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The top staff member of the Missouri House filed a lawsuit Friday accusing Speaker Dean Plocher and his chief of staff, Rod Jetton, of harassment and intimidation during battles over ethics charges and hiring decisions. House Chief Clerk Dana Miller’s lawsuit follows months allegations about misconduct by Plocher and a House Ethics Committee investigation that […]

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Missouri’s Medicaid enrollment has shrunk by around 200,000 people since last summer, as the state continues the process of undoing a COVID-era pause on eligibility checks. The federal suspension on annual renewals expired last year and since then, states have been undergoing the process of re-verifying each participant’s eligibility. From June to April, Missouri’s net […]

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One of Montana’s largest health clinics that serves people in poverty has cut back services and laid off workers. The retrenchment mirrors similar cuts around the country as safety-net health centers feel the effects of states purging their Medicaid rolls. Billings-based RiverStone Health is eliminating 42 jobs this spring, cutting nearly 10% of its workforce. […]

The post Safety-Net Health Clinics Cut Services and Staff Amid Medicaid ‘Unwinding’ appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Reactions by Missouri politicians to the felony conviction Thursday of former President Donald Trump fell predictably along partisan lines, with Republicans condemning the verdict and Democrats expressing satisfaction or trolling their partisan foes. Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a candidate for the GOP nomination for governor, blamed President Joe Biden for the state of New […]

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WASHINGTON — Taxpayers across the United States could be guaranteed a free public option to file federal tax returns online as the Internal Revenue Service announced plans Thursday to make its Direct File program permanent. The pilot program offered in 12 states from March to April drew roughly 140,000 accepted returns this filing season and […]

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WASHINGTON — Jurors in New York state court on Thursday found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to a porn star ultimately to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president wrapped up in […]

The post Trump found guilty on 34 felony counts in NY hush money trial appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Buchanan County can collect a special marijuana sales tax on dispensaries within St. Joseph city limits, a judge ruled Wednesday in the second decision granting counties the right to stack taxes on top of city levies. Circuit Judge Daniel Kellogg wrote in his two-page ruling that provisions in the recreational marijuana constitutional amendment passed in […]

The post 2nd Missouri judge rules counties can stack taxes at marijuana dispensaries appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Independence School District Superintendent Dale Herl feels targeted by the state for moving to a four-day school week. On Wednesday, Missouri Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick announced a plan to audit the district. Independence schools aren’t accused of wrongdoing, and no one asked for an audit. Rather, it’s Fitzpatrick’s first foray into conducting more routine audits of […]

The post Independence’s four-day school week draws Missouri auditor probe appeared first on Missouri Independent.

As the summer travel season approaches, new parents may be navigating airports with their babies — and the complexities of keeping them fed. Despite federal guidelines for airport agents laying out how to treat nursing moms, stories about problem encounters with security sometimes go viral. In 2023, actress and singer Keke Palmer said she was at Houston […]

The post A bipartisan push to make air travel easier for new parents packing breast milk and formula appeared first on Missouri Independent.

The addition of Negro Leagues baseball players’ statistics to MLB’s record books is bigger than baseball, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick said Wednesday. It’s a part of American history. Negro Leagues players were added to the MLB record books this week after a multi-year project by MLB, which decided in 2020 to reclassify […]

The post ‘America at her best’: Negro Leagues museum head says stat recognition is bigger than baseball appeared first on Missouri Independent.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office on Wednesday scrapped a proposal to extend a compensation program for victims of radiation exposure without expanding it to thousands of Americans across nine states. In a statement that came less than four hours after Johnson’s office said a proposal to expand the program was too expensive, a spokesperson […]

The post U.S. House speaker reverses on radiation compensation bill that excluded Missouri appeared first on Missouri Independent.

A Jay Ashcroft campaign letter that attacked his opponents Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe as a closeted Democrat and state Sen. Bill Eigel as a “political gadfly” shows illegal coordination between his gubernatorial campaign committee and a political action committee, a complaint to the Missouri Ethics Commission states. Ashcroft’s campaign is denying the allegations. The complaint, […]

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Melvin White sits with his generation at a demographic Ground Zero for mental stress. The Schlagle High School junior survived COVID isolation during middle school. He’s never known a world without smartphones. And he’s finishing high school amid the FOMO energy of a social media world in its own adolescence. All of those factors, experts […]

The post More KC schoolkids are asking for help with their mental health. A few are finding it appeared first on Missouri Independent.

WASHINGTON — As part of its ongoing effort to replace diesel-fueled school buses, the Biden administration on Wednesday said it will provide approximately 530 school districts across nearly all states with almost $1 billion to help them purchase clean school buses. The initiative, part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program rebate […]

The post Funds for clean school buses coming to hundreds of districts, White House says  appeared first on Missouri Independent.

WASHINGTON — A fund to compensate Americans sickened by exposure to atomic bomb tests, uranium mining and radioactive waste expires in just under 15 days, and activists and lawmakers are scrambling to keep the fund active and open to additional victims. A bill to reauthorize and expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, often shortened to […]

The post Missouri residents affected by radiation exposure push Congress to extend benefits appeared first on Missouri Independent.

After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, former NBA player Royce White became an outspoken advocate of defunding the police. Over those ensuing months, he appeared at a number of protests and marches in Minnesota – demonstrations that conservative politicians and pundits excoriated. Four years later, White accepted the endorsement of the Minnesota […]

The post What QAnon supporters, butthole sunners and New Age spiritualists have in common appeared first on Missouri Independent.

A proposal to renew compensation for cancer victims who were exposed to radioactive material from the nation’s weapons development without expanding the program to Missouri and several other states amounted to a betrayal, Missouri advocates and lawmakers said Tuesday. Members of Congress from Missouri learned late Tuesday that U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson plans to […]

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WASHINGTON — Closing arguments in the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president concluded Tuesday, leaving the jury to now decide if Donald Trump is guilty of faking reimbursement to his personal lawyer for hush money paid to a porn star just before the 2016 presidential election. Just outside the Lower Manhattan courthouse during […]

The post The jury now will decide Trump’s fate in hush money trial, after lengthy closing arguments appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Missouri will have two constitutional amendments on the Aug. 6 primary ballot, one to grant tax exemptions for child care facilities and another to rerun a 2022 election result on police funding thrown out by the state Supreme Court.  Gov. Mike Parson said Tuesday that he would put the two proposals from the General Assembly […]

The post Missouri governor sets vote on tax exemption for child care centers, Kansas City police funding appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Stefani Goerlich, a certified sex therapist and social worker with a private practice in Detroit, sees several dozen clients a month, most of them from underserved and minority backgrounds. She speaks to them about sensitive matters such as gender-affirming care, and building trust takes time. Those hard-won relationships often are upended when clients move away […]

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