Several health care organizations gathered at the Capitol Thursday to advocate for patients and call on legislative leaders to expand Medicaid. 

“Forty-seven years after I began my practice in Laurel, (it’s) 2025, there are still thousands and thousands of Mississippians who don’t have access to health care,” said Dr. Dan Jones, former chancellor of the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Jones was joined by the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Lung Association and Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. 

Advocates said there is “no time like the present” to take advantage of a state-federal program that would bring in billions of federal dollars, as 40 other states have done since the Affordable Care Act made it an option in 2014. 

Expanding Medicaid in Mississippi would provide health insurance to tens of thousands of low-income working Mississippians whose income is too much to qualify for Medicaid under the state’s strict eligibility requirements but too little to afford private insurance from the marketplace. 

As it stands, Mississippi has one of the country’s strictest income requirements for Medicaid. Childless adults don’t qualify, and parents must make less than 28% of the federal poverty level, a mere $7,000 annually for a family of three, to qualify. More times than not, that means that working a full-time job counts against an individual – despite anti-expansion critics arguing that Medicaid should only apply to those who work.

House and Senate Medicaid committees passed expansion “dummy” bills on Wednesday ahead of legislative deadlines, meaning the issue is alive, but no details have been fleshed out as lawmakers say they’re waiting to hear what a Trump administration will bring. 

Meanwhile, Gov. Tate Reeves continues to publicly oppose the policy, which he derisively calls “welfare.”

Expansion will face all the problems it faced last year – too few votes in the Senate, plus disagreements over the income threshold and whether or not to include a work requirement – with the added issue of a federal administration in transition.

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

The state House is again trying to reinstate Mississippi voters’ right to place issues directly on the ballot.

But the latest measure, again, would not allow voters to consider any abortion issues.

A House committee on Wednesday passed House Concurrent Resolution 30, which is still several legislative steps away from being finalized. It would reinstate citizens’ ability to gather signatures to propose new state laws or change existing laws. The measure also would not allow them to amend the state Constitution. 

“I’m trying to give something to the people,” House Constitution Chairman Price Wallace told reporters after the committee vote. 

The House leadership’s previous recent proposals also would have barred voters from considering any initiative related to abortion. However, the Senate has blocked voters regaining any right to ballot initiatives.

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated a person’s constitutional right to an abortion, Mississippi’s so-called “trigger law” went into effect that banned abortion in most instances.

But after the nation’s highest court ruled in 2022 that state governments have the authority to set abortion laws, voters in several conservative-run states elected to protect abortion access.

The current House proposal would require petitioners to gather signatures from 12% of the number of people who voted in the last presidential election, which Wallace estimates to be around 145,000 people. 

One change from past proposals is that the current legislation would require petitioners to gather an equal number of signatures from the state’s three Supreme Court districts, instead of from Congressional districts. 

“We looked at the Supreme Court districts, which is a lot easier to get the signatures,” Wallace said. “That’s why we went with that.” 

Mississippi law establishes three distinct Supreme Court districts, commonly referred to as the Northern, Central and Southern districts. But these districts have not been redrawn since 1987, and a federal judge is currently considering a case to redraw those districts.  

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Mississippi, the Southern Poverty Law Center and private law firms on behalf of a group of Black Mississippians including state Sen. Derrick Simmons, D-Greenville, sued state officials in April 2022 arguing the districts as currently drawn do not allow Black citizens to elect a candidate of their own choosing. 

If U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock orders the state to redraw the districts while the state implements a new voter initiative process, it could lead to voter confusion or further delay. 

Wallace said he was not aware of the lawsuit and it was not a factor in his decision to require petitions to gather signatures from the Supreme Court districts instead of congressional districts.  

Population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau and voter data from the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office analyzed by Mississippi Today show that the number of people and active voters in the three areas are not equal. 

There are 659,920 active voters in the Northern District, 621,181 in the Central District and 699,806 in the Southern District. 

This is now the fourth year in a row that lawmakers have attempted to reinstate some version of a ballot initiative after the Mississippi Supreme Court in 2021 ruled the state’s initiative process was unworkable because of a technicality of the number of the state’s congressional districts. 

The Senate killed a similar House bill in 2023,  and it failed to pass its own version of a ballot initiative proposal last year. The Senate has not yet advanced its own ballot initiative proposal out of a committee this session.

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

Randy McDonald relaxes at his vintage clothing store, exuding an air of timeless style, impeccably dapper in a striking Houndstooth jacket, red turtleneck, artfully ripped black jeans and Buster Brown-esque black-and-white saddle oxfords, reminiscing back in time with juxtaposing ease on how his love of fashion came to be.

“So, funny story,” he begins, smiling and shaking his head. “I always tell men that come into my store that the reason I’m probably so much into fashion has to do with my grandmother, my mother and my aunt. Yep, those three women,” his smile widening.

“We would get up on Saturday mornings, go have breakfast, then head to the mall. Let me tell you, they would go mad. From about 10 o’clock until 2 o’clock, we shopped. Then, we’d stop, have lunch, and repeat the process until around six in the evening. Then we would have dinner and very possibly do a third round dash through the stores before heading home around 9 o’clock.”

McDonald pauses, gazing around his store Silly Billy’s, located at 5482 N. State St. in Jackson.

“I learned a lot from those women. They were always stylish. I picked up that looking good makes you feel better about yourself,” he says quietly, nearly in a whisper.

“Here’s style for you. My grandmother…,” he says, remembering. “She wanted a very specific car… a black Cadillac with black leather interior and a black rag top, trimmed in gold. When the dealership found it and called her to come pick it up, she decided that first, she needed a new outfit to wear with her new car.”

“My grandmother went to Mobile and had a lady that sewed clothes for her create a two-piece ivory set that had lace on top and beading to match that Caddy. Here’s the kicker. Come Sunday, she put on her new two-piece ivory set to match her all black Caddy to drive to church,” he says with a gleam in his eye. “The church was probably fifteen to twenty feet away from her house.”

McDonald chuckles while arranging items in his store at the memory of his grandmother’s panache, pointing out different eras in clothing from the groovy 60s to the Disco 70s to 90s hip hop.

“The idea behind Silly Billy’s and why I go by Billy instead of Randy, is because Billy pays the bills,” McDonald says, still laughing. “The whole thing derived from sitting down with the original store owner and trying to come up with names. We kept coming up with all these crazy names. Then I remembered a funny story he’d told me about how in his family, they would say, “silly Billy,” instead of a curse word. It was their way of getting your attention when you were doing something or saying something incorrectly too. I just love the fact that they would say, “Oh, you’re being such a silly Billy.” For whatever reason, it resonated with me and just stuck,” he says, smiling, gesturing with a sweep of an arm. 

“Everybody always paid attention to that name. I knew, too, that I was onto something when my brother told me the name is so different and unique, and it makes you laugh.”

“I inherited the store from the original owner, who was retiring. I had another job, and I often just helped out as the cashier or wherever, doing whatever I could. Then, the place where I was working closed down.”

“The owner said, ‘”‘Come and work for me. Give it a year, see what happens.’ And so I did. Before I knew it, one year turned into two, two turned into three… now, here I am, almost 10 years in,” he says, smiling warmly.

“Here’s what I’ve learned over time. My items always tell people, we all fall under the umbrella of thrift. There are a few different arms to that though. You have donations, which will be similar to say, a Goodwill or Salvation Army. You have consignment, like a Repeat Street. Then there’s me. I’m the lone wolf here in Jackson because I go and purchase select items that I want to sell. I resell them in my store so I’m the only store that actually has to purchase up front. I do accept donations, but I don’t get donations like the others I mentioned.”

“My idea is to sell clothing and accessories at a price that pretty much anyone can afford.”

Silly Billy’s is open Wednesday – Saturday, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Social Media: 

Instagram – @SILLYBILLY’SLLC

Facebook – Silly Billy’s LLC

Website: http://silly-billys-llc.myshopify.com

Phone: (601)287-4949

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