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Shocker: Mississippi lawmakers not keen on sharing power with masses, more transparency for themselves

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Mississippi senators recently beat the stew out of a bill that would have applied more transparency and rules to their campaign finances, leaving the bill gutted, on life support and likely to die.

They gave similar treatment to a measure to restore voters’ right to sidestep the Legislature and put measures directly on a statewide ballot. The right was nullified by the state Supreme Court three years ago. The milquetoast move to restore it is once again dead.

Read that: Special interests, 2; unwashed masses, 0.

Now, if you asked the common ordinary Mississippian whether they should have the right to ballot initiative and to know who is buying their politicians and for how much, they’d say heck-yes.

So why are lawmakers killing what would appear to be basic, populistic initiatives?

Such is the nature of representative government, politicians’ self interest, special interests and voters’ short attention spans. Here’s a couple little secrets and axioms: Politicians don’t like relinquishing any power, even to their constituents. And when it comes to policing and transparency over the money they get from special interests, they are a hive mind — transparency and rules for thee, not for me.

READ MORE: Voter initiative would be hard to use under bills moving in Legislature

READ MORE: Campaign finance reform bill gets cold response; lawmakers axe transparency component

Perhaps no other issue ever brings such bipartisan support from Mississippi politicians as killing proposals for campaign finance or ethics reform. Recently they took turns with amendments, including removing anything from the campaign finance bill that would actually do anything, then making the measure repeal before it could take effect, just in case something crazy like it passing into law might happen.

Various groups have called for lawmakers to reinstate voters’ right to ballot initiative since the state high court deemed it unconstitutional on a technicality. This was in a ruling that struck down a successful referendum where voters overwhelmingly approved medical marijuana in Mississippi. Lawmakers reluctantly approved medical marijuana afterward, but dickering over details between the House and Senate has prevented any reinstatement of the right to ballot initiative.

Oddly, a ballot initiative drive led by medical providers and other advocates in 2021 could have let voters settle an issue that still has state lawmakers in a twist: Medicaid expansion. A petition drive to force a statewide vote on the issue had just begun that year when the state Supreme Court ruling nullified the state’s initiative process.

READ MORE: For third-straight year, ballot initiative likely dead in Senate 

Certainly there are valid arguments against expansive use of ballot initiative in a representative democracy. Our founding fathers wanted to prevent “mob rule” in part to guarantee individual rights. But it seems pretty clear after three years of debate on the issue in the Legislature, that’s not the primary concern for most lawmakers.

Several polls have shown voters want the safety valve the right to ballot initiative would provide, and while mob rule must be tempered, so must special interest influence over lawmakers.

That brings us back to the (now-defunct) campaign finance reform measure. It was technically passed and kept alive, but was gutted, then gutted again and now is only a shell of a bill containing only code sections ensuring the House couldn’t pass any reform into law if it wanted to (which it likely does not).

This bill was a result of Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and others seeking reelection or election last year realizing the state has extremely lax campaign finance laws, little transparency and basically nonexistent enforcement. As millions of dollars in dark money poured into campaigns and some candidates appeared to thumb their noses at what rules we do have, Hosemann and others called for enforcement.

But the secretary of state’s office and Ethics Commission noted they had no real enforcement authority under Mississippi’s confusing, conflicting hodgepodge of campaign finance laws. And the attorney general, the only officer with clear enforcement authority, made clear she had little interest in doing so.

Later, though, after catching some political flak, Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in a press release that she, too, is for reform, and ironically enough would like to see some enforcement. But in doing so, she appeared to nullify one of the state’s few restrictions on campaign donations. More on that in a bit.

READ MORE: Attorney General Lynn Fitch wants campaign finance reform and more enforcement — wait, what?

Senate Bill 2575, authored by Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England, would have brought some such reform, and could have brought Mississippi into the 20th if not 21st century with campaign finance regulations and transparency.

Notably, it would have created the same type public, searchable database of campaign donations that most other states — including all those that surround us — have had for years. It also would have made it illegal to lie on such a report. This, Hosemann said, “goes to the heart of the electoral process,” and “to have an informed voter, you need to know who’s paying for what.”

This (as did other reforms in the bill) drew indignant howls from Senate Democrats and Republicans alike. They generally seem to be all for government transparency, except when any might splash onto them. It would appear that stripping them of the right to turn in illegible campaign finance reports, written in crayon and full of inaccuracies and incomplete information would be a bridge too far. This got stripped in committee before the bill ever reached the Senate floor.

Obviously, as the legislative session enters the final stretch, no major campaign finance reform appears to be forthcoming. The shell of a Senate bill remains alive in the House, but even if the House were to revive its major reforms, the Senate already showed its disdain for it.

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves’ top political donors received $1.4 billion in state contracts from his agencies

That brings us back to Fitch’s odd move when she called for reform. In her press release, she said that Mississippi has no limits on how much out-of-state corporations can donate to candidates. This is contrary to decades of interpretation of Mississippi law and practice by candidates. Everyone other than Fitch, including her predecessors and secretaries of state, had operated under the legal interpretation that out-of-state corporations had the same $1,000 a year per candidate limit as in-state corporations.

Fitch made clear she doesn’t believe going over that limit is a violation. She even said that, perusing Mississippi code, she isn’t even sure what defines a corporation.

So, given what would appear to be an open invitation from the state’s chief legal officer to out-of-state corporate special interests, in the absence of any new law, Mississippi isn’t back where it started on campaign finance. It’s far worse.

So, that’s really: Special interests, 3; unwashed masses, 0.

The message to big money special interests appears clear: If you want to buy state politicians, come on down to Mississippi. We’re stacking them deep and selling them cheap.

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

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Mississippi Today

Derrick Simmons: Monday’s Confederate Memorial Day recognition is awful for Mississippians

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mississippitoday.org – @BobbyHarrison9 – 2025-04-27 14:32:00

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.


Each year, in a handful of states, public offices close, flags are lowered and official ceremonies commemorate “Confederate Memorial Day.”

Mississippi is among those handful of states that on Monday will celebrate the holiday intended to honor the soldiers who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War.

But let me be clear: celebrating Confederate Memorial Day is not only racist but is bad policy, bad governance and a deep stain on the values we claim to uphold today.

First, there is no separating the Confederacy from the defense of slavery and white supremacy. The Confederacy was not about “states’ rights” in the abstract; it was about the right to own human beings. Confederate leaders themselves made that clear.

Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens declared in his infamous “Cornerstone Speech” that the Confederacy was founded upon “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.” No amount of revisionist history can erase the fact that the Confederacy’s cause was fundamentally rooted in preserving racial subjugation.

To honor that cause with a state holiday is to glorify a rebellion against the United States fought to defend the indefensible. It is an insult to every citizen who believes in equality and freedom, and it is a cruel slap in the face to Black Americans, whose ancestors endured the horrors of slavery and generations of systemic discrimination that followed.

Beyond its moral bankruptcy, Confederate Memorial Day is simply bad public policy. Holidays are public statements of our values. They are moments when a state, through official sanction, tells its citizens: “This is what we believe is worthy of honor.” Keeping Confederate Memorial Day on the calendar sends a message that a government once committed to denying basic human rights should be celebrated.

That message is not just outdated — it is dangerous. It nurtures the roots of racism, fuels division and legitimizes extremist ideologies that threaten our democracy today.

Moreover, there are real economic and administrative costs to shutting down government offices for this purpose. In a time when states face budget constraints, workforce shortages and urgent civic challenges, it is absurd to prioritize paid time off to commemorate a failed and racist insurrection. Our taxpayer dollars should be used to advance justice, education, infrastructure and economic development — not to prop up a lost cause of hate.

If we truly believe in moving forward together as one people, we must stop clinging to symbols that represent treason, brutality and white supremacy. There is a legislative record that supports this move in a veto-proof majority changing the state Confederate flag in 2020. Taking Confederate Memorial Day off our official state holiday calendar is another necessary step toward a more inclusive and just society.

Mississippi had the largest population of enslaved individuals in 1865 and today has the highest percentage of Black residents in the United States. We should not honor the Confederacy or Confederate Memorial Day. We should replace it.

Replacing a racist holiday with one that celebrates emancipation underscores the state’s rich African American history and promotes a more inclusive understanding of its past. It would also align the state’s observances with national efforts to commemorate the end of slavery and the ongoing pursuit of equality.

I will continue my legislative efforts to replace Confederate Memorial Day as a state holiday with Juneteenth, which commemorates the freedom for America’s enslaved people.

It’s time to end Confederate Memorial Day once and for all.


Derrick T. Simmons, D-Greensville, serves as the minority leader in the state Senate. He represents Bolivar, Coahoma and Washington counties in the Mississippi Senate.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Derrick Simmons: Monday's Confederate Memorial Day recognition is awful for Mississippians appeared first on mississippitoday.org



Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Left-Leaning

This article argues against the celebration of Confederate Memorial Day, stating it glorifies a racist and failed rebellion that is harmful to societal values. It critiques the holiday as a symbol of white supremacy and advocates for replacing it with Juneteenth to honor emancipation. The language used, such as referring to the Confederate cause as “moral bankruptcy,” and the call to replace the holiday reflects a progressive stance on social justice and racial equality, common in left-leaning perspectives. Additionally, the writer urges action for inclusivity and justice, positioning the argument within modern liberal values.

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois urged active resistance to racist policies

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-27 07:00:00

April 27, 1903

W.E.B. Du Bois by James E. Purdy in 1907 from the National Portrait Gallery.

W.E.B. Du Bois, in his book, “The Souls of Black Folk,” called for active resistance to racist policies: “We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.” 

He described the tension between being Black and being an American: “One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” 

He criticized Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” speech. Six years later, Du Bois helped found the NAACP and became the editor of its monthly magazine, The Crisis. He waged protests against the racist silent film “The Birth of a Nation” and against lynchings of Black Americans, detailing the 2,732 lynchings between 1884 and 1914. 

In 1921, he decried Harvard University’s decisions to ban Black students from the dormitories as an attempt to renew “the Anglo-Saxon cult, the worship of the Nordic totem, the disenfranchisement of Negro, Jew, Irishman, Italian, Hungarian, Asiatic and South Sea Islander — the world rule of Nordic white through brute force.” 

In 1929, he debated Lothrop Stoddard, a proponent of scientific racism, who also happened to belong to the Ku Klux Klan. The Chicago Defender’s front page headline read, “5,000 Cheer W.E.B. DuBois, Laugh at Lothrup Stoddard.” 

In 1949, the FBI began to investigate Du Bois as a “suspected Communist,” and he was indicted on trumped-up charges that he had acted as an agent of a foreign state and had failed to register. The government dropped the case after Albert Einstein volunteered to testify as a character witness. 

Despite the lack of conviction, the government confiscated his passport for eight years. In 1960, he recovered his passport and traveled to the newly created Republic of Ghana. Three years later, the U.S. government refused to renew his passport, so Du Bois became a citizen of Ghana. He died on Aug. 27, 1963, the eve of the March on Washington.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Mississippi Today

Jim Hood’s opinion provides a roadmap if lawmakers do the unthinkable and can’t pass a budget

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mississippitoday.org – @BobbyHarrison9 – 2025-04-27 06:00:00

On June 30, 2009, Sam Cameron, the then-executive director of the Mississippi Hospital Association, held a news conference in the Capitol rotunda to publicly take his whipping and accept his defeat.

Cameron urged House Democrats, who had sided with the Hospital Association, to accept the demands of Republican Gov. Haley Barbour to place an additional $90 million tax on the state’s hospitals to help fund Medicaid and prevent the very real possibility of the program and indeed much of state government being shut down when the new budget year began in a few hours. The impasse over Medicaid and the hospital tax had stopped all budget negotiations.

Barbour watched from a floor above as Cameron publicly admitted defeat. Cameron’s decision to swallow his pride was based on a simple equation. He told news reporters, scores of lobbyists and health care advocates who had set up camp in the Capitol as midnight on July 1 approached that, while he believed the tax would hurt Mississippi hospitals, not having a Medicaid budget would be much more harmful.

Just as in 2009, the Legislature ended the 2025 regular session earlier this month without a budget agreement and will have to come back in special session to adopt a budget before the new fiscal year begins on July 1. It is unlikely that the current budget rift between the House and Senate will be as dramatic as the 2009 standoff when it appeared only hours before the July 1 deadline that there would be no budget. But who knows what will result from the current standoff? After all, the current standoff in many ways seems to be more about political egos than policy differences on the budget.

The fight centers around multiple factors, including:

  • Whether legislation will be passed to allow sports betting outside of casinos.
  • Whether the Senate will agree to a massive projects bill to fund local projects throughout the state.
  • Whether leaders will overcome hard feelings between the two chambers caused by the House’s hasty final passage of a Senate tax cut bill filled with typos that altered the intent of the bill without giving the Senate an opportunity to fix the mistakes.
  • Whether members would work on a weekend at the end of the session. The Senate wanted to, the House did not.

It is difficult to think any of those issues will rise to the ultimate level of preventing the final passage of a budget when push comes to shove.

But who knows? What we do know is that the impasse in 2009 created a guideline of what could happen if a budget is not passed.

It is likely that parts, though not all, of state government will shut down if the Legislature does the unthinkable and does not pass a budget for the new fiscal year beginning July 1.

An official opinion of the office of Attorney General Jim Hood issued in 2009 said if there is no budget passed by the Legislature, those services mandated in the Mississippi Constitution, such as a public education system, will continue.

According to the Hood opinion, other entities, such as the state’s debt, and court and federal mandates, also would be funded. But it is likely that there will not be funds for Medicaid and many other programs, such as transportation and aspects of public safety that are not specifically listed in the Mississippi Constitution.

The Hood opinion reasoned that the Mississippi Constitution is the ultimate law of the state and must be adhered to even in the absence of legislative action. Other states have reached similar conclusions when their legislatures have failed to act, the AG’s opinion said.

As is often pointed out, the opinion of the attorney general does not carry the weight of law. It serves only as a guideline, though Gov. Tate Reeves has relied on the 2009 opinion even though it was written by the staff of Hood, who was Reeves’ opponent in the contentious 2019 gubernatorial campaign.

But if the unthinkable ever occurs and the Legislature goes too far into a new fiscal year without adopting a budget, it most likely will be the courts — moreso than an AG’s opinion — that ultimately determine if and how state government operates.

In 2009 Sam Cameron did not want to see what would happen if a budget was not adopted. It also is likely that current political leaders do not want to see the results of not having a budget passed before July 1 of this year.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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