OurTupelo

Bursts of color and a bright vibe of joy beckon inside the “L.V. Hull: Love Is a Sensation” exhibition, newly installed at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson. That same magnet pulled scores of visitors to Hull’s Kosciusko home for years — a home the self-taught artist embellished to the nth degree using the raw materials of found and donated objects, paint and glue.

For Hull, who was born in 1942 and died in 2008, home and garden became her canvas, as did just about everything else within reach — fan blades, beads, buttons, jewelry, lighters, sneakers, tiny toys, bigger tools, television sets, spray bottles and more. Always more. Her home was simultaneously a studio, a gallery and an immersive art environment that was also packed with standalone pieces.

“L.V. Hull: Love Is a Sensation,” on view through June 14 at the Mississippi Museum of Art, is presented in partnership with the L.V. Hull Legacy Center and represents the first major museum exhibition devoted to Hull’s art and life. The Legacy Center, a project of the Arts Foundation of Kosciusko, includes Hull’s preserved home in a new visual arts campus scheduled to open in Kosciusko this June with a parallel exhibition and related programming. 

Hull’s home/studio was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2024, and became the first of a Black female visual artist to be recognized as nationally significant.

The title of the Jackson exhibition stems from a saying of Hull’s, repeated in different works. “The whole quote is ‘Love is a sensation, started by a conversation, spread by the population and hurts like an operation,’” said guest co-curator Yaphet Smith, a friend of Hull’s, an Arts Foundation of Kosciusko board member and president of the Keysmith Foundation, steward of her historic home.

Hull’s saying inspired, too, the title of Smith’s documentary, clips of which are included in the exhibition. The Mississippi Museum of Art hosts a premiere screening of his documentary “L.V. Hull: Love Is a Sensation” April 9. 

“Love was such a driving force in her practice of art,” Smith said. “That really came out as I recorded her … love of self, the love of her Creator, friends and family, neighbors, and then the strangers that used to come from around the world to visit with her.”

The large photo of Hull on her front porch at the exhibition’s start puts her at ground zero of this colorful, creative explosion. Her polka-dot dress echoes the paint dot patterns that show up on shoes, pots, signs and more that surround her, for a near-intoxicating visual buzz.

Inside, individual artworks, ephemera from Hull’s archives and video clips offer a chance to zoom in and appreciate the details. Curiosity and intrigue first drew exhibition co-curator Ryan Dennis to Hull’s work, and she hopes viewers experience the same pull toward a closer look. Annalise Flynn, who works with the Arts Foundation of Kosciusko to preserve Hull’s home and legacy, is also part of the exhibition’s curatorial team.

“What makes this show special for me personally,” Dennis said, “is that, if you encountered L.V.’s work in Kosciusko while she was living, you were surrounded — really immersed in this art environment.

“What we have done here is take out these gems and allow for them to breathe a little bit, and you can spend some time with the paintings. You can really see what these words are on these paintings. 

“You can see how she put together these assemblages, these plaquettes,” Dennis said. She hopes it sparks people’s own creativity to create art from things so close within reach.

Hull merged artmaking and hospitality in her practice, welcoming neighbors and visitors to the 900-square-foot home she purchased in 1974 and transformed over decades with her unique creative vision. “Coming into her truest artist self, she wanted to share that with the world,” Dennis said. “The invitation is just so beautiful, and it’s nice to also be able to extend that here.”

In Hull’s hands, a tabletop Christmas tree base provides the structure for a tabletop bottle tree packed with small, gaily painted glass and plastic bottles. No need for Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots to fight for attention, when Hull’s painterly touch adds so much vibrant visual action to the toy.

Zooming in on her plaquettes becomes a journey of discovery — a tiny toy or perhaps a Santa face amid the buttons, costume jewelry bits and other charms. Hull leads viewers through her B.B. King plaquette in a video clip, pointing out the gas pump, sunglasses and guitar that connect to the blues icon and fellow Mississippi artist.

An archive tableau offers a further peek into the perspective and outlook of this self-proclaimed “Unusual Artist,” with a paint-flecked sheet of notebook paper and its handwritten list of “wisdom drops,” as Dennis called them. “A smile is the most important to wear” reads No. 6 on the list.

“My hope is that people get a sense of the personality of L.V.,” Dennis said. “She’s obviously joyful, but she’s obviously also a pistol of sorts. She’s witty. And at the end of it, she’s fueled with love and creativity, and we want people to take that away.” 

The exhibition’s concurrent run with “Coulter Fussell: The Proving Ground” at the museum enhances the impact with intriguing parallels in the two one-woman shows centered on Mississippi artists.  Both highlight artists deeply connected to place, community and national contemporary art trends.

“They’re from different communities, and yet the community is really what informs the work,” said Betsy Bradley, Laurie Hearin McRee director of the Mississippi Museum of Art. Fussell uses items donated by friends, family and fellow townsfolk in Water Valley.

“L.V. Hull started making art when she was able to buy her own house. So, her art was decorating her house — painting on her house, adorning her house, creating beauty on every object in her house. Some people also in the community would drop off beads or buttons or whatever for her to use,” Bradley said. 

“It’s this connection and relationship between members of the community and creativity and making art, I think, that really ties them together.

“It really speaks to this need to create beauty and art out of everyday objects … this generous impulse that they both had to create and share with the community.”

Visit msmususem.org for details on admission, hours and related events.

Correction 3/26/2026: This story has been updated to correct Annalise Flynn’s name.

As states that already ban abortion look to further restrict access this year, much of the focus is on pills sent by out-of-state providers.

A survey released Tuesday helps explain the emphasis. It suggests that more women in states with bans obtained abortions last year using the pills prescribed via telehealth than by traveling to places where it’s legal.

Most of the states with the political will to impose broad bans have already done so in the nearly four years since the U.S. Supreme Court used a Mississippi case to overturn Roe v. Wade and opened the door to enforcing the bans. So far this year, just one state has a new one.

Here’s a look at where things stand as many state legislatures are wrapping up or have completed their 2026 sessions.

States are taking steps to make abortion pills harder to get

South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden, a Republican, signed a bill last week that makes it a felony to advertise, distribute or sell abortion pills.

Similar measures have cleared both legislative chambers this year in Mississippi, where the House and Senate need to iron out differences before sending a bill to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.

A survey of state abortion policies from the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, finds that at least three states — Florida, Oklahoma and Texas — already have laws that specifically ban providers from mailing the pills to patients. Louisiana has classified mifepristone as a controlled dangerous substance.

Bills intended to keep out the pills have cleared one chamber in Arizona, Indiana and South Carolina this year. Republicans control the legislatures in all three states and the governor’s office in two of them. In Arizona, any restrictions that pass could be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.

Survey suggests more women using abortion pills in states with bans

A Guttmacher survey released Tuesday sheds light on why abortion opponents may be focusing on pills.

The report suggests that in 2025, for the first time, more women in the 13 states that ban abortion at all stages of pregnancy obtained pills through telehealth than traveled to other states for abortion.

The prescriptions come from providers in states with laws adopted since the fall of Roe that are intended to protect those who prescribe abortion pills to patients in states with bans. Most often, women using pills for abortion are prescribed a regimen of two drugs — mifepristone and misoprostol. They’re approved for use in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.

The estimated increase in the mailing pills comes as Guttmacher’s estimates also suggest fewer women are traveling to obtain abortions in states like Colorado, Illinois, Kansas and New Mexico.

Guttmacher’s estimates are based on data from a monthly survey conducted among a random sample of U.S. abortion providers, combined with historical data from every provider in the U.S. They reflect a trend documented in other surveys of abortion providers.

Court battles are also centered on pills

Multiple states are challenging the federal rules that allow mifepristone to be prescribed via telehealth. Requiring in-person prescriptions instead would at least dent the ability of out-of-state providers to get pills into states with bans.

Louisiana has such a lawsuit in federal court there; the attorneys general of Florida and Texas have one in Texas; those two states, along with Idaho, Kansas and Missouri, are making the same case in a Missouri court.

Meanwhile, Texas has filed civil cases and Louisiana criminal ones against providers accused of sending pills into their states.

The Food and Drug Administration last year approved a generic version of mifepristone, which frustrated abortion opponents.

One state imposed a ban, but its fate is uncertain

Wyoming is the only state this year that has imposed a new abortion ban.

Under a law signed in March by Republican Gov. Mark Gordon, it became the fifth state with a ban on abortion at about six weeks’ gestational age — before many women realize they’re pregnant. Like most of the others, Wyoming’s bans abortions once cardiac activity can be detected.

But courts have rejected previous Wyoming efforts to limit abortion, and the Wyoming Supreme Court in January struck down a ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy.

The idea of punishing women is not gaining ground

No state has adopted a measure intended to allow criminal prosecutions against women who have abortions.

Proposals to do so keep getting made but sputter early in the legislative process.

The farthest such a bill has advanced was a hearing last year before a Senate subcommittee in South Carolina. One was scheduled for a subcommittee hearing in Tennessee this month, but didn’t get one.

Pregnancy Justice, which advocates for the rights of pregnant people, says it has tracked new “abortion-as-homicide” measures introduced in six states in 2026 — down from 13 states last year.

The major established anti-abortion groups oppose the approach. “Women require compassion and support,” said Ingrid Duran, the state legislative director for National Right to Life. “Not prosecution.”

Melissa Murray, a professor at New York University School of Law, says that by introducing bills with penalties against women, the movement’s less compromising abolitionists can break down the idea that such policies are off-limits.

“You keep pushing the boundary, pushing the envelope, eventually you will get what you’re seeking,” Murray said. “It will no longer feel fanciful or shocking.”

She also noted that women are already sometimes charged with crimes related to their pregnancies. This month, police in Georgia charged a woman with murder after allegedly using an abortion pill and the opioid painkiller oxycodone.

Abortion will be on ballots in November

Abortion questions will be before voters in at least three states in November.

Missouri lawmakers are asking voters to repeal the right to reproductive freedom that they put into the state constitution in 2024.

Elsewhere, voters are being asked to add constitutional amendments that largely mirror current state abortion laws.

In Nevada, a state constitutional amendment to allow abortion until fetal viability — generally considered to be sometime after 21 weeks of pregnancy — passed in 2024, and needs voter approval a second time to take effect.

A Virginia ballot measure would guarantee the right to reproductive freedom, including access to contraception and making decisions on abortion care during the first two trimesters of pregnancy.

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Associated Press reporter Amelia Thomson DeVeaux contributed to this article.

Amid a hectic week of crafting a multi-billion dollar state budget, most of the Capitol on Wednesday paused business to witness the unveiling of former House Speaker Philip Gunn’s portrait that will hang in the entrance to the House chamber. 

Gunn is a Republican who represented the Clinton area in the House for 20 years. For 12 of those years, he served as speaker, one of the most powerful positions in state government. He was the first Republican speaker since Reconstruction. 

The painting features Gunn sitting in an armless olive-green chair with brass rivets. In the upper-left corner, it features a painting of Mississippi’s newly changed state flag. As speaker, Gunn helped lead the charge for Mississippi to scrap its former flag containing a Confederate battle emblem and adopt its current flag. 

“When I first saw it, it was like looking in the mirror,” Gunn told reporters. 

The painting does not show Gunn wielding a gavel or inside the House chamber, which is the typical fashion for portraits of past speakers. Jason Bouldin, the portrait artist, said he chose to showcase Gunn in that fashion to portray his overall sense of generosity and calmness. 

In addition to changing the state’s flag, Gunn will likely be remembered for leading the House in its passage of a bill that restricted abortion in the state. That legislation led to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and ending a constitutional right to an abortion. 

The former speaker said other items he views as policy achievements are rehabbing road and bridge infrastructure, increasing salaries for public school teachers and cutting the state’s income tax. 

The end of Gunn’s speech sounded like a prelude to a future campaign announcement. He told attendees at the Capitol ceremony that he wanted to be part of an effort that helps build up the next generation of Mississippians and continue to make the state the “best place to live and work.” 

“I am not riding off into the sunset, but I will be riding into the sunrise,” Gunn said. 

Regardless of whether Gunn chooses to run for statewide office, his portrait will hang in the Capitol alongside other past speakers, as is the typical custom. Whenever the 122 elected House members enter the chamber during a session, they will likely view Gunn’s image. 

Current House Speaker Jason White told Mississippi Today that he believes the portrait captures his predecessor’s “down-to-earth” nature and his bold leadership style. When he views the painting, White said he’ll remember how Gunn led “from the front” and not “from the side or the back.”

“I can only hope to kind of get close to that mark,” White said. “For us, when you see that, you remember that guy and that leader, and it’s a good memory.”

Mississippi lawmakers are considering legislation that would make joint custody the standard in all divorce cases – something done in only five states.

Advocates of the proposed legislation say it will even the playing field for fathers. But litigation to gain sole custody would become more costly and time-consuming. If enacted into law, opponents say this bill would disproportionately hurt low-income women and those who work full time caring for children and households. 

Critics also say women who get joint custody of their children may end up providing most of the childcare, but they won’t receive child support that can make that extra care more manageable. In some cases, it could force women into contact with abusive ex-husbands or leave children in the custody of abusive fathers.

In most states, including Mississippi, parental custody is considered on a case-by-case basis. Often, mothers are granted primary custody. Experts say this legislation, if passed, would affect tens of thousands of Mississippi parents each year. 

Rep. Shane Aguirre, a Republican from Tupelo and author of the bill, told Mississippi Today he thinks Mississippi fathers have the odds stacked against them. He proposed legislation to make the system more fair, and because he believes children benefit from having a mother and father present when possible. 

“Why not start where we’re going to be 50-50 at the beginning?” Aguirre said. “And then if we have an issue with the dad who’s got problems, or mom she’s got problems, we can adjust it. 

Splitting custody down the middle is not necessarily the best scenario for all families, said Douglas NeJaime, a family law professor at Yale Law School. He also said creating a preference for joint custody could obscure the nuances of individual cases. 

“Families come in all shapes and sizes,” NeJaime said. “It’s not clear that a presumption of shared custody is going to promote the interests of children.”

Five Mississippi family and divorce lawyers told Mississippi Today they felt the legislation was unnecessary. Four of them said it was harmful. 

“I think it’ll be used to put more women in court than should be,” said Mark Chinn, who has practiced Mississippi law for 47 years and family law for 35 years. Chinn added that he respects that fathers today want to be more involved, but believes that this legislation would only make things harder for women. 

To those who aren’t lawyers, the system might appear to blindly favor mothers, but it doesn’t, said Matthew Thompson, who practices family law in Madison and is an adjunct professor  at Mississippi College School of Law. 

Current state law presumes mothers and fathers are equally entitled to custody of their children. Judges award custody based on a rubric of 12 factors, including employment responsibilities and who provided most of the care before the divorce. 

“Dads think, ‘Well I could have done XYZ, but I had to work.’ Well, they’re right, they probably could have – but they didn’t,” said Thompson. “The facts are what’s driving those cases. It’s not an inherent bias.”

That was the case for Terry Winter, a real estate agent in Tupelo, who always wanted to be a mother. After getting married and having children, Winter said she paid for her children’s braces and was their primary caregiver, taking them to doctors’ appointments and sports games. Her marriage unraveled. In 2015, Winter divorced her husband, and was then awarded full custody of their three teenage sons.  

If Winter had to pay to prove those things in court, she said she worries her family “would have been living on the street.”

Under the proposed legislation, sole custody would still be awarded to the mother in many cases, said John Grant, a former Rankin County judge who presided over 6,000 divorce cases during his 24 years in the role. But the presumption of joint custody would have to be overcome, and that will waste resources, Grant said. 

“It offers false hope in most cases to fathers,” Grant said. “It’s going to promulgate needless litigation.”

In some states where versions of this law already exist, some women who should get custody of children after a divorce don’t. Under Kentucky’s joint custody presumption law, the Wall Street Journal reported about cases where women and children have suffered abuse because the law compelled them to interact with violent ex-spouses and caregivers. 

Joy Jones, director of the Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said she’s not against the bill. However, she would like to see it amended to make exceptions for domestic violence. If the onus is on the victim to provide “a preponderance of evidence” showing abuse, Jones said she worries that will put women and children in harm’s way. In some cases, Jones said, a victim of such violence might choose to stay in an abusive relationship because it seems better than having their children out of sight. 

“The victim might go back to ensure that they can watch and see what’s happening with their children,” Jones said. 

Jak Smith served as Winter’s attorney, and he said lawyers stand to benefit from increased litigation if the bill passes. But he worries about the people it would hurt. 

“I will make more money if this law passes, but it’s wrong,” Smith said. 

For the bill to survive, the House will have to bring it up for a vote by Thursday. If it passes the House, it will be sent to Gov. Tate Reeves. The House also has the option to invite further debate with the Senate.

Democrats say a top official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency with a record of claiming that he has been teleported isn’t qualified for the job.

FEMA Associate Administrator Gregg Phillips, an ally of President Donald Trump with a history of being an election denier, was appointed to lead the agency’s Office of Response and Recovery in December. His remarks that he has teleported, including to a Waffle House, his past rhetoric about immigrants and his penchant for remarks promoting violence also drew concern from lawmakers.

Phillips was set to testify in front of the House Committee on Homeland Security on Wednesday at a hearing discussing the effects of the ongoing DHS shutdown. But he was unexpectedly replaced in the lineup by the agency’s external affairs associate, Victoria Barton.

“FEMA is on its third unqualified acting administrator in 15 months. And the witness that was scheduled to testify today, Mr. Gregg Phillips, raises serious concerns. He said of President Biden last year, and I quote, ‘I’d like to punch that (expletive) in the mouth right now. He deserves to die,’” Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking member of the committee, said at the hearing.

“That kind of violent rhetoric and wild conspiracy theories are troubling for someone who holds a leadership position at DHS,” he added.

Thompson said during the hearing that Phillips was absent due to an “emergency.” FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to NOTUS’ request for comment on his absence.

Phillips was director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services in the 1990s, under Republican Gov. Kirk Fordice.

Democratic Rep. Tim Kennedy described Phillips as “wildly unfit for his role as head of response and recovery” and said that he looks “forward to seeing him here before this committee in person.”

“Ms. Barton, I wanted to ask Mr. Phillips, along with my colleagues, about his election conspiracy theories, about his violent statements about former President Biden, or his deeply troubling bigoted comments about immigrants,” Kennedy said. “All of which, to me, makes him wholly disqualified to hold his position on its own. But only to be outdone by his claims of being teleported to a Waffle House.”

FEMA has been in the spotlight during the agency shutdown. Earlier this month, lawmakers on the House and Senate Judiciary committees grilled then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on what they called her mismanagement of FEMA. The pressure culminated with President Donald Trump firing Noem and replacing her with newly confirmed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who has promised his leadership style will be a departure from Noem’s.

The shutdown has now surpassed 30 days, but Senate Republicans still face an uncertain road to reaching an agreement with Democrats to end it.

During the hearing, Barton told lawmakers that FEMA’s dwindling Disaster Relief Fund is now at $3.6 billion. She added that the agency’s ability to provide some services, such as recovery efforts after storms, is limited because of the shutdown.

“With hurricane season approaching, each day of this shutdown increases the risk that a catastrophic disaster could occur while FEMA’s capacity to respond and support recovery is diminished,” Barton said. “This shutdown is imposing far-reaching and serious consequences for FEMA’s operations and the nation’s ability to prepare for and respond to and recover from disasters.”

Three Mississippi businesses are suing the company that operates the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control warehouse. 

Delays and software issues at the warehouse earlier this year left many bars, restaurants and package store owners with empty shelves and lost revenue. The warehouse in Gluckstadt is still working through a backlog of orders. 

Aloha Wine and Spirits, Rosetti’s Liquor Barrel and Buckshots, all Gulf Coast businesses, filed separate lawsuits against Ruan Transport Corporation. The Iowa-based company has been the contracted operator of the state-owned ABC Warehouse since March 2023. 

The lawsuits allege that Ruan has breached its contract with the Department of Revenue through mismanagement of a software transition, not delivering to stores within the timeline the company had laid out in its initial proposal and by billing stores for orders that were not delivered or only partially delivered. This breach of contract, the suit claims, has resulted in loss of revenue for the businesses. 

In Mississippi, the warehouse serves as the only distributor in the state for almost all alcohol, with the exception of beer and some light wines. The warehouse is owned by the state and ABC is under the Department of Revenue.

The warehouse was previously operated by the state but in 2022 the Legislature passed a law authorizing the department to hire a third party to operate it.

The department has said that overall operations have been running more efficiently with Ruan. In addition, a new $55-million warehouse is under construction that will have double the capacity of the current one. 

In January, the warehouse shut down to do inventory and implement new management software. The new software is not compatible with the warehouse’s conveyor belt system so the conveyor was torn out and a new system of lifting individual pallets to load trucks was implemented.

Issues with software implementation and adjusting to the new system resulted in a backlog of over 200,000 cases in February, ABC officials said.

Business owners, restaurateurs and angry customers have inundated the Legislature with complaints. Many had similar complaints as those brought up in the lawsuit, including deliveries for which they were charged but did not receive. 

The department has said that it expects to work through the full backlog by May. 

In a February hearing, legislators promised swift action. SB 2838 is in negotiation between the Senate and House and would allow ABC permit holders to purchase alcohol from any licensed distributor nationwide. This amendment, called “The Emergency Alcohol Distribution Act,” was brought by Rep. Hank Zuber, a Republican from Ocean Springs. 

While businesses report that deliveries are more regular, there is still a backlog. However, the Department of Revenue has said that all the issues have been resolved and that the warehouse is working hard to improve the process.

The Mississippi House’s proposed changes to the state retirement system would cost $1.25 billion over the next three decades and $175 million immediately to keep the program stable, according to state actuaries. 

With a handful of pricey policies still being negotiated in the final weeks of the session, Senate leaders — who have pitched a plan to spend $1 billion on the retirement system over 10 years — say the House’s plan costs too much for too little payoff. 

“I can’t see where you can spend more money than what we’re spending,” said Sen. Daniel Sparks, a Republican from Belmont who’s behind the Senate’s retirement proposals. “I don’t see where the money’s coming from.”

The retirement system has unfunded liabilities of $26 billion. The Legislature made sweeping changes to the program last year in an effort to shore up the system, including creating a new plan with fewer benefits for people hired after March of this year. 

Critics say that the new retirement plan will discourage people from taking state jobs. They say many employees stay in what can be relatively low-paying jobs for robust retirement benefits at the end of their years of service. 

As a result, both chambers have pitched plans this year that would “correct” last year’s changes to the Mississippi Public Employees’ Retirement System, which covers about 350,000 public employees or retirees and represents about 10% of the state’s population.

“We can afford anything we want to afford,” said House Education Committee Chairman Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville. “You do what you have to do to retain good people. If you don’t have a good pay or retirement structure, you’re not going to keep good people.”

The House’s plan, included in a nearly 500-page teacher pay raise bill, would tweak retirement benefits and eligibility for first responders and people hired to state jobs after March 1 of this year — a new category called “Tier 5” — and makes changes to the state’s return-to-work policies. 

A memo from the state Legislative Budget Office shows that analysts requested a breakdown of the fiscal impact of the House retirement plan earlier this month. 

The House plan would bring retirement eligibility for first responders who entered the system prior to March 1 back down from 35 years to 25 years of service or age 60 with 8 years of service. All first responders in Tier 5, hired after March 1, would be able to retire after the same years of service and age with their four highest consecutive years or earned compensation.

Other state employees would also be able to retire with their four highest consecutive years of compensation at 30 years of service or age 60 with 8 years of service.

Additionally, retirees would be able to return to work after a 90-day break in service at any district. Roberson said they would still have to contribute to the retirement system, but would not get a benefit for that contribution.

In contrast, the Senate’s proposals would infuse the state retirement system with $1 billion over 10 years, starting with $500 million this July, and add an additional $50 million a year over 10 years for cost-of-living increases.

The Senate plan would also bring down the years of service required to retire with full benefits from 35 to 30 for all state employees hired after March 1 and allow most people to return to a state job at up to 80% of their position’s salary and get insurance benefits. 

“Our billion actually lowers the liabilities,” Sparks said. “Their money keeps the liabilities at the same level … The money we’re putting in stabilizes the entire system.”

The chambers have invited negotiations on each other’s plans as of Tuesday.

“I get what Senator Sparks is saying,” Roberson said. “I don’t disagree with his assessment … but for the state of Mississippi to grow, we have to understand that we have to pay people the amount that nationally we’re competing with, and part of that pay structure is retirement.” 

Gov. Tate Reeves has approved a bill to retain funding that came to Mississippi from a historic federal infrastructure funding package in 2021.

As part of the American Rescue Plan Act, the federal government allocated $1.8 billion to the state in 2022. Of that pot, the state awarded $423 million in matching water and sewerage grants for cities and counties, as well as $385 million for rural water associations.

But the deadline to spend that money is sneaking up. The federal program requires that all money be spent by Dec. 31 of this year. In early February, lawmakers released a list of projects under those programs, showing millions in unspent money around the state.

As of the end of 2025, only 56% of the grants for cities and counties, handled by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, had been spent while, as of Feb. 2, 69% of grants awarded to rural water associations, handled by the Mississippi State Department of Health, had been spent. In total, over $305 million from those two programs was still unspent, although that number has likely gone down since February.

House Bill 1571, which Reeves signed into law Monday, moved the Dec. 31 deadline up to make sure the state doesn’t lose any of the federal money. As soon as Sept. 30, and no later than Oct. 15, the state will redirect unspent ARPA funds to three different places: The first $100 million will go to Mississippi Department of Transportation projects. Up to $63 million would then go towards a state health and life insurance fund.

After that, any remaining money would be spent at the governor’s discretion, following federal guidelines. The state Department of Finance and Administration will have until Oct. 30 to report to the House and Senate on how much money was split between the three buckets, and how much funding, if any, remains.

“It gives us the highest probability of the least amount of money going back to (Washington) D.C.,” said Sen. Bart Williams, a Republican from Starkville and an author of the Senate’s version of the bill. “If we hadn’t done this, I would suspect there would be several millions of dollars that would have to go back to D.C.”

He explained that some projects have come in under budget, or the local entity realized they couldn’t complete the project under the time constraints. For places with legitimate reasons for not spending all their money, such as a contracting issue, there’s a chance the Legislature could still appropriate funding back to those places, Williams told Mississippi Today in February.

Mississippi Today reached out to several cities and counties with unspent ARPA funds. Almost all said their projects were still ongoing and weren’t worried they would lose any needed grant money.

The February list showed Harrison County, for instance, with millions in unspent funds and most of its projects at less than 50% complete. But Jaclyn Turner, the county’s head engineer, explained there’s a lag between completing a project and paying for it, which makes it look like projects are much farther behind than they are.

Before she can request a reimbursement from the state, Turner said she first has to verify the work has been done and pay the contractor on the front end.

“ That kind of sets a stage where it looks like money is not being spent as quickly as it truly is,” Turner said.

She added there’s a long initial process, too, between following procurement laws and obtaining permits. Turner said the county sidelined some projects that would have “too many hoops to jump through,” but that all of its roughly 20 open ARPA projects should be complete by the new deadline.

Other entities with large unspent amounts, including the cities of Gulfport and Jackson, also said they expected to have their projects completed by the deadline.

Mississippi Rural Water Association CEO Kirby Mayfield said he expected a few systems to have trouble spending the needed funds by the new deadline.

“There’s not going to be a bunch, but there’s going to be some that don’t make this deadline,” Mayfield said last week.

The nonprofit CEO, who supported the bill, pointed to the limited number of people who can drill water wells in the state as an obstacle in ARPA spending.

“There are so many wells in these ARPA projects,” Mayfield said. “Mississippi doesn’t have but three or four well drillers that can drill these big wells. The well drillers just aren’t going to have enough time (before the ARPA deadline).”

Local entities have until the end of August to send reimbursement requests to the state for their ARPA projects.

NETTLETON — For the last 12 years, Thomas Minor has never missed a single election — local, state or federal.

It’s his way of making sure he has a say in the place he’s called home his whole life: Itawamba County. Over the years, he’s cast his ballot for candidates across the political spectrum.

But in Mississippi’s latest election — the March 10 congressional primaries — he didn’t end up voting at all. 

When Minor showed up to the polls, he found his name missing from the poll book. His voting status had changed to inactive. A couple days later, he learned it was all because of an error that was never supposed to happen.

The mistake originated from unverified consumer data the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office handed to county election officials statewide in July as an additional new tool to do the routine job of checking voters’ addresses and determining their status. Records show Minor’s voter registration was up to date, listing the address of a one-story home on the edge of the county, where he’s lived for the last eight years.

But according to the credit data from the consumer-reporting giant Experian — which guesses consumers’ possible addresses — Minor had an address about 160 miles away in Tchula, in a squat house with a shattered door, overgrown front lawn and “no trespassing” sign out front, based on Google Earth imagery from 2023.

Minor said he had never even heard of Tchula, much less been there. But to Itawamba’s election officials, the credit data showed Minor wasn’t living where he was registered to vote. They made him inactive last August, without his knowledge.

Minor is one of numerous Mississippi voters who were wrongly made inactive from errors in the credit data that went unchecked and unverified at every stage of the annual process of cleaning the voter rolls. The errors came as the secretary of state’s office broke from the official government data that Mississippi and most other states have relied on for years to track when voters move. 

It’s unknown exactly how many voters were wrongly made inactive due to the credit data, but Mississippi Today identified numerous voters who were affected from across the political spectrum and confirmed the mistakes with their county election officials. Their experiences resulted from a lack of proper safeguards to check the accuracy of the data before they could inactivate legitimate voters, even as the secretary of state’s office touted that the information would “bring a new level of reliable data to voter-roll maintenance.”

Mississippi Today found that Secretary of State Michael Watson’s rollout of the unverified credit data resulted in:

• Barriers to the ballot box: Because these voters never received notice they were made inactive, they didn’t discover the mistakes unless they checked their voter status days to weeks before Election Day or until they showed up at the polls. Affected voters and party election administrators say the issue made this month’s primaries, the first federal election since rollout of the credit data statewide, an early case study in how the new system put up barriers to the ballot box.
• Years of mistakes: State law broadly allows the secretary of state to roll out any “reliable information” to verify voters’ addresses. Election officials in Lafayette County, who began experimenting with the tool when the law took effect two years ago, say they warned the secretary of state’s office then that the credit data had incorrect addresses, and Mississippi Today found cases of voters wrongly labeled inactive as far back as 2024. Despite this, the secretary of state’s office a year later moved to expand the credit data statewide as “reliable information.”
• No notice: Under state law, election officials are required to mail a single notice to voters informing them they’re inactive and need to verify their home address with election officials. Counties have been sending those notices to the unverified addresses provided from Experian, where the voter might not even live. 

The secretary of state’s office has declined Mississippi Today’s repeated requests for an interview with Watson, saying that the news organization’s past reporting on concerns and gaps in the office’s rollout of the credit data caused “unnecessary confusion.” The office did not respond to a request for comment on how it checked the reliability of the credit data or fulfilled its legal responsibility to train election officials.

“Our office is not in the habit of using journalists as a pass-through for disseminating information, particularly when misconstrued,” Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jonson wrote in an email.

But in an interview with Mississippi Public Broadcasting the day after the primaries, Watson told host Russ Latino that from the beginning, the rollout of the credit data was “wildly successful.”

“It was a really successful partnership, as far as I’m concerned,” said Watson, a Republican who’s looking to move from his role as the state’s chief election officer to a new elected office next year, potentially lieutenant governor.

Minor sees it differently. To him, the secretary of state’s rollout of unverified data ultimately kept him from voting for the first time in 12 years, even though he had done everything on his part to ensure his registration made him eligible as an active voter.

“At that point, you lose voters,” Minor said. “The harder you make it to vote, the less people are going to vote.”

No ballot

Inactive voters aren’t barred from casting a ballot, but their status does limit how they can vote. They only can vote through signed paper ballots in their home precinct. Even after a paper ballot is cast, it must come under review to determine whether it’ll count.

Watson told MPB that the process means Mississippians can still cast a ballot if a mistake compromises their status. But those voters and voting-rights advocates say that in practice, those mistakes create more barriers for people who never should have been affected in the first place, which can hinder their access to the ballot box, limit the power of their vote or keep them from voting entirely.

In Minor’s case, that was all true. After his name didn’t show up in the poll book, poll workers told Minor he’d have to vote with an affidavit ballot for the first time. The process was completely new to Minor, but he did what he was told.

He filled out the papers the poll workers provided, signed to affirm his identity and quickly turned them in so he could get to his long shift producing Toyota car parts. The poll workers offered little explanation of the process. Minor believed he’d receive the actual ballot in the mail, where he’d fill out his vote.

“I didn’t ask any questions because I was in a hurry,” Minor said. “But I filled everything they handed me out and then handed it in. They filled out what they needed and said, ‘That was it.’”

It wasn’t until Minor was well down the road that he realized the poll workers never provided him with a ballot to mark his vote and none was coming in the mail. 

For the first time in 12 years, he didn’t vote.

‘We’ve corrected a lot of them’

Heather Williams said she would’ve also discovered she was made inactive at the polls if she hadn’t happened to get an email from a Democratic voters league warning her to check her voter-registration status, in case she was made inactive without her knowledge.

Two weeks before she planned to vote in the primaries, Williams went online to check her status. She wasn’t too concerned because she had always worked to make sure her voter registration was updated, especially after she moved to her current home in Starkville seven years ago. 

But her name didn’t show up in the system. She was inactive.

When she contacted her county’s circuit clerk’s office, which is responsible for registering voters, Oktibbeha County Elections Deputy Clerk Regina Sykes told her it didn’t seem like Williams lived where she was registered to vote.

Instead, Experian’s data incorrectly linked her to an old address in Columbus, where she hadn’t lived in years. Sykes said election officials, acting on the false information from the secretary of state, changed Williams’ voting status to inactive.

The fix was quick, and the circuit clerk’s office reactivated Williams’ voter status that same day so she could vote without a hitch in the primaries. But Williams knew she was able to resolve the issue only because she happened to check her status. She worried for other voters who weren’t as as informed about the voting process.

“There shouldn’t have been any questions about my address,” Williams said. “You’re just creating more stress and potentially, down the line, more obstacles for people.”

Sykes said Williams wasn’t the only voter mistakenly made inactive by errors in the credit data in Oktibbeha County, which has some of the highest rates of inactive voters in the state, according to voter records from the secretary of state’s office. According to Sykes, her office has corrected the statuses of “a lot” of voters who were mistakenly made inactive, especially people who discovered the errors after they turned out to the polls in the primaries.

Williams identifies as a Democrat. But to her, the scope of the errors is a concern that goes beyond party.

“I don’t think this is a Democrat or a Republican problem. This is just an overall issue for everybody,” Williams said. “Even my 68-year-old Republican mother has said this is all ridiculous and cause for concern.”

Watson told MPB that the data was meant to serve as another “tool” for counties to identify voters who had moved from where they were registered.

“The key for us is, ‘How do we give as many tools as possible to our elections commissioners to do their jobs?’” Watson told MPB this month. “I cannot force them to do it.”

But Williams said her experience showed the secretary of state’s office didn’t do its job to vet the reliability of the credit data and verify information that could negatively impact voters like her.

“It’s his way of taking the accountability off of him,” Williams said of Watson’s remarks. “It sounds to me like you’re giving people rusty tools when you’re using Experian.”

Unverified and unchecked

Experian has never billed its “most powerful locating product,” a massive consumer database called TrueTrace, as a verified source. Instead, the tool makes educated guesses on the possible addresses of over 245 million consumers based on a slate of exclusive data collected over years of their spending history: loans, rent payments, credit files and more.

Experian wrote that for most consumers in the database, its tool links a handful of possible addresses based on this trove of information. From this, it zeroes in on a single “Best Address,” which the company states is the place “where the consumer is most likely to be reached.” 

But still, according to the company, it’s a guess.

“Often, this will match their residence; however, we don’t verify residency,” Experian wrote to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency that initially offered the data for Watson’s office to use in Mississippi.

But when the secretary of state’s office unveiled its statewide “partnership” with Experian last year, it announced that election commissioners in all 82 counties would get access to “reliable commercial data” from the company’s “long history as a credit reporting agency.” In a series of press releases announcing the partnership, the office made no mention that the addresses in the credit data were unverified or provided transparency on the checks it implemented to determine the data was reliable.

“While Experian’s data and insights can assist with voter list maintenance efforts, all decisions related to voter registration policies, procedures and record updates are made solely by election officials in accordance with local, state and federal laws,” the company wrote in an emailed statement.

The secretary of state’s office did not fulfill a public-records request on how many voters the credit data was used for in time for publication. A Mississippi Today analysis of voter records from Watson’s office found that since the credit data was rolled out statewide, election officials have made at least 50,000 voters inactive due to address conflicts, for which Experian’s information is a key source.

If they don’t vote in the next two federal general elections, they could be purged from the list altogether under state law.

The primaries: An early look into the data’s flaws

The consequences of the secretary of state’s rollout of unverified credit data came out as voter turnout surged in the Senate primaries, with Democrat Scott Colom drawing out voters in his quest to unseat Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith in the November general election.

The jump in Democratic participation meant that Mikel Bolden, executive director of the Mississippi Democratic Party, had a lot more on her hands. Bolden directs the state party, whose county committees help conduct the Democratic primaries in their jurisdictions.

But on Election Day, she said she and her team were disrupted by an increase in reports from voters who discovered they were made inactive at the polls, even though they had just been able to vote as usual in recent elections.

Bolden said the party was used to hearing a “couple” of these reports every Election Day. But this time, she said a “substantial” amount of voters were affected.

Some told the party’s election-protection hotline that they were worried errors in the credit data had wrongly affected their status, Bolden said. Frustrated voters vented to her as workers couldn’t find their names in the poll books, leaving them to wait in line for a paper ballot and put their faith in an unfamiliar process.

Bolden tried to encourage the voters to stick it out. But for some, the frustration was too much. She said they decided to leave the polls without casting a vote.

“Regardless of if you don’t agree with how the person is voting, everybody still deserves the right to vote, still deserves the right to exercise their voice,” Bolden said. “But if you keep having the same issue of being inactive, you’re gonna have lesser voter turnout.”

The voters weren’t able to find out from poll workers on Election Day if they had been made inactive because credit data incorrectly identified their address. Only their county’s election officials would know. 

But Bolden said the secretary of state’s lack of transparency on gaps in the process compounded voters’ concerns and burdened the party as they worked to administer this year’s Democratic primaries. She said the secretary of state’s office never notified the party ahead of the primaries that they might encounter voters who were wrongly made inactive due to errors in the unverified credit data it provided election officials.

“It was a lot of frustration that happened on Election Day. This was totally left field,” Bolden said. “None of this was passed down to us by anyone.”

She said that if the secretary of state had notified the party, it would have been able to prepare its team to assist these voters. As Mississippi looks to the general election in November, Bolden is concerned that these issues could play out on a wider scale if errors in the credit data continue to go unchecked.

The Mississippi Republican Party, whose county committees conduct the Republican primaries, did not respond to an interview request. While Mississippi Today identified that Mississippians who had historically voted for Republican candidates were wrongly made inactive due to errors in the credit data, it is unclear whether party staff saw an impact in the Republican primaries.

Mistake inactivations date to 2024

Before handing the credit data to every county statewide, the secretary of state’s office handpicked Lafayette County to test out the new tool.

In Lafayette County, the University of Mississippi’s record-high enrollment creates special challenges for the commission’s responsibility to maintain accurate voter rolls, as students bounce around residences often or even return to their family’s homes outside of the county during long breaks or after graduation. 

District 4 Election Commissioner Laura Antonow said Lafayette’s commission wanted to be helpful and agreed to be the first to pilot the new tool starting in 2024, alongside Circuit Clerk Jeff Busby’s office. 

She said voter-roll maintenance should be a “partnership” between voters and election officials, but it’s long been bogged down as many voters fail to update their registration when they move. 

The sources that commissioners have traditionally depended on to identify these voters can give an incomplete, outdated view, according to Antonow. The main source that Mississippi and most states have relied on to track voters’ moves, U.S. Postal Service data on address changes, is an official governmental source. But it can flag moves only when people submit a paid notice to the Postal Service that they’ve relocated — something many voters never do.

Watson told MPB that from the beginning, the “big purpose” in rolling out the credit data was to “replace” the “outdated” Postal Service information.

“It’s not even good information,” Watson told MPB. “So, the commercial data that’s now starting to see, ‘Where are loans coming from? Where are house notes?’ — it’s better data to locate somebody where they actually do live.”

But still, the credit data sparked Antonow’s concern.

“It’s commercial data versus governmental data, and that made me a little skeptical,” Antonow said. “I told Jeff, ‘It was just a matter of time before people got concerned about this.’”

As the commissioners started using the credit data, Antonow said they discovered its errors in a way that hit home. Some of the commissioners found that Experian’s data flagged incorrect home addresses for their own family members, according to Antonow.

She said the commission informed the secretary of state’s office that the credit data had incorrect information years ago. The secretary of state’s office did not respond to repeated questions on whether it was aware that errors in the credit data wrongly inactivated legitimate voters.

Because the credit data didn’t prove to be entirely accurate, Antonow said the commission decided to avoid trusting its information alone and weighed other factors, such as the last time a person voted, before determining their status. The more recently someone voted in the precinct where they were registered, the more likely it was that they still lived there, no matter what the credit data indicated.

“We were very careful about who to make inactive,” Antonow said.

But errors still occurred. Jordan Jones Higginbotham, an Ole Miss student in Antonow’s district, discovered she was made inactive a week before she planned to vote in the 2024 primaries as she checked her voter status online — something she’s gotten in the habit of doing every time she intends to vote.

Higginbotham’s lived and voted in Mississippi her whole life. She originally registered to vote where she’s from, in Madison County, but she updated her voter registration when she moved to Oxford for college.

But that’s not what the credit data indicated to Antonow. According to Experian, Higginbotham actually lived in Madison County.

“So many people in our state already believe their vote doesn’t count,” Higginbotham said. “They don’t vote. So when they see that things like this are happening, it’s just another thing to put on their list why they shouldn’t vote to begin with.”

No notice

When Mississippi officials make a voter inactive, state law requires that officials send a single piece of mail to the voter, called a “confirmation notice,” to inform them they’ve been made inactive and need to verify their home address with the county. Higginbotham never received any word that she’d been marked inactive — just like all the voters Mississippi Today identified.

In the handful of other jurisdictions that have also turned to credit data, such as Montana, Maryland and West Virginia, officials do something different. They send out a notice asking voters to verify their address before making any changes to their status, which serves as a check on the unverified credit data. If the voter doesn’t respond within a certain period, then officials mark them inactive in those jurisdictions.

Under state law, Mississippi officials don’t wait at all.

Lafayette’s election officials thought they had mailed Higginbotham a notice. But she never got it because officials sent it to the incorrect address that the credit data linked to her in Madison County. 

The same thing happened to Minor. Two months after his county’s circuit clerk mailed out the notice to the house in Tchula, it returned as undeliverable — because he never even lived there. Under this system, legitimate voters are mistakenly made inactive without their knowledge and the notice they’re entitled to under state law.

“That does seem like a problem,” Busby said, after Mississippi Today flagged the issue to him.

Antonow and Busby told Mississippi Today that going forward, Lafayette County’s election officials would consider sending those notices to at least one verified address, the home address in a person’s voter registration. That way, they would be notified that they were made inactive, even if the credit data linked an incorrect address.

It speaks to the imperfections in this system, as errors persist and election commissioners correct them, largely without central guidance from the secretary of state. Antonow said errors and mistakes from Lafayette County’s first round using the credit data taught her lessons for when she used it this year.

“We’ve been much more conservative of who we’ve made inactive, just because we know there are some inaccuracies,” Antonow said. “Voters who are concerned should definitely question Experian and the secretary of state.”

You can check your voter-registration status at the secretary of state’s Y’All Vote website.

 This is a Mississippi baseball fan’s delight, highlighted by a three-game SEC series matching State and Ole Miss at Oxford and Opening Day in the Major Leagues. So much to discuss.

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