Ballots returned. Grace period. Flock lawsuit. Pet food claims. Affordable housing.

By Sherman Smith | editor-in-chief

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — The Wyandotte County Election Office sent voters mail-in ballots printed with an incorrect return address, causing completed ballots to be returned to voters instead of the election office.

The envelopes list two addresses, the election office at 850 State Ave. in Kansas City, Kansas, and the other for a P.O. box that the county election office said is no longer used.

Members of the Kansas Democratic Party submitted records requests for ballot information after finding out about the wrongly addressed ballots in the diverse county, which encompasses the northern half of the Kansas City metro on the Kansas side.

TOPEKA — The Kansas Supreme Court chose not to authorize an expedited review of lower court decisions temporarily blocking enforcement of a new state law repealing the three-day grace period for mail-in advance ballots.

On Thursday, a majority of the state’s highest court declined Secretary of State Scott Schwab’s request for extraordinary intervention by justices despite the approaching statewide primary Tuesday. A dissenting opinion signed by two members of the Supreme Court, one appointed by a Republican governor and one appointed by a Democratic governor, argued for immediate intervention into the case.

TOPEKA — Machinist Mason Grimmett criticized the Wichita Police Department’s reliance on high-speed equipment that reads, logs and converts into searchable files the license plate of everyone driving in range of nearly 200 specialized cameras in the city.

Last month, Grimmett used his five-minute public comment slot at a June meeting of the Wichita City Council to express apprehension about local law enforcement’s deployment of cameras capable of capturing images of plates on moving vehicles day or night. The city’s warrantless effort to document routine movement of street traffic placed images in a database that could be retrieved and shared with other law enforcement agencies.

TOPEKA — A federal appellate court revived a portion of a lawsuit that accuses Hill’s Pet Nutrition in Topeka of engaging in false advertising and orchestrating a misinformation campaign about an unsubstantiated animal health risk of pet food manufactured by rivals.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, which includes Kansas, disagreed with a lower district court’s decision to dismiss the case against Hill’s filed in 2024 by KetoNatural Pet Foods. A portion of the claims made by KetoNatural were allowed to continue as part of a $2.6 billion class-action lawsuit.

By Kirk McClure and Alex Schwartz

A sweeping housing measure, which became law on July 11, is being widely celebrated as a crucial step in addressing the nation’s housing crisis. But as housing policy scholars, we believe the improvements will be only marginal. That’s because the reforms do not address the main source of the nation’s housing problem: that millions of renters and homeowners lack the income necessary to cover their housing costs.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro moved Friday to dismiss charges against a former Olympian canoeist alleged to have damaged part of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump defended his highly criticized, nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” settlement fund on social media and in a Cabinet meeting Friday, as two key Republican senators withheld support for the president’s nominee for attorney general over Trump’s refusal to formally end the pot of money.

Thanks for reading Read & Reflect. Did you know our weekend digest is also free? Sign up here. And if you enjoyed today’s edition, please forward to a friend. Increasing our readership helps us cover more news.