More Rightwing Work Outside Their Own States

Seriously; if you read through these stories, both are part of the work of rightwing organizations operating in every state to get their missions accomplished. No state is safe from this sort of thing; people really need to keep their eyes on ALL of their legislators. Some of these groups even write ordinances and lobby county/municipal/local governing bodies.

Forty individuals, organizations object to Kansas Senate bill adding barriers to food and health aid

GOP legislators discount estimated $17 million annual cost of reform legislation

By: Tim Carpenter

TOPEKA — Melissa Sabin spoke officially on behalf of Little Lobbyists Kansas and personally in the name of her son, Logan, against a Kansas Senate bill aggressively expanding the state’s process of verifying eligibility for Medicaid, SNAP and other public assistance programs.

She was among dozens of organizations or individuals supplying opposition testimony Wednesday on Senate Bill 363. It would impose new state application and reporting requirements, some exceeding federal mandates, for programs serving children, elderly people, poor people, pregnant women and people with disabilities.

On Tuesday, the Senate Committee on Government Efficiency, or COGE, heard from the lone proponent of the bill — a conservative Florida organization that has sought for more than a decade to slash participation in Kansas public assistance programs.

“I oppose this bill because it creates an expensive, inefficient and legally questionable administrative structure that will predictably result in eligible Kansans — especially children — losing access to health care and food assistance,” Sabin said. “SB 363 does not improve program integrity or efficiency. It instead builds layers of red tape that state agencies are not equipped to manage or that federal law does not permit.”

Sabin, state outreach manager of Little Lobbyists, said the bill was inaccurately touted by its advocates as a means of improving accountability in terms of serving 325,000 Kansans taking part in Medicaid and 188,000 enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Sabin said requiring determinations of eligibility to be repeated monthly or quarterly would lead to additional paperwork errors, missed notices or administrative delays rather than documentation of alleged fraud or abuse.

She said a proposal for recipients of Medicaid to have eligibility reassessed every three months, rather than at 12-month intervals, could violate federal regulations. In terms of her son, she said the bill would compel the state to reconsider four times each year whether Logan, born with a genetic disorder characterized by intellectual disabilities, was eligible despite lack of change in his medical diagnosis.

“His condition does not fluctuate with paperwork cycles,” his mother said. “His need for skilled care does not disappear because the form is refiled or a verification is resubmitted.”

Sabin’s message of opposition was shared by representatives of Kansas Action for Children, Alliance for a Healthy Kansas, United Methodist Health Ministry Fund, LeadingAge Kansas, El Centro, United Way of Harvey and Marion Counties, Flint Hills Breadbasket, Kansas Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, InterHab, Reach Healthcare Foundation, Kansas Interfaith Action, Kansas Children’s Service League, United Community Services of Johnson County, the Disability Rights Center of Kansas and others.

The Senate bill

Under the Senate bill, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the Kansas Department for Children and Families would be required to establish data-matching systems to automatically share personal information on Kansans with other state agencies. KDHE would have to submit data to the federal government on a monthly basis to determine if Kansans were enrolled in Medicaid in other states.

The bill would direct the Kansas Department of Labor to affirm employment status of beneficiaries, while the Kansas Department of Revenue would reveal details on household income. The Kansas Department of Corrections would track prison inmates who might be ineligible for benefits. The Kansas Lottery would be on alert for anyone winning more than $3,000 because the income bump could compromise eligibility for aid.

As written, the Senate bill would block state agencies from unilaterally requesting approval of exemptions to federal regulations. Instead, the Legislature would have to first endorse the request. The legislation also would block Kansas agencies from accepting as true an applicant’s statements on household size, age or residency — a provision that would require extensive document searches by state employees.

Sen. Cindy Holscher, an Overland Park Democrat running for governor, said she appreciated a recommendation from an opponent of the bill to convene a special committee of the Legislature to develop a better understanding of how Kansans dealt with the process of obtaining SNAP or Medicaid assistance.

Holscher said the House and Senate should do more than accept testimony from the only organization supporting the bill: FGA Action, which operates as an arm of the conservative Florida think tank Foundation for Government Accountability.

FGA was a proponent of the 2015 Kansas law restricting enrollment in SNAP and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Research subsequently showed the state law undercut low-income families in Kansas, made it more difficult to prevent child abuse and contributed to a record surge in the number of Kansas children in foster care.

“We have 40 opponents to this bill who are subject matter experts based in Kansas,” Holscher said. “One proponent with an organization based out of Florida.”

The fiscal note attached to the Senate’s bill indicated state agencies would need to hire about 300 new employees to handle the revised eligibility processes. The Kansas Department of Administration estimated the cost of complying with the law would be $17 million to $18 million annually.

Sen. Doug Shane, R-Louisburg, and Sen. Mike Thompson, R-Shawnee, challenged the fiscal note.

“Quite frankly the fiscal note is, I guess we could say, hogwash,” Shane said. “There are just some pure fallacies.”

Opponents’ perspective

Heather Braum, senior policy adviser for Kansas Action for Children, said the additional layers of government red tape contemplated in the Senate bill would disproportionately harm children. She said the reform was introduced at a time when nearly 20% of Kansas children didn’t know where their next meal would come from and about 50,000 children lacked health insurance.

“Bottom line,” Braum said, “this bill will result in families losing Medicaid and SNAP. Families will be unable to afford their child’s medical care and kids will have less food to eat in their homes.”

Braum urged the Legislature to work toward streamlining the process of applying for aid. She said House and Senate members need a good understanding of how parents, children, pregnant women, people with disabilities and the elderly navigated the Medicaid and SNAP application processes.

Erica Andrade, president and CEO of El Centro, said the state’s plan to spend more on eligibility checks would result in loss of benefits by people qualified to receive aid.

“From El Centro’s perspective,” she said, “the most troubling aspect of SB 363 is that it prioritizes bureaucracy over people.”

The Rev. Jessica Williams, a Merriam Baptist minister with the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice, testified on behalf of Kansas Interfaith Action. She said Interfaith Action opposed federal SNAP and Medicaid reform signed in 2025 by President Donald Trump and likewise objected to SB 363.

She said the legislation weaponized the bureaucracy to dismantle the Medicaid and SNAP safety nets. She said paperwork traps embedded in the bill were “certainly counter to God’s law.”

“In my faith tradition we regularly pray the only prayer that Jesus taught, which says, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ ” Williams said. “This prayer is not an abstract nicety, but a concrete demand for survival and an indictment of unjust systems which withhold food from families.”

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Kansas local government leaders question ‘millions’ in costs, lack of detail in bathroom bill

By: Morgan Chilson

TOPEKA — Local government leaders want more details about how to enforce a “bathroom bill” passed by the Legislature that some city officials say could cost taxpayers “millions of dollars.”

Senate Bill 244, which is awaiting Gov. Laura Kelly’s signature, forces people to use facilities matching their biological sex at birth in government buildings.

Kelly has a 10-day deadline once receiving a bill to veto it. That deadline is Friday for SB 244, a spokesperson said. Kelly is expected to veto the bill, which passed both chambers with veto-proof majorities.

The bill says local governing bodies should take reasonable steps to ensure people use restrooms, locker rooms and other private spaces tied to their biological sex at birth, said Jay Hall, deputy director and general counsel for the Kansas Association of Counties.

The phrase that concerns Hall is “every reasonable step.”

“That’s really where our questions start,” he said. “What’s the expectation of local governments, and how are they supposed to handle the enforcement? That’s not something that we know at this point.”

Spencer Duncan, Topeka mayor and government affairs director for the League of Kansas Municipalities, said his organization is exploring what the bill means for its members. Initial determinations of changing signage and other steps could cost millions of dollars, some city leaders told him.

Duncan expressed frustration with the process that eliminated opportunity for public input when SB 244 was passed out of committee. The bill, originally House Bill 2426, addressed gender markers on driver’s licenses and birth certificates, which would stop the state’s practice of allowing transgender individuals to change their sex on those documents and would roll back markers that were previously changed.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee added the bathroom portion of the bill and then amended SB 244 by overwriting it with HB 2426, a process called “gut and go.” That allowed the Senate, which had already approved the unrelated version of SB 244, to concur with changes rather than hold hearings on the bill.

The only public hearing was in the House Judiciary Committee regarding gender markers — which received opposition from more than 200 people. During floor debate in the House, Democratic legislators spent more than five hours trying to add amendments that were repeatedly defeated. The bill passed along party lines, with one Republican, Emporia Rep. Mark Schreiber, voting against it.

The process meant no fiscal note was put on the bill for the bathroom portion, which concerned Democrats during the House debate and also worried Duncan and Hall.

(snip-a bit more)

For Science! On Friday

Meet The Giant Arctic Jellyfish That Defy Freezing Temperatures

Written by Matthew Russell

Beneath the icy stillness of the Arctic, where sunlight barely filters through thick sea ice, jellyfish are rewriting the rules of survival. For years, scientists assumed these delicate creatures could not withstand the region’s brutal winters. But that assumption shattered when researchers discovered adult Chrysaora melanaster jellyfish drifting under the frozen Chukchi Sea, tentacles trailing through near-freezing water.

The findings stunned marine biologists. Footage captured by Columbia University researchers using underwater vehicles revealed dozens of fully grown jellyfish gliding along the shallow seafloor. Their bells stretched nearly 24 inches across, and their tentacles extended up to 10 feet long. These jellyfish weren’t dormant, dying, or clinging to survival. They were alive and active, defying decades of assumptions about Arctic marine life, Live Science reports.

Arctic jellyfish are surviving the winter in their adult stage.

Life Under Ice Moves Slowly but Surely

To capture this rare glimpse, researchers rode snowmobiles across miles of frozen ocean and drilled through four feet of ice. Cameras dropped into the water below revealed not only jellyfish but a surprising abundance of other life — from algae to crustaceans. What stunned scientists most was that these jellyfish appeared healthy and fully developed, in the medusa stage, not the dormant polyp form previously believed to be their only means of winter survival, according to Columbia Climate School.

The cold helps them. It slows their metabolism, allowing them to conserve energy. And the ice above shields them from turbulent winter storms.

As Columbia biologist Andy Juhl put it, “Life under sea ice is like living in a refrigerator — everything slows down.” This slow-paced existence may help these jellyfish survive for years, not just months as once assumed.

Scientists found jellyfish living under four feet of Arctic ice.

From Arctic Shelters to Antarctic Giants

Jellyfish don’t just surprise us in the north. Thousands of miles south, in the icy waters of Antarctica, researchers aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s expedition recently filmed one of the rarest marine animals ever seen — the ghost jellyfish. This deep-sea giant (*Stygiomedusa gigantea*) spans over three feet wide, with flowing oral arms stretching more than 30 feet. It drifts silently through the dark, catching prey without the aid of tentacles. It was filmed at 1,300 meters depth in a region only accessible because a massive iceberg had recently broken free, the Stewartville Star reports.

Ghost jellies are rarely seen — only 120 sightings have ever been recorded since their discovery in 1899. Their immense size and unusual feeding methods set them apart, but it’s their reproduction that draws perhaps the most curiosity. Unlike most jellyfish, ghost jellies give birth to live young. The juveniles emerge directly from the parent’s mouth after developing inside its bell, a trait called viviparity, according to Live Science.

These jellyfish were once believed to die off each winter.

Adaptation in Every Form

While ghost jellies are deep-sea dwellers, some were filmed at surprisingly shallow depths — just 260 feet in Antarctic waters. Researchers suggest that in polar regions, shifts in sunlight and prey behavior may draw these jellies closer to the surface.

Both Arctic and Antarctic jellyfish species show how adaptable these animals can be. In the Arctic, jellyfish once assumed to vanish in winter now appear to thrive, aided by the very cold that was thought to be their limit. In Antarctica, a creature thought to be relegated to unreachable depths rises when opportunity allows, providing rare glimpses of life in Earth’s most extreme waters.

What unites them isn’t just their beauty or rarity. It’s their resilience — silent drifters shaped by pressure, cold, and darkness, yet still pulsing through the oceans, undeterred.

Ghost jellyfish in Antarctica can grow over 30 feet long.

Climate Change Could Tip the Balance

Despite their resilience, these jellyfish may face new threats. According to Columbia Climate School, arctic species like *C. melanaster* rely on thick sea ice for shelter. As climate change causes rapid ice loss, these jellyfish — and many creatures that depend on sea ice — may see their habitats disappear. At the same time, jellyfish in warmer parts of the world are thriving, even swarming, in response to warming waters and fewer predators.

In the far north, though, it may be the opposite. With less ice, cold-adapted jellies could decline. In the case of these jellyfish, warming may simply mean vanishing.

Still, these discoveries are a reminder of how much we have yet to understand. The creatures beneath the ice and beyond the reach of sunlight continue to defy expectations, reminding us that the ocean — even in its coldest corners — is alive with mystery.

In Regard To Scottie’s Search:

c’mon, everyone, Scottie can draw that toon! Cheer him on, and join him-draw one of your own! 🧑‍🎨

Make Your Own Comics

Exercises for the Classroom

Grant Snider

1. Start with a character

Will your character be an avatar of yourself? A plucky young heroine? A grizzled space pirate? A robot with feelings? Design your character with simple shapes that can easily be repeated from panel to panel. Put them in different poses, draw them far away and up close, from various views. Once the character starts moving on their own, you have the start of a story.

2. Journey from panel to panel

Draw the action from left to right, top to bottom across the page. The space between panels is called the gutter. In the gutter, time passes. This amount of time can be a millisecond (a character blinks) or an eon (a star collapses). Use small changes in expression and pose to show what the character is thinking and feeling. Add thought balloons and text bubbles for dialogue.

3. Create new characters

Make each character distinct in shape and personality. Let their form dictate their behavior and action. How do they complement or oppose the main character? What new direction can they take the story?

4. How does it end?

(Snip-this is a pretty long post with the art, so I’m snipping here. I wanted to leave the art big enough to be seen fairly clearly. We will know how our own toons end! Also, though I don’t recall thinking about it when I found this substack, no doubt there was subconscious inspiration from Michael Seidel’s blog. I read it over lunch.)

According To Libertarians,

(You can listen to this, on the page)

January 16, 2025 6:01AM

Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 1: Summary

By David J. Bier

This is Part 1 of a four-part series on the origins of the border crisis: Read Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

During President Joe Biden’s term, Border Patrol arrested an unprecedented number of immigrants who crossed illegally into the United States. Many believe Biden caused this increase in migration by reducing border enforcement. However, data obtained by the Cato Institute through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) challenges this narrative. In fact, the border crisis began before Biden took office and ended before he left.

From his administration’s first day in January 2021, Biden actually increased border enforcement—arrests, detentions, and removals of border crossers all increased. The prevailing narrative that blames Biden overlooks the real causes of the crisis: America’s robust labor market and bad immigration policies that incentivized illegal entries. However, Trump, not Biden, mostly started those policies. Biden eventually phased out some of them; he increased legal migration, and as the labor market cooled, the problem dissipated.

Summary

The main takeaways are:

Illegal immigration had already increased to a 21-year high before Biden entered office.
Biden immediately started increasing expulsions from his first day in office.
Biden tripled interior detention and increased border detention 12-fold.
Biden increased air removal flights by 55 percent over 2020 levels.
Biden negotiated broader expulsion deals with foreign countries than Trump.
Biden got many foreign countries to carry out crackdowns on illegal and legal migration.
Biden removed or expelled 3.3 million border crossers—three times as many as Trump.
Biden even managed to remove a similar percentage of crossers as Trump’s four years.

Despite Biden’s historic crackdown:

Expulsions did not deter migrants, even among demographics universally expelled.
The percentage increase in evasions of Border Patrol increased as much as Border Patrol arrests, implying that releases did not cause the crisis and that many people did not want Border Patrol to catch them but were undeterred by the threat.
Releases occurred not because Biden cut removals but because migration grew faster than the administration could increase them.
As a result, releases only occurred among specific demographic groups and in certain areas where removals were logistically complicated.
Biden could not easily remove groups to Mexico, like families, children, and immigrants from distant countries who were arrested in record numbers.

The actual causes of the increases in illegal immigration were:

Unprecedented labor demand, which incentivized and funded migration from around the world: From February 2021 to August 2024, there were more open jobs each month than in any month before Biden’s term began. During this time, economies worldwide were recovering far less quickly than the United States. As labor demand subsided in 2024, immigration fell.
Unprecedented access to information about migration through the Internet and social media: Internet access rose rapidly from 2018 to 2021, nearly doubling in Central America and reaching unprecedented highs in South America. Social media platforms gave people step-by-step instructions on migrating and connected them directly with smugglers. This opened migration from around the world, which contributed to the number of releases.
Novel and perverse enforcement policies: The Title 42 expulsion policy incentivized repeat crossings by returning people to Mexico, where they could immediately attempt to re-enter the United States. Title 42 also cut off access to asylum, incentivizing more Border Patrol evasions.
Novel and perverse legal migration policies: Title 42 not only banned asylum for people who crossed illegally but also prohibited legal entries by asylum seekers, including demographic groups that had traditionally always entered legally, like Haitians, Cubans, and Mexican families. Biden eventually increased legal entries by these groups and others, limiting the crisis’s extent and ultimately contributing to its end.

The border crisis did not end because Biden signed an executive order in June 2024. If he had signed his border executive order in 2021, it would have merely duplicated what Title 42 was already doing: ban asylum. Moreover, the border executive order did not significantly change the downward trend in arrivals in 2024, which had already fallen in half during the five months before he signed it. Finally, the order did not increase removals. Rather, the crisis primarily ended because labor demand subsided significantly and because Biden expanded legal migration.

Read Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 2: Did Biden Cut Enforcement?

A Couple Of Shorts; More Topical But In A Humorous Fashion

I acquired this link to a David Nihil short in 3 different ways, but it will not embed. I promise it’s worth the click, and it’s short.

https://youtube.com/shorts/qdFI3Y1Xa2o?si=yhsp9ugIcxHkeAqi

Your Josh Day Next Day

All device beverage cautions should be in place.

Art With Jenny Lawson

You can sit with me

Jenny Lawson (thebloggess)

Hello friend,

This week I needed a quiet place to escape from my own head so I made one:

And then I added another swing because maybe you need a quiet place to be as well. We’re all in this together.

In slightly related news, I follow a lot of artists on instagram who share tips and tutorials and this tree idea came from Cathflo.art who I adore. Her tutorials aren’t in English but art is universal in any language. Also universal? Hope. Love. Joy. Kindness. Compassion.

Just saying.

Love,

Some More Jogging Finds

Some may recall these Hitler videos from the latter part of GW’s admin, then further into the first and now second Trump admins. This one’s classical “Hitler Finds Out…”

Clay Jones, Open Windows

We already know Trump is a racist

That’s not new. Ann Telnaes

Trump throws red meat out regularly when trying to divert attention or he thinks his base isn’t solid. The very reason he was first elected was due to the underlying racism and sexism in this country. Trump just gave them permission to say it out loud.

https://open.substack.com/pub/anntelnaes/p/we-already-know-trump-is-a-racist?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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Trump Loves Hate

A message of love in Spanish tightens Trump’s sphincter

Clay Jones

If you believe that a message of love and unity is in opposition to everything you stand for, and you have to fight it with every fiber of your being, then you are either Darth Sidious, Hitler, or Donald Trump.

Why would you take a message that says, “The Only Thing More Powerful Than Hate is Love” as something hostile and political? Because it’s in Spanish and everything you’re about is hate?

Last night after the Super Bowl, Trump posted to social media, “The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World.” (Snip-MORE, and it’s hot)

https://open.substack.com/pub/claytoonz/p/trump-loves-hate?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web