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As COVID-19 deaths increase, Bolivar County coroner requests more body storage

Mississippi Today
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As COVID-19 deaths increase, Bolivar County coroner requests more body storage

Ashley F.G. Norwood, Mississippi Today

A lab tech prepares a body for autopsy in the Mississippi Medical Examiner’s office in Pearl.

CLEVELAND — Bolivar County Coroner Rudy Seals is one homicide away from being in an impossible situation.

Like many coroners in the state, Seals is dealing with an increase in COVID-19 related deaths, but doesn’t always have a steady location to store the dead because his office does not have its own morgue.

If people start dying at an even more increased rate than they already are, he could soon find himself collecting a body and not having a place to keep it.

That day could come much sooner if there were to be a homicide or suspicious death in Bolivar County. County coroners are required to send all deceased suspected of wrongful death to the State Medical Examiner’s office for an autopsy, which can take weeks because of how severely understaffed and under-resourced the State Medical Examiner’s office is. While Seals can still find somewhere to store a person’s remains for a few days until they’re buried, he’d be hard-pressed to do the same for weeks.

This is why he’s asking the Bolivar County Board of Supervisors to purchase a holding refrigeration unit as a temporary solution. His long-term plan is to work with the county to build out a permanent facility, “so this will never happen again,” Seals said.

Before the pandemic, he used the morgue at Bolivar County Medical Center or stored the dead at a local private funeral home. He can still do that, but Seals said the Bolivar County Medical Center only has adequate space to store two bodies, and space at the funeral home is limited because of its uptick in private business.

It’s not to the point where bodies are piling up, but Seals said there are “moments in which we cannot store a body because there are bodies already in those [holding] spaces. So what we would have to do is call a local funeral home and ask them to hold that person until another funeral home comes from three or four hours away to pick up a loved one.”

The situation is only exacerbated by the well documented woes of the State Medical Examiner’s office. In 2017, Mississippi Today reported that Mississippi’s Office of the Medical Examiner was more understaffed than any other state medical examiner office in the country.

Seals says he’s getting by right now, but with COVID-19 cases continuing to rise, he’s not counting on it staying that way.

“It leaves the county in a very awkward or uncomfortable position when those people pass away and the hospital cases have already filled up,” Seals said.

Though he hasn’t yet been dealt a homicide, he does have a case that needs to be sent to the State Medical Examiner’s office but can’t get there for weeks because of the state backlog.

“I’m housing [the remains] at a private location. I know that I won’t be able to keep it there for a month because those places are quickly filling up,” he said. “So I’m quite sure that next week I’ll have to go move it to the hospital until the hospital administration begins to ask questions. Then I’ll probably have to move it to continue to keep it. And I don’t think that is fair at all and I think that is sad.”

Heather Burton, the coroner in neighboring Sunflower County, said she didn’t feel like she had the same issues as Bolivar County, but added, “The only place where I could see it becoming a problem is if somebody had to go for an autopsy [at the State Medical Examiner’s Office] and we had to hold them for an amount of time.”

Seals presented his request for a refrigeration unit to the Bolivar County Supervisors on Aug. 3, who in turn expressed support for his plan. County Administrator Will Hooker said the board hasn’t taken official action yet on purchasing the refrigeration unit and is still discussing what the best option would be in terms of which unit to buy.

“We take this very, very seriously and we’ve got to do a better job of accommodating our citizens. I just want to personally tell you that this matter is taken very seriously and we’re going to do everything we can,” Supervisor Jacorius Liner said to Seals at the Aug. 3 meeting.

Supervisors also praised Seals during the meeting for being proactive.

“Well to be honest, if you really look at it, I’m not being proactive,” Seals later said during an interview. “I’m actually operating behind the gun. I’m just blessed that I don’t have any of those [wrongful death] situations.”

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An Indian Company Is Gearing Up to Make Millions of Doses of a $3 Covid-19 Vaccine

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As the Covid-19 pandemic drags on, there’s one thing we’re all counting on to rescue us from the drudgery of socially-distanced life: a vaccine.

How many times have you heard “X won’t happen again until there’s a vaccine”? Concerts, conferences, festivals, sporting events, weddings, and anything else that entails a lot of people being in one place has been put on hold indefinitely—and we miss it. All of it.

But as much as we’re counting on a vaccine to put an end to this nightmare, the reality is that even once a fateful scientist, company, or lab does find a vaccine, the story doesn’t end there; the next steps are manufacturing the vaccine at scale, ensuring equitable distribution both between and within countries, and making sure everyone who needs vaccination—billions of people around the world—can access and afford it. We’ve never been faced with a challenge like this, and the way it plays out will speak to our collective compassion and humanity.

An Indian company is getting a jump-start on manufacturing low-cost vaccines. With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Serum Institute of India plans to crank out 100 million doses of Oxford University’s coronavirus vaccine for poor countries at a cost of $3 or less per dose. In a separate deal with multinational pharma giant AstraZeneca, which licensed Oxford’s vaccine in late April, the Serum Institute also agreed to produce a billion doses for low- and middle-income countries.

The Serum Institute

The Serum Institute of India isn’t widely known, but as Bill Gates points out in this video from 2012, the company plays a crucial role in global health. As the world’s biggest manufacturer of vaccines by volume (not by revenue—that title goes to British GlaxoSmithKline), Serum makes vaccines for dozens of diseases, including measles, mumps, diptheria, tetanus, and hepatitis-b, among others. According to the company’s website, 65 percent of children in the world receive at least one of its vaccines, and they’re used in over 170 different countries.

Serum was founded in 1966 and is privately owned, which gives it the freedom to make quick, risky decisions that publicly-traded pharma companies can’t; Bloomberg says the company “may be the world’s best hope for producing enough vaccine to end the pandemic.”

The Oxford Vaccine

As detailed in a paper published in The Lancet on July 20, a vaccine developed by researchers at Oxford University showed highly encouraging results in phase 1 and 2 clinical trials. Of 1,077 people that took part in the trials, 90 percent developed antibodies that neutralized Covid-19 after just one vaccine dose.

Its unwieldy name, “ChAdOx1 nCoV-19,” is a mashup of its various attributes: it’s a chimpanzee (Ch) adenovirus-vectored vaccine (Ad) developed at Oxford (Ox). Unlike American company Moderna’s vaccine, which prompts an immune response using Covid-19 messenger RNA, the Oxford vaccine is made from a virus genetically engineered to resemble coronavirus. Scientists used a virus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees, and added the spike protein that Covid-19 uses to break into human cells. The resulting virus doesn’t actually cause people to get infected, but it prompts the immune system to launch a defense against it and block it from continuing to invade cells.

The vaccine’s only side effects were headaches and a mild fever. More extensive trials are now being launched in the US (this will be the biggest with 30,000 people), UK, South Africa, and Brazil. The vaccine may be used in controversial human challenge trials as well—this is when vaccinated people are infected with the virus to see whether the vaccine can effectively neutralize it.

Risky Business, Onward

The Serum Institute is taking a pretty big risk by forging ahead with these plans, even outside of the fact that the Oxford vaccine hasn’t yet passed Phase 3 clinical trials. If the vaccine falls through for any reason, Serum stands to lose up to $200 million.

Even once a vaccine (this one or any other) is determined safe, cranked out at lightning speed, and distributed, there’s no guarantee it will eradicate Covid-19. The virus could mutate and develop a new strain. The ultra-accelerated timeline under which vaccines are being developed could leave us with one that’s not truly safe and time-tested. Production constraints and supply hoarding could complicate manufacturing. And according to one study, 50 percent of Americans and more than a quarter of people in France say they don’t even want to be vaccinated.

As Carolyn Johnson wrote in the Washington Post, “The declaration that a vaccine has been shown safe and effective will be a beginning, not the end. Deploying the vaccine to people in the United States and around the world will test and strain distribution networks, the supply chain, public trust and global cooperation. It will take months or, more likely, years to reach enough people to make the world safe.”

Despite these caveats, though, a vaccine is still a finish line we must race towards, and the only logical next step short of letting the virus rage in an attempt to achieve herd immunity. So, fraught as it may be when (or if) it arrives, we’ll keep waiting, hoping, and looking forward to all the things we’re going to do again once there’s a vaccine.

Image Credit: Bao_5 from Pixabay

Thursday brings a good chance of scattered showers and thunderstorms across North Mississippi

Chris Mann
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Thursday brings a good chance of scattered showers and thunderstorms across North Mississippi

Good Thursday morning everyone! Temperatures are in the mid to upper 70s, under mostly cloudy skies this morning. Low pressure in the area will bring the chance for scattered showers and thunderstorms again today. We need the rain and most everyone will have the chance of getting some today. Patchy fog will be possible this morning, so be careful in your morning commutes. We will see a High near 88. Calm wind becoming south around 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%.

Tonight, A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a low around 72.

Mississippians file lawsuit to expand voting access during COVID-19 pandemic

Mississippi Today
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Mississippians file lawsuit to expand voting access during COVID-19 pandemic

Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America

A voter walks into Twin Lakes Baptist Church in Madison, Miss., Tuesday, November 5, 2019.

A group of Mississippians filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to ensure Mississippians have the ability to vote absentee in November to avoid exposure to COVID-19.

Most states allow people to vote early in person and by mail, but to do so in Mississippi, voters must provide an excuse, such as being away from home on election. The existing law makes Mississippi one of the most difficult places in the nation to vote early.

Many had suggested Mississippi lawmakers did little this year — relative to efforts in other states around the nation — to ease access to polls during the coronavirus pandemic. But the lawsuit filed on Tuesday argues that the language of a law they passed in June should broadly expand Mississippians’ ability to vote absentee.

“Over the last month, Mississippi has proven to be a consistent COVID-19 hot spot with the numbers of infections and deaths increasing, not decreasing,” said Vangela M. Wade, CEO of the Mississippi Center for Justice, in a news release. “Any requirement that citizens gather in polling places to cast their ballots would show a callous disregard for the health of our communities that would likely chill the voting process resulting in constructive disenfranchisement of thousands.”

The legislation in question, which has been signed into law by Gov. Tate Reeves, stated that any person under a physician-imposed quarantine related to the coronavirus or who was caring for someone under a physician-imposed quarantine could vote absentee. The quarantine language was an amendment to existing law that allows people to vote absentee if they had “a temporary or permanent disability.”

The lawsuit filed Tuesday argues that the state’s top physician — State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs — has already effectively imposed quarantine by ruling that Mississippians should avoid crowds of more than 10 people, like at crowded polling places.

The lawsuit, filed by the Mississippi Center for Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Mississippi on behalf of a group of Mississippians concerned about voter safety, is asking for a judicial ruling on the law passed earlier this year.

“The legislative history of this expansion makes it clear that a ‘physician-imposed quarantine’ does not require a doctor’s guidance given individually to the voter, but would also include guidance from the Mississippi Department of Health, whose director is a physician, and other public health officials and experts who are physicians,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit comes as the issue of early voting and voting by mail has become contentious in the nation, with President Donald Trump voicing opposition. Without providing proof, the president has continually alleged that voting by mail is fraught with fraud.

Presidential elections normally have the highest voter turnout in Mississippi with more than one million people participating. Experts have been predicting an unusually high turnout this year in Mississippi for the election, where former Vice President Joe Biden will challenge Trump.

In Mississippi, incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith faces opposition from Democrat Mike Espy, the former secretary of agriculture.

Existing state law had already included language that allowed people to vote early for a temporary or permanent disability. At one point, Secretary of State Michael Watson, who oversees state elections, said that individual county circuit clerks at their discretion could use the existing language to allow people trying to avoid contracting the coronavirus to vote early.

But after the bill passed, Watson asked for an official opinion from the Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office on whether the language referencing the physician-imposed quarantine would prevent the circuit clerks from using their discretion to allow people to vote early based on a temporary disability. Watson has not yet received a response from Fitch.

House Apportionment and Elections Chair Rep. Jim Beckett, R-Bruce, said it was not his intention when the bill passed the Legislature this year to limit the ability of the circuit clerks to use their discretion.

The lawsuit filed this week contends that state law should give Mississippians trying to avoid contracting the coronavirus the right to vote early.

“This lawsuit makes clear that Mississippi law allows absentee voting for many people during an event like the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Joshua Tom, legal director for the ACLU of Mississippi.

Editor’s note: Vangela M. Wade serves on Mississippi Today’s board of directors. 

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Rising drug costs keep Mississippians from necessary mental health treatment

Mississippi Today
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Rising drug costs keep Mississippians from necessary mental health treatment

Julien Behal, PA Wire

Drugs in a pharmacy.

Magdalin Fulce used to take three different prescription medications for anxiety and depression.

She doesn’t take any now, not because she doesn’t need it, but because she can’t afford it.

Fulce, 24, of Weir lost the Medicaid covering her prescriptions on her 19th birthday. She then signed up for AmBetter through the Affordable Care Act, which again provided coverage. But when she turned in her earnings as a self-employed hairdresser in 2019, she was unable to afford the premiums any longer.

At times, she was paying as much as $100 or $200 for a month’s supply of Valium. So, she stopped taking it.

Fulce got her prescriptions through her primary care physician but believes she needs a psychiatrist’s evaluation. “But I don’t have $400 for a psych workup,” Fulce said.

She has struggled since, she said. “I’ll go three months doing well then maybe three months downhill.”

Four months ago, she overdosed on Klonopin, landing in the mental ward at St. Dominic’s Hospital in Jackson.

Many families stop buying these types of prescription drugs because of the high cost, said Tandi Karol Weaver Hawthorne, an educator and mental health advocate in Choctaw County.

When her late husband, David, was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 1996, she said they paid up to $1,000 a month for his medication. If not for a combination of Medicare, a private drug plan and extended family support, they couldn’t have afforded his medication, she said. Magellan Health Service, a national leader in behavioral health care management, found that mental health drugs now account for a fourth of all pharmacy spending by private insurance and about a third of pharmacy spending by public payers such as Medicaid.

And that number is expected to increase 60% over the coming decade, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services predicted.

In Mississippi, approximately 77,000 Medicaid beneficiaries had behavioral health diagnoses (a number that includes children but not infants) in state fiscal year 2019, according to Matt Westerfield, communication director for Medicaid. The three primary diagnoses are schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression. “The vast majority of that 77,000 – if not all of them – would be on some form of mental health medication,” Westerfield said.

Not having regular access to medication causes relapse

Availability of medication plays a major role in maintaining mental health, according to the study by the patient advocacy group Mental Health America.

“Sixty-nine percent of patients with medication access problems had adverse events compared to 40% for patients with no access problems,” according to Joyce West, director of the American Psychiatric Research Network.

Of patients with access problems, the studies found:

  • 20% had emergency room visits
  • 11% were hospitalized
  • 23% had side effects significantly worsen—interfering with functioning and outweighing therapeutic benefits
  • 22% had an increase in suicidal ideation or behavior.
  • 15% had an increase in violent ideation or behavior.
  • 3% became homeless for more than 48 hours.

Most patients look first to their insurance companies to provide prescription coverage. Mississippi Insurance Department spokeswoman Beth Reiss said health insurance companies use lists to determine which drugs they will or won’t cover.

Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Mississippi and United Healthcare did not respond to requests for information on how they construct these lists or the prior authorization process, which is how doctors attempt to convince the companies to cover the drugs not on their approved list.

Westerfield said the cost of high-priced drugs shouldn’t affect those on Medicaid.

“For beneficiaries in regular fee-for-service Medicaid, there is a $3 copay for any drug regardless of what medication is prescribed, and children, pregnant women and long-term care residents are exempt from that copay,” he said. “In Medicaid’s managed care program, two of the plans don’t charge beneficiaries a copay for medications, and the third plan charges a $1 copay.”

There is a limit, however, of how many prescriptions Medicaid patients can receive — six. Those under 21 are eligible for more if medication proves necessary.

Pharmacists are ‘a crucial part of the treatment team’

Pharmacists also offer solutions through generic medications as well as transportation and delivery options, said Bob Lomenick, whose pharmacies in Oxford, Holly Springs, and Potts Camp treat more than 3,000 people. “A lot of people are on fixed incomes.”

He said that insurance companies are starting to realize that restricting access to needed medications can be detrimental in the long run. “Payers are finding out that patients that don’t take their medications correctly costs the system a lot of money,” Lomenick said.

New drugs are expensive, Lomenick said, noting that Latuda, a mood stabilizer and anti-psychotic, costs him $41 dollars a dose, while the popular ADHD drug Vyvance costs him $10 a dose. “Those ADD drugs are being used a ton these days—some justified, some not.”

Terence H. Brown, a pharmacist at GAC Community Pharmacy in Canton, said many manufacturers work with patient assistance programs, such as RxAssist, RxHope and GoodRx.

Teresa Parker, compliance director for Region 7 Community Counseling in West Point, says that connecting clients with patient assistance programs is a part of their plans to aid patients in getting their psychiatric medications. “It used to take only five days to be approved,” she said. “Now it takes three months.”

Delays and costs leads some patients to choose pills for physical ailments over mental health medication, she said. “If you rely on a fixed income, any new medicine, even a $60 medicine addition, that money has to come from somewhere.”

Fulce said that something more needs to be done so that mental health patients like her don’t fall between the cracks. “For someone who’s never had a severe mental health issue, they don’t have any understanding of what this is like. It’s not making it day to day—it’s more like minute by minute.”

This story was produced by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization that seeks to inform, educate and empower Mississippians in their communities through the use of investigative journalism. Sign up for our newsletter. Email Julie Whitehead at julie.whitehead.mcir@gmail.com.

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Mississippi among worst states for childhood COVID-19 infection rates per capita

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Mississippi among worst states for childhood COVID-19 infection rates per capita

Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today

Teachers monitor students as they walk to their classrooms during the first day of school Cassie White talks to her sixth grade math students during the first day of school at Neshoba County Central Middle School on Wednesday, August 5, 2020.

As most schools reopen this month, a new report shows that children across Mississippi carry more COVID-19 per capita than nearly every other state.

The report shows Mississippi has one of the highest rates of children diagnosed with COVID-19 in the U.S., dovetailing with increased community spread among all age groups and tracking with the state’s overall high infection rate.

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves bucks expert advice, delays school for just 7% of Mississippi students.

After Gov. Tate Reeves allowed most schools to resume as scheduled this month, State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs has reiterated that community spread is the largest indicator of cases among children, adding Mississippians’ adherence to masking, social distancing and avoiding large gatherings will determine how successfully schools reopen.

“If we’re very diligent about this we can make it much more likely that we’ll have a successful school start if there’s less coronavirus in the community,” he said Monday. As of Monday, 34 cases have been associated with school re-openings — 19 among students and 15 employees.

Reeves echoed Dobbs this week, saying Mississippi was at a “critical point” to further control the virus spread, adding the state’s average number of cases has started to decline. Though the average daily cases have dipped below 1,000 for the first time last week since mid-July, the state’s testing has also decreased, netting a still-elevated testing positivity rate — currently at 19% on a weekly rolling average.

Reeves refutes the positivity rate, saying not all clinics report negative results. An accurate number of total tests and the timing of recent tests is crucial to analyzing positivity rate, but that information is lacking in public health department reports.

Still, the state’s daily case rate remains one of the highest in the nation, and Mississippi has the fifth highest rate of cases among children, with nearly 800 cases per 100,000, behind only Arizona, South Carolina, Tennessee and Louisiana. The average across the U.S. is 447 cases for every 100,000 children. The new report, released by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association this week, shows that the burden among children is more significant than originally thought. 

Another metric of the burden of coronavirus among Mississippi kids measures their proportion of the state’s total infections, rather than just per capita. Mississippi has a higher than average percent of COVID-19 cases among children, at 10% of all the state’s cases compared to 9% nationally. Cases among those under the age of 18 have more than doubled in the last month, now accounting for the fastest growing age group for total cases. 

Though children tend to not get as sick if they contract the virus, early research is inconclusive about how likely children are to spread it, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Though older children are thought to contract and carry the disease similarly to adults, younger children’s propensity to spread has been less understood. However, recent research suggests young children do carry more of the virus than once thought.

The post Mississippi among worst states for childhood COVID-19 infection rates per capita appeared first on Mississippi Today.

During another spending fight with Gov. Reeves, lawmakers leave without passing DMR budget

Mississippi Today
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During another spending fight with Gov. Reeves, lawmakers leave without passing DMR budget

Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today

Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn speaks during Gov. Tate Reeves’ press conference on May 7, 2020.

The Mississippi Legislature, as it did in July, left Jackson on Tuesday without passing a Department of Marine Resources budget, remaining at loggerheads over Gov. Tate Reeves’ spending authority.

“We believe it’s not right for one person to have $40 million to pass out like he wants to, no matter who that person is,” House Speaker Philip Gunn said Tuesday.

Lawmakers, for now, adjourned what has been an on-again, off-again 2020 session since January because of the COVID-19 pandemic and an outbreak among legislators.

DMR’s budget, which includes only $1.4 million in state general funds, is not at issue. But spending control of about $46 million in Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act money is. GOMESA is a revenue sharing program for offshore oil and gas producing states in the Gulf.

Since its inception in 2006, then-Mississippi Govs. Haley Barbour and Phil Bryant controlled approval of GOMESA projects vetted by DMR as the revenue started out small but continued to grow.

In recent years, lawmakers and others have questioned whether projects chosen are helping coastal restoration and protection, or if they are just pet political projects.

Millions in GOMESA funds have been granted to build boardwalks near casinos, a planned aquarium in Gulfport — including a tram system threatened to be “de-obligated” for not meeting GOMESA requirements — and other projects critics have said don’t meet the intended purpose.

This year, House lawmakers wanted to include legislative oversight of GOMESA spending in DMR’s budget, saying the Legislature, not the governor, controls state purse strings. Reeves has called the move a “power grab” and said he should continue to control the money as his predecessors did. Coast lawmakers have been divided over the issue.

The Senate, over which Reeves presided for eight years as lieutenant governor, has balked at stripping the GOMESA spending authority from Reeves.

Lawmakers set the rest of a $6 billion budget and left town July 1 still at an impasse over the DMR budget. They had plans to return within a week and haggle out DMR’s budget, but a COVID-19 outbreak at the Capitol infected 49 legislators and had the Capitol shut down for weeks.

Lawmakers had reconvened on Monday, in large part to override Reeves’ veto of most of the public education budget. Lawmakers successfully squashed his veto, the first time since 2002 the Legislature has overriden a governor’s veto. Gunn last week also sued fellow Republican Reeves over his partial vetoes of education and federal COVID-19 health care spending, saying the governor is overstepping his constitutional bounds.

While two-thirds of the House and Senate voted to override Reeves’ education veto, the House and Senate remained at odds over the GOMESA spending.

DMR, charged in part with marine law enforcement, has continued to operate using federal funds, which make up a large part of its operational budget. But that cannot continue indefinitely, and some DMR employees missed some pay during a temporary furlough in July.

House and Senate negotiations continued late into the night on Monday on the DMR issue, but to no avail.

Gunn said the House offered the Senate and governor three compromise options:

  • Passing a DMR budget and put the GOMESA funding “on the shelf” until lawmakers return in January and can further negotiate.
  • Allow $26 million already earmarked for specific projects — also a source of contention with House leaders — to be spent as planned and shelf the remaining $20 million for now.
  • Have the governor provide a list of GOMESA for legislative approval, allowing for “checks and balances.”

Gunn said all these proposals were flatly “rejected.”

Senate leaders, in turn, offered to form a legislative advisory committee to make recommendations on the spending and projects.

“It would have three members chosen by House, three from the Senate, working with DMR vetting projects,” said Sen. Philip Moran, R-Kiln, chairman of Ports and Marine Resources. “The House just didn’t want to accept anything … (Governor’s control) has been this way since its inception in 2006. Why all of a sudden do you want to change it now? It has worked well. Our proposal for the advisory committee would have made it even better.”

Rep. John Read, R-Gautier, chairman of Appropriations, said the House tried to compromise.

“Outside of just turning money a-loose with no projects specified, we did everything we could,” Read said.

Amid the fight over Reeves’ line-item vetoes, DMR and other matters this week, Gunn indicated there is a larger, overarching issue between Republican legislative leaders and the Republican governor.

“Only the Legislature can spend dollars,” Gunn said. “We don’t have government by one man. We are not going to allow the governor to spend money. That is not what the law says.”

Reeves, who has the authority to order the Legislature back into special session, has indicated he might call such a session for DMR, but has said recently he was reluctant to do so because of the COVID-19 outbreak among lawmakers. Otherwise, the Legislature is set to reconvene in early October.

The post During another spending fight with Gov. Reeves, lawmakers leave without passing DMR budget appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Hyde-Smith at center of national debate on removing Confederate statues from U.S. Capitol

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Hyde-Smith at center of national debate on removing Confederate statues from U.S. Capitol

Rogelio V. Solis, AP

Mississippi Agriculture Commissioner Cindy Hyde-Smith, left, thanks Gov. Phil Bryant, center, for selecting her to succeed fellow Republican Thad Cochran in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday in Brookhaven.

U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, facing a November election challenge from Democrat Mike Espy, could find herself in the middle of a national debate over whether Congress should mandate the removal of Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol.

Last month, the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a spending measure for the legislative branch that would remove 14 statues of Confederates and others “with unambiguous records of racial intolerance” from the Capitol building.

Hyde-Smith is the chairwoman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that considers and passes the spending bills to fund the legislative branch, meaning her subcommittee will have to consider the House measure.

“Sen. Hyde-Smith respects the work of her House counterparts, but will continue to work with her Senate colleagues on a Senate legislative branch bill,” said Hyde-Smith spokesman Chris Gallegos.

In 1864, Congress authorized each state to donate and display two statues at the Capitol of citizens “illustrious for their historic renown or for distinguished civic or military services.”

Mississippi is the only state in the nation that displays two statues of Confederates: Jefferson Davis and James Zachariah George. Davis was a slaveowner and president of the Confederacy, and George was a lead architect of the 1890 state Constitution that stripped voting rights from nearly 150,000 Black Mississippians. Neither man was born in Mississippi.

The Mississippi statues were placed in 1931 after they were approved by the state Legislature in 1924.

In the 2018 Senate special election, photos surfaced of Hyde-Smith in Confederate memorabilia at Davis’ home Beauvoir, which is now a private museum operated by the Sons of Confederate Veterans on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. As a member of the Mississippi state Senate, Hyde-Smith sponsored legislation to have a highway in Mississippi named after Davis.

When asked about the recent efforts to remove statues from the U.S. Capitol, Hyde-Smith said that the fate of the statues should be decided by individual states and not the federal government.

“There are clear rules and procedures set for the designation, receipt, and placement of statues in the United States Capitol,” Hyde-Smith said last month. “Any state, including Mississippi, can avail itself to that process if it wants to exchange statues. How to best depict the history of our nation is always up for debate, but it is not the role of Congress to dictate to states which statues should be placed in the Capitol.”

In several recent years, lawmakers in the Mississippi Legislature have proposed bills to replace the state’s statues at the U.S. Capitol. This year, there was a proposal to replace the statue of George with that of civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer — a Mississippi native who led efforts to fight for voting rights for African Americans in the 1960s. That bill, along with more than a dozen others in the past 10 years, died in committee.

The issue of removing Confederate emblems and monuments has been hotly debated after the deaths of George Floyd and other Black Americans at the hands of police sparked national protests about racial inequality in government. That debate led to Mississippi removing its 126-year-old state flag, which featured the Confederate battle emblem in its design.

Espy, Hyde-Smith’s 2020 Senate opponent, is centering his campaign strategy around race during the national movement.

“Sen. Hyde-Smith is refusing to use her power to remove Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol, including two from our state of Mississippi,” Espy said in a statement. “Mississippi is unfortunately represented by Jefferson Davis and J.Z. George… Those men do not represent all Mississippians and do not project a positive image for our state. Mississippians are tired of Sen. Hyde-Smith’s continued preoccupation with keeping our state in the past, and they are ready to turn the page and move forward.”

During her 2018 special election against Espy — where both were vying to replace long-time Sen. Thad Cochran who resigned for health reasons — Hyde-Smith created controversy by saying she would sit on the front row of a hanging if invited by a particular supporter whom she was praising.

While campaigning at Mississippi State University, she also said the votes from people at some other universities in the state should be suppressed. She said at the time she was only joking.

Just one of Mississippi’s four congressmen — Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson — voted to pass the House spending proposal, which included the removal of the statues, last month. Republican Congressmen Trent Kelly, Michael Guest and Steven Palazzo voted against the measure.

Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, Mississippi’s senior senator, offered similar views as Hyde-Smith when asked about the statues earlier this year.

“It would be a mistake for Congress to remove statues placed in the U.S. Capitol by Mississippi or any state,” Wicker said in June. “In my view, such an overreach would be counterproductive to the healthy conversations on race happening across the country. Under federal law, state governments are solely responsible for selecting and replacing the statues that represent their states.”

The post Hyde-Smith at center of national debate on removing Confederate statues from U.S. Capitol appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Hot and muggy with afternoon thunderstorms Wednesday across North Mississippi

Chris Mann
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Hot and muggy with afternoon thunderstorms Wednesday across North Mississippi

Good Wednesday morning everyone!
Temperatures are in the mid to upper 70s, under partly cloudy skies across North Mississippi to start the day. Showers and thunderstorms will be likely, mainly mid to late afternoon. Otherwise, expect mostly sunny skies, with a high near 93. Light and variable wind becoming north 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Tonight a chance of showers and thunderstorms with mostly cloudy skies and a low around 73. Grab the umbrella as you head out the door and have a pleasant day!

Marshall Ramsey: The Legislature’s New Flag Design

Mississippi Today
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Marshall Ramsey: The Legislature’s New Flag Design
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