Category: Mississippi News

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves said Wednesday that he will continue pushing lawmakers to phase out the state income tax, even with the possibility of federal spending cuts that could affect states after Donald Trump begins his second term as president.

Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the U.S., and it receives billions of dollars a year from the federal government. One of the biggest chunks of federal money is for Medicaid, a government health insurance program for low-income residents.

“To the extent that the federal government wants to reduce federal funding — and I think they should — they need to give states more flexibility on what segments of the population are covered and which ones are not,” Reeves said of Medicaid.

Reeves, who spoke during a news conference Wednesday, has supported Trump since the 2016 election. Trump said Tuesday that he had chosen Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to lead an effort that could significantly reduce spending and the size of the federal government.

About 42% of the money for state government services in Mississippi is coming from the federal government during the budget year that began July 1, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Budget Office. That is about $13.2 billion out of nearly $31.7 billion. About $6.5 billion of the federal money was for Medicaid.

The individual income tax is expected to generate about $2.1 billion for the state this year, behind an expected $2.9 billion from the sales tax, according to the budget office.

Reeves has long said Mississippi should eventually eliminate its income tax to compete with Florida, Tennessee and Texas, which don’t levy the tax. Republicans control the Mississippi Legislature. House Speaker Jason White has said he supports phasing out the income tax, while Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has said the Senate will propose reducing the 7% sales tax on groceries.

In July, Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas signed legislation that will reduce her state’s income tax to 3.9%. Louisiana lawmakers are in special session this week to consider reductions to the state’s income tax, possibly to 3%.

“We are in a competition for new business and new industry, and it is a competition that we’ve got to be aware of,” Reeves said. “And if we want to continue to see the kind of economic development successes that we’ve had, we’ve got to be competitive from a tax standpoint.”

Reeves on Wednesday announced $110 million for infrastructure upgrades at potential industrial sites and projects for worker training, tourism and conservation. The money came from the state government and other sources, including the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Delta Regional Authority and a federal fund established after the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Mississippi needs to be ready to compete with other states when industries are looking for places to develop, the governor said.

“Most of the challenges we have in Mississippi could be solved by every single person here having both the skills that they need and the opportunity for a job that pays 60- or 70- or $80,000 a year, and that’s what we’re focused on,” Reeves said.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi is trying to extend his 30-year career on Capitol Hill as he faces Democrat Ty Pinkins, a challenger who received little financial support from his own party in a heavily Republican state.

Wicker, now 73, was first elected to the U.S. House in a northern Mississippi district in 1994 and was appointed to the Senate in 2007 by then-Gov. Haley Barbour after Republican Trent Lott resigned.

Wicker is an attorney and served in the Mississippi state Senate before going to Washington. He is the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee and has pushed to expand shipbuilding for the military. He was endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

Pinkins, 50, is an attorney and ran for Mississippi secretary of state in 2023. He said he wants to fight poverty and improve access to health care.

Pinkins and Wicker expressed sharp differences about abortion rights. Wicker has praised the Supreme Court for overturning its 1973 ruling that legalized abortion access nationwide, while Pinkins has criticized the court’s 2022 decision.

“While the Biden administration continues pursuing its pro-abortion agenda, pro-life advocates will continue doing what we have always done: working through our legislative and legal systems to promote a culture of life,” Wicker said.

Pinkins said that because it’s “impossible biologically” for him to become pregnant, “I am not qualified to tell a woman what to do with her body.”

Mississippi’s last Democrat in the U.S. Senate was John C. Stennis, whose final term ended in January 1989.

Republicans control all of Mississippi’s statewide offices, three of the state’s four U.S. House seats and a majority of state legislative seats.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi has three contested U.S. House elections and one incumbent who will win another term with no opposition in the general election.

HOUSE DISTRICT 1

Republican Rep. Trent Kelly faces Democratic challenger Dianne Dodson Black in north Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District. This is a rematch of the 2022 race, when Kelly defeated Black.

Kelly is a former district attorney and has been in the House since winning a 2015 special election. He is a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Black, a business owner, says she wants to support President Joe Biden’s economic policies, restore abortion rights and limit access to semiautomatic rifles.

Kelly’s campaign raised nearly $1.2 million and spent about $893,000 through mid-October, while Black’s campaign raised about $9,400 and spent about $7,400.

HOUSE DISTRICT 2

Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson faces Republican challenger Ron Eller in the 2nd District, which encompasses most of the city of Jackson, plus rural areas in the Delta and along the Mississippi River.

Thompson is a former Bolton mayor and former Hinds County supervisor. He the longest-serving member of Mississippi’s current congressional delegation, first winning a special election in 1993. He is the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee and chaired the committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Eller, a military veteran and physician assistant, ran unsuccessfully for the 2nd District Republican nomination in 2022. He supports U.S.-Mexico border wall construction and the expansion of domestic energy production.

Thompson’s campaign raised and spent just over $1 million through mid-October, while Eller’s campaign raised nearly $48,000 and spent about $17,800.

Republican Rep. Michael Guest was unopposed in the primary and the general election for central Mississippi’s 3rd District. Guest is a former district attorney who was first elected to the House in 2018. He is chairman of the House Ethics Committee and vice chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.

HOUSE DISTRICT 4

Republican Rep. Mike Ezell faces Democratic challenger Craig Elliot Raybon in south Mississippi’s 4th District.

Ezell had a 42-year law enforcement career, including eight years as Jackson County sheriff, before being elected to the House in 2022. He has voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and to end military assistance to Ukraine.

Raybon, a first-time candidate, has said he wants to increase the minimum wage, expand vocational training programs and lower prescription drug prices.

Ezell’s campaign raised and spent about $1 million through mid-October. Federal Election Commission records show no campaign finance information for Raybon.

BILOXI, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi Gulf Coast, battered by a mammoth oil spill more than a decade ago and left bereft by years of subsequent flooding, will have its first oyster season since 2018.

The oyster season will open at sunrise, Nov. 13, in eight harvesting areas, but will last only 10 days, the state Department of Marine Resources said in a statement Wednesday.

The agency has set harvest limits at 10 sacks per vessel for both commercial oyster tonging and dredging. Recreational harvest is limited to three sacks per recreationally licensed resident for a seven-day period.

The season arrives with the approach of Thanksgiving, when residents look forward to including oysters in holiday spreads.

The state has invested millions to restore oyster reefs since the 2010 BP oil spill. But flooding has in subsequent years, decimated the beds, diluting salinity in the Mississippi Sound to the point that oysters couldn’t survive, the Sun Herald reported.

In 2019, Mississippi River water released through the Bonnet Carré Spillway in Louisiana killed almost all the oysters on Mississippi’s most productive reefs, which are in the western sound.

“Through our monitoring efforts, we have seen positive growth over the last couple of years and are ready to open a limited season in certain areas,” Joe Spraggins, the department’s director, told the newspaper. “The season is to provide some access to the industry and get Mississippi oysters on the market.”

With a limited season, Spraggins said, the agency wants to avoid fragile reefs being over-fished so that oyster growth can be preserved.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A conservative federal court said Mississippi cannot count mail-in ballots that arrive shortly after Election Day, however Friday’s decision was not expected to affect the Nov. 5 election.

Although the appellate judges firmly asserted that counting late ballots violates federal law, even if those ballots are postmarked by Election Day, the judges stopped short of an order immediately blocking Mississippi from continuing the practice. Their ruling noted federal court precedents have discouraged court actions that change established procedures shortly before an election.

The outcome may be negligible in most elections in heavily Republican Mississippi, but the case could affect voting in swing states if the Supreme Court ultimately issues a ruling.

The three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a July decision by U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr., who had dismissed challenges to Mississippi’s election law by the Republican National Committee, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi and others. The appeals court order sent the case back to Guirola for further action.

The appeals court said its ruling Friday would not be returned to a lower court until seven days after the deadline for appealing their decision has passed — which is usually at least 14 days. That would put the effect of the ruling well past Nov. 5.

UCLA law professor Richard Hasen wrote on his election law blog that the appeals court ruling was a “bonkers opinion” and noted that “every other court to face these cases has rejected this argument.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley praised the ruling for upholding “commonsense ballot safeguards” and said voters deserve “a transparent election which ends on November 5th.”

A spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee did not immediately comment on the ruling.

Mississippi is one of several states with laws allowing mailed ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The list includes swing states such as Nevada and states such as Colorado, Oregon and Utah that rely heavily on mail voting.

In July, a federal judge dismissed a similar lawsuit in Nevada. The Republican National Committee is asking the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to revive that case.

Guirola wrote that Mississippi’s law does not conflict with federal election laws. The suit challenging the Mississippi law argued that the state improperly extends the federal election and that, as a result, “timely, valid ballots are diluted by untimely, invalid ballots.”

Guirola disagreed, writing in July that “no ‘final selection’ is made after the federal election day under Mississippi’s law. All that occurs after election day is the delivery and counting of ballots cast on or before election day.”

Although the Mississippi challenge was led by Republicans and Libertarians, there is bipartisan support for the Mississippi practice. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch is defending the state’s top election official. Secretary of State Michael Watson a defendant in the case. Both are Republicans.

Watson said in a statement Friday that his office will “explore all available legal options.”

The members of the appellate panel that reversed Guirola were judges James Ho, Stuart Kyle Duncan and Andrew Oldham, all nominated to the 5th Circuit by former President Donald Trump.