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A day after the surprise resignation of Missouri’s interim commissioner of education, the State Board of Education announced a new interim leader for the state’s public school oversight agency. Lisa Sireno, deputy commissioner of learning services, will lead the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, according to a news release from the board. Sireno has […]

National Democrats are suing President Donald Trump, accusing his administration of intimidating election officials and asking a federal court to block him from interfering in the midterm elections. The lawsuit, filed late Tuesday in Washington, D.C., comes as the Trump administration mounts a highly public offensive against voter fraud in California just two weeks before Election […]

Four media organizations, including the Missouri Broadcasters Association and the Missouri Press Association, have filed a lawsuit against the Missouri State Highway Patrol alleging the patrol’s redacted crash reports violate the state’s open records law. The MBA and MPA, alongside Gray Media and Warden Publishing Company Managing Editor Roxie Murphy, are asking the Highway Patrol […]

For decades, manufactured home builders have been working to shed the old image of boxy trailer homes reserved for the outskirts of cities and suburbia. Now, a small change in federal regulations could open the door for architecture welcomed in more neighborhoods. This summer’s sweeping housing bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, removed […]

HYANNIS, Neb. — With 19 days until Election Day, Dan Osborn sat across from three skeptical voters in a conference room in this blink-and-you-miss-it rural Nebraska town.  Osborn, a bearded former union leader and Navy veteran, wants to become the first independent U.S. senator from Nebraska since World War II by defeating Republican Sen. Pete […]

After Missouri banned nearly all abortions in 2022, Valerie Weaver began noticing a troubling change in some of the pregnant patients she cared for in Kansas City. They were arriving to her sicker. Some had developed infections, blood clots or other complications while waiting for treatment. Some were so ill they required general anesthesia rather […]

Just as hopes grew for a breakthrough in United States–Mexico trade talks, an Oct. 15 report by The Wall Street Journal, subsequently reported by Reuters, revealed another roadblock. The two countries were reportedly close to an agreement to lower U.S. tariffs on Mexican automobiles, steel and aluminum. But disagreements within the Trump administration slowed progress. […]

The U.S. Department of Justice is intensifying its campaign against voter fraud with a spree of arrests in the final weeks before Election Day, an effort that voting rights advocates warn risks instilling fear among voters. Over the past week, the Justice Department unveiled election-related criminal charges against 28 noncitizens in California and threatened state […]

Nine states and the District of Columbia lost jobs in the year ending in September, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hit hard by the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce, the District of Columbia suffered the largest percentage job loss, down 3.5% or 25,800 jobs. Montana, […]

Missouri interim Commissioner of Education Stacey Preis resigned Tuesday after just four months on the job amid speculation she was about to be fired. Speaking to reporters while the State Board of Education met in a closed session, Preis didn’t deny her situation but said no one had “directly” told her to resign to avoid […]

Missouri regulators say the state doesn’t need to issue more licenses to grow, manufacture or sell marijuana because the legal cannabis market is meeting consumer demand. But the statewide study behind that conclusion couldn’t answer a key question: whether a small number of companies controls a substantial share of Missouri’s marijuana businesses. The study, released […]

Single-family home completions remain stuck at early pandemic levels as of September as costs, labor supply shortages and high interest take a toll on home builders, especially in the Northeast and South.  Apartment building was a more mixed picture, down nationally but up sharply in the Midwest (53%) and West (18%).  New single–family homes dropped […]

Donald Trump carried Missouri’s 34th Senate District by 11 percentage points in 2024. The incumbent Republican state senator won re-election two years earlier by 18 points. Yet with Election Day approaching, Republicans have spent more than $300,000 on television advertising to keep the northwest Missouri seat in GOP hands. The spending comes as Democrats hope […]

Missouri child welfare workers and courts would be required to use the same standards to determine when children are unsafe and what must change before they can return home under draft legislation being developed by a state task force. The proposal, discussed Monday by the 18-member task force appointed by Gov. Mike Kehoe, aims to […]

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the legislation President Donald Trump called the “One Big Beautiful Bill” would increase the federal deficit by $3.4 trillion over a decade, despite its massive cuts to healthcare and food assistance. It was designed so that its worst impacts wouldn’t be felt until after the midterm elections.  Now the […]

Democrats have used President Donald Trump’s unpopularity to expand the midterm map, and analysts project the party carries momentum heading into the final two weeks of the election cycle, even as Democrats are expected to flip fewer U.S. House seats than wave elections this century. The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter predicts Democrats will […]

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday establishing a Women’s Health Division within the National Institutes of Health.  The new division is set to work with the agency’s existing Office of Research on Women’s Health, which was established in 1990 and “has served as the focal point for women’s health research at NIH,” according […]

WASHINGTON — Immigrants living in the United States with humanitarian status from Ukraine and Sudan will retain their deportation protections and work authorizations for now, the Department of Homeland Security said over the weekend.  More than 100,000 Ukrainians and roughly 2,000 Sudanese with Temporary Protected Status will keep their protections until “such an announcement is […]

Missouri Republicans’ advantage among voters has narrowed sharply this year, but that shift may do little to change the state’s congressional delegation on Nov. 3.  An August St. Louis University/YouGov survey showed Missourians were just about evenly split between Republicans and Democrats on a generic congressional ballot, a major gain for Democrats from a poll […]

Six years ago, when we launched The Missouri Independent, I made what was probably a pretty lousy sales pitch. Don’t trust us. Not yet, anyway. I asked Missourians to judge us by our work. To hold us accountable for our promises. To make us prove that we really were, as legendary investigative reporter Wayne Barrett […]