OurTupelo

A new grassroots movement is developing that would allow public money to follow what we’ll call the “recreator,” or a person who participates in recreational activity.

It makes sense. Why should a person be forced to provide his or her hard-earned money to support local and state park systems if they are not using them?

Would you like to take your kids to Disneyland, but you’re worried about how much it will cost your family? That’s OK, the government can give you back some of the tax money you paid to keep your town’s public parks open and subsidize your trip. You don’t use those local parks much anyways, and you could argue you’d personally get more out of the Disney trip.

Or, instead of paying for the parks with your tax money, take it to help purchase a gym membership or in-home exercise equipment — maybe even a backyard swing set. Instead of paying for public libraries, your tax funds could be used to purchase the books you want to read.

These ideas, of course, should read as extremely unserious. As much as we may like to pay lower taxes or have the public subsidize our vacations and lifestyle habits, most would agree a family trip to Disneyland or these other expenses would be an egregious use of money intended to improve our communities.

But these exact ideas are being increasingly touted by state leaders as part of the argument used by those supporting vouchers or even tax credits to provide public funds to allow students to attend private schools.

They argue that the tax dollars intended to boost public school should instead be spent by the parents of the students and not the government. After all, it’s their money. The parents of students should be able to use those funds to educate their children anyway they see fit.

To go a step further, the “school choice supporters,” as they call themselves, also contend that there should be no accountability for the schools or other entities receiving those education dollars. Trust in the parents is apparently the only accountability that the government needs.

Never mind the wild possible scenarios that could play out. Let’s say parents get mad because their child’s grades are slipping. The parents with a voucher to a private school tell the administrators they are transferring little Johnnie unless little Johnnie makes certain grades. The easy solution for the school administrators could be to give little Johnnie that grade demanded by the parents so that the school can continue to collect the public education dollars.

This “parents know best” argument neglects the important fact that there are many taxpayers who are paying to support the public schools who have no children. Taking this argument to the extreme: perhaps people who do not have school-age children should be able to keep their funds rather than funding schools where they have no personal connection.

That counter argument, of course, is also ridiculous and ignores the premise that was established at our nation’s founding. Americans don’t pay taxes for individual purposes. They pay taxes for the common or societal good.

The primary goal of taxes is to ensure a better school system not just for one student, but for the general public.

The goal of taxes is not to provide a good park in your neighborhood or a smoothly paved road in front of your own house — though that does seem to be the goal of some Mississippi lawmakers recently — but to provide good, safe public spaces and an adequate transportation system for all of us.

Granted, those goals are not always achieved, especially in many communities across Mississippi. But if there is no tax money to pay for public schools, public parks, public libraries, public law enforcement, we all suffer. Better public schools in particular can only build a better community, a better economy and a better state.

People want to live in areas where there are good schools, good parks, good libraries, good transportation systems and other public services.

If we pull tax revenue out of the coffers they were intended to support, what are we left with? It’s worth considering what our public school system — and our communities in the present and future — would look like with even fewer public resources.

A federal judge on Friday ordered water to be turned back on for five days at a south Jackson apartment complex where the utility company shut it off July 23 because the complex owner has $422,000 of unpaid water bills.

U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate issued his order in response to an emergency request from Mayor John Horhn. Wingate said it was a “temporary humanitarian measure.”

“Judge Wingate’s decision to turn the water back on gives us the critical time we need to help our neighbors get to a safe place,” Horhn said in a statement.

In the days before taps ran dry at Blossom, the city’s privately operated water utility company, JXN Water, had indicated water shutoffs were possible but not imminent at Blossom and other complexes with large overdue bills.

Many of Blossom’s low-income residents receive housing vouchers. Their water service is included as part of the rent they pay.

The apartments’ owner, Tony Little of Monroe, Louisiana, told Mississippi Today that he has a longstanding dispute with JXN Water over the amount the utility company says he owes.

Wingate wrote Friday that his ruling does not reduce or forgive the unpaid bills at Blossom.

“This Court recognizes that the property’s owners are in arrears on water bills and that condemnation proceedings may be ongoing,” Wingate wrote. “This Court further recognizes that to reactivate water for Blossom Apartments despite the Court’s warnings of a potential shutoff and Blossom Apartments’ continued nonpayment would be windfall to Blossom Apartments if it is allowed to receive free water under these circumstances.”

Wingate wrote that the absence of potable water “creates immediate and significant public health risks, depriving residents of the ability to meet their basic needs for drinking, cooking, sanitation, and hygiene.”

Horhn’s statement said the mayor, who took office July 1, has been communicating with Mississippi Home Corp., which has agreed to provide financial help for people to move out of Blossom. That includes down payments for new apartments, the first month’s rent and relocation expenses. The money will be delivered through Stewpot Community Services, which is coordinating relocation and support services.

Region 6 Housing Authority is speeding up the availability of vouchers to help Blossom residents find different housing, and Jackson Housing Authority is providing caseworker support and housing placement, the mayor said.

Stewpot CEO Jill Buckley has organized a relocation assistance meeting for Blossom residents at 5 p.m. Tuesday at Stewpot headquarters.

Blossom Apartments is a 72-unit property initially built in 2004 through low-income housing tax credits administered by the state to offer affordable rents to Jackson residents.

Earlier this year, JXN Water released a list of multi-family accounts that had more than $100,000 in unpaid water fees. Blossom was on the list.

JXN Water said it has tried to work with Little on Blossom’s overdue bills. The utility company said he has leaks on the property and it has offered a bill adjustment if those leaks are repaired. 

Reporter Maya Miller contributed to this story.

Mississippi’s Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council has finalized and expects to soon release grant applications for the tens of millions of dollars it oversees, moving the state closer to using its settlement money to address addiction.

The council held a make-up meeting in Jackson late Friday afternoon after a virtual session was derailed by hackers last week. Many committee members, including council chair Attorney General Lynn Fitch, were not in attendance.

One of Fitch’s special assistants, Caleb Pracht, and her chief of staff, Michelle Williams, provided the council members draft versions of committee rules, funding priorities and materials for applicants before the meeting started.

The new draft documents included some changes the members suggested from the last completed meeting, such as a scoring rubric and definitions for qualified applications. The grants would be available to organizations interested in addressing opioid addiction.

The members made a series of amendments to the procedures, such as adding language to encourage applications from underserved and under-resourced communities, encouraging applicants to submit matching funds and emphasizing that these dollars go toward helping Mississippians.

Pracht told council members he will spend the weekend making approved changes and hopes to make the application live on Monday. Williams said the grant materials will be accessible on Fitch’s website.

While the state Legislature has tasked the council with soliciting applications, reviewing them and making funding recommendations by early December, council members worried about whether they could meet that deadline and mused about asking lawmakers to push it back. Committee member Joseph Sclafani, an attorney for Gov. Tate Reeves, asked his peers if they thought all those tasks were doable in four months.

“If it’s not, perhaps we could beg some grace from our legislative members,” he told the council.

Although the council is tasked with developing the grant process quickly, Mississippi is behind most states in distributing its opioid settlement dollars. Every state that borders it has started allocating money.

Williams said Fitch’s office would be reluctant to request more time. But she said the attorney general and the council are committed to making sure their work would be completed by the 2026 legislative session, when the Legislature is expected to approve or deny applications.

“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure they get the recommendations when they’ve asked for them,” she said.

Like many Mississippians, Jovani Johnson was raised on PBS Kids. Shows like “Sesame Street” and “Maya & Miguel” were a key part of his early education. 

Now, as an afterschool teacher at Agape Love Learning & Developmental Center in Greenwood, he uses PBS Kids shows and resources from its website in his lessons three times a week. 

“My younger group, they love it,” he said. “They love it because they know we’re coming with something fresh, something new.”

But because of federal budget cuts pushed by President Donald Trump, Johnson and other Mississippians will lose access to these shows by next summer.

Mississippi Public Broadcasting will lose up to 15% of its annual budget, which is between $2 million and $2.5 million, according to Anna Neel, MPB’s chief operating officer.

She said that by July 1, MPB plans to eliminate programming from PBS, NPR, the Create television channel, the PBS Kids television channel, PBS Kids app and the streaming service Passport.

MPB will still air emergency weather alerts and local programming like “The Gestalt Gardener” on the radio and “Mississippi Roads” on TV, and it will continue to produce all local news, including “Mississippi Edition,” Neel said.

Nationally syndicated TV shows like “Daniel Tiger,” “Sesame Street,” “Frontline,” “Finding Your Roots” and “Antiques Roadshow” and radio shows like “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” won’t be available under MPB’s planned changes.

The Republican-led Congress last month approved and Trump signed cuts to federal spending, including a $1.1 billion reduction to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  Trump said in an executive order in May that he believes PBS and NPR have “biased and partisan news coverage.”

CPB helps fund PBS and NPR, and it sends money to more than 1,500 locally owned public radio and television stations nationwide, including Mississippi Public Broadcasting. CPB announced on Aug. 1 that it is starting the process of shutting down.

Neel said despite the cuts, Mississippi is in a better position than other rural states because most of its budget comes from state funding. She said CPB’s shutdown was expected and won’t impact the changes already planned.

“At the end of the day, it didn’t go our way,” Neel said. “So, defunded but not defeated, right?”

Republican state Sen. Angela Burks Hill of Picayune said she supports the funding cuts. She said the government should prioritize public safety, corrections and the national debt, and that MPB should replace missing funds with donations.

“We can’t just keep funding everything that we’ve been funding all these years if we’re ever going to hope to keep our fiscal house in order,” Hill said.

MPB started a donor campaign, Won’t You Be Our Neighbor, to try to make up for some of the losses. Neel said many donors reached out to show support and said they’d be increasing their contributions. 

“That donor pie is not enough to make up the $2.5 million deficit that we will see with these cuts,” Neel said.

For the fiscal year that began last month, Mississippi lawmakers put $8.3 million of state money into public broadcasting, listed in budget documents as the Educational Television Authority. That is a decrease of $2.1 million, or about 20%, in state support from the previous year. 

Johnson said he has seen how PBS Kids helps students with academics and social and emotional development. 

“Nothing will be able to replace PBS Kids, simply because it’s a network designed specifically for kids to educate them about how the world is ever-changing,” Johnson said.

Neel said it would be difficult and expensive for MPB to produce children’s educational programming locally. She said she has spoken to teachers in underserved communities who rely on PBS Kids.

“They depend on this free educational content … to help children not just learn to read, learn their colors, to learn their shapes, but they depend on this content to teach children how to regulate their emotions,” Neel said.

PBS says its children’s programming helps improve literacy and STEM skills, and its accessibility helps fill educational gaps: 60% of PBS’ audience lives in rural areas, and 56% of low-income households watch it.

For Johnson, the alternative to PBS Kids is YouTube. Instead of having prepared lessons, staff will have to build their own curriculum.

“I will stand on the highest mountain to say that there isn’t any platform, any network, or any broadcasting service that will replace PBS Kids,” Johnson said.

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

I was 7 years old when those funny-looking characters appeared on our black-and-white TV set. We lived in what the Tupelo city folk considered the country. If there was such a thing as cable, we surely didn’t know anything about it. The only static-free channel on our dial was the NBC affiliate, and that’s because the station on Beech Springs Road was barely a mile from our house. Suddenly, there was this new station – PBS. 

Those funny-looking characters were from this new show called “Sesame Street,” and they had me hooked from the first day. Of course, I was happy to have another TV choice. But this one was different. Skillfully included in the humorous scenes with Ernie and Bert, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster and Big Bird were educational messages that proved educationally life-changing for my family and me. 

PBS aired “Sesame Street” – the same PBS that helped teach scores of children in our nation, including me, to read. And it’s the same PBS and member stations that just had their two-year forward-funding appropriation yanked by a $9 billion GOP-led rescission bill that finally succeeded in doing what “Sesame Street” teaches against – bullying. 

After a long media career, including more than a decade as editor of The Clarion-Ledger, I spent another decade as executive director of Mississippi Public Broadcasting. It was one of my proudest moments for a kid from Saltillo, a child who came from a family of sharecroppers, to occupy the top seat in public broadcasting in my home state and to ultimately get elected to PBS’s national board of directors.

A kid who admired public media became an executive who ran a statewide operation and helped shape policy nationally. It felt like a dream. 

For those who care as much as I do about public media, it is unfathomable, inconceivable and plain dumb – choose your adjective – that both PBS and NPR stations are being picked on, possibly dismantled. And for what? Their financial impact on the multi-trillion-dollar federal budget is minuscule. The inexplicable action carried out by the GOP majority has hurt me deeply. While Republican members run home on recess to avoid further questions about Jeffrey Epstein, my mind can’t get away from the inevitable obliteration of content from local stations that looms.

PBS and NPR are certainly weakened by the passage of the recission, but it will be the rural stations in rural towns without wealthy donors that will feel the most pain. It is a foregone conclusion that some stations already barely getting by will close. 

One industry executive described the cuts as “catastrophic, devastating, unnecessary and mean-spirited.”  Several stations have already had layoffs and there will be more.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which announced Aug. 1 that it will begin shutting down in September, has been the congressional arm doling out funds to stations since 1967. For years, despite the shortsightedness of some members of Congress, CPB, with the assistance of affinity groups, fought off funding threats and delivered to the 1,500 stations federal dollars that were their lifeline.

Not this time.

The recent action to claw back the $1.1 billion public broadcasting receives over two years is a blow that most likely will place the industry as we know it in an unrecoverable position. 

The public media system and local stations have led the way in delivering some of the country’s best programming. PBS, for example, was among the first to bring to viewers travel shows, DIY content, cooking shows featuring cultural icons like the great Julia Child. There’s also Bob Ross, with his soothing voice, who made us all believe that we, too, could paint beautiful landscapes.

The children’s programming, which my grandchildren faithfully watch, cannot be matched by those with commercial interests. It provides a safe place for children, which is not always the case with the others. 

NPR frequently sets the agenda for the news of the day – often scooping better-financed media companies – with hosts and producers who have a knack for securing interviews with top newsmakers. Their aggressive reporting has always struck a nerve with thin-skinned politicians. As executive director of MPB, it was NPR that kept my phone ringing with lawmakers threatening to pull funding.  

Public broadcasting will survive in some form. It has been wounded, but it has not been silenced. I would not be truthful, however, if I didn’t believe that its strong voice has been reduced to a whisper.

The American people have supported public broadcasting with their viewership and donations, the perfect public-private partnership. But I don’t believe small-town America can keep up. Some larger stations will struggle, as well. 

So many people in my circle of friends have given their entire careers to public media. They won’t give up that easily. But they’ve been dealt a bad hand, a setback that has every station accountant working overtime to save as many people as they can.

What do I predict?

Expect to see mostly national programming and fewer local productions. Expect to see talented radio and TV professionals in the job market. But don’t expect to see public media and the ingenuity of its people give up. They will never quit.

Ronnie Agnew was named general manager of New Jersey Advance Media in 2022. He is a Mississippi native who has been in the media industry for more than 40 years. Agnew is a former executive editor of The Clarion-Ledger and former executive director of Mississippi Public Broadcasting. While editor of The Clarion-Ledger, Agnew received four President’s Rings, honoring editors in the Gannett Co. for exemplary performance. He also was honored with the Silver Em from the University of Mississippi. He is also a member of the University of Southern Mississippi Journalism Hall of Fame.   

Jackson’s sewer contractor fought to keep its place and a federal judge took new steps to address a neglectful apartment complex owner in the latest court hearings over the city’s water and wastewater utilities.

Notably, U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate said during Thursday’s status conference that he’s planning an in-person visit next week to Blossom Apartments, where third-party utility JXN Water shut off service after the owner said he wouldn’t pay over $400,000 in unpaid water bills. The judge also said he wants to have the complex’s owner, Tony Little, appear in court.

But most of Thursday’s status conference focused on Jackson’s sewer contract with Veoilia, which has managed the city’s three wastewater treatment facilities and pumping stations for the past nine years. Jackson has been under a federal consent decree since 2013 over its sewer system failures, which include polluting the Pearl River. Wingate placed the sewer operations under JXN Water in 2023.

Earlier this year, WLBT reported, JXN Water manager Ted Henifin clashed with city leaders after he decided to replace Veoilia with Jacobs Solutions, the firm that already manages the city’s water treatment services. Jacobs is set to take over the contract in October. Veoilia’s contract was set to end in November 2026.

Henifin, along with several Jacobs employees, attempted on Thursday to enter the Savanna Street Wastewater Treatment Plant to meet with Veoilia about the transition. But Veolia staff denied Henifin and the Jacobs employees entry, saying they no longer wanted to have their scheduled meeting.

Matt Johnson, Veolia’s vice president of operations, told Wingate that the meeting would have been disruptive to daily operations, and that he didn’t understand the “business sense” of Henifin’s decision to end the contract contract early.

Henifin said going with Jacobs would save about $800,000 a year, largely because it already has staff in the area. Johnson contested that it would cost $1.2 million to $1.6 million to end its contract early, but Henifin disputed that number, saying Jacobs would attempt to retain all of Veoilia’s staff.

The manager also criticized Veoilia’s performance.

“I’m a little dumbfounded they’re continuing to push this,” Henifin said, arguing the company neglected Jackson for roughly seven years before only recently turning things around.

Johnson, as well as representatives for Jackson, pushed back on Henifin for not going through a competitive process for choosing a new sewer contract, arguing Veolia could have competed with Jacobs’ price if there was an open bidding process. Jackson interim chief administrative officer Pieter Teeuwissen, speaking on behalf of the mayor’s office, agreed that a request for proposals, or RFP, would benefit the city by providing transparency and boosting trust in JXN Water.

The federal order that appointed Henifin over the water and sewer systems allows him to bypass laws around bidding contracts as well as public records. The manager has said before that an RFP process would be expensive and time-consuming.

Wingate made no ruling regarding the contract itself, but told Veoilia that Henifin should have “unfettered” access to all sewer facilities going forward.

At the end of the status conference, Wingate said he would soon address the question over whether to put Blossom Apartments and another abandoned complex into receiverships.

Representatives of the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, one of the intervenor plaintiffs, asked whether there was any way to turn water on at Blossom Apartments for just the weekend as Wingate decides how to proceed. Organizer Danyelle Holmes described “inhumane” conditions at the complex, where tenants haven’t had running water for over two weeks. Henifin responded that, short of the judge ordering him to do so, he wouldn’t restore service, emphasizing that neglectful property owners need to face consequences.

Mayor John Horhn, who took office July 1, told reporters this week that the city is providing potable water to residents as officials work to relocate tenants.

Horhn also came out against Henifin’s proposal to increase water rates, which Wingate is waiting to rule on as he finds out how the city spent money from its Siemens settlement.

“I’ve gone on record with the judge saying that I’m not in favor of a rate increase,” Horhn said at a press conference. “The people of Jackson are suffering enough under the water availability fee for example, just in order to qualify for getting water, you have to pay a $40 availability fee and a lot of residents have a lot of push back on that.”

The mayor mentioned the potential to reallocate federal funds to help pay for daily water operations. While Henifin has said he’s asking federal officials to do just that, he’s maintained a rate increase would still be necessary.

Reporter Maya Miller contributed to this story.

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna of California visited Jackson to highlight a technology job training initiative with Jackson State University he’s spearheading as part of a larger effort to connect the tech sector to historically Black colleges and universities.

Khanna, a Democrat, represents Silicon Valley, home to Google, Nvidia and Apple. His Thursday visit is part of the congressman’s broader effort to connect Black communities, particularly in the Deep South, with the uber-wealthy companies in his home district.  

“We need a generation of people who are participating in the modern digital economy that are being trained and educated right here in Jackson,” Khanna said at the Smith Robertson Museum downtown.

The program gives $5,000 scholarships to students at Jackson State University and allows them to participate in an 18-month course, according to Khanna. After completing the program, the graduates are usually offered a lucrative job in the technology sector, with a starting salary ranging from $65,000 to $80,000. 

“You have to bring the digital revolution to the Black South,” Khanna said. 

The son of Indian immigrants, Khanna said he and and his family have a deep appreciation for the Civil Rights Movement and the Mississippi organizers at its epicenter. 

The California lawmaker said his grandfather was jailed in India for four years for his support of Mahatma Gandhi’s movement for independence from the British Empire. That same movement in India inspired the nonviolent organizing tactics utilized by civil rights leaders such as Medgar Evers, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis. 

“The Civil Rights Movement then led to the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, and that’s what led my parents to come to the United States,” Khanna said. 

Despite its rich civil rights history and status as the Blackest state in the nation, Mississippi is sometimes overlooked by the national Democratic Party because of the state’s overall conservative electorate. 

Khanna told Mississippi Today in an interview that the national Democratic Party should invest more in Mississippi. If it supports organizing efforts, he said, the Magnolia State could become competitive in statewide elections. 

Beyond politics, the lawmaker said the party and nation did not support the capital city enough during the Jackson water crisis that left thousands of residents without clean running water and has not put Mississippi at the front and center of economic development. 

“Anyone who wants to understand the history of segregation, the history of racial justice, has to understand Mississippi,” Khanna said. “And anyone who wants to see the hope and promise of economic development has to come here.”

Delta Health Alliance is starting construction on a center in Leland that will offer dentistry and occupational, physical and speech therapy – with options for those who are uninsured or underinsured.

Groundbreaking was held Thursday for Delta Cares Center. It will be a $10 million addition to the comprehensive Leland Medical Clinic that has served the region since 2013. 

The expansion is made possible by a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to Delta Health Alliance, a nonprofit organization that works to improve access to health services in the mostly rural, impoverished part of the state. 

The decision to focus the new center on rehabilitative therapies and dentistry was born from the need providers saw in the main clinic, said Karen Matthews, CEO of Delta Health Alliance. 

“Dentistry is just very hard to come by in the Delta for our population,” Matthews said. “And people desperately needed it. Also with physical, occupational and speech therapy – it’s very hard to come by. And when people can get it, the wait is just extremely long.”

While construction of the new building will take approximately a year, Matthews said patients can make dental appointments immediately to be seen in the clinic’s mobile van. 

A sliding fee scale is available to people whose income is less than about $31,000 annually for one person or $53,000 for a family of three – below 200% of the federal poverty level. Fees start as low as $3.

That’s available for patients who are uninsured, as well as those who have what many call “junk” insurance plans, said Hilary Meier, head of Leland Medical Clinic. 

“Anybody can apply for the sliding fee scale, even if you have insurance, because a lot of people have really high deductibles or co-pays,” Meier said. “If they qualify then they can be in that sliding fee scale for any of the services we provide at the clinic.”

In addition to flexible cost options, the clinic also offers free transportation to those who need it with a van that picks up patients up to 45 minutes away. That service will also be available for the new Delta Cares Center. 

“Our mission for Leland Medical Clinic is to be able to serve everyone in the community regardless of their ability to pay or not, and to be able to offer high-quality services to everyone,” Meier said. “So that will expand into this new building, as well, and with the additional services that we’re going to be able to offer our community.”

This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra and Barbara Rodriguez of The 19th. Meet Shefali and Barbara and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

When there’s a maternal health emergency, Jessica Wheat springs into action.

Alongside a group of specialized health providers at Research Medical Center in Kansas City, Wheat works fast to make sure patients are able to have their babies delivered safely or their children given critical treatment at the Level III neonatal intensive care unit on site.

“We have just an abundance of resources, and people that know what they’re doing,” the labor and delivery nurse said.

That abundance is coming to an end. Last month, HCA Midwest Health, which owns Research Medical Center, announced it was closing its obstetrics program and NICU. The umbrella company that runs HCA Midwest Health, which oversees multiple hospitals and related sites of care in nearly two dozen states, cited declining births at the hospital as part of its reasons for the closure.

Wheat is worried about the implications for local patients who often struggle to find transportation even across Kansas City. But she’s also concerned about the rural patients outside of the metro area.

“We tend to get smaller hospitals that will Life Flight bleeding moms or moms who are breech or moms who are having a hypertensive crisis,” she said. “We can do the emergency C-section — a lot of smaller hospitals do not have those capabilities. The farther they have to go, the more at risk they’re going to be for complications, even death.”

The availability of obstetrics care in America has been dwindling for years. That could accelerate now, as hospital leaders across the country warn that President Donald Trump’s massive cuts to Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income Americans, could leave pregnant people in rural communities with vanishingly few options for medical care. 

Obstetrics is one of the most expensive services provided by hospitals, especially in rural areas, which often see a larger portion of Medicaid patients. Nationwide, the program pays for about 40 percent of all births. With financial hits looming, hospitals are primed to close maternity wards first, and rural areas are particularly vulnerable.

“This is going to have an enormous impact,” said Dr. John Cullen, a family physician in Valdez, Alaska, a remote city of about 4,000 people. “Already we’re seeing OB deserts that are increasing in size, and after the passage of this bill those are going to be markedly worse — where people are going to have to drive hundreds of miles before they can get prenatal care, much less delivery.”

For years, hospitals facing financial pressure have shuttered maternity wards. Between 2010 and 2022, more than 500 hospitals across the country dropped obstetrics, per a recent study that also shows more than half of rural counties now have no hospital-based obstetric services. A report from the advocacy group March of Dimes found that 1 in 3 U.S. counties had no OBGYN at all.

There are numerous reasons for the recent closures, ranging from declining births to difficulties hiring local providers. But the biggest issue is financial: Hospitals typically don’t earn enough from labor and delivery to cover the cost. Now, cuts to Medicaid — which will further cut hospital revenues and increase their share of uncompensated care — threaten to strain finances further.

“I do have a lot of concern that we’ll continue to see labor and delivery units close in rural hospitals and potentially even at an accelerated rate, as hospitals feel greater strain due to cuts in the bill,” said Carrie Cochran-McClain, chief policy officer with the National Rural Health Association.

The National Rural Health Association and Manatt Health, a consulting firm, estimated in June that the proposed Medicaid cuts over 10 years could reach almost $70 billion just for rural hospitals. Nearly half of all children and 1 in 5 adults in rural communities are enrolled in Medicaid or the related Children’s Health Insurance Program. The health insurance plan also pays hospitals less for the same services than private insurance does.

“When rural hospitals say, ‘We have these big Medicaid cuts, how do we deal with that shortfall?’ the OB units are going to be first on the chopping block,” said Jamie Daw, an associate professor of health policy at Columbia University.

One analysis from the National Partnership for Women and Families, a nonpartisan organization that supports policies such as equal pay and access to health care, suggests that the new cuts to Medicaid put almost 150 rural hospitals with maternity services at risk of serious downsizing or closing altogether.

The changes to Medicaid — including cumbersome new paperwork requirements for people insured through the program, and cuts to some of the taxes used to finance state Medicaid programs — largely won’t take effect until after the 2026 midterm elections. But already, hospitals are preparing for huge reductions in services, and pointing to labor and delivery as one of their most vulnerable offerings.

Michigan-based Trinity Health operates five hospitals that include maternity services. Hospital leaders are deeply concerned about service cuts that would make it harder for pregnant patients to get appropriate medical care, said Dr. Sharon O’Leary, an OBGYN and the organization’s chief data analytics and chief equity officer.

When patients have to travel further for prenatal care, they are more likely to cut the number of doctors’ visits or to receive no prenatal care at all. Studies over the past several years have shown that obstetrics unit closures — and increased travel time for pregnant patients — result in higher rates of pregnancy-related complications, including premature birth and low birth weight. 

“Our biggest fear is that as women lose coverage that they will not seek prenatal care,” O’Leary said.

The consequences are likely to be heightened in areas that are already underserved, and where birth outcomes are worse: rural parts of the country, and, in particular, large swaths of the South. 

“While we are concerned about the impact the bill will have on all hospital services, we are particularly concerned about its impact on labor and delivery services,” said Richard Roberson, president and CEO of the Mississippi Hospital Association.

Already, rural areas have seen access to reproductive care dwindling, particularly in the past three years, since the fall of Roe v. Wade allowed states to outlaw abortion. Preliminary data shows that medical residents for OBGYN are applying in smaller numbers to states with abortion bans and a recent study in the medical journal JAMA, the first to assess the relationship between abortion bans and provider availability, found that in Idaho, the number of OBGYNs fell by 35 percent between August 2022 — when the state implemented its near-total ban — and December 2024.

Abortion ban states, which are largely in the South, also have higher rural populations, worse birth outcomes and larger shares of hospitals at risk of closure. 

“It’s an additional trend — on top of this piece of the general financial pressure  — that’s going to also affect predominantly rural Southern communities,” Daw said. “It seems like a perfect storm of these concurrent trends really really affecting access to care.”

If hospitals reduce their pregnancy-related offerings, few alternatives will be able to fill in the gap. Earlier this year, the Trump administration began withholding millions of dollars in family planning grants through Title X, the federal program that supports family planning services for low-income people. Planned Parenthood, a major provider of services that include cancer screenings, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and contraception, is also one of the largest Title X providers. Most Planned Parenthood clinics are in rural or otherwise medically underserved areas. The federal budget and tax law also includes a provision that would cut federal Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood, though that policy has since been blocked by a federal court ruling. In recent weeks, several clinics have announced their plans to close. 

“You have to think of them as related,” Daw said. “It’s definitely not helpful to have all of these changes happening at the same time and really undermining the safety net for reproductive-aged women.”

Cochran-McClain said when a provider with a background in obstetrics care leaves a rural town or city, that impacts health services more broadly: Often, that provider was also providing contraception, general gynecological care and routine screenings.

“It’s so interconnected. While we’re talking specifically about labor, delivery and pregnancy, it can have an impact more broadly on access to women’s health in rural communities,” she said. “It’s been a rough couple of years before all of this, so it just feels like it’s a worsening trend in terms of overall access.”

The closure at Research Medical Center in Kansas City — where its obstetrics program is scheduled to close down in early September — also shows that even when a person in a rural area is forced to travel greater distances into a city setting for specialized care, those services aren’t guaranteed.

Wheat and other affected nurses at Research Medical Center, where they are represented by National Nurses United, said HCA Midwest Health has not provided enough information about the logistics of winding down services. Will the rest of the hospital, including its ICU unit, take emergency patients who need labor and delivery services? Or will the remaining staff in other areas of the hospital get specialized training?

HCA Midwest Health, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The 19th, said in a statement to a media outlet that it is working with area health providers to ensure patients have other delivery options.

Wheat has lined up another nursing job in labor and delivery with a different hospital system. In her text group chats with other impacted staff, there is a sense of sadness. She believes the obstetrics-related health providers will find other work, even if it means even more gas mileage to get to a new job. But Wheat keeps thinking about what’s to come for the patients.

“I’m emotionally exhausted. It is hard,” she said. “We’re just grieving for the community at this point, because we know they’re going to have a lot of issues after we’re gone.”

Demand for electric vehicles has slowed in the United States. Mississippi is already feeling its effects with a delay in production at the Nissan plant in Canton.

While President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” ended EV tax incentives it also freed up cash for companies to invest in domestic production. If national demand continues to slow what will this mean for Mississippi?

Electric vehicle demand slowed in the United States before EV tax incentives ended due to higher up front costs, limited ranges and lack of charging infrastructure. Despite embracing EV manufacturing, Mississippi has one of the lowest rates of EV ownership in the country. EVs make up 0.1% of the market share in Mississippi compared to 1.2% nationally according to data from the US Department of Energy. 

What do you think the future of EVs in Mississippi looks like? Let us know what you think at marketplace@mississippitoday.org.

EV Manufacturing 

Auto manufacturing is a major employer in Mississippi, with 15,000 employees according to the Mississippi Development Authority. Over the past few years, there has been an influx of investment in EV manufacturing in the state: 

• Nissan announced a $500 million investment in its Canton plant to build EVs.
• Mullen Automotive, now Bollinger Innovations, began producing commercial EVs in Tunica. 
• Cummins Inc., Daimler Trucks & Buses and PACCAR planned to invest $1.9 billion in a new EV battery plant in Marshall County.

Nissan’s declining sales of EVs and other financial pressures led to the announcement that EV production would be pushed back at its Canton plant. Bollinger Innovations’s ongoing legal battles forced it to consolidate its operations and transfer ownership of a plant in Indiana. However, its Tunica plant continues to be operational.

In July, the Commercial Dispatch reported that Paccar was laying off an unspecified number of people at its Lowndes plant, which manufactures diesel engines. While the company announced that its net income was down from the previous year in Q2 2025, it exceeded industry expectations. There’s been no announcements that the company is stopping plans for a new facility in Lowndes and the battery plant in Marshall County. Paccar’s executives were optimistic about the second half of 2025 on a recent earnings call. 

One reason was changes to tax law in the new federal tax and spending bill that allows companies to deduct spending on domestic research and development, equipment and factories all at once instead of spread out over multiple years. The result, more cash for companies sooner.  

Other News: New Factories, New Investment, New Leadership

• Anduril Rocket Motor Systems, a California defense company, opened a new factory in Stone County.
• Mancuso Chemicals, a Canadian company is investing $5.52 million to build a logistics distribution center in Clarke County. The project is expected to create 17 jobs in the next five years.
• Mississippi Power announced a new CEO and chairman, Pedro Cherry. Mississippi Power provides service to 23 counties and is a subsidiary of the Southern Company.
• Howard Industries is investing $236 million to expand its Mississippi footprint.

Have economic or business news? Email Katherine Lin at marketplace@mississippitoday.org.