A decade after candidate Trump's escalator ride, 10 ways he has altered Kansas
Business mogul Donald Trump rides an escalator to a press event to announce his candidacy for the U.S. presidency at Trump Tower on June 16, 2015, in New York City. ()
It's been 10 years since Donald Trump, a real estate mogul and reality TV star, rode an escalator down to a New York City press conference announcing his entry into the presidential campaign.
On that day — June 16, 2015 — Trump's candidacy seemed more like a publicity stunt and his presidency seemed like dark fantasy. Before the event that day, music from the 'Phantom of the Opera' played on repeat. The campaign paid people to attend as Trump said Mexico was sending 'rapists' across the border.
'I don't think anybody came away from that announcement thinking he was going to be the next president,' said Charlotte Alter, who attended the announcement for Time magazine.
And yet, here we are.
After 10 years, we are living in Trump's America, an era defined by his policies, his rhetoric and even his fashion. It's a golden anniversary, if only because of Trump's penchant for lacquering everything with the color gold.
While Kansas in 2015 was distant from Trump's Big Apple glitz and power, the state has undeniably been changed by Trump's two presidencies and three candidacies.
My list focuses on issues that particularly impact Kansans. There also are national changes.
With that caveat, here is my list of 10 ways that life in Kansas has shifted since the president rode that Trump Tower escalator 10 years ago.
When Kansas voters protected abortion rights in an August 2022 ballot measure, it signaled red-state resistance. During the Trump decade, national political attention rarely — if ever — focused on Kansas as much as that moment.
While the Supreme Court — increasingly of Trump's construction — ruled that the Constitution does not guarantee abortion rights, voters in the largely conservative state of Kansas pushed back.
Since then, the number of abortions in Kansas has risen, and a majority of abortions have been performed for patients from out-of-state.
The Kansas ballot results showed Democrats the popularity of their position on reproductive rights.
The acrimonious retreat to our partisan corners during the Trump decade contains so many anecdotes, so much data and so many consequences that it seems reductive to boil it down as a single item on this list.
The United States — and Kansans — are divided. On one side, the religious devotion of the MAGA faithful. On the other, the liberal and currently impotent resistance. While many kind folks in my life describe themselves as 'moderates' or 'centrists,' you wouldn't know it by watching Fox News, logging into Truth Social or reading the comment section anywhere online.
The mudslinging of politics that we bemoaned in past decades seems quaint by today's standards. Following Trump's lead, we empty entire dump trucks of vitriol on each other. The other political party? They are the enemy.
Starting with his announcement 10 years ago, Trump's rhetoric has targeted immigration over the southern border with Mexico. Trump has banned travel from Muslim-majority countries, demanded that Mexico pay for a border wall and unleashed lies against immigrants, particularly those from Mexico, Central America and South America.
How could this not impact Kansans?
The second largest racial group in Kansas, after white, is hispanic. According to the US Census, 13% of Kansans identify as hispanic.
Local activists report that agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been more visible in the state during Trump's second term and they worry that organized sweeps will come to the state soon. In Kansas City, immigration attorneys report that many clients aren't attending their scheduled hearings out of fear that agents will arrest them outside their hearing and deport them.
A recent study found that Kansas and Missouri farmers are reluctant to voice their opinions on climate change, regardless of their point of view. This seems part of Trump's effort to take climate change from settled science to political fulcrum.
To state a few obvious things, Kansas agriculture is vital and relies on a climate that allows for productive harvests. Climate change threatens that.
Kansas agriculture is weaker after twice having a president who withdrew us from key climate agreements while misrepresenting basic facts: the causes of wildfires, the paths of hurricanes and the virtues of renewable energy.
Trump's cynical rhetoric started with one phrase: fake news.
He used the phrase to bulldoze over any empirical resistance, whether from journalists, academics or lawyers. As he saw it, anyone who opposed him was peddling something dishonest.
Fast forward 10 years. The spread of measles in Kansas during recent months is a pointed symbol of the everpresent doubts that Trump and his administration have created. As diseases like measles sprout from obscurity, we can see Trump's actions as a unique fertilizer: COVID-19 vaccine denialism, appointment of a vaccine skeptic in his cabinet and skepticism of anyone who claims expertise.
Cuts to federal spending on agriculture research will likely threaten our status, as Americans and Kansans, as leaders in worldwide agriculture. Expect more stories from Kansas with headlines like these:
K-State ag research projects ended after DOGE cuts off USAID funding
Rural Kansas hit by federal job cuts as programs grind to a halt
Kansas City USDA food program cuts could leave some without enough food
Those stories touch on immediate effects. Consider the long-term effects on agriculture. Things will get more dire for Kansans. Not knowing why honeybees are dying? The threat of a 'man-eater' screwworm? Both possibilities are looming without a functioning federal agriculture response.
This concern over research doesn't even address the agriculture market instability caused by Trump's tariffs.
Kansas politicians have learned a new brand of conservatism from Trump: brash political bullying that ignores polite norms. 'If we can do it, we will,' seems to be their jet fuel.
Trump's second-term flurry of executive orders expresses this political swagger. So what if courts knock back most of the actions? In the meantime, the executive orders will have shuttered federal agencies. In the meantime, the damage is done.
Similarly, the Kansas Board of Regents in 2021 allowed campus administrators to eliminate university employees, including tenured faculty, without declaring a financial emergency. Discard precedent and don't look back.
No surprise: Just like Trump's executive orders, the firing of Emporia State faculty is tied up in court.
Opposing Trump has become so reflexive over the past 10 years that Democrats have often defaulted to opposition, even when it doesn't make empirical sense, let alone political sense.
Let's start with COVID-19. Trump called it the Wuhan Flu, simultaneously a jingoistic swing at China and an attempt to belittle a dangerous virus. And many of his public statements (injecting bleach, anyone?) revealed his foolishness.
But the Democrats' reaction was also imperfect — and likely carried more electoral consequences. Closing schools and demanding masking were both wildly unpopular while also not providing the desired protections.
Similarly, Democrats have spent 10 years now opposing Trump on immigration. While Trump holds many odious views on immigration, a central plank of his platform is the prevention of illegal immigration. To many Kansans, opposing Trump's immigration policies means that liberals want to open the border. That policy seems a political folly when 45.6% of Kansans believe illegal immigrants are a 'danger to public safety.'
Programs that celebrate diversity have been a hallmark of college campuses for years. Along with affirmative action — struck down by a Trump-appointed Supreme Court majority — DEI programs have vanished from Kansas education.
I understand it's a bit reductionist to group racial diversity with LGBTQ+ issues, but the Trump administration seems equally obsessed with sexual orientation and issues affecting transgender people.
Campus protests in Kansas have pointed to the unfairness of it all. Plus, a recent lawsuit against KU (where I work) threatens to punish the university for its response.
Electoral maps from the 2024 presidential election showed Trump continuing his gains in most Kansas counties — and the Kansas Legislature remains a conservative stronghold. So it's difficult to say that Democrats are gaining.
However, liberal opposition is more visible and galvanized during the Trump decade. Being the resistance party has brought underdog audacity to Democrats.
Kansans have protested Trump policies on abortion, immigration and COVID-19 policies. Protests are planned for Saturday in opposition to his increasingly authoritarian policies.
The opposition has even splashed back on Elon Musk and his allegiance to Trump. A Lenexa collision center for Tesla vehicles was firebombed with Molotov cocktails in April in an incident showing how this opposition can go too far.
Living in Trump's America has encouraged wishful thinking about a Trump exit.
On election night 2016, it was 'Maybe the exit polling is wrong.' During his first term, they thought, 'He's going to get impeached and removed from office.' After losing in 2020, many Kansans hoped, 'Now he will fade into obscurity.'
Instead, with more than three years remaining on his term, it's clear that Trump's escalator ride 10 years ago will define our modern lives as Americans and Kansans.
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.
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