MoInd 📰

State Rep. Scott Cupps strolled into a Missouri Capitol hearing room wearing a sport coat made of old quilts and toting a hand-cranked Bingo ball spinner.  The jacket was a gift from friends back in his Shell Knob district, commissioned by his grandmother’s old quilt club. The Bingo spinner, procured from “the nuns at St. […]

Included in the massive federal workforce cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services this week was the elimination of an office that runs a program over 100,000 Missouri families rely on to help pay their heating and cooling bills. 

The nation’s historically Black colleges and universities, known as HBCUs, are wondering how to survive in an uncertain and contentious educational climate as the Trump administration downsizes the scope and purpose of the U.S. Department of Education — while cutting away at federal funding for higher education. In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive […]

WASHINGTON — Markets and business owners in the United States and around the world reeled Thursday following President Donald Trump’s announcement of sweeping and steep tariffs that are not “reciprocal” but rather punish many countries that U.S. importers heavily rely on, experts say. U.S. stocks plummeted, posting the worst one-day drop since June 2020, financial media […]

Evenezer Cortez Martinez wanted to pay respects to a beloved grandfather who died last fall. He ended up deported, sent back to Mexico, a country the 39-year-old Kansas husband and father left at the age of 4. “Everything was approved, and I arrived here with no problem,” said Cortez Martinez, a DACA recipient, in a […]

The Missouri House sent the state Senate a budget of almost $48 billion to fund state agency operations in the coming fiscal year, a spending plan almost certain to grow as the upper chamber adds more money for public schools and child care. The 13 spending bills use about $2.1 billion less overall and $800 […]

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department’s Office of the Inspector General announced Thursday it has opened an investigation into Secretary Pete Hegseth’s highly criticized use of the Signal messaging app to communicate about plans to bomb Yemen. The evaluation stems from a letter the chairman and ranking member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, Republican […]

This story was updated at 6:44 p.m. EDT. WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education demanded in a letter to state education leaders on Thursday that they certify all K-12 schools in their states are complying with an earlier Dear Colleague letter banning diversity, equity and inclusion practices if they want to keep receiving federal financial […]

Democrats on the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee and a panel of experts on Wednesday blasted the Trump administration’s reduction to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget and workforce, citing consequences for everyday weather data, national security and affected industries. Virtually every American interacts with NOAA’s weather data, which supplies forecasting services across the […]

WASHINGTON — Amid dozens of injunctions placed against the Trump administration, Republicans on the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary discussed a bill Wednesday to curb the nationwide effects of those orders from federal judges. The bill, sponsored by GOP Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who leads the committee, would prohibit district court judges from issuing injunctions […]

The first thing Sandra “Sandy” Hemme did after walking out of prison in July 2024 — after spending 43 years behind bars — was visit her father. He was in the hospital battling kidney failure.  Ten days later, he was gone. Hemme, now 65, had been held for a crime she said she didn’t commit […]

A Republican state senator spent hours Wednesday trying to block the appointment of his former colleague to a county office over a grudge that goes back more than seven years.  Shortly after 1 a.m., the filibuster sputtered and the appointment was confirmed by the Missouri Senate. State Sen. Mike Moon, an Ash Grove Republican, sought […]

A Missouri House member violated a state disclosure law by voting on an appropriation that helped his employer, according to a report approved unanimously on Wednesday by the House Ethics Committee. The committee, made up of five Republicans and five Democrats, was investigating a complaint against state Rep. Justin Sparks, a Republican from Wildwood, related […]

This story was updated at 6:55 p.m. EDT. WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump rolled out sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs Wednesday on trading partners and allies across the globe. Declaring that foreign trade practices have created a “national emergency,” the president unveiled a baseline 10% levy on all international imports, plus what he described as additional “kind” […]

The newest reworking of a proposed constitutional amendment seeking to undermine abortion rights in Missouri has managed to draw the ire of the state’s largest anti-abortion group. The version of the Republican-backed amendment approved by a House committee Monday, if passed out of the legislature and approved by voters, would outlaw abortion with limited exceptions […]

A Democratic U.S. senator from California is blocking the nomination of Missouri Republican Ed Martin to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, calling him a “one-man wrecking ball” on social media. U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, in a news release issued Tuesday, cited Martin’s actions since being named interim U.S. attorney as the reason […]

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Maryland late Tuesday ordered federal agencies across 19 states and the District of Columbia to reinstate thousands of probationary workers who were fired as part of White House adviser Elon Musk’s government-slashing agenda. U.S. Judge James Bredar for the District of Maryland issued the preliminary injunction mandating 20 federal […]

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker broke the record for longest floor speech in the history of the Senate on Tuesday, surpassing the 24-hour and 18-minute record set in 1957 when South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond attempted to prevent passage of the Civil Rights Act. Booker, a Democrat who began his remarks Monday at 7 p.m. saying he […]

In the spring of 2023, efforts were underway to put the question of restoring abortion access to Missouri voters. Abortion-rights supporters geared up to collect the roughly 171,000 signatures required to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot. Per the state’s initiative petition process, then-Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft wrote a summary of their proposed […]

Democrats failed on Tuesday to win major changes in the $47.9 billion state budget plan during Missouri House debate, suffering defeat on proposals to shift money to the school funding formula and increase payments to child care providers. Few Republicans broke ranks with party leadership on those or any other proposal put forth by Democrats, […]