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The post Marshall Ramsey: Unhealthy appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Shane Quick, a little-known candidate in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor, withdrew from the statewide race earlier this week, according to state GOP officials and the Secretary of State’s office. 

Tate Lewis, the director of the Mississippi Republican Party, and Elizabeth Jonson, a spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office, told Mississippi Today that Quick sent a signed letter to party officials on Monday saying he wished to take his name off the GOP primary ballot, though he did not give a reason for ending his campaign. 

Quick, who could not be reached for comment, also filed paperwork to terminate his campaign finance account that housed $101 in donations.

A DeSoto County resident, Quick stood little chance at capturing the Republican Party’s nomination for the office. He also ran for lieutenant governor in 2019 and only garnered around 14% of the primary vote. Incumbent Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann captured around 85% of the vote.

But the candidate’s exit from the Republican field is notable because of the potential for a GOP primary runoff this year.

State Sen. Chris McDaniel, a conservative from Jones County, and Tiffany Longino, another little-known candidate from Rankin County, are competing against Hosemann, who has held statewide office since 2008.

If neither of the three candidates captures an outright majority of the votes cast in the Aug. 8 primary, election officials must conduct a runoff on Aug. 29 between the two candidates who received the most votes. 

The winner of the GOP primary will faced Ryan Grover, the only Democrat in the race, on Nov. 7.

The post Shane Quick withdraws from GOP primary in lieutenant governor’s race  appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Republican U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida has filed a resolution calling for censure of Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson for what Gaetz claims are violations of House Rules by the Jan. 6th Select Committee Thompson chaired.

Gaetz is calling for Thompson to be removed from the Homeland Security Committee, and “at a minimum” censured. Censure is a formal statement of disapproval that must be adopted by a majority of the House.

Thompson, then-chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, chaired the nine-member, bipartisan (although it only had two Republicans) select committee appointed to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, mob attack of the U.S. Capitol. The committee in December released its final report and recommended prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice and charges against former President Donald Trump of obstruction, fraud, conspiracy and inciting an insurrection.

READ MORE: ‘An attempted coup’: Rep. Bennie Thompson tells the world what happened on Jan. 6, 2021

Gaetz said a House Judiciary Committee investigation showed Thompson violated House rules by not turning over all the January 6th Committee records to the House clerk at the end of the 117th Congress in December.

“Thompson sent a letter to the Biden White House and the Department of Homeland Security in which he implied critical congressional records related to the work of the January 6th Committee would be improperly stored at the White House,” Gaetz said in a press release.

Thompson, in a statement Thursday, replied to Gaetz’ claims: “The Select Committee complied with the rules of the House, and I stand by its work. No one should be distracted by agents of chaos who would rather pull political stunts than protect the Capitol.”

According to numerous news reports, the January 6th Committee last year released interview transcripts from a Trump aide who testified Gaetz sought a preemptive presidential pardon relating to a federal child sex trafficking investigation. Trump and Gaetz have denied that he asked Trump for a pardon.

READ MORE: Rep. Bennie Thompson, leading the public Jan. 6 hearings, has long worked to protect democracy

The post Matt Gaetz calls for Bennie Thompson censure, removal from Homeland Security appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Even though federal judge Michael Mills has taken senior status, he says he still plans to be an active judge, though might take his band “on the road” when his replacement is finally named in the Northern District of Mississippi.

In theory, Mills would have more time with a band because of his decision to take what is known as senior status. Senior status for a federal judge normally equates to semi-retirement, or at least a reduced caseload. But Mills says he has continued to have essentially a full-time caseload, in part because of the delay in his replacement being confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Mills announced in 2021 his intention to take senior status, opening up a coveted post in the Northern District where President Joe Biden eventually nominated Lowndes County District Attorney Scott Colom. But Colom’s confirmation process in the U.S. Senate has been stalled by Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who has refused to approve Colom’s nomination. Under a sometimes-honored Senate tradition, the home state senator is allowed to block the nomination.

It is not clear whether Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, might advance the nomination despite Hyde-Smith’s objections. Colom’s nomination has been praised by diverse groups. Mississippi’s senior senator, Roger Wicker, a Tupelo Republican, has voiced support for Colom’s nomination.

Mills had no comment on Colom’s confirmation process. He did say that he wished his post was filled as well as the U.S. attorney’s spot for the Northern District.

Biden has not announced a nominee for U.S. attorney for the Northern District.

“I would like to see it filled, then I could slow down a little if I wanted to,” he said, adding if his replacement was confirmed, “I might take my band on the road.”

The 66-year-old federal judge, said of the band, “I am trying to stay young foolish and happy.”

Mills was joking, perhaps, about a band he helped form that includes politicians as well as professional musicians. The band performs on a sporadic basis, playing popular songs ranging from rock to country.

The group was created as part of “June Bug,” an annual event in June centered at least in part on June 3 – the day fictional character Billy Joe McAllister took his life by jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge in the “Ode to Billy Joe” song that was written and sung by Mississippi native Bobbie Gentry.

The June Bug recently held its annual event in Lafayette County where Mills now resides. Members of June Bug include Wicker as lead singer, and some professional musicians affiliated at least in part with the recording studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Will McFarlane from the Bonnie Raitt band is the lead guitarist while Mills is the rhythm guitarist. Billy Earheart of the Amazing Rhythm Aces plays piano.

Mills is a former state House member from Itawamba County and later served on the Mississippi Supreme Court.

Mills was nominated for the federal judiciary in 2001 by then-President George W. Bush. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate later that year.

Even when his replacement is named, Mills said he plans to remain active hearing cases in the Northern District even though he now has the title senior judge before his name.

It is not clear how Mills’ music might impact those plans.

The post Mills says he might take band on road when his U.S. District judge replacement named appeared first on Mississippi Today.

JUNE 8, 1953

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation in restaurants in Washington, D.C., was unlawful. 

Civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell had led that fight. Such discrimination had not always existed in the nation’s capital. In fact, Congress had passed laws in 1872 and 1873, barring restaurants and the like from refusing to serve any “well-behaved” customer, regardless of race. Those laws remained on the books, despite being ignored. 

After the high court ruled in her favor, Terrell returned to the same restaurant that had turned her away, and she and her friends were served.

The post On this day in 1953 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

As he made the request, news headlines in Mississippi and around the country reported on the state’s financially struggling hospitals, worsening maternal mortality crisis and one of the highest uninsured populations in the country as the result of state leaders’ steadfast opposition to Medicaid expansion.

Still, the answer he got was no. 

That’s not a novel response from lawmakers — the agency’s budget was slashed in 2017 and is still making up for the loss. But this year, it could be especially damning as the state’s health care crisis reaches a breaking point. 

As hospitals bleed out and it becomes increasingly dangerous for Black Mississippians to give birth in the state, the need for public health services offered by the Mississippi Department of Health is seeing a resurgence.

“That was my testimony at the Legislature,” said Edney, the agency’s leader. “I reminded them … we are having to do more, which is not good. It’s a sign that the needle is moving the wrong way.”

But there’s a limit to what his agency can do without adequate funding.

The Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies program, a partnership between the department and the state Division of Medicaid, puts nurses in the homes of expecting mothers who are undergoing high-risk pregnancies. The program serves about 700 moms, Edney said.

He knows the number of moms involved in the program needs to grow. But to do that, he needs more nurses — an increasingly difficult resource to come by in Mississippi, where nurse vacancies and turnover rates are at their highest in a decade.

The $9 million would have paid for a total of 100 nurses, the bare minimum Edney said he needs to adequately cover the state’s public health needs. 

The money needed to come from the state, Edney said, because federal funds have strict strings attached.

“One way I explained it at the Capitol was that state-funded nurses could do whatever we needed them to do,” Edney said. “I need Swiss Army knives. The feds give you the knife, and they tell you how to use it.”

But instead, as the agency’s responsibilities continue to grow, they got just enough to keep operating and cover inflationary costs for the next year — despite lawmakers starting the year with a historic $3.9 billion surplus.

Republican Rep. John Read, House Appropriations Chair and principal author of the Health Department’s appropriations bill, said the decision-making process was about prioritization.

“We had some money, but it’s like everything else: You don’t want to spend all your savings,” he said. “Everybody in this legislature wants to help everybody we can … Nobody gets 100% of what they asked for. There’s no way.”

Read maintained that the department’s staffing issue isn’t about their state appropriation — it’s about the nurse availability and desired salaries. To Read, hiring 100 nurses sounds impossible.

Still, Edney can’t hire even one of the 100 nurses without funding.  

In an interview with Mississippi Today, Edney said he was grateful for the money his agency did get. He repeatedly expressed his desire to do the necessary work with what he got. 

“We’ll keep trying,” Edney said. “That doesn’t mean we ignore those needs. We’ll push ahead with resources that we can find.”

Though the state portion is small, it is essential to the agency’s ability to fulfill its job. 

It’s the mission of the state Health Department to promote and protect Mississippians’ health. That includes surveilling for diseases and sexually transmitted infections, as well as other preventative public health efforts. The agency is also responsible for overseeing water testing, inspecting restaurants and licensing and regulating health care facilities.

This year, the Legislature gave the state Health Department $48 million. Of that, about half will go to agency operations, which includes salaries for state-funded positions. The other half goes elsewhere — the state Department of Health acts as a conduit for millions that will fund programs within their agency and others. 

While Edney was hoping to increase pay for his employees, he wasn’t able to secure enough funding to hand out uniform raises — just for the lowest compensated employees in the department. 

The agency is experiencing a vacancy rate of over 40% across departments – meaning almost one of two jobs at the agency are not filled – according to Edney.

On paper, it looks like the agency got a huge increase in funding, up $13 million from last year. But $12 million of that money is set to go to the Victims of Crime Act program, which provides services for victims of domestic abuse, childhood violence and human trafficking. It’s a program that’s only recently been added to the state Health Department’s list of responsibilities, as well as the state’s new medical cannabis program.

The remaining $12 million of the state appropriation is split among systems such as trauma care, emergency medical services, AIDS-related services and drugs, stroke and heart attack care programs, domestic violence prevention, Mississippi qualified health centers, the early intervention program and Medicaid matching.

And in a last minute change toward the end of the legislative session, lawmakers also decided to task the department with choosing the state’s next burn center and awarding it $4 million. Merit Health Central in Jackson closed Mississippi’s only accredited burn center in October.

“I have to remind folks we’re happy to administer grants and direct funding from the Legislature,” Edney said. “But we had to keep our focus on what is our core appropriation. That appropriation that helps us achieve the things we have to achieve to make sure that the most vulnerable populations in the state are served to the best of our ability.”

For agency operations, the Health Department got an increase of about $720,000, which Edney said covered cost increases caused by inflation.

“So we didn’t go backwards,” Edney said. 

“If I had the money, I would have done it yesterday,” he said of the county health department’s reopening on Monday.

It had been closed since September of last year.

“I have begged for the money to get our county health departments back open again,” Edney said. “We have been struggling.”

Within a month, David Caulfield, central regional administrator for the state Health Department, said the Yazoo clinic will be open four to five days a week, up from its temporary twice-a-week schedule, and be fully staffed. 

It’s typically up to the individual counties to provide and pay for their county health department’s building, while the state pays to staff it. 

“I want to personally thank the Board of Supervisors for caring about public health in Yazoo County,” Edney said. “Not every county has the same commitment to public health. They don’t look after their folks the same way you do it.

“I can’t tell you the joy in my heart to see this today because it shows me what we can do in Mississippi.”

But Yazoo County’s health department isn’t the standard — it’s an outlier. 

As the state Health Department has been gutted by budget cuts over the past decade while simultaneously being tasked with more responsibilities, county health departments have suffered. 

After the major budget cuts in 2017, hours were reduced at the majority of county health departments, and they became much harder to staff, Edney said. Services have been cut, too — county health departments stopped offering prenatal care in 2016.

And as hospital closures continue to loom — a report puts a third of rural hospitals at risk — it’s not apparent that the state Health Department is prepared to fill the gaps. 

“We utilize all the resources we can from our federal partners to help the county health departments, but the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) does not fund public health at the county level,” Edney said. “It’s up to us to do that, and we just don’t have enough state funding to run 86 county health departments the way that we would love to run them.”

Although Mississippi only has 82 counties, there are currently 86 county health departments. Several counties have more than one while others have none.

While county health departments remain a place where Mississippians can access vaccinations, STI testing, diabetes and hypertension care, tuberculosis screenings and treatment, pap smears, family planning and pregnancy testing, Edney wants to increase staffing and get health departments open longer more days a week. They’re also exploring restarting prenatal care at county health departments. 

It’s not clear how he’ll pay for it, but Edney’s determined to try. 

“I’m not negative, because we have to do a better job on our side of the street,” he said. “We will be doing all that we can do, so when I go back to the Legislature and continue to ask for funding our workforce needs on the county level, I can honestly say we’re doing all we can.”

The post ‘We have been struggling.’ As Mississippi’s health care crisis worsens, health department funding lags appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Aaron Lochmann’s mom was driving him home from surgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center when he looked at his phone and got what was perhaps the most poorly timed news of his 19-year-old life. The LGBTQ+ clinic where Lochmann saw a primary care provider and got a prescription for testosterone — and which had recently referred him for the chest surgery he had just undergone — was being shut down by hospital leadership. 

Too sleepy from the anesthesia, he didn’t know what to think.  

But on Tuesday afternoon, Lochmann, still wearing bandages, joined about a dozen other people who protested UMMC’s decision to close the TEAM clinic, which stands for “Trustworthy, Evidence-based, Affirming, Multidisciplinary.”

“I’m just appalled and really upset, because I don’t have access to basic health care anymore,” he said. 

The pioneering clinic, founded in 2015, had been subject to political pressure. A legislative investigation was launched after conservative lawmakers learned the clinic was providing gender-affirming care, like hormone therapy and puberty blockers, to transgender kids. At that point, UMMC executives worked with the clinic’s leadership to create a plan to stop treating trans kids at the clinic, according to documents obtained by Mississippi Today. 

But last week’s decision was made unilaterally. The co-director of the center that oversees the clinic, Alex Mills, was not consulted. And many patients found out they were losing access to health care that aimed to be safe and affirming for the LGBTQ+ community in the same way Lochmann did — from an article in Mississippi Today. 

Some patients still have not received a call from UMMC, said Jason McCarty, the executive director of Capital City Pride, a Jackson-based nonprofit that organized Tuesday’s protest along with several other LGTBQ+ organizations. 

At the start of the protest, held by the intersection on State Street that UMMC employees regularly cross, McCarty was passing out rainbow flags that he purchased with the intention of celebrating Pride Month. 

“You want to throw this shit on me during Pride Month?” he said. “We’re not gonna allow nonsense like this to rain on our parade.” 

The protest’s main request, McCarty said, was for UMMC to notify all existing patients that the TEAM clinic was closing and to help them find a new provider that would continue all aspects of their care.

“We understand the clinic is closed,” he said. “We get it. It’s not coming back. But we want to make sure people don’t get lost in the already bad system that is health care in Mississippi. Is that too much to ask?”

Since Friday, he said he has emailed Dr. LouAnn Woodward, the vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, with that request. Woodward hasn’t responded. 

Much of the protest focused on holding Woodward accountable as the leader of UMMC. 

As UMMC employees walked past the protest to their cars — some smiled and waved, others refused to make eye contact — McCarty turned to the group. 

“Help me come up with something,” he said. “We need to call her out.” 

That’s when they began to chant: “Dr. Woodward make it right, health care is a human right.” 

Another protester noted that Woodward is the chair of the American Association of Medical Colleges, a medical organization that recently joined several others in an amicus brief opposing Kentucky’s gender-affirming care ban. 

“She is part of an organization that believes in creating safe spaces for LGBTQ people yet a decision was made recently to take away a safe space for those people — in her own hospital?” said Wiley Smith, who is on Capital City Pride’s board of directors. “That’s backward.” 

The TEAM clinic’s closure leaves LGBTQ+ Mississippians with few options in an already deserted health care landscape. The protesters knew of just two clinics — Open Arms in Jackson and Spectrum: The Other Clinic in Hattiesburg — that openly provide gender-affirming care. 

Though Spectrum provides telehealth, it’s a nearly two hour drive from Jackson, where many former TEAM Clinic patients live. And Open Arms doesn’t advertise on its website that it offers gender-affirming care. 

“This clinic is where people felt safe,” said Valencia Robinson, the executive director of Mississippi in Action. 

Love Latonia, an advocate for trans health care, said that the people who will be most affected by UMMC’s closure of the TEAM clinic are Black trans women in part because they lack the financial resources to seek care far away from where they live. 

“It’s a way to control and to target the most marginalized, because they’re an easy target,” she said, adding that lawmakers and other powerful officials in Mississippi “should focus on things that are more serious than people’s sexual orientation.” 

LGBTQ+ clinics in other states have faced a similar backlash. In Tennessee, the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee paused gender-affirming care for minors last October following pressure from Republican lawmakers. Last month, the Texas Attorney General investigated two hospitals that provided gender-transition services to trans youth. 

Lochmann, who had been a patient at TEAM clinic since he was 16, said lawmakers don’t understand gender-affirming care. He had to wait a year before he could start hormone therapy. 

“It’s not like they’re just giving this care to children just because they asked,” he said. 

The clinic’s closure, Lochmann added, is yet another blow that is making it really hard to be a trans person in Mississippi right now. 

“The clinic didn’t get a say in it,” he said. “The patients didn’t get a say in it. The fact that it happened out of the blue — it just feels like a huge loss for everything. It’s just very hard to exist and feel safe as a trans person in this moment.” 

The post ‘We need to call her out’: Protesters seek to hold UMMC’s Woodward accountable for closing LGBTQ+ clinic appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Scientists have released their 2023 forecast for the so-called “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico — predicting it will be around 4,100 square miles this summer. That’s much bigger than last year, but still smaller than average.

The dead zone is a hypoxic area where low oxygen can kill fish and other marine life. It’s caused by excessive nutrient runoff, largely from fertilizer used on farm fields in the Midwest, which ends up in the Mississippi River and flows south to the Gulf.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses models and data from the U.S. Geological Survey to forecast the size of the dead zone each year. Data from river and stream gauges showed that nitrate and phosphorus discharges were below average in the Mississippi River and Atchafalaya River, which splits off in south Louisiana.

While some see this season’s forecast as good news, it is still well above the federal Hypoxia Task Force’s goal of shrinking the dead zone to 1,900 square miles or smaller by 2035. The area’s five-year average size is 4,280 square miles, more than double that target, and has trended mostly larger over time.

Don Scavia is an emeritus professor at the University of Michigan and leads one of several research teams partnering with the federal government on the annual forecast.

“Lack of a downward trend in the dead zone illustrates that current efforts to reduce those loads have not been effective,” he said. “Clearly, the federal and state agencies and Congress continue to prioritize industrial agriculture over water quality.”

A NOAA press release said the results were due to lower river flow rates. Despite lots of rain and flooding in the upper Midwest early this spring, discharge in May in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers was about 33% below the long-term average.

Lauren Salvato, policy and program director at the Upper Mississippi River Basin Association, said she’s hopeful about the projections. “It’s certainly positive,” she said. “Our states are working hard and they want to meet their nutrient reduction goals.”

Most states within the Mississippi River basin have developed their own plans, in concert with the Hypoxia Task Force, to reduce nutrient runoff.

Salvato said new funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will help advance those goals. The task force has received $60 million for its action plan, $12 million per year for five years. Some states are using their portion of the funds to institute more sustainable farming practices, like cover crops, others are beefing up staffing, Salvato said.

“It’s monumental,” she said. “We’ve never had this program authorized, we’ve never had this kind of money put towards nutrient reduction strategies.”

However, she said the results of those new efforts won’t be measurable for years, maybe even decades.

NOAA’s press release about this year’s forecast touted it as being “below-average.” But Matt Rota, senior policy director at the environmental advocacy group Healthy Gulf, remained disappointed in the results and called NOAA’s description “misleading.”

“It’s twice the size of the goal,” he said. “It’s too big. It’s not smaller than anything.”

He said reducing the size of the dead zone will require either enforceable regulatory actions – rather than the opt-in programs on which most states have relied to reduce farm runoff – or billions of dollars of federal investment. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding is a great start, Rota said, but it’s nowhere close to enough to solve the ongoing problem.

And he said dead zone forecasts aren’t just a numbers game. The livelihoods of thousands of people on the Gulf Coast are tied to fisheries, which are imperiled by the dead zone.

“It isn’t just about these numbers and these models – but how do we create a livable ecosystem?” he said.

NOAA and its research partners conduct a monitoring survey of the dead zone each summer, with results released in early August.This story, published in partnership with the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, part of Mississippi Today, is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Sign up to republish stories like this one for free.

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One of the victims of the recent St. Dominic’s layoffs was its mental health services — at a time when Mississippi needs all of the mental health services it can get.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Mental Health appeared first on Mississippi Today.

JUNE 7, 1875

Peter Crosby, a Black sheriff, was shot in the head in the wake of the Vicksburg Massacre in which armed White Leagues overthrew the Reconstruction government in Mississippi, killing as many as 300 Black Americans they regarded as a threat, including some of Crosby’s deputies. 

President Ulysses S. Grant had sent troops to quell the violence and enable the sheriff’s safe return. After Crosby returned, a white deputy shot him in the head. Although the sheriff survived, he never recovered, and the deputy who shot him was never prosecuted. 

The event became part of the Mississippi Plan —violence, terror and corruption to restore white supremacy. Grant decided against sending in any more troops and whatever hope Reconstruction offered Black Mississippians was soon dashed.

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