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Kansas City regional business leaders don’t care whether the Chiefs or the Royals play in Missouri or Kansas as long as they don’t leave the metropolitan area. That was the main message Wednesday for an online presentation featuring top executives from four organizations that have membership straddling the border. The presentation came just days before […]

Salt + Smoke, a popular St. Louis-based barbecue restaurant, is set to open its first Illinois location in Edwardsville later this year.

An insulting offer for a rural hospital fund is panned by Senate Republican holdouts. But the leadership is betting they’ll give in soon enough.

ST. CLAIR COUNTY, Ill. - Two mobile homes were destroyed and another was left damaged after an overnight fire in Cahokia Heights Thursday morning. The fire took place around 3 a.m. on Jarvis Place. Several fire departments in the Metro East assisted in putting the fire out. No injuries were reported in the fire. The [...]

The IRS has extended the deadline for filing tax returns and making payments for individuals and businesses impacted by the tornado that struck on May 16 to November 3.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans appeared deeply divided Wednesday over how to establish a fund for rural hospitals to offset the budget impacts of Medicaid cuts in the “big, beautiful bill.” The hospitals, which are generally already hurting financially, rely heavily on Medicaid, a state-federal partnership that provides health insurance for low-income households and for some people […]

Missouri stands to lose $23 billion in federal Medicaid funds over the next 10 years if proposed changes become law, the Missouri Foundation for Health says.

"Although we hope and pray that there are no additional victims, we know it's possible." St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Melissa Price Smith said.

The company notified the state of the layoffs in a letter this week and said that certain employees will have the opportunity to transfer to other Nordstrom locations.

Sheriff Alfred Montgomery hired a half-brother, Malik Taylor, as a deputy, according to the suit Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed to oust Montgomery.

"This prosecution achieves a measure of justice for a murdered child and hopefully brings some sense of solace to the child's family," Gabe Gore said.

by Eric Umansky and Vernal Coleman

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

What Happened

Senators this week called for a federal investigation into the Trump administration’s killing of hundreds of contracts for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Angus King, a Maine independent, wrote to the agency’s inspector general on Monday asking for an investigation into the administration’s cancellation of the contracts and the consequences for veterans.

The senators highlighted “damning reporting from ProPublica” on the cancellations, including how the Department of Government Efficiency used an artificial intelligence tool that marked contracts as “MUNCHABLE.”

The senators wrote that DOGE’s use of AI to scrutinize contracts “adds an entire new level of unease connected to the decision-making, security, governance, and quality control of the entire process.”

VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts after DOGE’s review but have declined requests by lawmakers and ProPublica for details.

“Despite repeated requests in letters to the Secretary, questions at hearings, and dozens of emails to VA officials,” the senators wrote, “the Department has not provided a single briefing or a complete and accurate list of the contracts it has cancelled.”

Blumenthal and King wrote that the VA shared a list of contracts in May, but it was “riddled with errors and inaccuracies.”

What They Said

Amid the administration’s “stonewalling,” Blumenthal said in a statement, “ProPublica’s reporting revealed these cancelled contracts were delivering essential services to veterans and exposed the cruel and dumb AI formulas DOGE bros used to cancel contracts.”

Blumenthal added, “Veterans and all Americans deserve transparency around decisions being made at VA.”

Background

As ProPublica detailed, a DOGE staffer with no background in government or health care created the AI tool used to mark contracts as “munchable.” Among the contracts that were tagged and later killed was one to maintain a gene sequencing device for improving cancer treatment. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. And a third was to help measure and improve nursing care.

In another story, we reported how VA doctors and other staffers across the country have raised alarms about how the killing of contracts could threaten veterans’ care. In internal emails, hospital staffers warned about canceled contracts to maintain cancer registries, where information on the treatment of patients is collected and analyzed. DOGE had marked one such contract “for immediate termination.”

Why it Matters

The VA is one of the nation’s largest health care providers, charged with the care of more than 9 million veterans. President Donald Trump has long promised to prioritize former service members. “We love our veterans,” he said in February. “We are going to take good care of them.”

The administration has reiterated that stance even as the VA has been shedding employees and contracts. Amid the cutbacks, Trump’s pick to run the agency, Secretary Doug Collins, said earlier this year, “Veterans are going to notice a change for the better.”

Response

The VA has not responded to our request for comment about the senators’ letter. Previously, press secretary Pete Kasperowicz said that decisions to cancel or reduce the size of contracts are made after multiple reviews by VA employees, including agency contracting experts and senior staff.

He also said the VA has not canceled contracts that provide services to veterans or work that the agency cannot do itself without a contingency plan in place.

The life-or-death decision was in Judge Kelly Wayne Parker’s hands. Twelve jurors had found Marvin Rice guilty of murdering his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend. But they could not unanimously agree on whether he should live or die. Missouri is one of two states where a judge gets the final say when jurors can’t agree on […]

Get rid of states? Legal scholar Stephen Legomsky, who taught for 34 years at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, has just published a book, “Reimagining the American Union,” that proposes a radical idea: Abolish state government. The Conversation’s politics and democracy editor, Naomi Schalit – a former statehouse reporter herself – […]

Commonwealth Fund estimates that Illinois and Missouri could lose 58,000 jobs due to funding reductions included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

ST. LOUIS - We remain under a Heat Advisory through Thursday evening. The combination of heat and humidity makes outdoor activities difficult during the core of the day (11 a.m.-6 p.m.), and the warm, muggy nights will offer little relief. More clouds and rain chances Friday may drop up below advisory criteria, but it will [...]

Two more Disaster Recovery Centers with FEMA Individual Assistance staff are opening to help people affected by the May 16 tornado and storms.

Over the past decade, there’s been more momentum behind the “land back” movement -- where native tribes try to regain ancestral lands.

by Margaret Coker, The Current

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Current. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Congressional Republicans, looking for ways to offset their proposed tax cuts, are seeking to mandate that millions of Americans work in order to receive federally subsidized health insurance. The GOP tax and budget bill passed the House in May, and Senate Republicans are working feverishly to advance their draft of federal spending cuts in the coming days.

Georgia, the only state with a Medicaid work mandate, started experimenting with the requirement on July 1, 2023. As the Medicaid program’s two-year anniversary approaches, Georgia has enrolled just a fraction of those eligible, a result health policy researchers largely attribute to bureaucratic hurdles in the state’s work verification system. As of May 2025, approximately 7,500 of the nearly 250,000 eligible Georgians were enrolled, even though state statistics show 64% of that group is working.

Gov. Brian Kemp has long advocated for Medicaid reform, arguing that the country should move away from government-run health care. His spokesperson also told The Current and ProPublica that the program, known as Georgia Pathways to Coverage, was never designed to maximize enrollment.

Health care analysts and former state Medicaid officials say Georgia’s experience shows that the congressional bill, if it becomes law, would cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in administrative costs as it is implemented while threatening health care for nearly 16 million people.

Here’s how proposed federal work requirements compare to Georgia’s — and how they may impact your state:

How will states determine who is eligible?

What Congress proposes:

The House bill, H.R. 1, and draft Senate proposal require all states to verify that Americans ages 19 through 64 who are receiving Medicaid-funded health coverage are spending 80 hours a month working, training for a job, studying or volunteering. These new verification systems would need to be in place by Dec. 31, 2026, and would have to check on enrolled residents’ work status twice a year. That means people who already receive coverage based on their income level would need to routinely prove their eligibility — or lose their insurance.

The federal work requirements would apply to more than 10 million low-income adults with Medicaid coverage as well as approximately 5 million residents of the 40 states that have accepted federal subsidies for people to purchase private health coverage through what’s commonly known as Obamacare.

The House bill exempts parents with children under 18 from the new requirements, while the Senate version exempts parents with children under 15. Neither bill exempts people who look after elderly relatives.

Georgia’s experience:

Georgia’s mandate applies to fewer categories of people than the proposed federal legislation would. Even so, officials failed to meet the state’s tough monthly verification requirement for Pathways enrollees due to technical glitches and difficulty confirming the employment of those who work in the informal economy such as house cleaners and landscapers because they may not have pay stubs or tax records. The challenges were steep enough that Georgia has decided to loosen its work verification protocols from monthly to once a year.

What this means for your state:

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that H.R. 1 would result in at least 10 million low-income Americans losing health insurance. Health care advocates say that’s not because they aren’t working, but because of the bureaucratic hoops they would need to jump through to prove employment. Research from KFF, a health policy think tank, shows that the vast majority of people who would be subject to the new law already work, are enrolled in school or are unpaid stay-at-home caregivers, duties that restrict their ability to earn a salary elsewhere.

Arkansas is the only state other than Georgia to have implemented work requirements. Republican state lawmakers later changed their minds after data showed that red tape associated with verifying eligibility resulted in more than 18,000 people losing coverage within the first few months of the policy. A federal judge halted the program in 2019, ruling that it increased the state’s uninsured rate without any evidence of increased employment.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP)

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, says Medicaid work requirements in H.R. 1 are “common sense.” He says the policy won’t result in health coverage losses for the Americans whom Medicaid was originally designed to help because the work requirements won’t apply to these groups: children, pregnant women and elderly people living in poverty. He points to the $344 billion in a decade’s worth of projected cost savings resulting from Medicaid work requirements as beneficial to the nation’s fiscal health. “You find dignity in work, and the people that are not doing that, we’re going to try to get their attention,” he said earlier this year.

Who will pay for the work verification system in each state?

What Congress proposes:

The House bill allocates $100 million to help states pay for verification systems that determine someone’s eligibility. The grants would be distributed in proportion to each state’s share of Medicaid enrollees subject to the new requirements — an amount health policy experts say will not be nearly enough. States, they say, will be on the hook for the difference.

Georgia’s experience:

In the two years since launching its experiment with work requirements, Georgia has spent nearly $100 million in mostly federal funds to implement Pathways. Of that, $55 million went toward building a digital system to verify participants’ eligibility — more than half the amount House Republicans allocated for the entire country to do the same thing.

Like other states, Georgia already had a work verification system in place for food stamp programs, but it contracted with Deloitte Consulting to handle its new Medicaid requirements. Georgia officials said the state has spent 30% more than they had expected to create its digital platform for Pathways due to rising consultant and IT costs. Deloitte previously declined to answer questions about its Pathways work.

What this means for your state:

All states already verify work requirements for food stamp recipients, but many existing systems would need upgrades to conform to proposed federal legislation, according to three former state Medicaid officials. In 2019, when states last considered work requirements, a survey by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office showed that Kentucky expected administrative costs to top $200 million — double what H.R. 1 has allocated for the country.

Rep. Buddy Carter (Justin Taylor/The Current GA/CatchLight Local)

Rep. Buddy Carter, the Republican who represents coastal Georgia and chairs the health subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which had recommended Medicaid cuts in H.R. 1, said that upfront costs borne by states would be offset by longer-term savings promised in the House bill. Some congressional Republicans concede that the cost savings will come from fewer people enrolling in Medicaid due to the new requirements. Savings from work mandates amount to 43% of the $793 billion in proposed Medicaid cuts, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

How will states staff the program?

What Congress proposes:

Medicaid is a federal social safety net program that is administered differently in each state. Neither H.R. 1 nor the Senate legislative proposal provides a blueprint for how states should verify eligibility or how the costs of overseeing the new requirements will be paid.

Georgia’s experience:

Georgia’s experience shows that state caseworkers are key to managing applications and work requirement verifications for residents eligible for Medicaid. The agency that handles enrollment in federal benefits had a staff vacancy rate of approximately 20% when Georgia launched its work requirement policy in 2023. Georgia at the time had one of the longest wait times for approving federal benefits. As of March, the agency had a backlog of more than 5,000 Pathways applications. The agency has said it will need 300 more caseworkers and IT upgrades to better manage the backlog, according to a report submitted to state lawmakers in June.

What this means for your state:

Former state Medicaid officials and health policy experts say Georgia’s staffing struggles are not unique. In 2023, near the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency, KFF surveyed states about staffing levels for caseworkers who verify eligibility for federal benefits, including Medicaid. Worker vacancy rates exceeded 10% in 16 of the 26 states that responded; rates exceeded 20% in seven of those states.

Adding caseworkers will mean higher costs for states. Currently, 41 states require a balanced budget, meaning that those state legislators would either need to increase taxes and revenues to verify Medicaid enrollees are working or lower enrollment to reduce costs, said Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

In about half a dozen large states where county governments administer federal safety net programs, the costs of training caseworkers on the new verification protocols could trickle from states to counties.

“There are provisions in there that are very, very, very challenging, if not impossible, for us to implement,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, told reporters in June of the costs facing her state to meet the House bill requirements.