Jim McLean

With control of the U.S. Senate up for grabs in November, Republicans may have fights on their hands in states they have long taken for granted: Kansas, for example.

The GOP has held both of the state's Senate seats since the Great Depression. However, as they approach a Monday, June 1, filing deadline, party leaders are not confident that any of the candidates now in the field are a lock to hold onto retiring Sen. Pat Roberts's seat.

Stephanie Clayton won her fourth term in the Kansas legislature as a moderate Republican but when she started in office this month, she did so as a Democrat. She says she had an abrupt change of heart about a month after the November election last year.

It was the day Republican legislative leaders said they wanted to rewrite a school-finance bill that Clayton and other moderate Republicans had worked alongside Democrats to pass in last year's session. For her, it was a breaking point.

Members of Congress might want to familiarize themselves with the story of Kansas' failed tax-cutting experiment as they begin deliberations on President Donald Trump's tax-reform plan.

It could serve as a cautionary tale because some elements of the president's updated proposal mirror pieces of the tax-cut plan that Republican Gov. Sam Brownback pushed through the state legislature in 2012, promising it would deliver a "shot of adrenaline" to the Kansas economy.

One of the least popular governors in the country is leaving his post to take a new position with the Trump administration.

President Trump announced Wednesday that he would nominate Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a social conservative with deep religious convictions, to head the Office of International Religious Freedom in the U.S. State Department. As ambassador at large, Brownback's mission would be to monitor and respond to threats to religious freedom around the world.