I call immediately for more volleyball stadia

Let’s check in again on the model for Republican governance in America:

On August 29th, running water stopped flowing in Jackson, Mississippi’s state capital. After flooding knocked out an already decrepit water treatment facility, many of the city’s 160,000 residents were left scrambling to find bottled water, while public facilities like schools were shut down. Water has returned – but what does come out is often brown. The city remains under a boil advisory. 

This is just the latest in a decades-long struggle for Jackson residents, who have dealt with a water system that has failed or intermittently been contaminated. A 2021 winter storm led to a month-long outage, and the city faces two lawsuits claiming that children had been exposed to lead over the years. Over 80 percent of Jackson’s population is Black, and many advocates are citing the water crisis as a textbook case of environmental racism. 

The effect on families is especially severe, and their needs are often overlooked in disaster planning, said Sarah DeYoung, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware and disaster researcher. Without access to clean water, parents whose infants rely on formula have to purchase bottled water or track it down at a distribution center. And with an ongoing infant formula shortage, that’s only part of the struggle. Water that is boiled can still contain contaminants dangerous to infant health, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health, so it also cannot be used to wash anything that goes in a child’s mouth, including toys and pacifiers.

If only fanatical abortion opponents motivated by their “pro-life” vision were in charge of the Mississippi government we wouldn’t have all of these problems!