Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on Tuesday morning threw cold water on a Senate plan to trim state taxes because the proposal does not fully eliminate the state’s individual income tax, injecting more tension in an already contentious debate at the Capitol.
“It doesn’t get anywhere near eliminating the income tax so it is a non-starter for me!” Reeves wrote on X. “I’m beginning to believe that there is someone in the Senate that is philosophically opposed to eliminating the income tax.”
If the House and Senate cannot agree on a plan to eliminate the income tax, Reeves could force lawmakers into a special session to debate the issue again and use his bully pulpit to try to sway public opinion.
Though they haven’t introduced actual legislation, Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Senate leaders unveiled a net $326 million tax cut plan last week that reduces the state income tax and the sales tax on groceries and raises the gasoline tax to fund road work.
Hosemann and Senate leaders described the plan as a “measured, careful, cautious and responsible” way to deliver tax cuts.
The House, on the other hand, passed a more sweeping $1.1 billion net tax cut plan that eliminates the income tax over a decade, cuts the state grocery tax and raises sales taxes and gasoline taxes.
House Speaker Jason White, a Republican from West, said in a recent interview with Mississippi Today that House leadership likely wouldn’t dig its heels in on one particular component of its tax cut plan. Still, the speaker wants a final agreement with the Senate that puts the state on a “path to total elimination over a reasonable and doable amount of time.”
“I would say we don’t have a hard line on anything, but I’m not interested in doing some small piece of a tax cut while not addressing our other issues that nobody disagrees are plaguing us right now,” White said.
A similar debate raged during the 2022 session when former House Speaker Philip Gunn pushed the Senate to eliminate the income tax, but Hosemann, at the time, pushed for more austere tax cuts that didn’t abolish the tax.
While the two legislative leaders were deadlocked, Reeves called a press conference late in the session and urged Hosemann and Gunn to adopt a compromise plan to eliminate the tax over a period of time.
The two leaders ended up agreeing on a plan that made drastic cuts to the income tax but didn’t entirely do away with it. Reeves ended up signing the measure into law.
Note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a new platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.
Like many women in the workforce, my wife faced a gut-wrenching choice: whether to tell her boss she was pregnant.
A postdoctoral researcher in science at a major university in the northern United States, she summoned the courage and was told that if she requested parental leave, her employment would end. She had our child and continued. She never filed a complaint.
Joshua Bernstein
Like many postdocs, my wife depended on her supervisor to advance in her career and feared the risks in speaking up.
This was about 10 years ago. Yet her situation is hardly unique, particularly for women in academia.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The United States is the only industrialized country in the world where federal law does not give workers paid time off for parental leave.
Across the U.S., at least 13 states and the District of Columbia have instated mandatory paid family leave policies. Nine more have a voluntary version. A growing number of colleges and university systems offer it, as well.
Even in our region, schools like the universities of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Auburn, Clemson and South Carolina have begun offering paid parental leave to some faculty and employees, as have the University of Louisiana and the Tennessee System, among others.
Although our state, Mississippi, does not yet offer paid parental leave to state employees, a broad coalition has sprung up among those seeking its implementation.
On Jan. 31, the Mississippi House unanimously approved a bill authored by Rep. Kevin Felsher, R-Biloxi, that would give state employees eight weeks of paid maternity leave. Speaker of the House Jason White and Attorney General Lynn Fitch have publicly backed the policy as part of a pro-life agenda. The Senate recently passed a similar bill, authored by Sen. Jeremy England, R-Ocean Springs. Now the House and Senate must agree on the same bill.
Whether Republicans nationally will embrace these efforts, especially under President Trump, remains to be seen. Neither he nor Kamala Harris campaigned extensively around paid family leave. Yet during his first administration, Trump became the first Republican to call for family leave in his State of the Union Address. He also approved a defense bill guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid parental leave to the nation’s two million federal employees.
Parental leave policies are popular across the political spectrum. Although polling data in Mississippi is limited, one national poll last year found that 76% of Americans support a national paid family and medical leave program, including 90% of Democrats, 71% of independents and 62% of Republicans.
Another poll, commissioned ahead of the 2024 U.S. Elections by an advocacy group called Paid Leave for All, found that 85% of voters in battleground states favor paid parental, family and medical leave, including 76% of Republican voters.
Attorney General Fitch said in January that “it is certainly time to have paid maternity leave in the state of Mississippi for our state employees,” adding: “I think it’s so important to say to our women again, we’d like for you to be here. That helps us with our retention and our recruitment for women in state government.”
Recognizing these needs, especially at universities in Mississippi, the United Faculty Senates Association of Mississippi, a group representing the faculty senates of the state’s public universities, has launched a petition requesting 12 weeks of paid parental leave for the universities’ employees.
The petition follows a parental leave proposal that was drafted and approved by the faculty senate of each university and the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Drawing on the World Health Organization, which recommends at least 18 weeks of paid leave for new mothers, the proposal has garnered the support of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable and the American Heart Association, among others.
Some ask why existing policies, such as the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), aren’t sufficient, or why men should be eligible.
While helpful for some, FMLA leave is unpaid and thus unaffordable for a lot of working parents, especially in Mississippi, which confronts the lowest median household income of any state in the U.S. Many parents, especially early-career academics, also fail to qualify for FMLA upon giving birth, since they have not accrued enough time with their employers.
Although universities like mine, Southern Miss, often go out of their way to try to accommodate new parents, there are limits to that flexibility, and one can’t depend on supervisors to make allowances. Moreover, while most caregivers for newborns are women, a growing number aren’t, and parents need the flexibility of choosing which parent will go on leave.
Others ask where the money for paid parental leave will come from in Mississippi. Although state coffers are likely to shrink as pandemic relief funds dry up and the economy cools, Mississippi enjoys a reported $700 million in state surplus funds, which some lawmakers have invoked in proposing to eliminate the state income tax. Perhaps the deeper pro-life investment, however, would be in a policy of paid parental leave.
After all, parental leave prioritizes the health of newborns. A study published in JAMAPediatrics found that after New York state implemented mandatory paid family leave, hospitals witnessed an18% drop in respiratory infection cases among infants. Another study found that paid family leave helps reduce child abuse. The findings join a growing chorus of research linking paid family leave policies to improved infant health.
Children in Mississippi, which is the state with the highest infant mortality and pre-term birth rates in the U.S., would likely benefit the most from these changes.
My wife was fortunate. Another supervisor took her under her wing and fostered her career. I was also lucky in that my university allowed me the flexibility to have time with our child.
But too many parents, especially women, have had to choose between nurturing their careers and their newborns.
If politicians are serious about protecting life and families, they can affirm that commitment by implementing paid parental leave policies.
After all, everyone deserves the chance to spend a little time with their kids.
Joshua Bernstein is an associate professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi and president of the United Faculty Senates Association of Mississippi. The views expressed here are his own. In his free time, he enjoys playing with and coaching his three children in soccer, baseball and tennis, though he hasn’t warmed to pickleball yet.
Book cover of Preston’s Lauterback’s book “Elvis Before: The African American Musicians Who Made the King.”
The notion that Elvis derived much of his musical, performative and sartorial style from African Americans is hardly new, and neither are the debates about whether this involved inspiration, borrowing or appropriation.
Issued on the 90th anniversary of Elvis’s birth on Jan. 8, Preston Lauterbach’s “Before Elvis: The African Americans Who Made the King” engages with these contentious issues though his central argument is that in the voluminous literature on the King the influences from African-American culture have simply not received their “due attention.”
“In debating good and evil,” Lauterbach writes, “we can lose sight of what happened in real time.”
Lauterbach came well prepared for the task, having written three books on African-American life and culture in Memphis [“Beale Street Dynasty,” “Bluff City” and “Timekeeper”] and the groundbreaking “The Chitlin’ Circuit: The Road to Rock’n’Roll.” The latter addresses how a national network emerged in the ‘30s and ‘40s connecting regional African American entertainment districts, including Beale Street, facilitating greater professional opportunities for Black artists.
Thirteen-year-old Elvis and his family left Tupelo for Memphis in late 1948, a time when the music industry was undergoing other radical changes that contributed to a vibrant rhythm and blues scene and, ultimately, the emergence of rock’n’roll.
In 1947 Memphis’ WDIA became the first station in the country to feature all African American programming and on-air staff, including deejays B.B. King and Rufus Thomas. And it’s likely that Elvis first heard the blues in Tupelo via Nashville’s 50,000-watt powerhouse WLAC, where white deejay Gene Nobles started a rhythm and blues show aimed at Black listeners in 1946.
The Birthplace of Elvis Presley in Tupelo Credit: Photo by Anna McCollum / The ‘Sip Magazine
The growth of Black radio programming was spurred by changes in FCC regulations that doubled the number of stations, which turned them away from national networks to concentrate on niche audiences, notably blues and country. This in turn aided upstart independent record labels that were capturing the new sounds being created in cities across the country. Memphis’ Sam Phillips, who discovered Elvis, started his career by producing recordings of local artists, such as Howlin’ Wolf, that he sold to L.A.’s Modern and Chicago’s Chess labels before founding Sun Records in 1952.
Did Elvis steal music from Black artists?
Rather than inventorying the many artists who influenced Elvis, Lauterbach focuses instead on a select group, including two Mississippians. Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup from Forest was the source of Elvis’s initial Sun single “That’s All Right,” issued in July 1954, while Clarksdale native Herman “Junior” Parker recorded “Mystery Train” for Sun two years before Elvis’s cover version for the label.
He also devotes considerable space to Willie Mae “Big Mama“ Thornton, an Alabama native who had a 1953 hit with “Hound Dog” on Houston’s Duke Records. Elvis’s considerably less raucous take was a smash on RCA Victor in 1956, reaching No. 1 on the pop, country and rhythm and blues charts. Thornton famously claimed that she only ever earned $500 off of the record. But did Elvis steal from her?
This is an oft-repeated charge, but an answer requires looking into the way that money flows in the recording industry, where most money stems from copyright rather than recorded performances. “Hound Dog” was written by two young white songwriters, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who sold the publishing for $1,200 to Duke’s owner, Don Robey, an African American Houstonian. The $500 Thornton earned was likely an advance on royalties.
Robey claimed the record sold 500,000 copies, very likely a lowball , and at the going royalty rate of .5 cents per copy those sales should have yielded Thornton at least $2,500. Any earnings from Elvis’s successful single and the song’s subsequent appearances on albums would have gone to Robey. It’s notable that considerable royalties for the flip side of the record, “Don’t Be Cruel,” went to African-American songwriter Otis Blackwell, who wrote multiple songs recorded by Elvis including “All Shook Up” and “Return to Sender.”
Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, performing at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, Ann Arbor, Michigan, August, 1969. Credit: Photo by Jeff Titon./Wikipedia
The case of Crudup is equally sad. Between 1941 to 1954 Crudup recorded prolifically for RCA associated labels, and Elvis no doubt heard his records on the radio and jukeboxes. In 1956 Elvis told reporters “Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now.”
Crudup was paid for his recording sessions, but yielded little or nothing in royalties for his compositions at the time or after Elvis covered his songs—in addition to “That’s All Right” Elvis recorded “My Baby Left Me” and “So Glad You’re Mine.” RCA was likely prompt in paying the royalties to the large publishing firm Hill & Range for Elvis’s versions, but it wasn’t until after his death in the early ‘70s that Crudup’s family began to receive what turned out to be millions.
What happened to Black artists ‘after Elvis’?
These stories are generally known, though Lauterbach provides considerably more detail on the artists’ lives and careers than in previous works. And despite the title of the book, he also devotes a third of the book addressing what happened to his subjects “after Elvis.”
Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton belts out a song in concert. Credit: Public domain
Thornton drew upon her association with Elvis in trying to reestablish a career, but experienced bouts of poverty before becoming a popular act on the blues revival circuit in the late ‘60s. Crudup had retired from music by the time Elvis debuted, and likewise enjoyed some success on the ‘60s revival circuit, but made much of his meager living transporting migrant workers along the East Coast.
The book also spends considerable space addressing less known influences. The Presley family attended church just blocks from the East Trigg Missionary Baptist Church, whose leader, the Rev. W. Herbert Brewster was a pioneer in gospel songwriting. He used his pulpit and a popular WDIA radio show to denounce segregation, and in 1953 Brewster openly invited white visitors to East Trigg, and Elvis was a regular.
Elvis earned the nickname “the hillbilly cat” from his fresh mix of the sounds of country and the blues, and Lauterbach argues that an overlooked element in his appeal was Black gospel, which Presley acknowledged was his “first love” in music. At Sunday night gospel shows at East Trigg he learned powerful lessons in “working the house” from masters of bringing the audience to ecstasy.
Calvin Newborn was an American jazz guitarist Credit: The Harmony Company – DownBeat Magazine
A key to understanding Elvis’ seemingly revolutionary arrival on the Memphis scene in the summer of 1954 was the African-American guitarist Calvin Newborn. His family band, led by drummer father Phineas Sr. and including brother Phineas Jr., later a jazz piano legend, was the hottest group in the area, playing largely for white audiences in the wide-open nightlife scene across the river in West Memphis.
They backed B.B. King on his first recordings in 1948 and toured with Jackie Brenston following the 1951 release of the Sam Phillips-recorded “Rocket 88,” often described as the first rock-‘n’roll record. Elvis befriended Calvin, who referred to the band’s musical approach as one of “boogiefication.” Elvis became a frequent witness to their power in May 1954, when white patrons were invited to attend Beale Street’s Flamingo Club, where the Newborns were the house band.
Elvis was enthralled with Calvin’s electric stage routine, perhaps adopting his leg-shaking, and was invited to participate with the band. Musician Honeymoon Garner recalled that a song that Elvis chose to perform was Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” which months later was featured on Elvis’ second single.
“Before Elvis” is stunning in how it intricately weaves stories about the five main characters in a manner that captures both the singularity of what Elvis accomplished and how he reflected burgeoning forces that revolutionized music-making.
Mississippi universities and nonprofits could lose tens of millions of dollars in federal funding for health research if a Trump administration policy withstands legal challenges.
A federal judge in Boston temporarily blocked the National Institutes of Health’s Feb. 7 plan to slash “indirect cost” rates – the portion of grant funding used for facilities and administration – to 15% after 22 attorneys general sued the Trump administration. Mississippi did not join the lawsuit.
Mississippi universities and other institutions have active grants worth over $97 million, according to publicly available data from National Institutes of Health. Grant funding from the agency directly supported over 1,200 jobs and $220 million in economic activity in Mississippi during the 2024 fiscal year, according to United for Medical Research, a group that advocates for National Institutes of Health funding.
“This agency action will result in layoffs, suspension of clinical trials, disruption of ongoing research programs, and laboratory closures,” wrote the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
The National Institutes of Health represented lower indirect cost rates as a way to carefully steward taxpayer money in its notice of the change, noting that it is difficult to track how indirect costs are used and that private foundations generally offer grant recipients indirect cost rates below 15%.
It pointed to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest funders of health research, which has a maximum indirect cost rate of 15%.
In 2023, the National Institutes of Health spent $35 billion on 50,000 competitive grants that supported 2,500 institutions. A fourth of the funding – $9 billion – went to support indirect research costs.
University of Mississippi Medical Center, the state’s only academic medical institution and the recipient of half of Mississippi’s National Institutes of Health grant funding, has a negotiated indirect cost rate of 55%, meaning the institution receives an additional 55 cents for overhead for each dollar granted for research funding. Slashing this rate to 15% overnight would have drastic implications for the institution.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center’s 64 active National Institutes of Health grants total $49 million and support cancer, maternal and infant health and health disparities research. The funding also supports the Jackson Heart Study, the largest-ever study of cardiovascular disease in Black Americans.
A spokesperson for the University of Mississippi Medical Center said the institution is monitoring the situation but declined to comment further.
A press release published by the medical center in 2023 indicated that National Institutes of Health grants account for over half of all research funding at UMMC.
“Without NIH funding, we would never have been able to make substantial advances in understanding the pathophysiology of major diseases such as hypertension, heart failure, obesity, diabetes and chronic kidney disease,” Dr. John Hall, the chair of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, said in the 2023 press release.
Mississippi State University and the University of Mississippi each currently have active National Institutes of Health grants worth over $8 million. Grants at the universities support studies of opioid addiction, infertility and viral infections.
The University of Mississippi said it is operating normally in light of the judge’s temporary order barring the new policy, but did not respond to questions about its indirect cost rates or how the cuts could impact its research faculties. Mississippi State University did not respond to a request for comment.
Other recipients of National Institutes of Health grant funding in Mississippi include universities, My Brother’s Keeper, a nonprofit with a focus on health disparities in Mississippi, and Delta Health Alliance, a nonprofit that works to improve access to health services in the Delta.
Leaders of research institutions in other nearby states have been vocal about the impact the cuts could have on their states.
Louisiana State University’s vice president of research and economic development said the impact of the proposed cuts would be “devastating,” reported Louisiana Illuminator.
The cuts will “mean fewer new treatments will get to children and therefore that fewer children will be saved,” said Dr. Charles Roberts, the director of the St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center, in a post on the hospital’s X account.
A Mississippian watching state leaders’ social media posts these days might wonder whether they’ve mistakenly logged into a chat between some petulant third graders as they call each other names and bicker.
Their high-brow discourse over policy has recently included state politicians calling people: “a fraud, a loser, swamp creatures, dorks, a chubby Teletubby, a charlatan and pathetic” as well as more personal plays on their names, such as “Lying Lynn.”
In today’s hyper-divided partisan political landscape, one might figure this name calling is mostly between Republicans and Democrats. But in Mississippi right now, most of the vitriol is Republican-on-Republican.
This is perhaps because Mississippi Republicans have such control of state government, they don’t have any powerful Democrats to harangue. They’ve run out of targets. They’ve long forgotten Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment. They’re starting to eat their young.
The latest red-on-red dustup was last week, and led by Gov. Tate Reeves, ostensibly the head of the state GOP.
The supermajority Republican Senate, as it did last year, has passed an early voting bill — which would allow “no-excuse” in person early voting for 15 days before election day.
Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, authored SB 2654 and told his colleagues 47 other states provide voters the convenience of early voting. A similar measure passed the Senate last year but died in the House.
Never mind that the Republican National Committee — and at times President Donald Trump — publicly embraced early voting last year: Gov. Reeves promptly took shots at England on social media after the state Senate voted 40-11 to pass the bill on to the House.
“Unfortunately Senator Jeremy England joined every Senate Democrat today … with his no-excuse Early Voting bill — one of the top priorities of the Mississippi Democrat Party,” Reeves wrote. “Keep in mind — every Mississippi Republican Party Senate Elections Chair before him has killed that terrible idea! Congrats to Senator England — he has earned his MVP award for the Mississippi Democratic Party!”
England responded to Reeves on social media: “I don’t care if you’re Governor. You won’t bully me. And you’re just plain wrong on this one.”
Former Republican state senator and perennial failed U.S. Senate candidate Chris McDaniel tried to pile on to England after Reeves’ mean tweet.
“RINO ALERT,” McDaniel posted. “Jeremy England is a fraud. A loser. He has lied to the people of Jackson County for years. He’s little more than a chubby Teletubby who pretends to be a Republican.”
England responded with a long, rather polite — given the slings and arrows he suffered — explanation of his bill. Many of his constituents following him on social media took up for him in the dustup.
One wrote: “I applaud your leadership. 47 other states have early voting and President Trump encouraged his supporters to vote early. My daughter is a nurse and lives in TN and voted early. There are lots of occupations who appreciate and support early voting. Learn the facts and don’t fall for false rhetoric. Thank you Jeremy !!!”
But Reeves couldn’t let it go. In between wishing people a “Happy Gulf of America Day,” and posting “Plastic straws are back, baby … And the sharks munching through the ocean are gonna be just fine!” the governor took another shot at England.
He posted a newspaper photo of England on the Senate floor laughing with Democratic Sen. Derrick Simmons and wrote: ” A picture is worth a thousand words!! Senator Jeremy England, you may think it is funny that you are working with the Senate Democrat Minority Leader to pass the Democrats’ priorities…. BUT I DO NOT!”
A constituent responded on Reeves’ post: “I’m confused. Is the Capitol supposed to function like kids in the lunchroom who are picking on the new kid? Or should our elected officials act as adults and be professional while working together to form a better functioning government? I see Jeremy England got the memo to be an adult. Maybe Tate missed it??”
Sen. Joel Carter, R-Gulfport, took the unusual step of addressing the Senate on Thursday to condemn Reeves for trying to “divide” lawmakers by lobbing insults instead of being a unifying leader.
Carter posted on social media: “I don’t know who is in control of (the governor’s) account, but they need to find something else to do. This is so petty and unbecoming of the Office of Governor. This divides us all. Republicans have all Statewide offices and supermajorities in both chambers. The fighting needs to stop. Where is the adult in the room?”
“There’s a lot of men in here that know a lot about birthing babies,” — Rep. Dana McLean, R-Columbus, after being questioned during floor debate on a midwifery bill by male colleagues.
In Brief
Senate approves ‘fifth tier’ in PERS for new employees
New hires by state and local governments would receive more austere retirement benefits than current and former employees under a plan approved after much debate by the state Senate.
SB 2439, authored by Sen. Daniel Sparks, R-Belmont, adopts recommendations from the Public Employee Retirement System board to create a “hybrid” retirement plan for employees hired after July 1, 2025. Mississippi, like many other states, is grappling with rising costs with its generous government retirement benefits plan and billions in unfunded outstanding future benefits.
Sparks
The Senate passed the bill 30-16 after a lengthy debate. It heads to the House, which has instead included providing more funds for PERS from state lottery collections as part of its tax overhaul plan in HB 1.
The new plan would not change benefits for current employees or retirees, but would mean new hires would have small part of their retirement going into a defined benefit plan, with the rest going into an investment account similar to a 401(K) . New hires would also not automatically get a cost of living adjustment — often referred to as the “13th check” — current retirees receive.
Opponents of the new play say PERS is not in as dire financial shape as some posit, and that drastically reducing retirement benefit would make it hard for the state to hire and retain employees, such as teachers, because government pay is relatively low. — Geoff Pender
Bill would expand scope for advanced nurses
The House has passed a measure on to the Senate to allow advanced practice nurses and certified registered nurse anesthetists with more than 8,000 hours of practice to operate without a collaborative contract with a physician.
HB 849, authored by House Public Health Chairman Sam Creekmore, R-New Albany, passed by a vote of 76-33 and now heads to the Senate. Proponents say the measure, similar to laws in 27 other states, would help the state with its shortage of doctors and health services. Opponents say allowing people with less training than a physician is dangerous for patients.
House Speaker Jason White praised lawmakers for working on the measure despite fierce lobbying pressure against it and trying to “break the mold … and try to meet our needs in the health care world.” — Geoff Pender
House votes to make entire state wet
The House last week voted to declare every county in the state as wet for alcohol sales.
Mississippi has a hodgepodge system in which counties and municipalities can sell alcohol. Most of Mississippi’s 82 counties, commonly called “wet” counties, allow liquor and wine sales.
However, around 30 counties in the state do not allow hard liquor sales and are typically called “dry” counties. But only three counties in the state are truly dry. Some large cities inside those dry counties, however, do allow spirit and wine sales, leading to the nickname of “moist” counties.
House Bill 91 would abolish this system and make every county wet, but it would allow counties to hold voter referendums to block the sale of alcohol. — Taylor Vance
Senate, House on same page with PBM transparency
The Senate passed a pharmacy benefit manager transparency bill Thursday that largely aligns with a bill the House passed two weeks ago. The bill, authored by Sen. Rita Parks, R-Corinth, prohibits the companies – which act as an intermediary between health insurers, pharmacies and drug manufacturers – from charging insurers more for drugs than pharmacies are paid to inflate their own profits and ensures that pharmacists are paid promptly for dispensing drugs.
It also requires pharmacy benefit managers and drug manufacturers to submit data to the Mississippi Board of Pharmacy, which will be tasked with creating a website to publicize the data, and gives the board additional audit authorities. The Senate added the data and transparency language to its bill after the House passed their bill with the same requirements.
The Board of Pharmacy and some pharmacists say the legislation doesn’t do enough to help pharmacies and patients. But Parks said the bill is a step towards better understanding pharmacy benefit managers’ business practices. “We have to start somewhere,” she said. “And I think the transparency portion of this bill begins to help (independent pharmacists).” — Gwen Dilworth
House approves Sunday liquor sales
The House last week voted to allow licensed package stores to sell liquor and wine seven days a week, including on Sundays.
Currently, Mississippi law prohibits package stores from selling liquor on Sunday, but House Bill 92 would allow local governments to pass an ordinance allowing liquor sales from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday.
Proponents of the measure say it will allow Mississippi to collect more tax revenue from liquor sales. Mississippi is one of a handful of states that do not allow seven-day liquor sales. — Taylor Vance
Senate advances kratom extracts ban
The Mississippi Senate passed a bill Tuesday to ban synthetic kratom products, also known as kratom extracts, by making it a Schedule III controlled substance. The proposed legislation, introduced by Sen. Angela Turner-Ford, D-West Point, would institute criminal penalties for possession of synthetic kratoms and make it available only with a prescription from a licensed health care provider.
Synthetic kratom extracts are products that contain high concentrations of 7-hydroxymitragynine, one of the chemical components in kratom that binds to the same receptors in the brain as opioids. These forms are more potent than the pure herbal substance and “more problematic and more addictive,” said Turner-Ford.
Critics of kratom argue that it is highly addictive and produces stimulant- and opioid-like effects. Advocates argue it can satisfy the cravings of people struggling with opioid use disorder and help people with depression and chronic pain.
The House passed a bill last week that would limit kratom purchases to people 21 and older and ban synthetic kratom products, also known as kratom extracts. Bills in the House and Senate now head to the opposite chamber for consideration. — Gwen Dilworth
House, Senate advance bills dealing with ‘squatters’
Both the House and Senate passed separate bills last week to make it easier for homeowners to get rid of “squatters.”
SB 2328, authored by Sen. Walter Michel, R-Ridgeland, and HB 1200, authored by Brent Powell, R-Brandon, were passed by their respective chambers.
Mississippi is one of at least 10 states to recently pass or consider bills making it easier for property owners to have law enforcement remove people illegally staying on their property. The anti-squatting measures are in part result of news stories nationwide and about people moving into homes, refusing to leave then trying to claim ownership, and from a viral TikTok video by a migrant influencer who encouraged people to squat in homes across the country. — Geoff Pender
House lets felony suffrage restoration die
House Constitution Chairman Price Wallace let two measures that would allow people convicted of nonviolent disenfranchising felony offenses die on Thursday’s legislative deadline.
Mississippi strips voting rights away for life from people who are convicted of one of 23 crimes, even if these people have completed the terms of their prison sentence.
The only way for someone to regain voting rights is to receive a pardon from the governor or convince two-thirds of the legislators in both chambers to restore it. Legislators do not restore suffrage to people convicted of violent felonies and only restore suffrage to a few dozen people yearly. — Taylor Vance
Senate kills bill to make insurance post appointed
Senate kills proposal to make Insurance Commissioner appointed office
Senate Insurance Committee Chairman Walter Michel killed a bill that would have made the Insurance Commissioner an appointed office instead of an elected one.
Mike Chaney, the current insurance commissioner, has called for the office to be appointed because it practically requires candidates to solicit campaign donations from insurance companies — the people the office regulates.
Opponents of the proposal argue that people should still retain the right to elect people to office instead of allowing a politician to appoint someone. — Taylor Vance
House advances hemp-testing bill
The House passed a bill this week that would beef up testing requirements for products made with hemp, a cannabis plants containing lower levels of THC than marijuana.
Republican Rep. Lee Yancey’s bill would require all hemp products sold in Mississippi to pass a test showing they have less than a 0.3% THC concentration. Congress made the sale of industrial hemp products possible in the 2018 Farm Bill. Mississippi approved hemp growing in 2020.
Yancey said his legislation is necessary because hemp products sold around the U.S. in places like gas stations and vape shops have been found to contain higher levels of THC than labels advertise, which Yancey blames on manufacturers. Products would be tested at an independent testing center, and sellers would have until July 1 to offload their stock of products containing too much THC. — Michael Goldberg
By the Numbers
$326 million
The net tax cuts for Mississippians under a long-awaited Senate plan unveiled Wednesday. The plan would cut the sales taxes on groceries from 7% to 5%, lower the individual income tax from 4% to 2.99% over four years and increase the excise on gasoline by 9 cents over three years, bringing the total per gallon to 27.4 cents.
Full Legislative Coverage
‘School choice’ bill sending taxpayer money to private schools stalls in Mississippi House
A bill that would allow some Mississippi parents to use taxpayer money to pay for private school does not have the support to pass this session, House leaders said Wednesday. . Read the story.
Speaker White frustrated by ‘crickets’ from Senate on tax plan
Last week, with the legislative session clock ticking towards midway, House Speaker Jason White was growing more frustrated with the “crickets” he’s heard from his Republican Senate counterpart Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann on the House’s sea-change tax overhaul plan. Read the story.
State Auditor criticizes bill he said would have ‘gutted’ his office
State Auditor Shad White on Monday continued to criticize legislation that attempted to alter the scope of powers his office has in auditing nonprofit companies, continuing the statewide officials’ clash with the Republican-majority Senate. Read the story.
Court-ordered redistricting will require do-over legislative elections this year
Five House seats will be re-decided in a November special election, pending court approval, under a resolution the House approved to comply with a federal court order. Read the story.
House passes ‘Tim Tebow Act’ to allow homeschoolers to play sports
The state House advanced a bill that would allow Mississippi children being home schooled to to play public school sports. Read the story.
Mississippi ballot initiative measure set to die for fourth straight year
House Constitution Chairman Price Wallace, a Republican from Mendenhall, told Mississippi Today that he would let the measure die by Thursday’s legislative deadline because he believed the Senate would not be receptive to any ballot initiative proposal. . Read the story.
‘Secure the bag’: Mississippi women want equal pay, paid leave and better health outcomes
Speakers asked lawmakers to act on a range of issues from midwifery care to child care, but all their priorities centered around making women more financially secure in the poorest state with the worst maternal health outcomes. Read the story.
Two versions of domestic violence fatality review board clear legislative hurdle
An effort to create a statewide board to study domestic violence deaths to uncover trends and guide opportunities for intervention, support and policy unanimously passed both legislative bodies. Read the story.
Lt. Gov. Hosemann unveils $326 million ‘sustainable, cautious’ tax cut plan
Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann on Wednesday unveiled a $326 million tax cut package that reduces the state income tax and the sales tax on groceries and raises the gasoline tax to fund road work. Read the story.
Lawmaker: There is no outside oversight of medical care at Mississippi prisons
The House passed a bill Thursday that would direct the state Department of Health to conduct a sweeping review of the medical care provided to inmates at Mississippi prisons.. Read the story.
Legislation to license midwifery clears another hurdle
A bill that would establish a clear pathway for Mississippians seeking to become professional midwives passed the House after dying in committee several years in a row. Read the story.
Podcast: Lawmaker says paid parental leave crucial in ‘post Roe v. Wade’ Mississippi
Kevin Felsher of Biloxi discusses the bill he authored, and the House passed unanimously, to provide eight weeks of paid maternity or adoption leave, two weeks for fathers/secondary caregivers for state employees. Listen to the podcast.
The Mississippi Senate on Thursday passed a bill that would place a permanent, full-time youth court judge in every area of the state, potentially creating a more consistent system of justice for vulnerable children.
“This is about protection and looking out for our state’s most vulnerable citizens, which are the children,” Senate Judiciary A Chairman Brice Wiggins said. “And there is inconsistent justice throughout the state, and that’s just a function of the system we’ve had for all these decades.”
Mississippi has a disjointed youth court system that differs from county to county. Youth court deals with most instances where children commit crimes and where adults are accused of abusing and neglecting minors.
A full-time county court judge presides over youth court matters in counties with a county court. But despite its name, not every Mississippi county has a county court.
For a county to have a county court, it must have a population larger than 50,000 people or, if smaller, it must convince the Legislature to pass a law to establish a county court in the area. Only 24 of the state’s 82 counties have one.
In the remaining counties, youth court is the responsibility of chancery courts. However, only two counties, Sunflower and Humphreys, have a chancellor who directly deals with youth matters. In the remaining 56 counties, the chancery court appoints a part-time youth court referee to handle those cases.
Referees are typically attorneys who agree to hear youth court cases part-time. Critics of this system argue that part-time referees cannot devote their full time and resources to youth court.
Senate Bill 2769 creates a “hybrid” system that allows counties with a county court to retain jurisdiction of youth court matters. In the remaining counties, the legislation places a full-time chancellor solely dedicated to youth court matters within the chancery districts.
“It’s imperative that we do something about youth court around the state,” Republican Sen. Nicole Boyd of Oxford told reporters. “This gives families the help they need.”
If lawmakers substantially reform the state’s youth court system to create a more uniform structure, the state could finally resolve the long-running Oliva Y lawsuit, which has cost taxpayers millions of dollars.
The Olivia Y lawsuit, filed in 2004 during Gov. Haley Barbour’s administration, alleged the state’s foster care system was not effectively protecting children who had been placed in Child Protection Services custody. The namesake of the suit was 3 years old at the time and showed various signs of abuse and neglect after being in the care of a foster family.
The state settled with the plaintiffs and agreed to meet several performance metrics to improve the foster care system. Twenty years later, the state has still not resolved the litigation.
The youth court bill coincides with lawmakers attempting to redraw circuit and chancery court districts, so lawmakers will likely work until the end of the 2025 session to agree on a final youth court reform bill.
OXFORD — In basketball, urgency matters. Mississippi State played with a clear sense of urgency here Saturday evening. Ole Miss did not.
That stark difference translated to a badly needed 80-70 victory for the Bulldogs, who completed a sweep their two-game series with the Rebels. This one didn’t seem nearly as close as the final score would indicate.
Ole Miss (now 19-7 overall and 8-5 in the SEC) came in with a three-game winning streak, including two straight on the road. The last time the Rebels had played at home, they blew away blue-blood Kentucky with an almost perfect performance. In contrast, State (18-7, 6-6) came in having lost six of nine (three of their last four) and desperately needing a victory on their arch-rival’s home floor. The Bulldogs snatched that victory with the same ferocity they snatched rebounds and loose balls. They seemed to get every rebound that mattered.
Surely, Ole Miss players wanted to win. Everybody wants to win. But State needed to win. The Bulldogs desperately needed to win. They played like it. As Sean Pedulla, the Rebels’ normally sharp-shooting guard put it, “They played like they had a chip on their shoulder.” He said the Rebels played as if they were “complacent.” His word, not mine.
Someone asked Pedulla if the Rebels were tired after two straight difficult, down-to-the-wire road wins Pedulla answered, “We weren’t tired; we just weren’t aggressive.”
Pedulla said more. “When you play a team that’s playing for a lot right now and as competitive as they are, it’s going to show like it did today,” he said. “They were definitely the most aggressive team today in pretty much every category.”
State was. It seemed as if every time a shot was missed, two or three Bulldogs crashed the boards, compared to a single Rebel. In two meetings now, State has out-rebounded Ole Miss 99-65. That’s dominance with a capital D.
It’s no great secret Ole Miss has achieved its 19-7 record and No. 19 national ranking despite severe rebounding deficiencies. Thing is, the Rebels usually make up for that rebounding deficit with Grade A defense and by forcing far more turnovers than they commit. That wasn’t the case Saturday night. State committed just one more turnover than Ole Miss (15-14).
When State defeated Ole Miss 84-81 in overtime four weeks before at Starkville, the Bulldogs out-rebounded the Rebels 51-29. The Rebels kept it closer that time by out-shooting the Bulldogs and by out-scoring State 14-3 on points off turnovers. Ole Miss had no such advantages this time. The Bulldogs not only out-rebounded the Rebels, they out-shot them and thoroughly out-hustled them.
Ole Miss started well. The Rebels led 22-15 with eight minutes to play in the first half. Then, it was as if both teams switched gears with State going into overdrive and Ole Miss seemingly into reverse. Over the next 19 minutes of playing time, State out-scored the Rebels by 26 points. With 8:55 to play in the game, State led by 19. From seven points down, to 19 up in just 19 minutes – that’s getting it done.
Beard tried everything he could to change the momentum: timeouts, substitutions, encouragement, butt-chewings, benchings. Nothing worked.
Because of severe impending weather, State did not make players available post-game and State coach Chris Jans was brief in his postgame comments. Beard, on the other hand, had all five of his starters appear at the postgame conference. It was as if he wanted all to face the music, as the saying goes. When asked why he had chosen to break postgame precedent, Beard replied, “Hopefully some of you guys asked questions that need to be asked.”
“I’m not throwing the players under the bus,” Beard said. “It’s my job to get them ready to play. . . . There was a lot of softness to us tonight.”
Beard went on to apologize to the packed house of mostly Ole Miss fans who drove to the game and “paid good money” to attend. He seized on one his star player’s use of the word “complacent.”
“If complacency is a part of this, then we have some guys that really need to do some soul-searching,” Beard said. “Complacent for what? What have we done that allows us to be complacent?”
Jans, who now holds a 5-1 record against Ole Miss, praised his team’s aggressiveness and togetherness. Yes, he said, the Bulldogs really needed a victory given their recent slump. But he stopped short of saying his team displayed a sense of urgency that State’s arch-rival did not.
Jans didn’t need to. It was clearly evident to anyone who watched. The Bulldogs just played harder. They wanted it more. That’s urgency.
State employees – including public school and community college teachers – would get six weeks of paid parental leave under a bill that passed the Senate Thursday. It now advances to the House, which passed its own version of the policy unanimously in January.
Sen. Jeremy England, R-Vancleave. Credit: Mississippi State Senate
It’s likely the two chambers will need to go into “conference” later in the legislative session – an opportunity for a smaller group of senators and representatives to talk at length about a bill’s details and reach a compromise.
The House version gives primary caregivers eight weeks of paid leave – two more than the Senate version. However, senators added an amendment to their bill during its floor debate to include public school and community college teachers, which was not included in the House bill.
Fourteen senators voted ‘No’ on the bill, authored by Sen. Jeremy England, R-Ocean Springs, after a long discussion.
Sen. John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, said he thinks paid parental leave is “a step too far” since the federal government mandates 12 weeks of unpaid parental leave for state employees.
“I don’t know why we’re even dealing with it,” he said on the floor.
Mississippi is one of only 12 states without dedicated paid family leave for state employees, according to A Better Balance, a national nonprofit advocating for better work-life balance.
Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, who was presenting the bill, responded by saying that it’s “the right thing to do” in the state that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion and claims to value families.
“We stand up here and put on our campaign commercials about families – ‘I’m a family man,’” said Wiggins. “Are we going to put on our campaign commercials into action or are we just going to talk about it?”
The policy has garnered wide support from leadership in both chambers. Speaker of the House Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann have championed it. Attorney General Lynn Fitch has also publicly spoken out in support of it.
Last week, the state Public Service Commission unanimously approved a special contract that will extend the life of a Mississippi Power coal unit in order to meet energy demands for a recently announced data center project in Meridian.
Mississippi Public Service Central District Commissioner De’Keither Stamps, discusses current agency operations across the state during an interview at district headquarters, Friday, Feb. 23, 2024, in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Gov. Tate Reeves announced last month a $10 billion investment from Compass Datacenters. The Dallas-based company will build eight centers, and in exchange will receive multiple tax exemptions, Mississippi Today reported. The project will be located within the Mississippi Power service area. The utility, a subsidiary of Southern Company, serves 192,000 customers in the southern and eastern parts of the state.
Following a 2020 directive from the PSC to get rid of excess generation capacity, Mississippi Power initially planned to close the two coal-powered units at Plant Victor J. Daniel — in Jackson County, about 10 miles north of Moss Point — by 2027. In 2023, though, the utility pushed the retirement date back a year in order to support demand needs for its sibling company, Georgia Power, Grist reported.
Then on Jan. 9, Mississippi Power informed the PSC that, in order to power the Compass Datacenter facilities, it would have to delay closure of at least one of the coal units, as well as “potentially other fossil steam units,” until the mid-2030s.
Central District Public Service Commissioner De’Keither Stamps told Mississippi Today that the PSC’s job is to meet demand, and that until Mississippi Power has the option to include nuclear power in its arsenal, “we’re going to need all the power we can get in that service area.”
“We can’t stop economic development because we’ve got to wait, you know, 15 years for some nuclear power in the service area,” Stamps said.
Sen. Jeremy England, R-Vancleave. Credit: Mississippi State Senate
Throughout the last couple decades, the country has moved away from coal as an energy source because of its contribution to global warming but also because of air and water pollution associated with coal-burning facilities. A 2023 study from George Mason University, the University of Texas and Harvard University found that exposure to fine particulate pollutants known as PM2.5 from coal plants contributed to 460,000 deaths around the country between 1999 and 2020, twice the mortality rate of PM2.5 exposure from other sources.
Sen. Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, whose district includes Plant Daniel, called the facility a “fixture of our community” because of the jobs and tax revenue it provides. He said he wasn’t aware of any health concerns related to air emissions from the plant.
“I don’t hear from any constituents that say, ‘Hey, we don’t want this here,’” England said.
England added that Plant Daniel retiring units could potentially hurt its tax assessment, meaning less revenue for public needs like the local school district. He also pointed to emission “scrubbers” that Plant Daniel and other coal facilities have added in recent years. The same 2023 study found that scrubbers have dramatically decreased sulfur dioxide emissions as well as air pollution-related deaths.
In addition to Compass Datacenters, Mississippi Power also entered into a special contract to supply power for a plywood manufacturer, owned by Hood Industries, in Beaumont, Mississippi.
The two deals, a spokesperson for Mississippi Power said, necessitate keeping the coal and other units set for retirement alive.
“We are committed to keeping the Mississippi Public Service Commission and our customers up to date and will present additional details in our upcoming 2025 Mid-Point Supply-Side Update,” spokesperson Jeff Shepard said via email. “These incredible economic development projects will create a significant number of jobs and bring billions of dollars of investment to southeast Mississippi.”
