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Settlement of civil rights suit brings ranked choice voting to a small city

Advocates of ranked-choice voting won a small victory last week when a Detroit suburb agreed to switch to that system for city council elections in order to settle a civil rights suit brought at the end of the Obama administration.

The Department of Justice alleged in January 2017 that the traditional at-large system used in Eastpointe, Mich., violated the Voting Rights Act because it resulted in black people having less opportunity than white people to elect candidates of their choice.


The Census Bureau estimates the city of 32,000 is now 46 percent black and 42 percent white, a dramatic shift from the start of the decade, when 64 percent of the residents were white and 30 percent black.

In a settlement agreement that still must be approved by a federal judge, city officials do not admit that the voting system that was used was discriminatory and the federal government acknowledges that any discrimination that has occurred was not intentional.

"This agreement reflects the department's resolute commitment to vigorous enforcement of the Voting Rights Act to protect the right to vote in all elections," said Eric Dreiband, the assistant attorney general for civil rights.

Under the new ranked-choice system, voters will rank city council candidates in their order of preference.

CORRECTION: An earlier version incorrectly said the suit was filed during the Trump administration.

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RFK Jr. Vowed To Find the Environmental Causes of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying To Do Just That.

Erin McCanlies spent almost two decades at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health studying how parents’ exposure to chemicals affects the chance that they will have a child with autism. This spring, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. eliminated her entire division.

Nate Smallwood for ProPublica

RFK Jr. Vowed To Find the Environmental Causes of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying To Do Just That.

Erin McCanlies was listening to the radio one morning in April when she heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promising to find the cause of autism by September. The secretary of Health and Human Services said he believed an environmental toxin was responsible for the dramatic increase in the condition and vowed to gather “the most credible scientists from all over the world” to solve the mystery.

Nothing like that has ever been done before, he told an interviewer.

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Trump’s Imperial Presidency: Putting Local Democracy at Risk

U.S. President Donald Trump visits the U.S. Park Police Anacostia Operations Facility on August 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Anna Moneymaker

Trump’s Imperial Presidency: Putting Local Democracy at Risk

Trump says his deployment of federal law enforcement is about restoring order in Washington, D.C. But the real message isn’t about crime—it’s about power. By federalizing the District’s police, activating the National Guard, and bulldozing homeless encampments with just a day’s notice, Trump is flexing a new kind of presidential muscle: the authority to override local governments at will—a move that raises serious constitutional concerns.

And now, he promises that D.C. won’t be the last. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia—cities he derides as “crime-ridden”—could be next. Noticeably absent from his list are red-state cities with higher homicide rates, like New Orleans. The pattern is clear: Trump’s law-and-order agenda is less about public safety and more about partisan punishment.

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