OurTupelo

From prisoners suffering amputations due to diabetes to a mother taking desperate measures to help her incarcerated son treat his debilitating pain, Mississippi lawmakers on Thursday heard stunning testimony in a more than three-hour hearing about inadequate healthcare in state prisons. 

Lawmakers presiding over a joint meeting of the House and Senate Public Health and Corrections committees peppered the CEO of Mississippi’s prison medical contractor, Kansas-based VitalCore Health Strategies, with questions about allegations of systemic failure to stop preventable deaths and illness. Their questions stemmed from stories that have poured in from their constituents, journalists and legislative watchdog reports. 

Lawmakers also condemned the absence of the Mississippi Department of Corrections at the hearing, despite having sent the agency a letter urging its officials to attend. 

The hearing came after Mississippi Today’s Behind Bars, Beyond Care series documented potentially thousands of prisoners with untreated hepatitis C and others having trouble getting cancer screenings. The series documented numerous cases of alleged neglect, including delayed care of an inmate leading to death, a prisoner’s untreated broken arm forcing an amputation, and prison officials communicating their dismay at an inmate’s rotting leg going untreated.

Lawmakers, led by House Corrections Chairwoman Becky Currie, a Republican from Brookhaven, proposed several measures earlier this year to improve prison healthcare and create stronger safeguards against the denial of care, but most of the proposed reforms died. 

The Thursday hearing centered on some of the problems the bills sought to correct as lawmakers expect to propose more reforms for the state’s troubled and expensive prison healthcare system next year. 

Lawmakers on Thursday heard about: 

Alarming delays in cancer diagnosis and treatment

Dr. Jacob Graham, an oncologist at South Central Regional Medical Center in Laurel, said he has been alarmed by the significant delays in diagnosis and treatment faced by his patients who are incarcerated in MDOC facilities. 

One patient he described did not receive a prostate cancer diagnosis until the disease spread to his bones and caused permanent paralysis of his lower body due to compression of the spinal cord. 

Another waited nearly a year to receive prostate cancer treatment after a blood test showed dangerously high levels of a protein measured to screen for the disease. The test in fall of 2025 showed a prostate-specific antigen of 60 — significantly higher than the normal range of zero to four — but he did not receive a biopsy until April 2026, and did not begin treatment until August. Graham said it was “miraculous” the cancer had not metastasized in spite of the significant treatment delay. 

Yet another patient with lung cancer that had spread throughout his body received treatment at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and a dire prognosis of weeks to a few months to live. But prison medical staff did not arrange for him to visit a local oncologist within a week as ordered, leaving him to languish for over a month before receiving follow-up care as his condition deteriorated. He was then hospitalized again due to complications associated with the delays in care. 

Limb amputations and trip to a Motel 6

Multiple state lawmakers relayed stories of constituents who suffered amputations due to untreated diabetes in prison. 

Limb amputations are a serious complication of diabetes, though a majority of diabetes-related amputations are preventable, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Rep. Elliot Burch, a Republican from Lucedale, testified that he received a call a year and a half ago informing him that a constituent with serious medical concerns had been released from prison to a Motel 6 on I-55 in Jackson, even though MDOC staff previously told his family they planned to refer him to long-term care. 

Burch, initially skeptical of the story, decided to investigate himself. He traveled to the motel, and after he knocked on the man’s door, he found him with both legs amputated, unable to get out of bed himself to unlock the door. At least one of the amputations occurred while the man was in MDOC custody due to uncontrolled diabetes.

The man had been dropped off with insulin, but no blood glucose monitor. And the only food he had to eat was a bag packed with carbohydrate-rich foods, including crackers and sandwiches. The man ultimately had to seek emergency care for another issue and was discharged to long-term care from the hospital. 

Rep. Steve Lott, a Republican from Lucedale, said he received a call from a constituent set to be released from South Mississippi Correctional Institution in Leakesville with serious health issues, including diabetes. Three days after the man was paroled from prison, his leg was amputated. 

A mother takes desperate measures to help treat her son’s chronic pain

Pearly White said she almost lost her home from sending money to the prison where her son was incarcerated after he lost access to critical medication.

She went on to tell lawmakers about a scheme where fellow prisoners, under the watch of guards, coerced her to pay them an ever-increasing sum of money for illegal drugs to help her son manage pain medical officials failed to manage.    

“She’s been extorted,” Currie said. 

White’s son was an amputee when he went to prison, spending time at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman and Marshall County Correctional Facility after multiple DUI charges. He had spinal cord damage, a condition he managed with gabapentin, a prescription nerve-pain medication. The problems began when prison officials told him they couldn’t provide him with the drug. 

He couldn’t function, she said, and desperate to manage the debilitating pain, he turned to marijuana. In a plea to help her son, White transferred money to people inside the prison through an app. She could afford the payments at first, but they eventually ratcheted up the price to over $1,000, threatening to cut off her son.

“They know what they’re doing,” White said. “They have help. The officers, they know.” 

White, a veteran who works as a surgical technician in Oxford, said she has plunged into debt trying to get her son treatment he should have received through the state’s prison medical contractor.

“I stand up on this bad back and these bad knees every day so that I can pay the bills that I acquired from the inmates, because VitalCore didn’t think it was necessary that he have gabapentin,” White said.  

White’s son was eventually released from prison and now lives with her. 

White said she reported the scheme to MDOC’s Corrections Investigation Division and the FBI. She’s received no word from either entity about whether they investigated her case or the illicit flow of money into prisons. 

VitalCore responds: ‘I think it’s time to tell our story’

After over an hour of testimony from speakers outlining a wide range of prison healthcare woes, VitalCore’s leader spoke for the first time to lawmakers. 

Beth Clay, VitalCore’s lobbyist in Mississippi, introduced her client in soaring terms.

“I’m telling you, the people I’m bringing you today have hearts of gold when it comes to medical care,” Clay said.  

Viola Riggin, the company’s founder and CEO, said she doesn’t like the limelight, but feels her company’s work has been misrepresented. 

“I think it’s time to tell our story,” she said. 

Before addressing the issues raised by those who testified, Riggin described her humble beginnings in Kansas, where she began her career working in correctional facilities when she was 19. She and Dr. Lorelei Ammons founded VitalCore in 2018, and the company developed a reputation for providing medical care to places in crisis, she said. 

Riggin then extolled her company’s management of prison healthcare, distributing a packet with statistics she said show VitalCore has made progress improving outcomes inside state prisons.    

She said she was met with a “dire” state of care in 2020 when VitalCore was awarded an emergency contract to provide medical care in Mississippi prisons after the previous company terminated its contract. VitalCore was awarded over $315 million in emergency, no-bid state contracts from 2020 to 2024. The state selected the company for a three-year contract worth over $357 million in 2024. 

She described a dearth of medical staff, patients not receiving annual physicals, HIV going untreated and six years in which patients did not receive mammograms to detect breast cancer. 

“The care was not appropriate, and it was not OK,” she said.  

She claimed that many of the current challenges facing medical care are residual effects of previous contractors’ impropriety.

For example, Riggin said, reaching contractually obligated staffing levels took time, though the company is now better meeting the requirements. And as for allegations that VitalCore has delayed payments to vendors are vestiges of past contractors’ behavior — she said the company pays bills within 90 days. 

Dispute over hepatitis C treatment

VitalCore has drawn criticism for treating only a handful of the hundreds of people in MDOC diagnosed with hepatitis C. 

Brian Collier, VitalCore’s executive operations advisor and former executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the company is treating 50 patients diagnosed with hepatitis C each quarter.

At this rate, he said the company will by 2029 cure over 700 patients identified with the disease in 2024. This does not include new people who enter the facility or contract the contagious illness while incarcerated. 

Currie questioned those numbers, citing conversations she had with Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain and Dr. Raman Singh, VitalCore’s chief medical officer, where they purported many more people incarcerated in MDOC facilities had tested positive for the illness.

“When I first became chair, when Burl and I actually got along, we had many, many discussions, and he told me that over 5,000 inmates had hep C,” Currie said. “Somebody is not telling the truth.”

Hepatitis C is a blood-borne infection that can be cured in more than 95% of cases with an eight- to 12-week course of medication, though it is costly. 

State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney said treating a fixed amount of hepatitis C patients a year is “unacceptable,” noting that the standard of care is to universally screen for the highly contagious infection and treat it immediately. 

“If you don’t, with a confined population, you will have reinfection,” said Edney.

Edney said he could help the company access medication at lower cost through a federal program. Mississippi Today reported in 2025 that the Department of Health provided MDOC information about how to access the discounted prices, but the agency did not take steps to do so. 

A notable no-show

Even as they probed VitalCore’s leaders and questioned some of their assertions, lawmakers commended the company for at least showing up. 

The same could not be said for the agency that hired them: MDOC. On Monday afternoon, lawmakers learned that MDOC officials, most notably Cain, planned to skip the hearing over the problems that have unfolded on their watch. 

On Tuesday, the chairs of the Public Health and Corrections committees sent Cain a letter urging him to reconsider. But their overtures apparently fell on deaf ears, as Cain and agency leaders didn’t show up. 

MDOC did not provide lawmakers with an explanation for their absence, and the agency did not respond to a request for comment from Mississippi Today. 

“So they just didn’t want to stop to sit and talk to legislators, I guess,” said Sen. Jeremy England, a Republican from Vancleave. “It sounds like they’ll be OK with whatever we do then if they don’t care to be here to listen.”

Rep. Chris Bell, a Democrat from Jackson, said he believes the joint committee should demand Cain come before it to answer questions. 

“To hear the testimony of all the individuals that we’ve heard today and for him to have the audacity not to show, not to designate someone to come is totally disrespectful,” Bell said. “This is unacceptable.” 

University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce and Mississippi State University President Mark Keenum will continue leading the state’s largest public institutions for another four years under new contracts approved by the state’s college board. 

The Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees in September unanimously approved Boyce’s and Keenum’s annual salaries, including potential retention payments exceeding $1 million each. 

The contracts keep Boyce and Keenum as Mississippi’s highest-paid public university leaders. 

Both contracts took effect Oct. 1 and end Sept. 30, 2030. Trustees did not publicly discuss the matter. 

Both leaders previously earned $950,000 a year, with taxpayers supporting $500,000 of their salaries and their respective university’s foundations making up the rest. 

Under their new contracts, Boyce and Keenum will each earn $1,012,500 in the first year, including $562,500 in state-funded salaries and $450,000 from their university foundations. Their annual compensation will slightly decrease to $1 million for each of the remaining three years, with a state-funded salary of $550,000 annually. 

Both presidents are eligible for additional retention payments if they remain in their jobs through June 2027 and June 2030. Boyce could receive up to $1.15 million in retention payments over four years, while Keenum could receive up to $1.35 million. The university foundations will determine the payment amounts. 

IHL Board President Steve Cunningham said Thursday that the raises reflect Boyce’s and Keenum’s job performance and their universities’ growth in recent years. Trustees considered several factors when evaluating the presidents, including enrollment, university rankings and research grants, he said. 

Trustees also wanted to keep both presidents in their roles, Cunningham said. Their university foundations agreed to fund the potential retention payments because state funding for salaries is limited. 

“It’s just great to have leaders that are still willing to serve because the average time span for (university presidents) is maybe four or five years,” Cunningham said. “Both leaders have exceeded that average time span.” 

Keenum declined to comment. Boyce said that he appreciates the board’s confidence in his university leadership and the direction that Ole Miss is heading. 

IHL policy requires trustees to review university presidents’ pay annually, considering state funding, university resources and contributions from university foundations and alumni associations. The board also reviews regional and national information about executives’ compensation when determining salary decisions. 

By comparison, University of Southern Mississippi President Joe Paul earns $700,000 annually, while Jackson State University President Denise Jones Gregory earns $465,000, according to the college board’s May meeting minutes. 

Delta State University President Dan Ennis earns $355,000, and Mississippi Valley State University President Jerryl Briggs earns $315,000. 

Alcorn State University President Tracy Cook earns $305,000, and Mississippi University for Women interim president, Scott Tollison earns $300,000 annually. 

Keenum has served as Mississippi State’s president since January 2009, while Boyce has led Ole Miss since 2019. Both institutions have experienced record enrollment growth under their tenures. 

The board also approved changes to National Collegiate Athletic Association compliance provisions in university presidents’ contracts, requiring them to cooperate with investigations and disciplinary proceedings. Executives found to have violated NCAA regulations could face disciplinary action, including suspension without pay or termination.

Correction, 10/15/2026: This article has been updated to specify that Mark Keenum and Glenn Boyce are eligible for additional retention payments if they remain in their jobs through June 2027 and June 2030.

University of Mississippi Medical Center’s Dr. LouAnn Woodward announced Thursday she will retire in June after more than a decade at the helm of the state’s only academic medical center. 

Woodward, 62, serves as the medical center’s vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the UMMC School of Medicine. She became the first woman to lead the medical center and school when she was appointed in 2015.

Woodward’s current four-year contract will expire June 30.

University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce recommended Dr. Alan Jones, associate vice chancellor for health affairs at UMMC, as the medical center’s next leader, Woodward wrote in a Thursday email to staff. 

Woodward said that the Institutions of Higher Learning’s Board of Trustees accepted Boyce’s recommendation Thursday.

“I have absolute confidence in Dr. Jones and our leadership team,” Woodward said. “He has played an integral role in our shared successes over the years and has advanced many of our strategic priorities. UMMC’s future is bright, and it will be in excellent hands with Dr. Jones at the helm.”

Woodward, a Carroll County native, was trained as an emergency room physician at UMMC after graduating from Mississippi State University. She is also a tenured professor in the academic center’s Department of Emergency Medicine, according to UMMC’s website. 

She joined the medical center’s administration in 2003, and previously served as associate vice chancellor for health affairs and vice dean of the UMMC School of Medicine before accepting her current role. 

Woodward has led the health system, which includes six health science schools and the state’s only Level 1 trauma center, through the COVID-19 pandemic, a major dispute with the state’s largest private insurer and a cyberattack that forced the medical center to close clinics across the state and cancel elective procedures for nine days.

Under her leadership, the medical center completed a major children’s hospital expansion, adding a seven-story tower adjacent to Children’s of Mississippi designed to expand neonatal and pediatric intensive care, surgery and imaging services.

She has also led the medical center’s charge to construct a new cancer center, which is expected to break ground this month. Officials consider this an important step in Mississippi’s quest to gain a national designation that could improve outcomes for patients in the state with one of the nation’s highest cancer mortality rates, according to hospital leaders.

Correction, 10/15/2026: This article has been updated to correct Dr. Alan Jones’ current title.

Over the past 10 years, there’s been a growing number of job apprenticeships in Mississippi and nationally. 

With the high cost of a four-year college degree, difficulty for recent grads to find jobs and uncertainty over artificial intelligence’s impact on work, there’s increasing interest in apprenticeships. 

Gov. Tate Reeves has said the state’s goal is to have 7,000 active apprentices, almost double the current number. It’s seen as a way to grow the state’s skilled workforce and stop population loss. Mississippi’s labor force participation rate has improved but still swings back and forth with West Virginia as the lowest in the country. 

During the last legislative session, the governor signed a bill creating a state-run Office of Apprenticeships. Responsibility for certifying apprenticeships in the state would shift from the federal Department of Labor to the new state office. Proponents say that this will mean programs will be more engaged with and responsive to the state’s workforce needs. 

Last week, I hosted a panel on apprenticeships for Mississippi Today’s second annual “All in on Mississippi” summit. Some key takeaways from my conversation with experts from across the state:

• Apprenticeships are expanding beyond the trades into fields such as healthcare and IT. Singing River Health System on the Gulf Coast offers apprenticeships for students to become nurses, pharmacy techs, phlebotomists and other in-demand health professions. 
• Community colleges play a key role. They are the most front-facing entities and offer the apprenticeship programs, work directly with students and partner with employers. 
• Experts said that in order to grow the pipeline and give more students the opportunity to “learn while they earn,” there will need to be close collaboration between the state, community colleges and industry partners. 

Lawmakers seek to increase cybersecurity

The Senate Cybersecurity Committee met Tuesday to hear recommendations from state, national and corporate experts on how to improve the state’s defenses. Artificial Intelligence and the February ransomware attack on University of Mississippi Medical Center have brought cybersecurity to the forefront. The committee is supposed to develop policy recommendations for the upcoming legislative session.

Most of the recommendations focused on ways to protect local and state governments. There was a proposal for a state law to incentivize private businesses to be proactive about cybersecurity. The law would limit damages and/liability against a private company after a cyberattack. This voluntary program would require the company to maintain certain security requirements and framework. 

The Mississippi Business Alliance also highlighted the importance of cybersecurity liability protections in its 2026 Legislative Report.

The group, one of the leading business organizations in the state, wrote that it was “encouraged to see the House advance practical measures in both of these areas. However, we were disappointed that cybersecurity liability protections and procurement reform ultimately failed to pass the Senate. These issues may not always attract the same public attention as larger economic development or tax proposals, but they matter to the day-to-day competitiveness of our state.”

Other news:

• Bill Cork, who recently stepped down as the head of Mississippi’s economic development agency, announced he has taken a job with the Texas Economic Development Council as its president and CEO. Cork served as executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority for almost three years. “I couldn’t be more proud of the work did for the Reeves administration and the 10.5 years he served Mississippi,” Gov. Reeves said on social media. 
• ALO, a Los Angeles-based clothing company, will establish a new fulfillment center in Southaven. The brand, which is popular with celebrities and influencers, will spend $176 million and create 400 new jobs.
• Huntington Bank, which acquired Mississippi-based Cadence Bank last year, is spending more than $40 million to renovate its campus in Tupelo. 
• Westwin Elements is investing over half a million dollars to set up a nickel refinery in Natchez. 
• A plastics manufacturer is investing $7.7 million in Sunflower County. The startup called Koinonia said it will make products for the packaging industry and create 18 jobs. 
• There are still no structures at the location of a Brandon data center according to the Clarion Ledger. The company behind the project originally said the data center would be up and running in the first half of 2027. 

Districts across the Delta region saw the largest academic gains in the state in the past year, according to new district rankings released Thursday. 

Because the state implemented higher cut-off scores this year, however, the accountability scores didn’t always reflect that progress. 

Some of last year’s lowest performing districts saw large improvements. Clarksdale’s city school district jumped a whopping 102 points since last year, moving from an F to a C. Greenwood-Leflore moved 98 points from a D to a C. Both made some of the largest single year gains out of any other district in the state.

READ MORE: Mississippi schools show progress, though higher state standards result in more C and D districts

Clarksdale schools were in bad shape last year. A big factor was record teacher vacancies in state tested subjects. The district had the second highest number of teacher vacancies in July 2025. Over a third of students were chronically absent. 

Superintendent Toya Harrell-Matthews took a chance on a new school leader to change the culture in a school plagued by dysfunction and low academic outcomes for students. It paid off.

“I knew what her abilities were, and how well she worked with students,” Harrell-Matthews said of Denise Calhoun, the new principal at W.A. Higgins Middle School. “And that’s the thing, you have to be able to build relationships before you can do any type of instruction, before anything else can happen in the classroom.”

Calhoun, a Webb native, helped to move the school over 186 points on the state accountability score. The rate of students proficient in math nearly tripled from the previous year.

“I felt that that was going to be a cornerstone in turning this building around to have someone who could build relationships and build trust with students and understand that even if a student has behavioral issues, that you have to champion them, and not just give up on them,” Harrell-Matthews said.

Through social media and her network, Calhoun was able to hire 15 teachers to ensure the school was fully staffed. She brought back choir and art as electives to give students something to look forward to in the day. She also worked with teachers on new strategies to incentivize better behavior, instead of relying solely on removing disruptive students from classrooms. She also restarted after-school detention.

Calhoun celebrated days without student fights, which were frequent in years past. She started a countdown tracker she called “days of peace.” After 50 days of peace, she held a citywide parade and celebrated the students. Students later made it 85 days without any fights.

“And so every time that our students reached another milestone, we would celebrate them even bigger. And so it got to the point where students were so appreciative of everything that was going on that they would report when issues were arising,” she said.

She instituted a bootcamp in the eight weeks leading up to state testing, where students practiced math, science and reading skills. Teachers provided additional support and remediation for special education students. She called it Success Academy.

Also, Harrell-Matthews was adamant that schools in the district have a clean clothes closet for low-income students, who might stay home to avoid ridicule for wearing old or dirty clothes. 

“You have to address student needs first before you can educate them,” Harrell-Matthews said. “So we take the child where they are, and we try to work with them as best we can.”

Superintendent Kenneth Pulley also credits professional development and support for principals with Greenwood-Leflore’s gains. He met with school leaders weekly to review student data to determine which students required additional support.

“We have to hold people accountable, and have high expectations for all students, and maintain a positive atmosphere,” he said. “As long as we know that what we’re doing was right for children, then we know we’ve made the right decision.”

He said a collaborative and receptive board helped implement policies as problems arose. He also put into place professional development sessions that were geared towards curriculum planning.

“As superintendent, yes, we wear a lot of hats, but as superintendent, we must first be instructional leaders,” he said. “That’s where my focus is. And I think when people know where the leader’s focus is, then they will keep their focus there, too.”

He decided to shutter Amanda Elzy Junior High School last October after a failing grade on the state accountability system and low enrollment. Now, all district middle schoolers attend the same school, which allowed the district to pool resources. He said school culture improved, too. Greenwood Middle jumped 100 points in the accountability scale.

“I have to have the hard conversations when they need to be had. My staff members know when we do that, it’s coming from a good place. It’s coming from a place of wanting the best for our children.”

Nearly a third of Leflore County residents live below the poverty line. The fact is not lost on Pulley, who grew up in the community he now serves.

“Our attitude is that, in spite of where you come from or what situation you find yourself in, it is our job to still provide quality instruction,” he said.

Western Line School District, which is based outside Greenville, and West Tallahatchie School District, which is based in Sumner, also made sizable academic gains. Both districts would’ve been a B under last year’s cut-off scores.

Lawrence Hudson, Western Line’s superintendent, said his district’s improvements were a result of “a little bit more fussing” and personnel shakeups at different schools. 

“We had a few teacher areas that were not producing, and they brought the whole district down,” he said. “Our biggest focus is not on strategies but making sure we’ve got the right people.”

Nearly all of the district’s schools posted improvements across the board, he said. 

That’s why Hudson was disappointed when he received his district’s letter grade this year. 

“To be at a point where you’ve gotten every school up and not get the recognition, it’s a little discouraging, but we know what we’ve got to do,” he said. “We’ve got to buckle down and do what it takes to be recognized as a high-performing district.”

When reached by phone on Wednesday, House Education Chairman Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville, commended Delta schools on their progress. 

However, he admitted it may not be enough to ward off consolidation talks swirling at the state Capitol. State lawmakers are eyeing both Western Line and West Tallahatchie schools for mergers next year. 

“We obviously don’t want to mess up good things, but here’s the problem I see,” he said. “When you are constantly losing students, it’s just a matter of time when you’re eventually going to have no money to keep the school afloat.”

Mississippi has lost nearly 70,000 public school students since 2013, taking funding with them. Delta schools, in particular, are shrinking.

“Educators for years have said we need more money, and sometimes they’re not wrong, they do need more money,” Roberson said. “But do we put more money from the state side or start trying to look at this differently?” 

The U.S. Postal Service and Homeland Security intercepted a letter sent to Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson’s office, as federal authorities warn of letters with suspicious substances being sent to congressional and election offices across the country.

Watson spokeswoman Liz Jonson said in a statement on Thursday, “Based on the events in other states, we were notified to expect a suspicious letter, but it was intercepted by USPS and HSI before it got to our office.”

Jonson said the letter was turned over to the FBI, and later reported that authorities told Watson’s office the substance in it was tested and determined to be nonhazardous.

The Associated Press obtained a message from the U.S. Senate sergeant at arms warning that law enforcement officials were seeking to intercept letters, and reported that federal authorities were urging congressional and election offices nationwide to treat the letters as “potentially hazardous.”

The AP reported that mailed packages containing a powdery substance led to evacuation this week of election offices in Louisiana and Oklahoma, and the Ohio secretary of state said a package intended for his office was intercepted.

The news comes just weeks before midterm Election Day, and is similar to a threat in 2024, when election offices in six states received mailings with a white powder. Some of those mailings contained traces of the powerful opioid fentanyl.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Update 10/15/2026: Watson’s office has reported that after testing, authorities confirmed the substance in the letter was nonhazardous.

Correction 10/15/2026: This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Liz Jonson’s name.

The Mississippi Supreme Court permanently disbarred former Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba on Thursday, two months after he offered to surrender his law license. 

Lumumba, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, is awaiting sentencing on a federal felony charge after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery in a case stemming from an FBI operation that ensnared multiple officials in Mississippi’s capital city.

Sentencing was initially scheduled for last month. U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III postponed the hearing to early November, but Lumumba’s attorneys are awaiting a ruling on a motion to further postpone the sentencing.

Lumumba was to be sentenced along with his co-defendants – former Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens and former Jackson City Councilmember Aaron Banks. They each face up to five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000. 

Others involved in the scheme have also yet to be sentenced, including former Jackson City Councilmember Angelique Lee. 

In 2024, a sweeping federal indictment alleged that in exchange for $50,000 in campaign donations, Lumumba directed a city employee to shorten a bid deadline to benefit a pair of out-of-town developers that were working with Owens. 

Unknown to the local politicians, the developers were undercover FBI agents.

SOUTHAVEN — With residents suing over noise and pollution, Elon Musk’s company is trying to buy up homes around his expansive data center operations in Southaven. 

A few owners have rejected the offers while others are contemplating it or have decided to take the buyout. But some renters believe they’re being left behind.

This is the latest development in over a year of tensions between Southaven residents and SpaceXAI, formerly xAI, as the $2-trillion company continues to expand its data center presence in the greater Memphis area. Some residents are opposed to the project that has resulted in noise and pollution complaints, multiple lawsuits and frustration on the part of locals and city officials.

Residents living near SpaceXAI’s power plant in Southaven have reported receiving offers to buy their homes from MZX Tech LLC, a subsidiary of SpaceXAI. 

In a letter that some residents received, Burch Realty Group, a local Realtor that said it was working on behalf of MZX Tech, offered to buy their house in exchange for “among other things, a release of all claims” related to the class action lawsuit brought by a group of Southaven residents against SpaceXAI.

The litigation is over noise created by the company’s temporary gas turbines, and plaintiffs seek a court order to reduce the “near-constant noise, vibrations, and other nuisance-level harms.” They seek financial compensation for the disruption they say has been ongoing for over a year. 

Anyone living in the affected area, including renters, is eligible for the class action, said Robert Wiygul, one of the attorneys representing residents.

Cushman & Wakefield, not mentioned in the letter, is another realty group that has made at least one buyout offer to local homeowners.

A representative from Cushman & Wakefield referred Mississippi Today to SpaceXAI and a representative from Burch Realty Group could not be reached for comment.

Mississippi Today spoke to several homeowners, who were reluctant to speak on the record or share details of the offers they received.

The NAACP is bringing a separate case against SpaceXAI over the same turbines, which it claims violates the federal Clean Air Act. State and local officials have said the company has not broken any state or local laws, and the federal government has said the company’s operations are vital for national security. 

In the letter to Southaven residents, MZX Tech “denies all of the allegations against it” and says it “requires property for business purposes.” The company did not disclose what business purposes it intends to use the houses for. 

However, in an Oct. 1 blog post, Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite said in addition to improving public perception, the buyout serves the purpose of acquiring homes for SpaceXAI employees. The project is expected to create hundreds of new jobs in the area and attract new residents.

The surge in construction is already bringing jobs and increased traffic. Residents report that surrounding parking lots are filled to capacity with employees’ cars and that privately chartered buses are routinely travelling to and from the site.

SpaceXAI is currently hiring for at least 160 jobs based in the Memphis area, according to its job board. 

SpaceXAI did not respond to a request for comment. But in August, the company wrote on social media, “We don’t just build in Memphis – we live, work and invest here. We are committed to being good neighbors and responsible partners.”

Mayor says purchase offers are good corporate citizenship

In response to media coverage of the buyout, Southaven Mayor Musselwhite addressed the news directly his recent blog post and at a Board of Aldermen meeting on Oct. 6.

“This buyout is not to say, ‘Well, scrap that. We can’t stop the noise.’ No, that’s still number one.” Musselwhite said at the meeting. He said that SpaceXAI has accelerated its plans to convert the louder, temporary turbines to permanent ones that are “much more quiet.” The buyout is instead a “parallel approach” to “eliminate negative impact or perception of negative impact” and “has been part of a comprehensive plan for many months,” he wrote in his blog post. 

“I told them that this should be part of your goodwill to the community, part of your being a good corporate citizen,” he said at the meeting. “Whether it is or it isn’t, if they view it as a negative, give them an option to sell.”

Musselwhite claimed media had needlessly alarmed people and stirred up controversy by sharing what he called misinformation that the company was forcing people out of their homes.

“Nobody is being forced to be bought out,” Musselwhite said, calling coverage “slanted” and “false.”

“It’s totally voluntary,” he said. 

As for renters, Musselwhite said that on any given day renters are at risk of being asked to move. “That’s nothing new. It has nothing to do with any development in Southaven.”

What about renters?

Danielle Dillard, 37, a renter who lives less than a mile from the power plant, disagreed. “If this wasn’t happening, my landlord wouldn’t have said a word. And even if he did, he definitely wouldn’t have given me 60 days’ notice,” she said. “And it wouldn’t be happening to multiple people because multiple homeowners don’t just decide to sell houses at the same time.”

In late September, Dillard learned that her landlord took the buyout offer. He told her she had 60 days to move out, she said. She had just signed to extend her lease a month before. 

Dillard had seen news of the buyout — “I sent it to my friend, and I was like, this is crazy” — but didn’t think it would apply to her. 

Dillard’s landlord offered to move her into a different home, she said, but it was 25 minutes away and wasn’t comparable to her current home. Dillard has four kids, three of whom are school-aged and live with her.

Neither her landlord nor SpaceXAI has offered to cover her moving expenses, Dillard added. She said she emailed SpaceXAI asking if there was anything they were offering renters, but never heard back.

Dillard still has not found another place to live. 

One-third to two-thirds of the Southaven and Horn Lake neighborhoods in the class action area are occupied by renters, according to 2020-2024 census estimates. In Mississippi at large, about a quarter of households are occupied by renters versus about a third nationwide.

Under Mississippi law, neither landlords nor tenants are allowed to end an active, fixed-term lease early, unless the contract has an early termination clause or parties voluntarily agree to end the lease early, according to lawyers Mississippi Today spoke with.

Tenants “can’t just automatically be kicked out at the landlord’s whim, or because the landlord found some other more lucrative offer,” said Sam Buchanan Jr., executive director of the Mississippi Center for Legal Services Corporation. Tenants have the right to see their lease through, unless the landlord has a reason to evict them based on a “material breach” of the contract. 

Dillard’s lease did not contain a termination clause, but her landlord sent her an “agreement to vacate property” that she said she didn’t know she had any option but to sign. 

“It was never optional,” she said. 

Buchanan Jr. recommends that before renters sign an agreement they may not fully understand, that they first seek out an expert for an independent opinion.

Robert Wiygul, the attorney representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit against SpaceXAI, urged people considering an offer to weigh their options carefully. 

“For every individual, they have to look at whether a buyout is going to actually make them whole for what they’ve lost,” he said. 

Jen Jenkins of The New York Times contributed research. If you’ve been impacted by the SpaceXAI buyouts, Mississippi Today is interested in hearing your story. You can email Julie Lee at jlee@mississippitoday.org.

In the midterm elections, meat is on the menu.

As Democrats and Republicans argue over high prices and the Iran war, they also are having a food fight over who is the most red-blooded carnivore.

The latest example came this week in Mississippi, where Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Scott Colom released a video with a snippet of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith saying that if consumers are upset over high beef prices, “you know you have so many proteins to choose from.”

The video cuts to a man grilling burgers who says, “Pick another protein? I’d rather pick another senator instead.”

The Mississippi race is somewhat unusual because it is the Democrat hammering the Republican over beef. Elsewhere, Republicans have branded Democrats as vegans or otherwise opposed to meat, trying to show that they are culturally out of step with voters, hostile to local cattle industries or just not manly enough.

READ MORE: Mississippi cattle producers and politicians lament Trump’s imported beef plan

In Texas, Republicans seized on an old interview in which Democrat James Talarico, the current U.S. Senate nominee, boasted that his campaign at the time for the Texas Statehouse was going vegan. Talarico has since been publicly scarfing down barbecue to rebut allegations that his dietary choices mean he is not a real Texan.

Chowing down on barbecue and tacos

In Colorado, Republicans have gone after Democratic congressional candidate Manny Rutinel for his activism against meat production and factory farming. In college, he was photographed shirtless with a banner for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals around his chest. In 2021, Rutinel founded Climate Refarm, which advocated for cutting down on the use of meat and has signed onto letters advocating for raising taxes on meat and dairy. He also supported a 2024 ballot measure to ban a lamb slaughterhouse in Denver, which failed.

Rutinel, 31, is now running against Gabe Evans, the Republican who represents Colorado’s 8th Congressional District. The vast swath in the northeastern part of the state is dotted with ranches, dairy farms and meat processing facilities, including the headquarters of beef production titan JBS Swift. Republicans have hammered Rutinel over advocating veganism, to the point that the conservative media group Daily Wire this week released an undercover video of a campaign official saying Rutinel eats meat “as little as possible.”

Rutinel has made a point of publicly eating steak tacos during the campaign and is backed by the meatpackers’ union. “I don’t think Coloradans care about what’s on my plate,” he said in an interview after a recent campaign stop. “I think they care more about what’s on theirs.”

Evans said the issue goes beyond Rutinel’s meal preferences. “I don’t care what he eats personally,” Evans said in an interview. “I care that he wants to use the power of the government to make everyone eat that way.”

High-stakes role for meat in the debate over rising consumer prices

Republicans, in the same way, have gone after two other Democrats running for the U.S. House. They are hammering Lindsay James in Iowa’s 2nd District, an area filled with hog farms, over a 2020 Facebook post supporting “meatless May,” and Amish Shah in Arizona’s 1st District for his long-standing vegetarianism and animal rights activism.

Also in Iowa, Republican U.S. Senate nominee Rep. Ashley Hinson slammed her opponent, state lawmaker Josh Turek, for opposing a bill banning lab-grown meat from being sold in the state. “He’d rather have meat that comes from a lab than from our family farms,” the congresswoman said at a campaign appearance.

Democrats have spotlighted meat as well, but mainly as one of the staples that cost more under Trump, squeezing voters’ pocketbooks. Trump has tried to lower prices by opening U.S. markets to beef imports, especially from Argentina, which is governed by a close Trump ally.

Those moves, however, have angered U.S. producers as prices have remained stubbornly high, creating a potential weakness in Republican-leaning states where Democrats hope to gain ground this year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average pound of ground beef cost $6.79 last month, up from $5.55 in January of 2025, when Trump returned to office.

That was the dynamic that Hyde-Smith, a cattle rancher and former Mississippi agriculture commissioner, was addressing in her interview that was clipped in Colom’s video. The prosecutor — who also delivers the “pick another senator” line in the spot — is running a long-shot challenge in Mississippi.

Nathan Calvert, spokesman for Hyde-Smith’s campaign, argued that the Democrats deserve blame for high prices. “It is Scott Colom who supports Biden-era policies that drove up inflation,” Calvert said.

Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

Half of Mississippi schools and districts are high-performing despite higher standards this year, according to state education rankings released Thursday.

The more rigorous standards underscore state leaders’ efforts to continue the gains that have rocketed Mississippi to national stardom, education leaders said at a press conference about the new grades. The scores released Thursday reflect how schools fared in the 2025-26 school year.

“I’m very proud to say this: We increased our standards, and our districts have responded,” State Superintendent Lance Evans said. “Their performance and the efforts they’ve put forth, in my opinion, have been very successful.”

The Mississippi Board of Education created the accountability framework to judge how well schools serve their students and communities. The system — which awards up to 1,000 points to high schools and districts and 700 points to elementary and middle schools — takes into account state test scores, graduation rates and academic growth. 

State law requires that standards increase when student proficiency rates exceed 75% or when 65% of schools or districts earn a grade of B or higher. After Mississippi met the threshold for grades in 2023, the education agency spent two years resetting the standards to be more challenging. 

The new standards raise the scores required for each letter grade and place more weight on college and career readiness, and this is the first year that doesn’t include the U.S. History assessment, which the state Board of Education voted last June to remove as graduation requirement. The state Board of Education approved the new standards in November. 

This year, 2024-25 reading scores might also be factored into accountability grades for some districts because the test was restructured. 

In the months leading up to this release, the Mississippi Department of Education has said that this year’s letter grades should not be compared to previous years’ — however, point scores are comparable, said C. Alan Burrow, associate state superintendent. 

Evans said the process is “an essential part of ensuring Mississippi students and schools continue to improve academically each year.” 

READ MORE: Delta school districts’ success not reflected in new state rankings

“If we’re back here at the table in two years resetting the standards again, that won’t be a bad thing,” said Paula Vanderford, chief accountability officer for the agency, while presenting the new grades at the state Board of Education meeting on Thursday.

The board set a goal in 2016 that every school and district in Mississippi is rated C or higher. This year, 121 of the state’s 138 traditional public school districts were rated a C or above, or 87.6%, and 50.7% of districts earned a B or higher.

If the agency had not reset the standards this year, Vanderford noted that 70.7% of districts would have made a B or above. 

All of the state’s public charter schools, though, were ranked C or lower.

The state’s largest school districts, such as DeSoto and Rankin County, continue to post top results. Delta schools appear to struggle in the rankings, but a closer look shows many of the region’s districts are posting improvements.

Many Jackson area and central Mississippi county school districts saw test score drop since last year. Others saw modest gains.

That wasn’t the case for the Simpson County School District. 

Simpson upped its score by 46 points since last year, improving more than any other district in central Mississippi. Mendenhall Elementary moved from a D to a C rated school. 

The district had a new superintendent this past year: Robert Sanders. He credits the improvements to dynamic building leadership and hard working students and staff. 

Through a partnership with The Kirkland Group, a Ridgeland-based educational consulting firm, teachers had help analyzing data on student progress. As a result, teachers could focus more on instruction  and lesson planning.

“Back in the day, we had to do this work by hand,” recalled Tommy Brumfield, principal at  Mendenhall Elementary School. “So now, teachers are able to spend more time, not just analyzing data, but being able to make plans from that data and doing something with it.”

Sanders inherited a district in need of better supervision. The district’s chronic absenteeism rate ranked third highest statewide in the 2024-25 school year. In response, Sanders dispatched principals and school staff to knock on doors in the community, and better learn the root causes of absenteeism. He said he’s since seen improvement. 

Magee Middle School saw a 36% drop in its chronic absenteeism rate since last year. The school also moved 84 points on the state accountability scale.

“I’m very pleased within just one year to see a 46-point gain,” Sanders told Mississippi Today on Wednesday. “That speaks to the leadership in our schools, because that’s where it’s happening. You have to look at every child, and you have to make sure when they’re not performing where they need to be, find out why and do the things that will empower your needle to move the right way.”

And though districts closer to the Gulf Coast again dominated the list, some show slight declines.

Long Beach School District has seen the biggest drop among Gulf Coast districts in its state accountability score the past five years, though it’s held on to its A rating. Pascagoula-Gautier School District also retained its B, but the district dropped in points since last year. 

Pascagoula-Gautier’s Superintendent Caterria Payton said the state education agency’s scores and grades don’t reflect the progress happening at her district. She highlighted three schools that improved by a letter grade, and emphasized that no schools earned a D rating.

“While these improvements have not yet resulted in the districtwide gains we expect, they demonstrate that progress is possible and that our efforts must remain focused and consistent,” she said in an emailed statement.

The Mississippi Department of Education is asking for $22 million more next year from the Legislature to focus on early education programs, dyslexia and dropout prevention initiatives. 

Evans said as the state education agency prioritizes areas of improvement and raises expectations, he’s confident Mississippi districts will rise to the occasion. 

“Overall, our districts have answered the call,” he said. “I’m very pleased with the outcome.”