In the News

House Democrats are pushing the Internal Revenue Service to increase a tax break that would help truckers, Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. drivers and other transportation-related businesses cut their tax bills as they struggle with soaring gasoline prices.

President Joe Biden and the Food and Drug Administration are taking action to alleviate the ongoing baby formula shortage.

The head of the FDA on Thursday said the shortage should start to improve within a matter of days.

For months, families have been struggling to find ways to make sure they can feed their babies as they navigate the formula shortage.

Kansas is in line to receive as much as $69 million in additional federal support for small business development and entrepreneurship through a U.S. Treasury Department program used to support companies through the pandemic.

The American Rescue Plan expanded the State Small Business Credit Initiative, or SSBCI, established in 2010 to assist businesses following the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009. The goal is to improve access to capital in rural and other traditionally underserved communities.

Leaders in Johnson County, Kansas, said securing a low-interest loan from the federal government to help pay for upgrades to a wastewater treatment facility will keep rates low for property owners in the county.

Survivors of a U.S. policy that forced Indigenous children to attend boarding schools where they were abused, or went missing, detailed to members of a U.S. House Natural Resources panel during a Thursday hearing the need for Congress to establish a truth commission dedicated to unveiling the traumas Indigenous children experienced at the schools.

Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kan.) sponsored the bill, H.R. 5444, which would establish the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies.

U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran and U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids offered input Thursday into development of a compromise bill designed to improve domestic manufacturing and the nation's supply chain that were exposed as competitively deficient during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moran, a Republican, and Davids, a Democrat, were appointed to the Senate and House negotiating committee working on a combined version of the Bipartisan Innovation Act. An agreement resolving differences in the House and Senate versions of the bill, if approved by both chambers, would be forwarded to President Joe Biden.

Two federal efforts — one in Congress and one at the U.S. Interior Department — could affect the search for marked and unmarked graves at the Shawnee Indian Mission in Fairway and Haskell University in Lawrence.

Congressional testimony began Thursday on a bill that would create a federal commission to look into the impacts of Native American boarding schools such as those that once operated throughout Kansas and at two sites in Missouri.

Representative Sharice Davids, the lone Democrat representing a district in Kansas, faces a difficult reelection fight in November. The House Republicans' campaign arm has targeted her seat, and she represents one of Democrats' "frontline" districts.