Senate forecast shifts. Agriculture stress. Reflecting Pool saga.

By Sherman Smith | editor-in-chief

TOPEKA — National election forecasters softened their ratings in Kansas’ U.S. Senate race following a Kansas City-area pastor’s Democratic primary win, prodding Democrats to build the momentum necessary to topple nearly a century of Republican dominance.

The Rev. Adam Hamilton beat out 10 Democratic opponents with roughly 35% of votes, propelling him to a November face-off with incumbent U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall. Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia and the Cook Political Report adjusted their ratings in the race, continuing to favor a Republican winner but offering a Democrat a bit more wiggle room.

Both shifted their race ratings from “safe” or “solidly” Republican to “likely” Republican — a slight change with larger implications.

TOPEKA — Kansas is on course for its smallest winter wheat harvest since the 1950s, with a July report showing the state’s farmers are expected to produce almost half the number of bushels they did at the same time last year, an expert said.

A July 10 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture projected 196 million bushels for the Kansas winter wheat harvest, down from nearly 347 million last year, said Dan O’Brien, agricultural economist and Kansas State University professor.

By Jennifer Tucker

In the latest twist in one of the strangest ongoing scandals in Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced that the government would be dropping charges against the four people accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the 2,000-foot long water basin that connects the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument. Pirro said faulty construction — not vandalism, as President Donald Trump had claimed — caused the pool’s liner to peel off in June 2026.

As I’ve followed this bizarre saga, I’ve found myself reflecting on the history of the pool itself. It was built in the 1920s, when Washington was transformed by ambitious construction projects, even as the nation grappled with political division, racial conflict and clashes between religion and secularism.

WASHINGTON — Congress is considering a hike of hundreds of billions in dollars in defense spending, which would represent a surge in military funding not seen since World War II.

Whatever the exact level of spending ultimately flows to military installations and defense contractors, some states will likely benefit far more than others, a States Newsroom analysis of federal defense data shows. Just a handful of states makes up a core of military production, topping the lists of federal defense spending, the data shows.

U.S. employers shed 23,000 jobs in July, and the employment count for earlier months was revised downward by 103,000 jobs as labor shortages begin to weigh on hiring, according to new statistics released Friday by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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