This week marks the anniversaries of several important events that contributed to the historic flag change. Below, you’ll find a comprehensive collection of our flag coverage, as well as our anniversary series that gives a behind-the-scenes look at the effort to change the flag. You’ll also see a timeline, originally published on our Instagram account, pointing out some of the pivotal moments leading to the change.
This is part four in a five-part series about Philip Gunn’s influence in changing the Mississippi state flag. Read part one here, read part two here, read part three here, and read more about the series here.
Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, feeling confident that he would soon have enough votes in his chamber to change the state flag, was at his home the morning of Monday, June 22, 2020, when he got a call from Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.
Hosemann, in his first year presiding over the Senate, informed Gunn that he would be hosting a press conference later that day with several other statewide elected officials outside the Senate chamber to publicly call for lawmakers to place the state flag decision on a statewide ballot. The people, not lawmakers, should decide the fate of the state flag, Hosemann argued.
Gunn, closer than ever to having enough House votes to change the flag, implored Hosemann to rethink the idea and shared his fear that a months-long campaign would divide rather than unite Mississippians and draw negative national attention to the state.
“I said, ‘Delbert, I don’t think that’s the right move,’” Gunn recalled telling Hosemann. “I said, ‘Let’s talk about that. Don’t take any action on that. I’m coming to the Capitol.’”
To that day — six days before the final vote — Gunn had been focused on the difficult battle of securing House votes to change the flag in the Legislature.
Hosemann, meanwhile, had been privately sharing with his Senate colleagues that he didn’t believe lawmakers should move to change the flag themselves. Mississippi Today had reported Hosemann’s apprehension to the legislative change and even his effort to relegate a Senate flag bill to a committee where it was assured death.
Several Senate leaders didn’t necessarily oppose the flag change, but they were content to wait and see if enough House Republicans would support a legislative change. The shared thinking of most every Republican senator at the time was that the House would never get the necessary votes to change the flag, so they didn’t worry much about it.
While Gunn had been counting House votes for a couple weeks, there had been no broad effort from Hosemann or any other Senate Republican leader to whip votes to change the flag.
From outside the Capitol, it appeared as though there may have been movement on the legislative effort. But inside the building, there was still a gulf between the House and Senate leaders on how, if even at all, to move forward. The June 21 phone call illustrated that.
When they hung up, Gunn drove to the Capitol and met with Hosemann, inquiring about how far along Hosemann was in the planning of the press conference. This served as their first substantive conversation about changing the flag.
“He said he hadn’t scheduled the press conference yet, and I said, ‘Let’s don’t. Let’s think about this and determine how best we can proceed,’” Gunn recalled. “You know the way this building works: A lot of times you have a shared outcome, but you have differing ideas about how to get there. Delbert and I have always had a good working relationship — I have a great deal of respect for him — and he agreed to hear me out and continue talks.”
Gunn, wanting to convince Hosemann that the Legislature, not voters, should change the flag, made a few calls and quickly organized a summit of statewide officials and conservative religious leaders.
The speaker wanted the meeting to remain private, so he called his friend Blake Thompson, president at Mississippi College, and asked if they could meet at the Mississippi College School of Law building a few blocks from the Capitol.
The next morning, June 23, Gunn hosted Hosemann, Attorney General Lynn Fitch and Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney at the law school. They were met there by Shawn Parker of the Mississippi Baptist Convention and Ligon Duncan of Reformed Theological Seminary — both of whom were invited by Gunn after the speaker had spoken to them about the flag just a few hours before.
Gunn also asked Ron Matis, a lobbyist for the United Pentecostal Church of Mississippi, to join. Hosemann, a devout Catholic, invited his priest.
Gunn began the meeting by discussing where House members were and reiterating that he believed the best path forward was a vote of the Legislature. Hosemann went next and said that he believed voters, not lawmakers, should decide the fate of the flag. The religious leaders spoke individually about their thoughts and the politics of the matter for their congregations.
“I indicated that the Mississippi Baptist Convention was going to release a statement in support of changing the flag later that day,” Parker, who leads the largest Christian denomination in the state, told Mississippi Today. “Some of the other religious leaders said their intent was to follow suit. Then we prayed, asked for the Lord’s guidance as we navigated the next few days.”
Later that day, leaders of the Mississippi Baptist Convention released statements calling on lawmakers to change the state flag. The Baptist statements, regarded by some as one of the most significant moments of the entire effort, were careful to say lawmakers, not voters, should make the change.
“I was very proud of those religious leaders for doing what they did publicly,” Gunn said. “They didn’t have to do that. They weren’t trying to be political. They were doing what they believed was in accordance with scripture. That was a big deal for so many people.”
But leaving that meeting with the religious leaders, Hosemann continued to insist he believed lawmakers should put the issue on a statewide ballot rather than changing the flag themselves. Plus, the speaker knew he didn’t quite have the necessary votes in the House to change the flag even if Hosemann were to come on board.
So Gunn kept working the phones.
When Gunn returned to the Capitol following the meeting with religious leaders on June 23, he called University of Southern Mississippi President Rodney Bennett, one of eight presidents of public universities in the state.
All eight public universities had long stopped flying the state flag for moral reasons — a point of tension in the House and Senate in recent legislative sessions.
“I knew those presidents could get to members (in the Legislature) better than anyone,” Gunn said. “If anyone could do it, it was them.”
Bennett, at Gunn’s request, got all eight presidents to 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 college board meetings.
“I told them, ‘Look, this thing is moving. I need your help. I need for y’all to contact your alums in the House and the Senate,’ and I urged them to support this,” Gunn said. “They said they were on it. They immediately started making phone calls. They got prominent alums to call lawmakers. It was incredible.”
After their meeting with Gunn on June 24, the college presidents walked across the Capitol to meet with Hosemann.
That afternoon around 4 p.m., Gunn received another call from Hosemann.
“He said, ‘I’ve changed my mind. I think the Legislature needs to do it,’” Gunn recalled. “I thought to myself, ‘Hallelujah, we are going to change this flag.’ Thinking back to that time, I really admire (Hosemann’s) desire to listen and come to the table. Not a lot of leaders are willing to do that, and the change couldn’t have happened without his support.”
A few minutes after Hosemann called Gunn, the lieutenant governor’s office released a statement.
“… the Legislature in 1894 selected the current flag and the Legislature should address it today. Failing to do so only harms us and postpones the inevitable,” Hosemann said in the June 24 statement.
When the eight university presidents sat in Gunn’s office on June 24, an idea was floated.
As pressure outside the building to change the flag was reaching a fever pitch, several Mississippi college athletes and coaches had publicly chimed in about the flag change. Most notably, Kylin Hill, Mississippi State’s star running back, threatened to not suit up for the Bulldogs that fall if the flag wasn’t changed.
“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.”
On June 25, dozens of coaches from the state’s eight public universities arrived at the Capitol for a press conference to call for changing the state flag. Big names like Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin, Mississippi State head coach Mike Leach were joined by coaches of the less popular sports.
It’s difficult to portray how meaningful that moment was to the entire change effort. Before that, change seemed far-fetched inside the building, even as Gunn and others were whipping votes. But for such prominent figures to come together on short notice and demand the change in the very building where lawmakers worked was powerful.
Veteran Mississippi sportswriter Rick Cleveland, a columnist for Mississippi Today, put it this way: “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.”
Nikki McCray-Penson, head women’s basketball coach at Mississippi State University, and Kermit Davis, head men’s basketball coach at Ole Miss, spoke at the press conference. Afterwards, the coaches met with individual lawmakers and leaders in the Capitol.
The only elected official invited to speak at the press conference was Philip Gunn.
“This entire state is screaming for change. This is an issue that needs to be resolved, and resolved quickly,” Gunn said. “The longer it goes, the more it festers and the harder it’s going to be later on. The image of our state is at stake here, ladies and gentlemen. The nation is watching.”
While Gunn had been organizing the meetings of the religious leaders, university presidents and coaches in hopes of changing Hosemann’s mind about unilateral legislative action, he also knew that those groups would have a tremendous effect on the individual lawmakers still on the fence about voting to change the flag.
With the stakes higher than ever, Gunn still didn’t have quite enough House votes to suspend the rules and pass the bill. There was also a final bill to write, the details of which had to be just right to keep the fragile coalition of supporters on board.
The final hours of that week would become some of the most intense of Gunn’s political career.
Part five of the Mississippi Today’s series will publish on July 2.
A last gasp effort has been rejected to convince the Mississippi Supreme Court to reconsider its landmark decision which struck down the medical marijuana initiative approved by voters in November and the entire ballot initiative process.
The Supreme Court rejected the pleas by the sponsors of an early voting initiative and a recreational marijuana initiative to reconsider its 6-3 decision issued in late May. In a two page decision released Thursday, Southern District Justice Dawn Beam, writing for the Court, said parties that wanted to intervene in the lawsuit were given a time period in November to make the request. And since neither party did, “the present motion for leave to intervene is not well take and should be denied.”
And with the denial of that motion, the efforts of the groups to request a rehearing are moot, Beam wrote.
This effectively ends any possibility that the decision to strike down medical marijuana and the initiative process will be reversed.
The Supreme Court took its action in response to a lawsuit filed by Madison Mayor Mary Hawkins Butler and the city of Madison in opposition to the medical marijuana ballot initiative that was approved by voters in November. The lawsuit contended, and the court agreed in the 6-3 decision, that the medical marijuana initiative and the entire ballot initiative process were invalid because the Constitution requires the signatures to place proposal on the ballot be gathered equally from five congressional districts. The state now has four U.S. House seats after the state lost a House seat as a result of the 2000 Census.
After the ruling in late May, Secretary of State Michael Watson who was a defendant in the lawsuit, opted not to ask for a rehearing. Watson said at the time he did not believe there was any chance the Supreme Court would reverse the ruling.
Instead, he said he was focusing on working with the Legislature to approve a medical marijuana law and to fix the initiative process so that it could resume. He has expressed optimism that the ballot initiative process can been revived in a manner so that the initiatives that were in the process when the Supreme Court decision was handed down could be restarted without their sponsors having to start over with the lengthy process.
Legislative leaders and Gov. Tate Reeves have not ruled out a special session to address the court ruling.
Scott Waller, president of Mississippi Economic Council
Scott Waller, president of the state’s chamber of commerce, said business leaders are likely to weigh in on the politically charged issue of Medicaid expansion before next year’s legislative session.
“At the end of the day a healthy workforce is a vital component of moving our state and economy forward,” Waller, president of the Mississippi Economic Council said on Thursday. “… We understand access to health care is a big issue in our state, and also how to deal with uncompensated care.”
Waller said he expects MEC, which has about 11,000 members from 1,100 member companies, will soon begin a research drive, including measuring public opinion and polling MEC business leaders on Medicaid expansion and other health care issues. He said he expects the group will take a position and make policy recommendations before the 2022 legislative session begins in January.
“I’m confident this is something our leadership wants us to take a look at,” Waller said. As to why the state’s chamber of commerce hasn’t previously taken a stance on Medicaid expansion during years of debate, he said, “I think the timing now is lending itself for us to look at this issue.” He said business leaders will also likely study “what other avenues might exist.”
Most recently the Mississippi Hospital Association and other groups had begun a ballot initiative campaign to take the issue from the Legislature and put it directly before voters. But the move was halted by the state Supreme Court’s ruling in a lawsuit against the Initiative 65 medical marijuana program that the state’s ballot initiative process is constitutionally flawed.
Waller first broached the Medicaid expansion subject during a Thursday online forum presented by Mississippi Today on the one-year anniversary of Mississippi removing its old state flag with its divisive Confederate battle emblem. MEC and the state’s business leadership (along with many others) strongly advocating for the flag’s replacement helped move the Legislature after decades of inaction. Waller said MEC will likely weigh in on other major issues in the future, including Medicaid expansion.
Medicaid expansion has been a charged political issue in Mississippi, and brought heated — and most often partisan — debate. Mississippi, despite being the poorest state and otherwise dependent on federal spending, is one of just 12 states that has refused to expand Medicaid. Most of the state’s Republican leadership, starting with former Gov. Phil Bryant, have opposed expansion, saying they don’t want to help expand “Obamacare” and don’t trust the federal government to continue footing most of the bill.
Refusal to expand the state-federal program has left at least 200,000 “working poor” Mississippians without health coverage, with the state rejecting at least $1 billion a year in federal funds to provide it. It has also left Mississippi hospitals to pick up the tab — which now runs about $600 million a year — for providing care to those without health coverage. Six Mississippi hospitals have gone under in the last decade, and a recent study said that about half of the other rural hospitals statewide are at risk of closure — in a state that already lags the nation in access to quality health care.
Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn have recently reiterated their opposition to Medicaid expansion. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has said he’s open to discussion on the issue, one of few state GOP leaders to openly say so.
Hosemann in a recent statement said: “Key chairmen in the Senate will likely hold hearings later this year to learn more from providers, advocates, patients, and other stakeholders in the healthcare community about the delivery of healthcare in Mississippi.”
At the end of this year’s session, after lawmakers again failed to take up the Medicaid expansion issue, Hosemann noted, “We have to look in Mississippi at the delivery of health care. That is important.”
But he avoided using the words Medicaid expansion, saying, “I certainly don’t want to get bogged down by a moniker — saying I’m against this without looking at something when, if you really look at it, you may not be against that,” Hosemann said. “You may just be against some moniker.”
Since COVID-19 first reached Mississippi in March of last year, Mississippi Today has been with our readers, trying to navigate a world that seemed to have permanently shifted on its axis. From the first case to waves of infections that pushed our hospital systems to the brink to thousands of Mississippians lost to the virus, we’ve never covered a public health crisis like this pandemic.
The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines in record time — and with efficacy levels no one had even dreamed of when this all started — has offered us and our state a path forward. Unfortunately, the use of these vaccines has become politicized, and it’s easier to find vaccine misinformation online than the truth.
That’s why we wanted to create a COVID-19 Vaccine Guide, where you can find everything you need to know about the vaccines alongside the how and where of getting them in Mississippi.
Mississippi Department of Health Chief Medical Officer Daniel Edney sat down with Mississippi Today’s health and breaking news reporter Will Stribling to debunk some common COVID-19 vaccine myths.
Read the full transcript for this video below.
Hi, I’m Dr. Dan Edney. I’m chief medical officer for the Mississippi State Department of Health, and I’m glad to be here today to answer any and all questions related to COVID vaccine.
All right so, first question. Does the vaccine cost money to get? That’s a great question because it does not. The federal government has bought all the vaccines that are being provided nationwide and people that have no insurance are not to be charged, the vaccine is free to everyone. Healthcare providers are allowed to charge insurance and administration fees to cover their costs but not to the patients.
Will the vaccine alter my DNA? Wow! We haven’t heard that one yet. So this is a very important question. The vaccine, the way both vaccines work have nothing to do with DNA. DNA is found in the nucleus of the cell and everything that’s being done with the vaccines is in the cytoplasm, which is part of the cell that’s surrounds the nucleus, and that’s where RNA is. And RNA, simply, is the coding for cells to produce proteins. And we need these cells to produce proteins, to attack the COVID virus. So the two type of vaccines introduce that code into the cytoplasm of our lymphocytes. So, they see the code and start producing anti-COVID proteins so that should you get COVID, your immune system recognizes it and starts attacking it in a healthy way, instead of the way it may do if you’re not immune and you get COVID naturally, your immune system may go out of control.
So, the vaccine does not affect DNA in any way. In fact, we wish we could affect DNA for diseases like cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy, but we can’t yet. But this vaccine has nothing to do with DNA.
Does the vaccine have dangerous or long-term side effects? So we’re looking at two groups of people who are not vaccinated, mainly those who are hesitant because of this question. This is new. These vaccines have never been used widespread with the technology that we’re using, so it’s understandable people can be hesitant about it. And, I’ve talked to two patients this week that were hesitant for this very reason, both were at high risk. And so I explained to them that vaccine reactions virtually always occur within two weeks. If you look at all the data with all the vaccines that we have produced and mass deployed, the vaccine reactions are within two weeks. And that’s also what’s happening with our three vaccines that are FDA, EUA approved. And so we’re not seeing long-term side effects. And we now have over a year experience when you go back and look at those who are in the clinical trials, I’ve been vaccinated since December and have had no issues whatsoever so this question is not one of concern for us. What does have long-term side effects is COVID and you may have heard about long COVID or what we call COVID long haulers. We don’t talk about that very much. These are people who survive COVID, but who may never recover and are fully disabled because of their infection.
Will the vaccine gave me a dangerous blood clot? So, back in April, the Johnson & Johnson single shot vaccine was identified to clearly be causing a very strange type of blood clot in young women. And we call this entity vaccine induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia. And it is where the vaccine is causing an abnormal antibody to be produced that causes these blood clots to happen. This is very rare. It’s less than seven per million doses that are administered, and if you look at things like oral contraceptives, the risk of blood clots with birth control pills is sky high compared to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Moderna and Pfizer has shown no issues with blood clots, and also the Johnson Johnson single shot vaccine has not shown to be an issue with blood clots at all in those over 50.
So, a reasonable strategy is if you’re over 50 and you want the single shot, get it. If you’re a younger female, and you don’t want any risk of blood clots and go with Moderna or Pfizer. But even young women who choose to get Johnson Johnson are at exceedingly low risk of, getting blood clots from the COVID vaccine. However, if you get COVID, the risk of blood clots is extremely high from the virus itself.
So say a young woman is on birth control and she gets the Johnson and Johnson does that put her at even higher risk of a blood clot?
And that’s a great question. We have not seen that. We specifically looked at that because we were concerned based on that age group, that it was an interaction with oral contraceptives and it wasn’t, this is an independent vaccine. And this clearly is a vaccine reaction. Thankfully, it’s very, very rare. And one thing people need to know, the COVID vaccine monitoring is the most intense vaccine monitoring we have ever done. No other vaccine has ever been monitored to the extent that these vaccines are, and so much so that we were able to pick up the signal for those blood clots, even though it was seven per million. Our vaccine reactions surveillance picked that up. So, we are intensely watching for any other reactions and thus far, the only two that we’re seeing are anaphylaxis, which are allergic reactions to shots that anybody can have, and the VITT syndrome.
Was the vaccine development a rushed process? So this is a very legitimate question people are concerned about. It was developed rapidly, but because of good things. Typically I tell folks when we’re developing new medications or vaccines, the research labs working, you know, nine to five, Monday through Friday and off for holidays. With operation warp speed, it was all hands on deck, all the time, around the clock, 24/7 365. So the amount of lab time is, you know, over the 18 months before where we are now, the amount of lab time was significantly higher than the few months that everybody’s looking at the actual time in the lab. And we have never invested the amount of monetary resources into a vaccine development.
What we were concerned about as physicians a year ago was would it work. We were grateful of the rapidity of development but we did have a lot of confidence that the technology was going to work because we had a lot of success in the past. And the other thing people don’t realize, we’ve been studying messenger RNA, viral vaccine research for a decade. Adenovirus, deployment vaccine research for a long time, but with the amount of money that was invested, we were able to take that research off the shelf, invest the amount of resources we needed, and we wound up developing, you know, not one but three vaccines that were highly effective. Moderna, Pfizer, 95% safe and effective. Johnson and Johnson, more in the 80% range, safe and effective. If the vaccines had come out of it, 50% effective, we’d have been excited. So to have vaccines that are 95% effective and safe and free and widely available, is just incredible.
There’s been a tremendous amount of work. This was not a rush. The FDA has looked at all the data from all the clinical trials and felt it was safe for general deployment under emergency use authorization, which means it can be given legally. People have to understand it’s not fully approved because the FDA needs more data, but that data really is there and has been submitted and we expect full FDA approval within a matter of weeks.
Next question. If I’ve already had COVID-19 do I need the vaccine? Not only do you need it, you’re lucky. Because if you’ve had COVID naturally we know that you have antibodies cause we can measure those. That didn’t mean you were immune. The antibody, the technology we use to measure antibodies basically just tells us, has your immune system reacted to COVID. Doesn’t mean you’re immune. We can’t tell you that from a blood test, but we know that you’ve had antibody production, which is good, but what we really need is T-cell. Which is a type of white blood cell that actually goes after the virus itself, that just produced antibodies, but attacks the virus.
And the vaccines helped stimulate what we call T-cell mediated immunity. And what we’re seeing is that vaccinations are protecting better than natural immunity, but if you want the best immunity available, if you have recovered from COVID and you get vaccinated, there’s nothing more we can do to make you safer. It doesn’t mean you’re absolutely safe, but, you’re safer than I am having not have COVID. So, if you have had COVID and you have fully recovered, you don’t have to wait 90 days. It’s just when your physician says you’re fully recovered, then you can get vaccinated.
Do I need the vaccine if I’m social distancing and wearing a mask? If you’re in a group where you don’t know everyone, then you need to assume that COVID could be present. And even though you’re vaccinated, the vaccines are not a hundred percent effective. They’re 95% effective. So we don’t want you getting it at all so wear a mask, wash your hands, socially distance. And that’s what I’ve been doing since last December. You know, if I’m going somewhere around people I don’t know, I want to wear my mask.
Can I stop wearing a mask once I get the vaccine? Which I just answered, which means in certain situations you can. If you know, my entire family that’s eligible is vaccinated, I don’t wear a mask around my family. When I’m around colleagues. I know we’re all vaccinated and we’re in a meeting, we don’t have to wear a mask. As long as everyone is vaccinated, then mask wearing is not mandatory. And again, you know, masks work, I mean, I don’t know why we have to try to explain this and I’ll be honest. I don’t know why there was confusion early on, you know? I think you will see a lot of healthcare workers like myself wearing mask during flu season, even after COVID just because it, it, they have worked. I don’t know why we were stubborn with this.
Do only vulnerable people need the vaccine? Well, unfortunately we’re all vulnerable. There’s no one who can say I’m not vulnerable to COVID. We have lost patients, of all age groups, including children and adolescents. We routinely will have pediatric patients in ICU, in our state, thankfully not big numbers, but, you know, we do see that. And it’s not that we’ve lost kids you know, with chronic illnesses, we’ve lost children that were otherwise healthy. We’ve lost people in every age group that were otherwise healthy and who should be alive today, but for the fact that that they had COVID, if you are vulnerable, such as, over 65 or having any chronic long-term medical problems, and you’re more vulnerable than the general population, you should absolutely be vaccinated.
And you know, as I’m talking to groups, you know, you care about yourself, you care about your family, but you care about your community too, and being vaccinated as a way to help. Demonstrate your care and concern for your community because you’re reducing the risk of giving COVID to someone that is very vulnerable.
Does Hydroxychloroquine offer protection against COVID-19? Is it an effective treatment for COVID-19? We wished that it were, we looked at it very hard. We wanted it to be when I was at the bedside of COVID patients last year. We needed anything to help us. And, , hydroxychloroquine was looked at very rigorously. The initial studies, which were just very small stage to see, is there a signal that it may be beneficial where there, which led to multiple groups doing larger studies, and when you expand the numbers, the positive factors went away. It does not help treat the disease.
Does the vaccine give you the virus? Well, we deal with this every year at flu shot time, “I got the flu shot five years ago and it gave me the flu.” No, it didn’t. You reacted to the vaccine as we want you to, you know, if you had received the COVID shot and you had fever and fatigue and those muscle aches for 12 to 24 hours, good. Your immune system is responding to the vaccine like we want it to. When you get the flu shot and you had a little fever, you had those muscle aches. That’s not the flu. That’s the flu shot stimulating your immune system.
There is no way for the COVID vaccine to give you COVID because there is no live virus in it. We’re using particles of the virus that are delivering the messenger RNA or delivering the code to the adenovirus, depending on what vaccine you’re getting. We’re delivering that code to our lymphocytes so that they can make anti-COVID antibodies where we can program our T-cells to respond. You’re getting just enough for that reaction to occur. There’s no way for it to give you the virus, that’s also true with the flu shot. You’re getting particles of the virus that are dead. There’s nothing alive there to replicate.
Will the vaccine affect my fertility? Another common question. And, this has been looked at rigorously, but mainly because of the questions started coming up and so all the back data was looked at and data going forward is being looked at, and the American college of obstetrics and gynecology has stated unequivocally that there are no impacts whatsoever. There is no any impact whatsoever on fertility. Definitely don’t use it as contraception because it won’t work. This was something of concern, but it’s been proven to be false and women do not need to worry about fertility issues.
Will the vaccine put a microchip in my body? You know, the Bill Gates theory is what it is and the most common thing I hear is what it’s gonna allow me to be tracked. *Holds up cell phone* If anybody wants, if the government wants to track me, it’s real easy, they just, they can access my cell phone signal and see where I am at any time and access my data. I have a lot of data on that smartphone that they can download if they so chose. That is much easier than coming up with a scheme that they were going to create a pandemic so we can get microchips in everybody. And then you have a state like Mississippi, where we have a low vaccine rates not even working. So no, there is no microchip, and that’s just one that somehow people just gotta understand that that is a myth.
Will the vaccine make me magnetic? No, it won’t give you a magnetic personality. It won’t magnetize you. It won’t do anything then any more than any other vaccine. I honestly don’t know where this one came from. It’s just not true. You know, your injection area is not magnetized. There are no metals in the vaccine. There are no heavy metals in the vaccine and you know, the only thing that prevents us administering the vaccine is if you’re allergic to the components of the vaccine. There’s nothing in the vaccine that can be magnetized.
What is true is that 96% of America’s physicians are fully vaccinated. So if you trust your doctor and you listened to your doctor for health care advice, which I hope is your source, you don’t have to take it from the health department, although we hope that you trust us and take our information, but certainly you trust your personal physician. 96% of America’s physicians are fully vaccinated. Your doctor knows that our vaccines are safe, effective, free, and widely available. Talk to your doctor about being vaccinated. Your doctor will explain all the reasons why you need to be vaccinated. And now the big push is getting vaccines into the clinic.So you can get your shot at your doctor. Visit just like getting your flu shot.
Mississippi casinos are making more money now than they were before the pandemic, and the Gulf Coast is leading the spike.
Mississippi casinos are reporting a nearly 21% increase in gross gaming revenue so far this year compared to the same period in 2019, according to data from the state Gaming Commission.
From January through May, the latest data available, the state’s casinos reported a gross gaming revenue totaling $1.1 billion. The Gulf Coast’s casinos gross revenue for the months of March, April and May have never been higher, according to Gaming Commission records.
“There was less competition for people’s discretionary dollars when you consider the number of businesses that had to close,” said Keith Crosby, the general manager of Biloxi’s Palace Casino. “On the flip side of that effect, the casino industry got ahead of it with some significant safety measures in place to deal with COVID.”
Coast casinos aren’t just breaking their collective revenue record, they’re smashing it. In April of this year, the Gulf Coast casinos reported a gross gaming revenue increase of about $46 million and $34 million in May.
Gross gaming revenue — the amount of money players wager minus what they win — is similar to traditional businesses’ sales figures. The gaming revenue numbers do not account for the cost of doing business.
Mississippi casinos reported nearly $1.8 billion in gross revenue for all of 2020, which included the roughly two months they had to shut down because of the pandemic. In 2019, that figure was $2.2 billion. With half of the year still left, the casinos are on pace to have the highest total gross gaming revenue since they began operating in the 1990s.
The casinos’ recent spike is matched with an increase in tourists visiting the Gulf Coast. Karen Conner, the director of marketing for tourism bureau Coastal Mississippi, said the region’s number of tourists is higher now than it has been in the last several years.
“This significant increase in visitation serves as an important benchmark for the progress of our recovery as a destination,” Conner said. “Tourism is the lifeblood of Mississippi’s tri-county coastal region, but despite the indelible impact of COVID-19 on the industry, Coastal Mississippi continues to see successes and growth.”
State Rep. Casey Eure, a Republcian from Biloxi who chairs the House Gaming Committee, said the casinos have benefited as more professional sporting events resumed. The state started allowing sports betting inside casinos in 2018.
“I think Mississippi casinos are some of the best in the country,” Eure said. “People have been happy to get back to normal life.”
The Beau Rivage, the Coast’s largest casino and resort, had 99 open positions on its website Wednesday. That’s even after the Biloxi resort and casino had a job fair in May, which hosted about 300 people and resulted in 120 job offers.
In response to labor demands, some casinos have started raising wages.
“The cost of doing business is going up,” said Crosby, the Palace manager. “Food costs are up, material costs are up. You have to think about what that nets out to. There may be better revenue but there is a creeping increase in cost following that.”
Casinos, like restaurants and bars, have had to deal with sudden shifts in supply chains resulting in pricy poultry and hard-to-secure crab legs. Crosby pointed to a common water valve that used to cost $8 that is now going for $18.
The casino manager said he’s waiting to see how the fall fairs. He doesn’t expect the record-smashing gross revenue to continue much longer.
“There’s no question the last 12 to 14 months were unique,” Crosby said. “As we move out of that uniqueness, things are going to start to sort back out again. I think there is as much unknown in the future as there was when we first reopened.”
OMAHA — It was a couple hours after The Game late Wednesday night, and a few of us media types were making our way out of the main entrance of TD Ameritrade ballpark. And, there, beginning at the iconic “Road to Omaha” sculpture that greets College World Series fans, a long line of people began.
And it went, and it went, and it went. What, I thought, is going on? The game is long since over. The championship party is a few blocks over in downtown. And then it hit me.
Rick Cleveland
Nearly all the fans in line wore maroon. They were waiting, politely, in line, most with dreamy looks on their faces. They were lined up for selfies to be made in front of the statue.
They wanted this moment for posterity.
“It’s winding down,” one smiling fan said. “You should have seen how long it was earlier.”
I’ve seen a lot of historic stuff in more than 50 years of doing what I do. But I truly have never seen a fan base enjoy what happened here over the last 10 days more than Mississippi State fans have enjoyed this.
They had waited a long, long time. And that just made it all the sweeter.
It is appropriate that Mississippi State’s first NCAA team championship comes, finally, in baseball. State people embrace college baseball as no other fans in America. It matters so much to them. The passion dates back to the days of Dudy Noble and Boo Ferriss, runs through Ron Polk, Will Clark and Rafael Palmeiro, moves on to legends such as Hunter Renfroe and Jake Mangum.
And now another group of legends have finally won the whole shebang — guys named Tanner (lots of guys named Tanner), and Luke and Will and Landon and, well, you know them all by now. They were led by a steady even-keel guy named Chris Lemonis, who really did push all the right buttons at all the right times for these Bulldogs.
And this begs the question: What was it about these Bulldogs that enabled them to achieve what so many remarkable Mississippi State teams in the past could not achieve? They weren’t necessarily better than some of those other great Diamond Dog teams. Hell, I’m not sure we’ll ever see a better college baseball team than Clark, Palmeiro, Brantley, Thigpen and those Boys of ’85.
Here’s the deal and I have written it many times: Winning championships in college baseball is all about getting hot at the right time. It’s about your players coming together and playing their best when it matters most. It’s about matchups. It’s about staying healthy. It’s about breaks, like when the opposing shortstop gets a ground ball stuck in the webbing of his glove.
It’s about playing well in all phases of the game: pitching, timely and patient hitting, base running and fielding — oh, yes, my gosh, fielding. Mississippi State played seven pressure-packed games without committing a single error in this College World Series. They made sensational plays, yes, but they made all the routine ones.
Yes, it’s about the stars — guys like Will Bednar, Landon Sims, Tanner Allen, Rowdey Jordan and Logan Tanner — but it’s also about key contributions from lesser lights. I’m talking about a slick-fielding shortstop Lane Forsythe, who saved his hits for when it mattered most. I’m talking about his back up, Tanner Leggett, who long waited for his chance, got it and had a shining moment if there ever was one. I’m talking about backup outfielder Brayland Skinner, who out-ran a baseball to turn a sure double into an out in the championship game. “My juco bandits,” Lemonis proudly called Leggett and Skinner.
Pitchers Hootie Harding and Preston Johnson stepped up, big-time, in Game Two of the championship series and provided a sturdy bridge to Game Three and the remarkable combo of Bednar and Sims.
There are many more names that could be mentioned. They know who they are. You know who they are. To win it all, it really does take a village.
In the case of Mississippi State baseball, you just cannot overlook the larger village: the fan base. Bulldog faithful — at least 20,000 of them — lifted these ‘Dogs on their collective shoulders here in Omaha. They cheered themselves hoarse. Not only did their unbridled support make the Bulldogs better, it made it far more difficult for opponents. In college baseball history, there has never been a more un-neutral neutral site than Omaha in 2021.
Dudy Noble North, it really was. The OmaDawgs, they really were. National champions.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday named Rep. Bennie Thompson chairman of a newly created House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
“I take the work of the committee seriously and look forward to making sure that the American people and people around the world know exactly what happened.” Thompson said.
— Bennie G. Thompson (@BennieGThompson) July 1, 2021
The House voted 222-190 to create the committee on Wednesday. Just two Republicans voted with Democrats to support its formation — Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.
Pelosi moved to establish the committee after Senate Republicans blocked the formation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 attack.
The bill to create the bipartisan commission passed through the House in May with support from 35 Republicans, including Mississippi Rep. Michael Guest. However, the bill was blocked by Senate Republicans, including Mississippi Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith. The final 54 to 35 Senate vote fell six votes shy of the 60 votes needed to prevent a procedural filibuster.
The unsuccessful bill, modeled after the commission that studied the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was the result of bipartisan negotiations between Thompson and the Homeland Security Committee’s Republican ranking member, Rep. John Katko of New York.
“Our bipartisan, good-faith proposal was met with a filibuster. Now that Senate Republicans have chosen to block the formation of an independent commission, it falls to the House to stay the course and get the answers they deserve,” said Thompson.
The earlier commission would have been composed of 10 members, with both parties appointing half of them. Proponents said it was necessary for Congress to acquire a full understanding of the deadliest attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812.
For the House Select Committee, Pelosi has appointed eight of the thirteen members. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy can nominate the remaining five members “in consultation” with Pelosi, meaning the speaker could veto his selections.
Pelosi also took the unusual step of making a Republican one of her appointees: Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Cheney has been the most vocal critic of former President Trump within the Republican ranks, and was ousted from her leadership post for criticizing Trump.
“Since January 6, the courage of my party’s leaders has faded. But the threat to our Republic has not,” Cheney wrote in a statement released prior to Wednesday’s vote. “On an almost daily basis, Donald Trump repeats the same statements that provoked violence before. His attacks on our Constitution are accelerating. Our responsibility is to confront these threats, not appease and deflect.”
McCarthy reacted angrily to Cheney accepting the position, and has not committed to nominating Republican members. Pelosi filling eight of the seats means they have a quorum, and the work of the committee can continue regardless of whether or not McCarthy participates.
“I was shocked that she would accept something from Speaker Pelosi,” McCarthy said. “It would seem to me, since I didn’t hear from her, maybe she’s closer to her than us.”
In addition to Cheney and Thompson, Pelosi appointed:
Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Administration Committee;
Representative Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee;
Representative Pete Aguilar of California
Representative Stephanie Murphy, Democrat of Florida and a leader of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition;
Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland; and
At the beginning of the pandemic, Tikisha Garrison lost her job as a freight analyst but continued to work her second job as a dispatcher for a commercial shredding company.
She dipped into her savings to keep making rent payments. But as the pandemic has dragged on, it has become harder to get the rent checks in on time, landing her two months behind on her rent and putting her at risk for eviction.
The federal eviction moratorium, which began March 27, 2020, was most recently extended to the end of July, but federal officials have indicated that this will be the last extension.
The single mother of three applied to the Rental Assistance for Mississippians program at her landlord’s recommendation, but over a month after submitting her application, she still has not heard back.
“I’m not the one to use public assistance, I always work. I never reach out for it,” Garrison said.
Her most recent experience shook her faith in the system. “And the one time I needed it, I got scammed.”
But what might feel like a racket to Garrison is really the bureaucratic backlog of an unprecedented amount of assistance being dispensed by a state agency with initially only five employees to distribute it.
By June 28, the Mississippi Home Corporation, the agency administering RAMP, had obligated just $3 million or 1.7% of its $186 million allotment from the December 2020 COVID-19 stimulus bill.
Two counties also received $7 million each, of which NBC News reported that Harrison County had paid out more than half, while Hinds County had just reached $500,000, or about 7%.
Other states are struggling too. Louisiana has obligated $8.8 million or 3.5% of its allotment as of June 22, and Alabama has obligated $1.5 million or 0.6% of its allotment as of May 31.
Mississippi Home Corporation Director Scott Spivey told Mississippi Today the large windfall of funding means that, unlike usual, a lack of resources isn’t the issue. Instead, administering the large pot of money is like “drinking from a firehose.”
In roughly the first 12 weeks since the program began accepting applications on March 29 of this year, just over 1,000 out of 5,518 completed RAMP applications had been approved for assistance as of June 25, with more than 17,000 applications started.
Spivey did say that the program is beginning to operate more quickly and is now approving about 100 applications a day.
The quasi-governmental Mississippi Home Corporation, created by the state Legislature in 1989, has had a difficult time administering the program because roughly 85% to 90% of applications contain some issue or error that requires manual clean-up or some additional documentation.
“We hoped we would be further along than this, quite frankly. We’ve had some delays with software. We’ve had two different changes in treasury regulations since we started the program, and those have been welcomed changes,” Spivey said. “They’ve kind of tried to make it easier for states to distribute money, but that still causes us to have to keep changing the way we do things. Especially at the beginning of the process, when you’re changing the process, that interrupts it.”
John Sullivan of Enterprise Community Partners, a national housing advocacy nonprofit, said the Mississippi program for rental assistance was not going well, but that these types of programs are not going particularly well anywhere across the country. National reporting has also highlighted these issues in California, Colorado, and Georgia.
“All around the country what you’re seeing is all of these programs are very slow-moving,” Sullivan said. “I think that’s a key component as to why the Biden administration extended the eviction moratorium for another month — to give states a little more time to get this money on the ground so people don’t get evicted.
“I’m very glad they did that. It would be a shame to lift the eviction moratorium when there are millions of people around the country that haven’t been able to access the rental assistance, and there’s so much money out there. The assistance is there for them. The money is available for them. It’s just a matter of processing the applications, which is always going to be time-consuming.”
While the previous June 30 expiration date for the federal eviction ban heightened anxieties for renters who have not been able to get help from RAMP, the moratorium was never the airtight protection for renters who struggled to pay their monthly bills as some believed. Landlords have continued to file evictions throughout almost the entirety of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Garrison’s landlord has not indicated that they will imminently file for eviction, but she knows of other people getting evicted after 2 months without payment. She has pulled money out of her 401k to be able to make payments if an eviction gets filed but is worried about what will happen to her credit score that she has worked to build.
“As a single mom, I can’t sleep at night not knowing what’s about to happen,” Garrison said.
Renee McClinton, a Southaven resident who also lost her second job due to the pandemic, has also not received any communication from the RAMP program two months after filing her application.
“After two months, you lose some type of hope … there’s no updates saying ‘we’ll get to you on this date’ or letting you know where you are on the list. There needs to be some type of changes on how they communicate with tenants,” McClinton said.
McClinton received a letter from her landlord that they were going to begin eviction proceedings on the same day that she submitted her RAMP application, but the paperwork had not been filed yet the last time she called the Justice Court.
Both McClinton and Garrison have called the RAMP office several times, repeatedly being told to just keep checking the application portal.
“I’m not looking for a handout, I just need some help,” McClinton said.
Spivey said the federal government does not allow rental assistance applicants to self-certify their income, meaning they must provide some documentation, such as tax returns, to prove they earn under the set threshold. Spivey said the frequent application issues, often stemming from the documentation requirements, have created a bottleneck for the five people tasked with processing applications for the Mississippi Home Corporation.
People who earn under 50% of the average median income are given priority, which means their applications are moved up the line. Spivey said they thought that prioritizing people earning under 50% would speed things up for people with the greatest need, but it has really just contributed to the bottleneck since a majority of the applications they are receiving are under that 50% threshold.
This element of the program structure has also meant that people who earned over 50% of the average median income kept getting pushed back to the end of the line, which Spivey said was the cause of the long wait times experienced by the tenants Mississippi Today spoke to.
Garrison said that while she appreciated they were working to make assistance available, she felt that the application didn’t fully consider other costs that affect her income, including her car note and how dependents affected her income.
Sullivan, who has experience working with federal disaster relief grants from Hurricane Katrina, emphasized the need for increased administrative processing power, into dozens of employees processing applications.
“It’s an extremely labor intensive process,” he said.
The Mississippi Home Corporation has recentlyset up a call center with 15 full-time employees and contracted with Balch & Bingham, providing 96 more people to process applications, in an effort to address these issues.
It is also likely that more people need help from the RAMP program than have currently applied. Sullivan explained that having an online-only application can limit the number of people that apply, since many low-income people may not have regular internet access or be savvy with uploading the variety of documentation required.
The size of the rental shortfall in Mississippi was originally estimated, in a September 2020 report, to be $159M-$225M by January of 2021, but as the pandemic has continued, these numbers are more difficult to calculate.
“There are too many variables to come up with decent estimates at this point,” Sullivan said. “Many renters with back due rent have been formally and informally evicted, racked up huge credit card bills, used stimulus funds, borrowed money from family, cut back on other necessary expenses, etc and so it is hard to say what amount of back due rent exists now that could be paid by the program.”
Unlike the previous rental assistance program for which Mississippi received $18 million last summer, RAMP currently applies to a large swath of tenants with past due rent. For one, the program raised the eligible income limit from people earning 50% of the area’s median income to 80%. In Hinds County, families of four qualify if they earn under $56,700, instead of the previous $35,450.
Also unlike the previous $18 million, this funding does not require landlord participation in the process if it cannot be obtained. Previous funding required landlords to apply on behalf of tenants. While the current program does attempt to make the payment directly to the landlord/utility provider, if they are not willing to participate, funds can be given directly to tenants to pay their rent.
Jeremiah Smith of the 662 Tenants Union, which operates a tenant emergency support hotline, said that landlords have been largely uncooperative with RAMP applications, preferring to evict in a majority of cases he’s witnessed. He also said that around half of the people that call them trying to get rental assistance have not heard anything back yet from the RAMP program.
Of the applications that have been fully processed, RAMP has approved 83% of applicants for assistance.
The December 2020 COVID-19 stimulus bill said funds could be reclaimed if 65% of a state’s allotment had not been spent by the end of September 2o21, but further guidance from the treasury department indicated they would not be quick to utilize this power. Spivey said that the September 2021 spending deadline is not realistic.
The American Rescue Act, passed in March of 2021, set aside another $155 million for rental assistance in Mississippi, but this money has more lenient spending deadlines and will be available through 2025.
Spivey said renters who apply for the assistance and qualify for it will receive it — eventually.
“The government has done the right things so far in providing assistance to help renters and extending moratoriums so they can stay in their homes,” Sullivan said, “[We’re] really just hoping that landlords can be as patient as possible during this process, because the money will eventually flow out into communities, to landlords, and to renters. It’s just a matter of time.”
To apply for rental assistance through the RAMP program, visit ms-ramp.com. If you live in Harrison County, you may also contact the Open Doors Homeless Coalition at 228-604-8011. For rental assistance in Hinds County, visit hindsrentalaid.com or call 601-514-0137.
