Mississippi Keeps the Door Firmly Shut on Ballot Initiatives

[Daily Kos Morning Roundup]( [Abbreviated Pundit Roundup]( is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet. - [Mississippi Keeps the Door Firmly Shut on Ballot Initiatives]( Three years after the state supreme court voided direct democracy in Mississippi, all legislative proposals to revive it died again this week. At issue: The state constitution requires that a citizen-led initiative collect signatures in all five of the state’s congressional districts; the language was adopted in 1992, before Mississippi lost a congressional seat in the 2000 reapportionment, and it now only has four. The court said in May 2021 that, since there were no longer five districts in which to collect signatures, no initiative could be valid. The ruling was as literal as it gets; “it stretches the bounds of reason,” complained a dissenting justice. Nevertheless, it brought the petitioning to expand Medicaid and other efforts like it to a screeching halt. And state officials have not fixed the issue in the intervening years. Many GOP leaders have said they want to revive initiatives; but the schemes they’ve proposed have been restrictive—requiring that initiatives receive a supermajority and prohibiting them from ever affecting abortion, for instance—and even those haven’t passed. - [Daily Kos is the largest independent, progressive news outlet and activism hub in the country. Can you please support our work with a $5 monthly recurring donation?]( - [There’s a reason you haven’t heard the White House bash Johnson’s Ukraine aid ideas]( The administration believes that aid will ultimately be passed. But the process of getting there is still hazy. For all their frustration with the painstakingly slow pace in the House, administration officials are privately hopeful their approach could result in Congress starting to move on an aid package later this month. - [Nebraska legislators buck Trump by blocking Electoral College vote change — for now]( Former President Donald Trump and Republican Gov. Jim Pillen have called on lawmakers to change the state’s Electoral College vote allocation to a winner-take-all system. Wednesday night's failed attempt to change the law to award all the state’s Electoral College votes to the statewide winner leaves the fate of the proposal in doubt with a few days left in the legislative session. - [Trump is Trying to Rig the Electoral College]( The former President and his MAGA allies are trying to pressure Nebraska to change how it awards its electoral votes On Tuesday night, Trump endorsed an effort pushed by his allies to get Nebraska Republicans to change how their electoral votes are counted. Nebraska is one of two states that splits its electoral votes between statewide and congressional district winners. Trump, the state’s Republican governor, and MAGA activists like Charlie Kirk, want the state to revert to a winner-take-all system. This seemingly minor change (Nebraska has only one competitive congressional district) could have massive implications for the 2024 election. In fact, it could hand Trump the election — here’s why: - [The GOP’s Women Problem]( From abortion policy to Trump’s skeeziness, Republicans have plenty of reason to worry about women voters in 2024. The urgent display of interest by Sens. Marsha Blackburn, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Cynthia Lummis, and Katie Britt in “a monument commemorating women’s long fight for the right to vote,” announced to the world in a Washington Post op-ed last week, capped several depressing weeks for women at the hands of conservative Republican officials. We’re not talking time-travel to a glorious future. Quite the opposite. Did a U.S. senator—Alabama’s Britt, one of the coauthors of the suffrage monument op-ed—really impersonate a 1950s housewife in her kitchen at the highest profile moment of her career? Was an 1873 “chastity law” a serious part of a recent abortion-pill discussion at the U.S. Supreme Court? Are red-state legislators and jurists really so eager to extend legal “personhood” protections to frozen embryos that they are willing to see IVF effectively outlawed? Are conditions so dire that women in politics and government—in Arizona, Alabama, Iowa, and beyond—feel compelled to talk about their own experiences with abortions and IVF? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. - [Abortion is the top issue for many Americans this year. Show where you stand with our 'Abortion is Healthcare' t-shirt]( - [Israel to Add Gaza Aid Routes as Biden Hinges Support on Civilian Protection]( The president denounced the killing of seven aid workers in a tense call with Israel’s prime minister. Within hours, White House officials said Israel had agreed to more aid routes into Gaza. During a tense 30-minute call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Biden for the first time leveraged U.S. aid to influence the conduct of the war against Hamas that has inflamed many Americans and others around the world. The announcement of additional aid routes hours later met some but not all of Mr. Biden’s demands. Want to write your own stories? [Log in]( or [sign up]( to post articles and comments on Daily Kos, the nation's largest progressive community. Follow Daily Kos on [Facebook](, [Threads](, and [Instagram](. Thanks for all you do, The Daily Kos team We're not asking for much Over the past 12 months, the average donation to Daily Kos has been just $9.44. These donations may seem small, but they're a big deal to us. In fact, they are our largest source of income. We literally couldn't do the work we do without them. 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