OurTupelo

After the House and Senate killed each other’s teacher pay raise bills last week, they’ve revived them by amending other bills, with the Senate upping the ante on Wednesday.

The Senate on Wednesday unanimously passed a $6,000 teacher pay raise with an extra $3,000 for special education teachers.

The House has proposed a $5,000 raise, with an extra $3,000 for special education teachers.

The Senate had initially passed only a $2,000 teacher raise before the chambers killed each other’s bills.

But the new Senate plan would spread its proposed $6,000 a year raise over three years, at $2,000 a year, plus $1,000 a year more for special ed teachers.

The Senate vote comes after the House revived its own teacher pay raise on Friday by amending a Senate bill. 

“Today is a good day for teachers, teacher assistants, professors and special education teachers,” Senate Education Committee Chairman Dennis DeBar, a Republican from Leakesville, said after Wednesday’s vote. “This is a big step moving forward.”

Under the Senate proposal, university and community college professors and K-12 teacher assistants would also get a $2,000 a year raise. 

The bill would over three years bring starting Mississippi teacher pay to $47,500. It would cost taxpayers $109.5 million extra a year, for a total of $328.5 million a year once fully implemented, according to legislative budget analysts.

One of the major differences from the House proposal is that the Senate bill would keep the pay raise money outside of the state’s per-student student funding formula during the first year to ensure that the money is goes to raises. When money passes through the formula, DeBar said, districts are not required to spend it on teacher raises because they receive it as a lump sum. 

“We put a lot of thought into this,” DeBar said on the floor. “We would like to do more … but we’re being cautious and prudent as we do over here in the Senate.” 

If either proposal becomes law, it would be the first raise for teachers in Mississippi since 2022, when they got a $5,000 a year increase. At the time, it brought Mississippi’s pay above other Southern states, but as neighboring states have passed raises, Mississippi has again fallen behind. 

Mississippi educators, now the lowest paid in the country on average, say it’s gotten harder to make ends meet in the years since.

“At the end of these three years, it’s gonna be a wildly increased raise for the teachers,” DeBar said. “I know five to 10 years from now, we’re gonna be back because our competing states are going to raise their pay to keep up with us, but I think this is a good start.”

The relationship between the Republican-led House and Senate has soured this session over education issues. Speaker Jason White has taken shots at Senate leadership, including Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, for failing to take up the House’s school choice proposals, while the Senate has returned barbs.

The squabbling reached a head last week when each chamber killed the other’s initial pay raise proposals. 

But Senate leaders made good Wednesday on an earlier promise to raise their teacher raise proposal by the end of the session. DeBar successfully offered an amendment to a House bill on Wednesday, the deadline for such action coming late in the 2026 legislative session. 

DeBar said the Senate would not consider the House’s latest pay raise proposal, which is hundreds of pages long and covers a range of topics including adjustments to the state employees’ retirement system, combatting chronic absenteeism in schools and capping superintendents’ pay. Senators have taken issue with the House’s omnibus bill strategy this session of including dozens of policy issues in one piece of legislation. 

Advocates have expressed concerns that the House proposal brings forward extraneous parts of state law, which could pave the way for changes well beyond teacher pay. In a statement after the Senate vote, Hosemann said a teacher pay raise “must not be held hostage by multiple other political issues.”

However, House leaders have said they are being thorough with their legislation, and not trying to tie school choice or other issues to a teacher raise.

“We wanted to narrow it down to one issue dealing with teachers, and that’s what we did,” DeBar said. “I tried to block out all the other noise … I want to focus on teachers because they’re the ones that deserve it. They’re the ones that brought us up to where we are.”

Mississippi has received national recognition over the past decade for public school academic gains.

Now, each chamber could approve the other’s proposal, ask for final negotiations on a compromise, or kill the bills.

“No one wants to see the sausage being made because that’s what we do — we debate,” DeBar said. “But in the end, I think we always come together and compromise.”

Crime victims and family members gathered Wednesday at the state Capitol for what organizers said would be the first Survivors Speak Mississippi event. They called on lawmakers to reform the state’s victim compensation program and fund a trauma recovery center in Jackson. Survivors from across the state held a rally and vigil to honor victims of gun violence, domestic violence, sexual assault and other crimes. 

Carleen Hicks has cared for her grandchildren, now 17 and 14, for nearly a decade after her daughter was shot, became partially paralyzed and developed a drug habit.

“To keep my grandbabies safe, I just had to take on that role,” Hicks said. 

Hicks, who is 54 and a custodian at Chapel of the Cross Church in Madison, said she’s happily taken on that responsibility, but it can be hard to make ends meet. She previously relied on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, but the paperwork was confusing and time-consuming. In 2024, she felt she could no longer justify missing work to go to hours-long recertification appointments for the benefits, and fell off the program. As a result, she said, her family eats less fresh produce and meat.

Experts say that versions of Hicks’ story will become more common after newly-expanded federal work requirements took effect in November. Previously, adults over 54 and people who care for children under the age of 18 were exempt. Under the new rules, adults between the age of 55 and 64 and caretakers of children older than 13 must now work 80 hours a month to keep their food benefits. An already-burdened system will become more strained, according to state and national experts who spoke to Mississippi Today. 

Work requirements and the red tape that comes with them could disproportionately hurt older caregivers and their families. That’s because older adults are more likely to have fixed incomes, limited access to computers, age-related health problems and care for older children who do not qualify them for the exemption. In Mississippi, 3.3% of children live in grandparent-caregiver households – more than double the national average and one of the highest rates in the country. 

Nationwide, family members who step into parental roles save taxpayers and states $10.5 billion by keeping children out of the foster care system. But these families face higher rates of poverty. 

The new age cutoff for children of exempted caretakers is arbitrary and harmful, said food access advocate Gina Plata-Nino, since the responsibility of caring for a child does not change at age 14. 

“The expanded requirements suggest parents’ responsibilities have shifted overnight even though they are still caring for dependents,” said Plata-Nino, director of SNAP at the Food Research and Action Center, a national nonprofit working to end poverty-related hunger.

Hicks recalled spending hours at the Hinds County Department of Human Services for a recertification appointment in 2024 to determine if she still qualified for benefits, only to have a caseworker ask for additional documents days later. Another time, she got a letter in the mail stating she missed a phone appointment. But Hicks said she never received a phone call – an experience shared by two other women who spoke to Mississippi Today. 

“It’s to deter you,” Hicks said. 

Regulations that Congress passed through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and that President Donald Trump signed into law in July further complicate that process. Here’s how federal law changed SNAP work requirements in November:

• Increased the work requirement age from 55- to 64-years-old;
• Decreased the child age exemption from 18- to 14-years-old;
• Removed exemptions for unhoused people, veterans and young adults under age 24 who aged out of the foster care system.

Exemptions still exist for adults who are pregnant, caring for a child under the age of 14, have a mental or physical disability or are over the age of 64. Those who don’t meet the exemptions will have to adhere to the work requirements and undergo recertification every six months, or they will lose benefits after three months. The recertification process includes logging hours that a person worked or volunteered each month, undergoing an interview and showing documents, such as paystubs, utility bills and identification.

Hicks said caring for her grandchildren is fulfilling, but she never imagined she would be raising teenagers at her age. It’s exhausting, she said. Aside from the strain of raising children, older adults face greater discrimination in the job market and are more prone to chronic health conditions that can make it hard to work consistent, full-time hours outside of the house. 

It’s hard for the children, too, said Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow in the Tax and Income Supports Division at the Urban Institute. Children living in a grandparent-led household have already suffered disruptions in life, Waxman said. Whether it’s a parent dying, going to prison or suffering from mental health or addiction, there is some reason the child cannot live with their birth parents. 

“Those are the kinds of things that get lost,” Waxman said. “They’re nuances, but they’re not unimportant nuances.”

In addition to expanding who is required to work to access food assistance under the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, about $140 million in SNAP costs previously covered by the federal government will shift to Mississippi in the next two years.

In the long-term, experts told Mississippi Today more people will lose access to SNAP for several reasons:

• Increased paperwork will inadvertently kick off eligible people;
• Fewer people will be eligible under new federally-mandated work requirements;
• Some states may further cut eligibility to afford the new costs. 

Considering how much money caregivers like herself save the state, Hicks said she believes the government should make it easier for grandparent-led families to access food. Most of all, Hicks thinks vulnerable adolescents who have already lost their parents shouldn’t be used as political bargaining chips. 

“It should be mandatory that the kids get food stamps if you’re in a certain income bracket,” Hicks said. “Of course, Granny is going to eat off the food – but don’t deprive the children because of that.”

Welcome to Mississippi Explained, our weekly news quiz to test your knowledge of this week’s news. 🧠

Context: The Senate Energy Committee last week advanced a bill that would place Jackson’s water and sewer systems under a separate utility authority. The bill would remove the city’s majority control of the authority’s board.

Previously: In February, the House passed a HB1677 that would create the “Metro Jackson Authority” and be led by a nine-member board that would include Jackson’s mayor, two members appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the Jackson City Council and the president or designee of the Greater Jackson Chamber of Commerce. The governor and lieutenant governor would also appoint members who live or work in the service area.

What’s the catch? The Senate’s version of the bill would allow the mayors of Ridgeland and Byram to make direct appointments and replace the Chamber of Commerce appointee with another named by the governor. Notably, the Senate version gives Jackson city officials direct power over only three board seats, down from five in the House version.

 The bill also contains a reverse repealer.

Quiz question: What is the main purpose of a reverse repealer?

Email your answer to newsletter@mississippitoday.org with your first name and last initial, and we’ll shout you out in the next quiz post.

Last week’s answer: Committee chair

Congratulations to last week’s winners: Connie C., Mac D., and Rita H.

READ MORE: Senators tweak Jackson water bill, city loses majority of board power

Think you know the news? Take more quizzes like this one: sign up for The Today, our daily newsletter, and never miss a chance to test your knowledge.

Booneville basketball coach Michael Smith never met football coach Frosty Westering, who died 13 years ago. Smith wishes he’d had a chance to talk to him.

“His book has meant so much to me over the years,” says Smith, the 48-year-old coach, who has become an institution in northeast Mississippi hill country where basketball is king and basketball coaches are royalty.

Westering was a highly accomplished small college football coach, mostly at Pacific Lutheran University in Washington state. Westering won 305 games and eight national championships over 39 seasons. He titled his book: “Make the Big Time Where You Are.”

The book’s title could also serve as headline to Michael Smith’s life story. That’s exactly what he has done at Booneville, where the basketball court bears his name and where his teams have won 765 games and 11 state championships over 22 years. Smith really has brought big-time coaching and winning to a Prentiss County town of about 9,000.

Inside the front cover of “Make the Big Time Where You Are” Smith long ago scribbled these words: “I don’t have to be the head coach at Duke or North Carolina to try and run a program like they do.”

North Carolina’s Dean Smith won 77% of his games. Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski won 76% of his games. Mike Smith has won 75% of his – and counting. Smith’s Booneville girls last week added the 11th state championship gold ball trophy to what must be a cramped Booneville Blue Devils trophy case. In their annual trip to Mississippi Coliseum, they defeated rival Belmont 54-31 for their fourth State Class 3A title in the past  five years. That was Saturday. Three days earlier, Smith’s Booneville boys were defeated in the State 3A semifinals by eventual State Champion St. Stanislaus 49-41. Smith will coach the Mississippi boys All-Stars in Saturday’s Mississippi-Alabama All-Star game.

And this will tell you much about Smith and what drives him. I asked him after the girls’ victory if the happy outcome had erased any of the sorrow of his boys team coming up short.

“No. It’s like Christmas morning and one of your kids gets exactly the present they wanted, and one of your kids can’t even find his gift,” Smith said. “You can’t be ecstatic for one when you hurt for the other. You can’t ever get the ones you lose back. The losses haunt you more than you remember the wins. You just hate it so much for the kids. If you love ’em as much as we do, you just hate to see ’em hurt.

“I just try  to enjoy the kids whether we win or lose, because if you’re just going to remember your last game, it’s going to be a miserable life for you.”

Michael Smith knows a thing or seven about kids and Christmas mornings. Michael and Shawna Smith are the parents of seven young’uns. There’s Ava Kate, 19; Rhett, 18; Clark, 16; Greir, 14; Bauer, 11; Audra Rose, 8; and Abott, 5.

Clearly, Michael and Shawna Smith don’t have a lot of spare time. He coaches both boys and girls basketball teams and is the Booneville athletic director. She is a nurse, who earned a PhD in nursing at Samford and now teaches nursing on-line to students around the globe.

Both Michael and Shawna grew up in the Booneville area. He played basketball at nearby New Site and then at Northeast Community College in Booneville. Michael was class valedictorian at New Site, then graduated with honors from both Northeast and Ole Miss, where he majored in education and social studies.

Says Shawna, “Michael could have done anything he wanted to do. He could have been a lawyer or a doctor, but he wanted to coach. It’s far more than a game with Michael. It’s who he is.”

Growing up, Michael figured he would become a lawyer, but then one day he was working as a counselor at a basketball camp at Northeast. A little camper was having trouble with his dribbling. The child lacked confidence. Michael showed him what he was doing wrong. And then, when the kid got it right, his whole demeanor changed.

“That was it,” Michael says all these year later. “I can still show you the spot on the court where it happened. Right then, I knew what I wanted to do. I saw that kid’s eyes light up and I saw that smile, and, for me, it was such a sense of accomplishment. In coaching and teaching, you can make a difference. So many people have made a difference in my life, helped me along the way. That’s what I want to do for others.”

When Michael Smith ticks off the names of people who made a difference for him, it starts with his mother, Denise, a middle school teacher who raised him alone. His aunt and uncle, Diane and Willie Weeks, ran a Booneville diner where Michael began flipping burgers at age 10. “From them, I learned about hard work and how to treat people with respect, no matter who they are and where they came from,” Michael says.

There was his high school basketball coach Randle Downs, who was there for him when his mother was undergoing serious surgery. Says Michael, “I saw Coach Downs recently and I told him I may not remember everything you taught me about basketball, but I remember how you loved me.”

There was Mike Lewis, his junior college coach. “He opened my eyes to the game and how much I didn’t know,”Michael says. “It made me want to learn everything about the game and that has never changed.”

There was Ricky Neaves, now the executive director of the Mississippi High School Activities Association but then the Booneville principal when Michael did his student teaching. “Mr. Neaves took on a father type role for me. From him I got a master class in hard work and how to treat people,” Michael says.

And then there was John Wooden – yes, the John Wooden, the famed Wizard of Westwood, perhaps the greatest basketball coach there ever was.

Michael Smith was at a coaching clinic 21 years ago when he ran into a former associate of Wooden’s. Wooden won 10 national championships in one 12-year period at UCLA. Wooden won 81% of his games and four times coached UCLA to 30-0 national championship seasons. On the question of who was the greatest basketball coach in history, there is really only one answer.

Michael told Wooden’s former associate he would give anything to meet and speak with the greatest basketball coach there ever was.

“Give me your contact information and I’ll see what I can do,” the guy said. Michael gave him his phone number and address and then pretty much forgot about it.

A few days later, the Smith’s phone rang and on the other end of the line was none other than Wooden himself.

Says Michael, “I could barely speak.”

Long story short: Wooden invited Michael and Shawna (who was pregnant with their first child) out to Los Angeles for a visit over Labor Day weekend.

“Nicest man I’ve met,” Michael says, “so down to earth, so sincere. We spent two days with him, two unbelievable days. He took us out to eat, took us to his church. Here’s John Wooden, the most famous basketball coach ever and he was in his mid-90s then and was still driving a 1980 Ford Taurus. Here he is entertaining two people he didn’t know from a place he never heard of.”

Of course, they talked about basketball and coaching. But they also talked about their families, their faith and about the value of humility. If there was one big take from their weekend in Westwood, it was Wooden’s humility.

“He told me a story about after his UCLA team had won the first of 10 national championships,” Michael says. “It was a day or two later and he stepped out on to a balcony to take in the glorious day. And, just then, a bird flew overhead and pooped right down on his head. He said he figured the bird was sent by God to remind him to stay humble.”

Both Michael and Shawna say the weekend remains a highlight in their lives, which most notably include the births of seven children and the triumph of 11 state championships.

“I mean, here is a man so accomplished, so famous, and he welcomes us like long-lost friends and makes us feel like royalty,” Michael says.

But here’s the deal, which I am guessing John Wooden figured out: In Booneville, Mississippi, where big-time basketball is played by small-town girls and boys, Michael and Shawna Smith really are. Royalty.

Responding to concerns that lawmakers are attempting to resuscitate failed school choice policy in a teacher pay raise bill, House leaders said that’s not the case. 

Education policy has been center stage during this year’s legislative session, including expanding school choice policies that would send public dollars to private schools and raising educators’ pay for the first time in four years. 

But the two chambers have sparred over these issues. Earlier this session, the Senate killed the House’s private school choice proposal. The battle culminated last week when the House and Senate killed each others’ teacher pay raise bills.

However, the Mississippi House on Friday revived a pay raise for educators by entirely replacing another bill’s original language. According to budget analysts, the House proposal would cost the state $292 million a year.

The revised bill is almost identical to the House’s original teacher pay raise proposal. The omnibus package — the House’s favored approach to education policy this session — is hundreds of pages long and spans education topics. It would make changes to the Public Employees’ Retirement System, address chronic absenteeism in schools, give an array of school employees pay raises, incentivize retirees to return to the classroom and increase state per-student spending.

But to do so, the lengthy bill brings forward numerous parts of state law. That means those state laws could be amended if the Senate doesn’t kill the bill outright. 

The bill could put the Senate in a tight spot — if the chamber does kill the bill, that means it has killed the final viable teacher pay raise vehicle. 

But the revised bill would put all of those parts of state law back in play and could allow another attempt at expanding school choice for private schools.

Advocates pointed out those concerns last week. But House Education Committee Chairman Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville, told Mississippi Today that despite including language in the pay raise bill that would allow lawmakers to bring up school choice policy again, that’s not his intention. 

He said all of those code sections were his chamber’s effort at being thorough, not to serve as a Trojan horse for school choice. 

“School choice is not what we’re focused on, and if it were, I would tell you that’s what we were doing,” Roberson said. “This was not a situation where we were trying to play gotcha.”

Since the school choice debate heated up in the weeks leading up the session, advocates and educators have implored the state’s leaders to avoid a situation where lawmakers are forced to vote in favor of school choice to secure a teacher pay raise. 

Though Republican Gov. Tate Reeves said this week that school choice and teacher pay raises should be connected, House leaders, including White, have publicly said they believe it’s wrong to tie the two issues together.

Roberson was asked by members of his own chamber during a floor vote on the bill Friday whether or not the bill contained school choice policies, and he repeatedly and emphatically said that it did not. 

“I will continue to say, ‘No,’” he said Tuesday. “I do not want teacher pay and school choice to be associated with each other. It reeks of political hackery, and I don’t want that to be the way we approach this.”

As school choice and teacher pay raise talks between the two Republican-led chambers of the Legislature have stalled over the past two months, their relationship has disintegrated. That’s been made clear by press conferences hosted by White in which he’s lambasted Senate leadership, and by letters sent by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann in which he’s blamed the House for failed education policy. 

“You can’t send letters out saying that we killed everything … and then we turn right around and send you something that … you would like to have happened, and then you still don’t like it,” Roberson said. “I mean, it’s like arguing with my wife. I just don’t know what to make of it.”

The teacher pay raise bill has been sent to the Senate. The chamber has until March 26 to either approve the bill, decide to negotiate the terms of the bill or to do nothing and kill the bill.

Chokwe Antar Lumumba is seeking to dismiss federal bribery charges against him, but Jacksonians can’t read the former mayor’s arguments because of a blanket restriction on public access to filings in the case. 

Lumumba’s motion to dismiss comes weeks after a co-defendant in Jackson’s bribery scandal, Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, filed his own motion to dismiss the case. That filing was replete with hundreds of pages of sensitive material, including grand jury testimony, photographs of undercover FBI agents and investigative documents containing allegations of local government corruption.

The disclosures prompted the U.S. Attorney’s Office to ask the federal judge overseeing the case, Daniel Jordan, to restrict most filings in the case until all parties involved could review and propose redactions. 

The case is slated for trial in July, and Lumumba’s motion was part of a raft of restricted documents that point to some of the strategies both sides are likely to use. 

Lumumba and a third co-defendant, former Ward 6 Councilman Aaron Banks, are seeking to sever the case, meaning they want separate trials from Owens, who is arguing that FBI agents “entrapped” him, such as by giving him alcohol knowing he is a diagnosed alcoholic. 

Meanwhile, the federal government has filed its own motions to “preclude certain defenses” and “exclude evidence of merits of official acts.” The latter filing is designed to prevent the counsel for Lumumba, Owens and Banks from winning the case via jury nullification – when jurors refuse to convict despite believing laws were broken – by showering jurors with information about the defendants’ various good deeds, said Matt Steffey, a Mississippi College School of Law professor. 

“The public official’s whole career isn’t on trial, just the corrupt acts,” he said of the government’s argument.

A local attorney for Lumumba, Thomas Bellinder, did not respond to calls or emails requesting comment. When the indictment against Lumumba became public in 2024, the then-mayor vowed to defend his innocence, calling the charges a “political prosecution,” but has since repeatedly stated he will not comment on the case. 

The federal government has accused Lumumba of violating a federal statute that prohibits officials from accepting bribes in exchange for an official act — the classic definition of a “quid pro quo,” Steffey said. 

Lumumba’s “official action,” the federal government alleged in its indictment, was a phone call he placed during what he thought was a campaign fundraiser on a yacht off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. While cruising the Atlantic in the spring of 2024, Lumumba accepted $50,000 in checks to his reelection campaign from Owens and FBI agents posing as developers.

In the months leading up to the trip, the city had been seeking bids from prospective developers to build a hotel across from downtown Jackson’s convention center. 

Dissatisfied by the number of respondents, Lumumba had directed the city’s planning and development department to extend the deadline. 

But the FBI agents, purporting to represent a company called Facility Solutions Team, which had submitted a bid, wanted the deadline moved back to eliminate any more competition, according to the indictment. 

Lumumba made the call, prosecutors alleged, but not until after he discussed with Owens the payment he would receive.

Two other companies also submitted bids, but the city did not award a contract. 

Steffey said the former mayor’s argument may hinge on whether this phone call actually demonstrated Lumumba wielding government influence, especially if the call did not result in the awarding of a bid. 

Even if the jury finds that it was an official act, Steffey said they may decide it was not a crime that warrants time in federal prison. 

“Is it appropriate to put the elected mayor of Jackson in prison for shortening the bid window on a project where there still had to be consideration of multiple bids?” Steffey said. “If President Trump (was charged for that), it would be called weaponizing the criminal justice system.”

One reason Lumumba’s filing was restricted is likely because his attorney attached grand jury testimony from an FBI agent named Lawrence Correll assigned to investigate corruption in Jackson. This document was also attached to Owens’ motion to dismiss. 

Mississippi Today obtained the testimony from the Owens filing in January before the documents were restricted. It shows Correll testified during a grand jury proceeding in the fall of 2024 that shortly after Lumumba returned from the Fort Lauderdale trip, he deposited the $50,000 worth of checks into a campaign account. 

Days later, Lumumba wrote himself a $9,500 check for “canvassing, signs, campaign car” that was later cashed, Correll said. Another $5,000 was taken out of the account – Correll did not say by whom – via a check for an “Atlanta Film Crew.” 

But Correll testified the FBI had not figured out where the money “ultimately” ended up. 

Before dawn one warm Sunday in June 2021, Renata Flot-Patterson and her husband turned a street corner in their Biloxi neighborhood to a scene she remembers as “lit up like Las Vegas.”

Police officers crouched on neighbors’ roofs. Dogs sniffed the yard outside the house where her daughter, Keli Mornay, lived. Immediately, Flot-Patterson suspected the worst. 

Nine days earlier, on May 28, Mornay filed a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend, Byrain Johnson, after more than a year of physical and verbal abuse, according to documents obtained by Mississippi Today. Mornay wrote in her petition for the restraining order that she was “in complete fear for my life, our infant son and my two other children.” 

On June 6, Mornay and her 7-month-old son were shot to death and became part of a grim statistic: Pregnant and postpartum women die by homicide more than any obstetric-related cause nationwide. 

Most of these homicides are linked to firearms. Mississippi leads the nation in pregnancy-related gun deaths, according to an analysis of 28 states with available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted by The Trace, a nonprofit news outlet that examines the nation’s gun violence crisis. For every 100,000 births in Mississippi, roughly 15 people who either were pregnant or had been pregnant in the previous year died as a result of gun violence. 

“We have women in Mississippi who are dying during pregnancy – not because they have medical problems, but because they are being beaten to death or shot and killed in their own home,” said Stacey Riley, chief executive officer of the Gulf Coast Center for Nonviolence in Biloxi. 

Pregnancy increases a woman’s chances of being targeted for a number of reasons, including heightened difficulty for them to leave abusive partners. Mississippi has become a hotspot for these deaths in large part because of lax gun laws and restrictive abortion access, both of which have been proven to increase violence against pregnant women. An intricate web of poverty, health policy and weak local justice systems have complicated the state’s problem.

“We really did not want her to have that baby,” Flot-Patterson said. “We’re a Christian family and we don’t really believe in abortion, but we really tried to encourage her to have an abortion. We worried until the day she died.”

On June 2, authorities granted Mornay the restraining order against Johnson. Things had gotten so bad between Mornay and Johnson that Flot-Patterson had bought her daughter a one-way ticket to Utah for June 12. 

Mornay never made it on that plane. Instead, she was shot to death in her bedroom before Johnson turned the gun on himself. Their infant son, Brixx, was also shot and later died in the hospital. 

Mornay is one of 36 pregnant or recently pregnant women who were killed with guns between 2018 and 2024 in Mississippi, according to analysis by The Trace. Eighty-one percent of those deaths were of Black women.

Lenient gun laws are among the biggest culprits of the epidemic of violence against women, experts say. Mississippi consistently has among the weakest restrictions in the country. 

Studies found women are five times more likely to be killed if their partners own a gun. 

“There’s decades of research showing that a gun in the house, and especially a house that’s experiencing domestic violence, is really, really dangerous,” said Maeve Wallace, a reproductive epidemiologist at the University of Arizona who has studied pregnancy-related homicides for more than a decade. 

‘Doubling your statistics’

Two years earlier and 200 miles north of Biloxi, McKayla Winston was found dead three days before she was due to give birth to her first baby. 

Yvetty Brown, a lifelong resident of Goodman, said she last saw her daughter on June 28, 2019, while they were planning a baby shower. On July 1, a neighbor found Winston’s body on a desolate stretch of road near Highway 17 in Holmes County, just 10 miles from where she grew up, Brown said. 

The father of Winston’s child, Terence Sample, was charged with two counts of capital murder and kidnapping, pleaded not guilty at his preliminary hearing and was released on bond nearly four months later, according to documents reviewed by Mississippi Today. The case is still open, and no trial has been set, according to a source within the Holmes County District Attorney’s Office who was not authorized to comment publicly on the case. 

Bailey Martin, spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, said the state crime laboratory is still investigating the case, more than six years after Winston was killed. 

Maternal and infant health have long served as markers of a society’s well-being, said Rebecca Lawn, an epidemiologist and public health scholar at Harvard University who studies interpersonal violence. Yet the most common driver of maternal mortality has been left out of the conversation, she said. 

“The need to prevent violence against women cannot be overstated when considering pregnant women’s health,” Lawn said. 

In an abusive relationship, power dynamics shift during pregnancy. Pregnant people leave their homes to go to doctor’s appointments, and their bodies are carrying the baby – outside of an abusive partner’s sense of control, explained Joy Jones, director of the Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence. 

During pregnancy, Jones said people may choose to leave an abusive relationship. That decision can compel the abuser to feel like they are “losing control of their significant other” and the baby, she said. They then may resort to violence to regain dominance. 

“You’re almost doubling your statistics,” Jones said.

The Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision that removed federal protections from access to abortion has also changed the landscape, reproductive advocates say. Preliminary research shows that abortion restrictions increased intimate partner violence by 7% to 10%. 

The healthline for Access Reproductive Care Southeast, an organization that helps pay for abortion-related travel and procedures for Southerners, has received a 66% increase in calls from Mississippi in the last year. 

Staff members say it’s not unusual to get calls related to domestic violence or reproductive coercion, a kind of abuse that includes birth control sabotage and controlling the outcome of a pregnancy.

Anecdotally, staff have noticed an increase in these cases in recent years, said Kenny C., a healthline coordinator for ARC Southeast, whose name is abbreviated here for safety concerns. 

In Mississippi, where the average one-way distance callers must travel for abortion care is 358 miles, the stakes are high, according to a report published by ARC. 

“If I get a call today and someone says, ‘My boyfriend threw out my pills,’ or ‘He pierced the condom,’ or ‘I was sexually assaulted and it resulted in this pregnancy’ – that’s not uncommon,” said Kenny C. 

Interrupting violence

Pregnancy-related homicides are not always the product of domestic violence. Sometimes, bystanders fall victim to social conflict or gang violence. Research shows public and private violence can overlap and reinforce each other. 

In 2021, Keyunta McWilliams, who was eight months pregnant, was killed in Jackson during a drive-by shooting that targeted her ex-boyfriend. Her ex-boyfriend and her son, now 5, both survived.

The victim’s mother, Shunta McWilliams, was shocked at one of the killers’ indifference during his trial. Kenya Webster admitted to knowing there was a woman and child in the car when he began shooting at it, according to a source familiar with the case who was not authorized to comment publicly on it. In March, another man, Joseph Brown, was also found guilty for McWilliams’ murder.

Thinking about reactions to lethal conflicts, Geno Womack said cycles of violence continue in part because young people become desensitized to brutality. In south Jackson, residents call Womack “PawPaw,” and he works as a violence interrupter. But he does more than break up fights. His group, Operation Good, organizes toy drives, runs reintegration programs for men coming home from prison, and offers safe passages for children walking to school along dangerous routes. 

In his neighborhood, Womack attempts to address the root causes of gun violence – deep, tangled and complicated. In Jackson, he said many young men are born with the odds stacked against them. The legacy of slavery, along with racism and generational trauma, have fundamentally changed Black families, Womack said. 

From a young age, Womack said, children learn violence can distract from other challenges, such as struggling with illiteracy, having clean clothes or enough money to feed their families. As they grow older, pressures often mount, and Womack looks for ways to alleviate that pressure to stop violence before it starts.

Most mornings, Womack said he patrols the streets south of Interstate 20, paying attention to people’s body language and deescalating conflict. Womack looks out for yelling, gesticulating arms and people who walk the other way when they see Womack’s vehicle. 

Violence interruption work has long faced criticism for being ineffective and not holding perpetrators accountable. But Womack sees his work as necessary and holistic. 

“Law enforcement is only reactionary, they only come after it’s too late,” he said. “We’re there before it even starts. We try to prevent it, and hopefully, law enforcement never even finds out about it.”

Pushing for solutions

While the forces perpetuating violence can be complex, experts say some of the solutions are simple. 

Laws that ban people who have domestic violence-linked restraining orders from owning guns resulted in a 14% decrease in intimate partner homicide, according to a study co-authored by Wallace, the reproductive epidemiologist. 

“State policy makers should consider further strengthening domestic violence-related firearm regulations and their enforcement to prevent homicide of pregnant and postpartum women,” study authors wrote. 

However, data suggest Mississippi is in no rush to try them. Mississippi is second only to Idaho in adopting the fewest safety policies around gun ownership in the country. 

During this year’s legislative session, Republican Sen. Brice Wiggins of Pascagoula introduced a bill to criminalize possession of firearms and ammunition for respondents in domestic abuse protection orders and those convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor. The bill died in committee Feb. 12. 

Law enforcement and victims deserve better from the state, Wiggins told Mississippi Today, saying he was disappointed with the committee’s decision. Gun restrictions for people with a history of domestic violence already exist at the federal level, but those regulations are often not enforced in states such as Mississippi that haven’t adopted their own policies.

“This bill replicated the federal law on the state level in an effort to save the lives of law enforcement officers and domestic violence victims,” Wiggins said. 

But statewide, pregnant people encounter systemic problems beyond a lack of firearm regulation. Those who continue their pregnancy can run into the complicating factor that in Mississippi, maternity care deserts and a high rate of uninsurance mean women have fewer opportunities to interact with health care providers who could potentially identify a problem and help them. 

When they do interact with health care providers or law enforcement officers, those professionals don’t always have the relevant training on mental health or abuse one might assume they have. 

Kim Neal, who runs a women’s shelter in Meridian called The Care Lodge, said she’s prioritizing these practices. 

Her organization is certified with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety to provide training for law enforcement related to domestic violence. Neal says those trainings are available for police officers upon request, and staff have provided “too many to count” over the 45 years the shelter has been open. 

“We provide real life examples and try to involve the officers on different case examples to help them to learn how to better respond to a victim of domestic violence,” Neal said. “Continued training is also important for law enforcement when there is a lot of turnover with their departments.”

Through her research in Arizona, Wallace has dedicated her life to studying these homicides and continues her work because she believes education can be an effective tool to produce meaningful change. 

“I try to disseminate this work to policymakers and people across political ideologies as a way to broaden our understanding and our empathy and ability to know truly what people go through – what women go through – across the course of their lives,” Wallace said.

The Cleveland boys recount the first days of NFL free agency, which have brought wholesale changes for the New Orleans Saints. Plus, Rick gives his take on the high school basketball championships and the first month of college baseball in Mississippi.

Stream all episodes here.

Incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith will face Democratic challenger Scott Colom in the November general election, after each candidate easily won party primary races on Tuesday.

House incumbents, including longtime Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, also easily won their primary races Tuesday night.

Hyde-Smith defeated GOP challenger Sarah Adlakha, while Colom, the district attorney for Noxubee, Clay, Lowndes and Oktibbeha counties, also won his primary by defeating Marine Corps veteran Albert Littell and Priscilla Williams-Till, a distant cousin of lynching victim Emmett Till. Hyde-Smith and Colom will also compete against independent candidate Ty Pinkins in November.

The matchup could prove to be an expensive, hotly contested battle as Republicans aim to hold their slim majority in the Senate.

All four of Mississippi’s incumbent U.S. representatives and Hyde-Smith, the junior U.S. senator, are running for reelection in 2026 and were on the ballot Tuesday. See Mississippi Today’s primary election results here.

Throughout the primary campaign, Hyde-Smith highlighted her close relationship with President Donald Trump and her close ties to Mississippi’s farmers.

Hyde-Smith became a U.S. senator in 2018 after former Gov. Phil Bryant appointed her to fill the seat vacated by longtime Sen. Thad Cochran. She later won a special election in 2018 to complete the remainder of Cochran’s term and was elected to a full six-year term in 2020. She is the first woman to represent Mississippi in Congress.

At a political breakfast in Rankin County on Saturday, Hyde-Smith relished the nearing end of a primary filled with what she said was a flurry of negative attack ads against her. She looked ahead to a general election against Colom, calling him a “George Soros-backed candidate” and saying she expected a difficult general election campaign, with Republicans trying to fend off Democratic challengers eager to capitalize on backlash to President Trump’s second term.

“It’s going to be tough between now and November,” Hyde-Smith said. “It’s going to be a long summer for me. I know that, but I’m going to be out working.”

Colom centered his primary campaign on raising the minimum wage, improving access to health care in Mississippi and exempting law enforcement officers and teachers from the income tax. 

“Mississippi needs a senator who’s going to put Mississippi first,” Colom has said at several campaign events.

Colom and Hyde-Smith have both engaged in fierce fundraising efforts in recent months, which is expected to continue into the general election. Colom raised more money than Hyde-Smith for the last quarter, but the Republican incumbent still had significantly more cash on hand than the Democratic challenger. 

Colom now faces an uphill battle of trying to become the first Democrat since the 1980s to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi. But national Democratic leaders have signaled they’re willing to spend lots of money to flip Mississippi to a Democratic state. 

House Republican incumbents Trent Kelly in District 1 and Michael Guest in District 3 both ran unopposed for the Republican nomination. Guest will take on Democrat Michael Chiaradio, a former baseball player turned regenerative farmer originally from New Jersey who now lives in Shubuta. Chiaradio also ran unopposed in his party’s primary.

Kelly will take on Cliff Johnson, a University of Mississippi law school professor who defeated former Marshall County state Rep. Kelvin Buck. The congressional district has voted solidly conservative in recent elections, but Johnson has aggressively fundraised and utilized digital ads in an effort to flip the conservative area to a Democratic district. 

In District 4, incumbent Republican Mike Ezell defeated Sawyer Walters, who works for the state Department of Marine Resources and serves as a lieutenant in the Mississippi Army National Guard. Ezell will take on Jeffrey Hulum III, a state representative from Gulfport. Hulum defeated D. Ryan Grover, a business consultant who was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 2023 and Paul Blackman, a Navy veteran.

In District 2, the only seat held by a Democrat, incumbent Thompson staved off a primary challenge from Evan Turnage, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Senate Conference Vice Chair Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. The race drew attention due to Turnage’s connections to powerful congressional Democrats.

Thompson has represented the district, which covers Jackson and the Delta, since 1993. Turnage attempted to run on a message of generational change, but Thompson, a civil rights leader and former chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6th Capitol attack, is a towering figure in state and national politics. 

Thompson also defeated Pertis Williams III, who has focused on agricultural issues. 

On the Republican side in District 2, Adams County Supervisor Kevin Wilson squared off against Ron Eller, a physician’s assistant and military veteran who is running again for the GOP nomination after losing to Thompson by nearly 25 points in 2024. As of late Tuesday night, the race was too close to call.

Party nominees chosen on Tuesday will compete in the general election on Nov. 3.