TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly on Wednesday proposed giving Kansas residents who filed state income tax returns last year a one-time rebate of $250, dropping the idea on a skeptical Republican-controlled Legislature…

TOPEKA — Kansas legislative leaders and the governor Thursday approved $14.9 million to extend state testing programs through the end of the year. With COVID-19 cases rising in Kansas and the omicron variant looming, the…

TOPEKA — Commerce secretary and Lt. Gov. David Toland says there is no question the Kansas economy is better now than it was three years ago, when Gov. Laura Kelly took office. The administration has…

Dr. Lee Norman, former Kansas Secretary of Health and Environment, is one more in a long line of political casualties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. After nearly two years of leading Kansas through the crisis,…

The job of guiding Kansas through a generation-defining public health crisis for nearly two years fell to Dr. Lee Norman. Until recently, and suddenly, it didn’t. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly recently fired him as secretary…

Viruses mutate to survive. Generally speaking, so do politicians. With omicron, the new, highly mutated COVID-19 “variant of concern” alarming the markets and the epidemiologists, it shouldn’t be impossible to imagine that Republicans could make…

The surprise is not that the Republican-dominated Kansas Legislature voted to weaken the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but that Gov. Laura Kelly did not veto it. With the stroke of a pen, Kelly…

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly on Tuesday brushed aside complaints from fellow Democrats about signing a Republican measure aimed at financially protecting workers who refuse to get COVID-19 vaccines by declaring, “leadership…

TOPEKA — The Kansas Legislature completed a 14-hour special session Monday night by sending Gov. Laura Kelly a bill packed with generous medical, religious and philosophical exemptions to federal COVID-19 vaccination mandates and the potential…

TOPEKA — Lee Norman stepped down Thursday from his high-profile cabinet post as the chief medical officer in Kansas, where he managed the state’s response to COVID-19 throughout the pandemic. His departure from Gov. Laura…