Kansas Legislators to Kansas Voters: You Spoke Loud and Clear, and We Don’t Care

Republican lawmakers in Kansas want to make sure you know they don’t care about the will of the voters. State representatives have introduced a bill completely banning abortion, despite Kansans voting less than two years ago to keep protections for the procedure in the state constitution.

House Bill 2492 was introduced Wednesday by eight Republican state representatives, seven of whom are men. The measure would ban all abortions except those necessary to save the patient’s life.

The bill bans prescribing, distributing, selling, or donating abortion medication. Anyone who helps someone get an abortion could face civil proceedings, while doctors who perform abortions would face a minimum fine of $10,000 per procedure.

The measure flies directly in the face of the will of the voters, as noted by Amber Sellers, the advocacy director of Trust Women, a pro-abortion nonprofit in Wichita, Kansas. “Kansans spoke—loudly—on the issue,” Sellers told the Kansas Reflector. “It’s time for anti-abortion lawmakers to wake up, remember and finally listen to the message that voters continue to send.”

In August 2022, less than two months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Kansans voted overwhelmingly to keep language in the state constitution protecting the right to abortion. The vote proved to be a bellwether, with multiple states voting to increase abortion protections since.

But that didn’t stop Kansas Republican lawmakers from trying to circumvent the will of the people. The Sunflower State GOP has tried to pass a bill that would let local governments of individual towns and cities ban abortion, as well as a bill that would force doctors to lie to their patients about abortion medication. Both measures were ultimately unsuccessful.

And just as the Kansas vote turned out to be an indicator of what voters wanted nationwide, so too have Republicans in other states followed the Kansas GOP’s model. Most recently, Ohio residents voted in November to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution. Ohio Republican lawmakers immediately set about finding ways to enact legislation that would undermine the results.

If the Kansas bill passes the state legislature, which is controlled by Republicans, it will likely be vetoed by Democratic Governor Laura Kelly. The GOP does have a large enough majority to override Kelly’s veto, but the abortion ban is unlikely to survive a legal challenge. The state Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the Kansas constitution protects abortion rights, meaning the bill violates those rights.

A New York state judge on Friday ordered Donald Trump to pay The New York Times almost $400,000 in legal fees for a lawsuit he brought against the paper in 2021.

Trump accused the paper and three Times reporters of conspiring with his niece Mary Trump, who has contributed to The New Republic, in an “insidious plot” to illicitly obtain his tax records. The Times published a series of stories on Trump’s taxes in 2018 that revealed the president wasn’t the self-made billionaire he claimed he was. In fact, most of his wealth came from his parents or from dodging taxes, as his businesses continued to bleed money elsewhere.

State Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed dismissed Trump’s case in May, writing in his ruling that Trump’s claims “fail as a matter of constitutional law.”

Reed issued another ruling on Friday ordering Trump to pay the paper and the reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow, and Russ Buettner a total of $392,638.69 in legal fees.

Trump made waves by refusing to release his tax returns when he first ran for president in 2016, which is not required but is precedent. He then actually brought more attention to his taxes by continually refusing to release the documents to the public or at the very least to Congress.

The House Ways and Means Committee finally obtained six years’ worth of the former president’s tax returns in late November 2022. After first reviewing the documents behind closed doors, the committee released Trump’s tax returns. The documents revealed Trump listed large charitable donations, millions of dollars in goods sold, and massive financial losses each year to avoid paying taxes.

Representative Jamie Raskin demanded Friday that Donald Trump return the nearly $8 million he was paid by foreign governments while he was president.

A report released last week by House Oversight Committee Democrats found that Trump made more than $7.8 million during his first two years in office. He did not ask Congress for permission to keep the money, as is required by the Constitution.

“I write today to demand that you immediately return to the American people the $7,886,072 that we know you have accepted from foreign governments,” Raskin said in a letter to Trump.

The Maryland Democrat noted that the report findings were likely incomplete, as it covers just half of Trump’s presidency and transactions at just four of his more than 500 businesses.

“I also demand that you give Congress a full accounting of the money, benefits and other emoluments ‘of any kind whatever’ you pocketed from foreign governments or their agents during your term as President and that you return the total sum of these foreign emoluments,” Raskin said in his letter.

“Your acceptance of foreign emoluments while in office was a stunning violation of the U.S. Constitution—and a profound betrayal of the interests of the United States and the trust of the American people.”

The money came from some of the “world’s most unsavory regimes,” according to the report, and Trump never asked for congressional approval to keep the funds, as mandated by the Constitution. The countries included China—which gave Trump $5.5 million, the largest sum listed in the report—Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Hungary.

Trump isn’t even trying to hide the fact that he received payments from foreign governments. In a Fox News town hall Wednesday night, Trump dismissed the amount as “a small amount of money.”

He then justified the fact that he received foreign payments by arguing he was “doing services for them.”

“People were staying in these massive hotels, these beautiful hotels,” Trump said. “I don’t get $8 million for doing nothing.”

Joe Biden announced Friday that federal student debt will be wiped out for millions of people, despite previous conservative attempts to stop him.

The Biden administration unveiled the Saving on a Valuable Education plan in August. The SAVE plan reduces millions of borrowers’ monthly payments based on their income and family size. The plan also caps interest accrual and forgives remaining balances after a certain number of years.

The new round of student loan forgiveness under the SAVE plan applies to borrowers who took out less than $12,000 in federal loans and have been paying off their balances for at least 10 years. They will have their remaining debt canceled in February.

This move, which comes nearly six months ahead of schedule, “will particularly help community college borrowers, low-income borrowers, and those struggling to repay their loans,” Biden said in a statement.

About 30 million people are eligible for the SAVE plan, but Biden said in his statement that just 6.9 million are currently enrolled. He did not give details on how many borrowers will see immediate benefits from the upcoming cancellations.

Biden has repeatedly pushed for increased student debt cancellation, despite pushback from conservatives. But the president has refused to give up: In July, his administration announced it was forgiving $39 billion in student debt.

The Biden administration counted payments for borrowers who had made partial or late payments, and for people who had paused their payments under certain circumstances, for instance if they were a student or unemployed, but continued to pay the interest. These types of payments previously went uncounted, according to the government.

Biden had originally proposed a plan to cancel up to $20,000 of student debt for up to 43 million people. But the ultraconservative Supreme Court ruled 6–3 against his plan in June.

Members of Congress are expressing their displeasure with Joe Biden for launching airstrikes in Yemen, a move that has achieved the rare effect of uniting many Republicans and Democrats.

The United States and the U.K. bombed 16 different sites in Yemen Thursday night, hitting more than 60 targets, in a retaliatory strike against the Houthis. The strikes were meant to pressure the Houthis to stop blocking commercial ships in the Red Sea, a campaign it began over growing frustration with Israel’s war on Gaza.

Members of Congress across the political spectrum expressed frustration late into the night that Biden gave them just a few hours’ notice before authorizing the strikes. Democratic Representative Ro Khanna was one of the first to state his outrage, writing on X (formerly Twitter) that presidents do not have unilateral authority to launch military strikes unless the country is under attack.

Khanna also retweeted former Republican Representative Justin Amash, who explained that the War Powers Act only allows the president to involve the U.S. military in overseas hostilities if the country is already at war or is currently under attack, or if the president got special approval. Otherwise, Congress must be notified 48 hours in advance.

Republican Representatives Matt Gaetz, Anna Paulina Luna, and Thomas Massie, as well as Senator Mike Lee, were quick to back Khanna up on his point. All four Republicans stressed that Congress should have been given more advance notice.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene slammed Biden for authorizing the airstrike without congressional approval, though she also slammed him for multiple other issues. The Georgia Republican accused him of becoming a warmonger by supporting conflict in Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and now the Middle East.

Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, accused Biden of violating the Constitution. “The American people are tired of endless war,” she wrote on X.

In a shocking display of unity, Massie backed her up in the comments against people arguing on Biden’s behalf.

Democratic Representatives Cori Bush and Summer Lee warned against involving the U.S. in more “endless wars,” alongside expressing their displeasure that Biden hadn’t notified Congress 48 hours in advance. Representative Pramila Jayapal called it “an “unacceptable violation of the Constitution.”

Representatives Sarah Jacobs and Barbara Lee, both California Democrats, were worried that the airstrikes could escalate into something much greater.

Many other lawmakers, again both Democrats and Republicans, also made an unlikely alliance in backing Biden’s decision to order the airstrikes. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called the bombing “overdue.” Democratic Representatives Ruben Gallego and Seth Moulton praised Biden for standing up to “terrorism” overseas.