Mississippi

John Nothdurft and Donny Kendal present episode #128 of the In The Tank Podcast. Today’s podcast features work from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, the Mississippi State University’s Institute for Market Studies, The Heartland Institute, and the Washington Policy Center.

In 2015, Mississippi enacted the Equal Opportunity for Students with Special Needs Program, creating education savings accounts for parents of special-needs students. The ESA program allows these parents to use a percentage of the money allotted for their children at traditional public schools on education alternatives instead.

Mississippi is in a precarious position regarding the Common Core national academic standards. Amid a large grassroots movement against the K–12 math and English standards, legislators opted to review the standards rather than simply repealing and replacing them.

Heather Kays talks to Mississippi Senator Angela Hill about why it has been so difficult to remove Common Core in Mississippi.

With a surprisingly wide margin of victory, Congressman James Lankford won the Oklahoma Republican U.S. Senate primary, defeating former Speaker of the State House of Representatives T.W. Shannon by 23 points and avoiding a runoff election. Lankford now becomes the prohibitive favorite to replace outgoing Senator Tom Coburn, who is retiring with two years remaining in his current term.

So-called “Right to Work” laws have been reinforcing government tyranny and putting artificial pressures on labor markets for too long. States have felt the pressure to rule against private union…