January 20, 1920 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was founded by Roger Baldwin, Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, labor leaders Rose Schneiderman and Duncan McDonald, Rabbi Judah Magnes, and others.The ACLU was organized to protect the rights guaranteed in the the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights. Prior to this the first ten amendments had not been enforced. The ACLU has paid particular attention to • First Amendment rights: freedom of speech, association and assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion as well as a bar against establishment of a state religion. • One’s right to equal protection under the law – equal treatment regardless of race, sex, religion or national origin. • One’s right to due process – fair treatment for citizens by the government whenever the loss of liberty or property is at stake. • One’s right to privacy – freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into one’s personal and private affairs. ACLU history The ACLU today
January 20, 1942 Nazi Party and German government officials arrived at what they called the “final solution to the Jewish question in Europe.” They developed plans for the coordinated and systematic extermination of all Europe’s Jews during a meeting at a villa near Lake Wannsee in Berlin. Notes of the meeting recorded by Adolf Eichmann used vague terms such as “transportation to the east” or “evacuation to the east” (nach dem Osten abgeshoben). But at his trial for genocide Eichmann testified of the meeting that “the discussion covered killing, elimination, and annihilation.” The villa on Lake Wannsee, now a holocaust museum. More on the Wannsee conference
January 20, 2001 Tens of thousands lining Pennsylvania Avenue to protest the legitimacy of the inauguration of President George W. Bush were systematically excluded from almost all media coverage of the event. They called attention to the election irregularities in Florida, the dispute over a recount, and the ultimate effective choice of the president by a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court.
Members of the Kansas House of Representatives are sworn in on Jan. 13, 2025. (Grace Hills/Kansas Reflector)
Watching senators and representatives traipse merrily into the Statehouse on Monday morning was like watching the beginning of a knockoff Harry Potter movie, one in which lawmakers returned to their majestic chambers full of excitement for the year to come.
Of course, Harry Potter movies feature fewer magical tax cuts for corporations, fantastical abortion messaging bills and terrifying anti-trans legislation.
I felt excitement in the air, as freshly elected supermajority Republicans licked at their lips at the prospect of enacting their agenda without having to pay pesky Democrats the slightest notice. House GOP members were heading out to a caucus meeting across the street — one closed to journalists — and hellos and backslaps echoed throughout the entrance.
It’s going to be a long three months. But don’t worry. I’ll be here writing this weekly roundup to collect bits and bobs that we didn’t get to over the week.
Think of me as Topeka’s own J.K. Rowling, only not transphobic.
House Speaker Dan Hawkins stands before his chamber on the opening day of session, Jan. 13, 2025. (Grace Hills/Kansas Reflector)
Press restrictions
I’ll have more about this Monday, but despite embarrassed protestations from some Republican House members, leadership indeed banned reporters from the chamber’s floor. Either have the decency to own the fact (it’s spelled out on a document sent to journalists) or voice your opposition, but don’t lie.
In the meantime, word of the new restrictions spread across the state and nation.
Kansas lawmakers will see their base pay double during the 2025 session. Nice work if you can get it. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)
Making money moves
Senators and representative have a good reason for the positive attitudes I saw Monday: They’re making a lot more money.
Thanks to a convoluted process involving an independent commission and its binding recommendations, rank-and-file lawmakers’ base pay more than doubled, from $21,000 to $43,000, for the session. If you include per diem reimbursements, that brings the average salary to $57,000. Leadership in both chambers saw their pay increase as well.
I’m on the record praising this idea. Given the aging demographics of our Legislature, these heftier salaries could attract younger talent. Hopefully, they will also cultivate a more professional attitude toward doing the people’s work. We shall see.
Americans for Prosperity lobbyists and enthusiasts pack a Statehouse hearing room on June 17, 2024 (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
AFP this week touted a new campaign calling on legislators in Washington, D.C., to renew former and future President Donald Trump’s signature tax cuts. The group claims in a news release that it will spend $20 million across 50 states to spread the word.
“If Congress fails to renew the TCJA, Kansans will be left paying $2,228 more in taxes,” claimed AFP-Kansas director Elizabeth Patton. “Along with increasing the burden of inflation on working families, the expiration of these tax cuts would cripple local businesses with a $988 tax increase and ultimately cost over 6,760 jobs.”
Meanwhile, the NFIB surveyed Kansas members and revealed the results, which mysteriously track with Topeka Republicans’ priorities.
The group writes in its own news release that more than 88% want state property taxes lowered. It also notes that 86% “believe Kansas should require the disclosure of third parties with financial interest in litigation,” and that 62% “support waiving fines and penalties for first-time regulatory errors.”
Robert Blaemire, author of a book about former U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana, moderated a discussion with former U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum at the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas in 2022. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)
Kassebaum addendum
In my Monday column about former U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum receiving the Presidential Citizens Medal, I noted that other state news organizations had only skimmed the surface in reporting on the honor.
Right on time, Marion County Record reporter Finn Hartnett popped up Wednesday with a lovely profile of Kassebaum at home. Read and enjoy.
The Kansas Reflector opinion section is always looking for fresh perspectives and new writers. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
Calling contributors
With a new year and new legislative session comes a new call from yours truly for contributors to the opinion section. We have a page of guidelines about what we’re looking for, but the short version is this: If you want to write about Kansas, and you live in Kansas, please drop me a line.
We don’t run traditional letters to the editor (he said politely, so please don’t send them), but I would love to see pieces in the 650-850 word range about the Sunflower State and its extraordinary residents. Take a look at our opinion section to see more.
Who knows, perhaps you can be the next non-transphobic J.K. Rowling along with me.
Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
and maybe you’ll get a good laugh out of this news I read on Showercap’s blog. Apparently Musk cheats and isn’t really a very good player. Earlier Sat. evening, I saw Musk on an old Big Bang Theory, acting at working in a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. This was fun news to read after seeing that!
Now I’m not at all a gamer, though once upon a time I did all right at PacMan & Asteroids. I couldn’t care less about this sort of thing, but I find it funny to learn it about Musk. Two story snippets below:
Elon Musk is currently in the midst of a feud with Twitch streamer Asmongold, after he was accused of boosting his ‘Path of Exile 2’ account, leading to Musk leaking Asmon’s private DMs.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is in the midst of a heated feud with gaming streamer Zack Hoyt, better known as “Asmongold,” who is accusing Musk of cheating at Path of Exile 2.
Asmongold is not the only gamer accusing Musk of cheating, as the larger gaming community, particularly Path of Exile players, believe that Musk is paying people to play games for him, leveling up his characters and arming them with powerful equipment—a practice known as “boosting.”
After Musk played Path of Exile 2 on a livestream, gamers quickly noticed that his actions did not match that of a proficient player, and compiled a list of evidence on Reddit that strongly implies that Musk is boosting his characters.
Commentators responded in bemused disbelief—one wrote that Musk “doesn’t seem to understand why he can’t pick up items when his inventory is full.”
It should be noted that Path of Exile 2 is a very difficult game that requires a serious time commitment to reach the level that Musk’s character achieved (level 97 on hardcore mode).
The prevailing sentiment is that a man who is running multiple businesses simply does not have time to do this.
What Happened With Elon Musk And Asmongold?
Like many gaming streamers, Asmongold watched Musk’s livestream of Path of Exile 2 and came to the conclusion that Musk did not know how to play the game properly.
Asmon took it a step further, and challenged Musk to prove that he had reached level 97 by himself.
If Musk could prove this, Asmon promised that he would stream on X (Twitter) for a full year. Once the news of Asmon’s challenge made its way to X, Musk didn’t take the criticism very well. (snip-More)
Musk’s livestreams in which he plays a popular role-playing game have sparked some in the gaming community to speculate that he’s not the gamer he claims to be.
Elon Musk is battling critics on the internet, again. This time, it’s the video game community.
The tech titan has in recent days taken time away from his roles as SpaceX CEO and adviser to President-elect Donald Trump to call out some of the gaming world’s niche content creators, firing back at accusations that he is not quite the gamer he purports to be.
The allegations amount to a sort of stolen valor for video games and center on some recent livestreams in which Musk played Path of Exile 2, a popular online role-playing game in which players select from a number of characters to end corruption spreading through the fictional world of Wraeclast. When playing on hardcore mode, as Musk does, when a character dies, its death is permanent. As gamers play, their characters level up, increasing in power and capability.
But many gamers have pointed out what they say is a crucial discrepancy. Two of Musk’s characters were particularly powerful — among the top 100 most powerful in the world — when they were “alive” (two characters tied to Musk have since “died” and are now ranked in the 30s and 200s, respectively). The levels of Musk’s now-deceased characters would require dozens if not hundreds of hours of gameplay, depending on the gamer, to achieve. His skills, however, appear to be lacking, according to some gamers.
“I’m a huge fan of Elon Musk — but this is embarrassing and very silly,” Zack Hoyt, who is known as Asmongold to his 3.29 million subscribers on YouTube, said in a video posted Sunday. “It makes him look bad and it’s for absolutely no reason. It’s of no consequence and it achieves no goal.”
Criticism toward the X CEO — who has for years described himself as an avid gamer — began gaining traction online after he livestreamed himself playing Path of Exile 2 on Jan. 7. Days later, in the Reddit community for the game, some accused Musk of having someone “boost” his account, or play for him. Others suggested he’s playing using a more skilled player’s account. (snip-More)
The Georgia State House of Representatives refused to seat black state representative Julian Bond despite his election the previous November.
Their stated objection was his endorsement of a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee statement accusing the United States of violating international law in Vietnam. In December 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Bond’s exclusion unconstitutional, and Bond was finally sworn in the following month.
An example of actual “cancel culture” within, plus more.
January 18, 1919 The peace conference to negotiate the end of the Great War (now know as World War I) opened in Paris, France. President Woodrow Wilson spent several months in Europe personally negotiating details of what became the Treaty of Versailles with heads of the allied powers or their foreign ministers.
January 18, 1962 The U.S. began spraying herbicides on foliage in Vietnam to eliminate jungle canopy cover for Viet Cong guerrillas (a policy known as “territory denial”).The U.S. ultimately dropped more than 20 million gallons of such defoliants, sparking charges the United States was violating international treaties against using chemical weapons. Many of the herbicides, particularly Agent Orange, manufactured by Dow Chemical, Monsanto and others, were later found to cause birth defects and rare forms of cancer in humans. Agent Orange: An Ongoing Atrocity
January 18, 1968 Invited to a Women Doers luncheon at the Johnson White House, Eartha Kitt, singer and actor, spoke out about the effect of the Vietnam War on America’s youth. Lady Bird Johnson had convened 50 whites and Negroes to discuss President Lyndon Johnson’s anti-crime proposals. Ms. Kitt first asked the President, “what do you do about delinquent parents, those who have to work and are too busy to look after their children?” He said that there was Social Security money for day care, and the group should discuss such issues. Later, she told the women that young Americans were “angry because their parents are angry . . . because there is a war going on that they don’t understand . . . You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street. They will take pot . . . and they will get high. They don’t want to go to school because they’re going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam.” Eartha Kitt and Lady Bird Johnson Eartha Kitt’s career took a severe downturn after this; for years afterward, Kitt performed almost exclusively overseas, while being investigated by several federal agencies. “The thing that hurts, that became anger, was when I realized that if you tell the truth – in a country that says you’re entitled to tell the truth – you get your face slapped and you get put out of work,” Kitt told Essence magazine two decades later.
January 18, 1971 In a televised speech, Senator George S. McGovern (D-South Dakota) began his anti-war campaign for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination. He vowed to bring home all U.S. soldiers from Vietnam if elected. McGovern had served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, earning the Silver Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross. George McGovern “. . . we must have the courage to admit that however sincere our motives, we made a dreadful mistake in trying to settle the affairs of the Vietnamese people with American troops and bombers . . . . “ But while our problems are great, certain steps can be taken to recover the confidence of the nation. The greatness of our nation is not confined to the past, but beckons us to the future.
January 18, 1985 Though a member of the World Court since 1946, the United States walked out during a case. The Court had charged the U.S. was in violation of international law through its support of paramilitary (Contra) activities against the Nicaraguan government. Efforts to undermine the Sandinista government in Nicaragua had been a keystone of Pres. Reagan’s anti-communist foreign policy from its inception. Congressman Michael Barnes (D-Maryland) said he was “shocked and saddened that the Reagan Administration had so little confidence in its own policies that it chose not even to defend them [in the World Court].” The Court still heard Nicaragua’s case and decided against the United States, and ordered it to pay reparations to Nicaragua in June 1986.
January 18, 1996 The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and the Mexican government reached an agreement in San Andres to recognize and guarantee the constitutional, political, social, cultural, and economic rights of indigenous peoples in Mexico. Treated as second-class citizens since the first colonial entry into their country, the document guaranteed the autonomy and right to self-determination of native communities within the pluricultural Mexican nation. The Zapatistas took their name from Emilano Zapata who played a major role in the Mexican Revolution early in the 20th century.When they began their revolt in Chiapas state on New Year’s Day of 1994, They wrote: “We have nothing to lose, absolutely nothing, no decent roof over our heads, no land, no work, poor health, no food, no education, no right to freely and democratically choose our leaders, no independence from foreign interests, and no justice for ourselves or our children. But we say enough is enough! We are the descendants of those who truly built this nation, we are millions of dispossessed, and we call upon all our brethren to join our crusade, the only option to avoid dying of starvation!” The Mexican government, despite their signature on the agreement, refused later to implement it. More background on the Zapatistas
January 18, 2003 In frigid temperatures, 500,000 converged on Washington, D.C. There were also joined by many more elsewhere around the world to oppose the threatened U.S. war on Iraq. Anti-war protesters march past the U.S. Capitol during the start of an anti-war protest that will culminate by a march to the Washington Naval Yard.Egyptian riot police and anti-war demonstrators face off in Cairo, Egypt. Banners at top read, ” Iraq . . . Another war for oil and American supremacy. “This was the largest U.S. peace demonstration since the Vietnam era. < Pakistani peace activists hold a rally in Karachi. > Crowds estimated at 80,000 fill the civic center of San Francisco, California
Where’d all these shivs come from all of a sudden? Read on Substack
Maxwell Frost represents the 10th House District of Florida. I dutifully looked that up for you before realizing it’s right there on the screen.
Over the last three years, the states have been on fire with anti-trans legislation, bathroom bills, healthcare bans, and most recently sports segregation bills. In 2024, the Heterosexism Santa Anas whipped these flames into a an actual fire tornado. But on Tuesday this week, Republican Congress members took new action that might just reverse this trend: They decided to take away states’ rights to regulate trans bodies and start making these bans national. First up was an amendment to Title IX that would ban trans sports participation. Grotesquely titled the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025,” HB 28 passed the House 218-206 — but its fate in the Senate is uncertain given the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster (there are 53 Republicans in the Senate this year). If it reaches Trump’s desk, he’s guaranteed to sign it.
What’s more clear than the GOP’s chances to get the bill through the Senate, however, is that the Democratic approach to this Republican proposal is very different from how they have responded to anti-trans efforts in the past. This week only two Dems sided against trans people, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. (Both represent Texas swing districts, if that matters to you.) But more importantly than the relative unity of the Democrats — even from Reps. Tom Suozzi and Seth Moulton who just recently decided to broadside the party for liking trans people so much they threw the election — they actually sounded a bit salty that the GOP was trying this shit on their watch. Almost like hating trans people was an affront to their values or something.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got a lot of attention for her speech:
She started on fire by calling out infamous anti-woman actions to make it clear that she isn’t buying GOP protestations that the bill is somehow motivated by concern for girls and women. Then she hit them for what they were actually doing:
“[You] open up gender, and, yes, genital examinations into little girls in this country in the so-called name of attacking trans girls. To that, today, what we have to say are two words: Not today.
“The majority right now says there is no place in this bill that says it opens up for genital examinations. Well, here is the thing: There is no enforcement mechanism in this bill. When there is no enforcement mechanism, you open the door to every enforcement mechanism.”
She also stressed that having these laws on the books limits the freedoms of cis (that is, “non-trans” if you’re new) women and girls:
“What this also opens the door for is for women to try to perform a very specific kind of femininity for the very kind of men who are drafting this bill, and to open up questioning of who is a woman because of how we look, how we present ourselves, and yes, what we choose to do with our bodies.”
AOC wasn’t the only one to body the misogynistic GOP. Congresswoman Sara Jacobs sharpened her shiv and stuck it right in,
“This bill doesn’t even come close to protecting women and girls in sports. In fact, it puts all women and girls in danger of sexual abuse.”
Lori Trahan, the only woman Division-1 athlete in Congress, attacked on the same line, this time asking, What about the children?
“[T]he consequences of that approach will be devastating: Girls as young as 4 years old being subjected to invasive lines of questioning about their bodies and even physical inspections by an adult, a stranger, a predator, all because some creep accuses them of not being a girl. What parent would want to put their daughter through that? I know I wouldn’t.”
Brand new Congressman Rep Maxwell Frost turned up the heat even more, if that’s possible, giving a few small but horrifying details about a recent investigation into a volleyball player in his home state of Florida. And he did it in front of a sign naming HB 28 “The GOP Child Predator Empowerment Act.”
That’s some shit, y’all. His video was posted to Twitter, which I will link this one time, because he’s almost as good at this as AOC.
And this Dem messaging? It got under Republican skin. When secret Wonkette girl crush Rep. Jasmine Crockett accused Nancy Mace of whipping up cissexism as a fundraising tactic, Mace actually challenged Crockett to step outside and fight. Joy Reid had a great take on this, but there’s nothing funnier than Mace herself, thinking she can take Crockett on when just five weeks ago she had her arm in a sling from shaking a man’s hand (yr Wonkette did not see any evidence she’d even visited medical staff or had any injury diagnosed, but damn that sling was sure real for a couple days).
This is, to use a technical term usually found only in the official records of the Parliamentarian of the House, some cool ass shit. I know that many of us have been waiting for Dems to hit the GOP and hit them hard when they come after minorities or rights or values that we on the Left would like to see them protect. So folks have to be wondering, what woke them up?
Though your friendly, neighborhood Crip Dyke doesn’t have hard information, it would be irresponsible not to speculate that last November’s election made a difference. And by this we mean not only the elevation of Trump, once again, to head of the executive branch which may indeed have lit a fire in some, but also the election of Sarah McBride, an election which elevated the entire US House of Representatives by finally making it possible for a trans legislator to participate in debates on the bills that target us.
Many noticed that McBride didn’t instantly and loudly fight back when Nancy Mace attacked her personally, using McBride’s election as an excuse to pass new bathroom restrictions for those working on Capitol Hill. But as yr Wonkette reminded at the time:
McBride [needs] a chance to work, a chance to develop reputation and influence. She needs to do some very careful relationship building now.
The House Dems did a fantastic job of articulating exactly how government interest in girls’ bodies becomes a predatory risk for cis and trans folks alike. But it wasn’t cis people that first noticed the problem or developed the argument. I know because I had to come up with these observations and arguments in 1996 without any cis help at all, and I spent 14 years teaching cis people patiently, over and over, how transphobia, like homophobia, is a weapon of sexism.
Whether McBride was secretly organizing Democratic rhetorical strategies and asking cis folks to take the point so that she couldn’t be marginalized as a trans radical, it’s certainly not an accident that it is now that congressional Dems are spending time on a daily basis talking to a real live trans person that they are figuring out how to talk about trans issues. Here’s hoping they’ll continue to make the GOP majorities bigoted victories more and more costly.
Last night, it got to be bedtime and I didn’t even realize I’d set nothing up for today, until I got up this morning. Scottie’s posted some important news here already, and I don’t want to knock it off the top, so instead of the posts I thought I’d make, I’m just gonna link ’em, and readers can just read whatever they like and still not miss those posts of Scottie’s.
January 16, 1966 Joan Baez Folksinger Joan Baez was sentenced to 10 days in jail for participating in a protest which blocked the entrance to the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California. She was part of an action to impede the drafting of young men for the U.S. war in Vietnam. Joan Baez Press Conference On Vietnam War (1966) Read more about Joan Baez
January 16, 1979 Faced with strikes, violent demonstrations, an army mutiny and clerical opposition to his repressive rule, the Shah of Iran, its hereditary monarch since 1941, was forced to flee the country. He had been installed in a CIA- and British-engineered 1953 coup which overthrew elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq. Mossadeq’s government had voted to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, displacing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.The U.S. gave substantial and continuous military and intelligence support to the Shah throughout his regime. Despite having imposed martial law the previous October, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi fled the Peacock Throne for Egypt and, later, the U.S. for medical care. Following the subsequent revolutionary overthrow, an Islamist state under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was established. The Shah and family Chronology of Iran in the 20th century: More on the Shah
January 16, 1987 Eight members of the Nanoose Conversion Campaign were acquitted of trespassing on Canadian Department of National Defence property. The group had picnicked on Winchelsea Island, part of the Canadian Forces Maritime Experimental and Test Ranges, where both Canadian and U.S. weapons are tested, in the Georgia Strait along the British Columbia coast.
January 16, 1992 The government of El Salvador and rebel leaders signed a pact in Mexico City ending 12 years of civil war that had killed at least 75,000 people.
January 16, 2001 Eight Greenpeace activists were arrested by Gibraltar police as they boarded a damaged British nuclear submarine. The HMS Tireless was considered a radioactivity hazard because of a cracked pipe in its reactor’s cooling system. Those living near Gibraltar Harbour and in Spain were concerned for their safety as the ship had been docked for more than six months awaiting repair. The problem was serious enough that Great Britain removed twelve comparable subs from service until they could be checked for similar problems. Greenpeace unfurled a banner just before the arrests reading Mares Libres del Peligro Nuclear, or “For a Nuclear-Free Sea.”
Scottie's Playtime 