Missourians could soon pay with gold and silver after lawmakers approve odd bill
Missouri lawmakers this week, in a move that surprised some, approved a controversial bill that would make gold and silver legal tender in the state. The legislation, which passed both chambers of the General Assembly as an amendment to a sweeping finance-related bill, is headed to Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe's desk.
The Republican-led legislation would require state government entities to accept electronic versions of gold and silver, called 'electronic specie currency,' as forms of payment for taxes and public debts. While the measure would not require businesses to accept gold and silver as payment for private uses, such as groceries, it would allow them to do so.
'The goal is about restoring economic and political freedom back to everyday Missourians,' state Rep. Bill Hardwick, a Dixon Republican who sponsored a version of the bill, told The Kansas City Star at the state Capitol.
But the legislation is one of the more unusual bills considered by state lawmakers in recent years and earned only a passing mention during a House floor debate this week. Its passage this year came as a surprise to some in the state Capitol, as critics have scoffed at the idea and raised numerous questions about how it would work in practice.
State Rep. Kemp Strickler, a Kansas City Democrat, said he opposed the language of the bill dealing with gold and silver. However, he supported other parts of the larger legislation and ultimately voted 'present.'
'Not a fan of that part of it,' Strickler said. 'Assuming it gets signed, we're in the 'how do we implement' stage.'
The full text of the bill was still not available online Wednesday, more than 24 hours after passing through the General Assembly. However, the amendment, reviewed by the Star, would require the Missouri Department of Revenue to craft rules on how to implement the law after it would take effect in August if signed by Kehoe.
Strickler said the bill's passage was both concerning and surprising. He anticipated that many local businesses would choose not to accept gold and silver as forms of payment.
'I would think this would be a huge challenge for private businesses,' he said.
Lawmakers have filed versions of the legislation, often called the 'Constitutional Money Act,' over the past several years. The bills have received backing from the Missouri Freedom Initiative, a grassroots organization that supports right-wing issues such as lower taxes, gun rights, school choice and anti-abortion causes.
A message sent to the group's contact page was not immediately returned. Utah was the first state to legalize gold and silver as legal tender in 2011.
The legislation headed to Kehoe's desk was considered a compromise version of the bill. A previous version faced pushback from the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry for outright requiring businesses to accept gold and silver as payment.
While the chamber opposed the previous version, the prominent business advocacy group told the Star this week that it did not take a position on the new version approved by lawmakers.
'The Missouri Chamber did not take a position on this bill as it does not mandate private businesses accept gold and silver, but rather, leaves it up to employer discretion,' Megan Davis, a spokesperson for the chamber, said in an email.
Kehoe spokesperson Gabby Picard did not give any indication whether the Republican governor would sign the bill into law. She said in an email that the bill would 'receive a thorough review by Governor Kehoe and his team.'
Receiving change back?
Versions of the bill have been carried by members of the hard-right Missouri Freedom Caucus, a group of Republican senators who have pushed the GOP-controlled General Assembly to be more conservative.
One of the most vocal members of the caucus in recent years, former state Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican, made the bill one of his priorities as he mounted an unsuccessful campaign for governor last year.
'This is just giving our citizens another option when it comes to how they can pay their bills,' Eigel told the Star before last year's legislative session began. 'We live in an age where … the dollar is being inflated and abused by our friends up in Washington, D.C.'
One prominent Democrat, former Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo from Independence, previously called the idea 'absurd' and questioned how it would work in practice, particularly if a shopper paid with gold and wanted their change back.
'So when I go to a gas station and buy a Coke, a 20-ounce Coke, and I'd say, you know, here's my gold … Are they gonna give me back money in gold?' Rizzo told the Star in 2023.
When asked about this at the Capitol this week, Hardwick said that the bill would allow for a new market for electronic and paper methods of payment for gold and silver. With the paper methods, change would still exist like current money does, he said.
'I think that those things will work themselves out in time,' he said.
___
© 2025 The Kansas City Star.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
In draft congressional map, Texas Republicans bet big that gains with Latino voters will persist
WASHINGTON — In the 2024 election, Hispanic voters fled their traditional Democratic Party roots, casting their ballots for Republican Donald Trump at historic rates in areas long seen as Democratic strongholds, like South Texas. With their plan to flip five blue seats under a new congressional map introduced in the Legislature last week, Texas Republicans are betting Latino voters will stick with them in 2026. In three of the districts Republicans hope to capture — the 9th Congressional District in east Houston, the 35th District southeast of San Antonio and Rep. Henry Cuellar's 28th District in South Texas — the GOP map-drawers crafted new boundaries that make each seat more favorable for Republicans while also adding more Hispanic voters to the district. These three districts would be majority Hispanic, as would the seat held by Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, whose South Texas seat Republicans are also gunning for. If the districts were in place during the 2024 election, Trump would have carried each by at least 10 percentage points, according to a Texas Tribune analysis. Such margins depended, in large part, on Hispanic-majority counties whose voters have been moving rightward since 2016. And in 2024, when the vast majority of U.S. counties shifted right, predominantly Hispanic counties saw even more pronounced movement. Trump carried all four counties in the Rio Grande Valley after failing to crack 30% in the region during his first presidential bid, and he won 14 of the 18 Texas counties within 20 miles of the border. But Trump's coattails extended only so far down the ballot, with Democrats winning numerous local races in the same counties that recorded eye-popping shifts at the top of the ticket. Cuellar and Gonzalez secured reelection even as Trump carried their districts, and even with Cuellar also facing down an indictment for alleged money laundering and bribery. GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, appearing just below Trump on November ballots, ran well behind his party's nominee in a number of South Texas locales, especially those with larger Latino populations. If the new lines proposed for Cuellar's district had been in place, the 28th District would have gone for Trump by 10 points, while Cruz would have eked out a narrow 0.1% win. Without Trump at the top of the ticket in 2026 and three of the five target districts increasing their share of Hispanic voters, the GOP map-drawers are making what could amount to a risky bet that enough Latino voters will turn out again to support GOP candidates across the ballot. Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who has worked in Texas politics for decades and hosts a podcast about Latino voters, believes Trump has a unique appeal to Hispanic voters that doesn't necessarily trickle down to other Republican candidates. Especially potent was Trump's assertion that the economic system was rigged against Americans and he would be the one to fix it, Rocha said. That sort of messaging transcends partisan affiliation, Rocha said, arguing that Trump in 2024 and progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2020 each overperformed in the Rio Grande Valley and with Latino voters 'because their messages aligned around a rigged system, around failed trade policies and reinvigorating economic populism.' 'The newest swingy electorate in Texas' Trump's freewheeling lack of political correctness also led some Hispanic voters to associate him with 'machismo,' Gilberto Hinojosa, the former Texas Democratic Party chair and Cameron County judge, said. 'In some parts of our community, they could relate to that.' Campaign operatives from both parties pinpointed two issues that drove Latino voters to the right last November: immigration and the economy. During the campaign, those operatives told the Tribune, President Joe Biden and Democrats struggled to convince voters they were doing enough to secure the southern border, while inflation hit the electorate's pocketbooks and proved an especially damaging issue for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris among Hispanic voters. 'Four years of open borders and 12 million illegal immigrants coming into this country did real damage across Texas, but in the Hispanic community in particular,' Cruz told The Texas Tribune last week. 'I think that was a big part of the reason why both President Trump and I won Hispanics statewide, and why the two of us flipped the Rio Grande Valley.' But Rocha doesn't think this means Trump and other Republicans are sure to hold onto those gains with Latino voters, who he labeled 'the newest swingy electorate in Texas.' Trump's approval rating is underwater among Hispanic voters. A July national poll by Equis Research found that one-third of Hispanic voters who backed Biden in 2020 then Trump in 2024 are planning to vote for a Democratic congressional candidate. Another one-third of these voters are undecided. Democrats are gearing up to court Latino voters in next year's midterms by homing in on the economy, already deploying messaging that highlights Trump's tariff strategy — which many economists have said will worsen inflation — to paint Republicans as unconcerned with the day-to-day lives of Americans. 'Throughout this cycle Democrats will be laser focused on making sure Latino voters know the harm that has come from the Republican trifecta and highlighting how Republicans broke their promise to lower costs and instead gave billionaires a tax cut at their communities' expense,' said Madison Andrus, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House Democrats' campaign arm. Republicans largely believe they can outflank Democrats by simply reminding voters of the record-high inflation under Biden's presidency. Prices for some common goods have fallen since Trump returned to the White House, a fact that GOP operative Wayne Hamilton sees as a bulwark against a Democratic resurgence among Latinos. 'Long term, that's good for South Texas,' said Hamilton, who leads a group, Project Red TX, that focuses on recruiting and supporting Republican candidates in South Texas. 'That's good for the border. That's good for America.' Jobs are also likely to be central to any messaging to Latino voters. In South Texas, many Hispanic voters work in the fracking industry — a sector some Democrats want to phase out in favor of clean energy alternatives. That plan, Hinojosa said, is viewed by Latinos as an existential threat to their jobs and way of life, despite the employment opportunities also generated by renewable energy. 'What's important to Hispanics in South Texas is quality jobs that provide good wages and working conditions and benefits,' Hinojosa said. Rocha agreed, arguing that Democrats should run ads centered on the 'sanctity of work.' On the other side of the aisle, Republicans are looking to do the same. To win Hispanic voters, Cruz said Republicans need to 'remain the party of jobs,' calling it his 'No. 1 priority in the Senate.' The National Republican Campaign Committee is also recruiting Latino candidates to run in districts that could tilt in their favor if new Texas maps are approved. Gonzalez has drawn a challenge from Eric Flores, a Republican Army veteran and lawyer from Mission, while Cuellar may face Democrat-turned-Republican Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, who is mulling a race. 'Hispanic communities in South Texas are sick and tired of out of touch Democrats Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez turning their backs on them time and again,' NRCC spokesperson Zach Bannon said in a statement. Mayra Flores, a Republican who briefly represented the 34th District after winning a 2022 special election for part of 2022, has already announced a bid against Cuellar. The lineup for The Texas Tribune Festival continues to grow! Be there when all-star leaders, innovators and newsmakers take the stage in downtown Austin, Nov. 13–15. The newest additions include comedian, actor and writer John Mulaney; Dallas mayor Eric Johnson; U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota; New York Media Editor-at-Large Kara Swisher; and U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso. Get your tickets today! TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
Chicago Tribune
38 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Storer H. Rowley: Six months into his presidency, Donald Trump has created a police state
Six months into Donald Trump's second term, a lawless president is solidifying his law enforcement powers to create something most Americans didn't vote for and don't want: a police state increasingly robbing residents of their rights and due process. Unaccountable, masked immigration agents, many in plainclothes, are arresting farm workers in fields, raiding Home Depots and car washes, hunting unauthorized workers 'like animals,' and grabbing immigrants in courthouses, mothers and children in their homes, high school soccer stars and kids at baseball practice. Even U.S. citizens have been rounded up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including children, and other children here legally seeking refuge, some of them sick, along with their parents in the country without legal permission. Many people snatched are quickly deported without due process. Some are 'disappeared' into detention facilities or shipped abroad before they can get legal representation. This hellscape of fear and chaos does not match up with Trump's campaign promise to mass-deport criminals and arrest 'the worst of the worst.' Residents here without legal authorization with no criminal records pleading their cases dutifully in court have been abducted by agents at courthouses. It is a shameful showcase for the cameras, an authoritarian regime running roughshod over constitutional rights, immigrant rights and human rights. Trump is improperly using the military on U.S. streets, defying court orders, caging detainees in deplorable gulags and dispatching ICE agents to grab anyone they can to meet arbitrary White House quotas of 3,000 a day. He makes a mockery of the rule of law by arresting Americans. Trump is escalating his war on immigrants as poll numbers on his immigration policies hit a record low. Six months in, the executive orders, court challenges, crypto corruption, firings and budget cuts seem bottomless, as well, and now he is grappling with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. And he's just getting started. Brace yourselves. It's going to get worse before it gets better. Look for the National Guard or the Marines coming next to Chicago. Recently, the GOP-led Senate narrowly confirmed Trump's former criminal defense lawyer, Emil Bove, to a lifetime appointment on the federal appellate bench after he was accused of defying the courts. Bove denied it, but one whistleblower said he told fellow Justice Department officials to ignore court orders if necessary to make sure deportation flights took off, alleging: 'Bove stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts 'f––– you' and ignore any such court order.' To be clear, Republicans and Democrats both agree that illegal immigration needs to be controlled. A bipartisan effort came close to finding a longer-term solution last year until Trump killed the comprehensive reform bill to weaponize the issue against Democrats in the Nov. 5 election. The question is how to do deal with illegal immigration legally and humanely. Americans voted to get the border under control, and to be fair, Trump's administration has done that. Crossings and apprehensions have slowed to a trickle. But they didn't vote for, nor do they support, what he is doing now: lawless crackdowns leaving migrants and Americans alike living in a republic of fear, danger and violence. 'Show me your papers' used to be the catchphrase for villains in World War II movies. Now, it's the harsh reality for many legal residents. Migrants who may have crossed the border illegally but are now going through the court system to plead their cases can be swept up and disappeared before their day in court. Worse, Trump and his top White House anti-immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, deliberately appeal to white nationalists and white grievance, leaving the feeling among immigrants that they are targeted in a deportation war aimed mainly against people of color. His administration has attacked diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and ICE agents have been accused of racially profiling immigrant communities. ICE denies this, but how many white European immigrants do you see in their detention centers? We have seen this pattern before, when whole groups of people are targeted — such as Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II. The inhumane immigration detention center in the Everglades is Exhibit A. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem insists her immigration agents are behaving legally and building cases correctly. She denies racial profiling: 'It's been done exactly how law enforcement has operated for many years in this country, and ICE is out there making sure we get the worst off the streets,' she said. It's not hard to do this legally. Barack Obama and Joe Biden, when they were president, fought illegal immigration within the law. In fact, Obama upset many Democrats by being the 'Deporter-in-Chief,' deporting more immigrants at a higher rate than Trump has — and he did it legally. But Trump's lawlessness and authoritarian conduct goes way beyond immigration, and it has provoked sustained nationwide protests since he took office. He has threatened a number of law firms into submission, tried to quell free speech and dissent at universities, attacked the media with frivolous lawsuits to try to bend them to his will and silence his critics in the entertainment world. But his police state tactics are causing blowback too. Americans who care about their democracy must continue to rally to defend it. Only people power and voters can stop a criminal president. Even his unprecedented weaponizing of the Department of Justice to target perceived enemies has caused revulsion among the ranks over abominations such as his attempt to restrict birthright citizenship. The unit that prosecutes those cases has lost nearly two-thirds of its staff as DOJ attorneys leave rather than further his corrupt attempts to tear down the constitutional system. Trump's approach toward immigratioin has squandered his support. Many MAGA supporters still approve of his actions, but a majority of Americans in a recent CBS poll now see his deportation program as a net negative. Moreover, more Americans now see the value of immigration way more than they did a year ago, with the share wanting immigration reduced dropping from 55% in 2024 to 30% today, according to a recent Gallup Poll — and a record-high 79% of U.S. adults now say immigration is a good thing for the country. Clearly, the police state tactics aren't working, and that's a good thing for America.
The Hill
38 minutes ago
- The Hill
Democrats contemplate walkout in Texas
Democratic legislators in Texas could flee the state to prevent the GOP from approving new maps that could expand Republicans' congressional majority. Texas and national Democrats have vowed to fight back while blasting the GOP plans, which could give Republicans five more seats, as discriminatory. Visiting with Democratic state lawmakers in Austin, U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) vowed Thursday that 'all options' should be on the table to stop the GOP plan. But because Democrats are a minority in the state Legislature, they have few options to stop the GOP and face an uphill battle legally and politically. One very real option would be to seek to deny the quorum necessary to keep the Texas state House and Senate functioning, something Democrats might have the numbers to accomplish. 'Democrats don't have many arrows left in their quiver. There simply aren't a lot of things they can do to be able to challenge these maps in the near term,' said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. A quorum break could be the 'nuclear option,' Rottinghaus said, 'because most members don't want to do it that way. They want to stay and fight.' 'But the problem is that they simply don't have a lot of tools legislatively, or in terms of their total numbers to stop or slow things here in Austin.' The map proposal, filed this past week during a special session called by Gov. Greg Abbott (R), comes after President Trump pressed Texas Republicans to draw new maps to protect the party's narrow 219-212 House majority. A public hearing before the state House's Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting was held Friday. Republican state Rep. Cody Vasut, chair of the redistricting panel, said he expects committee action in the coming days, followed by a full state House debate early next week. Specifics of the proposed lines could change as the plan works its way through the state chambers. But it's unlikely that Democrats have enough leverage in the state Legislature — where Republicans are 88-62 in the House and 19-11 in the Senate — to significantly change things in their favor. Faced with similar dynamics in 2003 and 2021, Democrats walked out to stall the Legislature on redistricting efforts and voting restrictions. 'Breaking quorum is a big task, and there's a lot of problems that come with it,' said Lana Hansen, executive director of Texas Blue Action, an Austin-based Democratic advocacy group. 'And I think this situation is particularly volatile because … this [redistricting] is a call from the president of the United States.' Fleeing would likely draw more attention to the brewing redistricting battle, but Abbott could continue to call sessions and the Democrats' absence would stall other business. A quorum break would also be expensive, due to new rules that impose fines for each day a lawmaker has fled, as well as the threat of arrest. Democrats are reportedly fundraising to help pay up if that happens, according to The Texas Tribune. 'In the past, it worked to sort of pause the conversation and start over,' Hansen said of the previous quorum breaks, but she noted that Republicans still got their way. 'At the end of it, it wasn't as successful as we had hoped.' Asked about a potential walkout, U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas) told reporters Thursday that 'there are a lot of ways to fight.' Jeffries, asked whether he's urging Texas Democrats to break quorum, said ' all options should be on the table ' but deferred to Texas Democrats. If Democrats can't block the GOP efforts within the Legislature, they'll likely pursue legal action as leaders in and out of the state decry the proposal as discriminatory. Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas), one of the lawmakers whose district would be impacted, called the moves 'part of a long, ugly tradition of trying to keep Black and brown [Texans] from having a voice.' Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) called it 'a power grab to silence voters and suppress votes.' Democrats' chances of success with potential legal challenges likely relies on the fate of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), said Mark McKenzie, an Texas Tech associate professor of political science who has practiced law in the state. A major Louisiana redistricting battle is set to be reheard by the Supreme Court next term, and Republicans are increasingly bullish on chipping away at the VRA. 'I think the Democrats, assuming the Supreme Court doesn't eviscerate the Voting Rights Act … would have a good case, in terms of African American majority districts in Texas and how they'll be impacted,' McKenzie said, noting that they might be harder pressed to argue the same of Latino voters, who have increasingly leaned toward the GOP in Texas. 'Legally speaking, the Democrats are not in a great position,' McKenzie added. The party appears to be gearing up for a political battle either way. 'The current map violates the law, and this congressional map will double and triple down on the extreme racial gerrymandering that is silencing the voices of millions of Texans,' Jeffries said Thursday in Austin. 'We will fight them politically. We will fight them governmentally. We will fight them in court. We will fight them in terms of winning the hearts and minds of the people of Texas and beyond.' House Majority PAC, a House Democratic super PAC, announced a new Lone Star Fund this week. It is hoping to raise millions for 2026 challengers if the lines are redrawn. 'If the GOP and the Trump administration think that Texas is the first state that they should look at doing this in, the place that he's most concerned with losing ground in, then we are in play, and my hope is that national investment will come this way,' Hansen said. 'There's still an opportunity for Democrats in Texas. We just might not be able to help flip to the congressional majority that we would like.' And Democrats may have avenues for offsetting GOP gains in Texas with redistricting efforts in other states. 'There's a phrase in Texas: 'what happens here sometimes changes the world.' Well, this is the case where what's happening here is setting off a cascade effect across the country,' said Jon Taylor, the University of Texas at San Antonio's department chair of political science. The developments in Texas have sparked congressional map conversations in several other states, including in California — where Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has said the Golden State might make its own midcycle changes if Texas moves forward. There's also a chance that Lone Star State redistricting backfires on Republicans. For one, the party may appear more focused on redistricting than on deadly Independence Day floods, another special session agenda item. It may also be hard to predict midterm voting patterns. 'Just because Trump won in 2024 in certain parts and certain areas that are currently held by Democrats doesn't mean that's going to translate to success in a midterm election of '26, particularly a midterm election that, nationally, is expected to be potentially a wave election for Democrats,' Taylor said. 'So you could end up with a situation where you've drawn districts that are supposedly for, you know, friendly for Republicans, and all of a sudden, in a year where the economy is going south, Trump's opinion poll numbers continue to decline, you end up with Democrats winning in districts that were designed for Republicans.'
