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Tucked amid the pines on the Wolfe Studio site in Jackson, traffic noise from nearby Interstate 55 and Old Canton Road is somewhat muffled and, at least from a vibe perspective, distant. The hurried hum of cars and trucks is nudged aside by a sigh of relief, the serenity of the surroundings and the expectation of art.

The studio’s snug workroom plays host to intersections of another sort, as artists collaborate, create and contribute to the 80-year legacy of Wolfe Studio, and carry the vision of its founders forward.

Wolfe Studio started with artists Karl and Mildred Nungester Wolfe, who established the Wolfe Studio in 1946, and continued with their daughter, artist Bebe Wolfe. But its vibrant output has also long borne the mark of additional hands and creative input from other artists working there over the years, notably in the beloved ceramic collectibles that are a studio signature.

The exhibition “Artists of the Wolfe Studio, Eighty and Counting,” through Nov. 29 at the Arts Center of Mississippi in Jackson, presents a peek into that synergy and shows the wide range of artistic perspectives folding into the studio’s work. 

“It was really important for Karl and Mildred to support artists,” Wolfe Studio Manager Sarah Teasley said. “Before they even hired artists, they would mount exhibitions of other artists’ work in their very own gallery.

“There are all these connections and threads from people who have worked here over the years that haven’t really been lost,” Teasley said. “People might move on and go away, but they also get pulled back in.”

Joining the artworks by Karl, Mildred and Bebe Wolfe are the personal works of artists employed at Wolfe Studio — mostly current, with a few former staff artists in the mix. At times, a ceramic piece they produced at the studio is displayed alongside the artist’s personal creations. 

An opening reception for the exhibition will be held 4-6 p.m. Saturday at the Arts Center of Mississippi. It is free and open to the public.

Elise Smith, a retired Millsaps College art history professor, will present the lecture “Everyday, Ordinary Magic: Mildred Wolfe’s Artistic Responses to the Wolfe Property,” at 3 p.m. Oct. 10 at the Arts Center of Mississippi. Smith noted that the majority of the late artist’s many landscapes were paintings of her own property. The exhibition includes several.

 “Painting over and over and over again that property struck me as just such a distinctive sense of ownership,” Smith said, ”a distinctive idea about place.”

Studio artists Gabrielle Dunn and daniel johnson (the artist eschews capitalization) co-curated the exhibition presented by Wolfe Creative Legacy, the nonprofit created to preserve and maintain the creative collaboration of the studio and the Wolfe family property. The show joins a series of programs and exhibitions this year honoring the studio’s 80th anniversary and highlighting the history and reach of the Wolfe family’s creative legacy in Mississippi.

In addition to the Wolfes, Dunn, johnson and Teasley, artists represented in the show include Theo Cooper, Wendy Eddleman Cooper, Lucie Wren Cooper, Ed Lowther, Aemi Baggett, Sarah Baggett, Anna Ingebretsen Hall, Robin Jayne Henderson, Laura Stoufer, K.C. Williams, Vesper Johnson and Patti Henson.

Quilting, stained glass, printing, painting, video and works on plexiglass are all part of the show. The number of artists involved in the work of Wolfe Studio as well as the broad scope of materials and media on display provide a window into the studio’s collaborative process.

“Just that assortment of different media that these artists are working in, and that they also come together and produce this ceramic collectible — that might be a little surprising to people, to see all that exists in the background, that ultimately comes together here at Wolfe Studio and makes what they love,” said johnson, who is also the board chair of Wolfe Creative Legacy.

That creativity “spills over, all over the place,” johnson said, noting that artists there also produce events and bring other artists together into their own collectives. 

“In another sense, there are some people that come here that are not ceramists. They are artists in other media, and then they start to produce other works that are not Wolfe works, in other ceramics. It goes in both directions,” he said.

For studio manager Teasley, the bulk of current work there involves spreadsheets and bookkeeping with only a tiny bit of glazing, and her personal output as an artist — functional pottery, sculptures, mixed media and fiber arts — “is slim these days,” she conceded. Inspiration still follows her home from work. A recent show by artist Ron Lindsey, the studio’s first staff member, in the studio gallery included ceramics he had fired, then finished with diluted paint.

“I was reminded of the artistic license, so to speak, that Mildred and Karl would take with how they finished their ceramic pieces,” Teasley said. “It lit up a little part of my brain, ‘Oh, that’s another way that I could treat the ceramic work that I’m doing.’” 

Her works in the show include a small fabric collage piece, a mixed media sculpture and a book box with found objects and a handmade book. 

Wolfe Studio artist Dunn, the show’s co-curator and organizer of the studio’s annual staff show, shares her short animated film “CYCLES” in the exhibition. 

A multidisciplinary artist, Dunn particularly enjoys storytelling work, including animation, illustration, printmaking and comics. She sees a connection with special holiday items she works on at Wolfe Studio, with touches akin to illustration. A squirrel form holds a nut, “but you can create anything from that little spherical object,” Dunn said. “So right now, it’s like they’re holding an eyeball. And, one of them is holding a pumpkin. One has an acorn. … For Christmas, we have these little nuthatches that have a little wreath around the base.”

“Working here, I think a lot about story,” Teasley said. “I think about the story of this place and its history. I think about the stories our customers share with us when they come in and buy something. We often hear about why they’re buying an object, or about their collection and their connection to the studio and its history.” 

Teasley thinks about her own work the same way – a cup she made may become some person’s daily go-to. 

“They’re having a conversation with that thing on a daily basis and it gets imbued with meaning because of how they use it in their lives and how they interact with it. And, I think that’s true of the Wolfe birds and critters,” she said of the ceramic creatures for which the studio is known.

In this 80th anniversary year, Bebe Wolfe sees her own role as a key part, but not the driving part in the bigger picture. 

“In some ways, I’m sort of like the hub of a wheel, and all this stuff is revolving around me in dizzying fashion,” she said, laughing lightly. “In other ways, I feel like I’m the container of a lot of the history and previous knowledge of all the incarnations and histories of the studio.The hub is not the same thing as the axle. And, it’s really kind of always been that way. It’s always been a creative collaboration.”

The exhibition includes a couple of paintings and a sculpture by Bebe Wolfe, works that have not been previously shown.

“At this moment of the 80th anniversary, where Bebe has really matured as the matriarch of the Wolfe Studio, whereas once Mildred was,” johnson said, “the real thrust of what this show is doing is bringing to the fore all these artists that work underneath Bebe, that she has mentored, and looking toward the next 80 years. 

“The studio has already gone through one generational change, and what does the next one look like?”

Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson faces two general election opponents in what could be the 17-term incumbent’s final race in a majority-Black district.

Thompson has represented the 2nd Congressional District covering Jackson and the Delta since 1993. A civil rights leader and former chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6th Capitol attack, Thompson is a towering figure in state and national politics. That status has made him the prime target of Republican state leaders, who are poised to redraw his seat through redistricting after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Callais decision in May.

Thompson, the lone Black and lone Democratic member of Mississippi’s congressional delegation, has dominated his reelection contests ever since first entering Congress. While the 2nd District has gone through redistricting three times — after the 2000, 2010, and 2020 censuses — it has remained a majority-Black district covering the Mississippi Delta and most of Jackson.

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has removed protections for minority districts and cleared the way for Republican-controlled state legislatures to redraw political lines in their favor, Republican leaders have left little doubt they intend to target Thompson through redistricting.

But before they can attempt that, Thompson faces Republican challenger Ron Eller and Independent Bennie Foster in this year’s midterm election.

Eller, a physician’s assistant and military veteran, has already run for Thompson’s seat twice. He lost the Republican primary in 2022, but secured the nomination in 2024. That year, he lost to Thompson by nearly 24 points. For 2026, he again emerged victorious from the Republican primary after narrowly defeating Adams County Supervisor Kevin Wilson.

Eller said he is campaigning on a platform of “economic growth, lower taxes, secure borders, support for law enforcement and expanding opportunity for working families throughout the district.”

On the campaign trail, Eller has called for congressional term limits and said he supports Republican President Donald Trump’s agenda.

“For far too long, Congressman Bennie Thompson has left the people of Mississippi’s 2nd District behind,” Eller said. “It is time for a new generation of leadership aligned with President Trump that will fight for economic growth, secure borders, voter integrity and the constitutional rights of every Mississippian.”

An independent, Foster, is also running for the seat. Foster has proposed reallocating federal spending “away from overseas conflicts to fix urgent local priorities starting with Jackson water system, rural health access, and Delta infrastructure.” He also supports training programs to equip workers for the rise of artificial intelligence and wants to “challenge corporate healthcare monopolies to lower costs.”

Thompson has pointed to his record of securing millions of dollars in grants and federal appropriations for his district, including his role as a vocal proponent of a $600 million aid package for Jackson’s water system. If Democrats retake control of the House, he would again become chair of the committee overseeing the Department of Homeland Security, he has also noted.

Federal campaign finance records show Thompson has a large financial edge in the race.

As of the latest reporting period, Thompson had over $1.4 million in cash on hand compared to Eller’s roughly $36,000. Foster began his campaign with less than $10,000 in cash on hand and hasn’t reported raising any more money.

While Thompson is the heavy favorite to once again coast to reelection this November, a subsequent redistricting fight could reshape his political future.

Following the Callais decision, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves said Thompson’s tenure “reigning terror on the 2nd Congressional District” was over. In public appearances, Thompson has leaned into the fight, daring Republicans to challenge him.

At a May fundraiser in Jackson featuring DNC Chair Ken Martin, Thompson said Republican state leaders didn’t want to own up to their own failures.

“At some point, you make folks mad,” Thompson said. “This state didn’t get on the bottom by itself. We had leaders who just did not give a tinker’s damn about the majority of the people in this state. So we have to do better. I’m in it to win it. I don’t care what it is.”

Mississippi’s congressional primaries had already concluded by the time the Callais decision came down, and Republicans declined to take the extraordinary step of invalidating those elections in order to redraw electoral maps before the 2026 midterms.

But the Republican-dominated state Legislature has created special committees on redistricting and is holding hearings across the state as it prepares to redraw maps. The new maps would likely be approved in a special session expected this November following the midterms or in regular session starting in January.

It is unclear what the new 2nd District would look like, but many Republicans believe they can draw the lines in a way that would help oust Thompson. In order to do that, they’d likely need to split up parts of the Delta and Jackson, which are majority-Black Democratic strongholds.

In this year’s Democratic primary, Thompson staved off a primary challenge from Evan Turnage, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Senate Conference Vice Chair Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. The race drew attention due to Turnage’s connections to powerful congressional Democrats.

Thompson won by a wide margin, and in a statement following that victory, the longtime incumbent sounded reflective.

“I didn’t begin this journey at the top or with a roadmap,” Thompson said. “As Langston Hughes wrote, life has not been a crystal stair. Every challenge only strengthened my resolve to expand access and opportunity.”

John Caldwell, the Northern District transportation commissioner, has announced that he is not running for reelection, leaving one of north Mississippi’s top political positions open next year. 

Caldwell didn’t say specifically why he’s not running again, but said it has nothing to do with his recent clashes with his commission and Mississippi Department of Transportation colleagues.

The mercurial Caldwell has clashed with MDOT Director Brad White and other commissioners recently. Caldwell has been known for generating news in the otherwise staid commission meetings by voting to hold up local road and bridge project money, demand minute details from MDOT employees in the middle of a meeting and arguing with White. 

At the commission’s meeting on Sept. 8, Caldwell repeatedly screamed “bullshit” and “shut up” at White, Central District Commissioner Willie Simmons and Southern District Commissioner Charles Busby.  

Caldwell, a Republican in his second term, first disclosed his decision not to seek reelection through his podcast “One for the Road.” He said it was time to “pass the torch” to a new person to represent north Mississippi on the three-member commission that oversees the Mississippi Department of Transportation.  

“When it’s time, you’ll know,” Caldwell said. “Well, I know it’s time. I have a little over a year left on the second of two consecutive terms as your transportation commissioner. It’s been a great tour of duty, but it’s coming to a close.” 

He told Mississippi Today that he had decided several months ago not to seek a third term because he felt like he was “getting to a point of diminishing returns” with his position.

The disagreement in the recent meeting involved efforts to install a traffic signal along a highway in DeSoto County. Caldwell said the signal was needed after a young woman died in a traffic incident along the road. 

He blamed the agency’s bureaucracy and agency leaders choosing to fund other road projects as the reasons for not installing the signal sooner. 

White said the agency decided to install a signal in the area, but local governments wanted a more decorative traffic pole beyond what MDOT typically offers. In instances like this, White said, the local government bears the extra cost. 

“The old saying is the truth is kind of like a lion,” White said. “You don’t have to defend it. You just turn it out, and it’ll defend itself.”  

Busby, a Republican, and Simmons, a Democrat, agreed with White and said Caldwell’s portrayal of that project was misleading. 

This prompted Caldwell to accuse Simmons, who presides over the meetings as chairman, of violating the state’s open meetings law by calling other commissioners to discuss public business, something Simmons disputed. 

But Caldwell told Mississippi Today the recent arguments with the commissioners and White were not a factor in his decision not to seek a third term. He even characterized Busby and Simmons as great commissioners and called White a “fine director” with a “great team” in place.

“This is one of the best jobs in state government,” Caldwell said. 

Caldwell is a Marine combat veteran of Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. Before serving as a transportation commissioner, he was a DeSoto County supervisor. 

The state’s Transportation Commission is composed of three elected commissioners, with each representing a different area of the state – southern, central and northern. The commission oversees the resources and operations of the Mississippi Department of Transportation.

The Transportation Commission’s Northern District stretches from the western to eastern borders of the state, DeSoto to Tishomingo counties, and from Alcorn County in the north to Winston County in the south, 33 counties in all.

Caldwell’s announcement will likely set off a scramble to fill his open seat. When former Commissioner Mike Tagert decided he was not running for reelection in the 2019 cycle, five Republicans competed to succeed him. 

Already, state Sen. Chuck Younger, a Republican from Columbus, has announced he will run for the northern seat next year.

The regional offices of transportation commissioner are highly sought after because they can serve as a springboard to higher office, though Caldwell said he doesn’t intend to campaign for another elected office next cycle. 

Twenty five years since prolific architect Sambo Mockbee’s death, his rarely seen archive may soon have a permanent home. 

Mockbee died in 2001 at the age of 57. He was at the height of his productivity. This anniversary has renewed efforts to house more than 400 original artifacts, including drawings, architectural models, paintings and personal journals – many never before publicly exhibited – that illuminate his lifelong creative project. 

The initiative, titled “Better Together: Samuel Mockbee’s Dream for the American Future,” features the family’s private collection of Mockbee’s work. 

“Better Together” is championed by the family and a network of curators, scholars and friends. It is further spurred by a three-headed hound of volunteer energy: Samuel Mockbee’s daughter Carol Mockbee, architect and Rural Studio graduate Jennifer Bonner and urban strategist and entrepreneur Josh McManus. 

“We’ve been working on his archives for 20 years,” said Carol. “One of my father’s classic lines was ‘You’ve got to leave them wanting more.’ And he did. He exited and he left everybody wanting more.”

In addition to being one of America’s inimitable architectural voices – the only architect to receive both a MacArthur “genius grant” and an AIA gold medal – the Meridian-born Mockbee was a painter, poet and evangelist for his region. As a creator rooted in process and context, it is not surprising that the full depth of his oeuvre can only be understood through the places that defined him, realized through his collection of writings, sketches, paintings and three-dimensional objects. 

Some of these treasures are directly tied to completed buildings, such as models of the Barton House and the Cook House, two master works designed by Mockbee and his architectural partner Coleman Coker, and made from materials such as concrete block and corrugated metal. These projects furthered their goal of using “conventional materials in unconventional ways,” and pay homage to rural Southern forms like dogtrots and roadside trailers. 

Other artworks in the Mockbee archive are personifications, amalgamations and animalia that praise the people he knew, many of them Hale County, Alabama, heroes turned mythological guides. 

“He was redesigning the world as he was making everything,” says Mississippian Robert Ivy, friend of Mockbee’s, the first to write about him and past CEO of AIA and editor-in-chief of Architectural Record. “He saw it differently from you or I, and he reinterpreted it for us. And we saw it more clearly through his eyes.”

Mockbee’s legacy

The Rural Studio, the pioneering design-build program that Mockbee co-founded with D.K. Ruth at Auburn University, remains a standard-bearer for education and civic responsibility in the field of architecture. Its impact still reverberates in the Hale County, Alabama, communities it serves, and through the hundreds of graduates it has guided toward careers and lives of deep meaning and purpose. 

The homes and structures he built with Coker are monuments to Southern culture, material and aspiration; each an unofficial pilgrimage site to those with good taste. Those who knew Sambo (or Big Mock, another nickname) tell tales about his good-natured exploits — such as when he won his first big award at a regional conference for the American Institute of Architects and proceeded to do a swan dive into the Sandestin Resort pool wearing a full suit. He scored himself a 3.5. 

Those who read about Mockbee might ask themselves the same questions he asked himself: What is my moral responsibility to my brothers and sisters in need? To the truth? To beauty? What work needs doing to make this world a better place? 

“… As an artist or an architect, I have the opportunity to address wrongs and try to correct them,” Mockbee once said. In one of his notebooks from 1994, he inscribed: “I will fight until I die against the cruelty of small ambition,” a quote attributed to an anonymous boyhood friend of poet William Butler Yeats. 

To inspire dialogue around the archive, Carol, Bonner and McManus organized the Southern Curatorial Odyssey in June, a national invitation to travel to the Deep South for four days to see, feel, taste and touch the raw material that shaped Mockbee’s work. Represented were institutions including the High Museum of Art, SFMOMA, Harvard University, the National Building Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Carnegie Museum of Art. 

The group traveled from Memphis through the Delta, to the Mockbee home in Canton (a museum in its own right), and then to the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson for an exhibition and discussion. 

They visited some of the same haunts Mockbee frequented on his own annual “odysseys” in the 1990s with students. They traveled past cotton-gin ruins and cypress swamplands and roadside barbecue pits and folk-art environments and Old South mansions and tin-roofed tractor sheds. 

“Those (Rural Studio) trips were about increasing their imagination as students,” said Mockbee’s architectural partner Coker, founder and former director of the Gulf Coast DesignLab at the University of Texas-Austin.  “You can live in this country and not know what’s going on outside your neighborhood if you choose to.” 

Discovery means excavation, Coker adds. “You’ve got to get that shovel and dig.” 

Architects as ‘designers of social change’

Mockbee’s odysseys were not Homeric epics, but those of home. He was a “homer,” to be sure, in the way that a baseball fan believes steadfastly in his local team like it is religion, knows every statistic in the almanac a hundred years back, and lives and dies by every inning, whether the squad is the favorite or the underdog. Perhaps more so when they are the underdog.

“Architects are by nature and pursuit, leaders and teachers,” Mockbee said. He invited students to “step over that threshold” into intimate interaction with clients in need, many of whom had been beaten down by the generational toll of poverty and disenfranchisement. 

It is part of “that mythology that we carry around as Southerners,” said Coker. “This weight we carry around on our back about slavery, about Jim Crow.” 

In this context, the Rural Studio built homes, community spaces and relationships with those who did not have the means to hire a builder, much less an architect. These structures are poetic and sculptural — indeed, high art — but their aesthetic language is that of the Southern agrarian and their ethos one of empathetic egalitarianism. The Rural Studio’s materials: old tires, repurposed automobile windshields, hay bales, local donated timber, scrap squares of carpet, everything useful they could find.

“Mockbee’s alchemy was … going out to the poorest county, Hale County, and trying to do the work,” said Coker. “And at the same time, educate architects of the social responsibilities that they could have, the potential they could have as designers of social change, rather than just designing buildings that had aesthetic quality.”

On the Southern Curatorial Odyssey, the group traversed much of the Mississippi Delta — that most Southern place where landscape and architecture and history are so hauntingly distilled. 

One of the most resonant stops was the barn in Drew on Milam Plantation where Emmett Till’s murderers put him to death. With guides from the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, they paid their respects with an extended silence. 

“It was bone chilling and sobering,” recalled McManus, one of the organizers of the Better Together initiative. “(It’s) the moment that will permanently affect me.” When they departed the site, the procession of cars on the dirt road felt funereal. 

The 1964 Freedom Summer killings of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner in Neshoba County hit close to home for Mockbee. Chaney was from Meridian, like Mockbee, and the two were born into different worlds little more than a year apart. 

In the late 1960s, Mockbee joined the Army and found an integrated brotherhood while the inhumanity of Vietnam loomed. Like anyone paying attention, Mockbee was forced to reckon with what Martin Luther King called the “schizophrenic personality” of the nation. 

“America is essentially a dream,” King preached. “… On the one hand, we have proudly professed the noble principles of democracy. On the other hand, we have sadly practiced the very antithesis of those principles.”

Theory and practice were interwoven for Mockbee, as were his architecture and his visual art. “I’m an architect and I’m also a painter,” he said. In his journals, he scribbled, “Nature leads to art … Art leads to architecture.” All of it led to social and cultural progress. It was the doing that made the difference. 

This is all part of Mockbee’s multimedia mythology. You’ll find Shepard and Alberta Bryant, recipients of the first house built by the Rural Studio (the Bryant Haybale House). Alberta is depicted in her wheelchair, appearing stoic and at peace. In one image, she holds a bouquet of blooming flowers. In another, she holds the hand of a winged mother goddess that Mockbee calls Lizquina. Alberta sometimes rides on the back of a giant turtle, the mythological form taken by her husband, Shepard, who for so many years bore the physical burden of keeping shelter over the family’s head and food on the table (including turtles that he hunted out of the Black Warrior River, some weighing more than 70 pounds). 

“The young pagan goddess is (Bryant’s) granddaughter, Apple,” Mockbee wrote in a letter circa 1998 to cultural critic Paula Dietz (Editor of The Hudson Review), which accompanied a hand-colored etching. Apple is associated with fate and fortune, and her figure is in the shape of a silhouetted hand, with two of the middle fingers serving as her human legs and feet. She wears dazzling garments and a belt of gold. She holds a beaver-stick bottletree scepter capped with a magical gourd. 

Along with that letter to Dietz, Mockbee included a photograph of Bryant and his grandsons beneath a tree along with a massive turtle that they killed for food. “The enclosed photograph . . . was taken at ‘Mason’s Bend’ about four years ago,” Mockbee wrote. “I thought you might find it interesting, if not beautiful in both a primeval and contemporary sense.”

Mockbee’s is a humanistic mythology where the humble have inherited Olympus. As in James Agee’s seminal coverage of Hale County published in 1941, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” their supreme position is in direct proportion to their historical neglect. Their Mount, one might imaginatively extrapolate, is a beaver dam a hundred feet high, their ornaments fashioned from cast off trinkets that delight in the sun, shimmer like the waters of an ancient river, indigenous to this place like the leviathan loggerheads that rule the depths, on whose backs the entirety of the heavens rely. 

“He looked at what people needed and certainly he saw what was wrong,” said  Ivy, Mockbee’s friend and a part of the Southern Curatorial Odyssey. “And that’s part of the mythology he shows in his artwork. The way it’s expressed (asks): what is the nobility of the people, and how can we elevate and respond to it?”

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch has unveiled a plan for how Mississippi can spend $189 million of national Meta lawsuit funds, directing over $18 million a year to be split among three state agencies for the next decade. 

The plan arrived in a consent decree that lawyers for the state filed Monday in Hinds County Chancery Court. Fitch drafted the plan as Meta, the corporation that runs Facebook and Instagram, prepares to pay billions of dollars to states after attorneys general accused the company of endangering children across the country with their social media platforms. 

States argued the company turned its platforms into “addiction machines,” targeting children during vulnerable life stages. Despite the settlement, Meta and other technology giants have denied the allegations against them and that they have any liability to states. The California-based company is represented in Mississippi by the powerful and politically connected law firm Butler Snow. 

The settlement agreement allows the attorney general to set the parameters for spending the money. Legal experts, mental health advocates and state lawmakers told Mississippi Today that Fitch’s plan could impact the health of children in the state for years to come. Here is what’s in it: 

How the money will be spent 

Mississippi will be able to spend its portion of the $17-billion national settlement over 10 years. The state’s share currently stands at $189 million, but it could go up to $270 million if the other tech companies ensnared in litigation — Snap, TikTok and YouTube — also agree to settlements with states’ attorneys general. 

The plan Fitch’s office filed directs $18.8 million in payments to be made per annual installment from Meta. That works out to just under $189 million over 10 years, which is the whole settlement. 

Starting in January 2027, Fitch set these parameters for the spending each year over the next decade: 

• $6.8 million to the Mississippi Department of Mental Health for “mental health programs targeting but not limited to youth 12 through 18 years of age, including through cooperative programs with Mississippi K-12 schools.” For the remainder of 2026, Fitch directed all payments to be made directly to this department for the same purpose.
• $6 million to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks for “new playgrounds, parks, sporting courts or fields, or other outdoor recreation facilities, or improvements thereof, across the State of Mississippi, including through cooperative programs with Mississippi K-12 schools and local governments, targeting but not limited to youth 12 through 18 years of age.”
• $6 million to the Mississippi Department of Education for “afterschool and school break learning opportunities and programming across the State of Mississippi, in cooperation with the Mississippi Department of Human Services.”

Meta will pay Mississippi an additional $6.1 million from a connected settlement involving Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct British political consulting firm that allegedly harvested the personal data of tens of millions of American Facebook users without their consent before the 2016 federal election. All the money from that part of the settlement agreement will go to the Mississippi Department of Mental Health for youth mental health programs, Fitch’s office told Mississippi Today. 

All of the money will be deposited into the Attorney General of Mississippi Contingent Fund, a special state fund that holds money the AG’s office receives from legal judgments. 

How much control will lawmakers have on the spending?

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

In her consent decree, Fitch decided which agencies will get the settlement money, how much money they’re getting and what sort of programs the agencies must use. But her office said the lawmakers have the authority to determine what specific programs will get funded. 

“The Legislature still directs how the money will be spent, and we will work with them on possible funding ideas in the upcoming session,” MaryAsa Lee, a spokesperson for Fitch, told Mississippi Today. “Ultimately, the Legislature decides how the funds will be appropriated.” 

Lawmakers could, for example, create new mental health programs targeting children between 12 and 18, or fund new playgrounds to be operated by the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, Fitch’s office added.  

Fitch’s plan also says the “parameters and structure” of the spending decisions made by lawmakers should be established “in consultation with the Governor of Mississippi and the Mississippi Attorney General.” 

Fitch’s office told Mississippi Today the consultation will involve meetings between lawmakers and the offices of the governor and attorney general about future legislation appropriating the settlement money. The legislation will ultimately not require any sort of specific written approval from either the governor or attorney general, they added.   

But the provision gives Fitch influence over the specific spending decision lawmakers could make in the future.  

Fitch, a Republican, is running for governor and has touted her efforts to protect children from large technology companies. 

In the upcoming legislative session beginning in January, there will be two initial payments the Legislature can spend, Fitch’s office said. 

State has a youth mental health crisis

Under the settlement, Meta also agreed to implement new safety standards on Facebook and Instagram. Those standards include setting daily time limits on platform use by children, restricting children’s access during school hours, requiring age verification and creating a range of content controls. Some experts have said the required platform changes are drawn from research findings, while others have questioned whether the changes will be effective.

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

The consent decree filed by Fitch’s office said Meta violated the Mississippi Consumer Protection Act by designing its social media platforms to “entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens.” Meta “misled the public about the dangers of its platforms and ignored the damages these platforms have caused to the mental and physical well-being of Mississippi’s youth,” the lawsuit argued.

Mississippi Today has been reporting on proposed data centers across the state. State leaders say the industry is a key driver for Mississippi’s economic future.

In Mississippi and across the U.S., residents have voiced concerns about potential energy costs and water usage, as well as air and noise pollution from the generators needed to power data centers. At the same time, data centers represent a historic investment in the state that is fueling demand in the construction industry, paying millions in taxes to school districts and local governments. 

There are a lot of unknowns with data centers in Mississippi given how early the state is in the buildout. The first project was announced in 2024. Read our past reporting here.

Map of data centers in Mississippi: Confirmed and potential projects

Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about data centers:

Data Centers 101

What are data centers?

A data center is a physical space that houses equipment, such as servers and routers, needed to process, store and distribute data.

Data is essential to the way we use the internet today. When we log into our email or watch a movie on Netflix, we are generating and using data. That data is stored on servers inside data centers.

What is artificial intelligence, or AI?

Artificial Intelligence is a broad term meaning a computer or system that can perform tasks generally associated with human intelligence, such as problem solving, learning and decision making. 

Chatbots, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude, are examples of generative AI. Generative AI doesn’t just recognize patterns, it uses that pattern recognition to produce new content, such as text and photos. 

In order to create new content, these models have to be trained on huge amounts of data. This is a time and energy consuming process that requires tens of thousands of computer chips. The chips are stored in data centers.

If data centers have been around for a long time, why are so many being built right now?

Generative AI requires a lot of computing power, and there’s not enough right now to support the current and anticipated demand. Tech companies are racing to build more data centers to train and deploy new AI models. 

The chips, physical infrastructure and construction of such a large number of data centers is expensive, which is why companies are spending hundreds of billions to build data centers.

So, why build a data center in Mississippi?

Data centers need a large amount of reliable power and land, and companies are looking to build them quickly. Mississippi offers all of the above. In addition, leaders at Amazon have said the partnership and collaboration with Entergy and state officials and lack of strict regulations have made the process of building the data centers here effective and quick. 

Mississippi has relatively few data centers, compared to other states. The 10 states with the most data centers have over 100.

Water & Environmental Impact

How much water do data centers need, and how will they impact our water supply?

The short answer is it depends on the facility.

Large data centers, which often need water for cooling, use up to 5 million gallons a day, or the same as a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Yet some, such as Amazon’s planned facility in Clinton, will instead implement “air cooling,” meaning they won’t need large volumes of water. The company is also planning to use recycled municipal wastewater at its Canton data center in a partnership with Veolia. 

As far as where they get water from, a data center can either purchase water from a local utility or dig a well, in which case it would need a permit from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality. 

Regarding other data centers coming to Mississippi, companies have not said much publicly yet about their water footprints, but this is something we’ll be focusing on in our ongoing coverage.

What noise and air pollution levels will nearby communities experience?

Noise and air pollution concerns come primarily from data centers that self-generate power. The most glaring example we’ve reported on has been xAI’s cluster of natural gas turbines in Southaven. Because those turbines operate in a state-sanctioned loophole that allows them to run without permits, there’s no official data on how much toxic emissions are coming from the facilities. The Southern Environmental Law Center argued in a lawsuit that the cluster is likely emitting harmful amounts of nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde.  

Moreover, Southaven residents for months complained about a constant humming noise coming from the facility. Mississippi Today reporters could confirm hearing the noise when visiting the area.

What are the primary power sources for data centers?

For the most part, data centers in Mississippi will source their power from whichever utility owns the service area for that facility, such as Entergy Mississippi and Mississippi Power. It’s hard to delineate which types of power go to which places, as utility companies blend power from an array of sources before sending electricity to an end user. Entergy has said that investments from data center companies such as Amazon will help the utility bolster its natural gas generation. Mississippi Power also successfully petitioned to keep an aging coal unit alive to power a data center in Meridian.

Impact on electric bills?

Will data centers drive up my utility bill?

Last year, Entergy Mississippi CEO Haley Fisackerly told Mississippi Today that customers’ electric bills will go up less than they would have without the arrival of Amazon’s data centers. Because of the immense amount of power Amazon will have to buy to run the facilities, Entergy will be able to use that revenue to make grid improvements it otherwise wouldn’t be able to, the company said. According to Entergy, customers’ bills were going to go up regardless as both prices and demand for gas are rising, necessitating new generation capacity. But limited information around Amazon’s projected energy use, as well as limited oversight approved by state lawmakers in 2024, makes it hard to verify those claims. A recent report from Synapse Energy Economics Inc. estimates that the data center projects have already increased rates for Entergy Mississippi’s residential customers by $10.60 a month.

How much power does a data center use?

According to research from the International Energy Agency, a typical AI-focused data center uses enough electricity to power 100,000 homes. Another report, from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, found that data centers accounted for over 4% of the country’s electricity consumption in 2023, adding that the number could reach as high as 12% by 2028.

Economic Impacts

How many jobs do data centers create?

Amazon has said its data centers across the state will create 2,000 jobs, AVAIO in Brandon said it will create at least 60 direct jobs, xAI in Southaven said the project will create hundreds of permanent jobs and Compass in Meridian is expected to create thousands of direct and indirect jobs. 

The projects also create new jobs in construction and other indirect jobs, such as, service providers, caterers, electricians and more

In other states, the number can range from 50 to 400. Critics say the number of jobs is relatively few, especially relative to the size of capital investment. But proponents say new jobs are new jobs, that these jobs pay well and that services/surrounding businesses benefit from the center which creates more jobs in the area.

What are the benefits of having a data center in a community?

Like many things, it is a benefits vs risks situation. How do governments and companies maximize benefits for the community and minimize risks?  

People often point to Virginia, given the large number of data centers built and operated in the state over the past 15 years. An important caveat is that the technology has significantly evolved since then. 

Here’s a story on how a community used tax revenue from data centers to create an affordable housing program.  

In Loudon County, Virginia, sometimes known as Data Center Alley, the economic developer who led the data center development told the Wall Street Journal that he estimated property taxes are down 48 cents on the dollar in the county and 45% of county revenue comes from data centers.

An application to rezone over 1,000 acres from agricultural to light-industrial use is facing intense public scrutiny in the small town of Walls. 

While there appears to be no project at this stage, some believe that the town wants to attract a data center. But residents say the larger question is why a rezoning this large is needed.

Rep. Dan Eubanks, a Republican from Walls, wrote on social media that the town is “wanting to put another massive data center right in our back yard.” 

Eubanks said that he’s for more economic development in the area but cautioned that it should not be done “at the expense of the residents.” 

FAQ: Your questions about Mississippi data centers, answered

In a letter to the town’s planning director, a representative for the land owner wrote that the rezoning would help attract economic development to the property which will in turn bring jobs and contribute tax dollars to the city. 

The rezoning has attracted so much attention in the majority-Black town of 1,400 that a planning commission meeting scheduled for Sept. 22 was moved to a larger venue, Walls Elementary School, in anticipation of a crowd. Some residents have expressed concern about how a data center or other industrial development would fundamentally change the small town’s character.

Walls resident Emily Harris said she was devastated when she learned of the rezoning, which is about a mile from her home. She and her family moved to Walls for the opportunity to own land in a rural, quiet community. 

“We are not against progress,” Harris said, “Growth is a wonderful thing if we do it smart.”

She and other residents have said they want more information about a potential project.

Residents questioned why the rezoning is coming so quickly after the town approved its comprehensive zoning plan earlier this year and if there has been sufficient change in the past few months to warrant rezoning.

The specter of Elon Musk’s SpacexAI looms large in Walls, which is near the company’s growing data-center operations in Southaven and Memphis. Harris has been to Southaven and has heard the noise that residents of Southaven have been living with for over a year. 

Members of the Walls Board of Aldermen did not respond to requests for comment, but on social media the town wrote that the rezoning was “to create a potential path to economic development” and encouraged residents to attend the meeting to gather facts, ask questions and express concerns.

LSU sack leader Princewill Umanmielen has been served legal papers related to a July lawsuit filed by the University of Mississippi which alleges that the former Rebels edge rusher owes Ole Miss $550,000 because of his decision to transfer to the rival Tigers.

Records filed in Lafayette County Circuit Court in Mississippi indicate that papers were served on Tuesday, just five days before No. 7 LSU was slated to visit No. 8 Ole Miss in a game immersed in hype stemming from coach Lane Kiffin’s decision to leave Mississippi in favor of LSU last Nov. 30.

A person familiar with the situation said Umanmielen was served outside LSU’s football operations complex. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because university officials have not commented publicly on the lawsuit between Ole Miss and two former players who are now at LSU, and who allegedly failed to compensate Ole Miss for their departure as required by revenue-sharing agreements they signed in early January.

The other is offensive lineman Devin Harper, who allegedly owes Ole Miss $400,000.

While legal issues between Ole Miss and Umanmielen have gone unresolved for months now, the timing of papers being served, first reported by ESPN, will only further pump up the intrigue surrounding Saturday night’s game in Oxford, Mississippi.

It will mark the first time Kiffin has returned to Oxford since being showered with insults by angry Rebels fans as he arrived at a small airport to catch a private plane to Baton Rouge.

Kiffin persuaded four players and host of assistant coaches and other staff to follow him to LSU, including linebacker TJ Dottery and Winston Watkins Jr., Dottery is LSU’s leading tackler through two games and Watkins Jr. leads LSU in yards receiving so far this season.

College athletes have been able to transfer far more freely in recent years without having to sit out a year, as was once required by the NCAA. There have been scattered disputes between players and their former schools over compensation agreements. Earlier this year, Washington quarterback Demond Williams Jr. said he would return to the Huskies after his school was reportedly prepared to pursue legal options to enforce his lucrative name, image and likeness contract.

Ole Miss has said revenue-sharing agreements signed by both players included a provision requiring them to compensate the university with a predetermined amount if they departed before fulfilling their commitment.

“The University of Mississippi has a responsibility to enforce its contractual terms, and this position is consistent with the actions of other institutions in the current landscape of college athletics,” the Ole Miss statement said. “The university attempted to amicably resolve this matter prior to filing.”

Kiffin left Ole Miss following its regular-season finale against Mississippi State in late November. Kiffin initially asked to continue coaching the Rebels in the College Football Playoff after he’d accepted the position at LSU, but Ole Miss declined and appointed then-defensive coordinator Pete Golding as Kiffin’s replacement. Golding coached Ole Miss to the national semifinals.

Umanmielen had nine sacks and 13 tackles for loss as a junior last season for the Rebels. Harper was a freshman reserve in 2025, appearing in six games.

The Trump administration has cut or frozen up to $177 billion in federal grants since the president took office for his second term, according to a tracking tool released Wednesday by a pro-democracy nonprofit and a group of researchers and scientists.

The cuts affected all 50 states and the District of Columbia, with health, nutrition, the environment and disaster relief making up the largest share of cuts, the States United Democracy Center and Grant Witness organization found.

Among the grants that were eliminated, frozen or delayed were ones related to maternal health in Michigan, education research in Mississippi and assistance to minority farmers in Iowa, the researchers found. California, Texas, New York, Illinois and North Carolina saw the highest amounts of interrupted grant money. The tracking tool is called Lost Funds.

“By bringing thousands of funding disruptions from the Trump administration together in a publicly accessible, verified database, Lost Funds puts the magnitude of their impact on full display,” Scott Delaney, co-founder of Grant Witness, said in a statement.

The $177 billion finding represents nearly 10% of federal discretionary spending, the groups said.

The tracker’s organizers said the disrupted grants were beyond the kind of cuts that typically happen when administrations change.

“Lost Funds shows the extraordinary scale and real human impact of these disruptions, and how states are once again on the front lines protecting their residents,” said Kelly Rader, States United Democracy Center’s research director.

In some cases, courts have ruled against the administration’s grant funding cuts.

The new tool, which is being made available for public use, relies on data from USASpending.gov, an open data source of federal spending information, according to the groups’ methodology. They said the tracker would be updated regularly as the administration takes new action and lawsuits move through the courts.

States United bills itself as a nonpartisan group dedicated to the rule of law and free, fair, secure elections. It was cofounded by Norm Eisen, an attorney who has been involved in prominent lawsuits against the Trump administration, including over the Kennedy Center. Eisen left the States United center in 2024.

Grant Witness is a group of scientists, researchers and attorneys who document how funding is changing under President Donald Trump’s administration.

A message seeking comment on the analysis was sent to the White House.

CBS National College Football Writer John Talty joins the podcast to talk about this week’s LSU – Ole Miss game and his latest book, in which he profiles LSU coach Lane Kiffin, one of the most divisive figures in sports.