No deaths or serious injuries reported as tropical storm disrupts plans for Juneteenth and Father’s Day weekend
Authorities in Alabama say a suspected tornado spurred by Tropical Storm Claudette demolished or badly damaged at least 50 homes in a small town just north of the Florida border.
Sheriff Heath Jackson in Escambia County said a suspected tornado “pretty much leveled” a mobile home park, toppled trees on to houses and ripped the roof off of a high school gym.
Continue reading...Health experts emphasize need for even those who have had disease to get inoculated
New cases of Covid-19 are declining across most of the US, even in some states with vaccine-hesitant populations.
But almost all states where cases are rising have lower-than-average vaccination rates and experts warned on Sunday that relief from the coronavirus pandemic could be fleeting in regions where few people get inoculated.
Continue reading...A US public health expert has warned that though cases of Covid-19 are at their lowest rates for months and much of the country is returning to normal life, young Americans are still “a vulnerable host” for the coronavirus.
Related: Post-lockdown summer: Americans out for fun and with money to spend
Continue reading...A case that could undermine the landmark Roe v Wade ruling and a punitive Texas law are the culmination of a decades-long push
The anti-abortion movement in the US is emboldened and optimistic after the supreme court announced it would hear a direct challenge to laws underpinning the right to abortion in the US, and Texas enacted a law intended to ban abortion after six weeks.
The high court decision to take up the case and the Texas move come during the most hostile year for reproductive rights in the nearly half-century since pregnant people won the constitutional right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy in the landmark 1973 case Roe v Wade.
Continue reading...Court will take up Mississippi’s bid to enforce a 15-week ban on abortion, setting up a showdown
The US supreme court agreed on Monday to consider a major challenge to reproductive rights, saying it will take up Mississippi’s bid to enforce a ban on almost all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy.
Related: ‘It would be glorious’: hopes high for Biden to nominate first Black woman to supreme court
Continue reading...Cases could plateau at a point equivalent to summer 2020 peak, while vaccines have reached relatively few people
Public health experts encouraged Americans to continue social distancing and wearing masks at a potentially critical inflection point in the pandemic – one in which highly effective vaccines could provide relief, but fervor to reopen public life could unintentionally spread new Covid-19 variants.
The warnings come the same week Texas and Mississippi flung open the doors to normal social life in their states.
Continue reading...
Tanden’s letter to Biden requesting her withdrawal said:
Dear President Biden,
I am writing to you to withdraw my nomination for Director of the Office of Management and Budget. It has been an honor of a lifetime to be considered for this role and for the faith placed in me.
The withdrawal marks the first cabinet nominee by Biden to fail to get confirmation.
“I have accepted Neera Tanden’s request to withdraw her name from nomination for Director of the Office of Management and Budget,” Biden said in a statement. “I have the utmost respect for her record of accomplishment, her experience and her counsel, and I look forward to having her serve in a role in my Administration. She will bring valuable perspective and insight to our work.”
Continue reading...Cameroonians say officers choked, beat and threatened to kill them, as lawyers tell of pre-election removal drive
US immigration officers allegedly tortured Cameroonian asylum seekers to force them to sign their own deportation orders, in what lawyers and activists describe as a brutal scramble to fly African migrants out of the country in the run-up to the elections.
Many of the Cameroonian migrants in a Mississippi detention centre refused to sign, fearing death at the hands of Cameroonian government forces responsible for widespread civilian killings, and because they had asylum hearings pending.
Continue reading...Tropical Storm Marco was swirling over the Gulf of Mexico early on Sunday, heading for a possible hit on the Louisiana coast as a hurricane, while Tropical Storm Laura knocked utilities out as it battered Hispaniola, following a track forecast to take it to the same part of the US coast – also as a hurricane.
Related: Could the US and Caribbean be heading for their worst hurricane season?
Continue reading...Mississippi lawmakers have voted to retire the state flag, the last to feature the Confederate battle emblem. The House and Senate voted to remove the current flag, while a commission will design its replacement.
Continue reading...Governor Tate Reeves has indicated he will sign the bill to replace the state flag and create a commission to design a new one
Mississippi legislators have voted to replace the state flag, the last in the nation to feature the Confederate battle emblem, which has been condemned as racist.
The state House and the Senate voted to remove the current flag on Sunday and create a commission that will design a new flag that cannot include the Confederate symbol and that must have the words “In God We Trust”. Mississippi governor Tate Reeves has signalled he will sign the measure in the coming days.
Continue reading...
Trump ends the briefing on a very abrupt and sour note.
Asked by CBS White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang why he is so fixated on comparing the US’ testing capability to other countries as opposed to focusing on the lag that still exists here, Trump snapped: “Maybe that’s a question you should ask China. Don’t ask me, ask China that question, okay?”
Trump throws a fit when @kaitlancollins of CNN tries to ask him a question and abruptly ends the press conference pic.twitter.com/58AVZ9CABl
Trump walked out of his own news conference after accusing @weijia of asking a "nasty question" and refusing to take @kaitlancollins's questions after calling on her.
Trump spent Mother’s Day sending conspiratorial tweets about his predecessor. In one tweet he accused Obama of committing the “biggest political crime in American history, by far!” Trump.
Asked to name the crime he is accusing Obama of committing, Trump replied: “Obamagate. it’s been going on for a long time it’s been going on before I even got elected.”
Related: Trump charges Obama with 'biggest political crime in American history'
Continue reading...Not a day has been spent in jail nor a penny paid in compensation for the brutal murder of a 14-year-old boy in Mississippi that helped spark the civil rights movement
Thelma Wright Edwards knows this is the last chance for justice for Emmett Till. The next few weeks and months will determine whether there will ever be closure for her beloved cousin “Bobo”, as the family affectionately call the child.
The Guardian has learned that a reinvestigation of the boy’s murder that has been carried out by the FBI over the past three years could be wrapped up in weeks. For Thelma and the rest of the Till family, a decades-long struggle for justice is fast approaching its conclusion.
Continue reading...At least six people were killed after severe storms tore through a number of southern states late on Wednesday, adding to weeks of extreme weather that had already killed more than two dozen people and destroyed hundreds of homes.
Related: Tornadoes and storms hit US south as six killed in Mississippi
Continue reading...Storms caused flooding, mudslides and power outages, killing 11 people in Mississippi and six people in Georgia
Severe weather has swept across the southern US, killing at least 19 people and damaging hundreds of homes from Louisiana into the Appalachian mountains.
Many spent part of the night sheltering in basements, closets and bathtubs as sirens wailed to warn of possible tornadoes.
Continue reading...Twister destroyed buildings in Monroe, Louisiana, while local media said at least two tornadoes touched down in central Texas
A tornado strike destroyed homes and left a trail of devastation across parts of Louisiana on Sunday, as forecasters warned that a powerful Easter storm could affect more than a dozen states and millions of people before the early hours of Monday.
The storm provided a dilemma for public safety officials trying to find the balance between wanting people to stay in lockdown for the coronavirus pandemic and wanting them to leave their homes for shelter if conditions worsened.
Continue reading...Whole families are falling victim as African Americans are hit disproportionately hard by the coronavirus pandemic
Last weekend, at two churches in New Orleans, two pastors read from separate passages of the Bible as they buried four members of the same family. Each had died within days of each other after contracting the novel coronavirus.
Related: 'A nightmare all over again': after surviving Katrina, New Orleans battles Covid-19
Continue reading...Bernie Sanders, second in the race, campaigns in Michigan hoping to win the state with the most delegates
Joe Biden is hoping to cement his position as frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president on Tuesday, as millions of voters in six states have their say in the next round of primary election contests.
For Bernie Sanders – the second of two major remaining candidates in the race – the six primaries in Michigan, Washington, Missouri, Mississippi, Idaho and North Dakota will be a crucial test of whether he can reverse the momentum the former vice-president enjoys coming out of his victories in the Super Tuesday states last week, and prevent him from extending his delegate count lead.
Continue reading...The motivations behind today’s efforts to overturn elections and remove black elected officials are not very different than Reconstruction-era motivations
On 5 November, Hester Jackson-McCray, a black woman, narrowly defeated Republican incumbent Ashley Henley by 14 votes in a heated race for a seat in the Mississippi house of representatives.
Shortly after, Henley asked the Republican-dominated Mississippi house to overturn the election results, based on claims including that one precinct didn’t collect voter signatures (a technicality required to process ballots in the state) and that her campaign had found three uncounted paper ballots. Jackson-McCray, meanwhile, pointed out that the election had been run by the Republicans – Henley’s party – making it unlikely that she had manipulated the race in her favor. This turn of events was particularly surprising because the Republican party tends to cast doubts on the existence of voter suppression, the idea that political parties find ways to prevent Americans from voting, calling it a Democratic myth.
Continue reading...Tate Reeves, Mississippi’s lieutenant governor, congratulated Trump on the Ice raids – which is odd since Reeves positioned himself as a protector of children
Sign up for the Week in Patriarchy, a newsletter on feminism and sexism sent every Saturday.
Continue reading...