WASHINGTON (AP) — Mike Pompeo’s hawkish instincts may seem at odds with traditional diplomatic norms. But after 14 demoralizing months of budget cuts and staffing reductions for the State Department, his conservative political bent and closeness to President Donald Trump could breathe new vigor into an agency all too often sidelined on many of the nation’s most pressing national security matters.

Pompeo, the outgoing CIA chief, will bring a new, blunt-speaking style to the job of secretary of state, strikingly different from Rex Tillerson’s understated approach. Pompeo’s arrival in Foggy Bottom also promises far more aggressive stances on Iran and North Korea, and he’ll at least start with Trump’s full confidence — something Tillerson never enjoyed.

“One of the most important jobs for the secretary of state is to make clear to the world the president’s policies and priorities,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, an establishment Republican and initial Tillerson backer, said Tuesday, after Trump announced via tweet that Pompeo would replace Tillerson. “No one has a stronger relationship with President Trump than Mike Pompeo. This relationship will empower him throughout his tenure as secretary of state.”

Tillerson had been widely criticized for an aloof management style, which had alienated droves of career diplomats and driven many of the agency’s senior brass into early retirements. But his foreign policy was far less controversial, as he hewed to much of the agency’s pragmatic approach, from climate change to free trade agreements, and to preserving the Iran nuclear deal, even when that put him at odds with his president and his most conservative supporters.

In Pompeo, the diplomats and civil servants who make up the 70,000-strong department may now encounter the opposite: a fiercely partisan veteran of some of the most bitter battles in Congress while he was a House Republican, and someone willing to jeopardize his reputation to defend Trump, as evidenced when he called up journalists to try to discredit a New York Times story outlining Trump campaign connections to Russia.

But Pompeo also helped engineer a detente between Trump and the U.S. intelligence agencies after the incoming president likened them to Nazis. In doing so, Pompeo never lost his access to Trump, or experienced a mass revolt to his leadership like Tillerson faced at the State Department.

“Tillerson’s ouster is a sign of continued turbulence in U.S. foreign policy,” said Jessica Chen Weiss, a Cornell University professor. “A potential silver lining is that the State Department will fare better under someone who has Trump’s ear.”

Immediately, there were calls for Pompeo to abandon Tillerson’s plans to shrink the department and empower marginalized diplomats.

While some opponents lambasted the former Kansas lawmaker for his posturing on a House panel that investigated Hillary Clinton and the 2012 Benghazi attack, some Democrats held out hope he could lead a State Department turnaround.

Rep. Adam Schiff, a harsh critic of Trump and Tillerson, said Pomepo would be wise to let the State Department’s talent “do their jobs.” Referencing the departure of many senior diplomats, Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, said Pompeo will “need to recruit and fill the many offices that have been left vacant.”

While Tillerson sought to reduce staffing at embassies and consulates abroad, and seemed to hoard many of the agency’s minutest decisions among a small group of advisers, Pompeo sent more spies to the field and tried to improve the CIA’s agility and speed by cutting bureaucratic red tape and moving decision-making down the chain of command.

Pompeo said his goal as America’s spymaster was to create a culture that says: “If you are in a process and you’re not adding value, get out of the way.”

Pompeo and Tillerson navigated different paths with Trump, too.

While Tillerson survived a tumultuous year amid rampant speculation that the White House wanted him out, he was unable to use a much-touted alliance with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to keep his job. Pompeo took a more direct approach, carefully cultivating Trump and even assuming the previously lower-level responsibility of delivering the daily presentation of intelligence to the president in the Oval Office.

Bigger questions loom about Pompeo’s ability to counteract Trump’s often unpredictable decision-making processes. For all of Tillerson’s bureaucratic stumbles, some of the president’s most bitter adversaries credited the ex-oilman with acting as an adult and serving with dignity even as Trump publicly humiliated him.

And, as Trump noted Tuesday, he and Pompeo have a “similar thought process” on the Iran deal, which Trump has threatened to abandon unless there are significant changes by May.

Tillerson “has been a poor advocate for the State Department, but he served as a Cabinet-level check on some of President Trump’s worst impulses,” said Thomas Countryman, one of the career diplomats who left in early 2017. Countryman, who was assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, said if Pompeo “has a disdain for diplomacy mirroring Trump’s, it will be bad for the department and the country.”

GEARY COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities and officials with USD 475 are investigating additional students for criminal threat.

At 10 a.m. Tuesday the School Resource Officer at Junction City High School was made aware of two students at the main campus that had allegedly made comments constituting a criminal threat. According to JCPD Public Information Officer, Trish Giordano, both students, ages 15 and 16, were arrested and transported to the Juvenile Detention Center.

Giordano also reported that at approximately 10:55 a.m. on Tuesday, Officers responded to the Freshman Success Academy in reference to a 15-year old who had an airsoft pistol in his backpack and had shown it to other students.

When the airsoft pistol was located in the backpack it was disassembled. The student claimed he had brought the airsoft pistol to school to give to a friend. Even though no verbal threats were made, the student, age 15, was arrested on suspicion of Criminal Threat.  Police said the student’s actions caused a classroom to be evacuated and the school’s regular activities to be disrupted which meets the definition under state law of Criminal Threat.

On Monday, police arrested a 12-year-old Junction City Middle School student who brought an airsoft gun to class. He was taken to juvenile detention for alleged Criminal Threat.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for causing recurring flooding that damaged farms and property in four Midwest states along the Missouri River.

The ruling Tuesday in Washington says the government must compensate farmers, landowners and business owners for the flood damage in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. The damage has been estimated to exceed $300 million.

More than 300 farmers, landowners and business owners argued in the lawsuit filed in 2014 in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that the Corps has altered its practices regarding the river’s water storage, release and flow management. The suit contended the Corps unconstitutionally deprived plaintiffs of their land, essentially taking it without compensation.

On Tuesday, Judge Nancy B. Firestone found in favor of the plaintiffs in five of the six years that the flooding was claimed dating back to 2007, disallowing the flood claims in 2011.

CAMDEN, Mo. (AP) – A northwest Missouri couple is charged with more than 50 felony counts of child abuse and neglect involving a 9-year-old girl.

Ray County authorities say the girl was abused for months, including allegedly being struck with an ax.

The Kansas City Star reports 29-year-old Mario Barreto, of Camden, is charged with 29 counts of child abuse or neglect. And 25-year-old Melissa Holloway, also of Camden, faces 22 counts of child abuse or neglect and one count of hindering prosecution. The child was in the care of Barreto, a relative of the girl.

Both pleaded not guilty Tuesday.

Court records indicate the girl was hospitalized in February with several injuries, including fingers on her right hand that were allegedly crushed with an ax head.

Online court records don’t indicate the couple has attorneys. Camden is 35 miles east of Kansas City.

DICKINSON COUNTY— A Kansas teen died in an accident just before 9a.m. Tuesday in Dickinson County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2016 Nissan Sentra driven by Mariah M. Lowe, 18, Abilene, was eastbound on Interstate 70 nine miles east of Abilene.

The vehicle left the road on the south side, struck a concrete culvert, overturned and caught fire.

Lowe was pronounced dead at the scene and transported to Danner Funeral Home.

She was properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.

TOPEKA– A man was sentenced Tuesday to 24 years and six months in federal prison for trafficking methamphetamine in Topeka, according to U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister.

Marco Antonio Cortes-Gomez, 42, Kansas City, was found guilty in a jury trial on one count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and one count of attempted possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine. During trial, prosecutors presented evidence that over a three-year period Cortes-Gomez distributed no less than 66 pounds of methamphetamine to buyers in Topeka.

The investigation began in 2015 when the Kansas Highway Patrol stopped a car in Ellis County that was bound for Topeka carrying about five pounds of methamphetamine. Investigators set up a controlled delivery at a Walmart parking lot in Topeka, where Cortes-Gomez was arrested when he attempted to pick up the load.

At trial, prosecutors presented testimony from witnesses who said Cortes-Gomez delivered one-pound and two-pound quantities of methamphetamine to them on a regular basis.

WICHITA, Kansas (AP) — A Kansas official has debunked a widely shared story that recently resurfaced on Facebook about a woman named Dorothy whose Oklahoma home supposedly flew nearly 130 miles before landing outside Wichita.

Sedgwick County spokeswoman Kate Flavin told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the story is not true.

The story was published in 2015 by the World News Daily Report and recently circulated again on Facebook. It claimed a woman named Dorothy Williams and four members of her family were carried in their Tulsa, Oklahoma, mobile home over northern Colorado before landing on an unoccupied car in Kansas.

“This is false; it did not happen,” Flavin wrote in an email, noting the publication’s website states the content is not true.

The story claims no one was injured in the home’s 4-hour-plus flight amid winds that reached speeds of more than 220 mph. The story is accompanied with photos of storm damaged properties.

The website includes a disclaimer that states, in part, that, “All characters appearing in the articles in this website – even those based on real people – are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle.”