From lewd sexual materials in area schools, to soft-on-crime policies and avoidable deaths of law enforcement officers, Heartlander readers were apprised of goings-on in the two-state region in 2025 that legacy media outlets either missed or misjudged.

In Kansas City, Kansas/Wyandotte County, Heartlander stories revealed that District Attorney Mark Dupree wants to convict a jail officer over an inmate’s death so badly that he sought to disqualify all 16 of the county’s district court judges from presiding over the case.

That request was duly denied – but moreover, The Heartlander broke the news that the Kansas Bureau of Investigation doesn’t even believe a crime was committed in the case.

Yet, at the same time, at least one other media outlet took notice of what The Heartlander has been reporting: that Dupree’s office often has peculiar difficulty prosecuting cases of more clear-cut crimes.

“Months of records reveal criminal suspects arrested for felonies are being released in Wyandotte County after two days because they’re not being formally charged right away,” reported television station KMBC.

In addition, The Heartlander reported back in January 2025 that one man had racked up 59 criminal convictions and some 86 behind-bars disciplinary actions mostly on the Kansas side of the state line. He’d even initially been granted probation in the 59th case.

In another case, The Heartlander reported that a repeat arsonist who set a fire in which a Kansas City, Kansas firefighter was severely injured was granted probation – and still failed to even show up for sentencing.

Law enforcement deaths avoidable?

But even more tragically, two Wyandotte County law enforcement officers were killed in 2025 – exactly a month apart – in cases in which the suspects arguably should not have been on the streets.

On Aug. 26, KCK Police Officer Hunter Simoncic was struck and killed by a driver who earlier was in an Iowa jail awaiting extradition on drug charges and failure to appear in Wyandotte County District Court – but Dupree’s office chose not to go get him, and he was set free to allegedly offend again.

On July 26, Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Deputy Elijah Ming was shot dead by a suspect who very well should have been in custody in Anderson County, Kansas, for physical abuse of a child and another charge alleging he failed to report a change in his status under the Kansas Offender Registration Act, which covers repeat violent offenders.

Soft porn in KC schools

The Heartlander also led the way in reporting on salacious materials being proffered to minors in area schools – and one parent’s lonely battle against them.

Just how lonely? Kansas’ Gardner Edgerton Unified School District 231 mom Carrie Schmidt was even banned indefinitely from all district property and events – even her son’s home and away ballgames – for merely having taken a photo of a Gay-Straight Alliance poster in the high school that went viral when she shared it with conservative watchdog account Libs of TikTok on X.

A judge quickly lifted the ban, which her lawyer had called a “death penalty for bad publicity.”

Later in the year, after Schmidt waged a failed weeks-long battle to get recalcitrant district officials to admit it, she learned through an open-records request that the high school had allowed a boy in the girls’ locker room – and that officials had sat on that information for a year.

The Heartlander also learned the same Gardner Edgerton Unified School District had passed out a sticker with the sexually suggestive term “Lesbian Juice” at freshman orientation.

Meanwhile, a flier in the district’s Trail Ridge Middle School, The Heartlander learned, had links to a “mental health” article with highly profane language and an obvious adult audience in mind.

The article, headlined “The Let Them Theory Is the Secret to Giving Less F*cks in 2025,” discussed largely adult dilemmas that “are shi**y situations that make you frustrated, angry, or stressed out.”

In other news …

The Heartlander in 2025 also broke and amplified news such as:

• Kansas City-area Turning Point USA chapters fighting for existence and acceptance
• A professor in Kansas being suspended for Charlie Kirk posts that called white American men the “most dangerous animals” on the planet
• A Kansas City-area school district banning Charlie Kirk-style “FREEDOM” shirts without explanation
• A KC-area cheerleading coach under fire for her “rest in piss” epitaph for Charlie Kirk
• An obscene text to a Republican colleague that had a Missouri Democrat House member under an ethics probe
• A powerful new museum-style traveling exhibit to introduce Kansans to facts and impacts of the state’s becoming a Midwest mecca for abortion
• The Missouri Legislature’s overturning of a Kansas City ordinance that had prevented landlords from asking prospective tenants about such things as ability to pay rent and criminal history. As noted by Gov. Mike Kehoe, the new state law “prohibits local governments from limiting what factors landlords can or cannot consider in rental-related decisions, including source of income, credit scores, and rental and criminal history.”
• Washington University in St. Louis lobbying the state so it could avoid a new paid sick leave requirement