The new guidelines ease up on COVID restrictions, including some that have been around since the start of the pandemic.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) streamlined its COVID-19 guidance to help people better understand their risk, how to protect themselves and others, what actions to take if exposed to COVID-19, and what actions to take if they are sick or test positive for the virus.
“COVID-19 continues to circulate globally, however, with so many tools available to us for reducing COVID-19 severity, there is significantly less risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death compared to earlier in the pandemic,” the CDC said in a release.
Greta Massetti, PhD, is the branch chief of the Field Epidemiology and Prevention Branch and a senior epidemiologist in the Division of Violence Prevention of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
Massetti said that the nation is in a stronger place today, with more tools—like vaccination, boosters, and treatments—to protect ourselves and communities from severe illness from COVID-19.
“We also have a better understanding of how to protect people from being exposed to the virus, like wearing high-quality masks, testing, and improved ventilation,” Massetti added. “This guidance acknowledges that the pandemic is not over, but also helps us move to a point where COVID-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives.”
Continuing to promote the importance of being up to date with vaccination to protect people against serious illness, hospitalization, and death.
Updating its guidance for people who are not up to date on COVID-19 vaccines on what to do if exposed to someone with COVID-19. This is consistent with the existing guidance for people who are up to date on COVID-19 vaccines.
Recommending that instead of quarantining if you were exposed to COVID-19, you wear a high-quality mask for 10 days and get tested on day 5.
Reiterating that regardless of vaccination status, you should isolate from others when you have COVID-19.
You should also isolate if you are sick and suspect that you have COVID-19 but do not yet have test results. If your results are positive, follow CDC’s full isolation recommendations. If your results are negative, you can end your isolation.
Recommending that if you test positive for COVID-19, you stay home for at least 5 days and isolate from others in your home. You are likely most infectious during these first 5 days. Wear a high-quality mask when you must be around others at home and in public.
If after 5 days you are fever-free for 24 hours without the use of medication, and your symptoms are improving, or you never had symptoms, you may end isolation after day 5.
Regardless of when you end isolation, avoid being around people who are more likely to get very sick from COVID-19 until at least day 11.
You should wear a high-quality mask through day 10.
Recommending that if you had moderate illness (if you experienced shortness of breath or had difficulty breathing) or severe illness (you were hospitalized) due to COVID-19 or you have a weakened immune system, you need to isolate through day 10.
Recommending that if you had severe illness or have a weakened immune system, consult your doctor before ending isolation. Ending isolation without a viral test may not be an option for you. If you are unsure if your symptoms are moderate or severe or if you have a weakened immune system, talk to a healthcare provider for further guidance.
Clarifying that after you have ended isolation, if your COVID-19 symptoms worsen, restart your isolation at day 0. Talk to a healthcare provider if you have questions about your symptoms or when to end isolation.
Recommending screening testing of asymptomatic people without known exposures will no longer be recommended in most community settings.
Emphasizing that physical distance is just one component of how to protect yourself and others. It is important to consider the risk in a particular setting, including local COVID-19 Community Levels and the important role of ventilation, when assessing the need to maintain physical distance.
Economist Thomas Sowell once noted that there are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.
“You try to get the best trade-off you can get; that’s all you can hope for.”
Decades after the launch of the systemized standardized testing in K-12 education, here is my reflection on whether we have the best trade-off available.
A few years ago, I was on my bike in Phoenix and came across a sign in front of a local middle school. I stopped my bike, stared at the sign for a good long while, and realized I was looking at something disturbing and deeply absurd. Two weeks of testing.
As a Gen Xer student, I took standardized tests – California Achievement Test, Iowa Test of Basic Skills, etc. They took little more than a few hours out of a single school day. My college admission exam took me a few hours on a Saturday morning to knock out. To this day, students go to testing centers with a couple of pencils (or do it on a computer) and in a few hours, take an exam that will influence which universities they can attend.
My comprehensive exams for a doctoral degree were three grueling days. But somehow, state “accountability” examinations disrupt school schedules for two weeks. Needless to say, prepping students for these tests consume a great deal more class time than simply the exam period. The time has come to ask: what is the added benefit of a two-week disruption compared to the three-hour long tests?
Research has established that people put greater stock in non-profit school evaluations than state-sponsored evaluations. People are wise to do so. The details of state evaluation systems are unavoidably political in nature. Researchers have also found people to be very interested in parental reviews of schools. Private platforms such as Niche.com and Greatschools.com collect reviews. State systems do not. The web traffic of private platforms also dwarfs that of any state department of education website.
American schools have big problems, and the accountability movement represented a well-intended effort to address those concerns. American schools spend at high levels
After a two year break due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the state’s best Literary Lawn party is returning to the Mississippi State Capitol.
The festival last gathered in Jackson in 2019. It is a free event and open to the public at the historic Mississippi State Capitol building and surrounding areas. The festival takes place on August 20, 2022 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Ellen Daniels, Executive Director
“Where else can you find 170 of the nation’s best authors in one location, plus have the opportunity to hear from them, visit with them, and have them sign your books? At the Mississippi Book Festival, of course,” said Executive Director Ellen Daniels.
Along with the over 170 panel authors, the festival features 15 booksellers from independent book stores to publishers, over 25 organizations from across the state, and one of its largest features; Author’s Alley, which holds nearly 100 authors from all over selling their works on Mississippi and West Streets.
The festival will feature authors like Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan as the guest of the Eudora Welty Foundation who will speak on her latest novel The Candy House. National Book Award-Winners Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell in conversation with Margaret McMullan about their collaboration with Congressman John Lewis on the graphic novel RUN: Book One. ational Book Award-winner Ellen Gilchrist, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown, and Secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie G. Bunch, III, will each have one-on-one conversations with noteworthy moderators.
It will also showcase Jackson’s-own Kiese Laymon who will join Pulitzer Prize-Winner Alice Walker in conversation to celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Color Purple.
Star of HGTV’s Home Town Erin Napier, Newberry Medal-winner Matt de la Peña, and New York Times bestseller Candice Millard will each visit with readers about their latest books. Another Times bestseller, Angie Thomas, will join a star-studded group of her collaborators on the book Blackout.
The event has something for everyone, with kids events scheduled throughout the day and authors to peak their interests into reading, even more.
As you enjoy your time at the state’s Literary Lawn Party, don’t forget to grab a bite to eat from one of the food vendors located on West Street. They bring some of Mississippi’s best cuisine, on wheels!
On Aug. 9, Oxford police testified for the first time to the evidence used to charge 22-year-old Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr. for the murder of Jimmie “Jay” Lee. During a preliminary hearing, Ryan Baker, an OPD detective, laid out the steps that police took before arresting Herrington for killing Lee.
A Black student who was well-known in Oxford’s LGBTQ community, Lee’s body is still missing more than a month after he disappeared on July 8. Herrington has not yet entered a plea in the case, but his uncle Carlos Moore has said he believes Herrington did not kill Lee.
To help the public understand how police investigate missing persons cases, Mississippi Today has recreated the timeline of OPD’s investigation into Lee’s death using Baker’s testimony and publicly available documents.
This post will be updated as more information is released about the investigation.
July 8
Around 8:30 p.m., the University of Mississippi Police Department receives a call from Lee’s mom, Stephanie Lee, requesting a wellness check. Stephanie tells police her son’s location isn’t showing up on her iPhone and that it’s alarming for Lee to let his phone die.
About 15 minutes later, according to UMPD’s initial incident report, an officer checks on Lee’s apartment at Campus Walk, a university-owned student housing complex. The door is slightly ajar, and Lee’s dog is inside.
UMPD starts pulling video surveillance footage from Campus Walk. The footage, Baker testified, shows Lee leaving his apartment a little after 4 a.m., coming back about 40 minutes later, then leaving again at 5:58 a.m.
July 10
UMPD posts on social media asking for information about Lee’s whereabouts. The post includes a description of Lee’s car, a black Ford Fusion with a gold stripe on the front hood and a Mississippi license plate reading “JAYLEE1.”
UMPD then receives a call from Bandit Towing, a company in Oxford. Bandit Towing tells UMPD that it towed Lee’s car from Molly Barr Trails, an apartment complex in northeast Oxford, at 1:52 p.m. on July 8, and gives UMPD a picture of Lee’s car parked in the back of Molly Barr Trails, near a wooded area that stretches to the airport.
The Oxford Police Department gets involved in the case and receives a call on its tip line from one of Lee’s friends who says they had talked over Snapchat early in the morning on July 8. Lee’s friend tells OPD that Lee was in the car on the way to meet someone “he had previously hooked up with,” Baker testified.
Lee didn’t say who he was going to meet, Baker testified that the friend recalled, but said he had blocked the person on social media following a fight they’d had a few hours earlier. The person then reached out on Snapchat “under a username Jay Lee didn’t recognize,” Baker testified Lee’s friend said, and “offered to do something to Jay Lee they’d never done before” that was implied to be sexual in nature.
July 11
To trace how Lee’s car ended up at Molly Barr Trails, Baker testified that OPD starts obtaining video surveillance from businesses along Jackson Avenue, a main thoroughfare in Oxford, and the front office at Molly Barr Trails.
Footage from the front office shows Lee’s car arriving at Molly Barr Trails at 7:25 a.m. Nine minutes later, Baker testified that the footage shows a “Black male running from Molly Barr Trails” wearing dark shorts, a gray hoodie and black-and-white sneakers. Baker noted during his testimony that the video does not show this same person running into the complex.
Around 7:38 a.m., footage from agas station on Molly Barr Trails showed the same person – who officers will later determine is Herrington – jogging into the parking lot and meeting a white Kia Optima with an Ole Miss tag.
July 13
OPD searches Molly Barr Trailswith help from K-9s from theDeSoto County Sheriff’s Office and releases a video of Lee’s father pleading for more information.
July 15
Lee’s family organizes a search party at Clear Creek Lake, a conservation area north of Oxford near where the body of Ally Kostial, a UM student who was murdered by her boyfriend, was found in 2019.
July 20
OPD announces the FBI and Mississippi Attorney General’s Office are assisting in the investigation.
July 21
OPD receives Lee’s Snapchat data – including his messages and blocked contacts – and identifies Herrington as a person of interest.
Lee’s Snapchat data corroborates the account his friend gave to OPD on July 10. Snapchat’s location data puts Lee in the vicinity of Herrington’s apartment for the last time at 6:12 a.m. on July 8.
Starting at 5:17 a.m. on July 8, Lee’s Snapchat messages show a conversation with an account named “redeye_24” that Lee doesn’t recognize. OPD determines “redeye_24” is Herrington by identifying the phone number associated with the Snapchat account, a Google Voice number registered to an email for Herrington’s podcast, “Dirt 2 Diamonds.” An account belonging to Herrington is also among Lee’s blocked contacts.
In the messages, Herrington asks Lee to “come back” to his apartment, but Lee initially refuses, calling the way Herrington treated him earlier that night as an “asshole move.” Lee then says that he thinks Herrington is “just tryna lure me over there to beat my ass or something.” Herrington replies, “you trippin,” adding, “I do feel bad because we cool so I ain’t trying to end it like this.”
Lee replies the only way he will go back to Herrington’s apartment is if Herrington reciprocates oral sex, and Herrington agrees. Lee tells Herrington it won’t “end up good” if he tries to “hurt me or some shit.” Herrington replies “I know.”
July 22
OPD pulls the car tags of the white Kia Optima – the car that Herrington met at the gas station parking lot – and realizes an officer pulled the car over during a traffic stop on the morning of July 8. OPD looks at the officer’s body camera, which shows a Black male in the passenger seat wearing clothes that match the video footage from Molly Barr Trails.
Mid-morning, officers knock on Herrington’s door at DLP Oxford, a luxury student housing complex. Baker testified that Herrington opens the door, answers “a few general questions about knowing Jay Lee” and asks officers to “excuse the mess … because he was moving to Dallas soon.” Baker recalls that clothes and towels were lying on the couch, as if Herrington had just done laundry.
OPD detains Herrington and takes him back to the precinct for questioning. At 2:44 p.m., officers read Herrington his Miranda rights, and he signs a waiver agreeing to give up his right-to-counsel in the interview with Baker and a lieutenant. Herrington acknowledges that he had a casual relationship with Lee and says that on the morning of July 8, he went to Walmart to buy duct tape before going on a run.
As Baker and his lieutenant are interviewing Herrington, other officers execute a search warrant on his apartment, obtaining several items including his MacBook, keys, and a pair of dark-colored shorts. Officers also seize a Walmart receipt that shows Herrington bought duct tape at 6:41 a.m. The DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office walks its “cadaver dogs” – K-9s trained to identify the smell of a dead body – through Herrington’s apartment. The dogs “alert” three times in Herrington’s bedroom and once in the living room area.
During the preliminary hearing, Herrington’s attorney, state Rep. Kevin Horan, repeatedly asked Baker if OPD had reviewed the training DeSoto County gives its cadaver dogs or checked to see if the dogs had ever before identified the smell of a dead body. Baker said that he had not.
The dogs also alert during a search of Herrington’s car, and an OPD technician finds blonde hair near the driver’s seat and back passenger seat. In the trunk, Baker testified that an OPD technician found bodily fluid in the shape of a footprint but did not specify what kind.
Police also bring in for questioning the driver of the Kia Optima who says that he was driving on Molly Barr Trails the morning of July 8 when he saw Herrington jogging. The driver says that Herrington told him he was “gassed” from a run and needed a ride back to his apartment.
Baker gets an affidavit for Herrington’s arrest, and he’s booked into the Lafayette County Detention Center around 8:15 p.m.
July 25 and 26
OPD expands its search for Lee’s remains to Grenada County and takes possession of Herrington’s box truck in Oxford.
July 27
OPD receives a forensic copy of Herrington’s MacBook that shows his Google search history. The forensic copy shows that on July 7, Herrington had googled flights from Dallas to Singapore. That night, he looked at a Twitter profile titled #TransLivesMatter that posts pornographic videos of trans people.
The copy also showed that Herrington was looking at Lee’s Twitter page at 5:21 a.m., a few minutes after he first messaged Lee on Snapchat.At 5:56 a.m., minutes afterLee messaged Herrington he was on his way, the copy shows that Herrington searched “how long does it take to strangle someone gabby petito,” then “does pre workout boost testosterone.”
OPD also obtains video from Walmart showing Herrington viewing garbage cans shortly before purchasing duct tape at 6:41 a.m.
July 29
Police search Herrington’s parent’s house in Grenada after getting a search warrant. Officers also obtain video footage of Herrington retrieving a long-handle shovel and wheelbarrow from his parent’s house and putting it into the back of the box truck.
A man has been arrested in Petal on kidnapping charges after a Petal woman narrowly escaped his pursuit at approximately 1:15 am Saturday morning, but another woman was not so lucky. Omar Bankhead was taken into custody Monday night just before midnight by the Petal Police Department and booked into the Forrest County Detention Center on a kidnapping charge. Petal police are investigating at least two incidents involving Bankhead.
THE DETAILS
According to statements obtained by HPNM, the incidents occurred late Friday night and the early morning hours on Saturday. In one incident a man hiding in a tree line approached a female after she exited her vehicle. She had just arrived home from a friend’s home, and her mother let her dog out to greet her as she exited her vehicle. The dog sensed something in the shadows and began barking at the shadowy figure. Not sensing the danger at the moment, the woman thought the shadowy figure was just an area resident out walking and told him not to worry, that her dog doesn’t bite. As she turned to walk to her home, she noticed the man had begun pursuing her. She screamed and ran for the safety of her home. Bankhead got within 10 feet of her door, before he fled on foot. Petal Police responded within minutes. Another woman was not so lucky. According to the other victim’s mother, her daughter, “was broken into and violated.”
More details will be reported as they are released by Petal Police Department.
A public healthcare entity and a non-profit media outlet share high dollar donors making transparency a challenge.
As first reported Friday on Jackson Jambalaya, there continues to be a curious flow of funds that now seems at least of tangential interest in a lawsuit between Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Mississippi and University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC).
At issue is whether this flow of funds may have involved some sort of arrangement whereby preferential coverage was actually provided and/or the disclosure of which should have been more explicit in the Mississippi Today’s coverage of the UMMC/BCBS battle.
Jackson Jambalaya details that founding Mississippi Today Board Member Jim Barksdale was concurrently giving substantial sums of money to both Mississippi Today and UMMC for years via an organization called the Mississippi Common Fund Trust.
Though funded by almost entirely Barksdale, this organization was staffed and governed by University of Mississippi Foundation members. The University of Mississippi Medical Center is affiliated with the University of Mississippi.
Optically complicating matters is that the University of Mississippi Medical Center began sponsoring Mississippi Today earlier in 2022 when Mississippi Today began focusing on coverage about the UMMC/Blue Cross Blue Shield dispute in ways that were substantially favorable to UMMC.
This was at the same time that individual UMMC officials were, according to a complaint, engaging in defamatory speech about BCBS and how it interacted with UMMC after UMMC rejected the BCBS renewal terms. Only after a defamation lawsuit was filed by BCBS against UMMC that sought records surrounding the financial relationship between UMMC and Mississippi Today did Mississippi Today begin to disclose publicly that UMMC had, in fact, started sponsoring Mississippi Today podcast and video content.
UMMC had spent some $279,000 on ads that denigrated Blue Cross Blue Shield that was funded out of “patient operations” budgets – not appropriated sums and not foundation money.Neither UMMC nor Mississippi Today has disclosed the specific amount of money paid by UMMC (a public entity) to Mississippi Today (a non-profit).
However, in their editorial disclosure after the fact, Mississippi Today went out of their way to state that the financial transaction between UMMC and Mississippi Today was to have no bearing on the coverage.
Following the flow of donor money for this non-profit media outlet for transparency’s sake has been challenging. As Jackson Jambalaya pointed out, in 2020 with revenues according to their 990 of just over $13,000 and operating expenses of just over $1,400,000, the entity is largely dependent on giving from donors.
Mississippi Today has had a practice going back to its founding where its publicly required 990 filings – showing how the non profit received and spent money in the public interest – have been intentionally obfuscated with regards to specific donor amounts. The outlet has listed all of their donors on one page but redacted the portions of their 990s that made it difficult to determine with clarity which donor had donated what amounts. Those amounts have been as little as $1,000 on the disclosure to over $500,000, which has had the net effect of having small dollar donors provide cover for very large institutional donors.
Another interesting wrinkle in the relationship between UMMC and Mississippi Today is the fact that Mississippi Today’s Community Health Editor, Kate Royals, was on staff at UMMC in their Communications Department ment immediately prior to working with Mississippi Today.
Kate Royals, Mississippi Today’s community health editor since January 2022, worked as a writer/editor for UMMC’s Office of Communications from November 2018 through August 2020, writing press releases and features about the medical center’s schools of dentistry and nursing.
She is now back on the UMMC/BCBS beat writing stories for Mississippi Today that are highly critical of Blue Cross Blue Shield compensation and critical of how the disagreement between BCBS and UMMC affects transplant patients.
Communications around all of these items are likely to be covered by a subpoena requested by BCBS in their lawsuit. Specifically, they seek just about all texts, emails and prepared materials by UMMC staff in conjunction with outside media personnel regarding the BCBS/UMMC dispute.
How well did Mississippi respond to the COVID-19 pandemic? The health department is hiring an outside contractor to answer that question.
The contractor, who should start work in early November, will conduct interviews with people involved in a wide range of pandemic response efforts, from contact tracing and COVID testing to hospital operations and public information. They’ll prepare an “after-action report” that will reconstruct and analyze Mississippi’s response – including how well state and local agencies followed emergency response plans – and offer suggestions for improvement.
Just shy of 13,000 Mississippians have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, according to health department data. Nearly 900,000 cases have been reported in the state.
Mississippi had the highest per capita number of deaths of any state in the country, with 427 deaths for every 100,000 people, according to the New York Times. The national average was 311.
A report by the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund released in June ranked Mississippi’s pandemic response last among 50 states and the District of Columbia. Mississippi scored particularly poorly in premature deaths from treatable causes – ranking 51st – and out-of-pocket medical costs for employees.
Mississippi also saw the country’s highest percentage increase in the drug overdose death rate from 2019 to 2020, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
The report produced for the health department will take a closer look at the nuts and bolts of the agency’s pandemic response. The analysis will answer questions including:
“What happened? What was supposed to happen based on current plans, policies and procedures?
Was there a difference? What was the impact?
Do plans, policies, and procedures support activities and associated tasks?
Are MSDH responders familiar with these documents?”
Mississippi Today reached out to the health department for comment but has not yet received a response.
According to the request for proposals, the state recently conducted feedback sessions with regional health department team members. The results of those sessions will be shared with the contractor chosen to write the report.
The 59-page request offers a sense of the scope of the state’s pandemic response, which involved thousands of people working at the health department, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), Mississippi Department of Human Services, the Mississippi State University Extension Service, the Board of Animal Health, the National Guard and the Department of Environmental Quality, as well as private contractors.
The state had operated 916 testing sites as of April 7, 2022 and processed over 3,200,000 PCR tests as of late April.
The contract will last until early November 2023 but may be renewed by the health department for an additional year.
Ethics Commission could rule by year end if they, in fact, have jurisdiction. Read the complaints from the media outlet and responses by the House GOP, Speaker Gunn below.
The Mississippi Legislature is set to return to the Capitol in just over four months, yet the issue of whether House Republican Caucus meetings should be subject to the Open Meetings Act remains unsettled by the state Ethics Commission.
This saga began on March 4, 2022, when State Senator Sollie Norwood, a Democrat, using the Open Meetings Act as a backdrop and amid a heated session where Senate and House leadership significantly differed on major legislation, namely the elimination of the income tax, asked the Mississippi Ethics Commission if it is lawful for a political caucus that represents a majority in a legislative chamber to exclude from its meetings any member of that chamber when business of the full body is discussed or decided during that caucus meeting. This was aimed at Speaker Gunn’s use of Republican caucus meetings, a regular practice that dates back to the state’s earliest days irrespective of the party in power.
Just over an hour later, Ethics Commission Executive Director Tom Hood responded to Norwood’s question, stating that the Commission had no authority to issue advisory opinions about the Open Meetings Act as it does under the Ethics in Government Law. Hood added that such a question would need to be directed to the Attorney General’s office. Senator Norwood later told Y’all Politics that he had no intention of making a request on the matter to the AG.
Then, on March 14, Mississippi Free Press reporter Nick Judin was escorted out of a House Republican Caucus gathering after he attempted to stay in the room when the caucus planned to meet. That rejection of Judin’s attendance was amplified as his outlet and others generated newly found hysteria and outrage, posting articles on the issue on the same day, March 21, a week later.
Judin’s effort was couched as an attempt to paint Speaker Gunn and House Republicans as violating the Open Meetings Act when such caucus meetings have never been subject to those parameters.
On March 24, Judin filed a complaint (shown below) with the Ethics Commission stating that “Speaker Philip Gunn and the House Republican Caucus are barring access to the official meetings of a public body engaged in the shaping of public policy in violation of the Open Meetings Act…”
Since then, Mississippi Free Press has engaged Mississippi Center for Justice attorney Rob McDuff to act on their behalf before the Ethics Commission, filing their own complaint on April 12. McDuff, as you may recall, was recently the attorney for Jackson Women’s Health Organization in their failed attempt to challenge the state’s trigger law that banned abortion following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Dobbs case which overturned Roe v. Wade.
McDuff’s complaint for Mississippi Free Press Commission requests relief, stating that the Commission should issue an order requiring Speaker Gunn and the House Republican Caucus to comply with the Open Meetings Act and open its meetings to the press and the public.
However, Speaker Gunn and the House Republican Caucus disagree. Both Gunn and the GOP Caucus submitted filings to the Ethics Commission on May 20.
The House Republican Caucus is being represented by Kenna Mansfield and Kelly Simpkins of Wells Marbles & Hurst PLLC. The caucus filed a motion to dismiss the complaint stating that the Mississippi Constitution commits to the House the decision as to when legislative business should be conducted in closed sessions, adding that the House is provided all rule making authority as to its proceedings.
“Accordingly, the question as to whether legislative business should be conducted in open or closed sessions is a procedural question,” the GOP caucus filing claims. “Simply put, the procedural workings of the Legislature are off-limits.”
The House Republicans state that just like the judiciary, the Ethics Commission lacks the authority to address and decide how the House conducts its legislative business.
Speaker Gunn concurs with the House Republican Caucus’ filings and writes in his response that the complaints raise nonjusticiable political questions, which Gunn says the Ethics Commission and the courts may not reach without violating the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches.
Just as he has maintained throughout this saga, Gunn writes that the Open Meetings Act does not apply to the Legislature as a whole or to any other group of House members that comprises a majority of members.
Speaker Gunn notes that the Open Meetings Act only applies to the Legislature when it is specifically included in the Act, saying that legislative committees are included in the definition of “public bodies.” Gunn goes on to state that an official meeting of the House is only when members are gathered in a “properly convened session.”
For now, the Ethics Commission is awaiting a rebuttal from Judin and Mississippi Free Press to the House Republican Caucus and Speaker Gunn responses. That rebuttal is expected by the end of the month.
Ethics Commission Executive Director Hood says once that rebuttal is received, the Commission could take the matter up in September or October in hopes of having it resolved by the end of the year and ahead of the 2023 legislative session.
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You can review the Ethics complaints in full below.
Rapper Rick Ross’ family, which operates several Wingstop franchises, owns the five Mississippi locations the labor department found to be illegally deducting money from workers’ wages, leaving some with take-home pay less than $7.25 an hour.
The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division says the Mississippi stores – under Boss Wing Enterprises – made their employees illegally pay for uniforms, safety training, background checks, and even cash register shortages.
“Restaurant industry employees work hard, often for low wages, and many depend on every dollar earned to make ends meet,” Jackson’s Wage and Hour Division director, Audrey Hall, said in a statement. “The law prevents Boss Wing Enterprises LLC from shifting operating costs to workers … or to allow a worker’s pay to fall below the minimum wage rate.”
The rapper and Clarksdale native’s older sister and assistant, Tawanda Roberts, is listed as the registered agent and manager of Boss Wings Enterprises LLC in Mississippi, according to business records filed with the state. His mother, Tommie Roberts, is also listed. Ross’ family has been growing its number of Wingstop locations for the last decade.
The DOL says it recovered $51,674 in wages owed to 244 workers and fined the franchise company $62,753 in civil penalties.
Tawanda Roberts did not respond to a request for comment to her business email regarding the DOL’s investigation. A Boss Wing representative reached by phone told a reporter to contact Wingstop’s corporate public relations department for comment, even though they operate independently. In a statement, Wingstop distanced itself from Boss Wings.
“The restaurants investigated by the DOL are owned and operated by a franchisee, not Wingstop Restaurants Inc. Our franchise agreement requires all of our franchisees to operate under our operating standards, which requires compliance with all laws and regulations,” the company said in a statement. “We were not previously aware of the DOL action against Boss Wings LLC.”
During its investigation, the Wage and Hour Division found minimum wage violations because of improper paycheck deductions; overtime violations when the employer deducted wages for safety training and background checks during weeks workers took extra shifts; and violations for failing to maintain proper records of hours workers logged.
Investigators also found a 15-year-old who illegally worked past 10 p.m. last June. Federal law says young teens cannot work past 7 p.m.
The DOL says it has uncovered more than $34.7 million for more than 29,000 workers in the food service industry during the last fiscal year. At the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics continues to report record job openings in the service industry as an influx of service workers begin efforts to organize unions.
“Employers who do not respect their workers’ rights will likely struggle to retain and recruit the people they need to remain competitive, as workers look for opportunities with employers that do,” Hall said.
Ross and his sister have spoken publicly about their entry into the wing business. The rapper – whose 2006 song “Hustlin” launched him to fame – told Forbes in 2014 that he first thought about opening a franchise of his favorite wing spot shortly after his music career took off.
Tawanda Roberts is an alum of Mississippi Valley State. Boss Wing lists its offices based in Southaven in state records. The DOL named the Wingstop locations in Clarksdale, Tupelo, Starkville, Olive Branch, and Oxford as part of its investigation.
Ross cut the ribbon to open the downtown Clarksdale location in 2020.
“This is an opportunity for jobs in Clarksdale and an opportunity for the Black community,” Ross told local media during the opening ceremony. “This will bring people downtown and Clarksdale needs that.”
The rapper had a cluster of locations in Memphis, but Wingstop’s corporate office said Boss Wings has transferred those locations to a new operator. Most of the family’s locations are throughout the southeast and Miami, where Ross lives.
It’s unclear how many Wingstop locations the family now runs, but a Wingstop blog said Ross owned 28 as of 2019.
“Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker” – the almost 500 page anthropology of diary entries by the acclaimed writer– starts with a poem inspired by Walker’s time living in Jackson.
“While love is dangerous / let us walk bareheaded / beside the Great River,” she writes in the poem’s second and final stanza. “Let us gather blossoms / under fire.”
The final lines are a metaphor for the impulse that moved a young Walker to join the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the summer of 1966; it also nods at her decision to leave about 10 years later.Walker wanted to prove to her family that it was possible for a Black woman to freely live in a place as dangerously racist as Jackson was at that time.
“That summer marked the beginning of the realization that I could never live happily in Africa–or anywhere else–until I could live freely in Mississippi,” Walker wrote.
But after several years of depression, loneliness and trauma – the result of watching civil rights activists face repeated abuse – Walker was burnt out, like a fire left unattended.
“I was starting to fray, my spirit was in tatters,” Walker told Mississippi Today. “It’s incredibly difficult to live in a place where people you care about deeply are being so abused – bombed, shot and banged, drowned, and assistanted and their houses blown up – it wears on you, and I felt all of that.”
“It wasn’t so much that I gave up on being there, it was that I simply wore out,” she added. I couldn’t really endure.”
Walker’s journals, released earlier this year, document her development as a writer. The journals also show Walker coming to realize the kind of community she wanted to live in, one where creativity was not stifled by segregation. Walker and her editor, Valerie Boyd, who passed away earlier this year, hope can serve as a “workbook” – or put another way, as a form of therapy.
“I want the journals to be used so that people can see this working through of disappointment, anger, sorrow, regret,” Walker said in an interview with the New York Times. “So in that sense, it’s a medicine book.”
The first section – titled “Movement, Marriage and Mississippi” – records Walker’s time in Jackson in the 1960s while she was partners with Melvyn Leventhal, a Jewish lawyer for the NAACP, in the first legal interracial marriage in Mississippi. Many of the entries were written in the large backyard of a house in north Jackson and show Walker working through states-of-mind that will be familiar to any artist. – confidence, self-consciousness, and ambition.
“How odd it is – I am having trouble writing honestly or well,” Walker writes at one point. “Could it be because I dared mention to Mel that I might one day publish this journal?”
The section begins in 1965 with the 32nd anniversary of Walker’s parents – a time, she remarks, “that seems so long to live with someone and still enjoy being with them occasionally.”
In the next entry, Walker is on an airplane, flying south from New York to Atlanta for an orientation for student members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. It’s the first time Walker – who grew up in rural Georgia, the eighth child of sharecroppers and valedictorian of her segregated high school – returned South since she left to attend Sarah Lawrence College.
The time away was fortifying. She mocks the whiteness of the clouds – one looks like a king, “whiter among his subjects and with pigs’ ears and a snout.” She’s less disgusted by the syrupy accents of the white flight attendants. Then she’s on the ground, on a bus driving past Morris Brown College, a historically Black liberal arts college, to meet fellow foot-soldiers, whose solidarity imbues her journal entries with a sense of community.
Throughout the first section, before Walker marries her husband in Mississippi in 1967, she talks about dating men who fall into archetypes – the ones who want to date their mothers or think it’s bourgeois to want to be a writer. She also contemplates creating her own philosophy – “not Philosophy of the Absurd, etc, but a Philosophy based on Curiosity.”
Walker later does this, coining the term “womanist” to describe what it means to be a feminist of color.
In Jackson, Walker is initially “afraid” to say she likes it, but she admires the people who “are mainly doing what they want or what they feel has to be done.” Isolated in her house with her dog, unable to freely go to the grocery store with her husband, Walker starts to have nightmares in which she tells her family about “the beauty of Mississippi Negro Bravery” but is then arrested outside a gas station.
“How odd, after so much travel, to land in Mississippi,” she writes. “Definitely not the route Wright and Baldwin took. Mel would like to stay here a long time. So would I if only we could get away two or three times a year. Soon we will have been here a year and a half. I begin to feel like a colonizer.”
She teaches at Tougaloo College and Jackson State University and, as she gains more acclaim, she knows people wonder why she stays in Mississippi. Her husband wants to stay, though, so she oscillates between familial and personal responsibility. She feels like she should live in Mississippi because of the political premise of it: “Imagine being afraid of being in your own country!” She writes. “Simply to live anywhere with freedom requires a willingness to become an immovable force, except by death.”
An incident, not described in the journal, brings clarity born out of anger.
“I looked at the back of the cracker bus-driver’s head and I hated him and everybody that looks like him,” she writes. “I am not going to stay here much longer – and all the placating, explaining, courageous talk in the world is not going to make me stay here and be destroyed.”
Once she leaves Mississippi, it lingers. Walker has lived in northern California,but her first stop after she left was Brooklyn. She gets a divorce and lives with her daughter. She notes that Brooklyn is “remarkably” similar to Mississippi, but she’s decided that ideology does not always equate to endurance.
“We must go wherever we are not destroyed in the image of those who hate us,” she writes. “Home is wherever we can live human lives.”
Walker is a featured panelist at the Mississippi Book Festival on Aug. 20.
