Red state goes to war with its largest city

Although Missouri is a red state — Donald Trump carried Missouri by 18 percent in 2024 compared to roughly 14 percent in Texas — its largest city, St. Louis, is a Democratic stronghold. Tensions have long existed between St. Louis' Democrat-dominated city government and Missouri's GOP-controlled state government in Jefferson City, and those tensions escalated when Donald Trump became the Republican Party's most influential figure.

St. Louis-based journalist Devin Thomas O'Shea describes the growing tensions between that city and Missouri Republicans in an article published on March 20.

Those tensions, according to O'Shea, are underscored by Republican responses to a May 2025 tornado that killed five people in the St. Louis and inflicted considerable damage.

"In St. Louis, as The Wall Street Journal pointed out, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been antagonistic to recovery efforts," O'Shea explains. "Neither the president nor this last year's Homeland Security director, Kristi Noem, believe that FEMA should exist. Some Senate Democrats believe Noem's pausing and delaying FEMA payments violated federal law, but the effect is that Missouri has been added to a growing list — alongside North Carolina after Hurricane Helene — of states cut loose, left to rebuild on their own."

O'Shea continues, "Noem cut FEMA's workforce by thousands to achieve this result, and if St. Louis is a test case for contemporary climate disasters, the verdict is in: You're on your own."

St. Louis City Mayor Cara Spencer, according to O'Shea, "admits that things have moved too slowly" with tornado recovery efforts "and that money has not reached storm victims."

"While some Missouri Republicans claim they are upset about FEMA's dysfunction, they are also using the tornado recovery to lash St. Louis," O'Shea notes. "This year, the GOP plans to bankrupt the city. This is not an exaggeration — in January, the Missouri Legislature turned $100 million in relief into a weapon to compel St. Louis to enact the budget policy of eliminating the earnings tax, a prime source of city revenue. It's also not an exaggeration to say that the Missouri State Legislature spent last year moving forward with the re-invasion of the City of St. Louis."

O'Shea adds, "The Republican-controlled state spends much of its legislative time trying to overturn voter referendums. State-wide, Missourians approve abortion, vote in favor of increasing the minimum wage, and reject right-to-work legislation. Meanwhile, Missouri lawmakers go to work to criminalize abortion, lower the minimum wage, and get right-to-work back on the ballot. In March 2025, three months before the tornado, Gov. Mike Kehoe rejected a 2012 voter referendum that granted local control of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (STLPD) to the City of St. Louis."

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