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A federal judge in Mississippi has admitted that his staff used artificial intelligence to draft a flawed court order, after months of speculation and an inquiry from a U.S. senator. 

U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate sent a letter on Tuesday to the director of the Administrative Office of the Courts in response to an inquiry from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley. Wingate acknowledged that his law clerk used an AI program to compose an order that paused the enforcement of a state law that bans diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Mississippi public schools. 

The order, issued July 20, was factually inaccurate — naming defendants and plaintiffs that weren’t parties to the case, misquoting state law and referencing a case that doesn’t exist — which led the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office to raise concerns. 

Wingate then replaced the order with a corrected version, wiped the flawed order from the docket, and denied a request from the Attorney General’s Office to restore the original order with errors to the public docket. He refused to explain the errors, calling them “clerical” mistakes.

Months later, Grassley sent a letter to Wingate, asking him to address the errors and the speculated use of AI.

Wingate finally acknowledged that one of his law clerks used an AI program called Perplexity to analyze publicly available information from the docket to craft the order. But Wingate emphasized no privileged or sealed information was used. Wingate says he still does not plan to restore the original order to the docket, in an effort to avoid confusion. 

The judge conceded that the order was a draft opinion, and it did not undergo proper review before being added to the docket. Wingate said he’s taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again. 

The corrective measures include requiring all draft opinions, orders and memos to undergo a second, independent review. He will also require all cited cases be printed and attached to the final draft. 

“I manage a very busy docket and strive to maintain the public’s trust by administering justice in a fair and transparent manner,” Wingate wrote. “Given that I hold myself and my staff to the highest standards of conduct, I do not expect that a mistake like this one will occur in the future.”

Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, commended Wingate, a Reagan-appointed judge, for acknowledging the mistake.

“Each federal judge, and the judiciary as an institution, has an obligation to ensure the use of generative AI does not violate litigants’ rights or prevent fair treatment under the law,” Grassley said in a statement. “The judicial branch needs to develop more decisive, meaningful and permanent AI policies and guidelines.” 

Still, AI usage in the federal judiciary is a serious issue, and it’s largely uncharted territory, especially among federal judges.  

The legal profession has seen a rise in AI use in recent years, with people relying on software or processes that attempt to replicate aspects of human work. These use vast amounts of data to accomplish tasks such as researching court cases and citing them in legal briefs. 

But these systems are not perfect and can “hallucinate,” or provide false information. 

Judges in Mississippi have punished attorneys in both federal and state courts for using AI because attorneys have an ethical and professional responsibility to tell the truth in court. 

But there’s little accountability when the roles are reversed. 

Robert Conrad Jr., the director of the federal Administrative Office of the Courts, also sent Grassley a letter noting that he recently established an AI task force composed of judges and technology experts to recommend new policies on AI usage in the federal court system. 

Conrad said the task force, during the summer, published interim guidance on AI, suggesting that attorneys should review and independently verify all AI-generated content and should consider disclosing when they’ve used AI to help craft documents. 

ExxonMobil had a preliminary conversation with Satartia leaders on Monday about a potential large economic development project for the tiny town.

Michelle Douglas, the mayor of Satartia, confirmed the meeting but said the potential project is still in early stages. She and others familiar with the proposal said they were bound by agreements not to discuss details.

ExxonMobil did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, and others familiar with the proposal would not say what type of development is being proposed.

Satartia, with a population of 40 people, is the smallest incorporated city in the state. It is in Yazoo County, about 45 miles northwest of Jackson.

Three large-scale data centers are currently under construction in Mississippi, totaling over $26 billion in investment, and they are some of the largest economic projects in the state’s history. In a September interview with Mississippi Today, Haley Fisackerly, CEO of Entergy Mississippi, said multiple companies are exploring bringing new data centers to the state.

Data centers being built across the country require huge amounts of electricity and water, and many of the deals involve energy companies.

Central District Public Service Commissioner De’Keither Stamps also told Mississippi Today that economic development discussions were taking place in Satartia, but he could not provide specifics because he had signed a non-disclosure agreement.

ExxonMobil has publicly said it plans on building power plants to service data centers.

“What I will say about that project is we are here and already doing our due diligence to support all economic development in the state,” Stamps said.

Although the specifics of the project are unknown, two people not authorized to discuss sensitive business details told Mississippi Today that it could be one of the state’s most significant economic development projects. 

However, both people emphasized that the discussions are highly exploratory in nature, the project could be located elsewhere and considerable work would be needed at the state and local levels before the project could advance further. 

A former University of Mississippi employee fired in September over social media commentary she reposted about the assassination of Charlie Kirk has filed a federal lawsuit against the university’s chancellor, claiming the chancellor violated her First Amendment rights.

Lauren Stokes, a former executive assistant in the University of Mississippi’s development office, said she was terminated over a social media post she endorsed on her private Instagram account about Kirk, the right-wing activist and CEO of the political organization Turning Point USA.

University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce fired Stokes over speech that is constitutionally protected, even if it was offensive, her attorney argued in a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court.

“A private employer might require its employees to conform to a point of view but the state acting through its public university cannot,” wrote attorney Allyson Mills. “After all, today’s policed are tomorrow’s policemen. No state institution should purport to wield such power.”

Boyce was sued in both his personal and professional capacities. University of Mississippi spokesperson Jacob Batte told Mississippi Today the university does not comment on pending litigation.

On Sept. 10, Kirk was assassinated while speaking on a college campus in Utah. That night, Stokes reposted to her Instagram account a statement made by another person that lambasted Kirk’s views on issues like guns, abortion and race.

“For decades, yt (white) supremacist and reimagined Klan members like Kirk have wreaked havoc on our communities, condemning children and the populace at large to mass death for the sake of keeping their automatic guns,” the statement said. “They have willingly advocated to condemn children and adult survivors of (sexual assault) to forced pregnancy and childbirth. They have smiled while stating the reasons people who can birth children shouldn’t be allowed life-saving medical care when miscarrying. They have incited and clapped for the brutalizing of Black and Brown bodies. So no, I have no prayers to offer Kirk or respectable statements against violence.”

The post generated immediate backlash for Stokes, who deleted the post and apologized hours after publishing it. That same night, Boyce happened to dine at a restaurant owned by Stokes and her husband, the complaint says.

By the next morning, a social media firestorm had kicked into high gear, with conservative activists and even some state leaders drawing Stokes’s post to her employer’s attention. That mirrored similar episodes around the country in the days after Kirk’s killing.

Journalists and teachers have been fired for their comments on his death, with several conservative activists seeking to identify social media users whose posts about Kirk they viewed as offensive or celebratory.

The University of Mississippi placed Stokes on administrative leave around 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, according to the complaint.

A little under four hours later, Mississippi State Auditor Shad White, a vocal critic of what he calls “woke” initiatives in higher education, posted about the episode on X.

“To Ole Miss, did an Ole Miss employee just repost this insane reaction to Charlie Kirk’s murder? Answer,” White wrote.

About an hour after that, university officials fired Stokes, according to her complaint. Then, 20 minutes later, Boyce released a statement that didn’t name Stokes, but confirmed her firing and called her comments “hurtful” and “insensitive.”

“The comments run completely counter to our institutional values of civility, fairness and respecting the dignity of each person,” Boyce said. “We condemn these actions and this staff member is no longer employed by the university.”

In Stokes’s legal complaint, her attorney points out that the speech in question “related to a subject of obsessive news interest” and was not even hers, but someone else’s that she reposted.

“By terminating Lauren for reposting the speech, the University says that Lauren is not allowed even to agree with a point of view held by a substantial portion of the nation,” the complaint said. “Stated differently, the University says it gets to tell its employees what to think on matters of public concern. The interests in freedom of speech, indeed of thought, are extraordinarily high here.”

Stokes said she has received death threats and bomb threats against her restaurant that forced it to close for two weeks. She is seeking damages, legal fees, and a declaration that Boyce violated her First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit was filed just over a week before Vice President JD Vance and Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, will speak at the University of Mississippi in Oxford on Oct. 29.

The city of Jackson will continue to own thousands of acres surrounding its airport under a settlement that is expected to clear the way for economic development on what’s long been considered some of Mississippi’s most coveted real estate. 

The agreement was approved by the Jackson City Council by a 5-2 vote Tuesday. It allows Flowood and Pearl, growing cities in Rankin County, to annex Jackson-owned but currently unincorporated land to the west and east of the Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport. The deal seeks to conclude a seven-year-old lawsuit in which those suburban cities sued to incorporate some of the land.

The airport is a few miles east of downtown Jackson. It is in Rankin County and is the rare example of a Mississippi city owning land outside the county where the city itself is located.

Through the annexation, the municipalities must now provide essential services that can entice development to the acres of currently empty, grassy land along Airport Road and the East Metro Parkway, a major thoroughfare in Rankin County. Jackson also gets to incorporate a portion of the land around the airport into the capital city as part of the deal.

The council’s vote comes amid a separate, nearly decade-long battle over governing control of the city’s airport, which the deal passed Tuesday does not impact.

“It’s very ripe for having a high-end development for office space, retail space and other space like that,” said Ward 1 Councilman Ashby Foote, likening the area’s potential to that of Highland Colony Parkway in Ridgeland. “But it’s just been on hold because of the confrontation surrounding the airport.” 

The arrangement concerns the minutiae of Mississippi land law and what it means for a city to own versus incorporate land, said Councilman Kevin Parkinson, who oversees Ward 7 where the airport is located. He filmed a 14-minute YouTube video explaining why he supported the agreement.

“All of our fates are tied up together, and we can’t continue to fight each other if there’s ways for things to be mutually beneficial,” Parkinson said. 

The Jackson airport has owned the land for decades and could have leased it for development, but since the land was not city-incorporated, Jackson was not providing essential services like water, police and fire protection, making development difficult. 

Under Tuesday’s agreement, the city of Jackson will continue to profit off any leases on land it owns because the airport will essentially act as a landlord for developers. 

“It’s not like Flowood is going to put a bunch of undesirable businesses there with no insight from the airport,” Parkinson said. “That’s what it means to own the land. You get benefits, including you can simply say, ‘Nope, I don’t want that business here.’” 

Meanwhile, Flowood and Pearl will provide services in their respective incorporated areas, and in turn collect the property tax and sales tax revenue generated there. 

This is what Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes, who voted against the measure, said causes the “bad taste that’s in a lot of citizens’ mouths,” as they’ve witnessed a boom of sales-tax-generating development along Lakeland Drive in the last couple of decades, mostly benefitting Flowood.

“The question that came up when they were doing it is: How how in the world this is supposed to be airport property, but the city of Jackson gets not a dime in sales tax? So they feel there’s some trickeration taking place,” Stokes said during Tuesday’s council meeting. “And they feel the same thing is going to happen with this. They feel this is a slow way to take the airport.”

The two suburban cities also agreed to support Jackson’s request to annex parts of the land around the airport. 

“Rather than a point of contention, it needs to be a point of one plus one equals three rather than one plus one equals zero,” Foote told Mississippi Today. 

Pearl Mayor Jake Windham could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Flowood Mayor Kathy Smith was out of the office for a ribbon cutting, her assistant said. 

A statement from Jackson Mayor John Horhn heralded the agreement as a win for the capital city, noting that the airport-owned land will benefit from the water and sewer system that Pearl will set up within the next year and a half. 

“This deal does not give away one inch of land,” Horhn’s statement said. “The City of Jackson remains proud owner and steward of the airport and its surrounding lands, and we are committed to ensuring that this partnership strengthens, rather than diminishes, our city’s economic future.” 

The vote also seeks to end to a legal dispute between Jackson, Flowood and Pearl that began in 2018 after the latter two cities filed a lawsuit to annex thousands of acres around the airport. 

Parkinson said he voted for the deal in part to avoid a trial in the lawsuit, which the cities filed in Rankin County. Not only did he believe a Rankin County judge would be more favorable to Flowood and Pearl, Parkinson said the judge would have only been able to rule on whether those two cities can annex the land they wanted — leaving no path forward for Jackson to annex the airport land that it wanted. 

As a bargaining chip at the settlement table, the two cities offered to go to Rankin County to help Jackson’s annexation request, Parkinson said. 

“To their credit, Pearl and Flowood came to partner, they came to negotiate,” he said. 

Jackson’s Ward 2 Councilwoman Tina Clay joined Stokes in voting no on the deal. 

Correction 10/22/25: This story was updated to reflect that Kenneth Stokes and Tina Clay voted against the agreement.

Poor sanitation in jails has been the subject of civil rights lawsuits for decades. Plumbing issues, vermin infestations, feces-covered walls, and limited access to basic hygiene products, such as soap or tampons, are common complaints.

Courts almost universally agree that a lack of basic sanitation violates detainees’ constitutional rights, said David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project. Pre-trial detainees have sued, arguing that filthy conditions violate their due process rights. If a person has already been convicted, foul living conditions could be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

Despite widespread legal challenges, many jails across the country are still filthy. Litigation against substandard conditions often ends in a settlement, Fathi noted, with officials agreeing to a change in policy, or better monitoring and enforcement, in exchange for not taking the case to trial. Settlements are typically the fastest route to clean things up, but they don’t set a legal precedent for other facilities, meaning there’s nothing requiring jails in the same county or state to adopt reforms.

Good hygiene in jail is often about more than detainees’ willingness to keep clean. Understaffing, overcrowding, facility maintenance, and mental health issues can all play a role. For example, the ACLU of Oregon, settled a lawsuit in 2019 against a county jail that had allegedly crowded a dozen women into a single intake cell, where they had to beg for toilet paper and menstrual products, and were denied showers.

“People don’t want to live in filth,” said Dr. Fred Rottnek, director of community medicine at St. Louis University and former medical lead at the St. Louis County Jail. “They are at the mercy of the administration to provide needed services because they can’t do it on their own.”

Reporters from The Marshall Project’s local news teams dug into the state of sanitation at jails in St. Louis; Cleveland, Ohio; and Hinds County, Mississippi, home to Jackson, the state capital. They found that poor jail maintenance and management, as well as understaffing, means many detainees are left to live in unsanitary conditions.

St. Louis City, Missouri

On most days, Marvin Young is desperate for a shower. For over a year, he’s been detained at the St. Louis City Justice Center awaiting trial on an attempted robbery charge.

“I haven’t had a shower in three to four weeks,” he said in June from the jail’s visiting room, pulling at the stains on his jail-issued T-shirt. Even through the glass, the odor was unmistakable.

Detainees are supposed to have shower access at least three times a week, according to jail policy, which was last updated in 2020. (The city did not respond to multiple requests for confirmation that staff still adhere to these policies). In the past, detainees have accused jail staff of withholding water access to punish people for speaking out about their conditions or asking questions. Jail policy says correctional officers can also force people to shower in certain circumstances. According to Young, however, people are desperate for the chance to rinse off.

“We gotta take bird baths in our cell,” he said, describing how he tries to cover the small opening in his cell door for privacy before attempting to clean himself over the sink. “I try to keep my spirits up, my health up… [but] I’ve been so mad, my knuckles are black from punching the walls.”

Current staffing levels mean there aren’t always enough officers to supervise people during recreation time — the hour that detainees get outside their cell for showers, phone calls, and stretching their legs — or to check and see if cells are clean. The jail, which houses roughly 800 detainees, is currently down about 50 correctional officers, according to jail commissioner Nate Hayward.

Hayward, who started at the jail in September after more than three decades at the county jail, said his goal is to hire 40 correctional officers by January, as well as two additional maintenance workers to address clogging in the showers and other facility needs.

The city’s former jail commissioner, Doug Burris, told The Marshall Project in April that roughly half of the pods in the jail were on a 23-hour lockdown. People formerly incarcerated at the jail described being held for days at a time in cells with feces on the walls. Their only reprieve was the hour they could spend in the dayroom — when there was enough staff to supervise it.

To make matters worse, detainees rarely have enough hygiene supplies, said Khanika Harper, a member of the city’s Detention Facilities Oversight Board.

The jail is supposed to give each detainee a personal hygiene kit with a toothbrush, soap, and deodorant when they first enter the jail. Once they run out, they have to purchase replacements through the commissary, or apply for free items through a caseworker if they can’t afford the commissary. Certain items, such as underwear, can only be replaced for free after a caseworker has physically inspected the old ones, according to jail policy.

Harper said she’s heard multiple reports of people not receiving soap, deodorant, or cleaning supplies for their cell and common areas, leading to a buildup of dirt and bacteria on people and surfaces alike. The showers have cockroaches and feeble water pressure, she added. Men wash their clothes in the sink when they can’t get clean laundry. Women on their periods are supposed to receive free pads and tampons from caseworkers, but Harper said detainees told her those supplies don’t always make it to women in time.

“If they have mercy on you, they’ll get it to you when they get it to you,” she said.

Hayward, however, is optimistic that some of the strategies he implemented at the county jail could also work in the city. For example, on days when the county jail was too short-staffed for detainees to get out for recreation hour, he instructed shift captains to let people out for the few minutes they needed to take a shower.

“If they don’t get out all day,” he said, “we gotta at least give them a shower.”

Cuyahoga County, Ohio

The Cuyahoga County Jail doesn’t have enough showers. The jail has been cited by the Ohio Bureau of Adult Detention year after year for not meeting the state’s standard of one shower for every dozen beds.

From June 2024 to June 2025, there were 334 work orders placed for malfunctioning or unusable showers, with complaints ranging from clogged drains and no water, to black mold in the shower with a leaking ceiling, according to records obtained by The Marshall Project.

Even if the jail cleared the backlog, it would still fall short of its requirement because some of its cells are holding two people, which exceeds the state’s ratio, Jennifer Ciaccia, press secretary for the Cuyahoga County Department of Communications, wrote in an email. Aging infrastructure exacerbates the strain on the jail’s plumbing system, Ciaccia added, leading to “frequent malfunctions.”

Detainees — some of whom can spend months awaiting trial — are responsible for cleaning the showers and other parts of the facility. But there is no set cleaning schedule, Ciaccia noted. Corrections officers are tasked with ensuring that the housing units are cleaned daily, and that showers are powerwashed “regularly.” Officers are required to provide residents with cleaning supplies, including solutions, mops, brooms, scrub pads, and toilet brushes.

Despite the mandate, detainees consistently complain of filthy conditions, including scratches and dirt on surfaces, disgusting sinks, and toilets caked in body fluids and grime. Staying clean is hard, they said, because the water pressure is so weak you can’t wash your hands. One detainee said he had to use the same spoon for every meal, cleaning it in the sink attached to his toilet.

In August, Tianetta Carter spent several days in jail after being arrested for a domestic violence charge. She refused to shower, she said, because the stalls were filthy. The toilets were so dirty, she asked for menstrual pads from a corrections officer so she could clean them first. Every time she went to the bathroom, she said she had to ask a corrections officer for toilet paper, and she was held in a cell where the toilet was backed up for hours.

“No matter how much they clean it, it’s still bad,” she said. “It’s so bad.”

Hinds County, Mississippi

When court-appointed monitors walked through Hinds County’s Raymond Detention Center in 2022, they found a myriad of deplorable conditions: broken toilets and showers, empty cells used as dumpsters, mice, and people sleeping on floors in general areas, with no access to toilets. One thing particularly troubled a monitor about the cleanliness of a housing unit: Two men had been found covered in feces.

Three years later — even though the dumpster cells have been cleaned up and the most problematic housing unit is closed — monitors said the jail is getting worse.

“Overall, the Hinds County jail system has regressed over the past two-and-a-half years,” monitor David Parrish said in an August court hearing.

People detained there described vile conditions: smells of sewage, limited access to showers, toilets and laundry facilities.

The jail’s sanitation problem is just one symptom of larger operational failures, said Kathryn Bryan, who was the jail’s administrator in 2021. It is a reflection of the jail’s many other issues: overcrowding, understaffing, gang control and crumbling infrastructure. The jail has a well-documented history of negligence. In October, a court-appointed federal receiver took control to manage the jail’s budget and day-to-day operations.

Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones declined to comment on the conditions, citing pending litigation and the incoming receivership.

“There’s nothing clean about that place,” said Tedrick Francois, who spent two weeks in jail this summer, after being arrested for allegedly attempting to deposit the same checks more than once. He was first held for hours in a dark holding cell with about 20 others. He remembers a broken toilet overflowing and spilling human waste onto the floor. His housing unit had one functioning shower, the monitoring report found.

Reports by court-appointed monitors say the jail is severely understaffed, with 71 corrections officers, about one-third of the number necessary to operate the facility. In the gaps, incarcerated people take control. “Pod bosses” control the distribution of food, hygiene products, and in some cases, who gets a cell, the monitors found.

“For the most part, there are no rules,” Francois said. “It’s the wild, wild west in there.”

That was the situation facing Mississippi State coach Jeff Lebby Saturday at Florida. Lebby chose to run another play and Florida intercepted a pass to sew up a two-point victory. The Clevelands discuss the pros and cons of the strategy – and a whole lot more college football, high school football, the Saints and college golf.

Stream all episodes here.

In a city with historic, persisting challenges – from infrastructure woes to a dwindling tax base – how do you measure the success of a new mayor’s first 100 days in office?

“Whether we get things done,” Jackson Mayor John Horhn said after his State of the City address Tuesday. “ I think there’s a visible difference in how the city is starting to look. Things are cleaner. They’re not totally where we want to be by far, but we’re starting to see signs that the city is pushing itself up. Our homicide rate is down. It’s not down to where we want it to be, but it’s 40% down from this time last year. We have investors that are looking at Jackson in ways that they haven’t looked at it before.”

In his speech at the downtown Mississippi Museum of Art garden, Horhn praised his “crackerjack staff” and the work of his appointments to several task forces formed at the start of his administration. He touted the $125 million secured for road resurfacing and the work that began Monday to fix water leaks at the Jackson Zoo. 

“ We must right size Jackson for today. This city was built for a quarter of a million people, but it’s home to 144,000 citizens now. That gives us open space, and that’s an opportunity,” Horhn said, citing 325 blight elimination cases the city has worked on in recent months. “ I believe it’s time we reimagine our vacant and dilapidated spaces as opportunities.”

Horhn, a Democrat, promised during his mayoral campaign to return basic functionality to city services. Robert Gibbs, one of Horhn’s major supporters and the chair of his transition team, told Mississippi Today shortly before Horhn took office that evidence of the mayor’s abilities would come by way of cleared up rights-of-way and filled potholes.

“We gotta clean up the city. I think that’s something we can do in 30 days,” Gibbs said in June.

He cited cutting back trees and vegetation that hang over neighborhoods and block stop signs, making for hazardous intersections, and efforts to fill potholes within 72 hours of them being reported.

“I think if people see basic services restored, their confidence that we’re going to do the bigger projects will happen,” Gibbs said. “But those are some things that we can tackle. Now, what I don’t know is do we have the tools to do it?”

Since Horhn took office, the city has filled more than 4,000 potholes, an average of 38 each day, and made about 1,800 patches to streets, according to figures Chief Administrative Officer Pieter Teeuwissen provided Mississippi Today. This does not reflect a concerted escalation in street repairs. The city was filling an average of 40 potholes a day in the three months before Horhn took office, according to Teeuwissen’s numbers.

To aid this work, the city recently secured the funds from a $40 million bond issue, which WLBT reported had been in the works for nearly two years, to repair ditches, drainage, streets and bridges.

But deploying city crews to fix roadways is just a sliver of what’s on Horhn’s plate. He’s also had crises to manage. In his first month in office, the federally-appointed third-party manager of the city’s water system, JXN Water, began shutting off water to apartment complexes with past due bills, displacing families. 

Horhn formed a Housing Task Force to study solutions to this and other housing dilemmas across the city. 

 ”No landlord should put a family in harm’s way or cut off basic services,” Horhn said. “We’re committed to making sure residents of Jackson have access to water and a safe home, and we’re taking actions to support them and encourage all landlords to do right by their tenants.”

Meanwhile, Horhn and city leaders have worked to oppose a rate hike for water customers that JXN Water says is necessary to bring financial stability to the utility. 

In Horhn’s second month, Jackson Police Department’s chief stepped down, prompting a national search to replace him, which hasn’t yet been completed. 

“It became clear that time isn’t the measure that matters most. The process is. What counts is getting this decision right, not getting it fast,” Horhn said. 

Horhn also reinstituted the Jackson Civil Service Commission, a group that ensures fair hiring practices and which had been inactive for some time.

Horhn, who previously served in the state Senate, has made inroads with state leaders. In both legislative chambers, lawmakers are convening to study policy proposals to improve Jackson. In Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann’s recent announcement of a new Senate committee focused on economic development in Jackson, he described the city as “entering a new chapter” after having battled with the previous administration.

 Hosemann’s announcement “represents an important step forward for both Jackson and the state of Mississippi,” Horhn said. “I want to thank him and our state senators, along with Speaker (Jason) White and members of the house for their leadership, their willingness to support the potential that exists in Jackson, Mississippi.”

Also, Horhn said in his address, the state’s economic development agency Mississippi Development Authority has for the first time assigned a dedicated project officer to Jackson, meaning “ we’re gonna have someone on the ground, part of our team, whose sole job is to ensure that opportunity doesn’t pass our city by.”

“ This kind of partnership is what progress looks like, city and state working hand-in-hand to deliver results for the people of Jackson,” Horhn said. 

The Jackson City Council, which gained three new members in July, has worked in conjunction with the new administration, including confirming Horhn’s nine cabinet appointments, reinstating a generally ineffectual youth curfew, adopting a resolution supporting the city taking back control of its water system and passing a roughly flat budget of $337 million.

While Horhn hopes to advance larger projects on Jackson’s horizon, such as the Pearl River flood control project, which is expected to spawn economic development and has raised talks of a potential casino, he’s also ushering in progress on existing projects, like the museum trail connection to downtown, or launching new, smaller-scale efforts like a volunteer clean-up effort called CleanJXN Gateway Beautification Day, which took place Saturday. 

What’s next? Horhn cited an in-the-works market value analysis “to take a clear-eyed look at where we are today,” including assessing the city’s assets, the conditions of its housing stock, schools, roads, and water and sewer, which he said will be used as the foundation of a citywide comprehensive plan.

“ There is an old saying that he who fails to plan plans to fail. Jackson must plan. Not out of a fear of failure, but out of a deep belief in our future,” Horhn said.

Abrupt terminations at the Mississippi Department of Health earlier this month removed the directors of about a dozen preventive health programs from their posts, according to staff members who were laid off. 

The layoffs included roughly 20 people in the Offices of Preventive Health and Health Disparities, many of whom were program leaders. Some worked at the health department for nearly two decades. 

Terminated directors included those responsible for leading chronic disease prevention, diabetes, cardiovascular health, cancer, school health, tobacco control, injury and violence prevention, heart disease and stroke prevention, and oral health programs, among others. 

Mississippi has one of the highest rates of preventable diseases in the country, including heart disease, hypertension, obesity and diabetes. These conditions disproportionately affect Black Mississippians, and contribute to the state’s high infant and maternal mortality rates. 

Selma Kelly-Alford is among the agency’s leaders who was fired. The bureau director for language access at the health department, Kelly-Alford was laid off on Oct. 1 after five years working at the agency. 

“We were making a great impact,” she said. “…Not all the work happens in the clinic. You know, in order to educate people, we need to learn how to really target those communities appropriately.”

Staff members were also laid off in the department’s Strategic Planning and Response division, formerly the Office of Emergency Preparedness, amounting to a total of about 30 layoffs, said spokesperson Greg Flynn. 

The decision to lay off staff members was made largely due to federal funding reductions, State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney said after the Board of Health meeting Oct. 8. 

He also estimated that about 150 contract employees were ordered to stop their work as a result of the ongoing federal government shutdown. Non-essential, federally funded contract workers have since been terminated, Flynn told Mississippi Today. 

The reorganization will save the agency about $20 million, Edney said Oct. 8. That figure includes staff layoffs, termination of contract workers and paused federally funded contracts with subgrantees, according to Flynn. 

The changes will not affect the agency’s core public health work or the Women Infants and Children’s (WIC) Nutrition program, Edney said. 

In spite of the federal funding reductions it faces, the health department does not plan to ask for a funding increase from the state Legislature next year. 

Edney said he hopes the staffing changes will result in the agency’s preventive health division providing more direct services to Mississippians on Oct. 8.

“Our programmatic areas should be there to make things better and improve outcomes,” he said. “When I’m not seeing improved outcomes, there will be changes, and I have not seen improved outcomes.” 

The Offices of Preventive Health and Health Disparities host a range of programs to improve the health of Mississippians and address inequalities in the health department’s policies and procedures, according to the health department’s website. 

Programs the offices administer include providing free rides to county health department appointments, training community health workers, educating the public on chronic disease prevention, and providing interpretive services to people with limited proficiency in English receiving agency services. 

Kelly-Alford said she worries the staffing reductions – which removed the employees most familiar with the agency’s preventive health programs – could undermine the initiatives she and others have developed.

“Will it stand?” she said. “Will somebody else come and pick up the pieces?” 

The agency has no concerns about its ability to continue preventive health work, Flynn said. 

The health department provided few language services in 2019 when Kelly-Aford joined as coordinator for the language access program, she said. 

She said she has spent the last five years “building it up, creating the program and really working to make sure that the community was really obtaining those benefits.”

Organizations that receive federal funds are required to provide people with limited English proficiency “meaningful access” to programs and services under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. During her tenure, the division established a language line to provide interpretive services to county health departments, certified about 130 interpreters and implemented a language access plan, she said. 

Today, health department providers use about 20,000 minutes of interpretive services each month to serve patients, she said. Interpreters trained by the health department serve their communities in hospitals, social work settings and schools.  

“We’ve come such a long way,” she said, noting that the agency was not in compliance with Title VI regulations when she began.

Kelly-Alford was not given a reason for her termination on Oct. 1. 

About a week before the layoffs, a report published by the Office of State Auditor Shad White alleged the health department failed to properly monitor $290,000 worth of taxpayer funds directed to the Office of Preventive Health and Health Equity.

“The state must stop handing taxpayer dollars to nonprofits with vague goals and then failing to monitor what these nonprofits do with it,” said White in a released statement. “The government is wasting so much money.”

Edney has not named the audit as a reason for the layoffs publicly. But a person outside the department who was briefed on the firings and spoke to Mississippi Today under the condition of anonymity to discuss internal agency decisions previously said the downsizing was partially linked to issues outlined in the report. 

Kelly-Alford said her work did not overlap with the grants mentioned in the report. She said it felt important to speak up to avoid being associated with alleged mishandling of federal funds. 

“I’ve worked hard to build my name,” she said. 

At the Oct. 8 press conference, Dr. Edney said the department should do more to eliminate health disparities and improve population health outcomes than simply process federal grants. 

“The area should be doing a better job taking care of people and not just taking care of grants,” he said.

Health department subgrants are not the responsibility of a single person. Several staff members must approve them before they are signed off by Edney, including those cited in the auditor’s report. 

Kelly-Alford said her termination at the health department does not diminish her commitment to providing language access services to Mississippians. She said she is strategizing on how to continue to provide interpreter training to the bilingual community. 

A huge part of public health is preventive health, she said, which includes educating providers and patients about available resources and implementing programs that deliver services to communities. 

“Without it, you’re kind of going in a circle.” 

SAUCIER — Many of the most accomplished college golfers in America gathered here over the weekend for the Fallen Oak Collegiate Invitational. So, naturally, the individual champion hails from about 3,700 miles away in Gardabaer, Iceland.

LSU sophomore Gunnlaugur Arni Sveinsson, the world’s No. 11 ranked amateur golfer, shot rounds of 66, 70 and 67 for a 54-hole total of 13-under-par 203 for the victory, one shot better than Alabama’s William Jennings.

Tenth-ranked LSU and No. 17 Alabama tied for the team championship of the 14-team Fallen Oak Collegiate Golf Championship on Monday, but the biggest winner may have been the tournament itself, which continues to grow in stature and popularity in only its third year. The tournament is tri-hosted by Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Southern Miss.

Played over three days amid gloriously sunny and mild autumn weather on one of the most spectacular golf courses anywhere, the tournament drew raves from coaches and players from some of the top teams across the nation. Said Iowa coach Tyler Stith, “I have been coaching college golf for 15 years and this one of the best tournaments I’ve ever been a part of. The tournament operations and hospitality is first-class and the golf course itself is as good as any we play in college golf. This is our third year to play here, and I sure hope we get invited back.”

Ole Miss, the highest-ranked team in the tournament at No. 4 in the country, finished fifth the tournament – an indication of the quality of the competition. Mississippi State finished ninth, three shots ahead of Southern Miss, which finished 11th.

Alabama came from 12 shots behind In the final round to share the team championship with LSU. Both teams finished 32-under par, three shots better than Big 10 golf power Illinois.

As most college golf tournaments do these days, the tournament had a huge international flavor. Matthew Dodd-Berry, who finished fourth, is from England. Mississippi State’s Ugh Malcor, who tied for 18th, is French. Southern Miss’s Matthew Javier, his team’s medalist at even par, is a member of the Canadian national amateur team and qualified for the Canadian Open on the PGA TOUR this past June.

While disappointed with his team’s fifth-place finish, Ole Miss coach Chris Malloy was thrilled with the success of the Fallen Oak event.

“This has definitely become one of the top four or five regular season golf tournaments in the country,” Malloy said. “Three years ago, we were asking teams to come here. Now, we have a waiting list to get here, including some of the highest-ranked teams in the country. This tournament is only going to get bigger and better.”

2024 NCAA individual champion Michael La Sasso shot 3-under-par for the tournament to finish 18th, a shot behind teammates Tom Fischer and Cameron Tankersley.

Said Malloy, “We just had a really bad second round on Sunday and never could really get it back together to make a run in the final round.”

Mississippi State was led by San Antonio senior Garrett Endicott, who finished 13th individually with a 4-under-par total. The Bulldogs pretty much shot themselves out of the competition with a 6-over par round on Saturday but were 4-under for the last two rounds.

Said State coach Dusty Smith, “We did a great job fighting this week. It wasn’t the start we needed in round one, but I was proud of the resilience we showed.”

Southern Miss coach Eddie Brescher, whose team won two tournaments earlier in the fall, believes his Golden Eagles are capable of qualifying for the NCAA Championship for the first time in school history next spring.

“We’re not that far away,” Brescher said. “We played a quality fall schedule and finished 54-17 against the teams we competed against. We didn’t have our best stuff this weekend, but we showed in the second round what we’re capable of when we finished 5-under-par for the day on one of the hardest courses around. I really, really like my team.”

Walker Wise of Tupelo finished with a 3-over-par total for USM, followed by Mississippi Amateur champion Jake Moffitt, who finished at 5-over despite a final round 76

Southern Miss and Mississippi State have completed their fall seasons, while Ole Miss will compete next week in the East Lake Cup at famed East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.

•••

Final Fallen Oak team standings: 1. LSU and Alabama, 32-under-par; 3. Illinois, 29-under, 4. Arkansas, 18-under; 5. Ole Miss, 15-under; 6. Tennessee, 14-under; 7. UNLV, 3-uunder; 8. Georgia 1-under; 9. Mississippi State, 2-over; 10. Chattanooga, 3-over; 11. Southern Miss, 5-over; 12. Wisconsin, 8-over; 13. Iowa, 17-over; 14. South Carolina, 21-over.

Editor’s note: October is National Drug Prevention Month, making an essay on the ongoing opioid epidemic both timely and pertinent. Mississippi Today Ideas publishes guest essays on the issues impacting the state.

On April 6th, 2015, I discovered my son, Jeffrey, non-responsive in his living room. I called 911 then performed CPR until paramedics arrived. Two hours later, the emergency room doctor confirmed our greatest fear. He was 24 years old and the cause of death was a heroin/fentanyl overdose.

I frequently speak in recovery centers as a father who witnessed his son struggle through a decade of opioid addiction that began in junior high.

In my son, I saw the shame he felt as a result of his addiction and the actions he felt he had to take to keep the dope sickness at bay. The impact of Jeffrey’s addiction on our family was significant then, and it continues to this day.

The safeguards in place to protect Americans from faulty products failed Jeffrey and our family. Addictive opioids were irresponsibly manufactured and distributed years after those profiting knew their actions were costing American lives and destroying families.

I was pleased to learn of the national opioid settlements directing those companies that practiced business unscrupulously to pay into a fund to be used to remediate some of the harms. I was saddened to learn over $63 million of those funds would be directed to Mississippi cities and counties with absolutely no stipulation that they be spent to remediate the opioid epidemic. These local governments are free to patch potholes with these funds if they so choose.

The good news is that as of now, most funds remain unspent, and there’s time to hold decision makers accountable on how they’re spent. The bad news is that hundreds more Mississippians have fallen victim to the opioid epidemic as those funds sat idle in city and county bank accounts.

At Mayor Toby Barker’s request, I formed a citizens advisory group to offer the city of Hattiesburg guidance on how to invest our funds. The committee included a university dean, the director of two area drug rehabilitation centers, a local harm reduction advocate, our local city homeless coordinator, directors of local sober living homes, people in recovery and surviving family members, like myself, who have lost loved ones to overdose.

We agreed on the following six strategies that we believe would best remediate the harms of the opioid epidemic.

Greater public access to no-cost naloxone (Narcan) is the number one reason for the recent decline in overdose death rates. We suggested our city provide overdose reversal kits anywhere they currently provide an automatic external defibrillator. We also asked that events be held where naloxone is distributed to the public along with overdose reversal training. 

The gold standard in treating opioid addiction is the use of medicated assisted treatment drugs (MAT). These drugs help manage cravings, increasing the chance of obtaining long term recovery. Making MAT available in local jails reduces the chance of overdose following discharge and reduces recidivism. We recommended the city explore using the employee clinic as a point of distribution of MAT and that they encourage the local jail to adopt MAT.

The chances of recovering from opioid addiction are increased if a person can move directly into a sober living environment following their treatment stay. If a tree surgeon removes a dying tree from the forest and nurses it back to health in a greenhouse then returns it to the same place where it acquired the disease, the tree’s chances of recovering are slim.

Sober living homes are few in number and the cost of moving into one often exceeds the resources of the person new to sobriety. We suggested the city consider making any vacant housing properties in their possession available to nonprofits experienced in operating sober living homes. We also suggested the city consider paying the move-in deposit and first month’s rent for city residents needing a sober living environment.

The Oxford House model is a worldwide sober living concept where residential homes are rented and shared by as many as eight individuals who split expenses making the arrangement cost effective while holding each other accountable in their personal recovery.

Lack of transportation is another obstacle to long-term recovery. By offering transit passes, the city could help those in recovery find and keep jobs and make the recovery meetings they need to attend. Funds also could be used to transport a resident to a recovery center and to return them home when they complete their stay.

We suggested the city look at ways to remove other small but significant obstacles to recovery, such as assisting those needing a driving license reinstated or obtaining a state-issued ID.

We asked the city to consider removing the “felony conviction” box from their job applications. This box of shame is enough to keep some otherwise well qualified applicants from applying for employment.

Lastly, we requested the city consider constructing a memorial to commemorate the lives of all our residents lost to overdose. It would allow grieving family members to gather to remember those lost and in doing so eradicate the unfair stigma of this disease.

What our group did not ask for was any financial consideration to us personally to compensate us for our pain and suffering. And I’ve yet to hear of any talks of such a settlement being directed at surviving family members.

The only thing we want to see from this settlement is for your family not to endure the losses we’ve endured.

Many elected officials will be tempted to look at these funds as a windfall and will spend them with little regard for the suffering and loss that created this opportunity. I encourage you to visit your city council and board of supervisors and implore them to do the right thing. 

Form your own local advisory group, or simply take the suggestions our group has provided for you and offer them to your elected leaders.

Rather than patching potholes, let’s insist on building pathways to recovery.

Bio: James Moore, a small business owner in Hattiesburg, has been an advocate on issues related to drug use and prevention since the overdose death of his son, Jeffrey, in 2015. He is a former alderman for the city of Petal and current member of a task force formed by Hattiesburg Mayor Toby Barker to offer suggestions on how the city can battle the opioid crisis. He also is on the statewide Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council.