Mayor of Mississippi's capital city fights for third term despite federal bribery indictment
In a matchup Jackson voters have seen before, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba , seeking a third term, faces state Sen. John Horhn in a Democratic primary runoff on Tuesday.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
Ketanji Brown Jackson turns independent streak loose on fellow justices
To hear Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson tell it, it's a 'perilous moment for our Constitution.' The Supreme Court's most junior justice had pointed exchanges with her colleagues on the bench this term, increasingly accusing them of unevenly applying the law — even if it meant standing on her own from the court's other liberal justices. Jackson has had an independent streak since President Biden nominated her to the bench in 2022. But the dynamic has intensified this term, especially as litigation over President Trump's sweeping agenda reached the court. It climaxed with her final dissent of decision season, when Jackson accused her fellow justices of helping Trump threaten the rule of law at a moment they should be 'hunkering down.' 'It is not difficult to predict how this all ends,' Jackson wrote. 'Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more.' Her stark warning came as Trump's birthright citizenship order split the court on its 6-3 ideological lines, with all three Democratic appointed justices dissenting from the decision to limit nationwide injunctions. Jackson bounded farther than her two liberal colleagues, writing in a blistering solo critique that said the court was embracing Trump's apparent request for permission to 'engage in unlawful behavior.' The decision amounts to an 'existential threat to the rule of law,' she said. It wasn't the first time Jackson's fellow liberal justices left her out in the cold. She has been writing solo dissents since her first full term on the bench. Jackson did so again in another case last month when the court revived the energy industry's effort to axe California's stricter car emission standard. Jackson accused her peers of ruling inequitably. 'This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this Court than ordinary citizens,' Jackson wrote. 'Because the Court had ample opportunity to avoid that result, I respectfully dissent.' Rather than join Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent that forewent such fiery language, Jackson chose to pen her own. The duo frequently agrees. They were on the same side in 94 percent of cases this term, according to data from SCOTUSblog, more than any other pair except for Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the court's two leading conservatives. Sometimes Sotomayor signs on to Jackson's piercing dissents, including when she last month condemned the court's emergency order allowing the Department of Government Efficiency to access Americans' Social Security data. 'The Court is thereby, unfortunately, suggesting that what would be an extraordinary request for everyone else is nothing more than an ordinary day on the docket for this Administration, I would proceed without fear or favor,' Jackson wrote. But it appears there are rhetorical lines the most senior liberal justice won't cross. In another case, regarding disability claims, Sotomayor signed onto portions of Jackson's dissent but rejected a footnote in which Jackson slammed the majority's textualism as 'somehow always flexible enough to secure the majority's desired outcome.' 'Pure textualism's refusal to try to understand the text of a statute in the larger context of what Congress sought to achieve turns the interpretive task into a potent weapon for advancing judicial policy preferences,' the most junior justice wrote, refusing to remove the footnote from her dissent. Jackson's colleagues don't see it that way. 'It's your job to do the legal analysis to the best you can,' Chief Justice John Roberts told a crowd of lawyers at a judicial conference last weekend, rejecting the notion that his decisions are driven by the real-world consequences. 'If it leads to some extraordinarily improbable result, then you want to go back and take another look at it,' Roberts continued. 'But I don't start from what the result looks like and go backwards.' Though Roberts wasn't referencing Jackson's recent dissents, her willingness to call out her peers hasn't gone unaddressed. Jackson's dissent in the birthright citizenship case earned a rare, merciless smackdown from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, cosigned by the court's conservative majority. Replying to Jackson's remark that 'everyone, from the President on down, is bound by law,' Barrett turned that script into her own punchline. 'That goes for judges too,' the most junior conservative justice clapped back. Deriding Jackson's argument as 'extreme,' Barrett said her dissenting opinion ran afoul of centuries of precedent and the Constitution itself. 'We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary,' Barrett wrote. The piercing rebuke was a staunch departure from the usually restrained writing of the self-described 'one jalapeño gal.' That's compared to the five-jalapeño rhetoric of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Barrett said, the late conservative icon for whom she clerked. On today's court, it is often Thomas who brings some of the most scathing critiques of Jackson, perhaps most notably when the two took diametrically opposite views of affirmative action two years ago. Page after page, Thomas ripped into Jackson's defense of race-conscious college admissions, accusing her of labeling 'all blacks as victims.' 'Her desire to do so is unfathomable to me. I cannot deny the great accomplishments of black Americans, including those who succeeded despite long odds,' Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion. It isn't Thomas's practice to announce his separate opinions from the bench, but that day, he said he felt compelled to do so. As he read it aloud from the bench for 11 minutes, Jackson stared blankly ahead into the courtroom. Jackson's boldness comes across not only in the court's decision-making. At oral arguments this term, she spoke 50 percent more than any other justice. She embraces her openness. She told a crowd in May while accepting an award named after former President Truman that she liked to think it was because they both share the same trait: bravery. 'I am also told that some people think I am courageous for the ways in which I engage with litigants and my colleagues in the courtroom, or the manner in which I address thorny issues in my legal writings,' Jackson said. 'Some have even called me fearless.'
Miami Herald
2 hours ago
- Miami Herald
‘Black market' dining reservations sell for thousands. States want to stop that
NEW ORLEANS - This isn't just any old list. With tables spread across several distinct dining rooms at the storied Commander's Palace restaurant, managers must calculate precise labor needs and open up the reservation list for just the right number of rooms at the right time for each dinner service. "If I spread the reservations out too much, it feels like you're sitting in church," said operations manager Steve Woodruff. "We have an old saying: Nothing dresses up a dining room like customers." In recent years, emerging third-party online platforms selling hard-to-get dinner reservations have created headaches for popular restaurants like Commander's Palace. New platforms such as Appointment Trader auction off the most desirable tables for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And unlike other platforms that contract with restaurants, such as OpenTable, the reservation trading apps work outside of a restaurant's control: Anyone can make a reservation (often for free) and sell it for a profit, with the platform taking a commission on the sale. During this year's Super Bowl weekend in New Orleans, one table at a French Quarter restaurant went for more than $2,100. When customers spend that kind of money before the meal, Woodruff said, it heightens expectations and alters a diner's perception of value without restaurants even knowing. He said the apps also can force restaurants to run a service with empty tables if those online platforms don't find buyers - putting the risk on the business, not the customer. "If you resell a concert ticket, you had to risk something to buy the ticket. There's no risk here," he said. The issue is increasingly gaining the attention of state lawmakers. Commander's Palace and the Louisiana Restaurant Association successfully lobbied for a new law banning the resale of reservations without the consent of restaurant operators. Recently, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the bill, which gained unanimous approval in every committee and floor vote. The Louisiana law follows the signing of bills by New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. A similar measure passed by the Illinois legislature is awaiting action by the governor. California and New Jersey are also eyeing such protections. "I know what it takes for people to build a brand," Republican state Rep. Troy Hebert, who sponsored the Louisiana bill, said in an interview. "I mean, think about it: You're making money off of my brand, and I didn't even know about it." He said online reservation platforms can use automated technology to quickly secure reservations, holding them hostage from other customers. Hebert noted that restaurants can still choose to work with any of the online reservation trading systems. "We're not preventing people from running those types of models," he said. "They just need to get the permission of the establishment. That's it." The new law allows the attorney general to issue platforms a $1,000 daily fine for each restaurant they're selling reservations for without permission. Appointment Trader founder Jonas Frey told Stateline that lawmakers are only hearing from powerful restaurant associations and the reservation platforms they contract with like OpenTable and Resy, which have pushed for these new laws. Frey said restaurants often show no availability online even when they have free tables. "It's one of the reasons why Appointment Trader works so well, because people with the relationship to the restaurant generally get these tables," he said. "We didn't make this problem - the restaurants are doing that." He said the site can actually help restaurants avoid no shows because most trades occur on the day of the reservation. And many restaurants require a credit card for a reservation, meaning a consumer could be charged even if schedules change and they can't use their reservation. "In my mind, it's atrocious: You're liable for something, but then you're not allowed to sell it," he said. Consumers completed 50,000 transactions on the platform last year, he said, with a no-show rate of only 1%. While restaurants have raised concerns about people making lots of reservations to flip a few online, Frey said his site blocks sellers who list too many openings without selling them. So far, these"black market" restaurant reservations have been most problematic in the nation's hottest dining destinations, including Chicago, Las Vegas, Miami, New Orleans and New York City, said Mike Whatley, vice president for state affairs and grassroots advocacy at the National Restaurant Association. "It's the places where there are those reservations that if you aren't logging on right at midnight a month out to get the reservation, you're not getting them, where these challenges have arisen, where you're seeing piracy take place," he said. Whatley added that this wave of state legislation is reminiscent of one that followed the rise of third-party delivery services such as DoorDash. In some cases, delivery platforms posted restaurant menus and sent drivers to pick up orders without permission. "And restaurants were going, 'Hey, why am I on this website? I didn't give authorization for that,'" he said. Whatley said some restaurants have responded to reservation traders by requiring deposits to make reservations, decreasing the likelihood of no-shows. "There's a lot of interest in states where this isn't a problem yet, getting ahead of it and just passing something on a bipartisan basis so that it never becomes a problem down the road," he said. Commander's Palace first learned of these platforms early last year when a customer asked why he couldn't get a table on the restaurant's website but saw one for sale on Appointment Trader. Woodruff said the new law is important because the restaurant and its reservation vendor struggled to tell which reservations came directly from customers and which came from reservation traders. "It didn't feel like we could fight it effectively on our own in house, because it's like a game of Whac-A-Mole," he said. Located among historic mansions and Victorian homes in the city's Garden District, Commander's Palace is more of a campus than a single restaurant. Nicknamed "Big Blue" among the staff for its striking teal paint job, the restaurant sprawls across nearly 12,000 square feet and is known for dishes like turtle soup and gumbo. In business for more than 130 years, Commander's Palace is among the city's most famous spots. Reservations can be difficult or impossible to land, especially between October and May when tourists and conventions fill the Big Easy. Proponents of reservation trading platforms argue they can provide customer flexibility. But Woodruff says it's only those websites that are winning - while consumers and restaurants lose out. In the foyer of the restaurant, Woodruff pulls up a big screen at the podium displaying the tables for every meal service. The restaurant is a must-stop for many tourists, but it's the locals that keep the place running year-round. Wearing a white shirt and black braided leather suspenders, Woodruff scrolls back to the recent Mother's Day brunch service. The screen shows the history of each customer. Some have dined here dozens of times, some more than 110. "These people spend every family special occasion with us," he said. "There's an awful lot of local goodwill that I try and cultivate." ____ Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached atkhardy@ Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Vox
4 hours ago
- Vox
5 questions about the Democrats' Tea Party moment
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, speaks during a press conference celebrating his primary victory on July 2. Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images Last weekend, my colleague Christian Paz wrote about how the Democratic Party could be on the brink of a grassroots takeover, similar to what the GOP experienced with the Tea Party movement. It's a fascinating piece that could have huge ramifications for Democratic politics, so I sat down with him to chat about his reporting for Vox's daily newsletter, Today, Explained. Our conversation is below, and you can sign up for the newsletter here for more conversations like this. Hey, Christian, how are you? Remind us what the original Tea Party was. What is this movement we're talking about? The movement that I'm talking about started before Obama was elected. It was a mostly libertarian, grassroots, localized, not-that-big movement — a reaction to the bailouts at the end of the Bush administration. The idea being there's too much deficit spending and government is becoming way too big and becoming unmoored from constitutional limited-government principles. It evolved when Obama was elected into a broader anti-Obama backlash and then a major explosion because of the Affordable Care Act fights. It basically turned into an effort to primary incumbent Republicans, an effort to move the party more toward this wing and eventually try to win back control of Congress. After it took off, what happened to the GOP? They were able to win, I believe, five out of the 10 Senate seats that they were challenging. Something like 40 members of Congress were Tea Party-affiliated. The primary thing was that they were successful in massively mobilizing Republican voters and getting people to turn out in the 2010 midterms, which turned out to be one of the biggest 'shellackings,' as Obama called it, that Democrats or that any incumbent president and their party had sustained. Democrats lost control of the House and lost seats in the Senate, and that was a massive setback. From then on, what happened was a successful move by more conservative primary challengers in future elections, the most iconic one being in 2014 — the primary that ousted Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, in favor of a Tea Party activist. It also forced the party as a whole to move to the right, making it more combative, more extreme, and more captive to a more ideological part of the Republican base. Why are we hearing about this now with the Democratic Party? The underlying idea is that there's a divide between the establishment Democrats and populist-minded progressive Democratic candidates. And that's part of the reason why we're hearing this now, because there was a victory in New York City's mayoral primary by Zohran Mamdani, a candidate who is fully in that latter category — a self-described democratic socialist appealing to this idea of bringing out new parts of the electorate, mobilizing people with populist appeal, with targeted, non-polished messaging, and taking more left-leaning positions on policy. The big thing fueling talk about this Tea Party moment for Democrats is that the base has never really been as angry as it is right now. What we're seeing is a combination of anti-Trump anger, wanting a change in direction, wanting a change in leadership, and also some folks who are like, Maybe we should become more progressive as a party. Today, Explained Understand the world with a daily explainer, plus the most compelling stories of the day. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. So tell me about that. A change in leadership, a change in the establishment — what does this movement actually want? It's interesting. Because at least back with the original Tea Party movement, you could point to a core list of priorities there were about repealing Obamacare, about never repeating a bailout, about limiting the federal government's ability to spend. Something like that doesn't exist right now, because it is a pretty disparate energy. The core thing is Democratic voters do not want the current leadership in Congress. They don't like Hakeem Jeffries's style of leadership in the House. They don't like Chuck Schumer's style of leadership in the Senate. There's frustration at older members of Congress being in Congress and serving in leadership capacity right now. In the polling, over and over again, we see, Democrats should be focused on providing a working-class vision for Americans. They should be more focused on kitchen table affordability issues. And that is the thing that most Democratic voters can actually agree on, and basically saying that that's not what they think their current leadership is focused on. What would it look like for the Democratic Party if this actually happens? There are some strategists and activists who are drawing up lists of potential candidates to primary. There are already some challenges underway. I'm thinking of some House seats in Arizona, House seats in Illinois. There's talk, especially after this New York City mayoral contest, about primarying Kirsten Gillibrand or Chuck Schumer and finding challengers to some more moderate House members in the New York area. I'd be looking to see if there actually are younger people launching primary campaigns targeting older or centrist Democratic members of Congress. Once we get to primary season next year, how successful in fundraising are these candidates? Is there an actual effort by some established progressive members of the House to try to support some of these younger candidates?
