In the News

Monday and Tuesday this week, the Olathe Public Schools Foundation and groups of volunteers are preparing for school supplies drive distribution by stuffing more than 2,000 backpacks with supplies needed to head back to school.

Throughout the summer, the foundation has been accepting donations through public drive drop boxes and by check to its annual school supplies drive. The foundation usually spends about $30,000 in all on the program on top of whatever is donated during the summer.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, travelers trying to get passports have had significant issues.

But now, the government is working on getting them done faster.

In Overland Park, Kansas, Stacy Drake applied for her passport in early March so she could go on a company trip booked to Switzerland in July.

She even sprung for the expedited service, which is supposed to take just five to seven weeks.

"Others were getting theirs back fairly quickly," Drake said.

But months later, there was still no sign of her passport.

Kansas officials and congressional leaders celebrated the unveiling Wednesday of a statue of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart in the U.S. Capitol.

U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, from the 3rd District, said Earhart is best known as the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean, but she was also a military nurse, social worker, author, "and a woman who really was breaking the glass ceiling on a field that was dominated by men at the time."

U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids acted as host to U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Jenny Lester Moffitt in Kansas' 3rd District to highlight lowering costs for processing, packaging and consumer purchasing of locally sourced meats.

Rep. Davids serves on the U.S. House Agriculture Committee which oversees USDA and its Meat and Poultry Supply Chain initiative.

Kansas representative Sharice Davids visited the Gardner wastewater infrastructure project Monday, July 11 with Mayor Todd Winters and Jim Pruetting, city administrator.

The project was recently approved for federal funding to create a new space for residential and commercial development in the city. Gardner has the highest projected population growth rate in the county from now through 2030.

Davids said she was proud to support the wastewater infrastructure project.

Both Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House voted Tuesday to enshrine the right to same-sex and interracial marriages in federal law, though the bill's path forward in the Senate is unclear.

The 267-157 bipartisan vote stemmed from concerns that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last month to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion may not be the only fundamental right the conservative justices could undo. A total of 47 Republicans voted for the bill.

Kansas has received $83.5 million in federal coronavirus relief funds for projects that are expected to connect more than 21,000 homes and businesses to high-speed internet service, say federal officials.

The money for Kansas is part of ten billion dollars in funds for capital improvement projects for states, territories, and Native American tribal governments, the U.S. Treasury Department said.

The projects are supposed to allow them to monitor health, work, and education.

The House passed a bill on Tuesday to protect marriage equality, a direct response to an opinion from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas last month that called for reversing multiple decisions that enshrined LGBTQ rights.

The legislation, titled the Respect for Marriage Act, passed in a 267-157 vote, with 47 Republicans joining all Democrats present in supporting the measure. Seven Republicans did not vote.