Southwest Missouri Has a Choice

Meet Missi Hesketh — and Look at What Eric Burlison Has Actually Done to You

There is a woman from Forsyth, Missouri who has been a public school teacher for nearly twenty years, raised three children alone, served as mayor of her town, and is now running for

the United States Congress because she looked around at what was happening to her neighbors

and decided somebody needed to do something about it.

Her name is Missi Hesketh. She is running for Missouri's 7th Congressional District.

The primary is August 4, 2026. The general election is November 3, 2026.

She has done this before. In 2024, Missi ran against Eric Burlison in this same race. She lost. And then she watched what Burlison did with another term in office. She watched him vote to cut Medicaid by a trillion dollars. She watched him refuse to sign the Epstein discharge petition when it was politically risky to do so. She watched him travel to Mexico to examine alien mummies while rural hospitals

in this district were put at risk. She watched him do

exactly what she warned he would do.

So she is back.

That is not the move of someone who runs for office because it sounds good.

That is the move of someone who genuinely believes this district deserves better

and is willing to do the hard work to make it happen.

She knows the opponent. She knows the district. She knows what is at stake. And she is not done. The man she is running against, Eric Burlison, has been in elected office in Missouri since 2009 — nearly 17 years. He has represented Missouri's 7th Congressional District in Congress since January 3, 2023. He has had more than three years in this seat, and nearly two decades in public office,

to show southwest Missouri what he stands for.

He has shown us. Let's talk about it.

Who Is Missi Hesketh

Missi Hesketh is not a career politician. She is not a wealthy donor's candidate. She is not backed by corporate PACs or party machinery. She is a single mother, a teacher, a neighbor, and a mayor who got things done because she showed up.

She was born in the suburbs of Chicago, moved to Forsyth as a child with her father, a retired Marine Vietnam veteran. She worked two jobs through high school. She spent time, by her own honest account, at the school of life before returning to college after September 11, 2001, earning her Bachelor's in Elementary Education from the University of Missouri-St. Louis while expecting her second child. She later earned a Master's in Gifted Education and a Specialist in Special Education and Assessment. She has been teaching in Missouri classrooms for nearly twenty years.

She has also served her community directly. She sat on the Forsyth Board of Aldermen from 2008 to 2012. She returned to city council in 2022. She won the mayoral race in Forsyth in April 2023. As mayor, she cleaned up decades of neglected nuisance enforcement, improved transparency, and focused on the issues that actually affect the people who live there.

Her campaign motto is four words:

"I'm taking you with me."

Not the donors. Not the party bosses. You. The child living in poverty. The single mom whose childcare costs more than her mortgage. The senior citizen worried about Social Security. The teacher, the firefighter, the nurse. Missi Hesketh has been all of those people at different points in her life. She is not guessing about what they need.

Her campaign runs entirely on grassroots donations from real people. No corporate cash. No PAC money. As her campaign website says: "Missouri politics shouldn't be for sale."

Find her at missiheskethforcongress.com. Call or text her campaign at (417) 674-3481.

Who Is Eric Burlison — and What Has He Actually Done

Eric Burlison has represented Missouri's 7th District in Congress since January 2023 — more than three years in this seat, and part of nearly two decades in Missouri elected office stretching back to the state House in 2009. He is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, one of the most extreme factions in Congress. He is a strong supporter of president †rump. He has had ample time to deliver for the people of southwest Missouri.

Here is his record:

He voted yes on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

This is the bill that cut federal Medicaid spending by more than one trillion dollars over the next decade. In Missouri alone, that means $17 billion in lost federal Medicaid funding and an estimated 130,000 Missourians losing their healthcare coverage. More than 300 rural hospitals across the country are now at immediate risk of closure. Freeman Health System and Mercy Hospital serve this community. The people who work there and the people who depend on them live here. Burlison voted to cut their funding in the middle of the night.

He voted to put Medicare on the path to insolvency.

That same bill erased 12 years of projected solvency from the Medicare trust fund. The fund is now expected to run out by 2040 instead of 2052. When it does, automatic cuts to Medicare benefits kick in. There are roughly 10,000 seniors in Joplin alone who paid into this system their entire working lives. Burlison voted to accelerate the timeline for cutting their benefits.

He refused to sign the Epstein discharge petition – then voted for the bill once it was safe.

When a bipartisan discharge petition circulated in Congress that would have forced a vote on releasing Jeffrey Epstein's files, Burlison declined to sign it, calling it "one of the most hostile moves" against Republican leadership. He said he supported releasing the files. He just would not do anything politically risky to make it happen. He waited. Eventually, the Epstein Files Transparency Act came to a floor vote in November 2025 with 427 members on board — an overwhelming, safe, bipartisan supermajority. At that point, with no political risk whatsoever, Burlison voted yes. When accountability was easy, he showed up. When it required courage, he chose his committee seats.

He voted against protecting victims of non-consensual intimate images.

Burlison was one of only two representatives in the entire House who voted against the Take It Down Act, which criminalizes the publication of non-consensual intimate images and protects victims of deepfake pornography and revenge porn. He has offered no explanation for his vote.

He does not hold in-person town halls, and his Washington D.C. office refused to tell a constituent when Burlison was last physically present in Joplin or Jasper County.

Burlison's Joplin district office confirmed directly, in a phone call on April 14, 2026, that he does not hold in-person town halls with constituents. The reason given: the district is too wide and too deep to ask people to drive to one location. That is not a justification. A large district is an argument for holding town halls in multiple locations across it, not for holding none at all. He offers only virtual and phone town halls.

When a constituent called Burlison's Washington D.C. office to ask a simple question — when was the last time their representative was physically present in Joplin or Jasper County for a non-virtual engagement — the staff member said he would provide that information only after the caller identified the name of their organization. The caller declined to do so. The information was never given. That is gatekeeping. A congressional office using organizational identity as a filter to decide which constituents deserve a basic answer about their own representative. No one should have to prove who they belong to before their congressman's office will tell them when he last showed up in their community. Every person in this district is entitled to that answer. Burlison's office made it a transaction. That is not public service. That is a wall.

On April 8, 2026, according to his Joplin office staff, Burlison was in Joplin all day meeting with constituents and businesses. That visit was not publicly announced. There was no press release. There was no public notice. There was no opportunity for ordinary constituents to attend. A search of his official website, burlison.house.gov, shows no announcement of any Joplin visit on that date — only a press conference in Springfield two days later on April 10. He was reportedly in the city, and the public had no idea.

He has also said constituent town halls are places where "only political nutjobs show up." That is a direct quote from your representative in Congress about the people he is supposed to serve. Put it all together: he holds no in-person town halls, his D.C. office screens callers by organization before sharing his schedule, and he has publicly dismissed the very constituents who want to meet him. This is not a representative who wants to be held accountable.

After three-plus years in Congress and nearly two decades in Missouri elected office, most people in this district could not tell you the last time they saw Eric Burlison in public in their community — because he has made sure they would not know when he was coming. He does not announce his visits. He does not open his door. He does not stand in a room and answer questions from the people who sent him to Washington. A representative who cannot be found by his own constituents is not representing them. He is hiding from them.

He traveled to Mexico to examine the Nazca mummies.

In July 2025, while Missouri's rural hospitals were being threatened by the bill he voted for, Burlison traveled to Mexico to examine mummies widely regarded as a hoax, alleged to be the corpses of three-fingered space aliens. He also serves on a congressional UFO task force and has stated he believes UFOs are "either angels or manmade objects."

His very first speech on the House floor invoked the Holocaust — to defend Newsmax.

Less than a month into office, Burlison took the House floor and compared DirecTV's decision to drop Newsmax over a fee dispute to the Holocaust. He misquoted the famous Martin Niemöller poem about Nazi Germany and suggested a cable company replacing one right-wing channel with another was comparable to the extermination of millions. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has repeatedly condemned such comparisons as "dangerous." That was his introduction to the people of southwest Missouri as their representative.

Here is what Burlison did not say. While he was invoking the Holocaust to defend Newsmax, his own party was simultaneously working to eliminate NPR and PBS, the public media that actually belongs to the American people. In May 2025, President †rump signed an executive order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease all federal funding for NPR and PBS, calling their journalism "biased." Congress followed, voting to cancel $1.1 billion in already-appropriated funding. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting — which had served American communities for 58 years — shut down entirely in January 2026. A federal judge later ruled the executive order was an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment, "viewpoint discrimination and retaliation," in the court's words. Burlison invoked the Holocaust to protect Newsmax from a fee dispute. He said nothing while his party used the power of the federal government to eliminate the public broadcasters he disagreed with. The First Amendment, it seems, only cuts one way.

He voted against condemning Russia's abduction of Ukrainian children.

In March 2024, Burlison voted against House Resolution 149, which condemned Russia's illegal abduction and forcible transfer of children from Ukraine. He was one of only nine Republicans in the entire House to vote no. The man who says he cares about protecting children voted against a resolution condemning a foreign government for stealing them.

He proposed what law enforcement called the "Make Murder Legal Act."

In 2022, while still in the Missouri state legislature, Burlison proposed a bill that would have shifted the burden of proof in deadly force cases; instead of defendants having to prove their use of force was necessary self-defense, prosecutors would have had to prove it was unlawful before even making an arrest. Law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, and civil rights leaders testified against it in bipartisan opposition. The Stoddard County prosecutor, speaking on behalf of the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, said the bill "would make it impossible to convict a great number of people of assault" and dubbed it the "Make Murder Legal Act." The Missouri NAACP president said it "would drag Missouri right into hell."

He has introduced legislation to abolish the ATF entirely.

Burlison has proposed eliminating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the federal agency responsible for enforcing gun laws, investigating gun trafficking, and combating violent crime. Southwest Missouri communities depend on federal law enforcement partnerships to address crime. Burlison's answer is to eliminate one of them.

He requested zero earmarks for the district in 2023 and 2024.

Earmarks are how congressional representatives bring federal dollars back home — for roads, bridges, community projects, economic development. In his first two years representing MO-7, Burlison requested no earmarks for his district. Other representatives were securing millions for their communities. Southwest Missouri got nothing. He chose ideological purity over practical results for the people who sent him to Washington.

He supported an unconstitutional war — and admitted it in writing to a constituent.

On February 28, 2026, the †rump regime launched strikes on Iran without a declaration of war from Congress, in violation of the War Powers Resolution and the United States Constitution. Military and legal experts called it illegal. In a written response to a constituent who contacted his office about the conflict, Burlison acknowledged the following, in his own words: 13 U.S. service members have died. More than 300 have been injured. The operation is costing billions of dollars. He wrote that "any unilateral military action taken by a president should be scrutinized by Congress" — his own admission that this war was launched unilaterally, without the congressional authorization the Constitution requires.

But having acknowledged the constitutional problem, he did not demand the war stop. He did not call for retroactive authorization. He did not vote to exercise Congress's war powers. Instead, he wrote that he "believes President Trump does not want the conflict with Iran to drag on" and said he is "encouraged by his willingness to negotiate." He accepted the president's stated intentions as a substitute for the law.

Here is what was actually happening while Burlison was writing that. According to Axios, Trump declared the war won or over at least 12 separate times while the fighting continued. "We've won this. This war has been won," he told reporters on March 24, while the U.S. was still bombing Iran. Negotiations in Islamabad collapsed after 21 hours on April 12. Trump responded by announcing a naval blockade of Iranian ports. As of today, the ceasefire is set to expire April 21 with no deal in place. Thirteen Americans are dead. Hundreds are wounded. Billions have been spent. And the war that Trump repeatedly declared over is still not over.

Burlison was "encouraged by his willingness to negotiate" while Trump was declaring victory twelve times and imposing a naval blockade. That is not congressional oversight. That is a congressman watching an illegal, unresolved war unfold and finding reasons to stay out of it.

At a Glance: Missi Hesketh vs. Eric Burlison

Issue	Missi Hesketh	Eric Burlison
Healthcare	Would fight to protect Medicaid and Medicare for Missouri families.	Voted to cut $1 trillion from Medicaid — 130,000 Missourians losing coverage, Medicare trust fund depleted by 12 years.
Town halls & access	Held public in-person town hall in Joplin, April 14, 2026. Pledges open access to all constituents.	Zero in-person town halls. D.C. office gatekeeps constituents by organization. Calls attendees "political nutjobs." Has been in politics 17 years — most constituents have never seen him in person.
Earmarks for MO-7	Committed to securing federal dollars for roads, bridges, and community projects in southwest Missouri.	Requested zero earmarks in 2023 and 2024. Other reps brought millions home. Southwest Missouri got nothing.
Campaign funding	$15,114 raised — every dollar from real people. Zero PAC money. Zero corporate cash.	$905,000 raised — $143,500 from PACs including UPS, Meta, AT&T, NRA, AIPAC, CVS, and Toyota.
Epstein files	Would have signed the discharge petition immediately — accountability before committee seats.	Refused to sign when risky. Voted yes only when 427 members were already on board and it cost him nothing.
Iran war	Would demand congressional authorization before American troops go to war.	Acknowledged the war was unilateral — then said he was "encouraged" while Trump declared victory 12 times and the war dragged on.
First floor speech	Would use her first speech to address the healthcare, affordability, and needs of southwest Missouri families.	Compared DirecTV dropping Newsmax over a fee dispute to Nazi Germany. His introduction to the district.
Protecting children	Would vote to condemn foreign governments stealing children and protect victims of non-consensual intimate images.	Voted against condemning Russia's abduction of Ukrainian children. One of only 2 reps to vote against the Take It Down Act.
Public media	Believes in a free, independent press accessible to all Americans.	Invoked Holocaust for Newsmax. Silent as his party eliminated NPR, PBS, and shut down public broadcasting after 58 years.
Background	Teacher, single mother, mayor. Has lived the life of the people she serves.	Career politician, 17 years in office. Most constituents cannot tell you the last time they saw him in public.

Seventeen Years. Here Is the Receipt.

Missi Hesketh has spent twenty years in Missouri classrooms. Eric Burlison spent 2025 chasing alien mummies in Mexico.

Missi Hesketh raised three children as a single mother on a teacher's salary. Eric Burlison voted to cut the healthcare program that 130,000 Missourians depend on.

Missi Hesketh says she would have signed the Epstein discharge petition without hesitation, because accountability for harming children matters more than committee seats. Eric Burlison refused to sign it when it was politically risky, waited until 427 members were on board, and then voted yes when it cost him nothing.

Missi Hesketh would bring federal dollars home to southwest Missouri. Eric Burlison requested zero earmarks for this district in his first two years in Congress. Other representatives were securing millions for their communities. MO-7 got nothing.

Missi Hesketh's first act in office would not be to invoke the Holocaust to defend a cable channel dispute. Eric Burlison's first speech on the House floor compared DirecTV dropping Newsmax to Nazi Germany. That was how he chose to introduce himself to the people of this district.

Missi Hesketh would demand congressional authorization before American troops go to war. Eric Burlison watched an unauthorized war begin, acknowledged in writing to a constituent that it was unilateral, watched 13 Americans die and 300 more get wounded, and responded by saying he is "encouraged" by the president's willingness to negotiate.

Missi Hesketh held a public town hall in Joplin on April 14, 2026. She has been showing up in this community her entire life. Eric Burlison has been in Missouri politics for seventeen years and most people in this district would not recognize him if they passed him on the street because he has never made himself available to be recognized.

There is a reason Missi Hesketh is not afraid to show up in person — with Democrats and Republicans alike, with people who agree with her and people who do not. It is because she leans into the truth. She is not managing a message or protecting a position. She does not need a screened phone call or a virtual barrier between herself and the people she serves. When you are telling the truth, you can look anyone in the eye. When your record is one you can defend, you do not need a wall around it. Burlison has built walls. Missi shows up.

Then there is the money. According to Federal Election Commission records, Eric Burlison raised nearly $905,000 for his 2026 campaign in 2025 alone. Of that, $143,500 came from PACs: political action committees funded by corporations, industries, and special interests. The same congressman who will not hold an in-person town hall for his constituents, whose office gate-keeps basic information unless you identify yourself, has no trouble accepting nearly $150,000 from PACs – like UPS, Meta, Southwest Airlines, AT&T, National Association of Realtors, CVS, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Toyota, the NRA, and more – representing the industries and interests he votes for in Washington.

Compare that to Missi Hesketh. According to FEC records, her campaign raised $15,114 in the same period — every dollar of it from real people, none of it from PACs or corporate interests. Her campaign website says it plainly: "Missouri politics shouldn't be for sale." She means it. The numbers prove it.

Burlison raised sixty times more than Missi in 2025. Most of it came from outside the district. None of Missi's came from corporations. That gap tells you everything about who each of these candidates answers to.

One of these people knows what it costs to raise a family in southwest Missouri. The other voted against that family in the middle of the night and called it beautiful.

Why This Race Matters Right Now

We know what the political math looks like. Missouri's 7th District is rated R+21 by the Cook Political Report. That means this district has voted 21 points more Republican than the national average in recent presidential elections. Nobody is pretending this is an easy race.

But 2026 is not a normal year.

On the evening of April 14, 2026, Missi Hesketh held an in-person town hall in Joplin. She showed up. She sat down with constituents. She listened. And what she has heard from the people of southwest Missouri was clear and consistent. They want three things from their representative:

• Access.

  They want to be able to reach their representative. To walk into a room, look them in the eye, and be heard. Not a phone call screened by a staffer. Not a virtual town hall announced on short notice. Actual access to the person they elected.

  
  

• Affordability.

  They are struggling. Grocery bills are higher. Healthcare costs more. Childcare is out of reach. Social Security feels less certain than it did three years ago. They need a representative who is fighting to make their lives more affordable, not voting for bills that cut the programs keeping them afloat.

  
  

• Accountability.

  They want a representative who answers for what they do in Washington. Who shows their work. Who does not hide behind virtual-only access, staff screens, and party-line votes made in the middle of the night.

  
  

Access. Affordability. Accountability. Those three words are a direct indictment of Eric Burlison's tenure. He has provided none of them. And they are the exact foundation of what Missi Hesketh is running on.

People across southwest Missouri who never paid attention to politics are paying attention now. They are showing up because something that used to feel abstract now feels very personal. Their grocery bills are higher. Their healthcare is less secure. Their Social Security is at greater risk. Their rural hospital is under threat. And the man they sent to Congress to fix it voted for the bill that made it worse.

Every vote Missi gets in August and November sends a message. It says that southwest Missouri is not someone's guaranteed property. It says the 7th District is paying attention.

It says that the people who live here, work here, raise families here, and depend on this community are not going to be taken for granted.

Difficult is not the same as impossible. And this moment is not the same as any moment before it.

What You Can Do Today

• Vote.

  The Democratic primary is August 4, 2026. The general election is November 3, 2026. Mark both dates. Make a plan. Show up.

  
  

• Donate.

  Missi's campaign runs entirely on small donations from real people. Every dollar goes directly toward reaching voters in southwest Missouri. Donate at missiheskethforcongress.com.

  
  

• Volunteer.

  Call or text the campaign at (417) 674-3481. Join the grassroots effort being built neighbor by neighbor across the Ozarks.

  
  

• Spread the word.

  Share this blog. Print it. Talk to your neighbors. Post about Missi. The most powerful thing in any election is a trusted person talking to someone they know. You are that person.

  
  

• Follow Missi's campaign:

At missiheskethforcongress.com and on Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

Southwest Missouri deserves a representative who has lived the life of the people she serves. A teacher. A single mother. A mayor. A neighbor. Someone who will take you with her.

Vote Missi Hesketh for Congress. August 4 primary and November 3 general election.

References

1. Missi Hesketh for Congress — Official Campaign Website | missiheskethforcongress.com.

2. Missi Hesketh — Ballotpedia | Ballotpedia. Source for candidate biography, education, career, and campaign key messages.

3. Hesketh Announces Run for Congress | Branson Tri-Lakes News, December 2023. Source for "I'm taking you with me" motto and platform statement.

4. Missouri's 7th Congressional District Election, 2026 | Ballotpedia. Source for primary and general election dates and Cook PVI (R+21).

5. Eric Burlison — Wikipedia | Wikipedia. Source for Burlison's Freedom Caucus membership and UFO task force membership.

6. Congressman Eric Burlison Talks About Tariffs, Medicaid Changes, Tax Cuts and More | KSMU Ozarks Public Radio, August 2025. Source for Burlison's own statements on Medicaid and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

7. How Federal Medicaid Changes Will Affect MO HealthNet and KanCare | The Beacon News, July 2025. Source for 130,000 Missourians losing coverage and $17 billion in lost federal Medicaid funding.

8. Medicaid Cuts in Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" Will Leave Millions Uninsured, Threaten Rural Hospitals | CNBC, July 2025. Source for $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts and rural hospital closures.

9. Trump Vows to Protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. But His Tax Cuts Shortened Their Life Span. | Fortune, February 2026. Source for Medicare trust fund solvency loss of 12 years.

10. Missouri Congressman Eric Burlison Wants Epstein Files Released But Won't Force a Vote | Missourinet, October 2025. Source for Burlison's refusal to sign the Epstein discharge petition, citing it as "one of the most hostile moves" against Republican leadership. Note: Burlison subsequently voted yes on the Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R. 4405) in November 2025, which passed 427-1, after the bill had overwhelming bipartisan support and carried no political risk.

11. Letter: Shame on Eric Burlison for Voting Yes on One Big Beautiful Bill Act | Springfield Daily Citizen, May 2025. Source for Burlison's yes vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

12. Eric Burlison — Town Hall Comment ("Political Nutjobs") | Podbean audio recording. Source for Burlison's statement that constituent town halls are "where only political nutjobs show up."

12a. Direct phone communication with Burlison's Joplin district office, April 14, 2026. Source for confirmation that Burlison does not hold in-person town halls, citing district size as the reason, and that he was in Joplin all day on April 8, 2026 without holding a public meeting.

12b. Direct phone communication with Burlison's Washington D.C. office, April 2026. Source for confirmation that staff conditioned disclosure of when Burlison was last physically present in Joplin or Jasper County on the caller first identifying their organization. The caller declined to provide that information. The question was never answered. This is gatekeeping: a congressional office using organizational identity as a filter to decide which constituents deserve basic information about their representative.

13. Republicans Vote Against Revenge Porn Bill | Newsweek. Source for Burlison's vote against the Take It Down Act, one of only two representatives to vote no.

14. Burlison Trip to Mexico to Investigate Possible UFO Objects | Newstalk KZRG, July 2025. Source for Burlison's trip to Mexico to examine the Nazca mummies and Buga sphere, in his own words.

15. "This Is Complete Nonsense": Scientists Rail Against "Alien" Bodies Shown Before Mexican Congress | Live Science, September 2023. Source for scientific consensus that the Nazca mummies are human remains deliberately manipulated to appear alien.

16. Race for Representative of Missouri's 7th Congressional District | KOLR OzarksFirst, October 2024. Source for Missi Hesketh's 2024 campaign against Burlison, her background as teacher and mayor, and her quote on serving the entire community.

17. Eric Burlison for Congress — Official Campaign Website | ericburlisonforcongress.com. Official campaign website of Eric Burlison.

18. Eric Burlison for Congress — FEC Committee Overview | Federal Election Commission. Source for Burlison's 2025-2026 campaign finance data: $904,531 raised, $143,500 from PAC contributions.

19. Committee to Elect Missi Hesketh for Congress — FEC Committee Overview | Federal Election Commission. Source for Hesketh's 2025-2026 campaign finance data: $15,114 raised entirely from individual grassroots donors, zero PAC contributions.

20. GOP Rep. Eric Burlison, Mad Over Dropped Newsmax, Invokes Holocaust | Newsweek, February 2023. Source for Burlison's first House floor speech comparing DirecTV's removal of Newsmax to the Holocaust. See also: GOP Representative Trivializes Holocaust After DirecTV Drops Newsmax | American Journal News, February 2023.

21. Nine Republicans Vote Against Resolution Condemning Child Abductions in Ukraine | NewsBreak, March 2024. Source for Burlison's vote against House Resolution 149 condemning Russia's illegal abduction and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children, one of only nine Republicans to vote no.

22. Missouri Congressman Eric Burlison — New South Politics | New South Politics. Source for Burlison's proposal to abolish the ATF and his anti-LGBTQ+ retweet of Matt Walsh content in April 2023.

23. U.S. House of Representatives, Missouri 7th Congressional District — Informed Voter Coalition | KSMU Ozarks Public Radio, October 2024. Source for Missi Hesketh's statement that Burlison requested zero earmarks for MO-7 in 2023 and 2024.

24. Prosecutor Slams Missouri Bill as "Make Murder Legal Act" | KY3, February 2022. Source for Burlison's 2022 Missouri state legislature bill shifting the burden of proof in deadly force cases, nicknamed the "Make Murder Legal Act" by the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys. See also: Prosecutor Slams Missouri Bill as "Make Murder Legal Act" | Washington Post, February 2022.

25. Written constituent correspondence from the office of Rep. Eric Burlison, April 2026. Direct email response to a constituent regarding Operation Epic Fury and the Iran conflict. Source for Burlison's own acknowledgment that the military action was unilateral, that 13 U.S. service members have died and more than 300 have been wounded, that the conflict is costing billions of dollars, and that he "expects," but has not demanded, congressional authorization before ground troops are deployed.

26. 12 Times Trump Signaled the Iran War Was About to End | Axios, March 30, 2026. Source for Trump's repeated declarations that the war was won or nearly over while fighting continued, negotiations in Islamabad collapsed, and a naval blockade was imposed.

27. Fact-Checking Trump and Hegseth's Claims of U.S. "Victory" in the Iran War | PBS NewsHour. Source for independent analysis of Trump's victory claims and documented strategic setbacks in the Iran conflict.

28. Fact-Checking Trump and Hegseth's Claims of U.S. "Victory" in the Iran War | PBS NewsHour. Source for independent analysis of Trump's victory claims and documented strategic setbacks in the Iran conflict.

29. Judge Says Trump Violated Free Speech When He Ordered Defunding of NPR | NPR, March 31, 2026. Source for Trump's May 2025 executive order defunding NPR and PBS, Congress's subsequent vote to cancel $1.1 billion in public broadcasting funding, the shutdown of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in January 2026 after 58 years, and the federal court ruling that the executive order constituted unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and retaliation in violation of the First Amendment.