News & Issues
It Starts With You And Must Engage Others
Walking along the Jersey Creek Park Trail in northeast Kansas City, Kansas, Broderick Crawford can see the overgrown weeds, the fractured asphalt trail and broken benches. “You can’t sit on them without getting a splinter,” he points out. No one could blame him for being angry with the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas…
Missouri Lawmakers Debate Whether Pregnancy Resource Centers Must Provide Science-Backed Information
You don’t have to drive far in Missouri to see billboards offering help to pregnant women. They’re part of the state’s Alternatives to Abortion program, which has seen a big increase in public funding in recent years. This year’s legislative debate on the program focuses on a new question: What kind of information should these…
To Diversify The Landscape, Diversify Who Works It
Farmers in the U.S. like to point out that their products feed people all over the world. And while this is a diverse country, the people working on farms and elsewhere in agriculture often don’t reflect the nation’s demographics. Changing that is becoming a priority, in hopes new people will bring fresh ideas to meet…
Judge Releases Defendant in 1988 Arson Deaths of 6 KC Firefighters
Bryan Sheppard, the youngest of five people sentenced to life in prison for a 1988 explosion that killed six Kansas City firefighters, will be released, possibly in the next few days, a federal judge ruled today. Members of Sheppard’s family, who packed one side of a federal courtroom here this afternoon began sobbing as…
Behind the Bryan Sheppard Ruling: What the Release Order Says and Doesn’t Say
A federal judge’s decision last week to release a man serving a life sentence in the 1988 deaths of six Kansas City firefighters was, at least for some of the families of those men, a hurtful betrayal by the legal system. For the families of the accused, it was the final arrival of justice long…