From the Alvin and Rosalie Sara Check studio PBS Kansas Presents Kansas Week.

Legal warfare erupts in the Kansas U.S.

Senate race as Roger Marshall scrambles to silence his opponents.

A brutal new campaign ad also explosive dark money accusations shake up the fourth district congressional race.

State Republicans are slamming Democratic challenger Katie Tyndall with a federal complaint.

But first, a high stakes showdown is exploding across Wichita over immigrant enforcement.

City leaders are moving to block local police from acting as federal agents, defying growing pressure from Washington.

We'll break it all down right now on Kansas Week.

Hello and welcome to Kansas Week.

I'm Craig Andrus sitting in this week for Jared Cirillo.

A high stakes showdown is brewing over immigration enforcement in Wichita.

Three city council members want to block local police from acting as federal immigration agents.

Council members Michael Hazel, Maggie Ballard and Joseph Shepherd are pushing a new resolution.

The measure would prohibit local police from entering into voluntary federal partnerships to enforce immigration laws.

Now, the announcement came during a large ACLU protest that was at Riverside Park.

While Sedgwick County already has an Ice partnership, Wichita does not.

Supporters of such cooperation say it makes the community safer.

But critics warn that local police working with Ice could damage community trust and also could be scaring families.

The proposal will soon head to the full council, so here to discuss some of the week's other local and state news is Wichita City Council woman Becky Tuttle.

Democrat.

State Representative Angela martinez.

Thank you for being here.

Also, we have representative Lee.

How thank you for being here.

And we have James Franco of the Kansas Policy Institute.

Thank you.

So much.

Thank you.

So I'd like to kind of dive right in here to this, discussion.

We'll start with you, Councilwoman Tuttle.

Where do you stand on this issue and why?

Sure.

And to be honest, I'm just learning about it.

I actually was just given a copy of the document a couple hours ago, so I haven't had a chance to even really, thoroughly enjoy it or speak to my colleagues who are interested in this topic.

One of the things that the city has done is we've always had a history to cooperate with our state and federal partners.

And so that's something that I think we'll have to have some discussions about.

I have had conversations with our chief of police, just to make sure, you know, I understand what what the stakes could be for them, what it could mean for them.

I just want us to be very cautious to make sure that we don't, fracture a relationship with a federal department, or anything at the state level, for that matter.

So, I'll be interested to learn more as the community learns more.

A little sidebar question before we move on.

What about the police chief?

What kind of insight has been given there?

Or have you seen that?

Because different times as a journalist, I've talked to, obviously, Jeff Easter, the sheriff, about this issue, and I would say he's been fairly neutral to the police chief.

Give you any ideas?

We didn't talk anything specifically about actions, but he just said that we do have a good relationship, with our partners at the Federal administration.

So if there seems to be something that my colleagues are interested in working on or changing, that could possibly be a discussion.

I know it's been a hot topic.

It's been a hot.

It's been a hot week.

I think it's going to continue.

Representative Martinez, doesn't characterizing federal law enforcement have a level of undermining trust in our government?

Well, possibly.

I think that immigration is a it's a federal responsibility.

And when we involve our local law enforcement, then, it kind of compromises trust in communities and, people wanting to report crimes and things like that that become kind of standoffish and, I think that, that it's just it's not necessary.

I mean, there's there's a time to help and there's a time not to, but these things that are going on right now, it's just, I don't know.

Are you referring back in your mind to events in, say, Minneapolis Saint Paul, or are you think in general, in general?

I mean, we have we're not Minneapolis to, you know, to save at all.

But I with the recent raids in southwest Kansas, yeah, there was 104 or 5, people that were detained and we only got report for what, maybe five that were actual, criminals.

Those that were, you know, the worst of the worst or whatever you want to call them, but, the other 99, we don't know who they were.

We heard that there were some citizens.

There were some people who were in the process of of obtaining their citizenship and things like that.

So, I think if if, I think that Ice needs to go ahead and get their, their federal warrants, their judicial warrants, and go after the people that they are looking for and save our tax dollars so our law enforcement can protect our own public safety.

Okay.

I will move to a representative.

How doesn't this proposal before the City council essentially turn Wichita into a sanctuary city?

I'm sure that term will get thrown around, but no, I think it truly does not.

Sanctuary City actually implies, you know, actually giving benefits to illegal immigrants and things like that.

And that's not what's being discussed here.

So, I will say that, you know, as I work on the Fed and State Committee, you know, I helped, vote in support of the halo, our Halo bill this last session.

And, so I did some research into things.

And I think it's important to, to make sure people understand that federal agents can only enforce federal law in Kansas.

They cannot enforce state law.

And our agents, law enforcement agents, can only enforce a state law.

They cannot and act as federal agents, and you cannot.

And those do not mix.

So even if they're partnering with each other, they only can stay in their own roles.

So I think there's a lot of comfort for our citizens on that.

So what from Halo goes goes into your thinking here.

What what are the takeaways?

Five seconds.

Explain Halo okay, okay.

Seconds I don't think it really can I know, I know, but it it is you know Halo Halo is is really I mean, I can't even remember what the acronym stands for actually right now.

Maybe, maybe James can rattle that off faster than I can right now, but, but it's, you know, ice, which came up in the discussion when we were debating that bill.

And so we were discussing about that.

And in fact, another thing that came up when I was just, talking to our law enforcement officers, a number of different ones.

One of the things that came up was that if law enforcement is, for example, our Kansas law enforcement is working with federal agents at any time, okay.

If they believe that something is happening that might be in violation of Constitution or something that is illegal.

They are they are completely allowed to walk away from that situation.

You just might be a good break away to to move to James Franco with Kansas policy Institute.

Appreciate you being here.

Local law enforcement are they and I wrote we have more live here.

So I will ask the question as more are we kind of morally obligated to assist federal authorities if asked?

And where where is the line?

Can people just walk away?

Right.

So I think, as you said and kind of alluded to, is morally obligated, is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that, in that question.

So the question to my mind, and it's something that we've discussed here just in the last couple of minutes, is what is the role of local law enforcement compared to state law enforcement, or in this case, federal law enforcement is what does the 10th Amendment mean?

Right.

Which leaves rights to the states and to citizens and our state and local governments just being subsumed into what's going on federally, because they all have different prerogatives, different constitutional responsibilities under the federal Constitution, the state constitution.

And these things are important to keep in mind.

And we don't just want state and local governments to be administrative units of the federal government.

We want them to be able to protect what's going on in Wichita or Sedgwick County or in the state of Kansas.

And that's where some of these things get, a little squirrely every once in a while.

When we start talking about federal agents, using local law enforcement, or vice versa, to enforce, or to interdict, you know, a situation, a fleeing suspect or something like that at a local level.

It just it does raise all kinds of very, you know, tricky, constitutional and prudential questions.

Okay.

So I want to move to this.

Ethics and campaign spending have become the latest flashpoints in the fourth district congressional race.

The Kansas Republican Party is file a federal complaint against Democratic challenger Katie Tindall.

State GOP leaders accused Tindall of illegally using resources from a civic nonprofit she founded to boost her bid against incumbent Republican Ron Estes.

Now, the complaint alleges, she improperly used the group's email lists, coordinated a sponsored debate and brought in undisclosed so-called dark money.

Now, Tindall strongly denies the allegations.

She dismissed the complaint as a politically timed distraction, pointing out it landed coincidentally on the day she held a town hall meeting in Sedgwick County.

So I wanted to discuss a little bit about this.

I'll start with Representative Howell.

Is this a legitimate claim by the Estes campaign or simply, political gamesmanship?

Well, I think it's too soon to actually know.

You know, I didn't have a lot of time to dive into this, but just reading some, newspaper articles and, you know, readily available information, it did look like there was some reason to be concerned, about her involving her, foundation that she had started before she was running for office.

It looked like, just from articles that I read that she has done a lot of constant reference, you know, referencing back to her foundation and talking about it and those kinds of things.

And I've been helping run campaigns for a long time.

There's definitely ethical rules and standards of how you're supposed to do things.

And, you're not supposed to mix those things up and use your connections from one thing to the other.

Let me break here and say, look, you, since you had so much to do with campaigns, is there more than an ethical break here?

Are we?

What are the legal implications here?

Well, and you have and to be very fair, we're talking about a federal level race here, which is very different than what I do.

So I can't I know nothing about federal level.

But I do know that, you know, there are strict rules that you have to follow and you're not supposed to use mailing lists and different things like that which she's claiming that she's innocent on.

But, I mean, there is absolutely no way that any of us could know that, you know and know for sure.

So that's something that the FEC and, and, and people you know, that are in charge of this kind of investigations are going to have to take a look at to know, representative Martinez, is this a kind of a deal breaker for Tyndall?

Should she give up a draw or march forward?

What do you.

I mean, what are your thoughts?

This is going to be a spring or is this a boost for her?

Well, you know, I think that any time, at any time there's an election is like that.

That's at the federal level.

Yes.

Mudslinging is, you know, taken with a grain of salt.

So, that's something that can be proven and taught with time.

And, she claims that that's that there's no wrongdoing.

So I think that remains to be seen.

And I think we need people need to focus more on, what she stands for.

And, just kind of keep it like that.

James Franco, aside from this controversy, what does this, this have to kind of stand on here?

What's the foundation and what's he accomplished in Congress?

Is that going to be a kind of launching point here moving forward?

I think so, I mean, the race that I'm most concerned about is the pennant race and whether or not all red blooded Americans are going to cheer against the Dodgers as they should as well.

They're the baseball players, right?

But even more than that, I mean, two immediate thoughts.

One is that this is something like the Streisand effect, right?

Where in trying to, you know, distract from something or to move attention away, you end up bringing more attention to the situation.

You know, anybody can use their search engine of choice and figure out what Barbra Streisand did.

Trying to get some pictures, of her house hidden.

But then I've got nothing against Congressman Estes or his work.

But to my mind, the question that we should be asking of anybody who's running for federal office is, are they actually going to help Congress work the way it's supposed to?

For 50 years?

I think we've only passed four budgets, for, years, that we passed all the appropriation bills in a regular and regular order.

We jam an entire legislative agenda into one bill, and we use budget reconciliation to ram it through.

I think we should be focusing on what are we going to do when we send our folks in the Senate or the House, to Washington, DC?

Are they actually going to stand up for the prerogatives of the article one branch and actually do their job as legislators?

Rather than just worry about, you know, something I'm sure that we'll talk about is just is this just political mudslinging?

And I, Becky Tuttle, was this political mudslinging?

How strong of a leader has has this proven to be in Washington?

Yeah, I have had the privilege of working with Congressman Estes on some projects, and I just want to thank him for his service.

I did a little homework and just a few of the things that I would like to highlight is he helped us secure funding for the Northwest Junction.

He secured funding for the Wichita Multimodal Transit for transportation facility.

He wrote the Aviation Manufacturing Job Protection Act, which helped save aviation jobs during Covid.

He secured three additional KC 46 tankers at McConnell.

He wrote the R&D tax legislation that benefits manufacturers and innovators here in south central Kansas.

He serves on the Ways and Means Committee that oversees taxes, trade and health care, and retirement security.

He serves as the co-chair of the House Aerospace Caucus.

He serves as the chair of the Social Security subcommittee, so he has had significant contributions to Wichita and to south central Kansas.

And for that, we're very grateful.

Okay.

In the interest of time, I'm going to move to the next question.

So I know we can talk about this for a long time.

Look, legal welfare is also escalating in the Kansas U.S.

Senate race, lawyers for incumbent Republican Roger Marshall demanding his Democratic challenger pull a hard hitting new ad.

The spot features a former patient of Marshall's medical practice.

She claims she was handcuffed, arrested while eight months pregnant over a $50 debt.

Now, Marshall's legal team calls the ad false and defamatory, insisting the woman was arrested for missing court dates, not the bill itself, but Pastor Adam Hamilton's campaign is refusing to back down.

They're keeping the video online as the race heads rapidly toward the finish off.

Well, let's dive right into this one.

Yeah.

I'm going to start with you here.

Aren't half truths maybe misleading statements is, if that's fair to say, kind of the cornerstone of running for, I don't wanna say American politics, but kind of running for office.

Absolutely.

I mean, Ecclesiastes tells us there's nothing new under the sun, right?

So in 1800, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Right.

People that we would call, you know, Jefferson's campaign staff called John Adams or hermaphrodite.

Right.

A half a century later, Stephen Douglas called Abraham Lincoln a hatchet faced nutmeg dealer.

Maybe that loses something in the last, you know, 170 years as far as, like, the zing of it.

But it's right there.

So political mudslinging, whether we don't like it or not, we're still talking about it.

So it suggests we do actually like it on some level.

It's as American as apple pie.

And this, to my mind, is is no different.

It doesn't strike me as particularly dirty pool.

Representative Martinez, what's your reaction to this whole story?

Well, to be fair, if that's if that's the case, I mean, everybody has the right to do their business and collect their money and be profitable like a business does.

But if if, in fact, that is true.

There's other ways to handle that.

I don't believe that was the right thing to do to arrest her, handcuff her in front of her children, eight months pregnant.

And there's other ways to go about that.

There's maybe a $20 payment plan would have been in order.

Or some other alternative to, bringing a resolution to the to the debt owed.

But I think that, that was a bit extreme, if, in fact, that's true.

Let me get your, ten second reaction here.

I did a story as a journalist.

When I was in Joplin, Missouri, a woman was arrested for an overdue library book, and we did a story on it.

It was a great story.

There contention was it brought attention to the issue is that was what is happening here or is that.

Oh, it definitely does.

It definitely brings attention to the issue.

And I don't think it's, it brings positive, attention to Roger Marshall, of course.

But, I mean, it's it's just kind of brings attention to to the whole thing.

Yeah.

It's not a good deal.

Not a good deal.

That's okay.

I can't argue one way or the other.

There's a journalist at the table.

Representative, help free the person.

You're the person.

Right.

And it, I get back to the mudslinging thing.

You said it was American as apple pie.

Yeah.

Okay.

Representative.

How why is this race so, so close in a state where Republicans basically dominate here?

What is what is it about Roger Marshall that some people feel they don't like?

He's won office, obviously.

I don't know that it's necessarily about him specifically.

I think it is a one of the chall delegation or just electeds in general, that and I think it's probably true at any, in any state that we there's a struggle for the, the people to feel like they still belong here and that they are still here and, and some, electeds, I think, do better at making the constituents feel that they are here and they're in Kansas and they, you know, for example, live here.

And, you know, I mean, there's this has been an ongoing thing with other people that we've other senators, other congressmen or whatever we've had in the past.

When was the last time Kansas sent a Democrat senator and then and, you know, and so I think that, and then in this particular race, we have a pastor running against him who's basically a professional speaker, and they don't very long and who's extremely wealthy, which is interesting because usually pastors get very criticized for that and but doesn't appear to be being criticized in this case.

So that it's an interesting dynamic.

Another.

So this is a lot of interesting things going on here.

Becky.

What are your thoughts on this?

Becky, tell, Senator Marshall justified in going after these, I guess in this case, young mothers for not paying.

Yeah.

This is a very complicated issue, and I have not dug that deep into it.

One thing my grandfathers used to say is there's three sides to every story.

Yours?

Mine in the truth.

So I'm sure there's lots of things going on that I'm not aware of, but as a past health, someone who worked in the health care industry, someone who's a public health professional.

The one thing that I would like to say is, I think this should highlight to all of us that the medical system in our country needs to be reviewed and revisited, so that we can make sure it's best serving all Americans because no one should be put in this position, the the patient or the provider.

And so I just think it's an opportunity for, you know, this to get down the road, maybe some of the heat come off that maybe we should all pause and really look at what the root cause of this, this discussion is.

It's because of health care I want to roll through.

And.

Oh, you had a thought.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

I just want to say that I think it's I think we have to question character when we are willing to, to traumatize children over a debt, $50 debt.

I mean, why why would you arrest someone over in front of their children and you're eight months pregnant?

I mean, that's I would go back.

I do think it is.

We have to do we do have to recognize, though, that it really is about failure, failure to appear in court.

It was not actually about the money.

There were other.

And but there is also the argument to say when you're explaining, you're losing.

And as much as I think there are good things that that Senator Marshall has done for our state and, and, and I think he's probably going to be very victorious in this.

There's he does have some challenges in this race and he needs to fight hard to be successful.

But I think this is a common business practice.

That that's done well when people don't show up in court.

That's what judges do.

That's what judges do, not what business owners do.

That's that's a solid distinction there.

Your thought I was just going to say.

I mean, you asked the question earlier, the last time Kansas Senate Democrat to the United States Senate was during the Great Depression.

So it's been it's been a minute.

And we're going to find out here in the next five weeks if we break that trend.

And I say we here in, you know, the royal sense of the dear voters of the great state of Kansas or if, or if Roger Marshall wins again, and it's one of those things where it's like, I will believe it when I see it, it doesn't mean it's not going to happen.

It doesn't mean that it is.

It just means after that long, it's like, well, we're not the Show-Me state, but, I'll believe it when I see it.

But don't Kansans vote however they want?

I mean, maybe not in the primary, but in the general?

Don't Kansans vote their conscience, or who they think the better person would be?

Or am I oversimplifying this?

I do we have a big moderate group in Kansas.

I don't think it's about moderates necessarily, and this is a personal bugaboo of mine.

So forgive me.

It's that, who we send to the United States Senate or who we vote for as a state for president is a very different question than who we vote for, for other statewide offices.

We have a Democratic governor right now.

Eight years before that, we had Kathleen Sebelius in her administration.

At the state level, we pretty routinely elect Democrats statewide.

Whereas at the federal level, that is not the case.

I don't know the last time Kansas senator electoral votes to the Democratic candidate for president.

But like I said before, you know, it's been 94 years since we sent a Democrat to the United States Senate.

I'm gonna pop off for another topic here higher education in Kansas, kind of facing a deep divide right now.

While four year universities enjoy a slight bump, technical and community college are taking kind of a brutal hit.

Overall enrollment slipped across the system, dragged down by sharp losses at two year schools.

And critics are pointing fingers at the Republican controlled legislature.

Now, new laws restricted college courses to high school juniors and seniors, cutting up the younger students while adding new grade requirements.

Critics warn those changes hurt enrollment and dampen the state's workforce pipeline.

Leading schools, leaving schools, that is, to pick up the pieces.

So, I want to discuss here a little bit.

And as far as this one goes, I'll start with Representative Howe.

Explain some of these changes here briefly, if you could, because we're really short on time.

But what what jumps out at you?

So, just briefly, we're saying that only this, I mean, this is taxpayer funded, you know, paid for schooling here.

And so we're only juniors and seniors are going to be enjoy the benefit, not younger students and high school students.

And they have to have a GPS out of it GPA like GPA of at least 2.0.

Okay.

So, and by the way, this just went into effect July 1st, so this has not hurt anyone yet.

We have no data yet.

So I think this is a little bit, you know, ahead of the game, representative Martinez, your thoughts on the decline in junior college enrollment?

You know, and this is one of the subjects I'm not too.

And there's so many, pieces that we've heard this, this legislative session, but, you know, there's there's lots of opportunity, different opportunities for, students.

So I don't know if that's kind of contributing to the low enrollment there into the, the, which that called, I can't think of the name of it, but it's it's the high school program where they get the training to do.

Yes.

Becky Tuttle, jump right in here.

Are we safe?

Me?

Are we prepared for the next generation with with our our kids going into the workforce?

I think so, and I will be curious to to see if enrollment really does decrease.

I know here locally WSU tech, saw a, just a minimal decrease this year.

Every other year it has just skyrocketed.

I think technical education is something that more and more of our youth are thinking about.

This is actually called the tool belt generation because many of them want to go into skilled trades because they can make a really good living.

Also, it provides a different kind of quality of life.

They have the potential to own their own business.

They can be creative, they can use Stem steam in different ways.

So I think technical education in our state is really thriving, and I'm excited for that.

James Franco, should the state government be cutting funding for higher education?

Not in and of itself.

I mean, a couple quick thoughts.

One is just how much like the demographics of education from like pre-K, all the way through higher ed or changing family formation being delayed, smaller family sizes themselves, and just how education is being delivered in a technical environment with AI and all of these different kinds of things is going to be, I mean, a real challenge for everybody across state government.

So, or private entities or what have you.

So the question is, how are these organizations, be they state government school districts, community colleges or whatever, going to adjust to this new world where how we deliver education is changing dramatically.

So I want to do a quick poll.

Here is we're now under a minute in the show.

Who here uses AI on a regular basis?

Anybody?

Okay, so three of you well sorry Becky I actually do two I don't use it.

Well I do, but I use it right.

So it is a changing model.

So, whether or not state government should be cutting.

That's an interesting takeaway.

So all right well that's our time.

That's a wrap for this week thanks to Becky Tuttle Angela martinez Lee how James Franco, thanks all for being here.

Thanks also for cake for sharing video with us.

I'm Craig Andrus.

Have a good one.

Oh.

Oh.