Free Republic

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that states can continue counting mail-in ballots sent by, and received within, five days of Election Day - delivering a staggering blow to President Donald Trump on one of his biggest fixations. The high court ruled 5-4 to allow state voting laws that permit the counting of the mail-in ballots to remain in place. Republicans argued it conflicted with federal legislation. 'The federal election-day statutes do not prevent Mississippi from counting absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received up to five days thereafter; nothing in the federal election-day statutes requires ballots to be...

The Communist Party USA has condemned the recent police shooting that killed 1-year-old Kohen Kartier Wiley in Mississippi, saying it stands with those demanding answers and justice for his family. In a statement dated June 23, the party said that “under no circumstances” should theft result in someone being killed. The statement came in response to the death of Kohen, who was killed on June 14 during an officer-involved shooting outside the Walmart on U.S. Highway 51 in Senatobia. A statement from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation that was carried by local media said officers with the Senatobia Police Department...

A 1-year-old boy was fatally shot by a Mississippi cop who fired at a car the tot’s mother and aunt were fleeing in through a Walmart parking lot after allegedly stealing diapers. Kohen Wiley, 1, was killed and another woman in their car was critically injured when a cop opened fire at their vehicle in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, Mississippi. Kohen’s family told WREG that his mother was holding him in the front passenger seat while his aunt drove. It’s not clear if Kohen’s mother or aunt was the woman critically injured. Officers from the Senatobia Police Department...

Who broke Britain? Someone—or something—must have. The past 18 years, enough time for a whole lost generation to be born and brought up, have yielded nothing but stagnation and mass disillusionment. In 2007, before the global financial crisis, Britain was at its postimperial zenith. Median household income had just surpassed that of Germany. A pound was worth more than $2, and London was arguably displacing New York as the center of international banking. But since then, Britain has been left behind. The country’s output per person is now only just above that of Mississippi, America’s poorest state—and that slight lead...

On Monday, the Supreme Court issued two brief procedural orders involving Voting Rights Act (VRA) cases — one out of Mississippi, the other out of North Dakota. Neither case was decided on the merits. Instead, the Court "GVR'd" the cases, meaning it granted review of them, vacated lower court rulings, and remanded the cases to the lower courts for further consideration in light of the Court's recent ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. Despite their brevity, the orders may still have major implications for future VRA lawsuits. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented as to both orders, seemingly out of concern that...

Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves called off a planned special session to redraw the state’s Supreme Court districts, even as he said Mississippi could still revisit its congressional map amid a broader GOP redistricting push in the South. Reeves announced Wednesday that he would cancel the special session scheduled to begin next week, which had been called to address Mississippi Supreme Court districts. Several Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump had pushed Reeves to add congressional redistricting to the agenda as part of a broader effort to create safer Republican seats amid a nationwide redistricting battle. Reeves said the cancellation...

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has vacated the liability order in Mississippi’s state Supreme Court judicial redistricting case. The move comes after the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais where the nation’s highest court struck down Louisiana’s congressional redistricting that added a new majority-minority district, saying that lawmakers relied too heavily on race. The high court’s 6-3 ruling deemed racial gerrymandering unconstitutional as it had been practiced under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 was being used as the justification for U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock’s order that mandated the redrawing of Mississippi’s...

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The chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Service committees on Saturday expressed they are “very concerned” about the withdrawal of 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany amid President Trump’s feud with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Trump on Wednesday had announced that he was reviewing a possible reduction of U.S. troops in Germany. “We are very concerned by the decision to withdraw a U.S. brigade from Germany,” the chairs, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), said in a joint statement. “Germany has stepped up in response to President Trump’s call for greater burden sharing, significantly increasing defense spending...

Environmental groups are legally challenging a permit that Mississippi granted to xAI allowing the company to build a massive, methane gas-burning power plant in the state. The permit application had "deficiencies," like inaccurate air pollution estimates, the groups said, adding that regulators rushed what should have been a careful process. Now part of SpaceX, xAI wants to build the power plant to provide electricity for its data center in nearby Memphis, Tennessee, and another one coming in Southaven, Mississippi. Elon Musk's xAI, now owned by SpaceX, is facing a new legal challenge from environmental groups in Mississippi, where the company...

While the SAVE America Act continues to languish in the Senate under the supervision of Republican Leader John Thune, leaders and voters in several states have taken it upon themselves to secure their own elections from noncitizen voting. ...***FloridaGov. Ron DeSantis signed Florida’s own version of the SAVE Act into law last week. The law, which requires citizenship verification against REAL ID data when registering to vote, will go into effect in January of next year.***MississippiMississippi Gov. Tate Reeves also signed election integrity legislation into law last week. Named the Safeguard Honesty Integrity in Elections for Lasting Democracy (SHIELD) Act,...

Donald Trump's immigration crackdown is fracturing his own party, with Republican governors openly defying the White House over detention expansion as political fallout from the carnage in Minneapolis threatens to cost him at the midterms. Kristi Noem was rebuffed this week when she tried to build a new illegal migrant camp in New Hampshire by the state's Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte. Merrimack residents were outraged when it emerged that the Homeland Security Secretary planned to use their town to expand Trump's mass deportation effort. Ayotte, a moderate Republican governing a blue state, informed Noem that she would not assist in...

KEY POINTS $20 billion investment: Elon Musk’s xAI will build the MACROHARDRR data center in Southaven, Mississippi — the largest private investment in the state — as part of a Memphis-area cluster the company says will house the world’s largest supercomputer with 2 gigawatts of computing power. Environmental and community opposition: the NAACP, the Southern Environmental Law Center and local groups have raised air-pollution and environmental-justice concerns tied to xAI’s Memphis-area facilities, and a Southaven petition against the developments has more than 900 signatures. Generous incentives: under a 2024 data-center law Mississippi will waive state sales, corporate income and franchise...

Four Massachusetts residents are accused of using more than 100 stolen identities to get over $1 million in food stamps and pandemic-era unemployment benefits in a multi-state fraud scheme, federal prosecutors say. U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley said stolen identities from Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico were used to obtain $440,000 in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The defendants also allegedly submitted fraudulent documents in order to receive more than $700,000 in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance from Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Washington and Nevada. --snip-- Three defendants charged...

Stephen Spencer Pittman, Madison, Mississippi man arrested setting Jackson synagogue on fire after referencing Jewish religious institution as the ‘synagogue of Satan.’ Suspect is avid Christian and baseball fanatic and honor roll student. A 33-year-old man has admitted to starting a fire at a Mississippi synagogue on account of its ‘Jewish ties.’ Stephen Spencer Pittman, 19, of Madison, Miss., was charged Monday with maliciously damaging or destroying a building by means of fire or an explosive. In an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Mississippi on Monday, the FBI said the suspect confessed to lighting a fire inside the...

A suspect has been arrested after a fire tore through Beth Israel, the only synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi, on Saturday, leaving the congregation forced to rebuild from the ashes — again.Investigators have not yet determined a motive for the fire, which remains under investigation, but it comes amid a wave of antisemitic attacks in recent years.

Six people were killed in a series of related shooting in eastern Mississippi, according to authorities. Clay County Sheriff Eddie Scott on Friday said a suspect, later identified as 24-year-old Daricka Moore, was taken into custody. Online records show Moore was charged with first-degree murder. WTVA reported that a 7-year-old girl was among the victims. "Unfortunately tonight we have dealt with tragedy in our community. Multiple innocent lives lost due to violence. We do have the individual in custody and no longer poses a threat to our community," Scott wrote in a post he shared on Facebook. "I ask that...

Some of the Democrats who have been spiking the ball in the end zone after the passage of the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” probably didn’t read all of the finer details in the bill. They’ve been celebrating its passage along with Joe Biden as the “biggest climate legislation” to ever be passed. They have also been grudgingly thanking West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin for getting the bill over the finish line. But it turns out that Manchin snuck in a few items that haven’t drawn many headlines yet and the climate warriors aren’t going to be very happy about them....

More than three dozen missing children were rescued from sex traffickers in North Florida after a massive sting. The rescue effort, named Operation Northern Lights, found 43 missing children across 14 counties with more children found in other states, the US Marshals Service announced Thursday. Federal authorities said the youngest victims were one-year-olds and that one of the young victims had been abducted from Florida and located in Louisiana. Nine people were arrested after the staggering operation, which law enforcement said took two weeks to conduct. Additional charges could include human trafficking, child endangerment and custodial interference. The sting turned...

Camille Benson of Mississippi arrested for putting razor blades in loaves of bread at Walmart A Texas woman was arrested and charged after she hid razor blades and fish hooks in loaves of bread at Walmart stores in Biloxi, Mississippi. 33-year-old Camille Benson is accused of putting almost a dozen razor blades inside loaves of bread at two Walmart stores. Benson’s crime spree began on December 5 after a customer found a razor blade in a banana nut muffin. Investigators initially thought it was an isolated event; however, two days later, a customer at a neighboring Walmart discovered a razor...