MoInd 📰

WASHINGTON — An effort to force President Donald Trump to seek congressional approval for further war actions in Iran failed in the U.S. Senate for the fourth time Wednesday, with all but one Republican continuing to support the president’s Middle East conflict. Senators voted down the measure, 47-52, with a similar partisan breakdown as earlier […]

WASHINGTON — The White House budget director on Wednesday defended the administration’s latest request for Congress, testifying before the House Budget Committee that a 43% increase in defense spending and a 10% cut to domestic programs is the best path forward.  Democrats on the panel were highly critical of that proposal, which lawmakers will debate […]

A Cole County Circuit Court judge ruled Tuesday that Missouri can use public funds to pay for private school scholarships even though state law doesn’t explicitly authorize it. In a 57-page ruling, Judge Brian Stumpe wrote that lawmakers could directly appropriate funds to the MOScholars program because state law does not “expressly prohibit” it. The […]

WASHINGTON — Tucked into President Donald Trump’s new budget request is a plan that could dramatically change — and, critics say, slash — how much money and help states provide to people needing jobs and training. Trump’s latest budget proposes a federal “Make America Skilled Again’’ grant that would combine a dozen current programs and provide […]

WASHINGTON — Republicans in Congress are once again looking toward the complex budget reconciliation process as a way to achieve some of their policy goals without Democratic votes.  GOP leaders were able to use the special pathway last year to approve the “big, beautiful” law that extended tax cuts, overhauled and cut Medicaid, provided hundreds of […]

When paramedics from the St. Charles City Fire Department arrive at the scene of an opioid overdose, patients refuse to go to the hospital about 75% of the time. But even if they decline treatment, they’re likely to accept naloxone kits that paramedics leave behind, said Marc Doll, emergency medical services bureau chief for the […]

Gov. Mike Kehoe’s office received 10,000 handwritten letters Tuesday asking him to veto a Missouri bill that would impose a statewide ban on intoxicating hemp products. The letters, gathered in just 10 days, came from small-business owners, farmers and customers across Missouri who say the legislation could wipe out the state’s hemp industry — even […]

A surge of tax refunds tied to Missouri’s capital gains tax cut pushed general revenue collections below last year’s pace, as the Senate Appropriations Committee worked on Tuesday to finalize the state budget for the coming year. Net general revenue collections for the year fell $10 million between the close of business Friday and the […]

A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court justices showed skepticism about the Trump Administration’s arguments on birthright citizenship. The court delayed its decision on birthright citizenship by first taking up the procedural question of universal injunctions. The conservative majority seemed to be throwing Trump a bone by barring universal injunctions. The ruling against universal injunctions […]

The Missouri State Board of Education approved Frontier STEM Academy’s charter school application Tuesday, with one board member decrying the addition of charter schools in Columbia as “problematic.” The vote, which was opposed by Columbia Public Schools, opens the door for the first charter school in Missouri outside of the St. Louis and Kansas City […]

The Department of Justice’s stated reason for obtaining sensitive personal data on millions of voters masks the Trump administration’s true intention for obtaining state voter lists, Michigan’s top election official asserted in federal appeals court Monday. Attorneys for Michigan Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson made the allegation in a brief in the 6th U.S. Circuit […]

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday he plans to use the complex reconciliation process to fund immigration enforcement for the next three years, though it wasn’t immediately clear if House Republicans were on the exact same page. The plan to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol with only […]

State Rep. Cathy Joy Loy, a Republican from Carthage, said her bill seeking to automatically retain Missouri third-grade students who are struggling to read is a “tourniquet” to “stop the bleed of children who are not reading.” But speaking to the Senate Education Committee Tuesday morning, school administrators said literacy rates are showing improvement three […]

A sweeping reorganization of the U.S. Forest Service signals that the agency is planning to lean heavily on states to help manage millions of acres of federal land, foresters across the West say. State officials and timber industry leaders say they’ve been given scant details about the plan, which will move the agency’s headquarters from […]

A Missouri Senate committee debated two bills Monday, one that would create a statewide alert system and another focused on children’s safety in school zones. The Senate Committee on Transportation, Infrastructure and Public Safety voted unanimously to pass legislation that would establish an alert system, similar to Amber or Silver alerts, for missing persons with […]

Missouri lawmakers are right to treat the collapse of rural health care as an urgent crisis. Nearly half of the state’s remaining rural hospitals are at risk of closure, and many communities already know what it means to lose emergency rooms, labor and delivery services and timely stroke care. In this environment, legislation allowing MU […]

The first-year cost of a House-passed proposal to eliminate the Missouri income tax ballooned to $4.2 billion under revisions made in the state Senate that were called “drafting errors” Monday during a committee debate. Despite the potential costs, and misgivings of some Republican members of the Senate Fiscal Oversight Committee, the bill passed Monday afternoon […]

The Missouri Senate peeled back its plans to establish broad state oversight of the Missouri State High School Activities Association, passing a less expansive bill Monday that would create a secondary appellate body for the association’s athletes. State Sen. Jason Bean, a Holcomb Republican and the bill’s sponsor, said the legislation he pitched last week […]

Bradley Breier had just settled in Cedarwood Terrace, an affordable housing complex in Springfield, when the notice arrived that all of the tenants were being evicted from their apartments. The owners planned to exit a federal low-income housing program at Cedarwood Terrace, and to convert another property they controlled, Rosewood Estates, into luxury senior living. […]

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump lashed out at Pope Leo XIV Sunday night following the pontiff’s sharp criticism of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran and wider Middle East conflict. In a lengthy post, littered with falsehoods, on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump accused the first U.S.-born pope of being “WEAK on crime” and of […]