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Reeves vetoes bills. Lawmakers won’t return to challenge them
Gov. Tate Reeves has vetoed several bills passed by the Legislature, but lawmakers will not reconvene Tuesday to attempt to override them. On Monday, the last day for him to address bills passed in the 2024 legislative session, the governor vetoed a bill transferring money between state agencies, and part of another similar transfer bill. He vetoed four bills restoring voting rights to people convicted of felonies. He let 16 such bills restoring voting rights pass.
Podcast: House Minority Leader reflects on breakdown of Medicaid expansion negotiations
Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, the House minority leader, talks with Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison and Taylor Vance on how efforts to expand Medicaid broke down during the chaotic final days of the 2024 legislative session. He hopes those efforts are revived in the 2025 session. listen to more episodes.
Lawmakers move to limit jail detentions during civil commitment
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Mississippi Today. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. Mississippi lawmakers have overhauled the state’s civil commitment laws after Mississippi Today and ProPublica reported that hundreds of people...
On this day in 1967
Benjamin Brown, a former civil rights organizer, was shot in the back on this day in Jackson, Mississippi. Brown had walked with a friend into the Kon-Tiki Café to pick up a sandwich to take home to his wife. On his way back, he encountered a standoff between law enforcement officers and Jackson State University students, who had been hurling rocks and bottles at them. Brown was hit in the back by three shotgun blasts. No arrests were ever made, and the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission gathered spy files on the students who protested.
If you didn’t like MAEP, you may not like the new public school funding formula
House and Senate members often adjourn a legislative day in memory of a constituent or other well known person who recently died. On the day the Mississippi House took its final vote to adopt a new school funding formula, Rep. Karl Oliver, R-Winona, asked “to adjourn in memory of the Mississippi Adequate Education plan…the failed plan.”
On this day in 1968
The Poor People’s Campaign arrived in Washington, D.C. A town called “Resurrection City” was erected as a tribute to the slain Martin Luther King Jr. King had conceived the campaign, which was led by his successor at the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Ralph David Abernathy. Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson reached out to young Black men wanting vengeance for King’s assassination.
Lawmakers may have to return to Capitol May 14 to override Gov. Tate Reeves’ potential vetoes
Legislators might not have much notice on whether they will be called back to the Mississippi Capitol for one final day of the 2024 session. Speaker Jason White, who presides over the House, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, must decide in the coming days whether to reconvene the Legislature for one final day in the 2024 session on Tuesday at 1 p.m.
On this day in 2007
An Alabama grand jury indicted former state trooper James Bonard Fowler for the Feb. 18, 1965, killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was trying to protect his mother from being beaten at Mack’s Café. At Jackson’s funeral, Martin Luther King Jr. called him “a martyred hero of a...
‘This doesn’t need to be a slap on the wrist,’ DA says of Noxubee County case
A capital murder investigation helped lead to unrelated federal charges against former Noxubee County Sheriff Terry Grassaree and his deputy that involved the sexual abuse of a jailed woman. On Tuesday, Grassaree pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI when he denied receiving nude photos and videos from a woman...
Medical residents are increasingly avoiding states with abortion restrictions
Isabella Rosario Blum was wrapping up medical school and considering residency programs to become a family practice physician when she got some frank advice: If she wanted to be trained to provide abortions, she shouldn’t stay in Arizona. Blum turned to programs mostly in states where abortion access —...
On this day in 1928
Burl Toler was born in Memphis. The first Black official in any major sport in the U.S., he defeated prejudice at each turn. In 1951, Toler starred for the legendary undefeated University of San Francisco Dons. Prejudice kept the integrated team from playing in the Gator Bowl, but the team found success anyway. Nine players went to the NFL, three of them later inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame. Their best player may have been Toler, who was drafted by Cleveland but suffered a severe knee injury in a college all-star game that ended his playing days.
EPA absolves MDEQ, Health Department of discrimination in funding Jackson water
About a year and half ago, on the heels of Jackson’s infamous water system failure, advocates and politicians from Mississippi began publicly questioning the funding mechanisms that are supposed to support such systems. In October 2022, U.S. Reps. Bennie Thompson and Carolyn Maloney wrote Gov. Tate Reeves, grilling him...
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