KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A decision by the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas to deny enrollment to the kindergarten child of gay parents has prompted thousands of people to sign dueling petitions.

A recent online petition supporting the archdiocese’s decision has received more 7,000 signatures. An earlier petition signed by almost 2,000 members of Kansas City-area Catholic parishes asks officials to change their minds.

Local parishioners learned of the decision when the Rev. Craig J. Maxim of St. Ann Catholic Church wrote a letter to parents last month telling families the archdiocese said the child’s parents cannot “model behaviors and attitudes consistent with the Church’s teachings.”

Maxim wrote this creates a conflict for those children and could be a source of confusion for other children.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Senate is backing an effort that could make it harder to impeach and oust top officials, less than a year after the state’s governor resigned while facing potential impeachment.

Senators behind the proposal say it isn’t motivated by the case against former Republican Gov. Eric Greitens. But had the measure been in place last year, House members likely would have been unable to pursue impeachment of Greitens.

The proposal would delete the current eight grounds for impeachment — including two of the causes against Greitens, “misconduct” and “moral turpitude” — and instead limit impeachment to “corruption or crime in office.” Under that standard, House members could not have pursued impeachment for allegations of sexual misconduct and campaign finance violations that occurred before Greitens took office in January 2017.

“Had this been the law a year ago, Eric Greitens would still be our governor, despite some pretty egregious behavior,” said Democratic Rep. Gina Mitten, who served on the special House investigatory committee that was weighing whether to impeach Greitens.

Greitens resigned June 1, before the panel voted on impeachment, as part of a deal with a St. Louis prosecutor to drop a felony charge alleging that he illegally provided a donor list from a veterans charity he founded to his campaign fundraiser in 2015. He was succeeded by Republican Lt. Gov. Mike Parson.

Prosecutors also decided not to pursue a charge alleging he took and transmitted a nonconsensual photo of a partially nude woman with whom he admitted having an affair in 2015. The woman testified that Greitens slapped her during a sexual encounter, which Greitens denied.

The Senate’s proposed constitutional amendment received initial approval earlier this week. It needs a second Senate vote to go to the House and then would be subject to a statewide vote, likely in the 2020 general election. The change would take effect in 2021.

In addition to narrowing the impeachment criteria, the proposal would shift the responsibility for conducting impeachment trials to the Senate instead of judges and would raise the threshold needed to remove an impeached executive branch official.

“It would make it a much more rigorous process,” said sponsoring state Sen. Ed Emery, a Republican. “It makes the lasso that you cast to pull in an impeachable offense a little smaller.”

Emery added: “I definitely think there was sense that (Greitens) was being mistreated, but I don’t think it had any impact on this” proposed constitutional amendment.

Emery said his main objective is to restore the authority for conducting impeachment trials to the Senate, as it had been under an 1875 version of the Missouri Constitution. He has sponsored similar measures in prior years. But to get this year’s version out of the Senate Judiciary and Civil and Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, Emery said he had to agree to narrow the grounds for impeachment.

Committee chairman Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer, a Republican attorney, said he was concerned that lawmakers could have used the broader, current criteria to try to remove judges from office for rulings with which they disagreed.

“When you have a generalized, nebulous standard like ‘misconduct,’ well, what is misconduct?” Luetkemeyer asked rhetorically.

He added: “What I don’t want to have happen is somebody reach back into a judge’s past — or the past of a statewide elected official — and say something that you did when you were 14 years old, or something that you did whenever you were in college, can then be used and bootstrapped as a basis for removing somebody from office.”

Luetkemeyer was not a member of the Legislature during last year’s investigation into Greitens, though his wife worked as a legal counsel in Greitens’ office.

Mitten, who opposes the measure, said it could give politicians a free pass for misconduct before taking office.

“You could hypothetically get elected in November, rob a bank December 31st, get sworn in a week later — nothing anybody could do about it,” Mitten said. “It would not be grounds for impeaching him.”

Had Greitens been impeached last year by the House, he would have been tried by a panel of seven judges appointed by the Senate that would have needed five votes to remove him from office.

The Senate’s proposal would require a three-quarters vote of the Senate to remove a governor or other elected executive official and a two-thirds vote to remove a judge. That provision is backed by Democratic state Sen. Jason Holsman, who said it would ensure bipartisan support while adding “a layer of protection for those elected officials.”

Republicans currently hold a greater than two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate but are just shy of the three-fourths mark.

“If they’ve done something that rises to the level of impeachment and removal, you would think that it would be near unanimous,” Holsman said.

___

CAMDENTON, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri school custodian has been charged with exposing his genitals to a child.

30-year-old Jesse Devore, of Sunrise Beach, was charged Wednesday with two felony counts of sexual misconduct with a child.

The Camdenton R-III School District said in a news release that administrators were told a staff member engaged in a “lewd act” in a restroom at Oak Ridge Intermediate School. Superintendent Tim Hadfield says the district fired Devore, and parents were notified through a phone call.

No attorney is listed for him in online court records.

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (AP) — A Russian-American crew arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, five months after a botched launch led to an emergency landing for two of the three astronauts.

Five months after being forced to abort his first launch to space, @AstroHague is now where he’s destined to be: aboard the @Space_Station. During his 6.5 month mission, he will perform the first spacewalk of his career, conduct experiments & more. Watch: https://t.co/ZuxLDtzW9c pic.twitter.com/lNcVe101M6

— NASA (@NASA) March 15, 2019

This time, the Russian Soyuz rocket carrying NASA astronauts Nick Hague of Hoxie, Kansas and Christina Koch along with Roscosmos’ Alexei Ovchinin lifted off precisely as planned from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 12:14 a.m. Friday (1914 GMT Thursday).

Six hours later, their capsule docked at the orbiting outpost.

On Oct. 11, a Soyuz carrying Hague and Ovchinin failed two minutes into flight, activating a rescue system that allowed their capsule to land safely. That accident was the first aborted crew launch for the Russian space program since 1983, when two Soviet cosmonauts safely jettisoned after a launch pad explosion.

On Friday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine congratulated the crew on a successful launch. “So proud of Nick Hague for persevering through last October’s launch that didn’t go as planned,” he tweeted.

Speaking at a pre-launch news conference at Baikonur, the astronauts said they trusted the rocket and fully believed in the success of their mission.

“I’m 100 percent confident in the rocket and the spacecraft,” Hague said. “The events from October only helped to solidify that and boost confidence in the vehicle to do its job.”

The trio will join NASA’s Anne McClain, Roscosmos’ Oleg Kononenko and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency who are already on the space station. They will conduct work on hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science.

When one of the four strap-on boosters for their Soyuz failed to separate properly two minutes after their launch in October, Hague and Ovchinin were jettisoned from the rocket. Their rescue capsule plunged steeply back to Earth with its lights flashing and alarms screaming, subjecting the crew to seven times the force of gravity.

Hague emphasized Wednesday that they were well-trained for the emergency.

“The nature of our profession is we spend 90-95 percent of our time practicing what to do when things go wrong,” he said. “And so we spend all that time training, running through all those scenarios. And because we do train that way, like in October when things like that happened, we were ready to do what we need to do to come out successfully.”

The October failure was the first aborted launch for the Russian space program in 35 years and only the third in history. Each time, the rocket’s automatic rescue system kept the crew safe.

A Russian investigation attributed October’s launch failure to a sensor that was damaged during the rocket’s final assembly. The next crew launch to the space station in December went on without a hitch.

Ovchinin recalled that they felt “more annoyed than stressed” when their rescue capsule touched down in the barren steppes of Kazakhstan. “It was disappointing and a bit frustrating that we didn’t make it to the International Space Station,” he said.

NASA and Roscosmos praised the crew’s valor and composure in the aborted launch and promised to quickly give them a second chance into space.

“We don’t accept the risk blindly, we have mitigated it as much as we can, and we always plan to be successful,” Hague said.

Ovchinin stressed that the aborted launch in October was an “interesting and very useful experience” that “proved the reliability of the emergency rescue system.”

.@AstroHague, @Astro_Christina, Alexey Ovchinin joined @AstroAnnimal, Oleg Kononenko, and @Astro_DavidS aboard the station when the hatch officially opened at 11:07pm ET. https://t.co/c6U1uRUAHt pic.twitter.com/ZDuqKAHyzC

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) March 15, 2019

Since the 2011 retirement of the U.S. shuttle fleet, Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft have been the only vehicles that ferry crews to the space station.

NASA, however, is counting on SpaceX and Boeing to start launching astronauts later this year. The SpaceX ship Dragon returned Friday from a six-day test flight to the space station and could take astronauts there on its next flight as early as this summer.

___

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (AP) — A Russian-American crew of three has blasted off to the International Space Station, making a second attempt to reach the outpost after October’s aborted launch.

A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying NASA astronauts including Hoxie, Kansas native Nick Hague and Christina Koch along with Roscosmos’ Alexei Ovchinin lifted off as planned from the Baikonur cosmodrome at 1:14 p.m. CDT Thursday  (in Kazakhstan at 12:14 a.m. Friday)

Their Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft reached a designated orbit about nine minutes after the launch, and the crew reported they were feeling fine and all systems on board were operating normally. They are set to dock at the space station in about six hours.

On Oct. 11, a Soyuz that Hague and Ovchinin were riding in failed two minutes into its flight, activating a rescue system that allowed their capsule to land safely. That accident was the first aborted crew launch for the Russian space program since 1983, when two Soviet cosmonauts safely jettisoned after a launch pad explosion.

Speaking at a pre-launch news conference at Baikonur, the crew said they trust the rocket and fully believe in the success of their mission.

“I’m 100 percent confident in the rocket and the spacecraft deliver us to the space station and bring us home safely,” Hague said. “The events from October only helped to solidify that and boost confidence in the vehicle to do its job.”

The trio will join NASA’s Anne McClain, Roscosmos’ Oleg Kononenko and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency who are currently on the space station. They will conduct work on hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science.

—————

Hoxie, Kansas native  Nick Hague is set for another attempt to reach the International Space Station Thursday afternoon. He and a fellow cosmonauts were forced to abort a launch in October.

According to a media release from NASA, two American astronauts including Hague and a Russian cosmonaut are set to join the crew aboard the International Space Station on Thursday. 

NASA astronauts Nick Hague  and Christina Koch, and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos, are set to launch aboard the Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft at 2:14 p.m. CDT (12:14 a.m. March 15 Kazakhstan time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a six-hour journey to the station.  

Live coverage will air on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

The trio’s arrival will return the orbiting laboratory’s population to six, including three NASA astronauts. This launch will also mark the fourth Expedition crew with two female astronauts. 

The new crew members will dock to the Rassvet module at 8:07 p.m. Expedition 59 will begin officially at the time of docking.

About two hours later, hatches between the Soyuz and the station will open and the new residents will be greeted by NASA astronaut Anne McClain, station commander Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos, and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency. The current three-person crew just welcomed the first American commercial crew vehicle as it docked to the station on March 3, amidst a busy schedule of scientific research and operations since arriving in December. 

The crew members of Expeditions 59 and 60 will continue work on hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science aboard the humanity’s only permanently occupied microgravity laboratory.

McClain, Saint-Jacques, Hague and Koch also are all scheduled for the first spacewalks of their careers to continue upgrades to the orbital laboratory. McClain and Hague are scheduled to begin work to upgrade the power system March 22, and McClain and Koch will complete the upgrades to two station power channels during a March 29 spacewalk. This will be the first-ever spacewalk with all-female spacewalkers. Hague and Saint-Jacques will install hardware for a future science platform during an April 8 spacewalk.

Hague and Ovchinin are completing a journey that was cut short Oct. 11, when a booster separation problem with their Soyuz rocket’s first stage triggered a launch abort two minutes into the flight. They landed safely a few minutes later, after reaching the fringes of space, and were reassigned to fly again after McClain, Kononenko and Saint-Jacques launched in early December. This will be Ovchinin’s third flight into space, the second for Hague and the first for Koch. Hague, Koch, and McClain are from NASA’s 2013 astronaut class, half of which were women—the highest percentage of female astronaut candidates ever selected for a class.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Two Republican-controlled committees of the Kansas Legislature have stripped Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s proposed state spending for Medicaid expansion out of budget legislation.

The Senate Ways and Means Committee voted 7-6 on Thursday to remove $14 million from a proposed budget for the state health department for the fiscal year beginning in July. The money represented Kelly’s initial estimate for the state tax dollars needed to draw down federal funds for the first six months after expanded Medicaid coverage started in January.

Medicaid expansion has bipartisan support, but GOP leaders strongly oppose it. They argue that supporters are underestimating the state’s potential costs.

The House Appropriations Committee voted 13-9 on Wednesday to remove not only the state tax dollars but the entire $509 million for expanded Medicaid coverage.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-run Senate rejected President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the southwest border on Thursday, setting up a veto fight and dealing him a conspicuous rebuke as he tested how boldly he could ignore Congress in pursuit of his highest-profile goal. Kansas senior Senator Pat Roberts voted with Trump. Missouri Senator Roy Blunt and Kansas Senator Jerry Moran voted against the measure.

 

I agree with the president’s assessment that we have reached a crisis point at the border, and this is nothing new. For many years, control of our southern border has been a fundamental failure of our first obligation to protect the national security of the United States.

— Senator Pat Roberts (@SenPatRoberts) March 14, 2019

I share President Trump’s goal of securing our borders, but expanding the powers of the presidency beyond its constitutional limits is something I cannot support.

Here are my thoughts on how I came to this decision: pic.twitter.com/DEHoBuNdhu

— Senator Jerry Moran (@JerryMoran) March 14, 2019

The Senate voted 59-41 to cancel Trump’s February proclamation of a border emergency, which he invoked to spend $3.6 billion more for border barriers than Congress had approved. Twelve Republicans joined Democrats in defying Trump in a showdown many GOP senators had hoped to avoid because he commands die-hard loyalty from millions of conservative voters who could punish defecting lawmakers in next year’s elections.

With the Democratic-controlled House’s approval of the same resolution last month, Senate passage sends it to Trump. He has shown no reluctance to casting his first veto to advance his campaign exhortation to “Build the Wall,” and it seems certain Congress will lack the two-thirds majorities that would be needed to override him.

“I’ll do a veto. It’s not going to be overturned,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s a border security vote.”

Though Trump seems sure to prevail in a veto battle, it remains noteworthy that lawmakers of both parties resisted him in a fight directly tied to his cherished campaign theme of erecting a border wall. The roll call came just a day after the Senate took a step toward a veto fight with Trump on another issue, voting to end U.S. support for the Saudi Arabian-led coalition’s war in Yemen.

In a measure of how remarkable the confrontation was, Thursday was the first time Congress has voted to block a presidential emergency since the National Emergency Act became law in 1976.

Even before Thursday’s vote, there were warnings that GOP senators resisting Trump could face political consequences. A White House official said Trump won’t forget when senators who oppose him want him to attend fundraisers or provide other help. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on internal deliberations.

At the White House, Trump did not answer when reporters asked if there would be consequences for Republicans who voted against him.

Underscoring the political pressures in play, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who last month became one of the first Republicans to say he’d oppose Trump’s border emergency, said Thursday he’d vote to support it. Tillis, who faces a potentially difficult re-election race next year, cited talks with the White House that suggest Trump could be open to restricting presidential emergency powers in the future.

Still, the breadth of opposition among Republicans suggested how concern about his declaration had spread to all corners of the GOP. Republican senators voting for the resolution blocking Trump included Mitt Romney of Utah, the party’s 2012 presidential candidate; Mike Lee of Utah, a solid conservative; Maine moderate Susan Collins and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a respected centrist.

Republicans control the Senate 53-47. Democrats solidly opposed Trump’s declaration.

Presidents have declared 58 national emergencies since the 1976 law, but this was the first aimed at accessing money that Congress had explicitly denied, according to Elizabeth Goitein, co-director for national security at New York University Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice.

Trump and Republicans backing him said there is a legitimate security and humanitarian crisis at the border with Mexico. They also said Trump was merely exercising his powers under the law, which largely leaves it to presidents to decide what a national emergency is.

“The president is operating within existing law, and the crisis on our border is all too real,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Opponents said Trump’s assertion of an emergency was overblown. They said he issued his declaration only because Congress agreed to provide less than $1.4 billion for barriers and he was desperate to fulfill his campaign promise on the wall. They said the Constitution gives Congress, not presidents, control over spending and said Trump’s stretching of emergency powers would invite future presidents to do the same for their own concerns.

“He’s obsessed with showing strength, and he couldn’t just abandon his pursuit of the border wall, so he had to trample on the Constitution to continue his fight,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Republicans had hoped that Trump would endorse a separate bill by Utah’s Sen. Lee constraining emergency declarations in the future and that would win over enough GOP senators to reject Thursday’s resolution.

But Trump told Lee on Wednesday that he opposed Lee’s legislation, prompting Lee himself to say he would back the resolution.

The strongest chance of blocking Trump remains several lawsuits filed by Democratic state attorneys general, environmental groups and others.

On Twitter, Trump called on Republicans to oppose the resolution, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., helped drive through the House last month.

“Today’s issue is BORDER SECURITY and Crime!!! Don’t vote with Pelosi!” he tweeted, invoking the name of a Democrat who boatloads of GOP ads have villainized in recent campaign cycles.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is backing Trump, went to the White House late Wednesday with other senators to see if some compromise could be reached that would help reduce the number of GOP senators opposing Trump, according to a person familiar with the visit who described it on condition of anonymity. The effort fell short.

The National Emergency Act gives presidents wide leeway in declaring an emergency. Congress can vote to block a declaration, but the two-thirds majorities required to overcome presidential vetoes make it hard for lawmakers to prevail.

Lee had proposed letting a presidential emergency declaration last 30 days unless Congress voted to extend it. That would have applied to future emergencies but not Trump’s current order unless he sought to renew it next year.

BUFFALO, W.Va. (AP) — Toyota Motor Corp. on Thursday announced it is investing an additional $750 million at five U.S. plants that will bring nearly 600 new jobs, including the production of two hybrid vehicles for the first time at its Kentucky facility.

It marks yet another expansion of the Japanese automaker’s U.S. presence, bringing to nearly $13 billion the amount it will spend by 2021.

The latest investments are at facilities in Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia. Those same facilities were part of a 2017 announcement by Toyota for a $374 million investment to support production of its first American-made hybrid powertrain.

Toyota Motor North America executive Chris Reynolds said the investments represent yet more examples of the company’s long-term commitment to build where it sells, irrespective of trade uncertainty due to tariffs.

“Our overarching manufacturing principle is if we can sell it here we need to make it here. That’s been true before any tariff uncertainty, it’s true during tariff uncertainty and it will be true after. Our investment cycles go beyond any particular political cycle,” he said during a conference call with reporters.

Toyota Motor North America CEO Jim Lentz said, “In a time when others are scaling back, we believe in the strength of America, and we’re excited about the future of mobility here in America.”

The automaker is spreading the additional investments among several plants.

Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky, facility will get a $238 million infusion to produce hybrid versions of Lexus ES 300 sedans starting in May and the RAV4 SUV starting in January 2020, the company announced.

The RAV4 production doesn’t signal a shift away from sedan production at the sprawling Kentucky plant, Toyota executives said. Instead, it reflects Toyota’s plan to build multiple vehicles at its plants to better insulate each facility from downturns in market cycles.

“Unlike some of our competitors, we think there’s value in the sedan market, while it may not be as big as it was,” Reynolds said.

The announcement also includes $288 million to increase annual engine capacity at Toyota’s Huntsville, Alabama, facility. The plant will add 450 jobs to accommodate new four-cylinder and V6 engine production lines. Last year Toyota and Mazda announced plans to build a $1.6 billion joint-venture plant in Huntsville that will eventually employ about 4,000 people.

Toyota also is spending $62 million on equipment to boost production of Toyota and Lexus cylinder heads at its Bodine Aluminum facility in Troy, Missouri, as part of its cost-saving New Global Architecture production strategy to share common parts and components among different vehicles.

A $50 million expansion and equipment upgrade at a Bodine plant in Jackson, Tennessee, will add 13 jobs and produce engine blocks while doubling the capacity of hybrid transaxle cases and housings.

And Toyota will add 123 jobs and spent $111 million to expand its plant and purchase equipment in Buffalo, West Virginia, to double the capacity of hybrid transaxles.

Previously, Toyota also announced a $600 million investment at its Princeton, Indiana, plant to increase the capacity of its Highlander SUV and to incorporate the new production strategy, and $170 million to launch the 2020 Corolla on a new production line in Blue Springs, Mississippi.

__

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Columbia police have identified a man who was found dead last month inside a Chinese restaurant in Columbia.

Police said Wednesday that 53-year-old Nam Hoang Le’s body was found Feb. 18 inside the ABC Chinese Cuisine restaurant.

Investigators determined Le apparently was trying to burglarize the restaurant while it was closed.

The Columbia Missourian reports the restaurant’s owner, Mingsun Wong, found the body near the business’ kitchen. He noticed holes in the ceiling and originally reported a structural collapse before finding Le’s body.

Le was a foreign national from Vietnam with a conviction for burglary in St. Louis in 2012.

TROY, Mo. (AP) — Authorities say a Missouri woman who is charged with fatally shooting her boyfriend reported that he had assaulted her.

49-year-old Angela Medici is jailed on $300,000 bond on first-degree murder and armed criminal action charges in the death of 63-year-old Keith Sweetin. Deputies responded around 3 a.m. Monday to the couple’s home east of Troy and found him dead.

A witness called 911 to report Sweeting assaulting Medici; the witness then reported seeing Medici shoot Sweetin in the head.

Charging documents say Medici told investigators she was “angry” with Sweetin and “that she could have and should have left the residence, however chose not to.” She said he had assaulted her earlier that morning. No attorney is listed for her in online court records.

___