Friday, June 10, 2022   
 
Delta Council to meet as an unpredictable world has crop costs at scary levels
Ever-rising crop prizes should bring cheers to the growers who make up a huge portion of the Mississippi Delta Council's membership. But not this year, not with the confluence of pandemic, war, oil shortages and international trade strife the world is seeing. Growers across the Delta see the escalating costs of growing and harvesting crops and wonder just how things will shake out for them, Delta Council leaders say. Input costs and ways to manage them are but a few of the pressing topics the region's main economic development entity will take up when it convenes June 17 at Delta State University for its annual meeting. Council leaders cite the deep uncertainty caused by a stubborn global covid pandemic, war in Ukraine, worldwide oil and natural gas shortages and retaliatory tariffs, to name just a few. All the uncertainty follows a 2021 that Delta Council Executive Vice President Frank Howell calls "one for the record books." Howell said the Stoneville-based organization is getting strong cost-management guidance from its Mississippi State University agriculture partners. And the help is surely needed as growers see "red ink all over the place," he said, though he conceded that crop prices "look pretty good." Tunica farmer Patrick Johnson Jr. is wrapping up his year as president of the Council which represents 19 Delta and part-Delta counties. Members will elect a new president at the June 17 gathering. Johnson said in an interview that he spent a good part of his term in Stoneville and Jackson working on getting money for the Delta's deteriorating bridges and crumbling roads.
 
Inflation hit new 40-year high in May as gas, grocery, rent prices jumped
Inflation unexpectedly hit a new 40-year high in May as gas, food and rent prices surged, underscoring that its anticipated decline could be painfully slow. The consumer price index increased 8.6% annually, up from 8.3% the prior month and the largest rise since December 1981, the Labor Department said Friday. On a monthly basis, consumer prices increased 1%, compared to a 0.3% rise the prior month. After inflation eased off its recent four-decade high in April, economists thought it had begun a grindingly slow descent. May's return to historic levels reveals just how intractable it has become as a broad range of goods and services rose sharply. Gas prices increased 4.1% and 48.7% annually while grocery prices rose 1.4% and 11.9% over the past year. Russia's war in Ukraine continued to curtail global supplies of oil, wheat, corn and other commodities and extend supply chain troubles. Core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy items, increased 0.6% for the second straight month. That lowered the annual rise to 6% from 6.2% in April. There is some good news in the report. Consumer purchases have started shifting from goods to services, such as dining out and traveling, now that the pandemic is broadly easing. Also, many port, factory and trucking employees are coming back to work and China is easing COVID-related lockdowns, mitigating the supply chain bottlenecks behind much of the inflation spike. And retailers that ordered too much inventory to cope with the supply snarls are heavily discounting some items.
 
Mississippi revenues soar to nearly $1.3 billion over initial Fiscal Year estimates
The May 2022 state revenue numbers are out and according to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, Mississippi continues to exceed budget estimates even after revising them earlier this as the state heads into the last month of the fiscal year. The initial FY 2022 revenue estimate was $5.927 billion but lawmakers moved that number upwards by $948.2 million before the end of the 2022 legislative session, bringing the FY 2022 revenue estimate to $6.875 billion. Even with that revision, state revenues are up $387.7 million over the new estimate. Total revenue collections for the month of May FY 2022 are $173,482,930 or 34.62% above the initial sine die revenue estimate approved in 2021. For reference, the fiscal year-to-date revenue collections through May 2022 are $1,293,511,524 or 24.31% above the initial sine die estimate in 2021. That means revenue collections through May 2022 are $614,989,588 or 10.25% above the prior year's collections. State revenues have risen dramatically over the last three fiscal years, allowing lawmakers to make historic cuts to the state's income tax while also making historic investments into education and teacher pay.
 
Republican Michael Cassidy's $48 trillion social spending platform
It's not the ambitious social spending platform of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But little-known Republican Michael Cassidy, who forced a runoff with incumbent U.S. Rep. Michael Guest in one of the nation's most conservative districts, proposed social spending programs would cost taxpayers at least $48 trillion over 10 years, according to a Mississippi Today analysis. Among Cassidy's ideas are Medicare for All, stipends for married couples, and universal basic income for families with children. Cassidy, a Naval reserve pilot whose campaign slogan is "America First for Congress," garnered 48% of the vote in Tuesday's Republican primary, while Guest received 47%. Thomas Griffin earned just 5% of the vote. Because no candidate reached 50%, Cassidy and Guest will duke it out in a June 28 runoff. A Mississippi Today analysis of several ideas Cassidy proposed on his campaign website shows that his platform -- focused on social spending -- would cost taxpayers at least $48 trillion over 10 years. On Wednesday, after several people posted to social media about some of the ideas listed on his website, Cassidy removed them from his site. But Mississippi Today saved an earlier version of the website that was publicly available to voters ahead of the June 7 primary. After Facebook and Twitter comments blistering much of Cassidy's original platform on Election Day, Cassidy removed his entire fiscal platform from the website sometime on Wednesday.
 
Cassidy scrubs government 'wedding gifts,' parent stipends from campaign site
It was announced Wednesday afternoon that the Congressional Midterm Republican Primary in Mississippi's 3rd Congressional District would be decided in a runoff on June 28th. That race will feature incumbent Congressman Michael Guest and Michael Cassidy. With 99% of precincts reporting, Cassidy led Guest in the Primary by 287 votes, or 47.5% to 46.9%. Cassidy's showing took nearly everyone by surprise. Following the runoff determination, political pundits began looking more into Cassidy's platform, trying to figure out how the relative political newcomer was able to push a well-known incumbent with deep roots in the state to a runoff and where exactly he stands on policy. Other than the "America First" talking points by Cassidy and his attempt to leverage former President Donald Trump's slogan for his own campaign, little was known about the Maryland native's actual policy positions. Questions were raised on social media Wednesday as to Cassidy's stance on a variety of issues after conservatives began openly digging into his campaign website's stated policy positions. Prominent Mississippi Republicans openly mused on social media that Cassidy's stances could result in hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars of new government spending for welfare programs. When that occurred, the Cassidy team began editing the candidate's website, attempting to scrub some of what could be viewed as more liberal, big government spending points.
 
Guest wins Madison, headed to runoff
Incumbent U.S. Rep. Michael Guest won Madison County in Tuesday's Republican primary but that wasn't enough to keep him from heading to a runoff on June 28 with a transplant Navy pilot from Maryland. Guest, seeking a third term representing Mississippi's Third Congressional District that includes most of Madison County, was trailing challenger Michael Cassidy, the Navy pilot, districtwide in a pack of three where neither candidate appeared Wedneady on track to receive 50 percent of the vote with counting still under way. With 93 percent of precincts reporting districtwide at noon on Wednesday, Guest trailed Cassidy by a few hundred votes. In Madison County, Guest, the former District Attorney, received 3,264 votes (50.6 percent) to Cassidy's 2,908 votes (45.1 percent). Thomas Griffin received 279 votes and there were 43 write-ins. Districtwide, Guest had received 21,430 votes (47 percent) with Cassidy garnering 21,831 votes (48 percent). A third candidate, Thomas Griffin, had received 2,533 votes (6 percent). Cassidy, a Maryland native, now lives in Meridian.
 
Once his competition, GOP candidates endorse Mike Ezell for Congress in Palazzo face-off
Republican candidates stood together at the Great Southern Club Thursday, and one by one they threw their endorsement to Mize Ezell in U.S. Congressional race for the 4th District of Mississippi. "All candidates in the Republican primary have endorsed my candidacy," said Ezell, the Jackson County Sheriff who finished second in the primary and now faces incumbent Steven Palazzo in the runoff election June 28. Ezell said he spoke to the other two candidates by phone Thursday, since they couldn't make the meeting, and they also gave their endorsement. "I got into the race with one thing in mind, and that was to get Palazzo out of office," said Carl Boyanton, who also ran against Palazzo in 2020. He said after the meeting he just formed the Conservative Candidate Caucus and will be working to get conservative candidates like Ezell elected. The focus now is to get people back to the polls for the runoff, "or we can't win this," Boyanton said. Palazzo had 32% of the vote Tuesday, and 68% of the vote went to Ezell and the other five candidates who now endorse him. "Sixty-eight percent of the people have rejected the incumbent," State Sen. Brice Wiggins said. That's a mandate for change."
 
Ezell endorsed, Palazzo seeks debate in Mississippi race
A sheriff who is trying to unseat a six-term Mississippi congressman picked up support Thursday from all the candidates eliminated in this week's first round of Republican primary voting. Later in the day, Rep. Steven Palazzo dismissed the endorsements of Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell and said he wants to debate Ezell before the June 28 primary runoff in south Mississippi's 4th District. "It's not shocking that local politicians who ran against me in the first primary are endorsing our opponent," Palazzo said in a statement. Palazzo -- who had faced an ethics investigation over campaign spending after the 2020 race -- declined to take part in candidate forums before Tuesday's six-person primary. He received about 32% of the votes and Ezell received about 25%, according to uncertified results. Palazzo, now 52, was first elected to the U.S. House in 2010. In his statement Thursday, he said of Ezell: "A 65-year old freshman in Congress is not going to be able to get done for Mississippi what I can as a subcommittee chairman on Appropriations with seniority in the House." Ezell has said Palazzo is ineffective in representing south Mississippi, and he has criticized Palazzo for proxy voting -- the practice of not showing up in person to cast votes in the House but allowing another member to cast a vote in his place.
 
Legislative leaders to scrutinize state health insurance plan, pharmacy benefit managers
Leaders of the Capitol's two insurance committees hope to find long-term solutions to the recent cash crunch in Mississippi's insurance plan, which covers the nearly 200,000 state employees and retirees. The House and Senate Insurance Committees are scheduled to conduct a joint hearing on July 19-20 on both the state's managed care insurance program and the drug middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers. "The elephant in the room is that our state health insurance plan is bleeding cash right now," Senate Insurance Chairman Water Michel told the Daily Journal. Michel, R-Madison, said state employees filed around $120 million in claims related to COVID-19 last year, which put a significant strain on the system and caused lawmakers to use one-time money to plug the hole. To temporarily stop the hemorrhaging, lawmakers agreed to supplement the recent loss with American Resource Plan Act dollars they received from the federal government. "We just want to make sure we're staying ahead of the curve with the plan," Michel said.
 
3 On Your Side Investigates: State of Affairs
Internal documents sent to the Mississippi Veterans Affairs Board spell out allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior between the head of the agency, Executive Director Stacey Pickering, and his subordinate, chief of staff Melissa Wade, five months before the two would abruptly resign. A memo from December 15, 2021 details one such encounter, which started with a knock on Pickering's door from a cleaning lady identified only as "Elaine." No one answered when she knocked, so she retrieved a spare key and unlocked the door to clean the office suite. The memo states she walked into Pickering's office and saw him and Wade "engaging in sexual conduct." The document said Elaine was then told a few weeks later that she should not barge into offices unannounced, and she was transferred out of the building entirely. "That, to me, is retaliatory. Without knowing more, I still say it's retaliatory and it was not a good move," said Tracy Pearson, legal analyst for Law & Crime Network. A second document penned two weeks earlier indicates that behavior had been going on for some time. It claimed rumors had been circulating within MSVA and other state agencies about such a relationship between the two, unprofessional and sexual. Why wasn't any action taken to investigate this conduct? One memo cited a "lack of direct evidence."
 
Mississippi leaders and law enforcement experts discuss how to curb rising crime rates
Crime rates in Mississippi's capital city of Jackson have risen drastically in recent years, and officials are exploring solutions to violent crime, as well as gathering community input. Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson organized a recent crime summit with local stakeholders, and says it should help create a dialogue between all fields of law enforcement. "Everybody agreed that we can work together, that we will work together. I think that's the first time that's publicly been said that the city, county, state, fairgrounds security, we're all working together on this," says Gipson. "That's gotta happen, and it's gotta have community support. There was a lot of people who showed up, citizens, individuals, businesses, churches represented there at this meeting, they want to be part of the solution." Speakers included Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, and Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell. Each shared what hurdles their departments or agencies faced, as well as plans that could help reduce crime. Gipson says having these discussions can help law enforcement have a more focused approach towards crime. Another crime summit is planned for some time in August.
 
'No silver bullet': Ag Commissioner recaps Jackson crime summit
In response to the rising number of homicide cases across the capital city, Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce Andy Gipson held a "Rebuilding the Walls of Safety" crime summit on Wednesday at the Mississippi Trade Mart. During the event, in which there were around 170 people in attendance, several key issues relating to arrests and misdemeanor charges were discussed by Gibson, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, and Jackson Police Chief James Davis. The three officials also talked about ways the city plans to find a resolution. One of the main problems acknowledged was the lack of a holding cell for those arrested in Jackson, leading to a majority of criminals being released on bond. Gipson proposed that the soon-to-be-completed base command center on the Mississippi State Fairgrounds serve as a temporary location to place arrested individuals. "I offered it yesterday and it was well-received as a multi-agency task force staging area to fight crime not only on the fairgrounds but around the fairgrounds and throughout the capital downtown area," Gipson said during a Thursday morning appearance on The Gallo Show. Gipson also added that the command center on the fairgrounds is set to be completed by either the end of summer or the beginning of fall. An additional topic discussed at the summit surrounded the current agreement between the city and the American Civil Liberties Union to not arrest individuals for misdemeanor charges. Gipson said it's time for that deal to come to an end.
 
Rural America Reels From Violent Crime. 'People Lost Their Ever-Lovin' Minds.'
Local prosecutor Rebecca McCoy used to think of her home in central Arkansas as a place where the worst crimes were usually stolen tractors and lawn mowers. In March 2020, she was called to the trailer of a 72-year-old man who had been bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. It was White County's first homicide in almost two years. By that December, there were 11 more. In Marion County, a swampy stretch of South Carolina, Sheriff Brian Wallace and his deputies worked nine killings in 2021, including the execution-style shooting of an 80-year-old retired teacher whose family the sheriff knew personally. It was the highest annual body count he had seen since he joined the small department more than two decades earlier. For ranchers Bill and Diana Beck, the violence arrived in their mountain community in northwest Montana in April when a friend texted them a picture of blood in the snow. A local bar owner had been shot to death. It was Flathead County's 12th homicide since the start of 2020, one of the region's most violent periods in recent memory. Violent crime isn't just rising in the nation's cities. Murder rates across the rural U.S. have soared during the pandemic, data show, bringing the kind of extreme violence long associated with major metropolises to America's smallest communities. In rural counties, where ties between police and locals are often less fraught, officials say the reasons for the rising violence are hard to pinpoint. They speculate that the breakdown of deeply rooted social connections that bind together many small communities, coupled with the stress of the pandemic, played a role. Pastors point to the suspension of rituals such as in-person church services, town gatherings and everyday exchanges between neighbors. Such interactions can serve as guardrails, helping to prevent conflicts from turning violent. The psychological and financial stress due to isolation and job loss were especially pronounced in remote areas, where social services were limited even before Covid-19 struck, local leaders say.
 
To convince more drivers to go electric, the Biden administration wants chargers that work for all EVs
The Joe Biden administration has a goal tied to decarbonizing transportation: By 2030, half of the new cars sold would be either electric or electric hybrid. To get there, it's pushing to get 500,000 new EV chargers up and running across the country. The infrastructure package that became law in November included $7.5 billion in federal funding to subsidize building that charging network.​ On Thursday, the administration proposed rules that would, among other things, mean that any charging station built with federal money must accommodate any electric car. Which -- as any EV owner can tell you -- is not the case today. Imagine you're out driving and you need gasoline, so you pull into a gas station only to find the pumps don't fit your car. Or maybe a couple do, but they have long lines. That's kinda the deal now with electric vehicles because there's no standard charger. "That's a situation we would like to move away from," said Jessika Trancik at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The new rules would mean all new charging stations built with federal funding would have to be universal, she said. "It is really important to know that when you're driving up to a charger that you're going to be able to use it, obviously, and also that chargers are going to be available at regular intervals along your trip."
 
Biden touts democracy at Americas summit but faces sharp pushback
resident Biden offered his vision for a flourishing democratic Western Hemisphere before dozens of delegations Thursday, but he quickly faced pushback from leaders upset that Biden had excluded a trio of authoritarian regimes from the summit. "There is no reason why the Western Hemisphere can't be the most forward-looking, most democratic, most prosperous, most peaceful, secure region in the world," Biden said ahead of a formal gathering of heads of state from North, Central and South America. "We have unlimited potential. We have enormous resources, and a democratic spirit that stands for freedom and opportunity for everybody." But Biden's exclusion of the authoritarian regimes of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the summit faced vocal criticism, as a handful of foreign leaders spoke out against the decision to not invite all nations. John Briceño, the prime minister of Belize, said the summit belongs to "all of the Americas" and that it was "inexcusable" that some countries were barred from attending. The influence of the gathering, he said, was "diminished by their absence." "It is incomprehensible that we would isolate countries of the Americas which have provided strong leadership and contributed to the hemisphere on the critical issues of our times," Briceño said. He later added: "Geography, not politics, defines the Americas." The question of democracy's future in many ways hung over the conference. While Biden shut out Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, some of the leaders he did invite, such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, have themselves been accused of anti-democratic actions. Biden even held a one-on-one meeting with Bolsonaro on Thursday.
 
Jan. 6 Committee Lays Out Case Against Donald Trump in First Public Hearing
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol held a prime-time session Thursday evening aimed at convincing a divided nation that former President Donald Trump's claims of a stolen election incited his followers to try to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power. The hearing, shown on cable television and most major broadcast outlets, was the first in a series scheduled over the next two weeks. It laid out the committee's vision of the attack on the Capitol as a watershed historical moment for American democracy and a red alarm for threats it could face in the future. Backers of Mr. Trump, including most Republican lawmakers, said the committee's approach miscasts the day's events and rejected the hearings as a political ploy by Democrats. Speaking from a hearing room in a congressional office building, part of the complex that a mob of pro-Trump supporters attacked a year and a half ago, Vice Chairman Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.) sought to connect the dots between actions taken by Mr. Trump and his campaign and the mob that stormed the Capitol. Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.) sought to strike a bipartisan tone in his opening remarks. "The Constitution doesn't protect just Democrats or just Republicans," he said. "It protects all of us: 'We the People.' And this scheme was an attempt to undermine the will of the people." "The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over," he said, in a nod to the committee's plans to make recommendations for legislative steps to protect democracy from future threats.
 
Trump ignored aides who warned him stolen election claims were false, Jan. 6 panel says
President Donald Trump was informed several times by senior aides that he lost the 2020 election, but he pressed forward with his false election fraud claims. And as his team pleaded with him to call off the mob at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump responded the rioters "were doing what they should be doing," which included knocking Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards unconscious and beating her colleagues. Those were among the findings of the House select committee investigating the riot carried out by his supporters, as revealed during a prime-time hearing Thursday. The panel also contended that as Trump was aware of the mob's chants of "hang Mike Pence," his vice president, Trump responded: "Maybe our supporters have the right idea" and that Pence "deserves" it. As the attack was underway, staffers in the White House urged Trump to intervene, leaders on Capitol Hill "begged" for help -- including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who said he was "scared" and called members of Trump's family demanding presidential action, according to Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. Further, Trump placed no call to any element of the government to defend the Capitol on Jan. 6, Cheney said, adding that Trump "gave no order to deploy the National Guard that day, and he made no effort to work with the Department of Justice to coordinate and deploy law enforcement assets."
 
'An attempted coup': Rep. Bennie Thompson tells the world what happened on Jan. 6, 2021
The eyes of the world were on Rep. Bennie Thompson, the longtime congressman from Mississippi, on Thursday night as the special House committee he chairs held a prime-time hearing regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Thompson's bipartisan committee began laying out a seven-point case Thursday night they say will show former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his defeat and keep himself in office. "Donald Trump was at the center of that conspiracy," Thompson said. "And ultimately, Donald Trump -- the president of the United States -- spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down the Capitol and subvert American democracy." The committee showed dramatic video of how the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group, led the attack on the Capitol. They also heard the emotional testimony of a U.S. Capitol Police officer who suffered a brain injury during the attack. "What I saw was a war scene," said Caroline Edwards, one of the more than 150 officers injured in the rampage. "I saw officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up ... I was slipping in people's blood ... it was carnage, it was chaos."
 
Bennie Thompson: The Jan. 6 committee chairman is a veteran lawmaker from a conservative state.
Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, wasn't supposed to be in this position. After Jan. 6, Mr. Thompson, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, negotiated with Representative John Katko of New York, the panel's top Republican, to create a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate the riot. But when Senate Republicans blocked the move, Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned to a backup plan: forming a special congressional committee to carry out the inquiry. She turned to Mr. Thompson, 74, a long-tenured member of the Congressional Black Caucus, to lead it. As the chairman of the nine-member panel, Mr. Thompson has been in charge of approving the committee's subpoenas, authorizing more than 100 of them. He says an aggressive investigation is needed to properly demonstrate how former President Donald J. Trump sought to misuse federal agencies, such as the Justice Department, to help him stay in power as he spread the lie of a stolen election. "I'm convinced, and so are the members of our committee, that some of our agencies were positioned to be used to support the Big Lie," Mr. Thompson said. "We want to show how that positioning occurred, so that the public understands that some of those things in a democracy should never happen." Mr. Thompson is the only congressional Democrat from Mississippi, a deeply conservative state. An avid hunter and angler, he has been fending off Republican challenges to Democratic election victories since he got into politics. At age 21, after he won a seat on the board of aldermen in Bolton, Miss., white residents filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to try to prevent Mr. Thompson and two other Black men from taking their seats on the board.
 
White supremacists are riling up thousands on social media
The social media posts are of a distinct type. They hint darkly that the CIA or the FBI are behind mass shootings. They traffic in racist, sexist and homophobic tropes. They revel in the prospect of a "white boy summer." White nationalists and supremacists, on accounts often run by young men, are building thriving, macho communities across social media platforms like Instagram, Telegram and TikTok, evading detection with coded hashtags and innuendo. Their snarky memes and trendy videos are riling up thousands of followers on divisive issues, like abortion, guns, immigration and LGTBQ rights. The Department of Homeland Security warned Tuesday that such skewed framing of the subjects could drive extremists to violently attack public places across the U.S. in the coming months. These type of threats and racist ideology have become so commonplace on social media that it's nearly impossible for law enforcement to separate internet ramblings from dangerous, potentially violent people, Michael German, who infiltrated white supremacy groups as an FBI agent, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. U.S. extremists are mimicking the social media strategy used by the Islamic State group, which turned to subtle language and images across Telegram, Facebook and YouTube a decade ago to evade the industry-wide crackdown of the terrorist group's online presence, said Mia Bloom, a communications professor at Georgia State University. "They're trying to recruit," said Bloom, who has researched social media use for both Islamic State terrorists and far-right extremists.
 
New report examines Mississippi's college governance structure
A legislative watchdog report is diving into the topic of how Mississippi controls decisions for the colleges and universities. The purpose of this PEER report was to see how other states are managing their college systems. "We're not changing in the process of changing so everybody can kind of relax there," noted Sen. Kevin Blackwell. "But I think what one of the things we do is that we do ask ourselves questions, how is this the way we should be operating? How can we do better? If we were to merge? Would there be some savings, you know, for the taxpayers." Some other states have a singular state board that oversees both the community college and universities. In 2020, Rep. Chris Bell suggested the state abolish the IHL Board of Trustees completely and let each university have a board instead. "You do get a lot of questions," Sen. Joey Fillingane. "But particularly around times, where you have a big change in leadership, either in the University of the whole, like the university presidency, or Chancellor's or the athletic directors and head football coaches and things like that." But here's the thing, it wouldn't be an easy change even if there was an appetite at the Capitol. The PEER report points out that the state constitution would have to change if they changed the governance model at all. "I don't think there's any intent to change anything," added Sen. Chad McMahan. "But we certainly want to study and understand the issue completely."
 
Mississippi Governor's School has returned to MUW
High school students from across Mississippi are getting a taste of the college experience. After a two-year hiatus, the Mississippi Governor's School has returned to the campus of Mississippi University for Women. Governor's School is a two-week residential honors program that offers a variety of creative and academic experiences for rising juniors and seniors. Students are encouraged to choose activities that appeal to their interests and challenge their skills. "This year's theme is creating a 'Culture of Belonging,' and so our faculty have worked really hard to create courses that correlate with that theme, and we have special speakers coming in," said Melinda Lowe, Governor's School Director. "I get to choose amazing classes that I am interested in. It's such a great opportunity that I am going to look back on and relish the memories and nostalgia," said Bel Monteith of Oxford. Governor's School runs through Saturday, June 18th.
 
Six Ole Miss alumni, faculty honored by Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters
The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters is honoring several University of Mississippi alumni and faculty members as part of its annual awards to accomplished individuals in various creative fields. Ole Miss alumni and faculty receiving 2022 awards from the MIAL are William Dunlap and Kenneth Holditch, recipients of the Noel Polk Lifetime Achievement Award; W. Ralph Eubanks, winner of the Nonfiction award for "A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape"; Scott Barretta, Citation of Merit for hosting Mississippi Public Broadcasting's "Highway 61"; Bill Ellison, Citation of Merit for hosting Mississippi Public Broadcasting's "Grassroots"; and Joshua Nguyen, Poetry award for his book "Come Clean." "It is wonderful that so many creative thinkers in the liberal arts are being honored with Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters awards this year," said Lee M. Cohen, dean of the UM College of Liberal Arts. "Their achievements help us to better understand ourselves and the world around us. We are very proud of them." Recipients will be recognized Saturday (June 11) at the 43rd Anniversary Awards Gala at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson. The awards banquet is set for 6:30 p.m., preceded by a reception at 5:30.
 
More states allow students to take mental health days off
Linnea Sorensen falls into a funk whenever her girlfriend of four years leaves for her six-month stints with the Marines, and the high school junior has trouble concentrating on her classwork. "I'm somebody who struggles with my mental health quite a bit," said the 17-year-old, who attends school in Schaumburg, Ill., a suburb of about 77,000 people northwest of Chicago. "When you're in school and not fully mentally there, it's like you're not really grasping anything anyway." Now Illinois is giving Sorensen and students like her a new option for dealing with mental health lows. The state allows K-12 students in public schools to have five excused absences per school year for mental health reasons, another example of the growing acknowledgment among lawmakers that emotional and physical health are intertwined. The new policy, which went into effect at the beginning of 2022, passed both chambers of the state legislature unanimously. But such novel policies are, in many ways, a half-step toward addressing the crisis of teenage mental health that has been highlighted and exacerbated by the educational interruptions caused by the pandemic. Many parts of the country are woefully short of therapists who can work with students to address mental health problems. In other states where lawmakers have implemented policies that allow students to take mental health days -- including Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Virginia -- a lack of services for young people remains a concern.
 
Graduate Assistants United unsatisfied with UF's proposed pay increase
The University of Florida's latest offer to graduate assistants does not address their demand for an increased stipend and allows the university to enact a proposed 3% raise and one-time payment of $1,000 without Graduate Assistants United's approval. The raise, which would begin retroactively from Jan. 1, will be implemented as soon as logistically possible, UF's labor lawyer Ryan Fuller said at a bargaining session Wednesday, and the one-time payment would only apply to graduate assistants who make less than $18,500. The offer is still a paycut, chief bargainer Esteban Rodofili said. The university's plan reflected earlier negotiations; $16,000 to $17,000 for nine-month contracts and $21,333.33 to $22,753.85 for twelve-month contracts. A single adult should make $31,748 per year to make a living wage in Gainesville, according to the MIT living wage calculator GAU referenced during negotiations. Spencer Murphy, a third-year doctoral student in the Counselor Education Program, said he currently makes $1,200 a month under his contract. His rent is $1,300 a month. Murphy said UF's negotiators bargained in bad faith and that the contract's stipulation that he cannot look for outside employment is predatory; it encourages students to pull out loans to survive. "There will come a time when you are not continuing to bargain with us," he said. "You will have a strike, and that's not fun. You don't want that."
 
Colleges step up efforts to prevent gun violence on campus
Recent mass shootings at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., and a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., have prompted new calls for higher education institutions to step up efforts to prevent gun violence on campus. During a webinar Tuesday hosted by United Educators, an insurance company with 1,600 K-12 and higher education members, education leaders received guidance on how to make their institutions safer. Marisa Randazzo, executive director of threat management at Ontic, a protective intelligence software company, said assessing behavioral threats on campus can help thwart mass shootings. "What we know from the research is that the people who carry out school shootings in K-12, as well as in higher ed, typically follow a detectable progression of behavior, meaning that they first come up with some idea to engage in harm," Randazzo said. Behavioral threat assessment teams are the best available tool to identify someone on a "pathway to violence," from conception to execution of the crime, Randazzo said. In higher education, such teams typically include campus police, administrators and mental health professionals. But there aren't reliable data on how many K-12 school districts or colleges actually use teams to assess behavioral threats in their midst. "The most important message I want everyone to take away from this is that it is absolutely possible to prevent acts of violence within our educational institutions," Randazzo said. "I'm not saying that we will prevent every one of them ... this is not necessarily a panacea for all problems that schools and colleges and universities are facing."
 
Congress Will Consider Student-Loan Deferrals for Victims of Sexual Violence
A bill introduced in Congress on Wednesday would grant students who experience sexual violence federal loan deferments while they are on temporary leave from college for treatment. Under the Student Loan Deferment for Sexual Violence Survivors Act, HR 7980, students would be eligible for up to three years of federal loan deferrals -- broken into six-to-12-month chunks -- after reporting an incident of sexual violence to their campus Title IX coordinator. Most federal student loans come with a six-month grace period that kicks in after graduation or when students take a semester off. But under the current system, even if students need more time to recover from an incident of violence, they must start repaying their loans when those six months expire. According to Rep. Madeleine Dean, a Pennsylvania Democrat who introduced the bill, easing the combined burden of mental and physical healing from sexual violence and paying off student loans is "the humane thing to do." As an English professor for 10 years at La Salle University, in Philadelphia, Dean knew students who "got really derailed" by a sexual assault. "I saw how they withdrew, how they couldn't continue their studies," Dean said. "And I also saw, of course, just regular students under the weight of high debt." Calls to cancel student-loan debt are increasing nationwide, and students continue to reveal injustices they faced in campus sexual-assault cases.
 
Congress targets Harvard, Yale and top universities with China-linked endowments
Congress first targeted U.S. universities' Chinese state-backed Confucius Institutes, then their academic partnerships with China. Now, some in Congress are preparing to go after America's top institutions of higher learning and their enormous endowments in potentially problematic Chinese companies. Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) is drafting legislation -- the Protecting Endowments from Our Adversaries Act -- designed to cut U.S. university endowment investments that fund abusive or hostile Chinese entities. Murphy doesn't yet have co-sponsors for the bill, but told POLITICO that he expects "a lot of interest from a lot of folks in both houses." On Thursday, Murphy sent a letter to the 15 private universities with the largest endowments -- Harvard, Yale, Duke and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among them -- asking them to purge their investment portfolios of "entities that are supporting the imprisonment of Uyghur Muslims or aiding the Russian Federation's horrific invasion of Ukraine." Murphy also wants those schools to vet their endowment portfolios for any "adversarial entities" named on U.S. government sanction lists. A successful congressional push to sever U.S. university endowments from Chinese investments could provide a template for legislation requiring private sector investors, including private equity firms and hedge funds, to do likewise, downsizing the U.S. financial sector's relationship with China. With Democrats in control, Murphy's latest effort is unlikely to succeed in this Congress. But his letter is putting universities on notice that Congress wants a say in how they invest their endowments.


SPORTS
 
Under Chris Jans, Mississippi State men's basketball players prepare for new style
Knowing who his next head coach might be, Mississippi State big man Tolu Smith made sure to watch New Mexico State's two appearances in the 2022 NCAA tournament. Smith came away impressed by the Aggies, led by coach Chris Jans, as NMSU upset UConn before falling to Arkansas in the second round. "They were really good," Smith said Wednesday. "They had a lot of good pieces. I thought they should have won the Arkansas game, but I'm not going to speak on it." A day after the loss to the Razorbacks, MSU hired Jans to replace Ben Howland. Smith had two games of tape on his new coach as well as a positive scouting report from former Western Kentucky teammate Trevelin Queen, who played under Jans at New Mexico State. Offseason workouts have since begun, and Smith has learned more about Jans in the process. The redshirt senior and his teammates are still getting acclimated, but so far, they like what they see. "I feel like it's going to be good," forward D.J. Jeffries said. "I just feel like he's going to be different." Smith, Jeffries and guard/forward Cameron Matthews all pointed to a newfound vigor within the Bulldogs' coaching staff, which consists of Jans; assistants James Miller, David Anwar and veteran George Brooks; and strength and conditioning coach Dominick Walker.
 
Shotgun national championship set for West Point
The best instinctive shooters in America will compete for the U.S. Helice Association National Championship at Prairie Wildlife near West Point next month. The event, set for July 21 through July 24, is open to the public. There is no admission charge for spectators. The venue, Black Prairie Helice, is part of Prairie Wildlife, a sporting destination specializing in upland bird hunting, target shooting and corporate retreats. Helice is a shotgun game that blends the accessibility of clay targets with the true, erratic unpredictability of wild birds. The game was invented in Europe early in the 1900s, but it's found a home in the United States, especially in the South. In the four years since its initial foray into the sport, Prairie Wildlife has grown its helice operation into the largest such facility in the nation. "It's the hottest shotgun game being played today," said Becky Briggs. She and her husband Eddie, a former Mississippi lieutenant governor, have been helice devotees for more than 10 years. They've both represented the United States in world helice competition, and she currently sits on the U.S. Helice Association's governing board. "Prairie Wildlife's venue is second to none. It's a grand spot, with a facility of unrivaled quality. Helice is a fast-growing sport. Jimmy Bryan and his crew have worked very hard to make their facility what it is." "We're hoping to have more than 200 shooters participate in the championship," Bryan, Prairie Wildlife's founder, said.
 
Think Ole Miss vs. Southern Miss baseball is a big deal? Just ask the coaches' wives
Baseball coaches harp on the importance of experienced players. Through the momentum shifts, players who can remain steady emotionally are often those delivering in the biggest moments. As Southern Miss and Ole Miss prepare to square off in the Hattiesburg Super Regional beginning Saturday (3 p.m. ESPNU), perhaps the most experienced people in the circles of Mike Bianco and Scott Berry sit outside the dugout. Their wives, Camille Bianco and Laura Berry, have learned as well as any slugger or ace how to handle the fickleness of a college baseball season. "Baseball is like life," Laura says. "You don't know what life's going to throw at you, you've just got to be able to handle it." "How awesome is it that last year you have Mississippi State win the national championship and this year you've got Southern Miss and now we end up matched up with them," Camille said. "It says a lot for our state -- how much we care and how passionate our fans and all of our fanbases are about the sport." Laura has lived in Mississippi her entire life. This weekend is sure to bring success economically along with what was already collected last weekend. The national attention is a bonus. "This is so much bigger than a baseball game," Laura said. "...It is just going to be a huge celebration. When we're not playing, we do pull for Ole Miss or Mississippi State. Of course I want Southern Miss to win, but I think it's a celebration of how much everybody loves baseball around here."
 
Jackson State football to grace cover of Sports Illustrated
Some familiar faces will be on the cover of Sports Illustrated's July edition. Announced on Thursday, Jackson State's Deion Sanders, Shedeur Sanders, and Travis Hunter are the first HBCU athletes to grace the cover of sport's biggest magazine since Alcorn State quarterback Steve McNair did it in 1994. In the video below, Coach Prime has Shedeur and Hunter sit down at his desk and starts showing them the five different SI covers he's been on over the course of his career. He then surprises the two players, saying "You guys in college got a dern cover, something I never did." SI's July cover story, written by Jean-Jacques Taylor, discusses the impact Sanders -- with the help of a lot of players like Shedeur and Hunter -- has made on not only Jackson State but the HBCU landscape as a whole.
 
How Kirby Connell became a Tennessee baseball cult hero: A children's hospital and a tube of mustache wax
Tennessee pitcher Kirby Connell, a member of the so-called villains of college baseball, poked his unmistakably mustached face into the doorway at East Tennessee Children's Hospital. Young grinning faces greeted Connell and five Tennessee baseball teammates Thursday. They brought encouraging words and a box of "Vollie Fingers" T-shirts donated privately by an admiring fan. This is how Connell and the No. 1 ranked Vols spent their Thursday, one day before playing Notre Dame in the NCAA super regional at Lindsey Nelson Stadium. The hospital visit had its roots in a ceremonial first pitch, the Vols' 23-game winning streak, an unforgettable photo, churches in three states and a tube of mustache wax. "It's a pretty awesome feeling when you can do something to make a kid's day," Connell said. "You'll remember that for a while, maybe longer than anything you could do in baseball." Connell visited patients at children's hospital with teammates Chase Dollander, Evan Russell, Ben Joyce, Drew Beam and Seth Halvorson Thursday morning. Then they went to practice.
 
Paul Finebaum doubles down on Dabo Swinney comment, calls Clemson fans 'most insecure, paranoid' in country
Paul Finebaum has ruffled some feathers. In the world of college football that's like saying the sky is blue. Only this time, the ESPN analyst didn't seem to even mean to do it when he said, "Dabo Swinney is yesterday's news." First, a little context. Earlier this week, during "The Paul Finebaum Show," he was joined by The Sporting News' Bill Bender, who had just released his top 10 coaches for the upcoming season. Finebaum took issue with Clemson's Dabo Swinney at No. 2, behind Alabama's Nick Saban and one spot ahead of Georgia's Kirby Smart. "How about right now?" Finebaum told Bender on Tuesday. "My pushback is we don't need a list. We already know that. We want a judgment to say who's better. Are you telling me -- I promised myself I wouldn't do this, but I'm going to – are you telling me that Kirby Smart is inferior by one number to Dabo Swinney, in spite of that championship? I don't need to remind you but look at the trajectory of the programs right now and where they are. I think Dabo Swinney is yesterday's news, and Kirby Smart is where it's at in college football today." The reasoning for Swinney's No. 2 ranking, according to Finebaum, is he has won two national titles since 2016. Finebaum's point, though, is the sport has crowned three national champions -- all SEC, he may remind you -- since Swinney's Tigers hoisted the trophy. "There is no doubt after reading social media (Wednesday), the most insecure, paranoid fanbase of college football in America is Clemson. The Clemsonites take it to a whole new level. It's one thing if you've never won a national championship. ... But these guys have won two in recent years and they are just so desperate for attention. They are so desperate for adulation. They are so desperate to be loved."
 
LIV Golf shines spotlight on 'sportswashing' -- the nascent term for an age-old strategy
Over the past five years, the term has been used to describe everything from the 2018 World Cup in Russia to a 2019 heavyweight boxing match in Saudi Arabia to the recently-concluded Winter Olympics in Beijing. And at a news conference for the Saudi-funded LIV Golf league earlier this week, it came up twice. "Isn't there a danger," one reporter asked Phil Mickelson on Wednesday, "that you're also being seen as a tool of sportswashing?" That term -- "sportswashing" -- is still relatively new. But the strategy it represents has been employed by governments around the world, in some form or fashion, for a century or more. For world leaders, it is a way to improve their nation's reputation by hosting a prestigious sporting event, or financing a popular team. "In essence, sportwashing is about diversion," said Simon Chadwick, a global professor of sport at Emlyon Business School in France. Human rights groups say LIV Golf is just the latest example. Bankrolled by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, the upstart league has offered astronomical sums to a handful of the sport's biggest names -- including Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson -- to poach them from the PGA Tour, which said Thursday it had suspended the defectors. LIV Golf claims that its goal is to "holistically improve the health of professional golf" and "help unlock the sport's untapped potential." But critics say the league is part of a broader political effort by Saudi Arabia to buy legitimacy and polish its global image.



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