BY JIM MCLEAN

Progressives deride supporters of President Donald Trump as willfully ignorant reactionaries, even racists.

Fans of the president respond in kind, dismissing liberals as snowflakes and worse.

The escalating war of words is a clear and president danger to American democracy, said Carolyn Lukensmeyer, executive director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, in a presentation sponsored by the Topeka-based Sunflower Foundation’s Advocacy in Health speaker series.

“Civility is an essential ingredient in a free democracy,” Lukensmeyer said Wednesday to an audience at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. “Our system is dependent on the capacity to absorb, assimilate and productively deal with difference.”

Incivility leads to certain groups of people being treated as “others to the point we don’t respect them as human beings,” she said.

Lukensmeyer, who holds a doctorate in organizational behavior, is a former White House consultant and chief of staff to former Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste, a Democrat who served from 1983 to 1991.

The current level of hostility in the nation’s political discourse rivals that of the Civil War era, Lukensmeyer said, warning that it will take decades to rebuild the social norms being destroyed in the wake of Trump’s election.

“Seventy-five percent of Americans believe that incivility is now a crisis, and about the same number believe it’s lowering our stature around the world,” Lukensmeyer said.

The ocean of special interest money in American politics and the gerrymandering of congressional districts have created structural barriers to solving the incivility crisis at the national level, Lukensmeyer said. But, she said, individuals and communities can and must start tackling the problem on their own.

“The one thing we all can control is how we behave in our own lives,” Lukensmeyer said, noting that in addition to providing civility training to state lawmakers across the country, the institute she heads has developed toolkits to help individuals and groups engage more productively.

One of the “conversation kits” available on the institute’s website is designed to help families navigate potentially fraught discussions at the Thanksgiving table. Called “Setting the Table for Civility,” the kit aims to promote respect over the upcoming holiday season by helping people with disparate views talk and, more importantly, listen to one another.

Jim McLean is managing director of the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A Lawrence man who molested a girl for more than two years has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 25 years.

Thirty-five-year-old James Fletcher was sentenced Thursday for five counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child. Prosecutors said he repeatedly fondled the girl’s breasts, starting when she was 11.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports about 30 people who supported Fletcher attended the sentencing. His attorneys had filed nearly 30 letters backing Fletcher, who had no previous criminal record.

The judge said the community support was admirable but was not sufficient reason to depart from sentencing guidelines mandating life in prison for the crimes.

Fletcher’s attorney, Sarah Swain, said she planned to immediately appeal the sentence.

BY JIM MCLEAN

Medicaid expansion advocates say Kansas policymakers should take notice of elections this week in Maine and Virginia.

In Maine, lawmakers sent five expansion bills to Republican Gov. Paul LePage in recent years. He vetoed them all. So Maine voters took matters into their own hands Tuesday by overwhelmingly approving a ballot initiative authorizing expansion.

In the Virginia governor’s race, Ralph Northam, a Democrat who supported expansion, handily defeated Ed Gillespie, a Republican who didn’t, in a race where nearly 40 percent of voters cited health care as a top issue.

Kansas doesn’t have an initiative and referendum process, so expansion advocates can’t force a statewide vote on the issue. But they will continue their efforts to win legislative approval of an expansion bill, said David Jordan, director of the pro-expansion Alliance for a Healthy Kansas.

“We’re going to strongly push for expanding KanCare in the upcoming session,” Jordan said, referring to the state’s privatized Medicaid program.

“It’s clear from our polling that over three-quarters of Kansans support expanding KanCare,” Jordan said, adding that this week’s election results show that voters will “reward candidates” who support expansion.

Republican Gov. Sam Brownback vetoed an expansion bill in March that would have made approximately 150,000 low-income adults eligible for KanCare coverage. Lawmakers attempted to override the veto but fell a few votes short.

When the 2018 session convenes in January, advocates may attempt to gain support among lawmakers concerned about the cost of expansion by proposing an increase in the state’s tobacco tax to pay for it, Jordan said.

Brownback’s expected departure for a State Department post in the Trump administration would put the issue in the hands of Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, who also has been a strong opponent of KanCare expansion.

Even so, advocates hope that Colyer’s perceived need to differentiate himself from the unpopular Brownback ahead of the 2018 election might prompt him to reconsider.

If that is a possibility, Colyer gave no indication of it during a recent interview. When asked about polls showing broad support for expansion among Kansas voters, he said, “It depends on how you ask Kansans the question.”

“What Kansans have made clear is that they don’t want more government, they want smaller government,” Colyer said. “But they want results.”

Jim McLean is managing director of the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – A prescription drug monitoring program for Missouri, the last holdout for a program aimed at curbing opioid abuse, is still not operational, nearly four months after Gov. Eric Greitens signed an executive order to establish it.

The head of the state agency that will oversee the plan told the Kansas City Star that it’s just a matter of finalizing the contract with the company that will supply the data. Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services director Randall Williams says that as soon as the contract is finalized by the Missouri Office of Administration, his agency will implement the drug monitoring program.

But when Greitens announced the executive order in St. Louis in July, Williams said it could be up and running within a month.

Live from the University of Kansas Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg is discussing what he learned in a Year of Travel.

KANSAS CITY (AP) – A police interrogation of a Kansas City man charged with drug and gun offenses ended prematurely when an investigator was driven from the room by the suspect’s excessive flatulence.

A detective reported that when asked for his address, 24-year-old Sean Sykes Jr. “leaned to one side of his chair and released a loud fart before answering.”

The Kansas City Star reports that Sykes “continued to be flatulent” and the detective was forced to quickly end the interview.

Sykes appeared in court Monday, charged with being a felon in possession of three firearms and possession with intent to sell cocaine. The charges stem from police traffic stops this month and in September in Kansas City.

The federal public defender’s office hasn’t responded to an Associated Press email seeking comment Friday.