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Beck Flavors, based in Maryland Heights, is attempting to trademark “Louligan” and “Louligans” on behalf of an unidentified client that wants to use the name on a beverage.

Thursday morning two dozen candidates took the first step on a path that could be life-changing for them. They had showed up at the St. Louis County Workforce Jobs Center at The Crossings at Northwest Plaza. They were there to learn more about joining the first cohort of a pilot certified survey technician apprenticeship program. […]

From St. Louis Magazine:  This morning, the Missouri Historical Society unveils its “We Are St. Louis” campaign. The $36 million initiative will pay for two sweeping new exhibits at the Missouri History Museum, an expansion of programming, and a major digital push showcasing its collection online. But for all those ambitions, Jody Sowell, the organization’s […]

In 2025, Missouri residents should be afforded the opportunity to shop for an energy plan that best meets their needs, writes Chris Ercoli of the Retail Energy Advancement League.

Three years after it was founded, the organization has more than 4,200 members of different ages and walks of life.

WOOD RIVER – The Wood River Fire Department honored Engineer/Paramedic Tyler Staicoff with a 2024 Firefighter of the Year Award for his excellent performance at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. Fire Chief Wade Stahlhut said each year, award winners are selected by their department peers for exemplifying the qualities of a firefighter, including bravery, dedication, selflessness, resilience, and more. “This year, our first Firefighter of the Year Award goes to someone who has truly made an impact felt throughout the entire department,” Stahlhut said. “Engineer/Paramedic Tyler Staicoff has demonstrated extraordinary commitment not only in responding to emergencies, but maintaining a high level of commitment in his fire and medical training, fitness, mentoring fellow firefighters, engaging with community members on prevention education, and continuously striving for excellence with the desire to do more.” Stahlhut noted Staicoff’s involvement

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Who really knows just what someone else really wants unless you ask them, and then the element of “real giving” somehow is diminished. At this last Christmas holiday time, the best present just appeared in the living room.

From St. Louis Pubic Radio:  Illinois Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski, D-Springfield, and Missouri Congressman Wesley Bell, D-Clayton, joined forces on Wednesday to raise concerns about potential federal funding cuts for infrastructure projects in the St. Louis region after the Department of Transportation recently paused funding. Budzinski and Bell met for an hour in a closed meeting […]

St. Louis Sheriff Alfred Montgomery finds himself at the center of four scandals after less than two months on the job.

Automation can be helpful, yes. But the story told to date by large tech companies like OpenAI has been that these new language learning models would be utterly transformative, utterly world-changing, and quickly approaching some kind of sentient superintelligence. Yet time and time again, data seems to show they’re failing to accomplish even the bare […]

SPRINGFIELD – State higher education leaders are pleased with Governor JB Pritzker’s proposed fiscal year 2026 budget, which includes a higher education budget of $2.73 billion. The higher education budget emphasizes college affordability and supports ongoing initiatives by including a $10 million increase for the Monetary Award Program (MAP) and a $46 million, or 3 percent, increase to operational funds for public universities ($37 million) and community colleges ($9 million). “The governor's proposed higher education investments will help us build on the progress we've made toward a more affordable and equitable higher education system and thriving Illinois economy for each family and student in our state,” said Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) Executive Director Ginger Ostro. “Even at a time when the state has to make difficult fiscal decisions, Governor Pritzker has prioritized investing in our students because they are the future of our state.”

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CHICAGO—On the heels of his 2025 State of the State budget address, Governor Pritzker focused on one of his top legislative priorities this year: lowering prescriptions drug costs. After introducing the Prescription Drug Affordability Act (PDAA) in his address, the Governor hosted a roundtable in Springfield with legislators and independent pharmacists to discuss the impact pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) have had on their businesses. In Chicago, the Governor visited Chicago Pride Pharmacy to highlight the struggles faced by independent pharmacies and the importance of reform. “Predatory pharmacy benefit manager practices hurt small, independent pharmacies that often are the only source of medication for entire communities,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “Unfairly high prices put a disproportionate strain on these small business owners and the clients they serve and can cause closures that contribute to medical access deserts—a loss for Illinois communities

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MACOUPIN COUNTY - The Illinois State Police is investigating a serious incident that has closed Fosterburg Road near Brighton Bunker Hill Road on Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025. The Illinois State Police (ISP) Troop 8 reported the situation occurred at approximately 2:20 p.m. Preliminary information suggests that ISP Troop 8 units are currently on the scene, working to gather more details about the incident. As a result, Fosterburg Road is closed at this location. The Illinois State Police urges motorists to seek alternate routes to avoid delays. The State Police said the investigation remains active, and officials have not released additional information at this time.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)—a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation (CST) and Ranking Member of the CST Aviation, Space and Innovation Subcommittee—is demanding a more detailed explanation from Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Acting Administrator Chris Rocheleau on why the FAA abruptly fired hundreds of employees in the wake of multiple deadly airplane crashes. In her letter, Duckworth is requesting multiple answers from the FAA by this Friday, February 21, regarding the reasoning behind these firings and the impact these firings will have on passenger safety and our ongoing aviation safety crisis. In the letter, Duckworth wrote: “I am alarmed about the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) abrupt firing of hundreds of FAA employees. In the wake of multiple deadly airplane crashes, Congress and the flying public need a more detailed explanation. At a minimum, we need to know why this

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, combat Veteran and U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)—a member of the U.S. Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee (SVAC)—joined U.S. Senator and SVAC Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and a group of 34 Democratic Senators calling on Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Doug Collins to immediately reinstate the more than 1,000 VA employees terminated last week who serve Veterans and their families nationwide, including critical employees addressing Veteran suicide working at the Veterans Crisis Line. The Trump Administration’s mass terminations of VA employees, which included a substantive number of Veterans and military spouses, comes at a time when VA faces critical staffing shortages and increased demand for its services, such as urgently needed mental health care to reduce the Veteran suicide rate. In addition, many of these terminated employees had exemplary performance records and multiple years of work experience i

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DURBIN CRITICIZES TRUMP AND MUSK FOR DISMANTLING OF USAID AND HARMING AMERICAN FARMERS IN SENATE FLOOR SPEECH In his remarks, Durbin also debunked Kremlin-fostered falsehoods about USAID that have been circulated by Trump, Musk, and foreign adversaries and called on Republicans to speak up WASHINGTON – In a speech on the Senate floor today, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) criticized President Trump and Elon Musk’s ill-advised mission to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)—the largest distributor of humanitarian aid in the world. Consequently, programs that provide clean drinking water, treat debilitating disease, and advance human rights have been shut down, recklessly gutting American soft power and providing a huge strategic opening to China. “This month, President Trump and Elon Musk attempted to dismantle USAID, the largest distributor of humanitarian aid on this earth. Musk was gleeful when he said

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EDWARDSVILLE — Madison County is announced it will be awarding $25,000 in funding for its new Clean Communities Litter Grant program. “We wanted to do something to get people more involved in helping to keep their communities clean,” Chairman Chris Slusser said. “For the past five years we’ve offered citizens litter kits to assist in keeping communities clean and this grant opportunity is the next step.” Slusser said Building and Zoning is overseeing the new grant program, which is promoting environmental stewardship, engaging residents in cleanup efforts and fostering pride in shared public spaces. Building and Zoning Administrator Chris Doucleff said the grant will provide funding up to $2,500 in matching funds. “This is a 100 percent match grant,” Doucleff said. He said the grant is intended to provide financial assistance and support for municipalities, townships, park districts and partners that help combat litter in their

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by Avi Asher-Schapiro, Andy Kroll and Christopher Bing

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

While Elon Musk and his underlings demand budget cuts and layoffs across the federal government, funding for their agency — the Department of Government Efficiency — has soared to nearly $40 million, ProPublica found in a review of Office of Management and Budget records.

Billionaire investor Musk has called DOGE “maximally transparent.” President Donald Trump has said that some 100 people work for the group, but his administration has refused to make information about DOGE’s spending and operations public. In an effort to gain a clearer understanding of DOGE’s inner workings, ProPublica has gathered the names and backgrounds of the people employed there. We’ve identified some 46 people, including 12 new names we are adding to the list today.

Trump and Musk have defended DOGE as a tool for trimming fat from what they see as a bloated bureaucracy. The effects of those cuts have proved crippling, bringing a halt to programs that provided essential services to vulnerable populations across the country and the world.

The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., told ProPublica she didn’t believe DOGE had the legal authority for the actions it’s taken. She called it a “made-up federal department” that’s wasting taxpayer dollars.

“This unlawful effort is stealing federal funds from American families and businesses,” DeLauro said.

Most of DOGE’s money, records show, has come in the form of payments from other federal agencies made possible by a nearly century-old law called the Economy Act. To steer those funds to the new department, the Trump administration has treated DOGE as if it were a federal agency. And by dispatching members of its staff to other agencies and having those staffers issue edicts about policy and personnel, DOGE has also behaved as if it has agency-level authority.

The use of the Economy Act would seem to subject DOGE to the same open-records laws that cover most federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the State Department. However, DOGE has refused to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests, saying it operates with executive privileges. Musk has also flip-flopped about whether DOGE’s staff members are paid. Initially he said they were not, but earlier this week he said some of them were.

The conflicting stances put the Trump administration in a bind, legal experts say. If DOGE is a federal agency, it can’t shield its records from the public. If it’s not an agency, then DOGE’s tens of millions of dollars in funding weren’t legally allocated and should be returned, some contend.

“The administration can’t have it both ways,” said Adam Grogg, a former deputy general counsel at OMB and now the legal director at Governing for Impact, a left-of-center think tank. “Either it’s an agency covered by FOIA with the authority to do what it’s doing, or it’s purely advising the president and can’t be directing agencies in the way it now is.”

A federal judge presiding over one of the many DOGE-related lawsuits also recently grilled the administration’s lawyers about its conflicting stances. In a recent hearing, U.S. District Judge John Bates characterized the government’s position as “we’re not an agency where we don’t want to be an agency, but we are an agency this one instance where we want to be.”

ProPublica has confirmed the names of 12 additional government staffers who are either part of DOGE or are linked to Musk’s constellation of companies and have roles in the new administration. We confirmed the names by cross-referencing agency records, speaking with dozens of sources inside the federal government, and poring through documents from ongoing litigation challenging DOGE’s authority.

They are spread across agencies. At the Department of Education, DOGE staffers are exploring how to expand the agency’s reliance on AI to both identify potential waste and interact with student loan recipients. At the EPA, they have reportedly gained access to contracting databases. Some staffers serve in executive-level roles while others have ambiguous titles, such as “senior adviser,” leaving unclear the nature of their work.

One of the names newly added to the tracker, Kathryn Armstrong Loving, is the sibling of crypto executive Brian Armstrong, who runs the industry leader Coinbase. Coinbase donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, and Armstrong met with Trump to discuss appointments to administration posts, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Some employees work at more than one agency. None responded to requests for comment.

While Musk has celebrated DOGE’s cuts and disparaged targeted agencies, Trump officials now say he’s not actually running it.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Funding Floodgates

The Trump administration began funding DOGE soon after it took office. It started by tapping $750,000 from a White House fund for information technology initiatives in late January.

Since then, the funding has ballooned; the most recent apportionment came on Feb. 8 and included a $14 million chunk described as part of a “software modernization initiative.” In all, ProPublica found, more than $39 million has been earmarked to DOGE in the Trump administration’s first month.

For perspective, in recent years Congress had allocated around $50 million a year for the IT modernization initiative that DOGE supplanted, budget records show.

The Trump administration has not yet released enough details to trace the exact source of the funding flowing into DOGE or said who is being paid. The money could be coming from agency budgets that have money set aside for IT upgrades or other services. It’s also not yet clear what timeframe the allocation covers or whether it has funded salaries.

Funding one agency from another’s budget is not unusual, experts say. But money cannot be moved around for whatever purpose the White House wants — it is restricted by something called the “purpose statute,” which requires funds to pay for items Congress has specifically prescribed.

DOGE’s operating method “leaves questions about possible violations of the purpose statute,” said Christie Wentworth with the ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “If DOGE uses funds that are available only for IT-related purposes for initiatives that have nothing to do with IT, that use could violate federal law.”

Brett Murphy, Kirsten Berg, Pratheek Rebala and Annie Waldman contributed reporting.

Correction

Feb. 21, 2025: This story originally misspelled the name of the sister of cryptocurrency executive Brian Armstrong. She is Kathryn Armstrong Loving, not Katherine.