(The Center Square) – Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee joined five other governors in opposing the United Auto Workers' unionization campaign with a vote this week of Chattanooga Volkswagen autoworkers on whether to unionize.

Lee is joined by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott against what they call misinformation from the UAW.

“The reality is companies have choices when it comes to where to invest and bring jobs and opportunity,” Lee and the governors wrote. “We have worked tirelessly on behalf of our constituents to bring good-paying jobs to our states. These jobs have become part of the fabric of the automotive manufacturing industry. Unionization would certainly put our states' jobs in jeopardy – in fact, in this year already, all of the UAW automakers have announced layoffs.”

Tennessee Senate Democratic Caucus Chairwoman London Lamar, on the other hand, offered her support of the Chattanooga workers and UAW, saying that Lee has a history of “anti-worker” legislation such as a removal of automatic Tennessee Education Association deduction options from Tennessee teacher paychecks and an incentive restriction for businesses that allow card check union elections.

“Unlike Tennessee's governor, we applaud Volkswagen workers for engaging in the democratic process and we would welcome the UAW's expansion in Chattanooga,” Lamar said in a statement. “We aren't surprised to see Gov. Bill Lee join with other anti-union states trying to tip the scales against workers. Lee, who inherited a company that made him a millionaire, has signed more anti-worker laws than any governor in Tennessee history.”

Lee and the governors, however, believe a vote to unionize would jeopardize those auto manufacturing plants' future.

“In America, we respect our workforce and we do not need to pay a third party to tell us who can pick up a box or flip a switch,” the governors said. “No one wants to hear this, but it's the ugly reality. We've seen it play out this way every single time a foreign automaker plant has been unionized; not one of those plants remains in operation. And we are seeing it in the fallout of the Detroit Three strike with those automakers rethinking investments and cutting jobs. Putting businesses in our states in that position is the last thing we want to do.”

(The Center Square) – Mississippi's second part of a Medicaid reimbursement plan that the state says will provide more than $700 million in additional funds for the state's hospitals has been approved by federal officials.

Gov. Tate Reeves, on social media, said the approval will result in an additional $160 million for hospitals across Mississippi, which is $23 million more than originally projected.

“This additional $160 million will go a long way toward further strengthening hospitals across our state,” Reeves said. “I'd like to thank all of the medical professionals and health care leaders who helped get us to today.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services still has to approve the rest of the $708 million plan, which would be funded by annual assessments hospitals pay to the state's Medicaid program. These assessments are calculated using a formula provided under state law.

The $708 million figure is reached after considering the funds the hospitals make to finance the initiative.

Under the plan, Medicaid base payment rates are supplemented by the reimbursement of inpatient and outpatient hospital services in the fee-for-service system up to the Medicare upper payment limit.

The first component of the plan was approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in December. Hospitals were reimbursed near the average commercial rate for services provided through the managed care delivery system. 

According to a news release, the Mississippi Division of Medicaid will be delivering the first round of payments to hospitals in the next few weeks. 

The approval comes as lawmakers could be expanding the state's Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act. Under the ACA, the federal government reimburses states with 90% of expansion costs, with state taxpayers picking up the rest of the tab. 

A conference committee will take up House Bill 1725, known as the Healthy Mississippi Works Act. The legislation, passed by the House by a veto-proof 99-20 vote on Feb. 28 and rewritten and passed by the Senate 36-16, would expand Medicaid eligibility with a work requirement if approved by the federal government.

The bill also would expand Medicaid even if the Biden administration refused to approve a work requirement.

KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, says the administration will likely not approve such a requirement. It also says 123,000 Mississippians could become eligible for Medicaid if a plan is signed into law.

Any Medicaid expansion plan will likely face a veto from Reeves, who ran against expansion in his gubernatorial reelection campaign. 

(The Center Square) – A coalition of Republican attorneys general has launched an investigation into MSCI, a New York-based investment company managing roughly more than $5 billion in assets, after allegations surfaced of its boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) policies against Israel.

The coalition, led by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, gave MSCI chairman and CEO Henry Fernandez until April 18 to respond.

They contacted Fernandez after the Jewish News Syndicate reported that MSCI's ESG policies appear to downgrade dozens of companies “that it said committed ‘human rights violations' simply for conducting business in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.”

JNS reported that it found “that MSCI has tagged nine companies that generated ESG controversy ratings at Morningstar for doing business in Judea and Samaria with its own such ratings” and contacted Florida officials.

In a letter to Fernandez, the AGs express “great concern” over the report saying, “the states we represent unequivocally support Israel's right to exist and oppose the BDS movement.”

The coalition represents the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.

“While the BDS movement ‘markets itself as a nonviolent movement' designed to pressure Israel to ‘withdraw to its pre-1967 borders,' its leadership in reality ‘seeks nothing less than the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state,'” they said. “According to a cofounder of the BDS movement, it is ‘but the first stage on the road to fulfilling the vision of the dismantling of Israel.' The movement often focuses on pressuring large investment portfolios – such as those run by municipality or university – to divest from companies that ‘aid Israel's occupation.'”

They also said the BDS movement has two goals: “to economically cripple Israel and create a false narrative of Israel's occupation and colonization.”

MSCI has not released a statement in response to the inquiry. In a report released last month, it states that according to data analyzed in two indexes, companies with higher MSCI ESG ratings outperformed their lower-rated counterparts over the last 11 and 17 years, according to when the indexes were launched. MSCI also has several Israel indexes created to “measure the performance of the large and mid and small cap segments of the Israeli equity market.”

The AGs' inquiry into MSCI followed a similar inquiry in 2022 into Chicago-based Morningstar and its subsidiary, Sustainalytics. The AGs of Kentucky and West Virginia led a coalition raising concerns about Sustainalytics, an ESG ratings and research firm that manages roughly $264 billion in assets, allegedly providing financial ratings and creating a “watchlist” of financial companies located in “occupied territories” in Israel. Last October, Florida placed Morningstar-Sustainalytics on its list of “Scrutinized Companies that Boycott Israel.”

Morningstar then conducted an internal investigation and subsequently committed to implementing seven recommendations made by the end of 2024 after working with a coalition of Jewish organizations, Jewish Federations of North America says. The recommendations involve Morningstar changing its business practices and eliminating anti-Israel bias in company ratings. A review of Morningstar-Sustainalytics' policies found that it rated a disproportionate percentage of Israeli companies or companies operating in Israel based on “faulty assumptions, poor sourcing, and flawed models [which] threatened to deny these companies access to capital from ESG funds and mar their reputations.”

A result of the coalition's work with Morningstar “has already resulted in significant change,” Jewish Federations said. “Last year, Morningstar removed unfair controversy ratings from over 100 firms operating in or doing business with Israel, a 94% decrease.”

Pointing to its efforts against Morningstar, the AG coalition said, “we oppose the BDS movement in all forms, especially given the recent rise in antisemitism across the United States.” They also raised concerns about an “egregious” allegation that MSCI deducted ESG points from an Israeli company because it constructed security and surveillance barriers to protect Israeli from terrorists.

So far, at least 38 states have taken actions to oppose the BDS movement, according to the Jewish virtual library, a project of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise.

According to a recent report, in the three months after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, antisemitic incidents increased throughout the U.S. by 360% – after the total number of antisemitic incidents were already at a historic high in 2022, The Center Square reported.