Tag: missouri

SHE’S BACK: Ousted Squad Rep. Cori Bush Thinks the Rise of the DSA is Her Ticket Back Into Congress

When far left Missouri Rep. Cori Bush was voted out of office, she vowed to return. Now that the radical left is seeing some wins with their DSA candidates, she thinks it’s her ticket back into congress.

She is one of those politicians who just can’t take no for an answer. Being a member of congress is probably the best and easiest job she has ever had and she is desperate to get back in.

She is even campaigning with a radical ‘Maoist’ who supports the terrorist group Hamas.

FOX News reports:

Ousted Squad Dem stumps with radical activist who defended Hamas, promoted political violence

Former Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., is campaigning to return to Congress alongside a self-described Maoist activist and political organizer whose online videos and social media rhetoric has included urging leftists not to disavow Hamas or Hezbollah, has included calls to “unmake” America, applauded burning the American flag and endorsed political violence.

The activist, Christopher Winston, has built an online presence across numerous platforms under the pseudonym “BlackRedGuard,” posting and appearing in videos about “Maoist organizing in DSA,” attacking leftists who say they do not support “Hezbollah/Hamas” and using rhetoric that appeared to condone political violence.

In one video reviewed by Fox News Digital, Winston asked, “What’s wrong with throwing molotov cocktails at a police station? What’s wrong with throwing molotovs at a police station?”

Bush, an ousted “Squad” Democrat mounting a comeback bid in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, appeared in a recent social media post standing right beside Winston as he participated in supporting her campaign…

“If you say s— like ‘I don’t support Hezbollah/Hamas’ and call yourself a leftist you lame. All power to all the resistance. Peace through the sword,” Winston, a St. Louis-area activist working with the DSA said in his social media post shaming those on the left who condemn Hamas and Hezbollah.

Bush is also already being investigated for fraud again. Some things never change.

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Missouri Age Verification Law Signed by Governor Mike Kehoe

Missouri wants to see your ID before you can look at legal content, and it is selling that demand as child protection. Governor Mike Kehoe signed House Bill 1839 on July 9, turning an attorney general rule into hard law and dropping the state deeper into the widening group of governments that treat online anonymity as a loophole to close.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The statute goes after websites where more than a third of the content qualifies as “sexual material harmful to minors.” Cross that line and you have to route every visitor through a third-party age check before they reach anything. Social media platforms answer to the same requirement once enough of what they host trips the threshold.

The check collects far more than a birthday. A visitor can hand over a government-issued ID, a form of digital identification tied to their legal name, or submit to what the bill calls “a commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data to verify the age of an individual.”

That transactional data, the text spells out, can be pulled from mortgage, education, and employment records. Confirming that someone has cleared 18 now means surfacing where they went to school, who holds their loan, and where they work.

Missouri could have asked for a birth year. It chose instead to build a system that welds a person’s real identity to the specific sites they visit, about the most sensitive browsing there is.

The law tells the companies running these checks that they cannot keep what they gather. A third party “shall not retain any identifying information of the individual,” the bill reads, and the attorney general can charge $10,000 for every instance a company hangs onto that data.

The promise reads well on the page. It also rests on trusting that a verification vendor, sitting on a database of IDs matched to porn habits, never gets breached. Age-check providers have leaked this exact kind of information before, and a no-retention clause cannot un-leak a database that has already spilled.

Catherine Hanaway, the state attorney general, enforces the rule and can stack penalties fast. A site faces $10,000 for each day it operates out of compliance, plus an added sum of up to $250,000 if a minor reaches restricted content. Hanaway, who inherited the rule from her predecessor Andrew Bailey, framed the signing as a landmark.

“Our office is proud to have promulgated and enforced Missouri’s age-verification rule, which prompted Pornhub to stop operating in Missouri- delivering one of the most significant online child-protection victories in our state’s history. House Bill 1839 builds on that success, and Missouri will continue leading the nation in standing with parents, protecting children, and holding pornography websites accountable,” she said in a statement.

Representative Sherri Gallick, who sponsored the bill, leaned on exposure figures. “The average age of first exposure is around 11. Early exposure shapes unrealistic expectations with pornography portraying sometimes violent and degrading sexual behavior. Much of the content is violent and demeaning, especially toward women and children,” Gallick wrote.

The bill does carve out news. Bona fide news and public interest content stay exempt, and the text says it cannot be read to touch the work of a news-gathering organization. Internet providers, search engines, and cloud services get their own shield, safe from liability for content they neither create nor control.

Aylo, the company that owns Pornhub, shows how compliance plays out. The site cut off Missouri users in December when the rule first landed, then reappeared as the signing drew near, now serving the state an age-verification prompt where it had gone dark. One version of that gate asked visitors to click “I am 18 or older – Enter” or “I am under 18 – Exit,” a reminder that the heaviest verification machinery tends to fall on the ordinary user while the theater of protection stays cheap.

The requirements take effect August 28.

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Missouri AG Moves to Oust Ray County Prosecutor Over Explosive Allegations of Affairs with Defense Attorney, Defendants — Including Illegal Alien Investigated for Felony Sex Crimes

Just when you think the lawlessness and corruption in our justice system can’t get any worse.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine L. Hanaway has filed a petition for a writ of quo warranto to remove Ray County Prosecutor Camille Johnston from office after explosive revelations of repeated intimate and romantic relationships with criminal defense counsel and defendants including an illegal alien being prosecuted for sexual assault in her own jurisdiction.

According to the petition, Johnston allegedly engaged in undisclosed romantic relationships with individuals whose criminal cases intersected with the Ray County Prosecutor’s Office, including a defense attorney who represented criminal defendants in cases prosecuted by her office.

The Attorney General alleges Johnston failed to recuse herself or seek the appointment of a special prosecutor despite what the filing describes as obvious conflicts of interest.

The petition further alleges Johnston maintained another romantic relationship with an individual charged with domestic violence and retaliated against a staff member who became aware of the relationship. The filing claims Johnston failed to disclose the alleged conflict to victims, court personnel, or her office until a judge ultimately disqualified her from the case.

Among the most serious allegations is the Attorney General’s claim that Johnston had a prior intimate relationship with a man identified in the petition as J.G., who was allegedly under investigation for felony sexual offenses.

The filing alleges Johnston knew of the investigation, failed to recuse herself, withheld information regarding his whereabouts, assisted him after he left Ray County, and later vacationed with him.

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Missouri State University Been Training Chinese Communists In Business

Missouri has voted strongly Republican since the 2000 election. A red state! How nice. Not exactly. Look deeper.

The Missouri State University, a tax-payer-funded institution like all state schools, has been offering an MBA program to Chinese nationals. Their website seems to be proud of that:

“Missouri State University

Missouri State University is a comprehensive institution offering undergraduate and graduate programs, including the professional doctorate. The university educates students to be global citizen scholars committed to public affairs.

It’s that last line to which I call your attention. “Global citizen scholars.”

Since the year, 2000, MSU HAS TRAINED OVER 1,500 CURRENT AND FUTURE MANAGERS FOR CHINESE STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISES AND GOVERNMENT BODIES – INCLUDING THE DEFENSE INDUSTRY – BY THE YEAR 2018!!

Global Citizen Scholars.

The amount that US Taxpayer’s have been spent on this runs into the tens of millions of dollars, or more, says Strategy Risks, a business intelligence firm focused on global risks which is based in New York City. I believe it has to have been much more.

The estimate of taxpayer funding rests on the most detailed figures available, which appear in a recruiting presentation from the Chinese Agricultural University, according to the report.

A report, “Heartland For Hire,” from Strategy Risks, provides the first public accounting of several MSU master’s programs that have “trained more than 1,500 current and future managers for Chinese state-owned enterprises and government bodies” since the programs began in 2001.

Graduates from these MBA and Executive MBA programs have gone on “to senior roles in China’s defense industry, strategic supply chains, and surveillance-technology sector”—including those sanctioned for aiding the People’s Liberation Army and providing technology to Russia for its war against Ukraine.

However, the report notes that the materials Strategy Risks found gave “conflicting accounts of the program’s finances.” Public recruiting materials for the MBA program describe “different prices, subsidy arrangements, and responsible payers.”

This bears repeating:

A publicly funded university in the State of Missouri, USA, provided a steady flow of business training to the Chinese Communist Party for over 20 years. The ads for the program still appeared on Chinese websites as late as 2024 – when DJT took office for the second term. During his first, you will see he placed this on a watch/special licensing list. Read on.

There is more.

By 2015, 107 finance positions from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) system entities had completed the MSU MBA program, according to the report.

AVIC is “China’s primary state-owned aviation and defense conglomerate,” which the Department of War designated as a “Communist Chinese military company” in June 2020, and an Executive Order from the Trump administration “prohibited Americans from holding securities in any company on that list.”

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Tight-knit Midwest town becomes ground zero in America’s war on AI… and local politicians get swift justice

A sleepy Midwestern town has become one of the fiercest battlegrounds in America’s growing backlash against AI data centers – and voters are making their anger clear at the ballot box.

In the town of Festus, Missouri, a community of 14,000 people near St. Louis, residents have ousted four city council members who backed plans for a massive AI data center, replacing them with candidates who openly opposed the project.

The political upheaval didn’t stop there. 

At a packed City Hall meeting following the election, newly sworn-in officials were greeted with cheers – while the city’s mayor Sam Richards, who still supports the development, was met with boos and jeers from the crowd.

‘You’re next!’ one resident shouted, underscoring how heated the fight has become.

At the center of the dispute is a proposed $6 billion data center spanning roughly 360 acres, designed to support the growing demands of artificial intelligence.

Supporters say the project could transform the local economy – generating an estimated $32 million a year in tax revenue for decades, funding schools, roads, and public services.

But many locals aren’t convinced, and opponents fear the development could strain the electrical grid, push up utility bills and disrupt daily life with years of construction.

Other residents worry about environmental risks, including pollution from backup generators and wastewater systems – concerns shaped by the region’s industrial past.

In a bid to scrap the development, locals have launched a website and a Facebook group titled No Data Center in Festus, which has attracted more than 3,000 members.

The backlash quickly spilled into local politics: In the landslide election, all four incumbents who supported the data center were voted out. 

‘It was an annihilation,’ said one local campaigner. 

Since then, more than 4,000 residents have signed petitions seeking to recall the mayor and other officials still backing the plan.

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Missouri State U. shuts down Bias Response Team amid First Amendment lawsuit

Missouri State University has accelerated the process of shutting down its Bias Response Team amid a lawsuit brought by Defending Education, a national grassroots organization that fights left-wing indoctrination in classrooms.

The complaint, filed April 21, claims campus leaders abused students’ constitutional rights and chilled free speech by allowing the team to monitor and investigate alleged acts of bias.

“Missouri State University and its officials have enacted a far-reaching policy that is designed to deter, discourage, and otherwise prevent students from expressing disfavored views about the political and social issues of the day,” violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the complaint stated.

In response, the university argues it is now shutting down the 10-year-old Bias Response Team.

Missouri State University spokeswoman Andrea Mostyn said officials made the decision to begin disbanding its Bias Response Team last month, before any litigation was issued. It was originally planned for July, but “has now accelerated that timeline.”

However, she added, the “university stands behind the work of the Bias Response Team.”

“The team’s purpose was limited, and its work was conducted in accordance with the university’s obligations under the First Amendment and other applicable law,” she said in an email to The College Fix. 

“The team historically reviewed isolated, anonymous reports of bias on campus, such as graffiti containing swastikas or racial epithets,” but rarely met since it was limited in scope and infrequent, with its most recent meeting being last September, she said.

In February 2025, the Bias Response Team page, which is now inactive, stated that it “serves to advocate for both individuals and groups impacted by acts of bias” by students they deem “perpetrators.”

Defending Education mentioned three students at MSU who want to engage in open debate and dialogue, “but they credibly fear that the expression of their deeply held views will be considered ‘biased,’ ‘offensive,’ ‘discriminatory,’ or the like.” 

Some of these views include being pro-life, pro-family, and anti-illegal immigration.

Moreover, the lawsuit noted that students have been previously reported for bias “for writing a satirical article about ‘safe spaces,’ tweeting ‘#BlackLivesMatter,’ chalking ‘Build the Wall’ on a sidewalk, and expressing support for Donald Trump.”

Defending Education declined to comment to The College Fix on the pending litigation.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ranks Missouri State University 123 out of 257 schools in the 2026 College Free Speech Rankings, giving it an F speech climate grade. In one poll, almost half of student respondents stated they have to self-censor on campus at least once or twice a month.

A 2020 investigation by The College Fix into some of the bias complaints filed at MSU found that in one instance, police were called to respond to a drawing of a penis.

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Voters Oust Half of City Council for Greenlighting $6,000,000,000 AI Data Center

Voters in a Missouri town ousted four city council members Tuesday for supporting an AI data center in the area.

Voters in the town of Festus, Missouri, voted against four members of the town’s eight-member city council who voted to greenlight a $6 billion data center project a week prior, according to St. Louis Public Radio. Anger has been brewing in several localities across the U.S. against data center projects, with voters in a Wisconsin town overwhelmingly opting Tuesday to crack down on a proposed development.

Tuesday’s vote followed months of at times raucous opposition against CRG Clayco’s plan to build a hyperscale data center on 360 acres in the town. The four city council members who lost their reelection bids were defeated by candidates who ran against the data centers and supported more transparency in the data center approval process.

“This data center fight has struck this community to the core and really, honestly ignited a community-driven effort here,” Dan Moore, who defeated pro-data center incumbent Bobby Benz, told St. Louis Public Radio. “People are awake now, and we’re not going to let this continue on anymore.”

Residents opposed to the AI data center flooded a local gymnasium to voice their frustrations during a March 31 city council meeting where the council voted to approve a framework of requirements for CRG’s planned construction, St. Louis Public Radio reported.

“I am not against growth,” Festus resident Lauren Albers said during the raucous city council meeting. “I’m against putting data centers between homes. I am against rushing into development before residents get real information, real answers and a real voice.”

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Missouri Governor Says Restricting Hemp THC Products Is ‘Something We Need To Get Done’ As Ban Bill Heads To His Desk

Missouri’s governor says the state needs to take steps to restrict the availability of intoxicating hemp-derived THC products in line with legislation that lawmakers recently sent to his desk.

“At a high level, I’m very much in favor of taking these illegal drugs in the form of the candies and stuff off of the shelves for kids to be able to buy,” Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) said in an episode of  This Week in Missouri Politics that aired on Sunday.

While the governor said his office will “do bill review” on the specific provisions of the legislation that lawmakers passed last week, he generally agrees with its aim.

“The way the legislation is drawn up is it helps us match the federal standard that’s coming down on these issues,” Kehoe said, referring to national restrictions that President Donald Trump signed into law late last year and that are set to take effect this November.

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Missouri Senate Passes Bill To Ban Intoxicating Hemp THC Products

After nine hours of debate over competing proposals to ban intoxicating hemp products, the Missouri Senate finally approved a House bill Tuesday night that would align state law with a federal ban set to take effect in November.

It also includes provisions to protect marijuana consumer privacy and cannabis workers’ right to organize.

It now heads back to the House, which can either ask for a conference to work out differences with the Senate or send it to the governor.

The bill, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Dave Hinman of O’Fallon, would prohibit hemp products from containing more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container, which is among the limits included in a provision in the federal spending bill Congress approved last year.

Even if Congress reverses course and decides to allow the sale of these products, Hinman’s bill would only permit them to be sold in Missouri’s licensed marijuana dispensaries. And if Congress chooses to delay the ban for a couple years, Missouri would still ban all products, except for intoxicating beverages.

“I had just a good opportunity over in the Senate to work with several of the senators to get some of the things that they wanted to get on there that I think actually benefit the bill,” Hinman told The Independent Wednesday morning. “So I’m very happy with the things that were done last night and look forward to bringing that to the House tomorrow.”

Resistance to the bill came from Republican senators who expressed concern that the hemp industry members weren’t included in the final negotiations that took place for more than 12 hours Tuesday.

And Democratic state Sen. Karla May of St. Louis argued Missouri would be taking a more restrictive approach than the federal government because the proposals would deem the intoxicating hemp products as “marijuana.”

“They claim they’re mirroring the federal regulation,” May said during the debate Tuesday. “There’s some things in there that’s going far beyond the federal regulation, such as…hemp-derived cannabinoids will be put under the marijuana umbrella and have to be sold in dispensaries.”

May successfully led a nearly seven-hour filibuster on the first bill brought for discussion, sponsored by Republican state Sen. David Gregory, which would have made the ban effective as soon as the governor signed it.

“We spent pretty much from 11 a.m. until really 9 p.m. trying to figure out where we wanted to go, trying different things,” Hinman said, regarding Gregory’s bill. “We couldn’t get everyone really to agree, and so the senator [Gregory] suggested, ‘Let’s just go back to Hinman’s bill and go with that.’”

In an unusual move, the senators decided to reconvene the Senate Fiscal Oversight Committee at about 10 p.m. The same committee had decided not to vote on Hinman’s bill earlier that day, saying Hinman needed to reach a resolution with the hemp industry.

There was no public notice of the fiscal oversight committee’s evening meeting, which ended when senators voted to move the bill forward and allowed the full Senate to take it up for debate.

An amendment was approved to keep dispensaries from collecting marijuana consumers’ information unless they “opted in,” Hinman said, and another ensured all cannabis workers can unionize and shouldn’t be considered “agricultural workers” who aren’t protected under federal law. A group of workers in St. Louis have been battling this point since 2023.

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Settlement Stops Government From Using Social Media As ‘Speech Police’

The government censorship machine took a huge hit Tuesday in a historic win for First Amendment rights. 

What is being billed as an “unprecedented” agreement will bar the three government agencies central to killing speech the Biden administration didn’t like from pressuring social media platforms from doing so in the future. 

“This case began with a suspicion, that blossomed into fact, that led to Congressional hearings and an Executive Order that government censorship of Americans’ social media posts should end,” said John Vecchione, Senior Litigation Counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), the nonprofit civil rights group that has battled in courts for years to bring justice to victims of government-led speech suppression. 

Also celebrating, Sen. Eric Schmitt, who, as Missouri’s attorney general, sued the Biden administration for “brazenly colluding with Big Tech to silence Missourians.” 

“This is a massive win for the First Amendment and for every American who believes in free speech,” the Missouri Republican said in a press release, adding that President Biden’s tenure in office brought “the most aggressively liberal and antiliberty excesses of government that America has ever seen.”

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