Columbia, Missouri — Celeste Athon had played softball from the day she was old enough to sign up for a local youth league. She’d never felt like this before. Athon, a second base player for the local Stephens College, found herself tired much faster. Even sprinting just a few feet left her short of breath. She didn’t know what was happening — why her performance was suddenly slipping in…
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Business Loop 70 looks like many American roads as it cuts through Columbia, Missouri. Four lanes of traffic; some sections with sidewalks, others without; a car dealership with a sea of available cars; an old single-floor mall set behind rows of parking, and an old brick smoke stack from a long-forgotten power plant.
Yet that one-and-a-half-mile stretch of state highway contains a model of innovation for the nation. Every day, Carrie Gartner parks in front of a small storefront and steps into the offices of the Loop Community Improvement District, where for the past decade she’s been working to achieve the seemingly impossible: turning a random collection of properties along a state highway into a destination for families and entrepreneurs.
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In an unprecedented move to funnel more public tax dollars toward groups that oppose abortion, Republican lawmakers in Missouri are advancing a plan to allow residents to donate to pregnancy resource centers instead of paying any state income taxes. The proposal would establish a 100% tax credit, up from 70%, and a $50,000 annual cap per taxpayer. The result: Nearly all Missouri households…
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At exactly 7:17 p.m. on Valentine’s Day, Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council Executive Director Alana Henry received a terse notice from the USDA: the agency was canceling its three-year Farmer’s Market Promotion Program (FMPP) award to Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council. The cut was swift, shocking, and, for those who’ve been paying attention, all too predictable.
The Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council (located in one of Kansas City’s historically Black neighborhoods) had already launched a visionary plan to boost food sovereignty and economic power in the community.
Their programs offered training for local growers—many of them Black, brown, and small-scale—so they could sell fresh, affordable produce at neighborhood farmers markets.
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Missouri health care providers can now resume offering abortion care after a Jackson County circuit court judge temporarily blocked a restrictive anti-abortion law. “Today’s decision is a triumph for all Missourians: for the voters who demanded their rights, for the medical providers we trust to provide care, and most importantly, for patients who will now be able to receive high-quality care…
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Reproductive rights groups celebrated on Friday after a Missouri judge temporarily blocked significant abortion restrictions that were kept in place despite voters’ approval of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to the procedure. Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood of Great Plains announced that “abortion care will be restored immediately” following the decision from…
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Conservative state lawmakers are prepared to press for more abortion restrictions this year, regardless of any action President-elect Donald Trump pursues in office. Many of the bills filed in state legislatures across the country focus on abortion pills, abortion access for minors and, in at least one state, how to undo protections for the procedure. Legislators in Indiana, Missouri…
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One month after Missouri voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion, Republican lawmakers in the deeply red state are already working to overturn it — or at least undermine it. One measure would ask voters to amend the state constitution to define life as beginning at conception, declaring that embryos are people with rights to life, liberty and the pursuit…
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A Missouri judge has upheld a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth and some adults in the state, citing outdated studies and the errant belief that the science behind such care is “unsettled.” Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter issued his ruling on Monday, siding with state Republican lawmakers who passed the ban into law in 2023. The deceptively titled Save Adolescents From…
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Voters in three states across the country passed ballot initiatives this election cycle that will install new paid sick leave rules for workers. The states that passed the measures — Alaska, Missouri and Nebraska — are traditionally solid Republican states, indicating that progressive pro-worker policies are popular to voters regardless of geographical location. As of Wednesday morning…
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Kansas City, Missouri — On a sunny Saturday in October, Johanna Kelley set out to canvass for two ballot propositions personal to her: one that would raise the minimum wage and create paid sick leave and another that would establish a constitutional right to abortion in the state of Missouri, which for more than two years has been under a near-total abortion ban. Kelley…
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The cannabis market in the United States has exploded in recent years, with total retail sales from medicinal and recreational marijuana projected to exceed $50 billion per year within the next three years. Recreational marijuana is now legal in 24 states, and three more have legalization initiatives on the ballot this November. Sales from recreational marijuana alone surpassed $30 billion last…
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Nicole was driving when she heard on the radio that Roe v. Wade had fallen, and that soon abortion would be almost completely illegal in her home state of Missouri. She thought first of her children, two teenagers who she feared might someday need reproductive health care, including abortion. She worried far less about herself. She was in her late 30s, and she was done having children.
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The billboards have popped up along both Interstates 55 and 170 around St. Louis. They’re along I-70 between Columbia and St. Charles, in central Missouri. And there’s one across from a shopping center in Cape Girardeau, along the Mississippi River in the state’s southeast corner. In fact, as the Nov. 5 election approaches, motorists can see the billboards all over Missouri.
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The owners of the NFL football team from Kansas City, Missouri, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to an anti-abortion political action committee that has run misleading advertisements about an abortion ballot initiative set to be voted on in November. Unity Hunt is the business entity that controls the estate of Lamar Hunt, the founder of the NFL team that was first known as the…
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The State of Missouri put its lethal hands on another of its longtime death penalty captives on Tuesday evening in Bonne Terre, prematurely ending his life with a poison injection of pentobarbital. The state-sponsored killing of Marcellus Williams took place at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center, the same prison where the state executed Brian Dorsey in April and David…
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Hundreds of medical professionals in Missouri have signed an open letter encouraging residents to support a ballot initiative in November that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Missouri’s abortion ban, which was automatically triggered when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the summer of 2022, bars the procedure at all stages of pregnancy and makes no…
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The Missouri State Supreme Court ruled with little time to spare on Tuesday that an amendment proposal enshrining abortion and reproductive rights in the state constitution will be placed back on the November ballot, overturning a lower court ruling that had removed it just days before. The decision, coming less than three hours before the state’s deadline to finalize the language and…
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Three mayors in the state of Missouri have filed an amicus brief in the case relating to an abortion rights ballot question that was supposed to appear before voters this November, but which a lower court judge, late last week, said had to be removed. The brief, filed by the nonprofit civil rights organization Public Rights Project (PRP) on behalf of the mayors, urges the Missouri Supreme…
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Campaigners who last month celebrated the success of their effort to place an abortion rights referendum on November ballots in Missouri faced uncertainty about the ballot initiative Friday night, after a judge ruled that organizers had made an error on their petitions that rendered the measure invalid. Judge Christopher Limbaugh of Cole County Circuit Court sided with pro-forced pregnancy…
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On Tuesday, the Texas Department of Public Safety announced in an internal email that it will no longer accept amended birth certificates or court orders to change gender markers on a person’s driver’s license. The email also states that name changes accompanying gender marker changes will not be accepted. Meanwhile, reports from Montana indicate similar bans on driver’s license changes are…
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On a recent Saturday outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Fairview Heights, Illinois, a woman wearing a reflective orange vest and body camera flagged down a car pulling into the facility. “Hi, can I talk to you a second?” the woman, Sheri King, said to the driver, reaching for a pamphlet in a pocket of her vest with information about alternatives to abortion and birth control. “I’m Sheri.”…
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Rep. Cori Bush lost her reelection bid in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District on Tuesday to a Democratic primary candidate backed by a massive influx of spending from AIPAC, which targeted the progressive incumbent over her early calls for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. Wesley Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County, enjoyed a huge cash advantage over Bush…
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On Thursday, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) signed a bill into law that effectively cuts off Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds in the state, making Missouri the fourth state in the country to ban Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood. The bill, HB 2634, is expected to go into effect later this year, and makes it illegal to allocate public funds to any abortion facility or…
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A coalition of abortion rights advocates in Missouri moved one step closer to putting abortion rights on the ballot despite legal challenges, delays and a grassroots “decline to sign” campaign waged by anti-abortion groups. The coalition, Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, submitted over 380,000 signatures on Friday for a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee a right to…
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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey issued a civil investigative demand, a form of subpoena, to Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Media Matters for America on March 25, 2024, for documents related to its reporting about the social platform X. A day later, Bailey filed a lawsuit in Missouri circuit court seeking to enforce his demand, according to court documents reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
On Nov. 16, 2023, Media Matters published a report written by its investigative reporter Eric Hananoki that found advertisements for major brands appeared next to pro-Nazi posts on X. Following the report’s publication and a post on X by owner Elon Musk that appeared to endorse an antisemitic conspiracy theory, several major companies paused their advertising on the platform.
The report touched off a firestorm of response from X and from Republican politicians across the country. X filed a lawsuit on Nov. 20 against both Media Matters and Hananoki, alleging that they had manipulated the platform’s algorithms to produce the report’s findings in order to harm X’s relationship with advertisers. (Media Matters filed a motion to dismiss X’s suit in March 2024.)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also cited allegations of algorithm manipulation in a probe he initiated into “potential fraudulent activity,” issuing his own civil investigative demand on Dec. 1, 2023, that Media Matters turn over documents related to its reporting on X. Media Matters sued to block that demand and was granted a preliminary injunction against Paxton in April 2024.
Bailey opened his investigation into Media Matters on Dec. 11, 2023, alleging that it appeared to have used the “coordinated, inauthentic activity” described in X’s lawsuit “to solicit charitable donations from consumers.” He said that his office would look into whether this violated Missouri’s consumer protection laws, “including laws that prohibit nonprofit entities from soliciting funds under false pretenses.” Bailey instructed the nonprofit to preserve all records related to the case.
Three days later, Bailey announced that he and then-Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (now serving as governor) had sent letters to several major companies that paused their advertising on X, including Apple, Disney, IBM and Sony, informing them of the investigation into Media Matters.
Bailey then issued a civil investigative demand similar to Paxton’s and petitioned a state court to enforce it, arguing that given Media Matters’ response to Paxton, it was unlikely to comply by his April 15 deadline.
Bailey’s demand included requests for Media Matters’ 2023 and 2024 donation records, documents associated with Hananoki’s reporting and materials “related to generating stories or content intended to cancel, deplatform, demonetize, or otherwise interfere with businesses located in Missouri, or utilized by Missouri residents,” among other records.
“My office has reason to believe Media Matters used fraud to solicit donations from Missourians in order to bully advertisers into pulling out of X, the last social media platform dedicated to free speech in America,” Bailey said in a news release. “If there has been any attempt to defraud Missourians in order to trample on their free speech rights, I will root it out and hold bad actors accountable.”
The organization has objected to Bailey’s demand in full. Media Matters President Angelo Carusone told Ars Technica, “This Missouri investigation is the latest in a transparent endeavor to squelch the First Amendment rights of researchers and reporters; it will have a chilling effect on news reporters.”
In a response to Bailey’s announcement of the suit on X, Elon Musk wrote: “Much appreciated! Media Matters is doing everything it can to undermine the First Amendment. Truly an evil organization.”
Carusone, in the Ars Technica article, countered: “Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Elon Musk has actually intensified his efforts to undermine free speech by enlisting Republican attorneys general across the country to initiate meritless, expensive, and harassing investigations against Media Matters in an attempt to punish critics.”
This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.
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The state-sponsored execution of 52-year-old Brian Dorsey on Tuesday evening in Bonne Terre, Missouri, marked the fifth such execution to take place in the U.S. this year, as right-wing activists across the nation push hard to expand the use of the death penalty. Two more executions are already scheduled to take place in Missouri this year, despite a multipronged anti-death-penalty campaign…
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The Missouri House is advancing a bill aimed at limiting abortion-specific training at both private and public medical schools within the state. Sponsored by Rep. Justin Sparks (R), the bill, HB 2621, also seeks to prohibit collaborations between medical schools in Missouri and clinics located in other states for the provision of such training. “If a university or research institution is going to…
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