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Wednesday is the deadline for those in Mississippi impacted by Winter Storm Fern to apply for funding through the federal government’s individual assistance program.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency previously posted locations for individuals to sign up for assistance on its website, but impacted residents can also reach out to their county’s emergency manager for information. Application information is also available on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s website.

So far, 84,000 Mississippians have applied for assistance through the program, MEMA said in a press release Tuesday. FEMA’s Individual Assistance program is designed to provide grants directly to people affected by natural disasters. Those impacts could include damage done to a person’s property or belongings or costs incurred to deal with the disaster.

FEMA has distributed over $126 million to survivors of Fern, MEMA said. The counties with the highest number of individual assistance registrations are:

• DeSoto County – 5,228

• Panola County – 5,577

• Washington County – 5,373

FEMA has obligated more than $37 million in support for recovering local governments through its public assistance program. Roughly $223 million in additional public assistance project applications is moving through the FEMA review process, the release added.

In addition, state lawmakers approved a revolving loan program this past legislative session to help cities and counties recover as they await funding from FEMA. So far, the state has approved 29 loans totaling nearly $40 million, MEMA said.

In a special legislative session in 2024, lawmakers excitedly passed a package of incentives to lure one of the world’s richest corporations to the nation’s poorest state. Two years later, Amazon now has four data center projects underway in Mississippi. One, in Canton, is already running, while the other three – in Ridgeland, Clinton and Vicksburg – are in the works. 

In interviews and press conferences, Mississippi leaders, local officials and the state’s largest power company have all spoken glowingly about the historic investment, expected to be a total of $25 billion coming to the state along with 2,000 jobs. Amazon’s business here promises an immense spike in tax revenue, new job training and a large investment in the area’s power grid. 

At the same time, critics of the project highlight what isn’t being shared publicly about Amazon’s arrival. As part of the 2024 deal, the Mississippi Legislature gave the company an express route through well-established regulatory checkpoints. Namely, the state’s utility regulator, the Public Service Commission, has a much depleted role overseeing spending by Amazon’s power provider, Entergy Mississippi, in relation to the data centers. 

The agreement between Amazon and Entergy, including what rates the company pays, is confidential. That in of itself isn’t unusual, Entergy said; such agreements with large, industrial customers, such as past deals with Nissan and Continental Tires, are usually protected from the public to preserve competitiveness for both sides. 

What is unusual, utility experts and watchdogs from outside the state say, is the long list of exceptions the 2024 law carves out for the Amazon-Entergy agreement. 

For one, the law allowed the agreement to move forward without approval from the PSC, which is in charge of regulating public utilities and protecting ratepayers. The law also prevents the commission from altering any terms of the contract for its entire duration – the length of which is also hidden – such as how costs are shared between the two sides. 

Those critics have panned the legislation for hamstringing public involvement in a process that impacts electric rates for customers of the state’s largest power company. 

“It is the worst piece of legislation I think I have ever seen in my entire time watchdogging the utility industry,” said Daniel Tait, research and communications director for the Energy & Policy Institute since 2017. “It systematically undermines every guardrail and every check that existed, which wasn’t even a lot, in statute to protect customers.”

Other protections the 2024 law gave Entergy to support Amazon’s development include:

• Any spending or construction by Entergy in relation to the project doesn’t need the commission’s prior approval. 
• Entergy can begin recovering money it spends to build new facilities before those facilities are in service. 
• The law removes the 4% cap on annual rate increases related to spending tied to the Amazon data centers. 
• Any Entergy spending on construction, infrastructure and property acquisition related to the data centers is deemed “used and useful” even before the utility has the necessary permits. “Used and useful” is language regulators use to describe spending that can then be charged to ratepayers. 

In press releases and interviews with Mississippi Today, Entergy, which serves about 459,000 customers in the state, maintained that the Amazon data centers will benefit the utility’s other ratepayers in the long term.

READ MORE: ‘When Amazon comes to town.’ Clinton and company host ribbon cutting for new data center 

In March, Entergy announced its “Fair Share Plus” pledge, in which it says data center projects from companies such as Amazon, Meta and others in the Deep South will save its ratepayers billions of dollars. In Mississippi, those savings will add up to $2 billion over the next 20 years, the utility company said. 

“Thanks to the direction and engagement of Governor Reeves, the Mississippi Legislature and the Mississippi Public Service Commission, these large technology customers will help pay the cost for needed power grid maintenance and upgrades that would otherwise have been borne by our existing customers,” Haley Fisackerly, Entergy Mississippi president and CEO, said at the time. 

The company’s power grid, it says, was in need of new sources of generation either way, and the large amount of power Amazon buys will help shoulder those costs. Jeremy Vanderloo, Entergy’s vice president of business operations and strategy, told Mississippi Today in a March interview that the utility had retired about two-thirds of its generation capacity in the last 15 to 20 years. 

“We would need to add to our system even if we didn’t have any growth at all,” Vanderloo said.

In addition to new power plants in Ridgeland and Vicksburg, Entergy recently announced it’s replacing a 50-year-old plant in Greenville with a combined-cycle natural gas facility called the “Delta Blues Advanced Power Station.” The plant, initially slated to go up around 2030, will be more reliable and efficient, saving ratepayers money, Vanderloo said. 

The Amazon investment means Entergy can build the new plant even sooner. Because of rising demand and increased costs for gas and supplies, Vanderloo said the $1.1 billion facility would have cost almost twice as much if they had stuck to the 2030 timeline.

“By pulling these (projects) forward, that’s a big part of some of the savings that we’ve seen for customers, recognizing we were going to have to build these plants even without (Amazon),” Vanderloo said.  

The company is dealing with other uncertainties around fuel prices, he said, pointing to the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Iran. Vanderloo added that the cost of damages from Winter Storm Fern were the most impactful by a storm ever in its service territory.

As Entergy told Mississippi Today last year, customers’ electric rates were going to go up regardless. But with Amazon’s business, the company projects that by 2030 rates will be 16% less than they would otherwise have been, saving the average customer over $30 a month. Customers will see that difference as early as 2027, the utility projects.

Entergy’s assurances, though, are unverifiable because its agreement with Amazon is confidential. That secrecy also extends to any amendments or renewals of the contract. 

Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, studies the impact of data centers on ratepayers around the country. While there’s a degree of secrecy around most data centers, the fact Entergy didn’t need PSC approval for its deal with Amazon is “fairly unique,” Peskoe said.

“I can’t think of another state law passed by a legislature that exempts a specific contract from regulatory review,” he said. 

Peskoe also questioned Entergy’s point that it needed to spend money on new generation anyway: Without Amazon’s arrival, what would Entergy’s generation needs have been? Would it have needed the same size or type of power plants as it’s building now?

“I don’t know how you’d verify it,” he said. 

Entergy said the revenue from Amazon more than makes up for the difference in its new generation costs. Mississippi Today asked the company for a price comparison of generation costs with the data centers versus without, but Entergy declined to share specific figures. 

Typically, the public can intervene and challenge a public utility’s spending on the front end, Peskoe explained. This is part of how the public ensures utilities, to whom regulators guarantee some amount of profit to sustain themselves, only include necessary costs when they start recovering that money through the rates they charge customers. 

In the case of Amazon, the PSC can still review Entergy’s expenses on the back end and prevent certain expenses from going into rates. By not having approval beforehand, Vanderloo said there’s a risk that Entergy will spend millions of dollars that the PSC then doesn’t allow it to recover through rates. 

But that’s an unlikely scenario, Peskoe argued. 

“ Generally for utilities, this sort of risk that a regulator finds an expense imprudent is generally low, and I think will be particularly low here where there won’t be public engagement on these issues,” he said. “ There should be risk on Entergy because presumably it’s capturing some profits from this deal.  What would be inappropriate is if there’s any risk here for ratepayers, and that’s what’s really impossible to tell, because we don’t know what’s in the contract.”

Tait, with EPI, took it a step further, arguing “there’s no real risk to Entergy here” because SB 2001 deems the utility’s spending as inherently justified. 

“Any protection that might actually exist (for ratepayers) is hidden,” he said.

Proponents of the Amazon deal point to language in the 2024 law that says the data centers must provide an “economic benefit” to Entergy’s other ratepayers. The legislation, though, neither specifies what benefits those are nor includes a way of assuring the benefits exist.  

Last week, a report commissioned by environment-focused nonprofits suggested the Amazon data centers have likely already increased rates for Entergy’s Mississippi customers. The report also pointed to measures enacted in other states to protect ratepayers from data centers’ energy consumption.

In recent years, regulators in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kansas have instituted certain requirements for new data centers, such as minimum bill amounts and contract lengths. The regulatory shift shows that “existing rate structures are inadequate to protect ordinary customers from cost shifts driven by hyperscale electricity users,” the report said. 

While Entergy may have included some of those requirements in its agreement with Amazon, “it’s impossible to know,” Ben Havumaki, one of the report’s authors, said.

When asked about the criticism over transparency, Vanderloo acknowledged, “It is difficult because you are trying to just take our word for it.” But the speed at which Entergy needed new generation to support Amazon required a faster regulatory process, he said. 

“ We just didn’t have the time to go through that process, and the Legislature understood that we had a clear need for new generation,” Vanderloo said.

Sen. Josh Harkins, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and the lead author of SB 2001, echoed that point.

“It was just tightening up the timelines on some of the requirements and getting the thing through the PSC, not dragging it out as long as sometimes they normally do,” said Harkins, a Flowood Republican.

The senator said he didn’t hear any complaints from the PSC regarding the bill, and that the commission will still be able to “monitor and have input” on Entergy’s data center spending. 

When asked how the 2024 law changes the PSC’s regulatory process, Central District Public Service Commissioner De’Keither Stamps only pointed to the commission’s ability to prevent Entergy from recovering costs on the back end. 

“If it does not pass the prudency review, the citizens will not pay for it,” Stamps said. “I can guarantee you have one commissioner who does not mind voting no and doesn’t mind speaking up.”

The state’s Public Utilities Staff, which advises the PSC on legal matters, declined to comment for this story.

In the last two years, Amazon has announced four data center facilities in Mississippi, expanding its capacity for cloud computing services through AWS, or Amazon Web Services. 

One of the four, in Canton, is already operating, while the other three – in Ridgeland, Vicksburg and Clinton – are in the works. 

“Amazon currently has five buildings operational at the Canton site, with plans to at least double that presence,” David Ross, a spokesperson for the company, told Mississippi Today in an email. “The Ridgeland site is in the early stages of construction, and a similar footprint is anticipated. Ultimately, each location is driven by campus size and may evolve over time.”

The Clinton and Vicksburg facilities are both in the “site prep” and “pre-construction” phases, Ross said. 

Regarding energy usage, a point of concern for the public regarding data centers, Amazon said it “has worked with Entergy Mississippi to ensure we pay 100% of the costs associated with our new data center campuses, covering all expenses for new energy infrastructure and upgrades that also strengthen overall grid reliability for all customers.”

Overall, the company is planning to invest a total of $25 billion into the state, creating 2,000 jobs. The revenue is allowing Entergy Mississippi, Amazon’s power provider, to invest $300 million to upgrade its power grid over the next five years, both companies have said. The improvements include a goal of reducing Entergy’s power outages by 50%. 

Amazon added that it’s investing in five renewable energy projects in the state, “enabling 616 MWs of new carbon-free energy in Mississippi through solar and wind farms across the state—enough to power 152,000 U.S. homes.” Those include the state’s first utility-scale wind farm, which opened in 2024 in Tunica County. 

The company also addressed its plans for water usage, another concern Mississippians have raised around data centers. For all of its facilities in the region, Amazon said it only plans to use water for cooling during the hottest points of the year, about 9% of the time, using air cooling the rest of the year. 

Amazon also pointed to an initiative it announced last year, in partnership with Arable and Mississippi State University, to replenish the Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer, which supplies groundwater to the Delta, by making farms’ water usage more efficient.

Canton

While not providing specific amounts, Amazon said its data center in Canton is using water for cooling from Canton Municipal Utilities. Next year, though, the company, in a partnership with Veolia, plans to transition to using recycled wastewater from the Madison County Wastewater Authority for all its cooling needs. 

Chris Low, Veolia’s executive vice president for Water Technologies in North America, told Mississippi Today the recycling process will use a combination of submerged, ultra-filtration membranes and reverse osmosis to “ bring that water up to quality that’s needed for the cooling system.”

Low said Veolia is working with more data centers elsewhere to reduce their water footprint. 

“ Our ability to provide water security and assurances to the local community that the facility won’t impact or have minimal impact on local water resources is really important,” he said.

As far as the standard of water needed for data centers, Low said the water can’t have “organics or different mineral components” that might contaminate the cooling system. He estimated the Canton facility will use about 83 million gallons of recycled wastewater each year. 

After the data center uses the recycled wastewater, Low said the water gets recirculated by the cooling systems six times before it’s put into a storage pond  “at a quality that it could be discharged into the environment.” 

Amazon also said it is investing in upgrades to increase CMU’s water system capacity by 39%, and increasing capacity at Madison County Wastewater Authority’s Beatties Bluff Wastewater Treatment Plant by 50%.

Ridgeland

Amazon said it will exclusively use water from the city of Ridgeland for its data center there, adding up to about 93 million gallons each year. The company said it’s investing $37 million into the city’s water system, increasing the system’s capacity by 10%. 

Vicksburg

Amazon will use water from the city of Vicksburg for its facility there, the company said, and is requesting 25 million gallons per year. That usage, the company said, comes out to less than the equivalent of about 200 single-family homes. 

Clinton

Amazon’s planned facility in Clinton will have a minimal water footprint because it will be air-cooled, the company said. While using water for cooling is still the industry standard, Amazon said it didn’t make as much sense for this facility.

“This facility is a retrofitted building, and the cooling system design is driven by the existing structure,” the company wrote.  “Adapting the building for the standard water-cooled approach would have required significant structural modifications, making air-cooled chillers the right fit for this site’s constraints and timeline.”

A Democratic political group announced on Tuesday that it will spend $2 million on Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race between incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom, an effort that’s part of a $50 million campaign targeting congressional races around the country. 

American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC, which calls itself the “largest research, tracking, and rapid response operation in the Democratic Party,” said it was targeting nearly 20 key House and Senate races across Mississippi, Iowa, Alaska, Colorado, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.

This campaign represents the group’s largest midterm paid media effort to date and will highlight “rising costs due to Trump’s tariffs and Iran War, health care challenges including rising costs and Medicaid cuts, and other economic pressures,” the group said in a news release.

“Many Americans are angry that President Trump has betrayed them, and we want them to share their stories. Working class voters are fed up with the cost, chaos, and corruption,” said Bradley Beychok, co-founder of American Bridge 21st Century. “Our investment aims to seize this opportunity in traditionally Republican territory. We will expand the map early and often.”

The campaign will use a mix of digital advertising, streaming television, streaming audio, social media, direct mail and AM/FM radio. Eva Kemp, head of paid media for American Bridge 21st Century, told Mississippi Today the group plans to spend a little over $2 million on the Mississippi race before the end of the election cycle.

The group has also published a research document titled “How To Win Against Cindy Hyde-Smith,” which focuses on claims that she supports cuts to healthcare, SNAP benefits and “tariffs that raised costs on goods.”

Hyde-Smith has criticized Colom’s ties to national Democratic groups, highlighted her close relationship with President Donald Trump and, as former state agriculture commissioner, touted her support for Mississippi farmers.

The U.S. Senate race in Mississippi between Hyde-Smith and Colom has kicked off a fierce fundraising battle in recent months, which is expected to continue into the November general election. Leading Senate Democrats see the race as a long-shot opportunity for Democrats, who need to net four more seats to reclaim a majority in the upper chamber. 

Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin came to Jackson for a fundraiser last month that featured Colom and other candidates on the ballot this November. Martin said the Democrats would prioritize making gains in red states such as Mississippi going forward.

After initially raising more money than Hyde-Smith at the end of 2025, Colom fell behind the Republican incumbent during the first quarter of this year. Hyde-Smith has also maintained significantly more cash on hand than the Democratic challenger. The most recent filings with the Federal Election Commission show Hyde-Smith with over $2.4 million in cash on hand, while Colom had just under $560,000.

Colom is the district attorney for Noxubee, Clay, Lowndes and Oktibbeha counties and has not appeared on a statewide ballot before. To become the first Democrat since the 1980s to win a U.S. Senate race in Mississippi, he would likely need a significant amount of cash to build name recognition and run campaign ads. 

Hyde-Smith became a U.S. senator in 2018 after former Gov. Phil Bryant appointed her to fill the seat vacated by longtime Sen. Thad Cochran. She later won a special election in 2018 to complete the remainder of Cochran’s term and was elected to a full six-year term in 2020. She is the first woman to represent Mississippi in Congress.

Hyde-Smith and Colom will also compete against independent candidate Ty Pinkins in November.

Mississippi Today Ideas is a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share their ideas about our state’s past, present and future. Opinions expressed in guest essays are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Mississippi Today. You can read more about the section here.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently  decided Pitchford v. Cain, a case from Grenada, Mississippi. The court ruled that Mississippi courts improperly handled Terry Pitchford’s challenge that the prosecutor removed Black jurors because of their race.

In the 5-4 decision, the court concluded that the trial judge should have given Pitchford’s attorney an opportunity to argue that the prosecutor’s reasons for striking Black jurors were merely pretextual and that the strikes were discriminatory.

READ MORE: A Mississippi death penalty jury was seated. With one Black juror

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The ruling is a victory for Pitchford. But it is a missed opportunity for the court.

Both Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s majority opinion and Justice Neil Gorsuch’s dissenting opinion treated the Batson framework, named after the landmark 1986 decision Batson v. Kentucky that prohibited prosecutors from striking jurors because of their race, as a functioning safeguard against racial discrimination in jury selection. Their disagreement concerned only whether Mississippi courts properly followed Batson’s procedural requirements.

Neither side seriously confronted a more fundamental question: Does Batson actually work? Forty years of experience and my research, forthcoming in the Florida Law Review, suggest the answer is no.

The flawed Batson framework

Under Batson, once a defendant claims that the prosecutor struck a juror because of the juror’s race, the prosecutor needs to provide a race-neutral explanation for the strike. Then, the defendant must be allowed to argue that the race-neutral explanation is merely pretextual or a fabricated reason and that the prosecutor’s strike is, in fact, discriminatory.

However, courts have routinely accepted explanations ranging from a juror’s age, employment status, demeanor, marital status, neighborhood, body language, family history or countless other factors as genuine. The result is a system in which proving discrimination has become extraordinarily difficult.

Indeed, the facts of Pitchford illustrate the problem. In a case involving a Black defendant, the prosecutor struck four of the five Black prospective jurors. The prosecutor’s reasons were that one juror returned late from lunch, two had relatives with criminal convictions and another was an unmarried father like the defendant.

Whether those reasons were genuine or pretextual was never fully explored because the trial court did not allow Pitchford’s attorney to argue pretext. But even if Pitchford’s attorney had that opportunity, the trial judge could have easily rejected those arguments and decided that the prosecutor’s reasons were not pretextual, as countless other judges have done.

Implications for Mississippi

What makes Pitchford striking is that both the majority and dissent doubled down on the flawed Batson framework, refusing to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that Batson does not prevent racial discrimination.

And that refusal matters in Mississippi.

No state has played a bigger role in the Supreme Court’s Batson jurisprudence. Mississippi courts have repeatedly grappled with allegations of discriminatory jury selection. Mississippi produced Flowers v. Mississippi, one of the court’s most important recent jury discrimination decisions.

For Mississippi defendants, Pitchford may offer a modest procedural benefit. Trial judges will likely be more careful to allow defendants to argue that the prosecutor’s reasons for striking Black jurors are pretextual. And defense attorneys will cite this case when arguing that they must be given a meaningful opportunity to argue pretext. Perhaps that will help at the margins. But Mississippians should not mistake this marginal procedural benefit for substantive reform.

After 40 years of experience, Mississippi defendants and the public more generally have reason to ask whether a framework that depends on judges discerning the true motivations behind peremptory strikes is capable of delivering what Batson promised in the first place – racial equality at jury selection.

If Pitchford was a missed opportunity to reconsider Batson, what might a better alternative look like? In 2022, Arizona became the first state in the nation to abolish peremptory strikes altogether. Arizona’s reform reflects a simple insight: if attorneys are not permitted to strike jurors without cause, they cannot disguise discriminatory strikes behind a veneer of neutrality.

Rather than continuing to refine a framework that has proven ineffective in practice, Mississippi should consider more fundamental reforms like those adopted in Arizona.

The Supreme Court used Pitchford to remind Mississippi courts to follow Batson to prevent racial discrimination in the courtroom. What it should have done is ask whether Batson itself remains equal to the task. 

Matthew Kim, J.D., Ph.D.is an assistant professor of law at the University of Florida. He teaches and writes about jury decision-making, empirical legal studies and procedural justice.

Tameshia Shelton, a Clay County mother of four, is serving life in prison on a murder conviction. But the latest reporting from Jerry Mitchell and Madeline Nguyen has opened the door for her to get a long-awaited retrial. The investigative reporters join Emily Wagster Pettus to discuss their findings and the recent ruling from the Mississippi Supreme Court.

Mississippi continues to outperform most of the nation in education, according to a new report, but health outcomes for children remain dismal. 

The 2026 KIDS COUNT Data Book, published annually by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, shows the state’s education ranking has held steady at 16th nationwide. Unchanged since last year, this ranking on education is Mississippi’s highest score ever, according to the foundation’s rubric. 

In other measures, though, Mississippi still struggles.

The report puts Mississippi at 49th for economic well-being, 50th for health and 49th for family and community. 

“When we think about children and families where the household head lacks a diploma, that’s tied to a chance of children living in poverty in that house,” said Ashley Parker Sheils, executive director of Children’s Foundation of Mississippi. “Every one of these indicators is an opportunity for us to work together to do better for the children of our state.”

Despite progress in categories that measure economic well-being and outcomes for families and communities, those rankings fell this year for Mississippi. States are ranked relative to each other. Other states also saw improvements, so Mississippi’s rankings fell slightly in those categories. The results put Mississippi at 50th in the country for overall child well-being compared to 48th last year. 

For the first time since the foundation began maintaining these child-centric data rankings in 1990, states received a comprehensive score in the Data Book, tracking a number of indicators from 2019 to 2024. Across the country, state education scores were the lowest of the four categories — education, health, economic well-being and family and community.

Louisiana and Mississippi were the only states to make progress in education during the five-year period, according to the KIDS COUNT data. The Data Book attributes the state’s success to investing in teacher training, strengthening early education infrastructure and passing the 2013 Literacy-Based Promotion Act. Experts say that helped raise reading proficiency among the state’s youngest students. 

“Mississippi’s continued progress is the result of effective work by our educators, supportive families throughout the years, and strong policies,” said Lance Evans, state superintendent of education, in a press release about the KIDS COUNT data. “We are proud of this milestone and remain committed to building on it for Mississippi students.”

Chronic absenteeism, however, remains an issue across the country and in Mississippi. The Data Book notes that chronic absenteeism, defined as missing 10% of the school year or 18 school days, among Mississippi students is 27.6% — more than double what was reported immediately prior to the pandemic.

State leaders have increasingly expressed concern about the chronic absenteeism rates in Mississippi. Absenteeism is directly tied to student achievement, and small schools in high-poverty districts are especially impacted.

Despite the state’s performance in education, Mississippi is still dead last in child health outcomes and had one of the sharpest drops in child health outcomes since 2019, according to the report.

Sheils said the findings were bittersweet. Her organization helps produce a factbook for the data each year, which provides county-specific information for local communities.

“You see the numbers and you have that moment of, ‘Should we just pack up and go home?’” she said. “There’s definitely disappointment … We must improve and do better for our children.”

TUPELO — Nearly 50 years after the death of Elvis Presley, a gaggle of exuberant boys and teens shook up his hometown, intent on keeping the king’s legacy alive for a new generation.

Ranging in age from 7 to 17, some in jeweled jumpsuits, they took the stage at the Tupelo Elvis Festival’s youth tribute artist competition last week.

In contrast to their peers, who may never have heard of Elvis, the competitors have dedicated an enormous amount of time and energy to embodying the king’s singing voice, mannerisms and style.

They are careful to specify they are Elvis tribute artists. Unlike impersonators, who pretend to be Elvis and sometimes present a characterized version of the king, tribute artists strive for authenticity. Some wore costumes created by B&K Enterprises Costume Co., a company licensed to recreate Elvis’ outfits and provide costumes for Elvis movies, musicals and TV shows.

“We’re not trying to be him,” said Tucker Gladden, 17, from Madison, Mississippi. “We want to recreate the experience as much as we can for people that maybe didn’t get to see Elvis in their lifetime.”

As for their fascination with a long-dead musician, several of the tribute artists credited the 2022 “Elvis” movie with sparking their interest. A couple said their admiration began after discovering they were distantly related to Elvis. Others said it was Elvis’ faith and charity that inspired them. Some said they had been performing Elvis songs since they were 3 years old.

For 16-year-old Ayden Maloy from Logansport, Indiana, it was the way Elvis’ music helped him during a difficult time in his life and motivated him to begin performing as an Elvis tribute artist three years ago.

“I just broke down in tears because it healed me,” Maloy said. “I think Elvis is the healer.”

In an afternoon of dazzling outfits and daring dance moves, the performers got the audience clapping, singing and swaying along to their Elvis covers. Ultimately, RJ Hursey, a 14-year-old from Bloomington, Illinois, won the competition.

Hursey, who inherited his love of Elvis from his grandfather, said he practices his tributes every day, and when he’s too sick to sing, he researches. He performs at nursing homes and assisted living facilities and hopes to someday star in a remake of an Elvis movie.

“It’s humbling,” Hursey said. “It makes you feel good because we know that he died thinking he’d be forgotten, and we’re just so glad he’s still around.”

While in Tupelo, the tribute artists also toured the Elvis Presley Birthplace, a sprawling complex that includes the home where Elvis was born and the church where he was first exposed to Southern gospel music.

“It feels so surreal to pay tribute to Elvis in his hometown,” said 15-year-old Charles Session from Morrilton, Arkansas. “I hope that he’s looking down and smiling at all these young performers.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up the case of Mississippi death row inmate Tony Terrell Clark, who argued there was racial bias in the makeup of the jury that convicted him.

Clark, who will turn 46 this month, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2014 shooting death of a 13-year-old boy and the attempted murder of the boy’s father, who were both working at a convenience store in Canton. 

To date, the state has not requested an execution date for him. 

Although she agreed with the  decision not to hear Clark’s appeal, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a separate six-page statement to call out “the problematic standard” that the Mississippi Supreme Court applied in Clark’s case under Batson v. Kentucky in the context of a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland v. Washington. 

In 1986, the nation’s high court ruled in Batson v. Kentucky that people could not be struck from jury service because of race, and it set up a test for trial judges to determine whether a strike is discriminatory. 

Two years earlier in 1984, the court in Strickland v. Washington established a test to determine when a defendant’s right to effective assistance of counsel was violated by inadequate representation. 

Sotomayor noted that the prosecution in Clark’s case struck Black prospective jurors at a rate more than five times that of white jurors and conducted dubious “special investigations into some of the most qualified Black prospective jurors in an attempt to disqualify them,” but did not investigate similarly situated white jurors. 

On Clark’s appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court, justices said his defense attorney didn’t present a “comparative analysis of minority and non-minority jurors to show disparate treatment” during the Baton proceedings. That led Clark to file a petition in state court, citing ineffective counsel.

Clark’s attorneys argued in a January petition that the Mississippi Supreme Court had refused to review his Batson claims stemming from trial. He also raised Batson challenges in post-conviction, which were denied. 

The state had used seven peremptory strikes against Black people during jury selection. His trial attorneys raised a challenge under Batson after five Black potential jurors were struck, which the state withdrew. During a second Batson hearing, the challenge was denied. 

That led to a jury with 11 white jurors, one Black juror and two white alternate jurors. 

In affirming his conviction and sentence in direct appeal, the Mississippi Supreme Court wrote “(t)he case before us is not Flowers,” referencing the case of Curtis Flowers that Clark cited. Flowers, another Black Mississippi man convicted of capital murder, argued there was racial bias during his jury selection. 

The high court returned Flowers’ case to the Mississippi Supreme Court in 2016, and after that court reaffirmed the conviction, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Flowers’ case. In 2019, it overturned his murder convictions and death sentence, leading to his release from prison over 20 years after the 1997 conviction. 

Other cases with Batson challenges have cited the Flowers case, including that of Terry Pitchford, with whom the U.S. Supreme Court sided on May 28. 

In Clark’s case, the state Supreme Court ruled that prejudice from his attorney’s ineffective presentation of the Batson claim requires proving not only that the claim would have succeeded but would have resulted in Clark’s acquittal.

“The Court should one day resolve the conflict outlined above and hold that Strickland does not require the kind of prejudice analysis that the Mississippi Supreme Court has adopted for Batson-related ineffectiveness claims,” Sotomayor wrote. 

She said Clark’s case, in its current procedural state, doesn’t present a “viable path” to resolve that conflict. 

In post-conviction, Clark’s attorneys also argued that he was intellectually disabled under Atkins v. Virginia, and therefore it is unconstitutional to execute him. In 2023, the Mississippi Supreme Court remanded his case to Madison County Circuit Court to hold an Atkins hearing. The trial court has granted experts access to Clark in prison, according to court records. 

He is pursuing post-conviction relief in Madison County Circuit Court based on Atkins v. Virginia, filing a petition for relief on the same day the high court’s decision. 

Rep. William R. “Bo” Brown, a Democratic state lawmaker from Jackson who was known for his long and wide-ranging career in public service, died on Monday, multiple state officials confirmed.

According to Hinds County Coroner Jeramiah Howard, Brown, 81, died after a lengthy illness. Brown is survived by his wife, Imelda Brown, children and other family members. Fellow state officials remembered him as a stable leader who sought to find common ground.

De’Keither Stamps, a member of the Mississippi Public Service Commission and former state representative, said Brown “represented a style of leadership that is becoming increasingly rare.”

“He was a steady and respected voice whose influence came from wisdom, not volume,” Stamps said. “He never needed to be the loudest person in the room to make an impact. Instead, he led through character, experience, humility and a genuine commitment to serving others. Bo was the kind of leader who commanded respect without demanding attention, and that is one of the many reasons he will be remembered and missed by so many.”

Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, said Brown was a “dedicated public servant who cared deeply about Jackson and worked hard to improve the lives of those he represented.”

Brown earned a bachelor’s degree from Tennessee State University, a master’s degree from Jackson State University and a postgraduate certification from Santa Clara University in California, according to his legislative biography.

His long career in public service included working as a public school teacher and coach in Jackson to working for the federal government. He served in a public relations role at the U.S. Department of Justice and between 1972 and 1983, he worked as a program manager for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Brown then worked as a radio broadcaster, an insurance broker and as a Jackson City Council member, an office he held from 1997 to 2005. He was elected to the state House in 2019, serving on committees including Judiciary B, Medicaid and Transportation.

In 2024, he co-authored a bill that would have required the Department of Public Safety to create and maintain a database of officer misconduct incidents. It did not survive in the Republican-dominated Legislature. He also advocated for improvements to Jackson’s troubled water system.

State Rep. Kabir Karriem, chairman of the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus, said Brown “leaves behind a legacy of service that will not be forgotten.”

“May we honor his life by continuing the work of building stronger communities and serving others with the same dedication he demonstrated throughout his life,” Karriem said.