Tag: missouri

Trump’s DOJ Seeks Access to Voting Equipment Used by Missouri Clerks Following 2020 Election

Two Missouri clerks reported they were contacted by the Trump Department of Justice recently. The DOJ is seeking access to election machines used by the clerks in the 2020 election.

The two county clerks were contacted in recent weeks by Andrew McCoy “Mac” Warner, a Trump DOJ official.

According to far left Missouri reporter Jason Hancock at NPR the two clerks were identified as Jasper County Clerk Charlie Davis and McDonald County Clerk Jessica Cole.

Jasper County is a rural southwestern county in Missouri on the border with Kansas. It’s largest city is Joplin, Missouri. And the county seat is in Carthage, Missouri. This is a VERY red area in the Show Me state that went for Trump in 2020 72% to 26% to Joe Biden.

McDonald County is located in the southwest corner of southern Missouri. The county seat of this rural county is Pineville. McDonald County voted for President Trump 82.3 percent to 15.9 percent for Joe Biden.

President Trump won the former bellwether state by 15.4 percentage points in 2020 – it was too big to steal.

The Trump DOJ reportedly wants access to the voting machines in these two counties to physically inspect and possibly take into custody.

Charlie Davis told Jason Hancock that he was also contacted by Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft about the machines.

Davis said he replaced the machines after the 2020 election.

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Missouri Governor Calls Special Session For Redrawing Congressional Map

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe announced on Aug. 29 that he was calling state lawmakers back to the capital for a special session tasked with redrawing the congressional district lines ahead of the 2026 election.

His announcement came just hours after fellow Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law Texas’s new congressional voting map, setting the stage for the GOP to gain five more seats in the House of Representatives.

Scheduled to begin Sept. 3, T.J.Muscaro reports for The Epoch Times that Missouri’s redistricting also appears to give Republicans help in the coming midterms, as Kehoe’s proposed map looks to stretch a Kansas City-area district – currently held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver—into Republican-leaning rural areas.

“Missouri’s conservative, common-sense values should be truly represented at all levels of government,” Kehoe said in a statement.

Cleaver is one of two current Democratic-controlled districts in the state. The other is in St. Louis, held by Rep. Wesley Bells. There are six total congressional districts in Missouri.

Cleaver decried the decision to alter his district in a statement.

“This attempt to gerrymander Missouri will not simply change district lines; it will silence voices. It will deny representation,” he said.

The state’s Democratic House Minority Leader Ashley Aune also spoke out against the change, accusing Kehoe of looking to “steal a congressional seat for Republicans.”

However, Missouri Democrats are unlikely to stop their Republican colleagues from passing the new map.

While they could filibuster in the Senate, Republicans have procedural means to shut it down, and the number of Democrats is too small for their absence to prevent a quorum.

Meanwhile, California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is asking voters to approve a new congressional map that seeks to help his party win five seats as a response to Texas’s new map favoring Republicans.

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After millions of taxpayer dollars and months of crippling issues, city-funded grocery store in Missouri abruptly closes its doors

When those who don’t know history inevitably repeat it, the greatest offense is not their profound ignorance (which is seriously painful), but it’s that their obliviousness has real consequences for those of us who know better.

Government by its very nature is, at best, a “necessary evil,” and in its worst state, “an intolerable one.” And, leftist ideologies, like communism, certainly fall under the “worst state” category.Now, after millions and millions of taxpayer dollars and months of issues—like completely bare shelves, a “rancid odor” that filled the store, and rampant crime—one of the nation’s only taxpayer-funded grocery stores has closed up shop, citing circumstances “beyond our control,” offering no further explanation. (Hint: It’s the s**t idea, that’s the circumstance that caused the closure, and it is within control: don’t think like a dummy.)

Have government-run grocery stores ever been tried? Yes, of course.

The Soviet Union had an expansive network…and these were characterized by long lines, empty shelves, and rations. This era of history also includes the Ukraine famine of the 1930s, which saw the starvation of millions of souls after Joseph Stalin collectivized the farms.

Mao’s communist China was responsible for one of the “greatest man-made disasters” in history when his regime bungled food distribution so badly that tens of millions (some estimates put the number upwards of 55 million) of his own people starved to death in what’s known as the Great Chinese Famine.

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Exonerated Missouri woman sues police for conspiracy and coverup that put her in prison for 43 years

Sandra Hemme’s federal lawsuit accuses St. Joseph Police of suppressing and destroying evidence that pointed to a fellow officer who was guilty of the 1980 murder. Before being freed last year, Hemme served the longest sentence of any wrongly convicted woman in American history.

Sandra Hemme, the Missouri woman who spent 43 years in prison for a murder she did not commit, has sued the city of St. Joseph and eight police officers in a 10-count federal lawsuit alleging malicious prosecution, a coerced confession and conspiracy.

“There was never any objective evidence tying Plaintiff (Hemme) to the crime,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit also points the finger at a former police officer, Michael Holman, as the killer of librarian Patricia Jeschke in 1980.

“To protect Holman, the Defendants concealed evidence of his guilt and chose not to follow the evidence leading to Holman,” according to the lawsuit. Holman died in 2015.

Hemme served the longest sentence of any wrongly convicted woman in American history, her lawyers have said. She was finally exonerated and freed last year after a lengthy legal battle that saw the Missouri Attorney General fighting to overturn her innocence ruling.

A year ago, in July 2024, Livingston County Circuit Court Judge Ryan Horsman overturned Hemme’s conviction — writing that she was “the victim of a manifest injustice.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey battled all the way to the state Supreme Court to keep Hemme in prison. She won her final freedom after the Missouri Court of Appeals rejected all of Bailey’s arguments, and in March the Buchanan County prosecutor declined to refile charges.

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“There’s No Nothing”: Empty Shelves, Rotten Odors Plague Gov’t-Funded Supermarket In Missouri

One of the dozen or so socialist policy proposals from NYC Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani is the creation of government-funded grocery stores.

While the Democratic Party increasingly embraces socialist and Marxist-leaning policies, such as the seizure of private property, this idea of government-funded grocery stores appears disconnected from both fundamental economic realities and historical precedent.

Nowhere is this more evident than in East Kansas City, where a nonprofit operates a grocery store on government land that has become a symbol of failure, plagued by the smell of rot and empty shelves.

Local media outlet KSHB 41 Kansas City toured Sun Fresh Market at 3110 Wabash Ave (31st & Prospect) on the city’s Eastside. The store opened in 2018 as part of a multi-million dollar public-private revitalization of the Linwood Shopping Center. Operated by Community Builders of Kansas City, a nonprofit focused on urban development, the store has since become a massive reminder that while socialism may sound great on paper, in practice, it can be an absolute disaster. 

KSHB 41’s Alyssa Jackson reported that her news team received a tip from a viewer about empty shelves throughout the dairy section, meat department, bakery aisle, and deli counter.

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Missouri Police Officer Shoots, Kills Blind & Deaf Dog …Community Outraged

A police officer in Missouri shot and killed a blind and deaf dog this week … and while the department’s saying the cop feared contracting rabies — the community’s calling BS.

Teddy — a five-year-old, 13-pound shih tzu mix was killed in Sturgeon, Missouri after escaping his yard. The owner gave the dog some water and called the police … who The Washington Post reports shot the dog twice within minutes of arriving.

Check out the body cam footage … little Teddy’s running around the field — away from the officer at first before turning around and moving toward him, though not seemingly in an aggressive way.

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Kansas City poured millions into a grocery store. It still may close.

It was the lone tomato in the produce bin that nearly made Marquita Taylor weep.

She’d stopped in her neighborhood grocery store, the place that was cause for celebration when it opened seven years ago. Area residents had long lived without a decent supermarket on Kansas City’s east side, and KC Sun Fresh was the city’s attempt to alleviate a lack of access to healthy food in its urban center.

But the store, in a city-owned strip mall, is on the verge of closure. Customers say they are increasingly afraid to shop there — even with visible police patrols — because of drug dealing, theft and vagrancy both inside and outside the store and the public library across the street.

KC Sun Fresh lost $885,000 last year and now has only about 4,000 shoppers a week. That’s down from 14,000 a few years ago, according to Emmet Pierson Jr., who leads Community Builders of Kansas City, the nonprofit that leases the site from the city. Despite a recent $750,000 cash infusion from the city, the shelves are almost bare.

“We’re in a dire situation,” Pierson said.

As grocery prices continue to climb and 7 million Americans face losing federal food assistance, more cities and states across the country — in Illinois, Georgia and Wisconsin — are experimenting with the concept of publicly supported grocery stores as a way to help provide for low-income neighborhoods.

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, has attracted attention for his campaign pledge to combat “out-of-control” prices by establishing five city-owned supermarkets that he says will pass savings onto customers by operating “without a profit motive.”

Yet these experiments, like the one in Kansas City, often don’t account for social issues that can make success even more challenging. Critics say the efforts are unrealistic regardless because grocery stores have such slim profit margins and struggle to compete with the prices offered by big-box chains like Walmart. High-profile projects have failed in recent months in Florida and Massachusetts.

“Running a grocery store is a difficult business,” said Doug Rauch, a former Trader Joe’s president who founded a chain of low-cost stores in the Boston area that shuttered in May. “You can have religion about the mission, but if you don’t have vast experience and knowledge about how to run these operations, you’re really going to be in trouble.”

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Missouri Marijuana Officials Are Reviewing Rules On Purchase Limits For Medical Patients

Cannabis advocacy organizations are sounding the alarm about guidance from state regulators limiting how much medical marijuana patients can purchase from licensed dispensaries.

By law, dispensaries are required to track how much medical marijuana patients buy so they don’t exceed their limit.

According to a FAQ that was added earlier this year to the website of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, the state’s cannabis regulatory agency, if patients reach their limit they are not legally allowed to buy marijuana like as a recreational consumer.

“…patient ID card holders are not allowed to purchase as a consumer in a licensed dispensary,” the website states. “These regulations help ensure patients and consumers stay within their allowed possession limits.”

In general, medical patients are limited to a 6-ounce allotment of dried, unprocessed marijuana every 30 days. Recreational consumers are allowed to purchase up to 3 ounces every day—but can’t possess more than 3 ounces.

The state is prohibited by law from tracking the purchases of people who don’t have patient ID cards without their permission.

Andrew Mullins, executive director of the Missouri Marijuana Trade Association, sent a letter to leaders of the Division of Cannabis Regulation in April claiming the policy is unconstitutional.

“We believe that DCR’s interpretation that a Missourian must either be an adult-use consumer or a medical patient is neither good public policy nor a constitutionally sound interpretation,” he wrote.

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Missouri governor activates National Guard, declares state of emergency

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) on Thursday declared a state of emergency and activated the state’s National Guard in anticipation of protests across the state — and in response to “civil unrest” across the country.

Missouri Executive Order 25-25 declares a State of Emergency and allows the Adjutant General to order service members to aid state officials.

The order comes after the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Missouri National Guard and Missouri Department of Public Safety established a Unified Command to monitor situations across the state and prepare local law enforcement.

Additionally, the order also declares that the Adjutant General may employ necessary equipment to support authorities and provide assistance.

While nationwide protests continue to flare up in response to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, Kehoe said his order is purely precautionary.

“We respect, and will defend, the right to peacefully protest, but we will not tolerate violence or lawlessness in our state,” the governor said.

“While other states may wait for chaos to ensue, the State of Missouri is taking a proactive approach in the event that assistance is needed to support local law enforcement in protecting our citizens and communities,” he added.

To read Kehoe’s full order, click here.

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Missouri AG Sends Cease And Desist Letters To 18 Hemp Companies, Warning More Are On The Way

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) has sent several cease-and-desist letters to companies selling a hemp product called THCA flower that looks exactly like marijuana flower sold at dispensaries.

Bailey’s letters threaten legal action, including injunctions, civil penalties and attorney’s fees if the companies continue to sell the products.

“When purchasing products, Missourians deserve to know if they are being exposed to dangerous side effects like psychotic episodes, hallucinations or other life-threatening risks,” said Attorney General Bailey in a statement to The Independent. “We have issued 18 cease and desist letters so far, and more are forthcoming.”

Cannabis lobbyist Eapen Thampy said about a dozen smoke shops in St. Louis received the letters, and in some cases, THCA flower makes up 60 percent to 80 percent of the companies’ inventories.

Thampy said he’s working with the companies to put together a response to the letters and preparing for potential litigation.

The action is the first major move since Bailey created a new specialized unit last fall, with the aim to assist the state’s alcohol and tobacco regulators in cracking down on intoxicating hemp products.

In September, Bailey vowed his new unit would work with the Missouri Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC) Division to bring legal action against licensees selling unregulated psychoactive cannabis products that violate the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act.

“The ATC will assist by making its investigators available as witnesses for legal proceedings resulting from actionable referrals,” Bailey said in September. “Our enforcement toolkit will be robust from cease-and-desist letters and investigations to subpoenas and lawsuits to referrals for criminal prosecution where appropriate.”

The letters that went out last month state that the companies are “directed to cease and desist from selling” hemp products that contain more than 0.3 percent THCA on a dry weight basis. THCA is a naturally abundant cannabinoid that transforms into Delta-9 THC when smoked or heated.

However, this is not what an official cease and desist order looks like, said Jefferson City-based attorney Chuck Hatfield.

“It is an informal cease and desist,” Hatfield said. “It is not a letter that has the force and effect of law. It’s more in the nature of a request to stop.”

Under state law, if Bailey wanted to issue an official cease and desist order—as he did for Planned Parenthood in March—Hatfield said Bailey would have to issue a notice of intent first. The company would have the right to appeal through an administrative hearing, as well as challenge the order in court.

“But he hasn’t done any of that,” Hatfield said.

Bailey could also file a lawsuit under Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, and that doesn’t require a cease and desist order, he said.

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