Mississippi
Mississippi Legislature approves 21 suffrage bills in 2024 session
 
																								
												
												
											 
House plans to reintroduce suffrage bill in 2025
Lyndon B. Johnson’s daughter: Time to unite for voting rights
In a 2020 interview, Luci Baines Johnson said she wanted our nation to finish the voting rights work of her father, former President Lyndon B. Johnson, and friend Rep. John Lewis.
While about 50,000 state residents with past felony convictions will have to wait another year to potentially regain their voting rights, state lawmakers passed 21 individual suffrage bills this past legislative session.
That represents roughly half of the individual requests made between 2021 and 2023 by people who were previously convicted of felonies seeking to regain their voting rights.
In Mississippi, people who commit certain disenfranchising felonies lose the right to vote, and the only recourse for them to have those rights restored is to request a lawmaker to file a bill. That bill may or may not be brought up in a committee, taken up on the House or Senate floor and then advance through the other chamber. If it makes it that far, it then goes on to the governor who may sign the bill, let it pass without his signature or veto it.
House Judiciary B Chairman Kevin Horan, R-Grenada, told the Clarion Ledger the bills his committee moved forward to the floor were from residents who had committed nonviolent felonies and whose sentences had been fully completed, including jail time, fines and other requirements.
The Senate Judiciary Division B Committee, led by Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, took the same policy when considering several bills this year.
Horan said a time comes when individuals who have paid their debt to society start contributing to society by paying taxes and making other contributions.
“There’s no reason those individuals shouldn’t have the right to vote,” Horan said.
The move to restore as many people’s voting rights as possible this year may or may not have come about after House Bill 1609 died in the Senate last month. That bill would have restored the right to vote to all Mississippians who were previously convicted of certain nonviolent felonies.
However, before making its way to the Senate, the House passed HB 1609 99-9, garnering wide bipartisan support, including that of first-year House Speaker Jason White, R-West.
That bill did not sway Sen. Angela Hill, R-Picayune, who chose not to bring the bill up in the Constitution Committee by the legislative deadline to do so. When asked why she let the deadline pass, Hill said the state’s constitution speaks for itself.
Read about suffrage bill dying Voting bill, which would have helped non-violent felons, dies in MS Senate
Disenfranchisement was adopted by the Mississippi Legislature in 1890 with the purpose of stripping voting rights from Black voters by listing crimes lawmakers thought Black people were likely to commit such as murder, timber larceny, possession of stolen property and murder, James K. Vardaman, who served as both governor and U.S. senator at the time, declared.
House Constitution Committee Chairman Price Wallace, R-Mendenhall, said he was disappointed in Hill for failing to pass HB 1609 out of her committee and that he plans to continue working on the legislation throughout the summer and to bring it up during the 2025 legislative session.
“We’re going to get together after session in the summer or early fall, sit down and see if we can draft something that hopefully can please everyone,” Wallace told the Clarion Ledger in April. “I felt that the bill we had was good.”
More on suffrage bills Mississippi lawmakers hope to return 32 peoples’ voting rights
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves as of Wednesday afternoon had not yet signed any approved individual suffrage requests from any state residents.
Grant McLaughlin covers state government for the Clarion Ledger. He can be reached at gmclaughlin@gannett.com or 972-571-2335.
 
																	
																															Mississippi
Three business organizations joining forces to become the Mississippi Business Alliance
 
														 
JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – The state’s top lawmakers and business leaders mingled at the Mississippi Coliseum on Thursday morning – tradition for the annual Hobnob event.
The Mississippi Economic Council played host for the 24th and final time.
If you’re involved with politics or business, you’ve heard of these three organizations and the work they’ve been doing.
The Mississippi Economic Council, the Mississippi Manufacturers Association, and the Business and Industry Political Education Committee.
“Mississippi needed a single authoritative and common voice for business,” explained MEC Chair John Hairston. “Policy makers were asking for clarity when it comes to legislative priorities. Business owners were asking for alignment of our policies, and our members were asking to become more impactful.”
So, these three groups will become one.
“Will represent every sector of Mississippi’s economy under one banner: the Mississippi Business Alliance,” said Scott Waller, MEC President and CEO.
The new rebranding was unveiled in front of the Hobnob crowd.
However, things officially began with the merged efforts on Jan. 1.
“Previously, you had legislators and policymakers trying to look for advice or input and they had three different organizations that were similar and overlapped,” described John McKay, current head of the Mississippi Manufacturers Association.
McKay will lead the Mississippi Business Alliance.
The joint organization will build on the already existing work of the three groups – everything from policy to workforce development and vetting of business-friendly candidates.
According to policymakers, there will be a value in having a singular group for business interests.
“These three organizations are merging not just to consolidate, but to elevate,” Gov. Tate Reeves emphasized.
“To have a unified voice is very helpful to those of us who are supposed to implement public policy,” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said.
And they’re looking at this as more than a simple merger.
“It’s really a transformation of how we operate and sponsor the business community moving forward,” Hairston continued. “It’s the uniting of our collective strengths into one clear and very decisive force for progress into the future, for the benefit of our grandchildren and those that come after them.”
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Mississippi
Mississippi woman searches for daughter in Jamaica
 
JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – A Mississippi mother is searching for answers after not being able to get in contact with her daughter who is trapped in Jamaica from Hurricane Melissa.
Lori Washington, an Ocean Springs native, told 3 On Your Side that she has not heard from her daughter since Monday.
“Now my mind is flashing back to the phone call that I got when my soldier was killed,” Washington said. “My oldest boy was killed in 2014 and now I’m scared that I’m going to get another phone call.”
She shared that her daughter, Lasha Thornton, travels frequently for work and the last location she knew of her whereabouts was Trelawny, Jamaica.
Washington says Thornton just turned 26 and must’ve been in Jamaica for her birthday.
In a text from her daughter Monday, Washington shared that she informed her the airports were shut down, and she would have to wait out the storm.
It has now been two days since hearing from her daughter, and Washington is doing all that she can to find answers.
“Once some reporter over there can hear this and make sure that my daughter is either at the convention center, where they have some of the tourists, or if they can check, I just want to know she’s okay and that she’s eating and she’s hydrated,” Washington said. “And I want her to come home, it’s time to come home.”
According to a post Tuesday on the country’s government website, there were around 6,000 people in shelters.
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Mississippi
Lab monkeys on loose after Mississippi crash were disease-free, university says
 
														 
A group of monkeys being transported on a Mississippi highway that escaped captivity on Tuesday after the truck carrying them overturned did not carry a dangerous infectious disease, a university has said.
The truck was carrying rhesus monkeys, which typically weigh around 16lb (7.7kg) and are among the most medically studied animals on the planet.
Video shows monkeys crawling through tall grass on the side of Interstate 59 just north of Heidelberg, Mississippi, with wooden crates labeled “live animals” crumpled and strewn about.
The local sheriff’s department initially said the monkeys were carrying diseases including herpes, but Tulane University said in a statement that the monkeys “have not been exposed to any infectious agent”.
All but one of the escaped monkeys were killed, the Jasper county sheriff’s department said in a post on Facebook, warning that the monkeys were “aggressive”.
They were being housed at the Tulane University National Biomedical Research Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, which routinely provides primates to scientific research organizations, according to the university.
The crash happened about 100 miles (160km) from the state capital of Jackson. It was not clear what caused the truck to overturn.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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