Jackson Jambalaya

Wow!  What a start!  Donald Trump began his Presidency with a blizzard of Executive Orders.  He’s not holding back on advancing a conservative agenda. An emergency has been declared to secure the southern border.  DEI hires in the federal government are being fired.  The renewable energy boondoggle is over.  Mass deportations have begun. 

  But what about Mississippi?  Have our state lawmakers been using their time in office to deliver the change we need?

The good news is that two weeks into the 2025 legislative session there are some significant conservative bills at the Capitol under consideration. 

  SCHOOL CHOICE

  HB1435 (Jansen Owen) offers public to public school choice.  It would give every Mississippi family the choice options that last year the legislature extended to military families.  HB1433 (Rob Roberson) would allow a limited form of public to private school choice in D and F rated districts.  Shout out to Rep Owen and Rep Roberson! Both bills are vitally important, and we strongly support them.  Also worth watching are bills to increase the number of Charter Schools and overhaul our phony district grading system.

  INCOME TAX ABOLITION

  The House has already passed HB1 (Rep Lamar, Speaker Jason White), which offers to eliminate the state income tax over the next decade.  It would be truly awesome if this were to pass. There is an issue with the fact that the bill frontloads some tax rises early on, but I am confident that good conservatives can make this work.  Kudos to Rep Lamar and Speaker White….

  ANTI DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION

  SB2223 (Sen Hill), HB1179 (Rep Currie) and HB1416 (Rep Currie) offer comprehensive legislative action to address DEI.  This is timely given that President Trump has just repealed Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order mandating reverse discrimination. Also important is Sen England’s SB2182 bill, which would let sunlight in as an anti DEI disinfectant.  Families would have a right to see what their kids are being taught in the classroom.  Three cheers for Sen Hill, Rep Currie and Sen England!

  BALLOT INNITIATIVE

  There is also a bill in the Senate, SB2572, sponsored by Sen Boyd, to restore the ballot initiative.  Well done, Sen Boyd.  If you can make this happen, you will be a hero to many. Given that the Senate has been the place that efforts to restore the ballot initiative have usually gone to die, the fact that this has the sanction of some in the Senate might be significant. There is also a superb bill to reform Certificate of Need laws (HB922) by Rep Zuber and Rep Creekmore.  A thousand cheers to both of them!

There are also some excellent proposals to allow Mississippians to buy wine online.  It’s ridiculous we can’t already …

  WILL ANY OF THIS HAPPEN?

  These are all excellent conservative proposals, but we’ve been here before.  Will our lawmakers make any of this happen?  What has already happened to some of the anti DEI bills is instructive. Mississippi Lieutenant Governor, Delbert Hosemann, moved to kill Sen Hill’s anti DEI bill through a procedural sleight of hand.  He did so by double referring the Hill bill, meaning that the chances of it progressing further are tiny.

  Mr. Hosemann maneuvered to kill the anti-DEI bill in Jackson the very week that President Trump issued Executive Orders to combat DEI in Washington. 

  Fortunately, lurking on the list of bills is a Senate bill (SB2515) called the REFOCUS bill (Sen Boyd).  It proposes a long overdue review of our public universities, and it seems to include a section about tackling DEI.  Or at least prevent public universities from maintaining a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion office. 

We know that Ole Miss and others have already rebranded their Diversity departments, so the bill could just be symbolic.  It might do nothing to counter leftist faculty, while allowing politicians to play word salad on SuperTalk. But depending on the language that Sen Boyd uses, her bill might actually be meaningful.  This could be the kind of anti DEI bill we need. 

  Here at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, we have built up a large audience across the state.  Our weekly email goes out to over 80,000 people In Mississippi.  Over the past week, more than ten million viewers across America and beyond saw our digital output.

As the House and Senate consider these conservative proposals in the weeks ahead, we will let you know who, like President Trump, has been actively on your side, and who continues to frustrate conservative reform. 

Douglas Carswell is the President and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. The Mississippi Center for Public Policy sponsored this post.