NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — After his election as Kansas next Attorney General on Tuesday, Kris Kobach is getting ready to hit the ground running.
"I'm going to be working hard getting some of our legislative bills ready," Kobach said. "There will be several things I will be proposing and pushing for in the legislature. Among those things will be a human trafficking bill, a bill increasing the penalty for those who traffic in drugs, specifically fentanyl, when it causes someone's death. We'll be working on that in the run-up."
Once he is sworn in come January, Kobach is certain there will be federal administrative actions his office will need to pay attention to.
"We'll be scrutinizing what the Biden administration is doing, very much being on guard," Kobach said. "I anticipate that the Biden administration will resort to even more executive orders that are on thin legal ice that may need to be challenged by the attorneys general of the states. Kansas will be leading that charge."
Though the balance of Congress is still in doubt, it is clear that the path to legislative change will likely be more difficult for the President, though maybe not as hard as was thought prior to Tuesday.
"We can remember what Barack Obama did when he lost Congress in 2010," Kobach said. "That's when he started just going crazy with executive orders and doing everything with his famous phrase of his phone and his pen. If Biden follows that course, it's going to be so important for attorneys general to be pushing back, because chances are what he does will be illegal."
Kobach cited the example of the student loan forgiveness program released this fall, which attorneys general from Republican states have argued violates the separation of powers as spending federal money is supposed to be the purview of Congress.