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Missouri Senator: Parson defying Trump by continuing to accept refugees

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Sen. Bob Onder, R-Lake St. Louis

State Senator Bob Onder, R-Lake St. Louis, says Gov. Mike Parson and other Republican governors have been “guilted into” continuing to welcome international refugees to their states. Last September, President Donald Trump issued an executive order requiring states and local governments to submit written consent if they want to continue letting refugees resettle in their communities.

Onder, a member of the Senate Conservative Caucus, says Parson and the other governors have issued “a big rebuke” to Trump.

“President Trump expended considerable political capital to give governors the opportunity to choose whether or not the refugee resettlement program is right for their states,” he says. “By governors saying ‘No, we’re going to side with the status quo over our president, I think in many cases they did not do what’s best for their states.”

Onder says accepting additional refugees costs too much social welfare money and the state has more pressing needs.

Missouri Governor Mike Parson speaks to the Capitol Press Corps after being sworn-in as governor on June 1, 2018 in Jefferson City (file photo by Tim Bommel/UPI)

“Refugee resettlement programs – they’re very lucrative for the social service agencies that participate in them,” says Onder. “But they impose big costs on the taxpayers of those states – social welfare costs, costs of multi-lingual education when the refugees don’t speak English. We know we’re at a time when we have teachers who are very poorly paid and we’d like to pay them more. The governor talks all the time about needing more money for transportation infrastructure and workforce development. And law enforcement needs our support – we have record high murder rates in St. Louis and Kansas City.”

Onder, in his final Missouri Senate term, says Trump is committed to revamping the federal immigration system.

“We have a backlog of 330,000 asylum seekers that aren’t processed. They’re approximately one million people around the world waiting to immigrate in an orderly way,” says Onder. “Between chain migration, the visa lottery, birthright citizenship, now mass waves of so-called refugees and asylum seekers, we have really disturbed the traditional orderly immigration process, where immigrants who play by the rules have a chance to come and become Americans.”

Parson says refugees boost the state’s workforce and add value and diversity to Missouri’s cities.

Last week, a federal judge blocked Trump’s order. A Washington Post article says U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte in Maryland said in his ruling that the president’s order “flies in the face of clear Congressional intent” of the 1980 Refugee Act by allowing state and local governments to block the resettlement of refugees in their jurisdictions.

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Backers of modernizing Missouri’s HIV law say it’s matter of life and death

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Legislation aimed at modernizing the state’s current HIV laws has been filed by a bipartisan group of Missouri lawmakers, who say the current laws are based on information that is no longer scientifically accurate.

State Rep. Holly Rehder, R-Scott City, briefs Capitol reporters on December 11, 2019 in Jefferson City. State Rep. Tracy McCreery, D-Olivette, is at left (file photo courtesy of Tim Bommel at Missouri House Communications)

State Rep. Holly Rehder, R-Scott City, hopes legislative leaders help push House Bill 1691 through quickly.

“Let’s work on these things (HIV and her prescription drug monitoring program legislation) and get them done to actually truly affect people’s daily lives at home,” Rehder says.

Supporters of the Rehder legislation want to see the laws change, so there is no longer an incentive to not get tested for HIV. They say current law treats HIV as a crime.

State Rep. Tracy McCreery, D-Olivette, joined Rehder at a December press conference at the Statehouse in Jefferson City. McCreery has filed her own version of the bill, which is similar to the Rehder bill. Representative McCreery tells Missourinet that modernizing the laws is critical.

“It’s a matter of life and death and it’s one of those issues that affects both rural and urban, suburban Missouri,” says McCreery. “And that’s why we’re working together.”

The Rehder and McCreery bills would both eliminate HIV-specific language in state law.

A coalition of groups ranging from Empower Missouri to the Missouri HIV Justice Coalition to the AIDS Project of the Ozarks is supporting the legislation. Spectrum Healthcare Executive Director Cale Mitchell tells Capitol reporters the state’s current laws are medically inaccurate.

“Diagnosis of a chronic illness should not be punitive and that’s what we have seen historically with the HIV laws that are in place,” Mitchell says.

Missouri’s current law has felony-level penalties if an HIV-positive person cannot prove that they disclosed their HIV status before engaging in sexual activity.

As for Rehder, she notes President Donald Trump (R) has aimed to cut HIV cases by 90 percent within ten years.

Empower Missouri says of the top 220 counties in the United States that are at risk of rapid dissemination of HIV infection among those who inject drugs, 13 counties are in Missouri.

All 13 of those Missouri counties are south of Interstate 70. They are Bates, Cedar, Crawford, Hickory, Iron, Madison, Ozark, Reynolds, Ripley, St. Francois, Washington, Wayne and Wright.

Missouri’s 2020 session begins Wednesday at noon in Jefferson City.

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Blunt defends president after evangelical magazine says Trump has ‘dumbed down morality’

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U.S. Senator Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, is sticking up for President Donald Trump, who was the target of an editorial in a prominent evangelical magazine. Last week’s Christianity Today opinion column calls for Trump’s removal from office. It says none of the president’s positives can balance the “moral and political danger we face under the leader of such grossly immoral character.”

From left: Sen. Mitch McConnell, President Donald Trump, Sen. Roy Blunt

The editorial goes on to say Trump has “dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration” and points to his hirings and firings of people who are now convicted criminals, immoral business actions and relationship with women. It also rips Trump’s Twitter feed having a “habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders.”

During CNN’s State of the Union program yesterday, Blunt defended the president.

“Well, I think that person looking at the president versus what the president’s done as president has got to be an outlier in everything I hear from the Christian community,” said Blunt. “The faith-based community generally is very supportive of this president because he’s been very supportive of them. What the president has done to allow faith-based institutions to get back as one of the potential options in adoption, something I care a lot about, what the president has done to try to assert religious freedom all over the world, really important.”

When asked if Blunt wrestles with the points made in the opinion piece, he goes a different direction.

“If you look at the president’s actions, if Roy Blunt looks at the president’s actions, no president in my lifetime has been as aggressive in trying to achieve the goals that faith-based voters have set out than this one has,” said Blunt.

Trump, who was impeached last week by the U.S. House, is expected to escape removal from office after his trial wraps up in the U.S. Senate.

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House impeaches President Trump, despite protests of Missouri Republicans

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In a historic vote, the U.S. House has impeached a sitting president. As expected, Missouri’s delegation voted along party lines in making President Donald Trump the third U.S. president in history to get impeached by the lower chamber.

Some took their turn to speak on the measure to put Trump on trial in the Senate on the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.  Comments became more contentious as the afternoon wore on.

In defending the case against the president, St. Louis Rep. Lacy Clay told his colleagues, “Our founders feared a lawless, amoral president would willfully put national security at risk for his own personal gain.”

Rep. Long listens to Rep. Smith on House floor December 18, 2019

Six of the eight House members from Missouri are Republicans.

East-central Missouri Republican Blaine Luetkemeyer says the whole process has been political: “Awhile ago the speaker spoke of the Pledge of the Allegiance,” says Luetkemeyer. “The last phrase of the pledge is justice for all. Justice is not something afforded to the president during the investigation. He was denied due process.”

Rep. Jason Smith of southern Missouri said, “I’m from the Show Me State, you have to show me. the only thing that you all have shown is that you are about to impeach a duly-elected president who has done nothing wrong.”

Southwestern Missouri Rep. Billy Long had 30 seconds to speak and said Trump has been a victim since he was sworn in. “He’s had his head held underwater for almost three years now, never coming up for a breath of air, just keep pushing him down. Lowest Black unemployment ever, lowest Hispanic unemployment ever, highest stock market ever, lowest unemployment in years.”

West-central Missouri Rep. Vicky Hartzler issued a statement before the vote: “Today’s vote is a gross abuse of power by Congress. This entire process to impeach President Trump is nothing more than a political calculation being made to undo the voice of nearly 63 million Americans. House Democrats fear they cannot beat him fairly at the ballot box, so they are intent in removing him at all costs.”

The case against Trump is likely to end in the Senate, Missouri’s senior Sen. Roy Blunt told Missourinet.

“If you can’t convince all of the Democrats in the House to be for the impeachment charges, it is highly unlikely that you’re going to convince any number of the Republicans in the Senate to be for that.”

Blunt says the charges are too weak and vague.

 

Blunt: People will want to know why did the House take all this time on impeachment (AUDIO)

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The Senate may have a trial of the president right after the first of the year, according to Missouri’s Roy Blunt. But he does not expect it to result in the removal of President Donald Trump.

Missourinet spoke with Sen. Blunt Friday after the House Judiciary Committee voted to approve impeachment articles against the president.

Blunt has said that he will be an impartial juror if the Senate has put Trump on trial. We asked him if that holds true now that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Fox News he has made up his mind: “I’m coordinating with the White House counsel. There will be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this to the extent that we can.”

Blunt said, “I do think we’re closer and closer to the point where the Senate can reach conclusions. The House is done. There are two articles of impeachment that are about as boiled down as they can possibly be to not very much. The bribery thing they talked about appeared to go away, the obstruction charge is something we’ll deal with.”

Missourinet: “Like McConnell, have you made up your mind?”

Blunt: “The likelihood that 20 Republicans would join every Democrat is pretty slim, and we’ll see. As I predicted for some time, a partisan determination to impeach by the House will almost certainly lead to a largely partisan vote in the Senate which means you would not have the votes you need to get this done.”

LISTEN TO INTERVIEW (3:15)

Blunt says the Senate, in the next few days, will decide on a trial date for after the first of the year.

 

Federal funding helps to expand virtual health care in rural Missouri

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture is giving more than $500,000 to expand virtual health care services in parts of rural Missouri. The USDA is providing the funding through the Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) grant program.

Photo courtesy of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Through the grant, Mercy Virtual will install video equipment to provide remote health services in parts of eastern, southern and southwest Missouri. The effort is expected to provide health care to about 210,000 area residents.

The grant will also allow Salem Memorial District Hospital in southern Missouri to put technology connecting rural Missouri schools in Dent, Reynolds, Iron, and Shannon Counties to Phelps Health Hospital in Rolla and SSM Health in St. Louis. The project is said to increase health care access to 2,300 rural Missouri students.

In 2017, President Donald Trump created the Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity to identify legislative, regulatory and policy changes that could promote agriculture and prosperity in rural communities. In January 2018, USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue presented the Task Force’s findings to Trump. These findings included 31 recommendations to align the federal government with state, local and tribal governments to take advantage of opportunities that exist in rural America. Increasing investments in rural infrastructure is a key recommendation of the task force.

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Missouri U.S. House members prepare to vote on whether to keep government open

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The U.S. House is scheduled to vote today on a temporary funding bill that would keep the federal government open for business through December 20. East-central Missouri Republican Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer tells Missourinet affiliate KWIX in Moberly otherwise, federal funding is scheduled to run out on Thursday.

Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) Photo courtesy of US House of Representatives

“I’m fearful we’re going to be stuck here over the Christmas holidays in a situation where we’re going to wind up pushing this can down the road one more time here because right now the whole process and the whole atmosphere here is so toxic that it’s very difficult to get anything done,” says Luetkemeyer.

He hopes Congress can avoid another government shutdown.

“I would love to say no, that’s not going to happen. But, I think it’s a very real possibility this time,” he says.

President Donald Trump has indicated he would sign the temporary funding bill, even though he’s demanding billions of dollars in other funding measures to build additional wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. The move is not going over well with Democrats.

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Sen. Blunt on impeachment process, his role and Trump’s approach

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Over the weekend, another whistleblower emerged who reportedly can corroborate the first account of President Trump’s conversation with the new Ukrainian president. President Trump is under an impeachment inquiry in the U.S. House to determine if he withheld aid to that country in return for intelligence information on his political rival, former Vice-President Joe Biden.

Missouri’s U.S. Senator Roy Blunt, a member of the Intelligence Committee, is also investigating the call to the Ukrainian President.

“I’m on the committee that’s supposed to look at all the things we can find and try to help come to conclusions with all of the information, rather than come to conclusions and then try to find the information that supports those conclusions.”

Senator Roy Blunt, appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday, said it doesn’t matter if there is another informant because “we’ve all seen the transcripts now so we can all back up what the whistleblower said as it relates to the transcript. I think the Speaker chose a fairly narrow topic here to move forward on, not very confusing. One way or another you’re going to decide is what the president says he said an impeachable problem or not.”

He told CBS’s Margaret Brennan Trump’s talk about asking other countries besides Ukraine to investigate Biden should not be taken seriously:  “I don’t know what the president was thinking,” Blunt said, “but I do know he loves to bait the press and he does that almost every day.”

Missourinet spoke with Sen. Blunt before the weekend talk show blitz.

He said that learning that the president knew Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on the call and that the U.S. Attorney General was also talking to foreign leaders about their questions is actually reassuring, as opposed to critics who fear the cabinet members were doing the president’s personal bidding.

Blunt says Speaker Pelosi has set up a narrow case to decide, and he expects the Democrat majority in the House will move quickly to impeach.

He does expect to hear from the initial whistleblower, “at some point in what appears to be a closed opportunity.”

“And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of the firsthand information, if there is firsthand information, isn’t something that our committee hears and should hear. I do know that the Inspector General would have looked at some of this information earlier and I look forward to seeing and hearing some of the things the Inspector General may have already heard,” he told Missourinet.

While Blunt supports the law protecting government whistleblowers, he questioned why those with firsthand knowledge did not come forward first.

“If this is such an important issue, where were the people that told the whistleblower—why weren’t they the whistleblower?” he asked.

Missourinet asked Sen. Blunt if Trump’s handling of the impeachment probe was helping or hurting the situation.

At that point, Blunt said he had not been asked or offered any talking points.

“They’ll have to decide how they deal with this. They’ve gone through almost two years of the Mueller investigation so they’ve got a lot more experience trying to fight these things they believe are unfair than anybody else does and I don’t have any advice for them as to how they should do their job. I just have a sense of how I should do mine, which is quickly try to get the information put together so that we can look at it, then based on the facts in front of us, make whatever recommendations the intelligence committee decides need to be made.”

Albright: from Waynesville resident to first female U.S. Secretary of State

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The nation’s first female Secretary of State spent time Thursday in Fulton recounting her journey from a newspaper reporter in Rolla to the nation’s highest diplomatic post.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright lectures at Westminster College in Fulton on September 19, 2019 (photo courtesy of Westminster Twitter page)

But the biggest part of Madeleine Albright’s speech was her warning that democracy “appears to be in retreat”, and her criticism of President Donald Trump (R).

Dr. Albright, who served as Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton (D) from 1997-2001, spoke to a capacity crowd of more than 1,500 at historic Westminster College. She tells the audience that President Trump “has become a source of comfort to anti-democratic forces across the globe.”

“The president has picked fights with Europe over trade, climate change, Iran and NATO instead of rallying our democratic allies to push back against Russia and compete together against China,” Albright says.

She says President Trump “touts a world in which each country is only out for itself.”

“It is a world in which the strong strut, the weak submit, and people everywhere may be divided into patriots and subscribers to, and I quote, ‘the ideology of globalism,’ whatever that may be,” says Albright.

Dr. Albright is also warning about Russia, saying Vladimir Putin’s “clear intent” is to divide the transatlantic community and cause NATO to collapse from within.

She served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1993-1997.

She also recapped her long career journey from a newspaper reporter in Rolla to becoming Secretary of State. Dr. Albright tells the audience she moved to southern Missouri’s Waynesville after college, where her husband was in the Army at Fort Leonard Wood.

Albright worked for the “Rolla Daily News”.

“Where I wrote obituaries and articles for the society page, reported on an occasional sports story, and even interviewed people who had seen a UFO,” Albright says, to audience laughter.

She also notes she sold classified ads in Rolla. She says her favorite read “Cemetery plot, owner must move, will sell at sacrifice.”

Westminster College is where former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946.

Previous Westminster Green Lecture speakers have included Presidents Harry Truman and Gerald Ford and Vice Presidents George H.W. Bush and Hubert Humphrey.

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Missouri GOP congressman describes opioid epidemic as a “scourge”; supports PDMP

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(Reporter Bailey Strohl at Missourinet Springfield affiliate KSGF Radio contributed to this story)

SPRINGFIELD, Mo.- A congressman who represents southwest Missouri on Capitol Hill says a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) is needed in the Show-Me State. U.S. Rep. Billy Long, R-Springfield, discussed the nation’s opioid crisis during a roundtable discussion this morning at Springfield’s Cox Medical Center South.

U.S. Rep. Billy Long, R-Springfield, speaks at a Springfield roundtable discussion about the opioid crisis on June 6, 2019 (photo courtesy of KSGF’s Bailey Strohl)

“No one doesn’t know someone that’s affected by it. I mean, it’s a scourge,” Long tells roundtable participants. “And so, that’s why we try and have get-togethers like this and find out what works and what doesn’t work.”

Congressman Long says the opioid crisis is killing people across the nation everyday.

“It’s killing 130 people a day in this country, I mean when I was growing up here in Springfield I never went home and my folks said so-and-so’s kid down the block died today,” says Long.

Cox officials are touting their new program that gives assistance and treatment to addicts who want to get clean. Cox officials also emphasize the need for a supervised short stay center to free up emergency rooms.

Congressman Long met with health care professionals today, including nurses. He toured Cox South’s neonatal intensive care unit to see how CoxHealth is treating babies who have a condition called Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, a condition caused by mothers who are addicted to opioids while pregnant.

“It is truly devastating to see the impact opioid addiction is having in our community. Touring the neonatal intensive care unit and seeing babies affected by opioid addiction is heart-wrenching,” Long says.

Congressman Long notes that President Donald Trump has signed legislation into law called the SUPPORT the Patients and Communities Act, which establishes grants to combat the opioid epidemic.

He says CoxHealth has been awarded a $790,000 federal grant to expand rural telemedicine services such as substance abuse counseling and mental health treatment.

Cox South is located on what’s known as Springfield’s “Medical Mile.”

Long supports a statewide PDMP, which is an electronic database that collects data on controlled substance prescriptions within a state. Long notes 49 other states have it, and that Missouri is the only state in the nation without a PDMP.

“It’s an anomaly that we don’t have it,” says Long.

The Missouri House approved PDMP during the 2019 session, but the measure died in the Senate due to opposition from the Senate Conservative Caucus.

PDMP sponsor State Rep. Holly Rehder, R-Scott City, tells Missourinet she intends to file the legislation again in January.

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