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MoInd šŸ“°

Trump issues travel ban on 12 countries

6 months ago
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump issued a long-awaited ā€œtravel banā€ late Wednesday to bar entry of nationals from a dozen countries and partially restrict entry for nationals from a smaller set of countries. Countries that will have a full ban areĀ Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan […]
Ariana Figueroa

Civil rights law firm sues to block Missouri from taking over St. Louis police

6 months ago
A St. Louis civil rights law firm filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging the state takeover of the St. Louis police as unconstitutional. ArchCity Defenders filed the lawsuit in Cole County circuit court on behalf of two St. Louis city residents, Jamala Rogers and Mike Milton. The state and Attorney General Andrew Bailey are the defendants. […]
Clara Bates

More GOP states embrace paid parental leave for teachers, public employees

6 months ago
More Republican-led states are giving paid parental leave to public school teachers and other state employees, signaling a broader acceptance of family-friendly workplace policies once championed primarily by Democrats. ā€œAll of these red states, I think we’re late to the party,ā€ said South Carolina state Rep. Beth Bernstein, a Democrat who sponsored a bill this […]
Anna Claire Vollers

Federal appeals court upholds order blocking Education Department closure

6 months ago
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court late Wednesday upheld aĀ lower court’s order requiring the U.S. Education Department to reinstate more than 1,300 fired employees and blocking an executive order to dismantle the department and a directive to transfer some services to other federal agencies. The ruling from a three-judge panel in the United States Court […]
Shauneen Miranda

Federal health agency says emergency abortion care guidance doesn’t reflect administration policy

6 months ago
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services hasĀ rescinded guidance issued in July 2022 that emphasized hospitals are responsible for providing emergency abortion care despite state bans, saying it does not reflect the Trump administration’s policy. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) is a federal law requiring hospitals that accept Medicare funding to […]
Kelcie Moseley-Morris

GOP cuts to food assistance would hit rural America especially hard

6 months ago
People in Marsha Keene’s community are already struggling to cover the basics. Most of the clients Keene serves at the Susanna Wesley Family Learning Center in southeast Missouri are working but still rely on federal food assistance to keep up with ever-increasing costs. The center provides a domestic violence shelter, parenting education and summer camps […]
Kevin Hardy

Cuts to Pell Grant will hurt Missouri’s economic growth

6 months ago
Missouri leaders take pride in our reputation as a business-friendly state where cutting edge industries like biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, agtech and geospatial intelligence continue to grow. A new report puts us among the top 10 states for tech manufacturing growth. But proposed federal budget changes could undercut our economic competitiveness by weakening one of our […]
Laura Winter

U.S. House Democrats grill Education Secretary McMahon on proposed cuts, anti-diversity measures

6 months ago
WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Linda McMahon took heat from Democrats on the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce on Wednesday over the Trump administration’s initiatives to dramatically overhaul the federal role in education and eliminate the Education Department. Lawmakers took aim at President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget request — which includes $12 billion […]
Shauneen Miranda

Federal judge unseals some records in Abrego Garcia case

6 months ago
WASHINGTON — The Maryland federal judge overseeing the lawsuit concerning the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia unsealed documents Wednesday that the Trump administration had asked to keep unavailable to the public under the so-called state secrets privilege. The order fromĀ U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis unsealed three documents that she said did not contain any privileged […]
Ariana Figueroa

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison: ā€˜We are a whisper away from Jim Crow’

6 months ago
When President Donald Trump’s performance in the polls in 2024 signaled a possible re-election, Keith Ellison and fellow Democratic attorneys general read Project 2025 and started getting ready, especially when Trump hired the key author of the planning document after his election. They divided the documents into sections and marshaled their staff lawyers to be […]
Madison McVan

Trump tariffs would lower deficit but slow U.S. economic growth, nonpartisan CBO finds

6 months ago
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s tariffs would decrease the deficit over the next decade but overall shrink the U.S. economy and raise costs for consumers, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released Wednesday. Tariffs are paid to the U.S. government by domestic companies and purchasers who buy goods from abroad. The nonpartisan CBO found […]
Ashley Murray

Trump-backed giant tax and spending bill bloats deficit by $2.4T, nonpartisan CBO says

6 months ago
WASHINGTON — The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released detailed analysis Wednesday showing Republicans’ ā€œbig, beautiful billā€ would increase federal deficits by $2.4 trillion during the next decade. CBO projects that if enacted as written, the legislation would result in 10.9 million people losing access to health insurance by 2034, a number that includes ā€œ1.4 million […]
Jennifer Shutt

Opioid overdose deaths drop in Missouri, but rural areas fight stigmas, barriers to care

6 months ago
After years of exponential growth, opioid overdose deaths in Missouri are dropping. While health care workers, community groups and other officials say many factors may contribute to the drop in opioid overdose deaths, they agree that access to overdose-reversing drugs like naloxone, often provided under the brand name Narcan, is saving lives. ā€œI do think […]
Meg Cunningham

New funding for private school vouchers will ā€˜set precedent’ for future Missouri budgets

6 months ago
Gov. Mike Kehoe’s first budget proposal launched a tug of war between public-school advocates and those hoping to use state funds for private education. Both sides ultimately came away with what they wanted — but neither expects this to be the final showdown. State Treasurer Vivek Malek, who oversees the state’s tax-credit scholarship program, told […]
Annelise Hanshaw

U.S. Sen. Hawley demands Tyson child labor probe. Trump’s cuts to DOL could make that difficult

6 months ago
Despite rising child labor violations and new Senate demands to investigate the nation’s largest meat processor, the U.S. Department of Labor remains silent on whether it has the staff to conduct future probes amidst a major reduction in its workforce. At a May 22 congressional hearing, newly appointed Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said 2,700 department […]
John McCracken

Street-level violence prevention programs have been decimated by Trump just ahead of summer

6 months ago
Community-based violence intervention programs nationwide have long worked alongside law enforcement officers to deescalate conflict, prevent retaliatory shootings and, in some cases, arrive at crime scenes before police do. In many communities, these initiatives have been credited with saving lives and reducing violence. But the Trump administration last month abruptly terminated at least 373 public […]
Amanda HernƔndez

Elon Musk fumes tax and spending bill is a ā€˜disgusting abomination’; GOP senators shrug

6 months ago
WASHINGTON — Billionaire and former Trump administration official Elon Musk published a flurry of social media posts Tuesday slamming the ā€œbig, beautiful billā€ in Congress, but his criticisms were mostly ignored or brushed aside by Republican senators. Musk wrote that the ā€œmassive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abominationā€ and told the GOP […]
Jennifer Shutt