MoInd 📰

Video lottery operators on Tuesday promised Missouri will reap a windfall of money for education and other programs if lawmakers will substitute their devices for slot machine-like games currently in thousands of retail locations across the state. But opponents of a bill, which was debated by the House Emerging Issues, said legalizing video gambling in […]

A drop in immigration amid President Donald Trump’s enforcement crackdown led to historically slow population growth in the United States last year. Activity at the southern border is at a historic low. The population change reflects the last months of the Biden administration, when immigration controls began to tighten, and the first months of the […]

Missouri lawmakers were urged Tuesday to make major investments in the state’s social services department in order to comply with new federal requirements and avoid steep penalties. Jess Bax, director of the Missouri Department of Social Services, told a House committee on Tuesday that her agency needs to hire additional contractors to tackle a backlog […]

Planned Parenthood and the Missouri Attorney General’s Office agree on one thing: abortion is legal in Missouri. That’s where the agreement ends. A 10-day trial that wrapped Monday in Kansas City laid bare decades of conflict over the state’s abortion laws. Dozens of restrictions — targeted regulation of abortion providers, or TRAP, laws — are […]

Imagine your physician offering you a new therapy for a serious medical condition—but with several warnings. You are told the treatment has never gone through carefully designed, peer-reviewed clinical trials. There is no professional licensure overseeing its use. And if something goes wrong, there is no clear system of accountability. Is that the care you […]

Gov. Mike Kehoe withdrew two nominees to the Missouri Ethics Commission Tuesday after Democrats pointed out the appointments were based on a congressional map that Republicans contend is no longer valid.  Senate Democrats have refused to allow any gubernatorial appointments to come up for a vote for the past two weeks, arguing that their stall […]

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is facing mounting criticism, including from some congressional Republicans and moderate Democrats, for her response to a second killing by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. President Donald Trump reiterated his confidence in Noem Tuesday, but several Republican senators, a group that overwhelmingly voted last year for Noem to […]

Household incomes have grown in nearly every state over the past 50 years, but a new study concludes that growth has been uneven across the country. An analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, released Tuesday from the Urban Institute’s Center for Local Finance and Growth, found inflation-adjusted incomes in Western, mid-Atlantic and New England states […]

PORTLAND, Ore. — Keith Ellison held up his cellphone. The Minnesota attorney general was onstage in an Oregon theater in front of hundreds of people, accompanied by four of his Democratic peers from other states, to mark a year of coordinated legal strategy to resist the Trump administration’s expansive use of executive power. “Can I […]

The push to reinstate Missouri’s presidential primary suffered a defeat Tuesday when the House Elections Committee voted to remove it from a wide-ranging elections bill. On a voice vote, the committee removed the provision from the bill. The measure also extends the period for “no-excuse absentee” voting from two to four weeks. The committee then […]

Missouri will be one of just a handful of states hosting FIFA World Cup matches in the summer of 2026, with Kansas City serving as the region’s primary stage. It’s a rare opportunity to welcome the world. But if history is any guide, hosting mega-events brings real challenges alongside the spectacle — not all of […]

With temperatures hovering near zero and windchills approaching minus 20 degrees, Spain Bady was ordered to leave his cell at Algoa Correctional Center on Saturday morning and clear snow from prison walkways. He refused, telling the corrections officer directing him to go outside that he has been enrolled in education programs and is exempt from […]

Missouri’s method for determining state aid for public schools is poised for substantial change, as a task force drafting the new funding formula began on Monday to synthesize four months of meetings into recommendations. The group, dubbed the Missouri School Modernization Task Force, met Monday morning for the first time since breaking into smaller cohorts […]

KANSAS CITY — After 10 days of often emotion-filled testimony, a trial dissecting Missouri’s abortion regulations under the new constitutional right to reproductive health care concluded Monday.  In closing arguments, attorneys from both the Missouri Attorney General’s Office and Planned Parenthood brought the focus back to the crux of the case: are Missouri’s abortion regulations necessary […]

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday urged Senate Democrats to advance the government funding package that must become law before the weekend to avoid a partial shutdown, rejecting their proposal to remove the Homeland Security funding bill. Democrats in the upper chamber say they are ready to help pass five of […]

Last spring, Illinois county judge Jeffrey Goffinet noticed something startling: A legal brief filed in his courtroom cited a case that did not exist. Goffinet, an associate judge in Williamson County, looked through two legal research systems and then headed to the courthouse library — a place he hadn’t visited in years — to consult […]

WASHINGTON — Several U.S. Senate Democrats launched an investigation into how the Trump administration’s child care funding cuts and policy changes are affecting rural families, in a Sunday letter provided exclusively to States Newsroom. Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Raphael Warnock of Georgia led four of their colleagues in urging the respective heads of Rural […]

WASHINGTON — U.S. border czar Tom Homan is expected in Minneapolis by Monday evening, President Donald Trump said, amid increasing criticism of the administration’s immigration enforcement methods following the second fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen by immigration officers in Minneapolis already this year. The move was part of an apparent toning down of the […]

While the Kansas City Chiefs are leaving Missouri and won’t use the incentives lawmakers created for them last summer, the question of whether other tax credits and property tax caps included in the legislation will be used by anyone remains undecided. Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh after a hearing on Wednesday promised he would […]

Let’s talk about how the first three weeks of Missouri’s legislative session are going. In short: Gridlock in the Senate. Scandal in the House. Senate Democrats entered the year divided after a contentious leadership fight. But the 10-member caucus appears to have coalesced around a simple two-pronged strategy: absolute opposition to increasing the sales tax […]