Free Republic

More than two dozen Senate Republicans are urging President Trump to re-engage in Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. The 25 GOP lawmakers sent a letter to Trump on Friday saying they support his recent comments that he may consider U.S. participation if the 11-nation Asia-Pacific pact is improved.

A Republican running for a Kansas congressional seat is going forward with his planned AR-15 giveaway for his campaign after the same weapon was used to carry out the mass shooting at a Florida high school this week. Tyler Tannahill, a Marine veteran, announced the giveaway one day before the shooting. He told The Kansas City Star that he would still hold the event...

The detention of a Kansas father of three who has lived in the U.S. for three decades highlights what experts say is the extraordinarily complicated nature of immigration law — and how much can change from one administration to the next. Immigration experts said the path towards citizenship can easily get derailed by what appear to be minor infractions, which may have contributed to the seemingly out-of-the blue detention of Syed Ahmed Jamal last month. Jamal, who is from Bangladesh, was about to take his daughter to school on Jan. 24 when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials showed...

When Mike Becker received the frantic call on Tuesday that a gunman was threatening his family at the nearby Dollar General, he said he immediately took off with a handgun. The Independence man ran to the store shortly before 6 p.m. and saw the gunman pounding on the glass door. Inside, his wife, 4-year-old adopted daughter and about 30 others huddled together, terrified, toward the back of the store. His wife hid the girl behind bags of dog food. Becker said he put his body between those inside and the gunman. “The only thing in my mind was my baby...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Harley-Davidson announced that it will close its Kansas City plant as the company moves to consolidate operations. In the company's fourth-quarter earnings report, Harley-Davidson said that the Kansas City motorcycle plant would be consolidated with its plant in York, Pa. Workers were reportedly told that the plant would close next year. A statement released from Harley-Davidson Tuesday morning said the plant would close in the third quarter of 2019. "As we continue to improve our cost structure and maintain world-class manufacturing operations, we are launching a significant, multi-year manufacturing optimization initiative that is anchored in the...

Chief Gordon Ramsay read from a statement during Friday’s Wichita police briefing, then took questions from reporters. One asked how indictments released Thursday, revealing two officers being charged with obstructing a criminal investigation, reflected on the department even though the officers’ actions allegedly occurred in 2014, two years before Ramsay’s arrival. Seemingly exasperated – and not by the question – Ramsay went off script. “There’s a lot that’s been going on, right?” he said. “I’m passionate about the role police play in society. We do tremendous stuff for the community, so it weighs heavily on us. Community support is critical...

Thanksgiving was right around the corner, and a sizable number of one of America’s most famous migrants could be seen still sputtering south. Not across the Texas-Mexico border, where most monarch butterflies should be by that time of year. These fluttered tardily through the migratory funnel that is Cape May, N.J., their iconic orange-and-black patterns splashing against the muted green of pines frosted by the season’s first chill. This delayed migration is not normal, and it alarmed monarch researchers across the country. Scientists fear that climate change is behind what they’re calling the latest monarch migration ev er recorded in...

Based on the approximate eight seconds of body cam video released by Wichita police, Eyewitness News asked several experts around the country if they could answer those questions. Their perspectives didn't necessarily align. Dr. Delores Jones-Brown is a former prosecutor and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "It appears that all the police officers had taken cover and there are no civilians on the street," she says. "So there would not have been a necessity to fire his weapon at the time that he fired." Jeff Noble, a former Irvine, Calif. police officer now works as a police...

Connecting with rural Americans, President Donald Trump on Monday hailed his tax overhaul as a victory for family farmers and pitched his vision to expand access to broadband internet, a cornerstone of economic development in the nation's heartland. "Those towers are going to go up and you're going to have great, great broadband," Trump told the annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation. "Farm country is God's country," he declared. Trump became the first president in a quarter-century to address the federation's convention, using the trip to Nashville as a backdrop for a White House report that included proposals...

"That kids house that I swatted is on the news," tweeted "SWauTistic" -- before he realized he'd gotten somebody killed. Security researcher Brian Krebs reveals what happened next. When it became apparent that a man had been killed as a result of the swatting, Swautistic tweeted that he didn't get anyone killed because he didn't pull the trigger. Swautistic soon changed his Twitter handle to @GoredTutor36, but KrebsOnSecurity managed to obtain several weeks' worth of tweets from Swautistic before his account was renamed. Those tweets indicate that Swautistic is a serial swatter -- meaning he has claimed responsibility for a...

Los Angeles police have arrested a 25-year-old man on suspicion of making the swatting call that ended with a Wichita man being killed by police. Tyler Barriss was arrested Friday afternoon, according to KABC. Booking records for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office say he was arrested at 3:15 p.m. for a felony. Barriss is accused of reporting a fake homicide and hostage situation to the Wichita Police Department just after 6:15 p.m. Thursday. The practice is called "swatting" and happens when someone makes a call to a police department with a false story of an ongoing crime – often...

Attorney General Jeff Landry is urging a federal appeals court to reverse an order that is preventing the implementation of President Donald Trump's executive order regulating so-called "sanctuary cities," arguing that such immigrant-friendly jurisdictions "undermine the rule of law and deprive law enforcement of the tools necessary to enforce the law effectively." "We have seen too many crimes occur against our own State’s citizens due to sanctuary city policies; which is why I have been actively fighting back against these policies since taking office," Landry, a Republican, said in a news release announcing that he had joined 10 other attorneys...

The footage, released publicly by the city for the first time this month, cleared Morris’ and Becerra’s names in the September 2014 incident. They had been convicted in Topeka municipal court on charges ranging from assaulting an officer, disobeying an officer, disturbing the peace and interfering with law enforcement. The judge vacated the sentences, and Morris was awarded a $40,000 settlement from the city of Topeka. Becerra received $10,000. The video that exonerated them wasn’t released in time to make a difference before their trial. After a judge had found both Morris and Becerra guilty on all counts, Luther Ganieany,...

For the first time in years, there is an emerging consensus that the biggest racket in national politics deserves to end. Earlier this month, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and 10 other Republican senators held a luncheon summit at the White House with President Trump with the goal of drastically reforming the Renewable Fuel Standard, the federal mandate that annually funnels $13.5 billion from the wallets of American fuel and food consumers into the coffers of agribusiness giants. Before the national nightmare of Obamacare, there was the RFS, the most sweeping and intrusive federal intervention in the American economy undertaken in...

WASHINGTON — Andrea Ramsey, a Democratic candidate for Congress, will drop out of the race after the Kansas City Star asked her about accusations in a 2005 lawsuit that she sexually harassed and retaliated against a male subordinate who said he had rejected her advances. Multiple sources with knowledge of the case told The Star that the man reached a settlement with LabOne, the company where Ramsey was executive vice president of human resources. Court documents show that the man, Gary Funkhouser, and LabOne agreed to dismiss the case permanently after mediation in 2006. Ramsey, a 56-year-old retired business executive...

WASHINGTON Andrea Ramsey, a Democratic candidate for Congress, will drop out of the race after the Kansas City Star asked her about accusations in a 2005 lawsuit that she sexually harassed and retaliated against a male subordinate who said he had rejected her advances. Multiple sources with knowledge of the case told The Star that the man reached a settlement with LabOne, the company where Ramsey was executive vice president of human resources. Court documents show that the man, Gary Funkhouser, and LabOne agreed to dismiss the case permanently after mediation in 2006. Ramsey, a 56-year-old retired business executive from...

Congressional Republicans say they reached agreement on a final tax bill that will provide a new 20-percent deduction for pass-through income from farms and small businesses. The agreement, which the House and Senate are expected to take up early next week, also calls for doubling the estate tax exemption and will include key expensing provisions that farm groups sought to preserve and expand, lawmakers said. They said the agreement also would allow deduction of state and local taxes, including income and property taxes, up to $10,000, a concession to lawmakers in high-tax states that could also benefit farmers. Senate Agriculture...

A Missouri high school that suspended a student for making critical comments about Islamic extremism says he’s not allowed to appeal the finding of wrongdoing. Senior Alex Lonsdale, a member of Liberty High’s nationally ranked debate club, says he was just trying to have a friendly debate. During his free period Oct. 17 at the public school near Kansas City, Lonsdale joined a spontaneous conversation among acquaintances about the nature of Islam.

Olathe businessman Greg Orman returns to Kansas’ political forefront Wednesday by formally launching an exploratory committee for an independent campaign for governor in a move certain to jolt the congested field of Republican and Democratic hopefuls. On Tuesday, The Topeka Capital-Journal confirmed Orman’s plan to submit required documents to the Secretary of State’s office and begin accepting campaign contributions for what is expected to be a compelling and expensive showdown for governor. “I would be shocked if he didn’t run. If Greg runs, I’m confident he’ll win,” said Jim Jonas, who managed Orman’s campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2014....

The GOP tax plan was passed through the Senate Friday night in a 51-49 vote. There are a number of things included in the last-minute text, including a provision by Sen. Gardner of Colorado that exempts Kombucha, a fermented tea drink, from alcoholic taxes and regulations. Why it matters: These are small examples of what got slipped in the bill last-minute as the Senate vote neared, and reveals some of the senators' pet projects back in their home states. Odd amendments included in the tax plan: Sen. Orrin Hatch Prohibit things like cash and gift cards to be given as...