MoInd 📰

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 […]

Some anti-abortion state lawmakers are pushing to revise the definition of “abortion” so abortion bans don’t apply to cases in which the death of an “unborn child” is the result of medical care provided to the pregnant woman. In the four years since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to ban abortion, stories continue to emerge of […]

Alabama, Maine and Virginia recently adopted policies that make it easier for physician assistants to practice and serve more patients. Alabama became the 24th state to adopt the PA Licensure Compact, an agreement between states that authorizes these clinicians to practice across state lines. The compact can help remove administrative barriers for physician assistants, making […]

WASHINGTON — California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell and Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales both announced Monday evening that they would resign from Congress amid sexual misconduct allegations.   Swalwell’s announcement came just one day after he suspended his campaign for governor over allegations of sexual assault.  “I am aware of efforts to bring an immediate expulsion […]

Missouri hospitals and clinics that perform forensic exams following sexual assault are not required by law to offer emergency contraception to survivors, a coverage inconsistency a bipartisan group of lawmakers is trying to correct with legislation aimed at standardizing care after rape. The proposal, called the Compassionate Assistance for Rape Emergencies Act, would require facilities […]

UM System President Mun Choi said he was responsible for the university’s funding cuts to several multicultural student organizations, citing concerns over Department of Justice investigations into other universities in a Wednesday faculty meeting. “It wasn’t an easy decision, but I decided that I needed to protect the institution, so that’s the decision that I […]

A political party is defined by the governing philosophy, values, policies and actions of its leaders and members. How would you define the Missouri Republican Party? The national Republican Party? One could argue that the behavior we are witnessing on the national stage is an extreme manifestation — not who the Republican Party really is. Or one could conclude that how President Trump operates, and how […]