NEW YORK (AP) — Video cameras stationed outside the Manhattan courthouse where former President Donald Trump is on trial caught the gruesome scene Friday of a man who lit himself on fire and the aftermath as authorities tried to rescue him.

CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC were all on the air with reporters talking about the seating of a jury when the incident happened and other news agencies, including The Associated Press, were livestreaming from outside the courthouse. The man, who distributed pamphlets before dousing himself in an accelerant and setting himself on fire, was in critical condition.

The incident tested how quickly the networks could react, and how they decided what would be too disturbing for their viewers to see.

With narration from Laura Coates, CNN had the most extensive view of the scene. Coates, who at first incorrectly said it was a shooting situation, then narrated as the man was visible onscreen, enveloped in flames.

“You can smell burning flesh,” Coates, an anchor and CNN’s chief legal analyst, said as she stood at the scene with reporter Evan Perez.

The camera switched back and forth between Coates and what was happening in the park. Five minutes after the incident started, CNN posted the onscreen message “Warning: Graphic Content.”

Coates later said she couldn’t “overstate the emotional response of watching a human being engulfed in flames and to watch his body be lifted into a gurney.” She described it as an “emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment here.”

Fox’s cameras caught the scene briefly as reporter Eric Shawn talked, then the network switched to a courtroom sketch of Trump on trial.

“We deeply apologize for what has happened,” Shawn said.

On MSNBC, reporter Yasmin Vossoughian narrated the scene. The network showed smoke in the park, but no picture where the body was visible.

“I could see the outline of his body inside the flames,” Vossoughian said, “which was so terrifying to see. As he went to the ground his knees hit the ground first.”

The AP had a camera with an unnarrated live shot stationed outside the courthouse, shown on YouTube and APNews.com. The cameras caught an extensive view, with the man lighting himself afire and later writhing on the ground before a police officer tried to douse the flames with a jacket.

The AP later removed its live feed from its YouTube channel and replaced it with a new one because of the graphic nature of the content.

The news agency distributed carefully edited clips to its video clients — not showing the moment the man lit himself on fire, for example, said executive producer Tom Williams.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Gov. Jim Justice announced Friday that West Virginia will not face a clawback of $465 million in COVID-19 money from the U.S. Department of Education, alleviating concerns raised by state lawmakers during the final days of the legislative session in March.

The Republican governor said in a statement that federal officials approved the state’s application for a waiver for the money, which was a portion of the more than a billion dollars in federal aid the state received to help support students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In order to receive the money, the state needed to keep funding education at the same or a higher level than before the pandemic. In other words, the federal money could supplement existing state investment in education but not replace it.

For federal spending packages passed in 2020 and 2021, that meant a dollar-for-dollar match. For 2022 and 2023, the federal government examined the percentage of each state’s total budget being spent on education.

Those regulations were waived for West Virginia in 2022. As lawmakers worked to finish the state budget in March at the close of the session, the state had not been approved for a waiver for 2023.

The question threw the state’s budget process into disarray and caused uncertainty in the days before the 60-day legislative session, with lawmakers saying they would pass a “skinny budget” and reconvene to address unfinished business in May, when the financial situation is clearer.

Justice said then that his office was negotiating with the federal government and that he expected a positive resolution, citing funds dedicated to school service and teacher pay raises each year since 2018 — when school employees went on strike over conditions in schools.

On Friday, he praised the federal government’s decision, and he said he was never concerned the waiver wouldn’t be approved.

“This announcement came as no surprise and was never a real issue,” Justice said.

He also said the state has dedicated money to building projects and putting teaching aides in classrooms to improve math and reading skills. The state said it spent $8,464 per K-12 pupil in 2024, compared with $7,510 during Justice’s first year as governor in 2017, according to documents submitted to the federal government.

But because state spending increased overall — from $4.9 billion in 2017 to $6.2 billion in 2023 — the percentage marked for education decreased. The key metric eliciting pause from the federal government was an 8% decrease in the education piece of the budget pie — from 51% in 2017 to 43% last year.

Justice said the state’s investment in education speaks for itself: State leaders also approved $150 million for the state’s School Building Authority in the state budget for the fiscal year starting in July.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A new Idaho organization says it will ask voters to restore abortion access and other reproductive health care rights in the state after lawmakers let a second legislative session end without modifying strict abortion bans that have been blamed for a recent exodus of health care providers.

“We have not been able to get a fix from our lawmakers, our politicians. We are going to seek a fix from our people,” Melanie Folwell, a spokeswoman for Idahoans United for Women and Families, said Friday morning. “The people in Idaho understand the contours of this problem.”

Idaho has several anti-abortion laws on the books, including one that makes performing abortions a crime even in medical emergencies unless they are done to save the life of the pregnant patient. The federal government has sued Idaho over the ban, contending it violates a federal law that requires hospitals to provide stabilizing care — including abortion — if a patient’s life or health is at serious risk.

Idaho’s attorneys say the ban allows for life-saving procedures for things like ectopic pregnancies, and they contend the Biden administration is trying to create a federal “abortion loophole” at Idaho hospitals.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in that case on Wednesday.

Idahoans United for Women and Families is fundraising and hopes to have one or more ballot initiatives ready to propose this summer in an effort to get them on the 2026 ballot, Folwell said.

Across the country, there have been increased efforts to put abortion rights questions to voters since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and removed the nationwide right to abortion. Voters in seven states have sided with abortion rights supporters on ballot measures, and several other states have signature drives for future ballot initiatives underway.

Cynthia Dalsing, a certified nurse midwife in northern Idaho and a board member for Idahoans United for Women and Families, said her region went from offering a “premiere obstetric range of services” to becoming a maternal care desert after the four local obstetricians moved out of state.

Pregnant women in the state’s panhandle now must either travel as much as 80 miles away or leave the state entirely for obstetric care, Dalsing said. Some are delivering babies at home because of a lack of other options, she said.

Roughly one-quarter of Idaho obstetricians have stopped practicing since a near-total abortion ban took effect in August 2022, along with about half of the state’s maternal fetal medicine doctors, according to data compiled by the Idaho Physician Well-Being Action Collaborative. Three hospitals have closed their labor and delivery units.

Some physicians and businesses are warning that the abortion bans carry other ripple effects as well.

During a news conference on Thursday, Dr. Jim Souza said the reduced access to prenatal health care means some dangerous pregnancy conditions will be diagnosed later than normal. Souza, the chief physician executive at the Boise-based St. Luke’s Health System, said that could lead to increased need for intensive medical treatment for newborns or expensive medical interventions for mothers that could have been avoided with better access to obstetric care.

A coalition of groups including the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce, Levi Strauss & Co., Yelp, Lyft and Match Group Inc. which runs dating apps like Tinder filed a friend-of-the court brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case contending that the abortion bans make it harder to recruit and retain workers and lead to increased time off of work for those who have to travel elsewhere for care.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Federal prosecutors want to revoke the U.S. citizenship of a South Africa man convicted of killing two Alaska Native women for allegedly lying on his naturalization application for saying he had neither killed nor hurt anyone.

Brian Steven Smith, 52, was convicted earlier this year in the deaths of the two women, narrating as he recorded one woman dying. That video was stored on a phone that was stolen from his pickup. The images were transferred to a memory card and later turned over to police by the person who took the phone.

Smith lied when he responded to questions on the naturalization application asking whether he had been involved in a killing or badly hurting or sexually assaulting someone, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Alaska said in a statement Friday.

Smith answered “no” to those questions, but prosecutors say he had committed the two murders that involved torture and sexual assault by the time he completed the application, officials said.

If convicted of illegally obtaining naturalization, his U.S. citizenship would be revoked. No court date has been set.

An email seeking comment sent to Smith’s public defender was not immediately returned.

Smith was convicted in the deaths of Kathleen Henry, 30, whose body was found weeks after Smith recorded her death in September 2019 at TownePlace Suites by Marriott, a hotel in midtown Anchorage where he worked.

Smith, who came to Alaska in 2014, became a naturalized citizen the same month Henry was killed.

The other victim was Veronica Abouchuk, who died in either 2018 or 2019. Smith told police that he picked her up while his wife was out of town. When she refused to shower, he shot her in the head and dumped her body north of Anchorage.

He told police where the body was left, and authorities later found a skull with a bullet wound there.

Smith was convicted Feb. 22 after the Anchorage jury deliberated less than two hours.

Smith’s sentencing was set for two consecutive Fridays, July 12 and July 19. Alaska does not have the death penalty.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A fired Philadelphia police officer pleaded guilty Friday to murder in the shooting of a fleeing 12-year-old boy, who prosecutors have said was on the ground and unarmed when the officer fired the fatal shot.

Edsaul Mendoza also pleaded guilty to possession of an instrument of crime as part of a plea deal with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office. A sentencing date has not been disclosed.

The Associated Press left a voicemail message for Mendoza’s lawyer seeking comment Friday.

Mendoza had been charged with first- and third-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter in the shooting of Thomas “T.J.” Siderio in March 2022, with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office saying at the time that video contradicted the officer’s version of events. Police have said the boy had first fired a shot at an unmarked police car, injuring one of four plainclothes officers inside.

Mendoza, a five-year veteran of the force, was fired a week after the shooting by then-Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, who said his conduct violated department policy.

Siderio threw a gun down about 40 feet (12 meters) before he was shot and then dropped to the ground, either tripping or obeying a command to get down, according to authorities.

The four officers had been in an unmarked car, looking for a teenager they wanted to interview related to a firearm investigation, police have said. They saw Siderio and an unnamed 17-year-old, and maneuvered the car around the block and next to them to initiate a stop.

Prosecutors said Monday that almost at the same time the officers turned their red and blue lights on, a shot came through the back passenger window and ricocheted around the car. One officer was treated for injuries to his eye and face caused by broken glass.

Mendoza and another officer on the passenger side got out and fired one shot each, according to police. Mendoza then chased Siderio down the block, firing twice and striking the boy once in the back from what prosecutors say was “relatively close range.”

Siderio’s family sued Mendoza and the city in January, saying his death was the result of “an abysmal systemic policy failure” within the police department.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen threatened from the beginning of this year’s legislative session that he would call lawmakers back for a special session if they failed to pass a bill to significantly ease soaring property taxes. On the last day of the 60-day session Thursday, some lawmakers who helped torpedo an already anemic tax-shifting bill said they would welcome Pillen’s special session.

“We’re not going to fix this bill today,” said Omaha Sen. Megan Hunt, the lone independent in Nebraska’s unique one-chamber, officially nonpartisan Legislature. “The time we’re going to fix this is going to be in a special session where we start from scratch.”

Pillen followed through in his address to lawmakers just hours before they adjourned the session without taking a vote on the property tax relief bill he backed, saying he planned to issue a proclamation for a special session.

“I will call as many sessions as it takes to finish the long overdue work of solving our property tax crisis,” he said.

Nebraska law requires that a special session can be no shorter than seven days and that actions considered must be limited to the subjects outlined in the governor’s proclamation. Pillen has in recent weeks said he would also consider a special session to change the way Nebraska allots its Electoral College votes to a winner-take-all system. Currently, Nebraska splits its presidential electoral votes based on the popular vote within its three congressional districts. Maine is the only other state to split its electoral votes.

Republicans want the switch ahead of this year’s hotly contested presidential election to ensure an electoral vote tied to Nebraska’s Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District doesn’t go to President Joe Biden, as it did in 2020.

Pillen has said he’ll include the winner-take-all issue in a special session call if there are enough votes to get it beyond a filibuster, which takes 33 votes. While Republicans currently hold 33 seats, not all of them are willing to toss out Nebraska’s split system, so Pillen remains focused on passing property tax relief.

He had backed a bill that initially sought to raise the state’s sales tax to 6.5%, which would have been among the highest in the country. It also expanded the sales tax base to items like candy, soda, pet grooming and veterinary services and digital advertising and included some caps on spending by local governments.

The measure squeaked through the first two rounds of debate, garnering just enough votes to overcome a filibuster. But by the time it reached the third and last round on the final day of the session, the sales tax increase had been stripped away, leaving just a fraction of the property tax savings originally sought.

The bill was key to Pillen’s plan to slash soaring property taxes. Just days into the session, Pillen called for a 40% reduction that would cut $2 billion from the $5.3 billion in property taxes collected in 2023. That property tax revenue compares to $3.4 billion collected just 10 years earlier, and is far more than the collections from sales and income tax, which brought in about $2.3 billion and $3 billion respectively in 2023.

Soaring housing and land prices in recent years have led to ballooning property tax bills for homeowners and farmers, but some homeowners have been hit especially hard, as state law requires residential property to be assessed at nearly 100% of market value, compared to 75% for agricultural land.

The skyrocketing costs are keeping a new generation from being able to afford homeownership, Pillen said. It’s also forcing some elderly residents on fixed incomes out of homes they’ve already paid off because they can’t afford the ever-rising tax bill, he said.

But the array of proposed sales tax increases was enough to find opponents in both liberals, who complained that it put too much of the tax burden on those least able to afford it, and conservatives, who called for more reductions in spending over new taxes.

Democratic Sen. Danielle Conrad labeled the bill “one of the largest tax increases in Nebraska history,” drawing protest from the bill’s main sponsor, Republican Sen. Lou Ann Linehan. who defended it as a tax shift to a wider base of taxpayers.

“It’s easy to say, ‘No, no, no,’” she said. “So everybody who’s saying we can do better, I hope you have those ideas to the Revenue Committee by the end of June.”

If Pillen follows through with the special session, Nebraska would join several other states that have done so or are expected to later this year. On Wednesday, Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin and the state’s General Assembly reached a budget agreement that will require a special session in May. On the same day, New Mexico’s Democratic governor announced a mid-summer special legislative session on public safety initiatives.

In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves called two special sessions in January during the regular legislative session for lawmakers to consider incentives for economic development projects. And in Louisiana, the Republican-dominated legislature passed a slew of tough-on-crime policies during a two-week special session in February that included expanding death row execution methods, charging 17-year-olds as adults and eliminating parole for most people who are jailed in the future.

Nebraska’s last special session took place in September 2021, when then-Gov. Pete Ricketts summoned lawmakers to redraw the state’s political boundaries.

BRENTWOOD, N.H. (AP) — A man who says he was beaten and raped as a teen at New Hampshire’s youth detention center testified Friday that he both tried to take his own life and plotted to kill his abusers years later before speaking up.

David Meehan, who spent three years at the Youth Development Center in the late 1990s, went to police in 2017 and sued the state three years later. Testifying for a third day in his civil trial, he described his life’s downward spiral after leaving the facility, including a burglary committed to feed a heroin addiction and multiple suicide attempts. He said he stopped using drugs after a 2012 jail stint but was barely functioning when he woke up from hernia surgery in 2017, overwhelmed with memories of his abuse.

“I go home, I heal up a little bit, and the moment I know I’m stronger, I walk out on my wife and my kids,” he said. “Because this time, I really think I’m capable of taking the life of Jeff Buskey.”

Buskey and 10 other former state workers have pleaded not guilty to charges of sexually assaulting or acting as accomplices to the assault of Meehan and other former residents. Meehan, who alleges in his lawsuit that he endured near-daily assaults, testified that he tracked down his alleged abusers more than a decade later and even bought a gun with the intent to kill Buskey, but threw it in a river and confided in his wife instead.

“That’s not who I am,” he said. “I’m not going to be what they thought they could turn me into. I’m not going to take another life because of what they did.”

Meehan’s wife took him to a hospital, where he was referred to police. That sparked an unprecedented criminal investigation into the Manchester facility, now called the Sununu Youth Services Center. But at the same time as it prosecutes former workers, the state also is defending itself against more than 1,100 lawsuits filed by former residents alleging that its negligence allowed abuse to occur.

One group of state lawyers will be relying on the testimony of former residents in the criminal trials while others seek to discredit them in the civil cases, an unusual dynamic that played out as Meehan faced cross-examination Friday.

“You were an angry and violent young man, weren’t you?” asked Attorney Martha Gaythwaite, who showed jurors a report concluding that Meehan falsely accused his parents of physical abuse when they tried to enforce rules. Meehan disagreed. Earlier, he testified that his mother attacked him and burned him with cigarettes.

Gaythwaite also pressed Meehan on his disciplinary record at the youth center, including a time a boy he punched fell and split his head open. According to the center’s internal reports, Meehan later planned to take that boy hostage with a stolen screwdriver as part of an escape attempt.

“It’s fair to say someone who had already been the victim of one of your vicious assaults might not be too enthusiastic about being held hostage by you as part of an AWOL attempt, correct?” she asked.

Meehan has said that the escape plan occurred at a time when Buskey was raping him every day, while another staffer assaulted him roughly twice a week. The abuse became more violent when he began fighting back, Meehan said. And though he later was submissive, “It never became easier,” he said.

“Every one of these takes a little piece of me to the point when they’re done, there’s really not much left of David anymore,” he said.

Meehan also testified that he spent weeks locked in his room for 23 hours a day, hidden from view while his injuries healed. Under questioning from Gaythwaite, Meehan reviewed a report in which an ombudsman said he saw no signs of injuries, however.

Meehan, who suggested the investigator lied, said his few attempts to get help were rebuffed. When he told a house leader that he had been raped, the staffer, who is now facing criminal charges, told him: “That doesn’t happen here, little fella.” Asked whether he ever filed a written complaint, he referred to instructions on the complaint forms that said residents were to bring all issues to their counselors.

“What am I going to do, write ‘Jeff Buskey is making me have sex with him,’ and hand it to Jeff Buskey?” he said.

The trial resumes Monday.

An attorney asked a federal appeals court on Friday to block a controversial Florida law signed last year that restricts Chinese citizens from buying real estate in much of the state, calling it discriminatory and a violation of the federal government’s supremacy in deciding foreign affairs.

Attorney Ashley Gorski, representing four Chinese nationals who live in the state, told a three-judge panel from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that “Florida is unlawfully restricting housing for Chinese people.” The law bars Chinese nationals and citizens from other countries that Florida sees as a threat from buying property near military installations and other “critical infrastructure.”

She compared it to long-overturned laws from the early 20th century that barred Chinese from buying property.

“It is singling out people from particular countries in a way that is anathema to the equal protection guarantees that now exist,” Gorski told the court.

But Nathan Forrester, the attorney representing the state, told judges Charles Wilson, Robert Luck and Barbara Lagoa that the law lines up with the Biden administration’s national security concerns, including threats posed by the Chinese government.

“It is not about race,” Forrester said. “The concern is about the Chinese government, and that is what this law is designed to do. The concern is the manipulation of the Chinese government.”

This case comes nearly a year after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the law, which prohibits citizens of China and some other countries from purchasing property in large swaths of Florida. It applies to properties within 10 miles (16 kilometers) of military installations and other critical infrastructure. The law also applies to agricultural land.

At the time, DeSantis called China the country’s “greatest geopolitical threat” and said the law was taking a stand against the Chinese Communist Party, a frequent target in his failed attempt to land the Republican presidential nomination. The law also affects citizens of Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia and North Korea. However, Chinese citizens and anybody selling property to them face the harshest penalties.

Luck and Lagoa both served on the Florida Supreme Court in 2019 after being appointed by DeSantis. Later that year, Luck and Lagoa were appointed to the federal court by then-President Donald Trump. Wilson was appointed to the court in 1999 by then-President Bill Clinton.

Throughout the arguments, Luck expressed skepticism of whether Gorski’s clients had standing to bring the lawsuit, asking how they specifically had been harmed.

Gorski replied that the law prevents Chinese citizens from getting home mortgages in Florida and that it declares “some kind of economic war” against China. She said it could have significant foreign policy implications.

“Congress vested only the president with the authority to prohibit a transaction because it is a major decision with significant foreign policy implications,” she said.

But Luck pushed back, saying the state used U.S. policy as its guidepost in drafting the law. “Florida took it from what the federal was doing and piggybacked,” he said.

Forrester noted that the Biden administration didn’t file a brief in support of Gorski’s clients.

Wilson pointed out that Florida has nearly two dozen military bases and that “critical infrastructure” is a broad term. He asked Forrester whether those restrictions would leave any place in Florida that someone from the barred countries could buy property. Forrester said maps were still being prepared.

In the original complaint filed to the Tallahassee district court last May, the attorneys representing Yifan Shen, Zhiming Xu, Xinxi Wang and Yongxin Liu argued the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection and due process clauses by casting “a cloud of suspicion over anyone of Chinese descent who seeks to buy property in Florida.”

But U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor, a Trump appointee, refused to block the law, saying the Chinese nationals had not proved the Legislature was motivated by an “unlawful animus” based on race.

___

Associated Press writer Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.

LEBANON, Ind. (AP) — A central Indiana man who won a primary election for a township board position while charged with killing his estranged wife has been found guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.

A Boone County jury convicted Andrew Wilhoite, 41, of Lebanon on Thursday, local news outlets reported.

Wilhoite was charged with murder in the death of his wife, 41-year-old Elizabeth “Nikki” Wilhoite, who was reported missing by coworkers on March 25, 2022, when she did not show up for work. Her body was found in a creek near her home the next day.

She had filed for divorce on March 17 and had recently finished chemotherapy treatments for cancer.

Wilhoite told police he struck his wife with a flowerpot during an argument, then dumped her body in the creek.

He faces 10 to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced on June 4.

One of his attorneys, Jennifer Lukemeyer, said she had no comment on the verdict.

Wilhoite was one of three Republican candidates who advanced in a 2022 primary for a township board position before later withdrawing from the race. He received 60 of the 276 total votes for Republicans for three positions on the Clinton Township Board, Boone County election results showed. The race drew only three candidates.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas’ Democratic governor on Friday vetoed proposed tax breaks for anti-abortion counseling centers while allowing restrictions on college diversity initiatives approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature to become law without her signature.

Gov. Laura Kelly also vetoed a bill with bipartisan support to increase the penalties for killing a law enforcement dog or horse, a move that the GOP leader who pushed it called “political pettiness.” In addition, she rejected two elections measures fueled at least in part by the influence of people promoting baseless election conspiracies among Republicans.

Kelly’s action on the bill dealing with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives stood out because it broke with her vetoes last year of anti-DEI measure from the current state budget.

The new law, taking effect July 1, prohibits state universities, community colleges and technical schools from requiring prospective students or applicants for jobs or promotions to make statements on their views about diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Kelly let it become law only two days after the state’s higher education board adopted its own, narrower ban on the same practices.

“While I have concerns about this legislation, I don’t believe that the conduct targeted in this legislation occurs in our universities,” Kelly said in her message on the bill, contradicting statements made by GOP legislators.

Legislators are scheduled to return Thursday from a spring break and wrap up their work for the year in six days. Top Republicans immediately pledged to try to override Friday’s vetoes.

Republicans in about two dozen states have sought to limit DEI initiatives, arguing that they are discriminatory and enforce a liberal political orthodoxy. Alabama and Utah enacted new anti-DEI laws this year, and a ban enacted in Texas last year has led to more than 100 job cuts on University of Texas campuses.

The new policy from the Kansas Board of Regents applies only to state universities and does not specify any penalties, while the new law will allow a fine of up to $10,000 for each violation.

Backers of DEI programs say they are being misrepresented. The American Psychological Association defines diversity, equity and inclusion as a framework to guide “fair treatment and full participation of all people,” especially those in minority groups.

“We need to move forward and focus our efforts on making college more affordable and providing students from all backgrounds with the tools they need to succeed,” Kelly said in her message on the bill.

With the bill helping the state’s nearly 60 anti-abortion centers, Kelly’s veto was expected because she is a strong supporter of abortion rights. She already has vetoed two other measures championed by abortion opponents this year.

But GOP lawmakers in Kansas have had increasing success in overriding Kelly’s actions. Republican leaders appear to have the two-thirds majorities necessary in both chambers on abortion issues and appeared close on the DEI bill.

The latest abortion measure would exempt anti-abortion centers that provide free services to prospective mothers and new parents from paying the state’s 6.5% sales tax on what they buy and give donors to them income tax credits totaling up to $10 million a year.

Kelly said in her veto message that it is not appropriate for the state to “divert taxpayer dollars to largely unregulated crisis pregnancy centers.”

The bill also includes provisions designed to financially help parents who adopt or want to adopt children.

“Governor Kelly has shown once again that her only allegiance is to the profit-driven abortion industry, and not to vulnerable Kansas women, children, and families,” Jeanne Gawdun, a lobbyist for Kansans for Life, the state’s most influential anti-abortion group, said in a statement.

Abortion opponents in Kansas are blocked from pursuing the same kind of severe restrictions or bans on abortion imposed in neighboring states, including Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. A Kansas Supreme Court decision in 2019 declared that access to abortion is a fundamental right under the state constitution, and a statewide vote in August 2022 decisively affirmed that position.

“This bill goes against the wishes of Kansans,” Kelly said in her veto message.

Kelly also has clashed repeatedly with Republicans on voting rights issues.

One of the election bills she vetoed would stop giving voters an extra three days after Election Day to return mail ballots to election officials. Many Republicans said they are responding to concerns — fueled by lies from ex-President Donald Trump — about the integrity of election results if ballots are accepted after Election Day.

The other elections bill would prohibit state agencies and local officials from using federal funds in administering elections or promoting voting without the Legislature’s express permission. Republicans see spending by the Biden administration as an attempt to improperly boost Democratic turnout.

But Kelly chided lawmakers for “focusing on problems that do not exist.”

“I would urge the Legislature to focus on real issues impacting Kansans,” Kelly said in her veto message on the second bill.

The veto of the bill on police dogs was perhaps Kelly’s most surprising action. Increased penalties have had bipartisan support across the U.S., and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis this week signed a measure this week.

The Kansas measure was inspired by the November death of Bane, an 8-year-old Wichita police dog, who authorities say was strangled by a suspect in a domestic violence case. It would allow a first-time offender to be sentenced to up to five years and fined up to $10,000.

Kelly said the issue needed more study, saying the new penalties for killing a police dog would be out of line with other, more severe crimes, “without justification.”

But House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican and the bill’s biggest champion, said: “This veto is a slap in the face of all law enforcement.”