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00000179-cdc6-d978-adfd-cfc6d7d40002Coverage of the issues, races and people shaping Kansas elections in 2016, including statewide coverage in partnership with KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, and High Plains Public Radio.

Kansas Secretary Of State Kris Kobach Meets With Trump Again

Stephen Koranda
/
KPR/File photo

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was in New York on Thursday for another meeting with President-elect Donald Trump.

After his highly-publicized first meeting with Trump in New Jersey on Nov. 20, Republican Party officials in Kansas are speculating this second round is more than a suggestion that Kobach will land a job in the new administration.

“I’ve spoken with a couple of people close to the transition team,” says Clay Barker, Kansas GOP executive director. “Speculation is he’s being considered for a position in either the Department of Homeland Security or the Office of the Attorney General.”

Kobach’s office has not returned numerous calls for comment.

Credit AP Photo
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and President-elect Donald Trump first met in late-November.

In his first get-together with Trump, Kobach was famously photographed holding a memo showing his plans for DHS in the first year of the administration.

The ideas included a total ban on Syrian refugees to the U.S., reintroducing a Bush-era program that required immigrants to be tracked, and questioning “high-risk aliens” about “support for Sharia law, jihad.”

Kobach had been quiet following that first meeting. But in an interview with WIBW in Topeka this week, Kobach said there was nothing in his memo that Trump hadn’t already talked about, including a plan to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

“(We talked about) border security problems in terms of national security, border security problems in terms of law enforcement, in terms of crime," Kobach said in the WIBW interview. "And so I’ve talked to him about that as well. And I think his administration is going to make sure that he fulfills that promise.”

Kobach is the architect of some of the toughest immigration laws in the country. He’s linked his concerns about those in the country illegally to his efforts to crack down on voter fraud.

Peggy Lowe joined Harvest Public Media in 2011, returning to the Midwest after 22 years as a journalist in Denver and Southern California. Most recently she was at The Orange County Register, where she was a multimedia producer and writer. In Denver she worked for The Associated Press, The Denver Post and the late, great Rocky Mountain News. She was on the Denver Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of Columbine. Peggy was a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan in 2008-09. She is from O'Neill, the Irish Capital of Nebraska, and now lives in Kansas City. Based at KCUR, Peggy is the analyst for The Harvest Network and often reports for Harvest Public Media.
Laura Ziegler began her career at KCUR as a reporter more than 20 years ago. She became the news director in the mid 1980's and in 1988, went to National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. as a producer for Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon.