JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Three federal judges are telling Mississippi to redraw some of its legislative districts, saying the current ones dilute the power of Black voters in three parts of the state.

The judges issued their order Tuesday night in a lawsuit filed in 2022 by the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and several Black residents.

“This is an important victory for Black Mississippians to have an equal and fair opportunity to participate in the political process without their votes being diluted,” one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Jennifer Nwachukwu, of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement Wednesday. “This ruling affirms that the voices of Black Mississippians matter and should be reflected in the state Legislature.”

Mississippi’s population is about 59% white and 38% Black.

In the legislative redistricting plan adopted in 2022, 15 of the 52 Senate districts and 42 of the 122 House districts are majority Black. Those are 29% of Senate districts and 34% of House districts.

The judges ordered legislators to draw majority-Black Senate districts in and around DeSoto County in the northwestern corner of the state and in and around Hattiesburg in the south, and a new majority-Black House district in Chickasaw and Monroe counties in the northeastern part of the state.

The order does not create additional districts. Rather, it would require legislators to adjust the boundaries of existing districts. That means multiple districts could be affected.

The Mississippi attorney general’s office was reviewing the judges’ ruling Wednesday, spokesperson MaryAsa Lee said. It was not immediately clear whether the state would appeal it.

Legislative and congressional districts are updated after each census to reflect population changes from the previous decade. Mississippi’s new legislative districts were used when all of the state House and Senate seats were on the ballot in 2023.

Tommie Cardin, an attorney for state officials, told the federal judges in February that Mississippi cannot ignore its history of racial division, but that voter behavior now is driven by party affiliation, not race.

“The days of voter suppression and intimidation are, thankfully, behind us,” Cardin said.

Historical voting patterns in Mississippi show that districts with higher populations of white residents tend to lean toward Republicans and that districts with higher populations of Black residents tend to lean toward Democrats.

Lawsuits in several states have challenged the composition of congressional or state legislative districts drawn after the 2020 census.

Louisiana legislators redrew the state’s six U.S. House districts in January to create two majority-Black districts, rather than one, after a federal judge ruled that the state’s previous plan diluted the voting power of Black residents, who make up about one-third of the state’s population.

And a federal judge ruled in early February that the Louisiana legislators diluted Black voting strength with the state House and Senate districts they redrew in 2022.

In December, a federal judge accepted new Georgia congressional and legislative districts that protect Republican partisan advantages. The judge said the creation of new majority-Black districts solved the illegal minority vote dilution that led him to order maps to be redrawn.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

The set list kept changing, right up until showtime. Laura Jane Grace had to cram more than two decades of music — both solo material and from her influential punk band Against Me! — into 15 minutes. Her band was used to this gleeful chaos. Grace’s wife, Paris Campbell Grace, Drive-By Truckers’ Matt Patton and The Ergs’ Mikey Erg make up the Mississippi Medicals, a loving and stabilizing force for a catalog of songs about American injustice, creative frustration, identity and broken promises… but also hope through collective action and personal revelation. In this Tiny Desk, you’ll see them play newer songs (“I’m Not a Cop” and “All F***** Up”), but also throwbacks to “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong” (a personal request) and an absolutely powerful version of “Black Me Out.”

An Against Me! show changed my life. Before Grace’s set, I shared a story about a sweet, sheltered suburban kid who spent his freshman year at shows instead of studying for class. (I lost my college scholarship, but, hey it worked out for me in the end.) Reinventing Axl Rose had just come out, but everyone knew every single word. In the small living room, the mass of bodies moved like high tide, pushing and pulling as we gleefully sang, “ ‘Cause, baby, I’m an anarchist / And you’re a spineless liberal.” We knew that the world can be rotten and cruel, yet could be beautiful, too, in how we fight for freedom together. At one point, the swell spilled over and I fell out the back door, then was quickly pulled back up because that’s what we do when someone falls.

Walking back to my dorm room afterward, beaming and bruised, I had a realization: Punk is complex and contradictory; it will fail and frustrate you… but it will also set you free. That paradox still haunts and challenges me, but I wear these songs — and all that have come after — like armor.

SET LIST

• “I’m Not a Cop” 
• “All F***** Out”
• “Supernatural Possession” 
• “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong”
• “Black Me Out” 

MUSICIANS

• Laura Jane Grace: vocals, guitar
• Paris Campbell Grace: vocals
• Matt Patton: bass, vocals
• Mikey Erg: drums, vocals

TINY DESK TEAM

• Producer: Lars Gotrich
• Director/Editor: Maia Stern
• Audio Technical Director: Josephine Nyounai
• Host/Series Producer: Bobby Carter
• Videographers: Maia Stern, Joshua Bryant, Elizabeth Gillis
• Audio Engineer: Carleigh Strange
• Photographer: Estefania Mitre
• Tiny Desk Team: Hazel Cills, Kara Frame, Ashley Pointer
• Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
• Series Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson
• VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins

WABASHA, Minn. (KTTC) – Many Minnesota communities living close to the Mississippi River faced flood warnings as water levels rose over the weekend. The city of Wabasha is one of the most significantly impacted areas with many streets and parks under water.

“We had a flood here last year, and it was our fourth highest crest in history,” City of Wabasha Emergency Management Director Riley Castello said. “This one is about two feet shy of that.”

According to Castello, water levels at the river peaked on Monday; on Tuesday afternoon, it sat at 15-feet.

“We’ve had to close down five of our major parks and a couple of streets in town.” Castello said.

Due to the severe weather and flooding, both the city and Wabasha County declared a local state of emergency, being one of the 22 counties approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for a federal disaster declaration.

“It’s frustrating that we can’t just get in moderation. We just came out of a drought. Last year was incredibly dry and the river level was low comparatively. This year, we just can’t stop getting the rain. And now we have water standing in fields.”

According to the National Eagle Center, the severe weather did not significantly impact the amount of visitors it received. “Overall, I don’t think the number of visitors have been impacted by the weather,” Director of Marketing and Communications Ed Hahn said. “ Maybe a little bit when it rains, you get fewer people going out.”

Castello shared there are currently many uncertainties with how the flood waters will be cleared and the restoration process will undergo. He said property damage estimates cannot be determined until water levels go down.

“We gasped when we saw the flooding,” said Maria Gorde, who was in Wabasha on Tuesday for a visit. “We had seen it online, but seeing it in person was like, ‘Wow.’”

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