Free Republic

Mississippi turns a corner, but can the federal government?The future for our state looks bright. In just the past five years, Mississippi has seen more economic growth than in the entire 15 years before that combined.We’re on track to phase out the state income tax entirely, allowing families to keep more of what they earn. Mississippi has attracted a surge of new investment, and for the first time in years, our workforce participation rate is finally heading in the right direction.Zoom out, and the picture gets even better. Contrary to the endless gloom from the pundits, the American economy has...

A college student allegedly shouted “F*** the Jews” and threw coins at Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy outside a pizzeria in Starkville, Mississippi, on Friday. The outburst occurred while Portnoy was filming a “One Bite” pizza review. According to The New York Post, Patrick McClintock, 20, a mechanical engineering student at Mississippi State University, was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace on Monday. He withdrew from the university the same day. In a video circulating on X, the man can be heard making the antisemitic remark. Members of the crowd immediately condemn the slur as Portnoy turns toward the...

A Mississippi State University student has been arrested after yelling antisemitic comments at Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy. The arrest of 20-year old Patrick McClintock, a mechanical engineering student at MSU, came after Starkville police were “made aware of a video circulating online that depicted an individual yelling an antisemitic statement and throwing coins toward another person outside a local business”, the police department said in a statement. According to a video of the incident which has gone viral on social media, Portnoy could be seen recording a segment of his One Bite pizza review outside Boardtown Pizza & Pints...

The court agreed to hear the matter after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law in 2024. The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case addressing whether states may count ballots that arrive after Election Day. The Republican National Committee and Mississippi Libertarian Party challenged the state's law permitting the counting of ballots postmarked by Election Day should they arrive within five days, Politico reported. The court agreed to hear the matter after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law in 2024. President Donald Trump, for his part, has long been a...

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy was subjected to an antisemitic slur while filming content in Starkville, Mississippi on Friday, reported the New York Post. Portnoy was recording one of his signature “One Bite” pizza reviews outside what appeared to be Boardtown Pizza near Mississippi State University when a passerby shouted “F***k the Jews” toward him. The comment was immediately condemned by bystanders. “Why don’t you come in the camera, buddy?” Portnoy, who is Jewish, responded, gesturing for the man to approach. The individual then walked up to Portnoy and his cameraman, engaging in a brief, inaudible exchange before walking away....

HEIDELBERG, Miss. -- Monkeys being transported on a Mississippi highway escaped captivity Tuesday after the truck carrying them overturned, according to law enforcement. All but one of the escaped monkeys were killed, the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department said in a post on Facebook, warning that the monkeys were “aggressive." It is not clear how many monkeys were originally in the truck or how many were killed. The truck was carrying Rehsus monkeys, which typically weigh around 16 pounds (7.7 kilograms) and are among the most medically studied animals on the planet. They were being housed at the Tulane University National...

A federal judge overturned a former Biden-era rule that protected transgender healthcare under anti-discrimination measures. On Wednesday, Judge Louis Guirola Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi ruled in favor of a coalition of 15 Republican-led states. The complaint was filed regarding Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which the Biden administration interpreted to include provisions for transgender-identifying people to receive so-called “gender-affirming care.” The provision added gender identity to Title IX’s definition of discrimination “on the basis of sex,” which previously included discrimination based on sex characteristics and reproductive function. This rule prevented...

BILOXI, Miss. (WLOX) - Five shootings in 24 hours across the Magnolia state left at least 9 dead this weekend. Most of the shootings happened after high school football games on Friday night. The last two happened at Alcorn State and at a Jackson State University event at Veterans Memorial Stadium on Saturday. At Alcorn State, one person is dead, and two others were injured near the Industrial Technology Building. Officials said no arrests have been made at this time. Jackson Police Department Interim Chief Tyree Jones said a child was hit by gunfire near the tailgate section during JSU’s...

High school homecoming celebrations in Mississippi ended in gunfire, with two separate shootings on opposite sides of the state Friday night that left at least six people dead and many more injured, authorities said. Four of the dead were killed in downtown Leland, after a high school football homecoming game in the Mississippi Delta region on the state’s western edge, a state senator said Saturday. About 20 people were injured in the gunfire after people gathered in downtown Leland following the game, state Sen. Derrick Simmons said. Of the 20 wounded, four were in critical condition and flown from a...

This is why “the Mississippi Miracle,” the sobriquet for the extraordinary gains that students in the Magnolia State have made in reading in recent years, is a misnomer. There’s nothing miraculous about a state that adopts phonics and that sets high standards for its kids getting better results in reading instruction. This, to the contrary, is a predictable outcome, and a replicable one, as other Southern states that have taken up similar polices have shown. Mississippi went from 49th in fourth-grade reading results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress about a decade ago to ninth in 2024. Its low-income...

The death of a 21-year-old Black student discovered hanging from a tree at Delta State University in Mississippi has been ruled a suicide, police said Thursday. The body of the student, identified as Demartravion "Trey" Reed, was discovered by a faculty member around 7 a.m. on Monday hanging from a tree near the pickleball courts on the Cleveland, Mississippi, campus, according to the campus police department. The Mississippi State Medical Examiner's autopsy findings are "consistent with the initial investigation, determining the cause of death to be hanging and the manner of death as suicide," the Cleveland Police Department said in...

Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom immediately politicized the mass shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis on Wednesday by blaming Republicans. As Breitbart News reported on Wednesday, two children were killed and 17 others were wounded during a shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school while the students attended Mass. Per the New York Post: The deranged gunman who slaughtered two children and injured at least 17 others at a Catholic school in Minneapolis has been identified as a transgender woman — as disturbing videos posted by the shooter show a handwritten manifesto and “kill Donald Trump” and “for the children”...

Eleven Iranian nationals have been arrested in the last 48 hours by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents across eight different states and nine cities, according to CBS News. This development comes in the wake of a nationwide security alert issued after the U.S. carried out a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities this past weekend. ... One of the individuals arrested is Mehran Makari Saheli, who is a former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). ICE arrested Saheli at his home in Minnesota where he "admitted connections to Hezbollah," an Iranian-funded terrorist organization. ... On Sunday, authorities also...

A 31-year-old Danish national with no criminal record who has been living in the U.S. legally for more than 10 years was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials during a routine appointment to finalize his citizenship, according to multiple media reports. Kasper Eriksen, a green card holder who works as a welder in Sturgis, Mississippi, where he lives with his wife and four children, was unexpectedly taken into custody on April 15 and later transferred to the LaSalle Detention Center in Louisiana, Newsweek reported. ... ICE officials reportedly detained the 31-year-old for failing to file a single document,...

A Danish man living in Mississippi for a dozen years has been imprisoned in Louisiana for more than a month after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers took him into custody because of a “paperwork miscommunication” during his effort to become a naturalized U.S. citizen, his wife says.......................... ......For years, Kasper went through the process of trying to become a U.S. citizen, and Savannah Eriksen – now homeschooling their children and pregnant with their fifth baby, due in August – said her husband’s move toward citizenship appeared to be on track. He received notice last September that his naturalization application was...

Painting the Deep South as an embarrassing cultural backwater is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice among elites. It’s not just tolerated—it’s venerated. Mississippi is probably the top target. I don’t have to tell you why. You know about the poor health outcomes. The poverty. The corruption. The obesity. The Confederacy stuff. Wikipedia has an entry dedicated to the phrase “Thank God for Mississippi,” because its horrible performance on so many metrics saves other states the embarrassment of finishing last. The term has been used since at least 1945. This has made it awkward in recent years,...

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, jointly with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other law enforcement partners, executed search warrants in Southern Mississippi that resulted in multiple arrests involving illegal immigration, cockfighting, and other criminal activity. The search warrants were part of an ongoing undercover investigation into the unlawful cockfighting in Harrison County, Mississippi. The arrests included United States citizens and suspected illegal aliens found at the site of the makeshift animal fights attended by some people from outside Mississippi. Two defendants, Alvin Smith III and Herbert Kasey Smith, were charged with violating the Animal Welfare Act for hosting the...

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — President Donald Trump offered some encouraging words and advice for graduating students at the University of Alabama on Thursday in a speech interspersed with impressions of transgender weightlifters, accusations that judges were interfering with his agenda and attacks on his predecessor, Joe Biden. The Republican’s jolting speech was standard fare for Trump and well received by the crowd in deep-red Alabama, which backed him in all three of his presidential runs. “You’re the first graduating class of the golden age of America,” the president told the graduates.

Mississippi is bringing back a “competitive” edge with Gov. Tate Reeves’ (R) signing of legislation to phase out the state income tax, and he discussed what this means for the state during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday. “So this is House Bill 1 that I signed into law on Thursday afternoon. And honestly, Matt, it’s really what I have called Mississippi’s one big, beautiful bill, and it is a bill that does a couple of different things,” Reeves began, explaining that it reduces the sales tax on groceries across the state and, over a period of time, eliminates the...

An upcoming 60 Minutes investigation into the drone sightings that took place toward the end of 2024 promises to reveal more about the government's knowledge and response to the still largely-unexplained phenomena. In a preview for the special, CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker speaks with Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, inquiring about the intelligence community's thoughts on the mysterious sightings and whether these could have been an attempt at espionage by a foreign power. "I am privy to classified briefings at the highest level," Wicker said. "I think the Pentagon and the National Security...