St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer paused the city’s Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise program Monday, citing federal pressures to end gender- and race-based programming nationwide.

Through this move, the city's business certification program will no longer accept new construction contracts with minority-owned or women-led goals. Existing contracts will not be discontinued to avoid placing legal risks on developers, contractors and subcontractors.

St. Louis officials are fighting to secure federal funding to help with tornado recovery, and being out of compliance with the Trump administration could jeopardize the funding, said Spencer.

“We have some discretionary allocations from FEMA. We have discretionary allocations from Community Development Block Grant funds. We have debris re

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