Republicans Now Trying to Trick Voters Into Limiting Their Own Power

Missourians are about to vote on their own power to change the state constitution.

Missouri, along with 26 other states and Washington, D.C., has a process by which voters can gather signatures and initiate amendments to the state constitution by putting a ballot measure to a vote. As it stands, if a citizen-led amendment wins a simple statewide majority—six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts—the initiative will pass.

But Tuesday’s primary election might take that away.

Amendment 4, placed on the ballot by Missouri Republicans, would require any citizen-led amendment to pass in all eight districts, rather than the traditional six. This means that any single district could tank an amendment, regardless of popular support in the rest of the state. No other state makes it that hard.

“I view it as a politician’s power grab,” Franklin County, Missouri, resident Derek Schriewer told The Missouri Independent. “They are trying to take away a typical function that we have had for over 100 years for citizens to be able to hold politicians accountable.”

Doug Kerr, chairman of the Knox County Republican Central Committee and a staunch supporter of Amendment 4, argued that GOP interests were not getting enough representation—despite the Republican supermajority in the state legislature.

“Our voices are not being heard,” Kerr told The Missouri Independent. “We’re not just a democracy. We are a democratic republic, and the rights of the minority should at least be heard. And right now, they’re not.”

Amendment 4 has powerful allies, and not just among Republican state representatives. It has also been endorsed by Missouri’s most salient agricultural lobby, the Missouri Farm Bureau, as well as the Missouri Right to Life PAC. Campaign spending, both for and against the measure, is through the roof, and Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins is predicting the highest primary turnout among Missouri voters since 2004.

In recent years, Missouri voters have relied on citizen-led amendments to expand Medicaid access, legalize recreational marijuana, approve sports betting, and enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

The irony of Amendment 4 is that it only cuts one way. Lawmakers aren’t limiting their own power to change the state constitution—they will still have the power to put constitutional amendments on the ballot. But if voters want to do the same thing, they’re out of luck.

President Donald Trump claimed Monday he was in talks to open the Strait of Hormuz “literally by tomorrow”—while Iran has denied speaking to the United States. 

Speaking at a press conference to sign an executive order, Trump rambled about ongoing talks with Iran to reopen the strait. 

“It’s not very complex. We’re talking about the strait, the opening of the strait, having it open, literally by tomorrow. Completely open,” Trump said. The president claimed that would be the first phase before proceeding to denuclearization talks.

Don’t hold your breath. Trump has teased an imminent deal with Iran more than three dozen times since the war began six months ago, and this doesn’t appear to be any different. 

Trump told reporters Sunday that he’d called off another “massive attack,” because U.S. allies in the Middle East believed that Tehran was ready to make “a deal on Hormuz.” The president indicated that the talks would begin Monday. 

But Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry, told reporters Monday that Iran was not currently in talks with the U.S. He said Iran was in the final stages of discussions with Oman to open the strait.  

In response, Trump called Iran’s leadership “unbelievably duplicitous,” claiming in a social media post before the press conference they’d begged him to restart talks.  

Still, Trump inexplicably promised there would be progress. “We’re gonna find out today or tomorrow. I mean, they’re gonna go quickly, one way or another,” he said during the press conference. 

The cyclosporiasis outbreak just turned deadly.

Two people died in Michigan after contracting cyclosporiasis, the state’s health department announced Monday. They’re the first confirmed deaths in the country that have been tied to the public health crisis spurred by a single-celled parasite found on iceberg lettuce.

Both people had “significant underlying health conditions that may have been impacted by cyclosporiasis and dehydration,” the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement, noting that no additional information about the specific cases will be shared.

“Cyclosporiasis is generally not a life-threatening illness,” the statement continued. “Death resulting from cyclosporiasis is uncommon in the United States.”

So far, the state health agency has tallied 11,234 cases and 193 confirmed hospitalizations associated with the illness.

Those numbers would indicate that federal health agencies are far behind in their own analysis of the parasite’s spread—or, at the very least, are failing to inform the American people as to the true nature of the nationwide threat. As of Monday, the CDC’s “fast facts” page on cyclosporiasis recorded “at least 1,947” cases and 98 hospitalizations across nine states.

In a July 28 memo, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that it had received reports of at least 6,707 laboratory-confirmed domestic cases of cyclosporiasis, though an additional 11,500 cases had not yet been confirmed.

An analysis by The New Republic of state health agency data found at least 18,517 cases across the nine states listed by the CDC. The survey compiled reported figures from Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. However, several of those states had not updated their own public-facing data within days or even weeks, suggesting that the current case tally could be much higher.

Health officials said that anyone experiencing symptoms should reach out to a health care provider right away. Symptoms of cyclosporiasis can include sudden, prolonged diarrhea; bloating, severe stomach cramps, loss of appetite, extreme lethargy, and even a low-grade fever, though many people infected by the parasite show no symptoms at all, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Those most at risk of serious illness from the parasite are the elderly, infants, and people with compromised immune systems.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Thursday that public health investigators were having a difficult time tracking the disease as it can take people one to two weeks to exhibit symptoms after the consumption of infected food.

The current outbreak has been linked to iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell restaurants, supplied by one of the largest fresh-produce suppliers in the country, Taylor Farms. The pro-Trump produce supplier sells products to Walmart, Sam’s Club, Kroger, SYSCO, Aldi, Target, and Dollar General. It also sells food for private-label brands such as Whole Foods’ “365” line, and offers assembly-line products for a slew of fast-food chains, including McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Subway, and more.

Investigators are also examining other possible causes for the uptick, which has seen cases of cyclosporiasis increase across 45 states in 2026 thus far. It is not clear if the cases are all tied to the contaminated lettuce, according to the CDC.

Strip clubs, casinos, designer purses, guns, an Adam Sandler puzzle, 30 different ice cream flavors, and a private performance of Ed Sheeran’s “Hills of Aberfeldy”: Representative Chuck Edwards has a long pattern of creepy behavior, and the House Ethics Committee just detailed all of it.

The House Ethics Committee Monday released a 25-page report on the congressman’s inappropriate conduct towards two young women staffers in his office, accusing him of violating House rules related to “sexual harassment and hostile workplaces.”

On pages 5 and 6 of the report, the committee lays out, in detail, a long list of Edwards’s inappropriate conduct, which made the women in his employ feel uncomfortable and unsafe.

The list includes lavish vacations, expensive gifts, trips to a staffer’s house to do her yardwork, and messages that made both women uncomfortable. In the case of one staffer, he arranged for a private singer to go to her “birthday party to sing Ed Sheeran’s ‘Hills of Aberfeldy’ and say that it was ‘from a special someone,’” after which the staffer told a friend she was “scared lowkey.”

After one staffer went to a restaurant the congressman recommended, he texted her: “I’m burning with jealousy because I wanted to be the person to introduce you to it.” After a staffer accompanied Edwards to a work event, he wrote: “You’re so fun to be with, so easy to talk to, and I love listening to you. By all means—let’s explore more of DC together. We seem to have a fondness for many of the same things. Even where we do not, I’ll enjoy the adventure alongside you!”

When the same staffer later left Edwards’s office, he read a poem “at her going away party in the congressional office accompanied by a slideshow, during which he cried. Several staffers present testified that they felt uncomfortable, and Representative Edwards acknowledged in his own testimony that he could tell the staff felt uncomfortable.”

The House Ethics Committee noted that many messages central to the investigation were mysteriously missing from the congressman’s phone. Edwards also deleted a photograph of 30 different types of ice cream that he had delivered to a staffers house, as well as her response: “Thank you, but this seems a bit excessive.”

“You looked like you needed a lot of cheering up!” the congressman texted back. “My heart was breaking seeing you like that.”

When the same staffer later wrote “I don’t think dinner is a great idea,” the congressman responded:

It’s disappointing to feel something that used to be easy has gotten complicated. Whether we were talking about cat poop, crime plots, or thoughts more meaningful—I’ve always valued the time we shared, and the money we won :) and I thought you might too. I didn’t expect outside chatter to change that. Still, I understand. You get to set the boundaries, and I get to respect them. If you ever feel easy again, I hope you’ll give me the signal.

The House Ethics Committee began investigating Representative Edwards in late April for then-unspecified “allegations.” Reports of inappropriate conduct with two young female staffers soon followed, including a handwritten note from the congressman that read, “Your kindness, encouragement, and light-heartedness have written a complex chapter in my heart that I will never stop reading.”

Edwards has been married to his wife, Teresa, since 1980.

Despite this mountain of evidence to the contrary, Edwards continues to insist that he did nothing wrong.

“Representative Edwards has continued to deny any wrongdoing publicly and to the Committee. He has also refused to acknowledge the reality of the power imbalance between a Member of Congress and young staffers,” the report states. “This shows a lack of self-awareness and accountability.”

In one staffer’s testimony before the committee, she said that Edwards completely ignored “the fact that [the staffer was] a young female in politics and that [her] image is everything. And while he can navigate rumors like those that are circulating now without concern because he is, I guess, a male in politics, he had no regard for how something like this could impact my career.”

Moving forward, the committee intends to “bring a privileged resolution for consideration and vote by the full House.”

This story has been updated.

The Department of Homeland Security has drastically ramped up efforts to add DNA from nearly one million immigrants to a massive criminal database. Most of them have no criminal history; some of them are kids.

In 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement added up to roughly 920,000 DNA profiles into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, a database used for conducting criminal investigations, WIRED reported Monday. That’s equivalent to more than 2,700 new profiles every day for an entire year.

We know that most of the people added to the database have no criminal record because most of the people who have been detained by ICE as part of President Donald Trump’s massive deportation crusade have no criminal record.

New research from Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology, published in a report titled “Raiding the Genome: How the United States Government Is Abusing Its Immigration Powers to Amass DNA for Future Policing” uncovered a huge increase in the rate of DNA collection from undocumented immigrants. Customs and Border Protection has historically been responsible for collecting DNA from immigrants entering through the U.S.-Mexico border.

Between October 2020 and December 2024, CBP collected the DNA of at least 1.36 million people, more than one dozen times the rate of ICE’s DNA collection during the same period. Even so, CBP’s prior collection rate has been dwarfed by the new data provided by ICE.

Among the scores of immigrants whose genomes are now being tracked by the government are the children held at the family detention center in Dilley, Texas, the source of multiple reports documenting unsafe living conditions.

“None of the families at Dilley have been convicted of a crime,” Representatives Joaquin Castro, Greg Stanton, and Nanette Barragán said in a joint statement to WIRED. “They do not belong in a database meant for violent criminals, especially children.”

The ICE facility in Dilley has been the source of horrific reports about living conditions. Records released to Georgetown by CBP identified 492 children under age 14 whose DNA was sent to the FBI in 2025—including 33 seven-year-olds, 32 six-year-olds, and 21 five-year-olds, WIRED reported.

And breaking with past precedent, ICE has also begun charging immigrants who refuse to submit a DNA sample when they are taken into custody. WIRED identified two prosecutions filed in 2025 against people in immigration custody who’d refused DNA collection.

In response to questions from WIRED, a DHS spokesperson defended DNA collection and claimed the agency had collected DNA from children in order to verify family relationships. That program is distinct, however, from the DNA collection program centered in WIRED’s reporting.