OurTupelo

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.

“The President is the symbol of who the people of the United States are. He is the person who stands for us in the eyes of the world and the eyes of our children.”

William Bennett, “The Death of Outrage,” 1998

There was a time, not that long ago, when American conservatives were obsessed with the public virtues of private character.

Ronald Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan titled her biography of Reagan, “When Character Was King.”

“In a president,” Noonan wrote, “character is everything. A president doesn’t just deal with the problems of the day; he sets the tone and spirit of the nation.”

James Q. Wilson, a longtime Harvard professor, wrote “The Moral Self” in 1993, a key text in the conservative case that character was the cornerstone of public and private life: “Human beings are endowed with a moral sense — an intuitive capacity to judge actions as fair or unfair, right or wrong.”

When I was working in the George W. Bush campaign, his single most powerful message was “Restoring honor and dignity to the White House.” Of all the ads we made, the one with then-Gov. Bush delivering that line straight to the camera moved the numbers more than any other.

While there is much on the policy front that Republicans got wrong in the 1980s and 1990s — remember the Laffer Curve that was the cornerstone of Republican tax policy — they got the importance of character right

“The presidency is not merely an office of power; it is an office of example,” George Will wrote in 1998.

Watching Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend launching a war with the Persian Empire and chortling over killing Iranians — “We might do it again for fun” — I’m struck by what the Donald Trump era has done to our national sense of self. A president who treats war like a snuff film he would have enjoyed with Ghislaine Maxwell — “I just wish her well,” Trump said when the pedophile was arrested — is a cancer on the nation’s soul.

It’s no surprise that we keep hearing about groups of youngish Republicans who praise Hitler in chatrooms. It has been 2007 since they knew a Republican president who was a decent human being.

Why does JD Vance defend the Nazi-humpers in his party? Because he knows that the way to advance in the Republican Party is to be the most transgressive. Donald Trump launched his campaign in 2015 by calling Mexicans rapists.

Now that a masked death squad is chasing brown people across the country, there’s no political juice in a mere verbal assault against Hispanics. So, Vance decides to up the ante and defend those in his party who cosplay as Nazis. Let’s see you top that, Marco Rubio.

It is the deepest sort of denial to assert that a country led by broken, sick men does not impact the definition of what it means to be an American.

Compare this moral collapse to Ukraine. Since the Russians launched their full-scale war of genocide, Ukrainians look to their country and leaders with great pride and respect. The Russians thought that Ukrainians would fold like a cardboard box left in a long rain. Not since Hitler invaded Russia has there been such a miscalculation in a European war

 Now in the fifth year of the largest European land war since World War II, the character of the Ukrainian people has been tested under the most brutal conditions. For generations, the quiet heroism and courage of Ukrainians and their leaders will be celebrated.

To grow up in America today is to look at our national leaders with a sense of disgust and alienation. Who in their right mind would want to be Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend who talks in public about dating his own daughter? Who would want to be a man so void of any basic humanity that the death of millions after the killing of USAID is gleefully cited as shrewd budget management?

The conservatives who once lectured the country about character did not lose the argument. They abandoned it. When it became inconvenient — when their voters chose a man who embodies everything they once claimed to oppose — they folded. Not gradually, not reluctantly, but enthusiastically.

The same movement that once insisted a president must be a moral exemplar for the nation’s children now explains away a man who paid hush money to a porn star, who mocks the disabled and who celebrates cruelty as strength. They did not change their theory of character. They simply decided that winning was worth more than the theory.

That is the real American crisis. Not just that we have a president of broken character, but that an entire political movement chose him knowingly, repeatedly and joyfully.

William Bennett was right in 1998. He just didn’t anticipate that the people who agreed with him most loudly would be the ones who burned it all down.

Stuart Stevens, a Jackson native, is  a veteran political consultant, working on multiple high-profile Republican campaigns, including presidential and senatorial campaigns. In more recent years, he has been affiliated with the Lincoln Project, comprised mainly of longtime Republicans who oppose Donald Trump. Stevens has spoken out on what he views as the country’s shift toward authoritarianism and is the author of multiple books, including the 2020, “It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump.”

On March 27, 1961, Joseph Jackson Jr. was alone in a jail cell in Jackson and afraid for his life. 

“The silence got to me, because here I am in Mississippi, where Negroes could just disappear without any investigation or without any recourse as to prosecuting whoever the white perpetrator would be,” said Jackson, now 88.

Jackson was a member of the Tougaloo Nine. He, along with Meredith Anding Jr., James “Sammy” Bradford, Alfred Lee Cook, Geraldine Edwards-Hollis, Janice Jackson Vails, Albert Lassiter, Ameenah E. P. Omar (born Evelyn Pierce) and Ethel Sawyer Adolphe staged a sit-in at the whites-only Jackson Municipal Library, near the state Capitol, to challenge racial segregation.

Jackson and Lassiter reflected on their experiences on that historic day with Mississippi Today ahead of the 65th anniversary of the Tougaloo Nine’s sit-in protest.

The group is named for their alma mater, Tougaloo Southern Christian College, now known as Tougaloo College. They were all members of the North Jackson Youth Council of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Medgar Evers, the NAACP’s field secretary for Mississippi, was key to organizing the sit-in. Evers secured them bail money and legal representation. The group spent weeks preparing, doing simulations to mentally prepare themselves to get attacked by a white mob without striking back.

Jackson said the mock demonstrations prepared them mentally and spiritually for what they were going to face.

“We had to go within, and get in touch with the spirit,” Jackson said.

On the day of, the nine made their first stop at the George Washington Carver Library, the branch for Black people, and asked for books they knew the library didn’t carry.

When that branch didn’t have them, they went to the whites-only library and began reading quietly and browsing the card catalog. The librarians there told them to leave. They refused, and the librarians called the police.

Lassiter, now 84, explained his thought process, saying, “I was a more visible target, tall and slim. I said, ‘Well, let me get over here into the card catalog so I’ll have a notice if a policeman comes around to whack me.’”

When officers arrived and the students still refused to leave, they were arrested for breaching the peace. The plan was for the students from the historically Black college to be bailed out the same day, but Sheriff J.R. Gilfoy, the only person who could accept their bail money, he left town.

They remained in jail for 32 hours.

“We really didn’t know what was going to happen or what they were going to do,” Lassiter said.

“So we just had to be tough and pray.”

While they sat in jail, support for them grew on the outside. After they were arrested, students at Jackson College for Negro Teachers, now Jackson State University, held a prayer vigil for them. The college’s president, Jacob Reddix, and the police broke up the gathering. Reddix, according to Clarion-Ledger reports at the time, assaulted two students, and three students were expelled.

The next morning, Jackson State students boycotted class and held a rally on campus in support of the Tougaloo Nine. Some of them marched toward the jail where the Tougaloo students were arraigned, but never got that far, because it was the same day as celebrations of the centennial of Mississippi’s secession from the Union.

The day after that, the Tougaloo Nine arrived to the courthouse. When a group of supporters gathered nearby and cheered for them, police attacked them with clubs, dogs and tear gas. Among those assaulted were Evers, several women, two children and an 81 year-old man.

The Tougaloo Nine were charged with breaching the peace, and each was sentenced to a $100 fine and 30 days in jail. The jail sentence was suspended on the condition that they never participate in another demonstration.

Though not the first sit-in, this demonstration is cited as a catalyst in the growth of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. Activists across the state staged their own sit-ins, challenging racial segregation in public spaces. Two of the Jackson State students who were expelled after the prayer vigil were sisters Joyce and Dorie Ladner, who became local activists.

Barred from demonstrating, the Tougaloo Nine went back to their lives. Lassiter said they became “like family,” even as they spread out across the country.

“One or two students in class made a comment, ‘You guys crazy?’” said Lassiter.

“No, we just did what we wanted to do to make a change, make things better.”

Jackson was originally from Memphis, Tennessee. His early life was marked by poverty and the oppression of Jim Crow. He claimed that when he was 11 years-old, a Greyhound bus driver struck his mother in the face. He said “the most humiliating experience” was knowing they had to board the bus and walk all the way back to the “colored” section, and when they got there looking at the other Black people and knowing they had no way to get recourse. It inspired him to get involved in activism in college.

“We had no one to speak on our behalf, and I never forgot that,” he said.

He began attending Tougaloo College on choral and ministerial scholarships in 1960. He was president of Tougaloo’s chapter of the NAACP Youth Council. Before Tougaloo, he spent his freshman year at Arkansas AM&N College, now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, prior to getting married and working as a pastor among other jobs.

Jackson had to drop out of Tougaloo to support his family, but graduated in 1972 from California State College at Fullerton, now California State University, Fullerton. He went on to remarry and have another child.

He became a Los Angeles County deputy probation officer and juvenile investigator, which he said, “became a ministry to me.” He retired in 2002. Tougaloo College awarded him an honorary doctorate in humane letters in 2021.

Lassiter was born and raised in Vicksburg. His father was a bricklayer and later a pastor, while his mother stayed home to care for him and his eight siblings. He said he had scholarships and worked four jobs to pay for school.

Lassiter recalled how, when 14-year-old  Emmett Till was murdered in the Mississippi Delta by white men in 1955, his eighth grade teacher pulled all the boys into a group to tell them how to avoid meeting Till’s fate.

“Colored folks, or Black folks, were put down in every way,” he said. “So we just had to scrap and work whichever way you could to take care of your family and to take care of yourself.”

After graduating from Tougaloo, Lassiter joined the military in 1964. He was promoted to the rank of colonel in the Air Force 1990, retiring in 1995. He is married with two children. He believes the country has made a lot of progress.

“We’ve come a long way because there are many individuals who were elevated to positions of leadership in all arenas … who would not be there if we hadn’t made that kind of progress,” Lassiter said.

In 1962, the NAACP filed a class-action lawsuit against the whites-only library branch, and a federal court ruled that the library had to integrate.

A Freedom Trail marker commemorating the sit-in was erected in 2017 where the library used to stand on State Street.

Most of the Tougaloo Nine shared their stories with writer and independent researcher Michael J. O’Brien’s for his book “The Tougaloo Nine: The Jackson Library Sit-In at the Crossroads of Civil War and Civil Rights.” Published in 2025, it chronicles their protest and the event’s local and national impact.

Jackson believes the struggle for freedom is ongoing, and young people need to learn about their history and “get into the fight.”

Paraphrasing a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., he said: “If you think that full equal rights are going to be granted to us, mainly as Black people, coming riding in on the wheels of inevitability without us really rolling up our sleeves and maintaining our history, it will never happen.”

Power generator replacements for homes where Mississippians with intellectual disabilities live. A major repair for a state hospital that’s likely to be cited in its next inspection without it. Financial support for the community mental health centers required to treat people regardless of their ability to pay.

These are some of the looming financial issues Department of Mental Health Executive Director Wendy Bailey highlighted to state lawmakers in her agency’s fiscal year 2027 budget request. It asks for just over $765 million — about $33 million more in general fund appropriations than lawmakers allocated last year. 

State agencies rarely receive all the money they request. The mental health department’s plan for some of the additional tens of millions of dollars is to expand services and to address one-time needs, Bailey said at a January Senate appropriations meeting. Some of the money also would help to keep up with rising expenses across health care. 

“Just like you’ve seen an increase in your cost for your living expenses at your home, it’s the same at a 24/7 health care situation, too,” Bailey said at the meeting. 

But as the legislative session approaches its March 30 deadline to decide the mental health department’s next budget, the House and Senate haven’t included funding for much of these expenses in their proposals. Neither plan will likely match the final appropriation, but they can indicate how each chamber is considering the agency’s next budget.

The Senate’s version of the bill reduced funding for the agency compared to last year by about $4 million. The House’s amendment added about $14 million more than the Senate’s plan in general funds to Mississippi’s mental health department, mostly specified for partial funding of some of the department’s requests. But it does not include additional funding for the state hospital capital improvements or the community mental health center operational costs. 

Bailey at the March 19 Department of Mental health board meeting said her agency is extremely appreciative of the House’s amendment, but she didn’t speak to the board members about how her department would address the costs she previously outlined if the request isn’t fulfilled.

“It would be wonderful, and I know several of you did, reach out to your House of Representative members in your area and thank them for the work they’ve done so far on our appropriations bills,” she told the board members. 

Adam Moore, spokesperson for the department, told Mississippi Today after the meeting that the Legislature could also address some of the agency’s capital improvement needs through a different funding bill. 

He said the agency will continue to monitor the budget process until the Legislature finalizes the department’s funding for the next fiscal year, which starts on July 1. 

“We work through it, make do with what we have, and we’ll have to prioritize with what we get,” Moore said.

Can Mississippi’s community mental health centers survive more budget cuts?

Others who work with Mississippi’s public mental health system expressed concern about the gap between the department’s request and what legislators have proposed. 

Phaedre Cole, president of the Mississippi Association of Community Mental Health Centers and executive director of Life Help in the Mississippi Delta, said the $4.2 million increase the agency asked for hers and others’ organizations would help offset the cost of providing services to vulnerable Mississippians. The state’s 12 centers are expected to treat people’s mental health conditions regardless of their insurance or ability to pay.

However, it doesn’t fully cover the centers’ actual operational cost needs, Cole said. She estimated that number to be about $14.4 million.

Neither the House or Senate proposals would add any additional line-item funding for the centers next fiscal year. Cole said she knows legislators are supportive of the mental health centers in their regions, and she said she and the other executive directors have been calling to remind their local lawmakers of that.

But she is aware Mississippi Medicaid Director Cindy Bradshaw has warned that the agency could lower its provider payments up to 11%. If the additional funding request for community mental health centers is unfulfilled and Medicaid payment rates drop for services they provide, Cole said the financial impact on the organizations would be “catastrophic.”

“I don’t know how we would survive that,” she said.

Matt Westerfield, a spokesperson for Mississippi Medicaid, didn’t respond to a phone call and email asking about this scenario. Angela Ladner, executive director of the Mississippi Psychiatric Association, said the current system of funding for community mental health centers often asks more of the organizations than what they can afford. 

State lawmakers told Mississippi Medicaid and the mental health department to apply for a federal program that would make community mental health service funding more sustainable, but the state was not selected the last time it applied. Without changing the model or adding more funding, Ladner said mental health services for Mississippians who most need it could be in jeopardy.

“Saying ‘We’re going to just give them the same thing that we’ve always given them’ is not necessarily going to get us where we need to go,” she said.

Forgoing building improvements to the state hospitals may prevent the facilities from serving the public as well, according to the Department of Mental Health. Bailey, the department’s executive director, told state senators at the January appropriations meeting that inspectors will cite North Mississippi State Hospital’s current generator if it is not replaced soon. 

She also said the department would use capital improvement funding for community homes run by North Mississippi Regional Center, where some Mississippians with intellectual and developmental disabilities live. The homes, Bailey said, need six new backup power generators — which some homes relied on during January’s severe winter storm. 

Executive directors for both mental health centers referred Mississippi Today’s interview requests to Moore, who did not elaborate further on their buildings’ needs. 

Ladner said in the long term, the state could improve how it goes about contracting capital improvement contracts for government buildings, including looking to fund joint projects with local governments. But in the short term, she said the state’s mental health department needs to find the money to replace the old generators.

“Obviously, that needs to be addressed,” she said. 

‘I want to get the real number’

Two lawmakers tasked with negotiating the mental health department’s next budget said negotiations over the state’s Medicaid budget bill will have bearings over DMH’s appropriations. 

House Republican Public Health and Human Services Committee Chair Sam Creekmore said he would like to finalize that budget before moving on to mental health.

He said making sure the department can fund mental health services and replace out-of-date generators is a major priority. But Creekmore said state agencies can inflate their financial needs in initial budget requests, and he wants to talk with Bailey more before the negotiations. 

“I want to get the real number if I can find it,” he said.

Sen. Angela Hill, the Republican chair of the appropriations subcommittee that oversees the mental health department’s budget, said she is concerned about public mental health funding in Mississippi. She’s heard from the community mental health center that serves her hometown of Picayune, and she knows they are struggling to finance their services. 

She said while she has some input in this budget bill, leaders in both the House and the Senate will make the final decisions about the agency’s next budget. Hill said in her role, she does her best to prioritize what she believes is important — such as the community centers. 

“It’s my goal to do as much as we can for them,” she said.

Mukta Joshi is an investigative reporter at Mississippi Today. She is spending a year as a New York Times Local Investigations fellow examining immigration and criminal justice issues. She can be reached at mukta.joshi@nytimes.com.

The Adams County Correctional Center, one of more than 200 ICE detention facilities in the U.S., is located near the city of Natchez on a sprawling 14-acre site in southwestern Mississippi.

The facility, which holds more than 2,000 people, is a significant economic driver in a county of fewer than 30,000 residents. CoreCivic employs approximately 400 people there, making it one of the largest employers in Adams County. Natchez Mayor Dan Gibson said CoreCivic is the county’s single largest taxpayer.

The federal government sets strict limits on who can visit Immigration and Custom Enforcement detention centers. And nearly all of them are run by for-profit companies, making the details of their operation private and difficult to monitor. 

So far, this is what we know.

Who owns it?

The Adams facility is privately owned and operated by CoreCivic Inc., a publicly traded company based in Tennessee. 

One of the largest private prison companies in the country, it disclosed in its most recent financial filings that it owns or controls about 57% of all privately owned prison beds in the U.S. 

The company, which reported $2.2 billion in revenue last year, has benefited financially from the Trump administration’s push to arrest immigrants. From 2024 to 2025, revenue increased by nearly $200 million thanks largely to an increase in ICE detentions, according to the company’s latest annual report.

Over the past few years, CoreCivic, its employees and PACs have poured millions of dollars into political donations and lobbying. In the 2024 election cycle, 84% of these donations went to Republican candidates. In the same cycle, CoreCivic spent more than $1.7 million lobbying, according to OpenSecrets. The previous year, it spent more than $1.6 million.

The Adams County facility is one of two ICE facilities operated by CoreCivic in the state. A second CoreCivic facility in Tutwiler, in northern Mississippi, was authorized last year to start housing ICE detainees.

What kinds of people are detained there? 

The Adams facility is a men’s facility. Most of its detainees are not from Mississippi. They were picked up by ICE agents somewhere else and are being held here until they decide to leave the country, or until an immigration judge deports them or sets them free.

Being in the U.S. without proper documentation is a civil infraction, like a speeding ticket – not a criminal violation. This fact has contributed to controversy about prison-like conditions that people detained by ICE are experiencing.

Only 9% of people in the Adams center have any sort of criminal conviction. But even those with criminal records are being held for civil immigration infractions, not as punishment. 

In addition to men, the facility currently houses a small number of transgender women. Following President Trump’s 2025 executive order, transgender people are required to be incarcerated in facilities that align with their gender assigned at birth, regardless of their legal status.

How long are detainees held?

In early 2025, then-warden Jason Streeval was quoted by the Natchez Democrat as saying that the average stay in the facility was about 60 days but had been getting longer. He told the newspaper that some detainees had been there for as long as seven months. 

Has the facility ever been the subject of controversy? 

The Adams facility made headlines in 2012, when an inmate protest against poor conditions snowballed into a riot that resulted in the killing of a guard. The FBI opened an investigation, leading to a number of inmates being charged and ultimately sentenced for participating in the riot. In the wake of the riot, U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson called for an investigation into CoreCivic, then operating as Corrections Corporation of America.

One section of the facility, known as the “Zulu” unit, contains solitary confinement cells, where detainees are housed as punishment. In 2020, two nonprofit groups submitted a written complaint to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security alleging that immigrants from Cameroon had been tortured by ICE officers in that ward and forced to sign deportation documents. A year later, the complaint was still unresolved, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights. A representative for ICE did not respond to an inquiry about the current status of the complaint.

In 2021, an inspection by DHS found that Adams generally had provided sufficient medical care but identified one case in which the medical unit examined a sick detainee but did not send the person to the hospital. The detainee died. 

DHS also found that Adams didn’t meet other federal standards. Among the cited failures: It did not respond to grievances in a timely manner, it inadequately implemented COVID-19 safety protocols and it failed to assist vulnerable detainees. The ACLU called for the facility to be shut down.

What’s life like inside? 

The facility is divided into units, each holding about 140 people who share eight toilets and 15 showers, according to detainees interviewed by Mississippi Today. While inside, detainees can work if they choose, helping to clean, run the kitchen or do laundry. Several people held at the center said they were paid about $3.50 per day for their work.

Detainees are generally restricted to their own unit, where they can move about freely. One detainee said he was allowed to visit a secure outdoor area once every four or five days.

Several detainees described harsh conditions, but said that they had spent time in other facilities that were far dirtier and more restrictive. 

We don’t know much beyond that, especially about what the detention center looks like inside. A detainee who can afford the fees can send messages and make video calls from inside. They can’t send photos or attachments. And the communication app blurs their background and obscures the video completely if the camera is aimed away from the detainee’s face during a call.

How much does it cost to run? 

The contract to run this facility, like most other ICE detention centers, is an “Intragovernmental Service Agreement” between ICE, CoreCivic and Adams County. The 2019 agreement shows that ICE had agreed to pay a $3.9 million monthly flat rate for the facility, an amount set to increase every year. There have since been changes to this contract, but they were not immediately accessible. 

When we requested an interview with the warden and assistant warden, a spokesperson for CoreCivic redirected us to the company’s public affairs office and requested us to send our questions in writing. 

Over the next few months, we plan to publish weekly dispatches about the facility and about ICE detention in Mississippi and do our best to address these unanswered questions. You’ll be able to find my reporting on the Mississippi Today website, on our social media channels and in our Friday newsletter. And you can follow me on X @mukta_jo.

In the meantime, please fill out our survey. If you know something about the detention center, if you know someone who works there or is detained there, or want me to find out something about it for readers, please get in touch.

Clarification 3/27/26: This story has been updated to clarify the types of detainees held in the Adams County Correctional Center.

Mississippi lawmakers removed a provision from an opioid settlement reform bill Thursday that would have guaranteed tens of millions of dollars from drug company lawsuits would be used to address addiction. 

Six negotiators unanimously agreed to a proposal that would change how the Legislature spends national opioid settlement money. The plan goes to the full House and Senate for consideration in the next few days.

Since 2022, the state has received over $130 million from lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies that contributed to over 10,000 Mississippi overdose deaths since 1999. The state is expected to receive about $421 million by 2040. 

Every state is receiving opioid settlement money, and every state besides Mississippi had spent at least $3 million of it to prevent more overdose deaths by last fall. The Legislature controls 85% of Mississippi’s settlements. So far, it has only spent its share on legal fees. 

Across the state, 147 towns, cities and counties control the other 15% of Mississippi’s money. Attorney General Lynn Fitch wrote a contract and a letter that said they could use the money on any public purpose without reporting their spending. Many did. 

Of the at least $15.5 million the local governments had received by last summer, Mississippi Today found that over $4 million went to general expenses, and less than $1 million was used to prevent overdoses. 

Soon after the newsroom’s investigation, House Public Health and Human Services Committee Chairman Sam Creekmore, a Republican from New Albany, said he would like to pass a law that encouraged local governments to spend money addressing addiction. Earlier this month, he and the House proposed amending the state’s opioid settlement laws to require all local money to be spent on public health overdose prevention measures.

But Thursday’s agreement between the three senators and three representatives, including Creekmore, removed any mention of how local governments should spend the money. Creekmore said he couldn’t get agreement from the other lawmakers, and the bill would’ve gone away if he didn’t continue moving it forward. 

If the bill passes without the local government restrictions, cities and counties can continue spending money paid out by the drug companies on non-addiction purposes. The local governments are expected to receive over $40 million more by the time all the money is distributed.

While Creekmore said he would’ve liked to include guidance to encourage cities and counties on how to spend the lawsuit funds, he and the other negotiators worked hard on other parts of the bill. 

“I’ll stand with them on it,” he said. “Did I want to? No. But at the end of the day, I thought the bill is as good as we can get.”

Sen. Nicole Boyd, a Republican from Oxford, is lead sponsor of the bill and also helped negotiate the latest provisions. She said the lawmakers sought advice about what they could and couldn’t do with reforming the local settlement provisions from their legal council in Fitch’s office. 

MaryAsa Lee, a spokesperson for the office, didn’t immediately answer a call or respond to a voicemail asking about the legal provisions the office suggested.

Boyd echoed statements the attorney general’s office has provided to Mississippi Today in the past — the money going to local governments was intended to compensate them for addiction expenses over the past two decades. While the national opioid settlements allow for a portion to not be spent on addressing addiction, the lawyers who negotiated the agreement discouraged states from doing that.

“The money that went back to them, that went to the cities and the counties, was for money they had already spent,” Boyd said. “It’s not abatement, it’s reimbursement.”

She said she’s more focused on the larger portion of opioid settlement money the Legislature controls — expected to be over $350 million by the time Mississippi receives all its payments. Most of that money is overseen by an advisory council and must be spent on addiction, but Fitch and the Legislature allow for about $63 million to be spent for general purposes. 

The current version of Boyd’s bill gives the Legislature more power to adjust the advisory council’s recommendations, strengthens ethics rules to prevent potential conflicts of interest among council members and instructs the council to contract with a third-party group to improve Missisisppi’s opioid settlement distribution and evaluation. It instructs Fitch’s office to use some of the $63 million for the third-party contract.

Boyd said she hopes these changes will lead to Mississippi’s opioid settlement money preventing more overdose deaths. 

“What we’re trying to see is how do we have a big impact for the people and how do you make a difference,” she said.

James Moore, a Hattiesburg recovery advocate who lost his son to an overdose, is a member of the advisory council with Boyd and Creekmore. During the council’s last meeting, he called for many of the reforms that are still in the bill. He  said he’s happy to see them moving closer to possibly becoming law. 

But he said he’s disappointed that lawmakers are insisting local money can be spent for anything other than what Mississippi argued it should be in its lawsuits against opioid companies, what Fitch’s office first said it would be used for — addressing the public health epidemic that killed his son.

If the lawmakers negotiated this deal at a public meeting, Moore said he thinks they wouldn’t have removed that provision. Too many families torn apart by the crisis, like his, would have shown up to encourage them to preserve that requirement. 

“I can’t imagine anybody in the room that’d be willing to look at survivors and families and parents and say, ‘We still ought to be able to do what we want to with this, even if it’s fix a pothole.’”

Natural gas explosions in January 2024 that destroyed two homes in Jackson resulted from underground pipes pulling loose from their fittings as spongy clay soil expanded and contracted with rainfall, according to a federal report released Thursday.

The first explosion killed Clara Barbour, 82.

The National Transportation Safety Board found that the natural gas utility in the city, Atmos Energy Corp., had detected the leaks before the explosions, but didn’t evaluate them as severe enough for quick repair. The board also found that Dallas-based Atmos didn’t do enough to assess risks and make repairs to its pipeline system and didn’t do enough to educate the public or emergency officials about how to respond to natural gas leaks. It urged regulators to take a closer look at the company.

“Atmos has had significant safety shortfalls in recent years,” the board wrote “Thus, Atmos’s multistate operations require broader oversight.”

Company spokesperson Bobby Morgan said safety remains “our highest priority.”

“We will work diligently in the coming days and weeks to evaluate the findings as part of our ongoing safety efforts to further our vision to be the safest provider of natural gas services,” Morgan said in a statement.

The company distributes natural gas in Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

One explosion and fire in south Jackson on Jan. 24 killed Barbour and injured her husband, Johnny Barbour. Three days later and three-quarters of a mile away, another explosion leveled one home and burned a neighboring home. No one was injured there.

Investigators found that in both cases, gas pipes feeding the homes had pulled loose from their couplings as soil expanded and contracted, allowing dangerous levels of gas to build up, setting the stage for the explosions.

Much of the Jackson area is built atop a soil layer known as Yazoo clay that expands in wet weather and contracts in times of drought. Besides causing building foundations to crack and roadways to heave, the expansion and contraction can cause pipes to disconnect, and the pipe couplings that an Atmos predecessor installed are not resistant to pulling out, the board found. Investigators recommended that Atmos find and replace all those couplings.

The leak at the Barbour home had been detected Nov. 17, 2023, after the homeowner smelled an odor compound that is inserted into methane gas. An Atmos technician declared the leak nonhazardous, meaning Atmos might not repair it for a year or more. The leak at the second home was detected Dec. 1, 2023, but Atmos evaluated it as even less hazardous, scheduling it for repair within three years.

The report indicates the company re-evaluated leaks in Jackson following the explosion and found others that were more serious than initially reported.

The safety board faulted Atmos for not doing more to identify threats posed by expansive soils, noting regulators had been warning about the issue since 2008 and that the NTSB identified expansive soils as a factor in a 2018 Atmos explosion in Dallas that killed one and injured four.

Investigators said Atmos had different safety procedures in different states and that if stricter state rules in Kansas had been followed in Mississippi, the explosions could have been prevented.

“Atmos’s siloed state operations, including leak monitoring procedures that differed by state, demonstrate that Atmos has not applied lessons learned in one state to the other states it operates in,” the board wrote.

Mississippi State baseball coach Brian O’Connor was just about to board the team bus for Oxford when we talked by phone Thursday afternoon. Yes, O’Connor said, he has mighty fine and fond memories of his first visit to Swayze Field nearly 17 years ago.

You would, too. In a memorable NCAA Super Regional, O’Connor’s Virginia Cavaliers battled back from a 12-inning, 4-3 Game One defeat, to defeat Mike Bianco’s Rebels 4-3 and then 5-2 to advance to the College World Series. It was fantastic college baseball, matching two talented, well-coached teams. It was June college baseball at its best with the outcome often hanging on every pitch.

Said O’Connor, “You don’t forget something like that, especially when it sends you to Omaha for the first time.”

There won’t be a trip to the College World Series on the line this weekend, but O’Connor’s first Mississippi State-Ole Miss experience definitely matches two teams that have Omaha and national championship potential.

“This is just another reason why you come to the SEC to coach or play baseball,” O’Connor said. “You play high-level opponents every weekend with great crowds and great rivalries.”

Mississippi State, ranked as highly as No 3 in the nation, will take a 21-4 record (4-2 in the SEC) to face the Rebels (19-7, 3-3), also ranked in most polls.

The Egg Bowl of baseball

This will be O’Connor’s introduction to the Egg Bowl of baseball, and he hasn’t experienced an in-state rivalry anything like this. At Virginia, his arch-rival, at least in-state, was Virginia Tech. It’s hard to call it an intense rivalry when you dominate a team as thoroughly Virginia as dominated Tech. During O’Connor’s Virginia tenure, the Cavaliers won 42 of 61 meetings against their in-state rivals in what Virginians call the “Commonwealth Clash.”

The Ole Miss-Mississippi State baseball rivalry, which these days includes a three-game SEC series and a Governor’s Cup mid-week game, is not nearly so one-sided. State leads the series  268-213-5. Last season, State won two of three games at Starkville and Ole Miss prevailed in the Governor’s Cup.

“It’s two great college baseball programs that just happen to be in the state of Mississippi,” O’Connor said. “I’m excited to be a part of it and I know our players are looking forward to it, as well. No doubt, it’s the same way at Ole Miss.”

State’s new skipper has the utmost respect for his Ole Miss counterpart, Bianco.

“Mike has been the staple of consistency at Ole Miss,” O’Connor said. “I’ve always had a high level of respect for him and the job he has done there, and just the way he runs his program. He’s a good man, and his teams play the the game the right way.”

Besides the to 2009 Super Regional at Oxford, O’Connor’s Cavs also played Ole Miss twice in the 2014 College World Series, winning two close, low-scoring games, the second of which eliminated Ole Miss. O’Connor was an interested observer in June 2022 when Bianco’s Rebels, given up virtually for dead earlier in the spring, got hot in May and stunningly won the College World Series.

“To do what that team did to win the national championship is a testament to what Mike has built there,” O’Connor said.

Rebels’ Hunter Elliott is still pitching

The Ole Miss pitcher who started that national championship-clinching victory over Oklahoma as a true freshman will be the same left-hander who starts Friday night’s first game of the State-Ole Miss series. Seems like Hunter Elliott has been around forever, and certainly long enough to get O’Connor’s attention.

“Elliott has been one of the premier pitchers college baseball for years, and they’ve got some really good bullpen options,” O’Connor said. “Plus, they’ve got a lot of guys in that lineup who hit the ball a long, long way.”

State will counter with a deep roster of sluggers, fresh from a 12-0 Tuesday night trouncing of No. 11 Southern Miss. State’s hitting numbers are nothing short of gaudy: a .347 team batting average, a .452 on base percentage, a .571 slugging percentage. 39 home runs and 66 doubles in 25 games. Sheepish!

“There’s power in our lineup, and there’s speed,” O’Connor said. “We can score runs anywhere in the batting order. That’s what makes great offense. Plus we’ve got depth. We’ve got guys not in the lineup who can really swing it.”

Yes, O’Connor answered, when asked if his first State teams compares favorably with some of his best hitting teams at Virginia, seven of which advanced to Omaha.

“Now, we’ll have to see how it plays out,” O’Connor said. “We’ve got eight more SEC weekends when we’ll face top-flight pitching. There’s a long way to go.”

It starts Friday night at 6:30 p.m. followed by a 1:30 p.m. game Saturday and a 3 p.m. game Sunday.

A rivalry that has given us the likes of Casey Stengel, Dudy Noble, Tom Swayze, Paul Gregory, Ron Polk, Jake Gibbs, John Cohen and Mike Bianco gives us Brian O’Connor for the first time.

OXFORD — Former Hollandale police officer Javery Howard pleaded guilty Thursday to charges involving the transportation and distribution of illegal drugs through portions of the Mississippi Delta and into Memphis. He also admitted to traveling to Miami on two occasions to plot drug runs with FBI agents posing as Mexican drug cartel members.

He is among those charged in a federal drug trafficking indictment involving nine former Mississippi Delta law enforcement officers, including a former police chief and two former sheriffs. In five separate indictments, an additional six former Delta law enforcement officers are charged with drug trafficking related charges.

Howard, 33, also pleaded guilty to conspiracy. He was indicted in October for accepting $31,000 in multiple bribe payments, the second highest of any other defendant across six indictments of former Delta law enforcement officers and associates. 

He previously served as an officer with the Metcalfe Police Department. Co-conspirator Brandon Addison, who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking last week, served alongside Howard at police departments in Hollandale and Metcalfe. Both departments are located in small, rural communities outside Greenville in Washington County. Howard is a resident of Greenville.

As part of Howard’s  plea agreement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Mississippi dropped five counts of attempting to aid and abet the transportation of illegal drugs, five counts of trafficking illegal drugs with a firearm, and one count of conspiring to traffick illegal drugs in possession of a firearm.

Howard declined to comment to Mississippi Today.

Senior U.S. District Judge Michael P. Mills accepted Howard’s guilty plea and set sentencing for Aug. 13. Mills released Howard on the conditions of the $10,000 unsecured bond after his arrest.

Howard was arrested on Oct. 30 along with former Washington County Sheriff Milton Gaston, former Washington County Sheriff’s Deputy Truron Grayson, former Humphreys County Sheriff Bruce Williams, Addison, four additional former law enforcement officers, a former corrections officer and five associates as part of what the FBI called a conspiracy to aid and abet the transport and distribution of roughly 55 pounds of cocaine on five escorted runs — the most out of any co-conspirator.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office dropped Washington County sheriff’s deputy Amber Holmes’s charges on Oct. 30 due to exonerating evidence from subsequent interviews with sources. 

Sean Williams, a former officer with the Yazoo City Police Department, intends to change his plea from not guilty, according to a March 20 court filing. A hearing has not been set.

The remaining charged co-conspirators in Howard’s indictment are scheduled for trial on July 20 in Oxford. Williams, who subsequently stepped down as sheriff, pleaded not guilty and promised to mount a “complete defense.” Washington County moved former Sheriff William Gaston into a new position responsible for trash collection in January.

Under federal guidelines, Howard can be sentenced to between 10 years and life in prison. He could also face up to $10 million in fines.

On Oct. 30, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed six indictments, which ensnared more than 14 current and former Mississippi Delta law enforcement officers. Those charged were arrested in pre-sunrise sweeps in some cases at private homes and apartment complexes by special agents in armored cars.

The Justice Department charged current and former officers from sheriff’s offices in Washington, Humphreys and Sunflower counties and police departments in Greenville, Greenwood, Isola, Hollandale, Metcalfe and Yazoo City.

The department also charged Greenwood-based former Highway Patrolman Marquivius Bankhead and former state Department of Corrections guard Marcus Nolan, a Drew native, on drug trafficking charges.

Asahn Roach, who was named in the same indictment as Howard, is a former school resource officer for Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Pierre Lakes, a Drew native, owns a real estate investment company. Torio Chaz Wiseman was a football coach for the Memphis Business Academy charter school.

At the conspiracy’s outset, a local drug dealer and FBI informant introduced Howard and Addison to an FBI agent posing as a Mexican drug cartel member who offered bribe payments in exchange for the safe transport of illegal narcotics, namely cocaine, through the Mississippi Delta along Highway 61 to Memphis. Howard, Addison and associates escorted the drug transports on three separate occasions in March 2023, March 2024 and July 2024, also escorting the proceeds of the drug trafficking in October 2023 and March 2024.

Howard, along with individuals unnamed in the indictment, are accused of escorting roughly 55 pounds of cocaine on June 22, 2022, the same date on which former Greenwood Police Department officer Jamario Sanford pleaded guilty to protecting illegal drug shipments through Washington, Sunflower and Leflore counties.

Howard is the fifth former Mississippi Delta law enforcement officer from the Greenville area to plead guilty to drug trafficking charges since mid-February.

The lone remaining bill intended to enhance the regulation and transparency of pharmacy benefit managers died Thursday after the Mississippi House of Representatives chose not to advance the Senate’s versions of the bill or pursue further negotiations on an issue that has long divided the chambers and lawmakers within them. 

House Speaker Jason White attributed the bill’s failure to the Senate’s inclusion of language mandating a dispensing fee and called on Republican Gov. Tate Reeves to call a special session to address pharmacy benefit manager reform in a social media post.

“The Senate has repeatedly taken this legislation too far, placing the cost burden on the shoulders of Mississippi’s patients,” wrote White, who declined to answer reporters’ questions after the House adjourned Thursday.

The House’s original bill would have given independent pharmacists 90% of what they have been advocating for the past three years, he added.

White said he anticipates further negotiations and for interested parties to reach an agreement within the next few days.

Sen. Rita Parks, a Republican from Corinth who has spearheaded pharmacy benefit manager reform efforts in the Senate for years, said in a statement the outcome is “so disappointing.”  

“This wasn’t about policy — it was about power,” she said. “And today, the power of Big Pharma outweighed the needs of Mississippi families and community pharmacists.”

Pharmacy benefit managers are the middlemen used by health insurance companies and self-insured employer plans. They 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.

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

Joe Mohamed, the president of the Mississippi Independent Pharmacies Association, said the bill’s failure is a missed opportunity for Mississippi patients and communities that depend on independent pharmacists. 

“We stand ready to continue discussions throughout the remainder of the legislative session and beyond to ensure that Mississippi independent pharmacies remain viable and the patients they serve have access to the care they deserve,” said Mohamed, who is also the co-owner and pharmacist of G&P Pharmacy in Belzoni.

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. The bill’s language defined sponsoring or providing cash discount cards as a pharmacy benefit management service. 

The section of the Senate’s bill “could complicate the President’s policy and priority of providing access to the lowest prices on prescription medications for every American,” the memo read. 

Reeves met with lawmakers this week to discuss the legislation. 

In the meeting, Parks said, the governor encouraged the House and Senate to find language that could get pharmacy benefit manager reform passed.

“Obviously, that didn’t happen,” Parks said. 

White said the governor has indicated he would be unlikely to sign the Senate’s version of the bill into law.

The House and Senate versions of the bill included similar provisions such as measures to increase transparency and prohibit spread pricing, or the practice of paying insurers more for drugs than pharmacists to inflate pharmacy benefit managers’ profits.

Several key differences emerged between the proposals. 

The original version of House Bill 1665, 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 Commissioner of Insurance.

Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney told Mississippi Today the state agency would regulate pharmacy benefit managers if it was given the staff and funding to do so. 

“We’re willing to run it if they give us the money and people to run it,” Chaney said. 

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

Under the proposal, pharmacy benefit managers would be required to reimburse pharmacists at least as much as an affiliate pharmacy or the Mississippi Division of Medicaid, which covers the cost of the drug and a dispensing fee. Pharmacists have long said reimbursements for filling prescriptions are often lower than the cost to acquire and dispense the medications. 

But some senators said the suggested payment structure would harm Mississippi businesses.

Sen. Jeremy England, a Republican from Vancleave and the most vocal opponent of the Senate’s version of the bill, said March 10 that the Senate’s proposed text would drive up the cost of prescriptions and health insurance, which would then be passed on to Mississippi businesses and their employees. 

He presented a memo from the Legislative Budget Office estimating the bill would add $34 million in costs to the State Health Plan. 

“This is bad policy,” England said. “This is going to cost our job creators money.”

Parks said the business community has consistently employed “scare tactics” that discourage legislators from voting for pharmacy benefit reform legislation but have provided little evidence that prescription drug costs will rise if the Legislature passes a bill that requires a specific reimbursement model. 

On Thursday morning, Zuber said negotiations were ongoing between the House and the Senate. 

“There’s still time,” he told Mississippi Today.  

But less than an hour later, the House killed the bill by not voting to advance the Senate’s version or invite further negotiations before the deadline.

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.

The options for reviving this year’s pharmacy benefit manager reform are limited. Lawmakers could introduce the text in a different bill, suspend the rules to revive the measure or the governor could convene a special session to address it. 

Parks said the work to regulate pharmacy benefit managers in Mississippi would continue. 

“While today’s result is disappointing, the fight for transparency and fairness in prescription drug pricing is far from over,” she said.

After Gov. Tate Reeves vetoed a bill that attempted to provide low-interest loans to local governments impacted by Winter Storm Fern, lawmakers on Wednesday night revived the program in another piece of legislation.

House and Senate leaders introduced the loan program in a compromise plan, called a “conference report,” in a separate bill. The House and Senate unanimously approved the plan on Thursday morning, and it will head back to Reeves for consideration. 

Sen. Scott DeLano, a Republican from Gulfport, said on the Senate floor that the new plan is a compromise with Reeves and addresses the concerns the governor had with the prior proposal that was vetoed.

“Our neighbors in North Mississippi have suffered too much devastation, and we must provide financial relief as quickly as possible,” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said in a statement. “This conference report is a second attempt to support our cities and counties. We will pass it out of the Senate.”

Under the plan Reeves vetoed, local governments would have been able to borrow money from the state at a 1% a year interest rate that would kick in after the federal government sends relief money. Under the new plan introduced Wednesday, lawmakers changed it to a 3% annual interest rate after reimbursement from the federal government arrives. 

It’s unclear why legislative leaders raised the annual interest rate from their initial 1% proposal to 3%. But it may be an attempt to avoid Reeves vetoing the program a second time. 

In his veto message on the first proposal, the governor claimed he had negotiated a 1% monthly loan rate with legislators, which would have totaled 12% annually. But legislative leaders last week said including the word “monthly” in the plan was a mistake and agreed to remove it. 

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves vetoes winter storm aid bill and levels false claim of criminal act at Senate staff

Reeves also falsely accused Senate staffers of removing language in an unconstitutional and potentially criminal fashion. Senate leaders on Wednesday rejected those allegations and said it was reckless for the governor to have done so. 

Sen. Tyler McCaughn, a Republican from Newton, told Mississippi Today on Wednesday evening that lawmakers were exploring different ways to revive the loan program after the governor vetoed it. 

McCaughn said he favored reviving the program in another bill because it would be the quickest and most efficient way to get relief money to cities and counties that desperately need it.