There's literally no reason for Congress to exist if any random freak in the presidential orbit can nullify laws and seize federal funds. All of this is plainly illegal, but Mike Johnson leads the most corrupt Congress in US history (and by a wide margin.)

Kind of wild how much of the expanded streetcar transportation development district (taxing district for KC’s new streetcar) doesn’t allow for apartments, or in some cases, even duplexes.

Girders for the new Grand Boulevard pedestrian bridge are nearly all set!

i desperately want everyone involved in the destruction of USAID to have to, st the very least, answer to the american people for the suffering and misery they have caused apnews.com/article/myan...

More than a third of Americans don’t have reliable car access to get to work, school, or the grocery store. Our new transportation map can help policymakers better understand their communities and build a system that will benefit everyone.

Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance Vice Chair Michael Kelley says the poll shows that people across the metro will support public transit if their local governments invest in it, especially at a time when the state and federal governments are pulling back transit funding.

🚨ADVOCACY ALERT!🚨 KCRTA polling shows majority voter support for transit funding across the Kansas City region! 🧵 1 of 4:

Sam’s Law of Media: The media treats Democrats as the only political actors with agency, responsible for everything happening Republicans, by contrast, are treated like zoo animals: odd, fascinating, but never to be judged and, perhaps more importantly, never responsible for their own decisions

Tom Homan took a bag of cash from an undercover FBI agent the right way. by Ezra Klein

The KC Riverfront is (finally) getting some promising urbanism!

It took, what, eight days? For the pretense that MAGA cares about Charlie Kirk to totally collapse, and for Trump’s megalomania to take center stage again. No matter what they say or do they only ever care about one thing: making us worship Great Leader alongside them

I genuinely cannot believe that Ezra Klein said we should run pro-life candidates in Kansas, Ohio, and Missouri; three states that recently held abortion referendums where the pro-choice side won!

Remarkable how centrist pundits like Noah Smith are still prattling on about "cancel culture" and "Bluesky-ization" while people are getting fired for insufficient mourning of a bigoted liar who constantly directed hatred towards the majority of Americans.

I wrote my own Charlie Kirk obituary, and about valuing truth over manners: www.thenation.com/article/poli...

“Kirk was not an example of healthy political discourse, and we should not pretend otherwise just because he was the victim of what appears to be more senseless political violence.” www.liberalcurrents.com/not-all-vict...

Excellent piece by Ezra Klein: if Dems really believe that Trump is creating an authoritarian government they should not continue to fund it. The shutdown is their only leverage right now to draw attention to what is happening and maybe force change. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/o...

ah yes, politics, that realm of human affairs where drama and emotional catharsis are to be avoided

JD Vance said he doesn’t care if the US commits war crimes. Did it make the news? Donald Trump said he’s declaring war on Chicago. Did it make the news? Executive agencies keep posting Nazi blood-and-soil propaganda. Did it make the news?

A simple way to improve American downtowns: Make one-way arterials bidirectional. Doing so will improve safety, boost retail sales, and attract pedestrians. Me, in Bloomberg 🧵

“Blueskyism” Rent free lmao

The owners of The Grand continue to blame crime on the presence of bus stop, including in their latest appeal to the PIEA last week. More obvious to me is the unsecured surface parking, concentration of 3AM bars, and c-store selling single serving liquor.

This all feels like a hallucination ngl

These digital advertising kiosks have been a huge eyesore downtown for the last 10 years. IMO digital should be kept out of the public realm. It falls apart too easily and won’t be lucrative or well maintained in low pedestrian footfall markets like KC.

The new River Market-Riverfront ped/bike bridge is starting to take shape. 📷Kansas City, MO

These are the owners of the new downtown drive thru coffee shop approved the the Kansas City Board of Zoning Adjustment

🚨 WaPo EXCLUSIVE Hours before Trump removed Billy Long as IRS commissioner, his agency clashed with the White House over sharing immigrants’ tax data.

The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority and Kansas City, Missouri, are wrapped up in intense negotiations over a new contract. If a new agreement isn't reached in the next few days, cuts to the local bus service could be on the table. https://loom.ly/vdOEcUA

“The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority removed the benches that were there in 2023 after a request from developers and the Kansas City Police Department.” Lot of fingers being pointed the wrong direction

Great write up in the Kansas City Star on the history of this highway and the community it impacted. Very excited to be helping Kansas City think through some potential solutions.

"Surging housing costs and endless traffic are pushing people to choose smaller, cheaper cities instead, and this is starting to shift the balance of power in the southern U.S." Sprawl always ends up strangling itself. Atlanta needs more incentives for suburban infill. www.wsj.com/economy/atla...

Wow — New Gallup poll: — Trump approval on immigration: 35-62 (!) — Record high approval of immigration (79-17 overall) — 78% of people support a pathway to citizenship (+8 from 2024); only 38% support mass deportation (-9 from 2024) — 30% want a decrease in immigration (-25 from 2024)

anti-doomer sentence of the day: "Globally, roughly a third more power is being generated from the sun this spring than last" www.newyorker.com/news/annals-...

Another all ages and abilities bike facility delayed or canceled by an “avid cyclist” grabbing the microphone

Amazing things are happening at the pit on Delaware

There’s a template from Milwaukee 100 years ago for politically and substantively successful socialist governance, but many leftist intellectuals of the time found the laser focus on quantity of city services to be problematically boring. www.slowboring.com/p/learning-f...

Anyone know what’s going on with the water taste in KCMO right now?

Josh Hawley is going to take away healthcare from working class people.

no amount of free money is going to get people to have children in a stagnant society of rampant corruption and dwindling opportunity

The failure of Kansas City’s emergency responders to follow protocols for treating heart attack symptoms poses “a very specific danger to public health and safety,” the fire department’s audit says.

I wonder if mom and pop landlords accept housing choice vouchers?

Congrats to everyone who’s still on Twitter, marinating in this fever swamp of bullshit and helping to keep it afloat with your patronage.

Loving this episode of Multistory, a new podcast from KC Urbanist friends @tessinprogress.bsky.social, @zachflanders.bsky.social, @staubio.com, and Coletta. youtu.be/zCIel0O9kT4?...

Arlington is making a real effort at demand-based parking pricing in some neighborhoods

W.E.B. Du Bois on Robert E. Lee: “Either he knew what slavery meant when he helped maim and murder thousands in its defense, or he did not. If he did not he was a fool. If he did, Robert Lee was a traitor and a rebel–not indeed to his country, but to humanity and humanity’s God.”

What happened when the U.S. forcibly sent 400,000 Mexican workers back to Mexico in the 1930s? The employment rate of native workers *went down* noticeably as a direct result. (You read that correctly) Why? Forced repatriation destroyed low-skill markets. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Reading the 1947 perspective on the benefits of zoning. From the book “Your City and You” by the Kansas City Board of Education. And yes, I read it in my head in the style of the Krusty Krab training video.

I realize posting this here is preaching to the choir. But after the Grok White Genocide thing & Ye essentially launching an exclusive Neo Nazi single on the platform... I felt motivated to write about X and how bizarre it is that so many people (news outlets, celebrities, politicians) use it

really bleak to pop on to the former twitter and see people i thought were reasonable palling around with race science maniacs

Every AEC firm should have an outpost in downtown KC. Even if they’re headquartered out south or in Johnson County, downtown really offers the best workplace amenities and best regional location for the most workers.