1 month 3 weeks ago
Lonnie Whiting Jr., a resident at the Unita Blackwell Stay Apartments in Mayersville, expressed joy in having electricity restored at the complex. "Everything is electric, so it was hard, but we making it," Whiting said on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Preparing to feed a revolving door of linemen Monday at her restaurant Chuck’s Dairy Bar, Tracy Harden recalled the winter storm of 1994, the last one that resembled what many Mississippians have lived through the past two weeks. It was then, 32 years ago, she stumbled upon a lineman she still knows well to this day.
“He was up top a light pole, and I saw him and I told my mom, ‘I’m going to marry that man up there,’” she said of meeting her now-husband, Tim.
By Alex Rozier - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Measures to improve prison health care access and create stronger safeguards against the denial of care in Mississippi prisons survived the first legislative deadline on Tuesday, but several also died.
The legislation is part of a reform package introduced by Rep. Becky Currie, the Republican House Corrections Chairwoman from Brookhaven.
By Michael Goldberg - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
The Senate Elections Committee adopted a measure on Tuesday that would, at least partially, restore the system to allow Mississippians to bypass the Legislature and put issues to a statewide vote.
The committee voted to approve Senate Concurrent Resolution 518, which would require initiative organizers to gather signatures from at least 10% of registered voters in the state, or roughly 170,000 signatures, before it can go on a ballot.
By Taylor Vance - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
The House of Representatives debate House Bill 2 on Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, at the State Capitol in Jackson. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
The Senate previously passed a $2K raise. The two chambers would have to reach an agreement.
Every Mississippi lawmaker has voted so far to give teachers a pay raise.
By Devna Bose and Michael Goldberg - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
There are moments in a republic when the noise of slogans must give way to the quiet insistence of conscience.
This is one of them.
We are told, almost daily, that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is pursuing the “worst of the worst.” Instead, the machinery of enforcement has turned its iron attention on those who have committed no crime beyond believing, worshiping, and hoping in the wrong direction.
By Joseph McCain on
1 month 3 weeks ago
A hallway remains empty in a closed area of the Delta Health System in Greenville, Miss., Tuesday, February 14, 2022. Credit: Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today
As Mississippi prepares to spend tens of millions of federal dollars to strengthen rural health care, lawmakers in both state legislative chambers have advanced bills aimed at increasing transparency and oversight.
By Gwen Dilworth - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
“Are we really going to be the Gestapo?” podcaster Joe Rogan asked. “‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?”
Uproar over ICE and Border Patrol aggressive tactics has begun to breach President Donald Trump’s fortress.
“Hate to say it, but they are all lying,” posted lifelong Mississippi Republican Pete Perry on Facebook. “Denial of what we have seen, what has been put in front of us – them and us – and ignored and lied about. We saw it. They saw it. And they know we and everyone else have seen the truth.”
By Bill Crawford on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Over the past few years, Mississippi lawmakers have passed some critical conservative reforms. Last year, Mississippi became the first state in America to legislate to eliminate the income tax in 40 years. In 2022, we implemented flat tax reform. A few years before that, we passed important labor market reforms. In 2024, we reformed school funding to get more money into the classroom.
It is thanks to these flagship conservative reforms that Mississippi has enjoyed more economic growth in the past five years than over the previous fifteen combined.
By Douglas Carswell - Mississippi Center for Public Policy on
1 month 3 weeks ago
The House voted Wednesday, for the third year in a row, to legalize online sports betting in Mississippi.
Proponents say this could generate tens of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue, but critics warn it would fuel gambling addiction and hurt brick-and-mortar casinos.
By Michael Goldberg - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Spin the truth, spin the youth,
confound the status quo
so they worry, fear and
Not understand
Do you trust your propaganda?
Those who owned the news
knew they could abuse
manipulate disenfranchised discord weaponized with indignant terrified urgency
Do you trust your propaganda?
The personally wounded, entitled,
idealistic, masters of displaced liability
and lacking self accountability
Do you trust your propaganda?
It is us against them, them against us
By Suzannah McGowan on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Mukta Joshi is part of The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship.
By Mukta Joshi - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Dear Editor:
With all due respect to the one or more state leaders who believe antifa (anTEEfuh) and basement dwelling keyboard warriors are the problem in Minneapolis, they are not. It is clearly the Gestapo like tactics of ICE.
Those leaders are glad we don't have that going on in Mississippi. I am, too, but I know why. They do, too. It is not because we don't have quite a few undocumented residents and a large city with a Democratic mayor. The difference is we have a Trumpublican leadership. Minnesota does not.
By Glynn Kegley on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home in Jackson. Credit: Ashley FG Norwood, Mississippi Today
The National Park Service has removed visitor brochures from the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument. Among the anticipated changes? No longer calling his murderer a “racist.”
Edits to the brochure have removed that reference to Byron De La Beckwith, according to Park Service officials, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. Other edits include eliminating the reference to Medgar Evers lying in a pool of blood after being shot.
By Jerry Mitchell - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Steve Jent, the exec director of Century Club Charities, announced recently that the Wayne-Sanderson Farms PGA golf tournament will no longer be held this year. So, after having a PGA professional golf tournament in Mississippi for 58 years we will have no sponsor, and therefore no tournament. Last year Century Club Charities, which organizes the tournament, gave $1 million to Blair Batson Children's Hospital, and $700m to several other charities.
By Peter Gilderson on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Louisiana’s U.S. Senator John Kennedy has written a national best-seller, “How to Test Negative for Stupid And Why Washington Never Will.” The preposterous conceit that drives the book is that everybody, or almost everybody, in the nation’s capital is stupid, with the exception of Senator Kennedy.
By Luther Munford on
1 month 3 weeks ago
The legislation would also require the Mississippi Department of Public Safety and county detention facilities to cooperate with ICE under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
By Daniel Tyson - Magnolia Tribune on
1 month 3 weeks ago
U.S. Senator Roger Wicker told Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a letter that the existing medical and human services infrastructure in Byhalia is insufficient to support an ICE facility.
Mississippi U.S. Senator Roger Wicker (R) is raising the red flag, expressing his opposition to a proposed Homeland Security plan to purchase a warehouse in Byhalia to convert into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center.
By Frank Corder - Magnolia Tribune on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Below is an opinion column by Grace Breazeale:
The question before lawmakers this session is whether we will protect that progress or allow it to erode by continuing to ask teachers to carry more than any profession reasonably can.
By Grace Breazeale - Magnolia Tribune on
1 month 3 weeks ago
The measure defines AI as “a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments.”
The Mississippi House of Representatives passed a measure defining artificial intelligence on Wednesday to provide clarity to an industry that Mississippi hopes to be a leader in.
By Daniel Tyson - Magnolia Tribune on
1 month 3 weeks ago
The bill would also revise the state retirement system’s new Tier 5, cap superintendent salaries, and increase pay for school attendance officers, among other provisions outlined in the measure.
A bill that aims to address the ongoing teacher shortage in the state and proposes to address problems with the state’s retirement system under the new Tier 5 system passed out of the Mississippi House Education and Appropriations Committees on Tuesday.
By Jeremy Pittari - Magnolia Tribune on
Checked
5 hours 32 minutes ago
Subscribe to Weekly Best Of tal feed
