In one way, this is the easiest column I’ve written.

It’s simple to celebrate public media in Kansas: public radio, educational television, veteran journalists, original reporting, local focus, innovative podcasts and more. For all that, I’m a long-time sustaining member of my local public radio station. And I have written many glowing columns about NPR journalism. Public media in Kansas is awesome.

In another way, this column is tricky. Defending anyone, let alone an institution, from fraudulent attacks is challenging. It’s proving a negative, when the negative is certifiably bonkers. And coming from the White House.

Here goes.

On Tuesday, National Public Radio and three public radio stations sued the Trump administration in response to the May 1 executive order that sought to strip public media of its funding in the United States.

The NPR lawsuit, filed in the District of Columbia, asserts that Trump’s executive order “violates the expressed will of Congress and the First Amendment’s bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association, and also threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information.”

The 43-page filing pokes holes in Trump’s executive order: a brazen attempt to extinguish public media throughout the country — and harm its audience in Kansas — based on a partisan grudge.

Under even brief inspection, Trump’s May 1 executive order and the press statements that accompanied it look inept.

They read like the half-baked political flailing of the first Trump administration when the rationale for his decisions was foolish and risible.

Just like many of the actions of the first Trump administration, there is a more principled and legal argument to be made here: Persuade Congress to defund public broadcasting because taxpayer money simply doesn’t belong in the media. The executive order only fleetingly expresses that viewpoint: “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”

More often, the White House falsely accuses public radio. It dishes out fake news about the real news.

If not opposed by a lawsuit like the one filed Tuesday, Trump’s executive order would wreck two valuable American institutions for petty and deceptive reasons: hot-button word choices, political innuendo and pet peeves.

What’s Trump’s best response for NPR’s regret at labeling someone as “illegal” in their reporting? Defund NPR.

What’s Trump’s best response to PBS’s documentary about a transgender teen? Defund PBS.

Forever a predatory real estate developer, Trump wants to tear down public media rather than putting money into improvements.

This week’s NPR lawsuit points us to documents that reveal Trump’s pettiness toward public media. First, consider “President Trump Finally Ends the Madness of NPR, PBS,” a press release published by the White House in conjunction with the executive order.

We find 24 bullet point examples of “trash that has passed for ‘news’ at NPR and PBS.” Many of the bullet points, stripped of context, completely misrepresent each instance of public media reporting.

One bullet point links to an NPR audio chat from 2022, headlined: “Which skin color emoji should you use? The answer can be more complex than you think.” During the discussion, the NPR host says, “These are not particularly easy questions for people to wrestle with.” The guest replies, “I completely agree with you that there is no clear-cut answer.”

How did the White House boil down this nuanced discussion of race? The press release says, “NPR assigned three reporters to investigate how the thumbs-up emoji is racist.”

NPR never used the word racist.

Summarizing the coverage in that way isn’t a political distortion. It’s a lie.

Here’s another White House claim from the same press release: “NPR routinely promotes the chemical and surgical mutilation of children as so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ without mentioning the irreversible damage caused by these procedures.” This bullet point links to a 2023 story from Florida by Melissa Block.

It’s a mind-bending stretch to see NPR as “promoting” medical care for trans kids in this journalism. The writer quotes experts — medical groups, plus an endocrinologist and a psychologist — as they each endorse the medical care.

Dear White House media critics, covering an issue is not to promote one side.

When the administration isn’t misrepresenting the work of public media, it nitpicks political language. In the press release’s final bullet point, the White House writes about the “PBS show Sesame Street partnered with CNN on a one-sided narrative to ‘address racism’ amid the Black Lives Matter riots.”

One-sided narrative? I wondered.

Clicking the link takes you to a cheerful image of Sesame Street characters with the title, “Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism.” What is the other side of racism that the White House wants represented here? Pro-racism?

The White House should be pressured to explain the “other side” of the debate that it is imagining, not Big Bird and PBS.

(The most likely true objection to this program? Sesame Street partnered with CNN, a network Trump would defund if he could.)

Taken as a whole, the list reads like a vendetta seeking a motive: Let’s destroy public media, but first we need a reason.

Given the White House’s complaints about news coverage in their press release, it seems that the executive order is in fact retaliation. Or, consider how the NPR lawyers metaphorically put it:

“It is not always obvious when the government has acted with a retaliatory purpose in violation of the First Amendment. ‘But this wolf comes as a wolf.’ … The Order targets NPR and PBS expressly because, in the President’s view, their news and other content is not ‘fair, accurate, or unbiased.’ ”

And yet, there’s more. Multiplying the unfairness of the lawsuit and executive order is the fundamental fairness of NPR’s news coverage. As a journalism instructor at the University of Kansas, I use NPR resources in my classroom precisely because they are among the most trustworthy and unbiased.

It’s not just me who sees it this way. Say what you will of the charts that organize media organizations in terms of bias; NPR is one of the most centrist sources, regardless of which media critics you trust.

“Our people report straight down the line,” said NPR CEO Katherine Maher during an appearance on CBS. “I think that not only do they do that, they do that with a mission that very few other broadcast organizations have, which is a requirement to serve the entire public. That is the point of public broadcasting. We bring people together in those conversations.”

During the past few weeks, as public media has defended itself against these garbage attacks, Trump’s order has been characterized as a disproportionate attack on people who live in rural areas, including large swaths of Kansas.

The faces of this defense have been the CEOs of NPR and the Public Broadcasting System. Each has stressed how rural audiences will suffer.

On Tuesday, Maher released a statement that repeatedly stressed the NPR’s nationwide virtue of “serving all 50 states and territories” as a source for “tens of millions of Americans.”

“Without public dollars, NPR’s investment in rural reporting initiatives, collaborative regional newsrooms, and award-winning international coverage would all be at risk,” Maher wrote.

Lisa Rodriguez, interim director of content for KCUR, an affiliate station in Kansas City, appeared on the station’s “Up To Date” show to explain how small rural member stations rely on NPR.

“For KCUR, you depend on it for what you hear every day,” Rodriguez said. “But also at these smaller stations, you don’t have as rich a local journalism ecosystem. It is sometimes the only news that is reaching small communities.”

To call the White House’s arguments weak should not minimize their gravity. The consequences of the executive order would be catastrophic, especially to Kansans, if they hold up in court.

Through the rhetoric of this executive order and its press release, Trump relishes in playing the schoolyard bully once again. This time he is not so much name calling or picking on the vulnerable. With public media, he threatens to take his ball, go home and leave Kansans stranded.

Why? The bully doesn’t like the way the game is being played.

However, as the lawsuit makes clear, it is not his ball. And he has no right to take it.

NPR and its fellow plaintiffs seek their continuing independence in their lawsuit. They quote a legal precedent that interpreted NPR’s founding legislation as creating an “elaborate structure … to insulate (broadcasters) from government interference.”

Later, the suit continues, that while “Congress is not obligated to support independent public radio with federal funds,” the government cannot remove funding in a way that unconstitutionally infringes on free speech.

Unfortunately, our current Congress does not appear willing to reassert itself against Trump’s hallucinatory rhetoric and orders.

This week’s lawsuit and its path through the courts may be the only remedy to save public broadcasting in Kansas.

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.

On Dec. 24, Amazon Prime released “Chiefsaholic: A Wolf in Chiefs Clothing,” charting the fame of Xavier Babudar, who rose to celebrity as a Kansas City Chiefs fan costumed each game as a wolf, before being arrested for bank robbery. The story became only more bonkers after his arrest: allegations of serial bank robberies on the way to Chiefs away games, an escape from law enforcement and more than $1 million in gambling to launder stolen money.

Babudar’s story was headline news for months before it was the “Chiefsaholic” documentary.

The storyline is a jackpot for the algorithmic recommendations of streaming television. Sports? Yes. True crime? Yes. A hidden identity built on lies? Yes.

And what if the sport was football? Even more specifically, Kansas City Chiefs football? And what if the true crime was a tale of serial bank robber hiding behind a mask — both during the heists and in real life?

The novelty of Babudar’s story combined with the movie’s in-depth documentary approach create a fun, if complicated, watch.

“Chiefsaholic,” like most contemporary documentaries, relies on access. In this respect, the producers deliver. Most importantly, they persuade Babudar to sit for interviews and to observe his life after he is released on bail. The camera watches him as he cheers for the Chiefs in the 2023 Super Bowl. He’s desperate for a win, both to see his favorite team crowned champions, but also to cash in a lucrative sports gamble for them.

In these moments, he reveals himself as profane and immature, trash talking his imagined doubters with tirades and celebrations pointed at the camera. This access allows us to know the man behind the mugshots.

The swirl of people surrounding Babudar further enriches the documentary. We meet Michael Lloyd, the mercurial and indefatigable bondsman who is on the hook for $80,000 if he can’t track down the suspect. The woman who stood at the end of Babudar’s fake pistol during his final bank robbery in Oklahoma, Payton Garcia, is a vulnerable and moral counterweight to the sports-fueled bravado of Chiefsaholic and his fellow self-proclaimed superfans.

Only Babudar’s mother, Carla Baduban, and her other son keep the camera distant — but alluringly so. Through the telephoto lens, Carla seems a tragic and withered woman who lives a nomadic and troubled life. Seeing her from a distance, we viewers speculate about how Xavier Babudar’s upbringing with her might have led to his federal jail cell.

By the end, the cast of characters feels outlandishly complex. The documentary veers away from a silly sports romp that you might have anticipated when you clicked on something called “Chiefsaholic” with promotional images featuring a football fan costumed as a wolf.

To counter this weight, the program delivers upbeat and goofy moments as well. Montages — almost too many to count — provide recaps of Chiefs’ wins and social media reactions. The quick-cut pace brings levity. Backed by TechN9ne’s song “Chiefs Kingdom,” game footage and social media screenshots remind us of the events leading to the Chiefs’ rise and Babudar’s fall.

The movie also relies on reenactments of Babudar’s crimes, as well as other events. In addition to relying on the actual bodycam footage of his arrest, the producers staged scenes that imagine aerial shots of the police cars speeding to the scene, details of his booking and fingerprinting and more. These staged set pieces distract us from the archival footage and the real people. These scenes (along with the ever-present montages) lard up the storytelling and push the movie’s runtime to 115 minutes, when 90 minutes could likely have fully and tautly told the story.

Besides the connection to our favorite NFL team, the movie offers other connections to Kansas. Babudar claims to have graduated in 2016 from Kansas State University, although no one in the documentary seems to believe that. Babudar often visits Kansas casinos, making wagers on the Chiefs and, the FBI alleged, laundering the money from his bank robberies.

As his bail bondsman and law enforcement chase him, the movie shows locations in Kansas City. (Coincidently, these areas are within a few miles of another recent KC-based documentary: the “Payday” episode of “Dirty Money” in 2018.) While the documentary is a tour of the Midwest, from Oklahoma to Minnesota, much of it plays out in Kansas.

The documentary ups the production values and stylistic choices over another Chiefsaholic documentary, ESPN’s “Where Wolf” from 2023. In “Chiefsaholic,” director Dylan Sires smartly chooses and lights locations for his interviews. When social media posts are displayed to help tell the story, Sires adds a pixelated effect. In these moments, the style reminds us of the barrier between real life and online life. Those pixels add subtle skepticism, asking: “What is real life?”

This is the strongest theme in the documentary. If NFL superfans are only celebrities when when they dress up for a game, if people don’t recognize them in real life and if people don’t even know their real names, then what is their fame? Whether in a wolf mask or another costume, superfans in this movie aren’t who they pretend to be.

“Chiefsaholic” showcases the trapping of superfans: the extravagant makeup, the social media trash talking, the customized buses, the curated online profiles. It investigates why these people are driven to embrace a team so completely. However, it can only hint at the answer to that question, and only for one person: Babudar.

The most revealing scene with Babudar comes as he watches the 2023 Super Bowl. He talks gently about how he must provide for his mom and brother. But then, fueled by the Chiefs gear he is wearing and the game on the TV, his persona swerves as he revs up to game mode. The superfan performance returns. For the benefit of the camera and thousands of miles from the actual game, he is “Chiefsaholic” again, announcing his return on social media.

As one Chiefs fan says in the movie: “I don’t have any problem with these people having alternate personas. The problem is when the persona becomes the purpose. Versus the purpose being the game.”

This fan could have been commenting on how regular people, especially young men fueled by online sports gambling and social media, transform when they put on their superfan costumes for game day and risk their money on football games.

In this way, the movie suggests that people’s alternate personas — the ones doing the most harm — might be online. People who follow Babudar online can’t cope with his guilt, despite the evidence.

In another scene, Garcia, the bank teller who was threatened by Babudar, explains her frustration at people supporting Chiefsaholic by believing his innocence. She wonders how people could so easily jump online to glibly assert his innocence, after he had threatened her life. Why take his side over hers? Her tears of sadness before the camera show how blind allegiance online — often posted for laughs — can wound real people.

By the end of the movie, we wonder how much sympathy we should have for Babudar, a person who most of us only knew online.

In exploring our willingness for sympathy, the documentary succeeds. It tells a well-known story in a way that still provides tension. We know that he will be arrested, that he will flee and that he will be found again.

But we don’t know how we will feel about him, and where we will place the blame for this bizarrely American story of true crime tangled with sports.

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.

Elections are the ultimate vibe check for political parties.

And the mood in Democratic watch parties quickly congealed into sludge Tuesday night.

Headed into the night, the tossup election seemed within the grasp of Vice President Kamala Harris. By the end of the evening, the Democratic body language was slumped shoulders, surprised faces and early exits.

They failed to defeat Donald Trump, a man they love to hate. They couldn’t unseat Kansas legislators who appear too conservative for their districts.

Sorry, Democrats, because here comes more cold water on your shivering and drenched heads: any seemingly positive election returns for Harris in Kansas might actually be bad news masquerading.

County election returns in Kansas provide an interesting lens, even if the state reliably wants a Republican in the White House.

What counties did Harris win?

Only four counties from 105 in Kansas gave Harris a majority of their votes. Riley County, home to Kansas State University, provided Harris with a razor-thin victory: 291 votes more than Trump. Aside from that small gain, Harris won the counties of Johnson, Wyandotte and Douglas, home of the state’s largest university, the University of Kansas.

However, all four majority-Harris counties voted at a higher rate for Trump than they had in 2020. Most dramatically, Wyandotte County shifted 7.9 percentage points toward Trump between 2020 and 2024. This was the third-largest swing toward Trump in the state among all counties — even counties that Trump won.

While losing Douglas County, Trump attracted 3.3 points more voters there than he did in 2020, and 2.2 points more in Riley County. The most liberal parts of Kansas swung — and decidedly so — away from Democrats.

If you thought that data set was the cold water, those are just the first drops hitting your head.

In what counties did Harris outperform Biden in 2020?

National political pundits talked about the Blue Wall in the run-up to the election. Democrats hoped that this imagined wall would include states in the northern Midwest, including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan.

Tuesday’s vote, when compared to the 2020 results, provides a different wall. The New York Times interactive election returns map shows it. (Click on Kansas and then select “Shift from 2020.”) You will see a red wall stretching from Minnesota to Louisiana. Each of the hundreds of red arrows signifies a county swung from a 2020 Biden win to a 2024 Trump win. The few and lonely blue arrows show the few counties that Harris stole back from Trump this election.

The red wall showing Trump’s 2024 gains is a thick, straight line from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. In some locations, you might be hundreds of miles from any county that swung toward Harris.

Kansas interrupts Trump’s red wall. Of the 105 counties in the state, 20 of them edged toward Harris, rather than Trump.

Those Kansas counties: Barber, Chase, Chautauqua, Comanche, Ellsworth, Greeley, Harper, Kingman, Lane, Logan, Morris, Morton, Ness, Osborne, Phillips, Rooks, Russell, Sumner, Thomas and Wallace.

Compare this long list to Missouri (only five Harris swing counties), Iowa (one), Minnesota (three), Illinois (five) and Arkansas (one). Here in Kansas, almost one in five counties swung toward Harris.

(I am warning you: Beware of considering this as good news, Kansas Democrats. Still more cold water in this bucket.)

The margins in these Kansas swing counties were tiny. Harris shifted small parts of these 20 county electorates, ranging from less than .1 points to 3.3 points. They are less swings, and more like nudges.

Or, perhaps they are even less than nudges.

Inspect the list of counties that moved toward Harris. The counties had an average population of about 5,000. The counties lost aggregate population during the last statewide certification. Wallace County, home to the biggest Harris nudge, is the 104th smallest county. These are not the most lucrative places to make electoral gains.

All of this suggests that the blue arrows are flukes caused by rural counties, rather than successes for Democrats. Comanche County only had 839 votes cast, so results in counties are more likely displaying noise than providing significant results.

Harris might have stolen back a few percentage points in these sparsely populated Kansas counties. Meanwhile, Trump wrangled essentially the same number — if not more — from Wyandotte County alone.

The optimism that last-minute polls created for Democrats in Iowa and Kansas turned out to be mirages. The Kansas Speaks poll showed Trump as vulnerable in Kansas (only leading by 5 points in the week heading up to the election). That poll was more than 10 points off from the final result, when compared with Trump’s 16-point win in Kansas.

A trusted Des Moines Register-Guard poll similarly suggested that other Midwesterners were reconsidering Trump as late as election week, putting Harris three percentage points ahead. Trump secured Iowa by 13 points.

All of this means that the Midwest remains free of electoral drama, unless you consider a growing affinity for Trump as drama.

On election night, cable news journalists might theatrically zoom in to click on Kansas counties early in the returns. Staring at Johnson County with 8% of returns, they tempt suspense. “Is this the night for a Kansas surprise? Anything can happen,” they say with a shrug. Kansas might get its few moments on the Magic Wall or at the fingertips of Steve Kornacki. But the spotlight wanders away soon enough.

Regardless of how fast the national broadcasters move on to other states, these county-by-county Kansas results have significance. On the Republican side, Trump might be reassured by the red wall of voters switching over to him, emboldened by the support of Kansans to reshape the federal government and seek retribution.

For Democrats, the question is: Was Tuesday more than a vibe check? Or will the same playbook lead to the same Kansas results every four years?

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and X.