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ALTON - Ania Sneed of Marquette Catholic High School was one of the Students of the month for March 2025 at a regular meeting of the Rotary Club of Alton-Godfrey at Gentelin’s on Broadway Restaurant. These were comments by Sneed about the honor: "My name is Ania Sneed, and I am a Class of 2025 senior at Marquette Catholic High School. Throughout high school, I have dedicated myself to academic excellence, leadership, and creative growth. With a 4.24 GPA, I have maintained straight A’s and earned the distinction of high honor roll all four years. I am a proud member of Marquette’s National Honor Society and the National Society of High School Scholars. My passion for learning has led me to take several honors and dual-credit courses in history and English, allowing me to challenge myself and expand my perspective. "Beyond academics, service and creativity have been central to my journey. I have completed over 143 hours of community service, reflecting my commitment

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O'FALLON - Members of the Looking Glass Prairie Chapter, NSDAR, want the local community to appreciate their local library. In honor of National Library Week, April 6-12, four members of the chapter visited the O’Fallon Public Library and presented a yard sign displaying the library’s importance to chapter members. “Our members and their families rely on the library in a multitude of ways,” said Melissa McArthur, the chapter’s registrar and librarian. “We want the library workers to know how much they are needed and appreciated in today’s world. We especially appreciate coordinating with them for displays and ensuring sufficient copies of books are available for the chapter book club meetings.”

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“The stakes could not be higher as tens of thousands of Roundup cases are pending in state and federal courts..." a Bayer spokesperson said.

A fire caused a partially collapsed vacant house on the 4900 block of St. Louis Avenue in north St. Louis' Kingsway East neighborhood, with no injuries reported.

Jones has to win back the progressive South Side wards that flipped to Spencer and boost turnout in largely Black north St. Louis, which barely showed up last month.

Voters in St. Louis can watch a final live debate at 6 p.m. Monday. Polls open at 6 a.m. Tuesday.

Police found the woman dead with stab wounds after a neighbor said they hadn't seen her for about two weeks.

Soman Chainani is on a mission to get kids to read. And not just one of the millions of books he’s sold as a children’s author – he wants to get kids into any book. As he shared with Laura Spencer from the Kansas City Public Library, the St. Louis author’s debut graphic novel taps into a childhood passion for horror.

MASCOUTAH - State Representative Kevin Schmidt (R-Millstadt) is proud to announce Wisper ISP as his “Business of The Month” for March. Rep. Schmidt presented an official certificate to CEO Nathan Stooke while visiting his company for a meeting and tour. In 2003, Nathan Stooke helped his neighbor obtain internet access and realized several others around his rural area were in demand too. Twenty-one years and six states later, Wisper is still connecting those that need reliable, high-speed internet. “Wisper ISP is an honest company that strives to deliver affordable and reliable services to individuals who need high-speed internet, specifically in rural locations,” said Schmidt. “Nathan Stooke basically started his company from scratch over twenty years ago and now he has created good paying jobs in Mascoutah. The company’s success comes from their core values of focusing on solutions, serving one another, and becoming life-long learners.”

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A woman was injured in a shooting overnight Monday morning in north St. Louis, during a fight between two men and women, and is currently suffering from non-life-threatening injuries.

The price tag for a tax cut poised for passage in the Missouri General Assembly is likely many times bigger than estimated, and lawmakers should learn more before voting, the research director of the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said last week. On Monday afternoon, the state Senate Fiscal Review Committee will hold […]

The imminent return of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police to state oversight is rooted in the belief that policing remains a crucial force for crime reduction. Safer streets, in turn, fuel business growth and community development. These legislative developments — and the changes that come with them — will undoubtedly affect ongoing crime reduction initiatives. […]

The Monroe County Sheriff's Department said a deputy shot a man who allegedly pointed a gun at deputies.

Schlafly handed over the operation of the Metro East location to local chef and restaurant operator Oscar Farina.

ST. LOUIS – Good riddance to the rain. But in its wake, we have a couple of colder days to content with and the concern about a freeze, especially for Tuesday morning. A chilly to cold start to Monday, but overnight clouds and some residual moisture in the atmosphere are keeping a lot of the [...]

by Mark Olalde

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

President Donald Trump’s executive orders shrinking the federal workforce make a notable exception for public safety staff, including those who fight wildland fires. But ongoing cuts, funding freezes and hiring pauses have weakened the nation’s already strained firefighting force by hitting support staff who play crucial roles in preventing and battling blazes.

Most notably, about 700 Forest Service employees terminated in mid-February’s “Valentine’s Day massacre” are red-card-carrying staffers, an agency spokesperson confirmed to ProPublica. These workers hold other full-time jobs in the agency, but they’ve been trained to aid firefighting crews, such as by providing logistical support during blazes. They also assist with prescribed burns, which reduce flammable vegetation and prevent bigger fires, but the burns can only move forward if there’s a certain number of staff available to contain them. (Non-firefighting employees without a red card cannot perform such tasks.)

Red-card-carrying employees are the “backbone” of the firefighting force, and their loss will have “a significant impact,” said Frank Beum, a board member of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees who spent more than four decades with the agency and ran the Rocky Mountain Region. “There are not enough primary firefighters to do the full job that needs to be done when we have a high fire season.”

ProPublica spoke to employees across the Forest Service — which manages an area of land nearly twice the size of California — including staff working in firefighting, facilities, timber sales and other roles, to learn how sweeping personnel changes are affecting the agency’s ability to function. The employees said cuts, which have hit the agency’s recreation, wildlife, IT and other divisions, show the Trump administration is shifting the agency’s focus away from environmental stewardship and toward industry and firefighting.

But notwithstanding Trump’s stated guardrails, the cuts have affected the Forest Service’s more than 10,000-person-strong firefighting force. Hiring has slowed as there are fewer employees to get new workers up to speed and people are confused about which job titles can be hired. Other cuts have led to the cancellation of some training programs and prescribed burns.

“It’s all really muddled in chaos, which is sort of the point,” one Forest Service employee told ProPublica.

“This agency is no longer serving its mission,” another added.

The employees asked not to be named for fear of retribution.

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The Forest Service did not respond to questions about the impact of cuts other than to clarify the number of terminated employees. The Forest Service spokesperson said about 2,000 probationary employees — typically new staff and those who were recently promoted, groups that have fewer workplace protections — were fired in February. Others with knowledge of the terminations, including a representative of a federal union and a Senate staffer, said the original number of terminated employees was 3,400 but that decreased, likely as workers were brought back in divisions such as timber sales.

The White House and a representative from the Department of Government Efficiency did not respond to requests for comment.

In early March, an independent federal board that reviews employees’ complaints compelled the Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service’s parent department, to reinstate more than 5,700 terminated probationary employees for 45 days. During their first weeks back on the payroll, many, including Forest Service personnel, were put on paid administrative leave and given no work.

The administration and DOGE continue working toward layoffs amid court challenges to their moves. Word circulated throughout the Forest Service in March that departmental leadership had compiled lists containing the names of thousands of additional Forest Service employees who could be soon laid off, according to some workers.

Additionally, understaffing in the agency’s information technology unit is threatening firefighting operations, according to an agency employee. In December, the branch chief overseeing IT for the agency’s fire and aviation division left the job. The Department of Agriculture posted the job opening, describing the division as providing “support to the interagency wildland fire community’s technical needs.” This includes overseeing software that firefighting crews use to request equipment — everything from fire-resistant clothing to hoses — from the agency’s warehouses so first responders have uninterrupted access to lifesaving equipment.

The day after Trump’s inauguration, the Department of Agriculture removed the IT job posting. The position remains unfilled, according to an employee with knowledge of the situation.

The hiring of new firefighters has also bogged down amid the deluge of sometimes-conflicting orders from the administration and DOGE, Forest Service staffers said.

“We are really, really behind onboarding our employees right now,” a Forest Service firefighter told ProPublica.

The staffing issues exacerbate challenges that predate the second Trump administration. To address a massive budget shortfall, the Forest Service under President Joe Biden last year paused the hiring of seasonal workers, except those working on wildfires. (Firefighters did see a permanent pay increase codified by Congress in its recently approved spending bill.)

Still, many permanent employees, including many firefighters, work on a seasonal basis and are placed on an unpaid status for several months each year when there is less work. Uncertainty within the federal government has led many of these employees to give up on government work and look elsewhere.

“Some of our people have taken other jobs,” one Forest Service employee told ProPublica. “People aren’t going to wait around.”

Cuts to the agency’s legal department will also curb its ability to care for the nation’s forests and fight wildfires, an employee told ProPublica. Large prescribed burns and other vegetation-removal projects require environmental review, a process that is often targeted with lawsuits, including by green groups concerned that the efforts go too far in removing trees.

A smaller legal staff could lead to fewer prescribed burns, increasing the risk of catastrophic fires, according to a lawyer for the Department of Agriculture who worked on Forest Service projects. The lawyer was fired in the mid-February purge of probationary employees.

“Every time we lose a case out West, it means the Forest Service can’t do a project, at least temporarily,” the lawyer said.

“They’re going to get sued more, and they’re going to lose more,” said the lawyer, who was reinstated in March following the board ruling that the Department of Agriculture’s mass firings were illegal.

The employee received back pay but was immediately put on administrative leave. Because of the cuts to support staff, it was several weeks before many of the returning employees were reissued government laptops and badges and allowed to do any work.

“Government efficiency at its finest,” the lawyer said.

The upcoming two-part documentary about Billy Joel is set to open the 2025 Tribeca Festival. The world premiere of Billy Joel: And So It Goes will happen on June 4…

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Fifteen years ago, I wrote that Democrats couldn’t build things anymore, and that Dems needed to better balance regulation with production.

5 On Your Side caught up with brides and business owners at a wedding expo in St. Peters about navigating the rising costs.