Kansas City politics, pressed for answers.
Week in Review gathers Kansas City journalists and commentators around the week’s most consequential local stories. Stadium deals, city budgets, elections, policing, development fights, and statehouse moves get tested against cost, timing, public buy-in, and who actually has authority.
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Week in Review is a Kansas City public-affairs roundtable with a reporter’s impatience for vague answers. The show follows the metro’s biggest local stories, then presses them through the practical questions that tend to decide whether they matter. Who pays? Who votes? Who enforces it? Who benefits if the decision happens quietly? The panel returns often to stadium politics, especially the Royals’ drawn-out search for a new ballpark site and the Chiefs’ stadium negotiations across the state line. Those conversations are not treated as sports chatter. They become tests of public financing, civic leverage, neighborhood development, political timing, and voter patience. City Hall gets the same treatment. Earnings tax renewals, police budgets, trash complaints, street naming fights, temporary jail plans, and audits of press coverage all become windows into how Kansas City actually governs itself. State politics stays close to the ground, too. Kansas and Missouri actions on schools, taxes, immigration enforcement, driver’s licenses, student walkouts, and public protest are discussed less as abstractions than as rules people will have to live under. The show can be blunt. It is not reckless. Its skepticism usually has a destination: a clearer account of process, power, and consequence. The recurring panel format gives the conversation a useful friction, with journalists bringing different beats, memories, and levels of tolerance for official explanations. Some episodes move at a clip, piling election results, development disputes, and public-safety concerns into one crowded hour. Others slow down when a story needs legal, budgetary, or political context. The local detail matters. Crown Center, Overland Park, Independence, Jackson County, Topeka, Jefferson City, Kauffman Stadium, and the World Cup all appear as part of the same civic map. Week in Review works best for listeners who already know the headline but want the fuller question underneath it.
Made for: For Kansas City listeners who care about local power, public money, development, elections, and the decisions that shape daily civic life. It suits people who want informed conversation without cable-news heat.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its roundtable: reporters and commentators connect city hall procedure, state politics, sports-business pressure, and neighborhood consequences in one conversation. It is local enough to name some places and skeptical enough to ask who gets a vote.
Join host Nick Haines as he sits down with Kansas City area newsmakers and journalists to explore the stories and decisions impacting our community.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Nick Haines and his panel connect Kansas City headlines to the public money, institutional power, and unresolved choices underneath them.
Week in Review turns Kansas City civic news into a brisk roundtable, with Nick Haines pressing a rotating panel on what public decisions mean beyond the week's headline.
The Royals stadium saga needs a state-line scorecard; Nick Haines brings journalists to help you keep one.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Tolls, stadium talks, and data-center plans become a test of public patience.
Week in Review frames Kansas City-area news as a run of choices that will linger: the first toll road serving Kansas City opens in Overland Park, a Kansas bathroom bill becomes law, and the Royals' ballpark talks keep expanding the map of possible sites while public patience…
A skeptical Kansas City roundtable examines the Royals' stadium limbo, public money, fan costs and political patience.
The Royals' stalled stadium decision puts public money and political patience under pressure. The mayor's self-imposed deadline at the start of spring training has arrived, but certainty has not.
A Kansas City roundtable connects stadium hearings, county power fights, and enforcement debates to the week's practical stakes.
Week in Review turns Kansas City political friction into practical questions: what the Chiefs Stadium hearings showed, whether KCPD can cover its budget, and why officials are debating mini liquor bottles, single beer cans, and driver's-license citizenship status.
A focused Kansas City roundtable tracks who gets a say when public money and political promises collide.
Week in Review uses the Royals' move away from the former Sprint campus as its cleanest question: if private talks are shaping speculation about keeping the team in Kansas City, where do voters enter the process?
A Kansas City panel weighs World Cup readiness through heat, attendance, stadium rules, and public safety.
Week in Review sorts a busy Kansas City news week into questions listeners can actually use: whether new owners can reshape Country Club Plaza, what a hot-weather soccer test says before the World Cup, why Jackson County property assessments are headed to court, and what changes…
A steady local-election roundtable links school boards, bus service, the Royals' ballpark plan, and Kansas City's office market.
Kansas City's pre-election week gets a grounded, practical airing in this roundtable, moving from local races on both sides of the state line to the sharper partisan pressure now gathering around school boards.
Corey delivers two-minute daily Minneapolis news briefs, from school budget cuts to fraud cases.
A daily five-minute anchor-read roundup of Fox Cities crime, schools, and local government news.
New Texas owners take over the financially struggling Country Club Plaza, promising luxury retailers and a revival.
This pre-election edition of Week in Review covers contentious local issues across the Kansas City metro.
Nick Haynes and four Kansas City journalists examine Missouri's map ruling and November's Proposition A vote.
Week in Review examines Kansas City's proposed Royals ballpark near Crown Center, including Mayor Quinton Lucas's claim that up to $600 million can be committed without new taxes and panelists' concerns about infrastructure, debt service, and the city's general fund.
A review of the week's local news in Kansas City, covering election results, a city audit of the Kansas City Star, a ban on data centers, funding cuts to the Truman Sports Complex, and trash issues ahead of the World Cup.
A weekly roundup of Kansas City local news, including political resignations, a bridge opening, and a new concert venue.
A panel of journalists discusses Kansas City's earnings tax vote, Missouri's income tax elimination, street renaming controversies, and other local news.
Nick Haynes and panel discuss the Royals' stadium decision and other news after a three-week break.
Kansas Republicans overrode Laura Kelly on a bathroom bill that could affect KCI Airport, public schools, and a proposed Chiefs stadium.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas used his State of the City address to emphasize affordable housing, inclusiveness, and a 5% Kansas City, Missouri Police Department budget increase.
Public hearings on the Chiefs stadium plan in Olathe and Wyandotte County drew lines between “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” claims and quotes like “This is not a deal.
The Royals dropped the former Sprint campus and Kansas residents near Overland Park and Leawood pushed back hard.
A year-in-review episode of a Kansas City radio program recapping major local news stories and political events of 2025, with predictions for 2026.
A panel of journalists discusses Kansas City's proposed east-west streetcar line to the 18th and Vine district.
A review of the week's top local news stories in Kansas City, including Pfizer bringing 2,000 jobs to Overland Park.
This episode of Kansas City Week in Review covers the city manager's suspension, bus service changes, and Kansas's vote on Supreme Court justice elections.
Nick Haynes interviews Pam Kramer about the challenges of organizing the 2026 World Cup in Kansas City, 500 days out, and reflects on the Wichita plane crash.