Jefferson City

Since 1992, Broadway Café in the heart of Westport has remained a central part of Kansas City's coffee scene. Plus: Ice skaters in mid-Missouri have to drive up to two hours in order to find a rink where they can practice their sport, but these two teens aren't letting that stop them.

It's already hard to become a competitive figure skater. But it's even harder in rural Missouri, where there's just one ice rink within a two hour drive: Washington Park Ice Arena in Jefferson City.

It’s the last week before the midterm break in the Missouri legislative session. What’s winning out – bipartisan agreement about how to spend the state’s record budget surplus? Or the acrimony that's paralyzed the General Assembly around controversial issues in recent years?

Reparation efforts in urban area are gaining national attention, as both Kansas City and St. Louis study what they can do to make amends for harm inflicted on African Americans. But elsewhere in Missouri, rural areas are taking their own steps toward righting historic wrongs on a neighborhood level.

Once a Democratic stronghold, a swing congressional district in northern Missouri became dominated by Republicans, thanks to a national realignment and the influence of conservative media. Plus: Why a Democratic candidate thinks she has a shot to flip a Kansas House district in Johnson County.

Even as the Jan. 6 hearings play out, election misinformation keeps spreading. NPR tracked four leaders preaching false information about election fraud at hundreds of grassroots events nationwide.

With congressional redistricting out of the limelight for now, education issues are moving to the forefront in Topeka and Jefferson City.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said the LGBTQ exhibit was removed last week because it didn't receive approval from a state board. By that logic, Democrats say all exhibits currently on display should be removed.

As hospitals fill up and people continue to fall to the delta variant, a story from Missouri's past reveals this isn't the state's first battle with vaccine hesitancy.

Lawmakers in Kansas and Missouri worked to limit the power of certain officials at the state and local levels to take emergency actions during a public health crisis.

Missouri lawmakers are on spring break, but still have hot button issues to work through when they return.

The Missouri legislature has been busy as it reaches the halfway-point of the 2021 session and the peregrine falcon population in the Midwest is recovering thanks to conservation efforts.