FOCUS: #MSWelfare/TANF Scandal • Jackson Water • Abortion • Race & Racism • Policing • Incarceration • Housing & Evictions
New moms who cannot afford private insurance will be eligible for a year of postpartum Medicaid coverage starting in July after Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed Senate Bill 2212 into law without fanfare today.
As in past years, no Medicaid expansion bill survived the legislative deadline for lawmakers to pass one out of committee. Within 24 hours of Reeves’ address, multiple Medicaid-expansion bills died, including Democratic and Republican-sponsored bills that would have allowed residents to vote on the issue in a referendum.
Duvalier Malone and his husband Dr. Adrian Mayse reflect on their collective journey in love as they celebrate 13 years together. It is also the anniversary of Malone’s first published column where he came out to the world in response to the discriminatory “Mississippi Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act” passed in 2016.
State senators from Jackson are asking the Mississippi Legislature for millions of dollars to help fund additional police and misdemeanor jail beds to keep those charged with low-level crimes who cannot afford bail locked up as a strategy to prevent violence as it rises in the capital city, they say. They are not asking for funds to support earlier interventions that a BOTEC Analysis study of Jackson crime recommended in 2016—which the Legislature authorized for $500,000 in taxpayer dollars. Kayode Crown reports.
Mississippi leaders reflected this morning on the life of Colin Powell, the four-star general who served as the nation’s first Black secretary of state, after news of his death broke this morning. U.S. House Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat who represents Mississippi’s Second Congressional District and chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, called Powell “the best example of a true patriot.”
Echoing arguments he last made when another Democrat, Barack Obama, was president, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker spoke out against President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats’ $1.9-trillion economic-stimulus plan today, claiming it “would add to the mountain of debt that our children and grandchildren will have to pay.”
Today, Kamala Harris became vice president of the United States—the first woman, the first person of South Asian descent, and the first African American to do so. Harris also became the first vice president to have graduated from a historically black college or university. However, the vice presidency itself has traditionally been a relatively insignificant position, though the office has become more influential in recent years.
Everyone should know that this assault on our nation, this (somewhat) armed insurrection against our nation in which five people, so far, have lost their lives did not happen because of Donald J. Trump alone. It happened because, ultimately, too many conservatives are cowards.
Today, former President Barack Obama cited that progress and urged the Magnolia State to do something it has not done since Reconstruction: Elect a Black man to the U.S. Senate.
Mississippi Journalism and Education Group is a a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media organization (EIN 85-1403937) for the state, devoted to going beyond partisanship and publishing solutions journalism for the Magnolia State and all of its people.
125 S. Congress Street #1324
Jackson, MS 39201
[email protected]
[email protected]
601-362-6121
The Mississippi Free Press is a project of the Mississippi Journalism and Education Group, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit journalism organization (EIN 85-1403937).