A federal judge will hear arguments Tuesday on a lawsuit brought by the state and national Republican parties and the state Libertarian Party that seeks to bar Mississippi election workers from counting mail-in absentee ballots after the date of an election.
U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola, a senior-status judge, set a hearing for Tuesday in Gulfport for arguments from both sides.
The plaintiffs argue that a 2020 state law allowing local election workers to process mail-in absentee ballots for up to five days after an election violates federal law because only Congress sets the timeframe for when votes can be processed.
The Mississippi law currently permits election workers to count mail-in votes if the ballots were postmarked by the election date.
The Republican parties, represented locally by former state GOP director Spencer Ritchie, argue that the five-day window should be suspended for federal elections because the statute dilutes the weight of ballots cast on Election Day and harms conservative candidates running for office.
The litigation marks a peculiar scenario where the national and state Republican parties have filed suit over a law passed by a GOP-dominated Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.
Secretary of State Michael Watson, a Republican, is the state’s chief elections administrator and is now tasked with fighting his own party in court using attorneys from Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office.
Watson’s office, as well as two voting rights advocacy groups who have intervened in the litigation, argued in separate briefs that the federal suit should be dismissed because the political parties lack legal standing to bring the suit.
“The Mississippi statute does not harm the plaintiff individuals or political parties in any way,” Special Assistant Attorney General Rex Shannon III wrote in a pleading on behalf of Watson’s office. “It does not conflict with laws that set the election day for federal offices. And it does not impair the plaintiffs’ rights to vote or to stand for office under the First and/or Fourteenth Amendments.”
The Republican-majority state Senate earlier this year passed legislation to abolish the five-day window for processing the absentee ballots after Election Day, but it died in the House.
After the hearing, it’s unclear when Guirola would issue a ruling. The aggrieved party could appeal his order to the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, though a prompt resolution before the November election is vital.
The appellate process is lengthy and time consuming, and the November presidential and congressional election is quickly approaching. Mississippians can request an absentee ballot application starting September 6, and the earliest day they can vote by absentee is September 23, according to the secretary of state’s elections calendar.
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This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Learn what the long-tenured economic developer and former Magnolia Tribune business columnist plans to do in retirement.
Phil Hardwick wears a coat of many colors. He started out as an FBI clerk, served in the Army on the White House security team, joined the Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia, and then moved to the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office as chief investigator.
After that, Hardwick, a Jackson native, joined the Mississippi Real Estate Commission, eventually serving as head of the agency. While there, he was instrumental in establishing the national certification program for real estate investigators.
That experience led to an appointment as the City of Jackson’s chief economic developer and a stint in economic development at Mississippi Valley Gas (now Atmos Energy) before landing at the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University.
A master multi-tasker, Hardwick also found time to teach at the Millsaps College Else School of Management for more than a quarter-century and pen more than 1,000 business columns, most recently for Magnolia Tribune. He has also authored several detective novels.
Magnolia Tribune sat down with Hardwick to ask about his career highlights, economic development challenges, and “re-retirement” plans.
What was the highlight of your career?
Being bestowed Life Membership in the Mississippi Economic Development Council in 2016. At the ceremony, I was honored to have my bosses in my economic development career share the moment, as well as my nominator, David Rumbarger, CEO/President of the Community Development Foundation in Tupelo, one of the premier economic developers in the state. Of course, my biggest supporter and friend (and wife), Carol Hardwick, was there.
Also, attending the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in the summer of 2004 as a Fannie Mae Foundation Fellow was what I would call “a mountaintop experience.” I still have acquaintances from that class.
What was your most rewarding experience?
My last full-time job was at Millsaps College as Director of Business Analysts at the Else School of Management. Each year, I had the pleasure of coordinating economic development activities of graduate students and businesses in Midtown Jackson.
By the way, Millsaps College has been a constant in my career. I received my MBA from there and taught as an adjunct instructor for over 25 years.
What are some challenges you experienced in economic development?
One of the biggest challenges in economic development is maintaining confidentiality when working on large projects. Elected officials, in particular, are anxious to know about projects that might be coming to their communities.
The other thing is simply balancing all the details that must be done, such as options, tax issues, incentives, and data gathering. On the flip side, economic development is a team sport, and every project involves a lot of people.
When a project finally comes to fruition, the economic developer is usually in the background. Mississippi is fortunate to have one of the best collections of economic development professionals in the country.
What’s one of the best things you learned in your economic development career?
When I joined Mississippi Valley Gas Company (now Atmos Energy), Matt Holleman, President & CEO, said that my title would be Vice President of Community & Economic Development instead of the more common VP of Economic & Community Development.
What he knew and what I learned was that community development comes first. Communities must be prepared for economic development.
What do you plan to do in “re-retirement”?
Carol and I now live in Georgia, where we moved to be closer to our grandchildren and family. I plan to stay actively involved in the community. I’m now serving as vice chair of the Canton Tourism Board. For recreation, I play on a couple of tennis teams. Carol and I continue to travel internationally at least once a year. I’m also working on a couple of novels.
So, family, community, tennis, travel, and writing keep me plenty busy.
Mississippi’s Crown Jewel of the Theatre, critics frequently compare Henley to Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor, two of the best storytellers the South has ever produced.
Jackson’s Beth Henley sprang to fame when her 1981 play Crimes of the Heart received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama even before its Broadway debut. She was thirty years old. At the time, no female playwright in the award’s 23-year history could lay claim to such a medal, and certainly not someone who had no string of previous productions to list on an impressive resume.
Who was this unknown?
Crimes of the Heart went on to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New American Play, garnered a Tony nomination, and gave Beth her first opportunity to turn her play into a film.
The movie version starred Diane Keaton, Sissy Spacek, and Jessica Lange and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. However, it was in the Golden Globe Awards that Sissy Spacek picked up the prestigious Best Actress trophy.
Crimes was not the only successful play that Beth translated to the big screen. The MissFirecracker Contest starring Holly Hunter was a hit in 1989.
Let’s say success could not have happened to a nicer person. Beth is funny, transparent, and insightful. No shallow person could create the complex personalities that inhabit her scripts. More than entertainment, Beth’s themes reveal poignant truths. Her stories linger in your mind after you have laughed yourself silly over the eccentricities of her well-drawn characters and shed a tear or two over their tragic situations. Those memories touch something indelible and enduring in all of us. Her plays resonate with heart and soul.
Beth has often been asked in an interview about her process. How does she come up with her themes and her characters? Without any pretense she says, “I never think about themes.” She never sets out to write something with an underlying message. And yet, she does.
She laughs as she says she never had an outline or a set pattern in coming up with her storylines.
“Chaos,” Beth says. Chaos is her method. Over many weeks of scribbling ideas in various notebooks here and there, an idea finally gels. She spends untold time searching for all those fragments here and there that have come together in her mind. Now where did she put all those pieces?
Critics frequently compare Beth to Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor, two of the best storytellers the South has ever produced. The self-deprecating scriptwriter laughed, saying, “I shudder to think what those two would think about such a comparison.”
Elizabeth Becker Henley was born on May 8, 1952, the second of four daughters. Her colorful parents, Charles, a judge and state senator, and Lydy, a beloved local actress, were larger-than-life personalities. The boisterous household these two created was a hotbed of artistic originality, nurturing their children’s extraordinary creativity.
Lydy’s frequent starring roles in New Stage theatre productions meant that her four daughters, from an early age, developed a keen appreciation for the collaborative arts that brought a play to life. The darkened theatre, the elaborate sets, the audience response, and the actors reacting to the audience were vivid, electric, and mesmerizing.
Beth and her sister, C.C., frequently ran lines with her mother at home. And it was a serious endeavor. Calling her mother the most significant influence on her life, Beth says, “One thing my mother gave me was the desire to take it [acting] seriously. It was important to do it well.” Lydy was adept at practicing what she preached. Beth recalls her mother pushing her cart through the neighborhood Jitney Jungle grocery once perfecting Laura Wingfield’s limp for her role in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.
A “shy child,” Beth describes herself as the one who “liked to sit in the corner and watch and listen as people talked. “I liked to hear their stories, and I could remember actual dialogue, the words and how they said them. I think it was just my nature to be quiet, and I think that habit comes in handy for a writer.”
Beth graduated from Murrah High School in 1970 and enrolled as a theatre student at Southern Methodist University. She began college intending to act but had second thoughts when she wrote her first play, Am I Blue, as a class assignment. Others, including her professors, discovered that the quiet, unassuming Beth was quite good at playwriting.
Lacking confidence and nerve, the future acclaimed American playwright and superstar used a pen name, Amy Peach, when she wrote Am I Blue in 1972. Performed on the SMU campus in 1974, it opened off-Broadway in 1981 after Crimes of the Heart catapulted Beth Henley to fame. It received positive reviews all around.
Suddenly, the plays she had struggled to get noticed were in demand.
The Civil Rights Movement was in its heyday during Beth’s high school and college career. Racial unrest and Vietnam protests dominated headlines and newscasts day after day for a Decade. Mississippi was the focus of negative coverage. As Beth, the listener and observer, absorbed the conversations and events of that time, she had conflicting emotions and more questions than answers. Though not insulated from the stories or the grainy pictures of political demonstrations and Klu Klux Klan hate-filled acts, Beth struggled to sort through the voices telling her what she was supposed to think. “It all made me very sad,” she said.
In the end, she did sort it out. Though subtle and more sorrowful than angry, her plays often carry a social justice reference with a “sad” slant in the storyline.
Although Beth’s later plays sometimes branched out from the Southern backdrops, dysfunctional families, and eccentric but endearing characters, some of her dark humor and tragic storylines were likely part of her visceral reactions to the shaking of her foundations in the 1960s and 1970s. Within her plays, she found a space where her fictional characters grapple with the questions that plagued her for so long. In the dialogues of often quirky weird people, she hammered home stark pictures of the place she called home, but she did so gracefully. The Bible calls this art “telling the truth in love,” and Beth, maybe without realizing it, does it well.
Beth’s playwriting has been consistent since that first iconic Pulitzer Prize in 1981. With at least 25 notable plays and more awards than there is space to name, Beth Henley remains one of the most respected and prolific contemporary American theatre dramatists.
For twenty-plus years, Beth served as the President’s Professional Theatre Arts chair on the faculty of Loyola Marymount University, one of the premier theatre programs in the country. She taught courses in Playwriting and The Creative Process. With a tender spot in her heart for her undergraduates, she remained closely attuned to that unique season of life when college freshmen and sophomores decide who they are and who they will become. Beth calls those vulnerable students “adorable,” and says her mission was always to connect with them, to teach and encourage them.
At the moment, Beth has three plays on her drawing board. The names are intriguing. Pay attention to the coming press. Myth Murder, Downstairs Neighbor, and The Unbuttoning promise to deliver the humor, pathos, and soul-searching storyline that we have come to expect from our Southern playwrights.
The best news is that Beth is coming home for the MS Book Festival in September. Follow www.MSBookFestival.com to get dates and times for Beth’s presentation.
This article first appeared on the Magnolia Tribune and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi’s Crown Jewel of the Theatre, critics frequently compare Henley to Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor, two of the best storytellers the South has ever produced.
Jackson’s Beth Henley sprang to fame when her 1981 play Crimes of the Heart received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama even before its Broadway debut. She was thirty years old. At the time, no female playwright in the award’s 23-year history could lay claim to such a medal, and certainly not someone who had no string of previous productions to list on an impressive resume.
Who was this unknown?
Crimes of the Heart went on to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New American Play, garnered a Tony nomination, and gave Beth her first opportunity to turn her play into a film.
The movie version starred Diane Keaton, Sissy Spacek, and Jessica Lange and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. However, it was in the Golden Globe Awards that Sissy Spacek picked up the prestigious Best Actress trophy.
Crimes was not the only successful play that Beth translated to the big screen. The MissFirecracker Contest starring Holly Hunter was a hit in 1989.
Let’s say success could not have happened to a nicer person. Beth is funny, transparent, and insightful. No shallow person could create the complex personalities that inhabit her scripts. More than entertainment, Beth’s themes reveal poignant truths. Her stories linger in your mind after you have laughed yourself silly over the eccentricities of her well-drawn characters and shed a tear or two over their tragic situations. Those memories touch something indelible and enduring in all of us. Her plays resonate with heart and soul.
Beth has often been asked in an interview about her process. How does she come up with her themes and her characters? Without any pretense she says, “I never think about themes.” She never sets out to write something with an underlying message. And yet, she does.
She laughs as she says she never had an outline or a set pattern in coming up with her storylines.
“Chaos,” Beth says. Chaos is her method. Over many weeks of scribbling ideas in various notebooks here and there, an idea finally gels. She spends untold time searching for all those fragments here and there that have come together in her mind. Now where did she put all those pieces?
Critics frequently compare Beth to Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor, two of the best storytellers the South has ever produced. The self-deprecating scriptwriter laughed, saying, “I shudder to think what those two would think about such a comparison.”
Elizabeth Becker Henley was born on May 8, 1952, the second of four daughters. Her colorful parents, Charles, a judge and state senator, and Lydy, a beloved local actress, were larger-than-life personalities. The boisterous household these two created was a hotbed of artistic originality, nurturing their children’s extraordinary creativity.
Lydy’s frequent starring roles in New Stage theatre productions meant that her four daughters, from an early age, developed a keen appreciation for the collaborative arts that brought a play to life. The darkened theatre, the elaborate sets, the audience response, and the actors reacting to the audience were vivid, electric, and mesmerizing.
Beth and her sister, C.C., frequently ran lines with her mother at home. And it was a serious endeavor. Calling her mother the most significant influence on her life, Beth says, “One thing my mother gave me was the desire to take it [acting] seriously. It was important to do it well.” Lydy was adept at practicing what she preached. Beth recalls her mother pushing her cart through the neighborhood Jitney Jungle grocery once perfecting Laura Wingfield’s limp for her role in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.
A “shy child,” Beth describes herself as the one who “liked to sit in the corner and watch and listen as people talked. “I liked to hear their stories, and I could remember actual dialogue, the words and how they said them. I think it was just my nature to be quiet, and I think that habit comes in handy for a writer.”
Beth graduated from Murrah High School in 1970 and enrolled as a theatre student at Southern Methodist University. She began college intending to act but had second thoughts when she wrote her first play, Am I Blue, as a class assignment. Others, including her professors, discovered that the quiet, unassuming Beth was quite good at playwriting.
Lacking confidence and nerve, the future acclaimed American playwright and superstar used a pen name, Amy Peach, when she wrote Am I Blue in 1972. Performed on the SMU campus in 1974, it opened off-Broadway in 1981 after Crimes of the Heart catapulted Beth Henley to fame. It received positive reviews all around.
Suddenly, the plays she had struggled to get noticed were in demand.
The Civil Rights Movement was in its heyday during Beth’s high school and college career. Racial unrest and Vietnam protests dominated headlines and newscasts day after day for a Decade. Mississippi was the focus of negative coverage. As Beth, the listener and observer, absorbed the conversations and events of that time, she had conflicting emotions and more questions than answers. Though not insulated from the stories or the grainy pictures of political demonstrations and Klu Klux Klan hate-filled acts, Beth struggled to sort through the voices telling her what she was supposed to think. “It all made me very sad,” she said.
In the end, she did sort it out. Though subtle and more sorrowful than angry, her plays often carry a social justice reference with a “sad” slant in the storyline.
Although Beth’s later plays sometimes branched out from the Southern backdrops, dysfunctional families, and eccentric but endearing characters, some of her dark humor and tragic storylines were likely part of her visceral reactions to the shaking of her foundations in the 1960s and 1970s. Within her plays, she found a space where her fictional characters grapple with the questions that plagued her for so long. In the dialogues of often quirky weird people, she hammered home stark pictures of the place she called home, but she did so gracefully. The Bible calls this art “telling the truth in love,” and Beth, maybe without realizing it, does it well.
Beth’s playwriting has been consistent since that first iconic Pulitzer Prize in 1981. With at least 25 notable plays and more awards than there is space to name, Beth Henley remains one of the most respected and prolific contemporary American theatre dramatists.
For twenty-plus years, Beth served as the President’s Professional Theatre Arts chair on the faculty of Loyola Marymount University, one of the premier theatre programs in the country. She taught courses in Playwriting and The Creative Process. With a tender spot in her heart for her undergraduates, she remained closely attuned to that unique season of life when college freshmen and sophomores decide who they are and who they will become. Beth calls those vulnerable students “adorable,” and says her mission was always to connect with them, to teach and encourage them.
At the moment, Beth has three plays on her drawing board. The names are intriguing. Pay attention to the coming press. Myth Murder, Downstairs Neighbor, and The Unbuttoning promise to deliver the humor, pathos, and soul-searching storyline that we have come to expect from our Southern playwrights.
The best news is that Beth is coming home for the MS Book Festival in September. Follow www.MSBookFestival.com to get dates and times for Beth’s presentation.
This article first appeared on the Magnolia Tribune and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — To a defiant President Joe Biden, the 2024 election is up to the public — not the Democrats on Capitol Hill. But the chorus of Democratic voices calling for him to step aside is growing, from donors, strategists, lawmakers and their constituents who say he should bow out.
The party has not fallen in line behind him even after the events that were set up as part of a blitz to reset his imperiled campaign and show everyone he wasn’t too old to stay in the job or to do it another four years.
On Saturday, a fifth Democratic lawmaker said openly that Biden should not run again. Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota said that after what she saw and heard in the debate with Republican rival Donald Trump, and Biden’s “lack of a forceful response” afterward, he should step aside “and allow for a new generation of leaders to step forward.”
Craig posted one of the Democrats’ key suburban wins in the 2018 midterms and could be a barometer for districts that were vital for Biden in 2020.
With the Democratic convention approaching and just four months to Election Day, neither camp in the party can much afford this internecine drama much longer. But it is bound to drag on until Biden steps aside or Democrats realize he won’t and learn to contain their concerns about the president’s chances against Trump.
There were signs party leaders realize the standoff needs to end. Some of the most senior lawmakers, including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Rep. James Clyburn, were now publicly working to bring the party back to the president. Pelosi and Clyburn had both raised pointed questions about Biden in the aftermath of the debate.
“Biden is who our country needs,” Clyburn said late Friday after Biden’s interview with ABC aired.
On Saturday, Biden’s campaign said the president joined a biweekly meeting with all 10 of the campaign’s nation co-chairs to “discuss their shared commitment to winning the 2024 race.” Clyburn was among them.
But the silence from most other House Democrats on Saturday was notable, suggesting that lawmakers are not all being convinced by what they saw from the president. More House Democrats are likely to call for Biden to step aside when lawmakers return to Washington at the start of the week.
Biden had no public schedule Saturday, as he and aides stepped back from the fervor over the past few days. But the president will head out campaigning again on Sunday in Philadelphia, intent on putting the debate behind him. And this coming week, the U.S. is hosting the NATO summit and the president is to hold a news conference.
Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned Saturday in New Orleans, but she steered clear of questions about whether Biden should step away.
The president’s ABC interview on Friday night — billed as an effort to get the campaign back on track — stirred carefully worded expressions of disappointment from the party’s ranks, and worse from those who spoke anonymously. Ten days into the crisis moment of the Biden-Trump debate, Biden is dug in.
Even within the White House there were concerns the ABC interview wasn’t enough to turn the page.
Campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez has been texting lawmakers and administration officials are encouraging them not to go public with their concerns about the race and the president’s electability, according to a Democrat granted anonymity to discuss the situation.
Democrats are wrestling over what they see and hear from the president but are not at all certain about a path forward. They were particularly concerned that Biden suggested that even if he were to be defeated in a rematch with Trump, he would know that he gave it his all. That seemed an insufficient response.
“A lot can change in the next 72 to 96 hours, because that’s what happens nowadays,” Hawaii Gov. Mark Green said Saturday. “You know, four months is an eternity in today’s political world. I’m not worried about making sure we have a great ticket if the president chose some other road.”
But Green said he also wants to “respect the president and give him the time to make this decision. And if he decides to be our nominee, he’s it. And we’ll go all in against Mr. Trump because he doesn’t represent the right values for our people.”
As Biden’s camp encourages House lawmakers to give the president the chance to show what he can do, one Democratic aide said the Friday interview didn’t help and in fact made things worse. The aide expects more Democrats will likely be calling on Biden to step aside.
Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, without breaking with Biden at this point, are pulling together meetings with members in the next few days to discuss options. Many lawmakers are hearing from constituents at home and fielding questions. One senator was working to get others together to ask him to step aside.
Following the interview, a Democratic donor reported that many of the fellow donors he spoke with were furious, particularly because the president declined to acknowledge the effects of his aging. Many of those donors are seeking a change in leadership at the top of the ticket, said the person, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
“Completely ruling that out,” he told reporters at the rally.
Biden dismissed those who were calling for his ouster, instead saying he’d spoken with 20 lawmakers and they had all encouraged him to stay in the race.
Concern about Biden’s fitness for another four years has been persistent. In an August 2023 poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, fully 77% of U.S. adults said Biden was too old to be effective for four more years. Not only did 89% of Republicans say that, but so did 69% of Democrats. His approval rating stands at 39% in the most recent AP-NORC poll.
Biden has dismissed the polling, citing as evidence his 2020 surge to the nomination and win over Trump, after initially faltering, and the 2022 midterm elections, when many expected Republicans would sweep but they didn’t, in part over the issue of abortion rights.
“I don’t buy that,” when he was reminded that he was behind in recent polls. “I don’t think anybody’s more qualified to be president or win this race than me.”
At times, Biden rambled during the interview, which ABC said aired in full and without edits. Asked how he might turn the race around, Biden argued that one key would be large and energetic rallies like the one he held Friday in Wisconsin. When reminded that Trump routinely draws larger crowds, the president laid into his opponent.
“Trump is a pathological liar,” Biden said, accusing Trump of bungling the federal response to the COVID pandemic and failing to create jobs. “You ever see something that Trump did that benefited someone else and not him?”
Republicans, though, are squarely behind their candidate, and support for Trump, who at 78 is three years younger than Biden, has been growing.
Miller and Mascaro reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Saugatuck, Michigan, Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Bill Barrow in New Orleans and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.
This article first appeared on the Magnolia Tribune and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — To a defiant President Joe Biden, the 2024 election is up to the public — not the Democrats on Capitol Hill. But the chorus of Democratic voices calling for him to step aside is growing, from donors, strategists, lawmakers and their constituents who say he should bow out.
The party has not fallen in line behind him even after the events that were set up as part of a blitz to reset his imperiled campaign and show everyone he wasn’t too old to stay in the job or to do it another four years.
On Saturday, a fifth Democratic lawmaker said openly that Biden should not run again. Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota said that after what she saw and heard in the debate with Republican rival Donald Trump, and Biden’s “lack of a forceful response” afterward, he should step aside “and allow for a new generation of leaders to step forward.”
Craig posted one of the Democrats’ key suburban wins in the 2018 midterms and could be a barometer for districts that were vital for Biden in 2020.
With the Democratic convention approaching and just four months to Election Day, neither camp in the party can much afford this internecine drama much longer. But it is bound to drag on until Biden steps aside or Democrats realize he won’t and learn to contain their concerns about the president’s chances against Trump.
There were signs party leaders realize the standoff needs to end. Some of the most senior lawmakers, including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Rep. James Clyburn, were now publicly working to bring the party back to the president. Pelosi and Clyburn had both raised pointed questions about Biden in the aftermath of the debate.
“Biden is who our country needs,” Clyburn said late Friday after Biden’s interview with ABC aired.
On Saturday, Biden’s campaign said the president joined a biweekly meeting with all 10 of the campaign’s nation co-chairs to “discuss their shared commitment to winning the 2024 race.” Clyburn was among them.
But the silence from most other House Democrats on Saturday was notable, suggesting that lawmakers are not all being convinced by what they saw from the president. More House Democrats are likely to call for Biden to step aside when lawmakers return to Washington at the start of the week.
Biden had no public schedule Saturday, as he and aides stepped back from the fervor over the past few days. But the president will head out campaigning again on Sunday in Philadelphia, intent on putting the debate behind him. And this coming week, the U.S. is hosting the NATO summit and the president is to hold a news conference.
Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned Saturday in New Orleans, but she steered clear of questions about whether Biden should step away.
The president’s ABC interview on Friday night — billed as an effort to get the campaign back on track — stirred carefully worded expressions of disappointment from the party’s ranks, and worse from those who spoke anonymously. Ten days into the crisis moment of the Biden-Trump debate, Biden is dug in.
Even within the White House there were concerns the ABC interview wasn’t enough to turn the page.
Campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez has been texting lawmakers and administration officials are encouraging them not to go public with their concerns about the race and the president’s electability, according to a Democrat granted anonymity to discuss the situation.
Democrats are wrestling over what they see and hear from the president but are not at all certain about a path forward. They were particularly concerned that Biden suggested that even if he were to be defeated in a rematch with Trump, he would know that he gave it his all. That seemed an insufficient response.
“A lot can change in the next 72 to 96 hours, because that’s what happens nowadays,” Hawaii Gov. Mark Green said Saturday. “You know, four months is an eternity in today’s political world. I’m not worried about making sure we have a great ticket if the president chose some other road.”
But Green said he also wants to “respect the president and give him the time to make this decision. And if he decides to be our nominee, he’s it. And we’ll go all in against Mr. Trump because he doesn’t represent the right values for our people.”
As Biden’s camp encourages House lawmakers to give the president the chance to show what he can do, one Democratic aide said the Friday interview didn’t help and in fact made things worse. The aide expects more Democrats will likely be calling on Biden to step aside.
Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, without breaking with Biden at this point, are pulling together meetings with members in the next few days to discuss options. Many lawmakers are hearing from constituents at home and fielding questions. One senator was working to get others together to ask him to step aside.
Following the interview, a Democratic donor reported that many of the fellow donors he spoke with were furious, particularly because the president declined to acknowledge the effects of his aging. Many of those donors are seeking a change in leadership at the top of the ticket, said the person, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
“Completely ruling that out,” he told reporters at the rally.
Biden dismissed those who were calling for his ouster, instead saying he’d spoken with 20 lawmakers and they had all encouraged him to stay in the race.
Concern about Biden’s fitness for another four years has been persistent. In an August 2023 poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, fully 77% of U.S. adults said Biden was too old to be effective for four more years. Not only did 89% of Republicans say that, but so did 69% of Democrats. His approval rating stands at 39% in the most recent AP-NORC poll.
Biden has dismissed the polling, citing as evidence his 2020 surge to the nomination and win over Trump, after initially faltering, and the 2022 midterm elections, when many expected Republicans would sweep but they didn’t, in part over the issue of abortion rights.
“I don’t buy that,” when he was reminded that he was behind in recent polls. “I don’t think anybody’s more qualified to be president or win this race than me.”
At times, Biden rambled during the interview, which ABC said aired in full and without edits. Asked how he might turn the race around, Biden argued that one key would be large and energetic rallies like the one he held Friday in Wisconsin. When reminded that Trump routinely draws larger crowds, the president laid into his opponent.
“Trump is a pathological liar,” Biden said, accusing Trump of bungling the federal response to the COVID pandemic and failing to create jobs. “You ever see something that Trump did that benefited someone else and not him?”
Republicans, though, are squarely behind their candidate, and support for Trump, who at 78 is three years younger than Biden, has been growing.
Miller and Mascaro reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Saugatuck, Michigan, Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Bill Barrow in New Orleans and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.
This article first appeared on the Magnolia Tribune and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
There he broke the flashing arrows, the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war. – Psalm 76:3
Our Redeemer’s glorious cry of “It is finished” was the death-knell of all the adversaries of His people, the breaking of “the weapons of war.” Behold the hero of Golgotha using His cross as an anvil, and His wounds as a hammer, dashing to pieces bundle after bundle of our sins, those poisoned “flashing arrows,” trampling on every indictment and destroying every accusation. What glorious blows the mighty Breaker gives with a hammer far more powerful than the fabled weapon of Thor! How the diabolical darts break in pieces, and the infernal swords are broken like old clay pots! Consider how He draws from its sheath of hellish workmanship the dreadful sword of satanic power! He snaps it across His knee as a man breaks dry sticks and throws it into the fire.
Beloved, no sin of a believer can now be an arrow bringing death, no condemnation can now be a sword to kill him, for the punishment of our sin was borne by Christ, and a full atonement was made for all our iniquities by our blessed Substitute and Surety. Who now accuses? Who now condemns? Christ has died, yes, has risen again. Jesus has removed the weapons of hell, has quenched every fiery dart, and has broken the head off every arrow of wrath; the ground is covered with the splinters and relics of the weapons of hell’s warfare, which are only visible to us to remind us of our former danger and of our great deliverance.
Sin no longer has dominion over us. Jesus has made an end of it and put it away forever. Our enemy’s destructions have come to a perpetual end. Declare all the wonderful works of the Lord, all you who make mention of His name; do not be silent, neither by day, nor when the sun goes down. Bless the Lord, O my soul.
This article first appeared on the Magnolia Tribune and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
There he broke the flashing arrows, the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war. – Psalm 76:3
Our Redeemer’s glorious cry of “It is finished” was the death-knell of all the adversaries of His people, the breaking of “the weapons of war.” Behold the hero of Golgotha using His cross as an anvil, and His wounds as a hammer, dashing to pieces bundle after bundle of our sins, those poisoned “flashing arrows,” trampling on every indictment and destroying every accusation. What glorious blows the mighty Breaker gives with a hammer far more powerful than the fabled weapon of Thor! How the diabolical darts break in pieces, and the infernal swords are broken like old clay pots! Consider how He draws from its sheath of hellish workmanship the dreadful sword of satanic power! He snaps it across His knee as a man breaks dry sticks and throws it into the fire.
Beloved, no sin of a believer can now be an arrow bringing death, no condemnation can now be a sword to kill him, for the punishment of our sin was borne by Christ, and a full atonement was made for all our iniquities by our blessed Substitute and Surety. Who now accuses? Who now condemns? Christ has died, yes, has risen again. Jesus has removed the weapons of hell, has quenched every fiery dart, and has broken the head off every arrow of wrath; the ground is covered with the splinters and relics of the weapons of hell’s warfare, which are only visible to us to remind us of our former danger and of our great deliverance.
Sin no longer has dominion over us. Jesus has made an end of it and put it away forever. Our enemy’s destructions have come to a perpetual end. Declare all the wonderful works of the Lord, all you who make mention of His name; do not be silent, neither by day, nor when the sun goes down. Bless the Lord, O my soul.
This article first appeared on the Magnolia Tribune and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Pearl, Miss. –– Five Disaster Recovery Centers will be closing permanently at 6 p.m. on July 8th.
These five centers are located at:
Hancock County (Kiln) Tax Collector’s Office & Storm Preparedness Center (look for the FEMA and MEMA signage) 18335 Highway 603 Kiln, MS 39556
Hinds County Smith-Wills Stadium parking lot (look for the FEMA and MEMA signage) 1200 Cool Papa Bell Drive Jackson, MS 39216
Madison County Karl M. Banks Emergency Services Complex (look for the FEMA and MEMA signage) 1633 West Peace St. Canton, MS 39046
Neshoba County Dixon Volunteer Fire Department (look for the FEMA and MEMA signage) 14800 Highway 21 South Philadelphia, MS 39350
Scott County The Usry Voting Precinct, District 2 Building (look for the FEMA and MEMA signage) 5335 Old Highway 80 Forest, MS 39074
Even though five centers are closing, Survivors of the April 8-11 storms will have until August 9, 2024, to apply for individual assistance. Applications can be completed in the following ways:
Going online to DisasterAssistance.gov
Downloading the FEMA mobile app
Calling the FEMA Helpline at 800-621-3362. If you use video relay service, captioned telephone service, or others, give FEMA your number for that service.
The following centers will be open until further notice:
Hinds County Hinds County Public Works Department parking lot (look for the FEMA and MEMA signage) 10000 I-20 Frontage Road Bolton, MS 39041
Humphreys County Humphreys County Multipurpose Building (look for the FEMA and MEMA signage across the street from Willard Jack Trucking) 417 Silver City Road Belzoni, MS 39038
Centers are open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Centers are closed on Sunday.
Specialists from FEMA and the U.S. Small Business Administration will be at the centers to help survivors apply for federal disaster assistance, check the status of their application, answer questions, and provide referrals to resources. To find the location of all centers, visit fema.gov/drc. Homeowners and renters can visit any center for help.
It is not necessary to visit a center to apply for assistance. Survivors can apply for FEMA assistance by going online to DisasterAssistance.gov, downloading the FEMA mobile app or calling the FEMA Helpline at 800-621-3362. If you use video relay service, captioned telephone service, or others, give FEMA your number for that service. For the latest information on recovery from the April tornadoes, visit msema.org and www.fema.gov/disaster/4790. On X/Twitter follow MEMA @MSEMA and FEMA Region 4 @femaregion4.
As of Friday, five of the six locations where Mississippi’s prisons are located are under a National Weather Service heat advisory.
And the Mississippi Department of Corrections has no clear timeline as to when it will install air conditioning to bring relief to inmates and staff.
“We are continuing to explore our options to provide air conditioning where possible; however, there is no timetable for that installation at this time,” MDOC spokesperson Kate Head wrote in an email.
One woman incarcerated at the women’s prison at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl said relief from the heat is hard to come by and the temperatures inside are worse than outside without any shade or trees. The woman asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.
“It’s actually worse (in) here,” she said Tuesday. “The heat just hits you in the face.”
The heat index, also known as what temperature feels like on the body, takes into account humidity and air temperature. Friday’s advisory was said to expect index temperatures up to 110.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people who are at an increased risk of heat-related illnesses include those without access to air conditioning, those over the age of 65 and people with chronic conditions – populations that include incarcerated people.
Last year was the incarcerated woman’s first summer at the prison, and she witnessed people pass out or experience seizures because of the heat.
Head, the MDOC spokesperson, wrote in an email that the department is taking steps to mitigate the heat by providing incarcerated people with water, ice and fans.
Some men incarcerated in Parchman’s Unit 29, which doesn’t have air conditioning, secure 8-inch fans purchased from the commissary to the bars of their cells and place their mattress on the floor beneath the fan, to try to deal with the summer heat.
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This is similar to what has been done in previous years,but some incarcerated people have said that distribution of ice isn’t always regular or enough to support hundreds of people and that fans move hot air around. MDOC did not respond to these concerns Friday.
Air conditioning installation has been completed at the women’s prison at CMCF in the church, school and dining areas, the incarcerated woman said. Several weeks ago it was completed in her housing zone, she said, but the AC there has not been turned on.
Tuesday evening, the prison superintendent visited the building where the incarcerated woman lives and told residents the air conditioning would not be turned on for the foreseeable future because it requires a part that is on backorder, the woman said.
The woman has also seen how three emotional support dogs trained by seminary students are moved to air conditioned areas and provided pools of water to stay cool. She doesn’t understand how the animals get access to the relief but she and the other women don’t.
In this March 20, 2019, photo, a watch tower stands high on the grounds of the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AP_19323716185651-scaled.jpg?fit=336%2C189&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AP_19323716185651-scaled.jpg?fit=780%2C439&ssl=1″ tabindex=”0″ role=”button” src=”https://i0.wp.com/mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AP_19323716185651.jpg?resize=780%2C439&ssl=1″ alt class=”wp-image-1027832″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AP_19323716185651-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AP_19323716185651-scaled.jpg?resize=336%2C189&ssl=1 336w, https://i0.wp.com/mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AP_19323716185651-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C432&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AP_19323716185651-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AP_19323716185651-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1152&ssl=1 2048w, https://i0.wp.com/mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AP_19323716185651-scaled.jpg?resize=1568%2C882&ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AP_19323716185651-scaled.jpg?resize=400%2C225&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AP_19323716185651-scaled.jpg?resize=706%2C397&ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AP_19323716185651-scaled.jpg?w=2340&ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AP_19323716185651-1200×675.jpg?w=370&ssl=1 370w” sizes=”(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px” data-recalc-dims=”1″>In this March 20, 2019, photo, a watch tower stands high on the grounds of the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
“We get the short end of the stick on everything,” she said, in reference to how the men at CMCF already have AC and the dogs in the women’s prison get access to it.
MDOC did not respond to questions about the air conditioning and the dogs’ access to it.
Last year as air conditioning was installed at three-fourths of the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, Commissioner Burl Cain estimated that by sometime in 2025, AC would be coming Parchman’s Unit 29, South Mississippi Correctional Institute in Leakesville and other facilities, so long as funding was available to support those upgrades.
“It just takes a good while to get it all done,” he said in an April 2023 interview with Missisisppi Today. “That’s just the way the funding is.”
At Parchman, the heat index was above 130 degrees – within the extreme danger category where a person’s risk of heat-related illness is likely – for 25 of the past 72 hours, according to the National Weather Service records.
On four separate instances Wednesday afternoon, the heat index reached 185 at Parchman, according to weather data.
Pictures from Parchman’s Unit 29, which doesn’t have air conditioning, shows how men have secured 8-inch fans purchased from the commissary to the bars of their cells and placed their mattress on the floor beneath the fan, which some have told advocates is how they get relief from the heat.
The majority of Parchman has had air conditioning since last summer, but Unit 29 is part of the group of prisons that are expected to get AC sometime in the future.
At all prisons, an 8-inch fan is available to buy from the commissary for $29.95, which is among one of the most expensive on the prison’s commissary list compiled by The Appeal.
Even if an incarcerated person has a job, Mississippi prison industry jobs can pay between 20 cents and $1.30 an hour, which falls within an estimated national average calculated by the Prison Policy Initiative. The group also estimated regular prison jobs nationwide have an estimated range of 14 cents and 63 cents an hour.
Privately operated Eastern Mississippi Correctional Facility has AC including in its housing units, but family members told advocates that since the end of May, the air conditioning has not been functional.
The maximum daily temperatures in Meridian, where the prison is located, have been above 90 degrees since the end of May, according to the National Weather Service.
Meridian is also under a heat advisory, and within the past three days, the highest heat index was 107 degrees – 95 degrees at 75% humidity, which is in the danger category for heat-related illnesses.
Management and Training Corp. spokesperson Emily Lawhead said technicians have diagnosed problems with air conditioning units and will install new units when they arrive.
“We’re working hard to get all AC units back online as soon as possible,” she wrote in an email.
In the meantime, Lawson said cold water and fans are available, and Gatorade is provided to staff and incarcerated people for them to stay hydrated. Swamp coolers are cooling the air in areas where AC units are waiting to be repaired, she said Friday.
Heat in prison is a national issue that Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which represents incarcerated people and their families, and One Voice United, a group representing corrections staff, have teamed up to address.
The Safer Prisons, Safer Communities campaign is highlighting a nationwide crisis through overcrowding, understaffing and deteriorating conditions that make prisons unconducive to rehabilitation and create poor conditions for incarcerated people, prison staff, families and communities.
Andy Potter, executive director of One Voice United and a former Michigan corrections officer, recognizes prison infrastructure can be old and it can be expensive to install air conditioning.
But he said it’s not enough for incarcerated people and the corrections staff to rely on fans, water bottles and Gatorade to stay cool. The incarcerated and staff do not have the freedom or ability to seek relief in a similar way as those not in a prison system can do, Potter said.
Daniel Landsman, vice president of policy for FAMM, said air conditioning can help decrease incidents of violence and fatalities, which research has found increases with heat.
“Heat is just going to make all the things we are experiencing in our prison system worse,” he said.
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This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
