Editor’s note: Former state Rep. Cecil Brown, who was involved in the budget process as a member of the Legislative Budget Committee from 2004 until 2012 and earlier as the state fiscal officer, explains how the state budget process works. Brown also references that the Legislature ended the 2025 session without a budget, which is not how the process is supposed to work.

This is an attempt to shine light on the Mississippi state budget process and make it understandable. Unfortunately, as we recently learned, when politics get involved, things don’t go as planned.

The state budget is the document created by the state Legislature that tells government officials how much money is available to spend for the upcoming fiscal year and how it should be spent. State law requires a balanced budget. Operating expenses cannot exceed available revenues. The current total annual state budget is about $28 billion, consisting of $13 billion in federal funds, $7 billion in general funds $700 million in “state support special funds” and $7.8 billion in “other special funds.”

The “general fund,” is the pot of money collected by the state from sales taxes, income taxes, use taxes and various other taxes and fees. “Special funds” are for the most part dedicated to specific uses. For example, fuel taxes are used primarily on highways.

All federal funds and many special funds have dedicated uses and are not available for general purposes. General funds, state support special funds and some other special funds can be used for the general needs of government. They are spent on K-12 education, universities and community colleges, the state’s portion of Medicaid costs and all the other legitimate obligations of state government.

The state’s fiscal year begins July 1 and ends on June 30 of the succeeding year. For example, we are currently in the 2025 fiscal year that began on July 1, 2024, and will end on June 30, 2025. Each state budget is for one year only and is adopted by the state Legislature in the legislative session that precedes the beginning of the fiscal year.

The budget process begins in the summer before the following legislative session. Staff work is performed by the Legislative Budget Office (LBO), a group of professionals who work for the Legislature. Each state agency submits a detailed budget request outlining their anticipated financial needs for the following year and number of personnel they need to carry out their missions. Requested increases require explanation and larger items such as equipment require detail analysis. The starting point for every agency budget is the money and personnel they have for the current year. Detailed analysis will be provided for new programs that require additional funding. Reductions such as non-recurring needs for new equipment also are considered.

All the agency budget requests then go to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC) to be considered for the “budget recommendation” provided to the Legislature to consider in the upcoming legislative session. The JLBC is composed of six members of the House and six members of the Senate. In addition, the committee also includes the speaker of the House and the lieutenant governor who alternate yearly as the chair of the panel.

While LBO is working on the spending side of the budget, another group of professionals is working on the revenue side. This “revenue estimating committee” is a group of experts who look at current tax collections and other state revenues, economic forecasts and changes to estimate how much money will be available for the general fund for the following year. After all the analysis is done, the JLBC will put all the numbers together to present a complete budget recommendation to the House and Senate during the first week of the legislative session. At that time, the budget is reduced to a series of revenue and expenditure (appropriation) bills. To become part of the budget, each bill must be passed by the House and Senate and approved by the governor.

The JLBC and the governor will meet with the revenue estimating committee to adopt a revenue estimate. That estimate sets a limit on how much the Legislature can appropriate during the session. Major changes in economic outlook might require changes in the estimate and the amounts available to spend.

During the session, everything works on a time schedule – when bills must be introduced, when they must be passed by the various committees and by the House and Senate. Failure to meet a deadline can kill a bill. One-half of the appropriations bills that are part of the budget will start in the House and one-half in the Senate. Legislators often introduce appropriations bills that are outside the budge recommendation. Most of those are never considered by the committees.

Appropriation bills can be amended in the committee, passed or killed by vote. Occasionally a bill will be amended, but most pass as introduced. After that, the full house of origin will vote on the bill, and if the bill passes it will go to the other house for consideration. If the two houses cannot agree on an appropriation or revenue bill, the bill will be referred to a conference committee where three members from each body will try to resolve the differences. Most of the appropriations bills go to conference. For a bill to be finally passed, it must pass both houses in the exact same form. After passage, the bill will go to the governor who can sign it into law, veto it or let it become law without his signature. A veto can be overridden by a 2/3 vote of each house.

This year, because of internal legislative politics, the Legislature adjourned without passing a budget. The only solution is a special legislative session. If appropriations bills are not passed by June 30, state government will shut down. Nobody, including employees, can get paid. Only the governor can call a special session, and he will set the agenda. Typically, the governor will not call a session until the legislative leaders assure him they have reached an agreement. 

In the end, a state budget will be adopted. Not everyone will be satisfied, but that is the nature of the democratic process.

The post As legislators end session without state budget, former fiscal officer explains how process supposed to work appeared first on Mississippi Today.

College basketball’s Cinderella has died, and with her, so much of the NCAA Tournament’s magic has been laid to rest. Both were victims of the out-of-control transfer portal and the almighty NIL dollar.

Another way of putting it: March Madness isn’t so mad any more.

You may like that. I do not. For me, the beauty and allure of the tournament always has been when the unthinkable happens, like two years ago when 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson shocked No. 1 seed Purdue. There was often drama, if not magic, when the monumental upset almost happened but did not, such as in 1986 when Lafayette Stribling’s Mississippi Valley State team led for most of the game before narrowly losing to overall No. 1 seed Duke.

The 2025 NCAA Tournament, one of the most predictable on record, ended Monday night with an exciting, remarkably well-played game. Florida defeated Houston 65-63. It seems appropriate that one of the Gators’ heroes was 23-year-old Mississippian, Alijah Martin, a graduate student from Summit in Pike County, who transferred to Florida after playing four seasons at Florida Atlantic. Mid-major transfers played critical roles for power programs throughout the tournament.

This Final Four consisted of all No. 1 seeds. Two No. 12 seeds won a first-round game, but there were no real stunners where a team seeded 13 or above advanced. Arkansas, a 10-seed from the SEC, was the only double-digit seed to make the Sweet 16. All the other 15 were 6-seeds or higher. 

There were no stunners. No school named Oakland beat a blue blood like Kentucky. No UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) upset Virginia. No Bucknell beat Kansas. Those ships have sailed away, perhaps forever.

This year’s biggest upset came when McNeese State defeated Clemson. And that one gets an asterisk because McNeese State reportedly out-spent many power conference schools with NIL money in the transfer portal.

“Follow the money,” longtime college and NBA coach Tim Floyd, a Hattiesburg native, says. “In college basketball today, recruiting is basically buying. For the most part, low- and mid-majors simply can’t compete financially with the power conference teams.”

Belmont University of Nashville was one of those low-to-mid major schools that might have pulled a gigantic upset in this year’s NCAA Tournament. The makings of an NCAA Sweet 16 team were there from last year’s 22-12 team. But then, power forward Malik Dia transferred to Ole Miss, point guard Jacobi Miller transferred to Maryland and small forward Cade Tyson transferred to North Carolina. Strike one, strike two and strike three: Belmont was out. Ole Miss, Maryland and North Carolina all made the NCAA Tournament; Belmont, which still somehow managed to win 22 games, did not.

Belmont was not alone. Across the land, richer teams from the power conferences cherry-picked from low-and-mid major teams, buying their best players with higher NIL packages. Stetson, a mid-major powerhouse in 2023-24, lost all five starters and all top reserves through the transfer portal. A team that won 22 games a season ago won only eight this past season.

Florida Atlantic shocked everyone by going to the Final Four in 2023, then made the NCAA Tournament again in 2024. The Owls won 60 games over those two seasons. Then, Coach Dusty May left for Michigan and nine — count ’em, nine — players, including Martin, left via the transfer portal. Cinderella no more, FAU was essentially a .500 team this past season.

Mississippian Kermit Davis has been on both sides of the NCAA power divide. He coached at Middle Tennessee State for 16 seasons before a five-year run at Ole Miss. In 2016, his Middle Tennessee team, a 15-seed out of Conference USA, shocked Tom Izzo and Michigan State 90-81 in one of the biggest upsets in college basketball history.

Davis doesn’t know if the same feat would be possible today. 

“I am not sure we could have afforded to hold that team together in today’s college basketball climate,” Davis said. “I know we couldn’t have held them together for that next season.”

What a lot of people might have forgotten is that Davis’s Blue Raiders won 31 games and beat another Big Ten team, Minnesota, in the 2017 NCAA Tournament. 

“Today, all those players would have left Middle and have been playing for Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee or somebody like that,” Davis says. “And you couldn’t blame them. There’s so much money out there. I’m not sure it’s good for college basketball overall, but it’s just the way it is.”

Floyd, who coached at Idaho and New Orleans before jobs at Iowa State and Southern Cal later in his career, strongly believes the new trend isn’t good for the NCAA Tournament or for college athletics in general. 

“It used to be that if you had a couple holes in your roster, you would go the junior college route for immediate help,” Floyd said. “Now, you just pluck then away from smaller four-year schools and leave them high and dry. It’s professional basketball without salary caps or contracts. It’s crazy as hell.”

And, at least for this one observer, it has stolen much of the madness from March.

The post Transfer portal, NIL have stolen the madness from March appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The word “bittersweet” doesn’t do justice to the news we share today. After six years with Mississippi Today, Marshall Ramsey, our editor-at-large and beloved editorial cartoonist, will be leaving the newsroom to launch the Mississippi Media Lab at the University of Mississippi’s School of Journalism and New Media. In this first-of-its-kind position, Marshall will serve as editor of the journalism school’s media lab and as the civic engagement coordinator for the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation, where he will serve as a liaison between the center, the school and the broader community.

Marshall joined our newsroom in December 2018 with decades of editorial cartoons under his belt. He’d been nominated for multiple Pulitzer Prizes, published numerous books, hosted television and radio programs and emceed nearly every event in the state. He brought to Mississippi Today his insatiable appetite for community connection, levity and creativity. He helped us build our brand of accountability reporting into a household name, and he gave readers across Mississippi hope, humor and an illustrative critique of current events. He is simply irreplaceable, and we will miss his presence in the newsroom and on the website.

Of Marshall’s many admirable qualities, his bravery will always be the one I admire most. Marshall often tells the story of getting a cancer diagnosis and being made part time at his newspaper job on the same day. He does so with his signature comic style, but what he doesn’t share is the tenacity and gumption it took to reinvent himself. He grew his artistic talent as a cartoonist into a full-time gig as a creative entrepreneur. His social media became a brand of its own, and Marshall Ramsey fans are a dedicated and loyal bunch to this day. Through his public speaking engagements, Marshall gave Mississippians what they hadn’t seen before: a mix of sarcasm and empathy that resonated deeply and profoundly for folks from all walks of life. From there, he developed television and radio programs that highlighted the creative spirit of our state but never shied away from the hard-truths that inspire the artistic process.

As an editorial cartoonist, Marshall’s pen spared no one and never played favorites. Marshall amplified the work of our journalists through his editorial cartoons and always had the backs of our reporters, and of our readers. We, as a team, never cease to be amazed by how he can capture the essence of a 7,000-word story in a single cartoon. He’s helped us all laugh to keep from crying, and to collectively seethe when words can’t do justice. For that, we as Mississippians are grateful.

Mississippi Today is growing, and for that we are grateful, but we won’t be posting a job description to replace Marshall Ramsey. That is simply impossible. What we will be doing is cheering on his work at Ole Miss, collaborating closely with the students and projects he leads and continuing to publish his original cartoons weekly for our readers. We are immensely proud of the accomplishments Marshall has made during his years in our nonprofit newsroom, and we are exponentially hopeful for the influence he will have on a new generation of journalists and newsroom leaders.

The post Marshall Ramsey to lead the Mississippi Media Lab at UM’s School of Journalism and New Media appeared first on Mississippi Today.

For nearly three decades, a little-known federal agency has provided millions of dollars in support and funding to Mississippi’s colleges and universities museums, to libraries and to cultural institutions, including the Margaret Walker and COFO Civil Rights Center at Jackson State University. 

In 2011, the state’s largest historically Black university’s cultural center and museum, received a $48,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Libraries Services. The grant paid for staff to travel and learn about the historical preservation work from larger museums and institutions across the country. 

“That grant was my professional development,” Robert Luckett, director of the cultural center said. “It was so important and has been foundational for all of the work we’ve done at Jackson State for the last fifteen, sixteen years.” 

But, Jackson State isn’t the only Mississippi college that has benefitted from funds from IMLS, and the federal agency has flowed millions of dollars in grants to the state.

In 2022, Mississippi State University received a $74,000 grant to fund its Office of Museum Services and a $50,000 grant from the American Rescue Plan for Museums and Libraries to train and hire students from underserved communities to assist with biological collection and conservation. That same year, Northwest Mississippi Community College received $33,000 from the agency to support a series of community engagement discussions for students around racial injustice, mental health and stress in the post COVID-19 pandemic. 

In 2020, Hinds Community College Utica’s campus received a $101,000 grant from IMLS’s Museums Grants for African American History and Culture to establish an oral history project for Black rural Mississippians and provided technology and equipment to record stories for residents who couldn’t make it to the campus museum. The federal agency also awarded $500,000 to the University of Mississippi through its Save America’s Treasures program and in 2010 a $450,000 grant to its Modern Political Archives to preserve and digitize 3,800 audio and visual recordings. 

The Margaret Walker Center, which houses oral histories, manuscripts, book collections and history archives of Black Mississippians, and operates as the Black Studies Institute for Jackson State University, has been a cornerstone of cultural development for students. 

Now, with an executive order from President Donald Trump, which led the federal agency’s nearly 70 employees to be placed on administrative leave last week, the future of the Margaret Walker Center’s work remains unclear.

The move to shut down IMLS comes weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to scale down six other federal agencies to “the minimum presence,” according to The Washington Post. 

The agency’s funding, which is less than one percent of the federal budget, has dolled out millions of dollars to museums, libraries and institutions. But, in states like Mississippi, where access to traditional resources and support for cultural institutions may be near to none or nonexistent, the agency’s funding has been essential in providing tools to do important work, Luckett said. 

Out of the eight full-time staff members at the cultural center, two staff and a graduate fellow who works to digitize the historical archives is funded by subgrants of IMLS through the Smithsonian Institute, another national cultural institution facing cuts by the Trump administration. These jobs on the digital humanities staff could be in jeopardy. 

Earlier this year, Luckett said his team applied for another grant from IMLS to pay for their renovation project of Ayer Hall, the oldest building on Jackson State University’s campus and home to the Margaret Walker Center. The grant funding will provide support for staff to move its collections into a safe environment. 

Luckett said the cultural center was supposed to be notified in June if they receive the grant. But, with the changes to the agency, he’s unsure of what comes next. 

“We don’t have the funding to do this,” Luckett said. “We’ll be back to square one.” 

Other cultural institutions and organizations across the state such as the Mississippi Humanities Council, which currently has 35 open subgrants to various state colleges and universities, were reeling after hearing a major defunding announcement. 

In a late night email, the organization learned their grant through the National Endowment of Humanities had been terminated.  The national organization has provided more than 400 grants in Mississippi, including colleges in the state. 

Sweeping cuts at IMLS and the National Endowment of Humanities threaten the future of established museum and library programs at local colleges from panels, literary festivals, history tours, youth education workshops and other public programs. 

“In [Mississippi] our greatest strength is our history and culture,” Stuart Rockoff, executive director of the Mississippi Humanities Council, said. “Our grants and our programs have helped highlight that especially in smaller towns and rural areas of our state.” 

The state’s cultural organization doled out various grants to Mississippi’s public universities and colleges, including a $8,400 grant to the Margaret Walker Center last year, which held a panel discussion on local activism in reflection to Mississippi’s civil rights movement history. 

Luckett said protecting the state’s historical collections and providing access to them are key components for the curriculum for students at Jackson State University  to engage in scholarship and research. 

“These skills are not politicized,” Luckett said. “These are important learning tools for any student of any discipline.” 

While it’s easy to ignore the federal agency being closed, the outside impact that such a small agency has on the country is remarkable, Luckett added. 

“These are public servants doing these jobs, who are committed and who aren’t willing to get rich,” Luckett said. “This assault on IMLS is something we should all be worried about.”

The post ‘We should all be worried’: Trump order threatens funding for Mississippi’s colleges cultural centers and programming appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report last week in its investigation of the UMMC helicopter crash in March that killed three crew members. 

AirCare 3 – one of four helicopters in UMMC’s critical care transport program – was destroyed March 10 after it crashed on a grass field in Canton. 

The pilot and two UMMC employees died in the crash: Cal Wesolowski of Starkville; Dustin Pope, a flight nurse and the base supervisor for AirCare in Columbus; and Jakob Kindt, a critical care paramedic from Tupelo. Denton, Texas-based Med-Trans Corporation provides helicopters and pilots to UMMC.

The preliminary report does not identify the cause of the crash, and the final report could take one to two years to be completed, National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman told press after the crash. 

The flight was headed to its home base at Golden Triangle Regional Airport in Columbus after the crew completed a patient transport to St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson and topped off its fuel at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, according to the report. 

The flight was classified as low-risk by the operator’s safety management system. 

The helicopter communicated with air traffic control at Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport and terminated communication about five minutes before the accident, after the pilot reported “clear to the north.” 

The helicopter flew over the Ross Barnett Reservoir northeast of Jackson and reached an altitude of 2,500 feet above mean sea level before it began to descend north of the reservoir. 

The flight nurse transmitted a message to the UMMC’s aircraft communications center about halfway through the descent. “We’ve got a major problem, we are having an emergency landing in a field right now, ops are not good, controls are giving us a lot of trouble, coming in fast,” he said. 

No further radio transmissions were recorded from the helicopter. 

The helicopter impacted multiple trees south of a flat grass field in the Pearl River State Wildlife Management Area before coming to rest in the field. 

A manager at Turcotte Fish Hatchery 700 yards from the accident site heard a “boom” or “explosion” while the helicopter was still airborne. He did not hear engine sounds after the boom and did not see smoke or fire coming from the helicopter while it remained airborne, he told the National Transportation Safety Board in a postaccident interview. 

It appeared the pilot was “having trouble controlling” the helicopter, and that the tail was pitching up and down, he said. The craft did not descend straight down but was “coasting,” in a 40 to 45 degree angle descent. 

The time from “boom” to impact with the ground was about 15 seconds, he reported. 

The helicopter was destroyed by a post-impact fire that burned for three hours. Fire department units deployed 1,300 feet of hose after the initial fire suppression, which was carried out using tank water. Water was then shuttled to the site for the remainder of firefighting. 

The National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration, Med-Trans Corporation and Colorado-based Global Medical Response, the company that owns Med-Trans, traveled to the site of the crash but were unable to functionally test any of the helicopter systems due to the fire damage. 

Wesolowski, the pilot, was hired by Med-Trans in September 2024 and passed a competency checkride in October. He had completed over 10,000 hours as a helicopter pilot, according to the report. 

The helicopter, a Eurocopter EC135 P2+, was inspected two and a half hours before the accident. It was manufactured in 2012 and transferred to the Med-Trans operating certificate in 2020. 

There have been 12 other crashes involving the Eurocopter EC135 since 2005, according to publicly available information from the National Transportation Safety Board. 

The Federal Aviation Administration issued an airworthiness directive pertaining to the helicopter model three days before the crash, to take effect March 24, 2025. Airworthiness directives are legally enforceable regulations to correct an unsafe condition in a product. 

The directive was “prompted by reports of malfunctioning emergency fuel shut-off switches on the warning unit,” and mandated inspections of certain switches on the warning units and depending on the result of the inspections, replacing or repairing the warning unit. 

AirCare flights were temporarily grounded after the crash but have now resumed operations.

The post Preliminary report released in UMMC helicopter crash appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Infighting between Mississippi’s Republican House and Senate legislative leaders reached DEFCON 4 as the 2025 legislative session sputtered to a close last week.

Lawmakers gaveled out unable to set a $7 billion state budget — their main job — or to even agree to negotiate. Gov. Tate Reeves will force them back into session sometime before the end of the fiscal year June 30. At a press conference last week, the governor assured he would do so but did not give a timetable, other than saying he plans to give lawmakers some time to cool off.

The crowning achievement of the 2025 session was passage of a tax overhaul bill a majority of legislators accidentally voted for because of errors in its math. House leaders and the governor nevertheless celebrated passage of the measure, which will phase out the state individual income tax over about 14 years, more quickly trim the sales tax on some groceries to 5% raise the tax on gasoline by 9 cents a gallon, then have automatic gas tax increases thereafter based on the cost of road construction.

The error in the Senate bill accidentally removed safeguards that chamber’s leadership wanted to ensure the income tax would be phased out only if the state sees robust economic growth and controls spending.

The rope-a-dope the House used with the Senate errors to pass the measure also stripped a safeguard House leaders had wanted: a 1.5 cents on the dollar increase in the state’s sales tax, which would have brought it to 8.5%. House leaders said such an increase was needed to offset cutting more than $2 billion from the state’s $7 billion general fund revenue by eliminating the income tax, and to ensure local governments would be kept whole.

Reeves was nonplussed about the flaws in the bill he signed into law (at one point denying there were errors in it) and called it “One big, beautiful bill,” borrowing a phrase from President Donald Trump.

Quote of the Week

“Quite frankly, I think it’s chicken shit what they did.” — Gov. Tate Reeves, at a press conference last week when asked his thoughts about the Senate rejecting his nomination of Cory Custer, Reeves’ deputy chief of staff, to serve as four-year term on the board of Mississippi Public Broadcasting.

Full Legislative Coverage

What happened (or didn’t) in the rancorous 2025 Mississippi Legislative session?

Mississippi Today’s political team unpacks the just ended — for now — legislative session, that crashed at the end with GOP lawmakers unable to pass a budget after much infighting among Republican leaders. The crowning achievement of the session, a tax overhaul bill, was passed by accident and full of major errors and omissions. Listen to the podcast.

Gov. Tate Reeves, legislative leaders tout tax cut, but for some, it could be a tax increase

Many of those retirees who do not pay an income tax under state law and other Mississippians as well will face a tax increase under this newly passed legislation touted by Reeves and others. Read the column.

Trump administration slashes education funding. Mississippi leaders and schools panic

Mississippi schools and the state education system are set to lose over $137 million in federal funds after the U.S. Department of Education halted access to pandemic-era grant money, state leaders said this week. Read the story.

Gov. Tate Reeves says he’ll call Mississippi lawmakers back in special session after they failed to set budget

Gov. Tate Reeves on Thursday said he will call lawmakers into a special session to adopt a budget before state agencies run out of money later in the summer and hinted he might force legislators to consider other measures.  Read the story.

GOP-controlled Senate rejects governor’s pick for public broadcasting board. Reeves calls it ‘chicken s–t’

The Senate on Wednesday roundly rejected the nomination of Cory Custer, Reeves’ deputy chief of staff, to serve a four-year term on the board of directors of Mississippi Public Broadcasting, the statewide public radio and television network. Reeves reacted to the Senate’s vote on Thursday, calling it “chicken shit.” Read the story.

Early voting proposal killed on last day of Mississippi legislative session

Mississippi will remain one of only three states without no-excuse early voting or no-excuse absentee voting.  Read the story.

Mississippi Legislature ends 2025 session without setting a budget over GOP infighting 

The House on Wednesday voted to end what had become a futile legislative session without passing a budget to fund state government, for the first time in 16 years. The Senate is expected to do the same on Thursday.  Read the story.

Mississippi Legislature approves DEI ban after heated debate

Mississippi lawmakers have reached an agreement to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from public schools across the state education system, following the lead of numerous other Republican-controlled states and President Donald Trump’s administration.   Read the story.

Fear and loathing: Legislative session crashes with lawmakers unable to set a budget because of Republican infighting

Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and other Senate leaders on Saturday excoriated the Republican House leadership, after the House didn’t show up for what was supposed to be “conference weekend” to haggle out a $7 billion budget. Read the story.

‘We’ll go another year’ without relief: Pharmacy benefit manager reform likely dead

Hotly contested legislation that aimed to increase the transparency and regulation of pharmacy benefit managers appeared dead in the water Tuesday after a lawmaker challenged the bill for a rule violation. Read the story.

The post Mississippi lawmakers end 2025 session unable to agree (or even meet about) state budget: Legislative recap appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Hundreds of Mississippians gathered across three cities on Saturday afternoon as part of a national movement called “Hands Off” to protest President Donald Trump’s policies and Elon Musk’s government cuts.

About 300 people gathered at the state Capitol in Jackson and dozens others gathered at rallies in Gulfport and Tupelo on Saturday. Organizers at the rallies decried many of Trump’s executive orders since he took office for a second term, and they focused attention on Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has abruptly slashed funding for countless public services.

Tens of thousands of Americans participated in the “Hands Off” protests in several cities across the country on Saturday.

The post ‘Hands Off’: Hundreds of Mississippians protest Donald Trump, Elon Musk as part of national movement appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Madison County Circuit Court Judge Bradley Mills dismissed former Gov. Phil Bryant’s defamation lawsuit against Mississippi Today on Friday, ending a nearly two-year case that became a beacon in the fight for American press freedom.

For the past 22 months, we’ve vigorously defended our Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting and our characterizations of Bryant’s role in the Mississippi welfare scandal. We are grateful today that the court, after careful deliberation, dismissed the case.

The reporting speaks for itself. The truth speaks for itself.

This judgment is so much more than vindication for Mississippi Today — it’s a monumental victory for every single Mississippian. Journalism is a public good that all of us deserve and need. Too seldom does our state’s power structure offer taxpayers true government accountability, and Mississippians routinely learn about the actions of their public officials only because of journalism like ours. This reality is precisely why we launched our newsroom nine years ago, and it’s why we devoted so much energy and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending ourselves against this lawsuit. It was an existential threat to our organization that took time and resources away from our primary responsibilities — which is often the goal of these kinds of legal actions. But our fight was never just about us; it was about preserving the public’s sacred, constitutional right to critical information that journalists provide, just as our nation’s Founding Fathers intended.

Mississippi Today remains as committed as ever to deep investigative journalism and working to provide government accountability. We will never be afraid to reveal the actions of powerful leaders, even in the face of intimidation or the threat of litigation. And we will always stand up for Mississippians who deserve to know the truth, and our journalists will continue working to catalyze justice for people in this state who are otherwise cheated, overlooked, or ignored.

We appreciate your support, and we are honored to serve you with the high quality, public service journalism you’ve come to expect from Mississippi Today.

READ MORE: Judge Bradley Mills’ order dismissing the case

READ MORE: Mississippi Today’s brief in support of motion to dismiss

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