Covid deaths are highest in Mississippi but Gov. Tate Reeves does nothing

Though he’s the fifth post-Reconstruction Republican to lead Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves is the first governor of either party to have been born (as I was) in the newness of the state’s post-civil rights era.

But despite his status as one of the South’s (and one of the country’s) youngest governors, Reeves is tearing the very first page out of the playbook drafted by old Southern Democrats and today's Southern Republicans: When your people are suffering unnecessarily, rile them with a sermon about the federal government’s evil.

Mississippi has proved to be...