Machine-Gun Converter Ban, Closing Parchman, Medicaid Expansion: #MSLeg Roundup
Mississippi lawmakers advanced bills to ban machine-gun converters, expand Medicaid, close most of the state penitentiary and outlaw sexual extortion.
Mississippi lawmakers advanced bills to ban machine-gun converters, expand Medicaid, close most of the state penitentiary and outlaw sexual extortion.
Former University of Mississippi journalism school dean Will Norton is returning to his old haunts in a new role in the building where he once ruled. Norton stepped down last year after a group of whistleblowers obtained emails that revealed how he tolerated racist comments about Black women students from a wealthy potential donor, as detailed in this publication’s 2020 “UM Emails” exposé.
Before the University of Mississippi terminated Dr. Garrett Felber, an anti-racist history professor, his public criticisms of its ties to the private-prison industry drew concern from administrators on campus who had monitored social-media activities, emails this publication obtained show.
Since mid-April, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has confirmed more COVID-19 cases among detained immigrants at a private prison in Natchez, Miss., than ICE had reported during the prior 13 months since the pandemic began.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Mississippi are calling on President Joe Biden’s administration to shut down 39 ICE detention facilities—including the Adams County Detention Center east of Natchez.
In late September 2020, eight Cameroonian asylum seekers reported suffering torture at the hands of facility and immigration officials at the Adams County Correctional Facility in Natchez. Black immigrants’ lives are under attack—not only in Mississippi, but nationwide.
During a period of what University of Mississippi faculty are calling a time of increasing paranoia, the university is set to terminate a celebrated professor of history—the outspoken anti-racism and decarceral scholar, Dr. Garrett Felber.
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