In the aftermath of the May 18, 2018, school shooting at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, the debate over whether or not violent video games contribute to youth violence has reignited.

The federal minimum wage was introduced in 1938 during the Great Depression under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was initially set at $0.25 per hour and has been increased by Congress 22 times, most recently in 2009 when it went from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour. 29 states plus the District of Columbia (DC) have a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage. 1.8 million workers (or 2.3% of the hourly paid working population) earn the federal minimum wage or below.

A universal basic income (UBI) is an unconditional cash payment given at regular intervals by the government to all residents, regardless of their earnings or employment status. Pilot UBI programs have taken place or are ongoing in the United States, Brazil, Canada, Finland, and other parts of the world. In 2017, Hawaii passed legislation creating a working group to study UBI. In that same year, 77% of Swiss voters rejected a proposal to introduce a UBI.

Election Day in the United States has occurred on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November ever since President John Tyler signed an 1845 law establishing a specific voting day for the entire country. [1] The decision was made taking into account farmers, a large portion of the voting constituency at the time, who would not have been able to travel to polling places in winter months or during planting or harvest times. [2] Sundays were for rest and worship, and on Wednesdays farmers typically sold their crops at the market, making Tuesdays the best day of the week. [1]

From the 1990s to the present, elected officials in several US states have made unsuccessful attempts to lower the voting age to 16, and sometimes even younger. [1] Student activism in the wake of a Feb. 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has brought new life to the debate over letting younger people vote in elections. [2]

“We let ex-convicts marry, reproduce, buy beer, own property and drive. They don’t lose their freedom of religion, their right against self-incrimination or their right not to have soldiers quartered in their homes in time of war. But in many places, the assumption is that they can’t be trusted to help choose our leaders… If we thought criminals could never be reformed, we wouldn’t let them out of prison in the first place.”

If you were looking for the perfect distillation of how dysfunctional the American system of electing the president is, it would be hard to top last week’s federal appeals court ruling allowing “electors” — the members of the Electoral College — to vote for whomever they want, rather than the candidate they were pledged to support.

“Wait,” you might say, “someone I’ve never even heard of can just throw out my vote for president?”

Well, yes. Or maybe not.

The debate over the continued use of the Electoral College resurfaced during the 2016 presidential election, when Donald Trump lost the general election to Hillary Clinton by over 2.8 million votes and won the Electoral College by 74 votes. The official general election results indicate that Trump received 304 Electoral College votes and 46.09% of the popular vote (62,984,825 votes), and Hillary Clinton received 227 Electoral College votes and 48.18% of the popular vote (65,853,516 votes).

Pro
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated in a Mar. 11, 2002 article titled “The Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People” that:

“Despite… advances into the American mainstream… lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people continue to face real discrimination in all areas of life. No federal law prevents a person from being fired or refused a job on the basis of sexual orientation…

The struggle for legal equality for LGBT people rests on several fundamental constitutional principles.

On June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is a right protected by the US Constitution in all 50 states. Prior to their decision, same-sex marriage was already legal in 37 states and Washington DC, but was banned in the remaining 13. US public opinion had shifted significantly over the years, from 27% approval of gay marriage in 1996 to 55% in 2015, the year it became legal throughout the United States, to 61% in 2019.