It was the sort of conduct one usually associates with totalitarian governments: Law enforcement officers swarm a newspaper office and confiscate computers, servers and cellphones of reporters and editors. Yet this raid took place not in a faraway autocracy, but in a small town in Kansas, despite a federal law prohibiting such searches in most cases.
On Friday, police acting on a warrant searched the offices of the Marion County Record, a weekly newspaper with seven employees and a circulation of about 4,000. Simultaneously, officers searched the home of Eric Meyer, the publisher and co-owner, seizing computers, his cellphone and the home’s internet router, according to Meyer. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother — a co-owner of the newspaper who lived with him — collapsed and died Saturday. Meyer blamed her death on the stress of the raid on their home.
July 5, 2023
Drastic as they were, the searches originated in what might appear to be a trivial dispute between the Record and a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell, who has accused the newspaper of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record. (The newspaper says it obtained information about her driving record unsolicited and verified it through online public records; and it didn’t print a story referencing the information.) The search warrant alleged identity theft and unlawful use of a...
In its latest effort to narrow pathways to immigration to the United States, the Trump administration says it will crack down on attorneys who file fraudulent asylum claims for their clients. The ...