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The closing days of Missouri’s legislature were among the most dysfunctional I’ve covered in more than one half century. Filibusters by Senate Republican conservatives blocked action on a number of issues. Ironically, the issues killed included conservative issues to allow firearms on public transportation and to increase the vote percentage required for approval of a […]

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Former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt lacked any legal authority to order school districts to end COVID-19 mitigation measures, a Jackson County judge ruled Friday.  In his 18-page decision, Judge Marco Roldan concluded that the attorney general’s office did not follow Missouri law when it demanded last year that Lee’s Summit R-7 School District rescind […]

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One thing opponents and proponents of a recently proposed U.S. Bureau of Land Management rule agree on: It would be a major shift in how the agency manages nearly 250 million acres of federal lands. The rule would allow for conservation leases, similar to how the agency auctions off parcels of land for mining, livestock […]

The post Western lands fight erupts over Bureau of Land Management’s conservation proposal appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Fast-growing Texas and Florida had the biggest increases in the number of births last year, while a dozen other states — half of them in the South — continued to rebound from pandemic lows. In the United States as a whole, however, the number of births has plateaued after a modest increase following the worst […]

The post Births decline in most states, continuing a long-term trend appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Missouri families who were promised emergency pandemic grocery funds last summer are still waiting — even as another summer is beginning.  For more than six months, families have been raising alarm about the delayed benefits owed to around 600,000 kids. There is, in Missouri, no clear end in sight. Pandemic EBT is a federal program […]

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“We are witnessing a lot of suffering on the hotline,” Linda told me. “People are scared out of their minds.” Dr. Linda Prine is the co-founder of the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline. When someone orders pills off the internet because their state has criminalized abortion care or they face other barriers, they can call if […]

The post Abortion initiative wouldn’t just end the cruelty of Missouri ban. It would be a new world appeared first on Missouri Independent.

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers in the U.S. House passed bipartisan legislation Thursday in an effort to curb staggering overdose deaths from illegal fentanyl substances that are illicitly produced and up to 50 times stronger than heroin. The HALT Fentanyl Act, passed on a 289-133 vote with 74 Democratic votes and support from the Biden administration, would permanently categorize lab-made […]

The post Fentanyl-related drugs permanently made criminal under bill passed by U.S. House appeared first on Missouri Independent.

St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones on Thursday signed an executive order seeking to insulate transgender Missourians from bills passed by the state legislature restricting access to certain medical procedures for minors and limiting participation in school sports. “The responsibility now falls to local governments to take tangible steps to respond to this state intrusion into […]

The post St. Louis mayor signs executive order seeking to shield trans youth from new state laws appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Missouri’s social services department is increasingly using a more-efficient method to process Medicaid renewal applications, officials said Thursday during a quarterly meeting of the health care program’s oversight board. Preliminary data shared Thursday shows the state used a streamlined renewal process which doesn’t require enrollee action in 47% of all Medicaid renewal cases it evaluated […]

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Strengthening federal air pollution rules could force some of the nation’s “deadliest” coal plants to upgrade their facilities or retire them, according to a report released Thursday by the environmental advocacy group Sierra Club.  In some cases, just more stringent enforcement of existing standards could force changes.   The Sierra Club report urged the U.S. Environmental […]

The post Sierra Club calls on EPA to enforce coal plant rules, highlighting Missouri facilities appeared first on Missouri Independent.

WASHINGTON — U.S. House members walked down the steps of the Capitol building Thursday morning to head back to their districts for a Memorial Day recess that began exactly one week before the country could default on the debt. House Democrats took to the floor after the final vote of the week to give a […]

The post With debt default as soon as a week away, U.S. House jets off for holiday break appeared first on Missouri Independent.

The U.S. Supreme Court in a major environmental decision on  Thursday overturned the Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of wetlands that fall under the agency’s jurisdiction, siding with an Idaho couple who’d said they should not be required to obtain federal permits to build on their property that lacked any navigable water. All nine justices agreed […]

The post U.S. Supreme Court rejects Joe Biden wetlands regulation appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Across much of the country, the jobs market is as strong as it’s ever been, and Black women, young people and people with disabilities are among the workers benefiting, recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show. Twenty states reported an unemployment rate under 3% in April, while 15 states saw record lows, led by […]

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Like many people with disabilities, I am living in fear as President Joe Biden, Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other Congressional leaders meet behind closed doors to discuss possible cuts to safety net programs on which I depend. Unfortunately, these politicians do not honor a principle that has long been affirmed by disability rights advocates: “Not […]

The post Congress should pass a clean debt ceiling without putting more holes in the social safety net appeared first on Missouri Independent.

The Missouri Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday over whether two single mothers should have been sentenced to jail time because their children missed more days of school than the local district allowed. The case centers on Missouri’s compulsory school attendance law, which states that a parent must ensure their child attends “the academic program on […]

The post Missouri Supreme Court to decide whether school districts can jail parents for absent students appeared first on Missouri Independent.

MANHATTAN, Kansas — National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility researcher Lisa Hensley’s career took her from laboratory to laboratory and country to country to study the alphabet soup of ghastly pathogens such as SARs, monkeypox, MERs and Marburg. But she said an Ebola outbreak in the West Africa country of Liberia brought home what it meant […]

The post Celebration marks completion of $1.2 billion NBAF lab for studying animal-to-human pathogens appeared first on Missouri Independent.

A bill awaiting action on Gov. Mike Parson’s desk would allow more state inmates released after being proven innocent to receive compensation — with a larger payment — but they would have to give up the right to sue the people who put them behind bars. The bill, passed a day before the Senate descended […]

The post Missouri bill allows payments to wrongly convicted — as long as they promise not to sue appeared first on Missouri Independent.

WASHINGTON — Progressives are pushing hard for President Joe Biden to take the unprecedented step of invoking the 14th Amendment as a way to avoid financial calamity if the White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy do not strike a deal on the debt ceiling in the coming days. The lawmakers and legal scholars argue […]

The post Progressives try to persuade Biden to use the 14th Amendment to resolve debt crisis  appeared first on Missouri Independent.

A former Missouri House speaker who was forced to resign in disgrace in 2015 has been fined $47,000 by the Missouri Ethics Commission for allegedly misusing campaign funds. John Diehl, a Republican from Town and Country, signed a consent decree with the ethics commission released Tuesday acknowledging probable cause that he violated state campaign finance […]

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WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of six U.S. House lawmakers on Tuesday described details of proposed legislation that would create a legal pathway for citizenship for undocumented people through work requirements, and would also fund border security measures.  The two Latinas who spearheaded the bill, Reps. Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat, and María Elvira Salazar, […]

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