Farmers suffer. Recreational marijuana. Death penalty. Attacks and counterpunches. Pivotal choice.

By Sherman Smith | editor-in-chief

TOPEKA — Trade tariffs cost the United States about $15 billion in losses in the Chinese market alone, agriculture policy experts said Friday.

Sandro Steinbach and Shawn Arita, associate professors at North Dakota State University’s Agricultural Risk Policy Center, spoke about international policies affecting agriculture during an episode of Kansas State University’s podcast Clearing the Air.

Steinbach said the policy center studied market disruption in the United States and China relationship.

He said the higher cost of exporting products to foreign markets caused a “pretty strong” diversion in China away from U.S. products, causing losses of about $15 billion for the United States.

TOPEKA — Cindy Holscher and Ethan Corson on Tuesday both called for the legalization of recreational marijuana in Kansas, separating themselves from other gubernatorial candidates who only support using the drug for medicinal use or oppose legalizing it altogether.

The two state senators are seeking the Democratic nomination for governor in the Aug. 4 primary, alongside Overland Park Mayor Curt Skoog, who has said he would focus first on medical needs.

Holscher on Tuesday released a video of herself speaking from the parking lot of a dispensary in Missouri, which she said was about 15 minutes from her house in Overland Park. She said the parking lot was full of vehicles with Kansas license plates.

By Celeste Dixon

It has been nearly 40 years since my mother, Marguerite, was murdered in a small town near Houston. It has been almost 19 years since the man who murdered her was executed. His death did not heal my pain — I still miss my mother every day — and it did not feel like “justice.”

Instead, my personal experience with the death penalty left me firmly convinced that it is both a false promise to the families of murder victims and a failed public policy. That is why I urge Gov. Laura Kelly to commute the death sentences of the nine men on Kansas’ death row to life without parole.

TOPEKA — Kansas Republican gubernatorial candidate Ty Masterson landed the campaign endorsement of a labor organization representing firefighters in Wichita, Topeka, Lawrence, Manhattan and a dozen other cities and counties.

A quarter millennium after its founding, the United States faces a stark choice that will define its future.

In the years ahead, the country can continue to follow the path blazed by President Donald Trump, who is attempting to bring states under the authority of a more powerful federal government led by him. Or it can move in a different direction, one where states become a heavier counterweight to an aggressive White House and rebalance the relationship between the states and the federal government.

A new appeals court ruling is another blow to the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy that threatens millions of immigrants with unlimited incarceration without bond if they ever crossed a border illegally.

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