Retired astronaut Mark Kelly kicking off Arizona Senate race

Retired astronaut Mark Kelly is kicking off his U.S. Senate campaign Saturday with a rally in Tucson not far from the site where his wife, Gabrielle Giffords, survived a shooting when she was a congresswoman. That attack in 2011 led Kelly to leave NASA and become a political activist, pushing for gun control.

Kelly, who has never held elected office, is the first Democrat to enter the 2020 race. The seat is now held by Republican Martha McSally, a former congresswoman and Air Force pilot who was appointed by Arizona's GOP governor after longtime GOP Sen. John McCain died.

Next year's election will decide who finishes the final two years of McCain's term. It's expected to be closely contested, with Arizona increasingly competitive after decades of Republican dominance.

FILE- In this Nov. 12, 2018, file photo politician and gun control advocate Gabrielle Giffords and husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, attend the Glamour Women of the Year Awards at Spring Studios in New York. Kelly is kicking off his U.S. Senate campaign Saturday, Feb. 23, 2019 with a rally in Tucson. (Photo by Evan AgostiniInvisionAP, File)

Kelly planned an appearance a downtown hotel about 9 miles from the grocery store where Giffords was shot in the head and six people died during a constituent event on Jan. 8, 2011.

Kelly, who was living in Houston at the time and stationed at NASA's headquarters, retired from the space agency and moved to Tucson in 2012. He and Giffords pushed Congress, with little success, to enact gun control measures. They shifted their focus to state legislatures in recent years, helping to strengthen background checks and domestic violence protections.

He said he raised more than $1 million in the first 24 hours after his announcement Feb. 12 that he was running.

U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego of Phoenix, who has strong ties to Democratic activists, also is considering a run.

Kelly flew combat missions during the first Gulf War and was a Navy test pilot before becoming an astronaut along with his twin brother, Scott. Mark Kelly flew four space missions over 10 years and commanded the Space Shuttle Endeavor in 2011.

McSally was appointed to temporarily fill McCain's seat after she narrowly lost to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in the 2018 race for Arizona's other Senate seat. McSally was elected to the House in 2014, defeating Ron Barber, a Giffords congressional staffer who was injured in the 2011 shooting and won a special election to replace her after she resigned.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn’t order the death of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny in February, according to an official familiar with the determination.

While U.S. officials believe Putin was ultimately responsible for the death of Navalny, who endured brutal conditions during his confinement, the intelligence community has found “no smoking gun” that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death — which came soon before the Russian president's reelection — or directly ordered it, according to the official.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Soon after Navalny’s death, U.S. President Joe Biden said Putin was ultimately responsible but did not accuse the Russian president of directly ordering it.

At the time, Biden said the U.S. did not know exactly what had happened to Navalny but that “there is no doubt” that his death “was the consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”

Navalny, 47, Russia’s best-known opposition politician and Putin’s most persistent foe, died Feb. 16 in a remote penal colony above the Arctic Circle while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he rejected as politically motivated.

He had been behind bars since January 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.

Russian officials have said only that Navalny died of natural causes and have vehemently denied involvement both in the poisoning and in his death.

In March, a month after Navalny’s death, Putin won a landslide reelection for a fifth term, an outcome that was never in doubt.

The Wall Street Journal first reported about the U.S. intelligence determination.

FILE - Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny gestures while speaking during his interview to the Associated Press in Moscow, Russia on Dec. 18, 2017. U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn't order the death of Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader, in February of 2024. An official says the U.S. intelligence community has found "no smoking gun" that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death or directly ordered it. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)