- Important state and national stories, market and business news, sports and entertainment, delivered in quick-hit fashion to start your day informed.
In Mississippi
1. Baskin appointed to Nursing Board by Governor
Dr. LaWanda Baskin, executive associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Nursing and Health Professions (CNHP) at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM), has been appointed by Governor Tate Reeves to serve on the Mississippi Board of Nursing. Her appointment is pending confirmation by the state Senate.
For now, she was sworn in Friday at the board’s meeting in Ridgeland.
A native of Natchez and resident of McComb, USM said Baskin joined the Southern Miss CNHP faculty in 2018. As executive associate dean for academic affairs, she oversees curriculum development, accreditation, and student recruitment and retention. She has taught both undergraduate and graduate nursing courses, and currently teaches advanced pathophysiology for advanced practice. She also mentors graduate students, serving as chair or committee member on numerous dissertation and doctoral project committees, guiding them through the research process and supporting their scholarly development.
2. Ole Miss football player killed in Tennessee
WJTV reports that 18-year-old Corey Adams, of New Orleans, a freshman Ole Miss football player was among five people shot outside of a house in Cordova in Tennessee on Saturday night.
“Deputies say five people were injured in the shooting. When deputies arrived at the intersection of Forest Hill-Irene and Walnut Grove, they stopped a car, finding 18-year-old Corey Adams of New Orleans, Louisiana suffering from a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead on the scene,” WJTV reported. “Four other men arrived by personal vehicles to area hospitals in non-critical condition.”
Ole Miss Football shared the above statement on X Sunday.
National News & Foreign Policy
1. Gabbard alleges Obama administration manufactured Russiagate
On Friday, TIME reports that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that she was turning over evidence of an “Obama Administration Conspiracy to Subvert Trump’s 2016 Victory and Presidency” to the Department of Justice “for criminal referral.”
“President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump,” she alleged in a DNI press release,TIME reported.
TIME went on to report, “Gabbard’s office declassified a number of documents and released a memo outlining a timeline of alleged information ‘manipulated and withheld’ by the U.S. Intelligence Community beginning in 2016. In a series of social media posts summarizing her findings, she said the documents ‘detail a treasonous conspiracy by officials at the highest levels of the Obama White House to subvert the will of the American people and try to usurp the President from fulfilling his mandate.’ The announcement backs Trump’s longtime contention that he was the victim of a ‘witch hunt,’ which the President has previously dubbed the ‘Russiagate hoax.'”
2. Democrats’ 2024 autopsy called into question
As the New York Times reports, “The Democratic National Committee’s examination of what went wrong in the 2024 election is expected to mostly steer clear of the decisions made by the Biden-turned-Harris campaign and will focus more heavily instead on actions taken by allied groups, according to interviews with six people briefed on the report’s progress.”
“The audit, which the committee is calling an ‘after-action review,’ is expected to avoid the questions of whether former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. should have run for re-election in the first place, whether he should have exited the race earlier than he did and whether former Vice President Kamala Harris was the right choice to replace him, according to the people briefed on the process so far,” NYT reported. “Nor is the review expected to revisit key decisions by the Harris campaign — like framing the election as a choice between democracy and fascism, and refraining from hitting back after an ad by Donald J. Trump memorably attacked Ms. Harris on transgender rights by suggesting that she was for ‘they/them’ while Mr. Trump was ‘for you’ — that have roiled Democrats in the months since Mr. Trump took back the White House.”
NYT noted, “Party officials described the draft document as focusing on the 2024 election as a whole, but not on the presidential campaign — which is something like eating at a steakhouse and then reviewing the salad.”
Sports
1. Ole Miss picked to finish 7th in SEC, Miss. State last
As the 2025 SEC Football Media Days concluded, Ole Miss was predicted to finish 7th in the 16-team conference while Mississippi State was voted to finish last.
Texas was predicted to win the 2025 SEC Championship.
As for players, the SEC Media Days All-SEC preseason teams featured Suntarine Perkins from Ole Miss in the 2nd Team Defense, and Zxavian Harris and Princewill Umanmielen from Ole Miss on the 3rd Team Defense. Mississippi State’s Isaac Smith was also on the 3rd Team Defense.
Place Kicker Lucas Carneiro from Ole Miss was named to the 2nd Team Special Teams.
Neither Ole Miss nor Mississippi State landed a player on the All-SEC preseason offensive teams.
2. Trump calls on Washington, Cleveland to change their team names back
The Washington Post reports, “President Donald Trump called on the Washington Commanders to ‘immediately’ change their name back to Redskins and said he might not make a deal with them if they do not, inserting himself into a debate that the franchise considers settled as it seeks to build a new stadium on federal land at the site of RFK Stadium.”
Trump also directed his comments to the Cleveland Guardians, an MLB team that changed their name from the longstanding Indians in 2021.
“The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team. There is a big clamoring for this. Likewise, the Cleveland Indians, one of the six original baseball teams, with a storied past,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them. Times are different now than they were three or four years ago. We are a Country of passion and common sense. OWNERS, GET IT DONE!!!”
Markets & Business
1. Futures up after winning week on Wall Street
CNBC reports stock futures moved higher on Monday “as investors tracked the latest developments in trade and awaited the start of big tech earnings this week.”
“Dow Jones Industrial Average futures added 94 points, or 0.2%. S&P 500 futures rose 0.2%, while Nasdaq-100 futures increased by 0.3%,” CNBC reported.
CNBC continued, “Wall Street is coming off a winning week for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, both of which continued to notch all-time highs. The S&P 500 ended the week higher by 0.6%, while the Nasdaq climbed 1.5%. The Dow ended the week slightly lower.The moves come on the heels of a solid start to earnings season. Of the 59 S&P 500 companies that have reported thus far, more than 86% have topped expectations, according to FactSet data.”
2. Economy “regaining its swagger,” WSJ reports
The Wall Street Journal reports that businesses and consumers “are regaining their swagger,” and evidence is mounting that those who held back during President Trump’s spring tariff implementation are starting to splurge again.
“The stock market is reaching record highs. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index, which tumbled in April to its lowest reading in almost three years, has begun climbing again. Retail sales are up more than economists had forecast, and sky-high inflation hasn’t materialized—at least not yet,” WSJ reported.
WSJ added, “In a July survey of 1,267 U.S. small-business owners by digital-marketing platform Constant Contact, 44% of respondents said demand for services and products is higher than they anticipated in January. A third were extremely optimistic that their business would be performing better in the next three months, and just under a third thought they would add more employees by then.”
