OurTupelo

WATER VALLEY — “I can’t believe I’m 60 years old,” said Beth Mayeaux to the friends gathered in her Water Valley home’s light-filled, eggshell blue living room. She paused, smiling, as they clapped and cheered.  

The education sales professional from Jackson thanked the assembled guests for supporting her birthday fundraiser for medical debt relief. The eight-week campaign, which ends Wednesday, raises money for north-central Mississippi’s Yalobusha and Calhoun counties. 

A glossy sign next to her proclaimed, “You gave $21,000.” The money will go to Undue Medical Debt, a national nonprofit that buys past-due medical debt from hospitals and debt collectors for a fraction of the amount patients owed. Using donations, they pay off the balances and notify recipients with a letter in the mail. 

Because the debt can be purchased cheaply, the nonprofit says each dollar donated can relieve up to $100 in medical debt. The money Mayeaux raised erased $3.2 million in medical debt, according to the organization.  

The funds from Mayeaux’s “Getting (G)older, Giving Back” campaign will help over 1,600 people, said Marisa Clemente, Undue Medical Debt’s vice president of philanthropy. It’s enough to cover the nonprofit’s already purchased debt holdings in the two counties, and additional money will go to the Mississippi Delta, where Mayeaux’s wife Robbie Fischer is from.  

In Water Valley, a town of  about 3,400, over a quarter of residents live below the poverty line. That’s more than the roughly 18% poverty rate in Mississippi, which also has among the nation’s highest rates of medical debt. 

Water Valley was a setting that made sense for Mayeaux, who  knew she wanted to do something big for her 60th birthday bash. For past decade birthdays, she had taken trips — to Paris and Champagne for her 50th, to New York for her 40th. This time, she wanted to give back to the community that had welcomed her nearly a decade ago.

She remembered having medical debt in her 20s, how a third party that bought her debt “hounded” her and how it  started impacting her credit score. Just before the COVID-19 pandemic, she learned about Undue Medical Debt. The pieces clicked. 

“It’s just so very Beth,” said Kerry O’Donoghue, a Water Valley resident who became friends with Mayeaux and Fischer soon after they moved to the area. O’Donoghue remembers first hearing about the campaign. 

“I was absolutely all in, and also furious that we live in a country where this is needed,” she said.

A big ask, and a broad imagination

Mayeaux first brought her idea to the mission committee at Church of the Nativity, the small Episocopal church where she helped start an on-site food pantry, now restocked twice a day with shelf-stable foods. She spoke in the first part of the meeting, before church treasurer Eddie Woods presented his financial report.

“When Beth finished with her presentation, she said, ‘I would like to have $3,000.’ And the room went silent,” Woods recounted at the party on Saturday.

“I was thinking, that’s a lot of money,” said the church’s senior warden, Mary Beth Pulsifer, standing beside him.

Wood smiled as he re-enacted the dramatic moment. 

“I said, ‘Well, it all comes down to finances. So in looking at the budget, I don’t see that we can do $3,000.’ And then I paused and I said, ‘I think we need to do $5,000.’” 

Cheekily, he added, “And Beth seconded the motion.”

Pulsifer talked about her motivation for supporting the campaign: imagining what it would be like to get a letter in the mail saying that your debt is erased. Another partygoer, bankruptcy paralegal Jack Barry, said he’s seen people have to declare bankruptcy due to their medical debt. 

Undue Medical Debt identifies people who earn at or below four times the federal poverty level, or $132,000 annually for a family of four, or have medical debt that exceeds 5% of their income. People don’t need to apply for relief, and face no adverse tax consequences, Clemente said. Because they buy bundled portfolios of debt and can only purchase from hospitals willing to sell to them, the organization can’t respond to individual requests for debt relief. 

Mayeaux and Fischer kicked off the campaign in August with $1,966, representing Mayeaux’s birth year. She wrote letters by hand to her network, a sizable one given that her annual Christmas card list includes some 400 people. While some donations came in larger amounts from grants, the majority were raised through individuals and neighbors in a true “people’s campaign,” she said.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever been a part of,” 71-year-old Woods said. 

Out on the spacious porch, guests mingled over bubbly beverages while Mayeaux flitted between friends. Barbara Phillips, a civil rights attorney, waved Mayeaux over and imparted a secret about her birthday gift. 

That business taken care of, she shared a recent moment when  an acquaintance in New York told her that for things to change in Mississippi was “beyond his imagination.” 

“It occurred to me, well, your imagination does not limit our reality,” said Phillips, a Virginian who grew up in Memphis but has since made Mississippi her home. 

She conjured an image of Mississippi civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, standing up in a cotton field that stretched for as far as the eye could see and imagining that she could change her world. The vision that Hamer and people that went with her to register to vote had still astonishes her, Phillips said.

For her, that spirit is reflected in efforts such as a medical debt fundraiser, where people take a larger issue into their own hands. 

“We’re doing it right here in this house in Water Valley,” she said. 

The party, which fell on Mayeaux’s actual birthday, provided a fitting finale to the monthslong campaign. “Thank y’all so much,” Mayeaux had said earlier in the living room, at the end of her toast. “Let’s just keep on drinking champagne, eating cupcakes, and erasing medical debt.” 

An hour after the stated 5 p.m. ending time, Mayeaux and Fisher waved off the last of their guests and retired with their terrier Mike to the kitchen for a dinner of frozen pizza. A half-empty basket of pink rubber eraser party favors stood by the door — a reminder of the debt that their collective efforts will wipe away. 

HATTIESBURG — Katie Herndon, curator of the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi, opens a box and pulls out several original illustrations of “Curious George.” They are as fresh and captivating as the little monkey’s mischief in the classic books by H.A. and Margret Rey.

Inside a folder, she carefully thumbs through pages to find letters between H.A. Rey and Albert Einstein, and a receipt of Rey’s contribution to the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists. 

In McCain Library’s de Grummond Manuscript Room, Herndon pulls down another box from towering stacks, lifts its lid and reveals Ezra Jack Keats’ brilliant collage art that illustrated his 1962 classic “The Snowy Day.” 

The book’s prestigious Caldecott Medal win, top prize for an illustrator in the U.S., was a first for a picture book with an African American main character and a breakthrough for minority representation in mainstream children’s publishing. “The Snowy Day” remains the most checked-out book of all time from the New York Public Library.

A more recent bequest from Diana Klemin, longtime art director at Doubleday and friend of the collection, included never-before-shown Andy Warhol originals predating his Pop Art stardom. Warhol’s sketches showed “exciting promise,” an editor noted in a letter that “most reluctantly” rejected the picture book manuscript they illustrated. A future exhibition is planned.

Charm and history often nestle side by side in the de Grummond Collection, which marks its 60th anniversary this year. 

This year also marks the 85th birthday of “Curious George,” first published in 1941. The Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson celebrated that occasion with cookies and photos with Curious George in the Kids Tent and a hands-on activity inspired by H.A. Rey’s love of the stars.

Lena de Grummond (1900-1987) started the collection in 1966 after capping a career in library science in her native Louisiana with 15 years as the state supervisor of school libraries for the Louisiana State Department of Education. During that time, she earned her doctorate in library science at Louisiana State University, graduating the same year her son got his bachelor’s degree, in 1956.

Retirement in 1965 just pushed her in a new direction. 

“She decided she wasn’t done,” Herndon said. “She didn’t actually want to stop working.”

USM was the site for her second career as a professor teaching children’s literature in the School of Library Science. Her once weekly, four-hour graduate course drew students, mostly working adults, from all over, Herndon said.

“She wanted the best for those students. She was preparing them to be future librarians, and we didn’t have a children’s collection at all.”

Their professor fixed that, with permission to found a special collection of children’s books and original manuscripts, and the persistence to work her lifetime of contacts.

“She did it the old-fashioned way, and I mean, really old-fashioned way, by writing letters,” said de Grummond Collection Curator Emeritus Ellen Ruffin.

“She started buying books,” Herndon said, “and writing to authors and illustrators of those books and saying, ‘Hey, I’m buying your books, I’m building this collection. Do you have some stuff you’re done with, that you could donate to us? If you’ve thrown it in the trash can already, send us the trash can. We’ll dig it out.’

“Her record was writing 500 a week,” Herndon said. “She was definitely a charmer, judging from these letters, and she made friends with all these people.” 

Herndon recalled a mention in one letter of a three-month visit to England, her goal to visit every author and illustrator she could find and managing to visit 35 people. “She was really putting in time with everybody.”

Ruffin recalled her interviews with de Grummond’s students for the collection’s 40th anniversary, and their tales of what a thrill it was as boxes of materials came in that included original illustrations, original manuscripts and illustrated correspondence. 

“A lot of people answered,” Herndon said. Some worried about 1966 Mississippi, segregation and the possibility that donated items could be off limits to some. “She wrote back to whoever questioned that and said, ‘I am building this for all the teachers, all the children, all the librarians in Mississippi and beyond.’”

The Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival at USM each spring started in 1968 as a way to highlight the collection. Hosted by the USM School of Library and Information Science, the event brings the best in children’s literature to campus for celebration and honors. 

The USM Medallion recognizing authors and illustrators for their total body of work and the Ezra Jack Keats Award highlighting a new picturebook author and a new illustrator for outstanding work are presented at the festival. Keats, Judy Blume and Dav Pilkey are past medallion recipients. The Keats Foundation and the de Grummond Collection co-administer the Ezra Jack Keats Award. Seeds are planted at the festival, too. 

“We get to meet new authors and illustrators at the very beginning of their careers and then, if things go the way we hope they will, we stay in touch with those people and, of course, watch their careers (reach their) zenith,” Ruffin said. “Then, they often mentioned to us that they would like their papers to come to the de Grummond collection.”

The collection’s main concentration is American and British children’s literature, historical and contemporary, but diversity is woven in from the beginning, Herndon said, with creators from China, Jamaica, Canada, Brazil and more represented.

The collection is a key resource for children’s literature scholars, for those working on biographies of authors and illustrators and for graduate students. Sometimes, aspiring illustrators come to look at original art for picture books, Herndon said, “to see how someone else did it.” Documentary filmmakers and podcasters also reach out with requests. 

It is one of North America’s leading research centers in children’s literature. Ruffin speculated that founder Lena de Grummond “would probably not be surprised, if I’m going to be honest,” she said, “because she truly was driven to create the best possible children’s literature archive that she could.” Practices and principles she started carry through to this day.

The de Grummond Collection now holds more than 1,400 original papers collections and about 250,000 books, Herndon said. 

“And, more come in every day. Literally, every day.”

The manslaughter trial for two former Capitol Police officers in the fatal shooting of a 25-year-old Jackson man ended Monday with both defendants walking free.

After nearly five hours of deliberation, a Hinds County jury deadlocked on whether to convict Michael Lamar Rhinewalt, who fired the fatal shot, and acquitted Steven Frederick Jr., who also shot his gun. 

The hung jury meant the lawyers for Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office who handled the prosecution could decide to retry Rhinewalt as soon as February, when Hinds County Circuit Judge Faye Peterson said she would be available. But the office said it would not pursue another trial.

“The benefit of the doubt goes to our law enforcement officers, and we will not seek to retry this case,” the attorney general’s office wrote in an email Monday night. “The men and women who wear the uniform have earned that.”

The defendants, who are white, told jurors they shot Jaylen Lewis, a Black man, in the head in self-defense during a traffic stop when he started to drive away. This is the first criminal trial related to the Capitol Police’s record year of shootings in 2022.

Lewis was the lone fatality in the agency’s four shootings by officers that year — the most of any law-enforcement agency in the state. The spike came as the Legislature expanded the force to cover a larger stretch of Jackson, in a controversial effort to address record homicide rates.

When the judge read the jury’s decision to acquit Frederick, the former officer appeared emotional, leaning his head down on a table while one of his attorneys, Boty McDonald, reached out to him. Neither he nor Rhinewalt responded to questions from reporters.

Frederick’s father-in-law, Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, attended the close of the trial and walked with him out of the Hinds County Courthouse in downtown Jackson. The sheriff had previously been under investigation by state and federal authorities over whether he helped his son-in-law escape a DUI charge in 2023, when Frederick totaled a Capitol Police truck — allegations the sheriff denies.

For the nine Black and three white jurors, the trial stretched into an extra third day of testimony last week after both former officers unexpectedly took the stand Friday — the fourth anniversary of Lewis’ death.

Both officers testified they shot Lewis because he turned his car toward them in an effort to run them over.

Lewis’ parents were both present for the last day of the trial. His father, William Drake, said Monday’s outcome adds to the list of unresolved questions surrounding his son’s killing.

“I wish we could get some type of conclusion today, some type of ending today,” Drake told reporters. “Unfortunately, we didn’t get that, but I still have faith that justice will be served.”

Did Lewis want to run over officers?

The prosecution’s case seemed doomed from the start as five of their law enforcement witnesses backed the former officers’ story, found evidence consistent with their statements or said they followed police protocol.

During final arguments, prosecutors and the officers’ defense attorneys sparred over whether Lewis intended to ram his car into the officers or even knew he was the subject of a traffic stop.

The prosecution focused on the passenger in Lewis’ car, Selena Hayes, who testified the pair didn’t know they were being stopped by officers. She said all she saw was a car pulling in front of them, a bright light and then a white man with a gun.

As a result, she testified, Lewis moved his car because he was trying to drive around the man, not at them.

To back up their case, prosecutors presented photos showing that instead of typical uniforms, the former officers were dressed in plain clothes and tactical vests. They were also driving unmarked police cars, although the defense argued their blue lights were on.

“These defendants claim self defense after they chose to approach Jaylen Lewis’ Jeep in unmarked cars, in plain clothes, in a very dark location at night,” Special Assistant Attorney General Luke Williamson said. “We believe that the evidence has shown that the actions of these defendants killed Jaylen Lewis and were unreasonable and unnecessary.”

But in an impassioned closing argument, Frederick’s defense attorney, Merrida Coxwell Jr., blasted the prosecution’s words as akin to “QAnon conspiracies.” 

“If you can’t see those police cars, you need to get your glasses fixed,” Coxwell told the jury. “As you can see those lights, there can be no question whatsoever that there are policemen there.”

Instead, the defense attorney presented a different theory, arguing that Lewis “fled” because he didn’t want officers to discover he was violating his probation. After the shooting, officers discovered Glock pistols, an assault weapon and bags of marijuana in Lewis’ car, Coxwell said.

By shooting Lewis, the defense argued, the former officers acted like any “reasonable person” would when faced with a “supercharged,” 707-horsepower car. The attorneys also contended that the former officers acted in line with their training to protect themselves from getting run over and potentially killed.

“You understand that we have to allow for police officers to make split-second decisions,” Coxwell told the jury. “They had, at that point, no option left (but) to fire.”

Rhinewalt’s attorney, J. Scott Gilbert, said the officers’ later discovery of guns in Lewis’ car — including a pistol with an extended clip — showed the officers were “dead correct” in suspecting the driver.

“You know how many people you kill with 30 rounds?” Gilbert asked the jury.

Not Frederick’s first time avoiding a conviction

State certification records show six months after Lewis’ death, Frederick resigned from Capitol Police in March 2023 “to prevent termination” after totaling a squad Ford F-150 and flunking a breathalyzer test.

State troopers arrested Frederick, but a judge dropped the DUI charge against him after a trooper failed to appear in court to testify in the case. 

State authorities learned that a prosecutor said Sheriff Bailey called him to ask what would happen if a trooper didn’t show up for a DUI hearing, and the prosecutor replied the case would be dismissed. 

Bailey has denied these allegations, telling WLBT, “Whoever said that I talked to a prosecutor is a liar.”

A year and a half after the incident, Frederick wrecked another patrol vehicle, this time as a Scott County sheriff’s deputy.

Regardless of prosecutors’ decision on whether to retry Rhinewalt, his legal troubles aren’t over.

Just a month before Lewis was killed, Rhinewalt and former Flex Unit officer Jeffery Walker also opened fire on a car, shooting a passenger in the head. That victim, Sherita Harris, survived but now has “permanent neurological and facial injuries,” according to a lawsuit she filed against Rhinewalt and Walker.

A Hinds County grand jury indicted Rhinewalt and Walker for aggravated assault in that case. No weapon was recovered from Harris’ car, according to the lawsuit.

The pair are scheduled to stand trial for Harris’ shooting in the county courthouse next Monday.

Prosecutors showed jury officers’ explanations for shooting, in blow to their own case

Prosecutors last week introduced Frederick and Rhinewalt’s recorded statements to investigators, where they gave their explanations for why they shot Lewis.

The defense hadn’t planned to put the pair on the witness stand, leading Judge Peterson to say she would instruct the jury to consider these statements as “self-serving” hearsay because the officers were never cross examined under oath.

Frederick and Rhinewalt then decided to take the stand. They told jurors they feared for their lives.

Frederick and Rhinewalt were serving on the Capitol Police’s crime suppression Flex Unit when they stopped the Jeep Grand Cherokee Lewis was driving after he ran two red lights. They said the vehicle matched the general description of a car suspected in auto burglaries.

After their unmarked police car boxed in Lewis’ Cherokee, he rammed the police vehicle behind him and then gunned the Cherokee to flee, Rhinewalt told investigators. Both officers fired their guns through the car’s windshield.

“I felt like he was going to run us over,” Rhinewalt said.

But Hayes, Lewis’ passenger, testified the driver didn’t know officers were performing a traffic stop and didn’t see the police car behind him. Lewis backed into the police vehicle in his effort to drive away, she said.

9/28/2026: This article has been updated to show that the attorney general’s office said it will not retry Michael Lamar Rhinewalt.

The Mississippi Charter Authorizer Board wants a recommendation by Wednesday on whether to revoke the charter of SR1 College Preparatory and STEM Academy so it can vote on the matter on Oct. 26. 

The board voted unanimously on Monday to ask that Kim Turner, the attorney general’s director of the state agencies division, produce a status update by Wednesday. The board also asked to get Turner’s recommendation on whether to revoke the school’s charter by Oct. 9. That deadline will give attorneys for the school and the authorizer board two weeks to send additional responses. Then, at its October meeting, the board will vote on whether to accept Turner’s recommendation.

Without Turner’s recommendation, the board can’t act.

Turner served as the hearing officer in May when attorneys for the board and the school argued their respective cases for whether SR1 should keep its charter. If Turner recommends revoking the charter — and if the authorizer board accepts her recommendation — SR1 would become the first charter school the state forces to close.

Without a decision about its charter, some of SR1’s funding is at risk.

Mississippi First, a nonprofit that distributes grants to the state’s charter schools, has until Wednesday to approve SR1’s reimbursements for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

Mississippi First has held off on reimbursing SR1’s grant-related expenses since December, when the charter board began the process of revoking the school’s charter. The organization also has not yet communicated with school officials about renewing the grant for the 2026-27 fiscal year, according to Angela Bass, executive director of Mississippi First. 

Bass said she is waiting on an official finding on the school’s fate before she can renew or close out the Charter School Program grant agreement, which provides federal funding from the U.S. Department of Education to open and expand high-quality charter schools. 

Bass asked board members Monday for a decision before the Wednesday grant deadline. 

“As the period of uncertainty continues, the window for SR1 to appropriately use these resources continues to narrow,” Bass wrote in a Sept. 9 email to authorizer board Executive Director Lisa Karmacharya. “This creates a practical concern for all involved.”

Bass said she was in communication with federal programs staff about extending the grant deadline, in case the school keeps its charter.

SR1 is at risk of losing its charter because of alleged severe financial mismanagement by its Chief Executive Officer Tamu Green. The school had one day’s cash on hand during fall 2025 monitoring, its cafeteria failed to meet federal safety guidelines, and leadership didn’t disclose all vendor contracts upon request, according to board attorney Dillon Pitts. 

Meanwhile, Green can seek up to $300,000 per year in reimbursements for school supplies and equipment through the grant administered by Mississippi First. Last year, he was reimbursed for over $50,000 in Chromebook and charging cart purchases, as well as other technology and supplies. Green and his staff said in a Sept. 3 letter to Bass that the purchases will meet “specific instructional and operational needs of the students” this school year. 

When requesting reimbursement for the technology, Green touted the school’s third grader’s 88% pass rate on the state standardized reading test, and a satisfactory monitoring report by Mississippi First staff of school leaders’ prior spending of the grant.

Bass also expressed concern about the impact the delay will have on students at the Canton charter school, whose students may be deprived of the bulk of the federal funding to support their education.

“We’re thinking about the kids who are being served,” Bass told Mississippi Today on Friday. “They have allowed them to open their doors for this year, and it’s really not setting them up for success that they cannot access their funds.”

A Jackson Municipal Court judge set a $5 million bond Monday for a third suspect charged in the killing of Tasia Fortune, as authorities said they were expecting more arrests in connection with what the judge called “an extremely heinous act.”

The latest suspect, Eric Derrell Clark, 45, made his initial appearance in court after turning himself in on Friday. He was appointed a public defender. Two others – Jarques Ratliff, 51, and Earnest Lloyd, Jr., 25 – were previously denied bond after being charged with murder earlier this month in connection with Fortune’s death.

The 29-year-old Fortune was found hanging from a tree early last month in west Jackson. The case drew national attention because of the manner in which she was found. 

At Lloyd’s preliminary hearing on Friday, Jackson Police Department Detective Samuel Dukes testified that Fortune was killed after a dispute over drugs and that her hanging was staged.

During Monday’s hearing, Judge Jeffery Reynolds said the killing shocked the community and damaged people’s sense of safety.

He called the staged hanging “an extremely heinous act” that “invoked the terrible history of our state.”

Outside the Jackson Municipal Court building, Police Chief RaShall Brackney suggested the ongoing debate about race in the death of Nolan Wells, a Black college student in south Mississippi, might have unjustifiably spilled into the narrative surrounding Fortune’s death.

“This has created even more damage in our communities,” Brackney said.

“We know we have a very sordid history around lynchings and racial terror across this nation, and particularly around the South.”

“The defendants here are entitled to a fair and impartial trial, not one that is tried in the media, but one that is tried in the courts based on facts,” she said.

Wells, 18, disappeared on July 4 after an outing with friends to an island off Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, and supporters of his family have questioned whether he was killed.

A grand jury found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, but his family and their legal team want the investigation to remain open.

Brackney said the investigation into Fortune’s death is ongoing and more charges and arrests could be coming.

According to Brackney, Fortune had a “known association” with all of the defendants charged so far. All of them, like Fortune, are Black.

Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, was in tears as she spoke to reporters after court Monday. She revealed that Clark spoke to her the day he turned himself in, shortly after Ratliff’s preliminary hearing.

“He never said he did it, but he said he was there to turn himself in for murder,” Spivey said.

She said she knew her daughter’s hanging had to be staged.

“I know that, because she loved life,” Spivey said. “She was always so positive about everything, even when she was down in her worst moments.”

Associated Press reporter Sophie Bates contributed to this report.

 Mississippi Today Ideas is a platform for thoughtful ideas to be shared about our state’s past, present and future. Opinions expressed in guest essays are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Mississippi Today. You can read more about the section here.  

Earlier this year, Mississippians may have noticed something unusual across from the state Capitol: a ⁠20-foot inflatable IUD named “Freeda Womb.”

It was hard to miss. That was the point. We joined advocates that day because Mississippians deserve the freedom to make their own decisions about contraception. Politicians should not be making those decisions for them.

World Contraception Day, which was observed this past weekend, is a good time to remember why that matters.

⁠Nearly every American woman uses contraception at some point in her life. Federal data show that more than 99% of sexually experienced women ages 15 to 49 have used contraception.

People use contraception for different reasons. For one of us, birth control was part of the journey to become pregnant through IVF.  In fact, doctors prescribed birth control as the first step in the IVF process.

That experience is an important reminder that healthcare is rarely simple, and that a single medication, thought to be only effective for one purpose, can assist patients with vastly different healthcare goals. Hormonal birth control can also help ⁠regulate menstrual cycles and manage conditions such as endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome and ovarian cysts. Some methods can also help with ⁠heavy bleeding and menstrual pain.

Being able to decide if and when to start or grow a family can shape far more than someone’s health. It can affect their ⁠education, ⁠career and economic opportunity, and their ability to  ⁠support themselves and their families. Having control over those decisions gives people greater control over the future they are working to build.

We have watched ⁠rights that once seemed settled come under new challenges. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the Court should “reconsider” other precedents. He specifically named ⁠Griswold v. Connecticut, the case that recognized a constitutional right to contraception for married couples, which signals that the debate surrounding the constitutional foundation for certain privacy rights will likely continue.

This is ultimately about what kind of Mississippi we leave to the next generation. We do not want our children growing up with fewer freedoms than their parents and grandparents had.

For the last two legislative sessions, lawmakers have fought to protect the right to contraception in Mississippi. Twice, the legislation has died in committee. We refuse to back down because we believe Mississippians deserve to know their right to contraception is protected. When lawmakers return to Jackson, we will be there again, fighting to make that right explicit in state law.

The legislation would protect Mississippians’ ability to obtain and use contraception, as well as healthcare providers’ ability to provide it. It would not dictate anyone’s choices. It would ensure those choices remain with Mississippians themselves.

Now is the time to act.

We should not wait until a right is taken away to protect it. The fact that contraception is available in Mississippi today is not a reason to do nothing. It is a reason to make sure that freedom is still there tomorrow.

Just last week, Heidi Overton, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the FDA, ⁠refused twice during her Senate confirmation hearing to say that an IUD is contraception rather than an “abortifacient,” or medication to induce abortions.

When Sen. Patty Murray pressed her for an answer, Overton said she would be “fully briefed” on the FDA’s previous decisions if confirmed. That comes after Trump administration officials ⁠falsely labeled IUDs and other forms of birth control as “abortifacients.” That should concern anyone who believes decisions about birth control should remain between patients and their healthcare providers.

Democrats and Republicans will always have disagreements. This does not need to be one of them. The bottom line is that decisions about whether and how to use contraception are personal. They are matters of health and medical privacy, not decisions politicians should make for someone else. 

Last year, Tennessee enacted the ⁠Fertility Treatment and Contraceptive Protection Act, protecting access to both ⁠contraception and fertility treatment, including IVF. The legislation ⁠passed both chambers with support from members of both parties and was ⁠signed into law by Tennessee’s Republican governor in April 2025.

If Tennessee can find common ground on protecting contraception, Mississippi can, too.

Freeda Womb may be gone from the Capitol. The issue that brought her there is not.

To coincide with World Contraception Day, we are asking our colleagues to stand with us and put the right to contraception into Mississippi law.

Sen. Kamesha Mumford represents Mississippi Senate District 26, and Rep. Zakiya Summers represents Mississippi House District 68. They are working to protect the right to contraception in Mississippi law.

Mississippi State has won four straight football games, three straight against power conference schools and two straight against Southeastern Conference foes.

The Bulldogs have moved up to No. 16 in the Associated Press poll, the first time they have been ranked so high since September of 2020. They have a budding superstar in quarterback Kamario Taylor. They have a terrific runner in uniquely named Fluff Bothwell. They have a fleet of speedy, glue-fingered receivers and a salty defense.

State fans are ecstatic. They are, as they themselves put it, feeling quite wooly, which is to say quite optimistic – really fired up, you might say.

So, naturally, this is when the next game on the schedule is Alabama, which has sheared State’s wool so many times, this veteran scribe long ago lost count. Let’s put it this way: Over the years, Alabama has been the hammer to State’s nail. 

State-Alabama is often referred to as the SEC’s closest rivalry, as far as proximity. The two schools are roughly 82 miles apart on U.S. 82. But you would never call it the SEC’s closest rivalry in terms of competitiveness, because Alabama has thoroughly dominated.

The first time they played back in 1898, Alabama won 20-0. The last time they played in 2023, Alabama won 40-17. In between, it has mostly been more of the same. It’s hard to even call it a rivalry because that term connotes a certain level of fierce competition. But State has won only 17 of 108 games, and that’s not competitive in any way, shape or form.

Alabama has won all of the last 10 meetings between the two and by an average of 25 points per game. And I know what many readers are thinking. But those other State teams didn’t have Kamario and Fluff. This Saturday will be different.

And it might be. That’s why they play. This could be the season. This Saturday could be the game. This time, Alabama is only a five-point favorite.

But there have been other times when the situation was much the same, when State was wild and wooly and even undefeated going into a game against the mighty Crimson Tide. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Let’s start with a dozen years ago. Remember? How could you forget Nov. 15, 2014? The Bulldogs, led by Dak Prescott were 9-0 and ranked No. 1 in the land, and had held that ranking for five consecutive weeks. You talk about wooly!

So, they make the 90-minute drive on U.S. 82 to Bryant-Denny Stadium, and you know what happened. Nick Saban’s Tide scored first on a safety and led 19-0 before State could get anything going. The Bulldogs rallied in the second half, but Bama put the game away with one of those time-consuming, numbing, 15-play scoring drives State fans have seen so often. That Alabama team went on to win the SEC Championship. That State team, its bubble pricked by a Crimson needle, lost three of its last four games, including the Egg Bowl to Ole Miss and the Orange Bowl to Georgia Tech.

“We should feel awful,” Dan Mullen said after the Alabama game. They did. State usually does after Alabama.

Take for example, two years before, in 2012. State was 7-0, ranked No. 11 in the country, headed to Tuscaloosa to face No. 1 ranked and likewise undefeated Alabama. It was no contest. Bama led 24-0 at halftime and 38-0 before State finally got on the scoreboard late in the fourth quarter. Saban’s Crimson legion marched on to another national championship. State lost five of its last six and finished 8-5.

And then then there was 2010, when State had won six straight heading to Tuscaloosa. It was no contest. Alabama led 20-3 at halftime and cruised to a 30-10 victory.

If there has ever been a State coach who had Alabama’s number, he was Alabama alumnus Jackie Sherrill, whose teams stemmed the Tide five times. Of course, Alabama won seven times of 12 over State, which managed to win five of 12 meetings with Alabama, his alma mater, while he was at State, which in this rivalry constitutes amazing Bulldog success.

But even Sherrill lost the one he probably wanted the most. That was in 1999, the year the Bulldogs won the SEC West. The Bulldogs, with realistic national championship hopes, were ranked No. 8, 8-0 overall and 4-0 in the SEC headed to Tuscaloosa, but lost 19-7, managing only 24 rushing yards on 22 carries.

And then there was 1986, Rockey Felker’s promising first season as State’s head coach. The Bulldogs were 6-2 and ranked No. 19 with Alabama coming to Scott Field. Turns out, Felker had been doing it with mirrors, and Alabama shattered them. Nothing fancy, mind you, Alabama just pitched the ball to running back Bobby Humphrey, who carried 30 times for a school-record 284 yards before going to the sidelines early. Didn’t matter. Alabama ran for a ridiculous 515 yards and started the game with three long touchdown drives, never needing to throw a single pass. In the press box, trying to stay interested, sports writers started a lottery with each Alabama drive, guessing how many plays it would take the Tide to score. It was that bad.

And it usually is when these two teams play. But there have been exceptions. Sherrill produced five of the 17, and Emory Bellard produced the biggest of all in 1980: State 6, No. 1 Bama 3. 

No matter what else happens, State fans will always have 1980. It was a wooly day at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium.

Hinds County’s historically underpaid public defenders will earn more through September 2027 after an advocacy coalition urged supervisors for months that with better pay, public defenders can reduce the costly burden of the county’s deadly jail and dysfunctional criminal justice system. 

The $600,000 pay bump for the Hinds County Public Defender’s Office was rolled into the county’s new budget that takes effect Oct. 1, records obtained by Mississippi Today show. The Hinds County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed the pay increase earlier this month, marking one of the county’s largest steps forward in the last decade to narrow a funding gap that’s long left public defenders behind prosecutors.

Years of lower pay, staff turnover and cramped desk space have strained the public defender’s office, which represents poor clients in a county where most criminal defendants can’t afford an attorney.

Robert Graham, the board president, said supervisors were convinced by arguments from newly launched advocacy coalition Defend Mississippi that paying public defenders more can help reduce the number of people sitting in jail at the county’s expense.

“They are the line of defense between people who have no resources and people who have plenty of resources,” said Graham, who represents District 1 in northeastern Hinds County. 

Records show the new pay bump brings the public defender’s total budget to over $3 million — nearly double what it was a decade ago.

But in an interview with Mississippi Today, Graham was shocked to hear how much the board boosted public defenders, insisting supervisors couldn’t have passed a pay increase as large as they did.

“$600,000? Absolutely not,” he said. “We increase someone’s budget $600,000, the entire county would be up in arms in pitchforks.”

Graham did not return multiple calls from a reporter after Mississippi Today confirmed the figure with the county administrator and budget comptroller.

Despite state law, public defenders’ funding still lags behind prosecutors’

For nearly half a century, state law has required Hinds County to fund the public defender’s office on an equal basis with the district attorney.

But despite the statute, Hinds has for years funded the public defender’s office below the district attorney, whose budget is largely supported by the state.

“I want for there to be fair fights in the courtroom,” said CJ Lawrence, an attorney and organizer with Defend Mississippi. “I think that would streamline the process for everybody involved.”

Even though the public defender’s office in Hinds oversees one of the busiest criminal dockets within Mississippi’s patchwork public-defense system, it remains short of manpower, desk space and other resources to be on par with the district attorney. 

The county’s head public defender, Gail Wright Lowery, unearthed the state law and has repeatedly raised it to the board over the last year to reinforce her calls for more funding. During a budget hearing last month, she printed out the state law and passed it out to the board, before telling supervisors that her team’s office is so cramped, three investigators have to work from a storage closet.

Even though the public defender’s office ended up with a budget increase after the hearing, supervisors ultimately balked at providing the full funding that Lowery requested to fill staffing shortages.

This leaves the public defender’s office over a million dollars short of what she estimated would put her office on equal footing with the district attorney’s.

Lowery said the new budget bump made no provision for the public defender’s office to hire more attorneys or employees, even though supervisors recently agreed to expand the district attorney’s staff. Last month, the board approved a request from Hinds County District Attorney Brad McCullouch – who was appointed earlier this year by Gov. Tate Reeves after his predecessor, Jody Owens, stepped down – to hire a new prosecutor to work on grand jury cases.

Lowery hasn’t yet calculated how much she’ll be able to raise salaries, but she said the boost will lead to better pay through next September. She hopes it’ll at least be enough to put her attorneys’ starting salaries at $80,000 annually — the same as the only assistant district attorney position funded by the county.

She’s lost an attorney due to low pay every year since she was appointed in 2020, except in 2022 — when a short-lived pay increase temporarily bumped up salaries — Lowery wrote in a February column with Mississippi Today. She said many public defenders move to the district attorney’s office because becoming a prosecutor can virtually double their salaries. 

“Since I’ve been here, I have lost so many attorneys to higher-paying jobs, and that disrupts the system,” Lowery said. “We are hoping that this will result in stability in our office staffing.”

Supervisors: Imbalanced funding structure can put public defenders behind prosecutors

Graham said the board hopes to achieve equal funding between the two offices over the next several years. But it’s “hard to say” whether the public defender’s historic funding increase will be permanent, Graham said, as it depends on how much money the county has in its coffers.

When faced with Lowery’s request for more staff at last month’s budget hearing, other supervisors decried how state law sets up an imbalanced funding structure for the public defender’s office, which can leave it behind the district attorney.

Under the state statute, cash-strapped Hinds County — where one in five residents fall below the poverty line — is required to match the public defender’s funding to what the state largely provides for the district attorney.

“The state of Mississippi made the law but didn’t put a dime in there,” said Supervisor Deborah Butler-Dixon, who represents District 3 in west Jackson. “But the people come to the county thinking that we don’t want to help the public defender. That’s not true.”

To pay for the new budget, which included the historic boost to the public defender’s office, the board had to hike property taxes by $1.5 million. Graham said the tax increase would cost homeowners about $30 a year.

Now, the board’s next step is to ask the state for help funding public defenders to the same level that it funds the district attorney. 

Last month, Graham told Lowery that the board had put a lobbyist to work on convincing the Legislature to pass more funding for the public defender’s office, hopefully during next year’s session. And Lynn Seals, the county administrator, is eyeing a larger space for the public defender’s office in the same building as the district attorney.

In the past, the board has relied on short-lived pay raises for public defenders. In June, the board raised the public defender’s pay for six months using leftover pandemic relief funds, after supervisors narrowly voted down pay raises in 2023, saying the county didn’t have enough money.

To advocates, the historic pay increase is an encouraging signal that Hinds County may be on the way to putting public defenders on equal footing with prosecutors. 

“I’ll close being grateful because you are hearing us, you are investing in us,” Lowery told the board last month. “But this is just the beginning of what I’m calling a new day in the Hinds County Public Defender’s Office.”

After a deadly wildfire tore through Maui in August 2023, community organizer Khara Jabola-Carolus set out to ask women how they were faring after the disaster. She teamed up with fellow community organizer Nadine Ortega to co-found Tagnawa, a grassroots recovery organization to meet the needs of Filipinos and other marginalized groups on the island.

There are plenty of statistics and anecdotes documenting the abuse and violence women have had to endure following natural disasters. Still, what Jabola-Carolus learned was startling: Of the 70 Filipino women Tagnawa surveyed, one in six said they felt forced to engage in “survival sex,” which involves the exchange of sexual acts for food, housing and other basic necessities. 

Mental health experts also shared stories of child sexual abuse going unreported to keep a family unit together amid the uncertainty and instability caused by the fires. At Women Helping Women, a local domestic violence organization, the number of calls doubled to 550 per month in the first two months after the disaster. 

“We tried to gather as much as we could in that short window of time in order to generate action,” said Jabola-Carolus, a former executive director of the Hawai’i State Commission on the Status of Women whose family is from the Philippines, where hurricanes and typhoons have been linked to increased violence against women.

Three years later, Reps. Laurel Lee, a Florida Republican, and Lucy McBath, a Georgia Democrat, have introduced legislation directing the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, to strengthen safety at evacuation shelters and establish reporting protocols for issues like domestic violence and sexual assault. 

The bill also requires training for FEMA personnel in how to identify and support survivors of gender-based violence, as well as changes to how the agency conducts household check-ins after a disaster. Currently, FEMA workers meet only with the head of household, typically a man. If the bill becomes law, they would have to meet with all adults in the family, something that advocates say could help women report abuse post-disaster.  

In an email to The 19th, McBath said that FEMA’s own advisory council found in a 2024 report that the agency should do more to address gender-based violence and exploitation, and to stop human trafficking in the wake of disasters. “Our bill turns that expert recommendation into law.” 

She added: “Our legislation addresses gaps in disaster response that impact survivors of natural disasters the most — being without their homes and their support systems. As a survivor of gun violence myself, the journey to recovery from any trauma is already incredibly difficult. This is our way of doing our part to ensure that every survivor is seen, heard, and protected.”

(Rep. Lee has previously worked on legislation aimed at tackling human trafficking; Florida ranks third for human trafficking among U.S. states — and it faces the threat of hurricanes every year. She could not be reached for comment.)

Though limited in scope, Tagnawa’s survey, “Equality in Flames,” echoed longstanding patterns of abuse following natural disasters. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, one study found that women in Mississippi who had live-in partners were twice as likely to report physical abuse after the hurricane; a separate survey found that intimate partner violence was nearly three times higher the year after the storm among people who were displaced and living in trailer parks in Louisiana and Mississippi. 

More recently, after a severe winter storm impacted Texas in 2021, domestic violence calls went up. One national organization that provides cash assistance to survivors of gender-based violence noted that for one in four applicants, the abuse either began or worsened during the disaster, The Texas Tribune reported. 

Under the Trump administration, the domestic violence services infrastructure has been destabilized through delayed and canceled grants and shifting priorities, forcing a number of organizations to lay off workers and reduce services, like hotlines that were previously available 24/7. 

President Trump’s budget for fiscal year 2027, released in April and not yet approved by Congress, includes significant cuts to housing and legal assistance programs under the Office on Violence Against Women. In a statement at the time, the National Network to End Domestic Violence called federal funding “the backbone of our nation’s response to violence and our commitment to survivors’ safety, stability, and recovery.” Any reduction, the statement added, “jeopardizes vital services and risks the lives of victims and their children.”

It is against this backdrop that the bill was introduced, though it remains unclear whether it will advance to a committee hearing during a final sprint to end the legislative session after the midterms recess. Regardless of whether the legislation moves forward this time, Yasmin Vafa, co-founder and executive director of Rights4Girls, an advocacy organization that helped raise awareness among lawmakers on Capitol Hill, said there’s value in bringing the topic of gender violence and natural disasters into the national conversation. “That’s one of the important principles of doing federal policy advocacy is that even the mere introduction of a bill at the federal level can get states thinking about it,” she said. 

She provided an example of another bill introduced in the House, and for which she lobbied, that would allow for shorter minimum sentences in cases where victims are convicted of harming their abusers: It has yet to pass in Congress, but it has led to similar laws at the state level in California, Hawaii, Illinois, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia. 

Jennifer Horney, a professor at the University of Delaware who has researched disasters and gender-based violence, said the FEMA bill has some of the same recommendations made in reports she has co-authored. One of the findings “was to think about ways that people whose primary job is in emergency response and emergency management could be more aware of the increased risk for violence post-disaster,” she said. “The fact that the legislation calls out the importance of trauma-informed care is really critical to providing these services.” 

Beyond passing the legislation, Horney said the federal and state governments could allocate more money to domestic violence organizations, which would, in turn, increase support for survivors after disasters. 

The Trump administration has moved in the opposite direction, though: It has slashed funding to these same organizations, which has already led to reduced services. 

Globally, there is widespread recognition that disasters lead to an increase in gender-based violence, with most research and policy-making on the topic being produced abroad. Still, the U.S. State Department has recognized this is an issue, at least internationally, said Vafa, of Rights4Girls. In 2022, in its annual “Trafficking in Persons” report, the department acknowledged that climate change and extreme weather displace populations and can lead to an increase in trafficking of women and children. 

The National Science Foundation, the federal government’s most prominent scientific agency, also released a report in 2024 finding that public health emergencies, like natural disasters, are associated with an increase in the severity and frequency of intimate partner violence. 

Jabola-Carolus said that if the FEMA legislation passes, the United States would at least come closer to other countries that are already dealing with the impacts of climate disasters. Countries like the one her family is from. “Filipinos are essentially people from the climate future,” she said. They are already confronting the ways women are affected by climate disasters. 

In 2016, the Philippines passed disaster reform legislation that integrated sex trafficking response and prevention into disaster recovery and planning. The United States, she said, can learn from them. 

This story has been republished with permission from The 19th, an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics, policy and power.

The secret superpower of politicians is that we, the voting public, often do not understand how their actions or inactions impact us, thus allowing elected officials to escape consequences.

They know this, but will never admit it.

Take healthcare in Mississippi, for instance. All five Republican members of Mississippi’s congressional delegation voted against extending the enhanced tax credits or subsidies for the Affordable Care Act Marketplace insurance policies. Their votes, combined with the votes of others, resulted in premiums increasing (more than doubling for some) and leading to at least 70,000 Mississippians dropping their healthcare coverage.

Bets are that the people with healthcare exchange coverage never made the connection that the action – or inaction – by Mississippi Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde Smith and Reps. Trent Kelly, Michael Guest and Mike Ezell helped lead to their insurance premiums increasing.

They just marked it down as another example of the high cost of living.

People aren’t dumb. They just often don’t have the time to explore policy nuances.

Enhanced subsidies for the marketplace policies were approved during President Joe Biden’s administration as a response to the pandemic. Since the subsidies expired at the beginning of 2026, about 3 million people nationwide have dropped coverage, including the more than 70,000 Mississippians.

Hit particularly hard by the elimination of the enhanced tax credits are middle-income people who depend on private insurance. People earning 400% or more of the federal poverty level (almost $64,000 annually for an individual, $132,000 for a family of four) receive no financial assistance under the original Affordable Care Act, which is in place with the expiration of the enhanced subsidies. This means their healthcare insurance has increased as much as five-fold in some instances.

In many cases, these people are part of the core voting block for Mississippi’s Republican congressional delegation. But thanks to politicians’ superpower, some people never make the connection between politicians’ actions and a dramatic increase in insurance costs.

While the subsidies were enacted as a COVID response, a majority of the U.S. House and Senate supported extending them. The bipartisan legislation to extend the subsidies passed the House and garnered a majority vote in the Senate, but not the supermajority needed for passage.

Granted, even if Mississippi Sens. Hyde-Smith and Wicker had voted for extending the subsidies, the bill still would have fallen short of the 60 votes needed to extend the enhanced marketplace subsidies. But their votes might have placed additional pressure on other senators to support the extension.

That is part of politicians’ superpower. Blame others.

While the bill to extend the marketplace subsidies died, Congress did pass what is known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” earlier in 2025. It did so with the support of the Republicans in Mississippi’s congressional delegation.

The legislation is estimated to cut healthcare spending by almost $1 trillion over 10 years, including about $3 billion in Mississippi. As a partial tradeoff, the bill includes $50 billion for rural hospitals over five years, including about $1 billion for those in Mississippi.

Politicians including Republican Gov. Tate Reeves have touted the rural hospital funds.

“When we began this work, we set out to do more than simply invest in the healthcare system we already have,”  Reeves said when announcing the first batch of grants from the federal program. “We set out to transform how rural Mississippians access care – bringing more services closer to home, strengthening the providers and facilities that rural communities depend on, and using technology and innovation to better connect patients to care across our state.”

No doubt, the federal funds are important. But that money will be a flash in a pan if people cannot pay for care they receive in the rural hospitals, either out-of-pocket or with insurance.

Mississippi politicians have refused to join 40 other states and the District of Columbia in expanding Medicaid coverage to the working poor, with the federal government paying most of the cost. That refusal, combined with people dropping their marketplace insurance because of its increasing costs, leaves between 200,000 and 300,000 Mississippians with no coverage.

If Mississippi’s struggling hospitals continue to treat people with no insurance or with no means to pay, they will continue to incur large losses or pass the costs on to others who have insurance or ability to pay out-of-pocket. That can lead to insured people paying higher premiums to cover the costs of those who lack coverage.

But we never make that connection. We just see the higher costs.

Remember the politicians’ superpower.

To further illustrate that superpower: Most of the estimated $1 trillion in healthcare cuts in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” take effect 2027 or later — well after this November’s midterm elections.