Thread by @ashtonpittman

In Matthew 25, Jesus describes "the least among us" while taking about showing kindness & compassion to:
•those in poverty
•the sick
•prisoners
•strangers (foreigners, refugees)
•those who are in prison

How has @PhilBryantMS' Mississippi treated them?

https://twitter.com/PhilBryantMS/status/1210723131729408007

Here's the score, after Gov. Bryant's 8 years in office:

POVERTY
-Mississippi is #51 in poverty with a 19.8% poverty rate.
–26.7% of Mississippi children live below the poverty line
–MS poverty by race: •12.1% white •17.2% Asian •21.6% Latino •31% black •36.1% Native

THE SICK
–Since 2013, Gov Bryant has rejected billions in federal funds to expand Medicaid, which would've opened access to approx 300,000 more people.
–Lack of expansion forced 5 rural ERs to close; people in closure communities have since died bc it took too long to get to a ER

THE SICK (cont)
–Mississippi's maternal mortality rate remains above the nat'l avg of 18 deaths per 100,000 live births. Mortality is higher among black women in the state—51.9 deaths per 100,000 live births.
–MS is also near the top in infant mortality
jacksonfreepress.com/news/2019/may/…

THE SICK (cont)
–Mississippi has one of the highest uninsured rates in the country at 12.13%.

After the Affordable Care Act, the uninsured average plummeted to 6.95% for state’s that expanded Medicaid.

For states like MS that refused expansion funds, the avg is 11.14%.

PRISONERS:

Gov. Bryant has signed a few modest criminal justice reforms into law, but despite a 11% drop in the incarceration rate from 2013 to 2016, @FWDus finds that Mississippi's incarceration rate is rising once again.

PRISONERS (cont.):

And while MDOC has remained sorely underfunded as private prisons thrive here, Mississippi remains #3 nationally in its incarceration rate (which is higher than many countries that we think of as despotic).

PRISONERS (cont.)
And from 2015 to 2017, the number of people incarcerated in Mississippi for drug possession steadily climbed.

PRISONERS (cont.)

Here's how Mississippi's incarceration rate compares to the US national average and to the founding NATO countries:

"STRANGERS"

Gov. Phil Bryant cheered as federal ICE agents raided Mississippi poultry plants & executed the largest one-day worksite raid in US history in August, taking hundreds of immigrant workers & leaving children stranded at school or alone at home.
jacksonfreepress.com/news/2019/aug/…

STRANGERS (cont.)

Many of those parents & family members are still being held in private prisons in Mississippi & Louisiana.

One of those prisons is run by the Bryant-friendly CoreCivic corporation in Adams County. It is also holding other ICE detainees.
jacksonfreepress.com/news/2019/aug/…

STRANGERS (cont)
Meanwhile, as children died in immigration custody, Gov. Bryant cheered on Trump's targeted cruelty of separating families & putting children in cages."The least among us" shouldn't be among us in this case, apparently.
jacksonfreepress.com/news/2019/oct/…

ABORTION
Though "the unborn" is what Gov. Bryant defines as "the least among us" (a group Jesus never mentioned)
& his signing multiple abortion bans...

...MS was one of just 6 states where the abortion rate increased since his 2011 election, up 16%.
guttmacher.org/sites/default/…

So whether we use Jesus' definition or Gov. Bryant's definition of who counts as "the least among us," MS remained well behind the rest of the country over the past 8 years of his tenure in each of those areas, sometimes going out of its way to remain so.