Frank Morris

For NPR News, I'm Frank Morris.

In the summer of 2023, Marion, Kansas' entire five-member police force and two sheriff's deputies stormed the town's newspaper office and the publisher's home, confronting the publisher's 98-year-old mother, who had a heart attack and died the next day.

The officers seized computers and cell phones, looking for evidence that the paper had improperly obtained confirmation of a local business owner's drunk driving conviction.

It hadn't.

The $3 million payment will be split between the publisher, two reporters, and the town's former vice mayor, whose home was also raided.

The agreement does not clear the police chief of criminal charges for allegedly obstructing an investigation of the raids or the city's liability in approving them.

For NPR News, I'm Frank Morris.

Federal farm subsidies go through the U.S.

Department of Agriculture.

It's closed, and now is a bad time for farmers to lose that lifeline.

The prices farmers are getting for the corn, wheat, and soybeans they grow don't come close to covering the cost of producing them.

Tariffs have a lot to do with that, and President Trump has promised farmers a bailout to partially compensate for their trade war losses.

But Pat Westhoff, an economist at the University of Missouri, says that's not happening anytime soon.

Things aren't going to go forward until the government's open again, it appears to me.

Farmers can't expect immediate help when the government does reopen.

The USDA has lost about 20,000 employees this year.

And every day the shutdown drags on, more work backs up.

For NPR News, I'm Frank Morris in Kansas City.

Federal farm subsidies go through the U.S.

Department of Agriculture.