MoInd 📰

By Kaitlin Bender-Thomas/Medill News Service WASHINGTON — Even with a valid driver’s license, Maryse Balthazar knows she lacks protection from what she dreads most: deportation back to Haiti.  Balthazar, a nursing assistant, often hesitates to leave her home in South Florida, worried that something as simple as a broken taillight could upend the life she’s […]

Labor and human rights concerns have long been entwined with FIFA and the World Cup. The 2026 games, which are drawing unprecedented international attention to Kansas City, are no different. Activists in Kansas City are using the world’s focus on soccer to highlight workers’ rights, social inequities and safety concerns for immigrants in the cities […]

Mylissa McNeill never expected to be a mother. But when she learned she was pregnant in the spring of 2022, at age 41, she and her partner were happy and excited at the prospect of parenting a little girl they planned to name Maeve. On June 24, 2022, about one month after McNeill discovered she was pregnant, […]

States and cities are loosening building code requirements in an effort to lower construction costs and boost affordable housing. Some of these changes include allowing low-rise apartment buildings to have just one stairway, reducing how often building codes are updated and rolling back specific electrical or fire safety standards. But critics have raised safety concerns, […]

For more than 40 years, Missourians have paid a small sales tax that supports state parks and soil and water protection programs. This year it is on the Aug. 4 ballot for a 10-year renewal. After barely passing the first time it was on the ballot in 1984, the tax has been renewed four times […]

The application window to win one of 77 microbusiness marijuana licenses through a lottery selection will open July 13-27.  The selection lottery is scheduled to take place on Sept. 9, and the Missouri Division of Cannabis Regulation expects to issue the licenses in December, according to a press release issued Monday. Microbusinesses are marijuana facility […]

The Trump administration illegally overhauled a U.S. Department of Homeland Security computer program in its hunt for noncitizen voters, a judge ruled Monday in a stinging decision that laid into federal officials for violating the privacy of millions of Americans. The ruling struck at the core of President Donald Trump’s project to assert authority over […]

For some teenagers across the country, the summer is the first opportunity to gain work experience for their nascent resume.  In a handful of states, however, teens who find jobs will find fewer protections under child labor laws. Four states — Indiana, Nebraska, Washington and West Virginia — enacted laws this year that weaken child […]

TOPEKA — Cole Epley isn’t afraid to run for Congress as a “proud progressive.” The 28-year-old believes he’s the best choice for the Democratic nomination in the Wichita-area 4th District because moderate candidates have already shown they can’t defeat incumbent Republican Rep. Ron Estes. In an appearance on the Kansas Reflector podcast, Epley said a […]

The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association and a family planning organization in Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Health and Human Services agency on Thursday alleging that it is politicizing the Title X grant funding program and violating the intent of the law. Attorneys from the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil […]

American teens are driving less than in previous decades, prompting civic advocates to warn that fewer young people may register to vote. Yet at least one state — New Hampshire — offers insight into how civic groups can work around a lack of registration opportunities to ensure young people can register, as well as the […]

WASHINGTON — When the overhead lights turn off at the Farmville Detention Center in Virginia, it not only means that night has arrived for Aliaksei Scharbachenia, but that panic attacks will soon follow. The attacks, which started after his detention began last August, he said, have only grown worse, stemming from the fear that he […]

A half dozen Republican governors are pushing alternative labels for June, which is widely recognized in the United States as Pride Month. Without explicitly tying their efforts to a replacement of Pride Month — which celebrates the LGBTQ+ community — GOP governors in states including Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Nebraska, Tennessee and Utah have labeled June […]

The birth of Danielle Stewart’s daughter thrust her into advocacy. She tells the story often. “Imagine walking into a hospital to have your first child,” Stewart said. “And leaving on a stretcher alone, paralyzed from your waist down.” Stewart says a failed epidural left her paralyzed from the waist down — a claim at the […]

Democrats are growing hopeful they can recapture the U.S. Senate in this fall’s midterm elections amid President Donald Trump’s plummeting approval ratings.  But they still need nearly everything to break their way against a map that put them at a starting disadvantage, analysts and campaign officials say. At the outset of this election cycle, Republicans […]

As we pause to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, we should take the time to evaluate her well-being. All is not well in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Why isn’t it? The leaders whom we have entrusted with her care — her very lifeline — are not doing what it […]

A recent commentary in The Missouri Independent asked what the Missouri Charter Public School commission (MCPSC) is doing with the 1.5% sponsorship fee it receives under state law. It is a fair question, and one we welcome. Because the answer goes to the heart of why charter public schools exist and why families across Missouri […]

Many of Missouri’s abortion regulations, including laws that Planned Parenthood said made it impossible for providers to prescribe medication abortion, were struck down in a ruling Thursday by a Jackson County judge. One of the regulations most widely condemned by abortion rights supporters, a 72-hour waiting period between an initial consultation and an abortion, has […]

Final peace negotiations between the United States and Iran officially began Thursday, Vice President JD Vance said at a late morning press conference in Washington, starting a 60-day countdown for the Islamic Republic to safely open the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. to lift a blockade on Iranian oil, and for the two nations to […]

U.S. Senate Democrats introduced legislation on Thursday to require Congress to sign off on any deployment of federal troops to the polls, as President Donald Trump and his administration refuse to rule out the idea. Fears of troops or other federal agents at voting sites have long loomed over the approaching midterm elections in November. […]