Opinion

While attending the 2025 National Association of Social Work’s Annual Conference in June, I received an email from U.S. Sen.

In coming weeks, our news feeds will be loaded with stories on the Trump administration’s plan to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the nation’s Medicaid program.Already, we’ve heard stories about non-U.S. citizens being on the rolls, able-bodied adults not having to work, and — of course — widespread fraud and abuse.Before we go down this road, as Kansans, we need to get a few things straight.Medicaid and Medicare are not the same thing.

Our nation’s founders embraced equality as a guiding principle in the Declaration of Independence with these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights.”Abraham Lincoln gave meaning to the founders’ words while on the campaign trail in 1857; he countered the infamous Dred Scott decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared that persons imported from Africa, whether free or enslaved, were not American citizens.Lincoln responded that the nation’s founders saw equality as an aspiration of American democracy:“They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society … constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”Critical steps in removing barriers to equality would be taken through constitutional change only after a bitterly fought Civil War.

Kansas City regional business leaders don’t care whether the Chiefs or the Royals play in Missouri or Kansas as long as they don’t leave the metropolitan area.That was the main message Wednesday for an online presentation featuring top executives from four organizations that have membership straddling the border. The presentation came just days before the teams face a deadline from Kansas on its proposal to build new stadiums for both teams.“We get this question a lot,” said Tim Cowden, president and CEO of the Kansas City Area Development Council.

Dear Sen. Moran:It’s me again, writing another of the no doubt thousands of letters and emails and texts that you’ve received over the past month, ever since the House of Representatives approved — by a one-vote margin — President Trump’s beloved One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Fourth of July is considered the midway point of the summer. I hate to break it to our kids, families and teachers – you are on the downhill side of summer.