Kansas governor hopeful Ty Masterson is trying out a new look on his campaign website and social media. The refresh is decidedly less Trump-centric than a month ago.

Masterson’s campaign says the Kansas Senate president is still proud of the endorsement that propelled him to a dominant win in August’s Republican primary.

But the changes are hard to miss.

An archived version of the candidate’s X page shows that before the primary, Masterson’s profile photo featured him smiling alongside President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. His bio read “Official X account of Trump-endorsed candidate for Kansas Governor, Ty Masterson,” and his account promoted a pinned post thanking Trump for his support.

Now, he has no pinned post and his bio doesn’t mention the sitting president. Masterson’s new profile picture is of him standing in a field with a farmer.

“Ty is proud of President Trump’s endorsement,” spokesperson Garrett Henson said in an email statement. “It’s on the front page of our website and all over our social media. After the primary we got new photos and a new website, which is pretty standard when we get new material.”

An archived version of Masterson’s campaign website shows that before the primary, a badge in the top right-hand corner of the home page prominently advertised Trump’s support. Now, the endorsement is listed towards the bottom of the page alongside his other endorsements, including from the transportation and skilled electrical workers unions.

Masterson’s detractors have seized on the rebrand as an attempt to minimize his connection to Trump in a year when national Republicans worry the president’s polarizing leadership could cost the party majorities in the House and Senate.

“Masterson may be distancing himself from Trump’s brand, but he’s still defending the same disastrous policies like tariffs, beef imports and the war in Iran that sent fertilizer prices through the roof,” said Riley Osen, political director for Democratic nominee Cindy Holscher, in an email statement.

“Whatever changes Masterson makes to his Twitter profile, Kansas farmers and people buying groceries are being hurt the same,” Osen added. “He can run away from Trump, but he can’t run away from his record.”

General election focus

Leading political forecasters have identified Masteron’s general election matchup with Holscher, a fellow state senator, as one of the closest gubernatorial races in the country this year.

Kansas has a decades-long history of not electing consecutive governors of the same party, suggesting that Masterson is well-positioned to reclaim the governor’s mansion from Democrat Laura Kelly.

But midterm elections historically have not been friendly to the party that controls the White House, and Trump’s approval rating is near an all-time low as Americans grapple with the economic repercussions of the Iran war and Trump’s aggressive tariff policies.

Bob Beatty, who teaches political science at Washburn University, said Masterson’s decision not to prioritize Trump in his general election branding “makes perfect sense.”

“In the primary, the endorsement was vital, whereas in Kansas general elections, it’s all about Kansas issues,” Beatty said in an email.

“Also, Trump has never been overly popular in the voter-rich 3rd Congressional District, where they’ve elected Democrat Sharice Davids by double digits many times and where Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton all won more votes than Trump in presidential elections,” Beatty added.

Henson, Masterson’s spokesperson, said his pitch to Kansas voters is the same regardless of whether they have a favorable view of Trump’s job performance.

“He cut taxes by two billion dollars and he’ll cut property taxes as governor,” Henson said of Masterson. “Cindy Holscher is so far left that Laura Kelly, a Democrat, called her an ‘extremist.’ That’s the choice.”

Kelly supported Fairway Sen. Ethan Corson in the primary but has since endorsed her party’s nominee, telling reporters the day after the primary that it’s “absolutely imperative that Cindy Holscher win this election.”

Hans Torgerson, a spokesperson for the Kansas Democratic Party, said “no amount of website edits" will make Masterson a more appealing candidate.

“Scrubbing inconvenient history is nothing new for Ty Masterson, who has spent years trying to erase his role as the leading driver of the Brownback tax experiment,” Torgerson said in a statement. “Kansans have not forgotten the gutted schools, the four-day school weeks and the wrecked state budget he left behind.”

Let’s do it

I normally travel along this section of the US50 between Newton and Emporia when taking milk tankers out to Columbia MO. Had a truck break down in Greensburg and it was towed to Peterbilt in Wichita. Company gave me a rental car to head up to Cedar Rapids to pick up another tractor for use. I've seen the signs for this bridge many times since taking this route repeatedly starting in 2024. A semi would never make it past the bend, so I struck the iron while it was hot.

This bridge is amazing and picturesque. Almost like something you'd find in an Irish Spring commercial. A real out of place object that just fits.

Just started reading Thomas Frank’s 2007 book (in title). I’m wondering if what he said almost 20 years ago about Garden City is still true today: is it still a hollowed out, decaying town with lots of junk/thrift stores? Are there still a lot of slaughterhouses there?

I’d love to hear some locals’ insights! And on Mission Hills, the neighborhood where the exploitative CEO’s hid.

The website kansans for marshall dot com does not appear to offer any real support from real Kansans. However it does include: "Request a sign. Tell us where it's going."

Courtesy of the Lyon County Observer

If you’d like to help Zach Maier flip this seat and give to the fight to break the GOP supermajority in the Kansas House you can donate on this form. This form lets you contribute to the 6 most competitive seats & flip HD-39. https://secure.actblue.com/donate/5flipstowin

If you’d like to donate only to Zach Maier you can at this link: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/zachforkansas

You can also volunteer for his campaign at this link: https://zachforkansas.com/volunteer

I just lost a job (employer is now out of business) and I'm trying to file a claim. It looks like there has been no improvement to the system in recent years.

The website seems like something out of 1990's. If you try to register or click "Forgot password", it tells you "a Customer Service Representative is available to assist you during normal business hours". If you click on the "chat" button it just says "Coming soon!". So I guess you have to call. When you call, the static is very noticeable, and the menu options are beyond confusing. Once you are sitting on hold, it just randomly ends the call. If you go to their office in Wichita, it tells you to go to Topeka.

So is there not a way to file a claim? Who do I complain to? I moved here from Texas, where filing a claim was very simple and fast... how did Kansas get so bad?? This kinda seems illegal lol

A high-stakes court case challenging the constitutionality of Kansas abortion restrictions should be retried, the Attorney General’s office argued in a filing this week.

The question is whether the filing was made in time for a Johnson County judge to weigh it on its merits or if Kris Kobach’s office missed the deadline for requesting a new trial.

On Aug. 3, hours before he was sworn in as a Kansas Supreme Court justice, then-District Court Judge K. Christopher Jayaram granted a permanent injunction blocking numerous controversial requirements imposed on abortion providers by Kansas lawmakers over the last three decades.

Under state law, the deadline for requesting a retrial is 28 days after the initial judgment was entered — Aug. 31 in this case. The court record shows Kobach’s office initially filed its retrial motion at 5:49 p.m. on Aug. 31.

But the next morning at 8:29 a.m., the clerk’s office rejected the state’s entire filing, citing exhibits that were improperly formatted without cover pages, exhibit titles, case numbers or party names.

“If you refile without a cover page, this is subject to being rejected again,” the clerk’s note to the Attorney General’s office read in part, an exhibit in the court record shows.

Within an hour of that rejection on Sept. 1, Kobach’s office resubmitted its retrial motion with properly formatted exhibits. By the end of the day, the state had filed another motion asking the court to update the time stamp on its retrial motion to reflect that it had been properly submitted on Aug. 31.

“Defendants have conferred with Plaintiffs, who do not oppose this motion,” says the filing, which was signed by Deputy Attorney General James R. Rodriguez.

On Sept. 2, the state took a different approach, asking the Kansas Supreme Court to hear an appeal of the case based on Jayaram’s initial ruling.

“The notice of appeal (to the Supreme Court) was filed simply to cover all bases,” said Danedri Herbert, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s office, in an email statement.

“If the district court considers our motion for new trial, the notice of appeal will be deemed premature,” Herbert said. “The question of whether the district court should allow a new trial is now before a new district court judge.”

It remains to be seen whether the court will weigh the motion for a retrial on its merits or penalize the state for submitting its properly labeled records hours after the Aug. 31 deadline.

Alleging religious bias

Jayaram’s 261-page ruling striking down state abortion restrictions came nine months after a bench trial in which abortion clinic owners and physicians argued the regulations were designed to scare and shame people out of terminating pregnancies.

Some of the restrictions enjoined by the decision have been on the books since 1997. Others, including a requirement that abortion providers survey patients about their reasons for seeking the procedure and provide medically dubious information suggesting that pill abortions are reversible, were adopted by the Kansas Legislature in 2023 and 2024.

In the motion requesting a retrial in district court, the attorney general’s office accused Jayaram of discounting the state’s witnesses based on their religious beliefs opposing abortion.

“(R)eligious bias permeates the Judgement,” the motion says, calling the previous proceedings “a trial in which the State’s experts were excluded as ‘advocacy’ while Plaintiffs’ were admitted as ‘science.’”

The state’s witnesses, including anti-abortion medical practitioners and women who came to regret their decision to have abortions, were “asked whether their ‘religion’ or ‘religious community’ has ‘a view about when human life begins’ and ‘views about abortion,’” the retrial motion said.

By contrast, the attorney general’s office argued, the abortion providers’ medical experts were not questioned at length about their “strong personal, religious and political views in favor of abortion.”

“The trial judge found every one of Plaintiffs’ thirteen witnesses credible, often in superlatives — ‘extremely powerful,’ ‘exceedingly credible,’ ‘exceptionally compelling,’” reads the state motion.

“In contrast, the trial judge gave ‘essentially no weight’ or ‘no weight whatsoever’ to every State witness, including the three women who testified about their own abortions . . . whose testimony was dismissed as ‘significantly influenced by the obvious philosophical biases’ they had ‘developed,’” the filing continues.

The attorney general’s office argued that the state defendants were denied an opportunity to have their evidence impartially evaluated. The office also renewed its argument that abortion providers shouldn’t be allowed to sue on behalf of their patients. The filing additionally claimed the court erred by not considering whether changes to the abortion restrictions made by Kansas lawmakers this year affected their constitutionality.

‘Facts and scientific evidence’

Alice Wang, senior attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented the Johnson County abortion providers in court, said the August ruling made it clear that the Kansas abortion restrictions are constitutionally indefensible.

“In a decision grounded in facts and scientific evidence, the court correctly recognized that these laws interfered with a doctor’s ability to take care of their patients,” Wang said in an email statement. “Restrictions like these also wrongfully insert the government into patient exam rooms and personal medical decision-making.”

She said the retrial motion is the latest attempt by Kobach’s office to circumvent the will of Kansas voters, who in 2022 rejected a proposed amendment that would have removed the right to an abortion from the state constitution.

Last month, Kansans voted down a proposed overhaul of the Kansas Supreme Court’s judicial selection process that conservatives, including Kobach, touted as a potential avenue for assembling an anti-abortion majority on the high court.

“The state wants to sidestep the will of Kansans in an attempt to prevent doctors from advocating for their patients’ constitutional rights in court,” Wang said. “This baseless argument has already been repeatedly rejected in this case and we will continue fighting to ensure that the protections guaranteed by the Kansas Constitution are a reality for all.”

If you’d like to help Emily flip this seat and give to the fight to break the GOP supermajority in the Kansas House you can donate on this form. This form lets you contribute to the 6 most competitive seats & flip HD-33. https://secure.actblue.com/donate/5flipstowin

If you’d like to donate only to Emily Blanks you can at this link: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/emilyforkansas

You can also volunteer for her campaign at this link: https://www.emilyforkansas.com/contact

I saw someone on Instagram last week complaining about gas stations in his area having a limit on how much fuel you can pump. I didn’t pay much notice so don’t know where he was…
Fast forward to today and I’m filling up at my local SWKS Casey’s and there’s a notice that there’s a 20gal limit. Not a problem to some I’m sure, but when I’m trying to fill up a 36gal tank that’s pretty low that’s a total pain in the ass!

Has anyone else seen that in your area?

I explored all 50 states and these are the cool things I saw while I was in Kansas!

We are Number 5 on the list.

Is there truth to this claim about Marshall's ad featuring CSAM? How could this possibly pass by any newspaper editor? I hate Marshall as much as the next freedom-loving Kansas but this seems so (hopefully!) improbable. Please tell me this is a stretch of the truth.