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While the Missouri Senate is expected to zero in on a measure making it harder for voters to amend the constitution, the House looks to finish work on reauthorizing a key tax to fund the state’s Medicaid program.
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Traffic tickets for low-income drivers can snowball into thousands of dollars of debt and revoked licenses. A new law aims to reduce fines and fees to help get them reinstated.
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A lawsuit appears likely over the measure, which goes into effect later this year. Missouri Republicans had tried for years to stop any funds from going to abortion providers or their affiliates.
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The new law will go into effect Aug. 28. Planned Parenthood, Democratic lawmakers and health organizations say the ban will cause the most harm to low-income Missourians who rely on the clinics for contraceptives, STI testing, cancer screenings and more.
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The legislation requiring companies to build their meatpacking sludge storage lagoons away from nearby homes passed the Missouri Senate this week.
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Near Eagle Pass, Texas, on Wednesday, the Missouri governor and top general of the Missouri National Guard touted the bill, which funds the deployment for 200 troops and 22 highway patrol officers.
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The sheriff's admission that no judge signed his search warrant for old election ballots came in the middle of a Republican candidate forum. For years, Hayden has claimed he is investigating voter fraud, but his probe has not yielded any charges or evidence.
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Republican statehouses like Missouri’s increasingly limit what rules places like Kansas City can adopt — typically shutting down more progressive policies on issues like minimum wage and housing.
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The bill would boost minimum teacher salaries from $25,000 to $40,000 a year. It also greatly expands Missouri's tax-credit scholarship program for K-12 students to attend private schools.
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Kansas City residents cannot access the KCMO.gov website or 311 portal after they were taken offline over the weekend. The outage is affecting municipal court, city council, and KC Water.
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Under protest by members of the far-right Missouri Freedom Caucus, the upper chamber adjourned without taking up any bills. But a state constitutional deadline is coming on Friday, a deadline that's only been missed once before.
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The law targets a plan by KC Recycle & Waste Solutions to build a landfill at Kansas City’s southern border. For more than a year, Raymore and other suburban municipalities have pushed legislation designed to block the landfill, arguing it would hurt the environment, property values and residents’ health.
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The state's law requires women seeking divorce to disclose whether they're pregnant — and state judges won't finalize divorces during a pregnancy. Texas and Arkansas have similar laws on the books.
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Veterans who helped test nuclear weapons are fighting to renew a 34-year-old law meant to help compensate for the long-term health effects of their work. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has spotlighted the issue in Missouri, where generations of people have been exposed to radioactive waste tied to the Manhattan project.
Government
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The police raid on the Marion County Record potentially violated federal law and constitutional rights. It could leave taxpayers covering a big legal settlement.
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Mirroring federal legislation passed on Dec. 8, Missouri Rep. Chris Sander, a Republican from Lone Jack, has pre-filed a bill to recognize marriage between two individuals.
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The proposal by Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft would threaten the funding of libraries over "non-age-appropriate materials" for minors. But former library administrators say the rules are "redundant and unnecessary."
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The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer's latest book examines the moral evolution of the 16th president from childhood through his time in office.
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The comprehensive collaborative plan would work on reducing homelessness not only in Kansas City but in the region.
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Kansas City attorney Stacy Lake has a plan to do better than the incumbent. That plan focuses on putting county residents first.
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David A. Paterson says he was ready to be governor, but the media's focus on his blindness obscured what he was trying to accomplish.
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Mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde have reinvigorated gun control advocates across the country. March For Our Lives rallies in hundreds of U.S. cities will take place Saturday to 'demand a nation free of gun violence.'
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A deep dive from the 2020 election through Joe Biden's first year as president reveals the struggle to hold the country together.
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Veterans were exposed to toxic air from burn pits overseas and comedian Jon Stewart and the Veterans of Foreign Wars say Congress needs to approve funds to treat them.
Elections
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Jackson County voters will decide in April whether to fund the Chiefs' and Royals' stadiums through a 3/8th-cent sales tax for the next 40 years. However, two legislators worry their constituents won’t have enough information to cast their ballots.
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State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick, a Republican, issued an audit of Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft's office and downgraded his administration to the second-lowest rating because it illegally withheld documentation about election cybersecurity. Ashcroft, who is also a Republican, criticized the report as a political attack.
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In the few days since the 2024 Kansas legislative session started, bills governing mail-in ballots and advance voting applications have already been filed. There is still zero evidence that widespread election fraud happens at the state or national levels.
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Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft threatened to unilaterally kick President Joe Biden off of the Missouri ballot if Donald Trump is disqualified in other states for violating the U.S. Constitution's insurrection clause. But an appeals court ruling found Missouri law did not give the secretary of state that power.
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A local baseball fan created a Facebook group to "save Kauffman Stadium" over two years ago. Now, their movement claims over 7,500 members, even as the campaign to build a new downtown Royals ballpark gains momentum and legislative support.
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Across the U.S., thousands of children and young adults serve as informal interpreters for family members that don’t speak English. For kids of Latino immigrants in Kansas City, being the family interpreter is an honor and burden. Plus: Gov. Laura Kelly is again calling for lawmakers to expand Medicaid to provide health care to about 150,000 low-income Kansans.
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The Shrewsbury lawmaker recently bowed out of the Missouri attorney general’s race. Unsicker was stripped of her committee assignments and later kicked out of the House Democratic caucus because of her social media posts and association with an accused Holocaust denier.
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Missouri lawmakers will gavel in the 2024 legislative session today. But where did they leave off last year? The 2023 session had a promising start – a budget surplus meant more money to work with. In politics, though, few things go according to plan.
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As the 2024 legislative session begins, the Republican-led Missouri General Assembly is prioritizing expanding child care access and restricting ballot initiative restrictions. But the stakes of an election year could exacerbate divisions between the parties.
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Sheriff Calvin Hayden, the conservative incumbent under fire for his controversial election investigation, will need to beat a former colleague and a current police chief to keep his job for a third term.