Deporting kids. Marshall sued for usury. The dumbest thing. Trump rally back on. Hot GOP men!

By Sherman Smith | editor-in-chief

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A young boy with autism played with brightly colored sensory toys Thursday morning in the Kansas City Immigration Court, his wide grin standing out in a room full of grim expressions.

The boy sat shoulder-to-shoulder with attorneys and other unaccompanied minors called unexpectedly into court by a Chicago judge with little time to understand what was happening.

Attorney Kirby Tyrrell, an associate professor at Washburn Law School who represents clients pro bono, sat with the 13-year-old boy she represents, apprehensive about what the hearing might mean.

“We were in court a few weeks ago, and everything went normal, and we were scheduled out for an appearance in March,” she said before the hearing. “Then last Thursday, I received a notice that the case had suddenly been transferred to an immigration judge based out of Chicago, and that we had a new hearing a week later.”

GREAT BEND — A class action usury lawsuit filed Thursday accuses U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall and his former Great Bend medical practice of routinely charging patients illegal interest rates on unpaid medical debt.

The lawsuit was filed in Barton County District Court in the final days of a bitter race between the incumbent Republican and Democrat Adam Hamilton, a Methodist minister from Johnson County. The race could determine the balance of power in the U.S. Senate.

LAWRENCE — Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly said the biggest disappointment of nearly eight years in office was the Kansas Legislature’s refusal to expand Medicaid health coverage to the working poor.

“I think it’s the dumbest thing Kansas has ever done,” Kelly said Thursday during an economic conference at University of Kansas. “Not only has it hurt the people who would have been eligible for insurance under the Medicaid program, but just financially we have left over $8 billion in Washington, D.C. We’ve seen it play out in the closure of some of our rural hospitals and certainly with so many of them today on the brink of it.”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will return to Kansas and Iowa on Sunday for back-to-back rallies, in addition to holding nearly 20 telerallies in the final days leading up to the midterms.

By Clay Wirestone

We know that President Donald Trump appreciates the finer points of a masculine physique. He's told rally audiences repeatedly in recent weeks about the primo posteriors of Republicans running for office.

So I was concerned when news came Thursday that Trump had canceled a Saturday rally in Salina. Think of all the missed opportunities to ogle the glorious glutes of Kansas candidates! Surely they had good looks to spare.

TOPEKA — U.S. Department of Justice election monitors will be in Kansas on Tuesday but won’t interfere in the voting process, says a spokeswoman for the secretary of state.

As the Trump administration waged a public legal fight with California over the ballots of suspected noncitizen voters in mid-October, behind the scenes a federal grand jury in Santa Ana issued a series of subpoenas to election officials in Los Angeles County at federal prosecutors’ urging.

The way we speak is a culmination of our life experiences, according to Jeff Holliday, a linguist and professor at the University of Kansas. He and Lacey Wade, also a professor and linguist at KU, recently authored research on how people inside and outside of Kansas perceive Kansas speech.

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