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Districts across the Delta region saw the largest academic gains in the state in the past year, according to new district rankings released Thursday. 

Because the state implemented higher cut-off scores this year, however, the accountability scores didn’t always reflect that progress. 

Some of last year’s lowest performing districts saw large improvements. Clarksdale’s city school district jumped a whopping 102 points since last year, moving from an F to a C. Greenwood-Leflore moved 98 points from a D to a C. Both made some of the largest single year gains out of any other district in the state.

READ MORE: Mississippi schools show progress, though higher state standards result in more C and D districts

Clarksdale schools were in bad shape last year. A big factor was record teacher vacancies in state tested subjects. The district had the second highest number of teacher vacancies in July 2025. Over a third of students were chronically absent. 

Superintendent Toya Harrell-Matthews took a chance on a new school leader to change the culture in a school plagued by dysfunction and low academic outcomes for students. It paid off.

“I knew what her abilities were, and how well she worked with students,” Harrell-Matthews said of Denise Calhoun, the new principal at W.A. Higgins Middle School. “And that’s the thing, you have to be able to build relationships before you can do any type of instruction, before anything else can happen in the classroom.”

Calhoun, a Webb native, helped to move the school over 186 points on the state accountability score. The rate of students proficient in math nearly tripled from the previous year.

“I felt that that was going to be a cornerstone in turning this building around to have someone who could build relationships and build trust with students and understand that even if a student has behavioral issues, that you have to champion them, and not just give up on them,” Harrell-Matthews said.

Through social media and her network, Calhoun was able to hire 15 teachers to ensure the school was fully staffed. She brought back choir and art as electives to give students something to look forward to in the day. She also worked with teachers on new strategies to incentivize better behavior, instead of relying solely on removing disruptive students from classrooms. She also restarted after-school detention.

Calhoun celebrated days without student fights, which were frequent in years past. She started a countdown tracker she called “days of peace.” After 50 days of peace, she held a citywide parade and celebrated the students. Students later made it 85 days without any fights.

“And so every time that our students reached another milestone, we would celebrate them even bigger. And so it got to the point where students were so appreciative of everything that was going on that they would report when issues were arising,” she said.

She instituted a bootcamp in the eight weeks leading up to state testing, where students practiced math, science and reading skills. Teachers provided additional support and remediation for special education students. She called it Success Academy.

Also, Harrell-Matthews was adamant that schools in the district have a clean clothes closet for low-income students, who might stay home to avoid ridicule for wearing old or dirty clothes. 

“You have to address student needs first before you can educate them,” Harrell-Matthews said. “So we take the child where they are, and we try to work with them as best we can.”

Superintendent Kenneth Pulley also credits professional development and support for principals with Greenwood-Leflore’s gains. He met with school leaders weekly to review student data to determine which students required additional support.

“We have to hold people accountable, and have high expectations for all students, and maintain a positive atmosphere,” he said. “As long as we know that what we’re doing was right for children, then we know we’ve made the right decision.”

He said a collaborative and receptive board helped implement policies as problems arose. He also put into place professional development sessions that were geared towards curriculum planning.

“As superintendent, yes, we wear a lot of hats, but as superintendent, we must first be instructional leaders,” he said. “That’s where my focus is. And I think when people know where the leader’s focus is, then they will keep their focus there, too.”

He decided to shutter Amanda Elzy Junior High School last October after a failing grade on the state accountability system and low enrollment. Now, all district middle schoolers attend the same school, which allowed the district to pool resources. He said school culture improved, too. Greenwood Middle jumped 100 points in the accountability scale.

“I have to have the hard conversations when they need to be had. My staff members know when we do that, it’s coming from a good place. It’s coming from a place of wanting the best for our children.”

Nearly a third of Leflore County residents live below the poverty line. The fact is not lost on Pulley, who grew up in the community he now serves.

“Our attitude is that, in spite of where you come from or what situation you find yourself in, it is our job to still provide quality instruction,” he said.

Western Line School District, which is based outside Greenville, and West Tallahatchie School District, which is based in Sumner, also made sizable academic gains. Both districts would’ve been a B under last year’s cut-off scores.

Lawrence Hudson, Western Line’s superintendent, said his district’s improvements were a result of “a little bit more fussing” and personnel shakeups at different schools. 

“We had a few teacher areas that were not producing, and they brought the whole district down,” he said. “Our biggest focus is not on strategies but making sure we’ve got the right people.”

Nearly all of the district’s schools posted improvements across the board, he said. 

That’s why Hudson was disappointed when he received his district’s letter grade this year. 

“To be at a point where you’ve gotten every school up and not get the recognition, it’s a little discouraging, but we know what we’ve got to do,” he said. “We’ve got to buckle down and do what it takes to be recognized as a high-performing district.”

When reached by phone on Wednesday, House Education Chairman Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville, commended Delta schools on their progress. 

However, he admitted it may not be enough to ward off consolidation talks swirling at the state Capitol. State lawmakers are eyeing both Western Line and West Tallahatchie schools for mergers next year. 

“We obviously don’t want to mess up good things, but here’s the problem I see,” he said. “When you are constantly losing students, it’s just a matter of time when you’re eventually going to have no money to keep the school afloat.”

Mississippi has lost nearly 70,000 public school students since 2013, taking funding with them. Delta schools, in particular, are shrinking.

“Educators for years have said we need more money, and sometimes they’re not wrong, they do need more money,” Roberson said. “But do we put more money from the state side or start trying to look at this differently?” 

The U.S. Postal Service and Homeland Security intercepted a letter sent to Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson’s office, as federal authorities warn of letters with suspicious substances being sent to congressional and election offices across the country.

Watson spokeswoman Liz Jonson said in a statement on Thursday, “Based on the events in other states, we were notified to expect a suspicious letter, but it was intercepted by USPS and HSI before it got to our office.”

Jonson said the letter was turned over to the FBI, and later reported that authorities told Watson’s office the substance in it was tested and determined to be nonhazardous.

The Associated Press obtained a message from the U.S. Senate sergeant at arms warning that law enforcement officials were seeking to intercept letters, and reported that federal authorities were urging congressional and election offices nationwide to treat the letters as “potentially hazardous.”

The AP reported that mailed packages containing a powdery substance led to evacuation this week of election offices in Louisiana and Oklahoma, and the Ohio secretary of state said a package intended for his office was intercepted.

The news comes just weeks before midterm Election Day, and is similar to a threat in 2024, when election offices in six states received mailings with a white powder. Some of those mailings contained traces of the powerful opioid fentanyl.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Update 10/15/2026: Watson’s office has reported that after testing, authorities confirmed the substance in the letter was nonhazardous.

Correction 10/15/2026: This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Liz Jonson’s name.

The Mississippi Supreme Court permanently disbarred former Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba on Thursday, two months after he offered to surrender his law license. 

Lumumba, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, is awaiting sentencing on a federal felony charge after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery in a case stemming from an FBI operation that ensnared multiple officials in Mississippi’s capital city.

Sentencing was initially scheduled for last month. U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III postponed the hearing to early November, but Lumumba’s attorneys are awaiting a ruling on a motion to further postpone the sentencing.

Lumumba was to be sentenced along with his co-defendants – former Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens and former Jackson City Councilmember Aaron Banks. They each face up to five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000. 

Others involved in the scheme have also yet to be sentenced, including former Jackson City Councilmember Angelique Lee. 

In 2024, a sweeping federal indictment alleged that in exchange for $50,000 in campaign donations, Lumumba directed a city employee to shorten a bid deadline to benefit a pair of out-of-town developers that were working with Owens. 

Unknown to the local politicians, the developers were undercover FBI agents.

SOUTHAVEN — With residents suing over noise and pollution, Elon Musk’s company is trying to buy up homes around his expansive data center operations in Southaven. 

A few owners have rejected the offers while others are contemplating it or have decided to take the buyout. But some renters believe they’re being left behind.

This is the latest development in over a year of tensions between Southaven residents and SpaceXAI, formerly xAI, as the $2-trillion company continues to expand its data center presence in the greater Memphis area. Some residents are opposed to the project that has resulted in noise and pollution complaints, multiple lawsuits and frustration on the part of locals and city officials.

Residents living near SpaceXAI’s power plant in Southaven have reported receiving offers to buy their homes from MZX Tech LLC, a subsidiary of SpaceXAI. 

In a letter that some residents received, Burch Realty Group, a local Realtor that said it was working on behalf of MZX Tech, offered to buy their house in exchange for “among other things, a release of all claims” related to the class action lawsuit brought by a group of Southaven residents against SpaceXAI.

The litigation is over noise created by the company’s temporary gas turbines, and plaintiffs seek a court order to reduce the “near-constant noise, vibrations, and other nuisance-level harms.” They seek financial compensation for the disruption they say has been ongoing for over a year. 

Anyone living in the affected area, including renters, is eligible for the class action, said Robert Wiygul, one of the attorneys representing residents.

Cushman & Wakefield, not mentioned in the letter, is another realty group that has made at least one buyout offer to local homeowners.

A representative from Cushman & Wakefield referred Mississippi Today to SpaceXAI and a representative from Burch Realty Group could not be reached for comment.

Mississippi Today spoke to several homeowners, who were reluctant to speak on the record or share details of the offers they received.

The NAACP is bringing a separate case against SpaceXAI over the same turbines, which it claims violates the federal Clean Air Act. State and local officials have said the company has not broken any state or local laws, and the federal government has said the company’s operations are vital for national security. 

In the letter to Southaven residents, MZX Tech “denies all of the allegations against it” and says it “requires property for business purposes.” The company did not disclose what business purposes it intends to use the houses for. 

However, in an Oct. 1 blog post, Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite said in addition to improving public perception, the buyout serves the purpose of acquiring homes for SpaceXAI employees. The project is expected to create hundreds of new jobs in the area and attract new residents.

The surge in construction is already bringing jobs and increased traffic. Residents report that surrounding parking lots are filled to capacity with employees’ cars and that privately chartered buses are routinely travelling to and from the site.

SpaceXAI is currently hiring for at least 160 jobs based in the Memphis area, according to its job board. 

SpaceXAI did not respond to a request for comment. But in August, the company wrote on social media, “We don’t just build in Memphis – we live, work and invest here. We are committed to being good neighbors and responsible partners.”

Mayor says purchase offers are good corporate citizenship

In response to media coverage of the buyout, Southaven Mayor Musselwhite addressed the news directly his recent blog post and at a Board of Aldermen meeting on Oct. 6.

“This buyout is not to say, ‘Well, scrap that. We can’t stop the noise.’ No, that’s still number one.” Musselwhite said at the meeting. He said that SpaceXAI has accelerated its plans to convert the louder, temporary turbines to permanent ones that are “much more quiet.” The buyout is instead a “parallel approach” to “eliminate negative impact or perception of negative impact” and “has been part of a comprehensive plan for many months,” he wrote in his blog post. 

“I told them that this should be part of your goodwill to the community, part of your being a good corporate citizen,” he said at the meeting. “Whether it is or it isn’t, if they view it as a negative, give them an option to sell.”

Musselwhite claimed media had needlessly alarmed people and stirred up controversy by sharing what he called misinformation that the company was forcing people out of their homes.

“Nobody is being forced to be bought out,” Musselwhite said, calling coverage “slanted” and “false.”

“It’s totally voluntary,” he said. 

As for renters, Musselwhite said that on any given day renters are at risk of being asked to move. “That’s nothing new. It has nothing to do with any development in Southaven.”

What about renters?

Danielle Dillard, 37, a renter who lives less than a mile from the power plant, disagreed. “If this wasn’t happening, my landlord wouldn’t have said a word. And even if he did, he definitely wouldn’t have given me 60 days’ notice,” she said. “And it wouldn’t be happening to multiple people because multiple homeowners don’t just decide to sell houses at the same time.”

In late September, Dillard learned that her landlord took the buyout offer. He told her she had 60 days to move out, she said. She had just signed to extend her lease a month before. 

Dillard had seen news of the buyout — “I sent it to my friend, and I was like, this is crazy” — but didn’t think it would apply to her. 

Dillard’s landlord offered to move her into a different home, she said, but it was 25 minutes away and wasn’t comparable to her current home. Dillard has four kids, three of whom are school-aged and live with her.

Neither her landlord nor SpaceXAI has offered to cover her moving expenses, Dillard added. She said she emailed SpaceXAI asking if there was anything they were offering renters, but never heard back.

Dillard still has not found another place to live. 

One-third to two-thirds of the Southaven and Horn Lake neighborhoods in the class action area are occupied by renters, according to 2020-2024 census estimates. In Mississippi at large, about a quarter of households are occupied by renters versus about a third nationwide.

Under Mississippi law, neither landlords nor tenants are allowed to end an active, fixed-term lease early, unless the contract has an early termination clause or parties voluntarily agree to end the lease early, according to lawyers Mississippi Today spoke with.

Tenants “can’t just automatically be kicked out at the landlord’s whim, or because the landlord found some other more lucrative offer,” said Sam Buchanan Jr., executive director of the Mississippi Center for Legal Services Corporation. Tenants have the right to see their lease through, unless the landlord has a reason to evict them based on a “material breach” of the contract. 

Dillard’s lease did not contain a termination clause, but her landlord sent her an “agreement to vacate property” that she said she didn’t know she had any option but to sign. 

“It was never optional,” she said. 

Buchanan Jr. recommends that before renters sign an agreement they may not fully understand, that they first seek out an expert for an independent opinion.

Robert Wiygul, the attorney representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit against SpaceXAI, urged people considering an offer to weigh their options carefully. 

“For every individual, they have to look at whether a buyout is going to actually make them whole for what they’ve lost,” he said. 

Jen Jenkins of The New York Times contributed research. If you’ve been impacted by the SpaceXAI buyouts, Mississippi Today is interested in hearing your story. You can email Julie Lee at jlee@mississippitoday.org.

In the midterm elections, meat is on the menu.

As Democrats and Republicans argue over high prices and the Iran war, they also are having a food fight over who is the most red-blooded carnivore.

The latest example came this week in Mississippi, where Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Scott Colom released a video with a snippet of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith saying that if consumers are upset over high beef prices, “you know you have so many proteins to choose from.”

The video cuts to a man grilling burgers who says, “Pick another protein? I’d rather pick another senator instead.”

The Mississippi race is somewhat unusual because it is the Democrat hammering the Republican over beef. Elsewhere, Republicans have branded Democrats as vegans or otherwise opposed to meat, trying to show that they are culturally out of step with voters, hostile to local cattle industries or just not manly enough.

READ MORE: Mississippi cattle producers and politicians lament Trump’s imported beef plan

In Texas, Republicans seized on an old interview in which Democrat James Talarico, the current U.S. Senate nominee, boasted that his campaign at the time for the Texas Statehouse was going vegan. Talarico has since been publicly scarfing down barbecue to rebut allegations that his dietary choices mean he is not a real Texan.

Chowing down on barbecue and tacos

In Colorado, Republicans have gone after Democratic congressional candidate Manny Rutinel for his activism against meat production and factory farming. In college, he was photographed shirtless with a banner for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals around his chest. In 2021, Rutinel founded Climate Refarm, which advocated for cutting down on the use of meat and has signed onto letters advocating for raising taxes on meat and dairy. He also supported a 2024 ballot measure to ban a lamb slaughterhouse in Denver, which failed.

Rutinel, 31, is now running against Gabe Evans, the Republican who represents Colorado’s 8th Congressional District. The vast swath in the northeastern part of the state is dotted with ranches, dairy farms and meat processing facilities, including the headquarters of beef production titan JBS Swift. Republicans have hammered Rutinel over advocating veganism, to the point that the conservative media group Daily Wire this week released an undercover video of a campaign official saying Rutinel eats meat “as little as possible.”

Rutinel has made a point of publicly eating steak tacos during the campaign and is backed by the meatpackers’ union. “I don’t think Coloradans care about what’s on my plate,” he said in an interview after a recent campaign stop. “I think they care more about what’s on theirs.”

Evans said the issue goes beyond Rutinel’s meal preferences. “I don’t care what he eats personally,” Evans said in an interview. “I care that he wants to use the power of the government to make everyone eat that way.”

High-stakes role for meat in the debate over rising consumer prices

Republicans, in the same way, have gone after two other Democrats running for the U.S. House. They are hammering Lindsay James in Iowa’s 2nd District, an area filled with hog farms, over a 2020 Facebook post supporting “meatless May,” and Amish Shah in Arizona’s 1st District for his long-standing vegetarianism and animal rights activism.

Also in Iowa, Republican U.S. Senate nominee Rep. Ashley Hinson slammed her opponent, state lawmaker Josh Turek, for opposing a bill banning lab-grown meat from being sold in the state. “He’d rather have meat that comes from a lab than from our family farms,” the congresswoman said at a campaign appearance.

Democrats have spotlighted meat as well, but mainly as one of the staples that cost more under Trump, squeezing voters’ pocketbooks. Trump has tried to lower prices by opening U.S. markets to beef imports, especially from Argentina, which is governed by a close Trump ally.

Those moves, however, have angered U.S. producers as prices have remained stubbornly high, creating a potential weakness in Republican-leaning states where Democrats hope to gain ground this year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average pound of ground beef cost $6.79 last month, up from $5.55 in January of 2025, when Trump returned to office.

That was the dynamic that Hyde-Smith, a cattle rancher and former Mississippi agriculture commissioner, was addressing in her interview that was clipped in Colom’s video. The prosecutor — who also delivers the “pick another senator” line in the spot — is running a long-shot challenge in Mississippi.

Nathan Calvert, spokesman for Hyde-Smith’s campaign, argued that the Democrats deserve blame for high prices. “It is Scott Colom who supports Biden-era policies that drove up inflation,” Calvert said.

Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

Half of Mississippi schools and districts are high-performing despite higher standards this year, according to state education rankings released Thursday.

The more rigorous standards underscore state leaders’ efforts to continue the gains that have rocketed Mississippi to national stardom, education leaders said at a press conference about the new grades. The scores released Thursday reflect how schools fared in the 2025-26 school year.

“I’m very proud to say this: We increased our standards, and our districts have responded,” State Superintendent Lance Evans said. “Their performance and the efforts they’ve put forth, in my opinion, have been very successful.”

The Mississippi Board of Education created the accountability framework to judge how well schools serve their students and communities. The system — which awards up to 1,000 points to high schools and districts and 700 points to elementary and middle schools — takes into account state test scores, graduation rates and academic growth. 

State law requires that standards increase when student proficiency rates exceed 75% or when 65% of schools or districts earn a grade of B or higher. After Mississippi met the threshold for grades in 2023, the education agency spent two years resetting the standards to be more challenging. 

The new standards raise the scores required for each letter grade and place more weight on college and career readiness, and this is the first year that doesn’t include the U.S. History assessment, which the state Board of Education voted last June to remove as graduation requirement. The state Board of Education approved the new standards in November. 

This year, 2024-25 reading scores might also be factored into accountability grades for some districts because the test was restructured. 

In the months leading up to this release, the Mississippi Department of Education has said that this year’s letter grades should not be compared to previous years’ — however, point scores are comparable, said C. Alan Burrow, associate state superintendent. 

Evans said the process is “an essential part of ensuring Mississippi students and schools continue to improve academically each year.” 

READ MORE: Delta school districts’ success not reflected in new state rankings

“If we’re back here at the table in two years resetting the standards again, that won’t be a bad thing,” said Paula Vanderford, chief accountability officer for the agency, while presenting the new grades at the state Board of Education meeting on Thursday.

The board set a goal in 2016 that every school and district in Mississippi is rated C or higher. This year, 121 of the state’s 138 traditional public school districts were rated a C or above, or 87.6%, and 50.7% of districts earned a B or higher.

If the agency had not reset the standards this year, Vanderford noted that 70.7% of districts would have made a B or above. 

All of the state’s public charter schools, though, were ranked C or lower.

The state’s largest school districts, such as DeSoto and Rankin County, continue to post top results. Delta schools appear to struggle in the rankings, but a closer look shows many of the region’s districts are posting improvements.

Many Jackson area and central Mississippi county school districts saw test score drop since last year. Others saw modest gains.

That wasn’t the case for the Simpson County School District. 

Simpson upped its score by 46 points since last year, improving more than any other district in central Mississippi. Mendenhall Elementary moved from a D to a C rated school. 

The district had a new superintendent this past year: Robert Sanders. He credits the improvements to dynamic building leadership and hard working students and staff. 

Through a partnership with The Kirkland Group, a Ridgeland-based educational consulting firm, teachers had help analyzing data on student progress. As a result, teachers could focus more on instruction  and lesson planning.

“Back in the day, we had to do this work by hand,” recalled Tommy Brumfield, principal at  Mendenhall Elementary School. “So now, teachers are able to spend more time, not just analyzing data, but being able to make plans from that data and doing something with it.”

Sanders inherited a district in need of better supervision. The district’s chronic absenteeism rate ranked third highest statewide in the 2024-25 school year. In response, Sanders dispatched principals and school staff to knock on doors in the community, and better learn the root causes of absenteeism. He said he’s since seen improvement. 

Magee Middle School saw a 36% drop in its chronic absenteeism rate since last year. The school also moved 84 points on the state accountability scale.

“I’m very pleased within just one year to see a 46-point gain,” Sanders told Mississippi Today on Wednesday. “That speaks to the leadership in our schools, because that’s where it’s happening. You have to look at every child, and you have to make sure when they’re not performing where they need to be, find out why and do the things that will empower your needle to move the right way.”

And though districts closer to the Gulf Coast again dominated the list, some show slight declines.

Long Beach School District has seen the biggest drop among Gulf Coast districts in its state accountability score the past five years, though it’s held on to its A rating. Pascagoula-Gautier School District also retained its B, but the district dropped in points since last year. 

Pascagoula-Gautier’s Superintendent Caterria Payton said the state education agency’s scores and grades don’t reflect the progress happening at her district. She highlighted three schools that improved by a letter grade, and emphasized that no schools earned a D rating.

“While these improvements have not yet resulted in the districtwide gains we expect, they demonstrate that progress is possible and that our efforts must remain focused and consistent,” she said in an emailed statement.

The Mississippi Department of Education is asking for $22 million more next year from the Legislature to focus on early education programs, dyslexia and dropout prevention initiatives. 

Evans said as the state education agency prioritizes areas of improvement and raises expectations, he’s confident Mississippi districts will rise to the occasion. 

“Overall, our districts have answered the call,” he said. “I’m very pleased with the outcome.”

Raphael Warnock knows something about winning a Senate seat in the Deep South, and he says Mississippi’s race looks awfully familiar to his Georgia election five years ago.

That’s what he said at a meeting with faith leaders and to an electrified crowd in Jackson on Wednesday, urging voters to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and replicate his successful Georgia election that sent a Black Democrat to the Senate from a Southern state and delivered a Democratic majority to the U.S. Senate. 

“I’m here because I’m tired of the South being overlooked or diminished in terms of its electoral importance,” Warnock told reporters. “We ignore the South at our own peril. Democrats are investing here. I would like to see more, for the sake of the country.”

Warnock shares similarities with Scott Colom, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Mississippi. Both faced steep electoral odds and several national Democratic figures believed victory in a reliably red state impossible. 

Mississippi has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since the 1980s, and the electorate has consistently aligned itself with the national Republican Party. 

But Warnock said Mississippi, the state with the highest concentration of Black voters in the nation, is ripe for the Democratic Party to flip the Senate seat if only they’ll consistently spend money in the Deep South state and keep working to register voters. 

“We lose elections by the margins of our disengagement,” Warnock said. “Mississippi is a blue state. It just doesn’t know it yet.”  

Warnock said he spent years working to register and mobilize voters across his state alongside Stacey Abrams, who was raised in Gulfport before moving to Georgia, where she would later run for governor. 

Abrams lost both of her gubernatorial bids, but many leading Democrats believe she built the organizing infrastructure that Warnock and fellow Georgia U.S. Senator Sen. Jon Ossoff ultimately used to flip what had been a deep-red state. 

He said Colom is capable of replicating his success in Mississippi, which will require amping up Democratic voter turnout. In Mississippi and across the Deep South, churches have long been an engine of political organizing for Black voters and the Democratic Party.

Warnock, who was elected to the Senate after serving as the senior pastor of Atlanta’s famed Ebenezer Baptist Church, and Colom met with faith leaders for a discussion about how pastors can use their pulpits to connect their congregations to the polls. 

The Rev. Jerry Young, senior pastor at New Hope Baptist Church in Jackson and former president of the National Baptist Convention, spoke about how he believes America is currently at a moral crossroads because the government is allowing the affluent to become richer while cutting benefits for the poor. 

“There is an attitude in this country, I think, that is antithetical to everything that the barefoot boy from Nazareth preached and talked about,” Young said. “And I just think it’s not Black or white or Republican or Democratic. It’s what is right versus wrong.”  

Pastor Stephen Cook of Anderson United Methodist Church in Jackson said his congregants were coming for guidance on how to deal with everyday struggles such as the rising cost of healthcare and groceries. 

“Every pastor, every faith leader in this room knows someone who is struggling to afford medication, worried about losing a hospital or working hard and still falling behind,” Cook said. “How do we help our congregation connect those everyday struggles to the decisions being made in Washington?” 

Colom said Hyde-Smith’s failure to address those issues puts her at odds with Christian teachings. 

“She has forgotten about the working people of Mississippi,” Colom said. “She’s forgotten about the teachings of Jesus Christ. And she’s not living the values that actually make our country great.” 

Warnock’s visit is the latest in a string of appearances by national Democrats as the race enters its homestretch. Sens. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Cory Booker of New Jersey have already campaigned in Mississippi for Colom, the Democratic nominee.

Former President Barack Obama recorded an ad for Colom that began running this week. “Mississippi, it’s time for a change,” Obama says in the ad.

More are coming. Former Vice President Kamala Harris will campaign with Colom in Columbus on Oct. 22, and former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will visit cities along the Gulf Coast on Oct. 27 before the Nov. 3 election.

Hyde-Smith has criticized Colom for his ties to the national party and for using national Democratic surrogates.

Her campaign manager, Jake Monssen, said in a statement that Colom “will suffer the same fate as the last two candidates President Obama endorsed in Mississippi,” referring to Obama’s endorsements of Mike Espy in the 2020 Senate race against Hyde-Smith and Jim Hood in the 2019 governor’s race.

President Donald Trump has again endorsed Hyde-Smith.

Colom has countered that Hyde-Smith is out of touch with average Mississippians and afraid to face voters in town halls or debate him. He has said he is focused on lowering costs for Mississippi families, raising the minimum wage and protecting health care and rural hospitals.

Colom and Hyde-Smith are also competing against independent candidate Ty Pinkins.

Earlier on Wednesday, Warnock said he visited the Jackson home of the late Medgar Evers, the civil rights legend who was assassinated in his driveway after he spent years registering Black voters. 

The Democratic senator spoke about the central role that Mississippi civil rights heroes such as James Meredith and Fannie Lou Hamer played in reshaping American politics by fighting for the right to vote. 

Warnock said the political stakes are always higher in the South, where “bloodstained ballots” mark the sacrifices made by legends such as Evers, James Meredith and Fannie Lou Hamer. 

“This is our moment,” Warnock said. “It is a moral moment. Don’t count out the South because as goes the South, so goes the rest of the nation.” 

A once prominent youth gymnastics coach was sentenced to 90 years in prison Wednesday for secretly recording his young female students undressing and using the bathroom at a Mississippi gym, in a case that rocked the sport.

Sean Gardner, 39, received the maximum sentence possible. U.S. District Judge Kristi Johnson ordered that he serve 30 years in prison for each of the three federal child pornography production charges to which he pleaded guilty. The sentence likely amounts to life in prison for Gardner.

READ MORE: Ex-Mississippi gymnastics coach plans guilty plea in child pornography case

Gardner’s arrest last summer by the FBI, first reported by The Associated Press, renewed questions about whether U.S. gymnastics authorities had done enough to protect athletes from sexual abuse at the hands of an influential coach.

Gardner pleaded guilty to placing a hidden camera in a bathroom at a gymnastics studio in Purvis, Mississippi, between December 2017 and April 2018 to record his students. Investigators say he created videos showing close-up images of at least 10 minors naked or undressing, which they recovered from his computers years later while investigating claims that he sexually abused gymnasts in Iowa.

Several of his former students at Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, Iowa, have alleged to police and in civil lawsuits that he used his position to prey on them. The institute was founded by prominent coach Liang “Chow” Qiao, who is known for producing Olympic champions. Gardner coached several youth prospects and served as director of an annual winter meet that drew hundreds of gymnasts to Iowa.

Gardner has not been charged in connection with any of the Iowa allegations, and police have said they would wait to determine how to proceed after the federal case concludes.

The lawsuits have also alleged the sport’s oversight bodies, USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Center for SafeSport, were told about inappropriate behavior by Gardner in 2017 but failed to take action to remove him from the sport for years. SafeSport temporarily suspended Gardner in 2022 after a Chow’s gymnast alleged sexual abuse, and Chow’s fired him then.

SafeSport has said it learned during its investigation that Chow and other coaches had been aware of allegations of sexual misconduct against Gardner but failed to report them to the center as required by its policy.

Mississippi’s workforce development agency is seeking more state money to add staff as it launches and expands job training programs. The request comes as the state prepares for thousands of jobs to open in the next decade. 

AccelerateMS is requesting a $7.1 million operating budget for fiscal year 2028, which begins July 1. That is about $2.5 million more than its current appropriation, according to information that agency officials recently presented to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. The increase would go toward hiring staff to help manage new programs, including UPSKILL (Upgrading Priority Skills for Key Industry Learning and Labor), which launched this summer, and the new Workforce Pell Grant program, said Courtney Taylor, executive director of AccelerateMS. 

The State Workforce Investment Board estimated in 2025 that Mississippi will face a shortage of 19,000 workers in priority fields such as manufacturing, construction and healthcare through 2035. Taylor said closing the gap will require the state to train more workers and students and to connect them to high-demand jobs. 

“The investment is crucial for our state and to meet the economy where it’s going,” Taylor said. 

AccelerateMS currently has 28 employees, Taylor said, and wants to hire an additional eight. 

One of those positions is a full-time Workforce Pell manager, Taylor said. The  Workforce Pell Grant program launched in July will allow eligible students to use federal Pell Grants for certain short-term job training programs. 

The expansion of the Pell Grant program, which traditionally helped low-income students pay for college, will allow students to pay for workforce programs lasting as little as eight to 15 weeks. 

Having a dedicated employee to review applications from the state’s universities, community and technical colleges seeking approval for eligible programs to qualify for Workforce Pell would help, she said. For now, an employee who oversees other federal initiatives, including the opioid-settlement workforce training program, reviews Workforce Pell applications. 

In September, Mississippi secured $8.5 million in federal funding to help launch Workforce Pell across all 15 community colleges.

Northwest Mississippi Community College will lead the effort, but AccelerateMS will help to coordinate and set up the program statewide, Taylor said. 

Workforce Pell requires a lot of management, including tracking data required by the federal government for students’ graduation rates, job placement and wage outcomes, said Iris Palmer, director of community college initiatives at New America, a national public policy think tank. 

The requirements for Workforce Pell “are very complicated,” and the process of getting these types of programs set up at colleges can be difficult, she said.  

Lawmakers will consider AccelerateMS’s request during their three-month session that begins in January, as they finalize the state budget for the next fiscal year. 

Senate Appropriations Chairman Briggs Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg, said it is too early to know whether AccelerateMS will receive its full request. Lawmakers are reviewing agencies’ budget requests and the state’s major spending needs, including Medicaid, he said. Hopson said lawmakers will consider how much money the state has available and determine where it can be spent when developing the final budget. 

The Mississippi State Department of Health is updating its blueprint for improving healthcare and public health systems. 

The new Comprehensive State Health Plan will establish priorities and strategies for enhancing access to care, addressing workforce and system challenges and supporting the sustainability of the state’s public health systems, said State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney at a Board of Health meeting Wednesday. 

“Instead of just monitoring, we’re trying to shape the healthcare needs of the state and push resources to those gaps,” Edney said. 

The state published its last health plan in 2023. This plan, designed as a regulatory document, focused on healthcare provider planning law, Edney said, but the new state health plan will expand its scope to analyze data and help the agency set priorities and plan its programs.

“The goal is not simply to produce another planning document,” agency officials wrote in a memo. “The goal is to develop an informed, actionable statewide framework grounded in current data and the real-world experiences of the people and organizations serving Mississippians.” 

Premier Healthcare Solutions Inc., a Charlotte, North Carolina-based healthcare consultant company, was awarded a 15-month contract worth roughly $567,000 in July to help the agency craft the plan, including executing a data-driven assessment of Mississippi’s health system, engaging stakeholders and drafting the final document. 

The company has begun seeking feedback from stakeholders, hosting invitation-only town halls this week in Greenville, Hattiesburg and Jackson, and will hold meetings in future weeks in Southaven and Oxford. 

Roughly 350 healthcare professionals have signed up for the events, and the company will conduct additional surveys and stakeholder interviews in coming months, said Laura Goodson, the health department’s chief of staff. 

Efforts to craft the new plan are funded by the federal Rural Health Transformation Program, a five-year, $50 billion federal investment in rural healthcare. Mississippi received nearly $206 million as a part of the first year of the program. Gov. Tate Reeves’ office oversaw the development of Mississippi’s plan and made a statewide rural health assessment one of the state’s six main initiatives. 

Mississippi consistently ranks at or near the bottom nationally in healthcare outcomes and access. Mississippi has the highest rate of premature death, or deaths that could be prevented with timely and effective healthcare, in the nation.

State health plans can help guide a state’s priorities for improving health outcomes, said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, former Maryland health secretary and a public health professor at Johns Hopkins University. Identifying measurable outcomes and delegating tasks to specific agencies or partners can strengthen the documents. 

“It’s good to have actions that people are committed to taking, rather than just goals,” he said.