America was Great, and the iconic male was calm, patient, kind, smart, stylish, resolved in the face of challenge, and focused on his family.

Think Ward Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver, the Dad from Father Knows Best, or one of my favorites, Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird.

Contrast that with some of the male characters who are elevated in today’s environment - abusive people like Andrew Tate and others. Most of their work is built around rage-baiting men into engaging with their content. And there have been a number of studies detailing how the idealogical rhetoric is creating a number of compounding issues for men and women.

This is in a study from the National Institute on Health:

“What unites these different groups within the manosphere is a fundamental belief that women are inferior to men and ought to be subordinated to them. Women are often derogated as innately illogical, selfish, greedy and scheming. These attributions are used to justify harassment, coercive control, and discriminatory behaviour [2, 4]. For example, self-styled ‘life coach’ Andrew Tate regularly suggests that women belong in the kitchen and owe their male partners service and gratitude [5]. Other misogynistic influencers, such as Pearl Davis, campaign to restrict voting rights to men [6]. Some influencers within the manosphere explicitly advocate violence against women and appear to have inspired real world attacks against them [3]. These communities are increasingly politicised and often advocate for far-right politicians [7].”

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Though I loathe the content, I can understand how this world speaks to men, especially young men, and young fathers.

I remember how I felt in my teens and early 20s - filled with a strong will and desire to build and achieve, but completely unsure about how to go about it, and still somewhat uncertain about who I was as a person. Sort of listing about, looking for my path in the world, and working to establish my unique identity.

I know that at 20, when my daughter was born, the purpose was set - even if the way to it wasn’t.

But I also remember the pressure that came with being a father. The feeling that I had to check the right boxes, make the right career and money moves, or risk sending my family into a downward spiral from which we’d never recover.

I wish I’d had worried about all of that less. I was overly concerned, I think, with the kind of financial life I wanted to provide for my children - which if you’re not born wealthy never feels like quite enough no matter how much money you make.

I wish I’d have taken in more to heart when my wife tried to tell me that none of that really mattered to our children. What mattered was that I was there, and that I was present, engaged, and an active part of their lives, and that I loved them and they loved me.

Showing up every day and being part of the small and mundane moments of life -navigating vomit and poop, toddler breakdowns, endless questions, messy houses, always running behind, overbooked schedules, health scares, school dances, first dates, learning to drive, broken hearts, and leaving the nest - that’s the truest measure of man, in my view.

These days I feel pretty lucky in this area. I get to see my kids making their own way through life as adults, and it’s beyond rewarding to see the talents and passion they bring to this world.

I also get to be an active part of my grandchildren’s lives, which is speical in ways I never could’ve imagined.

I also get to bear witness to my friends as they navigate their own journeys through fatherhood. I see such goodness in them. Everyday they strive towards patience, understanding, and compassion with their children. They apologize when they fall short. They think about how to improve along the way. I see the way they engage with their children, and it makes me feel warm. I get to see these guys being the sort of father I’d liked to have been had I known how to do it better at the time.

It’s not always been easy, or calm, and sometimes it comes with incredible pain and worry, uncertainty, and doubt - but being a Father has been the most consistently fulfilling part of my life.

There’s nothing else that has ever come close.

Where ever you are on your Fatherhood journey, I hope you see that for you, too.

Happy Father’s Day!

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I spend big chunks of my day in my head, processing some of the experiences, interactions, successes, failures, and thoughts that surfaced along the road.

I also spend time contemplating ways I could make spending all day on a bike a bigger part of my everyday life. A week of absolute clarity in one’s goal, one’s purpose - getting to the next stop and the freedom to determine how - stands in stark contrast to the often muddy reality of ordinary life. Also, doing something that feels so big then stepping back into the world of corporate normalcy can feel somewhat depressingly empty.

It reminds me to always question and evalutate how I’m spending my one wild and precious life, and this poem -

If joy is an act of resistance, then we must steal it where we can.

Generations of joyless men have built structures to contain us, and to keep us chasing a manufactured joy that costs us daily payments from our souls. Give more of ourselves, over a whole lifetime, and one day we’ll, maybe, reach that destination we’ve all been told is the goal.

And the destination, if you haven’t noticed, keeps moving further away.

Yet, given enough space from the busyness of life, we feel the tension in our chest. The very old knowledge that someone else’s goal is not the point.

Biking Across Kansas helps me remember.

There is a start and an end, daily and for the entire week.

But the ride is the the thing.

And the ride is a different sunrise everyday.

The changes in the weather, the clouds, the heat, and the wind.

It’s the welcoming warmth of a Kansas town, and the people who put so much of themselves into making our time there feel special.

It’s the curiosity of strangers.

It’s kids with impromptu lemonade stands, whose eyes fill with wonder about how far they could ride their bikes, too.

It’s sharing a few beers with friends.

It’s making new friends with new people who live along the route.

It’s waking up every hour worried that you’ll be late, and oversleeping because you finally got comfortable and tired enough to let yourself.

The ride starts and ends at points on a map, and there’s clarity and purpose to move along that path.

But the ride?

That’s everything that isn’t on the map.

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During our stop in Burden, Kansas last week, Christopher came down to record a bonus episode. At only 67 miles long, the day’s route was one of our “shorter” days - so it seemed a good time to record. I brought in a few friends to share their experiences, too, so we had a pretty fun conversation.

Since it was shot on location, immediately after a day’s ride, I think you’ll get a unique perspective on life as it unfolds during BAK.

Oh, and if you listen to the end, you’ll hear one of the funniest stories ever - but be warned if some light bathroom humor isn’t your thing, this might not be the story for you.

Evidence of the wildfires that burned hundreds of thousands of acres in the area marks the hills and valleys throughout the area.

The ride from Montezuma to Ashland was 67 miles. We started the day off with thick fog, cool temperatures, and damp air. We had a stretch into a southern headwind, before turning East toward Clark County.

We came over a rise, and we could smell the charred earth before we could see it.

The prairie restores itself after adversity; its resilence lying in the earth ready to emerge and grow, turning fire’s destruction into new life.

BAK staff and leadership told us that after the fires, there was a storm that tore part of the roof from the Ashland High School. Then another storm that caused some flooding. We weren’t sure if we’d be able to stay here but the town wanted us to come, in spite of the difficulties they had faced.

We were welcomed to the school and the town, and our accommodations didn’t show a hint of the strain these communities have endure.

It’s the sort of spirit and determination that comes from people who have spent their lives learning lessons from the prairie.

Aside from a mechanical issue nearly halfway into the ride, it was a nearly perfect ride. I threw my chain near Meade, it because lodged between chain rings and slightly damaged. I lost a good part of my gearing, so had to crank up the hills a little harder than I’d have rather. It’s not the first time I’ve had to limp a bike into the next town. Probably not the last, either.

We spent a good chunk of time in Meade, checking out the town and revisiting the Dalton Gang Hideout, before heading east toward Ashland.

The area between Meade and Ashland is the start of some of the Red Hills we’ll see more of tomorrow as we head toward Medicine Lodge. This area is gorgeous and the photos I’ve taken and shared here will never come close to showing its real beauty.

A few other highlights from today that I want to share.

My riding partners so far this week - Tyler and Arlynn - have been a lot of fun. We kicked off the morning with around an hour of bike-related Dad jokes.

“Your jokes are breaking my chain of thought.”

”Your jokes are all re-cycled”

”You should tread lightly”

”You never should’ve spoke up.”

Yeah, they’re bad. But we were cracking each other up, and it was a great way to start out the morning.

The other thing that stood out to me that really struck me is when I could sense a change in the air temperature as the wind blew over a creek full of water. I don’t know how to describe it, really, but you can feel a noticable change in the air. It’s cooler, and fresher. It smells different.

I don’t ever notice that when I’m in town, or in a car. And I couldn’t help but wonder if we’ve gotten so far away from the outdoors, from our connection to nature, that we fail to notice what I suspect is an ancestral signal to help us find life’s most essential element.

Tomorrow we’ll ride we’ll ride about 73 miles to Medicine Lodge. It’ll be hotter, and with more hills, so I’ll be sure to appreciate the water I have even more.

As they grow, we tell them they can be anything, do anything, have anything. If they’re willing to work hard for it, fight for it, you can build a world of your making - and our mass media and marketing shows them all the examples of men who have done exactly that.

We tell them to be strong. We tell them crying is for sissies. We tell them asking for help is weak. We tell them to turn pain into power, shame into action, and fear into anger.

We tell boys all of this, and never warn them that a heart emptied of love, passion, hope, and desire, doesn’t sit empty long. And if we’re not careful what takes love’s place is anger, rage, and suffering.

I know.

Three years ago, I rode this bike for the first time on Biking Across Kansas. As is the tradition amongst my friends, we name our bikes after spending some time with them.

I named mine Hope.

Because life was opening up before me in all the ways I had hoped.

I was physically healthy and strong.

My work was challenging, meaningful, and rewarding.

I was deeply in love with a woman, and it seemed she was in love with me, too. We’d talk about how our souls had been made for each other, and how our love made the world feel more vibrant, more full of color.

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Then late 2024 and parts of 2025 broke me.

The election of 2024 fractured my spirit, and my humiliation and loss was displayed in front of my family, friends, and entire community. I have a lot of loving friends who supported me, even while others celebrated.

My already bruised heart broke when the love that once helped me feel so safe and secure vanished, without much discussion, concern, or care.

Then my body failed me. Well, my body and a healthcare and insurance system that left me without critical medication I need to manage my chronic illness for nearly 6 months.

I desperately wanted to ride Biking Across Kansas last year. I needed it, and wanted it more than anything. For me, it’s the way I start anew. It’s how I discard the ugliness of the past and sort of hit the reset button for the future.

The events of 2024 and 2025 left my soul tattered, and in desperate need of repair. And BAK is the activity that most restores my soul.

I struggled to find the motivation to train, and even then, my legs would cramp after a only a few miles.

My chronic disease is Ulcerative Colitis, a condition where the immune system attacks the colon, creating ulcers that lead to inflammation, intestinal cramping, and frequent trips to the restroom. I was diagnosed with it in my late 20s and have endured years of various levels of treatment - some effective, and some not at all. It has, at times, been horrifically painful and debilitating.

Treated properly, it doesn’t affect my life too badly. But left untreated it’s a disease that can consume a person’s life, lead to fatigue and weakness, severe depression, and the inability to live much of a life at all.

I lost my health insurance in January, which meant I also lost access to medication - at the time a very expensive injectable biological, Humira. It took several months for me to find another job with insurance, but then had to jump through the absurd prior authorization process, and subsequent rejections from the insurance company, before I was able to secure medication in late May.

After 12 weeks on the medication that had once worked, my body wasn’t responding to it any longer - thus starting again the prior authorization process to move to a different medication. It wasn’t until September/October of 2025 that I felt my disease was moving into remission.

I tried to ride, but couldn’t manage without severe cramps or weakness. I intentionally didn’t eat much food to sort of self manage the effects of UC - but that doesn’t work on long bike rides. Calories are essential to prolonged physical activity.

I had signed up for BAK in January, an attempt to create some new Hope in my life. But I had to concede that I wasn’t physically able to do BAK. Probably not mentally or emotionally fit, either, and that only added to my already growing depression.

We do tell boys not to talk about the difficulties in their lives. We largely encourage them to keep their challenges to themselves. No one wants to hear about the things that make you sad, that make you question or doubt yourself, or reconsider the decisions you’ve made in your life. When love runs cold, we’re trained to do just about anything except look inside ourselves.

Sadness and vulnerability are to be avoided, we’re told, and you certainly shouldn’t admit to any single bit of humanity if you’re doing something like running for office or otherwise living a public facing life.

I’ll not hide from my humanity.

I have been ill and unhealthy and it has affected my life. I have shown bare my heart, and have struggled with the rejection of that love. I know, too, that I have caused that same sort of pain in others. I have been sad, depressed, and broken. I have made mistakes, some of them terrible, some embarrassing, some of them momentary lapses in judgement, others carrying longer lasting effects.

As I write this, I’m sitting next to my friend Tyler, driving through the windswept land towards Johnson City for the start of Biking Across Kansas.

It’s been two years since I’ve been here.

I’ve been training and feel confident - or as confident as I ever feel on this front. I will be excited to see friends I’ve not seen in two years - even though one of my dearest biking friends - Kimberly - won’t make it this year.

I’m happy I’ll get to explore these towns along the route, and I’m eager to ride through the countryside of Kansas, meeting more of the kind and earnest people who make our state great.

I’m excited about doing this thing that for the past 11 years has been crucial to my overall wellbeing.

The physical work strengthens my body.

Managing myself through heat, wind, adversity restores my mind.

Feeling connected to my friends and these Kansas communities heals my heart.

Spending all my effort to reach a new goal each day repairs my soul.

After a few years of enveloping darkness shrouded so much of my world, this drive westward through the changing landscapes of Kansas is stirring something familar.

It feels something like Hope.

For the whole 30-second pre-roll, I was mesmerized by all the things that could harm our country if I didn’t jump out of my chair to stand, salute, and pledge my allegiance to these United Data Centers of America.

My heart rate returned to normal when I realized that I was not probably contributing to the destruction of Western Civilization with my thoughts, ideas, and opinions about data centers. I went back and watched the video again - this time to see who had sponsored, paid for, and promoted it.

The answer was a familiar name: NetChoice

NetChoice is the trade association that represents the biggest and richest companies in the world, including Meta, Google, OpenAI, Amazon, and JP Morgan Chase bank.

In Kansas, NetChoice has two registered lobbyists, a husband and wife duo, one of whom introduced and testified on legislation that would later become Senate Bill 98 - which grants data centers in Kansas a comprehensive sales tax exemption for 20 years.

(I say later because the bill morphed along the way into a Conference Committee Report so that legislators don’t have an opportunity to amend or change the bill)

Now, if you didn’t watch the video above, go watch it with a critical eye. Consider the imagery and the message its sending to viewers.

The basic message NetChoice is pushing goes something like this: China is building data centers and if they beat us we’ll be in imminent danger. The president supports them so you should too. And if you don’t support them, the economy will tank, you’re unpatriotic, and we’ll never be able to win another war again. Data Centers aren’t dangerous - but not wanting them in your town is.

Now watch this video, which was published in 2021 when Florida, Texas, and a number of other Republican state legislators were passing laws to prohibit social media companies from restricting content - which at the time many believed was suppressing politically conservative points of view. The states’ argument was that since social media had effectively become the “public square” it had a duty to provide space for all points of view - and the legislation sought to keep social media companies from deciding which content people would be fed.

Did you see it? Did you catch what they did?

Different issue. But relatively the same vibe, same imagery, same talking points.

I’m going to say this as plainly as I can and I hope I say it loud enough for everyone to hear it…

These people, these companies, think we’re all stupid.

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For the better part of 20 years, I’ve watched business groups and political action committees play this trick on the American public and on Kansans. Heck, they did it to me in the last several elections on a number of issues.

It turns out President Trump recently celebrated renewed trade agreements with the Communist nation, brushed aside worries and defended the purchase of additional farmland purchases by Chinese Nationals.

Ope.

These groups deploy a simple formula to confuse and trick people.

If it’s an issue, tie it to some liberal cause, or some radical agenda, some anti-American idea. Exploit fear about economic uncertainty, tease a few emotional images of the flag and U.S. soldiers, and the truth becomes difficult to see through the imagery and emotion of the message.

If it’s someone running for office - might be a Democrat, might be a moderate Republican, might be a far-right Republican, but always the candidate who won’t do big business’s bidding - just run an ad showing candidate X with the boogeyman du jour - Obama, Biden, Pelosi, AOC, Kamala, China, Immigrants, Environmentalists, Terrorists. It doesn’t matter who, so long as people get mad, or scared, so these companies can watch the stacks of money pile up.

Here we have two videos, with two distinctly different issues, yet the message is crafted in a way that’s designed to move the same audience, the same group of voters. And where they hope to move them is to NetChoice’s side of the issue.

The only thing they are loyal to is profit. The only sense of patriotism they feel is to their bottom lines. The only thing they hope to strengthen is their grip on our government so that it will continue to serve them well.

I’m going to say it again…

These people, these companies, think we’re all stupid.

I remembered that NetChoice had a few issues in the statehouse over the years, so I decided to, somewhat ironically, use AI to help do some research for me.

It’s worth noting a process point here. NetChoice is the overall trade organization, but Google, Amazon, etc., also employ their own lobbyists in Topeka, in other states, and in Washington, D.C. Generally, these hired contract lobbyists work together with other groups, such as the Kansas Chamber, National Federation of Independent Businesses, etc., - both during session and in the next election cycle - to create an overwhelming force against lawmakers who might object or oppose their legislation.

NetChoice is also quite proud of it’s activities in the judicial branch of government, giving itself some glowing praise in stopping efforts to restrict underage access to pornography, regulations that require digital warning labels for harmful online content, and numerous other cases.

In 2019, NetChoice launched its effort to “help” states adopt laws for data centers, in particular a series of sales tax exemptions on the construction, equipping, and upgrading data centers. This site has some information about their responses to questions about the tax relief plan included in SB 51, which was the basis for SB98.

In NetChoice’s testimony in support of SB 51/98, there was this familiar nugget, which for my entire adult life has been the veiled threat looming behind every economic development deal - be it data centers or a widget factory.

(Of course, such logic doesn’t apply when it comes to legalizing cannabis, expanding access to healthcare, reducing the state’s debt load, or anything that might help people more than billionaires).

The threat of loss, of missing an opportunity, is a well-worn tactic in rural areas that have suffered incredible economic loss over the years. We wish for better days, new opportunities, and the possibility of becoming again what we once were - and in this there are some who see desperation that is ripe for exploitation.

This invocation of fear has been used as the justification for compelling elected officials to sign non-disclosure agreements, to develop ever bigger tax incentive structures, and invent creative cash payout systems.

And it’s the fuel that ignites the fire of urgency around the dire need of those without enough, who are struggling to get by, to let the Googles, Amazons, Metas, and Xs of the world take just a little bit more.

Again, I’ll ask the question: If AI and data centers are so profitable, transformative, and inevitable, why is the public being asked to fund incentives to support them?

I’ll say it once more, just so we’re clear…

These people, these companies, think we’re all stupid.

Calling a man weak generally gets up his dander and makes him see red. That might explain why the lone woman on the council has seemed to understand the gravity of the moment we’re in, and been trying to pump the brakes.

Now, thanks to the reporting of the Hutchinson Tribune, we have it on record that there’s a plan for a smaller scale data center east of town, on 4th and Duffy Road.

Weirdly, or maybe not so weirdly in this world, the conversation around data centers appears to be developing an undercurrent of partisan politics, with a splash of international political espionage.

The Trump administration is a full-throated supporter of building more data centers across the country. Together with billionaire investors like Kevin O’Leary (from SharkTank) they’re creating a narrative that there’s not real life opposition to data centers, just Chinese operatives and leftist agitators. I even saw a report today that the CIA, FBI, and DHS are launching online surveillance efforts at what they describe as “Anti-Technology Extremism.”

That narrative falls apart, though, when we examine the local level.

There has been a lot of emerging activism about the possibility of a data center around here, and that opposition runs across the political spectrum. Folks who agree on very little else are finding common ground on this issue.

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I genuinely hope we’re on the cusp of realizing that it never really was a left vs right fight - it’s always been a uber-wealthy vs the rest of us fight. For as long as there have been people, there have been other people who work to keep us all fighting against one another so they can reap the spoils. No group in history has done that better than the billionaire class today - and with the technology they now own, they’ve perfected the art of social manipulation and media exploitation.

But I digress.

I am generally against the development of data centers without explicit consent from the public. I retain the possibility that my mind could be changed, and I’d become more accepting of data centers - but for that to happen, there are a list of questions I think we all deserve to haven answered - clearly and plainly - before we subject our community to the potential coming onslaught of our digital and billionaire overlords.

Today the conversation is about data centers, but this is a familiar pitch we know quite well.

We’ve been sold economic development pipe dreams before. The promised boom of related suppliers around the Siemens plant never took off. Eaton took its taxpayer money and then cruelly forced soon-to-be unemployed workers to train their replacements at the shiny new plant in Mexico. Over the years, we’ve celebrated “wins” that are just on the horizon, only to watch them disintegrate before they ever got started.

And for years, we’ve been dealing with the fallout from industries that irresponsibly polluted and mistreated our community. The industrial area east and south of the Hutchinson Mall was heavily polluted and there’s an EPA Superfund Site east of town due to years of solvent and chemical pollution. In addition to making parts of our community functionally useless, such abuses also increase the burden on local and state taxpayers. In fact, the city has spent roughly $200,000 a year for decades to maintain water testing wells due to pollution that happened in the 1970s and 80s.

Locally, we’ve been told that any restriction on data centers would be “weak.”

Well, color me stupid, but I think it’s even weaker to stand flat footed and not defend yourself against the blows you can see coming - especially against the gazillionaires who own the world’s technology companies and have nearly all the world’s wealth.

The argument that we have no agency, no right to self determination to create policy that protects the long term interests of our community is absurdly vapid. No one is going to save us, and no one is going to look out for our best interests in the same way that we will.

I’m no Luddite - which I guess is the new-old insult we are throwing out at anyone who dares question the benevolence of our digital overlords. I have often been an early adopter of technology and am always curious about how it might improve my work or life. But I’m also skeptical of people who sell me a bill of goods without being authentic about the downsides. I’ve been around long enough to know that money is always the ultimate goal in these sort of deals - and historically the love of money leads people to compromise communities, relationships, health, wellbeing, and the environment.

Regardless of whether you lean for or against these data centers, or haven’t made up your mind, I’ve compiled a list of questions I think are worth the asking - for Hutchinson and any community.

1. How much water will the proposed data center use? And I need specifics - not “just about the same amount as an average Reno County farm.” Gallons per day, and where it’s coming from. I want to know how that will affect Hutchinson water, or water in our rural water districts, and private wells. We deserve to know where the water comes from, how it’s handled, and what’s done with it when you’re done with it. We don’t need another company pumping bad water into the Arbuckle formation and reawakening the Reno County fault that caused so many earthquakes several years ago.

2. How will this data center affect electricity generation and delivery in Hutchinson and Reno County? Will homes suddenly have large transmission lines in their front yards? Will there be an effect on residential and commercial users?

3. What can we expect in terms of noise, light, and emissions pollutions? How will neighbors be affected by an “always-on” high capacity data processing center?

4. How will existing neighborhoods around the proposed site be held harmless? There are people there who have owned their homes for years, or recently built. What has been the affect on property values and quality of life for residents near other data centers? Is there a method to compensate them for their real property loss?

5. Who will own and operate the center, and who benefits or profits from its construction?

6. Will this data center benefit from SB98, which exempts data centers from state and local sales tax on the initial construction and all updates for the next 25 years?

7. Will this data center apply for additional state incentives? County, city, and other local incentives?

8. What’s will be the total public investment into this private, for-profit venture?

9. Will this data center pay local property taxes, or are they going to ask for abatements? Will any offset payments be one-time offers, or ongoing payments that could offer long-term relief to local taxpayers?

10. Will construction jobs be local, or does this company bring in its own construction crews for the build-up?

11. How many permanent employees will be employed by the data center in Reno County?

12. Will there be a cost/benefit analysis done to determine the net good for the community? Will we be able to weigh how much public investment is used for this project against how much economic, employment, and tax benefit will be created for our community?

13. Will there be claw back provisions if requirements aren’t met, or regulations disregarded? How will those be enforced?

14. Do local governments have the ability and resources to litigate disputes or violations against larger, wealthier corporations if they don’t comply with local laws or challenge our legal zoning rules?

    From the Detroit News, about one township’s legal fight against an AI data center:

    Saline data center sparked statewide outcry

    The Saline Township data center project was controversial from the start. Township officials didn’t want it and denied a conditional rezoning request in September. Related Digital sued two days later, arguing the township used exclusionary zoning to prevent the sprawling tech development.

    The township stopped fighting. Losing would have been too expensive to justify and “a hindrance on each resident here in this township,” township clerk Kelly Marion said in May.

    Instead, the township settled. It agreed to rezone the property, while Related Digital promised to put $2 million into a farmland preservation trust, $2 million into a community investment fund, $8 million into local fire department budgets, preserve 200 acres of farmland, not to expand the data center, not to build solar arrays, to use water-efficient cooling methods and more.

15. What do we know about the company that plans to come here? Is it connected to a tech giant? Do they have a history of being good community partners, or do they have a history of legal issues or violation of local codes?

16. What happens when this data center closes or becomes obsolete? Just like previous complains about decommissioned wind turbines, these facilities have lifecycles. Computing power will improve over time, and the foot print of data centers will likely shrink in coming years. Who is responsible for decommissioning, cleanup, and remediation when they’re done?

17. What data will actually be stored here, and who has legal access to it? If there’s a national security conversation happening at the federal level around data centers, Flock cameras, etc, and residents deserve to know what’s sitting in their backyard and under what legal authority it can be accessed.

18. What is this company’s track record at other facilities? Not the press release. What do residents near their other data centers actually say about water, noise, property values, and whether promises were kept?

19. Who negotiated this deal, and how much of that conversation happened outside public view? When did this actually start? Executive sessions and letters of intent have a way of producing facts on the ground before the public ever gets a seat at the table. What mechanisms and opportunities exist for the broader public to engage?

20. If AI and data centers are so profitable, transformative, and inevitable, why is the public being asked to fund incentives to support them?

This marketing around this vote is going to be built around the idea of “who could possibly be against elected judges? That’s freedom, democracy, and America all wrapped together.”

But that doesn’t provide any context.

First you have to know about a famous scandal called the Kansas Triple Play - which angered so many Kansans they demanded in 1956 the system we still use today.

Fred Hall served two terms as Lieutenant Governor of Kansas, but he was wildly unpopular with the Republican party bosses. Yet, the party still begrudgingly gave him the nomination for Governor in 1954, because winning is everything, don’t you know.

Hall won the election in 1954 and took his seat as Governor. But by 1956 it was clear that the party had abandoned him and he became the only sitting governor to ever lose his party’s primary for re-election as Governor.

So Hall is a lame duck, with a party that dislikes him, and a short amount of time to figure out his next career move. Here’s a summary of what became known as the Kansas Triple Play:

“His next move was a conspiracy that was both sleazy and genius. Fred Hall had no plans to move back to Dodge City as a loser, as a one-term governor. He concocted the only judicial scandal in Kansas history. It even has a cool name: the Triple Play.

In addition to Hall, there were two other actors in the Triple Play. First, there was the chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, William Smith, a long time Republican party stalwart. Remember, Kansas was electing judges back then.

How long had Smith been a player in GOP politics? Remember the Archiver episode on John Brinkley, the goat gland doctors who ran a write-in campaign for governor in 1930? Well, many believed Brinkley might have won had not so many ballots been disallowed. The man in charge of deciding which ballots were legal? William Smith, who was state attorney general at the time.

The other player was Lt. Governor John McCuish. He was a newspaperman by trade, he owned the Harvey County Times in his hometown of Newton.

So, here’s the triple play:

On December 31st, 1956, Smith sent a letter to the Secretary of State resigning as Chief Justice. Smith was ill and wanted to resign, but being a good Republican, he didn’t want to quit and let the newly elected Democratic Governor George Docking pick his replacement. Then on January 3, 1957 Hall sent a similar letter, quitting just 11 days before his term ended. McCuish was in the hospital in Newton and Hall dispatched a Highway Patrolman to bring him back to Topeka. McCuish was automatically elevated to Governor and he immediately appointed Hall to the state’s highest court and The Triple Play was done. Hall was on the supreme court where he hoped to launch a future bid for governor.”

Kansans were so appalled by this abuse of power, they demanded that we STOP electing judges and create a better process to ensure our judiciary is selected on merit, experience, and ability - and not on political favoritism.

Another point worth making here is how the Corporate world has worked to capture the levers of political power, specifically the courts, and it was all outlined in a memo produced in 1971 by Lewis Powell.

Powell was a corporate attorney and board member for what we now call “Big Tobacco” arguing in court that smoking was harmless. He was later appointed as a Supreme Court Justice - but before taking that seat he wrote to his friends at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about how important it was for the ruling business elite to pool their resources and energy to capture all the branches of government. He had this to say about the courts: “Under our constitutional system, especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic, and political change.”

And indeed it is. Because within 48 hours of the Trump-dominated United States Supreme Court striking down key parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Southern states raced to revive Jim Crow laws and redraw maps that disenfranchise black voters. Louisiana even tossed out nearly 45,000 legally cast ballots so they could hold the election under new maps that favor Republican power holders in the state.

It sounds pretty appealing to directly elect Supreme Court justices, but let’s play a scenario closer to home - one that in many ways is already underway and in progress.

Let’s say a city and county located in central Kansas, maybe close to the Arkansas River, are having private, off-the-record conversations with an AI company that wants to build a data center, use that community’s water and electricity, get property tax and sales tax abatements.

Maybe the public catches wind of a development being planned somewhere east of that town, or out in the county somewhere, and people start to demand transparency and protections, even specific zoning and planning laws that would require these companies to protect our resources and be a positive addition and fit for our town.

And the city council/county commission responds to the public outcry! Hooray!

They pass these additional protections and now this company can’t just have its way with these communities. It can’t just use their water, make a bunch of noise, etc., without going through a more public process - thanks to responsive and responsible local government and the actions of an engaged, concerned citizenry.

But wait!

There’s a judicial election coming up, and now that Supreme Court justices can be partisan, elaborate on policy philosophy, and state how they’ll probably rule on cases, the likes of Elon Musk, Kevin O’Leary, Jeff Bezos, and the other billionaires trying to ruin all our lives know exactly where to make their “investments.”

(An aside: If you want to have a good laugh and be horrified all at once, watch this video. Kevin O’Learly accused these two women who publicized his proposed data center of being “Chinese Operatives.” They are not. But they’ve made some great videos highlighting so many connections to powerful people and policymakers.)

Remember that Musk spent upwards of $25 million to try and buy a judge in Wisconsin in what became the most expensive judicial election in American History at $90 million. The election of judges and justices have helped sow doubt about the independence of our judiciary across the country - and has led to dramatic increases in judicial campaign spending over the years.

So back to our little town by the river with our new, cute little ordinances designed to ensure the people who live there will still be able to live and thrive if a giant AI data center comes to their town.

During the campaign season, however, what might happen if the richest companies in the world decided to invest heavily in supporting the Supreme Court justices of their choosing?

What if they threw millions upon millions of dollars trying to convince the body politic that the same Supreme Court justices that are good for billionaires are also good for the everyday citizen of our Central Kansas City by the River?

History tells us they’ll likely be successful and the election will go their way.

Then I expect they would file a number of legal cases arguing our efforts at protections violate the Kansas Constitution, and they’d quickly run the case up to the Highest Court - where their newly seated justices sit.

And since we have new competitive, partisan elections for these positions, it’s also quite likely that during their deliberations, those justices are likely to remember who brought them to the dance in the first place, what outsized influence that money had in the election - and whose support they’ll need in the next election cycle.

So the justices strike down our quaint city’s codes and protections, or uphold some state law that says local ordinances restricting business is not allowed - ensuring unfettered access and freedom to build as many data centers, in as many other quaint little prairie cities as they please - all without the concern of even a hint of regulation, responsibility, or commitment to any of those communities.

The motivation behind the Republican supermajority pushing for this change isn’t based on data centers - it’s rooted in frustration with rulings on education funding and reproductive care.

But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched monied interests leverage social concerns - which corporations don’t care about at all - to secure policy wins on taxes, regulations, and to get themselves some nice big taxpayer-funded welfare.

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Generally speaking, the Kansas Legislature is filled with followers who will do as they’re told, so instead of writing smarter, cleaner laws, or directing state resources in a way that is constitutional, the Kansas Legislature has decided it’s easier and less effort to just buy up the courts.

In addition to all the other problematic doors that will be opened if we move to a partisan system for Supreme Court justices, we will 100-percent be inviting billionaire control of our judicial system.

And they will use that control to invalidate any local level laws that get in the way of their mission, which is clear and simple: Extract as much wealth from every person, everywhere, until there’s nothing left to take all.

The connection between this upcoming judicial election process and the growing debate and discussion of community protections around data centers doesn’t yet exist.

But it will. If we allow it.

It’s a special thing to be able to share in and celebrate in our community life - and more so to share in the development of children on the cusp of adult life.

The mission of MidTown Center is to provide real-world, relevant learning in a safe, smaller setting that is conducive for all students to achieve.

That’s extra special for me, since, admittedly, I wasn’t always the most focused, determined, or typical student when I was young.

Here’s the message I shared with the graduates, their family and friends, and the Midtown and USD 308 staff.

When I was in kindergarten, my teacher asked the class to draw a picture of a tornado.

Before I go on, can we just acknowledge for a moment how special it is to live in a place where you can ask just about any 5 or 6 year old to draw a picture of one of mother nature’s most devastating forces - and it’s likely that they’ll know how without explanation.

So I was asked to draw a tornado. That was it.

Nothing about the background, or the size, or anything else. One simple instruction - draw a tornado. The rest was up to me to decide.

Or so I thought.

I quickly went to work, drawing my tornado, then put down my crayon and proudly held up my drawing, expecting that my teacher would offer glowing praise for my exceptional artistic ability, creativity, and hard work.

She looked down at me and said: “You did it wrong.”

I looked across the room and saw every other student holding up their interpretation of a Kansas tornado.

To a person, they had drawn their tornados from a side view perspective - with the wide part of the funnel at the top, gradually shrinking toward the small part of the funnel touching the ground.

Not me, though.

For some reason, I drew mine as if I was inside the tornado, looking down. Mine was not a funnel from the side, but a funnel with wide circles leading into smaller and smaller circles.

Immediately my face turned red with embarrassment. I felt really dumb and weird and different from everyone else.

I was confused about how I could misunderstand the assignment so badly, and how I could fail to understand what everyone else in my class clearly had no trouble comprehending.

It took some time, experience, and the help of a number of people throughout my life to see the truth of that early memory.

Sure, my drawing didn’t meet the unspoken expectations of my teacher, or the established norms of my classmates.

But I was not wrong.

My colorful crayon drawing wasn’t wrong.

My interpretation of how to draw a tornado wasn’t wrong.

It was simply a different perspective. The same thing, presented in a completely different way.

Something different isn’t wrong, or a threat, though it’s not uncommon to be labeled as such.

Difference, when embraced, can help protect us from the chaos of the world.

It can offer us advance warning of dangers we might not otherwise be able to see or understand.

It can show us solutions to complex problems that evade conventional thinking.

Difference, welcomed, nurtured, and cultivated, is essential to building communities that are physically, economically, politically, and socially resilient.

We know this is true in nearly every aspect of our lives.

When you all are a little older and start saving for retirement, you’ll be told how important it is to diversify your stock portfolio. You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket.

Community leaders and planners often talk about the need to build different types of economic development opportunities to provide a stable workforce for residents.

Economists talk about how a multi-faceted economy that creates wealth from agriculture, heavy industry, technology, commerce and retail - builds a stronger economy that can better withstand downturns.

We see this perhaps most clearly when we look to nature.

Healthy, diverse ecosystems allow the opportunity for more life at every level of the food chain to flourish. An ecosystem that favors the predator too much, or eliminates diversity in plant and animal life, faces its eventual, but certain, collapse.

Yet, in the human systems we’ve developed there are countless examples where sameness is rewarded and encouraged, while differences are discouraged, or even punished.

It’s baked into our culture and we hear it all the time.

Stay in your lane

Fall in line

Get with the program

Don’t rock the boat

Or, you did it wrong

And sometimes we can feel it in judgemental looks, rolling eyes, and lingering stares of others.

Being the same might be an easier path, but it is not necessarily a healthier one.

And it does not build strong communities capable of adapting and adjusting to modern challenges.

Tonight, I look out and see in each of you a spark of uniqueness, a spirit of individuality that is wholly yours.

You, your perspectives, your views and ideas, your energy and talents, are an essential part of building and enriching our future world.

I also see in this room the people who saw and recognized all of that first. Your family and friends, your teachers, counselors, your principal - all people who had their own choices to make in their lives about where to spend their talents and effort.

And they chose you.

People who really worked to see you for who you are, and made the active, ongoing, decision to accept you, support you, nudge you, hold you accountable, and to walk alongside you - not just when it was easy, but when it was hard.

We are here today to celebrate the achievement of graduation. To commemorate the work you’ve put into moving your life forward, to its next natural phase.

It’s also an opportunity for all of us to acknowledge the people in our lives who helped construct a community in which we could thrive.

To take a moment to appreciate the strength and power of a community that embraces and supports all of us, our experiences and perspectives - and the people who gave a part of themselves as an investment in our shared future.

We can also use this moment to ask what we owe to them, and what you owe tomorrow’s version of yourself.

What role do we owe in the lives of others in our community?

What effort are we willing to expend to build the life we might imagine for ourselves?

Do we have a moral obligation to use our experiences and perspectives to light a path for those around us, and to help those who will follow behind us?

The answer to those questions is complex, nuanced, and entirely yours to make.

But you don’t ever need to feel alone in that decision.

You are stepping away from the structures and systems that have shaped and guided most of your young lives. And you’ll soon emerge into new systems and new structures, with new people, new rules, new expectations, and new norms.

That can be exhilarating, liberating, overwhelming, confusing, and terrifying all at once.

I know that it was for me, when I was sitting where you are right now - unsure of how to navigate what seemed like a pivotal moment in life.

But I’m going to give you for free the hack that took far too many years of my life to figure out.

The more I gave and invested in building and fostering my community, the richer my life grew.

I felt safer in the world around me.

I felt supported in difficult times.

I had fun.

I made mistakes. A lot of them.

But I had people who helped me recover.

I made enemies.

But I also made friends who had my back.

I found people who loved me.

And I found people to love.

I found a sense of belonging.

And I have tried to use that to help others feel like they belonged, too.

Together, it all helped me find purpose and meaning in my everyday life.

And I really hope you’ll hear it with your whole heart when I tell you there’s a richness in community, connection, meaning, and purpose that can’t be found in wealth, or fame, or any of the traditional measures of success.

The people here today know that.

They felt that sense of meaning and purpose and community when they made the choice to invest themselves in you.

That’s part of why we’re all so very happy to celebrate this achievement today.

But most of all, we’re excited to watch all the future ways you’ll invest in yourselves, too.

Congratulations and Good Luck in All you do.

Yet when we ran into each other around town every now and then, we'd always spend too long catching each other up on our lives. I last ran into Don maybe a month ago, and it was no different then.

He loved his family and friends with incredible deepness.

His sons talked about how willing Don was to give someone his time. To visit, to help with a project, to offer insight, or to just visit and catch up.

During the service, I found myself remembering the conversations I had with Don, but more so I remembered the unhurried time he gave me. He never rushed a conversation, and he was always warm. For a few moments, the rest of the world took a step back, creating space for genuine connection.

His children also talked about how skilled Don was at making the most of tough times.

In some of our conversations, Don expressed to me frustration about a few things going on in his life. But he always smiled and laughed. He’d find a joke to make. He kept his outlook positive, even when the subject matter might have given him permission to feel otherwise.

There are people in our lives, in our communities, who are fixtures we sometimes take for granted. We just figure they’ll always be around. Don, for me, was one of those.

You never know when you are going to see someone for the last time. But there’s always going to be a last time.

I didn’t know that my last time with Don would be that brief encounter downtown.

I’m sad that won’t happen again.

And it makes me want to be better about sharing my time, be more intentional about showing people how much they mean to me, and find joy in even some of the hardest moments of life.

Take care, Don.

I’m sure you’ll get a real jolt out of it!

It might be the most shocking episode yet!

OK. Enough with the Dad jokes.

This week’s episode features a couple of standout Allen STEM Magnet School students - and their coach - who are headed to the World KidWind Competition in Madison, Wisconsin after taking tops the Statewide Competition.

You’ll hear Clayton Hatfield, Milo Miller, and coach Keith Gable discuss the work that goes into designing a winning wind turbine, designed to generate the most electricity possible, and all the skills the students learn in the process.

Before we get into that, however, I am going to ask a favor.

Allen STEM Magnet School has two teams headed to the world competition: the Whirlwinds (4th and 5th grade) and the Mavericks (6th-8th grades). Both teams won first place in their division at the state competition and need to raise about $15,000 to cover travel costs for the students and their sponsors. While these students learn a great deal in the KidWind competition, it’s not something covered by normal school expenses.

You can mail a check to to Allen STEM Magnet School: KidWind Team, 403 W 10th Ave, Hutchinson, KS 67501. The Checks can be made out to Allen PTO c/o KidWind Team. Alternately, you can also drop a check off at the Allen office.

They also have a gofundme where the money goes directly to help with these expenses. That’s how I’ll donate this week, and I hope you will too!

As you listen to this episode, I think you’ll find the KidWind competition is a valuable and enriching experience for these students. I was most impressed with they way Clayton and Milo talked about the process of trial and error. As they develop their ideas and plans, they must put those ideas into practice; when they fail, they revise their plans and try again.

Projects like this give students permission to be imperfect. It’s teaching them how to think. How to problem-solve, and how to create. It was such a shining example of what is happening in our education systems—something that often isn’t highlighted as prominently as it should be.

I know you’ll find this episode informative and adorable. And I hope when you listen you’ll also consider supporting our local kids who are looking to do some really big things on a really big stage.

To listen to Clayton, Milo, and Keith, visit Salt City Podcasts or your favorite podcast streaming service.

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For more information on KidWind

www.kidwind.org

kansasenergyprogram.org/events/2026-state-kidwind-challenge-salina

facebook.com/AllenSTEMKidWind

kidwind.org/worlds/2026-2/

For additional questions, contact the school at 620-615-4900

In our conversation, you’ll learn about her motivation for renovating the once-dilapidated building - including her initial battle with the pigeons who had taken up residency in the building.

You’ll also learn about her vision and spirit for downtown, and how the work she’s doing to redevelop the Meyer Landmark is building on the legacy of her father, Nation Meyer, who was a strong advocate for downtown Hutchinson.

If you’ve been curious about what’s happening at the corner of 5th and Main, you’ll want to make sure to listen to this episode of That Podcast in Hutch.