President Donald Trump’s administration will pursue a ban on Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland as part of an effort to strengthen farm security, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Tuesday. Appearing alongside other Cabinet officials, Republican governors and members of Congress at an event outside the U.S. Department of Agriculture headquarters in Washington, D.C., Rollins announced […]
TOPEKA — A Leavenworth County District Court judge held off on a decision Monday on whether to lift a temporary restraining order he placed on CoreCivic last month, stopping the company from housing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees at its vacant Leavenworth prison. Judge John Bryant said he would take CoreCivic’s motion to reconsider […]
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has abandoned plans for mass layoffs but still anticipates the exit of 30,000 employees by the end of the fiscal year. Previous downsizing goals aimed to return the agency to 2019-level staffing of roughly 398,000 employees, which would represent the loss of about 70,000 jobs and a 15% overall […]
WASHINGTON — The federal government cannot withhold Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood for at least the next two weeks, after a district court judge issued a temporary restraining order the same day the organization filed a lawsuit. Republicans included language in their “big, beautiful bill” that would block Medicaid payments from going to Planned Parenthood […]
After years of mourning family and friends who succumbed to aggressive cancers, activists in Missouri finally won federal recognition that radiation released during the development of nuclear weapons is to blame. Since the publication of a six-month investigation by The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press, Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley has pressed for […]
ABILENE, Texas — Bolstered by $3.2 million from a former Midland oilman, this West Texas city of 130,000 people is helping the Lone Star State lead a national nuclear energy resurgence. Doug Robison’s 2021 donation to Abilene Christian University helped the institution win federal approval to house an advanced small modular nuclear reactor, which might […]
Not all farmers and ranchers will agree in a discussion about climate change, but it would be difficult to find a Midwest producer who did not value climate-related data addressing drought, precipitation, temperature and frost outlooks. These are all pieces of data gathered and distributed by the Ames-based Midwest Climate Hub, which along with the […]
Despite heading one of the oldest anti-abortion organizations in the country at a time of huge upheaval for abortion rights, John Mize is new to the movement. The father of four became the CEO of Americans United for Life in January 2024. Previously he worked for the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, after more than a […]
The front-page headlines in the last few days have been jarring: “Medicaid Cuts May Force Retirees out of Nursing Homes.” While much of the battle over Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill for billionaires is theoretical to many of us who’ve always had health insurance and coverage for things like rehab and even nursing homes, […]
WASHINGTON — U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ended temporary protections Monday for nationals from Nicaragua and Honduras, opening up roughly 76,000 people to deportations by early September. The move is the latest effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to wind down legal statuses, such as Temporary Protected Status, amid an immigration crackdown and pledge […]
Days after President Donald Trump signed a massive budget bill, attorneys for Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its state members in Massachusetts and Utah filed a lawsuit Monday challenging a provision they say will affect more than 1 million patients who use their clinics across the U.S. Planned Parenthood says if the defund provision […]
President Donald Trump on Monday threatened tariffs from 25% to 40% on all goods from seven countries, including major U.S. trade partners Japan and South Korea. The tariffs would go into effect Aug. 1, rather than Wednesday, which was the deadline Trump already extended once from an initial April date, Trump wrote in a series […]
A growing number of firearms are being stolen from parked cars, especially in urban areas, according to a new report that highlights a frequently overlooked source of illegally circulating guns. The nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice released an analysis examining five years of gun theft data reported to law enforcement in 16 cities […]
TOPEKA — A bipartisan council of Kansas lawmakers voted Monday to extend by six months the deadline for the Missouri-based Kansas City Royals or the Kansas City Chiefs to accept economic development incentives from Kansas for construction of sports stadiums. The Legislative Coordinating Council unanimously agreed to grant the reprieve so the Kansas Department of […]
GREENBELT, Maryland — A federal judge at a hearing Monday sought more information on the Trump administration’s plans for wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose attorneys are pressing to have him transferred to Maryland from a Tennessee jail. Abrego Garcia lived in Maryland with his wife and family before he was mistakenly deported to the […]
Kansas City’s immigration court is on the fifth floor of a nondescript downtown office building. The area is better known for the bustling shops of Crown Center to the south, or nearby Washington Square Park, a potential site for a new Royals stadium. Yet thousands of life-changing decisions for immigrant families are routinely handed down […]
A Kansas City man spent his weekends in Cole County jail in June, after pleading guilty last year to two misdemeanor charges for submitting fraudulent documents to cannabis regulators in 2021 to obtain a marijuana cultivation license. It’s a license his company still holds, according to the Missouri Division of Cannabis Regulation, along with a […]
Four years before Kimberly Gallagher enrolled in Medicaid herself, the public health insurance program’s rules prompted her to make an excruciating choice — to give up guardianship of her son so she could work as his caregiver. Now, another proposed twist in the rules could mean that, even though Missouri pays her to do that […]
I googled: “Josh Hawley SNAP,” a few weeks ago when I was looking for our Senator’s position on cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (aka SNAP, or food stamps). The AI told me that “Josh Hawley SNAP” refers to a snap of Hawley on January 6th cheering supporters of his effort to overturn the […]
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed into law Friday evening his massive spending cut and tax break package to fulfill his domestic policy agenda on immigration and defense and overhaul American energy production. The “big, beautiful bill,” which Trump signed on Republicans’ self-imposed Fourth of July deadline, will make permanent the 2017 tax cuts from […]
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