The above is my life. Am sorry if this brings you down but these are what I struggle with every day 24 hours a day. I really want to thank the wonderful people / community support I have gotten. You are the most wonderful to understand how hard it can be for me some days. Hugs
Education and Healthcare lowest ranked on the states report card Alabama ranks in the bottom 10 for education, with higher education at 42nd and Pre-K through 12th grade at 43rd. California ranks 37th in Pre-K-12 education according to recent reports, with challenges in areas like high school graduation rates and college readiness.
Good Evening, Everyone!! It was 15 degrees on this unknown-numbered day of the apocalypse. I salted, chipped ice, shoveled while I shivered, my shoulders ached, my lips chapped… I’m so looking forward to the greens of spring!
In all honesty, though, I’m a Michigan kid. I had some of my favorite days on winter sleds, building show forts in plowed snow piles, snowball fights (and yes, I did save one in the freezer just to throw it at my sister in June :D) and snowmobiles. I can ice-fish without a shanty, cross-country ski and drink peppermint schnapps with the best of them. So, this year’s winter has been a measure of beautiful nights of softly falling snow while I sat by the window with a hot cup of coffee – you know, in the midst of the shoveling and salting and freezing and stuff. I remember it more fondly as a kid?
May you find your moments of zen in the harshness that life brings. Stay Warm!
check to make sure your state isn’t trying to do the same thing. It’s insulting that ours would think we don’t know better, but this rings like some sort of ALEC type of a thing; those generally go national, or at least all red states. Anyway:
The House Elections Committee wants to elect Governor with an Electoral College
Most days, I rely on BillBee and other monitoring tools to flag the most important activities of the prior day and use those to substantially prepare this newsletter. Yesterday’s action, though, goes beyond anything we’ve tracked in two years of covering Kansas politics.
HCR 5027 proposes replacing the direct election of Kansas Governor and Lieutenant Governor with an electoral college. Under this system, voters in each of the 40 state senate districts would effectively be choosing an elector…not a governor. Those 40 electors would then cast the actual votes for our state’s top executive office.
If that sounds familiar, it’s modeled on how we elect the President. But with one critical difference: each senate district’s elector would carry equal weight, regardless of population. (It’s also unconstitutional.)
Why That Matters
Kansas senate districts vary significantly in population density. Rural western Kansas districts and suburban Johnson County districts each get one elector under this proposal, despite representing vastly different numbers of voters. This is intentional.
The proposal also includes a failsafe for the majority party: if no candidate pair wins 21 electoral votes, the Legislature elects the governor in a joint session, with each legislator casting one vote. Given the current supermajority dynamics in Topeka, this framework would likely cement one-party control of the governor’s mansion for a generation—regardless of statewide popular vote totals.
The Fine Print
You won’t find much about HCR 5027 on the Legislature’s website yet. At the time of this writing, the draft language appears only on page 1,709 of the House daily journal. Here’s the full text:
Be it resolved by the Legislature of the State of Kansas, two-thirds of the members elected (or appointed) and qualified to the House of Representatives and two-thirds of the members elected (or appointed) and qualified to the Senate concurring therein: Section 1. The following proposition to amend the constitution of the state of Kansas shall be submitted to the qualified electors of the state for their approval or rejection: Article 1 of the constitution of the state of Kansas is hereby amended by adding a new section to read as follows:” § 17. Electoral college for governor and lieutenant governor.(a) The governor and the lieutenant governor shall be elected by an electoral college consisting of one elector from each state senate district, for a total of 40 electors.(b) In each state senate district, the candidate pair for governor and lieutenant governor receiving the highest number of votes shall receive such district’s elector, who shall be pledged to vote for governor and lieutenant governor.(c) The candidate pair receiving a majority of the electoral votes which shall be at least 21 votes shall be elected governor and lieutenant governor. If none of the pairs receives a majority, the legislature shall elect the governor and lieutenant governor in a joint session from among the two pairs receiving the highest number of electoral votes. Each member of the legislature having one vote and a majority shall be required to elect the governor and lieutenant governor.(d) Electors shall be qualified voters of Kansas, residents of their respective senate districts and nominated in advance by political parties or independent candidate pairs in accordance with law. Electors shall meet and cast votes as prescribed by law. Any elector voting contrary to their pledge shall be subject to penalties as provided by law.(e) The legislature shall enact laws to implement this section, including procedures for certification, meetings of electors, handling of ties or vacancies and enforcement.” Kansas House Committee on Elections
Constitutional Questions
As a constitutional amendment, HCR 5027 would need two-thirds approval from both chambers before appearing on a statewide ballot. Voters would then decide.
But even if passed through that process, the proposal may face legal challenges. Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution guarantees states a “Republican Form of Government”—language the Supreme Court has historically avoided interpreting, but which scholars argue requires some baseline of representative democracy. Whether an electoral college that can override the popular vote meets that standard is an open question.
There’s also the matter of the Kansas Constitution’s own Bill of Rights, Section 1: “All men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Courts have historically read such provisions as foundational to equal voting power.
Part of a Pattern
HCR 5027 doesn’t exist in isolation. This session has seen an unprecedented wave of election-related legislation, much of it now law:
Already signed:
SB 4: Advance ballots must arrive by 7 p.m. Election Day (no more postmark grace period) SB 5: Blocks federal election funds without legislative approval HB 2020: Requires DMV to send quarterly lists of noncitizen license holders to election officials HB 2106: Bans out-of-state contributions to Kansas constitutional amendment campaigns SB 105: Governor must pick replacements for U.S. Senate, state treasurer, and insurance commissioner from a three-name list approved by a new legislative committee
Moving through the House:
HB 2438: Limits online voter registration to .gov websitesHB 2452: Move local elections to even-numbered yearsHB 2525: Bans remote drop boxes for advance ballots
HCR 5027 is currently in the House Elections Committee. As a constitutional amendment, it faces a higher procedural bar than ordinary legislation, but in a supermajority environment that bar is not insurmountable.
Amid the Trump administration’s ongoing attempts to erase queer and trans history, a University of California Berkeley professor’s students are working to right these wrongs — through Wikipedia edits.
Over the past decade, students in ethnic studies, gender and women’s studies, and performance studies professor María Rodríguez’s courses have edited and even created Wikipedia articles about LGBTQ+ history, with an emphasis on queer and trans people of color. The assignment currently replaces a final paper in three of her classes: “Documenting Marginal Lives,” “Queer of Color Cultural Production,” and “Queer of Color Critique.”
Rodríguez’s Wikipedia assignments take place in partnership with Wiki Education, a nonprofit that works with university professors in the United States and Canada. The professors’ students add content to course-related Wikipedia articles, which, according to the organization’s website, helps them gain skills like “media literacy, writing and research development, and critical thinking,” while simultaneously filling Wikipedia “content gaps.”
“Wikipedia is a public-facing project — it’s the largest encyclopedia in the world,” Rodríguez told UC Berkeley News in a December interview. “In a political moment where these histories are actively being erased from public view, having students work on a platform like Wikipedia becomes even more important.”
According to The Daily Californian, as of January 26, Rodríguez’s students have contributed over 300,000 edits and 3,000 citations to Wikipedia. At the time of writing, their work has garnered a whopping 96 million-plus views. Her students’ topics run the gamut, touching upon local history like the resonance of queer life in San Francisco’s Chinatown, as well as more international focus areas (for instance: worldwide sex worker movements).
As Rodríguez explained to UC Berkeley News, her students’ edits often help address the disparities between the amount of Wikipedia information about white, Anglo LGBTQ+ populations versus LGBTQ+ populations of color.
“It becomes particularly important to document these subcultures within these communities,” she said. “Because it’s not just queer Latinas — it’s queer goth Latinas, it’s queer comics of color, it’s African American slaying, right? It’s very specific topics that might really vary by region, by historical moment, and of course at different places around the world. Those topics, in Wikipedia and in real life, remain really under-studied and really under-researched.”
These contributions carry a newfound weight during the second Trump administration, in which officials have repeatedly attempted to erase references to queer and trans history. In February 2025, National Park Service websites removed the word “transgender” from multiple pages for historical programs and monuments, as well as references to trans figures such as Marsha P. Johnson. Meanwhile, in June, an unnamed Defense Department official told Military.com that Trump timed an order to remove LGBTQ+ icon Harvey Milk’s name from a military ship to coincide with Pride Month.
“Right now, the Trump administration is trying to erase the very existence of transgender people, so having information about those histories, as well as present challenges facing queer and trans communities, is particularly urgent,” Rodríguez told The Daily Californian via email. “Queer and trans people have always been here, and adding that information to the world’s largest open access encyclopedia is one way to make sure that these stories remain available.”
The ICE Handbook Tells A Damning Story About The Death of Renee Good
Training material, which HuffPost obtained, shows the multiple ways agents didn’t follow agency rules.
One of the intended consequences of President Trump’s politicization of the Justice Department is to leave behind a weakened, overwhelmed, decimated organization that simply can’t do its job.
They’re hollowing out the DOJ by purging nonpartisan career attorneys, making life intolerable for those who remain, and replacing them with loyalists sucks the capacity out of the organization. It can’t handle as many cases, isn’t capable of tackling ambitious ones, and the quality of the lawyering suffers in all cases.
This is all coming home to roost in a very visible way in Minnesota, where the lawless Operation Metro Surge has produced hundreds of habeas cases filed by wrongfully detained immigrants. The chief federal judge in Minnesota, speaking for an overwhelmed judiciary, has already publicly castigated the Trump administration for not preparing for the flood of cases that its mass deportation operation in the state was bound to generate. (Chris Geidner explains the ins and outs of why we’re seeing so many cases.)
Meanwhile, the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office has been crippled by mass resignations, including some of its most senior career attorneys. That has left the remaining DOJ attorneys in Minnesota inundated with more cases than they can keep up with. But I’m not sure that does justice to what’s been happening. It’s quite a bit worse than that.
The quality of lawyering has eroded to such a point that government lawyers have been unable to keep up with the court orders demanding that detainees be released. As a result, detainees have lingered in confinement even after courts have ordered their release.
Last week, as the Star Tribune first reported, Ana Voss, a career DOJer who was the chief of the civil division in the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office, submitted an astonishing court filing in which she admitted that her office had not followed a judicial order to release a detainee because they hadn’t seen the email.
“I did not timely read these orders,” Voss reportedly said in the court filing. “I understand that is inexcusable.”
But it doesn’t appear to be a case of incompetence or willful disregard. As Voss explained in the filing: “It has become apparent to me that I am not able to effectively triage and review every order which is not an acceptable practice for me or the United States.”
Numerous reports have suggested that mass resignations in the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office are not due solely to the failure to investigate the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. My suspicion is that the hell-on-wheels inundation of immigration cases is another contributing factor.
More evidence of that emerged yesterday, when Julie Le, an attorney for the government, essentially melted down in court, as FOX9’s Paul Blume reported :
“I wish you would just hold me in contempt of court so I can get 24 hours of sleep,” Le said. “The system sucks, this job sucks, I am trying with every breath I have to get you what I need.”
As Joyce Vance notes, Le is not a regular assistant U.S. attorney but a “special” AUSA. She is reported to have been working as a DHS attorney before being detailed to the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office to help with the flood of immigration cases. Le had been assigned over more than 88 cases since December.
It’s easy to see this as attorneys getting what they deserve for participating in a corrupted system, but remember it’s the detainees who are languishing despite courts ordering their release. I’ve seen defiant DOJ political appointees in court telling judges to shove it. Le does not appear to be one of those kinds of attorneys:
“I am here to make sure the agency understands how important it is to comply with court orders,” said Le, who became visibly emotional during the court hearing.
Le was removed from the U.S. Attorney’s Office after her courtroom remarks, NBC News reports.
When chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz said last week that the Trump administration had violated 96 court orders in 78 cases since Jan. 1 in Minnesota alone, I first thought this was another Trump administration gambit to defy the judicial branch. And it may be, but it’s not as direct as the confrontations in the Alien Enemies Act and Abrego Garcia cases.
It seems increasingly clear the rampant noncompliance with court habeas orders happening in immigration cases now is not a problem of attorney ethics. It’s a symptom of structural, institutional collapse at the Department of Justice.
The Trump administration is tearing down U.S. Attorney’s offices and undermining Main Justice so that there simply aren’t the resources to even respond to the judicial branch. A burn it all down ethos. Catch me if you can.
Keep an Eye on This One …
U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson of Minneapolis ordered the pretrial release of two immigrants accused of assaulting an ICE agent who shot one of the men in an incident last month. But the men did not make it out of the courthouse before they were re-detained, by ICE, the Star Tribune reports.
Attorneys for Alfredo Aljorna and Julio Sosa-Celis were quickly back in court, filing a habeas petition seeking their release from ICE custody. Last night, chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz ordered the Trump administration not to remove the men from Minnesota and, if they already had, then to return them to Minnesota immediately.
Not to get overlooked: At the pretrial hearing, the mens’ attorneys introduced into evidence photos of the shooting scene that suggest the ICE agent shot through a closed door and undermine the government’s account what happened.
Quote of the Day
“In the last few weeks, our family took some consolation thinking that perhaps Nee’s death would bring about change in our country. And it has not.”—Luke Ganger, brother of Renee Good
Judge Protects Anti-ICE Protesters
U.S. District Judge Michael Simon issued a temporary restraining order barring federal agents from using tear gas and other crowd-control weapons against peaceful protesters and journalists outside an ICE facility in Portland, Oregon.
In his order, Simon was harshly critical of the Trump administration:
“the repeated shooting and teargassing of nonviolent protesters at the Portland ICE Building will likely keep recurring … Defendants’ violence is in no way isolated.”
“statements made by DHS officials and senior federal executives show that the culture of the agency and its employees is to celebrate violent responses over fair and diplomatic ones.”
“Rather than reprimanding DHS violence against protesters, senior officials have publicly condoned it.”
“There are clear instances of excessive force, including a use of force incident recorded by ICE’s own cameras and deemed “inappropriate” and “not reasonable” by a Federal Protective Service (“FPS”) Deputy Regional Director. Yet, the agents involved were not put on leave and do not appear to have been held accountable in any way.”
The video below has people recounting the gang thug brutality of ICE attacking and shooting people doing nothing wrong. ICE thugs were totally out of control and had no respect for civil rights or the lives of the people they attacked. The ICE thugs seemed to be jacked up in rage by some substance and enjoyed causing pain and being cruel. Hugs
The video below details how the ICE gang thugs were bragging about shooting innocent people. The thugs did not care how brutal they were with the woman but instead seemed to relish being allowed to be so brutal. Hugs
The video below details the conditions at the ICE concentration camp, including that a 2 month old baby is being held there. Hugs
Witness testimony at a congressional hearing. I will post clips of their testimonys from MS Now. But please watch this. These are US citizens who committed no crime but being of Hispanic ethnicity. The agent who shot one of the witnesses bragged about it. These descriptions are something we wouldn’t believe it couldn’t happen here, but they are under the fascist government of Stephen Miller. These gang thugs do not think of these people as humans. This is no different from the way Jewish people were treated in Nazi Germany. The thugs were laughing at the disabled woman with a brain injury. They were totally willing to let this woman die. Plus currently there is no way for these assaulted people to recover lost / damaged property and income, and when taken to the hospital for emergency care due to their being assulted / shot by ICE gang thugs the people assaulted have to pay the cost of their treatment, not ICE or the government! Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 