Jackson Free Press

There's never a slow news week in Jackson, Miss., and last week was no exception. Here are the local stories JFP reporters brought you in case you missed them:

1. The head of the Mississippi state agency that sent out a tweet last week honoring Confederate General Robert E. Lee once attended a rally of a racist organization that refers to black people as a "retrograde species of humanity."
2. Mississippi law would require schoolchildren to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and see the Ten Commandments be displayed on public-school walls under new bills in the Legislature this session.
3. Nissan Motor Co. announced Thursday that it's cutting up to 700 contract workers at its Mississippi assembly plant, citing slowing sales for vans and Titan pickup trucks that it makes there.
4. The City of Jackson sent out a short, cryptic press statement last Wednesday, indicating that an older man may have died from an encounter with Jackson policeon Sunday, Jan. 13, after a low-level misdemeanor stop.
5. The ongoing federal government shutdown is doing more damage in Mississippi than in most states, an analysis finds. Mississippi ranks eighth, according to WalletHub.
6. Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba navigated between his "radical" criminal-justice reform stances and his decisions to increase policing surveillance in his press conference last week about two murders in Jackson.
7. Despite a new poll showing that large majorities of Mississippians support Medicaid expansion, Mississippi Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves said last Monday that he opposes it.
8. Last week, Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba sent out a statement addressing several murders that roiled the capital city over the weekend—from a preacher killed in the Washington Addition to a teenager killed in a Walmart parking lot.
9. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant used his final State of the State speech to look back on his two terms and to offer proposals for his final year in office.
10. Sixth-term Sen. Gray Tollison was unanimously elected Senate president pro tempore by colleagues from both parties.

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