This is what colonization looks like in the biotech century. In the latest dispatch of the Plunder Papers, Defender Africa Correspondent Jon Jeter investigates America’s push to extract the cells, pathogens, and medical records of millions of Africans. Countries that refuse are told their HIV patients will die.

Under Senate Bill 244, Kansas requires driver’s licenses to reflect sex assigned at birth and invalidates about 1,700 licenses previously updated to match gender identity. Advocates say the law directly targets transgender residents, forcing them to carry identification that contradicts who they are and raising concerns about discrimination, safety, and barriers to voting.

Twenty-five years after the body of a three-year-old girl was found at 59th & Kensington, Kansas City is still learning how to say her name.

How 11 council members advanced the framework to commit $600 million in taxpayer money as collateral for a billionaire’s stadium.

They call this corner a crime hotspot. They never tell you the state sent tanks down this same street in April 1968 to crush the Dr. King assassination uprisings. Fifty-eight Aprils later, our Defender Mutual Aid Team came back with clothing, hygiene, and political education for the people the state abandoned.

One of the greatest Black orchestras in American history returns to the city that birthed it Thursday night, on the eve of International Jazz Day. KC’s own Lonnie McFadden, Deborah Brown, and Charlton Johnson take the stage with them. The kind of show people will tell their grandchildren they were at.

Still workshopping its position on chattel slavery, the NPR affiliate invites you into the conversation.

The Kansas City Defender launches Liberation Now, our first-ever video series, debuting with an interview so explosive it names AIPAC, Hakeem Jeffries, the Kansas City mayor, and the entire war machine in a single conversation. Missouri democratic socialist Hartzell Gray holds nothing back. Neither do we.