FOCUS: Medicaid Expansion • Pauper’s Field Burials • State Legislature • National News • Fact Checks • #MSWelfare/TANF Scandal • Jackson Water • Race & Racism
A majority of voters in Mississippi, the state whose leaders successfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade in June, disagree with the ruling and support some form of legal abortion, a new survey shows.
Although the original Postpartum Medicaid extension bill died with a March 9 deadline, Sen. Kevin Blackwell and the Senate still have a few opportunities to send the provisions in the bill back to the House. The Senate can amend bills from the House currently in conference between the two chambers that address the relevant sections of Mississippi Code to include the postpartum extension.
For the second year in a row, Mississippi House leadership has once again killed an extension of postpartum Medicaid benefits, likely guaranteeing that many low-income people will lose health insurance benefits only two months after giving birth.Â
The 2022 Legislative Session has been remarkably rapid, compared to some of the gridlock seen in the Mississippi Capitol during the pandemic era. With the deadline for general bills to pass out of their original chamber approaching this Thursday, some of the session’s most significant goals are already checked off.
Of all the priorities in the near future for the short session, none has been more comprehensively discussed, tweaked, debated and recalibrated than the state’s long-awaited medical-marijuana plan. With a supportive majority across both the House and Senate, only Gov. Tate Reeves’ opposition threatens the plan’s adoption.
Christine Loftin believes medical marijuana could save the life of her son, Bryan, who has mitochondrial disease. But more than a year after Mississippians voted to enact a medical marijuana law, Gov. Tate Reeves has not called a special session to create a program.
The nearly 25,000 Mississippians who use Medicaid health insurance to cover pregnancy will continue to lose their health benefits just 60 days after birth, after a proposed extension fell casualty to a long session of gamesmanship over control of the Mississippi Division of Medicaid. Dr. Charlene Collier, OB-GYN and director of the Mississippi Maternal Mortality Committee, says the 60-day Medicaid cutoff is illogical at best, and deadly at worst.Â
Mississippi’s trans youth may find themselves barred from school sports if the Mississippi House of Representatives confirms a Senate bill, passed in the waning hours of last week’s legislative deadline, that targets trans children, especially trans girls. Both chambers saw similar bills to limit trans rights this session.
The anti-trans bill passed the Senate in the long hours of a Thursday session extended into early Friday morning. A contentious battle over a parallel marijuana program—an alternative to 2020’s successful ballot initiative 65—derailed regular floor debate until late at night.
Three local Oxford candidates are in confusing limbo after Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced on Monday that municipal candidates in Mississippi should be required to live in their current wards for at least two years leading up to their election in order to qualify for their races.Â
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, MSÂ 39201
info@mississippifreepress.org
tips@mississippifreepress.org
events@mississippifreepress.org
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).