OurTupelo

While telling the Legislature how the Mississippi Opioid Settlement Advisory Council recommends spending state lawsuit money, Council Chair and Attorney General Lynn Fitch said she and the other committee members would be reviewing their internal processes and may change how they oversee hundreds of millions of dollars. 

It’s one of the first times Fitch has publicly acknowledged there may be better ways for Mississippi to manage the money it’s won in the national opioid lawsuits, cases that charged some of the country’s biggest companies with contributing to a public health crisis that’s killed over 10,000 Mississippians since 2000. 

The Attorney General’s office sent an email addressed to Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Speaker of the House Jason White late Friday afternoon with two attachments: a finalized list of applications seeking to spend some of the state’s opioid settlement money, and a letter authored by Fitch to the Legislature.

The list, a reflection of the council’s work soliciting and scoring project applications looking to address Mississippi’s addiction crisis, tiers the 127 applications into five categories. The council recommended about $40 million of grant funding in the highest priority category and about $41 million for applications in the second highest group. 

Fitch’s letter summarizes the recommendation list and adds additional messages the council agreed to tell the Legislature. Toward the end of it, she acknowledges that she and the other members may need additional help to make sure funds are spent appropriately. 

“As we prepare for the second round of applications, the Council will be reviewing its process and may determine the need to utilize services to assist in evaluation of applications, tracking of public funds, and others to ensure that the Legislature’s priorities for accountability, transparency, and public involvement are fulfilled,” she wrote.

The Legislature created the council last spring to recommend how lawmakers should spend most of Mississippi’s opioid settlement money and appointed Fitch’s office to lead the effort. Lawmakers gave council members about five months to create application materials, review completed proposals and assess how well they believe applicant organizations will address the addiction epidemic.

The council completed these tasks in that time period, but the process was filled with a variety of issues that concerned overdose prevention advocates both on and outside of the council. From missing application materials in the summer to conflicts of interests and grading discrepancies in the fall, Mississippi Today reported on challenges that led overdose prevention advocates to worry whether the funds would help those who struggle with addiction. 

In the past, Fitch has often responded to the newsroom asking questions about these concerns without proposals to address them. When Mississippi Today asked her about the council conflicts of interest in November, her Chief of Staff Michelle Williams wrote back that the members are state leaders at addressing addiction and are positioned well to address the public health crisis. 

Her idea in the letter to seek out additional services echoes fellow council member James Moore’s message at a meeting last week. Just before the members left, he asked the committee to consider reaching out to groups with expertise in helping states manage opioid settlement funds in the future.

Also in the letter, Fitch said the state has just over $90 million in opioid settlement money that must be spent to address addiction. There’s an additional roughly $15 million in state coffers that her office and the Legislature allow lawmakers to spend the same as any public money.

The setup for those $15 million mirrors the one Fitch created for the settlement money sent to Misississippi’s cities and counties. Elected leaders can spend the money on addressing addiction but don’t have to. A September Mississippi Today investigation found that most of the settlement money local governments were spending went to general expenses rather than addressing addiction — a big reason why the state has spent less money to fight the public health crisis than any other state in the country. 

When Mississippi Today has asked Fitch why she allowed Mississippi to spend large chunks of the settlement funds for purposes other than addiction, her office has said the lawsuits allow for some of the money to repay past government expenses fighting the opioid epidemic. 

State lawmakers are expected to consider the advisory council’s recommendations in the 2026 regular legislative session.

In a rare show of bipartisan cooperation, Mississippi’s congressional delegation has sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer with concerns that new regulations implemented by the European Union will harm the state’s forestry industry. 

The delegation wrote that the E.U. regulations “introduce substantial uncertainty” for the forestry industry and risk “further depressing already strained log and wood-product markets, harming rural communities that depend on healthy, functioning timber economies.”

While the delegation’s letter primarily focused on the state’s $15-billion a year forestry industry, the regulations apply to other agricultural products, such as cattle and soybeans. 

In 2023, the E.U. revised its timber supply chain regulations to curb deforestation, clearing trees and converting forest land to another use, such as agriculture. The new regulations, which will start to be implemented on Dec. 30, require companies importing wood and certain agricultural products to certify that their products were not produced on recently deforested land.

The delegation said this is an infringement on “American private property rights.”

Casey Anderson, executive director of the Mississippi Forestry Association, says that as a consequence of the new regulations, some producers are being asked to sign contracts by traders saying that they will not convert the land. Landowners are pushing back at their ability to decide how best to use the land they own.

“The E.U. is trying to dictate how we do things in the U.S.,” said Anderson. 

In a social media post, Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce Andy Gipson wrote, “We can never allow foreign interests and globalists to dictate the use of our land and natural resources here in Mississippi.”

Anderson points out that most producers in the U.S. practice sustainable forestry. And in the delegation’s letter, they highlighted that the E.U. considers the U.S. to have “negligible or insignificant levels of deforestation.” 

Mississippi and much of the South’s forestry industry has struggled in recent decades and is facing low prices. 

“It can really do a lot of harm if it goes through,” said Anderson of the new regulations.

STARKVILLE — Since transferring to Mississippi State University from Itawamba Community College in 2022, the cost of parking on campus has always been an issue for Madeline Comer. 

Last spring, Comer got a $50 parking ticket because her license plates weren’t registered properly with the university’s parking services, she said. Comer, a junior studying graphic design, called to dispute the ticket. 

For weeks, she couldn’t reach anyone on staff, she said. Two weeks after the first ticket, she received another $50 ticket for the same issue. She was afraid of racking up other parking citations that might result in progressively higher fines and a “boot” or wheel clamp. 

The citations would have strained her monthly budget as she juggles rent, art supplies for classes, groceries and other bills. 

After weeks of back and forth, parking services dropped the ticket. Comer felt relieved.

Then in July, university officials announced a major parking overhaul that included restructuring campus zones, revamping prices and implementing new tier systems to purchase parking permits. 

Comer knew parking fees would be even more of a problem. But she lucked up. 

She bought a $225 annual commuter parking permit after waiting nearly four hours in an online lottery to apply for her pass, unlike many of her peers, who ended up on a lottery waitlist or getting a pricier permit outside of their desired spot. The annual parking permits can cost up to $650. 

Her parking spot is in G3, a lot near Humphrey Coliseum, where the Bulldogs’ basketball teams play. But Comer’s parking spot is nowhere near the majority of her classes in Hunter Hall. She lives 15 minutes from campus, outside of Starkville, and commutes four times a week. 

Weekly costs for gas are now adding up, Comer said.

“It’s just a lot for my bank account to handle,” she said. “Not to mention the rent, groceries and art supplies I also pay for out of pocket.” 

Comer, who is paying for college on her own, works multiple part-time jobs. She is a house cleaner for Airbnb, a barista at a coffee shop and has taken on multiple side hustles as a freelancer, selling her art and designs online. 

Covering unexpected college costs

Mississippi undergraduates leave university with an average of $29,000 of federal loan debt, according to a 2021 report from the Institute of College Access & Success.

The rising cost of in-state tuition over the past few decades, along with additional costs of campus meal plans, textbooks and class supplies, laboratory fees, transportation and off-campus housing have made attending university expensive. 

At Mississippi State, tuition has increased slightly in each of the past four years, including a nearly 4% rise from $9,815 in 2023-2024 to $10,202 in 2024-2025 academic year, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. 

On-campus housing starts at $8,456, and meal plans are $5,808 a year — a total of $24,000 for a full academic year. For out-of-state students, costs can soar up to $42,000 a year. 

While the cost for books and supplies have steadied over the past year, the cost of food and housing for students living on and off campus has steadily increased year to year. Data from NCES shows nearly a 5% increase in food and housing expenses and a 4% increase in other expenses between 2023-2025. 

Mississippi State officials said its new parking system allows students to pay less for a permit with guaranteed space, while other universities in the state do the opposite.

“The inherent value of our permit is significantly higher than that of our peers,” Sid Salter, a university spokesman, said in an email.

By comparison, parking permits at the University of Southern Mississippi are $167 for students and $414 for reserved spaces, according to the university’s parking and transit services website. At the University of Mississippi, parking permits for students are $395 for the 2025-2026 academic year. 

But for some students at Mississippi State, the price change for campus parking is just another cost to their already lean budgets.

Kenneth McGowan, senior studying computer engineering, said college students can quickly tally hundreds or up to $1,000 a semester in unexpected expenses. He felt blindsided by the price changes to parking, tuition and dining plans upon returning to campus this semester. He said he had to come up with more than $3,000 extra to get through the year.

McGowan isn’t alone. Nationwide, students reported some level of surprise with the full cost of attending college, including but not limited to tuition and other directly billable expenses, according to survey results from Inside Higher Ed’s Student Voice report. At least a quarter of students have trouble budgeting as a result, according to the report. 

In another set of findings in Inside Higher Ed’s report, 36% of students said an unexpected expense of $1,000, or even less, could threaten their ability to stay enrolled. Another 22% said the same of an expense between $1,001 and $2,500. 

The College Board estimates that indirect expenses can make up 40%–50% of the annual cost for undergraduates. The average full-time undergraduate spends $1,240 per year on books and supplies, according to the College Board report. An estimated 91% of American colleges fail to tell students the full cost of their college education, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. 

To make up for extra college related expenses, McGowan spends his free time with gigs including food pickup and delivery for GrubHub, UberEats and Door Dash. He also picked up another job as a FANgineer, working for catering and event services during Mississippi State football games. 

“The whole thing, it’s just kind of frustrating,” McGowan said of unexpected expenses. 

McGowan said he bought a $225 parking pass for the year. It was another hit in his budget, but he considers himself lucky. He parks his car near Sanderson Center, the student recreation hub, which is near the heart of campus. His engineering classes in McCain Hall are another 10-15 minute walk across campus. 

Eli Rowell, a senior studying graphic design, paid $650 for a North Garage parking permit. He was shut out of the lottery process once the university ran out of his preferred parking lot spot: G3, near Howell Hall. 

Rowell works part time as a bartender at Harvey’s restaurant in Starkville to pay for college. He received a scholarship when he transferred from Hinds Community College, but he is paying out of pocket for his next three semesters.

Mississippi State does a “decent job” of breaking down costs for attending the university, Rowell said. But research and transparency from university scholarship and financial aid offices are just as important, he said. 

“Education should be accessible to more people,” Rowell said. “Understanding where your money is going is important. The more information you have about costs, the better you are able to navigate your college experience.” 

McGowan said he wishes the university would be more transparent about price changes. He said he doesn’t know anyone in his friend group who had to pay less due to the changes made at Mississippi State. 

“I just don’t understand the reason or purpose behind it,” McGowan said of increased costs. “MSU used to be affordable.” 

Mississippi State officials said they’ve worked to modernize and improve the parking system to accommodate population growth and changing campus infrastructure. The changes were also to reduce heavy traffic, enhance pedestrian and cyclist safety, and increase usage of existing parking spaces. 

“The plan has worked as it was designed to work,” Salter said. 

This year, MSU sold parking permits on a tiered system, with different prices assigned to parking zones based on proximity to campus and desirability. The most convenient spots at the heart of campus, aside from North Garage, cost $375 for residents and $275 for commuters. Permits for North Garage, located at the center of campus, cost $650. 

For commuters, parking breaks down into four tiers, with the lowest level costing $100 to park on the outskirts of campus. Resident parking breaks down into three tiers, with the lowest level costing $150. 

Mississippi State officials were aware of the criticism from students, faculty and residents, including several petitions calling for the resignation of Jeremiah Dumas, executive director of parking services. 

“Parking is a hot-button topic, so such unfair criticism is neither unexpected nor unusual,” Salter said. “The university will continue to work and adjust as necessary to fix issues, but there are none we plan to address. Things are functioning smoothly.”  

It is unclear how much the university profits off of campus parking, but the revenue is used to cover the cost of parking operations, which is more than $2 million, Salter said. It costs an average of $5 million a year to maintain the parking lots and roads on campus, Salter said. 

‘Spending every penny’ to pay for college

Mississippi State offers resources for students who need short-term loans, food security resources, temporary housing assistance and access to devices such as laptops. The university also helps students find on-campus and part-time employment. 

When Comer moved to Starkville, she opted to not buy a parking pass. It was expensive. To save money, she walked 40 minutes from her apartment to classes, trudging along with her portfolio and art supplies. 

“It wasn’t much  fun in the heat and heavy rain. But I made it work,” Comer said. 

She tried taking public transportation, but a bad experience left her not wanting to ride the bus. During Comer’s first year, she was dropped off at a random location on campus and had to find her way back on her own. 

She worked multiple shifts waitressing at a local sports bar to save up for a car.  

Comer doesn’t want to slam her university; she enjoys attending Mississippi State. But she said as someone who is “spending every penny” to put herself through college, speaking up on behalf of other students can make a difference for future students. 

“Parking may seem small to some people,” Comer said, “but it’s just these little costs that make it really hard and often feel like, if you don’t have money, college isn’t for you.” 

Newly elected state Sen. Johnny DuPree is no stranger to state politics. He was longtime mayor of Hattiesburg and is a former Democratic nominee for governor. He outlines issues he’ll tackle in his new job, and vows to keep his constituents informed of what’s happening at the Capitol.

NATCHEZ — Buddhist monks from Fort Worth, Texas, are walking on a 2,300-mile, 110-day pilgrimage to Washington, D.C., to promote peace, unity and kindness.

They left Oct. 26 from their Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center.

And on Friday — Day 41 of their sojourn — the monks and their dog, Aloka, crossed the Mississippi River on the Natchez-Vidalia Bridge from Louisiana into Mississippi, where they were greeted by a small group of locals.

“We walk not in protest, but to remind Americans that peace is not a destination. It is a practice. And that peace resides within each of us,” Bhikkhu Pannakara, spiritual leader of the Walk for Peace, said in Natchez.

“The walk is a reminder that unity and kindness begins within each of us and can radiate outward to communities, families and society as a whole,” he said.

Mississippi private school officials have said they would welcome receiving public funds from state taxpayers to help educate their students, but not if it means governmental oversight of their faith-based curriculum and their admissions requirements.

For some legislative supporters of providing public funds to private schools, the conditions being demanded by those private schools are OK. At least that seems to be the message, based on recent hearings at the Mississippi Capitol in advance of the 2026 legislative session.

“I don’t want to force our Christian schools to teach secular curriculum,” Rep. Jansen Owen, a Pearl River County Republican and co-chair of a House school choice select committee, said after an October meeting with the Mid-South Association of Independent Schools. ”I don’t want the state’s involvement to infringe on that in any way.”

Sure, it is highly likely many Mississippi legislators would support spending public funds on the teaching of “Christian values” and even campaign on that expenditure in their next election.

But what if the school receiving public funds was teaching Muslim values or Hindu values or Wiccan values?

What if the school accepted students only if they would pledge allegiance to the Prophet Muhammad?

Would it be OK with Mississippi politicians if the school taught tolerance and respect for LGBTQ people? What if the school allowed boys and girls to compete against each other in sports?

Would they support public funds going to those private schools?

Mississippi has a law preventing public schools from teaching diversity, equity and inclusion. Private schools are free to teach a DEI curriculum because they are, duh, private. But what if the private school teaching DEI was receiving public funds through vouchers, tax credits or some other scheme?

Many politicians also do not like the teaching of what is known as critical race theory or in general terms instruction on the impact of race on what happened in the past and what is occurring now. What if a private school wanted to construct its curriculum around the teaching of critical race theory? Would that be OK with Mississippi politicians who support providing vouchers to private schools?

Surely it would be.

After all, Mississippi politicians are known for their open mindedness. Look up the phrase open mindedness in Webster’s, and there is a photo of the Mississippi Legislature.

But such is not the case in Florida.

According to an article on the website of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, many Florida school choice supporters are concerned that Muslim schools are receiving public funds.

The article quotes Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, the former president of the state Senate, explaining that schools “‘that indoctrinate Sharia law should not be a part of our taxpayer-funded school voucher program.’”

Many Mississippi school choice proponents argue that the private schools receiving public funds should not be required to face the same oversight and rules and regulations of public schools.

When state Auditor Shad White, whose job is to provide accountability of the spending of public funds, was asked back in March whether private schools receiving public funds should be subject to governmental oversight, he said, “They are held accountable by the parents who choose to send their kids there.” 

So, if the private schools receiving those public funds want to teach “Sharia law” or the virtues of LGBTQ rights and the parents do not object, is that OK with politicians like Auditor White, House Speaker Jason White and Gov. Tate Reeves who all support passing a school choice bill during the upcoming 2026 legislative session?

If so, they are indeed open minded. We just didn’t know.

Dr. Patricia Tibbs said her pediatric practice in Laurel has gotten “so many rejections” for newborn hepatitis B vaccines in the last year, and she suspects some of those infants may end up with debilitating conditions as a result. 

“The problem with that is that if you are in the process of turning positive for hepatitis B and you did not know you were exposed, and if we don’t give the baby the vaccine at birth, then your baby has acquired it,” said Tibbs, president of the Mississippi chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told Mississippi Today. “You can’t stop the process once it’s acquired.”

This shift among how parents choose to protect their children against infectious disease was underway even before a group of advisers convened for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week. Universal hepatitis B vaccines for infants are no longer recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel that advises the federal government on vaccination policy, as a result of a controversial vote Friday. 

The 8-3 vote brought an end to a longstanding recommendation to vaccinate all healthy newborns against hepatitis B, regardless of whether the mother tests positive for the virus. The current committee was hand-picked by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after he fired 17 former members. In June, Kennedy called his move a “clean sweep” that represents a broader movement to prioritize parental autonomy. Committee members also discussed the childhood immunization schedule but only voted on the recommendation for hepatitis B. 

Several national health associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, have come out with statements reiterating the importance of continued recommendation of universal birth doses of the vaccine. On Friday, the American Medical Association called the panel’s decision “reckless.” 

Hepatitis B can spread through sexual contact and drug use, but it can also be transmitted from mothers to infants during childbirth. In infancy, the disease can be transmitted through contact with an infected person’s body fluids, such as their blood. The committee now recommends the vaccine only for babies whose mothers test positive for the virus. For other babies, it will be up to parents and doctors to decide whether a birth dose is appropriate. 

The virus attacks the liver, is often asymptomatic for years, and can present in adulthood as liver cancer, cirrhosis and death. The risks of these outcomes are much higher for people who get infected as infants. There is no cure.

Babies born to mothers who are negative at the time of birth are very unlikely to get the virus. However, if a mother tests negative before birth, she could still contract the virus between the time of testing and birth. Testing at birth is a mostly-effective alternative to immediate vaccination in large hospitals that do speedy in-house testing, but not in smaller, rural hospitals where tests can take days to come back, Tibbs said, adding that there is always a chance of a false negative or infection from someone other than the mother. The newborn vaccine is most effective when administered within 12 hours of birth, experts say. 

The recommendation changes will likely have a greater impact in rural areas. There, mothers are more likely to get tested for the first time at birth, the results may take a while to come back, and infants can miss the 12-hour window, Tibbs said.

“This particular decision is going to impact Mississippi especially a lot,” Tibbs said. “Because we already have issues with adequate prenatal care and places where people travel for hours to get good care.”

Panelists say the vaccine has come up now because the committee is required to periodically review vaccine safety. They say they deemed the hepatitis B vaccine the most important to examine since it is the earliest vaccine given to infants and contains aluminum adjuvants – salts that make some vaccines more effective by stimulating an immune response. 

“We have to be cognizant of the fact that the past several decades have seen an explosion in chronic disease, especially the highest rate in our children,” said ACIP member Dr. Evelyn Griffin, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Thursday. “Something is happening, and we have to address that … I’m not saying it is vaccines that is causing this, but vaccines is what we are tasked to explore, so we have to investigate these topics.” 

The new recommendations will not affect access or availability of the vaccine currently available, Andrew Johnson of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said during the meeting. The vaccine will continue to be covered by insurance at no out-of-pocket cost for all beneficiaries. 

“This vote to weaken the hepatitis B dose recommendation will be the first time in my 21 years of experience as a liaison to ACIP that ACIP is voting on a policy that based on all of the available and credible evidence regarding benefits versus harm, it actually put children in this country at higher risk rather than lower risk of disease and death,” said Dr. Amy Middleman, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma’s College of Medicine, during the hearing.

Why this, why now?

In 1991, the U.S. pioneered its recommendation that all infants receive a dose of the hepatitis B vaccine on the day of birth. Between 1990 and 2019, reported cases of acute hepatitis B among children declined by 99%. 

Most parents today choose a birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, with only 9% choosing to forego or delay it, according to the KFF/Washington Post Survey of Parents conducted last summer. 

About 30 vaccines, excluding flu and Covid shots, are recommended in the U.S. for children. The debate on childhood vaccination has become increasingly contentious as the country becomes more divided. Liberals are more inclined toward vaccination, seeing it as a matter of public health, and conservatives are less inclined toward vaccination, seeing it as a matter of individual freedom. Seventy-four percent of Democrats or those who lean Democrat feel confident that vaccines have been tested enough for safety, while only 35% of Republicans or those who lean Republican believe the same, according to an Oct. 20-26  survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.

Some of the people Kennedy replaced former committee members with are considered controversial for being vaccine skeptical. During this week’s meeting, members pushed back against decades-long practices in disease prevention.

“My personal bias is to err on the side of enabling individual decision making and individual rights over the rights of the collective,” said the committee’s vice president, Dr. Robert Malone, who has said he is not anti-vaccination and has worked in mRNA technology for years, during Friday’s deliberations over when to administer the hepatitis B vaccine. “This is not a trivial thing, and it reflects fundamental, frankly philosophical, disagreements about the role of public health and medical practice.”

“Your role is population health, not the individual,” shot back Dr. Jason Goldman, who has served as a liaison to the committee for the American College of Physicians for almost a decade. “We are looking at what are the population risks and how do we make those recommendations.”

In the two-day session, committee members called for more long-term vaccination studies, including placebo-controlled trials to look at causation with conditions such as asthma, allergies, ADHD and autoimmune disorders. Virologists have long considered it unethical once a vaccine is authorized for use to perform additional studies that withhold the vaccine from placebo patients. 

“Many vaccines have been in existence for decades. When the newer, next-generation vaccine comes along, we are obligated to use the standard of care as the control – not a placebo,” Dr. Wilbur Chen, an infectious disease physician-scientist at the University of Maryland Medical Center, told Mississippi Today. Chen was one of the 17 former committee members dismissed in June. 

Before Friday’s vote, the hepatitis B vaccine was recommended for all newborns but not mandated. However, in schools and some pediatricians’ offices, the vaccine is required. More than half of pediatricians’ offices in the U.S. included in a study published in the medical journal JAMA reported having a dismissal policy for families who do not vaccinate their children according to the immunization schedule. 

“I was trained in bioethics that these are things that are not acceptable,” said Malone. “The absence of coercion, compulsion and enticement is the essence of informed consent.”

Mississippi recently added religious exemption, allowing children who do not comply with the recommended immunization schedule to attend school. Before 2023, Mississippi was one of six states that did not allow religious exemption for childhood vaccines. 

Since the exemptions became allowed two years ago, Mississippi went from first in the nation for its rate of childhood immunization to third. 

“Historically, parents all got vaccines,” said Tibbs. “It’s not in my memory for people to reject vaccines until recently.”

The way forward

Two-thirds of Americans don’t trust the health care system today, according to a study from Johns Hopkins University study. That’s up 10 percentage points from 2021, the height of the Covid pandemic. 

Panelists who voted to pass the new hepatitis B recommendations said that increased parental autonomy is necessary to rebuild public trust in the medical industry. They also said that it has never been socially acceptable to talk about adverse effects of vaccines, leading to parents and individuals feeling gaslit and silenced. 

MaryJo Perry, co-director of Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights, called the new recommendations a win after she tried to bring these changes to Mississippi in 2017 through a bill authored by Rep. Becky Currie, a Republican from Brookhaven. The bill would have prohibited the state’s Health Department from requiring the hepatitis B vaccine for all infants at the time of birth. 

“I think it’s a shift in the integrity behind the government and the way they represent vaccine science,” said Perry, whose group now has 14,000 followers on Facebook. Perry said most of the families she works with report feeling that their concerns are not taken seriously and are judged or penalized for exercising their right to choose. 

“They get shamed, they get bullied, they are fear-mongered and coerced,” Perry said. “When you have a brand-new baby, it’s supposed to be a wonderful time. And parents just are tired of that, and today’s young mamas are not putting up with it.”

Some doctors who spoke during the hearings expressed concerns that public distrust might grow, since there is now a rift between what ACIP now recommends and what various medical and pediatric associations recommend. They also described the hearings as chaotic and overly anecdotal. 

“These decisions really affect a lot of people’s lives, and we really are obligated to our countrymen to make sure that we do this in an organized process,” said Middleman, the ACIP liaison. “We can’t just dump a pile of unfolded laundry on the floor and then try to determine from that whether or not we need more T-shirts or more pants.”

Pediatricians also expressed their own confusion over how the new recommendations will change practice, if at all, considering the decision has always been up to parents. 

“Is it not going to change anything because people have always been able to opt out?” asked Tibbs, of the Mississippi chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “I won’t stick your baby if you don’t want the hepatitis B vaccine, right? So, is nothing changing?”

As of now, the hepatitis B vaccine will continue to be covered by insurance for all families who choose to receive a birth dose. But Tibbs worries about the possibility insurance companies will stop covering the vaccine down the road. 

“We as pediatricians will continue to follow the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation,” said Dr. Anita Henderson, past president of the group’s Mississippi chapter. “… We are not planning to make any changes to our recommendations, any changes to our policies. We will continue to recommend the vaccine.”

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Doris Crenshaw was 12 years old on Dec. 5, 1955, when she and her sister eagerly rushed door to door in their neighborhood, distributing flyers prepared by activists planning a boycott of city buses in Montgomery, Alabama.

“Don’t ride the bus to work, to town, to school or any place on Monday,” the flyers read, urging people to attend a mass meeting that evening.

There was a sense of urgency. Days earlier, Rosa Parks, the secretary of the local NAACP chapter, had been the latest Black person arrested for refusing to give up a bus seat to a white passenger on the segregated buses. For 381 days, an estimated 40,000 Black residents stayed off city buses — opting to walk, ride in car pools or take Black-owned cabs — until a legal challenge struck down bus-segregation laws.

“In this city there was a groundswell of a need to do something about what was going on in the buses, because a lot of people were arrested,” recalled Crenshaw, now 82.

Friday marked the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and many of the boycott organizers’ descendants, including those of late civil rights icons the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy Sr., planned to reunite in the Alabama city where it all started. Widely considered the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement, the bus boycott demonstrated the power of sustained nonviolent protest and economic pressure that continues to provide a model for the activism today.

A group of national organizers encouraged people to avoid the temptation of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, aiming the action at corporations like Target and Amazon over their stance of diversity initiatives and financial backing of the Trump administration.

“Any time there can be a strategic and organized response to corporate behavior or exclusionary policy, communities should be free to identify the best approach to address the harm that’s being created,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a phone interview Thursday.

“Boycotting is one tool in the toolbox. At the NAACP, we call it selective buying campaigns,” said Johnson, who lives in Jackson, Mississippi.

Boycott history

Parks’ Dec. 1, 1955, arrest was the final catalyst for the boycott that had been quietly discussed by some activists in Alabama’s capital city. The seats at the front of the city buses were reserved for white people. Black passengers were forced to sit in the back and were expected to give up their seats if the white section became full.

Contrary to the story that is often told, Parks, who died in 2005, wrote that she was not particularly tired from work that day when she took a stand by keeping her seat.

“No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in,” Parks wrote in her autobiography.

Parks was a beloved figure in the town, Crenshaw recalled. She led the NAACP Youth Council and Crenshaw and other members would meet at the Parks’ apartment each week.

Pulling off the boycott for more than a year took an extreme amount of dedication and discipline, Crenshaw recalled.

“We walked, and we kept walking,” said Crenshaw, who walked across town to school each day. “We never got back on those buses.”

Crenshaw went on to a lifetime of civil rights activism. She organized National Council of Negro Women chapters as a southern field representative and was a member of President Jimmy Carter’s domestic policy staff, focused on small and minority business issues. She founded The Southern Youth Leadership Development Institute, mentoring young people as Parks once did for her.

“Everywhere you go, people say they are inspired by Mrs. Parks and by what happened with the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” Crenshaw said.

Boycotting in the spirit of Montgomery

While the specific methods have changed, the underlying goal of leveraging the economic power of the community to drive social and policy change remains the same, said Deborah Scott, the CEO of Georgia Stand-Up. The organization is focused on economic and social justice issues and emphasizes engaging and developing the next generation of activists and leaders.

Scott said she was a teenager when she arrived in Atlanta more than 30 years ago to begin organizing with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference around the anti-apartheid movement. She worked to free South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela and to establish a holiday honoring King.

She learned from the Rev. James Orange, the late prominent civil rights activist and King assistant, who taught her the value of preparing young people to work for however long it takes to enact change.

She remembers some of the important questions he posed: “What are you going to do after you tweeted, after you put the word out to show up? What are you going to say when you get to the microphone? What are you going to do and how will you conduct yourself in these situations?”

Just like the original Montgomery boycott, which sought access to affordable, non-discriminatory transportation by bringing large groups of people together to drive change, the success of boycotts after it required an unshakeable sense of unity.

“Everything is about relationships, but relationship organizing is the thing that is the same,” she said.

With widespread use of social media platforms, today’s boycotts look different. Scott said the biggest change in boycotting with the newer generation is the focus on using consumer purchasing power to pressure companies to change their policies or practices.

“We’re encouraging people to really dig deep about where they want to spend their dollars,” Scott said.

Next generation takes action

Madison Pugh, at 13, is about the same age that Crenshaw was when she became involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The eighth grader decided with her grandmother not to shop at Target after the retailing giant announced it was phasing out its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

She said the retailer’s decision felt like a betrayal and a step backward.

Living in Montgomery, Pugh is growing up surrounded by the history of the civil rights movement that transpired decades before she was born. The stories from Crenshaw and others are more than just inspiring, she said.

“It’s saddening to the heart to know that a whole group of people weren’t allowed to go somewhere and have an education or be treated as humans because they were a different skin color,” Pugh said. “It definitely lets me know that the job will never be finished and you have to keep pushing.”

Scott said one of her goals is to help people see the connection between the activism of the past and today.

“The movement and the Civil Rights Movement didn’t just happen back then,” Scott said. “It’s still happening now.”

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Jaylen Green reported from New York. AP Race and Ethnicity news editor Aaron Morrison in New York contributed.

New Orleans community leaders and politicians, including Mayor-elect Helena Moreno, U.S. Rep. Troy Carter and former Mayor Mark Morial, hosted a press conference Friday to demand that federal immigration agents deployed to New Orleans be more transparent and humane in their tactics. 

The press conference followed a letter sent earlier in the day by City Council to Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino with five specific demands for the recently-launched immigration sweep dubbed “Catahoula Crunch,” taking place in parts of Louisiana and south Mississippi.

The council asked agents to report data including number of arrests made and criminal history of detainees, ensure due process, require officers to be identified and unmasked, disavow discriminatory stops and provide medical care and language services to detainees. 

The demands from the City Council come less than a week into the operation, which has led to widespread unease among New Orleans’ sizable immigrant population as individuals have been stopped, detained and even chased at their places of employment, homes and churches. 

“We stand here with an obligation to ensure that federal operations are conducted with transparency, constitutionally and with respect for local residents,” Moreno said. 

As anxiety over the operation continues to rise, multiple leaders spoke about the economic impact to New Orleans’ large hospitality and tourism industries, noting concerns of workers not showing up for fear of being detained or deported. 

Carter represents Louisiana’s 2nd District, which includes New Orleans. He decried any operations that create fear and confusion for families, workers and businesses. 

“We want federal partners, we just don’t want occupation,” Carter said. “We want them to work with us, not around us.” 

City Council members in New Orleans, a Democratic stronghold in a deeply Republican state, have grappled with the legal limitations of their power to push back against federal agents, in part because of laws and policies enacted by Louisiana’s conservative state government, such as a recently passed Louisiana law that prohibits interference with federal immigration agents. Moreno said that she felt they were requesting only basic transparency data, which she said she views as reasonable. 

The clash between local, state and federal officials continues as Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill posted a letter sent to New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick, where Murrill wrote that she recommended Kirkpatrick order NOPD officers to cooperate with ICE. 

Earlier in the week, the council published a web page where people can anonymously upload footage that depicts any alleged abuses from federal immigration agents. The page also includes materials to educate people on their rights in English, Spanish and Vietnamese, which states that the NOPD will not ask people about their immigration status. 

Speakers at the press conference urged continued transparency and community collaboration as operation Catahoula Crunch moves forward. 

Council President JP Morrell pushed back against the reasoning behind the quota announced by Border Patrol — to arrest 5,000 people in New Orleans.

“I do not believe you are here for the reason you say you are here but you have an opportunity to prove me wrong,” he said in reference to federal immigration agents. “Provide this information that’s being requested by the New Orleans City Council. … Until then, this council will continue to use all the resources available to us, legal and otherwise, and make sure that the citizens of this city are protected.”

This article was originally published by Verite News in New Orleans, which is part of Deep South Today, the nonprofit news organization that includes Mississippi Today.

The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether it should revive a lawsuit from a Mississippi man convicted of violating a local protest ordinance outside the Brandon Amphitheater after authorities said he shouted insults at people over a loudspeaker. 

Gabriel Olivier describes himself as an evangelical preacher and alleges the city of Brandon, a suburb in the Jackson Metro area, improperly restricted his religious and free-speech rights. 

But lower courts have ruled a legal quirk may prevent him from challenging the city’s regulations in court.

Olivier also frequently protested outside Mississippi’s only abortion clinic before it closed in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court, using a Mississippi case, overturned abortion rights nationwide. In 2021, Olivier stood outside the Brandon amphitheater, a popular concert venue, waving posters with pictures of aborted fetuses, passing out fliers and using a loudspeaker to get his message out.

Police in Brandon arrested Olivier and charged him with breaking a recently passed city ordinance that confined protests to a designated area near the theater. Olivier pleaded no contest to the charges, received a fine, and was placed on probation.

After Olivier pleaded no contest to the charges, he filed a civil lawsuit against the city seeking to overturn its protest ordinances. But a prior Supreme Court precedent, Heck v. Humphrey, places strict limits on when criminal defendants can file civil rights lawsuits that relate to their conviction. 

The city of Brandon in court papers argues its regulations aren’t about the content of the speech, but rather about limiting disturbances caused when he and his group yelled insults such as “Jezebel,” “nasty,” and “drunkards” at people passing by.

A district court and the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Olivier and sided with the city, but the Supreme Court will have the final say.  

The nation’s high court heard arguments in the case on Wednesday is expected to issue a ruling in the summer.