Maria Altman

Updated 11:37 a.m. with reaction from Mo. Sen. Claire McCaskill and at 12:01 p.m. with statements from community organizations and Mo. House Speaker Tim Jones. Updated 5:59 p.m. with additional reporting from St. Louis.

Gov. Jay Nixon says expanding Medicaid eligibility in Missouri is both "the smart thing" and "the right thing to do."

Nixon announced his support for the expansion Thursday, saying it could provide health care coverage to an additional 300,000 Missourians.

The owner of Vintage Vinyl in St. Louis was one of 15 small business owners who met with President Obama today.

Lew Prince is a member of Business for Shared Prosperity, an organization that is pushing Congress to end the Bush-era tax cuts for the top two percent.

Prince says the meeting at the White House this afternoon was unusual because no one was asking for anything for themselves.

Updated 3:23 p.m. with statement from McCaskill

Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri says if the Army Corps of Engineers doesn’t increase water flow from the upper Missouri River the next move may be to ask the president to step in.

The Corps began reducing the outflow from a dam in South Dakota on Friday.

That means less water for the already-low Mississippi River, which could lead to restrictions or even a halt on barge traffic by mid-December.

Senator Blunt says transportation down the river could be severely impacted if nothing is done.

The U.S. Senate race in Missouri was sewed up by Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill by 10 p.m. last night.

McCaskill got nearly 58 percent of Missouri ‘s vote compared to Republican Congressman Todd Akin’s 39 percent.

Early in the campaign, pundits predicted McCaskill would not be able to hold onto her seat.

But as St. Louis Public Radio’s Maria Altman reports, it was a race filled with strange turns.

Starting with an upward battle