WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed likely to rule for a Black death row inmate from Mississippi who claims there was racial bias in the makeup of the jury that convicted him.

The justices took up an appeal from Terry Pitchford in a case with similarities to that of another Black man on Mississippi’s death row, whose conviction the high court overturned seven years ago.

The jury that sentenced Pitchford to death for his role in the killing of a grocery store owner in northern Mississippi had one Black juror. Doug Evans, a now-retired prosecutor with a history of dismissing Black jurors for discriminatory reasons, had excused four other Black people.

The Supreme Court ruled 40 years ago in Batson v. Kentucky that jurors could not be excused from service because of their race and set up a system by which trial judges could evaluate claims of discrimination and the race-neutral explanations by prosecutors.

Pitchford’s case focuses on whether his lawyers did enough to object to Judge Joseph Loper’s rulings and whether the state Supreme Court acted reasonably in ruling they had not.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he thought one of Pitchford’s lawyers had spoken up. Reading from the trial transcript, Kavanaugh said, “She’s trying to make the objections right there.”

There was broad agreement that neither the judge nor the lawyers performed especially well when the jury was chosen.

“This is the most timid and reticent defense counsel that I have ever encountered,” Justice Samuel Alito said.

But Alito also faulted Loper, who accepted Evans’ explanations and moved on without analyzing whether race was the reason.

“The judge didn’t handle this the way it should have been handled,” Alito said.

In 2019 in another Misissippi case, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence and conviction of Curtis Flowers, because of what Kavanaugh described as a “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals.”

Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart sought to distinguish Pitchford’s case from Flowers’.

“In Flowers versus Mississippi, this Court faced an extraordinary case and ruled against the state,” Stewart said. “This case is also extraordinary but in a very different way that requires a very different result.”

The Supreme Court could rule for Pitchford but still leave it to lower courts to sort out whether his conviction should be overturned.

Pitchford, now 40, was 18 when he and a friend decided to rob the Crossroads Grocery, just outside Grenada in northern Mississippi. The friend shot store owner Reuben Britt three times, fatally wounding him, but was ineligible for the death penalty because he was younger than 18. Pitchford was tried for capital murder and sentenced to death.

The case has been making its way through the court system for 20 years. In 2023, U.S District Judge Michael P. Mills overturned Pitchford’s conviction, holding that the trial judge did not give Pitchford’s lawyers enough of a chance to argue that the prosecution was improperly dismissing Black jurors.

Mills wrote that his ruling was partially motivated by Evans’ actions in prior cases. A unanimous panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the ruling.

Kavanaugh, in an exchange with Stewart, praised Mills’ handling of the case.

“Mills is a very experienced district judge. He had been a former Mississippi Supreme Court justice. He knows what he’s doing,” Kavanaugh said. “He read the record entirely differently than you did.”

J. Janice Coleman is an English professor at Alcorn State University and is known as a seamstress who often incorporates history and colorful designs into her quilts, tote bags and other works.

Her textile art has been featured at multiple locations, including the Mississippi Museum of Art and at the National Folk Life Festival, both in Jackson. She has been honored by the Mississippi Humanities Council and was commissioned to create a work honoring Mississippi Civil Rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer by the Mississippi Arts Commission.

Mississippi Today Ideas thought it was appropriate to highlight Coleman and Hamer during March – Women’s History Month.

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Mississippi Today Ideas – I appreciate you being here. Talk about your, I wanna call it art. I think it is art. Give us the background of how all this, your work, came about? How did you learn to quilt? And talk about what you do now.

J. Janice Coleman – OK. I learned to sew when I was very young. Of course, I don’t have an exact day and time, but I can date it from the time that we were in the house that we were living in before we built a new house. So that was about, I guess I might have been 6 or 7 years old then.

MT Ideas – And, where was that?

Coleman – In Mound Bayou. And  I remember sewing then. Now, I wasn’t making quilts, I wasn’t making dresses. As a matter of fact, I was making purses or pocketbooks.

I would take a piece of fabric and fold in half on the wrong side. One of the major rules of quilting is that you keep the right sides together. OK, see, I’m almost through with this thing. This is going to be a pocketbook in a few seconds. 

So as a child, I would  get old sheets or old items, old items of clothing and just cut some pieces, blocks or whatever.

Mt Ideas – And, y’all were a farm family? 

Coleman – We were a farm family, yes. 

MT Ideas – So your mother was the person who taught you?

Coleman – I would say yes. She was a seamstress. 

If you look at the works in my exhibit, you will see I still sew according to the same pattern. The first exhibit I had was entitled “Quilts and Other Quadrilaterals.” Everything here is a quadrilateral, whether it’s a quilt or a cotton sack, or a tote bag or whatever. So I never strayed from my basic pattern, but within this basic pattern I can put triangles, circles, oblongs, whatever, but I stick with the basic pattern, the square or the rectangle. A quadrilateral. That’s my pattern. 

MT Ideas – So many of your projects have a historical perspective. How did you come up with wanting to be historical in your work and your art? 

Coleman – Well, it developed over time, and I think it developed before I even had an awareness of it. Because even the sacks are based on family history. I grew up in a farm family. We lived on the farm.

I’ve picked cotton, chopped cotton, picked cucumbers, purple hull peas. I’ve done all of that stuff. May I show my cotton sack? 

MT Ideas – Yes, ma’am. 

Coleman – On the farm, the cotton sack was the only textile that I could recreate. I could not recreate a tractor. I could not recreate a cucumber basket. I could not recreate a plow or any of those things, but I could recreate this cotton sack because it’s fabric. And so when I was at Mississippi State last year, I took my exhibit titled “The Cotton Sack Reimagined, Repurposed, Revolutionized,” and any cotton sack that’s got quilt panels all over it is revolutionized, is repurposed, is reimagined. I was trying to redo this, you know, this drab cotton sack.

This is a very functional thing, but my cotton sacks are not, well, they might be functional. They might be. We might say they are. They represent decor. They do not go to the cotton fields. They go to conferences. They go to colleges. They go to exhibits. They go to museums. That’s where my cotton sacks go.

MT Ideas – When I was a small boy growing up in rural Jones County, my mother and her sisters would get together on our porch and quilt. But there would be several of them doing it. But you do your sewing by yourself, right?

Coleman –  I do. So you all had the quilting bee. That’s what they were called, the quilting bee. When the women would get together and sew. Right? But  I’ve never sewed with anyone. Not that I would be opposed to it. I just haven’t.

MT Ideas – You kind of combine your English professor background into your work, into your art, which I think is unique and is fascinating. How did that come about? Did you just have an epiphany one day?

Coleman – Well, if you’ve spent as much time sewing as I have, then you may as well share it with the students and it needs to become a part of your academic life. 

MT Ideas – Have any of your students been inspired by your work?

Colman – They have seen the sack here many times. I have required them at times to make poster board quilts, and they can do some artistic things. I asked them to make poster board quilts as a way of learning more about authors, particularly African American authors.

So I would tell them to study 20 Black authors and put those authors on a poster board quilt. Some of them have done some amazing work, and I am just pleased that some of them allow me to keep their work.

MT Ideas – Now one of your pieces, one of your works that is just so incredible is your Fannie Lou Hamer quilt. I thought it’d be appropriate to talk about that during March, which is Women’s History Month.

Coleman – The quilt is 6 feet wide and 8 feet long. 

MT Ideas –  it is very inspiring, and I think she must have inspired you. 

Coleman – Yes, she did. But the quilt, I didn’t intend for it to be that long. I think Fannie Lou Hamer was 5 feet, 4 inches tall. And on the quilt I wanted her to be 5 feet, 4 inches tall. Life size. Right? But the the quilt got longer when I had to put the writing on the quilt, what she’s saying at the top of the quilt.

And then I had to have a border, so it just got longer than I intended for it to be, but Mrs. Hamer just had a way of doing that.

MT Ideas – Now she was a Civil Rights icon and did so much in terms of helping to enfranchise people to vote in Mississippi and throughout the South. Did you depict all that in your quilt?                                                                                                                                                    

Coleman – Yes, I had gotten a grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission to make that quilt. I got the grant in, maybe it was July or August of 2023.

But I already knew that I was going to dress her in red, white and blue, in flag print, because she really was a patriotic American. But she said, you know, you have to make the work. You have to work to make the dream come true.

And she worked. She gave it all that she had and then some, so I knew that I wanted to show her in red, white and blue. And if you get very close to the quilt and you look at the body part anyway, and some other parts of it, you will see in that fabric the words to “America, the Beautiful.”

MT Ideas – What was  the famous quote she had at the 1964 Democratic Convention, the “I’m sick and tired” quote?” 

Coleman – I think she said that before 1964. The one on the quilt is from 1964 where she says, “I question America. Is this America?” And a woman who saw that at the fall Folk Festival in Jackson said, I think we are still questioning America.

MT Ideas — And so what else is on the quilt?

Coleman – She suffered so much physical abuse. So I was thinking, I was wondering if I were going to try to show some of that abuse. Like I had this thought for a moment of showing one leg longer than the other, but then I decided I don’t want her all broken up like this on this quilt. Right? And so if you look over her left eye, you would see just a little red under the lid.

There’s nothing on the other eye, just the left eye. And I just let that stand for all the abuse that her body has suffered.

MT Ideas – Well, it’s breathtaking, and you should be proud of it.

Coleman – But no woman wants to be shown all beaten and battered, though. Right? 

As you engage with the art, the art engages with you. When it’s talking to you, you have to listen or you’ll never be able to finish anything. I’m serious about that.

MT Ideas – So what are you working on now?

Coleman – I’m not sewing now. I’m in the middle of the school year. I don’t sew much during the school year because it’s too distracting. I usually sew when school is out.

I was on the Fannie Lou Hamer project for a year, but it was slow going until school was out. And I got behind on the project because of the Mississippi Arts Commission that wanted it completed about May 15th. So the time that I had to work on the quilt ran along the months of the school year.

So after May 15th or when school was out, I was working on that quilt about, I would say sometimes about 16 hours a day.

MT Ideas – So, do you work in your home? Is there a room, a special room that you work in? 

Coleman – I work at my dining room table. But I think if you were to walk in my house, you would know that a person who sews lives there. 

And you would know that a person who reads a lot of books lives there.

MT Ideas – Well, you say you’re not working on anything right now. Do you have a vision for what you’re going work on next?

Coleman – I really want to put Myrlie Evers on a quilt. And not so much as a Civil Rights worker, but as a singer at Carnegie Hall. I interviewed her a few years ago when she was about to turn 80, you know, she’s 90, 93 now, I believe. And she was talking about how pleased she was that she finally got to sing at Carnegie Hall. 

MT Ideas – Uh, real quick, the Fannie Lou Hamer quilt, has any of her family seen it?

Coleman –  No, and, believe it or not, she hasn’t even been to the Delta. 

MT Ideas – She, the quilt? 

Coleman – Yeah. She hasn’t been to the Delta yet. She needs to get up there. She’s been getting around. But we do need to go to the Delta sometime soon.

MT Ideas – I appreciate your time. I’ve learned a lot more today about sewing. It’s good to know about it, but I never could do it myself. 

Coleman – Have you tried?

MT Ideas – No, ma’am. So some things I just know it’s better not to try. 

Coleman – OK. I know that too.

Lawmakers approved a roughly $200 million increase in Medicaid’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year, delivering about half of what the agency requested. 

State legislators have also advanced a measure to give the agency a $35 million deficit appropriation to cover a shortfall for the current fiscal year. Senate Appropriations Chairman Briggs Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg, warned Sunday of a “very real possibility” there could be a deficit appropriation next year, too. 

The steep increase in state spending for Medicaid has squeezed other parts of the state’s $7.36 billion total budget, including an overdue teacher pay raise and spending for child care, lawmakers said. 

“We’ve got a massive Medicaid issue that we’re addressing, and the funds are not there,” said House Appropriations C Committee Chairman Clay Deweese, a Republican from Oxford, on the House floor Sunday in a response to a question about why $15 million for desperately needed child care vouchers was removed from an appropriations bill.  

Lawmakers proposed $1.17 billion in state spending on Medicaid, but that amount is roughly $190 million less than the agency’s January budget request. It also falls about $29 million short of Gov. Tate Reeves’ recommendation for the agency. The appropriation bill will next go to Reeves’ desk for consideration. 

Lawmakers this session were stunned by the agency’s request for a nearly $390-million increase in state funding over the current year, even as the program’s enrollment dropped to the lowest level in over a decade. They were also baffled by a roughly $160-million discrepancy between the agency’s request and a November budget proposal from Reeves, whose office oversees tMedicaid.

The sharp increase in the budget request for Medicaid, which accounts for roughly a tenth of the state’s spending and administers health coverage to nearly 700,000 children and low-income pregnant, disabled and elderly Mississippians, was the result of a reserve of federal pandemic relief dollars running out, according to agency leaders. 

During the pandemic, the federal government provided an enhanced match for state Medicaid funding in exchange for states keeping individuals enrolled during the emergency. As a result, Medicaid’s cash reserve soared to $682 million in 2023, according to agency budget documents. 

In recent years, state lawmakers granted Medicaid small funding increases as the agency relied on the leftover COVID-19 pandemic funds to balance its growing budget. But with the surplus exhausted during this fiscal year, agency officials say a significant boost in state appropriations is necessary to maintain services. 

To allow the agency to continue providing the same services, lawmakers recommended an additional $120 million from the state’s general fund compared to last year. Of that amount, lawmakers said $20 million is meant to offset reduced funding from the Health Care Expendable Fund. This money was taken from tobacco settlement funds and is now dwindling, according to lawmakers. 

Lawmakers also opted to set aside $100 million for Medicaid from the state’s capital expense fund, a reserve intended for funding one-time expenses such as repairs and renovations of state-owned properties. 

Hopson said he hopes the state will only need to use capital expense dollars to fund the agency this year, but Medicaid’s budget is difficult to predict. 

“I’ve been doing this long enough where I wait every year to see how things look, and while I try to predict based on market trends, based on things that are going on in our state, I never know exactly,” Hopson said. 

The proposed funding reaches the level agreed upon by the Division of Medicaid and the governor to allow the agency to continue operating at its current level, but that could require the agency to freeze some reimbursement rates, Hopson told lawmakers Sunday. 

Responding to Mississippi Today, Hopson said he did not know whether or not the agency would be forced to freeze or cut provider rates due to the amount at the current budget rate. 

“That’s not clear yet. That’s going to be for the Division of Medicaid to handle,” said Hopson, who added that he trusts Medicaid and Reeves’ office to look into it and make a decision carefully. 

Mississippi Medicaid Director Cindy Bradshaw warned some stakeholders during an earlier stage in the budget process that the agency could lower its provider payments by as much as 11% without an increase in the agency’s budget.

Matt Westerfield, a spokesperson for the Division of Medicaid, did not respond to Mississippi Today’s questions about whether the agency is considering freezing or cutting provider rates at proposed budget level. 

Hopson told fellow senators an expected increase in the proportion of Medicaid funded by the federal government could improve the agency’s budget outlook for the coming year. 

Mississippi’s federal match rate, which is the highest in the country, will rise by less than half of a percentage point to 77.32% for the coming fiscal year. The federal match rate is calculated using a formula that accounts for the average per-capita income for each state relative to the national average. 

As the House and Senate worked their way through appropriations bills Sunday, legislators warned the same challenges could resurface next year if efforts are not made to reduce Medicaid spending. 

“I’m going to come back up here and tell you, if the good Lord gives me the strength,” Rep. Omeria Scott, a Democrat from Laurel, said Sunday. “Next year, you’re going to be in the same boat.”

Deweese said the Legislature will call a study committee on Medicaid’s budget this summer to continue to further examine the agency’s rising costs. 

Correction, 3/31/2026: This article has been updated to reflect that Rep. Clay Deweese is the chairman of the House Appropriations C Committee.

The Trump administration on Tuesday exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said environmentalists’ lawsuits against the industry threatened to hobble domestic energy supplies as the U.S. wages war against Iran.

Critics said the move by the government’s Endangered Species Committee could doom a rare whale species and harm other marine life. The committee is nicknamed the “God Squad” by groups who say it can decide a species’ fate. It includes several Trump administration officials and is chaired by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

It met Tuesday for the first time in more than three decades amid global oil shocks and soaring energy prices brought on by the Iran war. The U.S. pumps more oil than any other nation, but that hasn’t insulated it from spiking prices: The national average for a gallon of gasoline topped $4 Tuesday for the first time since 2022.

“Disruptions to Gulf oil production doesn’t hurt just us, it benefits our adversaries,” Hegseth told the committee. “We cannot allow our own rules to weaken our standing and strengthen those who wish to harm us. When development in the Gulf is chilled, we are prevented from producing the energy we need as a country and as a department.”

Environmental groups sought unsuccessfully to block Tuesday’s meeting and pledged to challenge the exemption. They say the exemption would speed the extinction of the rare Rice’s whale, which is found exclusively in the Gulf of Mexico. Government biologists say only about 50 of the animals remain.

“If Trump is successful here, he could be the first person in history to knowingly extirpate a species from the face of the earth. That’s how precarious the condition of the Rice’s whale is,” said Patrick Parenteau, emeritus professor of law at Vermont Law School.

Streamlined approvals for drilling

Republican President Donald Trump has made increased fossil fuel production a central focus of his second term. He wants to open new areas of the Gulf off the Florida coast to drilling, and has proposed sweeping rollbacks of environmental regulations disliked by industry.

Hegseth had notified Burgum on March 13 that an Endangered Species Act exemption for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf was “necessary for reasons of national security.”

Hegseth told committee members Tuesday that Iran’s efforts to block shipping through the world’s busiest oil route, the Strait of Hormuz, underscored the national security imperative of a robust domestic oil production. He said the energy industry is under threat from pending litigation from environmental groups challenging government approvals for drilling.

Industry observers said the exemption could have significant implications for energy companies by streamlining approvals of new projects and impeding opponents’ ability to derail drilling plans.

“Serial litigation from activist groups targeting a lawful, well-regulated industry should not be allowed to indefinitely obstruct projects of clear national importance,” said Erik Milito with the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore developers.

The Gulf of Mexico is one of the nation’s top oil regions, producing 2 million barrels a day. It accounts for almost 15% of crude pumped annually in the U.S., plus a small share of domestic natural gas production.

The Gulf also has been the scene of environmental disasters such as BP’s Deepwater Horizon blowout in 2010 that killed 11 workers and spilled 134 million gallons (500 million liters) of oil. A spill in the Gulf earlier this month spread 373 miles (600 kilometers), contaminating at least six species and polluting seven protected natural reserves.

The Trump administration in mid-March approved BP’s new $5 billion ultra-deepwater drilling project in the Gulf.

Whales, turtles and sturgeon at risk

A 2025 National Marine Fisheries Service analysis determined the Gulf oil and gas program was likely to harm several species of whales, sea turtles and Gulf sturgeon that face potential harm from ship strikes, oil spills and other impacts.

The Gulf exemption is the first time national security has been cited to justify action by the Endangered Species Committee. Conservation groups immediately condemned the action and asserted it was done illegally.

“The Endangered Species Act has not slowed an iota of oil from being extracted from the Gulf,” said Defenders of Wildlife President Andrew Bowman. “I cannot stress enough how unprecedented and unlawful this action is.”

Since 1973, the Endangered Species Act has made it illegal to harm or kill species on a protected list. The committee was formed in 1978 as a way to exempt projects if no alternative would provide the same economic benefits in a region or if it was in the nation’s best interest.

Before this week, the panel had convened just three times and issued only two exemptions. The first was in 1979 to allow construction on a dam on the Platte River in Wyoming, home to the whooping crane. It last met in 1992, allowing logging in northern spotted owl habitats in Oregon. That exemption request was later withdrawn.

Its latest meeting follows a federal judge’s ruling on Monday that struck down attempts during Trump’s first term to weaken rules for endangered species.

The panel’s members include the secretaries of agriculture, interior and the Army, the chairperson of the Council of Economic Advisers, and the administrators of both the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They all voted in favor of Hegseth’s request for an exemption.

Days before the start of a trial that could send a Jackson woman to prison for decades, Hinds County prosecutors discovered a sheriff’s deputy had body camera footage they didn’t know existed and wasn’t turned over to the defense. 

The footage showed a Hinds County Sheriff’s Department deputy administering a Breathalyzer test to Jada Kelly, then 22, who was accused of killing two people and disfiguring a third after allegedly driving under the influence in the early morning hours of Jan. 15, 2023. 

How did this 3-year-old footage go unearthed for so long? The Jackson Police Department neglected to include the body cam in the case it turned over to the Hinds County District Attorney’s Office — a recurring problem that attorneys in Jackson have identified with the understaffed agency. 

Instead, prosecutors repeatedly told the circuit court judge in recent weeks that they learned the footage existed after they interviewed Kenny Bryant, the deputy who conducted the Breathalyzer test, and he told them he was recording that night. 

“Because multiple agencies were involved in the response and investigation, materials are sometimes maintained by different entities and are not always consolidated into a single submission at the outset,” Kayli Hankins, the communications director for the district attorney’s office, wrote in an email to Mississippi Today. 

JPD did not respond to a request for comment by press time. 

The video’s sudden discovery is one of several issues that Kelly’s attorney, Dennis Sweet III, raised at a hearing before Judge Debra Gibbs on Jan. 26. 

Sweet is now seeking to suppress parts of the video, claiming it shows officers failing to properly inform Kelly of her rights before conducting the Breathalyzer. Gibbs did not rule on this motion, and the trial is underway.

If convicted, Kelly faces up to 75 years in prison. She was indicted in 2023 for three counts of aggravated DUI about four months after she was arrested for driving a Toyota Camry through a red light and colliding with Toney Payne’s Nissan Altima, killing sisters Azure Higgins, 45, and Valerie Lynch, 43, and leaving Payne permanently disfigured, according to investigators.  

JPD responded to the scene at the intersection of Canton Mart Road and I-55 Frontage Road but called Bryant, a sheriff’s deputy who has done hundreds of sobriety tests since joining the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department in 2020, to determine if Kelly was under the influence. 

Bryant found Kelly’s blood alcohol content was 0.18, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08. He did not test Payne, whom officers took to the hospital. There, his blood alcohol content registered at .10. 

Soon after the indictment, Sweet filed a motion for discovery – a routine filing to ensure the defense has access to all available evidence – in June 2023. But it wasn’t until last week, six days before Kelly’s trial was set to begin, that prosecutors turned Bryant’s footage over to Sweet. 

“Why am I just getting it now?” Sweet asked a prosecutor, Carrie Jourdan, before the hearing last week. 

“Because I just found it,” Jourdan responded in frustration. 

Hankins wrote that the district attorney’s office “promptly” turned the footage over once it was discovered. On Monday, Sheriff Tyree Jones said he was familiar with Kelly’s case but had to attend to another matter involving two homicides in rural Hinds County. 

Matt Steffey, a professor at the Mississippi College School of Law, said he thought prosecutors should’ve known the footage existed much earlier, given the likelihood that Bryant’s name appears in JPD’s case file. While Mississippi Today has not reviewed the case file or the body cam footage, prosecutors included Bryant’s name on a witness list filed with the court earlier this month. 

The late disclosure can lead to what is known as a Brady violation, the legal term for when the prosecution withholds evidence that can help the defense make its case. Brady violations result in cases being dismissed — another motion Sweet entered after learning the footage existed. 

But Steffey said Sweet is unlikely to win that argument, since the evidence was also effectively withheld from the prosecution. 

“It does show the chaos around the Hinds County law enforcement,” he said. “That they didn’t know about it is just as relevant as why are we talking about this 3-year-old case now.” 

Allen Siegler, mental health reporter at Mississippi Today, has been named a finalist for the 2025 National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Awards for his investigation into how Mississippi officials spent the state’s opioid settlement funds.

In September, Siegler’s Black Box series investigation found that Mississippi spent less than 1% of over $124 million the state had received so far on measures that would prevent more overdose deaths. Since 2000, more than 10,000 Mississippians have died as a result of opioid use. 

Siegler earned a spot among 42 finalists from local, state and national news outlets from across the country through the competition judged by independent panels and hosted by the NIHCM Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that relies on evidence and collaboration to explore issues in health care and policy research. 

“These stories and studies represent the best of health care journalism and policy research – work that brings to light important stories and strengthens the evidence base on the nation’s most pressing health care challenges,” said Andrew Dreyfus, CEO and President of the NIHCM Foundation, in a released statement.  

It is an honor for his newsroom’s work to be recognized in this way, Siegler said, but he finds the moment bittersweet. 

“At the same time, it’s devastating to find that financial resources intended to be life saving for Mississippians struggling with addiction, like Chelsea Aultman Sadler, went unspent or for other purposes when they were needed most,” Siegler said. 

After his investigation’s initial launch, Siegler has continued to cover how Mississippi lawmakers and officials award contracts and respond to the overdose crisis.

“As recent events at the Legislature show, the Black Box reporting by itself is not enough to guarantee all funds will be spent for their intended purpose — to end one of the worst public health crises in modern history,” Siegler said. “But we will continue to advocate for truth and transparency around the settlements, while documenting how the most powerful Mississippians manage them.”

Winners will be announced in late April in Washington, D.C.

Jarvis Dortch, executive director of the ACLU of Mississippi and a former state lawmaker, warns of a pending Supreme Court decision from a Louisiana case and efforts in Congress that would undermine the Voting Rights Act and potentially turn back the clock on voting rights and redistricting in Mississippi and elsewhere.

House Speaker Jason White on Monday night said legislators were working on a proposal to revive legislation to enhance the regulation of pharmacy benefit managers and may ask Gov. Tate Reeves to call a special legislative session later this week if legislators reach an agreement.

The Speaker’s remarks came as lawmakers finalized the bulk of the state’s $7.36-billion budget for the next fiscal year to fund state agencies and signaled they will conclude their 2026 session by the end of the week. It also came just after the House passed a resolution that would extend the legislative session, at least “on paper,” to April 15, a legislative maneuver White said would give legislators flexibility to address any last-minute issues.

The Senate is expected to agree to the resolution, which would buy lawmakers a little more time to haggle out some measures. The Speaker said those measures could include any last-minute snafus in an agreement to give teachers a pay raise, and efforts to revive measures to redraw Mississippi’s Supreme Court districts and pharmacy benefit manager reform.

“If we can get an agreement on PBMs, we’re going to ask the governor to call a special session for one day, maybe later this week and see where we get on that,” White said.

A proposal aimed at increasing the transparency of operations of pharmacy benefit managers, middlemen used by health insurance companies and self-insured employer plans, died in negotiations between the House and Senate, even as it became one of the major issues of the 2026 legislative session. Pharmacy benefit managers have increasingly drawn scrutiny from policymakers because of their opaque business practices, market consolidation and concerns that their practices are leading to increased drug prices with little accountability.

White had already called on Reeves to call a special session to revive talks to pass legislation addressing pharmacy benefit managers. On Monday evening, he said lawmakers were “close” to reaching a new agreement that could prompt a special session within or at the end of the current regular one, which he also said could be as soon as Thursday.

“We’re looking at some alternative language that a large portion of the independent (pharmacies) seem to support,” White said. “So we’re going to see where we get with that and with our friends at the other end of the building.”

White declined to provide details on the new agreement in the works, but has previously attributed the earlier bill’s failure to the Senate’s inclusion of language mandating a dispensing fee on pharmaceuticals. The House’s original bill would have given independent pharmacists 90% of what they have been advocating for the past three years, White has said.

The House plan, authored by Rep. Hank Zuber, a Republican from Ocean Springs, would have moved the regulation of pharmacy benefit managers from the Board of Pharmacy to the insurance commissioner.

The Senate’s version, authored by Sen. Rita Parks, a Republican from Corinth, would have kept the regulation of pharmacy benefit managers at the Board of Pharmacy and added language to the House’s bill that she said independent pharmacists requested to ensure they are paid fairly and transparently for dispensing drugs to patients.

Independent pharmacists have warned year after year that if legislators do not pass reform legislation, their businesses may be forced to close. They say the companies’ low reimbursements and unfair business practices have left them struggling to break even. 

The Trump administration and Reeves have also gotten involved in the dispute. 

In a memo dated March 18, the Trump administration urged the House to invite further negotiations on the bill to remove a provision that would interfere with TrumpRx, a government-run website launched in February that offers cash discounts for prescription drugs. 

Reeves later met with lawmakers to discuss the legislation, where Senate negotiators said he encouraged the chambers to find language that they can agree on so pharmacy benefit manager reform can be passed.

Last year, a pharmacy benefit reform bill made it to a similar stage in the legislative process but died in the House after a lawmaker raised a procedural challenge.

Mississippi Today reporter Gwen Dilworth contributed to this report

As the Mississippi Legislature’s regular session enters what lawmakers hope are its final days, legislators on Monday appeared to settle the state’s biggest ticket item: spending $3.4-billion on K-12 education. 

Though lawmakers were wrapping up most of their work on a nearly $7.4-billion budget, House Speaker Jason White on Monday evening filed a resolution that would extend the legislative session, at least “on paper,” to April 15. The Senate is expected to agree to the resolution, which would buy lawmakers a little more time to haggle out some measures.

House leaders said they still expect to end their session as early as Thursday, and the extension is a parliamentary move. The eleventh-hour haggling includes trying to agree to bills to fund special projects in members’ districts around the state before the session ends. 

White on Monday said lawmakers still hope to end an impasse over changes to the state’s pharmacy benefit manager laws, and might ask the governor to call a special session within or at the end of the current regular one to try to reach an agreement.

The education budget bill, which accounts for nearly half of the state’s general fund spending, earmarks around $108 million for teacher and assistant teacher raises. 

While the education budget, including an increase of $121 million over the current fiscal year, has been approved by both chambers, it’s not final yet — the bill has been held on a procedural motion that could invite more debate, though that’s unlikely. 

A teacher pay raise was one of the session’s headline issues. The two chambers have debated the issue for months, killed each other’s bills, and then revived their respective proposals. In the end, it appears that the Senate’s original $2,000 raise has won out. 

The Senate had recently passed a $6,000 teacher pay raise, spread over three years, but legislative leaders said that after reviewing other agencies’ hefty budget requests, the state could only afford the $2,000 raise this year.

During floor debate, Rep. Robert Johnson III, the House Democratic leader from Natchez, unsuccessfully attempted to stall the passage of the education budget to revive the House’s $5,000 teacher pay raise proposal it passed earlier in the session.

“I would suggest that the gentleman has a wonderful idea, and it was our House position, but we based our final decision on the teacher pay raise based on what we had available and what we could afford to give the teachers,” said Rep. Karl Oliver, a Republican from Winona, who promised, “we’ll come back and look at it another year.”

Lawmakers also earmarked millions for a number of Mississippi Department of Education initiatives, including extending the literacy act that boosted reading rates into higher grades, creating a similar statewide math program and implementing financial literacy courses. Lawmakers’ decisions raise state per-student spending to $7,202, up from $6,961.

The House has until Tuesday to table the motion to reconsider it. Then, the education budget would go to the governor for his consideration. 

And while the K-12 education budget bill provides funding for the pay raises, the bill that changes teachers’ salary schedules in state law still awaits approval from both chambers, with a deadline of Wednesday.

Lawmakers on Monday continued to haggle over the last of the 100 or so bills that make up the state budget, and on general bills, many of which they’ve debated for weeks. Some highlights:

Session extended ‘on paper’

Lawmakers have extended the legislative session “on paper” until April 15, but it’s largely a precautionary measure. 

The Mississippi Constitution does not allow the Legislature to pass bills that spend money during the last five days of a session. Since the final day of the session is set for Sunday, April 5, the measure would give legislators an extra cushion in case they need more time on revenue and spending bills. 

Lawmakers could vote to extend the session on paper but still finish by either the end of the week or Sunday’s scheduled final day. 

House Rules Committee Chairman Fred Shanks, a Republican from Brandon, told Mississippi Today that lawmakers should pass all of their revenue and budget bills in time, but House leaders wanted to pass the measure as a backup.

PERS changes adopted, no cash infusion

Lawmakers this session have debated changes to the Public Employees’ Retirement System, an effort to undo some changes they made last year that have drawn criticism. 

In an effort to shore up the system’s $26 billion in unfunded liabilities, lawmakers last year made the plan more austere, a hybrid defined contribution plan instead of a defined benefit plan, for people hired after March of this year. Opponents said this will make hiring and retaining state employees, such as teachers and first responders, more difficult.

Lawmakers scuttled a proposal from the Senate to pump $1 billion into PERS over the next decade.

A final agreement approved nearly unanimously by the House and Senate would:

• Reduce the service requirement for full retirement for new hires from 35 years to 30.
• Allow retirees to return to state work after 30 days instead of 90, and make other changes to allow retirees to more easily fill vacant state jobs without jeopardizing their retirement benefits.
• Base retirement payments on an employees’ highest four years of salary instead of their highest eight years.
• Allow state employees to pay into “catch-up” plans such as Roth IRAs.

Bill requiring protective equipment for prisoners sent to governor 

Both chambers on Monday adopted a compromise version of House Bill 1444, a measure authored by Rep. Justis Gibbs, a Democrat from Jackson, that will require the Department of Corrections to provide prisoners with protective equipment when using raw cleaning chemicals. 

Gibbs introduced the legislation, which also passed the House last year but died in the Senate, in response to the case of Susan Balfour, a woman who developed terminal breast cancer after she came into contact with raw industrial chemicals during cleaning duty. Balfour died in August. 

Balfour had filed a federal lawsuit against three private medical contractors for the prison system, alleging medical neglect. 

The companies contracted to provide health care to prisoners at the facility over the course of Balfour’s sentence — Wexford Health Sources, Centurion Health and VitalCore, the current medical provider — delayed or failed to schedule follow-up cancer screenings for Balfour even though they had been recommended by prison physicians, the lawsuit alleged. The suit is ongoing even after Balfour’s death. 

House Bill 1444 is one of the only prison health reform measures that survived this session. The Senate blocked most of the proposals to improve health care in Mississippi’s prisons, which were driven in part by findings from an ongoing Mississippi Today investigation. 

Rep. Becky Currie, the House Corrections Chairwoman driving the push for reforms, said she will try again next session.

Oil spill settlement money sent to Coast projects

The House and Senate adopted a compromise measure that provides $41 million from the Gulf Coast Restoration Fund to various projects to support economic growth along the Coast. The money comes from the state’s settlement with BP over its 2010 Gulf oil well disaster. The House has until Tuesday to table a motion to reconsider its passage of the bill. 

Of the 19 projects that would receive money, nine were recommended by the Mississippi Development Authority or the board’s advisory council, which administers funds and manages the application process. The Legislature appropriated funds to 10 projects that were not recommended, totaling about 45% of this year’s money.

While the Legislature makes final decisions on spending the money, a report from the state auditor’s office published in March raised concerns about giving money to projects that are not recommended by MDA. The report said projects might not “meet MDA standards” or not “have clear performance metrics.”

Historically, most projects the Legislature funds for the program follow the application process but the Auditor’s report found that 34% of projects the legislature has approved did not submit an application. This year, at least one project did not appear to have submitted an application to MDA.
This year’s projects include the restoration of the Long Beach Harbor Complex, repairs to a shipbuilding facility and setting up a museum at the Mississippi Songwriters Performing Arts Center.