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The post Marshall Ramsey: Life Vest appeared first on Mississippi Today.

When the case that seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade and give states the option to ban abortion is argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch will be at the counsel’s table.

But it will be Fitch’s appointed solicitor general, Scott Stewart, arguing the case.

Stewart, a California native, served in the U.S. Department of Justice defending many of then-President Donald Trump’s most controversial immigration policies. After Trump left office, Fitch named Stewart solicitor general of Mississippi in March 2021.

Michelle Williams, Fitch’s chief of staff, confirmed on Monday that Scott will argue the case, and Fitch “will be at the counsel’s table with him.”

The case began as a challenge to Mississippi’s 2018 law that bans abortions after 15 weeks. Early on, Fitch’s office filed documents with the Supreme Court saying Mississippi’s law could be upheld without completely overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established a woman’s right to an abortion.

But sometime after Stewart came onboard at the Attorney General’s Office, Fitch’s argument was re-crafted to claim Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be reversed by the nation’s high court.

Many prognosticators believe that the current makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court makes the Mississippi case the most serious challenge to Roe v. Wade since the early 1980s — making the state of Mississippi, its attorney general and solicitor general the focus of national attention this week.

READ MORE: U.S. Supreme Court schedules oral arguments for Mississippi abortion ban

Prior to Fitch winning the vacant attorney general’s office in 2019, Mississippi has not had the position of solicitor general. In a press release, Fitch said that 39 states, according to the National Association of Attorneys General, had the post of solicitor general to serve as “the lead advocate for appellate litigation.”

In 2020, soon after being sworn in, Fitch announced Kristi Haskins Johnson of Brandon — a former assistant U.S. attorney — as the solicitor general. But in March 2021, after Trump left office resulting in Stewart’s departure from the Justice Department, Fitch announced Stewart would assume the role as solicitor general.

State law does not address the issue of solicitor general, but Williams said Fitch has the option to create the post.

“I would note that there is nothing in statute providing specifically for employment of a chief of staff, but that is my title,” Williams said earlier this year.

Stewart was involved in the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, according to the Washington Post, and assumed a deputy attorney general post for the office of immigration litigation after Trump’s victory.

While working for Trump, who has advocated for the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Stewart has not previously been known as active in the anti-abortion movement, according to the Washington Post article. While at Princeton University, Stewart wrote about dialing down the rhetoric surrounding the controversial issue of abortion — “a calming of the waters on abortion,” the Post article revealed.

In 2017, according to various media reports, Stewart did argue one abortion case at DOJ. Stewart, defending a policy of the Trump administration, argued that a 17-year-old teenager who discovered she was pregnant while being held at a Texas facility as an unaccompanied minor immigrant could not receive the abortion she sought, even though she had received permission from the courts to obtain it.

The Trump administration would not allow her to leave the holding facility to obtain the abortion. Stewart argued the girl would have to return to her native land to receive the abortion.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan told Stewart, “I am astounded by that position,” and ordered that the girl be allowed to have the abortion in the United States. After that court ruling, the Trump administration later changed its stance on denying abortions for unaccompanied minor immigrants who had gone through the legal process to be approved for an abortion.

READ MORE: Gov. Reeves says individual choice for vaccines OK, but not for abortion

The post Former DOJ attorney under Trump will argue Mississippi’s case to Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Rep. Hester Jackson-McCray has received the National Foundation for Women Legislators’ Elected Women of Excellence Award for 2021.

The award “was created to identify women who have worked tirelessly, often breaking down barriers and overcoming obstacles that once seemed insurmountable, to serve their communities” according to NFWL.

“These pacesetters have engendered an environment where women can now serve in public office and fight for the issues they are passionate about,” said NFWL Director Jody Thomas.

Jackson-McCray was presented the award Nov. 9 at the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. She said it was an honor and thanked her colleague state Rep. Latashia Jackson, who nominated her.

“I was honored that one of my colleagues would think so much of me to be nominated,” Jackson-McCray said.

READ MORE: Despite dramatic electoral and financial setbacks, Hester Jackson-McCray makes legislative history

Jackson-McCray is a proponent of voters’ rights, and this year filed for approval of a ballot initiative to amend the state Constitution to allow early voting in Mississippi. She is the co-chair of the Mississippi Early Voting Initiative.

Jackson-McCray, D-Horn Lake, a retired nurse and owner of a catering business, was elected to House District 40 in 2019, the first Black person elected to represent DeSoto County in Jackson since Reconstruction. She defeated an incumbent Republican by 14 votes.

NFWL said Jackson-McCray “is the definition of perseverance.” In 2009, dealing with health and financial issues but inspired by the election of President Obama, she ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Horn Lake. Four years later, she ran for a city alderman seat and lost. Three years later, she ran for the House of Representatives and lost, before running again in 2019 and beating the incumbent by 14 votes.

Her Republican House opponent contested the election. After a hearing in 2020, the supermajority Republican House voted unanimously to seat Democrat Jackson-McCray.

Mississippi’s 174-member Legislature is only about 16% female, and remains much whiter and more male than the state of Mississippi at large.

Jackson-McCray said she and other female elected leaders “just have to encourage other women that they can be in office, that they can serve in the Legislature.”

“I have been encouraged during the last elections in this area, we have seen several women running for office,” she said. “I hope we see more of that.”

The post Rep. Jackson-McCray receives national women legislators award appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Gov. Tate Reeves said on Sunday that he is against COVID-19 vaccine mandates, adding he believes “in individual liberties and freedoms and people can make decisions on what’s best for them.”

But when pressed on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning, Reeves said that while he believes in the right to control one’s body, other factors have to be taken into account when it comes to women and abortion.

“What I would submit to you, Chuck, is they absolutely ignore the fact that in getting an abortion is an actual killing of an innocent unborn child that is in that womb,” Reeves told NBC’s Chuck Todd on the national television show.

On Wednesday of this week, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Mississippi case which many prognosticators believe could overturn Roe v. Wade, the nation’s long-standing legal precedent that guarantees a woman’s right to abortion.

The case centers around a Mississippi law, passed in 2018, that would make abortions after 15 weeks illegal. That law has been stayed by lower courts as it has gone through the federal appeals process.

Reeves, the first-term governor, has drawn criticism for his handling of the pandemic response in Mississippi, including his unwillingness to firmly state that Mississippians should get vaccinated — even as other Southern Republican governors have gone to great lengths to do so.

READ MORE: Mississippians get mixed pandemic messages from experts, governor

Some have equated recent rhetoric over vaccination mandates with debate on the legality of abortion, which was the focus of Reeves’ interview Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

“The difference between vaccine mandates and abortions is vaccines allow you to protect yourself. Abortions actually go in and kill other American babies,” Reeves said.

Todd, the “Meet the Press” host, countered that vaccines were “about protecting a larger community,” not just protecting one’s self. 

“You could certainly argue that, Chuck,” Reeves said. “… The fact is that during this very horrible and challenging time since I was sworn into office in January of 2020, Chuck, we’ve had 800,000 American lives lost because of COVID. And my heart aches for every single one of those individuals that have died because of COVID.”

Reeves continued: “But since Roe was enacted, 62 million American babies have been aborted, and therefore have been killed. And that’s why I think it’s very important that people like myself and others across this country stand up for those unborn children, because they don’t have the ability to stand up for themselves.”

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves celebrates suspension of COVID-19 vaccine mandate

The post Gov. Tate Reeves says individual choice for vaccines OK, but not for abortion appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Department of Transportation Director Brad White joins Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast to discuss the $3.3 billion earmarked for Mississippi highway work in the recently passed federal infrastructure bill. White says the money will help, but will still be tightly controlled by federal highway officials. He notes the state has a more than $4 billion list of needed projects.

The post Podcast: MDOT Director Brad White talks federal infrastructure package billions appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The state House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation in 2008 to restore voting rights to all Mississippians convicted of felonies, except for those convicted of murder or rape.

The 2008 legislation later died in the Senate, where Phil Bryant presided as lieutenant governor. Current House Speaker Philip Gunn, then a sophomore legislator from Clinton, was among the few House members to vote against the 2008 bill.

Since 2008 there has not been any serious efforts by legislators to move Mississippi more toward the nation’s mainstream, where in more than 40 states voting rights for those convicted of felonies are restored automatically at some point after their sentence is completed.

In the upcoming 2022 session, House Judiciary B Chairman Nick Bain, a Republican from Corinth, has vowed to try to make the process of restoring voting rights for Mississippians with felony convictions “more consistent and fairer.”

What that effort looks like remains to be seen. Bain has stressed that at this point he is not trying to completely scrap Mississippi’s archaic felony voting ban.

The surest way to make whatever changes Bain decides to try to make would be to amend the 1890 Constitution to revise the language that disenfranchises people convicted of certain felonies.

“Obviously we can try to amend the Constitution, but that is a high burden,” said Bain, who held a legislative hearing in October on the issue.

Changes to the state Constitution require approval by two-thirds of the members of each chamber of the Legislature and voter approval.

The current language in the Constitution says to restore voting rights, approval is needed from two-thirds of the elected membership of both chambers of the Legislature. Voting rights also have been restored through gubernatorial pardons and by judicial expungements, though the process is burdensome and not allowed for all convicted of felonies.

The Legislature normally approves individual bills to restore voting rights one person at a time. Normally less than five people have their rights restored each year. In the 2021 session, the rights of just two people were restored.

But there seemed to be a consensus at Bain’s October hearing that rights could be restored to large swaths of people in one piece of legislation instead of restoring rights one person and one bill at a time.

Some said they believe the Legislature has the constitutional authority to restore rights to just those already convicted.

But Paloma Wu, a deputy director with the Mississippi Center for Justice, said she believes the Constitution is not clear on the issue and said legislators could restore voting rights for people convicted in the future and allow the courts to interpret the issue should a lawsuit be filed challenging the law.

Most all agreed, though, that to restore the rights to a large group of people would take two-thirds approval from members of both chambers just as it does to restore rights to an individual convicted of a felony. That process could prove difficult in a Legislature where in recent years, many members of the Republican majority have been reluctant to restore voting rights.

In a perfect world, Bain has said he believes it should be another entity, such as the judiciary, and not the Legislature that restores voting rights. It is not clear whether giving that authority to the courts could be done without a constitutional amendment.

There is no public polling on whether voters would support removing the lifetime ban on voting if the Legislature offered such a proposal to the electorate. In Florida, voters overwhelmingly approved an initiative removing the ban.

One of the problems with the current process in Mississippi, Bain has said, is that a person faces a lifetime ban on voting for a felony bad check writing conviction, for instance, but could vote while in prison if convicted of child pornography or of being a major drug dealer.

The current system of disenfranchisement for those convicted of certain felonies has its roots in the state’s Jim Crow-era.

In the 1890s, the Mississippi Supreme Court wrote the disfranchisement of people of specific felonies was placed in the Constitution “to obstruct the exercise of the franchise by the negro race” by targeting “the offenses to which its weaker members were prone.” The crimes selected by lawmakers to go into the Constitution were thought by the white political leaders as more likely to be committed by African Americans.

That provision is currently being challenged on constitutional grounds in the federal courts with two cases pending before the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Attorneys have argued that the provision’s intent is the same as the poll tax, the literacy test and other Jim Crow-era provisions that sought to prevent African Americans from voting.

Another sure way to change the state’s felony suffrage ban is for the courts to strike it down.

The post Legislature could try to address felony voting ban for first time since 2008 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

An extensive report from the Commonwealth Fund has found deep-seated racial health disparities in all 50 states — with many more pronounced in Mississippi than anywhere else in the nation.

Across 24 measures graded in a Health Equity Scorecard, Mississippi ranked near the bottom or last when measuring health outcomes, health care access and health care quality for both its Black and white populations. Only one state, Oklahoma, had a lower overall health care rating for its Black population. 

The number of deaths in Mississippi from potentially preventable diseases, like diabetes, that are given effective and timely health care are much higher than the national average for both racial groups. However, in nearly all categories where disparities were measured, they were more pronounced for Mississippi’s Black population.

READ MORE: The full report from the Commonwealth Fund.

For example, Mississippi’s health system scores in the 8th percentile for Black residents, but much higher for white residents, in the 38th percentile. Compared to 38 states with large Black populations, Mississippi’s health system ranks 37th overall. 

Mississippi also performed poorly for insured and uninsured patients, showing that there are issues in health care delivery for those who have access on paper. There is one specific policy issue, however, that is partly responsible for the sheer breadth of the disparities in the state’s health care system: Medicaid expansion. 

“Improving people’s health care requires people to have health insurance coverage, and you’re not going to see a narrowing of disparities in states like Mississippi unless you provide health insurance coverage for everyone in the state,” said Sarah Collins, vice president for health care coverage and access at Commonwealth. “We’ve seen in other states that the disparities narrow in coverage once they expand Medicaid. So this would be a critical first step for Mississippi. It’s not the last step, but would be a critical first one.”

Mississippi is one of 12 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Doing so would allow thousands of low-income Mississippians eligible for tax credits through the ACA marketplace. Without these tax credits, the few plans that are available on the state’s marketplace are too expensive for those that fall in this “coverage gap.”

The state’s top elected officials, most notably Gov. Tate Reeves and Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, oppose Medicaid expansion, and have long maintained that the state cannot afford the costs.

If Medicaid were expanded, the federal government would cover 90% of the health care costs related to expansion, while Mississippi would have to cover the remaining 10%. In September, one of Mississippi’s top economists released a study showing that the 10% state match would be more than covered by health care-related savings to the state and new tax revenue generated.

The post Mississippi among worst in racial health disparities, new report finds appeared first on Mississippi Today.

That three-week stretch of June 2020 — when Mississippi lawmakers worked to change the 127-year-old state flag, the last in the nation containing the Confederate battle emblem — was insane. There’s really no other way to put it.

For those of us who got to watch those historic days unfold up close, perhaps the most memorable moment was when dozens of coaches from Mississippi’s eight public universities gathered at the Capitol for a joint press conference to drive a final nail in the old flag’s coffin.

Longtime sports writer and Mississippi Today columnist Rick Cleveland wrote it this way at the time: 

All my professional life I have wondered what it would take for all the universities in Mississippi to agree on any matter under the sun. Just once.

And now I know: It’s the state flag of Mississippi — specifically, the need to get rid of the current flag.

Rick Cleveland, Mississippi Today

There was so much that we knew and heard at the time that we couldn’t report. We had to make several judgment calls a day about what information was most newsworthy at the moment. 

One story that we had to lose in the fray: The first meeting of Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin and Mississippi State head coach Mike Leach in their new jobs came at the state Capitol, where they would serve as lobbyists together.

As you might expect, things got weird.

Mississippi schools typically don’t get to hire big national names as their head football coaches. Ole Miss and Mississippi State both did it after the 2019 season.

Fans across the state eagerly awaited what Kiffin and Leach would bring to their respective schools — both possessed offensive masterminds, both had a knack for stealing national headlines with their witty banter off the field.

Most figured the first time they’d meet as Mississippi coaches was Thanksgiving 2020 on the field in Oxford for the annual, bitter rivalry. Not so.

The fact that lawmakers were on the verge of changing the state flag in June 2020 was nothing short of miraculous. As protests over racial inequality raged across the state and nation following the murder of George Floyd, Mississippi lawmakers had earnestly worked for a couple weeks in early June to whip the votes to change the flag.

For decades, earnest efforts at the Capitol to change the flag — led by Black lawmakers — had been ignored by powerful white lawmakers, who enjoyed large majorities in both the House and Senate. There was virtually no broad political will among most white lawmakers, even in the summer of 2020, to change the flag.

Further complicating things in June 2020: Leaders needed to secure more votes than normal because deadlines to pass general bills had long passed.

Starting on June 8, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers — including Republican Speaker of the House Philip Gunn — had been unsuccessfully trying to whip enough votes to change the flag. Outside the building, pressure from Black organizers and activists, major corporations and other prominent groups like the Southeastern Conference and Mississippi Baptist Convention had reached its peak. 

The clock was ticking as leaders had just a few days before the scheduled end of the legislative session. 

Gunn, knowing the window of opportunity was closing, called University of Southern Mississippi President Rodney Bennett on June 23. All eight public universities had long stopped flying the state flag for moral reasons — a point of tension among some Republicans in the House and Senate in recent years.

“I knew those presidents could get to members (in the Legislature) better than anyone,” Gunn told Mississippi Today earlier this year. “If anyone could do it, it was them.”

So Bennett, at Gunn’s request, got all eight presidents to a meeting in the speaker’s office the very next morning on June 24 — an incredible feat considering it can be difficult to get all eight presidents in the same room even for their scheduled monthly college board meetings.

As the presidents sat in Gunn’s office that day, an idea was floated.

“Sports had already played a pretty big role in moving some lawmakers (to change the flag),” Gunn said. “It’s Mississippi. You know how sports are here. What more powerful way to convince people about this than sports?”

The presidents all agreed.

“From a press standpoint, the best thing we could come up with was to get the coaches involved,” said Rep. Trey Lamar, one of the speaker’s top lieutenants who was in the meeting with the university presidents. “So we told (the presidents) that and they all agreed, and they left that meeting with the understanding that we are leaving here, and we are calling our coaches and we are going to put it together. Within hours, you know, word had gotten back to us what was going to happen the next day. They were all coming back.”

The next day, on June 25, dozens of coaches from the state’s eight public universities would come to the Capitol to publicly lobby to change the flag.

Kiffin, the new Ole Miss coach, was in California on June 24 when he got a call from his boss Keith Carter, the university’s athletics director. They were sending a plane, and he’d need to be on it that night.

The new Ole Miss coach, who hadn’t spent much time in Mississippi since COVID-19 cancelled spring practice in 2020, landed in Jackson on June 25 around 3 a.m. and checked into a hotel near the Jackson-Evers International Airport.

A pretty robust morning of lobbying was planned for June 25. Dozens of coaches from the public universities would do two main things: Meet individually with lawmakers who were still privately saying they would not vote to change the flag, and collectively hold a press conference that would be broadcast across the state and nation to lobby to change the flag.

The thinking was that any legislative holdouts would cave to the pressure of sports figures who were privately and publicly asking them to make the change.

But early that morning, there was a problem. The Ole Miss athletics department group flying down that morning from Oxford was delayed, and Kiffin, who had gotten about three hours of sleep after arriving to town, had nothing to wear except the hoodie, T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops he arrived in.

That attire doesn’t quite meet the Capitol dress code, particularly when Kiffin would draw perhaps the most camera time of any coach there.

So Sidney Allen Jr., a Butler Snow lobbyist and Ole Miss alumnus, scrambled to solve Kiffin’s clothing dilemma. Allen called his friend Luke Abney, who owns The Rogue, a fine men’s clothing store in Jackson’s Highland Village. Abney told Allen he would open the store early on June 25 to get a suit quickly tailored as best they could.

Abney’s staff opened his store early, and Kiffin got there around 8:30 a.m. and stripped down to be fitted for a suit.

That light blue suit and tan shoes Kiffin wore in front of all those cameras? He bought them minutes before getting to the Capitol that day.

“After we got him all dressed up, he left his other clothes here — the T-shirt, shorts, hoodie, visor, everything,” Abney said. “He told us he’d be back to pick it all up. He came back after he did his thing at the Capitol, he took pictures with everybody here, talked with us for about 30 minutes. He couldn’t have been nicer. It was fun as an Ole Miss guy to get to meet him, but it was really cool that he was in town to be a leader in changing the flag. It was a proud moment.”

Inside the Capitol on June 25, the coaches were not only doing the press conference, which the world saw; they were meeting with lawmakers behind closed doors.

Staffers for Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann ordered a nice breakfast spread for their expected visitors. The coaches in Hosemann’s office that morning would be treated with a true Southern delicacy: chicken biscuits from Chick-Fil-A.

Mike Leach, the Mississippi State coach, is apparently a fan.

When Leach, who flew to Jackson for the day from his home in Florida, made his way into Hosemann’s office, he didn’t immediately shake hands or greet anyone. Instead, he walked around to everyone who had a biscuit, grabbed them off their plates and stuffed them into his pockets.

Everyone in the office looked at each other in amazement, and Leach greeted Hosemann after a few seconds and began telling the staff some funny stories.

The coaches’ day at the Capitol was an incredible success. 

Ole Miss men’s basketball coach Kermit Davis, Jr,, and Mississippi State women’s basketball coach Nikki McCray-Penson delivered eloquent speeches in the Capitol rotunda that centered on one single message: “Change the Mississippi flag. Now. Let’s move ahead.”

Just behind the podium stood Kiffin, in his brand new suit, and Leach, with pockets filled with biscuit crumbs. Jackson television station WAPT captured the hilarious moment when Leach, seeing Kiffin for the first time, pulled Kiffin’s mask off his face and popped it.

That mask that Kiffin wore? It was a Mississippi National Guard Association mask. Allen, the lobbyist, had to go get it from Senate Pro Tem Dean Kirby’s office because — you guessed it — Kiffin didn’t have one when he landed from California.

The suit, the biscuits and the mask fun aside, Kiffin and Leach scrambling to get to Jackson that day proved to be a critical moment in Mississippi history.

Two non-native Mississippi head coaches, men who would recruit and compete against each other, who are expected to hate each other, came together to make a difference for the state.

“This is very important to (the student-athletes),” Kiffin said at the Capitol that day. “Anything we can do to help support them, and I think it has a lot to do with the future of the state programs. You’re going to deal with kids leaving the state or not wanting to come because of this… It’s important for the rivalry for people to see us (Kiffin and Leach) coming together for one united cause. That’s very important.” 

“The purpose of a state flag is to unify the state. Right now, this flag doesn’t do that,” Leach said that day. “To me, it’s really quite simple. Why do you have a state flag? To unify all the people in the state. If your flag doesn’t do that, change it. Does your flag bring business to the state or keep business out? If it doesn’t bring it in, change it. Does it draw athletes and people to the state, or not? If it doesn’t, change it. It’s as simple as that. On that very practical level, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened a long time ago.”

Three days later, lawmakers cast the final vote to change the state flag. Many people deserve credit for that final outcome, but the coaches coming to the Capitol that day certainly moved the needle with several lawmakers who had previously resisted making that vote.

Kiffin and Leach, two Mississippi outsiders, played an unexpectedly large role in that.

If only Jackson State had hired Deion Sanders just a couple months earlier so he could’ve gotten in on the fun.

READ MORE: Kiffin and Leach have made the Egg Bowl… a lovey-dovey affair?

The post Lane Kiffin and Mike Leach went to the Mississippi Capitol to lobby. Things got weird. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Brandon High School coach and former Mississippi State receiver Sam Williams joins the Cleveland boys to talk about his Bulldogs’ bruising run in the MHSAA Playoffs and what it’s like to prepare to play in an Egg Bowl.

Stream all episodes here.

The post Podcast: Talking prep playoffs, Egg Bowl with Sam Williams appeared first on Mississippi Today.