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 […]
Organizers launched more than 2,500 No Kings events across all 50 states and the District of Columbia Saturday, this time focusing their efforts on the midterm elections. From roadside rallies to letter-writing campaigns and protest songs, this round of demonstrations aimed to get people to the polls early. In the bustling and diverse neighborhood of […]
For more than three decades, the federal government released an annual comprehensive report on the state of hunger in America. But that ended in 2025 when the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would no longer produce Household Food Security reports. While the report has disappeared, hunger clearly hasn’t. In fact, it appears to be […]
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has a flurry of travel on deck in the final frantic weeks leading up to the end of the midterm elections, in which the GOP is vying to maintain its control of both the U.S. House and Senate. But that outlook looks increasingly less favorable for Republicans, as analysts say […]
WASHINGTON — More than 100,000 Ukrainians and roughly 2,000 Sudanese immigrants are bracing for the possibility they’ll lose their humanitarian protections by Monday. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has not indicated if he will renew protections for Ukrainians, who first received Temporary Protected Status after Russia invaded their country in 2022, and for Sudanese nationals, […]
WASHINGTON —Suddenly there’s hope for cutting the reams of red tape that can make getting new energy projects a seemingly endless slog. Top Republican and Democratic senators have unveiled a 417-page bill to overhaul the approval process, a pathway for what’s known as “permitting reform.” A debate is likely when lawmakers return for their lame-duck session […]
The sheer size of investment in data centers is drawing concern as it surpasses all other historical booms and crowds out other more job-creating ventures. Until now, no industry had driven the U.S. economy with such force since the railroad expansion of the late 1800s, when titans battled one another to lay the transcontinental tracks […]
WASHINGTON — The No Kings movement that has brought millions to the streets across the United States three times since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term is staging its next event at the polls. Organizers across hundreds of advocacy groups will pull together thousands of events nationwide Saturday to encourage early voting in […]
A new Missouri-based nonprofit has dropped $2.9 million into a campaign hoping to reinstate an abortion ban. Her Health Her Future Missouri was incorporated in September and is now the top donor to Her Health, Her Future PAC, the campaign aimed at passing Amendment 3. If approved by a majority of voters, it would overturn […]
AUSTIN, Texas — It was a good day for the defense. Standing in front of a judge in Austin’s Blackwell-Thurman Criminal Justice Center, attorney Matthew Shrum secured a ruling that spared his client from serious punishment on a shoplifting charge. In the hallway immediately afterward, the defendant thanked Shrum with an appreciative hug. “She walked […]
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