Louisiana Voice

The campaign of Tammy L. Jump as district attorney of Louisiana’s 2^nd Judicial District has been jolted by the arrest of her husband on a single count of molestation of a juvenile and two counts of indecent behavior with juveniles.

The 2^nd JDC is comprised of the parishes of Jackson, Bienville and Claiborne.

It was the second arrest of Nathan Jump, who was also arrested in February for sexual battery.

He was being held without bond in the Claiborne Parish Detention Center following his latest arrest.

Following his first arrest, he has been on leave as principal of the Mt. Olive Christian School in the Claiborne Parish town of Athens, where he and wife Tammy reside.

The latest arrest was the culmination of a months-long investigation into complaints against him. The investigation was the joint effort of the Claiborne Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation.

Tammy L. Jump is a graduate of REGENT UNIVERSITY of Virginia Beach, Virginia, formerly Christian Broadcasting Network University, founded in 1977 by Pat Robertson.

Her Facebook page announcing her candidacy for next fall’s election contains a photo of her and husband Nathan and two dogs in the back of a pickup truck. Accompanying the photo is the caption reading, “Public service is only possible with a strong foundation at home. Nathan and I have built our lives around faith, family, and service. These are values that guide everything we do. Those same principles guide my work and my commitment to serving others with fairness and integrity. I am grateful for the support of my family and the community that we are proud to call home.”

Her opponent in next fall’s election is fellow Assistant District Attorney Jim Colvin of Homer, also in Claiborne Parish. The announcement of Nathan Jump’s arrests appeared in the Homer newspaper, The Guardian-Journal.

Her Facebook page also says for more than 25 years she “has devoted her career to handling the [2nd JDC’s] most serious cases while building partnerships and programs that make the community safer. She’s not only a prosecutor, but a neighbor who cares about others.”

But in 2015, she became involved in investigating the complaints of several survivors of the New Bethany home for delinquent girls in Arcadia, in Bienville Parish and ended up taking no action against the owner and administrator, fundamentalist preacher Mack Ford who has since died.

As assistant district attorney, Tammy Jump took over the investigation by the DA’s office instead of recusing herself because several members of Ford’s family and New Bethany staff had worked for her Gantt family, which survivors say should have been disqualified her because of the apparent conflict of interests. She ended up declining to prosecute Ford for alleged sexual abuse of the women when they were teenage residents of the home, which has since closed. She was Tammy Gantt before she wed Nathan Jump.

Corporate records on file with the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office show that Nathan Jump and Linda Gantt are the registered agents for MT. OLIVE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL, incorporated in May 1995,and two other members of the Gantt family, Perry Keith Gantt and James Len Gantt, are officers in the non-profit corporation.

Additionally, Nathan Jump is listed as vice-president of the ASSOCIATION OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS OF LOUISIANA, incorporated in January 2013, though the records show that non-profit corporation is “not in good standing for failure to file [an] annual report.” It last filed its annual report on Feb. 12, 2025.

The district attorney’s entire office will certainly be forced to recuse, as will the 2nd JDC court judges, as well. That will likely mean the Louisiana Attorney General will be handling any grand jury investigation and ensuing criminal trial–if the case even goes that far–and the matter will have to be moved to another judicial district.

(If there’s no recusal, then there’ll be an even bigger story to tell.)

My grandfather taught me at an early age to never take another person’s dignity from him. “A man’s dignity may be the only thing he has left and you have no right to take it,” he would say. I guess I must’ve heard that admonition a hundred times or more as I was growing up.

The echo of his words carries more meaning than ever now that the U.S. Supreme Court has done precisely that by ripping dignity from a marginalized people by delivering a gut punch to the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965.

What took generations to achieve by Lyndon Johnson’s affixing his signature to that document 61 years ago has been destroyed in a single blow by six members in black robes, a cruel substitute for the traditional white robes normally worn by racist terrorists.

The irony of the ruling is that it said:

• Compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not automatically justify race-based districting;
• The state’s use of race in the 2020 redistricting creating a second Black-majority district was not a compelling interest under strict scrutiny;
• The map violated the 15^th Amendment, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting.
• The ruling restricts of the ability to create majority-minority districts solely to comply with the Voting Rights Act, reinforcing a constitutional “colorblindness” approach to redistricting.

While the name of the court case was Callais v. Louisiana, the SCOTUS (Supreme Court of Trump’s United States, as one reader calls it) could reduce the number of majority-Black and majority-Hispanic districts nationwide and could conceivably affect local and school board redistricting—and even the Fair Housing Act.

The decision fits nicely with the agenda of the Republican Party which has its own plan for redrawing congressional districts, particularly in Florida and Texas, so as to guarantee a Republican advantage in future elections at the expense of Blacks and Hispanics.

One of the six-person majority was critical of the 6^th District, represented by Cleo Fields, which the ruling stands to abolish because of the way it snakes its way from Baton Rouge to Shreveport through the central part of the state.

But apparently no one objected to a nearly identical 4^th District that existed back in 1995:

Or later, when the 5^th District snaked across parts of North Louisiana, all the way down along the Delta area and into the Feliciana parishes.

I suppose that was because no one had the audacity to provide one-third representation to a third of the state’s population 30 years ago.

Folks, if you can’t see this as collusion between Trump, congressional Republicans and six justices of the U.S. Supreme Court (and let’s not forget that our governor, Jeff Landry, is a part of this cabal), then I have some Bolivian bitcoins to sell you.

I wouldn’t put it past these Republican autocrats and their oligarch supporters to eventually attempt to reinstitute poll taxes and/or literacy tests (with he usual trick questions like “recite the Gettysburg Address verbatim”) in further efforts disenfranchise minority voters.

If you cannot see the racism in this decision by the Supreme Court, you haven’t been paying attention.

I know if this gets to Cadet Bone Spurs, I’ll probably be labeled as a domestic terrorist, but since I’ve run out of seashells, perhaps the time has come for a resurgence of the 1960s Civil Rights marches.

But sometimes, you just have to dig your heels in and say, ENOUGH already!

SC

Today is the final day of our Spring fundraiser. After today, I won’t be bugging anyone for contributions until October.

Now, what televangelist can make that claim?

If you have not made a contribution and can see your way to do so in these turbulent times of higher costs of everything, thanks to POTUS (Pedophile of the U.S.), and his tariffs and wars, your generosity would be appreciated “bigly.”

Those contributing $50 or more will receive a signed copy of my new book, The Dinosaur Club, about half-a-dozen 80-something retired reporters who go on a quest to shut down a child sex trafficking ring, armed with nothing more than pens, notebooks, recorders, Depends, walkers, canes, hearing aids, bifocals, Metamucil, Ensure and blood pressure medication.

Go to https://louisianavoice.com/, scroll down and click on yellow rectangular “KEEP UP INDEPENDENT” button and follow the directions to make a ONE-TIME contribution.

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Illegitimi Non Carborundum!