Opinion

On February 18, investor/entrepreneur James Fishback posted a suggestion to X: “President Trump and @ElonMusk should announce a ‘DOGE Dividend’ -- a tax refund check sent to every taxpayer, funded exclusively with a portion of the total savings delivered by DOGE.”

As I write, the Kansas House Committee on Judiciary is about to hear HB 2348, which would eliminate tenure at higher education institutions governed by the State of Kansas. The bill emerged from a legal dispute between certain faculty members and administrators at Emporia State, yet its consequences would reverberate far beyond that.

The first time I heard a Bob Dylan song was at Washington Elementary School in Baxter Springs, where in the auditorium a young music teacher led our class in singing “Blowin’ in the Wind.” I couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8 at the time, but I remember thinking so hard about the words and what they meant that I slipped into a kind of reverie.

We are in a collective grief process. The old normal passed away. We are not getting it back, at least not anytime soon. And so, the destabilization we are feeling right now is two-fold. First, the destabilization that we feel from the flooding of the zone, which is by design, and part of a playbook we knew was coming. They told us. But what we did not expect was another destabilization—that is, the destabilization that comes with grief.

Voters in November sent a clear message that they were dissatisfied with the status quo and the high cost of goods and services.

Last May, Donald Trump bragged on Truth Social that “IF PRESIDENT, I WOULD BE ABLE TO NEGOTIATE AN END TO THIS HORRIBLE AND RAPIDLY ESCALATING WAR WITHIN 24 HOURS” (all-caps styling his).