Jerry Moran

A massive federal coronavirus stimulus package, on the verge of final passage, should bring some welcome relief from the pandemic to the Kansas City metro area, members of the Kansas and Missouri Congressional delegations said Thursday.

The U.S. Senate unanimously passed the so-called CARES Act on Wednesday night, and the U.S. House is expected to do so quickly on Friday. It then goes to President Trump.

Passenger trains will keep rolling through rural communities in Kansas, for now. But Amtrak still hasn’t committed to operating the long-distance routes that connect small towns to larger cities long-term.

Earlier this year, Congress agreed to an additional $50 million to keep the Southwest Chief, which travels from Chicago to Los Angeles with stops in several small Kansas cities, running through September.

Long-running frustration about Amtrak’s willingness to keep a rail passenger line running through remote parts of the country has politicians threatening to block new directors to the agency.

A handful of U.S. senators demanded specifics by this week about how Amtrak plans to spend an added $50 million to keep the Southwest Chief line running from Chicago, through Kansas, to Los Angeles.

Kansas U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran is one of several Republicans who expressed concern about President Donald Trump’s declaration Friday of a national emergency to fund construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

He’ll cringe when he reads this but, Republican U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran is part of “the resistance.”

Not always in obvious ways. Moreover, not in ways that come close to comforting those who view President Donald Trump as a clear and present danger to the nation.

But in his own quiet, Kansas way Moran resists the chaos of Trump’s Washington by advocating for a return to “regular order” in the U.S. Senate and the nation.

Different in style but still much like his late colleague, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, the new congresswoman from Kansas' 3rd District, will meet with Republican Sen. Jerry Moran this week and lobby him to vote for a House bill that would reopen the government, Davids said on Sunday.

As President Donald Trump prepared to address the nation about the partial shutdown of the federal government, U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran huddled with staffers this week talking about rocket launches.

They fretted over whether the furlough of workers at NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration could force the delay of satellite and experimental rocket launches.