Mississippi
In Mississippi, GOP aims to hang on to statewide majority
Mississippi is deciding 4 U.S. Home races, with incumbents on the poll in three. The longest-serving member of the state’s present congressional delegation is Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the Home Homeland Safety Committee and of the Home choose committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. Thompson was first elected in 1993 within the 2nd District in western Mississippi.
He faces the identical Republican he defeated in 2020, navy veteran Brian Flowers. Within the northern 1st District, Republican Rep. Trent Kelly was first elected in 2015. He faces Democrat Dianne Black, a enterprise proprietor. Within the central third District, Republican Rep. Michael Visitor was first elected in 2018. He faces Democrat Shuwaski Younger, a navy veteran.
Within the southern 4th District, Republican Rep. Steven Palazzo, first elected in 2010, misplaced the GOP major in June to Mike Ezell, a sheriff. Ezell faces Democrat Johnny DuPree, a former mayor who was the 2011 Democratic nominee for governor, and a Libertarian candidate, Alden Patrick Johnson.
MISSISSIPPI RIVER WATER LEVELS PLUMMET DUE TO DROUGHT, EXPOSING SHIPWRECK
Right here’s a take a look at what to anticipate on election evening:
Election Evening
Polls shut at 7 p.m. native time (8 p.m. ET).
How Mississippi Votes
Republicans maintain all statewide places of work in Mississippi, together with the governorship and each U.S. Senate seats. In addition they maintain extensive majorities within the state Home and Senate, which aren’t on the poll this yr. Throughout redistricting this yr, legislators didn’t make main modifications to the 4 U.S. Home districts. Three of the districts are majority-white and one is majority-Black. Mississippi has a historical past of racially polarized voting, with Republicans extra prone to win in areas with increased concentrations of white voters and Democrats extra prone to win in majority-Black districts.
MISSISSIPPI LAWMAKERS APPROVE NEARLY $247M IN STATE INCENTIVES FOR ALUMINUM PLANT, WOULD BRING A THOUSAND JOBS
Determination Notes
AP will tabulate and declare winners in 5 contested elections in Mississippi, together with 4 U.S. Home races and one particular state Home race. Within the 2020 common election, AP first reported outcomes at 8:18 p.m. ET Tuesday, Nov. 3, and 100% of outcomes at 8:29 a.m. ET on Thursday, Nov. 5.
The AP doesn’t make projections and can solely declare a winner when it’s decided there isn’t any situation that might permit the trailing candidates to shut the hole.
Ought to a candidate declare victory or provide a concession earlier than the AP calls a race, we are going to cowl newsworthy developments in our reporting. In doing so, we are going to clarify that the AP has not declared a winner and clarify why.
The AP could name a statewide or U.S. Home race during which the margin between the highest two candidates is 0.5% or much less, if we decide the lead is just too massive for a recount to vary the end result.
JOHN W. WINKLE III, A LONGTIME UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI PROFESSOR AND STATE CONSTITUTION EXPERT, DIES AT 75
The AP is not going to name down-ballot races on election evening if the margin between the highest two candidates is lower than 2%. AP will revisit these races later within the week to verify there will not be sufficient excellent votes left to rely that might change the end result.
What Else Ought to I Know?
Q: What’s Modified Because the Pandemic Election of 2020?
A: Not a lot when it comes to how Mississippi votes. The state stays primarily a spot of in-person voting, with no early voting and no no-excuse voting by mail.
Q: What Do Turnout and Advance Vote Look Like?
A: Whole advance vote doubtless will return to lower than 10% of the overall vote after spiking in 2020 to almost 20% attributable to Covid exceptions for absentee voting. With no statewide races and no aggressive Home races, turnout can be low. It was about 11% for the June 2022 major. Absentee and abroad ballots have to be returned or postmarked by Election Day to be counted.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Q: How Lengthy Does Counting Often Take?
A: Mississippi usually doesn’t rely all its votes on election evening, however the share of uncounted votes shouldn’t be as excessive as November 2020 when solely 83% of the overall vote was accomplished election day.
Q: What Occurs After Tuesday?
A: Mississippi legislation doesn’t present for automated recounts. Anybody who needs to contest an election should go to court docket.
Mississippi
Mississippi Aquarium ramping up for summer season, 1 millionth guest
PINE BELT, Miss. (WDAM) – The Mississippi Aquarium is ready for the unofficial start of summer.
The aquarium folks stopped by WDAM 7 Friday to introduce us to a couple of its residents: Lapis, the blue-tongued skink; and Ashley, the box turtle.
The skink is a native of Australia and feels right at home with Mississippi’s warm, weather.
Of course, box turtles are native to the South, and can be familiar sights around homes and property.
The aquarium’s staff said they are ready to welcome visitors this summer and anticipate welcoming its one millionth visitor before the end of the year.
Staff members want people to know that there are a lot of opportunities to have safe animal encounters
“You can get up close and personal with not only the ambassador animals, but some other animals, like the dolphin encounter and the penguin encounter,” said staff member Nice Matz.
The MIssissippi8 Aquarium will be open for the long Memorial Day weekend.
Military members and veterans get in free.
Looking ahead: Come Father’s Day, all dads will be admitted free as well.
For more information, please click here.
Want more WDAM 7 news in your inbox? Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.
Copyright 2024 WDAM. All rights reserved.
Mississippi
Mississippi high school teacher arrested
STARKVILLE, Miss. (WTVA) — Police have arrested a high school teacher in Mississippi who is accused of inappropriately touching children.
Officers arrested Kelvin Stanfield, 51, a teacher at Starkville High School, on Thursday, Starkville Police announced.
The purported crimes happened at Starkville High School between March and May; this according to four of his alleged victims.
Starkville Police released no more details about the alleged crimes.
Starkville Oktibbeha School District Director of Communications Haley Montgomery said the school district does not have a statement to release at this time.
Montgomery could not answer any questions about Stanfield’s employment, citing a personnel matter.
Want more WLBT news in your inbox? Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.
See a spelling or grammar error in our story? Please click here to report it and include the headline of the story in your email.
Copyright 2024 WLBT. All rights reserved.
Mississippi
Mississippi River refuges get $10 million for nature-based solutions to climate change
A Nonprofit is working to fight climate change through tree cloning
The Archangel Tree Archive nonprofit is cloning trees across the country and replanting them around the world in hopes of reversing climate change.
A $10 million investment will fund seven projects aimed at making national wildlife refuge lands along the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers more resilient to climate change, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced earlier this month.
The projects, which span all five states that border the upper Mississippi, will emphasize nature-based solutions — in other words, working with the river ecosystem instead of trying to control it — to blunt the impacts of some of the river’s major problems, like flooding and drought. There are 11 national wildlife refuges along the two rivers, the largest of which is the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.
The funding comes from the Inflation Reduction Act. Part of it was rolled out last year to support projects on state-owned lands, including in Wisconsin.
The upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers are seeing the consequences of a warmer, wetter world, and the human-engineered infrastructure built decades ago, like the lock-and-dam system and levees, isn’t able to keep up. In particular, an almost unprecedented amount of water flowed through the rivers over the last decade, killing trees, degrading fish habitat and threatening to breach levees meant to constrain them.
These new projects are meant to help land managers think through those climate threats and adapt to what’s happening now, said Tim Miller, who manages the La Crosse District of the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.
Here’s what to know about what they’ll tackle.
Floodplain forests are a priority
More than $1 million will be dedicated to the project, “Building Resilience in America’s Big River Forests,” and an additional half-million will go toward restoring bottomland hardwood forest in Missouri.
Bottomland forests, also called floodplain forests, are located along major rivers. As their name indicates, they flood seasonally when the river floods. But along the upper Mississippi, more water flowing through the river and longer-lasting flooding events have inundated these trees more than they can handle, causing hundreds to die.
More: What to know about floodplain forests, a struggling ecosystem on the Mississippi River
More: A new technique could help save the Mississippi River’s floodplain forests: raising the forest floor
Work is ongoing to save them, but this money will allow the Fish and Wildlife Service to expand the range of that work to all 11 national wildlife refuges along the river in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, Miller said.
Staff will be curtailing invasive plant species that have moved into areas where larger trees have died and planting tree species that are better suited for today’s wetter conditions.
The funds will also help staff labor-intensive projects like these on refuges that have very few employees, Miller said. The national wildlife refuge system has struggled with chronic understaffing in the past decade.
Other projects will make room for the river
Some river engineering structures will get a facelift, or even a total overhaul, to deal with high waters. That includes Guttenberg Ponds in Clayton County, Iowa, where a levee protecting a wetland area from the river’s main channel has been degrading over time, repairs for which have been costly. The project will allow the degradation to happen and turn the area behind it into floodplain forest, Miller said.
“Instead of fighting the river with these levees we’ve had, we’re allowing it to naturally degrade over time,” he said. “It’s kind of a neat way of looking at it.”
Other engineering changes include replacing or raising the elevation of water control structures, which regulate the flow of the river, so they can hold more water, easing stress on the river, Miller said.
Wisconsin project focused on fish habitat
One of the projects funded is specific to Wisconsin: restoring Sam Gordy’s Slough in Buffalo County. Floods and high flows have brought more sediment into the backwater channel, making the area shallower and less suitable for fish and effectively cutting it off from the river’s main channel.
More: Climate change imperils the upper Mississippi River backwaters. Now nature needs human help.
The project will reconnect the backwater channel to the main channel by dredging, and install a sediment diverter so sediment can’t keep piling up, Miller said.
Work will start on most of the projects this year, he said, with the exception of the Guttenberg Ponds project.
Madeline Heim is a Report for America corps reporter who writes about environmental issues in the Mississippi River watershed and across Wisconsin. Contact her at (920) 996-7266 or mheim@gannett.com.
-
Politics1 week ago
Vulnerable Dem incumbents move to the center in key swing states as Biden panders to far-left base
-
World1 week ago
‘Monstrous crime’: World reacts to attack on Slovakia’s prime minister
-
News1 week ago
How a migrant aid group got caught up in a right-wing social media thread : Consider This from NPR
-
Politics1 week ago
Southern border migrant encounters decrease slightly but gotaways still surge under Biden
-
World1 week ago
Slovakia PM Robert Fico in ‘very serious’ condition after being shot
-
Movie Reviews1 week ago
Is Coppola’s $120M ‘Megalopolis’ ‘bafflingly shallow’ or ‘remarkably sincere’? Critics can’t tell
-
Movie Reviews1 week ago
Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil movie review: This Prithviraj Sukumaran, Basil Joseph-starrer is a total laugh riot
-
World1 week ago
Taiwan grapples with divisive history as new president prepares for power