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Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, said in a national Sunday morning interview his committee was open to subpoenaing former President Donald Trump “if the evidence” leads them there.

“Let me say that nobody’s off limits,” Thompson said when asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” if his committee would subpoena the former president. “We will be, on an ongoing basis, issuing subpoenas to various individuals around the country. If we have enough evidence — and obviously we are pursuing evidence — but if the evidence leads to former President Trump or anyone else, the committee is not resonant in pushing back on it. We will go forward with it. 

“So, you know, it’s an investigation,” Thompson continued. “We’re not trying to get ahead of the investigation. We’ll follow the facts and circumstances as they present themselves.”

Thompson was appointed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi on July 1 to lead the committee, which is compromised of seven Democrats and two Republicans.

The House committee has subpoenaed several people close to former President Donald Trump, including his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and communications director Dan Scavino. The committee also subpoenaed organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally, which was the catalyst of the Capitol riot.

Steve Bannon, an adviser to Trump, was held in criminal contempt by the House last week after he defied a subpoena to appear before the committee and turn over documents. All but nine Republican House members voted against the contempt charge. Mississippi’s three other congressmen — Reps. Trent Kelly, Michael Guest and Steven Palazzo, all Republicans — voted against holding Bannon in contempt.

Prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice will now decide whether to pursue criminal charges against Bannon.

READ MORE: With insurrection investigation underway, the nation’s eyes turn toward Bennie Thompson

In the interview on Sunday, Thompson also talked in length for the first time publicly about the committee’s focus on Facebook and other social media companies. He said the committee is “working with” Facebook to obtain requested information and that it is examining the financing that went into the Capitol riot.

The House committee sent Facebook and 14 other social media companies letters in August asking them to provide records related to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. Thompson on Sunday said that “it’s clear” rioters used Facebook and other social media sites as an “organizing tool.”

“At this point, Facebook is working with us to provide the necessary information we requested,” Thompson said in the Sunday morning interview. “… If it’s consistent with some of the things that we’re hearing coming from other areas, then obviously it’s a problem. But at this point, we are not ready to make a decision one way or the other on Facebook’s role.”

Among the Facebook documents the House committee requested: 

• All Facebook internal communications, studies, reports and data analyses related to the riots.
• Documentation about the spread of misinformation and efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and foreign influence in the election.
• Documentation of “domestic violent extremists, including racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, militia violent extremists, sovereign citizen violent extremists, QAnon, or other extremists associated with efforts to overturn the 2020 election.”

Thompson also said his committee is investigating the financing of the Capitol riot.

“It’s just interesting to note that a lot of people came to Washington by bus, by plane, by chartered vehicles. They stayed in hotels, motels, all of that. Somebody had to pay for it,” Thompson said on Sunday morning. “And we want to look at whether or not they’re paying for that participation was legal and whether or not it contributed to what occurred on Jan. 6.”

Jan. 6 investigation: Full opening statement from Congressman Bennie Thompson

The post Will Rep. Bennie Thompson’s Jan. 6 committee subpoena Trump? “Nobody’s off limits.” appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey visits with Jane Granberry who was crowned the 72nd Mississippi Miss Hospitality in July 2021 (and was previously crowned Mississippi Outstanding Teen in 2019.)

Jane is studying integrated marketing communications and history at the University of Mississippi and plans to work in health communication. She is a member of the Rebellettes Dance Team, Ole Miss Ambassadors, and Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. Jane is also in the honors college and Lambda Sigma Honors Society.

When not busy on campus (her day planner is filled from 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.,) Jane will spend the next year promoting Mississippi’s tourism and economic development industries across the state and country. In this interview, Jane shows her high-energy, love of the state in this interview and gives several good reasons to be optimistic about Mississippi’s future.

The post Mississippi Stories: Jane Granberry appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Gov. Tate Reeves is holding up efforts to enact a Mississippi medical marijuana law.

The first-term Republican governor’s refusal to call a special session is preventing legislators from taking up and presumably passing a bill approving medical marijuana.

While Reeves is, at this point, the sole person blocking efforts of legislators to at least take up the issue of medical marijuana, there is plenty of blame to be shared by both House and Senate leaders as to why the state does not already have a medical cannabis program.

Medical marijuana is an issue that legislators have been dragging their collective feet on for years.

First and foremost, during the 2021 session, the Senate, led by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, passed a bill that would have made medical marijuana legal by now if the House had passed it and if it was signed into law by the governor.

The House opted to let the bill die.

The backdrop is that many supporters of medical marijuana did not want the Legislature to pass a bill that they feared would supplant Initiative 65 that was approved overwhelmingly by voters in November 2020 to legalize medical marijuana.

The bill approved by the Senate would have gone into effect only if the Mississippi Supreme Court threw out the citizen-sponsored Initiative 65. As everyone now knows, the Supreme Court in a lawsuit that was pending when the Senate passed its bill did strike down Initiative 65, citing problems with the language establishing the initiative process.

Since that controversial Supreme Court ruling in May, legislators have been trying to reach agreement on a medical marijuana proposal that could be taken up in a special session.

There was a second moment in the 2021 regular session that could have already decided the fate of medical marijuana. Had the Senate agreed to what some members of the House wanted earlier this year — an extended regular session — the Legislature could have come back into session on its on to enact medical marijuana.

The state Constitution gives the Legislature the authority to extend the regular session essentially through the entire year if two-thirds of the membership of both the House and Senate agree. While the House wanted to do this in 2021, the Senate leaders had no interest.

The session extension resolution could be crafted in a way that legislators would only return to the Capitol if Hosemann and House Speaker Philip Gunn agreed on a reason for them to return.

But lawmakers are responsible for the delay dating back many years before 2021. Truth be known, as neighboring states began to legalize medical marijuana years ago, the Mississippi Legislature should have seen the writing on the wall — the broad public support for medical marijuana — and acted before it ever got to a citizen-sponsored initiative.

And when the initiative was filed, legislative leaders should have known there was a good chance it would be successful. That is especially true since it had the backing of state Rep. Joel Bomgar, R-Madison, who has the tech savvy needed to wage a successful campaign to gather the number of signatures of registered voters needed to place an issue on the ballot.

Legislators could have passed a medical marijuana bill early on after the initiative was filed. The Legislature’s legalization of medical marijuana most likely would have taken the steam out of the initiative.

To further parse blame, there would have been less of a chance a lawsuit would have been filed challenging the initiative had the proposal not incorporated many of Bomgar’s libertarian principles, including the restraints on taxing the product and the wide discretion in its use.

In fairness to Reeves, one of the few powers the Mississippi Constitution gives the governor is the authority to call a special session. He is using that leverage to say precisely what he wants the bill to entail.

That is his right. But as a veteran of the legislative process, the governor also should know that even if legislative leaders agree to his demands, it would be difficult for them to guarantee that an amendment offered and passed by the full membership during debate would not be contrary to Reeves’ wishes.

The legislative leadership, presumably, could limit debate and prevent amendments from being offered. But how would it look to pass a bill legalizing medical marijuana without debate?

Another option would be for Reeves to do the hard work of gaining commitments from enough lawmakers to ensure amendments changing his proposal did not pass.

But if Reeves does not want to do that work — as other governors have done in the past — he can simply keep them from convening. He has that power, at least until January when the 2022 regular session begins.

Then, legislators can pass whatever medical marijuana bill they want, and it will be up to Reeves to sign it or veto it. The question then will be does he want to veto medical marijuana that has been approved overwhelmingly by the Mississippi electorate.

The post Gov. Reeves is holding up medical marijuana now, but the blame starts with lawmakers appeared first on Mississippi Today.

As Geoff Pender reported earlier this month, Mississippi is the only state without an equal pay law. And his analysis found that compared to the rest of the country, Mississippi’s gender pay gap is higher than the national average of 19%. According to the American Association of University Women, women in the Magnolia State earn 23% less of what men earn, which translates to a rank of 41 out of 51 states and 13 out of the 17 Southern states.

View our data illustrating the varying gender pay gap in the Southern United States:

READ MORE:

• Will Mississippi continue to short-change women on equal pay?

The post Data: What do Southern women earn compared to men in 2021? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

People wanting to draw their own congressional district can access legislative computers and in-depth data to do so until Nov. 5.

The guidelines of the Joint Legislative Redistricting Committee require public access for three weeks to allow the public to draw their own congressional districts and three weeks to draw their own state House and Senate districts.

People wishing to do so should call 601-359-1226 and ask for Ted Booth, executive director of the Legislature’s Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review Committee. The offices and computers will be available from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. on weekdays.

“We will have operators available to help the public draw the districts,” said Ben Collins, the Geographic Information System coordinator for the redistricting staff, which is part of PEER. “If they want to look at DeSoto County, we will look at DeSoto County. If they want to look statewide, we will look statewide.”

Collins said members of the public can keep the maps they draw, and the maps also will be made available as part of the public record as the Legislature works to redraw the state’s four U.S. House seats and 174 state legislative districts to match population shifts found by the 2020 U.S. Census.

State and federal laws require redistricting to be conducted every 10 years to ensure equal representation of districts on the federal, state and local levels.

A three-week period early in January after the 2022 session begins will be made available for the public to draw state House and Senate districts.

The plan is for the Joint Redistricting Committee to adopt a U.S. House redistricting plan before the session begins in January. Then early in the session the entire Legislature will take up congressional redistricting with the hope of getting it adopted quickly.

The reason for the need for swift action on congressional redistricting is because the deadline for candidates to qualify to run for the congressional seats is March 1. The primary election will be held in June.

For the past two redistricting cycles, the Legislature has been unable to agree on a congressional redistricting plan and the federal judiciary ultimately drew the congressional district map for the state.

The next election for the 174 legislative seats is not scheduled until 2023 so the Legislature most likely will take up redrawing those districts late in the 2022 session.

The post Want to try your hand at redistricting? Come draw your own map appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The speed limit on Ole Miss’ campus is 18 in honor of Archie.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Congrats Eli appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Though healthcare workers were among the first able to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, just 32 of the 204 nursing homes in Mississippi have reported that at least 75% of their employees are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

This data comes from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which has called the 75% threshold a “realistic goal for providers to meet.” 

The Biden administration announced in August that CMS was collaborating with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to develop a plan that will require staff working at all nursing homes accepting Medicare and Medicaid funding to be vaccinated, or risk losing their federal funding. While the new rules are expected to go into effect by late October, around 40% of nursing home employees in Mississippi have refused to get vaccinated.

Since mid-June, all staff and employees of Mississippi nursing homes have been required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or be tested for the virus twice per week under an order from State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs. 

Still, public health officials have maintained for months that the vast majority of outbreaks occurring in nursing home settings are due to unvaccinated employees. Employees account for nearly half of all infections that have occurred in these settings throughout the pandemic.

The post Just 15.6% of all Mississippi nursing homes have staff vaccination rates of 75% or more appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In Oxford, they call it “The Eli Boom.”

In 2000, the year Eli Manning joined the Ole Miss football varsity, the population of Oxford was 13,572. In 2010, the next Census year, Oxford had grown by a remarkable 40% rate to nearly 19,000. What’s more, the real estate market soared. Ole Miss alums bought second homes there. The condo market exploded.

Oxford Mayor Robyn Tannehill graduated from Ole Miss in 1992 and has remained in Oxford ever since. She witnessed it all.

“Oxford’s population and real estate market took off during the Eli years, no doubt about it,” Tannehill said. “The years Eli was at Ole Miss were some of Oxford’s greatest years for growth an economic prosperity. The numbers are amazing. The trajectory, thankfully, has continued.”

Jackson lawyer Fred Krutz once told the story of shopping for an Oxford condo Eli’s freshman year. He found one he really liked. “I told the realtor it was just what I wanted but I thought the price was too steep for a little place like Oxford. She told me, ‘If that Manning kid is as good as they say he is, real estate prices in Oxford are fixing to go off the charts.’”

Krutz continued, “Turns out, she was right.”

Back then, it seemed every kid in Oxford or at any Ole Miss sporting event wore a Rebel jersey, number 10. Ole Miss will pay tribute to Manning when that jersey number is retired Saturday evening during ceremonies at the LSU-Ole Miss game. He was inducted into the Ole Miss M Club Alumni Hall of Fame in ceremonies on Thursday night.

Oxford is hardly recognizable from the pre-Eli days. Count Archie Manning, Eli’s father, among those amazed at the transition.

“It’s not the sleepy little college town I remember from my college days, that’s for sure,” the elder Manning said Thursday morning. “I don’t know how much Eli had to do with all the growth, but I do know he loved his time here, just like I did.

“Eli doesn’t get real excited about anything, but he is excited about this weekend.”

Eli Manning met his wife, the former Abby McGrew, in Oxford. They returned to Oxford Thursday, bringing their four children in tow. Although they live in the New York area, they retain an Oxford home. Archie and Olivia Manning still have a condo on University Avenue.

Certainly not all the Oxford growth is due to Archie’s and Olivia’s youngest son. Says real estate developer Campbell McCool, “I really believe the fuse was lit when Robert Khayat became chancellor in 1995. The Eli years poured gasoline on the flame. Oxford exploded.”

Ole Miss never won a conference championship during the Eli years. He did lead the Rebels to 24 victories in three seasons as the starter and set 45 school records. He capped off his college career with an almost perfect, MVP performance in a Cotton Bowl victory. He was a first team All American and finished third in Heisman Trophy voting.

But those numbers don’t tell why he became such a beloved Ole Miss legend. As was the case with his father, some of Eli’s greatest, most valiant performances came in defeat — such as the time, as a sophomore, he threw for seven touchdowns against Arkansas in a losing cause.

Khayat, now retired, once told me why he believed Eli Manning has become such a beloved icon at Ole Miss. It wasn’t just his on field accomplishments or the two Super Bowl MVP  trophies he won with the New York Giants. It wasn’t just the fact that Ole Miss season ticket sales increased 61% — or $5 million per year — during Eli’s college career.

“It’s the image he projects: wholesome, honorable, intelligent, humble,” Khayat said. “And it’s not just an image. That’s Eli. He’s the quintessential student-athlete. Every college wishes it had an Eli Manning. We were so fortunate to have him at Ole Miss.”

Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, where Eli will be honored Saturday evening, underwent a 10,000-seat, $25 million expansion during No. 10’s time there. That’s when Ole Miss began construction on the the indoor performance facility, now known as The Manning Center, for Archie and Olivia Manning.

Eventually, all that might have happened anyway. It wouldn’t have happened nearly so fast had it not been for Eli Manning.

This weekend’s ceremonies coincide with the notable recruiting visit to Ole Miss of a football prospect named Arch Manning, Archie’s grandson, Cooper Manning’s son, Eli’s nephew and the No. 1 recruit nationally in the class of 2023. 

Coincidence? Certainly not.

“I have no idea where Arch is going and I try to stay out of it,” Archie Manning said. “But I am happy it works out that he will be here this weekend for his uncle.”

The post ‘The Eli Boom’ transformed Oxford and will be on display when Manning’s No. 10 is retired this weekend appeared first on Mississippi Today.