There are 159,826 children in Mississippi whose custodial parents are owed child support, totaling $1.7 billion, according to data obtained by a Mississippi senator.

Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, got those numbers from the Mississippi Department of Human Services on Thursday, hours before the Senate passed a bill that would allow the agency to collaborate with the state Gaming Commission to withhold cash winnings from people with outstanding child support.

“I have to admit, I was astonished,” said Blount, chairman of the Senate Gaming Committee. “This is a bill that comes to us from the Department of Human Services in an effort to get some of that money for those families and those children.”

Some Mississippi lawmakers have pushed for years to intercept gambling and sports betting winnings from people delinquent on their child support payments. Federal data shows Mississippi has the worst child support collection rate in the nation and one of the highest rates of child poverty. The state collected just 52% of the support payments judges ordered parents to make in 2023, compared to 65% nationally.

The legislation, authored by Sen. Walter Michel, R-Ridgeland, targets gambling winnings as a way to claw back some of the outstanding payments. Similar efforts in the Legislature have failed for years as lawmakers have argued over how casinos would identify delinquent consumers and questioned how much money the state would realistically recoup through such an effort.

The gaming industry has also requested a real-time database that casinos could access, so as not to disrupt the issuing of winnings. 

In 2024, a similar bill passed the Senate but died in the House. This year, the House has also passed a bill out committee that would also require the state Gaming Commission to collaborate with MDHS, the state’s welfare agency that oversees the child support program, to withhold winnings.

Similar laws already exist in several other states, including bordering Louisiana. In the first nine years, the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services intercepted an average of nearly $1 million a year from casinos, according to the National Child Support Engagement Association. 

The bill would require the MDHS and the Gaming Commission to set up a system similar to the one in Louisiana, Blount said.

The system would impact people who win more than $1,200 on slot machines. It would also look at the rare instance in which people bet more than $600 in table or sports games and win more than 300 times the amount they wagered. These instances would be targeted because they are documented with the Internal Revenue Service.

MDHS would then use those documents to build a list of people with outstanding child support payments. Casinos would be required to reference that list before handing over winnings. People who have their winnings withheld would have the opportunity to challenge their status on the list with MDHS.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Feb. 7, 1866

Ten months after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, a delegation of Black men, led by Frederick Douglass, met with President Andrew Johnson at the White House. 

Southern states had already begun to impose “Black Codes” on Black Americans now freed from slavery. 

In their meeting with Johnson, Douglass and others shared why it was important that the right to vote be given to Black Americans and enforced. Johnson rejected their proposal and responded with what sounded like a prepared speech, arguing that “a war of races” would take place between newly freed Black Americans and their poor, white counterparts. 

After the meeting, Douglass and the others penned a letter to the president, saying while it was true the hostility existed, the roots of such hatred were found in the system of slavery. The end of such slavery can help to bring the end to such hate, they wrote. 

They questioned how Johnson could allow these Black Codes to continue “for a people whom you have repeatedly declared your purpose to maintain in freedom.” 

They told the president that “peace between races can not be secured by degrading one race and exalting another, by giving power to one race and withholding it from another, but by maintaining a state of equal justice between all classes.” 

In the years that followed, Douglass continued to rise as a leader, championing the rights of both African Americans and women. 

Johnson became the first president impeached, dodging removal from office by one vote in the Senate. He eventually returned to Tennessee and the U.S. Senate, dying just a few months later.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The Mississippi Senate passed a bill Thursday that would eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs from the state’s universities, a priority elevated by Republican President Donald Trump. 

Senate Republicans passed the bill with a party line 34-14 vote. The move comes a day after the House advanced a sweeping anti-DEI bill of its own. The move lays the groundwork for negotiations between the House and Senate. The measures passed by each chamber differ in who they would impact, what activities they would regulate and how they aim to reshape the inner workings of the state’s education system.

The Senate bill defines DEI as any effort to influence the composition of the faculty or student body with reference to “race, sex, color, or ethnicity, apart from ensuring colorblind and sex-neutral admissions and hiring in accordance with state and federal anti-discrimination laws.”

It would ban all campus training and programs deemed to violate that definition.

The bill’s prime sponsors, Tyler McCaughn, R-Newton and Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, have argued the proposed law will clean up inefficiencies in Mississisppi’s higher education system and return the admissions and hiring process to a merit-based system.

“Abolishing DEI policies does not mean we are abandoning diversity,” McCaughn said. “It means that we are refocusing …We’re refocusing on excellence.”

In addition to banning DEI initiatives, Senate Bill 2515, titled the “Requiring Efficiency For Our Colleges And Universities System,” or REFOCUS Act, would create a task force to look for inefficiencies in the state’s higher education system. 

The task force would seek to shed light on Mississippi’s lower rate of postsecondary degrees than other states, what can be done to prepare for a declining number of high school graduates attending college and other questions. 

Senate Democrats, as their colleagues in the lower chamber argued Wednesday, said DEI programs were created to correct for centuries of discrimination against minorities and women.

“I want you to understand that when we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, it is not a matter of having unqualified people or you missing an opportunity,” said Democratic Sen. Rod Hickman. “What diversity, equity and inclusion does is it is a mechanism that opens the door for me that your fathers or your grandfathers or somebody down the road opened for you.”

The legislation would impact all of the state’s community colleges and public universities. The House version extends to K-12 schools. The House bill would also bar universities from offering certain courses. The Senate bill has an exemption for scholarly research or creative works.

The House bill contains a provision absent from the Senate version that would force all public schools to teach and promote that there are two genders.

The proposals also differ in how they would be enforced. The Senate bill would direct universities to develop an internal complaint and investigative process for looking into those accused of violating the law. Only students, faculty and contractors would be able to file complaints. The House bill threatens to withhold state funds based on complaints that anyone could lodge. It would empower people to sue schools accused of violating the law.

DEI programs have come under fire mostly from conservatives, who say the programs divide people into categories of victims and oppressors, exacerbate antisemitism and infuse left-wing ideology into campus life. DEI also has progressive critics, who say the programs can be used to feign support for reducing inequality without actually doing so.

But proponents say the programs have been critical to ensuring women and minorities aren’t discriminated against in schools and workplace settings. They argue the programs are necessary to ensure that institutions meet the needs of increasingly diverse student populations.

Trump promised in his 2024 campaign to eliminate DEI in the federal government. One of the first executive orders he signed did that. Some Mississippi lawmakers introduced bills in the 2024 session to restrict DEI, but the proposals never made it out of committee.

The House and Senate now have the ability to take up the other chamber’s proposal as they potentially work toward a final bill.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.