I’m a man of faith. I trust God — His great faithfulness, His promises and His call for us to pursue justice, love our neighbors and to live in faith, hope and especially charity. I believe He readily reveals how to do so, sometimes with only a whisper.
The leaders we elect and the policies they pursue reflect how seriously we take that call. They reveal whether we’re working toward a better, more just society.
We’re falling woefully short at every level.
And you don’t need to believe in any god to recognize the godlessness — and, more locally, the fundamental indecency — of many elected leaders. This isn’t atheism I’m describing, but a political throughline threaded with corrupting cruelty, seething contempt for humanity and a profound lack of moral courage.
At the top, the Trump administration’s godlessness isn’t merely stylistic, as many choose to excuse, but substantive. Enforcing immigration laws is one thing; mocking vulnerable people, denying due process, and deporting them to foreign torture gulags is another.
Policing immigration is one thing; deploying a masked paramilitary force — ICE wasn’t always this — to carry it out is another. Worse still, policing that too readily engages in lawless public killings, often without apparent remorse (“F—g b—h”), and with the administration’s full support.
Why do we accept this from the leader of our nation, let alone the free world? Why do we tolerate such small, petulant godlessness?
Godlessness — such as treating homelessness as a prosecutable condition rather than a social failure — isn’t just a federal issue. With Senate Bill 285 and House Bill 1431, our state Republican lawmakers are again trying to criminalize homelessness. The bill makes sleeping on public property a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by up to sixty days in jail or a $500 fine.
If the sheer irrationality isn’t offensive enough, the legislation also forbids local governments from discouraging enforcement. It even allows anyone to sue a city deemed insufficiently punitive. What’s not addressed: homelessness itself.
No. Surely this wasn’t what was meant by “provide the poor wanderer with shelter.” The legislature shouldn’t need reminding that what we do to the least of us, we do to Christ. But, of course, this bill didn’t come from Christ; it came courtesy of Texas.
“Locally, incompetence, if not corruption, is currency.”
Locally, incompetence, if not corruption, is currency. Two women accused former Hogsett chief of staff Thomas Cook of serious misconduct: Lauren Roberts in 2017 for sexual harassment and abuse of power, and Caroline Ellert for sexual assault and harassment between 2018 and 2020. Our city’s Human Resources (HR) advised Hogsett to fire Cook. He refused. Instead, he publicly praised Cook, who left only after the administration discovered his prohibited relationship with senior official Scarlett Andrews.
Cook then slid seamlessly into a job at a law firm with Hogsett connections. He signed major developers as clients and helped secure millions in city incentives overseen by Andrews. Over public opposition, Andrews supported projects tied to Cook’s clients, and granted exceptions that let luxury developments avoid affordable-housing requirements. Meanwhile, Cook maintained informal contact with Hogsett, including texts about developer campaign donations.
Then we paid for an investigation overseen by council members widely viewed as Hogsett allies. It recommended “reforms” such as replacing the city’s HR department with an independent structure. What? We paid half a million dollars to learn half of what we already knew. Instead of accountability, we were “Kansas City shuffled” into blaming HR — the same HR that recommended Cook’s removal — while Hogsett’s late-night poetic overtures to young women on staff went unmentioned.
Despite everything, Hogsett not only lacks the decency to resign but forces us to endure the indignity of his indecision about seeking a fourth term.
Meanwhile, his close ally, former City-County Council President Vop Osili, asks for our vote as Hogsett’s successor. The same Vop Osili who removed Lauren Roberts from a City-County Council meeting and — perhaps more troubling — expelled fellow Democratic councilors from their own caucus for voicing dissent. Is this the best we can muster in pursuit of a better, more just society? No.
“We can’t cling to today’s politics and claim tomorrow’s promise.”
We can’t cling to today’s politics and claim tomorrow’s promise. I can accept mistakes, even egregious errors. That’s human. What I can’t accept is plain cruelty or a total lack of accountability — this insistence that we deny what we witness. Can you?
I believe we know better. And knowing better requires us to choose morally courageous leaders — leaders shaped by charity, by an ascendant love rooted in reverence for human dignity.
Matthew J. Whitley is a local civil rights and mass torts attorney.
