High Plains regional news
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Texas aims to contract child welfare services to private providers by 2029 under a system called "community-based care." The abrupt cancelation of its contract with a foster care provider serving eastern North Texas after child deaths has community stakeholders questioning the system's effectiveness. -
Taxpayers will cover $132,000 in lawsuit settlements owed to two fired Oklahoma State Department of Education employees who sued former state Superintendent Ryan Walters and his senior adviser. -
Bonds-Raacke is the former president of Saint Martin’s University, a private Catholic school in Washington. -
The poll found the Austin Democrat with a commanding lead among independents and a surprising edge with non-college-educated voters, who have consistently favored Republicans. -
When Congress allowed Affordable Care Act tax credits to lapse, healthcare premiums spiked for millions of Americans — especially self-employed farmers and ranchers. That added cost is multiplying the stress on their already stretched balance sheets.
Happenings across the High Plains
Regional Features
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I’m Megan Hope, a native Southwest Kansan (currently living in the Missouri Ozarks) and proud supporter of HPPR. A book I think will resonate with many High Plains listeners is All the Living, by C.E. Morgan, published in 2009 by Picador and widely available at libraries and booksellers. -
Painting by Thelma WarnerA conventional description of the Great Plains landscape of Kansas may include references to open skies, treeless flatlands, rolling hills of shortgrass and mixed-grass prairies, and colors tending toward tan and brown. However, when we look at areas in Southwest and South-Central Kansas, the former description may not always fit. Located mostly in Clark, Comanche and Barber counties along the southern border of Kansas, there exists a physiographic province known as the Red Hills. This undulating terrain of red-tinted sediments comes from an underlying geological structure that developed when the Great Plains spanned an ancient ocean. -
This is Tracy Million Simmons, owner of Meadowlark Press in Emporia, Kansas, for High Plains Public Radio Reader’s Summer Reading List. As a regional press specializing in stories from the Midwest, I’d like to take this moment to introduce you to our newest memoir, Reptile Romance, by Harley Elliott. -
Tune in this week to hear the Amarillo Symphony perform music by Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev!
NPR Top Stories
I-HWA CHENG
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AFP via Getty Images
The author and translator of Taiwan Travelogue, the winner of the 2026 International Booker Prize, discuss identity and history amid the debate over Taiwan's colonial ties to Japan and escalating geopolitical pressure from China.
Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania via Liveright Publishing
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