MoInd 📰

As pennies vanish from the American landscape, many businesses are clamoring for federal guidance on how to handle cash transactions in a penniless world. Should retailers round up or down? Should they round in favor of the customer? Or in favor of the business? So far, calls for federal direction have gone unanswered. Some businesses […]

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration took major steps Thursday in a campaign to block minors’ access to gender-affirming care nationwide.  Under two proposed new rules from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, hospitals would be barred from providing gender transition treatment for children as a condition of participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs, […]

The process of drafting a new formula to calculate state aid for Missouri’s public schools became more challenging this week as state officials discovered some federal data sources are likely to disappear. Kari Monsees, the state education department’s semi-retired chief of finance, told working groups tasked with revamping the formula that he hopes to find […]

In 2023, the U.S. secretaries of Education and Agriculture did something Missouri can’t shrug off: they wrote Gov. Mike Parson that from 1987 to 2020 the state underfunded Lincoln University by about $361 million in per-student support compared with the University of Missouri. It was a figure highlighted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and […]

Kansas legislative leaders will meet Monday to take one of the final steps toward luring the Kansas City Chiefs across the state line, floating bonds worth hundreds of millions so the team can build a domed stadium and an entertainment district. With a year-end deadline looming, the Legislative Coordinating Council will consider approving Sales Tax […]

The U.S. Department of Justice has sent a confidential draft agreement to more than a dozen states that would require election officials to remove any alleged ineligible voters identified during a federal review of their voter rolls. The agreement — called a memorandum of understanding, or MOU — would hand the federal government a major […]

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday to loosen federal restrictions on marijuana, which Trump said reflected the drug’s potential medical benefits while discouraging recreational use. The order moves cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III on the Federal Drug Administration’s list of controlled substances. Schedule I, the most restrictive category under federal law, indicates […]

WASHINGTON — The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a prestigious cultural hub in the nation’s capital, will be renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Thursday. The renaming comes after President Donald Trump named himself chair of the board in February in a major shake-up. He later fired […]

WASHINGTON — A panel of appellate judges seemed skeptical during Thursday oral arguments that the Trump administration erred in relying on a decades-old statute to require millions of noncitizens to register with the federal government and carry documentation. But they did take issue with the paperwork required of immigrants without legal status as well as […]

Contracts are in place for a project that will test the wastewater of public schools in Missouri for signs of fentanyl and other drug use. The Missouri Department of Public Safety has been negotiating with Mighty Good Solutions DBA Stercus Bioanalytics, and the Missouri-based company is now the contractor on a $7 million statewide project. […]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning four major retailers about compliance with a recall of infant formula that has been linked to botulism.  Ann Oxenham, the FDA’s top compliance officer for the human foods program, sent letters to Albertsons, Kroger, Target and Walmart Friday about ByHeart Whole Nutrition formula products remaining on some […]

The number of measles cases is continuing to grow, reaching 1,958 confirmed cases in 43 states through Dec. 16 and threatening to undo next year the United States’ status as a nation that has eradicated the disease, according to a report released Dec. 17 by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The increase […]

For a year, I’ve been writing and working with a larger coalition — What’s Next 4 Missouri — to ensure the story of Missouri’s fight for reproductive freedom is told accurately and rooted in justice.  New abortion data backs our longstanding argument: that legal doesn’t mean accessible. State data reported in The Missouri Independent, and […]

The capital gains tax cut passed this year by Missouri lawmakers will cost far more than expected and shrink state revenues, a new state budget estimate shows. The consensus revenue estimate, issued Wednesday, anticipates that revenue in the year ending June 30 will be $400 million below estimates made a year ago. Growth will return […]

Josh Moore is the new director of MO HealthNet Division, taking over the agency that administers Missouri’s Medicaid program, according to a press release from the state’s social services department Wednesday.  Moore, who has served since 2019 as MO HealthNet’s pharmacy director, succeeds Todd Richardson, the former Missouri House speaker who resigned from his role […]

WASHINGTON — A U.S. appeals court ruled Wednesday that National Guard troops can remain in the District of Columbia while the judges take up the case that began when the district sued the Trump administration for deploying roughly 2,000 troops to the nation’s capital. Pointing to the district’s special status as a federal territory, a […]

NEW YORK — On a frigid December morning along busy Broadway in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York, pedestrians walk rapidly toward the subway. Cars and e-bikes speed along a busy two-lane road and blast through sharp turns during the early rush to get to the office. In recent years on this stretch of […]

Arrests in the United States have fallen to levels not seen in decades, according to a new report that reconstructs national arrest trends in the absence of federal data. The Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, on Thursday released the first comprehensive national analysis of arrests since federal authorities stopped publishing detailed arrest […]

WASHINGTON — Republican leaders in the U.S. House will face a floor vote in early 2026 on Democrats’ plan to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits for three more years, after passing their own legislation Wednesday night that has little chance of a future in the Senate and does not address the tax credits. […]

If you were appalled by the spectacle of Donald Trump clumsily accepting a peace trophy that looks like a prop from “Night of the Living Dead,” then brace yourself. There may be worse in store. To recount, Trump was given — to nobody’s surprise — the inaugural “FIFA Peace Prize” during the World Cup final […]