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Students and teachers told U.S. House members during a Thursday hearing that their right to talk about race and LGBTQ issues in public schools is being silenced due to an onslaught of new state laws as well as pressure on school boards from right-wing advocates. “To be crystal clear, this is about disrupting and destroying […]

The post Freedom of speech is under attack in public schools, U.S. House panel told appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Members of a U.S. Senate panel and election administrators raised a bevy of concerns Thursday about the challenges elections officials will face this fall, saying problems ranging from a lack of paper to coordinated misinformation campaigns could affect confidence in U.S. democracy. A bipartisan panel of current and former elections officials and experts told the […]

The post Misinformation, violence and a paper shortage threaten midterm elections, officials say appeared first on Missouri Independent.

If Missouri’s primary election were held today, three candidates in the 4th Congressional District Republican contest would not be able to vote for themselves. The new district lines that took effect Wednesday already led state Rep. Sara Walsh of Ashland to quit the campaign she started last year because her home and legislative constituency will […]

The post New maps make residency an issue in Missouri’s 4th Congressional District appeared first on Missouri Independent.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Food and Drug Commissioner Robert Califf told Congress Thursday that the infant formula shortage will likely begin to improve in the coming days, though he declined to explain to unhappy lawmakers why his agency didn’t act sooner on a whistleblower report that detailed safety issues at an Abbott Laboratories facility in Michigan. […]

The post Under fire from Congress, FDA chief says baby formula shortage will improve soon appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Gridlock in the Missouri Senate doomed issues that the GOP should have used its supermajority to accomplish, Gov. Mike Parson said Wednesday, pointing specifically at legislation targeting transgender students and banning critical race theory in schools. In an interview with KFTKs Mark Reardon, Parson lamented that the legislature spent so much time and effort this […]

The post Missouri governor laments failure of transgender sports bill, ban on critical race theory appeared first on Missouri Independent.

WASHINGTON — Both the Biden administration and Congress moved Wednesday to try to relieve a national infant formula shortage, as the White House invoked the Defense Production Act and the U.S. House approved $28 million for the Food and Drug Administration. President Joe Biden said he would use the law to address the formula shortage, requiring suppliers […]

The post Congress, White House scramble to ease baby formula shortage appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft will not use random sampling to verify whether a pair of initiative petitions submitted this month collected enough signatures to be placed on the November ballot, his office confirmed Wednesday. Instead, Ashcroft will rely on the traditional method of line-by-line checking by local election officials to verify and count […]

The post Ashcroft won’t use random sampling to certify marijuana, ranked-choice initiatives appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Gov. Mike Parson signed the bill revising the boundaries of Missouri’s eight congressional districts Wednesday afternoon, officially ending the most contentious legislative battle of the year. The revised districts have already led to one candidate, state Rep. Sara Walsh of Ashland, withdrawing from her campaign for the open 4th District seat. Walsh on Monday lamented […]

The post Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signs new congressional redistricting plan appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Attorney General Eric Schmitt is preparing for a new round of lawsuits challenging school mask rules if districts reinstate orders in the face of an uptick in COVID-19 cases. During a hearing Tuesday in Boone County Circuit Court, assistant attorney general James Atkins said the new cases would involve districts that have policies triggered by […]

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President Joe Biden on Tuesday commemorated the victims of last weekend’s mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, and condemned the ideology that drove the killer to “carry out a murderous, racist rampage” at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood. In a visit to the Upstate New York city, Biden and other New York […]

The post Biden condemns racist theory of white supremacy in visit to Buffalo after mass shooting appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Missouri Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz used his exit from the legislature to blast Attorney General Eric Schmitt, arguing he failed to stop the proliferation of illegal gambling machines and cost public schools millions in revenue. Schatz, who is opposing Schmitt in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, was stymied by a filibuster in […]

The post Missouri Senate president accuses AG of turning ‘blind eye’ to illegal gambling appeared first on Missouri Independent.

This story was originally published by Investigate Midwest.  Lawyers for Tyson Foods, one of America’s largest meatpacking companies, drafted an early version of a 2020 executive order that allowed plants to continue operating during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new Congressional report based on company emails shows. It’s been reported that the meatpacking industry wrote a draft […]

The post Tyson Foods wrote draft of Trump order keeping meatpacking plants open during pandemic appeared first on Missouri Independent.

This story was originally published by Kaiser Health News.  The Biden administration in March 2021 announced it was investing $2.25 billion to address COVID health disparities, the largest federal funding initiative designed specifically to help underserved communities hardest hit by the virus. Two months later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awarded grants to […]

The post States have yet to spend hundreds of millions of federal dollars to tackle COVID health disparities appeared first on Missouri Independent.

WASHINGTON – Years after firefighters extinguish a blaze, after the smoke has lifted and ashes have cooled, the people who risked their lives to contain the fire face another danger: Cancer and cardiovascular disease resulting from exposure to smoke and heat. Government and academic studies have shown firefighters are 9% more likely to develop cancer and 14% […]

The post U.S. House vote to expand federal firefighters benefits seen as step toward parity appeared first on Missouri Independent.

A panel of state appeals court judges heard arguments last week over whether former Gov. Eric Greitens and his staff used self-destructing text-message apps in 2017 to illegally circumvent Missouri’s transparency laws.   While Greitens was still serving as governor, it was revealed he and his staff were using a text-messaging app called Confide. The app […]

The post Appeals court hears arguments over Greitens’ use of self-destructing text message app appeared first on Missouri Independent.

The 2022 legislative session ended last week the same way it began back in January: With the Missouri Senate bogged down and barely able to function thanks to bitter divisions within the Republican majority.  Over the course of five months, there were filibusters, procedural hijinks and ugly back-and-forths between members of the Senate’s conservative caucus […]

The post Winners and losers of Missouri’s raucous 2022 legislative session appeared first on Missouri Independent.

The 2022 regular session of the Missouri General Assembly was the most dysfunctional I can remember in more than 50 years covering the statehouse. Endless Senate filibusters stalled action for weeks on major issues for Missourians — contributing to the second lowest percentage of bills passed in an annual session in more than one-third of […]

The post Capitol Perspectives: A dysfunctional legislative session appeared first on Missouri Independent.

In chess, a defensive move that swaps positions of the rook and the king is called castling. The move that ends the game, of course, is the checkmate. Early Thursday morning, the Missouri Senate leadership castled the congressional redistricting bill by recessing, instead of adjourning, the Wednesday session. That meant that when members returned around […]

The post Battle lines remain fixed in Missouri Senate Republican factional fights as session ends appeared first on Missouri Independent.

A flurry of activity in the Missouri House on Friday kept 2022 from earning the ignominious distinction of least productive legislative session in modern history.  With GOP infighting in the Senate forcing it to adjourn a day early after a session that’s seen it mired in gridlock, the House returned Friday morning to pass 20 […]

The post Missouri legislature ends tumultuous 2022 session marked by gridlock, GOP infighting appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Infants born to women in prison may soon get to remain with their mothers for their first 18 months, under a bill on its way to Gov. Mike Parson’s desk. The bill would direct the Missouri Department of Corrections to establish a nursery within a women’s correctional facility by July 2025. It gained bipartisan support […]

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