Editor’s note: Christopher Jolivette, a sophomore at Mississippi State University and Birmingham native, offers his perspective on the national controversy surrounding DEI. Jolivette is active in college life and among other activities and accomplishments is a presidential scholar and drum major for the Famous Maroon Band.
Why is our country afraid of race? If that is an unfair question, I have to only wonder why? The answer should be an emphatic “no, we embrace it” but the past few weeks have proven the opposite true.
For the past few months, a group of peers and I have been organizing a Black History Month event celebrating 65 years of integration at our university and our journey from a racial division to inclusivity. Last week, just before we were set to put on our event, the U.S. Department of Education released one of the most charged statements on race in recent memory. In it, they acknowledge the obvious: that discrimination on the basis of race, color or origin is reprehensible. Yet, they go on to fervently condemn schools for having the audacity to educate their students on structural racism, i.e., slavery, segregation and civil rights. How dare educators, the DoEd asks, teach students about our racialized past, the struggle for freedom and our nation’s inability to live up to its tenet of justice for all?
At the same time the DoEd released this letter claiming that DEI “smuggl[es] racial stereotypes” into the classroom, millions of Americans continue to be afflicted by the very issue that DEI initiatives aimed to fix: the nation’s growing opportunity gap. In spite of politicized cries of discrimination against low-income white families, the fact remains that 21% of Black Americans compared to just 8% of white Americans live below the poverty line according to the Department of Commerce. Only 25.7% of Black Americans make up high-earning jobs compared to 50.4% of white Americans, and 45% of Black students receive no formal education beyond high school and only 15% obtain a bachelor’s degree. Clearly, there is a gap in the options and opportunities being given to Black Americans.
The notion that equal opportunity regardless of race exists in America is patently false. Even when marginalized groups are able to attain advanced degrees, at every level of educational attainment, Black and Hispanic Americans are less likely to receive the same paying job as their white counterparts (Georgetown). Our “disadvantaged” and “low-income families” being affected by gaps in opportunity are not those who make up the highest earning jobs. It’s those who receive no formal education beyond high school, those who earn the least and those whose demographic background prevents them from receiving the same opportunities as their peers. The fact remains that diverse communities continue to be afflicted by historically racist practices in employment and schooling.
Fortunately, I am one of those lucky few Black Americans able to attend college. I am one of the lucky few Black Americans who will have the chance to enter a higher-earning position. I am one of the lucky few Black Americans raised in a middle-class family. But the fact that I am only one of a handful should be a blatant call to our policy makers that there is something amiss in our system.
The reality is that DEI, a chapter in our nation’s history that aimed to rectify the transgressions of our past, is coming to a close not because we have moved past racism, but because we are engulfed in it. The DoEd’s Feb. 14th statement, filled with racially charged anti-inclusionary language, is tangible evidence that our nation has not grappled with the “darker period in this country’s history” they claim to fight against. Their statement does little to fix our nation’s problems, misrepresents nationwide efforts to rectify systemic racism and showcases the extent of our country’s deep-seeded racism.
But our government doesn’t see it that way—they actively ignore my race. Needless to say, the funding for our Black History Month event was cut, taken away for fear of being targeted by the government’s attacks on diversity in higher education. I can only imagine what else we will lose in the future. I’m left with distasteful questions: does the end of DEI mean erasing the parts of myself which are entrenched in my identity? Am I supposed to hide my skin tone so as to not offend my peers whose relationship with race is less matured? Am I supposed to segregate my skin from my personhood so that I can yield to the anti-diversity policies of our nation? At this point, I fear that I might.
I am tired of being afraid of our national boogieman, tired of appeasing so as to not offend and tired of having to prove my racialized experience to the individuals perpetuating it. Our country has not outrun racism, and recent assaults on DEI show just how far we have to go.
OXFORD — A judge denied bond Thursday for the University of Mississippi graduate who is accused of killing Jimmie “Jay” Lee, a well-known member of the LGBTQ+ community in this north Mississippi college, and hiding his body.
Lafayette County Circuit Court Judge Kelly Luther made the decision during Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr.’s bond hearing, which was held on the heels of the discovery of Lee’s body. Despite the finding, the prosecution also announced that it would not seek the death penalty, just as it had declined to during last year’s trial that resulted in an 11-1 hung jury.
“The pressure on Mr. Herrington has gotten worse,” Luther said. “The justification for not showing up is about as high as it can get. The only thing higher is if the state had said ‘we’re gonna seek the death penalty.’”
Though Herrington, a son of a prominent church family in Grenada, had previously been out on bond, he will now remain in jail pending trial. The prosecution recently secured a new indictment against Herrington for capital murder and hiding Lee’s remains, which were found in a well-known dumping ground in Carroll County, 19 minutes from Herrington’s family home, wrapped in moving blankets and duct tape and hidden among mattresses and tires.
Lee was found with a silk bonnet, which evidence shows Lee had worn when he returned to Herrington’s home the morning he went missing on July 8, 2022.
Herrington’s new counsel, Aafram Sellers, a criminal attorney from the Jackson area, said he was too new to the case to comment on the possibility of a plea deal. But he made several pointed arguments against the state’s move to revoke Herrington’s bond, calling it an attempt “to be punitive in nature when the presumption still remains innocent until proven guilty.”
Before making his decision, Luther asked the prosecution, who had previously agreed to give Herrington a bond in 2022, “what’s changed since then?”
Lafayette County District Attorney Ben Creekmore responded that the state now had more evidence, when previously, the case “was mostly circumstantial evidence.”
“Now they want to hold us to that same agreement when the situation has changed,” Creekmore said. “We tried the case. … Everyone knows it was an 11-1 finding of guilt on capital murder.”
“It’s not a no-body homicide this time,” he added.
This prompted Sellers to accuse the prosecution of attempting to taint a future jury, because the court had not established the jury’s split.
“Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t mean it’s a fact,” Sellers said.
Prior to discussing Herrington’s bond, Luther heard arguments on Sellers’ motion to dismiss Herrington’s new charge of evidence tampering for hiding Lee’s body. Sellers argued the charge violated the statute of limitations because law enforcement knew, by dint of not finding Lee’s body at the alleged crime scene, that evidence tampering had occurred, so Herrington should have been charged with that crime back in 2022.
“If there is a gun here that is a murder weapon and I walk out of here and leave and they never find it, but they know a murder happened in this courtroom, they know I moved evidence on today’s date,” Sellers said. “It’s not hard to contemplate that.”
This led Luther, who said he was not prepared to rule, to ask both parties to provide him with cases establishing a legal precedent in Mississippi.
Federal immigration officials will soon be able to house an additional 250 people at a privately run prison in the Delta.
Tennessee-based CoreCivic announced Thursday that it has entered contract modifications for the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, which has held U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees for years.
“We are entering a period where our government partners, particularly our federal government partners, are expected to have increased demand,” Damon T. Hininger, CoreCivic’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “We anticipate additional contracting activity that will help satisfy their growing needs.”
On Thursday, CoreCivic also announced contract modifications to add a nearly 800-detainee capacity at three other facilities it operates: Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, Nevada Southern Detention Center and Cimarron Correctional Facility in Oklahoma.
Ocean Springs homeowners on Wednesday appealed a federal court’s decision to dismiss their lawsuit against the city. The dispute stems from the city’s 2023 proposed urban renewal plan that would have permanently labeled some properties as “slum” or “blighted.”
While later that year the city voted against the plan after receiving public pushback, as the Sun Herald reported, the plaintiffs maintain that the state code behind the city’s plan violates their constitutional right to due process. They also argue that there’s nothing stopping the city of Ocean Springs, whose mayor, Kenny Holloway, supported the plan, from reintroducing the idea down the road.
Property owner Marie Cochran poses for a portrait after expressing her concerns with Ocean Springs’ proposed Urban Renewal Plan on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
In January, U.S. District Judge Taylor McNeel granted the city’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the appropriate way to contest the urban renewal plan was by appealing to their locally elected officials.
“This is somewhat evident by how the Plaintiffs’ complaints to their elected leaders have resulted in their properties being removed from the urban renewal area,” McNeel wrote in his opinion. “In a way, the Plaintiffs have already won.”
Under Mississippi law, cities are not required to notify owners of properties that they label “blighted,” a distinction that doesn’t go away. On top of that, those property owners only have 10 days to challenge the designation, a limitation that doesn’t exist in most states, an attorney for the plaintiffs told Mississippi Today in 2023. In 2023, property owners whose land was labeled “blighted” in the Ocean Springs urban renewal plan didn’t know about the designation until months later.
A sign that expresses opposition to Ocean Springs’ proposed Urban Renewal Plan is seen in the front yard of a home in Ocean Springs, Miss., Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
While Holloway, who also owns a real estate and development company, maintained that the city never wanted to forcibly take anyone’s property, a “blight” designation would have allowed the city to do just that through eminent domain.
The nonprofit Institute for Justice represents the five homeowners and church that filed the suit in Wednesday’s appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Mississippi governments cannot brand neighborhoods as slums in secret,” Dana Berliner, an attorney at the institute, said in a written statement. “Obviously telling a person about something when it’s too late to do anything is not the meaningful opportunity to be heard that the U.S. Constitution’s Due Process Clause requires.”
The nonprofit said it plans to make oral arguments in the New Orleans court later this year.
Mississippi’s only academic medical center hopes to gain a national research designation that could improve outcomes for cancer patients in the state with the highest cancer mortality rate in the country.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center has sought National Cancer Institute designation since 2012, a process it then expected to take five years, the Jackson Free Press reported at the time. Over a decade later, the medical center is again in the early stages of readying itself for an application.
“This is the top priority of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, with staunch support from executive leadership,” said Patrice Guilfoyle, a spokesperson for UMMC.
Guilfoyle declined to say what has prevented the cancer center from reaching its goal over the past 13 years beyond citing changes in leadership and the COVID-19 pandemic. But Mississippi Today spoke with former faculty members who said UMMC previously closed a critical program and lacked the institutional commitment necessary to achieve the status.
The National Cancer Institute, a federal agency run by the National Institutes of Health, recognizes cancer centers that meet rigorous requirements for laboratory and clinical research and translate scientific knowledge into innovative treatments for patients. They also provide training for the next generation of cancer-care professionals and perform outreach to the community. Designated centers receive a support grant from the agency and have access to early clinical trials.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in Mississippi, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mississippi’s cancer death rate is 25% higher than the national average.
Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the UMMC School of Medicine, wrote in 2022 that gaining the designation was an “ethical imperative.”
She spoke again of its importance at a recent legislative budget hearing for the medical center.
Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, answers questions during a Health Affairs Committee meeting at the Universities Center in Ridgeland, Miss., Wednesday, January 18, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
“With Mississippi’s health outcomes in cancer being as terrible as they are, we are committed to working towards this NCI designation,” said Woodward Jan. 14. “It is the thing that will change cancer outcomes in Mississippi.”
There are 72 NCI designated centers nationwide, but none in Mississippi, Louisiana or Arkansas. Cancer patients in Mississippi seeking care at a designated center must travel to Memphis, Birmingham, Dallas or Houston. The designation was first introduced in the 1970s as a part of a national initiative to increase Americans’ access to cutting-edge cancer treatment.
Achieving the designation will be a “long, heavy lift,” that could take as long as a decade, said Dr. Rodney Rocconi, who has served as director of UMMC’s cancer center since 2023. It will require the center to recruit faculty, expand its research capacity and demonstrate strong programming in community outreach and prevention.
The application process is like an “ultra marathon,” said Dr. Barry Sleckman, the director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of the nation’s first-ever NCI designated cancer centers and the only one in Alabama.
The state Legislature increased its appropriation for the cancer center to $9 million for the current fiscal year – a nearly $5 million increase. The additional funding is being used for research infrastructure, clinical trials and to recruit researchers.
UMMC has already made significant progress recruiting research faculty, according to Rocconi. In the past year, it has hired 14 faculty members of the 30 he estimates will be necessary to strengthen the center’s research programs and amass the requisite level of federal research grant funding for an application.
Many of the hired faculty members bring federal research grants with them, said Rocconi. A strong NCI designation application requires a cancer center to hold $10 million in cancer-related research funding, though some experts suggest twice that amount is needed.
UMMC falls short of that benchmark. UMMC currently has $3.8 million worth of active federal National Institutes of Health cancer-related research grants, one major source of peer-reviewed cancer research funding, according to publicly available data. Just $500,000 of that funding comes from the National Cancer Institute itself, the most coveted funding source for aspiring NCI-designated cancer centers.
These federal grants could be reduced due to a recent Trump administration policy that would cut the portion of National Institutes of Health grant funding available for overhead costs. The change has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
Dr. John Ruckdeschel served as the director of UMMC’s Cancer Center and Research Institute from 2017 to 2020. He previously led Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa to gain NCI designation in 1998 in seven years and helped the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Center in Detroit regain its NCI status.
He hoped to do the same at UMMC, but retired in 2020 after becoming frustrated by what he said was the medical center leadership’s lack of support and funding aimed at helping the cancer center achieve the designation. The COVID-19 pandemic created another hurdle, one Ruckdeschel acknowledges was not the fault of the medical center.
“It is, in fact, difficult to see that there is a genuine institutional commitment to cancer care and cancer research at UMMC,” he wrote in his resignation letter in 2020.
The year he joined UMMC, the Legislature slashed its appropriation for the cancer center from $5 million to $4.25 million. Facing this financial setback, UMMC depended heavily on researchers’ grant funding to support the cancer center but did not invest sufficient resources to retain faculty members and keep an essential program open, Ruckdeschel said.
Grant funding rarely covers the costs of researchers’ salaries and laboratories, Ruckdeschel wrote in a 2020 article about UMMC’s strategy for achieving NCI designation. So if more scientists are hired – even if they bring federal grants with them – the institution must dedicate resources to the center.
“You have to make a pretty major commitment from the University,” Ruckdeschel said. “And they’ve just never been willing to do that.”
NCI-designated centers are required to have community outreach and engagement programming, which UMMC plans to house in the School of Population Health. The cancer center is currently in the process of hiring population health researchers who will direct outreach and engagement efforts, Rocconi said.
However, in 2021 medical center leadership shuttered a program that would have fulfilled that requirement. The program focused on increasing cancer screenings, researching disparities in access to preventive care and exploring variables that impact access to cancer treatment in Mississippi, said Michael Stefanek, the former associate director of the program.
The closure means community outreach efforts must be rebuilt from scratch, said Roy Duhe, one of the program’s former faculty members. “I saw no reason to close that program,” he said.
A community outreach and engagement program is one of the more difficult requirements of a National Cancer Institute application to satisfy because it is unlikely to be funded by grants and requires significant institutional financial support, said Sleckman, the director of Alabama’s NCI-designated institution.
Guilfoyle, a spokesperson for UMMC, declined to say why the program was eliminated, but said work to increase cancer screenings and research disparities in preventive care and access to cancer treatment are ongoing at the institution.
The cancer center has outreach programming for lung cancer screenings, telehealth and chemotherapy symptom tracking.
UMMC also plans to construct a new cancer center building – a five-story, 250,000 square foot facility – that will be housed on UMMC’s main campus and facilitate more collaboration between scientific research and clinical care. The medical center initiated a $125 million capital campaign last month and received its largest-ever donation of $25 million for the building.
“The main focus and the main priority of UMMC is towards cancer,” Rocconi said. “…Our patients and our state need it.”
A House chairman killed a proposal aimed at attracting developers to build a resort and casino in the city of Jackson moments before the full chamber was set to vote on it.
House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, made a successful motion to table House Bill 1879, as its sponsor, Rep. Chris Bell, D-Jackson, was answering questions from lawmakers concerned a casino in Jackson would bring unwanted competition to casinos in their districts.
“We didn’t have the votes,” Lamar said. “We felt like it was worth a conversation. Last year it got brought up in committee and didn’t get brought out of committee. This year it made it out of committee and got brought out to the floor,” Lamar said. “Anytime private investors are willing to invest hundreds of millions in downtown Jackson, we think that’s worthy of a conversation. That’s what happened today.”
Tabling the bill caused it to die with a Wednesday deadline.
A dejected Bell walked away after and declined to speak with reporters. Earlier Wednesday, the Ways and Means Committee quickly approved his bill and sent it to the House floor.
House Bill 1879 would have granted one gaming establishment already licensed in Mississippi the legal authority to build a casino in Jackson, in exchange for a minimum capital investment of $500 million for a resort inside downtown Jackson’s Capitol Complex Improvement District.
“This is an opportunity for the city of Jackson to take advantage of opportunities that have been passed over for several years now,” Bell said. “This act provides economic stimulus to the city of Jackson and developers who want to come inside the city of Jackson.”
The measure was the latest attempt in a yearslong push by some lawmakers to clear the way for casino in the capital city. Such efforts last year fizzled quickly in the Legislature after backlash from those who fear economic disruption of existing casinos, including some lawmakers and the Mississippi Gaming and Hospitality Association.
Under current state law, casinos can only be built along the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast, or on land owned by Native Americans. The House proposal would have changed that, allowing for a casino to be built within 6,000 feet, or about one mile, of the state Capitol building.
Proponents of the legislation said the legal authority to build a casino in Jackson, the most populous city in the state at the crossroad of three interstates, would be the primary draw for developers, not tax credits.
“A casino doesn’t need money to be incentivized to come here,” said Conrad Ebner, an accountant who helped draft the proposal. “The casino will do a market analysis and ascertain that they will make money.”
But opponents, including those in the casino industry, said such a move would give one casino an unfair monopoly over the most populated area of the state.
Speaking to reporters after he killed the bill, Lamar said there were already developers interested in building a casino in Jackson, and he expected the Legislature to try again next year at passing a similar measure if the developers were still interested.
“As far as I know, the developers interested in doing this don’t have any plans to go anywhere,” Lamar said.
Those behind the proposal said the plan was not to build a box casino, but a sprawling resort as well. The resort would include retail stores, restaurants, a spa, an RV Park and a hotel with hundreds of rooms.
In a letter sent to state officials last week and obtained by Mississippi Today, Rickey Thigpen, president of the tourism organization, Visit Jackson, said projections show such a casino resort could attract over four million visitors annually. It would create over 6,722 new jobs and bring in over $70 million per year to Mississippi’s economy, he wrote.
On top of the ability to build what proponents say would be a lucrative project, the bill also would have offered financial benefits to developers.
Beyond the casino, it would have also provided tax incentives for developers to restore blighted properties in Jackson. The incentives included a 25% tax credit for building costs.
The legislation aimed to ease the anxieties of other casinos around the state, who have long feared what increased competition from a Jackson casino could mean for their bottom lines.
Under the proposal, developers reinvesting at least $100 million at existing casinos would be eligible for a 10% tax credit, which could be claimed over three years. But the specter of economic disruption still loomed for some lawmakers who were scrambling to review the proposal on Wednesday.
House Minority Leader Robert Johnson represents Natchez, which is home to several casinos. Johnson said the state’s small casinos went through a laborious process getting off the ground, and that a Jackson casino could upend their businesses.
“I’ll do anything I can to help the city of Jackson, but I’m not going to destroy markets on the river,” Johnson said. “Jackson needs a lot of things. I don’t think a casino solves their problems.”
The legislation included a provision that would have made up for revenue shortfalls at casinos in Vicksburg. It did not do the same for Johnson’s Natchez district.
Bell, a fellow Democrat, said Jackson has been deprived of economic development opportunities enjoyed by other areas of the state.
“It’s interesting he would say that because the state of Mississippi has always swayed projects away from the city of Jackson,” Bell said. “So quite frankly, I don’t give a damn about what other casinos have issues with. I’m going to stand up for the city of Jackson. I don’t give a shit about who cares less about (Jackson).”
In 2024, another House measure to pave the way for a Jackson casino died after it caught the Senate, gaming regulators and the casino industry by surprise. That proposal appeared to give special treatment to an unnamed developer, which some speculated was tied to former Gov. Haley Barbour, who had recently pushed the casino development with state lawmakers.
This year’s bill was crafted to award the legal authority to build a casino in Jackson without favoring one developer, said Ebner, one of the proposal’s authors. Lamar told reporters that there were already unnamed developers interested.
Ebner said the measure would have been a much-needed economic boon to a struggling city.
“Unless they are going to move the capital city, the Legislature is going to have to start funding the Capital City,” Ebner said.
Another bill, sponsored by Lamar and seen at least in part as a shot at the casino lobby would have increased taxes on Mississippi casinos from 12% to 16%. It also died with Wednesday’s deadline for passage.
Voters from 10 Senate districts will have to re-decide in November special elections who should represent them in Jackson, pending court approval, under a resolution the Senate approved on Wednesday.
The chamber passed the plan 33-16. Two Democrats joined with the GOP majority to support the plan, while three Republicans joined with the Democratic minority to oppose it.
Even though voters just elected members of the Legislature in 2023, the 10 races will be held again because a three-judge federal panel determined last year that the Legislature did not create enough Black-majority districts when it redrew its districts.
The panel ordered the state to redraw the districts and create a new majority-Black district in the DeSoto County area in the Forrest County area.
Senate Rules Committee Chairman Dean Kirby, a Republican from Pearl, told senators that the newly redrawn map complies with federal law and will allow Black voters in the two areas to elect a candidate of their choice.
“It’s not a partisan ordeal,” Kirby said. “We have a court order, and we’re going to comply.”
The map creates one new majority-Black district each in DeSoto County and Forrest County, with no incumbent senator in either district. To account for this, the plan also pits two pairs of incumbents against one another in newly redrawn districts.
The proposal puts Sen. Michael McLendon, a Republican from Hernando, who is white and Sen. Reginald Jackson, a Democrat from Marks, who is Black, in the same district. The redrawn District 1 contains a Black voting-age population of 52.4%.
McLendon spoke against the proposal, arguing the process for was not transparent and it was not fair to the city of Hernando, his home city.
“I don’t want to be pushed out of here,” McLendon said.
The plan also puts Sen. Chris Johnson and Sen. John Polk, two Republicans from the Hattiesburg area, in the District 44 seat. Polk announced on the Senate floor that he would not run in the special election, making Jonson the only incumbent running in the race.
The full list of the Senate districts that were redrawn are:
Senate District 1: Sen. Michael McLendon, R-Hernando, and Sen. Reginald Jackson, D-Marks
Senate District 2: David Parker, R-Olive Branch
Senate District 10: Neil Whaley, R-Potts Camp
Senate District 11: New Senate district with no incumbent
Senate District 19: Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven
Senate District 34: Sen. Juan Barnett, D-Heidelburg
Senate District 41: Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall
Senate District 42: Sen. Robin Robinson, R-Laurel
Senate District 44: Sen. John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, Sen. Chris Johnson, R-Hattiesburg
Senate District 45: New district with no incumbent
McLendon and Sen. Derrick Simmons, a Democrat from Greenville, offered amendments that proposed revised maps, but both alternatives were rejected.
Simmons, the Senate’s Democratic leader, opposed the plan the Senate passed Thursday because he does not believe any incumbent senators should be paired in the same district.
The House earlier in the session approved a plan that redrew five districts in north Mississippi and made the House district in Chickasaw County a majority-Black district.
Sen. Kirby told reporters he believes the House and the Senate have a “gentleman’s agreement” to pass the other chambers’ plan, which has historically been the custom.
Under the legislation, the qualifying period for new elections would run from May 19 to May 30. The primary election will be held on August 5, with a potential primary runoff on September 2 and the general election on November 4.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has no direct say in legislative redistricting, so once the Legislature passes a redistricting plan, it will go back before the federal courts for approval.
In May 2023, the Mississippi Parole Board released James Williams III — 18 years after he was convicted of fatally shooting his father, James Jr., and stepmother, Cindy Lassiter Mangum. Williams had previously tried to poison them to death.
His parole faced pushback from the victims’ family, community members and lawmakers.
At the time, Zeno Magnum, whose mother was killed by Williams, decried the Parole Board’s decision. “He murdered ‘em, threw ‘em in trash bags, put them in Rubbermaid trash cans and threw ‘em out like the trash,” he said. “We are concerned not only for our personal safety, but also for the safety of anyone who may come in contact with this psychopath.”
Parole Board Chairman Jeffrey Belk defended the Parole Board’s decision, saying they received no objection from the family or others at the time — a claim that Magnum’s family disputed.
Less than five months after his parole, he got drunk and wrecked his car on Oct. 20, 2023, the same day of the Brandon-Pearl high school football game, Magnum said. “There were people everywhere. He’s very fortunate he didn’t kill anybody.”
Williams’ parole was revoked, and he returned to prison.
A month later, the Parole Board found that by violating the law, he violated a condition of his parole. Three of four members voted to return him to prison for a year, according to court records, and Belk cast the lone “no” vote.
Hinds County Circuit Judge Debra Gibbs vacated the Parole Board’s decision to return Williams to prison for at least a year for violating parole.
“Mr. Williams has already served more than ninety (90) days in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections,” the judge wrote. “Therefore – unless he is held pursuant to some other sentence or order – he SHALL BE RELEASED IMMEDIATELY from the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections and returned to parole.”
The judge agreed with Williams’ argument that his DUI misdemeanor constituted a technical violation of his parole, meaning that 90 days was the maximum period he could be imprisoned for a first-time technical violation. The judge’s decision matched a recent attorney general’s office opinion on the subject.
When word came that Williams might go free again, Cindy Mangum’s sister, Barbara Rankin, said her family set up a Sept. 16, 2024, meeting with Parole Board members, she said. “They let him out a week before we were set to go.”
Around noon Saturday, Williams met his death near Sanctuary Drive. The 39-year-old was driving his 2009 Honda Civic north on Will Stutely Drive when he collided with a 2019 GMC Sierra that contained Curtis Jones, 73, and his 72-year-old wife, Ruth, who were traveling east, according to the Mississippi Highway Patrol.
Williams was pronounced dead on the scene. Paramedics transported the couple to St. Dominic’s Hospital in Jackson. Their injuries remain unknown, and the patrol continues to investigate to determine if Williams had been intoxicated.
“The ironic thing,” Zeno Magnum said, “is if he was still in prison, he would be alive.”
The whole ordeal has been “cloaked in secrecy,” he said. “My mom was killed, and it was like pulling teeth to get information on it. It was tough even for me as her son to get information.”
Williams’ death has brought him a wide range of emotions. On one hand, he doesn’t want to celebrate the loss of a human being, he said, but on the other hand, the death “does bring my family and I a great deal of closure.”
Hundreds of thousands of poor, disabled or pregnant Mississippians could lose health care coverage if Congress slashes funding for Medicaid.
Although President Donald Trump has vowed Medicaid won’t be “touched,” the U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget resolution Tuesday that instructs the committee that oversees Medicaid and Medicare to cut $880 billion over 10 years. The cuts will help pay for Trump’s agenda on tax cuts and border reform.
The talk of such dramatic changes to the federal-state program has Mississippi lawmakers concerned – and hesitant to push expansion this year.
Proposals for Medicaid budget cuts nationwide include lowering the rate at which states are reimbursed for Medicaid services, capping the amount of money states can get per enrollee, and imposing block grants – meaning states would receive a fixed dollar amount for the program, regardless of need.
Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation, could suffer the most under some of these proposals, according to health policy experts.
Despite the state having some of the strictest eligibility requirements in the nation, pervasive poverty and poor social health determinants mean that more than 650,000 Mississippians – about half of whom are children – rely on the program for basic health care. More than half of births in Mississippi are funded by Medicaid.
“Mississippi has a relatively small population, with the lowest per capita annual income in the country, rates of chronic conditions that are consistently higher than the national average, and with around 60% of Mississippians living with multiple chronic conditions,” explained John Dillon Harris, a health care systems and policy consultant at the Center for Mississippi Health Policy. “… The result is a large Medicaid population that is very expensive to treat.”
Democratic lawmakers are also sounding the alarm about deep cuts to Medicaid. Rep. Omeria Scott, D-Laurel, said it’s something Mississippians “ought to really be afraid of.”
“If they are talking about cutting $880 billion out of the budget, Mississippi is going to be on its knees,” she said at the Democrats’ legislative press conference Tuesday.
However, since Mississippi is one of only 10 states not to expand Medicaid and draw down billions in additional federal funds, some proposed cuts wouldn’t directly affect the state’s current budget – though they would affect future enrollment.
“Mississippi isn’t drawing down as much, so that’s not going to be a direct cut to your current budget, but it’s an opportunity cost,” said Joan Alker, Medicaid expert and executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.
House Speaker Jason White brings the House of Representatives to order at the beginning of the new legislative session at the State Capitol, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025 in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Threats to slash Medicaid spending have already scared away Mississippi lawmakers from attempting expansion this year – though they have passed “dummy bills,” void of details, to keep the issue alive “should something transpire,” House Speaker Jason White said.
After a decade of squelching any debate on the issue, Mississippi House GOP leaders in 2024 pushed for legislation that would expand Medicaid to 200,000 low-income adults, as 40 other states have done. While the bills died after a saga of partisan politics, advocates were hopeful that the historic session created enough momentum to get the policy through the finish line in 2025.
Now, lawmakers fear they may have bigger problems on their hands.
“Unfortunately, we’re hearing more about what may be cuts or block grants to the Medicaid program in general that we will have to deal with as a state because there’s no denying we have a large Medicaid population – so I don’t know the chances,” White said when asked about the likelihood Medicaid expansion would be brought up this year.
Others are more certain the issue is dead this year.
“In a most practical sense, I’d say we probably won’t be doing anything this year,” Senate Medicaid Chairman Kevin Blackwell told Mississippi Today, though he added that if anything changes, lawmakers could suspend the legislative rules and bring a bill back to life late in the session.
Click the dropdown to learn more about the specific proposals that would reduce Medicaid funding:
Reducing the federal match rate
The federal government could reduce the federal matching rate, or FMAP, which determines the percentage of Medicaid costs the federal government pays to each state. How much this would affect Mississippi would depend on the language of the proposed cut.
Mississippi currently has the highest FMAP in the country at 76.9% – meaning the federal government pays for nearly 80% of Mississippians’ Medicaid coverage, while the state makes up the rest – because of the state’s high poverty rate.
One of the proposals would take away the FMAP floor. As it stands, all states receive at least a 50% FMAP, even if they “should” be receiving less, according to the per capita income formula. If that floor was removed, richer states would be affected, as their FMAP would drop below 50%. Mississippi would likely not suffer from this proposal.
Another proposal would remove the increased federal match rate of 90% that the federal government offered to newly-expanded states in the last few years. Without the increased match rate, expansion would not hold the financial favor that has made it politically palatable to Republicans in the state.
Capping benefits per enrollee
The feds could also impose what’s called a “per capita cap,” limiting the amount a state could spend on Medicaid per person. If the caps were implemented, Medicaid would only receive a certain amount of money from the federal government to cover the care of a beneficiary – regardless of his or her medical needs. States would be locked into a fixed amount based on what they have historically spent.
The fact that Mississippi has one of the lowest per person Medicaid spending would count against the state – locking it into a lower fixed budget.
Alker, the Medicaid expert from Georgetown University, says pushing expansion legislation through this year could make Mississippi more likely to receive a higher per capita budget – though it’s no guarantee.
“I’ve seen proposals that look at taking away the American Rescue Plan Act incentives, which is extra funding for states that newly come to expansion … I have seen some chatter about how one proposal is to take away those incentives, but to not take them away from states that were counting on them,” explained Alker.
“In other words, sort of grandfathering in North Carolina and South Dakota (states that expanded Medicaid in the past two years). So, if anything, it might be smart for Mississippi to do the expansion this session and lock that in.”
Imposing a block grant
Imposing block grants would be similar to per capita caps, but arguably more punishing for states since funding wouldn’t change based on enrollment growth.
Block grants would limit states’ abilities to respond to emergencies, and would especially hurt rural areas, research says.
Limiting provider tax
Mississippi is currently almost maxed out on the tax it’s allowed to impose on hospitals, which helps the state pay for its share of Medicaid spending. One option being discussed in Congress is to lower the limit of or eliminate the tax, which would mean hospitals would be reimbursed at a lower rate and there would be less state money to fund the Medicaid program.
The proposal is less likely to garner support, explained Harris, the policy consultant at the Center for Mississippi Health Policy.
“It’ll be difficult to move this particular reform through Congress since such a large number of states, both red and blue, rely on this tax to pay for their programs,” he said.
But if it did go into effect, the impact would be profound.
“The state would have to get really creative in figuring out what to tax and how in order to maintain the current level of support hospitals receive through these supplemental payments,” Harris said.
Imposing work requirements
Work requirements have long been discussed as a means of making Medicaid expansion more palatable to conservatives who view the program as “welfare.” Now, Congress may decide to impose work requirements on the regular Medicaid population.
As it stands, Mississippi has one of the country’s strictest income requirements for Medicaid. Childless adults don’t qualify, and parents must make less than 28% of the federal poverty level, a mere $7,000 annually for a family of three, to qualify. More times than not, that means that working a full-time job counts against an individual.
If the state were to keep its strict income requirements while also imposing a work requirement, it would be difficult for Mississippians to qualify for the health care program.
The red tape that a work requirement would create would also likely deter eligible Mississippians from enrolling or staying on the program.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said Mississippi lawmakers have “a leg up” since the state’s former Medicaid director recently landed a spot in Washington leading the federal Medicaid division under Trump. Hosemann has yet to say what, if anything, Snyder has told lawmakers so far, but said he expects to have “a direct commentary into the area of Medicaid” through Snyder.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann discusses a legislative tax reform plan for the state, during a press conference held at the State Capitol, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Regardless of what action the federal government decides to take, cuts of this magnitude would affect millions of low-income people across the country, not just in Mississippi.
“States will be forced to deeply cut eligibility, benefits and reduce provider rates,” Alker said in a statement published online in response to the House budget resolution outlining Medicaid costs. “These cuts will especially harm rural communities who are more reliant on Medicaid, and where hospitals are already operating on tighter margins.”
Taylor Vance, Geoff Pender and Michael Goldberg contributed to this report.
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