TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s successful reelection campaign in Republican-leaning Kansas wooed centrist voters with ads showing her standing in the middle of a rural road. She is starting her second term facing a skeptical, GOP-led Legislature and a new, hard-right state attorney general.

Kelly and other statewide elected officials are scheduled to take their oaths of office in a ceremony at noon Monday that includes her inaugural address. She’s often used her major public speeches to promote bipartisanship.

The ceremony also will cap a big political comeback for Kris Kobach, the new attorney general. Over two decades, he gained a national reputation by advocating for strict immigration and election laws but became a lightning rod for controversy. He lost the 2018 governor’s race to Kelly and then a GOP primary for an open U.S. Senate seat in 2020.

Both Kelly’s and Kobach’s victories last year were narrow, as Kansas voters sent decidedly mixed messages. Voters in August decisively rejected a proposed change to the state constitution that would have allowed lawmakers to ban abortion, but Republicans maintained their supermajorities in both legislative chambers — keeping conservatives firmly in charge.

The Legislature is set to convene at 2 p.m. Monday for House and Senate sessions of mostly housekeeping and swearing in new members. Kelly is scheduled to outline her legislative agenda in the annual State of the State address Wednesday evening.

“I knew from the very get-go that if I wanted to accomplish anything in public life, that I was going to need to establish relationships across the aisle,” Kelly said in a recent interview. “I will continue to work in a bipartisan manner to get things done.”

Kelly’s centrist credibility has rested on a few high-profile moves, such as breaking with President Joe Biden on COVID-19 vaccine mandates in November 2021 and signing a bill to ban “sanctuary” cities for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. Last month she banned the use of TikTok by state workers on state-issued devices, following similar action by Congress and a slew of Republican governors such as South Dakota’s Kristi Noem.

But she’s also clashed frequently with Republican lawmakers on budget issues, tax cuts and education and public health policy. She twice vetoed their proposals to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s K-12 and college sports. Her proposals to expand the state’s Medicaid coverage for another 150,000 people have been dead letters for top Republicans.

“I’ve never thought she lived in the middle of the road,” state Rep. Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, said after fellow Republicans named him the next House speaker last month, adding that his chamber, “if anything, moves a little bit further to the right.”

Kobach lost a congressional race in 2004 before winning the first of two terms as Kansas secretary of state in 2010. He was the first prominent Kansas elected official to endorse Donald Trump’s bid for president in 2016 and served as vice chairman of a short-lived Trump commission on voter fraud.

His unsuccessful 2018 and 2020 races crashed his political career and left many Republicans believing that he couldn’t win a statewide race. But many GOP leaders and activists said his 2022 campaign was better organized and more focused, generating less drama or outrage.

The more combative Kobach could return: He’s promised to file lawsuits to challenge Biden administration policies. He’s already identified as potential targets a listing of the lesser prairie chicken as a threatened species and an expansion of waters covered by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations.

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Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, sparking the worst conflict in Europe in a long time.

Thousands of civilians have been killed in the war, which has been marked by numerous setbacks for Russian forces in the facial area of an epic fightback by Ukraine.

In this article is a timeline of the key developments:

– February 2022: invasion –

Russian President Vladimir Putin announces a “special military services operation” in Ukraine on Feb. 24.

He claims this is to secure the Russian-speaking, self-declared separatist republics of Luhansk and Donetsk in the east of Ukraine, whose independence he has just identified.

He says he would like to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, a previous Soviet republic, and demands a warranty it will in no way be part of the NATO military alliance.

A complete-scale invasion starts, with missile strikes on a number of Ukrainian cities.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stays in the cash Kyiv to lead the resistance.

The West imposes unparalleled sanctions on Russia. The European Union and United States ship weapons to Ukraine. The aid pledged by Washington rises into the billions as the months pass.

– March: developments in south but Kyiv retains –

Russian troops attack Ukraine’s south coast, seizing the metropolis of Kherson, near to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014.

Russian forces also attempt to encompass Kyiv and just take Ukraine’s 2nd metropolis Kharkiv in the northeast but fulfill intense resistance and major logistical difficulties.

A thirty day period into the fighting, Russia withdraws from the Kyiv region and the north to aim on the jap industrial Donbas location (Lugansk and Donetsk), partly held by separatists, together with the south.

– April: war crimes discovered –

In early April, scores of corpses of murdered civilians are uncovered in Kyiv suburbs and northern cities that Russian forces had occupied.

The discoveries spark an intercontinental outcry.

– Could: Mariupol falls –

On May 21, Russia announces the slide of the strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol, which experienced been relentlessly bombed considering the fact that the commence of the war.

Ukrainian troops, who had held out for months at a steelworks in the town, surrender.

Sweden and Finland ask for membership of NATO, fearing they could be future targets of Russian aggression.

– June: Donbas battle rages –

In June, Russia normally takes the Donbas metropolis of Severodonetsk just after one particular of the bloodiest battles of the war, adopted quickly soon after by the neighboring city of Lysychansk.

Ukraine pleads for far more weighty weapons from the West.

– July: grain unblocked, fuel supplies minimize –

On July 22, Kyiv and Moscow sign a deal to resume grain exports from Ukraine, in a bid to minimize a food crisis aggravated by Russia’s blockade of the country’s ports.

Russian fuel large Gazprom slashes its supply to Europe as a result of the Nord Stream pipeline, fuelling fears of gas shortages in Europe.

– August: nuclear fears –

Ukraine and Russia blame each other for shelling about the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear electricity plant and Kyiv launches a significant offensive to retake Kherson.

– September: annexation –

Ukraine retakes hundreds of towns and villages in a lightning counter-offensive all over Kharkiv.

On Sep. 21, Putin launches a partial draft of 300,000 reservists, sparking an exodus of young Russian men of armed service age to neighbouring international locations.

In between Sep. 23 and 27, Kremlin-backed authorities maintain hasty referendums in the Moscow-held Ukrainian regions of Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia on becoming a member of Russia.

The votes, in which the Kremlin claims victory, are dismissed by Kyiv and the West as a sham.

On Sep. 30, Putin formally annexes the 4 locations.

– Oct: electrical power infrastructure pounded –

On Oct 8, Ukrainians celebrate following an explosion brings about key injury to a bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland — a symbol of Moscow’s annexation of the peninsula.

Putin blames Ukrainian key solutions for the assault.

Russian forces retaliate with a barrage of strikes on energy infrastructure in Kyiv and other cities, leaving thousands and thousands with no ability in what gets to be its new modus operandi all through the winter season.

– November: retreat from Kherson –

On Nov. 9, Moscow orders its troops to retreat from Kherson in the experience of advancing Ukrainian forces, marking a gorgeous defeat in a single of the regions it annexed.

– December: Zelensky goes to Washington –

On Dec. 22, Zelensky visits Washington on his 1st abroad excursion given that the war began. He retains on his trademark fatigues for a meeting with President Joe Biden and a historic tackle to Congress.

– January 2023: bloody New Year, ceasefire –

Russia suffers its most significant single reduction of life because the invasion began in an assault on a temporary foundation in the jap town of Makiivka on Jan. 1. Moscow claims 89 soldiers have been killed but Ukraine’s army says almost 400 misplaced their life in the attack which leads to rare shows of general public grief in Russia.

On Jan. 5, Putin orders a short term ceasefire in Ukraine on Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 6-7. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak rejects the shift as “hypocrisy” and “propaganda.”

 

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As you enjoy your Sunday evening, NYPD officers will be out protecting New Yorkers, as they do every day and night.