The neighborhoods of north St. Louis are far from the Supreme Court’s marble steps, but what transpired in Washington last month had a significant impact on Missouri. The court’s 6-3 decision to declare a Louisiana congressional map to be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander resolved more than just a Deep South case. It sent a signal that reverberated all the way to Jefferson City, where Republicans in Missouri have spent the better part of two years watching the legal landscape change in their favor. The current configuration of Missouri’s 1st Congressional District has been in place for many years. For the…
Author: Sierra Foster
Sierra Foster
Born in Kansas City, Sierra Foster writes about politics and serves as Senior Editor at kbsd6.com. She was raised paying attention to this city, not just living in it. Sierra has a strong, deep connection to Kansas City, from the neighborhoods east of Troost to the discussions that take place in the city hall halls. Sierra, who is presently enrolled at the University of Kansas to pursue a degree in Political Science, applies the rigor of academic study to her journalism. She writes about politics in Missouri and Kansas as someone who genuinely cares about what happens to the people in these communities—the policies that impact them, the leaders who represent them, and the civic forces influencing their futures—rather than as an outsider watching from a distance. Her editorial coverage encompasses state-level policy, local government, and the national political currents that permeate bi-state regional life. Whether it's a city council vote or a Senate race, she has a special gift for turning complex policy language into writing that feels urgent, relatable, and worthwhile. Sierra seldom sits still off the page. She claims that playing soccer on a regular basis has sharpened her instincts for political reporting because of the sport's teamwork, strategy, and requirement to read a changing game in real time. She's probably somewhere in Kansas City with her friends when she's not writing or on the pitch, discovering new reasons to adore a city she already knows so well.
Record-breaking events in track and field have a certain quality that makes them seem both inevitable in retrospect and utterly unexpected in the moment. That kind of momentum was something that Ahmad Hardy was familiar with. The Missouri running back, who broke the Mizzou single-season school record by rushing for 1,649 yards and 16 touchdowns in a single season, didn’t have a lot of hype behind him. He was doing it consistently, repeatedly, and with the silent accumulation of yards that most people didn’t notice until the total became unavoidable. In college athletics, records typically fall in this manner. Not…
Witnessing someone develop into the person they have always envisioned themselves to be is subtly amazing. Not in a cinematic sense. Not in the manner of a podium speech. Just in the typical, unyielding, patient manner that real life occasionally permits—when the circumstances coincide and the individual in question refuses to blink first. For Kansas City, that person is Matt Besler. Besler was the type of child who, depending on the season, participated in every sport while growing up in Overland Park. Baseball in the spring, basketball in the winter, and soccer in the fall. As a result, his dreams…
When the work stops, a certain kind of silence descends upon a river town. Not quiet and serene. The other type: deserted shops, an overly broad main street, and a diner where regulars still frequent, but primarily to reminisce about the past. By the early 2000s, that was the silence that had descended upon a number of small Missouri River towns. Industry had shifted. It had been followed by younger people. All that was left was a river that continued to flow and a populace that needed to make decisions. The Missouri itself has always been a complex entity. It…
Swope Parkway is a busy, broad road that runs through Kansas City’s southeast. There, traffic moves swiftly. Individuals come and go. It’s not the kind of place where people just vanish into thin air, but that’s precisely what appears to have happened. Suzann Page, a 67-year-old woman with blue eyes and gray hair, was last seen close to the 2300 block of that same parkway on Sunday morning at approximately 10:45 a.m. She had on pink shoes and a green dress with flowers. She appeared to be a grandmother traveling somewhere on a calm Sunday, according to most accounts. However,…
A house collapsing into the ground has a subtle, unsettling quality. There was only the ground collapsing beneath something that was meant to be permanent—no explosion, no warning siren. That type of disappearance has been the subject of years of research by Missouri State University geology professor Doug Gouzie. He tracks the flow of water by sending fluorescent dye into subterranean waterways, walking along stream banks, and wading through caverns. He is one of about a hundred doctorate-level researchers in the nation. And what he’s discovering, methodically and slowly, relates to something far bigger than sinkholes. The majority of Missouri…
If you stand long enough in a certain area of downtown Kansas City, between the T-Mobile Center and the former Kansas City Star building, you can practically see what the city is attempting to become. Below, the highway hums. The East Crossroads seems to be in a state of transition, neither forgotten nor fully developed. In the midst of that conflict, the Kansas City Royals made the decision to focus on their future. The 17.3-acre site, which is bounded by Grand Boulevard, Truman Road, and Locust Street, was the focus of that decision, which was made public in early 2024.…
Fifty tiny wooden buildings, each about the size of a large living room, have been erected on a cleared area of Kansas City land. Twenty feet in length. 240 square feet. Enough to breathe, sleep, and feel like you belong for the first time in a long time. You can see something quiet going on when you drive by this developing neighborhood. Not a ribbon-cutting ceremony or a government campaign. Something made by hand, primarily by veterans, for veterans. There’s a feeling that when community stops waiting for permission, it truly looks like this. A large portion of this work…
A few hundred people gathered outside Cox North Hospital in Springfield on a steamy August morning. Government representatives, executives in the healthcare industry, deans of universities, and nursing students with signs identifying the professions they wanted to pursue were all present. At a groundbreaking ceremony, Gov. Mike Kehoe was also present and referred to what he was witnessing as a “trendsetter.” However, that day’s launch wasn’t exactly typical either. At its home base, Cox North, the Alliance for Healthcare Education, a collaboration between Missouri State University, CoxHealth, Ozarks Technical Community College, and Springfield Public Schools, began construction on a $15…
Many people in Kansas City have spent decades learning to live around rather than with a particular stretch of highway. Bruce R. Watkins Drive, also known as U.S. Highway 71, slices through the East Side of the city like an unhealed wound. It has never been just a road for the predominantly Black communities on either side. It has served as a barrier, a source of pollution and noise, and a constant reminder of choices made in the past with little input from those who had to deal with the fallout. The city now has a new strategy. It’s also…