Missouri’s State Auditor held a news conference to call out Kim Gardner, the former St. Louis Circuit Attorney, for not complying with his audit of her office during her tenure. … St. Louis County and the City of St. Louis now plan to use a portion of the more than half-billion dollars from the Rams/NFL settlement on everyday needs like roads, sidewalks, and water mains. … St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones wants to create a taxpayer-funded loan fund to help people pay sales taxes, property taxes, and insurance premiums to properly license their vehicles. The city is plagued by people driving with no license plates or expired temp tags. … Governor Mike Parson lashes out at fellow Republicans in the legislature for repeating false claims that a Kansas City Chiefs fan was an illegal immigrant who opened fire during the mass shooting at the Chiefs Super Bowl victory parade and rally. … President Joe Biden pledged “ironclad” support for Israel in its war against the terror group Hamas, but now he is withholding thousands of U.S.-made weapons from Israel. … Former President Donald Trump was reined in by a judge for audibly cursing and shaking his head as porn star Stormy Daniels testified about having sex with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump is on trial for allegedly disguising hush money payments to Daniels to benefit his 2016 presidential campaign. … Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, a rising star in the GOP, removes a claim from her new book that she once met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. … Our quote of the week from St. Louis Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III on the possibility of the team seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers in the coming years for upkeep and upgrades at Busch Stadium.

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Progressive Democrats in St. Louis, like Aldermanic President Megan Green and Congresswoman Cori Bush, are railing against police crackdowns on pro-Palestinian tent-camp protests at colleges in St. Louis and across the United States, as Democrat New York Mayor Eric Adams takes a strong stance in support of police in ending protests that have resorted to vandalism, violence, and antisemitism. Should President Joe Biden stand more firmly with Adams or continue to lean toward Green and Bush? ... Fredbird and Louie were among the Missouri professional sports team mascots dropping off signatures in Jefferson City to put legalized sports betting on the Missouri ballot in November. Initiative petition drives will likely put the issues of minimum wage and abortion rights on the ballot as well. ... Democrats in the Illinois legislature use their supermajority to propose, pass, and sign into law a change in the rules for the election of state lawmakers within 24 hours. ... Former President Donald Trump gets fined for violating the gag order in his criminal trial in New York, but soars in polls, including our exclusive poll from Emerson College and The Hill, showing Trump leading President Biden in all seven so-called “swing states” likely to decide the 2024 presidential election. ... Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene may be wearing out her welcome among fellow Republicans as she pushes to remove Speaker of the House Mike Johnson in the week ahead. ... Our Quote of the Week was from legendary Mizzou men’s basketball coach, Norm Stewart, who was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians at the state capitol.

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The Missouri Legislature defunds Planned Parenthood ahead of voters getting a chance to restore abortion rights in the state. … The issue of a state-appointed police board taking over the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department just keeps rolling in Jefferson City. … The St. Louis Board of Aldermen is proposing a hike in the city's sales tax rate. … The city removes a refugee couple and their makeshift shelter from the sidewalk, where they'd been living in front of someone's house for more than three years. … Universities—including Washington University in St. Louis—continue to grapple with tent camps and protests against Israel’s sustained bombing and ground campaign in Gaza in the months following a Hamas-led surprise attack in Israel last October. … Former President Donald Trump endures a week of damaging testimony in his New York trial and also argues for immunity before the U.S. Supreme Court. … President Joe Biden says he will debate the former president, but he's been saying a lot of things that may not be true.

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Hancock and Kelley on FOX 2 take on the top issues of the week. On the agenda:

• Illinois’ biggest county in the St. Louis area no longer wants to be in the same state as Chicago.
• Disturbing surprises show up on the desks of members of the Missouri legislature: dessert ‘brownies’ — along with a note saying they contain dog feces.
• Donald Trump’s so-called “Hush-Money” trial has begun — is that worse for him or President Biden.

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The Wall Street Journal had an extremely unflattering front-page report about the demise of downtown St. Louis. ...

First lady Jill Biden was in St. Louis to raise money for her husband’s reelection bid. ...

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey files a lawsuit to stop the latest incarnation of President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. ...

Iran attacks Israel with more than 300 drones and missiles. Israel claims its air defense system stopped 99% of those drones and missiles. ...

Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden both try to address potentially the most damaging issues for their campaigns: abortion rights for Mr. Trump and inflation for Mr. Biden. ...

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announces a new ATF rule that will effectively close the so-called gun show loophole by requiring more gun-sellers to run background checks on more gun buyers. ...

Our Quote of the Week had to do with the death of O.J. Simpson and painful memories and emotions felt very close to home here in St. Louis.

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We begin with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland taking note of violent crime in St. Louis and pledging to do something about it. ...

The rise of the write-in candidates and the fall of right-wing school board candidates in Tuesday's local elections. ...

We’re keeping up with former President Donald Trump's courtroom battles and a big endorsement in a key Missouri congressional race. ...

Israel admits fault for a bombing that killed World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza, as a rift between President Joe Biden and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gets wider. ...

Democrats go all-in on the abortion issue for the November elections. Can it turn red states like Missouri and Florida blue? ...

Is independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. fanning the flames of the January 6 Capitol riot? It's our quote of the week. 

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• Viral videos of violent, even deadly, after-school fights among teens in St. Louis County lead to calls for action from the state capital to the nation’s capital. ...
• A new bipartisan bill in the Missouri legislature would ban marriage for those under the age of 18. Currently, 16- and 17-year-olds can marry someone who’s also under 21 with parental consent. ...
• The City of St. Louis is leading an alarming population decline in the St. Louis region. Census estimates show the city has lost 20% of its population in the last 20 years—more than half of its population in the last 50 years. ...
• Riverfront Times founder and long-time Donnybrook panelist on KETC (PBS St. Louis) Ray Hartmann announces that he’s running for Congress as a Democrat against six-term St. Louis County Congresswoman Ann Wagner.
• Special Counsel Robert Hur testified before the House Judiciary Committee about his investigation into President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, and Hur’s assertion that the president comes off as a “well-meaning, elderly man” with a poor memory. ...
• A Georgia judge rules that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can stay on as prosecutor in the Donald Trump election interference case, but Nathan Wade, Willis’s former lover, who she hired as special prosecutor in the case, must resign his position. ...
• Pop singer Olivia Rodrigo hands out free Plan B emergency contraception (aka “morning after” pills) at her concert at Enterprise Center in St. Louis. It drew international backlash, with her core audience being made up of young girls. Plan B will no longer be handed out at her concerts. ...
• Our Quote of the Week was from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who’s proposing a national four-day week in the United States.

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A call for retired cops to help St. Louis out of its reckless driving epidemic. ... Missouri Governor Mike Parson, a self-proclaimed "mega" Kansas City Chiefs fan, is receiving backlash after pardoning the son of Chiefs head coach Andy Reid. The coach's son, Britt Reid, was drunk and speeding when he crashed into multiple cars on an Interstate 435 ramp near Arrowhead Stadium in 2021, which left 5-year-old Ariel Young with traumatic brain injury. Reid was sentenced to three years in prison in 2022. Parson commuted the rest of his sentence to house arrest after just 16 months. Republicans and Democrats are blasting the governor over this. He's offered deepest sympathy to Young's family but said Reid has already served more time than others convicted of similar offenses. ... Are Democrats fired up after President Joe Biden's State of the Union Address? Critics claim the speech was more appropriate for a campaign rally, with President Biden repeatedly blasting former President Donald Trump without ever naming him and instead referring to him as his predecessor. Though Biden struggled with words at times, he avoided any major gaffes, and displayed passion, wit, and stamina in the nearly 70-minute speech. ... Amid all of the accolades from Democrats for the president’s State of the Union performance comes a challenge from Trump, to see how Biden holds up in a debate.  

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A FOX 2 New interview with a St. Louis alderwoman about the city’s reckless driving crisis is interrupted by blatant reckless driving: motorcyclists doing wheelies, running a red light, driving on the wrong side the road and circling cars waiting for the light to change. Alderwoman Cara Spencer is calling for booting the wheels of reckless drivers. The mayor and aldermanic president want to bring back red-light cameras, which would put citations in the mail for offenders, tickets offenders will likely be ignored, knowing they face no threat of jail time. ...

Missouri Governor Mike Parson sends Missouri National Guardsmen and state highway patrol troopers to help with the border crisis in Texas, just as the crisis shifts to California. ...

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker calls for nearly $900 million in tax hikes to help cover the cost of processing more than 35,000 migrants who’ve crossed the southern U.S. border and are now flooding the sanctuary city of Chicago. ...

Republican Congressman Mike Bost, who represents a large portion of the St. Louis area in Illinois, agrees with President Joe Biden on something. He says Congress should be in session instead of taking a two-week winter break with pressing issues like the border crisis and military aid for Ukraine and Israel demanding action. ...

Former President Donald Trump wins the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina in a landslide over former S.C. Governor Nikki Haley in her home state.

Missouri Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who is running for governor, creates a stir by saying military veterans should not get special treatment like discounts. "I don't think we ought to say if you're in the military, we'll give you this discount, but everybody else has to pay twice as much,” he said. “If it's good for veterans, it's good to do it for everyone." ...

The Alabama Supreme Court rules that frozen embryos in fertility clinics are human children. ...

Our Quote of the Week was from Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, who said Governor Parson’s use of the word “thugs” to describe the suspects in the deadly mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl victory parade/rally was a racist dog whistle.

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St. Louis City’s reckless driving crisis claims the lives of two visitors from Chicago after they attended a concert downtown. It comes a year of a teenage girl visiting from Tennessee lost her legs in a reckless driving crash. She was hit by a vehicle while walking downtown. Instead of addressing the glaring lack of enforcement of traffic laws, Mayor Tishaura Jones calls out the Board of Aldermen for stalling her plan for street safety improvements. ...

Republicans and Democrats in the Missouri Legislature back Valentine’s Law, which would enact mandatory prison time for those knowingly fleeing police in a vehicle. It is named for St. Louis County Police Detective Tony Valentine who was killed by a fleeing driver in 2021. ...

Missouri Senate Democrats filibuster initiative petition reform at the state capitol. Reform measures aim to make it more difficult to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. ...

Democrat St. Louis Congresswoman Cori Bush lashes out at Republicans for Missouri’s lax gun laws in the wake of the mass shooting during the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl victory parade and rally, even though Kansas City and St. Louis have laws making it illegal for juveniles to carry weapons. Twenty-two people were shot and a woman was killed in what authorities say was an exchange of gunfire among juveniles. ...

President Biden blasts Russian President Vladmir Putin over the death of Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison. Navalny had been poisoned and jailed after leading protests against Putin and the Kremlin. President Biden also called out former President Donald Trump for saying he would not protect NATO allies from invasion by Putin and Russia if those allies fail to pay their fair share toward mutual defense. ...

A New York judge levied a $364 million judgement against Donald Trump and his family’s businesses in a civil business fraud trial. ...

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis took the witness stand and admitted hiring her lover as a special prosecutor in an election fraud case against Donald Trump. Attorneys for one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants are seeking to have Willis removed from the case and possibly the entire case thrown out of court. ...

Our Quote of the Week was from Cardinals pitcher Matthew Liberatore, as the team reports to Jupiter, Florida, for spring training.

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The chief of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department heads to Jefferson City to fight a state takeover of his department. ...

There's another viral video of another Missouri Republican breaking out a flamethrower. ...

Both Republicans and Democrats lament our do-nothing Congress, from border security to aid for Israel and Ukraine to impeaching a cabinet secretary. ...

In our quote of the week, a local congresswoman calls into question President Joe Biden’s memory and also calls for his resignation. ...

There's a new Democratic candidate for Congress from St. Louis. ...

On this Super Bowl Sunday, St. Louis Aldermanic President Megan Green says the people have spoken: they want to spend NFL settlement money on city pay raises, among other things. ...

Should Missouri and Illinois follow Michigan's lead in sending parents to prison for crimes their children commit? 

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