Mississippi Today
Trump says everybody should vote on abortion. Mississippi leaders clearly disagree.
Mississippi’s Republican political leaders have continuously voiced unwavering support for former President Donald Trump’s policies and actions.
But on the hot button issue of abortion, there appears to be some separation between the position of the state‘s political leadership and the policy of the former president who is vying to win a second term.
Trump now supports, his campaign has said, every state voting on the issue of abortion.
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign told NBC News earlier this month: “As president Trump said, he wants โeverybody to vote’ on the issue, reiterating his long-held position of supporting the rights of states to make decisions on abortion.”
Mississippi’s political leaders, however, have gone to extraordinary measures to ensure that their citizens are not allowed to vote on the issue.
For two consecutive legislative sessions, the state’s political leadership has proposed legislation that would prohibit Mississippians from being able to vote on abortion.
In both the 2023 and 2024 sessions, lawmakers attempted to pass a proposal to restore the ballot initiative process, in which voters can bypass the Legislature and gather enough signatures to place issues on the ballot for the electorate to approve or reject. There was a need to restore the initiative process because the state Supreme Court struck it down on a technicality in 2021.
At the time, the state’s political leadership vowed to fix the technicality and restore the process of allowing citizens to place issues on the ballot.
But as they worked to restore the process the past two sessions, political leaders opted to add a provision to proposals that would prevent the initiative from being used to garner a vote on abortion. Those efforts to restore the process have been blocked at least in part because of opposition to placing the ban on a vote on abortion in the legislation.
But, in a sort of Catch-22, the fact that the initiative has not been restored means there is no mechanism for the citizens to put abortion on the ballot.
Political leaders do not want abortion on the ballot, at least in part because it would be embarrassing for them if voters rejected the state’s strict abortion ban. After all, Mississippi brought the lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court that led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which previously provided a national right to an abortion.
It is important to remember that the only time Mississippians voted on an abortion-related issue was in 2011. The state’s electorate that year overwhelmingly voted against the personhood initiative, which would have put into law that life begins at fertilization.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, seven states have voted on abortion โ and all seven, including Republican states like Kentucky and Kansas, have voted in favor of abortion rights.
At least nine more states will vote on abortion this November. Trump is fearful that people coming out to vote in favor of abortion rights in those states will vote against him because he has bragged about being responsible for the overturning of Roe v. Wade thanks to the three conservatives he appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court during his first term.
The states that will be voting on abortion this November include the key swing states of Florida, Arizona and Nevada. It would be difficult to see a path to reelection for Trump if he loses Florida. So, not surprisingly, the man who brags on overturning a national right to abortion will not say how he plans to vote on the abortion issue in his adopted home state of Florida.
In neighboring Arkansas, where former Trump spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders is governor, the Republican secretary of state blocked an initiative that would provide a right to an abortion for up to 18 weeks from making the ballot. The initiative was struck down even though sponsors gathered the required number of signatures. Arkansas, like Mississippi, now has a ban on most all abortions.
It’s also important to remember that Trump’s position on abortion has evolved dramatically through the years.
In 1996, he proclaimed that he supported abortion rights.
When he ran for president in 2016, he campaigned on overturning Roe v. Wade and voiced support for placing national restrictions on abortion. He even briefly endorsed criminal penalties on women who had abortions, though he backtracked on that position soon after learning how unpopular it was.
Trump recently seemed to leave open the possibility of his administration banning the so-called abortion pill, though he later backtracked and his campaign said he misunderstood the question.
Now, facing a tough campaign where abortion is a major issue, his latest position is that he wants โeverybody to voteโ on it.
Whether Mississippi officials, who have gone whole hog for Trump for years, will accept that position remains to be seen.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
A Mississippi town moves a Confederate monument that became a shrouded eyesore
GRENADA (AP) โ A Mississippi town has taken down a Confederate monument that stood on the courthouse square since 1910 โ a figure that was tightly wrapped in tarps the past four years, symbolizing the community’s enduring division over how to commemorate the past.
Grenada’s first Black mayor in two decades seems determined to follow through on the city’s plans to relocate the monument to other public land. A concrete slab has already been poured behind a fire station about 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) from the square.
But a new fight might be developing. A Republican lawmaker from another part of Mississippi wrote to Grenada officials saying she believes the city is violating a state law that restricts the relocation of war memorials or monuments.
The Grenada City Council voted to move the monument in 2020, weeks after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. The vote seemed timely: Mississippi legislators had just retired the last state flag in the U.S. that prominently featured the Confederate battle emblem.
The tarps went up soon after the vote, shrouding the Confederate soldier and the pedestal he stood on. But even as people complained about the eyesore, the move was delayed by tight budgets, state bureaucracy or political foot-dragging. Explanations vary, depending on who’s asked.
A new mayor and city council took office in May, prepared to take action. On Sept. 11, with little advance notice, police blocked traffic and a work crew disassembled and removed the 20-foot (6.1-meter) stone structure.
“I’m glad to see it move to a different location,” said Robin Whitfield, an artist with a studio just off Grenada’s historic square. “This represents that something has changed.”
Still, Whitfield, who is white, said she wishes Grenada leaders had invited the community to engage in dialogue about the symbol, to bridge the gap between those who think moving it is erasing history and those who see it as a daily reminder of white supremacy. She was among the few people watching as a crane lifted parts of the monument onto a flatbed truck.
“No one ever talked about it, other than yelling on Facebook,” Whitfield said.
Mayor Charles Latham said the monument has been “quite a divisive figure” in the town of 12,300, where about 57% of residents are Black and 40% are white.
“I understand people had family and stuff to fight and die in that war, and they should be proud of their family,” Latham said. “But you’ve got to understand that there were those who were oppressed by this, by the Confederate flag on there. There’s been a lot of hate and violence perpetrated against people of color, under the color of that flag.”
The city received permission from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to move the Confederate monument, as required. But Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes of Picayune said the fire station site is inappropriate.
“We are prepared to pursue such avenues that may be necessary to ensure that the statue is relocated to a more suitable and appropriate location,” she wrote, suggesting a Confederate cemetery closer to the courthouse square as an alternative. She said the Ladies Cemetery Association is willing to deed a parcel to the city to make it happen.
The Confederate monument in Grenada is one of hundreds in the South, most of which were dedicated during the early 20th century when groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy sought to shape the historical narrative by valorizing the Lost Cause mythology of the Civil War.
The monuments, many of them outside courthouses, came under fresh scrutiny after an avowed white supremacist who had posed with Confederate flags in photos posted online killed nine Black people inside the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
Grenada’s monument includes images of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and a Confederate battle flag. It was engraved with praise for “the noble men who marched neath the flag of the Stars and Bars” and “the noble women of the South,” who “gave their loved ones to our country to conquer or to die for truth and right.”
A half-century after it was dedicated, the monument’s symbolism figured in a voting rights march. When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders held a mass rally in downtown Grenada in June 1966, Robert Green of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference scrambled up the pedestal and planted a U.S. flag above the image of Davis.
The cemetery is a spot Latham himself had previously advocated as a new site for the monument, but he said it’s too late to change now, after the city already budgeted $60,000 for the move.
“So, who’s going to pay the city back for the $30,000 we’ve already expended to relocate this?” he said. “You should’ve showed up a year and a half ago, two years ago, before the city gets to this point.”
A few other Confederate monuments in Mississippi have been relocated. In July 2020, a Confederate soldier statue was moved from a prominent spot at the University of Mississippi to a Civil War cemetery in a secluded part of the Oxford campus. In May 2021, a Confederate monument featuring three soldiers was moved from outside the Lowndes County Courthouse in Columbus to another cemetery with Confederate soldiers.
Lori Chavis, a Grenada City Council member, said that since the monument was covered by tarps, “it’s caused nothing but more divide in our city.”
She said she supports relocating the monument but worries about a lawsuit. She acknowledged that people probably didn’t know until recently exactly where it would reappear.
“It’s tucked back in the woods, and it’s not visible from even pulling behind the fire station,” Chavis said. “And I think that’s what got some of the citizens upset.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Crooked Letter Sports Podcast
Podcast: New Orleans sports columnist and author Jeff Duncan joins the podcast to talk about his new Steve Gleason book and the new-look New Orleans Saints.
Jeff Duncan went from the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson on Saturday to Jerry World in Dallas on Sunday where he watched and wrote about the Saints’ total dismantling of the Dallas Cowboys. We talk about both events and also about what happened in high school and college football last weekend and what’s coming up this weekend.
Stream all episodes here.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1899
Sept. 18, 1899
Scott Joplin, known as โthe King of Ragtime,โ copyrighted the โMaple Leaf Rag,โ which became the first song to sell more than 1 million copies of sheet music. The popularity launched a sensation surrounding ragtime, which has been called America’s โfirst classical music.โย
Born near Texarkana, Texas, Joplin grew up in a musical family. He worked on the railroad with other family members until he was able to earn money as a musician, traveling across the South. He wound up playing at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, where he met fellow musician Otis Saunders, who encouraged him to write down the songs he had been making up to entertain audiences. In all, Joplin wrote dozens of ragtime songs.
After some success, he moved to New York City, hoping he could make a living while stretching the boundaries of music. He wrote a ragtime ballet and two operas, but success in these new forms eluded him. He was buried in a pauper’s grave in New York City in 1917.
More than six decades later, his music was rediscovered, initially by Joshua Rifkin, who recorded Joplin’s songs on a record, and then Gunther Schuller of the New England Conservatory, who performed four of the ragtime songs in concert: โMy faculty, many of whom had never even heard of Joplin, were saying things like, โMy gosh, he writes melodies like Schubert!’โ
Joplin’s music won over even more admirers through the 1973 movie, โThe Sting,โ which won an Oscar for the music. His song, โThe Entertainer,โ reached No. 3 on Billboard and was ranked No. 10 among โSongs of the Centuryโ list by the Recording Industry Association of America. His opera โTreemonishaโ was produced to wide acclaim, and he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his special contribution to American music.ย
โThe ragtime craze, the faddish thing, will obviously die down, but Joplin will have his position secure in American music history,โ Rifkin said. โHe is a treasurable composer.โ
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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