- 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. Ranking the top community colleges in Mississippi
According to SmartAsset’s rankings for Best Community Colleges for 2025, 13 Mississippi community colleges qualified for its ranking, with the top three schools in the state being Itawamba Community College (130th), Coahoma Community College (157th), Southwest Mississippi Community College (207th).
The study ranked 585 two-year schools offering associate’s degrees with at least 500 full-time students. Rankings are available within each state and can also be compared to the wider, national rankings.
Ranking criteria captures various factors for residents considering matriculation, including tuition and fees, student-faculty ratio, and student retention rate. A full list of the rankings can be found here.
2. Bluesky goes dark in Mississippi
Bluesky, what has become the left-leaning alternative to X, announced last week that it has blocked access to its platform in Mississippi over the “Walker Montgomery Protecting Children Online Act.”
Mississippi lawmakers passed the legislation in unanimous bipartisan votes in both chambers in 2024. It requires social media platforms to make reasonable efforts to prevent or mitigate children’s exposure to potentially harmful content while using the platforms. While legal challenges continue, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the law to take effect.
Bluesky said in a statement, “Unlike tech giants with vast resources, we’re a small team focused on building decentralized social technology that puts users in control. Age verification systems require substantial infrastructure and developer time investments, complex privacy protections, and ongoing compliance monitoring — costs that can easily overwhelm smaller providers. This dynamic entrenches existing big tech platforms while stifling the innovation and competition that benefits users.”
National News & Foreign Policy
1. Trump removes Federal Reserve board member
The New York Times reports that President Trump said on Monday “that he was taking the extraordinary step of removing Lisa Cook from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, in a legally dubious maneuver that could undermine the independence of the nation’s central bank.”
“Mr. Trump justified the firing, which he said was effective immediately, by pointing to allegations that Ms. Cook may have falsified records to obtain favorable terms on a mortgage,” NYT reported. “But Ms. Cook and her lawyer vowed to fight her dismissal, maintaining that the president did not have the grounds to oust her.”
NYT went on to report that, “Ms. Cook has not been charged with wrongdoing or convicted of a crime. In the days before Mr. Trump attempted to remove her, the president had made no secret about his desire to remake the roster of the Fed, as he savaged its members, including Jerome H. Powell, the chair, for keeping interest rates too high.”
2. Trump seeks to crack down on flag burning and violence it incites
As reported by ABC News, “President Trump on Monday signed an executive order directing the Justice Department to ‘prioritize’ prosecution of Americans who engage in ‘acts of American flag desecration,’ activity which the U.S. Supreme Court has previously ruled is protected by the First Amendment.”
“To get around the constitutional roadblock, which the order acknowledges, Trump instead directs government attorneys to aggressively charge flag burners with other crimes, such as destruction of property, disorderly conduct, aiding and abetting, and local open burning restrictions,” ABC News reported. “Declaring the flag ‘the most sacred and cherished symbol of the United States of America,’ the presidential order calls destruction of the flag in public – by burning or other means – ‘uniquely offensive and provocative’ and ‘may incite violence and riot.'”
“The Court has never held that American Flag desecration conducted in a manner that is likely to incite imminent lawless action or that is an action amounting to fighting words’ is constitutionally protected,” the order reads, per ABC News.
Sports
1. USM softball’s Moody named to All-Sun Belt Community Service Team
Southern Miss Athletics said Monday that senior softball outfielder Madeline Moody has been named to the All-Sun Belt Community Service Team, as announced by the league office.
Student-athletes must serve with non-profit organizations or have a clearly beneficial impact on the community to be eligible. The school said Moody has been a steady presence with the Golden Eagles throughout her career.
Moody served as her team’s representative as a member of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) where she played a key role in tracking and organizing community outreach efforts. The Southern Miss softball team received the 2025 SAAC Talon Awards Community Impact Award, with Moody at the helm, logging a total 1,218 hours of community service. The award is given to the team with the most community service hours among all Southern Miss athletic programs.
2. MSU golfer named to ANNIKA Award preseason watch list
The Haskins Foundation has named Avery Weed, an Ocean Springs, Mississippi native, to the 2025-26 ANNIKA Award Preseason Watch List, the organization announced on Monday.
The ANNIKA Award is named each year to the top female Division 1 Golfer. This season marks the fourth consecutive season that a Bulldog has been named to the preseason watch list.
MSU Athletics said Weed will enter her third season in the Maroon and White when State kicks off their season this Friday at the Carmel Cup. Through her first two seasons, she has compiled a 72.31 scoring average, which would stand as the second-best career scoring average in program history. She has finished par or better in 31 of her 61 rounds played. Last season, Weed finished the year with a 71.67 average, the sixth-best single season in program history. She also collected 20 par or better rounds, the fourth most of any Bulldog in a single season in program history.
Markets & Business
1. Trump Intel deal prompts GOP criticism
The Hill reports that President Trump’s announcement “that the federal government would take a 10 percent stake in Intel, once the nation’s most successful chip manufacturer, has raised alarm bells with conservative Republicans, who see it as part of a bigger trend under Trump of the federal government asserting itself in corporate decisionmaking.”
“Trump announced his agreement with Intel after he reached a separate deal earlier this month with two other U.S.-based chipmakers, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), that will see them pay the U.S. government 15 percent of their revenue from AI-chip sales to China,” The Hill reported.
The Hill added, “Conservative Republican critics of the Intel deal warn it’s another step toward ‘socialism’ that undermines the free market and sets a precedent that Democrats could exploit when they return to power.”
2. Cracker Barrel: We could’ve done a better job
CNBC reports that Cracker Barrel on Monday “issued a statement responding to the widespread backlash it faced last week over its rebranding and new logo.”
“If the last few days have shown us anything, it’s how deeply people care about Cracker Barrel. We’re truly grateful for your heartfelt voices,” the company wrote, per CNBC. “You’ve also shown us that we could’ve done a better job sharing who we are and who we’ll always be.”
CNBC noted, “The new logo removes the image of the restaurant’s ‘Uncle Herschel’ character leaning against a barrel that was prominently featured in the original, leaving behind just the words ‘Cracker Barrel’ against the outline of a yellow barrel. The phrase ‘old country store’ has also been removed.”
Magnolia Tribune
