JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri: On Monday, faith leaders and experts will hold a virtual press conference at 11 AM CT to discuss the dangers of Christian nationalism and its impact on democracy and society.
The conference will focus on Senator Josh Hawley’salarming pronouncement at the National Conservative Convention on July 8th, in which he declared, “Some will say now that I am calling America a Christian nation. So I am. And some will say that I am advocating Christian nationalism. And so I do.”
The press conference will feature Rev. Nate Empsall, Executive Director of Faithful America, a leading expert on Christian nationalism, Rev. Phil Snider, Brentwood Christian Church, and other prominent Missouri leaders.
When: Monday, July 15, 2024, 11:00 AM CT
Who:
Rev. Nate Empsall
Rev. Phil Snider, Brentwood Christian Church
Other Missouri faith leaders
Why:
Recent remarks by Senator Josh Hawley have sparked a renewed discussion on Christian nationalism. This press conference provides context and expert opinions on why Christian nationalism poses a threat to democracy and our way of life.
How to Join: Contact Claire Cook-Callen at Claire@progressmo.org for the zoom link.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Progress MO released a new ad today to bring awareness to Senator Josh Hawley’s vote on the Right to Contraception Act in the U.S. Senate. The new ad, titled “Watch What They Do”, is part of an aggressive campaign to inform Missourians about the effort to attack common forms of birth control like IUDs, Plan B and condoms.
Last week, Missourians came together under a 20-foot inflatable IUD to share concerns about politicians attacking their right to access birth control and IVF. Missouri Senators Hawley and Schmitt are part of a concerted effort being funded by special interests and extremists to attack our rights and control our bodies – and they’re using the courts and legislative chambers to block our access to our reproductive rights.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, June 26, 2024 Contact: liz@progressmo.org
St. Louis, Mo. – Beneath the shadow of a 20-foot inflatable IUD and with the Gateway Arch in view, community leaders and citizens shared their concerns about politicians attacking their right to access birth control and IVF. Advocates had a clear message to electeds: You can’t take our rights without a fight.
Dubbed “The IUD Express,” the inflatable birth control device is part of a campaign by Americans for Contraception that aims to educate the community on the importance of protecting women’s access to contraceptives.
“First they came for abortion. Then IVF. Now contraception,” said Heather Lindsy, a St. Louis resident who spoke at the event. “This isn’t about policy. It’s about control.”
Earlier this month, U.S. Senators Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt voted against the Right to Contraception Act blocking the bill’s passage in Washington. Without protection in place, the Missouri legislature could move to eliminate those freedoms as they did with abortion rights in 2022 just minutes after the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson
“There can be no confusion here about what Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt did by voting against the Right to Contraception Act,” said Margot Riphagen, Vice President of External Affairs at Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri. “This was a simple bill to guarantee the right to basic birth control. These politicians showed that they have no qualms about ripping our health care options away piece by piece. Missourians cannot trust their rights to be protected by our state legislature when it took just minutes to ban abortion after Dobbs. We need our elected officials to protect our right to plan our families.”
According to data from the Missouri Family Health Council, over 85% of Missourians support people having access to all methods of birth control. But nearly 60% of Missourians have expressed concern about state elected officials restricting access to it.
However, Hawley’s record makes it clear that he will do anything to keep Missourians from having access to reproductive health care, from his stance of being 100% pro-life to the work he and his family have done to ensure families can’t access birth control through their employer.
“Make no mistake. This is a planned effort by Senator Hawley and other extreme politicians to strip women of their reproductive freedoms,” said Liz McCune, Executive Director of Progress Missouri. “We will not stay silent. We urge all Missourians to call Senators Hawley and Schmitt and their elected leaders and tell them to protect our right to contraception and our own reproductive health.”
WHAT: Beneath the shadow of a 20-foot inflatable IUD, Missourians will express their concerns about politicians attacking their right to access birth control and IVF. Advocates will gather near the Gateway Arch to send a clear message to electeds: You can’t take our rights without a fight.
Dubbed “The IUD Express,” the inflatable birth control device is part of a campaign by Americans for Contraception that aims to educate the community on the importance of protecting women’s access to contraceptives.
WHO: Advocates and community leaders
WHEN: 10 a.m. Wednesday, June 26
WHERE: Kiener Plaza, 500 Chestnut St., St. Louis, MO 63101
WHY: Earlier this month, U.S. Senators Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt voted against the Right to Contraception Act blocking the bill’s passage in Washington. Without protection in place, the Missouri legislature could move to eliminate those freedoms as they did with abortion rights in 2022 just minutes after the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson.
“First they came for abortion. Then IVF. Now contraception. This isn’t about policy. It’s about control,” said Heather Lindsy, a St. Louis resident who will speak at the event.
According to data from the Missouri Family Health Council, over 85% of Missourians support people having access to all methods of birth control. But nearly 60% of Missourians have expressed concern about state elected officials restricting access to it.
COLUMBIA Mo. – The Missouri Legislature let down kids repeatedly this year, failing to invest in public schools that more than 90% of Missouri school children depend upon.
This year’s legislative session was the least productive and most chaotic in living memory with only 28 non-budget bills reaching the legislative finish line. What legislators did pass directly hurts Missourians, such as the education spending bill that takes money from public schools and pumps them into private charter schools and vouchers.
“I don’t understand how legislators who claim to represent us can be so short-sighted on funding education, which is pivotal to the American Dream,” said Carmen Buis, a mother of three in Columbia. “Teachers are buying their own classroom supplies while politicians are sending even less money to public schools.”
At a time when Missouri has some of the lowest salaries for teachers in the nation, the over 160-page education bill allows charter schools to operate in Boone County and raises the funding cap for private schools from $25 million to $75 million.
“At every turn, legislators failed to enact laws that would actually improve people’s lives, from expanding child care tax credits to banning child marriage to supporting children in foster care,” said Liz McCune, Executive Director of Progress Missouri. “This is shameful behavior that directly hurts Missouri kids.”
COLUMBIA, Mo. – New research shows a majority of Missourians are afraid of losing even more of their freedoms. And Missouri’s politicians are giving them every reason to be concerned.
On Wednesday, U.S. Senators Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt voted against the Right to Contraception Act blocking the bill’s passage in Washington. Without protection in place, the Missouri legislature could move to eliminate those freedoms as they did with abortion rights in 2022 just minutes after the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson.
According to data from the Missouri Family Health Council, over 85% of Missourians support people having access to all methods of birth control. But nearly 60% of Missourians have expressed concern about state elected officials restricting access to it.
Nancy Bateman is a retired nurse from Jefferson City who has seen firsthand how dangerous these bans are for women.
“At my age I have witnessed the advances in civil rights women and minorities have made in the past 60 years. The terrible and unequal laws that have been enacted have made me heartsick and afraid for our citizens,” Bateman said. “It’s a travesty and overreach of government in the quest for adequate health care.”
The fear Missourians feel stems from an actively harmful state legislature. The politicians who opportunistically jumped at the chance to enact the abortion ban failed to pass any laws protecting the health and wellness of Missourians.
This legislative session, the Missouri legislature could have passed a bipartisan women’s health bill with provisions on birth control access, mammograms, rape kit tests and STI screenings. But politicians incorrectly equated birth control with abortifacients and the delays sunk the bill.
In passing a record-low 28 non-budget bills – surpassing the previous low of 31 in the COVID-marked 2020 session – Missouri elected officials have yet again demonstrated just how little they care about the basic health and wellness of Missourians.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, June 5, 2024 Contact: liz@progressmo.org
COLUMBIA, Mo. – The U.S. Senate failed to pass the Right to Contraception Act, which would affirm the right to use birth control in the United States. Missouri senators Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt turned their backs on Missourians with their no votes, refusing to codify basic health care.
Hawley’s record makes it clear that he will do anything to keep Missourians from having access to reproductive health care, from his stance of being 100% pro-life to the work he and his family have done to ensure families can’t access birth control through their employer.
St. Louis resident Heather Donahue said the vote was a wake-up call for all Missourians.
“We’ve been shouting from the rooftops for years now that they will come for your birth control too – they won’t stop at abortion,” she said. “I never thought I would see in my lifetime that we would actually experience this threat to control our reproductive choices. But with self-serving politicians like Josh Hawley, I now believe there are no rights he won’t go after if he believes it would advance his career.”
Hawley’s track record on women and access to abortion and birth control is clear.
He and his family spend their private careers preventing women from having control of their own bodies and families; working on SCOTUS cases like Hobby Lobby (birth control), Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA (mifepristone/medication abortion)
In 2022, Hawley told a reporter who asked if a woman who lost her ability to have children would still be a woman, and he replied, “I mean, a woman has a vagina, right?”
In 2022, he attempted to give women second-class status by removing women from a proposal about a military draft – blaming “woke liberals.”
He claims to be 100% pro-life meaning he is “opposed to abortion at any stage of pregnancy.”
Missourians overwhelmingly support access to contraceptives, but some fear their lawmakers could pass laws limiting that availability, a March poll from The Right Time, a family planning initiative through the Missouri Family Health Council Inc., shows.
The Right to Contraception Act would protect unrestricted access to contraception in the face of growing threats by ensuring the legal right for individuals to use contraception and practitioners to provide contraception and related information.
Enshrining the right to contraception into federal law would reverse steps already taken by state legislatures to restrict access to contraceptives and ensure that any future court rulings would not endanger access to this essential health care.
Welcome back to Under the Dome, your weekly update on the goings-on of the Missouri state legislature.
Majority rule survives as dysfunction, chaos reign in Jefferson City
The Missouri Legislature ended its session for the year in a display of utter dysfunction with only a few bills reaching the finish line despite Republicans holding a super majority.
The chaos worked in the favor of democracy this year, however, as a resolution that would have stripped Missourians of their century-old right to amend the state constitution through the initiative petition process was stalled out in the final hours of session. It paves the way for ballot measures including paid sick days and improved wages for workers as well as the right to access abortion. A majority of Missouri voters can pass these measures into law using the initiative petition process in place since 1907.
Missourians told politicians that they must protect majority rule and the essential principle of “one person, one vote” in Jefferson City in January. Photo by Ryan Gavin/Progress MO.
The victory was possible through a massive and sustained nonpartisan wave of support to protect the sacred principle of “one person, one vote” as well as pro-democracy legislators who filibustered to quash the resolution.
As noted in the Missouri Independent, the session was the least productive and most chaotic session in living memory.
“In the end, only 28 non-budget bills found success this year. That’s fewer than the previous low-water mark in 2020, when only 31 bills passed because the legislative session was upended by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Independent reported.
At every turn, legislators failed to enact laws that would actually improve people’s lives, from expanding child care tax credits to banning child marriage to supporting children in foster care. Even a bipartisan bill allowing women to pick up an annual supply of birth control pills rather than going to the pharmacy every few months failed to advance.
What legislators instead were able to pass directly hurts Missourians, such as the ban on Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood, an essential health care provider on which thousands of Missourians – often those in vulnerable populations – depend. Not to mention the education spending bill that takes money from public schools and pumps them into private charter schools and vouchers.
Dean Plocher screenshot via YouTube.
Certainly a low point for the session was the thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion of the investigation of House Speaker Dean Plocher, who was under investigation throughout the year for gross violations of the public trust, including lobbying for unneeded and expensive communications software, double billing travel expenses and threatening staffers who dared to truthfully report about his unethical behavior. Although Plocher was publicly called out for obstructing the investigation by the House Ethics Committee and intimidating potential witnesses, the investigation was ultimately dropped.
The good news is that despite the dysfunction in Jefferson City, voters continue to hold the power to put forth ballot measures that matter to them and to change the tide under the dome.
Power dynamics are always shifting, and anyone watching the goings on in the capitol could plainly see that politics as usual are broken in Missouri. The winds of change are blowing like an afternoon pop-up storm in late spring. This is what a super majority looks like. It’s time to break it.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The people of Missouri came together with a united message this legislative session: asking politicians to stop their radical attack on the initiative petition process. After months of political infighting, tens of thousands of calls, emails, and meetings, plus an over fifty-hour filibuster, the Missouri House and Senate adjourned for the year without passing any changes to the process.
“This is a huge victory for Missourians,” said Liz McCune, Executive Director of Progress MO. “The initiative petition process is an essential part of our democracy that allows voters to have a direct say in the policies and issues that matter to them most.”
The legislature attempted to pass multiple versions of their radical ideas at times requiring up to 75% approval from voters for a ballot measure to pass.
This was not the first attempt by radical politicians to attack the initiative petition process. Progress MO will continue to combat all attempts to end majority rule and remove power from hardworking Missourians.
Greetings, fellow Missourians! It’s been a lively week in Jefferson City, with plenty of political developments to keep us on our toes. Let’s dive into the latest happenings.
Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, center, speaks to reporters after the Senate approved a budget. With Rizzo are, from left, Sens. Karla May, Doug Beck of Affton, Steven Roberts of St. Louis and Lauren Arthur of Kansas City. Photo by Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent.
Despite having months to hammer out the state’s spending plan, the Missouri Senate narrowly avoided a budgetary impasse by just 24 hours. With a dysfunctional GOP supermajority, Democrats played a crucial role in passing the $51.7 billion budget.
Even Governor Parson thinks unelected AG Bailey has gone too far
Missouri State Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, speaks during a press conference in January. Sen. Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg, stands to his left. The pair, along with Sen. Nick Schroer, R-St. Charles County, are being sued for defamation. Photo by Eric Lee/STLPR.
Governor Mike Parson made waves this week by pushing back against Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s legal defense of three Republican senators sued for spreading false information. Parson’s criticism highlights growing concerns about the state’s legal strategy and underscores divisions within the Republican Party over issues of accountability and transparency.
House Republicans stall child marriage ban
A bipartisan effort to outlaw all child marriages in Missouri has hit a roadblock in the state House. Despite overwhelming support in the Senate, the legislation has stalled in a House committee, raising concerns about the influence of extreme views on marriage within the Republican Party. With just over a week left in the legislative session, advocates are urging House Republicans to prioritize the safety and well-being of Missouri’s young people by advancing this critical bill.
Politicians reportedly hell-bent on stripping voters of rights
As we’ve reported here, Missouri Republicans are diverting attention from the state budget to an alarming proposition: making it harder to amend the constitution through initiative petitions.
Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin of Shelbina speaks after passage of a $51.7 billion state budget as Sen. Lincoln Hough of Springfield waits for his turn to speak. Photo by Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent.
Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin told the Missouri Independent she aims to push the initiative petition bill to a vote before the session ends on May 17. This bill proposes changes that would require constitutional amendments to pass not only by a simple majority statewide but also in a majority of congressional districts. Such alterations could seriously undermine the democratic process.
Democrats, concerned about potential suppression of voter voices, are gearing up to filibuster. Meanwhile, initiative petition campaigns face daunting new hurdles. Recent successful ballot measures, such as Medicaid expansion, have spurred GOP efforts to restrict citizen-led initiatives. As Republicans seek to overhaul the petition process, the future of grassroots democracy in Missouri hangs in the balance.
Progress MO launches the Missouri Freedom Project
Screenshot from the new Missouri Freedom Project website.
Progress Missouri has kicked off an exciting new initiative aimed at holding our state’s politicians accountable. The Missouri Freedom Project seeks to shed light on the actions and statements of elected officials that don’t align with their public rhetoric. This project empowers Missourians to make informed decisions by highlighting politicians’ records on issues like reproductive rights, workers’ rights, voter rights and public education. It’s a bold step toward transparency and accountability in our state’s politics.
Don’t let them get away with it
Stay tuned for more updates on Missouri politics as we navigate the twists and turns of the legislative session. Remember, your voice matters, so stay informed and engaged in shaping the future of our state!
