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Tag: Missouri news

  • AP Photos: A Cafeteria Worker Prepares a Thanksgiving Meal to Feed Hundreds

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    REEDS SPRING, Mo. (AP) — The first year Shirley Mease cooked up a free Thanksgiving feast in the Reeds Spring High School cafeteria, icy weather kept most people away. But when her family knocked on doors to offer the meals, the gratefulness they found confirmed the need in her Missouri community.

    “When you work with the school system you know the families that are in need because there are a lot of babies that come to school and that’s the only meal they get,” says Mease, who is semi-retired from her job in the cafeteria.

    That first year, 2009, Mease and her volunteer crew provided 100 meals. This holiday, they expect to serve 700, drawing on donations. That’s up from about 625 last year, to account for food insecurity in many households that count on SNAP food aid benefits suspended during the federal government’s recent shutdown.

    All are welcome, no questions asked.

    The 73-year-old Mease, her children and grandchildren have been preparing for weeks, loading shopping carts and picking up donations. When she and volunteers arrived at the school cafeteria Wednesday to begin cooking, at least 44 turkeys and 225 pounds (102 kilograms) of sweet potatoes awaited.

    “I know (SNAP) is back in working order, but it will take time for that to really help people out,” she says. “Especially in this area, the food banks are being hit very hard, so I just feel like this is a time to step it up a little bit.”

    This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Gratitude and Doubt: the Effects of the Shutdown Linger as Families Prepare for Thanksgiving

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    She had it figured down to the last dollar. The looming insurance payment, balanced against the hard-earned paycheck. The cost of keeping her children fed, covered mostly with government SNAP assistance. And when Shelby Williams reviewed the family budget for November, she told herself that this month would truly be one for giving thanks.

    After living with her parents for more than two years, Williams and her two children were finally moving into an apartment of their own in her hometown of Reeds Spring, Missouri. They would celebrate with a Thanksgiving meal made by the kids, the grandparents joining them at the table.

    The funds for the needed groceries were all lined up — until the federal government shut down on Oct. 1.

    Now Washington is running again. But as Americans prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday, the relieved gratitude of families in Williams’ community, and the many others still recovering from the suspension of government paychecks and food assistance during the 43-day shutdown, is tempered by lingering stress and economic insecurity.

    “I’m thankful for my children and my job, and I’m thankful for SNAP because it supplies food,” said Williams, 32, who works as a paraprofessional in an elementary school. “But … with the way the world is, with the financial strain, it is hard to be thankful.”

    The anxiety stirred by the shutdown persists in the lines at food pantries in this southwestern Missouri county and echoes through households nationwide.


    Dealing with the shutdown’s fallout

    In South Florida, Darlene Castillo is still struggling to prop up her family’s fragile finances after working without pay for seven weeks at the U.S. Customs Service.

    To get by, she lined up at a mobile food bank, a first for her. She held off paying bills and canceled subscriptions. Family members sent money, and when one extended an invitation for Thanksgiving, she and her husband gratefully accepted, knowing that they’d be hard-pressed to host the holiday meal.

    “It’s a thankful time,” Castillo said last week. “I’ll bring a dish because hopefully this week we’ll get paid. And then we’ll worry about Jan. 30.”

    That’s when the funds just approved by Congress to reopen the government are set to run out, threatening yet another shutdown.

    During the shutdown, McNeil said he got by on the modest stipend he receives as a trainee in a culinary program run by the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen. But attending classes meant missing the hours food pantries were open. His wife, who is disabled and counts on him to bring home SNAP-funded groceries, grew distraught.

    “If it was any longer, I don’t know what I would’ve done,” said McNeil, whose relief is compounded by news that after months of radiation treatment, his prostate cancer is in remission. “I got a lot to be thankful for right now.”


    Community support for stretched resources

    In Williams’ Missouri community, a haven for retirees on modest fixed incomes, the lapse in SNAP funds has added to the pressures on families who stretch to buy daily necessities.

    In early November, a startling 428 families lined up at a drive-through food pantry run by Carrie Padilla and church volunteers, in a county with about 32,000 residents. About 12% of households in the county rely on SNAP benefits, but it is closer to 17% in rural areas.

    Though SNAP has been restored, many families registering for a Christmas toy drive run by Padilla’s nonprofit indicate that they are entering the holiday season without enough food.

    “Almost everybody is antsy,” Padilla said. “Just because the government reopened, it doesn’t mean that somebody has waved a wand and suddenly everything’s all hunky-dory.”

    That uncertainty has figured into Shirley Mease’s planning, as she prepares to host a free Thanksgiving feast at Reeds Spring High School. Mease and her family anticipate serving and delivering 700 meals, up from about 625 last year, to account for food insecurity worsened by the shutdown.

    “I know (SNAP) is back in working order, but it will take time for that to really help people out,” said Mease, 73, a semi-retired school cafeteria worker who has been providing the feast since 2009, drawing on community donations and volunteers.

    “Especially in this area, the food banks are being hit very hard, so I just feel like this is a time to step it up a little bit,” she said.


    Feeling the pressure without SNAP

    The pressure of trying to get through November without SNAP weighed on Williams in the weeks leading up to the holiday.

    She had planned the move to the new apartment for months, carefully balancing income and expenses to account for the $600 rent. The math worked thanks in no small part to $450 in monthly benefits her family receives from SNAP. That covers their food bill after the two free meals served each school day.

    As the shutdown stretched on, the Trump administration announced it would suspend November SNAP payments, despite judges’ orders to use available emergency funds. With her move days away, Williams started November with just $25 left in her SNAP account.

    She used the funds to buy bread, peanut butter, jelly and milk, and a friend with chickens gave her eggs. The fixings lasted through four nights of sandwich dinners. Then her parents stepped in to help.

    Williams tried to keep her stress hidden from her 11-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter. But it was hard to avoid tearing up or getting angry.

    “What bills do I not pay so I can feed my children, because that’s the priority,” she said.


    Faced with a difficult choice

    There were other factors to consider, too. Williams said she loves her job, working with students in a special education classroom. In her off-hours she is studying to become a teacher, a pursuit that required taking out a student loan.

    The suspension of SNAP confronted her with a difficult choice. She knew she could earn more at Walmart than doing the classroom job she treasures.

    “But then I’m giving up a part of my dream,” she said.

    It never came to that. Three days after the shutdown ended, Missouri officials sent $217 to Williams’ SNAP account, just under half what she receives in an ordinary month.

    That helped refill her family’s refrigerator, but it was not enough to afford the luxury of a Thanksgiving celebration. Williams held off paying a bill for car insurance, due at month’s end, reserving the money in case it was needed for food.

    Then, last Friday morning, the remainder of the SNAP funds for November showed up in Williams’ account. Finally, she could exhale. She paid the insurance bill. Then she treated her children to ice cream.

    The anxiety that had weighed on Williams for weeks lingered. But it was still November and her family had so much to be thankful for.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Police Say a Man Has Been Shot and Killed After Wielding a Knife at St. Louis Airport

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    ST. LOUIS (AP) — Officials say a man has been shot and killed after wielding a knife at St. Louis airport.

    St. Louis County Police spokesperson Vera Clay said Friday that about 1 a.m. officers at St. Louis Lambert International Airport noticed a person in an area he should not have been in and who refused to leave.

    She said when officers tried to get him to move, he showed them a knife. Officers used Tasers, but the man continued to advance toward them. Clay said an officer then fired his gun, fatally wounding the man. There were no other injuries.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Different Needs but Similar Fears Arise in Communities on Both Ends of Missouri’s Redistricting

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    The 18th and Vine community is known for a museum telling the story of segregated professional baseball in the decades before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier. Its leaders are talking about expanding the city’s streetcar line to lure more visitors to its cultural and historical attractions.

    About 100 miles (161 kilometers) east, Boonville leaders want federal help restoring an old railroad bridge to give cyclists a more direct route on a popular cross-state bike trail near the mostly white farming community.

    The two areas are thrust together under a new map Missouri Republicans passed in September in response to President Donald Trump’s push to give the GOP another winnable seat ahead of next year’s elections. Texas answered Trump’s call first, tilting five seats toward Republicans, but lawmakers in both major political parties are fighting a mid-decade, state-by-state battle to squeeze extra territory out of states they control. In California, voters approved a new House map to boost Democrats.

    Missouri Republicans targeted Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, shaving off portions of his Kansas City district and stretching it into Republican-heavy rural areas.

    Congressional districts often mix rural and urban areas, but redoing boundaries can alter priorities and change which federal projects representatives pursue and how they pursue things like health care, housing and education funding. When Congress debates a farm bill, is protecting food assistance benefits more important than preserving crop insurance? It often depends on who’s being represented.

    That might explain why Robert Sylvan, an 81-year-old Kansas City resident who attends Cleaver’s church, worries “the whole set of dynamics that impact us” could be upended.


    Voters fear being forgotten

    Even with U.S. politics deeply polarized, there’s bipartisan agreement on Sylvan’s point.

    Republican state Rep. Tim Taylor, who represents the Boonville area in the Legislature, said farmers Cleaver previously represented didn’t feel he understood them or came around much.

    “Where he lives, things are different than they are here,” said Taylor, who voted for the redistricting plan despite misgivings about it.

    It’s unclear how any Republican challenging Cleaver in the redrawn district would balance the needs of the two communities. So far, no likely contender is from Kansas City.

    Some Kansas City residents don’t expect people around 18th and Vine to get much attention if Cleaver loses. Cleaver was raised in public housing in Texas and preached about social justice as a Methodist pastor in a predominantly African American congregation.

    “Naturally, 18th and Vine is kind of his baby,” said Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. “I don’t want it to be forgotten.”

    Fewer than 11% of Boonville’s residents are Black, while more than 64% are in 18th and Vine. The new Missouri map could have the state going from having people of color hold two of its eight House seats to one. Non-Hispanic white people are 62% of Missouri’s population but would hold 88% of its seats.

    “We could potentially have folk representing us who have no interaction and have never had any interaction with people of color and have no idea of what goes on in the urban context,” said Cleaver’s son, Emanuel Cleaver III.

    The areas often see common needs differently. Is the pressing problem with health care cuts that they cause rural hospitals to struggle or that millions of Americans don’t have insurance? An 18th and Vine resident is nearly twice as likely as a Boonville resident to have no health insurance. Boonville has been without a hospital since 2020.

    Other differences: Buses stop every 15 minutes in 18th and Vine but must be prescheduled in Boonville. Kansas City leaders want more gun laws to combat violence while Republicans like Taylor have fought to expand gun rights. Trump won 67% of Boonville’s vote, compared with 14% of 18th and Vine’s.

    The Kansas City neighborhood, celebrated for barbecue and jazz joints, hosted a 1920 meeting that founded the Negro National League, where Robinson got his start. Later, the area fell into disrepair.

    Cleaver helped change that, seeking taxpayer dollars for 18th and Vine since 1989, first as a city councilman and then mayor before his two decades in Congress. The city’s spending has exceeded $100 million, helped by federal grants. Most recently, Cleaver helped obtain $15.5 million in federal money to renovate the nation’s oldest Black-owned housing cooperative, which he called “one of the citadels for the African American community.”

    That project followed Cleaver’s efforts to bring money to neighborhoods on the historically Black side of Troost Avenue, long known as the city’s unofficial racial dividing line. It’s now one of his new district’s borders, which he finds outrageous.

    “I feel more skeptical about the society’s direction than I did when I was a kid growing up in public housing,” Cleaver lamented during an interview at the church his son now leads.

    Now, 18th and Vine also is home to all-night jazz jam sessions, a dance company, an arts center and an MLB Urban Youth Academy. Kendrick’s museum hopes to raise $35 million to triple exhibit space.

    If there’s unease among locals, it’s that they might be priced out as taxpayer money helps transform the area. The city is working on a pedestrian plaza and a parking garage. Local officials are studying a streetcar line extension. There’s no cost estimate yet, but the latest streetcar extension got $174 million in federal funds.

    Carmaletta Williams, executive director of the Black Archives of Mid-America in Kansas City, an area museum, wonders about a new representative: “Will they see the value in what’s going on?”


    A bike trail lures tourists to Boonville

    Boonville is surrounded by row crops and cattle ranches. One local school district graduates fewer than 10 students a year.

    Yet it lures tourists with the Katy Trail. At 240 miles (386 kilometers), it’s the longest trail built on former rail lines in the U.S., and work on it began at nearly the same time as the rebuilding in 18th and Vine.

    Taylor said after the trail’s first section opened in 1990 it was instrumental in reviving a town that was “pretty much dying” when he was a teenager in the 1980s. His wife runs Taylor’s Bake Shop & Espresso downtown.

    Heading into Boonville, bikers detour off the railroad’s original path, crossing the Missouri River on a highway bridge that includes a designated bike path. The path leads them away from a 1932 railroad bridge, which trail riders would love to see refurbished. The city applied unsuccessfully last year for a $236,000 federal planning grant.

    “The Katy Bridge is like the Eiffel Tower of Missouri if it would only be fixed,” said Annie Harmon, who runs a store in downtown Boonville called Celestial Body that sells essential oils, herbs, tie-dyed clothing and crystals.

    Missouri has received $30 million in federal funds over the years for the Katy Trail and a related trail-building effort that cycling enthusiasts hope will loop almost 450 miles (724 kilometers), said Brandi Horton, a spokeswoman for the Rails to Trails Conservancy, a Washington-based nonprofit.

    “You can’t do trail development at this scale,” Horton said, “without the dollars and the investment that the federal government can uniquely provide.”

    Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • What’s Next in the National Redistricting Fight After California Approved a New US House Map

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    The new congressional map that California voters approved marked a victory for Democrats in the national redistricting battle playing out ahead of the 2026 midterm election. But Republicans are still ahead in the fight.

    The unusual mid-decade redistricting fray began this summer when President Donald Trump urged Republican-led states to reshape their voting districts to try to help the GOP retain control of the House in next year’s election. Democrats need to gain just three seats to win the chamber and impede Trump’s agenda.

    Texas responded first with a new U.S. House map aimed at helping Republicans win up to five additional seats. Proposition 50, which California voters supported Tuesday, creates up to five additional seats that Democrats could win.


    What’s the score in the redistricting battle?

    If the 2026 election goes according to the redistricting projections, Democrats in California and Republicans in Texas could cancel each other’s gains.

    But Republicans could still be ahead by four seats in the redistricting battle. New districts adopted in Missouri and North Carolina could help Republicans win one additional seat in each state. And a new U.S. House map approved last week in Ohio boosts Republicans’ chances to win two additional seats.

    Some big uncertainties remain. Several Ohio districts are so competitive that Democrats believe they, too, have a chance at winning them. Lawsuits persist in Missouri and North Carolina. And Missouri’s redistricting law faces a referendum petition that, if successful, would suspend the new map until it’s put to a statewide vote.


    What’s next in California?

    Republican legal challenges are likely to continue against California’s new districts, which impose boundaries drawn by the Democratic-led Legislature in place of those adopted after the 2020 census by an independent citizens commission.

    But candidates can’t afford to wait to ramp up campaigns in the new districts.

    Though Democrats could win up to 48 of California’s 52 U.S. House seats, several districts are closely divided between Democratic and Republican voters.

    “Some of the Democratic districts are probably going to vote blue, but I wouldn’t call them locks,” said J. Miles Coleman, of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “You could still have some expensive races,” Coleman added.

    Republicans who control the Legislature chose not to convene a special session on redistricting Monday, after Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Braun had called for it. But efforts to round up enough votes continue. Lawmakers now are planning to consider redistricting during a rare December regular session.

    Republicans currently hold seven of Indiana’s nine U.S. House seats and could attempt to gain one or two more through redistricting.

    Kansas Republican lawmakers had been collecting signatures from colleagues to call themselves into a special session to try to draw an additional Republican-leaning congressional district. But some lawmakers remained reluctant, and House Speaker Dan Hawkins ended the effort Tuesday.

    Redistricting could still come up during Kansas’ regular legislative session that begins Jan. 12.


    Could more Democrats join in gerrymandering?

    Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said he hopes approval of California’s redistricting “sends a chilling effect on Republicans who are trying to do this around the country.” But “if the Republicans continue to do this, we will respond in kind each and every step of the way,” Martin said.

    On Tuesday, Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced a commission on congressional redistricting, even though the Democratic Senate president has said his chamber won’t move forward with redistricting because of concerns the effort to gain another Democratic seat could backfire.

    National Democrats also want Illinois lawmakers to redistrict to gain an additional House seat. But lawmakers thus far have resisted, citing concerns about the effect on representation for Black residents.

    Virginia’s Democratic-led legislature recently endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment allowing mid-decade redistricting. But it needs another round of legislative approval early next year before going to voters. Democrats currently hold six of Virginia’s 11 U.S. House seats and could try to gain two or three more by redistricting, though no specific plan has been released.


    Does all this remapping matter?

    Over the past 90 years, when the president’s party has held a House majority, that party has lost an average of more than 30 seats in midterm elections. No amount of Republican redistricting this year could offset a loss of that size. But the 2026 election may not be average.

    Those past swings were so large partly because the president’s party often held large House majorities, which meant more competitive seats were at risk.

    The Republicans’ current slim majority is most similar to GOP margins during the 2002 midterm election under President George W. Bush and Democrats’ margins during the 2022 midterm under President Joe Biden. Republicans gained eight seats in 2002, when Bush was widely popular after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Democrats lost nine seats in 2022, when Biden’s approval rating was well under 50%, as Trump’s is today.

    If next year’s swing is similarly small, a gain of just half-dozen to a dozen seats through redistricting could make a difference in which party wins the House.

    “Because we have this tiny numerical sliver separating a Democratic majority from a Republican majority, the stakes are incredibly high — even in a single state considering whether to redraw its districts,” said David Hopkins, a political science professor at Boston College.


    What does this mean for future years?

    The battle to redraw congressional voting districts for partisan advantage isn’t likely to end with the 2026 election.

    The Republican State Leadership Committee, which supports GOP candidates in state legislative races, warned in a recent memo that “the redistricting arms race has escalated to an every cycle fight” — no longer centered around each decennial census.

    Democratic lawmakers in New York are pursuing a proposed constitutional amendment that could allow redistricting ahead of the 2028 election. Several states currently under split partisan control also could pursue congressional redistricting before 2028 if next year’s election shifts the balance of power so one party controls both the legislature and governor’s office.

    “It’s important to recognize that the fight for 2027 redistricting — and the U.S. House in 2028 — has already started,” RSLC President Edith Jorge-Tuñón wrote.

    Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri. Associated Press writers John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Marc Levy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, contributed.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Former Republican Election Official Buys Dominion Voting — a Target of 2020 Conspiracy Theories

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    DENVER (AP) — Voting equipment company Dominion Voting Systems, a target of false conspiracy theories from President Donald Trump and his supporters since the 2020 election, has been bought by a firm run by a former Republican elections official, the new company announced Thursday.

    KNOWiNK, a St. Louis-based provider of electronic poll books that allow election officials to confirm voter information, announced the deal and the name change. In a possible nod to a groundless conspiracy theory that linked Dominion to the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, the release highlighted that the company would become “100% American-owned.”

    The announcement also quotes KNOWiNK’s owner, former St. Louis elections director Scott Leiendecker, as vowing to provide “election technology that prioritizes paper-based transparency,” one of the longtime demands of election conspiracy theorists. Almost all U.S. voting equipment already leaves a paper trail.

    Dominion’s former CEO confirmed the sale in a single-sentence statement on Thursday: “Liberty Vote has acquired Dominion Voting Systems,” John Poulos said.

    The release from the new company vows to reintroduce “hand-marked paper ballots” and adjust company policies to follow Trump’s executive order on voting procedures, which is not in effect because judges have ruled that Trump doesn’t have the power to mandate them. Part of the president’s order sought to prohibit voting equipment that produces a paper record with “a barcode or quick-response code” — equipment that is currently in use in hundreds of counties across 19 states.

    Denver-based Dominion was at the heart of some of the most fevered conspiracy theories about Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election., Those false allegations sparked a number of defamation lawsuits against conservative-leaning media and the president’s allies, including a settlement in 2023 in which Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787 million and one this year that Newsmax settled for $67 million.

    The announcement from the new company does not disclose the cost of the transaction, but a spokesman said all the money was put up by Leiendecker. Both companies involved are privately held.

    The false allegations against Dominion made its brand toxic in many Republican-leaning states and counties. But voting machine companies are usually careful about making overt political statements, given that the market for their equipment is split between places under Republican and Democratic control.

    But some election officials said Thursday that KNOWiNK had seemed to steer clear of 2020 conspiracy theories and acted like a typical, nonpartisan firm.

    “They have a good reputation in the field,” Stephen Richer, a Republican who was targeted by Trump and his allies when he served as the top elections official in Arizona‘s Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.

    Despite years of detailed debunking of the Dominion conspiracy theories, Trump has continued to repeat them even as recently as a few weeks ago, when he vowed to get rid of voting machines. The president doesn’t have the power to do that because the Constitution gives states and Congress the authority to set election and voting rules.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Abortion Providers Say Missouri’s Attorney General Is Trying to Get Patient Records

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    Missouri’s Republican attorney general is trying to get the medical records of Planned Parenthood patients who’ve had abortions, officials who oversee clinics in Kansas City and St. Louis said in legal filings.

    The fight over the subpoenas is playing out in a lawsuit filed last year by Planned Parenthood Great Plains, the abortion provider’s affiliate for Kansas City, and Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, the affiliate for St. Louis. Planned Parenthood officials argue that the state’s restrictions violate an amendment to the Missouri Constitution narrowly approved by voters in November to protect abortion rights.

    The Missouri attorney general’s office issued subpoenas starting in late August to two employees of the Kansas City Planned Parenthood affiliate, a physician contracting with it, and two former board members of the St. Louis-area Planned Parenthood affiliate, according to Planned Parenthood court filings last month. One filing seeking to quash the subpoenas said the attorney general demanded patient records, reports on adverse events and communications about patient care, along with clinical protocols, equipment maintenance records, contract documents and records related to compliance with state requirements.

    “Despite the Missouri Attorney General’s blatant attempts to overturn the will of the people, all patients expect and have the right for their medical records to be private,” the two affiliates said in a joint statement Tuesday. “Politicians have no place in the exam room with patients and their medical providers.”

    Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s office did not immediately respond to an email Tuesday requesting comment. But in a filing in June, the state questioned Planned Parenthood officials’ repeated statements that “abortion rarely involves medical complications” and that state requirements do not improve patients’ health.

    “The purpose of litigation is to ‘ascertain the truth,’” the filing said.

    Abortion policy has been in flux nationally since the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to enforce bans. Twelve states now ban abortion at any stage of pregnancy, with limited exception, and women now are more likely to cross state lines for abortions or to obtain them via pills shipped in by prescribers elsewhere.

    A multiyear legal battle has seen Missouri swing back and forth between banning and allowing most abortions. Before last year’s ballot question, the state had a near-total ban.

    In July, Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Jerri Zhang, in Kansas City, blocked enforcement of many of the restrictions while the lawsuit proceeds, including licensing requirements and a 72-hour waiting period for abortions.

    Planned Parenthood clinics are doing procedural abortions in St. Louis, Kansas City and Columbia, home to the University of Missouri’s main campus. Planned Parenthood Great Plains also has two clinics performing abortions on the Kansas side of the Kansas City metropolitan area.

    The Republican-led Legislature wants to return to a ban, with exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape and incest. It approved a proposed constitutional amendment in May to do that, but the explanation for voters that lawmakers wanted on the ballot in 2026 became tied up in another lawsuit, filed in Cole County Circuit Court the state capital of Jefferson City by a doctor who championed last year’s ballot question.

    Cole County Judge Daniel Green ruled last month that summary originally written by lawmakers was unfair and failed to tell voters they would be repealing last year’s measure. He ordered Missouri’s secretary of state to rewrite it.

    The revision Green approved Tuesday notes that the new measure would “Repeal Article I, section 36, approved in 2024,” but it doesn’t explain what that entails.

    Associated Press journalist David A. Lieb also contributed from Jefferson City, Missouri.

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  • Mom shoots sleeping son, then stabs him to put him ‘out of his pain,’ MO cops say

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    The mother said she laid beside him and caressed him as he cried out ‘mommy,’” investigators said.

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  • Nebraska Joins Trump Program to Use Public Money for Private School Tuition

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    OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — After years of failed attempts, Republicans in Nebraska have enacted a measure that uses taxpayer dollars to pay for private school tuition, despite voters repealing a newly-passed state law that would fund private school tuition with state dollars.

    Republican Gov. Jim Pillen signed an executive order opting the state into a federal school choice tax credit program included in President Donald Trump’s tax and budget bill passed in July.

    “I am not opting this in, I am cannonballing it into the state of Nebraska,” Pillen said as he announced the move Monday at Catholic school in Lincoln. He was joined by Republican U.S. Reps. Mike Flood and Adrian Smith, both of Nebraska, who supported the federal budget bill and private school scholarship plan.

    The measure is remarkably similar to one the state Legislature passed in 2023 to allow corporations and individuals to divert millions of dollars they owe in state income taxes to nonprofit organizations, which would in turn award that money as private school tuition scholarships. Lawmakers axed the measure the following year after opponents gathered far more signatures than was needed to ask voters to repeal it. The Legislature then passed a new law funding private school scholarships directly from state coffers.

    The new federal law that Pillen opted into allows individual taxpayers to direct up to $1,700 in federal income taxes owed to scholarship-granting groups to be used for eligible K-12 private school expenses. But unlike Nebraska’s 2023 proposal, the federal measure allows even high-income households to receive public money for private school costs. Eligibility extends to families earning up to 300% of the area median gross income, according to the Nebraska State Education Association — the state’s largest teachers union.

    “Families making more than $200,000 a year are eligible to receive a voucher funded through these tax credits,” NSEA President Tim Royers said.

    The private school-funding move in Nebraska highlights the growing tension around the country between the will of voters and their elected representatives. Earlier this year, Nebraska lawmakers were accused of subverting the will of the people by limiting voter-approved paid sick leave. In Missouri, lawmakers have taken steps to repeal voter-approved initiatives on abortion rights and paid sick leave and imposed more requirements on ballot initiative campaigns.

    When presented directly to voters, school choice expansion efforts have largely faltered. Nebraska voters in November repealed the school choice law passed earlier that year. A proposed constitutional amendment in Colorado that would have established schoolchildren’s “right to school choice” also was defeated. Kentucky voters rejected a measure to enable public funding for private school attendance.

    “Today’s decision by Gov. Pillen undermines the clear will of Nebraska voters, who just rejected state-level vouchers at the ballot box,” Royers said.

    Pillen countered that opponents are wrong when they say the publicly-funded private school scholarship scheme will take money away from public schools, saying the federal school choice measure comes “at no cost to the state.”

    “We have to have great public schools, and we have to have great St. Teresa’s,” Pillen said Monday. “And because of this legislation, both can win.”

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Kansas City Royals launch partnership with CBD company – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

    Kansas City Royals launch partnership with CBD company – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

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    KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Fans of the Kansas City Royals may notice a new addition to the Outfield Experience the next time they’re at Kauffman Stadium.

    Pure Spectrum Lodge opened at the K Friday night. It’s part of the Royals‘ new partnership with the CBD company.

    The lodge is equipped with fans and misters. The Royals say the space is designed to give fans a place to relax and watch the game while educating them about CBD products.

    The partnership has the Royals following in Major League Baseball’s footsteps. In 2022, the MLB was the first major professional sports league to partner with a CBD company.

    There is also a hometown connection: The CEO of Pure Spectrum is from the metro.

    “As someone who grew up in Kansas City, this partnership with the Kansas City Royals is more than a ‘dream come true’ for me,” Dan Huerter, CEO of Pure Spectrum, said. “To be able to work with such an iconic organization and to be a part of promoting health and wellness in my hometown community is an incredible honor.”

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