Blaise Mesa
News ReporterBlaise Mesa is a reporter for the Kansas City Beacon. He is based in Topeka, where he covers the Legislature and state government. Mesa previously covered social services and criminal justice for the Kansas News Service. He graduated from Columbia College Chicago where he was one of the most decorated journalists in the history of the college’s newspaper. Mesa served as co-editor-in-chief of the Columbia Chronicle and was that organization's first executive producer. Mesa also spent a year reporting on local government for the Topeka Capital-Journal during the height of the pandemic.
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Centurion of Kansas has been fined almost 5,000 times for compliance issues.
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The Division of the Child Advocate, an office less than a year old, has already closed seven cases and found some troubling handling of foster care.
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Changes in state law should help expand mental health services, but it will take years to get everyone on board.
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The decision could have wide-ranging impacts for biological families aggrieved by a judge's decision on whether to give custody rights to adoptive or foster families.
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The state is trying to make it easier for someone with a suspended license to get some driving privileges with restricted licenses. But people are still missing out.
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Attorneys in rural Kansas are getting older and have larger workloads. A statewide task force will try to find solutions.
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The larger facilities in central and southern Kansas are stretched thin. Hospital staff say rural facilities lack resources to help.
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Nine Kansas counties must hand recount votes for the defeated state constitutional amendment on abortion after advocates raised $120,000 to pay for the effort. The largely symbolic recount won't change the result of the election.
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Jury nullification is allowed, but few know about this legal process because courts don’t tell juries they have this power.
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Kansas fue el primer estado que votó sobre el derecho al aborto desde que el Tribunal Supremo de Estados Unidos anuló el caso Roe versus Wade en junio. En la Constitución de Kansas, el voto preserva el derecho al aborto.