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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. 

The Mississippi Senate passed its version of pharmacy benefit manager reform legislation Tuesday following a heated debate in which some legislators warned that the bill, which is intended to help independent pharmacists and patients, could come at the expense of business interests. 

Republican Sen. Rita Parks has spearheaded pharmacy benefit manager reform efforts in the Senate for years. The Corinth lawmaker offered an amendment — replacing all of the House’s original language — she said would strengthen House Bill 1665 by adding key provisions requested by independent pharmacists to ensure they are paid fairly and transparently for dispensing drugs to patients. The bill passed the Senate with a vote of 44-7 and will now return to the House for further consideration.  

Parks said the bill ensures that patients in rural communities can access health care from independent pharmacists, who have warned with increasing urgency that their businesses could be forced to close because of low reimbursements from pharmacy benefit managers.

“Can we afford to not do anything as a state?” she asked. 

Mississippi lawmakers have proposed bills to regulate pharmacy benefit managers unsuccessfully for several years as other states have passed laws to increase oversight over the companies. A pharmacy benefit reform bill last year made it further in the legislative process than in years past, but died in the House after a lawmaker raised a procedural challenge. 

Pharmacy benefit managers are the middlemen used by health insurance companies and self-insured employer plans. The managers have increasingly drawn scrutiny from policymakers because of their opaque business practices, concerns that their practices could lead to increasing drug prices with little accountability, and market consolidation.

The Senate’s measure maintains many of the provisions in the House version of the bill. These include measures to increase transparency and prohibit spread pricing, or the practice of paying insurers more for drugs than pharmacists in order to inflate pharmacy benefit managers’ profits. 

It would also require pharmacists to be reimbursed at least as much as an affiliate pharmacy or the Mississippi Division of Medicaid, which covers the cost of the drug and a dispensing fee. Pharmacists have long said reimbursements for filling prescriptions are often lower than the cost to acquire and dispense the medications. 

The language also keeps oversight of pharmacy benefit managers under the Board of Pharmacy, rather than transferring it to the insurance commissioner, as in the House’s bill.

Parks’ proposed provisions faced strong opposition from several lawmakers who argued that the suggested payment structure would harm Mississippi businesses.

Sen. Jeremy England, a Republican from Vancleave and the most vocal opponent of the Senate’s version of the bill, advocated for the chamber to pass the House’s version — which he said would still constitute meaningful pharmacy benefit manager reform — and send it to Gov. Tate Reeves. 

England said the Senate’s proposed text would drive up the cost of prescriptions, which would then be passed on to Mississippi businesses and their employees. He pointed to a letter from the Mississippi Business Alliance that warned rising prescription drug costs could force employers to do away with health plans for their employees altogether. 

Parks said the business community has consistently employed “scare tactics” that discourage legislators from voting for pharmacy benefit reform legislation but have provided little evidence that prescription drug costs will rise if the Legislature passes a bill that requires a specific reimbursement model. 

Parks said data from the Division of Medicaid, which implemented their current reimbursement policy in 2017, generated tens of millions of dollars in savings.

In an attempt to force legislators to continue discussing provisions, England made a failed motion to return language into the legislation that could force the bill into final negotiations between the House and Senate — language he had requested to be added in the Senate Public Health and Welfare committee but was removed by Parks on the Senate floor.

England also argued that having the Board of Pharmacy regulate pharmacy benefit managers presents a conflict of interest, since most board members are pharmacists.

Parks previously said that Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney told her he believes pharmacy benefit managers should be regulated by the Board of Pharmacy and that transferring those responsibilities to the Mississippi Insurance Department could take at least two years, which would slow down relief for independent pharmacists.

Speaking in opposition to Parks’ language, England presented a memo from the Legislative Budget Office estimating the bill would add $34 million in costs to the State Health Plan. 

He warned that the high cost could impact civil servants covered by the State Health Plan, like firefighters and policemen, and potentially limit the Legislature’s ability to approve a teacher pay raise this session, a topic that has been the focus of intense debate.

“This is bad policy,” England said. “This is going to cost our job creators money.”

Sen. Daniel Sparks, a Republican from Belmont, pointed out that the estimate was provided by CVS, the company that owns CVS Caremark, one of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit managers. 

Parks said independent pharmacists would be forced out of business without a new payment model that includes the costs of dispensing medications.

“They’re not asking for special treatment, they’re asking for a fair reimbursement system,” she said.

The Mississippi Legislature passed a bill on Tuesday that aims to prevent child support money for over 150,000 Mississippi children from being gambled away, the culmination of a yearslong effort to pass such a proposal.

The House passed SB 2369 by a vote of 92-22, sending it to Gov. Tate Reeves. The bill was authored by Sen. Walter Michel, a Republican from Ridgeland. The legislation allows the Mississippi Gaming Commission and the Mississippi Department of Human Services to set up a process to withhold gambling winnings from individuals with outstanding child support.

In a statement, MDHS spokesperson Mark Jones said the agency has been pushing for four years to get this policy across the finish line.

“This is another measure that MDHS has undertaken to serve families across Mississippi,” Jones said. “We appreciate the collaboration the Gaming Commission and attorney general have offered and the willingness of the gaming industry to meet with us about this legislation. This is about parents supporting their children. Enhancing opportunities for parents to support their children is desperately needed.”

Federal data shows Mississippi has the worst child support collection rate in the nation and one of the highest rates of child poverty. The state collected just 53% of the support payments judges ordered parents to make in 2024, compared to 65% nationally, a figure that prompted Michel to work with Senate Gaming Chairman David Blount, a Democrat from Jackson, on a legislative proposal.

There are 153,964 children in Mississippi whose custodial parents are owed child support, totaling $1.7 billion, according to data obtained by Blount.

“When I heard that amount, I was just flabbergasted,” Michel said. “It’s a step in helping DHS collect these past due payments from deadbeat parents.”

The proposals would mostly impact slot machine winnings of over $2,000, Blount has said, because gaming licensees are required to report those winnings to the Internal Revenue Service. The bill explicitly targets slot machine annuities and sports betting winnings.

Similar bills had stalled in previous years because the state’s powerful casino industry did not want to be on the hook for collecting a broad range of winnings, Michel said. This time around, the legislation targeted “the right mix of winnings,” Michel said.

The bill would require the state Gaming Commission to collaborate with MDHS, the state’s welfare agency that oversees the child support program, to maintain a database of individuals with outstanding child support.

Similar laws already exist in several other states, including Louisiana. In the first nine years, the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services intercepted an average of nearly $1 million a year from casinos, according to the National Child Support Engagement Association. 

For every 100 foster children in Mississippi’s custody, the state has only 52 foster homes. To recruit more families to care for these children, the state is joining the Trump Administration’s A Home for Every Child Initiative, Gov. Tate Reeves announced Tuesday.

Mississippi is the fifth state to join a pilot of the initiative behind Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Each state will be required to share updated data with the federal government about its child-to-home ratio, which will be shared on an online dashboard. 

To incentivize states to opt in, the federal government is allowing these states to forgo tedious paperwork associated with Children and Family Services Reviews. These federal performance reviews of state child welfare programs look at metrics such as the percentage of cases in which states deployed appropriate risk and safety assessments or concerted efforts to prevent family separations. 

Under those reviews, states develop Program Improvement Plans to address problem areas. But states who join the push will no longer be required to conduct these. The last PIP from Mississippi available on the federal website is from 2019.

The initiative is not tied to additional federal funding, but a federal representative said the reduction of red tape will allow the state to target funds for necessary casework.

“On average, states were sending us 300-page reports of mostly duplicated and recycled content across years that the federal agency did nothing with, frankly,” said Alex Adams, assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families under the U.S. Department of Human Services. “A lot of what this is doing is liberating the time and energy of the best caseworkers that they have to better deploy that time to actually benefiting kids as opposed to checking boxes and all those things that just sap time and energy.”

Reeves said the state’s child welfare agency, the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services, has already begun using data to determine where and what kind of foster homes are most needed across the state. Many children who come into state custody require therapeutic care requiring a higher level of licensing. 

“Instead of broad recruitment efforts that don’t always meet specific needs, we are moving towards targeted recruitment, identifying the right families for the right types of placements,” Reeves said. “At the same time, we are working to cut unnecessary red tape that discourages qualified families from stepping up and stepping forward. Good people who want to help children should not be overwhelmed by bureaucracy.”

In the absence of licensed foster homes, some children who come into state custody end up in short-term rentals, hotels, Airbnbs or even in government offices, Adams added.

“This is a beautiful building, but I don’t know that government buildings are conducive to stable, loving, nurturing environments that every child deserves,” Adams said during the press conference at the Walter Sillers Building in downtown Jackson.

Andrea Sanders, director of CPS, said the agency is working on a modern, digital application process for prospective foster parents. She also said a new campaign to recruit foster families will launch soon.

“That’s part of the work that we’re doing to make sure that this becomes a transparent process where the agency is fulfilling its role to help support and provide information to foster parents,” Sanders said.

A federal announcement of the A Home for Every Child Initiative says it also aims to reduce the number of children entering the system by prioritizing other interventions.

“By investing in prevention, we can reduce unnecessary entrees into foster care while still protecting children who truly need intervention,” Reeves said.

The Tuesday announcement did not provide specific details about how Mississippi plans to increase prevention through the initiative.

The Family First Prevention Services Act, enacted in 2018 during Trump’s first term, was designed to pump unprecedented levels of funding into states to support the stability of biological families – such as mental health and substance abuse treatment and in-home parenting programs – to prevent the need for foster families. 

It took years for Mississippi to submit a state plan to the federal government to start receiving these funds. The plan was approved last August, but the state has yet to fully launch the program.

A Home for Every Child is a product of HHS’s Administration of Children and Families. Laurie Todd-Smith, a deputy assistant secretary for that agency and former Gov. Phil Bryant’s senior policy advisor, recently visited Mississippi ahead of the announcement to assemble suitcases for foster children as part of a partnership with evangelical Christian parachurch organization, Focus on the Family. 

The problem they sought to solve: Children carrying their belongings from home to home in trash bags.
“Nationally, it’s 57 homes to every hundred children. In Mississippi, it’s 52 homes for every hundred children. So our goal is to get to a one-to-one ratio. A home for every child,” Todd-Smith said at the Jan. 14 suitcase event, WLBT reported.

Despite repeated cries from Southaven residents about noise, unchecked air emissions, and opaque operations of the xAI gas turbine facility in north Mississippi, the state permit board voted unanimously Tuesday to allow the company to expand its footprint.

Shannon Samsa, a Southaven resident with a master’s degree in physician assistant studies, said after the hearing she felt “dread” about the prospect of dozens of new turbines emerging at the nearby generator station.

“Every single system and person who’s supposed to protect us has failed to do so,” said Samsa, a community organizer who made the three-hour drive Tuesday morning to attend the hearing in downtown Jackson.

The permit board’s decision comes three weeks after the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality held a town hall in Southaven to invite feedback on xAI’s application to build 41 permanent turbines. Dozens of residents and advocates — both from north Mississippi as well as Memphis, Tennessee — spoke out against the proposed permit. No one there spoke in favor of the facility.

The group of generators would power xAI’s data center operation that stretches across the state line into Memphis. The company also recently announced a new center it plans to build just down the street in Southaven. Elon Musk, a billionaire and recent adviser to President Donald Trump, owns the business. The xAI facilities, which consists of the “world’s largest supercomputer,” the company claims, are used in part to power the AI chatbot Grok.

Residents, at the town hall and Tuesday’s hearing, largely complained of the site’s proximity to people’s homes. Less than half a mile away from the xAI facility, neighbors can hear a constant humming noise from the existing 27 turbines. The state allows those turbines to run without a permit because they fall under a “temporary-mobile” exemption, which means no one is officially tracking what toxic releases come from the generators. A number of parents at the February meeting expressed concern that the emissions were already impacting their children’s health.

Brent Mayo, vice president of operations for xAI, spoke at the hearing, thanking MDEQ for helping the company “lead the global AI race.”

“ We have advanced emission controls on all of our turbines to produce environmental effects,” Mayo told the board. “We use this modern technology to adhere to stringent air quality standards to help maintain healthy environments for everyone.”

Jaricus Whitlock, chief of MDEQ’s Air Division, said modeling done by the state and the Environmental Protection Agency showed emissions from the new turbines would keep the area in compliance with national air quality standards.

“As MDEQ is conscious of the  concerns regarding the contributions that emissions from (the proposed turbines) will potentially have on existing air quality, this analysis was thoroughly scrutinized by both MDEQ air modeling staff and EPA Region 4,” Whitlock said.

Mayo added that xAI has worked “closely and transparently” with MDEQ and EPA throughout the permitting process.

None of the concerned residents in Southaven, though, have been able to get in touch with Mayo or anyone else at the company, said Samsa. Her group, the Safe and Sound Coalition, has raised alarms about the facility since the fall.

Mississippi Today reached out to xAI’s official media channel in the fall, which responded with an apparent automated message, “Legacy Media Lies.” When reporters approached Mayo at Tuesday’s public hearing, he declined to answer any questions. The only contact information he gave out was his account on X, the social media platform Musk owns.

Jason Haley, who said he can see the turbine site from his backyard in the Colonial Hills neighborhood, played for the permit board an audio recording of the humming from the facility he hears around the clock. He said some of his neighbors have already moved because of the noise.

“I’ve lived in my house for 20 years and now I don’t want to be here anymore,” Haley told the board.

‘Rush to get this permit finalized’

Emails obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center suggest Mississippi officials were in a hurry to approve xAI’s permit application.

“Attached is the first draft permit preliminary determination for MZX Tech,” Jeffrey Bland of MDEQ’s permits division wrote to the EPA on Dec. 22 last year (MZX Tech is the subsidiary of xAI that owns the Southaven facility). “The directive from my upper management is that this permit needs to be at public notice no later than (Jan. 15th) of next year. If you plan to review, please provide comments on the draft document no later than (Jan. 6, 2026).”

Another email, sent by EPA Region 4 staff to MDEQ on Jan. 14, references a “rush to get this permit finalized.”

In a response Tuesday afternoon, MDEQ said the email from Bland was regarding “coordination about scheduling, not an effort to rush or bypass the permitting process.”

“Because the company’s construction timeline was tied in part to the one-year limitation on temporary turbines, staff were asked to determine whether the draft permit could be ready for public notice in January if the technical review was complete,” Jan Schaefer, MDEQ director of communications, told Mississippi Today in an email. “That direction was contingent on the air quality modeling and other analyses meeting all regulatory requirements.”

The one-year timeline Schaefer referenced is how long xAI has to run its temporary-mobile turbines without a permit. The company began running those turbines last August. Mississippi Today also reached out to EPA about its email, and will update this story if it hears back.

Last week, the national NAACP and the group’s state chapter wrote a letter blasting the agency over the hearing’s timing. MDEQ only publicized the hearing on March 5, giving just five days notice, and it also just responded to public comments on Saturday, the letter said.

Moreover, the hearing took place on the morning of a midterm election primary, making it especially burdensome to attend for Southaven residents who already live a three-hour drive away.

“Instead of protecting air quality, MDEQ is forcing Black and low-income residents to choose between exercising their right to vote and protecting their right to breathe clean air,” Abre’ Conner, director of the NAACP Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, said in a statement. “Scheduling a hearing on Election Day, three hours away from the community, with almost no notice, is a textbook example of environmental racism.

“The message is clear, they want to sneak this data center in with as little involvement from the community as possible.”

The Southern Environmental Law Center also panned the agency for holding the hearing just three weeks after the end of the public comment period, which received significant participation.

“This absurdly short timeline shows that MDEQ is seemingly more concerned about rubberstamping xAI’s air permit than it is about having a dialogue with the public or protecting the health of North Mississippi and Memphis families,” Eric Hilt, SELC’s senior communications manager, wrote in an email.

In a two-paragraph response on Monday, MDEQ Executive Director Chris Wells wrote that the board always meets on the second Tuesday of each month, and that all public comments were provided to the board.

In February, the SELC and NAACP sent xAI a notice of intent to sue for violating the federal Clean Air Act by running its temporary-mobile turbines without a permit. Hilt told Mississippi Today the groups have to wait until 60 days after that notice before they can file the lawsuit.

Samsa, with the Safe and Sound Coalition, confirmed after the hearing that her group would explore additional legal action to address the constant noise coming from xAI’s turbines.

The state environmental permit board is comprised of state agency appointees. All six members who were present Tuesday — the state Oil and Gas Board’s David Snodgrass was the lone absence — voted to approve xAI’s permit application.

Updated 3/10/26: This story has been updated to include MDEQ’s response to its emails regarding the timeline to get the permits.

The city of Clarksdale is in discussion with a company interested in building a large data center in the Delta town.

During a contentious meeting Monday night, the Board of Commissioners and mayor considered a proposal to rezone an area from commercial and agricultural use to light industrial, as well as a list of stipulations for a potential data center project.

Those stipulations included a $5 million impact fee paid to the city, along with guarantees about water usage and property setbacks. Currently, there are no concrete plans for the site. 

The land being considered is 648 acres between the Sunflower River, U.S. 278, Tallahatchie Street and the Roundyard neighborhood.

The board ultimately tabled the discussion without making a decision about the proposal.

“The company that we are in talks with, they are a global company. They want to be a good neighbor,” said Jon Levingston, executive director of the Crossroads Economic Partnership, the economic development organization for Clarksdale and Coahoma County.

City leaders weigh benefits of rezoning

City commissioners also debated possible drawbacks for residents, and the potential for transformative economic development in the shrinking Mississippi Delta city.

“We are here today to change the zone, to open the door for the opportunity to get business here,” said Ward 2 Commissioner Jimmy Harris. “We’re crazy if we shut the door on this.”

Representatives from Clarksdale Public Utilities, which would provide power to the site, rebuffed concerns from city commissioners on the potential for rate increases if a data center was built. 

“There is no direct correlation between a data center coming here and a rate increase coming for our citizens,” said Luke Howard, the utility agency’s chief financial officer.

Some, such as Ward 1 Commissioner Ray Sykes, said the public needs clarification about the impacts of constructing a data center. 

“Doing my research, I found out that many of the communities felt this wouldn’t happen to them, but it did,” said Ward 4 Commissioner Linda Downing. “But it affected the communities in a negative way. That is a lot of the citizens in Ward 4’s concern.”

Data centers: increasingly scrutinized but still booming

There are five data centers being constructed in Mississippi. Including Clarksdale, there are at least four more centers under consideration.

Elon Musk’s xAI is building a data center and its own power plant in Southaven. The project has generated national attention, including a potential lawsuit over its use of temporary gas turbines to power its data centers. So far, there are no announcements of other data centers relying on temporary turbines in Mississippi. 

Data centers are facing increased community pushback in Mississippi and across the country. As the AI boom spurs unprecedented investment into building the physical infrastructure needed, residents say they are concerned about water and power usage, the relatively few jobs created and a lack of transparency about the projects. 

However, the projects have spurred demand in the construction industry and are projected to add millions of dollars in new tax revenue to local governments.

Some local business owners are welcoming the potential investment into the financially struggling Delta.

“The only way we can help this community is to be on a global map as a tech leader,” said Clarksdale real estate developer Shiva Adireddi. “We need to do something totally different.”

Levingston emphasized the need for speed with this potential project and urged the board to approve the rezoning.

“Approve the rezoning with these conditions imposed on it,” Levingston said. “We will stand a chance to transform Clarksdale.”

‘Very confusing and very unstructured’ meeting

Despite a call to enter a closed-door executive session, some community members remained at the board meeting and open debate continued.

A majority of the city government later voted to reconsider rezoning with stipulations after a failed earlier motion. They then voted to table a final vote on the zoning with stipulations that might diminish environmental harm for a future meeting.

Downing said these additional votes were not in sufficient view of the public. She said many of her constituents had already left the board room when the vote occurred. 

She also believes there are some in the city government that want to remove the restrictions for a potential data center company.

“It was very confusing and very unstructured,” she said.

Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share their ideas about our state’s past, present and future. Opinions expressed in guest essays are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Mississippi Today. You can read more about the section here.

Mississippi United is celebrating its first six months of helping Mississippians get informed and take action to move our state forward.

Our efforts are:

• Making it easier for folks to raise their voices about issues and policies that matter.
• Encouraging citizens to be a thorn in the sides of politicians who don’t care what we have to say.
• Helping people do the hard work of living in a democracy.

I launched Mississippi United after working as an amateur activist and organizer because it became so clear to me that Mississippians are hungry for an avenue to actually DO SOMETHING to make things better in this beautiful and complicated place.

The fortunate among us could be anywhere else. But we’re here because it’s home. It’s where our roots are. We love the food and the music and the sports and our church and the hunting and fishing and the literature and the local theater. We love the short lines at the cash register and the red lights.  We love the fresh air, the eye contact and smiles from complete strangers.

And whether we could be someplace else or not, so many of us are certain things could be better in Mississippi, and we’re willing to fight for it.

Mississippi could be a place where good health care is readily available, whether you’re in Belhaven or Mound Bayou. Where, if you’re expecting a child, you know there is medical personnel within reach to care for you and your newborn. Where you rest easy because you know your kids are getting an education at the local public school that will prepare them for a future better than anything you could have imagined at their age. Where dependable and affordable child-care incentivize you to work and support your family.  Where law enforcement is there to serve and protect all Mississippians and not just some, and all Mississippians actually believe it.  Where the median household income is well above the current $55,000 per year and is sufficient that folks can sleep at night knowing there’s enough by the end of the month to keep the lights on, the refrigerator stocked, the prescriptions bought, the car note paid and maybe even a little to sock away for the future.

Mississippi could be a place where lawmakers actively encourage all of us to get out and vote and do everything in their power to make sure our voices are heard at the ballot box and not drowned out due to partisan gerrymandering.

Mississippi could be a place where proponents of economic development understand there’s no better investment than in our health care and our education.

And Mississippi doesn’t have to sell itself out to giant tech companies for billion dollar AI “developments” that will ultimately offer little in the way of jobs for our people and will most likely bring noise and air pollution, natural resource depletion and rising utility costs for consumers. No, Mississippi could be a place where its leaders recognize the desperation of those companies to find land and power like we have in abundance here and demand they invest in us and our people in ways that help more Mississippians thrive.

I’m no expert on AI data centers, but there are plenty of communities all over the country that have become the experts by learning the hard way.  And our state leaders would be foolish to ignore the lessons learned from those experiences.

Mississippi could be a place where our lawmakers don’t talk out of both sides of their mouth. In one breath preaching peace through strength and in the next voting “nay” on the war powers resolution that would perhaps begin to end the most ill-conceived and unsupported war we’ve ever started.

In one breath saying we don’t have the money to begin to solve the issues facing our poorest public schools and in the next breath voting “yay” on HB 1944, which will use tax credits to give up to $20 million of our state taxes every year to private schools for literally anything, regardless of whether it helps educate a single student. 

In one breath saying we should expand Medicaid but only if it includes “work requirements” and in the next breath (or a breath two years later) saying the nearly identical version of Medicaid expansion passed under the federal “Big Beautiful Bill,” including the work requirement, is too expensive for Mississippi. In reality the federal return on the state’s investment in any version of Medicaid expansion is just too good to pass up.

In one breath saying undocumented immigrants are costing taxpayers too much money and in the next breath supporting detention of nonviolent immigrants at a cost to taxpayers of $152 per day and the loss of all the tax dollars working immigrants pay, when even the Cato Institute reports that immigrants have reduced our nation’s deficit by $14.5 trillion over the past 30 years.   

Mississippi could be a place where our U.S. senators and their staff don’t criticize and literally run from constituents who dare to show up with facts from the Congressional Budget Office about the financial hit we’re all taking thanks to the “Big Beautiful Bill” and tariffs.

Our state could be all of these things, but only if we Mississippians demand it. Problem is, the work of demanding it is hard. And life is already hard enough for a lot of folks, no matter where you sit in relation to that $55,000 median income.

There are carpools to run and meals to cook and groceries to buy and jobs to work and broken appliances to fix and bills to pay and homework to help with and plumbers to call and doctor’s appointments to schedule and lost shoes to find and deadlines to meet and pets to feed and what the heck is Medicaid really anyway and why does it matter to me since I have private health insurance and what’s the truth about this war in Iran? And I read something the other day about data centers, but I don’t really get it and is ICE really in Mississippi and are they actually deporting folks? Just the really bad criminals, right?

My hope for Mississippi United is to make it easier on all of us to be a voice for positive change. We want to make it easier to understand how different policies impact life at home and for our neighbors. We want to simplify the often intimidating process of learning about an issue and then raising our voices about it to policymakers. We want to make sure our elected officials know that we are paying attention and we have both the courage and the knowledge required to speak up on the things that matter to us.

To accomplish these goals, Mississippi United prepares letters to lawmakers about different issues and enables anyone to review the letter and sign on with little more than a couple mouse clicks.

 We share tips on legislation and who to call to voice your opposition or support. We publicize a calendar of statewide events Mississippians eager for positive change may want to attend. We keep a resource library for folks to learn more about the policies we discuss in our calls to action.

Our most recent featured letter concerns the war in Iran and is addressed to U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker.  We demands a congressional investigation and public hearings in the Senate Armed Forces Committee that he chair.

Several of us, including four U.S. military veterans, recently hand-delivered that letter and the signatures of 620 Mississippians, to Sen. Wicker’s Jackson office.  

We explained to the senator’s staffers that Mississippians are eager to understand why the U.S. launched a war without congressional approval, what the goals and strategies and endgame are for this war, what the human and financial costs will be and what benefit will come to Americans as a result. We would like to know how this war will impact global trade and oil prices and our own pocketbooks, and how this war will affect our relationships with whatever remaining allies we have and how it will embolden China, Russia and North Korea.

Mississippi United is here to help people ask those questions and demand answers from the folks who work for us in Washington.  We did just that by delivering the letter to Sen. Wicker’s staff.

Imagine our shock when the senator’s staffer told us, in no uncertain terms, that the senator “has no power” over President Trump’s war in Iran.  Two of the veterans with us – one a 1st lieutenant infantry, combat platoon leader for the U.S. Army in Vietnam, and the other an Air Force sergeant, avionics specialist on F-4 Phantoms, were so disgusted they had to turn around and walk out of the senator’s office before the visit concluded. Six of us remained in the office — two retired government lawyers, two retired private practice lawyers, a retired CPA and U.S. Army veteran, and another retired veteran. 

We insisted that the senator had the power to vote in favor of the war powers resolution, but he voted “nay” instead.  We explained that the very reason for our letter was that the senator has the power to launch an investigation and hold congressional hearings about this war.  And he has the power to speak out against the war and the power to vote against additional funding for the war.  The staffer said she would relay our messages to the senator.

The issues we help Mississippians tackle vary from week to week. So far, we’ve taken up the financial and emotional cost of immigrant detentions and deportations, the tactics used by ICE, the extension of Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, First Amendment protections, the Epstein files, impeachment of various administration officials, the financial hit to Mississippians from the “Big Beautiful Bill” and tariffs, school choice, ballot initiatives, infant mortality, voter suppression, and 287(g) agreements, and now the war in Iran, among other issues.

What’s particularly unique about this work is that we understand that we don’t all have to agree on all the same things in order to move the needle. There are likely far more Mississippians passionately opposed to the war in Iran than those who care one way or another about ACA tax credits. And that’s fine.

When folks see a letter or a call to action from us that speaks to them, they can sign on to the letter and make the calls if they want. And if it’s something they don’t agree with or don’t care about, they can sit that one out. Easy breezy.    

All told, Mississippi United has helped 1,286 Mississippians make nearly 108,000 written contacts with approximately 250 local, state and federal officials in just six months. 

When you combine that with all the work folks are doing on their own – calling lawmakers, showing up for protests, writing letters to the editor, emailing their representatives, attending legislative hearings, visiting with legislators – we’re certain that Mississippians are moving the needle in a positive direction.

Kathleen O’Beirne is a native Mississippian, a recovering lawyer, and an eternal optimist convinced that Mississippi can get off the bottom of all the good lists and the top of all the bad lists, if we really want to.  She studied political science and Spanish at Davidson College and obtained her J.D. from the University of Mississippi School of Law. O’Beirne says the very best part about her work as an activist and as the founder of Mississippi United is getting to know the fabulous Mississippians throughout the state who work hard every day to make things better.  Anyone interested in learning more about Mississippi United can visit www.mississippiunited.online.  

Gov. Tate Reeves on Tuesday said he would consider calling a special session on school choice and a teacher pay increase if legislators can’t come to an agreement over the next four weeks. 

Republican House and Senate leaders have bickered over raising teacher pay and expanding school choice — policies that often allocate state funds to families to pay for private schooling — since the start of the legislative session in January.

Despite the discord, Reeves told reporters at a press conference Tuesday that both issues remain a priority for the Republican governor. 

In fact, he said the two issues should be “tied together.” 

“We should give teachers a pay raise, and we should also give parents and kids more options to give every child in our state an opportunity for success,” Reeves said. 

But that’s a strategy House Speaker Jason White, who has led the school choice charge at the Capitol, has publicly opposed.

“No one in the legislature is tying school choice policy to a teacher pay raise,” White wrote on social media in December. 

A major issue for a special session is the fact that school choice expansion failed in the Senate and barely passed the House. Even with White deeming it his No. 1 issue, many of his GOP caucus members voted against his school choice bill and it’s unclear whether he could keep a majority vote together even in a special session.

Reeves has never called a special session, which would suspend legislative deadlines and put more pressure on lawmakers, over a policy issue. He has only called lawmakers into a special session to deal with economic development projects and to pass a budget when legislators last year failed to agree on one.

However, he hinted that could change if lawmakers don’t reach a compromise on school choice soon, in part because of his lame-duck status.

“I don’t have much time left,” said Reeves, who is in the penultimate year of his second four-year term as governor. “And so on items that are incredibly important to me like rewarding our teachers, like getting more options for our kids — those are the kind of things that I am very, very interested in the Legislature getting across the finish line.”

Reeves said that it would be premature to make a decision yet, given the mercurial nature of the session. Just last week, the House revived a teacher pay raise bill, after House and Senate measures died. 

“Nothing is dead in the Capitol until it is dead, dead, dead,” Reeves said. “We’re continuing to have good conversations with members from the House and the Senate, and we will continue to do so.”

A bill that would tie union organizing restrictions to economic development incentives is headed to Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves’ desk for final approval. 

Senate Bill 2202, which passed the House last week, would require that businesses that receive economic development grants from the state agree to labor organizing stipulations. 

The legislation would ban employers from recognizing unions solely by a card check, or majority sign-up, and require a secret ballot election. It would ban agreements that prohibit employers from campaigning against unions during organizing and ban companies from giving unions employee contact information without written consent. 

House Business and Commerce Committee Chairman Lee Yancey, a Republican from Brandon, said the bill is intended to attract businesses to Mississippi by ensuring them the “flexibility to run their companies.”

“This is us having a say in what we spend our dollars on and what kind of activities it promotes,” he said. 

However, Rep. Oscar Denton, a Democrat from Vicksburg and longtime union member, was concerned the bill would discourage companies from coming to Mississippi. 

“We must ask whether it is appropriate for the state of Mississippi to condition economic incentives on how employees exercise federally protected rights,” Denton said. “Economic development should be about jobs, infrastructure and opportunity – not about limiting how workers organize themselves together.”

By requiring a private ballot, employers who receive these state grants would no longer be able to voluntarily recognize unions based on signed authorization cards alone.

Additionally, the bill could make labor organizing more challenging by prohibiting employers from giving employee contact information to organizers without approval and banning neutrality agreements between employers and unions. Under these agreements, employers vow not to advocate for or against worker organizing during a union campaign.

Yancey said that it was reasonable to impose such measures on companies receiving state dollars, while Denton argued the bill would also skew organizing campaigns in favor of management. 

“We can be in a race … but if you’re on pavement and I’m in quicksand, you already got the advantage,” Denton said. “The distance is the same, but the conditions are different.”

Mississippi has long been a right-to-work state, meaning workers cannot be forced to join a union or pay dues. Employers may fire workers at any time for almost any reason. About 5% of working Mississippians are union members, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

If Reeves signs the bill, Mississippi would become the first state in the country to ban neutrality agreements and the fourth state to require private ballots, according to Workers for Opportunity, a national group that advocates for employee rights against unions.

Mississippi voters are choosing Democratic and Republican nominees for Congress on Tuesday, with polls open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Check here with Mississippi Today after polls close for live results provided by The Associated Press.

All four of Mississippi’s incumbent U.S. representatives and its incumbent junior U.S. senator are running for reelection in 2026. Party nominees chosen Tuesday will compete in the general election on Nov. 3. 

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