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The St. Louis Park, Minnesota, City Council voted unanimously Monday night to reinstate the Pledge of Allegiance, saying the firestorm of criticism over the issue has taken a toll on the staff and kept the city from doing its work. More than 100 people packed the City Council chambers Monday night to protest the council’s June 17 decision to do away with the pledge at most meetings. A similar protest took place last week. The pledge was not scheduled to be discussed Monday night, but Council Member Thom Miller made a motion to reinstate it because the city has been inundated with e-mails and phone calls, some that Miller believed endangered city staff and residents.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Though women racked up electoral gains in 2018, they are still underrepresented in politics at all levels. As of 2019, at the state level there are only nine female governors and 15 lieutenant governors, and less than 30% of legislative seats are held by women. In other political jobs, women make up 24% of Congress and hold 20% of mayoral positions in large cities. But in one position, women are disproportionately overrepresented, and startling so: across the country, there is no state where fewer than 50% of county clerk positions are held by women. In some places, women have a near monopoly, such as Arkansas, where in 2016, 91% of county clerks were women.
Route Fifty
Twin brothers Erin and Evan Addison had never heard a podcast before joining the podcasting club at their school. And they managed to convince their best friend, Andrew Arevalo, to join as well. That was two years ago, when the three boys were in seventh grade at Steel City Academy, a charter school in Gary, Ind. But in March of 2018, their reporting took a serious turn. Students learned about a proposal to build a waste management facility next to their school — and they weren’t happy about it. They started interviewing classmates and teachers. They learned how to submit a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. They also attended informational meetings and peppered representatives from Maya Energy, the company behind the plant, with questions — their recorders rolling, of course. At one protest outside a Gary City Council meeting, about 150 students showed up to demand that the council reject the proposal. Student Malik Hubbard told Erin, “I really want Steel City to stay here. And that dump gotta go somewhere else.”
NPR
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“Amherst councilors have demonstrated they simply cannot be entrusted with the awesome power to nullify an election with no explanation whatsoever to the public.”