OurTupelo

 Mississippi could be responsible for an estimated $75 million a year in SNAP benefit costs under new federal requirements as food pantries across the state report increased demand for assistance.

Mississippi Food Network reported in August that visits across its network were up 36% from a year ago. The increase comes as Mississippi prepares to shoulder a larger share of the costs of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Beginning Oct. 1, states will be responsible for 75% of SNAP administrative costs, up from 50%. Beginning in fiscal year 2028, states may also have to contribute directly to SNAP benefit costs based on their payment error rates, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Mississippi’s payment error rate was 9.51% in fiscal year 2025, down from 10.69% the previous year and below the national rate of 10.62%, according to the USDA. 

At that rate, Mississippi would fall into the 10% state cost-share tier. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that it could cost the state about $75 million annually based on current SNAP spending. 

If Mississippi lowers its error rate below 8%, its share would drop to 5%, an estimated cost of about $40 million annually. States may use their fiscal year 2025 or 2026 error rate when the requirement begins. 

Gov. Tate Reeves said lowering Mississippi’s error rate is a priority.

“We’re working very hard to reduce our error rate … When we started this, Mississippi’s error rate was below the national average but still too high … I think we’ll definitely get under 8% before the end of September,” Reeves said. 

Updated September figures were not available as of publication.

The USDA defines payment error rates as a measure of how accurately states determine SNAP eligibility and benefit amounts. The rates include overpayments and underpayments and are not a measure of fraud. 

Reeves said he expects eligible families to continue receiving benefits and said workforce development should also be part of efforts to reduce dependence on federal assistance. 

“I believe very strongly … every single individual has two things. If they have the skills that they need … and the opportunity for a job that pays $60,000 (or more) a year, most of those other things take care of themselves,” Reeves said.

The federal changes come as food assistance organizations respond to existing food insecurity across Mississippi. 

Mississippi Food Network serves 56 counties through more than 430 partner agencies and reports reaching more than 163,000 people each month. CEO Karli Coughlin said the organization’s sourcing partnerships allow it to provide about six meals for every dollar donated.

“When considering the impact of SNAP, it’s not only feeding Mississippi families … We want families to stay in Mississippi and build a life here … Food security is part of what makes a state worth staying in,” Coughlin said. 

Feeding America’s 2026 Map the Meal Gap study estimates that 591,530 Mississippians, or about 1 in 5 residents, experienced food insecurity in 2024. 

Food assistance programs are also serving college students. At Mississippi State University, registered dietitian Suzanne Bowen coordinates Bully’s Pantry, which provides food and other necessities to students in need. 

“Bully’s Pantry provides food, toiletries, school supplies and other necessary items to Mississippi State students who are in need,” Bowen said. 

Bowen said the pantry recorded 8,515 visits in 2025. During that period, 112 students used the service for the first time. 

Asked whether the federal SNAP changes could increase demand, Bowen said the pantry will continue serving students while working to make them aware of the available assistance. 

“It’s our students here at MSU that help us by promoting Bully’s Pantry on campus to other students, so that they know it’s a resource that’s available to them… we certainly want to reduce any stigma around food insecurity,” Bowen said. 

Mississippi Food Network plans to hold volunteer events during Hunger Action Month in September and “go orange” for Hunger Action Day on Sept. 29.

Mississippi Today Ideas is a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share their ideas 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.

It is back to school season, and over 67,000 college students in Mississippi are relying on Pell Grants to help pay for college. But, the program is facing a $15 billion funding shortfall that will undermine college access and success unless the United States Congress fixes the funding gap. 

The Pell Grant program is the primary federal grant helping low- and middle-income students pay for college. Students can use the funds to pay for tuition, books and living costs like rent and food.  

Congress wisely made structural changes to the Pell Grant program at the end of the first Trump administration as part of the FAFSA Simplification Act. Those changes created a new Student Aid Index, based on family income and assets, that is used to determine how much financial aid a student is eligible for. The changes raised the eligibility threshold for Pell Grants, making almost 600,000 more students eligible, and approximately 1.7 million more eligible for the maximum grant. 

The eligibility changes mean more students are receiving Pell than anticipated. Because Pell is funded through discretionary appropriations, Congress must estimate how much money is needed. When the estimates are too low, there is a shortfall that requires additional appropriations. 

Mississippians who rely on Pell funding need to know that funding will be there for the duration of their programs. Students cannot make informed decisions about postsecondary education and training if they do not know whether the financial aid they are counting on will be available from one year to the next.

Cuts to Pell would also undermine Mississippi’s ongoing efforts to increase postsecondary credentials and degrees that lead to family-sustaining employment. 

Just last year, the state expanded eligibility for financial aid programs like the Higher Ed Legislative Plan and Mississippi Tuition Assistance Grant to make it easier for our students to get help paying for college. But, state financial aid relies on complementing Pell funding, not replacing it. If Pell grants are reduced, state funding cannot make up the difference.  

Mississippi has also been a leader in helping students apply for financial aid to help pay for college. This year, according to the National College Attainment Network’s FAFSA Tracker, Mississippi ranks third in the country with a record-breaking 71% of the 2026 high school class completing the aid application. FAFSA is the federal form that determines student eligibility for aid to help pay for college and other training after high school. 

More students, especially low-income and first-generation students, enrolling in college is a good problem to have.

FAFSA simplification and increased Pell Grant eligibility are rare examples of policy changes rapidly achieving the hoped-for outcome of increasing college access. This progress will be undermined if Congress jeopardizes millions of students’ Pell Grants by failing to fully fund the program.

There are positive signs that this administration and congress are willing to fix the Pell shortfall. The President’s budget proposed maintaining the current maximum grant, but did not include funding to address the shortfall. Congress is now considering legislation that would both address the funding gap and increase the maximum grant by $50.

But, the House proposal would pay for that increase by eliminating subsidized federal student loans, another important tool that helps make college affordable. This approach would add thousands of dollars of interest to the loan balances of millions of student loan borrowers, but especially students who rely on Pell funding. 

The maximum Pell Grant of $7,395 is already too low. Today, the max grant covers 30% of average tuition, housing and food at public colleges, down from 79% of those expenses in 1975. If the maximum grant had kept pace with inflation since 2022, when it was last increased, it would be $8,109 today. An extra $50 is a positive if insufficient step in the right direction. 

If Congress fails to address the Pell funding shortfall, millions of students will struggle to cover tuition, possibly stop attending school or decide not to enroll in the first place 

Financial challenges are already the primary reason that students leave college. There is also strong evidence that every $1,000 of grant aid increases graduation rates by 1.5 percentage points. Similar sized cuts are likely to reduce graduation rates, after years of positive gains. 

Lower graduation rates would disproportionally impact first generation and low-income students, potentially reversing the enrollment gains we are seeing among those groups. 

They are the students that we work to support at the Woodward Hines Education Foundation and our Get2College program, and who have the most to gain from higher education and training. Those students know exactly how valuable college is, because they know what it’s like when a lack of education limits your options. 

Mississippi students are doing their part. They are completing the FAFSA, enrolling in college and pursuing credentials that can strengthen their futures and our state’s workforce. They should be able to count on the financial aid they planned around.

Congress must close the Pell funding shortfall so Mississippi students can move forward knowing the support they planned on will be there when they need it most.

James E. McHale is president and CEO of the Woodward Hines Education Foundation and the Mississippi Higher Education Assistance Corporation, based in Jackson. Since joining WHEF as president in December 2015, McHale has led the organization’s efforts to expand postsecondary access, affordability, persistence and completion and strengthen connections between education and family-sustaining work for Mississippians.

Under McHale’s leadership, WHEF has expanded its work beyond college access to support promising practices, programs and policies that help more Mississippians enter and complete postsecondary education and connect their credentials to meaningful employment. He has led efforts to strengthen WHEF’s college access program, Get2College, which provides free college planning and financial aid assistance to students and families across Mississippi, while also advancing the foundation’s partnerships and policy work to address systemic barriers to postsecondary success. 

As Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch prepares a plan for how Mississippi can spend $189 million of national Meta lawsuit funds, legal experts told Mississippi Today that the settlement raises questions about whether the money will be used to directly address children’s mental health.

Fitch is drafting the plan as Meta, the corporation that runs Facebook and Instagram, prepares to pay billions of dollars to states after attorneys general accused the company of endangering children across the country with their social media platforms. The settlement agreement the lawyers came to doesn’t require Mississippi to use the money for any specific purpose, instead instructing the attorney general to set the parameters in a final consent decree filing.

Fitch’s office said lawyers for the state would file that plan in Hinds Chancery Court this month. Legal experts, mental health advocates and state lawmakers told Mississippi Today that Fitch’s plan could impact the health of children in the state for years to come.

A landmark settlement

The final consent decree is coming after 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories reached a historic $17 billion settlement in late August with Meta. Mississippi’s share of the money could go up to $270 million if the tech companies Snap, TikTok and YouTube also agree to settlements with the attorneys general.

The settlement follows a series of years-long parallel lawsuits and joint federal complaints against Meta, accusing the company of turning its social media platforms Instagram and Facebook into “addiction machines,” targeting children during vulnerable life stages. This settlement resolves those cases, including Mississippi’s lawsuit, with payments to each of the states and establishing new safety standards Meta must implement on Facebook and Instagram. Some social media experts have questioned whether the standards will be effective.

But the agreement allows many states to determine how their share of the billions of dollars will be spent as Meta makes payments over 10 years, starting by the end of this month. 

The national settlement offers suggestions for how states could spend the lawsuit money — such as improving youth crisis hotlines or funding outdoor activities. But those recommendations are non-binding. 

Asked about the parameters she might set for spending the money, Fitch told Mississippi Today it would be spent to provide children with information to protect themselves from the harms of social media. 

“The money will be used for our children,” Fitch said. “It will be geared specifically to protect our children (through) awareness, outreach, programs that involve them and give them the information to be protected.” 

Fitch, a Republican, is running for governor and has touted her efforts to protect children from large technology companies. MaryAsa Lee, a spokesperson for Fitch, said the consent decree will follow the directions laid out in the global settlement.

Lee didn’t answer an additional emailed question about how the Hinds County consent decree will ensure the Meta money is spent to help Mississippi children. She said the lawsuit “was premised in part on the impact on children’s mental wellbeing and the settlement agreement her office helped to negotiate made that a priority.”

But no legal documents bind Mississippi’s Meta money to that priority yet. Matt Steffey, a Mississippi Christian University law professor, said the settlement does not include some of the restrictions that were tethered to the $430 million the state is receiving in opioid settlement money. Some of those funds can be spent on purposes unrelated to addiction, but the lawsuits against the drug companies that contributed to the overdose epidemic say the state must use most of it to address addiction. 

By contrast, the Meta settlement says state attorneys general can use the money for any lawful purpose.

“That language gives the AG virtually unlimited latitude,” Steffey said. 

Chris Murray, senior fellow at the Northeastern University Cybersecurity Research Center, said in an email that attorneys general including Fitch should be applauded for filing and investing resources in the lawsuit. The center’s research has repeatedly found platforms such as Instagram to be dangerous for kids, even after they’ve implemented safety features. 

Mississippi continues to face a youth mental health crisis. Roughly 31,000 children in the state between the ages of 12 and 17 have seriously considered suicide, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness in 2025. The alliance also found that Mississippi only has about one school psychologist for every 10,000 public school students. 

“This settlement can be used to support the mental health of Mississippi kids — if the state doesn’t sweep the money into the general fund and use it to pay for politicians or potholes,” Murray said.

What role will state lawmakers play?

Although the national settlement assigns spending decisions to attorneys general such as Fitch, the Mississippi Constitution gives the Legislature authority to spend most public money. Lawmakers have asserted that authority with both tobacco and opioid settlement funds. 

House Public Health Chairman Sam Creekmore, a Republican from New Albany, said he had a recent meeting scheduled with Fitch, and he planned to address the settlement with her then. 

Creekmore declined to say what he would like to be included in the consent decree, but he said he hopes the money will support children’s mental health initiatives. Fitch’s office did not answer a question asking whether she has discussed the settlement with legislative leaders. 

“Whatever money comes in from whatever settlement needs to address the reasons why we got the settlement to begin with,” Creekmore said.

Senate Public Health Chairman Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory, said the state Supreme Court has ruled that money recovered via settlements such as this one belong to the client, not the attorney. He cited the court’s 2007 ruling against the attorney general’s office, which stopped the AG’s office and a board it created from spending money recovered from a landmark tobacco settlement without legislative approval. 

Bryan said he was concerned about managing the Meta money even if the Legislature has broad spending authority. He said that in the past, the state hasn’t spent pots of health funding in ways that complement each other. 

“I just am extraordinarily concerned that this appears to be a one-off thing over here in a world unto itself, and it’s got no coordination with anything else,” Bryan said.

Even with settlement restrictions on national opioid funds, other states have found ways to use some of those lawsuit dollars for purposes unrelated to mitigating the crisis corporations catalyzed. Shelly Weizman, the associate director of Georgetown Law’s Center on Addiction and Public Policy, said that puts more of the onus on states to plan ahead for how the Meta money can be used effectively. 

“Where does Mississippi want to be on this issue in five years, in 10 years?” Weizman said. “And what’s needed to accomplish that?”

Mississippi leaders finalized their plan to spend most of the state’s opioid settlement years after the state received its first payment. But in a rush to implement that plan, the state made mistakes and didn’t create opportunities for the Mississippians most harmed by the opioid epidemic to offer their wishes for the money.

Joy Hogge, former executive director of the Mississippi children’s mental health advocacy nonprofit Families As Allies, said in a text that the state’s opioid settlement management provides leaders with a clear lesson on how not to approach the Meta funds. She said the input of Mississippians directly harmed by the social media company is crucial.

“Funding decisions should always be guided by the people most impacted by the issue.” 

PETAL — More than three decades after 17-year-old Angela Freeman disappeared in Petal, a new Mississippi law is changing how law enforcement agencies respond when someone is reported missing. 

The law, passed as House Bill 377 and effective July 1, prohibits law enforcement agencies from requiring a waiting period before accepting a credible missing person report. It also establishes requirements for investigating missing and unidentified people. 

Freeman was last seen at a Pizza Hut in Petal on Sept. 10, 1993. Her case remains unsolved as the 33rd anniversary of her disappearance approaches, illustrating the challenges investigators face as a disappearance stretches from an initial search into a decades-old cold case.

When someone goes missing 

The Forrest County Sheriff’s Office begins investigating as soon as it receives a missing person report, according to Jamie Humphrey, major of operations at the sheriff’s office. 

“There’s a bad misconception that people have now, especially with the new law, that you must wait so many hours to report someone missing,” he said. 

The law also prohibits agencies from requiring a missing person’s next of kin to appear in person before an investigation can begin. 

Deputies are dispatched to where the person was last seen and begin determining what may have happened. Humphrey said the circumstances could include a runaway, missed curfew, kidnapping, medical emergency or possible foul play. 

Federal law requires law enforcement agencies to enter information about certain missing young people into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center within two hours of receiving a report. Humphrey said the quicker it’s input, the faster that information is available to other law enforcement agencies. 

How the search unfolds

Investigators look at who is missing, when the person was last seen and what may have led to the disappearance. 

“You’ve got to ascertain first what the facts and circumstances centered around that person initially,” said Rusty Keyes, assistant vice president of public safety and chief of police at the University of Southern Mississippi. 

Investigators may develop what law enforcement calls a victimology, examining the person’s habits, relationships, frequently visited places and other details that could provide clues. 

A physical search can expand beyond law enforcement to include firefighters, emergency medical personnel, volunteers, family members and community organizations. Teams may use drones, horses, four-wheelers, aircraft and infrared technology. 

The search for answers can continue after an active search ends. Meaghan Good, founder and administrator of the Charley Project, maintains a public database of cold missing person cases that can include details not found on traditional missing person flyers, such as identifying tattoos. 

Good said keeping publicly accessible information can generate attention and potential leads years after a disappearance. 

“If the missing person’s case isn’t in the database to begin with, then no one knows how to look,” Good said. 

When a case goes cold 

As time passes without answers, investigators face new obstacles. Witnesses become difficult to locate and memories fade. 

“The older the case is, obviously, you get into situations where witnesses or suspects have died,” Humphrey said. 

Humphrey began working on Freeman’s case in 2016 as part of a cold case unit, reviewing previous investigative work and reinterviewing people connected to her disappearance. 

That review help investigators uncover new information and prompted new questions previous investigators had not asked, Humphrey said. Multiple agencies have worked on Freeman’s case, and leads continue to be reviewed. 

“I can’t tell you how many hundreds of people have been interviewed just from us,” Humphrey said. 

Technology can give investigators options that were unavailable when Freeman disappeared. Keyes said investigative genetic genealogy can help in some cold cases when suitable DNA evidence is available, but Humphrey said newer technology does not replace traditional investigative work. 

“Use the old stuff, the old ways. That still works,” Humphrey said. 

Freeman’s family will mark 33 years since her disappearance with a remembrance ceremony at 6 p.m. Sept. 12 at Hinton Park in Petal. 

For investigators and families, an unsolved disappearance can have an impact long after the initial search ends. 

“There’s cases that stand out in me that hurt,” Keyes said. “Maybe I didn’t get to bring someone home.” 

“When someone has been missing for like decades, the wound never closes,” Good said. “These people, they will be afflicted by this for the rest of their lives until the case is solved and perhaps even afterwards.” 

Let’s look back at Mississippi’s first big college football weekend. And let’s start with No. 9 Ole Miss, which survived No. 24 Louisville, 41-38, in a thriller that began with a first half defensive struggle that turned into a second half shootout.

“Hotty Toddy” is the usual Ole Miss refrain after a hard-fought victory, especially a nationally televised win over a really good team. But that wasn’t the case Sunday night in Nashville when the most audible Rebel reaction was a collective, “Whew!”

“Whew” because Ole Miss survived a two-turnover deficit, first half offensive stumbles, a second half defensive collapse, several crucial injuries and what coach Pete Golding correctly called “a really good Louisville team.” Golding was also dead-on when he told the post-game interviewer, “We got a lot of work to do.”

Better to do that extensive work with a 1-0 record than with the alternative that suddenly became quite likely when Louisville erased a 38-24 lead in a four-minute span late in the fourth quarter. Bottom line: Trinidad Chambliss, the Rebels’ fearless quarterback, wasn’t going to let the Rebels lose. He threw for 336 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 50 yards and another touchdown. 

And, when it mattered most after Louisville tied the game with a minute, 28 seconds remaining, Chambliss led the Rebels 40 yards against the clock to set up Lucas Carneiro’s 48-yard, game-winning field goal as time expired.

Facing third and six at his own 40 with 42 seconds remaining, Chambliss cooly hit tight end Caleb Odom with an 18-yard dart over the middle to extend the drive. Odom, who began his college career at Alabama, also caught a touchdown, while Deuce Alexander, a rocket of a wide receiver, caught two touchdowns.

Most concerning for Golding has to be the injuries to key players, such as preseason All American running back Kewan Lacy, who missed nearly all the second half with what appeared to be a leg bruise. The Rebels also lost defensive lineman Kam Franklin, who was a force before leaving the game, linebacker Keaton Thomas, guard Delano Townsend and offensive tackle Tommy Kinsler. The nature and extent of their injuries are not known. 

The Rebels can probably manage this Saturday’s home opener with Charlotte, a 43-41 loser to The Citadel, without those guys but then comes you-know-who on Sept. 19. One man’s opinion: The LSU team I watched clobber Clemson 51-10 Saturday night would beat the Ole Miss team I watched Sunday night by two touchdowns or more. Yes, much work to do.

Mississippi State 62, UL-Monroe 13

The Bulldogs did what they were supposed to do against an inferior team, putting up other-worldly offensive numbers in the process. State gained 762 yards of total offense, just a smidgeon under a first down per play.

It could have been worse if State coach Jeff Lebby had a sadistic streak. He called off the Dogs early. Kamario Taylor wasn’t as sharp as these eyes have seen him before, so he threw for only 354 yards and four touchdowns without an interception and ran for 59 more and another score. He is going to win some big games for State.

Taylor has more help this season with a deep pool of running backs and receivers and an offensive line that for one night, at least, was dominating. We will see just how much they have improved Saturday. That’s when the Dogs venture into Big Ten country to play at Minnesota, which won seven games and a bowl last year and started the season with a 59-7 crushing of Eastern Illinois.

Both Minnesota and State take a huge step up in competition.

Southern Miss 49, Alcorn State 3

Yes, the Golden Eagles dominated an out-manned team, but they surely looked sharp in doing so. When you consider what little Blake Anderson inherited and the fact that he brought more than 70 new players into the program, his team was crisp and efficient.

“We did what we were supposed to do,” is the way Anderson put it.

Anderson’s teams usually do. He’s been there before, done this and done it well. He won two Sun Belt championships at Arkansas State. He won one Mountain West championship at Utah State. He had taken nine of the 10 college teams he has coached to bowl games.

Despite missing much of preseason practice with a bruised thumb on his throwing hand, quarterback Ethan Hampton played well after a rusty start. He isn’t the most mobile guy but he has a strong arm and once quarterbacked Northern Illinois to a victory at Notre Dame. So there’s that. A fleet of running backs with varied skills ran well. And the USM defense harassed talented Alcorn quarterback Jaylon Tolbert, intercepting him four times. Kobi Albert, a newcomer at cornerback, swiped three of those.

What Anderson had to say after Saturday night’s win was this: “Now it gets real.”

Yes, it does. Southern Miss will be a decided underdog Saturday at Auburn. 

Jackson State 66, Edward Waters 14

This was the most one-sided matchup of all. Jackson State out-gained the Division II visitors 704-231 and could have scored far more. The question is: Why? Why play this game?

In fact, Edward Waters president A. Zachary Faison Jr. asked himself that same question afterward, and then apologized to players, coaches and fans for allowing the game to be scheduled. You don’t see or hear that every day.

“I owe an apology because the position we placed you in Saturday was not your doing and it was not your coaches’,” Faison wrote in a statement on social media. “The decision was mine.”

Faison indicated he scheduled the game because of a $60,000 guaranty Jackson State paid Edward Waters to make the trip from Jacksonville, Florida. The road trip cost approximately $30,000 in travel expenses, meaning the game netted the Florida school only $30,000.

Faison said a lot more, but I’ll paraphrase. He said Edward Waters will never play a Division I team again. He said 30 grand isn’t nearly a large enough pay day for such a terrible beating.

Jackson State plays host to Tuskegee, another D-II school, albeit a much better football team. Tuskegee defeated Fort Valley State 24-23 last Saturday in Mobile, Alabama.

Since losing his teeth, Herbert Griffith has tried just about every smoothie on the market that his older sister could find for him. 

Griffith lost most of his teeth after being diagnosed with oral cancer in 2022. Radiation treatment, which targets cancer cells but can kill healthy ones in the process, took the rest. 

“They just crumbled up,” said his sister Beverly Cole, who has helped manage Griffith’s care since his tooth pain first alerted them that something was wrong. Griffith has difficulty speaking, and Cole, a retired medical manager, often steps in to help him communicate. She has spent much of her career and retirement as a caretaker, first as a hospice worker, then for her mother, and now for Grffith. 

To her, he’s just “Herbie.”

Traditional dental implants require drilling into the jawbone to screw in individual teeth, but Griffith’s cancer-riddled bones made that procedure impossible. There wasn’t enough bone to support them. Instead, he became the second candidate in Mississippi for a double jaw subperiosteal, or “on-the-bone” surgery.

Over several months, doctors used advanced scanning techniques to map out the shape of the jaw. Then Griffith’s care team worked with a medical technology company to 3D print a robust scaffold made of titanium alloy that sits on top of what remains of his jawbone. After checking the scaffold’s fit, the team of plastic and oral surgeons can mount a full set of teeth, giving the patient a functional jaw in the same day. 

The medical center’s dental school is the only in-state center that performs this procedure, said Dr. Ignacio Velasco, an oral and dental surgeon at the medical school and one of Griffith’s doctors. It is among a handful of medical centers nationwide that have both the infrastructure to take care of patients and the multidisciplinary team of doctors who can perform it. 

With this capability, Velasco said he can keep seeing his oral cancer patients for the whole recovery process. Before, many of these patients endured without a working jaw. 

“Now, patients don’t need to leave Mississippi to get a full treatment for their cancer and finally the dental reconstruction,” he said.

A complicated procedure

Dr. Pasha Shakoori, a plastic surgeon who specializes in facial reconstruction, works on these surgeries at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. It’s a complex procedure to pull off, he said. For each patient case, Shakoori said he works with a dentist, an oral surgeon, and an ear nose and throat doctor. 

Patients benefit from the speed of the process, Shakoori said. For traditional implants, patients have to wait three to six months for the metal posts to heal before they can get each individual tooth screwed into place. For a full set of teeth, that is time-consuming and expensive, because insurance often only partially covers dental implants. 

In 2025, the dentistry school team started offering single jaw subperiosteal implants and completed their first double jaw case in February 2026. Double jaw surgery is more difficult, Shakoori said, because there are literally more moving parts. 

“If you’re operating on both, now you’re changing everything.”

A complicated procedure did not surprise Griffith after a difficult medical journey that included an initial misdiagnosis. When the tooth pain first started, Griffith’s dentist cycled him through antibiotics for three months before Cole booked him an appointment with a Hattiesburg-based oral surgeon. 

“Dr. York looked at it and he said, ‘That’s cancer,’” Cole recounted.

By the time surgery was an option, Griffith’s jaw had deteriorated so much his doctors needed to reconstruct his jaw from skin and bone from his leg before they could screw in the titanium scaffold. Then, in a rare occurrence, the temporary plastic scaffold broke during his recovery and Griffith had to go through the multi-hour surgery again.

“He’s really been through a lot,” Cole said of her brother. “He’s a trooper.”

Still, while in the waiting room for a follow-up appointment, accompanied by Cole and his girlfriend, Griffith was positive about his procedures. 

“They’re going well enough,” he said. “Let me tell you, I have my faith.”

Cole is now trying out different foods with her brother, who eats slowly and carefully, making sure each morsel is soft enough to swallow. Just the other day, she said, “Herbie” was able to chew and swallow one of his favorite desserts: a slice of apple tart. 

For a brief two-year period from 2008 until 2010, Democrats, despite not having won a presidential election in Mississippi since 1976, held three of the state’s four U.S. House seats.

But Mississippi’s 2026 U.S. House races are happening in November against the backdrop that since 2010 Republicans have held three of the four seats.

In 2010, Democrats Travis Childers, who held the 1st District seat in north Mississippi for one two-year term, and Gene Taylor, who held the 4th District seat in south Mississippi from 1989 until 2010, were defeated.

Both Taylor and Childers first won their congressional seats in special elections. Taylor won in 1989 when newly elected Republican U.S. Rep. Larkin Smith died in a plane crash. 

In office, Taylor often was a thorn in the side for both parties. The Republicans could not defeat him. But Taylor often voted against the national Democrats. He voted to impeach Democratic President Bill Clinton, and he often did not vote for the Democrats’ choice for speaker. There were countless other examples where Taylor voted against the Democratic side.

While Taylor held the 4th District seat for more than a decade after winning the special election, Childers served only one term before being defeated by state Sen. Alan Nunnelee of Tupelo.

Childers won a special election after incumbent 1st District U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker was appointed to the U.S. Senate by then-Gov. Haley Barbour when incumbent Trent Lott unexpectedly resigned.

Childers, who was a former chancery clerk in Prentiss County in northeast Mississippi, initially won the seat in part because of the geography of the district. The district included both populous DeSoto County in northwest Mississippi just south of Memphis and rural northeast Mississippi anchored by Tupelo.

Northeast Mississippi voters, by and large, put party preference aside and voted for Childers, a fellow northeast Mississippian, over Republican Southaven Mayor Greg Davis from DeSoto County.

But in 2010, the Republicans nominated Nunnelee, another northeast Mississippian, removing Childers’ geographic advantage.

It could be argued the 2010 elections were the last competitive Mississippi House races. Republican state Rep. Steven Palazzo defeated Taylor 52% to 47% while Nunnelee upended Childers 55% to 41% in the November 2010 general election. Since Taylor’s and Childers’ losses, no Democratic candidate in any of the three majority-white districts has garnered as much as 35% of the vote.

Significant focus has been given to this November’s U.S. Senate race where Democratic District Attorney Scott Colom of Columbus is attempting to upend Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Much less attention has been given to the four U.S. House seats, where all four incumbents have opposition.

In Mississippi’s only majority-Black district, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson has been nearly as dominant electorally as his Republican colleagues in the three majority-white districts.

The bottom line is that the challengers in all four U.S. House races face long odds this November.

Various metrics have long identified Mississippi’s U.S. House districts as being non-competitive. Through the years, the respected Cook Political Report, based on its analysis of data, has ranked all four Mississippi House districts as high on its partisan voting index. In other words, the three majority-white districts have a strong Republican lean while the majority-Black district has a significant Democratic tilt.

Earlier this decade when the Mississippi Legislature was redrawing lines for the four U.S. House districts to ensure equal populations in each district based on the 2020 U.S. Census, the Democrats, led by Rep. Thompson, tried to make the districts less partisan. Thompson offered to take in more Republican-leaning areas to make his 2nd District more compact and in the process more competitive.

But Republicans, fearing that Thompson’s offer also would make the 3rd District represented by Michael Guest of Rankin County more competitive, rejected that offer.

The Legislature is expected to take another stab at congressional redistricting in the coming months in light of this year’s U.S. Supreme Court landmark ruling that allows minority voting strength to be diluted. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and others have cited the ruling as an opportunity to defeat Thompson, only the second Black Mississippian to serve in the U.S. House since the 1800s.

It will be interesting to see which – if any – of the four U.S. House districts become more competitive as a result of that Supreme Court ruling and the anticipated redrawing of districts by the Mississippi Legislature at Reeves’ behest. Redrawn districts would first be used in the 2028 election.

The U.S. Supreme Court has twice reversed Mississippi death-row convictions in the past seven years on the basis of racial bias in jury selection. Counsel for death row inmate Willie Manning say his conviction should be the next one overturned.

In a filing Friday with the Mississippi Supreme Court, Manning’s legal team argued that decisions by the nation’s high court in the Terry Pitchford and Curtis Flowers cases enable Manning to seek post-conviction relief.

The motion was filed eight days after Mississippi Today published its investigation that uncovered new evidence suggesting Manning’s innocence. 

On May 28, U.S. Supreme Court justices reversed the capital murder conviction of Terry Pitchford in Mississippi. In a 5-4 decision, they concluded the trial judge failed to follow all the steps required to make sure that then-District Attorney Doug Evans was not discriminating on the basis of race when he struck all four potential Black jurors.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the judge “erroneously omitted” part of the inquiry detailed in the court’s Batson v. Kentucky 1986 decision, which banned the use of jury strikes to remove potential jurors on the basis of race.

The Pitchford opinion followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2019 decision that threw out the conviction of Curtis Flowers, who was on Mississippi’s death row. Evans also prosecuted that case.

In Flowers’ first four trials, Evans tried to strike all 36 Black prospective jurors. “The State wanted to try Flowers before a jury with as few black jurors as possible, and ideally before an all-white jury,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Manning, who is Black, went on trial in 1994 for the 1992 killings of two Mississippi State University students, Tiffany Miller and Jon Steckler, who were both white.

In that capital murder trial, 28 of 85 potential jurors were Black, but only two served on the jury. 

After then-District Attorney Forrest Allgood exercised seven of his 11 strikes against Black Mississippians, defense lawyer Mark Williamson objected, saying, “I would at this time like to interpose an objection to the State just arbitrarily striking every black as he’s gotten down to it.”

As a result of these strikes, Williamson continued, Manning does not have “a jury comprised of his peers.” At the time, white Mississippians made up 69% of Starkville’s population; they made up 83% of the Oktibbeha County jury that heard Manning’s case.

Asked by Circuit Judge Lee J. Howard to provide race-neutral reasons for striking jurors, Allgood responded that one Black man wore gold chains, “a ring in his ear” and “sunglasses hung in his shirt.” The prosecutor challenged another African American because he lived in a neighborhood similar to Brookville Garden Apartments, where many low-income Black residents live in Starkville.

Other reasons provided by the prosecutor to strike Black potential jurors? One “watches a tremendous amount of TV,” “made eye contact” with the defense counsel and was “wishy-washy” on capital punishment. But the juror actually said she could “go with the death penalty” during questioning.

But Allgood did not strike white potential jurors who held similar views on capital punishment. One white woman even said in her questionnaire that she could not impose the death penalty, only changing her answer during questioning that is part of jury selection. She still served on the jury. 

The prosecutor also excused his strikes of Black potential jurors by saying they read “liberal magazines.” Those magazines were Jet and Ebony — two publications focused on Black news and culture. In the recent motion, Manning’s counsel wrote that this reason “reeks of racial motivation.”

The magazines, Allgood said, included “a lot” of articles “espousing O.J.’s innocence” in the June 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

Jet published 15 articles on Simpson in the months following the killings, but none of them declared Simpson’s innocence. Ebony featured people’s opinions on the crime, but the magazine didn’t weigh in on who committed the murders.

When striking one Black potential juror — Christi LaMarque Robertson — Allgood repeated that Robertson was someone who “read those same magazines … which has had those articles on O.J. Simpson.” She read Time and Newsweek, according to her questionnaire. White candidates read the same magazines and wound up on the jury.

Allgood struck two Black potential jurors because they were “unemployed.” In reality, one worked at Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg. The other was disabled.

In contrast, four white potential jurors wrote “unemployed” or left the question blank in their questionnaires. One of them served on the jury.

The prosecutor struck a potential Black juror because a family member had been convicted of a crime. But Allgood raised no objections with three white potential jurors who had been arrested.

In the motion Friday, Manning’s counsel called these reasons “either inconsistent with the record or equally applicable to several white jurors.”

After being challenged, Allgood questioned why the defense’s strikes were all aimed at white potential jurors.

“There weren’t any blacks left to strike except one,” Williamson responded.

Williamson cried foul and asked the judge to strike the jury and declare a mistrial. Howard rejected that request, later saying, “All reasons stated by the State for the exercise of its peremptory challenges were for a race-neutral reason.”

But Manning’s counsel argued that, just like in the Pitchford case, the trial judge had “failed to undertake a meaningful review of the prosecutor’s reasons,” quickly moving on after he professed them. “In one sense,” the motion reads, “the trial judge’s treatment of Batson was even more egregious than in Pitchford.”

This filing is an additional challenge to Manning’s standing motion in front of the Mississippi Supreme Court.

In September 2024, his lawyers asked for a rehearing after this court upheld Manning’s death sentence in a 5-4 decision, clearing the way for his execution. 

According to court observers, justices usually rule on such rehearings within 60 days. It’s been more than 700 days, and a decision has yet to be made.

The attorney general’s office has previously said that Manning’s Batson claim is barred because the courts have already ruled on the issue. Manning’s counsel called this justification “unreasonable.”

The state has yet to respond to the most recent motion, but Attorney General Lynn Fitch has previously called on justices to schedule the execution. “What he is doing is a blatant attempt to delay his lawful execution,” Fitch wrote in a 2023 brief.

In a brief filed by the Innocence Project, ACLU and the NAACP on behalf of Manning, lawyers wrote that “the jury selection for Mr. Manning’s trial was replete with blatant racially motivated strikes that could never survive a Batson challenge today.”

“Mr. Manning never stood a chance to prove his innocence even before he entered a courtroom.”

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit against Jackson alleging the city knowingly allowed residents to drink contaminated water. A group of residents filed the lawsuit in 2022, before it was dismissed in U.S. District Court in 2024.

The plaintiffs — residents Priscilla Sterling, Raine Becker, Shawn Miller and John Bennett — alleged that the city’s actions and failures caused lead to enter Jackson’s drinking water and that city officials later misrepresented that the water was safe to drink. The lawsuit claims the contamination violated Jacksonians’ right to “bodily integrity.”

The allegations point to testing from the Mississippi State Department of Health from 2010 to 2013 that showed lead in the city’s water was “increasing at an alarming rate.”

“Rather than take the needed steps to stop lead from leaching further into the water, the City ignored warnings, even actively switching a section of the City’s water source from a safe groundwater system to the corrosive surface water system that was already causing lead to leach from its pipes into residents’ drinking water,” the plaintiffs wrote in their 2024 appeal.

The lawsuit named as defendants: the city, former mayors Chokwe A. Lumumba and Tony Yarber; former public works directors Kishia Powell, Robert Miller and Jerriot Smash; and Trilogy Engineering Services.

In affirming the district court’s 2022 ruling, the court said that while the alleged deprivations of clean water and honest information are “grievous,” they “do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.” The opinion added that the allegations aren’t comparable to bodily integrity cases the court has previously ruled on, such as those arguing assault or forced surgery.

“We are skeptical that the right to not be harmed by lead-contaminated water fits within the right to bodily integrity, and Plaintiffs point us to no historical tradition or Supreme Court precedent convincing us otherwise,” Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote.

Engelhardt added there is no “constitutional right to truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.” The plaintiffs, though, have other avenues to pursue justice in the matter, he said.

“The Constitution does not provide a remedy for Plaintiffs’ injuries,” the opinion argued. “But that does not mean they are without a remedy. Plaintiffs may pursue tort claims against Defendants, elect officials who will better manage the water system and provide accurate information to the public, or petition their state and federal legislatures for other remedies.”

Jackson Mayor John Horhn said in a statement Friday, “We are pleased that the Fifth Circuit upheld the dismissal of these claims. The City remains committed to the health, safety, and well-being of every Jackson resident.”