From the Alvin and Rosalie Sara Check studio PBS Kansas Presents Kansas Week outmuscled and outnumbered in Topeka, Kansas, Democrats launched a new statewide effort to break the Republican supermajority.

Also, a stark warning for more than 100,000 Kansans who could soon lose their health insurance.

Governor Laura Kelly says the consequences could be disastrous.

But first, ten gunshots in the dead of night, a targeted attack on a Kansas school board president.

A small town is ripped apart by controversy.

That's what we're talking about right now on Kansas Week.

Hello and welcome to Kansas Week.

I'm Jaren Cirillo.

Amid a national climate of increasing political violence, a small Kansas community is on edge and searching for answers in cold water.

Authorities say someone fired ten gunshots into a car belonging to school board president Kelly Heard.

The vehicle was empty.

No one was injured.

The shooting comes less than three weeks after the board placed the district superintendent on leave.

Amid allegations that he sexually harassed a student.

That decision has caused a major rift in the community.

The KBI is now assisting the local sheriff's office in the investigation.

And all of this comes as political leaders at all levels are on alert.

Following several high profile shootings and other acts of violence against political figures across the country.

Here to talk about this and some of this week's other news, state Senator Aletha Faust Goudeau, 18th Judicial District Court judge Phil Journey, former fourth district congressional candidate Esau Freeman, and Sedgwick County Commissioner Jim Howell.

Thank you all for joining us today.

I'll start with you, Esau.

Crime in in small town.

And we we're in the big city here in Wichita, but we're not we're kind of used to that.

But this is small town stuff here, and it's scary no matter where it happens.

Yeah, I was going to say it doesn't matter if it's in a small town or big city.

Political violence is not okay.

The basis of our democracy is that we can share ideas and disagree and walk away without harming one another.

We have elections, we have voting and things that take care of that.

And people who are engaged in this type of behavior should be arrested.

And, and I kind of question whether they should possess a firearm, to be honest.

Yeah.

I'm a responsible gun owner.

I believe in the Second Amendment, but I have to say, when people take actions and use weapons against other people to intimidate them in our society, it's not okay.

Yeah.

And fill judge journey as the story said, this comes as there was a controversial decision made this as no way to react.

We've seen political discourse over the nation over the past five years go severely downhill.

Well, you know, that's that's a whole nother topic.

We really don't know who the shooter was.

I don't know what their motivation was.

It could have been something personal.

It could have been random.

It could have been a perceived failure of the criminal justice system regarding the superintendent and what happened as a result of that.

So I don't think it's anywhere in the same class as what we have seen in the last year with Minnesota.

And then, of course, Charlie, Charlie Kirk and and all of that.

But, you know, Mr.

Issa's point about, horrible tribalism and hyper partizanship that both parties have fomented over the last several decades has all come home to roost.

Yeah.

How do we set simple.

How do we cool that?

The tension I suppose, Senator.

How how do we bring the temperature down?

So first of all, all of these shootings, it's just a shame.

Period.

And when we send our kids, our children to school and in those areas, we, we presume they're going to be safe, and they're not, we need to step things up for the protection of our kids and and our employees at schools, period.

When I first ran for office, one of the questions was asked.

You know, they ask the questions about where do you stand on abortion?

Damn long guns.

And back then I said, you know, I predicted the wild, wild West.

And here we are.

And we have changed some laws.

When, County Commissioner Howell was in the legislature, I know we changed some laws of having a permit to carry or not.

And I've been tracking this for years.

And our previous, police chief, Gordon Ramsey and others have said they really don't know who the bad guys are because they.

No longer can ask for that permit along with the driver's license.

So we all the state, the level, the moms that everybody needs to do something different.

And I just want to say, for the record, I think it's terrible that if just because you disagree with me.

Whether it's personal or political, I don't think that, we need to shoot people.

We've got to do something different.

You know, and, Commissioner Howell, I'll give you the last word here.

Judge journey mentioned.

We don't know if this car that belonged to the school board superintendent was targeted with the persons not in custody, so we don't know those specifics.

And to senators point, you know, I bifurcate this topic a little bit because law abiding citizens don't do these types of things.

This is someone who's not a law abiding citizen.

Gun.

If it wasn't for a gun, it could have been a hammer or a baseball bat, because who knows?

It could have been another another incident entirely.

But for someone to take an instrument of whatever it is and use it violently as a as a threat or something against someone, you know, none of us stand up for that.

This idea of cooling things down is important, but the laws our state have changed.

I agree with you, but it's not the wild, wild West.

We actually have a huge number.

A million, if you will, or more people who are law abiding citizens in our state.

They have guns and use guns the right way.

What we see right now is a is another population that is willing to commit violence.

You know, these Minnesota legislators that were shot and it's horrible what happened there.

The Charlie Kirk thing is absolutely horrendous.

What happened there?

None of us stand for that type of solution.

We stand against the violence.

We stand for freedom of speech.

But we have some people with mental health problems in the community.

We don't know the motivation.

We don't know what happened.

But at the end of the day, to commit violence for with a gun is absolutely not okay.

Right?

Our next story, a stark warning tonight for more than 100,000 Kansans who could soon lose their health insurance.

A new report from the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund says 108,000 Kansans will likely lose their Obamacare coverage as costs skyrocket by as much as 77%.

The cause is the expiration of Affordable Care tax credits, which were eliminated by President Trump's one big, beautiful bill.

With all of the help from Kansans, Republican Congress as well, Governor Laura Kelly is warning of disastrous effects here, especially for rural hospitals.

She is now urging Congress to restore the credits as part of a deal to avoid a government shutdown, all before open enrollment begins in about six weeks.

Senator, here, the only state lawmaker on the table here.

So I'll give you the first edge here.

This is well, I'm going to say it's going to be disastrous if it happens.

A lot of people are going to end up in the emergency rooms.

Wesley Medical Center, via Christi.

They're going to be there because they are, you know, people do get sick for real.

And, you know, prior to this, we already had a little over 300,000 people, under insured or without, health insurance.

And I think one of the things we need to stop doing when we call it Obamacare, I think that kind of scares people off or or it puts it in a political aspect, and we need to call it what it is affordable health care that will provide for individuals when they are sick.

The other thing that I understand is that we're in this mess because we didn't and we have not, passed, Medicaid expansion in the state of Kansas.

Yeah, that would help.

You might get some argument from a let me let me go to Commissioner Howell here.

I want to I want to clean this story up just a little bit.

Sure.

The 77% increase is over ten year period.

Okay.

And what we're talking about right now is not a loss of coverage, but really a loss of tax credits that pays for the care.

As I mentioned, difference here.

And by the way, 108,000.

That's all of the people who could be impacted.

If every single person found no solution to this problem, it would be 108,000 people.

So the end of the day, there's going to be a lot of opportunities for a lot of people to find all kinds of solutions to this.

And the result is premiums are going to rise no matter where they are going to rise.

But, you know, health care isn't rising for all of us, is it not?

Absolutely.

We have a we have a lot of problems in our country with rising health care costs.

There's a lot of reasons as to why that happens, but this population is not exempt from that reality.

One of the principles of the Republican Party is personal responsibility.

And, you know, the reality is the costs are going to go up.

These folks are going to have to maybe step up a little bit and pay for some additional cost for themselves.

But these problems will be solvable over time.

And this, this story, the way that came out is really alarmist in my opinion.

It's not it's like the worst case scenario, if everything went the wrong way and it all happened immediately.

That's what the story is, is all.

I have to disagree with Jim.

You know, health care is an important thing in our country.

We've got all kinds of money to pay for wars.

We've got all kinds of money to pay for tax breaks for billionaires.

We've got all kinds of money for other things, but we're not taking care of the people in our country.

Health care is a very important thing, and I love when you guys flash numbers around.

The fact of the matter is, these people are taxpayers one way or the other.

And to say that they need to, have some self reliance and pull up their bootstraps is the oldest lie in the world.

The problem here is a lot of the people can't afford health insurance.

I have a coworker who, if this passes my coworkers health insurance will probably double.

And it double is for everybody all the time.

Insurance always goes up.

So when is it okay to say, well, we shouldn't take care of those people in our community if it's too expensive and we have to pass laws for people to have affordable health care.

We ought not do it.

And very quickly, the reason I feel that it's it's the insurance companies that are doing it is last year or the two years ago when we were running for office, I went to a chamber dinner to listen to my opponent run as the stock.

And as I walked out, I talked to some people that were there, and I had a guy who will rename remain nameless.

But he handed me his card and he was an insurance vendor and he was so against Medicaid expansion, we've got to quit letting industry control the lives of the American population.

We need to quit making money the first priority.

We need to make people the first priority judge journey.

And it's not only health insurance here, I mean car insurance, homeowner's insurance.

In the last five years, all of these insurance premiums have skyrocketed.

And it's not just health insurance that we're talking about here.

It's important to remember that insurance rates are regulated, that they have to demonstrate that they have the need so that they can cover the outflow that comes from insurance claims.

That's kind of like averages rates being, you know, they they're still going to get there.

Why why is why is health care so expensive in this country.

Because we don't have enough people.

Because we don't have enough people that could do the job.

Why?

Why are we going to suffer?

Well, it's really going to be much worse if this happens, even at half the rate.

Giving my colleagues some credit there, it's going to hurt all these rural hospitals that are on hospice now.

Yeah.

And it's people are just not going to have access out there in Goodland or wherever.

And because their hospital may not be there in six months.

Yeah.

This is a this is a very difficult problem.

It is so politically charged.

You know, it's clear that we're going to have a shutdown because the House went home and they're not coming back till after the deadline they gave the Senate.

And, you know, we used to play those games in the state legislature.

Do you know they adjourned.

They left them one bill straight up or down.

Vote for it or not.

And then yesterday Trump turned the ante up a little more and said, you know, if this shutdown happens, I'm going to fire a whole bunch more and, you know, it's it's the way politics works sometimes.

Yeah.

And it's tragic that there's so much unintended consequences.

It is.

It is certainly.

But Alisa, let me give you the last word here because is that acceptable though unintended consequences?

Are we just are we just accepting that unintended consequences is okay or how do we how do we fix the problem?

It's it's tough because we're playing with people's lives and we're going to pay for it one way or another.

We're going to pay for it from our paychecks.

Those that do work, we do know that this is going to hurt a lot of millennials who turn 26 and they're not on their parents insurance.

Their parents.

Yep.

That's going to be awful.

Senior citizens are still struggling, and people with disabilities.

I was over at the Cerebral Palsy Foundation talking to them the other day.

It's going to hurt those individuals.

And help.

Heck, we we really need to, make this a priority.

And car insurance.

Yeah.

My daughter just called me, and she's like, mom, my insurance went up, so everything is going up.

And I just got to say this for the record, you know, with care, you know, so I by would I kind of am a person that I do the same thing, the same routine.

So h were already 397.

They went up to $89, but now they're back to 397 where they were in the first place.

We've got to do something and we've got to stop playing with people's lives.

All right.

Still reeling from tough legislative losses in the last election, Kansas Democrats are already on the offensive for 2026.

House Minority Leader Brandon Woodard is on a 14 city tour across the state after Republicans expanded their veto proof super majority in November.

Woodard says the goal is to find allies and flip at least five Republican seats.

That would be enough to break the GOP's powerful super majority.

And, in his words, end the extreme right madness in Topeka.

Commissioner Howell, you've been a former state lawmaker.

Do you see?

Do you see this happening?

Do you see the Democrats being able to flip five seats?

You know, this is going to be a midterm for Trump, which typically tends to favor the other party.

So this might be the one year they have a bit of an opportunity.

But the governor seats up this year, I think that's going to have a huge influence on the elections coming up.

So we'll have to see what that what happens there, next year.

But, you know, I like Brandon.

He's a nice guy.

But the reality is their party.

No offense to you guys.

My friends here, I love you both, but the party is just out of touch.

I think your average candidate is not in agreement with the Democrat Party right now.

And unless they change their ways, I don't think they're going to be you know, simply just wishing they get get five more and suddenly get five more doesn't work that way.

They need to come.

They need to come, basically.

He calls an extreme right wing position.

Let me flip that around.

I think we have an extreme left wing position.

It is it is extreme.

It does represent your average Kansan.

So the way they're going to get more seats if they want to hear it for any free advice here is stop being so extreme.

I think the reality is, our state represents, if you will, the will the viewpoint of of Kansans across the state of Kansas, Republican.

The Republican principles represent that a lot better than the Democrats do right now.

So let me move over to you.

Would you let me ask you this?

Would you agree that not only Sedgwick County, locally here in Sedgwick County, but statewide Democrats have really done a terrible job of of trying to get their side wins?

I, I would have to say yes.

And and I'll go on the record.

You know, I've, I've committed a lot of my time over the past several years to the Democratic Party.

But about two months ago, I switched over to be an independent.

I'm very tired of the two party system.

I think we need to start a Labor Party in this nation and in Kansas for all working people.

If you've got a job, you need to be a part of the Labor Party, because there's one party that's for the business owners, and there's another party that used to really be for labor, and they reach out to labor, but they always get baited into these, culture war issues.

And unfortunately, when we're talking about whether we're going to represent national security or security here at home or kitchen table issues, we keep getting pulled into these damn culture war issues, which are what divide us all the time.

And we need to get together, and we need to talk about the things that are really important to all of us.

You know, can you afford this insurance that we just talked about?

Can you afford to pay your electric bill, which we talked about before the show started?

Can you feed your kids?

Can you save some money?

Can you take a vacation once in a while and a huge part of our population, the answer is no.

And they can't just pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

So we have got to quit the division.

We've got to quit arguing back and forth about whether it's this group or that group.

We've got to take care of the American people.

Period.

End of discussion.

Judge.

Jury.

Do you see Democrats making some gains?

No.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing, expecting a different result.

This is exactly what they planned two years ago.

I see no difference between what they present today.

It's you know, and I have lots of friends in the Democratic Party.

And I remember when I went in the Senate, there were pro-life and pro-gun Democrats.

When I overrode Sebelius and veto, I did it with the majority of the Democrats in both chambers.

They are all gone.

And that's because they all got kicked out in primaries because they weren't politically correct.

The Democratic Party and, you know, and I'm saying this with all the love in my heart has ostracized the middle, and then they've insulted the middle.

I have a New York attorney general calling an organization I belong to, a terrorist organization, you know, and you can't do that, the 140 million gun owners and expect them not to remember.

And so now that they've alienated them, what they're going to have to do, I want to urge all my Democratic friends to read the tape, the May 19th issue of time.

The whole issue was about the Democratic Party reboot, and I don't think anybody in this article has any idea what's in that time article, because they're not marching to the right drummer.

And if they don't change their perception of their party, if they don't really, truly say, you know, we're kind of sorry, you know, before they start doing the reboot, it's not going to work and there's not going to be any change.

And we're still going to have a super majority in November.

And Alisa, you and I have talked about this before on this program, Kansas Week, on this program itself.

I, you know, I try to get guests of all political affiliations.

It is really getting harder and harder and harder to find Democrat lawmakers, especially from the state level there, that think that they think it might be an I gotcha moment.

And so, but let me get one thing straight here.

I want to put it in in layman's terms to the people of what we're really looking at.

So out of your 165 lawmakers, so in the Senate, there's 40 of us and there's only nine Democrats.

So I mean, I mean, yeah, and and we lost, some of our lawmakers that retired.

We did.

We had 11.

Now we're down to nine and we lost some Republican, support.

So but I think we're all going to be surprised there's a new strategy, coming.

So, just wait and see.

Okay.

We'll do.

You know how they get out of a hole?

They have to stop digging first.

Yeah.

What's up there is the fact that the Republican Party's in control and things haven't gotten better yet.

So somebody is going to have to do something.

We're going to have to quit giving tax breaks to the rich.

We're going to have to take care of health insurance.

And we really need to take care of our public schools.

He's talking like a Democrat.

Yeah he is.

He is.

The debate over how Wichita handles homelessness is intensifying after mayor Lily woo shared a stark example, telling the city council that she saw a man defecating on a public street.

The city has an ordinance to clear encampments, but police confirmed they have not issued a single citation, citing a lack of shelter space.

Well, now the focus is shifting to a new solution creating a dedicated civilian outreach team to work alongside police, connecting people with services instead of writing tickets.

The city council already approved a downtown mill levy increase to fund these workers, and leaders say the next step is to decide how quickly that team can be deployed on our streets.

It's interesting that the mayor, seems to be upset about seeing a person defecating on our streets, but she voted against public restrooms, you know?

So, it seems like she has a little bit of a contradiction there.

I'll go ahead.

I'd say so, but, you know, I'm.

I'm disappointed that those things are happening, but I think that is a greater look at our society.

Why do we have people who don't have a place to go, who feel like their only choice is or maybe there's a mental health issue there, but no matter what, we're not taking care of the problem sufficiently.

Now, I can tell you these, these encampments that they have, I represent the people at city Wichita that go out and clean that stuff up.

And unfortunately, the workers that do that, you know, they get pricked with needles.

There's tons of needles around there.

They get scabies, they get bedbugs, they get all kinds of things.

Because those conditions that people are living in are unsanitary, you know, and we've already bought a school from the school district, and we've made it a homeless shelter, and it's already too full.

And we've got a homeless shelter on the north end of town that is too full.

So what do we do?

Is it too full, Commissioner?

How?

Well, you might know the answer to that question.

I've heard there's empty beds at the new right now.

There's room.

And I would just say, if you get to the summertime and you still can't enforce these encampments, you're obviously not serious about doing that.

And by the way, this 600, over $600,000 toilet was the problem, wasn't she?

Was opposing public toilets.

She was opposed to the cost of that solution.

That was not the right solution for Wichita.

Having said that, you know, there are some other cities that are that are providing, you know, homeless services are much more successful than we are.

And I was trying to learn from them.

I just spent last week I went down to Haven for Hope back down in San Antonio, just again to get another, another look at what they're doing down there.

They are.

Their numbers are very impressive.

They have a but they have a new wave of homeless coming in all the time.

But once they get done, you know, helping these folks get off the streets, the vast majority of like 65% don't come back.

They're not homeless ever again.

They're actually solving the problem down there.

But they but they have services that are that are, you know, providing, you know, a real, real help to people.

And I see right now that our, our, our multi-agency center, we want to call it that or the second light.

It's just getting started.

It doesn't really have the services in place yet.

And so I do I don't think the enforcement issue here is, is a lack of bed space.

It's a lack of willpower, Senator.

Good.

Okay.

Go ahead.

I really do want to come in on this.

So I was just talking to a friend who lives in Oakland, California, and he suggested that the state of Kansas implement a, work for pay, that involves those people, on the street, you know, get them to buy into it so they clean up or do something and they get a little pay, some incentive.

But the the other thing, will they them.

But here's the other problem.

This is a real actual problem, that that it's going to be addressed in the upcoming session.

So a lot of people and I did some research and I've got some stats that a lot of our homeless people are actually veterans who can, that's one thing.

And they need birth certificates, etcetera to get their VA benefits.

That bill will be addressed in the upcoming session.

But here's the biggest problem is if you were ever evicted, even if you've got money, you can't get into housing and we've got to change those laws a little bit.

So I mean, we just like a life.

It shouldn't be a lifetime.

Look back on an eviction.

So I've had people with money and they can't rent, so they're just homeless.

And I'm talking about families.

Not just people on drugs, but actual families.

So let's let's work on that together.

My wife, Leah actually has a bill with Cindy, and they're working on that, specifically on rental rights, if you will.

That way that solves that problem that you're speaking about.

Yes, judge journey, let me move over to you.

There are some people on social media that I've seen over the last week or so that have been attacking Council member Dalton Glasscock and the mayor, Lily Wu, for not being compassionate enough.

You know, there's people in this town that flunk Dale Carnegie every day.

You know, here's the reality of it, too.

And I see it every day.

I work downtown, a significant portion, probably a third to half have mental health issues.

And the fact that we abandoned mental health and decentralize it and closed the state hospitals and then put them on the streets and said, you'll be fine.

And then nobody follows up.

They don't take their meds, they go off at work, they lose their job.

They lose their income, they lose their home.

They're wandering around talking to themselves.

Got to get the the state, the Department of Corrections involved.

So a lot.

Yeah, they just fed us $2 million.

Yeah.

Anyway, 30 30s.

Oh, thank you so much.

You know, we have to address the root cause or we're never going to solve the problem.

And that root cause is much deeper than building a new shelter, because if you build it, they will come and a lot more will.

Yeah.

All right.

That's a wrap for this week.

Thank you so much to Alisa Foust, Goudeau, Phil, Janine Esau Freeman and Jim Howell for being here.

And thanks also to cake and CSN for sharing their materials with us.

I'm Jared Zarrella.

We'll see you back here next week.

You.