OurTupelo

Made possible through grants from Visit Mississippi, Volunteer Mississippi, and the Mississippi Humanities Council.

Written by Laurie Guimont Guillaume

Ryan Parker, Executive Director of the Mississippi Film Society, is passionate about two things, cinema and serving the Mississippi community. Spending his childhood in Brookhaven, Mississippi, Parker traces his interest in film to the Westbrook Cinema 4 and the ‘80s and ‘90s blockbusters that played there.

An English major at Mississippi College, a film and literature course there deepened his appreciation for the genre. After two graduate school degrees, Parker moved to Los Angeles from the academy to the industry, embarking on a career in film publicity and marketing and consulting that spanned a decade in Los Angeles and continues to this day.

In 2022, Parker and his wife Amy moved back to Mississippi. Along with his work film film publicity and producing, he founded the Mississippi Film Society in 2023.

Leveraging his connections to distributors and independent filmmakers, Parker began offering free preview screenings of upcoming theatrical releases or screenings of smaller films that would not ordinarily have a theatrical release in Mississippi. Another goal of the Film Society was to bring another film festival back to Jackson.

This goal comes to fruition on Thursday, April 10, as the Mississippi Film Society launches its first film festival, Stranger Than Fiction (strangerthanfiction.eventive.org), which will run through Sunday April 13 at the Capri Theatre and Fondren Yard in Jackson, MS. The Stranger Than Fiction Film Festival will showcase eight feature-length films, two Mississippi-produced short films, an Introduction to the Film Industry Workshop, and two after parties.

The festival kicks off on Thursday at 7 pm with the opening night screening of Secret Mall Apartment, an unbelievable true story of a group of artists in Rhode Island, who build a secret apartment inside a new mall and lived there for four years. On Friday night at 7 pm, the festival will host another documentary feature, Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, which profiles musician Jerry “SwampDog” Wiliams and highlights his influential yet under-the radar-career. This screening will be preceded by a Mississippi produced short film, Country Punk Black about Jackson musician Twurt Chamberlain. The night will conclude with an afterparty at Fondren Yard, where Jackson artist DJ Young Venom will live score the silent black-and-white horror classic, The Monster (1925).

Saturday, April 12, is a full day of events at the Capri Theatre and Fondren Yard, starting off with a preview screening of the upcoming A24 family-friendly film, The Legend of Ochi, which will also include a breakfast cereal buffet and coffee courtesy of Northshore Coffee Company. This will be followed by an Introduction to the Film Industry Workshop, co-hosted by the Mississippi Film Office and the University of Mississippi Department of Theatre and film. This will be followed by two more documentary features: at 3:30 p.m., 23 Mile presents a portrait of Michigan residents during pivotal events in 2020 and will be followed by an in-person panel conversation with director Mitch McCabe; and at 6:00 p.m., Kim’s Video pays tribute to an iconic video store and its legendary film archive. The night will conclude with movie trivia in Fondren Yard beginning at 8:00 p.m.

Sunday, April 13 features another full day of programming starting at 1:30 p.m. with a screening of Mississippi filmmaker Anthony Thaxton’s Eudora, which will be preceded by another Mississippi produced short film, Jason Bouldin: Corporeal Nature, directed by University of Mississippi student Tanner Goodeill. At 4:00 p.m., Cajita (written by Belhaven film production professor Rick Negron) is an intimate tale that follows an immigrant laborer who fled his country by shipping himself to the United States in a crate. This screening will be followed by an in-person Q&A with Negron. The festival will close with a 6:30 p.m. screening of the comedy Lady Parts, which will be followed by an in-person panel conversation and Q&A with producer/writer Bonnie Gross and local physician, Dr. Kimberly Zachow of The Woman’s Clinic.

Thanks to generous partnerships with Visit Mississippi, Volunteer Mississippi, the Mississippi Humanities Council, and the Mississippi Film Office, the Film Society can offer attendees a variety of ways to engage the festival including a $25 weekend pass (priority seating at all screenings and free drink coupon), $12 individual screening tickets, and free screenings. Visit The Stranger Than Fiction Film Festival site (strangerthanfiction.eventive.org) for more information on the films and to purchase passes or tickets and to register for any free events.

The post Mississippi Film Society Announces First Film Festival, Stranger Than Fiction appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The House on Wednesday voted to end what had become a futile legislative session without passing a budget to fund state government, for the first time in 16 years. The Senate is expected to do the same on Thursday. 

The decision to leave the Capitol without funding government services means Gov. Tate Reeves would have to call legislators into a special session before government funding runs out on June 30 to avoid a shutdown. The governor could, based on previous legal rulings and opinions, run some agencies at least temporarily but many would be shuttered without a state budget in place.

House Speaker Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, both Republicans, blamed each other for failing to come to the negotiating table on ironing out a final $7 billion state budget.

“They have ignored the deadlines, failed to show up repeatedly, taken their marbles home at least twice, and given us conflicting statements every other time,” Hosemann said of the House. 

White, however, said he told Hosemann in early January that the House would not craft a “hurried budget” late in the session. 

Reeves, who previously helped write the state budget when he served two terms as lieutenant governor, has not said anything publicly about the Legislature’s failure to adopt a budget and has not indicated when he might force them back in a special session. 

The 2025 session has been characterized by bitter GOP infighting between White and Hosemann and their leadership teams, with the two chambers killing much of each other’s legislative priorities. 

House Minority Leader Robert Johnson of Natchez said the Republican bickering this session is not good for the state, and he hopes GOP leaders in the House and Senate can learn to get along. He said they should have stayed and passed a state budget, not relied on the governor to force them back into session.

“I think the situation is just unfortunate,” Johnson said. “It appears to me, after being in the Legislature for 30 years, that problems like this are more about personalities than actual issues. They need to step back, set aside their personal feelings and look at what’s best for the state of Mississippi instead.”

Even though the House finally accomplished its long-championed policy of eliminating the income tax, lawmakers might have to correct some of the mistakes in the legislation in the future. 

The House began to seethe after it felt the Senate was dragging its feet on proposing a plan to eliminate the income tax, after it killed most of White’s K-12 public education reforms and refused to pass a bill legalizing mobile sports betting.

When the Senate finally passed a measure to eliminate the income tax, it included typos that eliminated the tax much quicker than the Senate intended. Instead of pointing out the error to the Senate, the House pounced on it, passed the flawed bill and sent it to the governor. Normally, each side would work with the other to correct known mistakes in legislation.

The Senate felt burned by the House’s move and accused House leaders of negotiating in bad faith. Those frustrations carried over into trying to reach agreement on the state’s $7 billion general fund budget.   

The House leadership had vowed to avoid crunching budget numbers late into the night on “conference weekend” Saturday, as is tradition and the deadline for filing agreements. Many lawmakers have for years complained about the rushed budget setting, saying they don’t have time to vet or sometimes even read spending bills, and it has resulted in major mistakes in the past. White has vowed to end the practice.

The Senate, however, said they tried to iron out spending bills with their House counterparts during the week leading up to the conference weekend deadline, but they were initially met with silence.  

Still, House leaders met with Senate budget writers during the middle of last week to try to agree on at least some of the budget bills. But Hosemann said at one point on Friday night, the House walked out of the negotiations. 

Another point of contention between the two chambers is that Senate negotiators pledged not to agree to spend excess cash on lawmakers’ pet projects, including in an annual “Christmas Tree” bill. Lawmakers typically pass such a bill, usually ranging from $200 million to $400 million on earmarked projects across the state. Some lawmakers have complained this “pork” spending based on politics is an unfair way to spend money on projects in a poor state with many infrastructure needs.

The Legislature has not left Jackson without setting at least most of the state budget since 2009, when then-Gov. Haley Barbour had to force them back to Jackson to avoid a government shutdown.

But that 2009 instance was when Democrats still had a slight majority in the House and Senate, with Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant presiding over the Senate and Democratic Speaker Billy McCoy leading the House. Now, Republicans have a supermajority in both chambers. 

The House on Wednesday afternoon made a final attempt to revive negotiations by passing a measure to revive budget bills and extend the session. But shortly after the House passed the proposal, the Senate ended business for the day without considering the House offer. 

Sen. Angela Burks Hill, R-Picayune, is one of a handful of more conservative senators who had opposed the tax overhaul compromise with the House and was angered by its passage due to typos. She also was displeased with the House’s failure to show up on conference weekend to negotiate a budget and said she was “100% opposed” to passing a resolution to extend the session and renew negotiations with the House.

“That’s what happens when you play Napoleon,” Hill said. When asked to whom she was referring as Napoleon, she said, “You can figure it out.”

The decision to leave the state Capitol without a budget comes in the middle of unpredictability with the federal government, where President Donald Trump’s administration is cancelling hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants and other funding to states.  

Mississippi is one of the most federally dependent states in the nation.

State Health Officer Daniel Edney told lawmakers earlier this week that the federal government has cancelled around $230 million in federal grants to the state Department of Health. 

And Hosemann told reporters on Wednesday that State Superintendent of Education Lance Evans informed him that around $190 million in education funding was frozen, though the lieutenant governor did not reveal the specific details of those funds. 

Mississippi Today‘s Michael Golberg and Geoff Pender contributed to this report. 

The post Mississippi Legislature ends 2025 session without setting a budget over GOP infighting  appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi lawmakers have reached an agreement to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from public schools across the state education system, following the lead of numerous other Republican-controlled states and President Donald Trump’s administration.  

House and Senate lawmakers approved a compromise bill in votes on Tuesday and Wednesday. It will likely head to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves for his signature after it clears a procedural motion.

The agreement between the Republican-dominated chambers followed hours of heated debate in which Democrats, almost all of whom are Black, excoriated the legislation as a setback in the long struggle to make Mississippi a fairer place for minorities. They also said the bill could bog universities down with costly legal fights and erode academic freedom.

Democratic Rep. Bryant Clark, who seldom addresses the entire House chamber from the podium during debates, rose to speak out against the bill on Tuesday. He is the son of the late Robert Clark, the first Black Mississippian elected to the state Legislature since the 1800s and the first Black Mississippian to serve as speaker pro tempore and preside over the House chamber since Reconstruction.

“We are better than this, and all of you know that we don’t need this with Mississippi’s history,” Clark said. “We should be the ones that say, ‘listen, we may be from Mississippi, we may have a dark past, but you know what, we’re going to be the first to stand up this time and say there is nothing wrong with DEI.’”

Legislative Republicans argued that the measure — which will apply to all public schools from the K-12 level through universities — will elevate merit in education and remove a list of so-called “divisive concepts” from academic settings. More broadly, conservative critics of DEI say the programs divide people into categories of victims and oppressors and infuse left-wing ideology into campus life.

“We are a diverse state. Nowhere in here are we trying to wipe that out,” said Republican Sen. Tyler McCaughn, one of the bill’s authors. “We’re just trying to change the focus back to that of excellence.”

The House and Senate initially passed proposals that differed in who they would impact, what activities they would regulate and how they aim to reshape the inner workings of the state’s education system. Some House leaders wanted the bill to be “semi-vague” in its language and wanted to create a process for withholding state funds based on complaints that almost anyone could lodge. The Senate wanted to pair a DEI ban with a task force to study inefficiencies in the higher education system, a provision the upper chamber later agreed to scrap.

The concepts that will be rooted out from curricula include the idea that gender identity can be a “subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality.” The move reflects another effort to align with the Trump administration, which has declared via executive order that there are only two sexes.

The House and Senate disagreed on how to enforce the measure but ultimately settled on an agreement that would empower students, parents of minor students, faculty members and contractors to sue schools for violating the law.

People could only sue after they go through an internal campus review process and a 25-day period when schools could fix the alleged violation. Republican Rep. Joey Hood, one of the House negotiators, said that was a compromise between the chambers. The House wanted to make it possible for almost anyone to file lawsuits over the DEI ban, while Senate negotiators initially bristled at the idea of fast-tracking internal campus disputes to the legal system.   

The House ultimately held firm in its position to create a private cause of action, or the right to sue, but it agreed to give schools the ability to conduct an investigative process and potentially resolve the alleged violation before letting people sue in chancery courts.

“You have to go through the administrative process,” said Republican Sen. Nicole Boyd, one of the bill’s lead authors. “Because the whole idea is that, if there is a violation, the school needs to cure the violation. That’s what the purpose is. It’s not to create litigation, it’s to cure violations.” 

If people disagree with the findings from that process, they could also ask the attorney general’s office to sue on their behalf.

Under the new law, Mississippi could withhold state funds from schools that don’t comply. Schools would be required to compile reports on all complaints filed in response to the new law.

Trump promised in his 2024 campaign to eliminate DEI in the federal government. One of the first executive orders he signed did that. Some Mississippi lawmakers introduced bills in the 2024 session to restrict DEI, but the proposals never made it out of committee. With the national headwinds at their backs and several other laws in Republican-led states to use as models, Mississippi lawmakers made plans to introduce anti-DEI legislation.

The policy debate also unfolded amid the early stages of a potential Republican primary matchup in the 2027 governor’s race between State Auditor Shad White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. White, who has been one of the state’s loudest advocates for banning DEI, had branded Hosemann in the months before the 2025 session “DEI Delbert,” claiming the Senate leader has stood in the way of DEI restrictions passing the Legislature. 

During the first Senate floor debate over the chamber’s DEI legislation during this year’s legislative session, Hosemann seemed to be conscious of these political attacks. He walked over to staff members and asked how many people were watching the debate live on YouTube. 

As the DEI debate cleared one of its final hurdles Wednesday afternoon, the House and Senate remained at loggerheads over the state budget amid Republican infighting. It appeared likely the Legislature would end its session Wednesday or Thursday without passing a $7 billion budget to fund state agencies, potentially threatening a government shutdown.

“It is my understanding that we don’t have a budget and will likely leave here without a budget. But this piece of legislation …which I don’t think remedies any of Mississippi’s issues, this has become one of the top priorities that we had to get done,” said Democratic Sen. Rod Hickman. “I just want to say, if we put that much work into everything else we did, Mississippi might be a much better place.”

The post Mississippi Legislature approves DEI ban after heated debate appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The House on Wednesday attempted one final time to revive negotiations between it and the Senate over passing a state budget.

Otherwise, the two Republican-led chambers will likely end their session without funding government services for the next fiscal year and potentially jeopardize state agencies.

The House on Wednesday unanimously passed a measure to extend the legislative session and revive budget bills that had died on legislative deadlines last weekend. 

House Speaker Jason White said he did not have any prior commitment that the Senate would agree to the proposal, but he wanted to extend one last offer to pass the budget. White, a Republican from West, said if he did not hear from the Senate by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, his chamber would end its regular session. 

“The ball is in their court,” White said of the Senate. “Every indication has been that they would not agree to extend the deadlines for purposes of doing the budget. I don’t know why that is. We did it last year, and we’ve done it most years.” 

But it did not appear likely Wednesday afternoon that the Senate would comply.

The Mississippi Legislature has not left Jackson without setting at least most of the state budget since 2009, when then Gov. Haley Barbour had to force them back to set one to avoid a government shutdown.

The House measure to extend the session is now before the Senate for consideration. To pass, it would require a two-thirds majority vote of senators. But that might prove impossible. Numerous senators on both sides of the aisle vowed to vote against extending the current session, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann who oversees the chamber said such an extension likely couldn’t pass. 

Senate leadership seemed surprised at the news that the House passed the resolution to negotiate a budget, and several senators earlier on Wednesday made passing references to ending the session without passing a budget. 

“We’ll look at it after it passes the full House,” Senate President Pro Tempore Dean Kirby said. 

The House and Senate, each having a Republican supermajority, have fought over many issues since the legislative session began early January.

But the battle over a tax overhaul plan, including elimination of the state individual income tax, appeared to cause a major rift. Lawmakers did pass a tax overhaul, which the governor has signed into law, but Senate leaders cried foul over how it passed, with the House seizing on typos in the Senate’s proposal that accidentally resembled the House’s more aggressive elimination plan.

The Senate had urged caution in eliminating the income tax, and had economic growth triggers that would have likely phased in the elimination over many years. But the typos essentially negated the triggers, and the House and governor ran with it.

The two chambers have also recently fought over the budget. White said he communicated directly with Senate leaders that the House would stand firm on not passing a budget late in the session. 

But Senate leaders said they had trouble getting the House to meet with them to haggle out the final budget. 

On the normally scheduled “conference weekend” with a deadline to agree to a budget last Saturday, the House did not show, taking the weekend off. This angered Hosemann and the Senate. All the budget bills died, requiring a vote to extend the session, or the governor forcing them into a special session.

If the Legislature ends its regular session without adopting a budget, the only option to fund state agencies before their budgets expire on June 30 is for Gov. Tate Reeves to call lawmakers back into a special session later. 

“There really isn’t any other option (than the governor calling a special session),” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann previously said. 

If Reeves calls a special session, he gets to set the Legislature’s agenda. A special session call gives an otherwise constitutionally weak Mississippi governor more power over the Legislature. 

The post House gives Senate 5 p.m. deadline to come to table, or legislative session ends with no state budget appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Lawmakers negotiated and passed legislation to create a statewide board to study domestic violence deaths during the final, seemingly chaotic days of the 2025 session. The bill now heads to the governor’s desk.

Senate Bill 2886 by Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, would establish the Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board to study deaths and near-fatal incidents, suicides and other domestic violence matters. The goal is to learn how a death happened – the lead up, actions taken, what community resources were available and existing laws and policies. 

And from this study, the goal would be for the board to learn how to prevent domestic violence through early intervention and the improvement of how people and institutions respond to domestic violence. 

“We have to keep people alive, but to do that, we have to have the infrastructure as a system to appropriately respond to these things,” Stacey Riley, executive director of the Gulf Coast Center for Nonviolence and a board member of the Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence, told Mississippi Today earlier in the legislative session. 

Conference committee members for the bill included Wiggins and Rep. Fabian Nelson, a Democrat who proposed a House version of the bill. 

Advocates have told Mississippi Today that it’s difficult to know how many domestic violence deaths and injuries there are in any given year because there isn’t data collected at the state level. 

An analysis by Mississippi Today found at least 300 people – victims, abusers and collateral victims in the form of children and law enforcement – died from domestic violence between 2020 and 2024. 

Information was gathered from local news stories, the Gun Violence Archive, the National Gun Violence Memorial, law enforcement and court documents to track locations of incidents, demographics of victims and perpetrators and information about court cases tied to the deaths. 

Last year when a similar bill was proposed but didn’t make it out of committee, Mississippi Today started tracking the number of domestic violence fatalities, demographics and outcomes similar to how a review board would. 

The statewide board would be established under the Department of Public Safety and include appointed members from the criminal justice system and others who interact with domestic violence survivors and victims. 

The House version of the bill would have placed the board under the Department of Health, which has similar boards to review child deaths and maternal mortality. Nelson was the only member of the conference committee not to sign the report to withdraw the House’s amendment to place the board in the Department of Health. 

Under SB 2886, circuit judges can form a review board based in their circuit court district. Those teams would work with local and state domestic violence centers,  local law enforcement and judicial officers including prosecutors and public defenders. 

The bill also directs the membership of a team to be inclusive and reflect the racial, geographic, urban, rural and economic diversity of the state or circuit court district. 

The post Long-sought domestic violence bill heads to governor’s desk appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Cuts to public health and mental health funding in Mississippi have doubled – reaching approximately $238 million – since initial estimates last week, when cancellations to federal grants allocated for COVID-19 pandemic relief were first announced.

Slashed funding to the state’s health department will impact community health workers, planned improvements to the public health laboratory, the agency’s ability to provide COVID-19 vaccinations and preparedness efforts for emerging pathogens, like H5 bird flu. 

The grant cancellations, which total $230 million, will not be catastrophic for the agency, State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney told members of the Mississippi House Democratic Caucus at the Capitol April 1. 

But they will set back the agency, which is still working to recover after the COVID-19 pandemic decimated its workforce and exposed “serious deficiencies” in the agency’s data collection and management systems.

The cuts will have a more significant impact on the state’s economy and agency subgrantees, who carry out public health work on the ground with health department grants, he said. 

“The agency is okay. But I’m very worried about all of our partners all over the state,” Edney told lawmakers. 

The health department was forced to lay off 17 contract workers as a result of the grant cancellations, though Edney said he aims to rehire them under new contracts. 

Other positions funded by health department grants are in jeopardy. Two community health workers at Back Bay Mission, a nonprofit that supports people living in poverty in Biloxi, were laid off as a result of the cuts, according to WLOX. It’s unclear how many more community health workers, who educate and help people access health care, have been impacted statewide.

The department was in the process of purchasing a comprehensive data management system before the cuts and has lost the ability to invest in the Mississippi Public Health Laboratory, he said. The laboratory performs environmental and clinical testing services that aid in the prevention and control of disease. 

The agency has worked to reduce its dependence on federal funds, Edney said, which will help it weather the storm. Sixty-six percent of the department’s budget is federally funded. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pulled back $11.4 billion in funding to state health departments nationwide last week. The funding was originally allocated by Congress for testing and vaccination against the coronavirus as part of COVID-19 relief legislation, and to address health disparities in high-risk and underserved populations. An additional $1 billion from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration was also terminated. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” the Department of Health and Human Services Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement.

HHS did not respond to questions from Mississippi Today about the cuts in Mississippi.

Democratic attorneys general and governors in 23 states filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Tuesday, arguing that the sudden cancellation of the funding was unlawful and seeking injunctive relief to halt the cuts. Mississippi did not join the suit. 

Mental health cuts

The Department of Mental Health received about $7.5 million in cuts to federal grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. 

Over half of the cuts were to community mental health centers, and supported alcohol and drug treatment services for people who can not afford treatment, housing services for parenting and pregnant women and their children, and prevention services. 

The cuts could result in reduced beds at community mental health centers, Phaedre Cole, the director of Life Help and President of Mississippi Association of Community Mental Health Centers, told lawmakers April 1. 

Community mental health centers in Mississippi are already struggling to keep their doors open. Four centers in the state have closed since 2012, and a third have an imminent to high risk of closure, Cole told legislators at a hearing last December. 

“We are facing a financial crisis that threatens our ability to maintain our mission,” she said Dec. 5. 

Cuts to the department will also impact diversion coordinators, who are charged with reducing recidivism of people with serious mental illness to the state’s mental health hospital, a program for first-episode psychosis, youth mental health court funding, school-aged mental health programs and suicide response programs. 

The Department of Mental Health hopes to reallocate existing funding from alcohol tax revenue and federal block grant funding to discontinued programs.

The agency posted a list of all the services that have received funding cuts. The State Department of Health plans to post such a list, said spokesperson Greg Flynn.

Health leaders have expressed fear that there could be more funding cuts coming. 

“My concern is that this is the beginning and not the end,” said Edney.  

The post Federal cuts to Mississippi health agencies surpass $230 million; will impact community health workers, bird flu efforts, substance use programs appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today is pleased to announce that Candice Wilder has joined the newsroom as our newest higher education reporter.

Wilder takes over higher ed coverage from Mississippi Today reporter Molly Minta, who built the beat starting in early 2021 but has since moved to the newsroom’s team covering the city of Jackson.

“I’m thrilled to join a talented and ambitious team of journalists who provide critical news and information to Mississippians,” Wilder said. “Reporting on the state’s colleges and universities at this moment is more important now than ever. My goal is to develop thoughtful coverage and tell crucial stories that will continue to serve and reflect these communities.

Wilder, an Ohio native, was one of 19 founding staff members of Signal Cleveland, an inaugural nonprofit newsroom part of Signal Ohio. There, she developed a beat that provided accessible health news and information to residents of Cleveland. Her work has led to recognitions from the Cleveland Press Club and the Association of Healthcare Journalists.

“We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Candice to our newsroom,” said Adam Ganucheau, Mississippi Today’s editor-in-chief. “So many aspects of the higher education system are under intense scrutiny and attack across the country — from free speech to funding to accountability — and Mississippi is certainly no exception. Our colleges and universities are at the heart of critical conversations about equity, access, and the future of our state as a whole. Candice brings a sharp eye, strong reporting skills, and genuine curiosity to our team, and I’m confident that her work will help Mississippians navigate the often complicated and evolving nature of higher ed here.”

“We’re so happy to have someone with Candice Wilder’s passion and experience to pick up the mantle of higher education reporting at Mississippi Today,” said Debbie Skipper, who will serve as her editor. “Molly Minta set a high standard in our reporting in this area, and I know Candice will maintain that while offering her own professional perspective.”

The post Candice Wilder joins Mississippi Today as new higher education reporter appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Ole Miss basketball season draws to a close in the Sweet 16, just as college baseball (and the weather) heat up. Rick opines on how the season is shaping up, while Tyler wonders whether the Braves will ever win.

Stream all episodes here.

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The Mississippi Public Service Commission voted unanimously on Tuesday to lift a stay on programs offering incentives for solar power. The same commission voted to suspend the programs last April.

The PSC initially voted in 2024 to suspend three programs: “Solar for Schools,” which allows school districts to essentially build solar panels for free in exchange for tax credits, as well as incentives for battery storage and low-income participants in the state’s “distributed generation” rule. Mississippi’s “distributed generation” rule is similar to net metering in other places, but reimburses customers for less than what most states offer.

Net metering is a program where power companies — in this case Entergy Mississippi and Mississippi Power — reimburse customers who generate their own solar power, often with rooftop panels, and sell any extra power back to the grid.

The PSC suspended the programs in 2024 because, at the time, the federal government was also offering funds through its “Solar for All” initiative. The commission reasoned that the state didn’t need to add incentives, which the previous commission approved in 2022 on top of the new funding. After learning that the state government didn’t receive any “Solar for All” funding, the PSC decided on Tuesday to reverse course.

While the State of Mississippi didn’t receive any of the funding, Hope Enterprise Corp. did get $94 million last year through the program to bring solar power to low-income and disadvantaged homes in the state.

The previous PSC created the “Solar for Schools” program as a way to save school districts money on their power bills to help with other expenses. While no districts were able to make use of the program before the PSC suspended it last year, other districts have seen savings after installing solar panels. Any of the 95 school districts within the Entergy and Mississippi Power grids are eligible for the PSC incentives.

Solar advocates disagreed with the PSC’s assertion that federal “Solar for All” funding would have replaced the PSC programs, which went into effect in January 2023, arguing that the commission’s ruling would scare off potential new business. Those advocates applauded Tuesday’s reversal, saying the incentives will support professions within the solar supply chain such as electricians, roofers, manufacturers and installers.

“Yesterday’s actions by the MPSC sends a strong signal that Mississippi is open for business,” Monika Gerhart, executive director of the Gulf States Renewable Energy Industries Association, said via email. “For schools and homeowners that want to save money on their light bill, yesterday’s vote creates additional savings to install solar.” 

The post PSC revives solar programs a year after suspending them appeared first on Mississippi Today.

“Somebody died in here?” asked one of the guests at the glum election watch party.

On Tuesday night, under a dozen supporters of Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba sat silently with news reporters on the low couches at a downtown marketing office, watching the results of the Democratic primary that played over muted televisions and fanning themselves in the sweltering heat. 

The incumbent had nearly lost the mayoral election outright, earning 17% of the vote compared to Sen. John Horhn’s 48% in the last unofficial count of the night. It was a stacked race of 12 candidates and turnout was low – just 23% of the city’s registered voters participated.

Seven blocks away at The Rookery event venue, Horhn’s watch party was livelier. Around 8:45 p.m., about 100 supporters whooped and cheered as Horhn, his family and his pastor, Bishop Ronnie Crudup Sr., walked into the shiny marbled room. 

“That appears to me to almost be a mandate, for one candidate to secure that much percentage of the vote,” Horhn, the state senator of 32 years, said.

The 2025 Democratic primary for Jackson mayor shaped up to be somewhat of a rematch, with the roles reversed this time. After meeting defeat against Lumumba in the same race in 2017, Horhn nearly avoided a runoff in the unofficial count Tuesday, securing 12,318 of the total 25,665 votes. It is his fourth time running for mayor.

“We knew it was gonna be close and had turnout been a little higher, had we worked a little harder, we might’ve been able to get there.”

Unless he receives nearly all of the mail-in absentee and affidavit votes left to be counted, Horhn will face a runoff, likely with Lumumba, on April 22. Lumumba received 4,267 votes. Tim Henderson, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel known by few at the start of the race, finished close in third with 3,482 votes. 

In a speech, Horhn thanked his father, Charlie, his family, members of the Legislative Black Caucus, and his campaign supporters, shouting out many by name, including well-known restaurateur Jeff Good, whose support of Horhn was seized on by some mayoral candidates as a reason to not vote for the state senator. 

“You know, a lot has been said by some of my opponents about the fact that we were reaching out across different party lines, racial lines, socioeconomic lines, but everybody wants Jackson to do well,” he said. “And in time, Jackson will be well.” 

Good’s support was one reason Horhn’s competitors in the primary tried to paint him as a Trojan Horse for white business interests in the city. He also received endorsements from sitting state representatives and the unions of public sector workers and Jackson firefighters.

“Anyone who thinks that John Horhn is bought by anyone obviously hasn’t seen the depth and breadth of the people that he’s worked for 40 years, and all the endorsements that he has received,” Good said. “The endorsements read like a who’s who of Black leadership. Those are facts. I mean, listen. This is a who’s who room. There’s former supervisors in here, there’s former state senators, current state senators, it’s amazing.” 

The accusation is not grounded in a factual understanding of the Legislature, said Rep. Justis Gibbs, D-Jackson, who noted that Horhn is one of 52 senators in a statehouse led by Republicans, not Democrats. 

And, Horhn’s district is larger than Jackson, so he has other cities to think about, like Edwards and Pocahontas.

“I think he has done well,” Gibbs said. “I know if I need something done … that I have an advocate, not an adversary.” 

Good helped cater the watch party, with Broad Street sandwiches and Sal and Mookie’s pizza. He said he hoped Horhn could continue the vision of former mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. and finally bring a hotel to the downtown convention center, what many hoped would be the starting point of revitalizing the city.

“What was supposed to be the beginning was the end,” he said. 

Last year, Lumumba was indicted on federal charges alleging he took bribes in the form of campaign donations from supposed developers of that same property in exchange for moving up a proposal deadline. He pleaded not guilty and his trial is scheduled for 2026.

“I am going to be clear that I am not guilty of any wrongdoing. I am not guilty of any wrongdoing,” Lumumba told reporters after the election results. “I admit that I love this city so much, and I am going to fight relentlessly in order to make sure that everybody gets the quality of life they deserve.” 

Lumumba arrived at the Fahrenheit Creative Group office for his watch party, a location change from the luxury bed and breakfast where it was originally planned, a little after 9:30 p.m.. His wife Ebony and their two daughters accompanied him. He chalked up his low performance in the race to misinformation.

“When they tell Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary, we should not be standing here,” Lumumba said, dabbing at his brow. “They gave every reason for us not to be standing here, and yet we are standing here.”

One guest, Amina Scott, said she’s supporting Lumumba no matter what. 

“He’s the only option for people in the city of Jackson as a progressive city that’s run by progressive American people,” Scott said.

She points to attempts by the state to take over Jackson Public Schools and the airport. 

“It’s not a new concept that has happened in cities across this country where Black people run the cities and states to try to take them back, and they’re doing the same thing to Jackson,” she said.

“…We have to look at our history and understand it’s not a new thing and it’s an old game, and we need to win this time. And the only way we can do that is as a unit.”

Lumumba became mayor in 2017 after winning 55% of more than 34,000 total votes in the Democratic primary against eight challengers, including the incumbent, making a runoff unnecessary. Horhn, who was running for his third time that year, came in second to Lumumba with 21% of the vote. After his first term, Lumumba won reelection after receiving 69% of the vote in the Democratic primary in 2021 with under 20,000 Jacksonians turning out.

The 2025 election saw similarly low voter turnout of under 25,700 votes in the last tally of the night. Mail-in absentee ballots and affidavit ballots are still left to be counted. With all of the issues voters had identifying their correct precinct due to redistricting last year, an election official said they saw a higher number of affidavit ballots – those cast due to irregularities at the polls. 

The 2025 election represented a drop in nearly 10,000 votes from 2017, but the city has lost more than that in population during that time.

If Horhn is victorious, his pastor Bishop Ronnie Crudup Sr. said he hopes Horhn can hit the ground running to reverse depopulation in Jackson, which has experienced some of the steepest losses in the country since the last census.

“We’re in a really tough and hurtful place in the city of Jackson right now,” he said. “Years ago, we experienced white flight in Jackson to the suburbs, and now we’re experiencing Black flight. People are feeling hopeless.” 

Johnnie Patton, whose family owns the Big Apple Inn, a famous restaurant on downtown’s historic Farish Street, said she wants to see Jackson return to the city she knows it can be. 

“We’ve lost a lot,” she said.

Across town at the Jackson Medical Mall, candidate Tim Henderson gathered with members of his family and volunteers around 7:30 p.m. while the election results trickled in. 

Henderson, a military consultant who went from little name recognition to finishing third in the primary, said people liked him precisely because he was an outsider, having moved back to the city just two years ago.

“We keep electing the politicians that have been around, and we keep getting the same thing,” he said.

Inside the mall, also a voting location, the poll workers were packing up the precinct. In the center of the mall, empty tables and chairs waited for Henderson’s supporters who were steadily showing up for the watch party. Slow jazz music was playing.

Henderson set up his campaign headquarters here in an office he also uses for his consulting business. Since it was close to a precinct, he had to take down his office signage.

But the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel said he would stand outside the medical mall and talk to potential voters as they walked in, including one woman whose mother was killed in a shooting earlier this year.

“People are tired in this city,” he said.

That was reflected in the city’s anemic turnout, he added. At the medical mall, for instance, officials recorded just 115 official votes from the 541, as of 2024, registered there.

“When people have been in such a depressed and distressed state for so long psychologically it impacts them,” he said.

As he spoke to a reporter in his campaign office, someone called his desk phone. “Please, Mayor Henderson, give me a call back,” they said, but Henderson couldn’t answer it in time.

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