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Originally published by The 19th

Nearly 6,000 doctors, hailing from all 50 states, have drafted a letter asking the Supreme Court to uphold a federal law that requires hospital emergency departments to provide abortions when they are needed to stabilize patients.

The letter, organized by the left-leaning Committee to Protect Health Care and shared first with The 19th, concerns the case Idaho v. United States, which the high court heard in April.

In that case, the federal government has argued that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act — a 1986 law known as EMTALA — requires that hospitals participating in the federal Medicare program provide abortions if doing so is the necessary treatment in an emergency. Idaho has contested that interpretation, and argued that its state-level abortion ban supersedes federal law. Idaho’s current ban allows an exception only if the procedure will save the life of the pregnant person, but not if it will otherwise preserve their health. 

“We know firsthand how complications from pregnancy can lead very quickly to a medical crisis, requiring immediate care and treatment,” states the letter, which was signed by doctors across specialties whose abilities to provide care could be affected by a ban, including oncology, emergency medicine and anesthesiology. “These patients’ complications can range from a miscarriage to heavy bleeding, from placental abruption to a stroke from severe preeclampsia – and doctors and health professionals in emergency departments must be allowed to use the full range of medical options to save these patients’ lives, including abortion.”

The case is one of two abortion-related challenges the court has heard this term, and one of the first since the overturn of Roe v. Wade in the 2022 decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. A decision is expected this June. 

The court has held that, while this case is pending, the federal government cannot enforce EMTALA in Idaho. As a result, patients in the midst of medical emergencies have flown to Utah — the next closest state with abortion access — to receive treatment.

Abortions that would be covered by EMTALA constitute only a tiny fraction of terminations performed in the United States. Still, the case has sparked tremendous concern among physicians. 

“If someone is having a crisis and part of the treatment involves an abortion — or any procedure or intervention that might be deemed an abortion by a prosecutor down the road — that is something we shouldn’t have to think about,” said Dr. Rob Davidson, a Michigan-based emergency physician and the committee’s executive director. “When I have a pregnant woman having a crisis, my first call should be to an OB, and not a lawyer.”

It’s not clear how the Supreme Court will rule, but their decision could have implications well beyond abortion. Already, the fear of violating strict abortion bans has deterred aspiring and practicing physicians from setting up shop in states with such laws — particularly in Idaho, which has seen an exodus of maternal-fetal medicine specialists in the almost two years since Roe’s fall. Physicians in the state worry a court finding in favor of Idaho might exacerbate that trend. 

Legal scholars say that if the court finds EMTALA does not protect abortion as one form of emergency medical care, states could subsequently restrict other treatments — undercutting the law’s core holding that patients who present at emergency rooms are guaranteed to at least receive stabilizing treatment.

“The basis of Dobbs is states have the power to regulate medical care. If you extend that to EMTALA, you open up EMTALA to whatever drama a state wants to play out in its emergency rooms,” Sara Rosenbaum, a professor emerita of health law and policy at George Washington University who has written extensively about EMTALA, told The 19th last month.

This could theoretically include prohibiting hospitals from providing emergency care for patients with HIV or substance use disorder — treatment they would ordinarily be required to provide.

“What if someone says, ‘We don’t believe in harm reduction programs for opioid use disorder, so we don’t think we should provide naloxone kits when patients leave the ER?’” Davidson asks. “This is bad enough that I don’t have to imagine what could happen next, or what else they could carve out. But you’re opening a Pandora’s box.”

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On Wednesday morning, the FBI raided businesses owned by Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens II as well as his office.

“This morning, FBI agents came to our offices,” he said in a statement. “We are fully cooperating with their efforts.”

FBI agents raided his Downtown Cigar Company and other businesses, just blocks from the Hinds County Courthouse, where Owens serves as prosecutor.

“The FBI is executing federal search warrants at multiple locations,” FBI spokeswoman Marshay Lawson said in a statement. “The affidavit in support of the search warrants has been sealed by the court, and so I am prohibited from commenting further. There is no threat to public safety.”

Owens, who was first elected as district attorney in 2019, did not return calls, but said in a statement on Facebook that his office continues to “work on behalf of the citizens of Hinds County. That has been and will continue to be our primary focus.”

Owens, a native of Terry, previously served as chief policy counsel and managing attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mississippi office. He attended Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C., and worked for the late U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran as a legal intern for the Senate Appropriations Committee. Owens is a lieutenant intelligence officer in the Navy Reserves.

Sources close to a federal investigation say the FBI has been examining the city of Jackson’s garbage contract, though it’s not known if there is any connection to the raids related to Owens. Agents have questioned City Council members about that contract.

In recent years, the Jackson City Council and Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba have battled over garbage contracts, leading to multiple emergency contracts with Waste Management and Richard’s Disposal.

After City Council members rejected the mayor’s choice of Richard’s Disposal, Richard’s stopped collecting garbage.

That led to trash piling up on the streets of Jackson for 18 days in April 2023. The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality later levied a fine of up to $900,000 against the city for failing to pick up trash.

In March, following a new request for proposals, Richard’s Disposal was awarded a $64 million contract over six years. The council voted 4-3 after two hours of discussion with the three no votes coming from Ward 1’s Ashby Foote, Ward 3’s Kenneth Stokes and Ward 5’s Vernon Hartley. Council President Aaron Banks, who had opposed awarding Richard’s the contract last year, sided with the majority.

Update 5/22/24: This story has been updated to include new developements.

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Mississippi has seen significant improvement in its reading scores over the last decade, bringing  much national attention and leading other states to attempt to replicate the success. 

Mississippi’s success, first drawing national eyes in 2019, is usually attributed to a state law from earlier in the decade that reformed reading instruction and testing, piquing the interest of other states. As reading reforms have become particularly popular, 38 states have added to or updated their laws in the last five years according to data collected by ExcelinEd. 

These policies are not uniform across the country, however, and much of the debate around implementing them has focused on whether third-graders who fail a benchmark assessment should be held back. It is a key component of Mississippi’s law, the so-called “third-grade gate.” Sixteen other states have a similar requirement, but at least two states have also recently repealed it.

How many students actually get retained under Mississippi’s policy? It’s harder to know than you might expect.

When a student takes state tests at the end of third grade, they receive a score on a 1-5 scale: minimal (1), basic (2), passing (3), proficient (4) or advanced (5). Students are required to score a three or above to be promoted to the 4th grade per Mississippi law, and have multiple chances to take the test before being held back. Students can also still move up to the 4th grade even if they fail the test in a couple of extenuating circumstances known as “good cause exemptions.” These include a learning disability or being previously retained for two years. 

It is up to local school districts to implement this law and determine if students qualify for an exemption or should be held back. Since each of Mississippi’s 138 school districts made this decision independently, the Mississippi Department of Education said they cannot easily track whether a student was held back specifically because of the law. The department’s data management system does not show a reason why a student was held back, merely whether they were held back. 

Given that limitation, Mississippi Today requested data regarding how many students both failed the test and were held back, with the acknowledgment that there was no guarantee one caused the other. The number of students in this category has fallen in recent years, going from 9% of test takers in 2019 to 6.5% last school year.

Grace Breazeale, a K-12 policy associate with Mississippi First, an education policy nonprofit, said that, while these numbers may be in the ballpark, she has concerns they are not completely accurate since a student could have failed the test, received a good cause exemption, and still been held back for another reason.

Given this lack of clarity,  Breazeale said the education department should adjust its data collection methods and publish official numbers of students retained because of the literacy law.

“That would be important information for them to have to maintain a more accurate narrative about the (2013 literacy law) and spreading awareness about how third-grade retention is only a small piece of it,” she said.

Other states with retention policies have seen a similar number of students affected. In Florida, about 7-8% of students were held back because of the literacy law before COVID-19 according to Cari Miller, chancellor of early learning for the Florida Department of Education.

A review of the academic literature on third-grade retention by FutureEd, a Georgetown education policy think tank, showed mixed or positive results. Holding students back in higher grades was found to be generally unsuccessful, leading to disengagement, but could be productive in younger grades, particularly if paired with interventions. 

One study from Boston University specifically examined the Mississippi “gate” and analyzed students just above and below the cut score from 2015, the first year the policy was in effect. They found the students who were held back scored better on sixth-grade reading assessments than their peers who were not retained. The authors said that, while these results are positive, they “cannot entirely disentangle” the effect of holding a student back from the additional interventions Mississippi provides to retained students.

Those additional supports are essential for the success of Mississippi students in the eyes of Kymyona Burk, former state literacy director with the Mississippi Department of Education. Burk said the additional supports the Education Department provided, including teacher training, state reimbursement for universal screeners, full-time literacy coaches and parent outreach, eased anxieties when it came to the retention piece of the law.

“We showed, kind of for the first time, that we not only want kids to learn how to read, we’re going to help you get there,” she said.

READ MORE: Mississippi ‘reading miracle’ has been out of reach for some schools

The post How many students are retained by the ‘third-grade gate’? No one knows appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The SEC Tournament is underway in Birmingham. The Sun Belt Tournament has begun in Montgomery. And, closer to home, the MHSAA State Tournament has begun at Trustmark in Pearl. The Cleveland boys have thoughts on all of it, but not before Tyler tells his dad, “See, I told you so.”

Stream all episodes here.

The post Podcast: Tournament time for Mississippi baseball. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

PEARL — So somebody asked me after Ripley’s 5-0 Tuesday afternoon victory over Sumrall in the Class 4A championship series victory: “Have you ever seen a better pitching performance in a high school baseball game?

Answer: If so, I do not remember it. Ripley’s Ty Long, Mississippi’s  Class 4A Player of the Year, blanked the proud Sumrall Bobcats with a seven-inning, complete-game three-hitter. Of the 21 recorded outs, 18 were strikeouts, tying Long’s career high. He did not walk a batter. All three Sumrall hits were singles, one a swinging bunt. Of Long’s 98 pitches, 66 were strikes. He was in utter control.

This was nothing new where Long is concerned. The 6-foot, 175-pound Southern Miss commit was a perfect 11-0 during the regular season, allowing only three earned runs in 67 innings. He averaged more than two strikeouts an inning, fanning 140 in those 67 innings.

Long seems wise beyond his years as a pitcher. Asked the key to his performance, he responded with words any pitching coach at any level would appreciate.

“The key for me was getting ahead and staying ahead in the count,” Long said. “When that happens, I can throw any pitch I want.”

Yes, and he has so many pitchers in his arsenal, said his coach Joel Gafford. “Ty throws a two-seam fastball, a four-seam fast ball, a cutter, a slider, a curveball and a changeup. He commands them all.” 

Long is a pitcher, not just a thrower. He mixes speeds and locations. So many of his fastballs, which appeared to be in the high 80s (mph), were over the black edges of home plate, often at the knees.

But you should know Long is far more than a pitcher. When he’s not on the mound, he usually plays shortstop and plays it well. He bats leadoff and hit .506 with five home runs on the season. He led off Tuesday’s game with a sharp single that whizzed past Sumrall pitcher Drew Davis, son of Sumrall coach Andy Davis, and a youngster you will be hearing about for years to come.

Davis, a 15-year-old ninth grader who doesn’t yet drive, was sensational before tiring noticeably in the seventh inning. He threw six complete innings, allowing only one run. He tops out at about 90 mph and has three more years of high school baseball to play and get bigger and stronger.

What made Long’s performance all the more impressive was the team he was pitching against. Down in the Pine Belt there’s a saying: “There are only three sure things in life: death, taxes and Sumrall baseball.” Sumrall was 32-4 coming into the state championship series. The Bobcats have won six state championships, all since 2008. The Bobcats know how to play and they know State Tournament pressure about as well as any program in the state. Many Sumrall fans wore bright, blue T-shirts claiming Trustmark Park as their home away from home.

That’s not the case where Ripley is concerned. The Ripley Tigers have never won a state championship and haven’t played for one since 1992, long before there was any such thing as Trustmark Park.

But then, Ripley has never had a player quite like Ty Long, who was Ripley’s football quarterback before a shoulder injury his junior season prompted him to give up the sport. Baseball, he decided, was his future.

The big questions: What position will he play in college? Will he pitch? Will he play shortstop? Will he try to do both. There has been some talk that his natural position might even be centerfielder.

Asked where he wants to play, Long didn’t hesitate. “I want to play every day, definitely,” he said. “I like to pitch, but I love to hit and play defense.”

“Ty can play wherever you put him, he’s just a ballplayer,” Gafford, his coach, said. “What you saw out there today, that’s Ty every day. He works at it. He’s a good student, a good teammate. All those little kids you see waiting for him up there in the stands love him and he spends time with them. I’ll tell you this, Southern Miss is getting way more than their money’s worth.”

But first thing’s first: Long desperately wants to take that first-ever baseball state championship back to Ripley and Tippah County. That would require one more victory in the best-of-three series. Game two is Thursday at 4 p.m. If needed, a Game 3 would be played Friday or Saturday, depending on the results of games in other classes.

And here’s the deal: By MHSAA rules, if they play Friday, Long can’t pitch. If they play Saturday, he can throw 125 pitches, which is usually far more than enough for him.

Care to guess when Ripley wants to play?

The post Believe it or not, Ripley’s Ty Long spins a three-hit gem at Sumrall appeared first on Mississippi Today.

MAY 22, 2002

An Alabama jury convicted Bobby Cherry of taking part in the Ku Klux Klan’s 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four girls. Cherry received four life sentences — one for each slaying. In 2004, he died in prison.

The post On this day in 2002 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Major changes to the state tax code, including reducing the grocery tax and eliminating the personal income tax over time, will be considered during the 2025 legislative session, House Speaker Jason White said Monday.

White, R-West, who recently completed his first session as House speaker, met with media late Monday afternoon to answer questions about the recently completed 2024 session and to discuss his agenda for the 2025 session.

White said he will form a select committee to study the state’s tax laws and to make recommendations before the 2025 session. But it was obvious that he already has an idea of what he believes should be considered.

“It would be a net (tax) reduction,” White said, but he added if both the grocery tax and the income tax were cut that taxes would have to be increased in other areas to ensure enough revenue to provide state services.

White said he would like to see the state’s 7% grocery tax, the highest statewide tax of its kind in the nation, be cut at least in half as soon as possible. He also said his goal would be to completely eliminate the personal income tax, which provides just under one-third of the state general fund revenue. But he said that would be done over time.

“We have to be smart how we do it,” White said.

It seems that White is eyeing reviving at least portions of the tax reduction plan first proposed in the previous term by former House Speaker Philip Gunn, then-Speaker Pro Tem White and Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar. That plan included reductions in the grocery tax, elimination of the income tax over time and increases in the general sales tax on other retail items.

That plan drew criticism from many, including Gov. Tate Reeves, because of proposed increases in the sales tax on some items. White said the reason for the select committee, in part, would be to meet with outside groups to try to develop consensus on what taxes could be raised while enacting an overall net decrease in taxes by cutting the grocery tax and the income tax.

While the earlier plan to eliminate the income tax and to reduce the grocery tax was rejected, it did lead to a $525 million income tax cut – the largest in state history. It will not be fully phased in for two years. When the cut is fully phased in, the income tax still will generate close to $2 billion a year in state revenue.

The income tax cut is just the latest in a series of tax cuts totaling more than $1 billion a year the Legislature has passed over the past decade.

White’s goal also would be to provide the Department of Transportation with a new stream of revenue to fund infrastructure. Transportation is currently funded through an 18.4-cents-per-gallon fuel tax. But Transportation officials have contended for years they need more money for road and bridge projects and maintenance.

The speaker said the state could afford another major tax cut – pointing out that for the past two years the state has experienced unprecedented revenue surpluses. White acknowledged that unusual circumstances caused by billions in federal COVID-19 relief spending and by revenue generated by high inflation have helped lead to the large surpluses.

“That is why we have moved slowly,” said White.

White also said that Medicaid expansion would again be a major topic during the 2025 session. Efforts to expand Medicaid to provide health care for the working poor died during the 2024 session when a consensus could not be reached between the Republican majority House and Senate on the issue.

“I do think we got a pretty clear picture of the lay of the land” on Medicaid expansion in the 2024 session, White said. “A consensus did develop among the health care community, faith community, Mississippians in general and certainly the backing of business leaders as a whole.

“… That brought people around to the position to take it (Medicaid expansion) seriously and try to make it work. I think that lends itself to we will continue to push that. What that looks like I don’t know.”

The post Speaker White eyes major cuts to Mississippi grocery, income taxes for 2025 session appeared first on Mississippi Today.

CLARKSDALE — On a Tuesday afternoon in the fall, Jessica Johnson held up index cards of words as students crowded around the table to identify the type of vowel sound and sort them into buckets.

In another classroom, Shalandria Ivy guided students as they identified images, sounded out the first letter of the item in the drawing, and found that letter in their cards. These teachers at Kirkpatrick Health & Medical Science Magnet, an elementary school in the Clarksdale Municipal School District, are also tutors in the Reading Roadmap after-school literacy program. 

Johnson and Ivy are among hundreds of Mississippi reading teachers and leaders that helped create a rise in test scores after the passage of the Literacy-Based Promotion Act in 2013. Mississippi, which has long struggled with reading outcomes for students, has been showered with international acclaim for its gains that some dubbed the “Mississippi Miracle.”

But in several school districts across the state, including here in Clarksdale, the drastic reading gains haven’t been as strong. For the teachers and students, the effects have felt less than miraculous, for reasons ranging from resources to teacher turnover.

“We’re in a space where students need hardcore remediation, (we) can’t really teach the grade-level themes because their comprehension is not there,” said Janice Citchens, a first-year English teacher in the West Tallahatchie School District. “My students are 100% capable, if they had the resources and the right people … then the sky is the limit.”

‘The science of reading’

The 2013 state law created a more robust infrastructure around helping children learn to read and holding them back at the end of third grade if they didn’t hit a certain benchmark. While the law did not create a mandatory curriculum, the State Board of Education promoted, and in some cases required, teacher training on the principles of the “science of reading.” This term refers to a body of research that demonstrates the importance of phonics instruction in learning to read.

The success of the new system, which includes targeted teacher training, more parent communication and interventions for lower-performing students, brought much national attention to the state. 

These test score improvements have come primarily on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test administered by the federal government in the fourth and eighth grades that is often used to compare between states. A decade ago, Mississippi ranked near the bottom of the list for its fourth-grade reading scores. In 2019, the state made headlines for making the most gains in the nation on fourth-grade reading. Again in 2022 and 2023, Mississippi has been lauded for surpassing the national average in this area.

Nearly every district in the state has seen some amount of improvement: A recent analysis by Mississippi First, an education policy nonprofit, found that 97% of school districts improved third-grade reading scores since the passage of the 2013 state law. 

Despite this success, many districts across Mississippi are still struggling to get all their students to be successful readers, with 24 having 10 percent fewer students passing the third-grade “gate” on the first try than the state average. Teachers and policy experts attribute the challenge to multiple factors, including higher teacher turnover rates and fewer resources in low-income communities.

“One of the things I think we did with the Literacy-Based Promotion Act is prove … that Black kids and low-income kids can learn to read just like everybody else,” said Kelly Butler, former CEO of the Barksdale Reading Institute that workeds to improve Mississippi students’ pre-literacy and reading skills. “So when you think about those districts that still have big pockets of low performance, I think part of it has to do with being able to attract (educators) in these hard-to-serve schools.”

Citchens, the West Tallahatchie teacher, said she can see in the data that many of her seventh- and eighth-grade students have regularly been behind grade level. She attributes this to her students receiving inconsistent reading instruction and a disparity in resources.

Citchens also said the teaching coaching she received has been some of the most influential training in her career, as it covered resources and best practices as well as how to use them in her classroom. She believes the benefits of these trainings are stemmed when teachers regularly leave a district. 

“They’re pouring into the teacher, they’re getting these coaches, but if (the teachers) don’t stay long enough to perfect these practices … then the students are still at a disadvantage,” she said. 

A recent Mississippi First analysis had similar findings. Its review of state testing and teacher turnover data for the 2022-23 school year found districts with higher rates of turnover were more likely to have low proficiency on state tests. While this analysis does not prove one factor is causing the other, it also points to research on the negative impacts on student learning when teachers leave. 

Other educators have also observed this pattern. Rosemary Collins, a reading interventionist working in Leland, said that, while some districts have more resources, knowledge and experts to implement new tools, other districts are “asked to do more with less.”

Collins works with third-grade students who are projected to fail the reading assessment, or “third-grade gate” as it is colloquially known. She said she would like to see a highly structured literacy curriculum implemented for all students, not just those she works with, as she believes it would decrease the need for intense intervention. She also discussed the need for effective and equitable teaching training to make this happen, something that is stymied by turnover.

“To keep teachers in the classroom, it has to be a mindset change about what educators are and who they are for the community,” Collins said. “You have to feel respected and valued as an individual to want to stay in an environment.”

Both Citchens and Collins described an increased investment from parents in helping their children pass the third-grade test after all of the discussion and positive press related to Mississippi’s “reading miracle.”

“With the growth, and with all of the positive promotion of the growth, I see parents in my community … willing to be more active in their child’s education because they’re not only proud for their child, it’s like a sense of pride for themselves as well,” Citchens said.

‘The gains aren’t zero-sum’

Reading Roadmap, founded in Kansas, came to the Mississippi Delta in 2017. The interactive program places students in small groups based on their skill level and uses instructional materials that follow the “science of reading” principles promoted by the state education board.

“Mississippi as a whole has done it successfully, but here in this area, an area that’s sort of marginalized or stigmatized, I think we wanted to bring equity and bring a better light to this area,” said Taurean Morton, Mississippi state director with Reading Roadmap. 

The excitement and investment around reading is something Clarksdale Municipal Superintendent Toya Harrell-Matthews said Reading Roadmap helped bring to her district. While COVID-19 interrupted some of it, she said she is working to see the energy return and help the program thrive. 

“The first training they did in that little boardroom right over there, just the excitement (of) the teachers learning a new approach and the science of what they were actually going to be doing … I want to get back to that,” Harrell-Matthews said. 

Morton, the state director for Reading Roadmap, said the program uses the local district’s benchmark testing results to sort students into skill groups and track their movement to ensure they are getting the interventions they need. Activities at each skill level are interactive or gamified, which allows students and teachers to reset from the school day. 

He also said he’s noticed a gap in higher education teacher training programs around phonics and “the science of reading.” Morton said he hopes that if they can show the effectiveness of these strategies in their work, it will help create a shift at the post-secondary level. 

Butler, the former CEO of the Barksdale Reading Institute, also said strengthening Mississippi’s teacher training programs remains one of her key focuses. She said the programs have made improvements but there is still a lack of accountability for higher education programs. 

“Until they are required to do something differently, we’re always going to be retraining teachers,” Butler said. 

The Mississippi Department of Education attempted to address this issue in 2016 by requiring candidates to pass the Foundations of Reading assessment to receive an elementary education license. 

Morton is excited by the growth students in the program are experiencing, with some of the schools they serve in Clarksdale also seeing improvements in their accountability grades. But even in the years where the program hasn’t seen huge improvements, his team still considers it a success. 

“Each year we’ve seen movement and growth,” said Becky Nider, director of programs for Reading Roadmap. “Maybe a kid doesn’t go from being in the red to the green like we want, but we see them move through the red… We get to celebrate those small successes because it’s not a small success for that child.”

This mindset of incremental progress is one that some teachers would like to see more consistently represented in discussions of the so-called “miracle.” 

Langly Dunn, an elementary librarian in the West Tallahatchie School District, said her district can have both a celebratory attitude and a clear understanding of the work they have left to do. It’s something she wishes politicians would also embody instead of “weaponizing and politicizing” the reading gains for their own benefit. 

“When it comes to reading, the gains aren’t zero-sum,” she said. “It’s not like ‘we solved all problems and the way that we teach reading in Mississippi is perfect in every district, in every school, in every classroom all the time’ or ‘the results are unreliable’. It doesn’t have to be one of those two things. We can have made great strides and still interrogate what’s left for us to do.”

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