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Three nonprofits received over $850,000 in federal grants for HIV prevention between 2021 and 2024 but administered only 35 HIV tests during that period, State Auditor Shad White alleges in a report released Monday. 

The report identified reimbursements for alcohol, late-night rideshares, purchases from a smoke shop, the rental of a nightclub owned by one group’s executive director and a declined payment for gift cards. All of the payments were approved by the Mississippi Department of Health, the agency responsible for overseeing distribution of the funding to community-based organizations.

“The lapses identified are unacceptable and not reflective of our agency’s standards or mission,” the health department said in a press release Monday. 

The agency could not produce monthly reports for grant activities or documentation of hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenses, the report said. Nor could it provide all of the funding agreements or say whether the organizations were aware they were required to report testing data, a spokesperson for the auditor’s office told Mississippi Today. 

The grant funding was meant to help states establish and maintain HIV prevention and surveillance programs, and HIV testing was an element of each organization’s agreement. The grants also paid the nonprofits to educate the public about HIV and hire community health workers. 

Mississippi has the sixth highest rate of new HIV diagnoses in the country, and the majority of the state’s prevention efforts are funded with federal dollars. 

“It’s almost like our government hates us,” said Auditor Shad White in a press release. “This kind of spending defies all common sense and is an insult to hardworking taxpayers.”

Lorena Quiroz, the executive director of Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity, said the nonprofit submitted all required monthly reports and expense documentation to the health department. 

Love Inside for Everyone and Love Me Unlimited 4 Life, the other two organizations investigated by the state auditor, did not respond to questions from Mississippi Today. 

None of the organizations referenced in the audit report still have grants or contracts with the health department, and the agency has already taken steps to hire new leadership in its STD/HIV division and tighten management of grants, it said in a press release.

The audit probes a period when the health department’s STD/HIV division was severely understaffed after public health priorities shifted to the COVID-19 pandemic and skyrocketing syphilis cases in the state. Around the same time, the health department began receiving tens of millions of dollars in additional federal funding for HIV prevention efforts as a part of an initiative launched by President Donald Trump during his first term in office to end the domestic HIV epidemic. 

But the funding increases have resulted in only a slight dent in new HIV cases. New diagnoses dropped 5% in the first three years of reported data since the state began receiving the additional federal dollars, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data published by AIDSVu – far from keeping up with the federal government’s ambitious goals of reducing new diagnoses 75% by 2025 and 90% by 2030.

Increasing HIV testing in community settings is one of the plan’s core strategies. 

Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity, a Jackson nonprofit that advocates for immigrant and indigenous communities in Mississippi, was contracted to take steps to become a rapid HIV testing site, but did not conduct any tests because the health department did not provide a phlebotomist, Quiroz told Mississippi Today in an email. 

It is unclear why the organization would have required a phlebotomist, as rapid tests are administered with a finger prick or saliva. Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity did not respond to a follow-up question for clarification. 

Quiroz said HIV testing materials worth $11,412 were lost in a storm that destroyed the organization’s building and roof. The storm occurred in June 2023, one month before the nonprofit’s agreement with the health department ended and 10 months after the supplies were purchased. 

Health department records showed that Love Inside for Everyone, a LGBT+ advocacy nonprofit, performed 35 HIV tests between 2021 and 2024. 

Love Unlimited 4 Life, a transgender advocacy organization no longer in operation, recieved grant funding between 2021 and 2023 for the salaries of two community health workers. Health department records showed that no HIV tests were administered by the organization. 

The nonprofits’ grant agreements also included education and testing events. The auditor’s report called several events “questionable,” including a Latinx pride month and HIV awareness event hosted by Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity that exceeded its proposed budget and included alcohol purchases in a request for reimbursement. 

Love Inside for Everyone used grant funding to rent Metro 2.0, a nightclub owned by the organization’s executive director, Temica Morton, a possible conflict of interest. 

Due to the health department’s lack of grant monitoring, it could not say if HIV testing or awareness activities occurred at the events, the auditor’s office said.

Several federal grants Mississippi relies on for HIV prevention efforts have been cut or destabilized since the Trump administration took office earlier this year. Public health experts have argued these cuts will undermine HIV testing activities. 

White said the audit shows that the Trump administration’s cuts to HIV prevention efforts have been unfairly criticized in a video on Fox News Digital. 

“Our audit shows that when you dig into how this money is actually being spent, it’s not actually helping people with HIV/AIDs, it’s not helping to test people for HIV, it’s instead being wasted,” White said.  

The health department reiterated the importance of community partners to advancing public health goals in a statement. 

“It is important to underscore that these findings do not reflect the value of many nonprofit partners we continue to work with across Mississippi. Partnerships remain critical to our public health mission.”

On the heels of the Legislature’s most recent failed attempt to legalize mobile sports betting in Mississippi, a 52-year-old gambling enthusiast named Gary drew a distinction between himself and his fellow bettors: He is a winner, and most of them are losers. 

“To say it honestly, most people are losers when it comes to sports betting because they lose control. But I hope they legalize it because I have control over my gambling,” Gary said. “Certain members of my family call me a degenerate, but I guarantee you I’m not a losing sports bettor.”

Gary, whose full name Mississippi Today agreed not to publish so he could speak candidly about placing illegal sports bets, is among the Mississippi residents who have together placed, according to some analysts, billions of dollars in online sports bets through illicit offshore betting platforms. He is also among the dozens of people who told Mississippi Today, in a written survey and interviews, about what legalization would mean for those who currently bet illegally. 

What emerged is a portrait of the state’s shadow sports betting economy alongside growing concern among experts about the potential for gambling addiction. 

A thriving black market 

The push to legalize mobile sports betting in Mississippi has prompted a debate that has captured the attention of powerful moneyed interests and ordinary citizens alike. It has unfolded in bustling casinos on the Coast, church pews in the Delta and the group text chains of sports-obsessed college students. 

Favorable regulatory and technological shifts have led to rapid growth for the online gambling market in recent years. But the industry continues to be undercut by illegal operators. Online gross gaming revenue in the U.S. topped $90 billion in 2024, $67 billion of which went to unlicensed players, according to research commissioned by the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, a group that lobbies against illegal gambling.

Mobile sports betting statewide has remained illegal in Mississippi, largely due to fears that legalization could harm the bottom line of the state’s casinos and increase gambling addiction. In 2024, illegal online betting in Mississippi made up about 5% of the national illegal market, which is about $3 billion in illegal bets in Mississippi, proponents said that year. 

From the start of the most recent NFL season to about March, Mississippi had recorded 8.69 million failed attempts to access legal mobile sportsbooks in other states, according to materials presented to House members at a legislative meeting.

Those who engage in illegal online sports gambling and spoke to Mississippi Today described a black market that bridges newfangled technologies with the illicit gambling practices of yesteryear. Some use “arbitrage betting tools” and virtual private networks, or VPNs, to bet across the globe on different sites, pitting casinos against each other. Others keep themselves a degree removed from placing bets directly, using “bookies” to place bets on offshore gambling sites.

However people place illegal sports bets, the persistence of a thriving black market and an estimated $40 million to $80 million a year in tax revenue legal sports betting could bring in has prompted a fierce push for lawmakers to legalize the practice. The sports gambling lobby, as it has done in other states, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Mississippi politicians trying to win the Legislature’s support. 

The Mississippi House in 2023 and 2024 passed legislation legalizing online betting, but it died in the Senate.

Some form of sports betting is legal in 40 states, though only 20 have full online betting with multiple operators, according to Action Network, a sports betting application and news site. Some states have only in-person betting, and some only have a single online operator. Mississippi permits sports betting, but it only allows bets made in person at casinos or bets made with apps on mobile devices while inside casinos. 

That is how Greg, 38, placed his bets in Mississippi.

‘Hyper-targeted victimization’

Greg earned his master’s degree at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. When he was a student, Greg would make the roughly one-hour drive north to Tunica, home of several casinos along the Mississippi River. The area was one of the first to capitalize after Mississippi enacted the Mississippi Gaming Control Act in the early 1990s, which legalized dockside casino gambling. 

For Greg, driving through the rural Delta landscape to a casino was as a guardrail against over-indulgence, one that has been lost with the advent of smartphones and easy access to offshore betting platforms.   

“That’s a conscious effort, that you think the whole way, ‘is that money you need to be gambling or losing, versus (now) when you’re dialing it up on your phone,” he said. 

Greg has since moved to Kansas, a state that fully legalized mobile sports betting. He now bets on football and college basketball two to four times a week with wagers ranging from $55 to $500. He places bets on three different apps, all of which compete with special promotions enticing him to return. These deals are not typically matched by brick-and-mortar casinos.

“I can’t imagine walking into the Horseshoe in Tunica and them saying, bet $100 cash and we’ll give you a free $50.” 

Online betting is conducive to marketing campaigns that are precise in their execution and relentless in their frequency, experts told Mississippi Today. The rise of mobile sports betting has been accompanied by the introduction of new technologies in advertising and marketing, including those buoyed by artificial intelligence.

“You can absorb their betting patterns and use AI to predict when to send that notification reminding them to place a bet,” said Dan Durkin, an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Mississippi. “It’s hyper-targeted victimization, let’s just call it what it is.”

Durkin is chair of the steering committee for the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, an organization that works to promote student well-being in intercollegiate athletics. The coalition has monitored the spread of mobile sports betting as college campuses have become hubs of activity for sports betting and, increasingly, gambling addiction.

According to a 2023 survey conducted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, sports wagering is pervasive among college students, with 67% of students betting on sports. Nearly 60% of students are likely to bet on sports after seeing an advertisement, the survey found.

And more than 60% engaged in sports gambling are betting on sports using highly addictive “in game/micro bets.” This type of betting allows users to wager on specific in-game moments, such as the next football play or golf swing. That sort of betting would become easier if sports betting is legalized because, under current law, many bettors say they still rely on bookies to place bets on offshore gambling sites for them.

These forms of online gambling, made seamless and accessible through digital apps, can allow addiction to fly under the radar.

Gambling addiction has the highest suicide rate of any addiction disorder, according to the National Institutes of Health. The disorder’s ability to fester in private makes intervention more daunting, Durkin said.

PODCAST: Mississippi citizens often left in the dark on special-interest lobbying of politicians

“If you have a drug problem, you are going to have physical symptoms. If you have an alcohol problem, you are going to have physical symptoms. Gambling disorder can remain hidden for a very long time. Most of the folks that have it stay very functional,” Durkin said.

“Until they’re not.”

‘Gambler is going to find a way to bet’

For some students, the appeal of mobile sports betting stems not from cleverly-constructed digital marketing schemes, but as a source of camaraderie.

Cole, a 19-year-old college student, likes to bet on soccer and March Madness and the NBA Playoffs. He and a group of friends recently placed bets on the Master’s golf tournament

“It’s fun to do with your friends cause you’re all watching the game together, you get that adrenaline rush, and you celebrate together,” he said. “It’s not life-changing money, it’s mostly a social thing.”

Nevertheless, some Mississippi universities have become so alarmed by the rise of online gambling on their campuses, they are taking steps to prepare for increased addiction, even as mobile sports betting remains illegal. In Oxford, the University of Mississippi plans to hire a gambling clinician to help students struggling with addiction, according to The Daily Mississippian.

Influential religious institutions in Mississippi, a Bible Belt state, have long opposed the spread of gambling, a stance many retained as mobile sports betting came before the Legislature.

During the 2025 legislative session, David Tipton, District Superintendent for the Mississippi District United Pentecostal Church, sent a letter to the Mississippi Legislature opposing legalization on the grounds that it would harm young people in particular.

“The introduction of mobile sports betting would represent the most significant expansion of gambling in Mississippi since the legalization of casinos over thirty years ago,” Tipton wrote. “This development would effectively place a casino in the pocket of every Mississippian, creating new challenges, particularly for our youth and young adults who are the most vulnerable to gambling-related harm.” 

READ MORE: House Speaker Jason White, staff treated to Super Bowl by gambling giant pushing for legalized betting

Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the country, and the extent to which that calls for an added layer of caution lies at the heart of the debate between proponents and opponents of legalization.

“I’m a libertarian. It’s not my job to tell people how to live their life,” said Gary, the 52-year-old sports gambler. “If you can’t control yourself, I’m sorry, learn some control. Is that brutal? Probably, yes. If you want help, there’s ways to get help. You can self-ban yourself.”

READ MORE: Questions to ask Mississippi lawmakers about transparency, ethics, special-interest money

Gary says every gambler is responsible for managing their own “leak.”

The term often refers to a consistent weakness in a bettor’s strategy, but Gary also uses it to connote a weakness of will.  

“Every gambler has a leak, as we call them. Drugs, women, money, strippers, or the dice table, which was my leak. I could win every sports bet, but I’m going to walk through the casino and go to the dice table and lose money on a dice table,” Gary said.

“The Legislature, in their great, infinite wisdom, where they say they are protecting people, they’re not protecting anybody except casinos. A gambler is going to find a way to bet.”

After nearly two years, Jackson State University President Marcus Thompson has resigned.  

No reason was given.

The news came after the Institutions of Higher Learning Board, Mississippi’s governing body that oversees the state’s public universities, met Wednesday to discuss a “personnel matter” regarding an employee at Jackson State University. 

The board met for two hours in a closed door executive meeting to discuss a matter “regarding the job performance of a person holding a specific position at Jackson State University and related potential litigation,” a spokesperson for IHL said. Board officials told reporters there was nothing to report at the end of the meeting.  IHL later released a statement saying Thompson had resigned.

This is the second time in three weeks the board had met to discuss a personnel matter related to the historically Black university. 

In April, the board met for a nearly two-hour executive meeting. The board released a statement that no “personnel action” has been taken regarding JSU president, Marcus Thompson.

IHL hired Thompson in late 2023 after his predecessor, Thomas Hudson, resigned after serving three years in that position. The board had placed Hudson on administrative leave, but to date has not shared with the public the nature of the personnel issue that motivated its decision. He ultimately resigned.

IHL conducted a national search, interviewing 79 applicants, but Thompson was the epitome of an internal hire, having worked at IHL since 2009. He had never before led a university. 

The day the IHL board appointed Thompson president, Jackson-area attorney Lisa Ross, who is also a Jackson State alumnus, filed a lawsuit accusing the board of gender discrimination for overlooking her client, Debra Mays-Jackson, who had been senior administrator at the university. The lawsuit alleges that when IHL makes internal hires at its three historically Black universities, men tend to benefit. 

It’s not the only way women are harmed by the system of internal hires, the lawsuit alleges Ross said that while Hudson was serving as interim president, he sent “unwanted and unwelcome” sexually explicit photographs to a female employee. 

Thompson was permitted to investigate the photographs, but he allegedly closed the investigation without questioning the female employee. 

IHL has not responded to those allegations in its repeated motions to dismiss the case. 

Thompson’s resignation marks the third time in five years the JSU presidency has been vacated by board action or resignation. Hudson’s predecessor, William Bynum, appointed in 2017, was ousted following his arrest in 2020 on a charge of “procuring the services of prostitute, false statement of identity and possession of marijuana.”

The board has named Denise Jones Gregory, provost and vice president of academic affairs at JSU, as interim president. 

Jackson Reporter Molly Minta contributed to this story.

A 74-year-old Navy veteran who says she was assaulted by a retired Long Beach police officer was hospitalized for a couple of days after the alleged attack because of a serious head injury that resulted in brain bleed.

Vivian Ramsay suffered a subdural hematoma of the brain, or a type of brain bleed, caused by a head injury during the April 24 attack, her attorney David Baria said.

“When I was serving my country in the Navy, I never thought there would be a day that any American, especially a retired policeman, would purposely confront me for expressing my opinion in a silent and peaceful manner,” Ramsay said in an interview Monday.

On the afternoon of the April 24 assault, Ramsay had parked her van at U.S. 90 and Jeff Davis Avenue for a peaceful protest against actions by President Donald Trump since he began his second term in office. Her van had signs denouncing various acts during the Trump administration. “We should not have to protect democracy from the President,” read one sign. In another, Ramsay proclaimed, “Married women lose voting rights. SAVE Act is voter suppression.”

Ramsay said she was surprised by the assault suspect, since identified as retired Long Beach Officer Craig DeRouche, 64, who she says approached her and ripped a protest sign off her van.

“He attempted to further intimidate me by grabbing at me,” she said. “I defended myself until he struck me in the head so hard that I fell to the ground, and I think I lost consciousness. His actions were unprovoked and outrageous. I defended my country in the Navy, and I defended myself on April 24, and I intend to defend myself in court for any charge that I violated the law.”

DeRouche has been arrested on a misdemeanor charge of simple assault against Ramsay in the April 24 incident. He is charged with a second count of misdemeanor assault in the same incident for allegedly assaulting a man who saw the attack and stopped to help the veteran protester, Long Beach Police Chief Billy Seal said.

READ MORE: See the full Sun Herald article here.

When the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department agreed to a $2.5 million settlement after “Goon Squad” officers tortured two Black men, the department’s attorney said he hoped it would provide closure for the victims.

But at a breakfast Saturday sponsored by the sheriff and his former father-in-law, Irl Dean Rhodes, county officials struck a much different tone.

Two days after the announcement of the settlement, Rankin County Supervisor Steve Gaines said the department’s attorney, Jason Dare, “beat the pants off of those guys — the dopers, the people that raped and doped your daughters. He beat their pants off.”

Gaines was referring to Eddie Parker and his friend, Michael Jenkins, who were beaten, tased and sexually assaulted by the deputies before they shot Jenkins in the mouth during a mock execution. The deputies tried to plant a BB gun and drugs on the men to cover up their crimes, but they were ultimately convicted and sent to federal prison for decades.

Parker has one felony conviction in Rankin County is for failing to “stop vehicle pursuant to officer’s signal,” according to court records. In Alabama, he had a 2019 conviction for drug possession with intent to distribute. Jenkins has no felony convictions listed in Rankin County. Neither has a conviction in neighboring Hinds County.

Gaines declined to comment about his remarks.

LISTEN: Two days after the $2.5 million “Goon Squad” settlement, Rankin County Supervisor Steve Gaines praised the sheriff’s department’s lawyer, Jason Dare, and talked about the two Black men whom deputies beat, tortured and sexually abused. Click the link to hear what he said at the Saturday breakfast hosted by Sheriff Bryan Bailey.

The two men’s lawyer, Trent Walker, said Gaines’ remark fits the racist trope of falsely accusing Black men of raping white men’s daughters.

That remark, Walker said, makes obvious “that attitudes like this permit rogue police to prevail and allow for the conditions in which officers have been able to carry out their unlawful agenda against other citizens of the state of Mississippi.”

An investigation by Mississippi Today and The New York Times exposed a decades-long reign of terror by 20 Rankin County deputies, several of whom routinely tortured suspected drug users to elicit information and confessions.

Many people have filed lawsuits alleging abuses by deputies, or say they filed complaints with the department or reported these incidents directly to Bailey, but the sheriff has denied any knowledge of these alleged abuses.

Gaines, who worked for three decades as an agent with the Office of Inspector General, praised Bailey for enduring the scandals that have wracked his department and prompted investigations by the Justice Department and the state auditor’s office regarding Bailey’s alleged misuse of taxpayer money equipment and supplies used at his mother’s commercial chicken farm.

READ:  ‘You’re His Property’: Embattled Mississippi sheriff used inmates and county resources for personal gain, former inmates and deputy say

“It made me cry at night that Sheriff Bailey, my friend, was absorbing this,” he said. “I’m gonna tell you, he has weathered the storm, and we are back.”

Bailey thanked the county’s leaders for their support. “For the past 28 months through all of this,” he said, “my board of supervisors have stood behind me 110%.”

The sheriff said he was ready to quit several times, but Rhodes urged him to stay and run again for sheriff. “He kept pushing me,” Bailey said. “He’s still pushing me.” 

Rhodes has long been regarded as “kingmaker” in Mississippi politics with many seeking his support in their campaigns. In the early 1980s, he was convicted and fined on multiple counts of felony tax evasion.

Gaines praised other Rankin County officials, citing the county’s smooth roads and relatively low crime rates, and expressed concern about the county’s growing pains, such as students from other counties attending Rankin schools. 

“ How do you feel about paying the taxes that you pay and people from across the river coming over here and putting their kids in your school?” he told the nearly all-white crowd, referring to the Pearl River that separates Hinds and Rankin counties. “They’re gonna pay taxes maybe one year or maybe not at all.”

Rankin County is 72% white, while Hinds County is 72% Black.

Angela English, president of the Rankin County branch of the NAACP, said there is no mistaking Gaines’ words as a racial reference. “That’s the kind of toxic environment that we have in Rankin County,” she said.

A lifelong resident of Rankin County, English helped integrate Florence schools with her sisters. “It’s always good to know where he [Gaines] stands, whether you agree with him or not,” she said. “I’d rather know who I’m dealing with than to be caught by surprise.”

His remark, she said, “alludes to the kind of people who are upholding Bryan Bailey.”

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.

Guess what? Immigration is good for America, and it is good for Mississippi!

I have been a practicing attorney in Tupelo for 50 years. In 1992, a colleague suggested that I may wish to take on some immigration cases, as that appeared to be a growing area of the law.

I began by representing foreign students from Ole Miss and Mississippi State. Both universities have long been attended by foreign students from around the world. Strong engineering programs at both schools and the agriculture research programs at Mississippi State attracted students from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, South America and Europe. My immigration practice quickly grew and by 1995, I was working as a full-time immigration attorney in a small Mississippi town. Who could’ve predicted that?

In 1994, I took on my first case for a south Mississippi Federally Qualified Health Clinic (FQHC), seeking a J-1 waiver and work visa for two foreign pediatricians who were just finishing their pediatrics residency in the U.S. In return for a waiver of the mandated two-year foreign residence requirement, they agreed to work in a federally designated Health Professional Shortage Area for three years.

My practice in this area quickly grew, and as I write this today, over 80% of my practice is devoted to obtaining waivers and visas for extremely well qualified foreign physicians (they are trained in the finest residency and fellowship programs in the United States). Note that all 82 Mississippi counties are designated in whole or in part as either a Medically Underserved Area or a Health Professional Shortage Area.

In short, this means that Mississippi does not have enough doctors to serve our population, and thus the J-1 waiver program serves a very important role to incentivize foreign doctors to serve our underserved populations for up to three years. Many of these foreign doctors choose to remain in Mississippi following their initial three-year obligation. 

I have seen how immigrants from all parts of the world contribute to the economy and the well-being of Mississippi residents. Immigrants serve as high school teachers in rural Mississippi counties. They work as computer software engineers for Mississippi high technology firms. They work for the state of Mississippi in many professional positions. They work as nurses in our hospitals and nursing homes, and they work on our farms and tree farms as seasonal agricultural and non-agricultural workers.

Many of these workers are legally present in the United States and they hold lawful employment authorization. Everyone is aware that many workers are undocumented and entered the United States without authorization. Most of the undocumented workers toil in jobs that require them to pay Social Security and FICA withholding from their paychecks. These undocumented workers will not receive the benefit of the withholding amounts, but these funds help to support Social Security and FICA for U.S. beneficiaries of these programs. 

It is also important to keep in mind that many undocumented workers are faithful and stable spouses and parents to U.S. citizen families. When these people have remained in the United States for many years, have established ties to U.S. families and employers and are otherwise law-abiding, it seems that good public policy would favor providing them with a means of legalizing their status.

Instead, the current Trump administration is hell-bent on using the harshest means imaginable to forcibly remove all undocumented foreign-born persons. It is hard to imagine how our economy would operate if the Trump administration were able to remove large numbers of undocumented workers. In recent weeks, I have been contacted by numerous Mississippi companies, contractors and factory owners, who have stated that they do not know how they will continue in business if their foreign workforce is deported.

In the meantime, as the Trump Administration’s ham-handed tariff policies appear to be wreaking havoc on the U.S. and world economies, the immigration enforcement agencies are ratcheting up their lawless rendition of undocumented immigrants, and now it appears the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has deported two U.S. citizen children, one of whom suffers from metastatic cancer.

Late evening Friday, April 25, Erin Heber, an immigration attorney in New Orleans who represents the Honduran mother, reported that while she was preparing a habeas corpus petition to prevent the rendition of her clients, ICE clandestinely removed the undocumented mother and her two children from the United States in order to avoid the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts. It appears that the father of these children wanted them to remain in the U.S.

In any event, these U.S. citizen children were deprived of their constitutionally protected due process rights by a U.S. government agency. Before being removed from the United States, these children had the right to be represented in a court of appropriate jurisdiction, where their interests would have been protected by an appointed guardian ad litem.

These acts by ICE agents represent the most heinous and terroristic conduct imaginable. Under the law, ICE has the authority to remove persons from the United States, but only after the immigrant is provided due process by a court of competent jurisdiction or by expedited removal proceedings under U.S. law. When ICE acts to render U.S. citizens without due process beyond the reach of U.S. court jurisdiction, we can be sure that we are witnessing the destruction of our 250-year-old democracy, and every U.S. citizen of the United States should be alarmed and outraged. Members of Congress and the courts must act to protect the due process rights of U.S. citizens and lawful residents, as well as all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States. 

FBI Director Kash Patel recently posted on social media “Just NOW, the FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on charges of obstruction—after evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week.”

Judge Dugan has been charged with enabling the escape of an undocumented immigrant through a jury room off the courtroom where she presided, allegedly for the purpose of avoiding arrest by ICE agents who were waiting outside the courtroom. The facts are unclear as to whether the judge was actually attempting to assist the person to avoid arrest. He was arrested in the street outside the courthouse. But this heavy-handed arrest of a state judge by the FBI appears to represent another assault on the judiciary by the Trump administration.

It is important to understand that federal, state and local judges are charged with the authority and responsibility to carry out and control the orderly conduct of judicial proceedings. The arrest of a judge by FBI for events stemming from court could be a violation of state court authority and appears to be unprecedented in U.S. history. FBI conduct in this case is clearly intended as a chilling message to all judges in the United States.

Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared on the Fox News Channel to talk about the arrest and to attack the judiciary. “What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,” she said. “The [judges] are deranged is all I can think of. I think some of these judges think that they are beyond and above the law. They are not, and we are sending a very strong message today…if you are harboring a fugitive…we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.”

Many believe the Trump administration’s attack on the judiciary is part of its strategy to establish one-man authoritarian rule. It is reminiscent of the Netanyahu government’s attempt to neutralize the Israeli Supreme Court in 2023, which led to mass protests in Israel. The attack on the U.S. judiciary, the law profession, the media and on U.S. universities is characteristic of past authoritarian regime’s takeover of democracies (i.e. Hungary, Turkey, Russia, Belorussia).

In order to preserve our democracy, the American people, the legal profession, the universities, the independent press and the judiciary must continually and persistently speak out.

Barry Walker is a graduate of Mississippi State University and the University of Mississippi School of Law. He has been a practicing attorney since 1975 and has practiced immigration law in Tupelo since 1992. 

Five Horizons Health Services in Starkville provides sex education and low-cost reproductive health care to Mississippians who might never receive it otherwise – but the federal government is withholding the funds that make the work possible.

Title X, a federal program that has been providing money for family planning services to states for over 50 years, flows through the nonprofit Converge to 91 clinics in Mississippi, including Five Horizons. But the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on March 31 told Converge it was withholding its funding indefinitely. 

The organization’s head said despite complying with the demands of the letter, the funds still haven’t been distributed and she hasn’t been told if or when they will be. The nonprofit had to furlough half of its Title X staff, who will be laid off June 1 if the funding doesn’t come through. 

Seven states, including Mississippi, had Title X funds completely withheld, while another sixteen had their funds partially withheld. An estimated 834,000 people nationwide would be affected if the funds are never disbursed, Guttmacher estimates.  

Clinics around the state are scrambling to notify patients of cost increases for services like birth control, cancer screening and testing for sexually transmitted infections. 

Delta Health Center, which operates 17 safety net clinics covering six counties in the Mississippi Delta, is short $250,000 for family planning services as a result of the funding freeze.

They’re now unable to provide contraception for free as a result of the loss of funds, according to administrator Robin Boyles. 

Boyles said Delta Health Center staff always did everything they could to make sure patients could access whatever medication their provider prescribed – regardless of cost. And as a federally qualified health center, they continue to provide services and see patients on a sliding fee scale.

But in the past week, a provider called her to ask if the clinic still had the funds to cover the birth control implant Nexplanon or an IUD for a patient.

Without the Title X dollars to reimburse for the medicine, however, a patient without insurance would have been on the hook $540 for Nexplanon or $371 for a Mirena IUD – two of the most effective forms of contraception.

Those most harmed by the delayed funding will be young adults who received next to no sexual education growing up in Mississippi, says Maggie White, a nurse practitioner at Five Horizons. The clinic sees a lot of patients from Mississippi State University, which educates about 23,000 students a year.  

Mississippi allows school districts to adopt one of two types of sexual education curricula: abstinence-only or abstinence-plus. Abstinence-only education promotes abstinence until marriage, while abstinence-plus programs encourage abstinence but include some information about contraception. 

“They don’t know anything (about sexual health),” White said. “… They’ll come in for sinus stuff, and then they start asking other questions.”

Title X services include methods for preventing unwanted pregnancy, fertility treatment for helping people get pregnant, testing for STIs and screening for certain kinds of cancer. 

In its letter to Converge, the nonprofit that beat out the state Health Department for the federal Title X grant in Mississippi in 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services alleged that the organization “could be in violation” of the terms of the award and parts of the federal civil rights law. The allegation referenced a 2020 statement the nonprofit made committing to diversity in health care during the wake of the George Floyd protests. 

The group sent HHS all the documents it was required, but has not heard back in over a month, said Jamie Bardwell, co-executive director of Converge. 

“I have to believe that common sense will eventually prevail,” Bardwell said. “We for sure have done nothing wrong.”

The Title X funding freeze will force Five Horizons to increase the cost of a package of STI tests and treatment from $20 to $120. That’s still comparable to or less than most urgent care facilities, but nurses at the clinic say it will be cost-prohibitive for much of their low-income, younger clientele. 

The funding freeze won’t just affect costs – it will also affect accessibility. The only women’s health clinic in Starkville currently has a wait time of two months for a new patient appointment. 

Because they serve a largely college-aged population, the providers at Five Horizons are also privy to another trend: Some of the younger patients who are still on their parents’ insurance choose to forgo reproductive care rather than let their parents know they are sexually active.

“Sometimes the college kids will have insurance, but they don’t want to use their insurance because then their parents will figure out what they’re doing, so that was nice that we had that option to not use their insurance to get what they needed,” White said.

Through Title X funding, Five Horizons was able to keep supplies like the Depo-Provera shot – an injection given once every three months to prevent pregnancy – on hand and administer it for free on site to those who were uninsured or chose not to use their parents’ insurance. 

Now, McKenzie Russell, the nurse caring for most of the clinic’s Title X patients, says she’ll have to send patients to an offsite pharmacy to pick up birth control – an added obstacle that might put contraception out of reach for some. 

Russell, who grew up in Starkville and had her first baby at 16, fears that increased barriers like cost and extra trips will lead to more unintended pregnancies in the community. 

She said the clinic has also seen increased rates of abnormal pap smears, which can be a sign of precancerous changes and warrant further testing. The clinic has been offering uninsured patients free pap smears, though that could change if they don’t find another source of funding to cover those costs.

Mississippi has the highest rate of deaths from cervical cancer and the nation’s worst uptake of the vaccine that protects against this cancer. 

Meanwhile, the influence of social media on young people has meant that much of the work providers do in well visits is combatting misinformation. 

“There was a girl who thought she had syphilis because there was something wrong with her eye,” Russell said. “… They just go down rabbit holes, and we have to bring them back.”

Even if the funding delays don’t result in permanent cuts, the lapse in care could have life-changing consequences for some. 

“A month delay may not sound like a huge deal to some people, but when you’re talking about women’s health care, one month could be a huge deal,” said Bardwell. “You could be missing your prescription for birth control, (and) perhaps it results in an unplanned pregnancy. Perhaps you don’t get screened for an STD, STI. Congenital syphilis is very high in Mississippi. These are things that just have a very negative effect for women and their children.”

In the meantime, Converge is expanding telehealth services, as well as launching pop-up clinics around the state. The first one will be June 7 at the Jackson Medical Mall. 

“Our number one job since April 1 has been fundraising,” Bardwell said. “Every dollar that we’ve been raising has been to make sure we can still provide care to people in this way.”

The National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services. The lawsuit argued the agency’s withholding of funds before determining there was a violation of the grant terms is unlawful.   

But the lawsuit won’t provide any immediate relief for Mississippi and other affected states – and even if Converge gets the money it was due, Bardwell thinks this won’t be the last time she has to fight for funding under the Trump administration.

“So in our minds, getting our money unfrozen would be a huge positive step, but we by no means think that once that happens we’d be in the clear,” she said. “We imagine there will be multiple hurdles for years on this topic.”

President Donald Trump has appointed former Southern District Public Service Commissioner Dane Maxwell as Mississippi director of rural development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

He also appointed Chris McDonald, currently director of federal and environmental affairs at the Mississippi Department of Agriculture, as director of the USDA’s farm services for the state.

According to the USDA, its missions include providing assistance to America’s farmers, improving the nation’s health, ending hunger, ensuring food safety, providing marketing assistance and conserving and protecting natural resources.

The Farm Service Agency implements agricultural policy, administers credit and loan programs, and manages conservation, commodity, disaster and farm marketing programs through a national network of offices.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins recently announced the appointments for state directors under the Trump administration.

“When America’s farming communities prosper, the entire nation thrives. This new group of USDA appointees will ensure President Trump’s America First agenda is a reality in rural areas across the country. I am grateful for the leadership of these new state directors and look forward to their work reorienting the agency to put Farmers First again,” said Secretary Rollins.

Maxwell is former mayor of Pascagoula and former state public service commissioner for the Southern District and served as state director for Trump’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.

For the Pearl River Glass Studio, located in the Midtown neighborhood of Jackson, it started as an honor and labor of love, with Memphis-based artist Lonnie Robinson, who out of hundreds of artistic contestants, won the privilege to create the stained glass windows along with artist Sharday Michelle, for the historic Clayborn Temple, located in Memphis, Tennessee, as part of a massive renovation project. 

This team of artisans restored three enormous stained glass windows, panel by panel, for the historic church that was a bastion for the Civil Rights movement in Memphis, Tennessee, in the 1960s. The stained glass windows depicted Civil Rights icons and paid homage to the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike, which lasted 64 days from Feb. 12 to April 16, 1968. It is the site where sanitation workers agreed to end the strike when city officials recognized their union and their raised wages.

Over time, the church fell into disrepair and closed in 1999.

In 2018, it was officially named a national treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The $14 million restoration of Clayborn Temple was a collaborative effort by non-profits, movers and shakers on the national scene, community leaders and donations.

The hard work, the labors of love, the beautiful stained glass arch windows and other restorative work at the historic church all came to an end due to a fire in the wee hours of Monday morning on April 28 of this year. 

The cause of the fire is currently under investigation.

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.

Given recent policy changes threatening the future of medical research and news of Mississippi’s falling childhood vaccination rates, I fear we are ignoring lessons learned the hard way. 

One of those lessons occurred during a yellow fever outbreak in the summer of 1898 when a community of honest citizens in Orwood, then a hamlet in southwest Lafayette County, helped a team of physicians change the direction of public health for Mississippi and the rest of the country.

I first heard about their story listening to a documentary about yellow fever with my husband, a virologist, who teaches at the University of Mississippi. The video mentioned an unnamed doctor in Mississippi who had advanced a theory linking mosquitoes and yellow fever.

The story I uncovered models the honesty and trust in medical science we need today to keep our families and communities healthy. 

***

Yellow fever was a problem in the South throughout the 1800s. Its initial symptoms — fever, body aches and severe headache — were followed by jaundice and in some cases internal bleeding leading to death. The jaundice left the skin tinged with yellow, thus the name “yellow fever.”  

In early August 1898, a young woman named Sallie Wilson Gray (no relation to the author) developed chills and a fever while visiting at her uncle’s home in Taylor. Her uncle immediately sent her home to be cared for by her family in Orwood, about 10 miles away.  

Days later, Sallie’s uncle in Taylor died from what proved to be yellow fever. Family members wiped black vomit, a sign of internal bleeding, from his body as he lay in his coffin. 

Sallie had now brought the same illness home to Orwood. 

***

I learned about yellow fever in seventh grade when we studied the 1878 yellow fever epidemic, the worst to strike the Mississippi River Valley. That year, Mississippi reported almost 17,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths. I didn’t realize, though, how yellow fever continued to appear year after year. 

Physicians had a basic understanding of bacteria after the Civil War, but they didn’t recognize viruses, which proved to be the cause of yellow fever, until later in the 1900s. One popular theory suggested yellow fever spread on fomites—inanimate surfaces—like bedding, clothing and furniture. Panic often followed news of a yellow fever outbreak. Health officials established quarantines, closed roads, river ports and train stations, hoping to curb the spread of infections. 

The fear of what was not known then about yellow fever reminded me of the early days of the COVID pandemic when fear spread through rumors and unconfirmed anecdotes on social media. 

***

Sallie’s sisters and brothers in Orwood soon developed the same symptoms as Sallie. By September, 30-plus people in Taylor and Orwood showed signs of the disease and new cases were reported outside the local area. In response, three interstate railroads shut down and Memphis halted train traffic coming into the city. In Starkville, the president of Mississippi A&M (now Mississippi State University) posted a column of guards along its roads. In mid-October, officials placed all of Mississippi under quarantine as thousands fled the state. 

Months earlier, the governor of Mississippi, recognizing the heavy toll yellow fever often brought to his state, had sent a team of Board of Health physicians to Cuba, the center for yellow fever research. There the group met with Dr. Walter Reed, the Army physician directing the American research interests on the island. Reed pursued a theory that mosquitos transmitted the disease, but his experiments to establish that link repeatedly failed. The Mississippi team, including Dr. Henry Gant, a Water Valley doctor, returned home, still hopeful that science could soon solve the yellow fever mystery.

Gant immediately responded when he learned about the outbreak in Taylor. So did Dr. Henry Rose Carter, a field epidemiologist who served as the quarantine officer at Ship Island and who investigated yellow fever outbreaks throughout the South. 

Committed to the same rigorous scientific process that epidemiologists use today, Carter looked for patterns in how diseases spread within clusters of people. With yellow fever, he needed to identify the first person to develop the disease in a specific area and then trace everybody and everything that the person came into contact with.  

Over and over again, unreliable sources or conflicting pieces of data prevented Carter from finding a pattern. People, suspicious of government intervention and scared of the consequences of yellow fever, often distorted the truth. 

Fortunately for us today, the people of Orwood proved to be different. The people, Carter wrote, were “honest enough to tell the truth” and cooperated with efforts to trace the infection of each case.

Working with Carter, Gant moved from house to house in Orwood, instructing families to quarantine at home, though their natural inclination was to care for their neighbors. He also questioned each person, recording data for Gant’s analysis. 

Unlike diseases that produce low-grade fevers, an abrupt and high fever often characterizes a case of yellow fever. For that reason, many of the people Gant interviewed reported the day their infections started and also the time their fevers ignited: Mr. G. W. McMillan, sickened on Aug. 29 at noon.  Mrs. Rogers, Sept. 4, 10:00 am. 

Collecting this detailed information about time proved essential for Carter’s study and he cheered Gant’s ability to gather such reliable data. “A greater tribute to the good faith of the community, or to its confidence in Dr. Gant, can scarcely be given,” he wrote. 

Studying the Orwood data, Carter recognized a consistent time interval between cases, about two weeks between the first case and the development of secondary cases. This meant that the infection did not immediately spread from person-to-person but required time to incubate. He called this the period of extrinsic incubation.

I’ve read Carter’s scientific report with the results of the Orwood study, the same report that persuaded Walter Reed to alter his experimental process. Waiting 10-14 days before introducing infected mosquitos to healthy volunteers, Reed successfully demonstrated the transmission of yellow fever from mosquito to human. 

With the development of mosquito control procedures, the fever soon vanished in the U.S. and Caribbean. Today a vaccine can protect those travelling or living where the disease remains a threat.

***

Sallie and her siblings were among the lucky, surviving their infections with only lingering weakness and fatigue. When frosts fell in north Mississippi in early November 1898, the number of fever cases quickly fell. In total, officials confirmed 2,478 cases across the state. Those who died totaled 114.

Reed later acknowledged that the “work in Mississippi did more to impress me with the importance of an intermediate host in yellow fever than everything else put together.”  

***

My husband and I drove from our home in Oxford to Taylor and then Orwood on a hot muggy day in August, probably experiencing the same weather conditions as Sallie. Orwood is a ghost town today, but we found the cemetery where Sallie’s uncle is buried, adjacent to the wood-planked Presbyterian Church that still stands. 

Walking those grounds emphasized for me what the neighbors who once lived in Orwood taught us. Honesty and rigorous scientific inquiry — and not political rhetoric or unproven claims — are the tools we must trust to combat disease and dispel fear.

Bio: Shirley Wimbish Gray lives in Oxford. A retired writing instructor and science editor, she writes about what is often overlooked or forgotten, particularly in the American South. Her recent essays have appeared in Earth Island, Brevity Blog and Persimmon Tree.