A Cole County Circuit Court judge must soon decide whether Missouri voters will be able to enshrine sports betting in the state’s constitution. A lawsuit brought by two political strategists questions the validity of the signature verification process used by the Secretary of State’s Office. The proposal was certified for the November ballot after being […]
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft has been ordered to remove his characterization of an abortion rights amendment from his government website after a judge deemed it was unfair and violated state statute. A Cole County judge on Thursday ruled that Ashcroft’s “fair ballot language” summary of the reproductive rights amendment, also known as Amendment […]
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will take the stage next week in the only planned debate between the respective Democratic and GOP presidential candidates between now and November. It’s the first presidential debate since President Joe Biden bowed out of the race following his own disastrous debate performance in late June […]
WASHINGTON — Exactly two months out from the presidential election, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan plans to move ahead with the case accusing former President Donald Trump of subverting the 2020 presidential election results, telling Trump’s attorneys that she is “not concerned with the electoral schedule.” Chutkan released a timeline for the case late Thursday […]
SEDALIA — On a hot and humid afternoon in the Swine Barn of the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, brothers Cole and Ty Murphy keep watch over their two hogs. Ty, 14, said he likes the hard work caring for pigs requires. “Every night we’re walking them for five to 10 minutes, working hair, cleaning […]
Former President Donald Trump questioned polls showing a close race against Vice President Kamala Harris and complained about the conditions of an upcoming debate during a Fox News interview Wednesday in Pennsylvania. Under questioning from a friendly interviewer, Sean Hannity of Fox News, in front of an arena of cheering supporters in Harrisburg, the Republican […]
Congress couldn’t pass a new farm bill last year, so it punted. The extension of the old bill ends in less than a month, on Sept. 30. It will likely miss that deadline, too, an unprecedented two-year delay. Farm state representatives predict doom without a new farm bill. They would have us believe we will go […]
A judge could decide as early as Thursday whether Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s “fair ballot language” summary for an abortion-rights amendment is truly fair. Missouri voters will be asked on Nov. 5 whether they support Amendment 3, which would establish a constitutional right to an abortion up until fetal viability and protect other […]
WASHINGTON — Latino voters are concerned with the high cost of living, the minimum wage and rising housing costs heading into the November elections, according to a comprehensive survey released Wednesday by UnidosUS, the largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy center in the nation. “Laying out a coherent economic policy agenda that will resonate with […]
The Republican nominee for lieutenant governor has dropped a defamation lawsuit he filed before the Aug. 6 primary against the corporate owner of Missouri television stations and one of his political rivals. David Wasinger filed the lawsuit on Aug. 2 claiming that a television ad run by another Republican vying for the lieutenant governor nomination […]
AUSTIN, Texas — Four days after residents of coastal Houston celebrated the Fourth of July with the traditional parades, backyard barbecues and fireworks, Beryl came calling. The Category 1 hurricane, weakened from an earlier Category 5, slammed into Texas’ largest city on July 8 — an unusual midsummer arrival. Delivering one of the worst direct […]
It has been a year since a state law required Missouri schools to have athletes compete according to their sex as assigned at birth, and few student manuals and school-board policies reflect the change. Enforcement, which was murky last year, remains unprescribed with many districts stating that they will follow the law without describing how. […]
Outrage is my beat. Somebody asked me the other day what exactly my beat was in writing a regular opinion column. The query came during a phone call with a producer for a television documentary while she was doing a pre-interview to decide if anything I had to say was compelling enough to appear on […]
BERNALILLO COUNTY, N.M. — Bianca Quintana was just taking a walk in the early morning dark near her mother’s house on South Coors Boulevard. There, the city streets of Albuquerque give way to feed stores and irrigation ditches, and the sounds of chickens and crickets mingle with high-speed traffic noise. Quintana, a 31-year-old mother of […]
GRAYLING, Mich. — Clairene Jorella was furious. In the northern stretches of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, the Crawford County Board of Canvassers had just opened its meeting to certify the August primary when Jorella, 83 years old and one of two Democrats on the panel, laid into her Republican counterparts. Glaring, she said she was gobsmacked […]
Missouri’s backlog of unresolved child abuse and neglect cases has fallen by more than 80%since January, with officials anticipating it will be eliminated by the end of the year.
The mailers started showing up in Rep. Jeff Farnan’s district months before the Aug. 6 primary, labeling the Republican from Stanberry a tool of teacher’s unions with an agenda of “open borders” and “higher taxes.” By the time voters went to the polls, the Missouri chapter of the American Federation for Children had spent $90,000 […]
What the public thinks the law is can matter more than what a law on the books actually says. So inaccurate or exaggerated reporting on a problematic law can make it even more harmful in practice. Over the years, I have written about a number of viral news stories that inadvertently misrepresent the law, causing […]
In September 1992, as I performed one of the perfunctory duties of my job as assistant city editor of the Columbia Daily Tribune — watching the nightly local news to keep up with our competitors — a startling story came on KMIZ. Stephen Gaither, a spokesman for Harry S Truman Memorial Veterans Hospital, described to […]
Bridget Bolder sent her daughter, Mia, to kindergarten at a neighborhood public school. After all, it seemed the “normal, regular thing to do.” But Bolder started to worry that some of her daughter’s classmates were exposing her to inappropriate topics. Early in the school year, Mia had to tell a teacher about a boy groping […]
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