Copies of the Aug. 16 edition of the Marion County Record rest on a countertop in the newspaper office. Staffers pulled an all-nighter to get the newspaper out after their equipment was seized by law enforcement. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

TOPEKA, Kan. — A special prosecutor in court documents filed Tuesday says former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody “induced a witness to withhold information” in the days after Cody led a raid on a newspaper office, the publisher’s home and the home of a city councilwoman.

Special prosecutor Barry Wilkerson, of Riley County, charged Cody with interference with judicial process, a low-level felony, in Marion County District Court. If convicted, the presumed sentence would be probation.

Wilkerson and special prosecutor Marc Bennett, of Sedgwick County, announced last week they would file the charge against Cody. But they determined Cody and other officials didn’t break the law by planning and conducting an illegal and unconstitutional raid.

The prosecutors wrote that Cody, his officers, Sheriff Jeff Soyez and his deputies, Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents, County Attorney Joel Ensey and Magistrate Judge Laura Viar didn’t realize their “inadequacy” in accusing journalists and a political outcast of committing identity theft because they obtained Kari Newell’s driving record — a public document.

Newell wanted a liquor license for her restaurant, but her driving record showed she had a DUI and suspended driving license. Five federal lawsuits accuse Cody, with support from Mayor David Mayfield, of spearheading an investigation into Marion County Record reporter Phyllis Zorn, publisher Eric Meyer and Councilwoman Ruth Herbel.

On Aug. 11, 2023, Cody led the raids of the newsroom, Herbel’s home, and the home where Meyer lived with his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, who co-owned the newspaper with her son. Body camera video shows Joan Meyer cursing at and confronting the officers in her home. She died the next day from a stress-induced heart attack.

Wilkerson and Bennett said in their report they would not hold police responsible for her death.

Cody resigned in October after KSHB-TV reported he had instructed Newell to delete text messages the two had exchanged. Wilkerson and Bennett’s report said Cody’s actions regarding text messages would provide the basis for a criminal charge.

The complaint filed Tuesday identifies 37 witnesses, including law enforcement, city leaders, journalists and Newell.

This story was first published by Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Marion County Record editor and publisher Eric Meyer answers questions during a July 25, 2024, interview in his newsroom office. He says he doesn’t know of any other newspaper that has been raided like his, but “crap like this happens” (Grace Hills/Kansas Reflector).

This story is part of a series by Kansas Reflector and The Handbasket to examine the one-year anniversary of the raid on the Marion County Record. Support independent journalism by subscribing to The Handbasket or donating to Kansas Reflector.

MARION, Kan. — Marion County Record editor and publisher Eric Meyer began speaking out about the police raid of his home and office before the officers could even retreat to their celebratory pizza party.

He said it never entered his mind to keep quiet.

“Crap like this happens more often than we hear about,” Meyer said. “I don’t know of anybody else that’s been raided quite the way we were. But there are other similar things that have gone on, other acts of intimidation of one sort or another, that have gone on around the country. And you don’t hear about them because nobody said anything.”

Meyer can afford to take risks. Unlike virtually all other news media, he doesn’t have to worry about his finances — this is a retirement project for him. Other outlets face a different reality. But he sees it as more than work. And there’s a reason he continues to go through the grueling exercise of producing a newspaper.

“It’s still a calling,” he said.

The attack on constitutional freedoms in Marion placed a spotlight on the inherent tension between journalists and the powerful people they hold accountable. And while the sight of American police seizing computers from a newsroom sent shockwaves around the world, and threats to reporting efforts by local officials continue, the Marion County Record and others like it remain resolute in their mission.

Every Friday afternoon at the offices of Harvey County Now, a half-hour southwest of Marion, locals gather around an actual bar in the back — a remnant of a previous business — to shoot the breeze. Though they’re in the news business, Joey and Lindsey Young provide beers and sips to those who come by, and who often bring libations of their own.

“It’s a great way to talk about community issues without people feeling intimidated, because it’s like, none of us are writing it down — which is a shame,” Young joked recently from behind his desk in the storefront office. “But we get good stories, and we talk to people, and people are always more willing to just hang out and talk if they feel relaxed.”

This collegiality is important in contrast to continued skepticism of the media, both locally and nationally. It also creates a personal relationship between the town and the paper, and helps the community see it as an essential part of a functioning society.

In Marion, according to a local pastor, despite the widespread outcry, the raid didn’t change anybody’s opinion of the newspaper.

“I think there’s some people who will tell you what is printed at the Marion County Record is 100% truth, and it’s gospel, and it’s accurate every time,” said Jeremiah Lange, pastor of the Marion Presbyterian Church. “I think there’s other people that would disagree with that.”

In the aftermath of the raid, journalists from across the state began calling Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association. She said they would ask things like: “I’m looking at my city manager. Are they going to come in and do this?”

Bradbury said nothing surprises her after what happened in Marion. But her main reaction to the raids has been to inform the public about the role journalists play in a healthy democracy, and educating judges on federal and state laws that are supposed to shield journalists from police raids, and making sure outlets are able to put out a paper, even if law enforcement has seized their reporting tools and technology.

The KPA provided news outlets with posters that outline protections for journalists, as well as a legal warning letter that journalists can hand to police if they try to search a newsroom. The idea, according to Bradbury, is to be “optimistic it won’t happen again, but prepared if it does.”

“We’re going to be a lot more prepared moving forward on how we react to those kinds of situations,” Bradbury said. “It’s one of the few bright sides that came out of it.”

But local officials still have other avenues for punishing news outlets.

Kansas law requires cities to publish public notices in a “paper of record,” but some cities have declared the city website to be the paper of record, stripping the local newspaper of advertising revenue from charging for print space. If every city in the state took that action, Bradbury said, half the newspapers in Kansas would disappear overnight. That gives local officials extraordinary leverage over reporters.

Earlier this year, the Wichita City Council pulled its public notices from the Wichita Eagle. Officially, the move was about saving taxpayer money. But Bradbury pointed out the city, while facing a $12 million deficit, saved a mere $150,000. She said the decision was really about “sticking it to the paper.”

Max Kautsch, a First Amendment attorney who operates a hotline for journalists through the KPA, said local officials also punish reporters by refusing to hand over public records or by charging outrageous fees for a records request. The officials know that newspapers in Kansas rarely have the resources to pay for a court battle over the records.

“Taking advantage of the Kansas Open Records Act is a time-honored practice,” Kautsch said.

And few Kansas leaders have been willing to stand up for journalists, even after the state became known as a hub of hostility toward a free press. In the state Legislature, the House speaker this year blocked a resolution that would have declared support for a free press in Kansas — even as the chamber readily passed resolutions supporting Israel, Taiwan and St. Patrick’s Day.

Rep. Mari-Lynn Poskin, a Leawood Democrat, recalled watching the “crazy” story unfold in the days after the raid on the Marion County Record. But she wondered at the time: “Where are the defenders of the free press?”

She drafted a resolution declaring support for the freedom of the press, as guaranteed by the U.S. and Kansas constitutions, and gathered 45 co-sponsors — including 10 Republicans with wide-ranging ideology. She thought it would be “a unifying thing” to start the legislative session this past January. But she was “awestruck” by the response from House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican.

“He was livid. He said, ‘This is anti-law enforcement.’ And I said, ‘Wow. I am really sorry you feel that way,’ ” Poskin said.

Hawkins’ spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request to comment for this story.

Former Marion County Record reporter Deb Gruver maintains that local and state governments ultimately were unsuccessful in their attempts to silence their critics in the media.

“They didn’t get what they wanted. They thought they were going to get away with it, and they learned very quickly, no, you don’t get away with this,” Gruver said. “And it’s reopened the conversation about the fourth estate and our role.”

The Marion County Record and Harvey County Now continue to churn out a weekly paper, and Young and the KPA have rolled out an online course called “Earn Your Press Pass.” The idea is to give people living in rural areas access to basic knowledge for getting started as a local news reporter, and to create desirable job candidates for outlets in the area.

Over the course of nine months, Lindsey Young, the co-owner of Harvey County Now and a former high school journalism teacher, built the course.

As Joey Young explained, it was made so that the owner of a local outlet could approach someone in town and “be like, ‘Hey, you’ve got kids in school. You live here. Those are all assets to the newspaper that we never thought about previously.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, you’ve got a ton of institutional knowledge. We’ll teach you the journalism stuff.’ ”

At the Marion County Record,  readership has grown from 2,000 to 6,000 subscribers in the year since the police raid of the newspaper office.

Special prosecutors determined no law enforcement officer broke the law by carrying out the chilling raid, but Meyer filed a federal lawsuit seeking damages in excess of $5 million. He said he would prefer to get a verdict rather than settle the case, even if it costs him money, because he wants to set a precedent.

“The whole point of doing this is not to get money,” Meyer said. “The whole point of doing this is to say ‘you can’t do this crap.’ ”

And he still sees a place for his paper: “If we’ve got truth on our side, there are enough people who still believe in truth.”

Gruver put a finer point on it.

“I think that journalists are public servants, except that we don’t get regular raises and sweet, sweet benefits,” she said. “So I feel like there are a lot of winners in this, actually. And I feel like the next generation of journalists will be winners because of this.”

This story was originally published by the Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Copies of the Aug. 16 edition of the Marion County Record rest on a countertop in the newspaper office. Staffers pulled an all-nighter to get the newspaper out after their equipment was seized by law enforcement. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

TOPEKA, Kan. — The magistrate who authorized last year’s police raid on the Marion County Record escaped discipline from a state panel by making claims that contradict statements in federal lawsuits about how the search warrants arrived in front of her and whether the police chief swore they were true before she signed them.

Magistrate Judge Laura Viar’s secret explanation, obtained by Kansas Reflector, adds a new layer of confusion and mystery to how law enforcement were able to carry out the search and seizure of journalists’ computers and cellphones without regard for state and federal laws that prohibit such police action. It also raises concerns about the low standards set for judges by the Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct.

Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody prepared search warrant applications with the assistance of a sheriff’s deputy that accused newspaper reporter Phyllis Zorn of committing identity theft by looking up a driving record in a Kansas Department of Revenue public database. Publisher and editor Eric Meyer and Councilwoman Ruth Herbel were targeted for having a copy of the record.

In court documents, Cody said he emailed the search warrant applications to County Attorney Joel Ensey, whose office delivered them to the judge. Ensey, in an email he sent to himself a day after the Aug. 11, 2023, raid, said he printed off the applications without reading them and had an office manager deliver them to the judge. That email has been attached to court filings.

Kansas officials downplayed involvement in Marion newspaper raid. Here’s what they knew

A Topeka woman in April filed a complaint against Viar with the Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct after reading Meyer’s lawsuit against Cody and others. The lawsuit questions whether the search warrants were legal if Cody never appeared before the judge.

In Viar’s response to the disciplinary panel, she wrote that District Judge Susan Robson approached her with an unknown law enforcement officer on the morning of the raid. According to Viar, Robson introduced the officer as Cody and said she couldn’t sign the warrants “because of her history with the city,” which isn’t explained. Cody led the judges to believe that Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents, who had assisted Cody in the investigation, were prepared to join the raid, even though they weren’t, Viar wrote.

“I can say with 100% certainty that I did not approve the search warrants and return them to Chief Cody until I had verified under oath his signature and the truthfulness of the statements in the supporting affidavits,” Viar wrote.

The disciplinary panel dismissed the complaint against Viar after receiving her response, according to a letter obtained by Kansas Reflector. It isn’t clear whether the panel, which operates in secrecy by Kansas Supreme Court rule, independently investigated the accuracy of Viar’s account.

The panel members who dismissed the complaint against Viar were Grant County District Judge Bradley Ambrosier; Kansas City, Kansas, attorney Tonda Jones Hill; Rosemary Kolich, of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth; Kansas Court of Appeals Judge Thomas Malone; and Johnson County Judge Thomas Kelly Ryan.

Viar didn’t respond to an email inquiry asking her to reconcile her account with the ones provided by Cody and Ensey.

The commission directed questions to Lisa Taylor, spokeswoman for the Office of Judicial Administration, who said, “I have no information related to this matter.”

Jared McClain, an attorney with the Virginia-based Institute for Justice who represents Herbel in her federal lawsuit over the raid, said he was surprised that Viar’s account differs “so drastically” from the police chief and county attorney.

“Those are completely different versions of the truth,” McClain said. “And I don’t see what Cody or Ensey could have to gain by telling their version of the story, because their version of the story is worse for them. But Viar’s is better for everyone. So if that were the truth, why did the other guys spend a year saying something different?”

McClain also said it was “obvious” there was no probable cause for the searches, because the police theory of a crime dealt with accessing a public record on a public website.

The same disciplinary panel previously dismissed a complaint against Viar that was based on the lack of evidence to support a crime, the federal and state laws that should have prevented the judge from signing the documents, and the violation of constitutional freedoms.

Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, said she was disappointed the disciplinary panel had let Viar off the hook.

“It’s another level of accountability that will never happen,” Bradbury said.

Zorn, the reporter whose work became a pretext for the raid, said she was upset that police “came in with such a lousy excuse for a warrant.”

“This thing was political. And I wasn’t the target. I was actually the pawn,” Zorn said. “They seized upon something and used that as their excuse. And I will say this: I was raised by a small town cop who spent 18 and three-quarters years with highway patrol. He has been dead for four years. There’s no doubt in my mind he is still spinning in his grave.”

This story was originally published by the Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

U.S. attorney Kate Brubacher announces the indictment and reward for Rim Jong Hyok during a July 25, 2024, news conference at the federal courthouse in Kansas City, Kansas. On the right is George Brown, a Department of Justice attorney (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector).

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Federal authorities on Thursday announced the indictment of a North Korea man accused of launching ransomware attacks on hospitals in Kansas and other states, then using the bounty to finance cyber attacks on military bases and defense contractors.

Rim Jong Hyok, a member of North Korea’s military intelligence agency, faces federal charges of conspiracy to hack computers and conspiracy to launder money. Federal authorities are offering up to a $10 million reward for information about Hyok and the cybersecurity attacks.

The FBI’s Kansas City field office led the investigation, which began with a May 2021 ransomware attack against an unnamed Kansas hospital. Hyok’s group, known in the private sector as Andariel, also attacked health care providers in Arkansas, Florida and Colorado, and a health care advocacy group in Connecticut.

The group used the ransom payments to lease virtual private servers that were used to launch attacks on NASA, Randolph Air Force Base in Texas, Robbins Air Force Base in Georgia, and defense companies in California, Michigan, Oregon, Massachusetts, China, Taiwan and South Korea.

In total, the FBI identified 17 victims between May 2021 and March 2023.

“Cybersecurity is critical to the systems and structures that uphold our way of life,” said U.S. attorney Kate Brubacher. “This indictment demonstrates our resolve to use every tool to protect the integrity of American organizations from foreign intrusion.”

Brubacher announced the indictment of Hyok during a news conference at the federal courthouse in Kansas City, Kansas, alongside Stephen Cyrus, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Kansas City field office, and attorneys involved in the case.

Hyok was a member of North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, a military intelligence agency, and was last known to be living in North Korea.

The group used a previously unseen malware tool called Maui to seize control of the Kansas hospital’s servers and left behind a ransom note that threatened to post “all your files” on the Internet unless a cryptocurrency payment was made.

“Please do not waste your time! You have 48 hours only!” the note said. “After that the Main server will double your price. Let us know if you have any questions.”

The hospital quickly agreed to make the payment, and also contacted the FBI, which began its investigation.

Cyrus said the North Korea group laundered the ransom money it received from hospitals and used the funds to launch attacks on “some of our most sophisticated military weapons systems.”

“Our cyber adversaries use ransomware operations for financial gain, to steal proprietary information from our most advanced tech companies, and disrupt our critical infrastructure,” Cyrus said.

The FBI was able to identify a cryptocurrency account linked to the scheme and recover funds that are in the process of being returned to the victims.

A federal grand jury this week indicted Hyok on the conspiracy charges. The hacking charge would carry a sentence of up to five years, and the money laundering charge would carry a sentence of up to 20 years, according to court records.

The U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice program is offering up to $10 million for information leading to the identification of any person, including Hyok, who is acting under the control of a foreign government and engages in malicious cyber activities. Officials said the money is not meant to be a bounty.

“We use every tool in our efforts to fight malware and ransomware attackers, and this is one tool,” said Brubacher, the federal prosecutor. “We are working closely with international partners. And certainly there could be regime change in North Korea. This is one step in pursuing justice against Rim, and borders will not stop us.”

This story was originally published by Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Brady Singer of the Kansas City Royals throws in the first inning against the Houston Astros at Kauffman Stadium in April (Ed Zurga/Getty Images).

LAWRENCE, Kansas — On the eve of a vote that could yield $750 million for a new Kansas City Royals baseball stadium in Kansas, a team executive met with several Democratic state lawmakers at a local steakhouse.

Brooks Sherman, chief operating officer for the Royals, and lobbyists hosted lawmakers at the Six Mile Chop House and Tavern on Monday “to talk about the Royals interest in Kansas,” according to an email from a lobbyist inviting Kansas House and Senate Democrats.

Outside the restaurant, lawmakers said they weren’t concerned about the idea of their votes on legislation worth hundreds of millions of dollars being influenced over dinner.

“It happens,” said Sen. Marci Francisco, a Lawrence Democrat. “Most of the discussions in the legislature go on behind closed doors.”

The meal came the night before lawmakers were expected to vote on whether to expand a state tax incentive program to help finance a new stadium for the Royals or the Kansas City Chiefs to lure the teams from Missouri.

Chiefs, Royals ask Kansas for incentives to allow teams to leave Missouri

The bill, which was discussed in an informational hearing Monday, would enhance the state’s existing Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program to provide up to 75% of the project’s cost for a professional football or baseball stadium project with a minimum $1 billion investment. STAR Bonds are issued to pay for the construction and repaid by the increased state sales tax revenue at the project site.

Normally, STAR Bonds, which are intended to help pay for tourism and entertainment destinations, are only authorized to finance up to 50% of a project. Debt on a stadium constructed under the expansion wouldn’t have to be repaid for 30 years instead of the normal 20.

The project could also receive a boost from liquor taxes generated in the STAR Bond district and revenues from a fund Kansas created when it legalized sports betting.

The Chiefs shut down a city block near the Capitol in Topeka for a rally at the Celtic Fox restaurant at lunchtime Tuesday.

On her way into the restaurant, Francisco said she wasn’t supporting the current bill but would be interested to know whether the Royals would support a standalone deal. She wasn’t sure what level of impact dinners with lobbyists have on lawmakers’ overall support.

Francisco said she was uncomfortable that revenue information from the project would not be released and that there was not enough public testimony on the legislation.

Rep. Jerry Stogsdill, a Democrat from Prairie Village, said it was “par for the course” for lawmakers to get lobbied at evening events. He said he has discussed issues with lobbyists and asked for information but that in his eight years in the Legislature he has never been influenced to change his vote on an issue.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a single person in there tonight that is going to be persuaded to vote against their conscience and against their constituents,” he said.

Stogsdill said he imagined he’d vote for the legislation and thought a stadium would be an economic boon to the community around it.

Sen. Ethan Corson, a fellow Prairie Village Democrat, said didn’t see Kansas’ efforts to help finance one or both stadiums as competing with Missouri. He’d be fine if the teams stayed in Kansas City, Missouri, but he said the Missouri Legislature is “beyond dysfunctional.”

“I worry about their ability to do anything, really,” Corson said, “so I think this is a chance to put something on the table so, that way, we can say we made a reasonable effort to keep the teams in the metro.”

Rep. Linda Featherston, an Overland Park Democrat, said Monday she declined to attend the lobbying event.

“I don’t want there to be any questions about undue influence,” she said.

Rep. Cindy Neighbor, a Shawnee Democrat, attended Monday’s dinner and recounted the sales pitch in a meeting of House Democrats Tuesday morning.

She said the Royals are looking at three potential sites in Wyandotte County where they could build a 34,500-seat stadium. The team, she said, believes its current home, Kauffman Stadium, is crumbling and that repairs would cost at least $800 million. It also doesn’t have enough office space or room for medical personnel.

Royals executives told attendees that most ticket buyers are from Johnson County, Neighbor said, and that the team is not interested in having conversations about staying where they are.

“The Royals do not feel welcome in Kansas City, Missouri, right now,” Neighbor said.

The Royals declined to comment.

Marion Councilwoman Ruth Herbel waits Aug. 11, 2023, in the Marion County Record office following the raid on the newsroom and her home. (Sam Bailey/Kansas Reflector)

TOPEKA, Kan. — Former Marion Councilwoman Ruth Herbel alleges in federal court that city officials orchestrated an illegal raid of her home — alongside the raid of the Marion County Record — as part of a conspiracy to silence criticism.

The Institute for Justice, a Virginia-based law firm that says it represents “everyday people” in opposition to abuses of government power, filed the lawsuit on Herbel’s behalf against former Mayor David Mayfield, former Police Chief Gideon Cody, Sheriff Jeff Soyez and other local authorities.

“Ruth ran for city council in Marion at age 76 because she was tired of her local government’s dishonesty and lack of transparency,” the Institute for Justice says in the lawsuit. “She quickly learned, though, that the men with the power in Marion were resistant to change, and public scrutiny.”

Herbel’s lawsuit is the fifth to be filed in response to the Aug. 11, 2023, raids by city and county law enforcement of the newspaper office, the publisher’s home and Herbel’s home. Recent court filings show the cases could be eventually consolidated.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is reviewing the actions by law enforcement, local officials and journalists before turning findings over to special prosecutors who will decide whether to file criminal charges.

Herbel’s lawsuit alleges violations of constitutional rights to free speech and protections from unreasonable searches and seizures. The narrative is consistent with a lawsuit filed April 1 by Marion County Record editor and publisher Eric Meyer, whose mother, Joan, the paper’s co-publisher, died of stress-induced heart failure a day after police raided her home.

The lawsuits accuse Mayfield of seeking vengeance for criticism of his actions.

As mayor, he once called Herbel a “bitch” during an executive session of the city council, her lawsuit contends. Mayfield asked the city attorney send a letter warning her that it would be illegal to speak about city business without the council’s full approval. He threatened to admonish her in a public meeting.

The lawsuit recalls Mayfield’s failed attempt to gather signatures for a recall election against Herbel, as well as a “harebrained scheme” to convince her she could be fired as an “at will” employee, even though she was a duly elected councilwoman.

In a July 25, 2023, social media post, Mayfield said it was not Black people, Asians, Latinos, women or “gays” but rather journalists who were “the real villains in America.”

A local restaurateur who asked the council for a liquor license became the unwitting catalyst for the raids when a resident pointed out that she had been driving on a suspended license, apparently with local law enforcement knowledge, after a drunken driving conviction. The resident distributed a copy of a government agency letter that outlined the situation.

“Mayor Mayfield and his allies hatched a plan to use the letter as pretext to punish Ruth and the Record,” according to Herbel’s lawsuit. “The theory they came up with was that, because the letter listed the restaurateur’s driver’s license number, simply possessing the letter was illegal and that someone ‘obviously’ stole the restaurateur’s identity to get the letter.”

But instead of a “real investigation,” the lawsuit alleges, the mayor worked with the police chief and sheriff “to maliciously procure baseless warrants” that were “based on lies and omissions.”

“No one even swore the allegations were true,” according to the lawsuit.

Cody, the police chief, didn’t sign the affidavits under oath, as required by federal and state law, and his unsworn signatures on the four affidavits appear to vary.

The lawsuit accuses local officials of “judge-shopping” for somebody who would sign the warrants. Instead of taking them to the district judge for the county, they sent them to Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, who also had a history of drunken driving. Viar falsely asserted the applications were “sworn to before me” when she signed them — an action that is now subject to a complaint before the state’s judicial ethics panel.

The warrant failed to note that Herbel had received the letter from a tipster, that it was publicly available on Facebook, that the information included in the letter is a matter of public record, that she shared the letter as a public official in advance of a city council vote, or that police were knowingly allowing someone to drive on a suspended license.

“To make things worse, the warrants were also absurdly overbroad,” the lawsuit alleges. “But that hardly mattered because the police just took every phone and computer, without bothering to limit their searches to the terms of the overbroad warrants they drafted. The warrants, after all, were just a means to punish their critics.”

The search of Herbel’s home traumatized her husband, Ronald, who suffers from dementia. Police knowingly left the couple without a phone to contact their children or doctors. He remained on the couch for hours after police left and wouldn’t eat. The experience intensified his depression and anxiety. He couldn’t eat or sleep in the days after the raid. He would pace the house and cry.

The lawsuit contends it “should have been obvious” that there was no reason to search Herbel’s house. Her supposed crimes were identity theft and official misconduct, which involves the use of confidential information to intentionally harm someone.

“Simply obtaining a copy of a KDOR record on social media is not a crime,” her attorneys say the in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says the news media’s spotlight on the raids spared Herbel from arrest. Cody sent an email to county prosecutor Joel Ensey with the subject line: “Crimes?” The email outlined five possible ways they could charge Herbel with a crime. As the lawsuit puts it, the descriptions of supposed crimes “betray Chief Cody’s willful and malicious misunderstanding or disregard of the law.”

“The conspiracy started with the defined goal of silencing Ruth Herbel and Eric Meyer, and the conspirators worked backward from there to find the closest thing to a crime that would let them achieve that goal,” the lawsuit contends.

This article originally appeared in the Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Marion County Record publisher Eric Meyer talks to reporters during an Aug. 16, 2023, news conference in his newsroom (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector).

MARION — Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody enlisted the support of local and state law enforcement officials in the days before he led raids on the local newspaper office, the publisher’s home and the home of a city councilwoman.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Kansas Department of Revenue, Marion County Sheriff’s Office and the Office of the State Fire Marshal — along with the county attorney and a magistrate judge — were complicit in the Aug. 11 raid or knew it was imminent. But in the days that followed, they largely downplayed their involvement.

Police reports, internal agency emails and other documents obtained by Kansas Reflector provide a clearer picture of the raid than the early one that crystallized as a fast-moving story attracted international attention.

There was the restaurateur who wanted a liquor license. The reporter who looked up the restaurateur’s drunken driving record. The police chief who knew reporters were investigating his past misconduct. The newspaper publisher with his strident editorial voice, and the demise of his defiant 98-year-old mother.

We now know there was also a KBI agent and his supervisor who had advance copies of the search warrants. A sheriff’s detective who wrote the search warrants. Department of Revenue staff who treated the reporter’s actions as criminal. And a fire marshal’s investigator who participated in the raid even though he seemed to realize it was unlawful.

Then there was the county attorney who claimed he didn’t review the search warrant affidavits until after the raid, even though police had sent them to him for preapproval. And the magistrate judge, with her own checkered driving record, who signed three of the search warrants but refused a fourth.

Officers from three agencies converged Aug. 11 to seize personal cellphones, computers and other items from Marion County Record publisher Eric Meyer, two of his reporters — including one who wasn’t even a target in the investigation — and Councilwoman Ruth Herbel. Police also rummaged through a reporter’s desk drawer and Meyer’s paperwork to take stock of confidential sources.

There is no indication in any of the records obtained by Kansas Reflector that anybody anywhere suggested the raid would be a bad idea, despite federal protections for journalists and the flimsy pretext of a crime.

Katherine Jacobsen, U.S. and Canada program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said it is incredibly concerning that so many taxpayer-funded agencies were willing to tacitly or directly sign off on a gross violation of the freedom of the press.

“I think the most charitable interpretation I can come up with is they just didn’t know and were ill informed about freedom of the press and the rights that journalists have in this country,” Jacobsen said. “A more nefarious interpretation is, of course, that they just didn’t care and were in fact kind of happy to see the journalists put in their place.”

Before and after

Marion County Record reporter Phyllis Zorn was exhausted Aug. 16 after staying up all night to publish the first edition of the newspaper since the raid five days earlier.

Scrutiny of the raid had intensified as the police chief and KBI director issued statements about journalists not being above the law — a distraction from the reality that if anyone had broken the law, it was the police. The newspaper’s 200-point bold type headline that morning read: “SEIZED … but not silenced.”

Cody, the police chief, had notified County Attorney Joel Ensey of his investigation in an Aug. 8 email, and sent copies of the search warrants to Ensey before taking them to a magistrate. A day after the raid, Ensey told Cody he would need to get a district court judge to sign the warrants so that the evidence seized during the raid could be reviewed by law enforcement outside of Marion.

“I also believe with the scrutiny this will receive, another judge reviewing the warrant would be a good idea, especially with some of the new information learned during the search,” Ensey said.

But as copies of the newspaper were being delivered around town on Aug. 16, and new subscribers streamed into the newspaper office, Ensey claimed he had reviewed the search warrants in detail on Aug. 14. He said there was insufficient evidence to support the raids and that items seized would be returned.

Zorn, wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, leaned against the doorway to the sheriff’s office evidence locker, where a deputy was retrieving the electronic devices that police had collected and bagged during the raid. The reporter was listening to Sheriff Jeff Soyez assign blame to the police department.

“It’s not my search warrant,” Soyez said. “It was PD’s search warrant.”

He leaned in to say quietly in Zorn’s ear: “You didn’t see me over there.”

“No, I’m glad I didn’t,” she told him, “because as relaxed as it is between you and me, I probably would have said some things.”

In fact, it was one of Soyez’ officers, Detective Aaron Christner, who had advised Cody on Aug. 8 to get a search warrant to preserve emails. Christner then drafted the search warrants and sent them to Cody to modify and sign. During the raid, Christner used software to make a digital copy of files from Zorn’s computer, which police initially didn’t disclose on their evidence log.

Ensey and the sheriff weren’t the only ones offering a cop-out.

Anyone can access driving records legally through the Department of Revenue’s online database — if they have a name, date of birth, and driver’s license number. Marion resident Pam Maag on Aug. 2 sent Zorn and Herbel a copy of restaurateur Kari Newell’s driving record, which showed Newell had a DUI and had been driving without a license. Zorn used KDOR’s website to verify the record.

According to Marion police officer Zach Hudlin’s written summary of an Aug. 7 phone call, an unnamed employee in KDOR’s IT department told him “there was a loophole or a vulnerability in their system that would allow someone to access another person’s private data.” The IT staffer confirmed that Zorn had looked up Newell’s driving record on Aug. 4.

Emails exchanged among Chad Burr, with KDOR’s Office of Special Investigations; Garrett Kaufman, technical services manager at KDOR; Craig Bowser, with the Office of Information Technology Services; Desiree Perry, a cyber intelligence specialist; and Valerie Pitts, IT manager at KDOR, show the agency treated Zorn’s use of the website as a crime. Kaufman said it was good that police were working with the KBI.

KDOR didn’t respond to an email asking why the agency’s perspective changed in the days after the raid.

On Aug. 21, KDOR spokesman Zach Denney told the Kansas City Star that “this information is public record and available online.” He told NBC News “the motor vehicle driver’s checker is public-facing and free-use.”

Cody emailed KBI special agent Todd Leeds on Aug. 8 and asked for assistance. Leeds forwarded the request to his supervisor, special agent in charge Bethanie Popejoy, then opened a case on “Marion Public Corruption.”

Leeds asked police for cellphone numbers, Facebook account names and email addresses for Newell, Meyer, Herbel, Zorn and Maag. The KBI agent also wanted Newell’s witness statement and Herbel’s emails. Marion police sent Leeds “everything we have currently for the case.”

Hudlin sent copies of search warrants to Leeds on Aug. 10.

“Did you guys execute this today?” Leeds asked.

“No,” Hudlin replied. “My understanding is that the county attorney wasn’t in the office today.”

A day after the raid, Cody wrote to Popejoy at the KBI to notify her of the items police had gathered during the raid. He CC’d Ensey on the email.

“I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the KBI’s support,” Cody wrote. “It has been tough being the Chief of Police today.”

Two days after the raid, KBI director Toni Mattivi professed his belief in free speech while defending his agency’s involvement in the investigation and taking a jab at news media. Mattivi said his agent did not apply for the search warrants and wasn’t present during the raid.

Attorney General Kris Kobach, who has oversight of the KBI, told reporters on Aug. 16 that the KBI “was not notified of the searches prior to their taking place.”

The s***storm

Cody told the KBI that Magistrate Judge Laura Viar “scrutinized the evidence and decided it was not enough for me to get Pam Maag’s electronic devices.”

But Viar approved search warrants for the Marion County Record newsroom, Meyer’s home and Herbel’s home. The alleged crime was identity theft.

On the morning of Aug. 11, Marion police asked Chris Mercer, an investigator with the Office of the State Fire Marshal, to help with the raid.

Mercer agreed. He was briefed and assigned to Meyer’s house, according to the report he filed. He arrived at 10:55 a.m.

There, he secured Meyer’s cellphone and laptop and made Meyer leave a stack of paperwork on a table. Mercer told Meyer and his mother, Joan, the 98-year-old co-owner of the paper, they were free to leave.

From Mercer’s notes: “Eric home walking around with phone he’s upset, ‘we in s***storm,’ he says.”

Joan Meyer alternated between being calm and outraged, Mercer wrote. She called the judge stupid. Demanded police get out of her house. Called them Nazis.

She told Mercer she had previously suffered two strokes. If she has another, she said, that’s “going to be murder.”

“Joan crying and violent verbally, sitting in living room, Nazi comments, angry kicking walker,” Mercer wrote.

At one point, Mercer heard Eric Meyer talking to someone on the landline: “Cody has checkered past, and he will now have access to that information!”

The phone rang after Eric Meyer left to go to the newsroom, which was under siege. The caller was the author of this story. Joan Meyer answered, then handed the phone to a sheriff’s officer, who wasn’t interested in answering questions.

“Joan appears to be getting more confused,” Mercer wrote. She was crying and mumbling about corruption.

At the newsroom, police read reporters Zorn and Deb Gruver their Miranda rights. Gruver, who wasn’t named in any of the search warrant affidavits, told Cody she didn’t have anything to do with Newell’s driving record. Cody ripped her personal cellphone from her hand.

Surveillance video shows Hudlin uncovered a file in Gruver’s desk drawer and encouraged the police chief to take a look, the Marion County Record reported.

“Hmm,” Cody said. “Keeping a personal file on me. I don’t care.”

The first page in the folder revealed a confidential source who had provided information about Cody’s time on the Kansas City, Missouri, police force. A half-dozen of Cody’s former coworkers had told Gruver that Cody faced demotion for sexual harassment before taking the Marion job in April.

When police arrived at Herbel’s house, she was in the bathroom. Her husband, who suffers from dementia, ran in a circle through the house trying to find her. He went to the backyard and screamed her name. She sat him down on the couch to try to calm him.

The councilwoman’s supposed crime involved forwarding Newell’s driving record to the city manager and raising concerns about whether the city council should grant Newell a liquor license. A political adversary, Mayor David Mayfield, had tried and failed to remove Herbel from office before. A felony crime would disqualify her from public service.

Police took her cellphone and computer during the raid, leaving her without a way to call for medical help if her husband needed it. She had to drive 35 miles to a town where she could buy a new phone.

Herbel’s husband ended up staying on the couch for more than three hours. Following the raid, she has taken him to the doctor several times because of his declining health.

“I will never forgive this police force or the sheriff’s office or the county attorney or anybody else for what they did to him,” Herbel said. “I mean, they can kick an old lady — and I’d say I’m an old lady because I’m 80 years old. And I can’t run that fast either. But they don’t do that to my husband. He’s 88, and I just felt that this shortened his lifespan tremendously when they did this, and I’ll have hard feelings against them all.”

Federal protections

By Mercer’s own account, he made sure city police went through the stack of paperwork he required Eric Meyer to leave behind.

Meanwhile, Mercer wrote, Joan Meyer was “yelling not to touch her stuff, calling us a**holes.”

She hoped officers would fall down the stairs and break their necks. She threw her walker.

“The team left and I was the last one out of the front door, while she sat in her recliner continuing to yell at us,” Mercer wrote. “She mentioned something about shoot if we come back, but I disregarded it as a I walked out the door.”

Joan Meyer died the next day. The coroner said the stress of the raid was a contributing factor.

Mercer’s report is dated Aug. 11, the day of the raid. Attached to it is a three-page article written by media law attorneys Jonathan E. Buchan and Corby Anderson in 2001.

The article — “When the police knock at your door: Newsroom search warrants” — is about the federal Privacy Protection Act, which requires criminal investigators to get a subpoena instead of a search warrant. Congress passed the law to address concerns about police weaponizing search warrants against journalists.

Journalists “feared that the magistrates who issued warrants for these searches, often political allies of law enforcement officials, would be biased in deciding whether there was probable cause to justify issuing a warrant,” the attorneys wrote. “In addition, they feared that such searches would physically disrupt the newsroom and its operations.”

A spokeswoman for the Office of the State Fire Marshal didn’t respond to questions for this story about why the legal memo is attached to Mercer’s report, or why he agreed to join an unlawful raid.

Max Kautsch, president of the Kansas Coalition for Open Government, said the reference to federal protections attached to Mercer’s report “goes a long way to show that the decision-makers at the state and local levels involved with authorizing and executing the searches knew or should have known the searches were contrary to clearly established law.”

A convenient excuse

Four days after the raid, Marion Councilman Zach Collett emailed the League of Kansas Municipalities. He was “beginning to wonder if it would be beneficial to our community to have a council member grant an interview request?”

“I would be comfortable doing this, but would most definitely want lots of coaching from someone more versed in crisis communication than myself,” Collett wrote. “I was wondering if the League offers any services like that? I am still unsure of the best route forward, but I am tired of our community being portrayed the way (it) is in a national headline currently.”

Nathan Eberline, executive director of the League of Municipalities, referred Collett to two firms that focus on crisis communications and pointed him to a YouTube webinar on the topic.

“Given the weight of the media focus, I agree that it would be prudent to speak with an expert,” Eberline said.

Eric Meyer said nobody in Marion, including himself, wanted this kind of publicity.

“I mean, we’ve become the laughingstock of the free world, really, in terms of we’ve got these Keystone Cops and the judge who doesn’t know anything and had drunk driving arrests, and prosecutors who can’t take time to read stuff, and city council members who don’t answer questions,” Meyer said.

In the weeks that followed, ethics complaints were filed against Ensey and Viar. Gruver left the newspaper and filed a civil lawsuit against Cody in federal court. Cody resigned after KSHB reported he had instructed Newell to delete text messages between them. Hudlin is now the interim police chief. Herbel is up for re-election Tuesday.

Melissa Underwood, spokeswoman for the KBI, said the agency’s investigation “remains ongoing.”

“We expect to be able to update on the case soon,” Underwood said. “At that time we should be able to answer some additional questions.”

Meyer believes the raid was orchestrated by local figures who wanted to bully him.

“And for what? So we got Kari Newell’s driving record,” Meyer said. “This isn’t a big drug deal. This isn’t embezzlement.”

The newspaper’s website recently was subjected to a malware attack, Meyer said.

“That’s probably a more serious crime than what we were accused of — particularly since when all this was said and done, nobody did anything about it,” Meyer said. “And we told them what we’d done. So what crime existed? No, they just saw this as a convenient excuse.”

This article was first published by the Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

A lawsuit says Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, top left, spearheaded the Aug. 11 raid of the Marion County Record in retaliation against the journalists who worked there. Reporter Deb Gruver’s desk appears at the bottom right. She filed the lawsuit in federal court (Marion County Record screen capture of surveillance video).

TOPEKA, Kansas — Police Chief Gideon Cody arrived at the Marion County Record and handed a copy of a search warrant to Deb Gruver, the veteran reporter who had questioned him about alleged misconduct at his previous job.

As Gruver read the search warrant, she told Cody she needed to call her publisher and editor, Eric Meyer. The police chief, who was ostensibly investigating another reporter’s computer use, snatched the phone out of Gruver’s hand.

The scene is recounted in a lawsuit Gruver filed Wednesday in federal court that says Cody had no legal basis for taking her personal cellphone. She is seeking damages for “emotional distress, mental anguish and physical injury” as a result of Cody’s “malicious and recklessly indifferent violation” of her First Amendment free press rights and Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure.

“Although I brought this suit in my own name, I’m standing up for journalists across the country,” Gruver said. “It is our constitutional right to do this job without fear of harassment or retribution, and our constitutional rights are always worth fighting for.”

Cody spearheaded the Aug. 11 raid under the pretense that reporter Phyllis Zorn committed identity theft when she accessed public records on a public website. His real motivation, Gruver’s lawsuit contends, was to punish the journalists for investigating and reporting news stories.

Gruver had questioned Cody in April, when he was hired as police chief, about allegations made by his former colleagues with the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department. They accused Cody of making sexist comments, being a poor leader and driving over a dead body at a crime scene. The newspaper initially declined to write about the allegations without an on-the-record source or documentation that Cody was in danger of being demoted when he left Kansas City.

In Marion, a town of about 1,900, Cody became an ally of Kari Newell, who owns a restaurant and cafe.

A dizzying drama unfolded in the days preceding the Aug. 11 raid as Newell had Cody evict Meyer and Zorn from a public meeting at her cafe, and a confidential source provided Zorn with information that could jeopardize Newell’s efforts to obtain a liquor license at her restaurant.

The source said Newell had lost her driver’s license following a 2008 drunken driving conviction. When Zorn asked the Kansas Department of Revenue how to verify the information, the agency directed her to search the public records in its online database. Meyer told Cody about the information in part because the source also alleged that police knew Newell was driving without a license and had ignored repeated violations by Newell of driving laws.

Cody prepared an affidavit that claimed Newell was the victim of identity theft, and he requested permission to raid the newspaper office. Cody wrote in his affidavit that Zorn had accessed Newell’s driver’s license history by impersonating Newell or lying. Magistrate Laura Viar authorized the raid.

Nothing in the affidavit or search warrant connects Gruver or her cellphone to the alleged crime. The search warrant only identifies Zorn as a suspect.

Cody ignored federal and state laws that prohibit authorities from taking journalists’ materials as he and his four police officers, aided by two sheriff’s deputies, seized an assortment of electronic devices from the newsroom that were unrelated to Zorn’s supposed crime.

Officers read the reporters their Miranda warning during the raid, then left them waiting outside for three hours in heat that reached 100 degrees. After the raid, Gruver went to the sheriff’s office, where police stored the confiscated equipment, to ask for her personal cellphone.

Gruver spoke with Cody there and told him she had nothing to do with the search of driver’s license records.

Cody grinned.

“I actually believe you,” he said, according to the court filing.

The equipment was returned five days later, when the county attorney determined there wasn’t evidence to support the search warrants. Police altered an evidence list to avoid disclosing they secretly copied and unlawfully retained files from the computers.

Gruver is seeking at least $75,000, the minimum threshold for filing a civil case in federal court. She is suing Cody in his individual capacity for the “shocking, unprecedented and unconstitutional police raid,” her lawsuit says. Cody could claim qualified immunity, but the lawsuit argues that no reasonable police officer would think his actions were constitutional.

Blake Shuart, a Wichita attorney, is representing Gruver.

In a statement, Shuart pointed to Gruver’s 35 years of experience as a journalist. She has won numerous awards for her reporting and is a former board member of the Kansas Coalition for Open Government.

“Gruver is not the one to target for a violation of fundamental constitutional rights,” Shuart said. “She will fight for herself and her fellow journalists.”

Newell is not a defendant in the lawsuit, but her name appears 25 times through 18 pages of the complaint.

The lawsuit notes that Gruver and Newell had been friendly before Cody’s arrival. When Gruver was new to town in August 2022, the lawsuit says, she wrote a “glowing review” of Newell’s restaurant. The review complemented Newell’s spatchcock chicken with whole new potatoes and asparagus, followed by “death by chocolate” cake.

Then, in April 2023, Newell objected to Gruver talking to sources on the phone while at her restaurant and began complaining about her reporting, the lawsuit says. In a contentious exchange of text messages, according to the lawsuit, Newell told Gruver she was not one to mess with.

News of police raiding a newsroom attracted international scrutiny. The Marion County Record continued to publish its weekly paper and report on the circumstances surrounding the raid.

Recent Record stories revealed additional allegations made against Cody by his former colleagues. A former internal affairs detective for the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department said he “lost count” of Cody’s violations. The detective asked not to be named.

“He has horrible, horrible ‘little man syndrome.’ His ego is taller than he is,” the detective said.

This story was originally published by the Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Editor and publisher Eric Meyer gestures during a press conference Wednesday at the Marion County Ledger. Max McCoy / Kansas Reflector

TOPEKA — Affidavits signed by a police chief and magistrate to warrant the raid on the Marion County Record were supposed to provide evidence that a reporter committed a crime.

Instead, they serve as evidence that the local officials abused their power.

Police Chief Gideon Cody received approval from Magistrate Judge Laura Viar to conduct the Aug. 11 raids on the newspaper office, the publisher’s home, and the home of a city councilwoman after small-town drama erupted over a restaurant owner’s quest for a liquor license. Officers hauled away computers, hard drives and reporters’ personal cellphones during the newsroom raid — inviting worldwide condemnation for the brazen attack on press freedom.

Cody claimed a day after the raids that he would be “vindicated” when the rest of the story became public. But the probable cause affidavits he wrote before the raids provide little information that wasn’t already reported.

The raids were based on the premise that Marion County Record reporter Phyllis Zorn broke the law when she received a driver’s license record from a confidential source and verified the information through a Kansas Department of Revenue database. But state and federal law clearly support a reporter’s ability to access such information, and separate laws shield journalists from police searches and seizures.

Jared McClain, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, said the affidavits confirm that “the police’s strong-arm tactics were completely unjustified.” It should have been obvious to the magistrate that the searches were illegal, he said.

“Too often, the warrant process is just a way for police to launder their lack of probable cause through a complicit local judge,” McClain said. “Until we start holding judges accountable for enabling the abusive and lawless behavior of the police, incidents like this are just going to keep happening.”

Who’s who in Marion

The complicated circumstances surrounding the raids involve a cast of characters who include:

• Cody, who left the Kansas City, Missouri, police force in April while facing possible discipline and demotion for allegations of making insulting and sexist comments to a female officer, the Kanas City Star reported.
• Viar, whose pair of DUIs in 2012 included drunkenly crashing into a school building. There is no public record of that case in the state’s court system, the Wichita Eagle reported.
• Kari Newell, the supposed victim of identity theft. She owns Chef’s Plate at Parlour 1886 and was seeking a liquor license for the restaurant. She also owns the cafe Kari’s Kitchen.
• Zorn, the newspaper reporter who received a tip that Newell had been convicted of a DUI in 2008. Zorn verified the information through the KDOR database.
• Eric Meyer, publisher of the Marion County Record.
• Joan Meyer, the 98-year-old mother of Eric who co-owned the Marion County Record and lived with her son. She died a day after the raid on her home left her so stressed she couldn’t eat or sleep.
• Joel Ensey, the county attorney who declared Aug. 16 that the search warrants were based on “insufficient evidence.” The property was returned that day.
• Jeremy Ensey, brother to the county attorney. He and his wife, Tammy, own the Historic Elgin Hotel, where Chef’s Plate is located.
• Ruth Herbel, the only city council member to vote against the approval of Newell’s request for a liquor license.
• Pam Maag, a Marion resident who notified Herbel about Newell’s driver’s license record.
• U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, who held an Aug. 1 meet-and-greet at Kari’s Kitchen. Cody, at Newell’s request, removed Eric Meyer and Zorn from the event.

Supporting evidence

Before police can carry out a search warrant, they need to convince a judge that they have evidence a crime has been committed.

That evidence is presented in the form of a probable cause affidavit.

Cody’s evidence for the raid on the newsroom starts with a reference to the Aug. 1 meet-and-greet with LaTurner and the newspaper’s story about being ejected.

Maag — identified in a separate affidavit as the wife of a Kansas Highway Patrol officer — sent a social media message to Herbel regarding Newell’s driver’s license history. Herbel in turn notified the city administrator and told him she wanted to deny Newell her liquor license.

Eric Meyer, meanwhile, emailed Cody to let him know the newspaper had received a copy of Newell’s driver’s license record and raised the question of whether the record had been obtained through police misconduct.

Cody contacted the Kansas Department of Revenue, which said Newell’s records had been downloaded twice — by Zorn and someone claiming to be Newell.

On Aug. 7, ahead of the meeting where the city council would vote on Newell’s liquor license, Cody told Newell that the newspaper and Herbel were aware of her DUI. Newell denied accessing the KDOR website, which meant “someone obviously stole her identity,” Cody wrote in the affidavit.

“Downloading the document involved either impersonating the victim or lying about the reasons why the record was being sought,” Cody wrote, a conclusion he based not on law but on “options available on the Kansas DOR records website.”

During the Aug. 7 city council meeting, Newell accused Herbel and the newspaper of wrongdoing.

According to Newell, Eric Meyer responded with this threat: “If you pursue anything I will print the story and will continue to use anything I can to come at you. I will own your restaurant.”

Meyer, in an interview with the Washington Post, denied making the threat.

The Marion County Record published an article in the Aug. 9 edition that responded to allegations made by Newell during the city council meeting.

Based on that narrative, Cody concluded police needed to seize all electronic devices, utility records and other materials from the newspaper office, as well as the homes of the publisher and councilwoman. Viar approved.

Hours after the police raids, Viar told Zorn the affidavits hadn’t been filed with the court.

The affidavits were signed Aug. 11, a Friday, but appeared in the court record three days later. That’s because Kansas rules prohibit a court from acknowledging a probable cause affidavit until it receives notice that the warrant has been executed, said Lisa Taylor, a spokeswoman for Kansas courts. The three-day delay in this case suggests the notification came after the close of business on Aug. 11.

Journalism is not a crime

Bernie Rhodes, a partner at Lathrop GPM in Kansas City, Missouri, who is representing the Marion County Record, provided a legal memo outlining state and federal law.

While it is unlawful to disclose personal information from a motor vehicle record, including an individual’s driver’s license photograph, state law makes it clear that personal information “does not include information on vehicular accidents, driving violations, and drivers’ status.” It also allows personal information to be disclosed for research activities and statistical reports, so long as it isn’t published or used to contact individuals.

Courts have determined that reporters have a “legitimate research purpose” when investigating stories and should be allowed access to vital records, according to the annotated memo.

Rhodes said the affidavits establish that Cody knew the only thing Zorn did was verify the authenticity of Newell’s driver’s license record by going to a public website.

“Zorn had every right, under both Kansas law and U.S. law, to access Newell’s driver’s record to verify the information she had been provided by a source,” Rhodes said.

“As I have said numerous times in the last week, it is not a crime in America to be a reporter,” Rhodes added. “These affidavits prove that the only so-called ‘crime’ Chief Cody was investigating was being a reporter.”

Max Kautsch, president of the Kansas Coalition for Open Government, said the affidavits make it clear that Zorn didn’t violate state law regarding the access of driver’s license information, much less the supposed crime of identity theft.

“The disclosed information was directly related to a matter in the public interest, namely, whether a person with an invalid driver’s license should be permitted to obtain a liquor license,” Kautsch said. “A prohibition against a reporter verifying information about such a matter from a source would be an unconstitutional and unintended application of the statute.”

This article was initially published by the Kansas Reflector, a part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. 

Marion County Record publisher Eric Meyer holds a copy of the Wednesday paper, featuring the headline “SEIZED … but not silence,” during a news conference at the newspaper office (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector).

MARION, Kansas — Marion County Record staff worked through the night to publish the paper’s weekly edition as scheduled Wednesday, days after police raided the newsroom and confiscated computers, cellphones and other items.

A single word screamed across the top of the paper in 200-point bold type — “SEIZED” — followed by a defiant statement: “… but not silenced.”

Authorities returned property taken by police during Friday’s raid but said they would continue to investigate whether a newspaper reporter had committed a crime by verifying information from a confidential source.

Eric Meyer, the owner and publisher of the newspaper, said it was important the newspaper prevail in this First Amendment fight.

“This just couldn’t stand,” Meyer said. “If it did, it would be the end of people ever being able to send anything anonymously to a newspaper. It would be the end of news organizations ever pursuing any sort of controversial story.”

Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody and his officers executed a search warrant last week at the newspaper office, Meyer’s home and a councilwoman’s home. The action attracted international attention — and contributed to the death of Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, who spent her final hours in anguish over the raid. Funeral services are planned for Saturday.

Meyer said his mother would be pleased by the outpouring of support the newspaper has received in recent days. That includes 2,000 new subscriptions for a newspaper that previously had a circulation of about 4,000.

As distribution staff waited for bundles of newspapers to arrive Wednesday morning from the press in Hutchinson, they handled an unrelenting stream of phone calls from people interested in purchasing a subscription. The calls came from New Hampshire, Florida, New Mexico, New York, Michigan, Texas, Vermont, Germany, Massachusetts, Illinois and Montana.

One of the distribution workers, Bev Baldwin, was wearing a “Keep America Great” shirt in support of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. She didn’t view the attack on her local paper as a partisan issue.

“It’s just something you don’t do,” Baldwin said. “Everybody was shocked.”

Meyer said he brought in extra help Tuesday night to get the paper ready to print. After police took away the computers, hard drives and server, staff cobbled together a machine from discarded computers. They needed to find a disc reader to access back-up files stored on DVDs.

After running a gauntlet of local and national media inquiries, Meyer tasked Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, and a staff photographer with “guarding the gates to keep everyone away from us, so we could get the paper done.”

Phyllis Zorn, a staff reporter, said she had heard of the term “all-nighter,” but she didn’t know it to be real before.

They finished the pages shortly after 5 a.m., and Meyer made it home at 7:30 a.m.

“If we hadn’t been able to figure out how to get computers together, Phyllis and I and everybody else would be handwriting notes out on Post-It notes and putting them on doors around the town, because we were going to publish one way or another,” Meyer said.

Last week’s raid appeared to be a response to information the newspaper received from a confidential source about a local restaurant operator’s driver’s license history, and Zorn’s efforts to verify the information by looking it up in a state database.

Magistrate judge Laura Viar signed a search warrant under the pretense that Cody, the police chief, had reason to believe a newspaper reporter committed identity theft and unlawful use of a computer. It wasn’t clear what evidence would support such a search warrant, or if Cody and Viar understood the significance of raiding a newsroom.

Katherine Jacobsen, program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, was monitoring the situation at the newspaper office Wednesday. She said she wasn’t aware of any other example of police raiding a newsroom in United States history.

“That’s why I’m here,” Jacobsen said.

Marion County attorney Joel Ensey said he had reviewed affidavits that support the search warrants and would ask the district court to release them.

“I have come to the conclusion that insufficient evidence exists to establish a legally sufficient nexus between this alleged crime and the places searched and the items seized,” Ensey said. “As a result, I have submitted a proposed order asking the court to release the evidence seized. I have asked local law enforcement to return the material seized to the owners of the property.”

Ensey said the Kansas Bureau of Investigation was reviewing the case and would submit findings to his office for a charging decision. He would then determine if there is sufficient evidence “to support a charge for any offense.”

At the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, an undersheriff unloaded computer towers, a laptop, reporters’ personal cellphones, a router and other items from the storage locker where they were stored after the raid. The officer handed them over to a forensic expert who was working for the newspaper to examine the devices. The newspaper hoped to find out whether law enforcement had accessed or reviewed any of their records.

Meyer said KBI director Tony Mattivi deserves praise for behind-the-scenes efforts to return items taken from the newsroom.

“I believe this is something that’s all been worked out between our lawyer and him,” Meyer said.

At the newspaper office, a steady stream of concerned residents purchased newspapers and offered their support for the newspaper. Some brought flowers or donuts for staff.

Dennis Calvert drove from Wichita to purchase a six-month subscription. A U.S. Navy veteran who served on a nuclear submarine in the 1970s, she aid many people have died to protect the kind of rights that Marion police violated when they raided the newspaper office.

“What the PD did here, in my opinion, from what I know, they are ****ing out of line,” Calvert said. “They are totally off the ****ing board. They’ve lost their morals, man.”

“It just shoves a burr up my butt,” he added. “This is the kind of stuff, it shouldn’t be tolerated. In my opinion, right now, the police chief should be sitting over here in the jail.”

This story was originally published by Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Alex Tretbar won the PEN America first-place award for poetry writing in this year’s prison writing contest for his “Variations on an Undisclosed Location” (photo submitted).

TOPEKA — Alex Tretbar scratched Lou Reed lyrics into the concrete “rhomboid exoskeleton” of an Oregon jail’s solitary confinement hole, then found the strength to write about it.

“Some people work very hard,” the song goes, “but still they never get it right.”

Tretbar, a Wichita native and University of Kansas graduate, references the experience in “Variations on an Undisclosed Location,” a poem he wrote while incarcerated for five years for his role in a drug-related shooting. PEN America announced Wednesday that Tretbar’s poem was a first-place winner in the organization’s annual prison writing contest.

The award is a testament to Tretbar’s ability to reconcile his battle with opioid addiction through the “self-psychotherapy” of writing. He now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, after being paroled in July.

“I was like, OK, there’s not really much left for me to do other than try to improve myself and get clean, and writing was just — it wasn’t really like a choice. It was just what I do,” Tretbar said.

He said the poem is about working out the effects of segregation on the personality, how time is perceived, and grappling with addiction and suffering and racism.

“It kind of goes all over,” he said.

PEN America champions literary art and free expression through its Prison and Justice Writing program. The organization’s annual awards spotlight writers “who are critically reshaping the conversation on mass incarceration, advocacy, and justice in the United States.”

Robert Pollock, manager of the Prison Writing Program, said this year’s anthology of winners takes its name from Tretbar’s poem because it “resonated with us so deeply.”

The way Tretbar sees it, prison saved his life.

Tretbar grew up in Wichita and graduated in 2012 from KU with degrees in English and journalism. He said he was involved in the Lawrence music scene, where he played bass guitar and managed the college radio station. He also developed an addiction to oxycodone and other opioids while in school.

“I wasn’t necessarily like this reclusive drug addict,” he said. “To a certain extent, I was a functional addict when I was in school. And that ended up not being tenable after I graduated.”

When it became difficult to find pharmaceuticals, Tretbar started using heroin. He moved to Los Angeles to pursue music and journalism — “just running and not really thinking straight” — and washed up in a hostel in Venice Beach, trying to get clean. Then it was on to Portland, Oregon, with a woman he met in L.A.

He worked at a law firm for a while, ghostwriting recommendation letters for immigrants who were trying to get green cards. He was on methadone and still chained to opioids. In 2016, he started using again and lived on the streets for Portland for about a year.

That’s when he made a “horrible mistake.”

Tretbar and a drug dealer went to settle a debt, which led to gunfire. Luckily, no one died. Tretbar fled the scene instead of calling 911 or attending to the victim. He was charged with first-degree attempted robbery.

“Sometimes it doesn’t really seem like me, looking back on it, but it definitely was me,” Tretbar said. “I take responsibility for it.”

In the years that followed, “I’ve tried to live my life in a way that would honor not only the victim, but my family and friends who also suffered while I was in prison for my absence, and also to honor myself and honor the life that I should have been living all along.”

Tretbar said he worked as a librarian and GED tutor at Deer Ridge Correctional Institution, where he met several mentors from Oregon State University who helped him work on his writing. In 2021, he won second-place PEN awards for poetry and fiction writing.

This year’s award-winning poem evolved from a prompt with his mentors. It begins:

The lyrics were from the Velvet Underground song “Beginning to See the Light.”

Tretbar said he draws inspiration from the music of the Velvet Underground, the Stooges and “krautrock” artists. His writing influences include Topeka natives Ben Lerner and Michael Robbins.

He is now working remotely for an old friend at a political consulting agency in Omaha and searching for post-November writing work. He hopes to attend graduate school and work as a GTA next year.

Tretbar said he never thought about prison or mass incarceration until he was arrested.

“Five years was the right amount of time to get sober and get my head straight, and so I have a complicated relationship with prison, because I’m grateful for it,” he said. “Sure, I hate and despise many aspects of incarceration — the mindless bureaucracy and the dehumanization and all of that. But for some people, it works.”

Tretbar said his first impressions about people “have almost always been wrong.” Similarly, other people have the wrong idea about prison.

“I struggle with coming up with a single sentence that says, ‘This is how you should feel about prison.’ But I would say don’t make up your mind too readily about the kind of person that goes to prison and the kind of person that gets out of prison, because every single one of them is different,” Tretbar said.

This story was originally published by the Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and Missouri Gov. Mike Parson at a 2019 event in Kansas City (photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's Office).

TOPEKA, Kansas — Sports wagering in Kansas will launch Sept. 1, state officials said Thursday, allowing bets to be placed at the start of football season.

Lawmakers in April passed legislation to greenlight sports wagering in the state under the administration of the Kansas Lottery. The action was estimated to generate revenues of up to $10 million annually within three years, with funding earmarked to fight white collar crime and attract new sports ventures.

Gov. Laura Kelly signed Senate Bill 84 in May. Lottery officials have worked with the Kansas Racing and Gaming Commission and the operators of four casinos to implement sports wagering well ahead of a Jan. 1 deadline.

Stephen Durrell, executive director of the Kansas Lottery, announced the “tentative soft launch” for placing bets at noon Sept. 1, followed by a full launch Sept. 8.

“A lot of people worked very hard in a very short amount of time to make sports wagering a reality here in the state,” Durrell said in a promotional video.

The timing corresponds with the start of college and NFL football seasons. The Kansas State University football team’s first game is Sept. 3, and the Kansas City Chiefs play their first regular season game on Sept. 11.

“Legalizing sports betting is a common sense solution that keeps Kansans’ money in Kansas and drives business to sporting events, casinos, restaurants, and other entertainment venues,” the governor said. “I want to thank all our partners for working with us to get this done in time for football season.”

Missouri lawmakers have made multiple efforts in recent years to legalize sports wagering. The most recent push this year fell short when it became embroiled in a dispute over video lottery, dooming both proposals in the Missouri Senate.

The Kansas legislation allows for sports bets to be placed in casinos and on mobile apps. The four state-licensed casinos operate in Kansas City, Mulvane, Pittsburg and Dodge City. Tribal casinos are still working out deals with regulators.

State officials said operators were being granted a one-year provisional license, and the platforms that were granted contracts “will be announced soon.”

The website BetKansas.com, which describes itself as a “group of sports betting and casino experts,” identified the platforms that will be ready to launch on Sept. 1 as FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, Caesars, PointsBet and BallyBet.

The Senate passed legislation to authortize sports wagering by a 21-13 vote after the House adopted it on a 73-49 vote.

“Kansans are already betting on sports,” said Sen. Jeff Pittman, a Leavenworth Democrat who voted for the bill. “Many do it on illegal platforms that take money out of the state. Sports betting is not for everyone. This is just another avenue for avid players.”

Opponents of the bill questioned its legality, how revenues would be used, and the detrimental impact of gambling.

“We will destroy people’s lives,” said Sen. Mark Steffen, a Hutchinson Republican. “We don’t know their names right now. We don’t know what they look like. But we do know that will happen.”

This story was originally published by the Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Ashley All, spokeswoman for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, gives a speech Aug. 2, 2022, at a watch party in Overland Park after primary results verified Kansans voted to preserve abortion rights (Lily O’Shea Becker/Kansas Reflector).

TOPEKA — For Ashley All, the effort to defeat a constitutional amendment that would have eliminated abortion rights is the most consequential campaign the Kansas political veteran has worked on.

The issue is personal, All told news reporters during a conference call Wednesday morning.

“I have four daughters, and this” — All paused. “I don’t want to cry,” she said, before continuing. “I have four daughters, and this campaign was for them. When I found out that Roe had fallen and they were going to grow up in a world with fewer constitutional rights than I had, I was motivated, and I think a lot of other Kansans were as well.”

As spokeswoman for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, All helped abortion-rights activists hone a disciplined message that transcended partisan politics and resonated with Kansans across the state. The organization successfully characterized the constitutional amendment as an attack on personal rights and freedom.

A surge of Kansas voters responded by rejecting the amendment in an unexpected landslide. The final results from Tuesday’s election showed a 59-41 margin with more than 900,000 ballots counted, a high-water mark for an August election in Kansas.

“This outcome was a surprise to most observers and even to many of us that have been working on this campaign for years at this point,” said Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom. “The deck was stacked against us from the beginning. From the moment lawmakers passed this amendment back in 2021, and put this vote on the 2022 primary ballot, we knew this would be an uphill battle.”

Instead of giving up, Sweet said, “we got to work.”

The organization built a nonpartisan coalition of voters who knocked on doors and worked the phones.

“We helped Kansans understand that this amendment would lead to an extreme ban on abortion that would put the lives of women and girls at risk,” Sweet said.

Supporters of the amendment said the fight is far from over. Attention has already turned to Kansas Supreme Court justices whose 2019 ruling — which found the state constitution’s right to bodily autonomy includes the decision to terminate a pregnancy — moved anti-abortion forces to draft the constitutional amendment. Six of the seven members of the court are up for a retention vote on the November ballot.

Anti-abortion lobbyists also could attempt to put another constitutional amendment before voters, or urge the Legislature to test the limits of abortion restrictions in state courts.

The Value Them Both Coalition put out a statement calling Tuesday’s vote a temporary setback.

And U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall in a statement Tuesday night said he was disappointed by the blow to the sanctity of life, and vowed to keep fighting.

“Too many times I’ve seen sadness and hurt, without an explanation why — this is one of those moments,” said Marshall, a Kansas Republican. “While I don’t have an answer, I do know that God works all things for good for those who trust him.

“Each of us will have to pray and look in our hearts to see what’s next,” he added. “However, we must not rest as there is much work to be done to support moms who are contemplating abortion, and decide instead for life. Let us all reach out and give them all the help and hope we can.”

All, who has worked on campaigns in Kansas for the past 18 years, said the unprecedented level of energy behind the effort to preserve reproductive health care rights was inspiring.

She said the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was a wake-up call for moderate voters who believed their rights would be protected at the federal level. The already-scheduled vote on the abortion amendment in Kansas provided a unique opportunity to mobilize voters, she said.

The decisive outcome, All said, is an indicator that Americans want to protect their ability to make decisions about their bodies and health care.

“People really want to protect those rights and believe that people ought to be able to make decisions for themselves and their families,” All said. “That is something that would resonate no matter where you live in the country.”

All said the next step is to keep people engaged for the battles ahead.

“Kansas has a really complicated and unique history on this issue, decades of extreme policies, bans, extreme tactics from the other side that really brought us to this moment,” All said. “I did not expect it to end here.”

The ballot measure was failing by a 63-37 margin at 9:45 p.m. as voters responded to an intense and costly campaign marked by dubious claims by amendment supporters and the unraveling of protections by the U.S. Supreme Court (Noah Taborda/Kansas Reflector).

OVERLAND PARK, Kansas — Voters in a landslide Tuesday defeated a proposed amendment to the Kansas constitution that would have stripped residents of abortion rights, defying polling and political observes who expected a close result.

The ballot measure was failing by a 63-37 margin at 9:45 p.m. as voters responded to an intense and costly campaign marked by dubious claims by amendment supporters and the unraveling of protections by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The question before voters, in the form of a confusingly worded constitutional amendment, was whether to end the right to abortion in Kansas by voting “yes” or preserve the right by voting “no.”

The outcome could have far-reaching political implications, with a governor’s race and congressional seats on the ballot in November. It also means reproductive health care will remain available in a state where six girls younger than 14 were among nearly 8,000 patients who received an abortion last year.

While the vote took place in Kansas, it will have a major impact on Missourians’ access to abortion.

Missouri’s restrictive abortion laws, and the fact that the one abortion clinic in the state is in St. Louis, resulted in only 167 abortions being performed in Missouri in 2020. Meanwhile, 3,200 Missourians travelled to Kansas that year for an abortion and more than 6,000 to Illinois.

The proposed constitutional amendment is a reaction to a 2019 decision by the Kansas Supreme Court, which struck down a state law banning a common second-term abortion procedure. The court determined the right to bodily autonomy in the state constitution’s Bill of Rights includes the decision to terminate a pregnancy.

That meant abortion remained legal in Kansas when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing each state to determine its own rules for reproductive health care. Kansas attracted national attention as the first state to vote on abortion rights in the post-Roe world.

“You know,” said Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, a Lenexa Democrat, “you go back to William Allen White: ‘If something is going to happen, it’s going to happen in Kansas first.’ A lot of friends from across the country are like, ‘Why is this on a primary ballot?’ So I think they’re paying attention to really some cynical tactics that the other side tried to play to their advantage.”

Voters showed up in unforeseen numbers in urban areas of the state, while rural areas underperformed compared to turnout in the presidential race two years ago. Forecasters with Cook Political Report and FiveThirtyEight predicted early in the evening that the amendment would fail, possibly by a double-digit margin.

Passage of the constitutional amendment would have nullified the Kansas Supreme Court ruling and given the Legislature the authority to pass any kind of abortion restriction, without exceptions for rape, incest or a patient’s health. The amendment’s defeat means abortion will continue to be legal — and heavily regulated — in Kansas.

Supporters and opponents of the amendment spent millions of dollars in campaigns to educate and influence voters.

The so-called Value Them Both Coalition refused to say whether it would support a ban on abortion if the amendment passes, routinely denouncing claims that the amendment equates to an abortion ban. But audio obtained by Kansas Reflector revealed that supporters of the abortion amendment already had legislation in mind that would ban abortion from conception until birth, without exceptions.

The Value Them Both Coalition denied Kansas Reflector entry to its election night watch party because the organization doesn’t approve of Reflector news stories.

On Monday, Democrats received a text message — eventually connected to former Republican U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp — that inaccurately told them to vote “yes” to preserve reproductive health rights.

Opponents of the amendment have complained about its misleading language. A line-by-line analysis by the Guardian concluded “the ballot language sows confusion in an effort to push people to vote ‘yes.’ ”

The amendment claims to ban government-funded abortion, which is already banned under state law, and suggests the Legislature “could” provide exceptions in state law for rape, incest or the life of a mother — even though the amendment doesn’t actually require those exceptions.

Annual reporting from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment shows that a typical abortion in Kansas involves a woman of color between the ages of 20 and 30 who lives in Kansas or Missouri and is unmarried, already has at least one child, has never had an abortion before, is less than nine weeks from gestation and uses the drug mifepristone to terminate her pregnancy.

Because of existing restrictions, which remain in place even if the amendment fails, she has received state-ordered counseling designed to discourage her from having an abortion, waited at least 24 hours, looked at an ultrasound image and pays for the procedure out of her own pocket.

No abortions occurred outside of 22 weeks, the legal threshold except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger.

This story was originally published by the Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

The Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade has raised the stakes for a vote in August in Kansas on a constitutional amendment removing a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy (Noah Taborda/Kansas Reflector).

TOPEKA, Kansas — The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Friday striking down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide resonates deeply in Kansas where a proposed constitutional amendment on the August ballot could set the stage for a wave of new abortion restrictions in the state.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat campaigning for reelection in 2022, said the 6-3 decision by the nation’s highest court would have no immediate impact in Kansas given a Kansas Supreme Court opinion two years ago that said a constitutional right to abortion existed in the state’s Bill of Rights.

“But anybody who’s been alive in Kansas in the last six months knows that we have an amendment on the primary ballot that would essentially overturn the (state) Supreme Court ruling and say that women’s reproductive rights are not protected under the constitution,” Kelly said.

If the state constitutional amendment passed, Kelly said, the Republican-led Legislature would likely attempt to impose more stringent restrictions on women’s health care.

“If people in the state of Kansas vote no on that amendment, then the status quo will remain. And women’s reproductive rights will remain constitutional here in the state of Kansas,” Kelly said.

The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court held special significance in Kansas because the state’s voters head to the polls Aug. 2 to consider an abortion amendment to the Kansas Constitution. The amendment would reverse the state Supreme Court decision in 2019 that declared a right to bodily autonomy in the state’s Bill of Rights included a woman’s right to decide whether to carry a pregnancy to term.

Under the state Supreme Court’s decision, Kansans retained that right even if Roe v. Wade was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Passage of the “Value Them Both” amendment to the Kansas Constitution would nullify the state Supreme Court’s interpretation of constitutional rights to private health decisions and open the door to a ban or additional limitations on the procedure in Kansas.

The proposed Kansas amendment included no exemption for pregnancies occurring as result of rape or incest or to save the life of the pregnant woman. However, it wouldn’t preclude the legislative and executive branches of state government from embracing those exceptions in Kansas law.

The vote will have an impact on Missouri, where restrictive abortion laws have resulted in only 167 abortions being performed in the state in 2020. Meanwhile, 3,200 Missourians travelled to Kansas that year for an abortion and more than 6,000 to Illinois.

A coalition of anti-abortion, church and political organizations supporting the amendment claimed the state Supreme Court decision triggered an influx of out-of-state residents seeking abortions in Kansas. That perspective ignored consequences of profound abortion restrictions adopted in Texas and Oklahoma that pushed to other states women seeking reproductive health services.

“Kansas medical professionals are concerned about our state becoming a permanent destination state for painful dismemberment abortions,” said Mackenzie Haddix, who works with the pro-amendment coalition.

The Susan B. Anthony national pro-life group invested $1.3 million in Kansas to promote passage of the abortion amendment.

On the opposite side of the amendment debate, the bipartisan Kansans for Constitutional Freedom began airing television advertisements to encourage voters to choose “no” on the ballot measure. A simple majority of people participating in that statewide vote determine fate of the constitution amendment.

“On August 2nd, Kansas will vote on whether to eliminate Kansans’ freedom to make private medical decisions without political interference,” said Ashley All, spokesperson for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom. “The constitutional amendment on the primary ballot will mandate government control over our private medical decisions and pave the way for a total ban on abortion. We ask Kansans to vote no.”

The coalition’s first commercial warned passage of the amendment would grant politicians power to pass any law regarding abortion, including a total ban without exceptions. Another ad pointed to the oath taken by physicians to “do no harm,” and issues raised when politicians in Topeka would assume authority for medical decisions.

“If this amendment passes, there will be nothing to prevent politicians from banning abortion outright,” All said. “One legislator already introduced a bill that completely bans abortion, makes it a felony to receive or perform an abortion, and provides no real exception to save a woman’s life.”

In Kansas, seven of 10 abortions in Kansas occurred prior to nine weeks of pregnancy and 90% prior to 12 weeks of pregnancy. State law prohibits abortions after 22 weeks. There have been no “post-viability” abortions in Kansas since 2018. Government funding of abortion has been outlawed in Kansas.

U.S. Sens. Jerry Moran, left, and Jon Tester answer questions about their burn pit legislation during a news conference in Washington, D.C. (screen capture from live video).

TOPEKA — U.S. Sens. Jerry Moran and Jon Tester say swift action is needed to ensure post-9/11 combat veterans who were exposed to burn pits can receive medical care.

Moran, a Kansas Republican, and Tester, a Montana Democrat, in a news conference Tuesday outlined a billion-dollar plan to offer access to VA medical care to every post-9/11 combat veteran impacted by toxic exposure. As the ranking member and chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, they plan to hold a hearing on the bill on Wednesday.

“As more and more veterans report alarming rates of toxic exposure-related illnesses, one thing is abundantly clear,” Tester said. “Without action, post-9/11 veterans will suffer as Vietnam veterans have. And every year more toxic exposure veterans will pay the ultimate price while waiting for the treatment that they need.”

The cost of the bill would be just under $1 billion, Tester said.

During wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, federal contractors would fill holes in the ground with garbage, medical waste, vehicles and plastics, douse the trash in jet fuel and set it on fire, The New York Times reported. Defense officials have been reluctant to accept responsibility for the health issues caused by breathing in the smoke from these burn pits.

Moran said the 3.5 million post-9/11 combat veterans experienced some level of toxic exposure.

Soldiers might have undiagnosed illness or late-emerging health care challenges. Some missed the window of eligibility for VA care, and some assumed they weren’t eligible.

“This is the first step on a continuum of trying to make certain that those who experienced toxic exposure, and as a result are suffering in their health and well being, receive medical benefits,” Moran said.

The proposed Senate legislation would guarantee access to VA care, allow the VA to link toxic exposure to military service, and strengthen federal research on toxic exposure. Every member of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee co-sponsored the bill, and there is similar legislation in the House.

Moran and Tester see the Senate bill as the first part of a three-step plan. The next step is to establish a process for the VA to determine future presumptive conditions, and the final piece is to provide overdue benefits to thousands of toxic-exposed veterans.