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As Greenwood Leflore Hospital’s financial crisis plods on, more people are stepping up to propose remedies aimed at keeping the hospital’s doors open. 

Hospital leaders warned in December that the facility was on the brink of closure under the weight of debt owed to the Mississippi Division of Medicaid. This debt stemmed from overpayments from a program designed to support struggling hospitals. The public hospital faces a looming deadline at the end of February to reach an agreement with the agency, but hospital officials say negotiations have stalled.

Under the agreement, the hospital was expected to secure a bond by Jan. 31. The terms of a bond remain unresolved, said Gary Marchand, the hospital’s former interim CEO who is now serving as an executive consultant advising the hospital’s board.

“Our understanding is that the parties will have to bring this dispute back to the Chancery Court for any further relief from Medicaid’s efforts to reduce the hospital’s payments,” Marchand said in an email to Mississippi Today. 

Matt Westerfield, a spokesperson for the Division of Medicaid, declined to comment, saying it would be inappropriate to do so during ongoing litigation.

Greenwood Leflore Hospital serves roughly 300,000 patients in the Mississippi Delta, a region of the state with limited access to health care. The facility is jointly owned by the city of Greenwood and Leflore County. Members of the City Council and Board of Supervisors told Mississippi Today they were unaware of the current status of efforts to secure a bond. 

At the same time, state lawmakers are proposing legislation to provide relief. These bills include measures that would give hospitals more time to settle overpayments during times of financial hardship and outline the terms for a potential sale of the hospital, backed by a proposed $10 million state appropriation. 

In December, Marchand testified during a hearing in the case with Medicaid that the hospital’s ongoing financial difficulties, paired with $3.5 million owed to Medicaid, would force the facility to close.

“We will make our last payroll tomorrow,” Marchand said Dec. 18, when he was then serving as interim hospital CEO. Before reaching the agreement that gave both parties more time to negotiate, Marchand warned that once layoffs were announced, staff would likely seek work elsewhere, making it difficult to reopen the hospital even under new leadership.

The dispute with the Division of Medicaid began in June, when the agency informed the hospital it would recoup $5.5 million in state-directed payments, or supplemental funds intended to offset low Medicaid reimbursement rates. In September, hospital leaders warned the agency that the proposed repayment schedule of $900,000 a quarter — with about $2 million already recovered in 2025 — would severely strain the hospital’s finances. 

The overpayments resulted from Medicaid calculations based on outdated data that did not account for reduced patient volumes after the hospital closed its labor and delivery and intensive care units in 2022. According to the Division of Medicaid, hospitals were notified two years ago that a reconciliation would take place in 2025. They did not know then how much they would owe. 

The two sides have since sparred over the terms of a repayment plan. At a December court hearing, the Division of Medicaid said it would require financial guarantee before negotiating a repayment plan, a stipulation the hospital said it would agree to. 

The conflict between the hospital and Medicaid officials in Mississippi is but the latest trial in a litany of hardships the hospital has faced. 

Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the hospital was losing up to $9 million a year, Marchand previously told Mississippi Today. To keep its doors open, the hospital shut down departments and clinics, went up for lease multiple times, drew down millions of dollars in credit, applied for grants from the state Legislature, and pursued a more lucrative hospital designation. In 2023, the hospital suspended the use of 173 beds to control costs, according to an audit. 

The House passed a bill Wednesday sponsored by House Medicaid Chairwoman Missy McGee, a Republican from Hattiesburg, that would require the Division of Medicaid to give providers 12 months to repay “incorrect payments” if immediate repayment would cause financial hardship. 

The Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee passed a bill with similar provisions, which would stall recoupments from Greenwood Leflore until May 1. 

During a Jan. 28 Senate budget hearing, Mississippi Medicaid Executive Director Cindy Bradshaw said the payments were not made “incorrectly,” but were the result of the program’s routine reconciliation process. Hospitals are aware that when inpatient visits decline, as they have at Greenwood Leflore in recent years following the closure of beds and services, they will owe money during reconciliation. 

“A prudent businessperson would have been setting that money aside,” Bradshaw said. 

Marchand said McGee’s bill alone would not be enough to save the hospital.

“The hospital’s financial situation requires a multi-year repayment plan to prevent the closure of service lines,” Marchand said. 

Lawmakers have also advanced a separate proposal aimed at the hospital’s long-term future. A bill authored by House Public Health and Human Services Chairman Sam Creekmore, a Republican from New Albany, would authorize the city of Greenwood and Leflore County to sell or lease the hospital within the next year, provided they continue to operate the emergency room and swing-bed program. The bill would also appropriate $10 million to a potential new owner.

Creekmore said that he, along with Senate Public Health and Welfare Chairman Hob Byran, a Democrat from Amory, met with the hospital board twice in recent months.

“It was evident they did not want to be in the hospital business anymore,” Creemore said. “They want to sell or lease it.” 

Marchand said he appreciates lawmakers’ efforts to save the hospital, but there are no current efforts to sell the hospital. 

“At this time, the hospital has taken no steps to consider closure of any service lines or entertain a sale or lease of the hospital,” he said.

City Council President Ronnie Stevenson said he would be open to a proposal to sell the hospital to the right buyer, so long as it would maintain the hospital’s long-term sustainability. 

“I just want to make sure we sell to the right people,” Stevenson said. “…I don’t see us, the county and the city, able to maintain it without any help.” 

Leflore County Supervisor Anjuan Brown said he, too, would support a sale if it was necessary to save the hospital.

But Rep. Solomon Osborne, a Democrat from Greenwood, said the bills proposed to help the hospital are nothing more than stop-gap measures that skirt what he sees as the more obvious solution to saving the hospital: Medicaid expansion. 

“It wouldn’t really solve the long-standing problems that we have,” he said, pointing to the hospital’s large portion of uninsured patients. 

And, he added, if the Legislature is willing to give $10 million to a potential hospital buyer, they could offer the same amount to the hospital’s existing owners to shore up its finances.

Preparing for the worst-case scenario, the hospital’s administration said it is seeking approval from the state Legislature to file for bankruptcy in a Jan. 20 memo to staff. Officials stressed it would be used only “in the event it becomes necessary” and that they remain optimistic bankruptcy can be avoided. 

The Greenwood City Council approved a resolution on Jan. 20 authorizing the hospital board to take steps needed to pursue bankruptcy protection if required.

“A last, last resort,” said Stevenson. “We will not do this unless it’s a last resort just to save the hospital.” 

The Board of Supervisors tabled the request at its Feb. 4 meeting. Supervisor Brown said he needed more information on how a bankruptcy filing could affect employee pensions before voting.

The hospital has recently made strides to shore up its tenuous finances. In April, Greenwood Leflore was one of three hospitals in the state chosen for the Rural Community Hospital Demonstration Program, an initiative operated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“We thought we had finally climbed out of the COVID hole,” Marchand said Dec. 18 of the hospital’s acceptance into the program. 

But Greenwood Leflore’s trials are likely not over yet. The state-directed payments that helped to stabilize Greenwood Leflore’s finances after it was forced to close valued services are set to be reduced over time beginning in 2028 as a result of federal cuts to Medicaid included in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” signed by President Donald Trump in July.

During a House Public Health and Human Services committee meeting Tuesday, Creekmore urged lawmakers to support his proposal, acknowledging that it could change as it progresses through the legislative process. 

“I do believe we need to try every effort we can to keep this hospital open,” he said. 

Mukta Joshi is part of The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship.

Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, has agreed to abandon efforts to acquire a warehouse in northern Mississippi and turn it into a detention center for immigrants, according to U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker.

Wicker’s announcement came days after he had written to Noem opposing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, acquiring an industrial warehouse in Byhalia.

The Republican senator wrote on his X account Friday, “I just spoke with DHS Secretary Noem about the proposed ICE detention facility in Marshall County. I relayed to her the opposition of local elected and zoning officials as well as economic development concerns. I appreciate her for agreeing to look elsewhere.”

His office did not respond to a request for comment.

In his letter to Noem, Wicker had said he supported immigration enforcement but worried that putting a detention facility in Byhalia could overwhelm the town’s infrastructure. The warehouse would reportedly have held up to 8,500 people — more than four times the population of the town. 

The warehouse is one of nearly two dozen industrial facilities that showed up on a list of possible detention sites in a document spread online recently. Under the Trump administration, ICE has been allocated $85 billion — an unprecedented spike — making it the highest funded law enforcement agency in the country. It has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars as part of a $45 billion plan to expand detention centers.

Wicker also noted in his letter Tuesday that the warehouse was one of the few existing facilities in northern Mississippi that could draw industrial development and that it had been seen as a key site to bring “meaningful growth” to the region. Turning it into a detention facility would erase that opportunity without benefiting the community, he wrote. 

Some community members who gathered at the warehouse in mid January to oppose its conversion expressed fears that it would endanger the community. Citizens’ concerns about unlawful arrests by ICE have manifested in unprecedented demonstrations across the country, with major cities seeing tens of thousands taking to the streets in protest.

Some residents said they planned to voice their concerns before the county’s board of supervisors during their next scheduled meeting on Feb. 17. “No ICE detention center in our community!” a flyer being circulated reads. 

A spokesperson for ICE did not respond to a request for comment. 

The House’s expansive education bill is dead — but that doesn’t mean school choice is off the table this session.

The Senate Education Committee on Tuesday killed House Bill 2, the House’s omnibus education package, which contained a key element of expanding school choice with education savings accounts, which allows public dollars to be used for private schooling.

School choice, a years-long movement that’s gained momentum in Mississippi in recent months, refers to policies aimed at giving parents more power over their children’s education. But these policies vary widely. Some, such as education savings accounts, give parents public dollars to pay for private school tuition. A more limited option, called portability or open enrollment, would make it easier for students to transfer between public schools. 

The committee vote came weeks before the deadline for Senate committees to vote on House measures, so it sent a clear signal that the Senate is not open to passing legislation that allows families to use public dollars for private schools. A Senate portability bill that loosens regulations around public school transfers awaits a vote in the House.  

But the House could still try to push its measure back through. 

“I think all options are on the table,” House Speaker Jason White told Mississippi Today this week. 

The likely option available to House leaders is to find a similar education bill to add school choice provisions to, such as House Bill 517, which is a so-called “dummy bill” that doesn’t make any changes to the law and only brings charter school code sections forward, or Senate Bill 2002, the open enrollment bill. 

Rep. Rodney Hall, a Republican from Southaven, supported White’s school choice plan and said that the House should try to amend a similar education bill, insert its education savings account language in it and send the bill back to the Senate for consideration. 

“We’re not at the point where we need to negotiate to something a lot more watered down like the Senate had,” Hall said. “I think that we should continue to push strong on it. It’s still early. The session’s not over yet, I don’t think it’s time to get worried or anything like that.” 

But if White keeps pushing a vote on the House floor, things might get hairy. His education bill eked out of the chamber by a two-vote margin, and a majority of the 122-member chamber didn’t vote for it. 

It passed the majority-GOP chamber by 61-59. A key reason it passed out of the chamber is that two House members didn’t vote. One of them was at home repairing broken farm equipment, and another intentionally didn’t vote on the measure, even though he was at the Capitol that day. 

READ MORE: ‘Absent’ Republicans, heavy whipping help Speaker Jason White pass school-choice bill

A key question White will have to answer is whether he wants to force his chamber and the GOP caucus to vote on the divisive issue again, perhaps by continuing to rely on key legislators not voting or being absent from the Capitol. 

Republican Sen. Chuck Younger of Columbus is also pondering this political question, and he told Mississippi Today the speaker should just give up on trying to secure legislation giving public tax dollars for parents to use on private school education. 

“I think he should quit putting his Republican representatives in a tough vote all the time,” Younger said. 

Younger’s House counterpart, Republican Rep. Dana McLean of Columbus, who voted against House Bill 2, said that she hopes the two chambers come to a compromise. 

“We’ve got some really good legislation that hopefully will survive this session,” she said. “I hope that we can at least get the portability piece through.”

Another option is for Republican Gov. Tate Reeves to call lawmakers into a special session to deal with school choice, which would suspend legislative deadlines and put more pressure on lawmakers.

However, the governor is busy right now leading the state’s response to a winter storm that hammered north Mississippi, and he has postponed indefinitely his annual state of the state address to the Legislature because of the storm.  

The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the possibility of a special session over school choice. White meets regularly with Reeves, but the speaker did not say whether he and the governor had spoken recently about a special session. 

“We talk frequently, but I don’t know that that’s been decided on yet,” White said. “I know that he’s passionate on the issue, and he’s certainly not timid about using whatever tools he has in his toolbox on an issue when he does feel passionate.”

Reeves has only called lawmakers into a special session to deal with economic development projects and to pass a budget when legislators last year failed to agree on one because of infighting. 

The governor has never called a special session over a policy issue and has previously said many times he does not want to spend taxpayer dollars to have lawmakers at an impasse in a lengthy special session. However, he lambasted Senate leadership on social media after they killed the House bill.

A racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle was removed from President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account Friday.

Hours after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called criticism of the post “fake outrage,” officials backtracked.

An official said: “A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.”

A source close to Trump told NOTUS the president “did not watch the video beforehand, a staffer reposted it.”

The reversal came after Republicans began to speak out against the president’s post. The video Trump shared Thursday discussed unfounded allegations of voter fraud involving Dominion voting machines during the 2020 presidential election. In the final seconds of the video, the feed cuts to the clip of the Obamas’ smiling faces on apes in the jungle, as notes from “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” play.

“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina posted on X. “The President should remove it.”

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine shared Scott’s post, writing: “Tim is right. This was appalling.”

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi called it “totally unacceptable.”

“The president should take it down and apologize,” he wrote on X.

The White House defended the president’s post Friday morning, connecting the clip to a popular video that circulated on X in October. That video depicts House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democratic figures as animals, with Trump as a lion.

“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” Leavitt said in a statement.

Privately, some Black Republicans expressed disbelief at the video and the initial defense by the White House. One outside ally of the president’s told NOTUS there are too few Black staffers at the White House who could help shape the response, and those who are there have been sidelined.

“The lack of diversity when it comes to messaging is a problem,” the Republican source said. “It makes it so much harder for the rest of us to help him.”

They faulted the White House’s consistent strategy of defending any action. “Sometimes an apology is necessary.”

The Obama Foundation did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

But a slew of Democrats took to social media to condemn the clip, the latest instance of Trump posting mocking and racist depictions of his political opponents using AI-generated content.

“Trump is a vile racist old man. The people in the @HouseGOP that don’t speak out on this, I’m going to assume you support this racism,” Rep. Herb Conaway wrote on X.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office called the video “disgusting behavior” and called on Republicans to denounce the video.

The White House communications team has shared its own fake images, including a digitally altered photo that portrayed Nekima Levy Armstrong, a Minnesota activist who protested against Immigration and Customs Enforcement during a church service, as crying during her arrest. Armstrong wore a serious expression in the original photo.

This story is provided by a partnership between Mississippi Today and the NOTUS Washington Bureau Initiative, which seeks to help readers in local communities understand what their elected representatives are doing in Congress.

Notes, quotes and an opinion or two…

Let’s get right to it: Archie Manning does not have terminal brain cancer as has been posted on social media several times in recent days.

I pretty much knew that, but checked in by phone, just to make sure.

“My back hurts,” Archie told me. “Can’t seem to get much relief. But, no, I don’t have brain cancer that I know of.”

And, “No,” he answered, he hasn’t publicly criticized Donald Trump as a “self-serving showman.” The same deceitful Facebook account has posted that and many other falsehoods concerning the Manning family.

Archie doesn’t do Facebook, but he and his family hear constantly about such folderol from people who care about them. Indeed, the posts about the retired quarterback’s “brain cancer” have generated hundreds of comments from grieving fans promising fervent prayers.

“What can I do?” Archie asked.

The answer, apparently, is nothing. The fact is, we live in an age of unprecedented misinformation, much of it coming from social media platforms where it is estimated that up to 50% or more of the content is bot- or AI-generated. We’d probably all be better to cut the cord.

QB eligibility case in court

As predicted three weeks ago, the college football eligibility of Trinidad Chambliss will be determined in a north Mississippi chancery court. The NCAA on Wednesday turned down Chambliss’ waiver appeal for another season of eligibility, leaving the judicial system as his lone hope to continue his college career.

And so whether or not Chambliss plays another season at Ole Miss will be decided in a hearing in Calhoun County Chancery Court next Thursday in Pittsboro. There will be no jury. Judge Robert Q. Whitwell, who has the reputation of being a fair, seasoned and impartial jurist, will both preside and decide.

Millions of dollars are at stake in Trinidad Chambliss versus the NCAA, in which Chambliss and his attorneys ask the court for a temporary restraining order against the NCAA. If granted, the TRO likely would allow Chambliss to play for Ole Miss in 2026.

Whitwell attended both Mississippi State and Northwest Mississippi Community College before graduating from Delta State. His law degree is from Ole Miss. He knows sports. At Northwest, he was a standout quarterback and team captain who led the Rangers to a state championship.

Chambliss and his lawyers contend the NCAA unfairly denied his request for a sixth year of eligibility due to medical issues they say caused him to miss the 2022 season. The NCAA counters that those medical issues, upper respiratory in nature, were not properly documented and that denying his appeal has not caused Chambliss irreparable harm. Quoting directly from the NCAA’s 27-page response to Chambliss’s appeal, the group further says “the administration of collegiate sports requires the sound application of well-established rules carefully applied by experienced NCAA staff … to make such eligibility determinations. Collegiate sports will become ungovernable if eligibility determinations are instead the result of individual court decisions.”

A cynic might argue that in recent years the NCAA has done such a lousy job of governing collegiate sports that said sports already have become ungovernable.

The NCAA’s legal response was authored by highly regarded Atlanta-based lawyer Douglas Minor, formerly of Jackson, who grew up in Oxford, graduated at Oxford High School, got his undergraduate degree at Harvard and his law degree at Georgetown.

Chambliss is represented by northwest Arkansas-based Tom Mars, a nationally recognized college sports advocate, and Mississippi attorney William Liston III, founder and general counsel for The Grove Collective, which supports Ole Miss athletes.

Chambliss has reportedly agreed to a contract in the neighborhood of $5 million at Ole Miss. Should he be allowed to play at there again, Chambliss would return as a leading candidate for the Heisman Trophy. Seems almost surreal his eligibility will be determined in a chancery court room in a town of about 200 in rural north Mississippi.

Beard takes Ole Miss to his old home court in Texas

It will be interesting to see what kind of welcome Ole Miss basketball coach Chris Beard will receive his first appearance Saturday at the University of Texas Moody Center since he lost his job there in January of 2023. The Rebels (11-11, 3-6) play the Longhorns (14-9, 5-5). Tipoff is set for 1 p.m. on ESPN2. My guess is Beard will be booed, although he was extremely popular in Austin before his dismissal.

Beard’s Rebels defeated the Longhorns 72-69 in Oxford last season, but that was an Ole Miss team that eventually reached the Sweet 16. Sean Pedulla led the Rebels to a comeback victory with 19 points. You ask me the biggest difference in these Rebels and last season’s is the graduation of Pedulla, who not only was the Rebels’ best clutch scorer but also a “glue player” who made everyone around him better. When Ole Miss really needed a bucket, he was money.

When there was a loose ball, he was most often the one to get it. Pedulla currently averages 13.6 points and three assists per game for the Rip City Remix, the Portland Trailblazers’ G-League team.

Meanwhile, Mississippi State (11-11, 3-6) seeks consistency Saturday (11 a.m., ESPN) against the No. 21 Arkansas (16-6, 6-3) in Starkville.

Ole Miss and State, with identical records, are tied for 12th in the SEC and need to get hot quickly for any chance at the post-season.

The same is true of Southern Miss (12-13,6-7), which begins a four-game homestead Saturday against Kent State (2 p.m.).

Correction, 2/6/2026: This story has been updated to show that the hearing over Trinidad Chambliss’ eligibility is in chancery court.

Nearly a year after a mass shooting hours after Hal’s St. Paddy’s Parade in downtown Jackson, Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens is touting progress he said his office has made on the case but offering few details to help the public make sense of the chaotic incident that killed one and injured seven. 

The shooting rang out as many parade-goers were walking back to their cars from the largest annual event in downtown Jackson. Days later, Capitol Police arrested two brothers – Michael McLeod, 23, and Marquavius McLeod, 22. Officers picked up a third suspect, 19-year-old Kanye Davis, in July. 

All three men were charged with murder in the killing of 21-year-old Cortez George, as well as multiple counts of aggravated assault, indicating that police believed they were exchanging gunfire in a mutual fight. A Capitol Complex Improvement District judge jailed them without bond at the notoriously troubled Raymond Detention Center, finding they represented a threat to public safety.  

Owens’ comments at his Thursday press conference, convened in part to highlight his office’s work on this shooting, indicated the cases were swimming along to justice. 

“Individuals have been indicted,” Owens said. “I’m somewhat limited in what I can say, but we are proud to announce individuals have been indicted, and we will be moving forward to conviction on that case.” 

But a recently-called grand jury has thrown cold water on law enforcement’s efforts, finding the evidence gathered by police and presented by the prosecution did not support the same set of charges for all three men. 

Instead, jurors indicted just one of the suspects – Davis, a friend of the man who died – for murder and seven counts of aggravated assault. After the brothers had spent 10 months behind bars, the grand jury cleared them of murder charges, though it indicted Marquavuis McLeod for being a felon in possession of a firearm.

The McLeods went home, thinking their cases were over. Their aunt made a celebratory Facebook post. But days later, Marquavius McLeod was arrested by sheriff’s deputies for the lesser firearm charge and taken back to Raymond. 

Deputies made this arrest shortly after Marquavius McLeod’s attorney, Carlos Tanner, criticized the quality of Capitol Police’s investigation in a WLBT report, advising police to next time arrest the “correct” person. 

In that same report, Capitol Police Chief Bo Luckey said the investigation was difficult and praised his officers who responded to the scene with hundreds of people on the street. He said police received “very little cooperation from anyone” involved in the shooting. 

But documents in the case show that at least two people did cooperate with Capitol Police: Michael and Marquavius McLeod. 

According to an April 3 affidavit filed against Davis, Michael McLeod voluntarily gave a statement, telling investigators he fired a gun in self-defense after Davis started shooting at him and his family. 

Then he was arrested. 

The brothers also helped police identify Davis in Instagram pictures – including one showing Davis posing with a firearm during the parade. Marquavius McLeod picked Davis out of a lineup. 

Owens would not say what evidence was presented to the grand jury to support Marquavius McLeod’s new charge, but according to the affidavit, Michael McLeod told investigators that his younger brother fired a weapon during the shooting. At the time of the parade, Marquavius McLeod had a suspended sentence for possession of a stolen vehicle. 

The district attorney also suggested that the man cleared of all charges – Michael McLeod, who worked as a police officer at the University of Mississippi Medical Center at the time of the shooting – may have used his weapon in defense of himself and his family members. 

“With Mr. McLeod being an officer of the University of Mississippi Medical Center and also I believe an Air Force reservist, he was well in his right to need to defend himself if necessary,” Owens said. “But we wanted to make sure we understood all the facts surrounding that, and we’ll continue to evaluate those facts, allow people to continue to come back after cases have been indicted and give us facts, something that was unknown at the time that for whatever reason they’ve not told the police.” 

As a result of the swift arrest, Michael McLeod lost his job. His brother’s defense lawyer and aunt have criticized the investigation — in which police made arrests before they were able to say who fired the first shorts.

Since Michael McLeod spoke with police, Owens said investigators have learned more about the case. He said about 20 shell casings were on the ground at the time.

“All those shell casings have to be tested,” Owens said. “Individuals have to be interviewed. Footage has to be reviewed. We know that there were certain aggressors and that’s what we do in every case, we decide who is the aggressor, who started the event, and what individuals … might have been protecting their loved one.” 

Owens suggested the new indictments are a reflection of a properly functioning criminal justice system in which the grand jury ensures prosecutors are pursuing the right charges. 

“We just know that individuals were shooting back at each other and the goal was to make sure Capitol had the support they needed,” Owens added, referring to Capitol Police. “And what we do with all cases, we work with Capitol, JPD to ensure we know the facts and present the best case. The arrest is just the start of their job. Our job is making sure we get it right with the indictment.”

In response to a question from Mississippi Today about whether investigators know whose gun shot and killed George, Owens hinted that more people will be indicted in the shooting, but he did not say how many or when the indictments will be public.

“That’s still an active investigation to some degree, so I can’t speak to that,” Owens said. “We do know that multiple people were shot, and we do know that we believe that the individual who has been indicted in that case, currently, I don’t want to say his name, but he has been indicted … but there might be more indictments coming.” 

Grand jury proceedings are secret in Mississippi. They are not recorded or transcribed. Davis is still jailed in Raymond and his indictment for murder and aggravated assault, which the district attorney’s office confirmed in an email to Mississippi Today, has not been made public. It’s unclear if he has an attorney. 

Despite allegedly participating in the gun fight, Davis also seemed to be confused about the logic behind his charges in a comment he made during his initial appearance in CCID court. WLBT reported that Davis told the judge he attended the parade with George. 

“It says ‘by shooting George multiple times with an unknown firearm,’’ Davis said, according to WLBT. “I came with George.”

The shooting took place close to the intersection of Lamar and Pearl Streets – close to a cigar bar Owens owns – hours after the end of the parade on March 22. 

Police arrived to a chaotic street. Multiple people were suffering from gunshot wounds, including the McLeods’ cousin, Jordin Ward, and George, who was transported to UMMC where he died of  his injuries. 

Five days later, documents show that Michael McLeod gave the Capitol Police a statement, allegedly telling them he was walking family members to their cars when he heard gunshots and began firing in self-defense. 

“I took my gun out and began shooting the threat,” Michael McLeod told officers, according to the affidavit. 

By the time Davis was arrested, Capitol Police did not know what gun he used during the shooting, calling it “unknown,” according to the charging documents. A felony affidavit charging Marquavius McLeod with George’s killing says he used an “unknown caliber” firearm. 

Correction 2/6/26: This story has been updated to reflect that the McLeods are cousins to Jordin Ward.

Expanded eligibility for federal Pell Grants could help more Mississippians pursue training that may lead to a job and earning a living wage, workforce advocates and higher education officials say. 

As part of sprawling spending and tax legislation Congress passed last year, eligibility for the Pell Grant program, which provides financial aid for students from low-income backgrounds, will be expanded to include short-term training programs — lasting between eight and 14 weeks, or 150 to 599 hours of instruction, through an accredited institution.

Traditionally, Pell Grant recipients are undergraduates enrolled in long-term — at least one academic year — professional degree or certificate programs.  

That expansion, known as Workforce Pell, is slated to go into effect July 1. 

An estimated 79,709 Mississippi college students received Pell Grants in 2024-25, according to a report from the National College Attainment Network. 

That number would likely increase with expanded eligibility.

The expansion is an “optimistic opportunity,” said Courtney Taylor, executive director of AccelerateMS, the state’s office of workforce development strategy.

“If there is a new funding stream that can potentially assist more people to get into high quality training opportunities that can put them on a path of getting a better job, we should look at it with an open mind.” 

Workforce Pell could also be a chance for Mississippi to reach its Ascent to 55% goal of getting more than half of its residents the training or education needed to earn a college or degree certificate by 2030, said Jason Dean, executive director of Mississippi Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. 

As of 2025, 48.7% of Mississippians ages 25 to 64 had a degree, credential or industry certification beyond high school, slightly higher than the national national average of 43.6%, according to the Lumina Foundation.

State lawmakers have also begun examining ways to increase the number of adults who complete some form of higher education and enter the state’s workforce. This could mean tying state money to a new funding formula that rewards universities and colleges on metrics of postgraduate students’ success such as degree completion, employment and median job earnings. 

Expanding  the federal financial aid program challenges the definition of higher education by making it affordable and accessible for all individuals wanting to go to college, Dean said. 

“People have had different ideas of what post-secondary education means in the United States,” Dean said, “but Workforce Pell suggests a broader definition beyond traditional degrees and a way for people to get the workforce certificate, education or skills needed to create a better quality of life path for them and their families.”

Preventing waste and protecting students

It’s unclear how Workforce Pell will ultimately work. 

The federal government is still ironing out details of the final rules and accountability requirements for states. The U.S. Department of Education must sign off on those regulations before governors can start state specific program approval processes. 

In initial conversations, state higher education leaders, economic and workforce development officials and lawmakers have focused on identifying  short-term programs that could be eligible for Workforce Pell, Taylor said. Mississippi’s list would likely include a niche set of programs such as training commercial truck driving or emergency medical technicians, she said. 

Each program must also award a credential that is “stackable” or can count as academic credit toward an advance certificate, associate or bachelor’s degree, according to the education department’s draft guidelines. 

Grants awarded for Workforce Pell recipients will likely be less than the current Pell Grant maximum of $7,395, depending on factors such as the length and cost of the programs, said Wesley Whistle, project director for student success and affordability at New America, a national nonprofit public policy think tank.

States will also have to consider strategies to protect students from wasting their lifetime Pell Grant eligibility on short-term programs that are risky, low-quality or fraudulent, Whistle said.

If students leave the programs with “a low wage and a thousand dollars of debt that has really bad repayment terms, that’s not great,” Whistle said. 

Ultimately, state agencies, accreditors and colleges can establish protections to prevent students from being exploited. This could include providing transparency around program costs, setting consumer protection standards and requiring reports of  program outcomes, he said. 

If implemented correctly, Workforce Pell could dovetail with the state’s policy efforts to align support services for Mississippians looking  to enter and stay in the state’s workforce and boost the economy, Taylor said. 

 “It is challenging,” she said, “but there’s a lot of opportunity to make a difference.”

Mississippi quarterback Trinidad Chambliss’ appeal to the NCAA for an additional year of eligibility so he can play for the Rebels next season has been denied, the university said on Wednesday, but the fight is not over.

The NCAA originally denied Chambliss’ request for a sixth year of college football eligibility on Jan. 9, so an appeal was made to the NCAA’s Athletics Eligibility Subcommittee, which was also denied.

Ole Miss issued a statement that said the NCAA’s decision was “indefensible in light of the undisputed facts.”

Chambliss has also taken his fight to state court, where the case is pending.

Chambliss “will continue to pursue all available legal remedies, and we will publicly stand behind Trinidad while holding the NCAA accountable for a decision that fails to align with its own rules, precedent and the documented medical record,” the Ole Miss statement said.

Ole Miss’ arguments revolve around the fact that the 23-year-old Chambliss, although he has been in college for five years, has only played three years of college football because of his medical history.

“Trinidad first enrolled in Ferris State in the fall of 2021, but medical and physical incapacity prevented his ability to adequately train and condition and develop athletically,” the court complaint says.

After taking a redshirt his first season at Ferris State in 2021-22, Chambliss was held out in his second season for medical reasons.

He played two more seasons at the Division II school in Michigan, leading the Bulldogs to a national championship before transferring to Ole Miss before the start of this season.

Chambliss completed 294 of 445 passes (66.1%) for 3,937 yards with 22 touchdowns and three interceptions for Ole Miss (13-2), which set a school record for wins, including two after making the College Football Playoff for the first time. He ran for 527 yards and eight more TDs.

The Rebels lost 31-27 to Miami in the Fiesta Bowl in College Football Playoff semifinals on Jan. 8.

Hours after Mississippi Today reported Thursday that the National Park Service had removed brochures to the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument that identified his murderer as a racist, the Park Service returned the brochures to the home.

On Thursday, Park Service officials told Mississippi Today that the reason they removed the brochures was they were “outdated.”

The Park Service had pulled the brochures in anticipation of replacing them with a new version, which would remove the word “racist” to describe the killer, Byron De La Beckwith, according to Park Service officials, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. Other edits include eliminating the reference to Medgar Evers lying in a pool of blood after being shot.

Medgar Evers’ niece, Hinds County Supervisor Wanda Evers, said, “You can take away the brochures, but the one thing you can’t take away is history.”

Reena Evers-Everette, executive director of the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute and daughter of the couple, said the family has been told the matter is under review, “but the final product has not been put out yet.”

Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson said Thursday he is sending a letter to the National Park Service to get an explanation of what is happening. The Evers home is in Thompson’s district, and he worked for 16 years to get the home recognized as a national monument.

In 1963, Beckwith shot the civil rights leader in the back on the driveway of the Evers family home in Jackson. It would take 31 more years before a Mississippi jury would convict Beckwith.

The pulled brochures called Beckwith “a member of the racist and segregationist White Citizens’ Council.”

Stephanie Rolph, author of “Resisting Equality: The Citizens’ Council 1954-1989,” said the council “believed in the natural superiority of the Aryan race. They even went so far as to say that civilizations failed because of racial amalgamation.”

Beckwith also belonged to the nation’s most violent white supremacist group, the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, responsible for at least 10 killings in Mississippi. 

When he ran unsuccessfully for Mississippi lieutenant governor in 1967, telling crowds that he believed in “absolute white supremacy under white Christian rule.” Six years later, he was caught trying to plant a bomb outside a Jewish leader’s home in New Orleans and went to prison. 

In a 1990 interview, Beckwith repeatedly used racial slurs. He called African Americans “beasts,” referred to Medgar Evers as a “mongrel” and said, “God hates mongrels.”

President Donald Trump, who once called Evers “a great American hero,” issued a March 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which accused the previous administration of rewriting history. Under the order, the interior secretary must revise or replace signs that “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history.”

Two months later, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum followed with his own order, calling for the removal of “descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.”

The Washington Post has reported that the administration has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks, including an 1863 photo that Christian abolitionists used to prove the horrors of slavery. The picture depicts a Black man whose back was covered in scars from beatings while enslaved.

According to the Post, National Park Service officials are “broadly interpreting that directive to apply to information on racism, sexism, slavery, gay rights or persecution of Indigenous people.”

Park Service officials said Thursday that the interior secretary’s order “directed a review of certain interpretive content to ensure parks tell the full and accurate story of American history, including subjects that were minimized or omitted under the last administration. That includes fully addressing slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, and other foundational chapters of our history, informed by current scholarship and expert review, not through a narrow ideological lens.

“Some materials may be edited or replaced to provide broader context, others may remain unchanged, and some removals being cited publicly had nothing to do with [the order] at all. Claims that parks are erasing history or removing signs wholesale are inaccurate.”

Julien Beacham said while working for the Evers Institute, he recalled the order coming into the Evers home that park rangers could no longer refer to Beckwith as a “racist” on their tours.

Leslie Burl McLemore, a longtime political science professor and founding director of the Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy at Jackson State University, called it “asinine” to remove such language about Beckwith. “He was a first-class racist, and there’s no way you can get around it,” McLemore said. “He assassinated a man and then bragged about it.”

The Civil Rights Movement never would have happened in Mississippi without people like Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer and Bob Moses leading the way, McLemore said. “And now there are people who want to turn back the clock.”

Mississippi needs to invest in its youngest residents and improve access to child care, nearly 100 advocates, community leaders, early childhood educators and lawmakers said Thursday at the Capitol.

A 10-month crisis has shown the fragility of support structures for families and providers. Last year, 170 child care centers closed statewide – the highest number in nearly a decade. Pandemic-era funds that helped cover child care costs expired in April.  

That rupture in care has landed over 20,000 families on a waitlist for child care vouchers – coupons that make care more affordable for low-income working people. Speakers Thursday demanded solutions from the Legislature and the Department of Human Services, the agency overseeing the child care voucher program. 

“Child care providers and teachers are the backbone of the rest of the workforce,” said Jennifer Calvert, whose Aberdeen center lost about 70 children as a result of the voucher situation. “We show up early, stay late and pour our hearts into helping children learn, grow and feel safe. But we can’t do this work alone, and families can’t shoulder these costs by themselves.”

At the Capitol, speakers also implored lawmakers to pass bills removing the sales tax on diapers and expanding paid family leave. Advocates focused on how these policies would improve Mississippi’s workforce participation rate – the lowest in the nation. 

Mississippi has  room to improve, child care experts say. For example, the enhanced pandemic funding didn’t expand eligibility. Instead, it allowed the program to reach more families. At the height of the pandemic, Mississippi served 1 in 3 eligible children. But now, that gap has more than doubled, and the state has returned to serving only 1 in 7, according to the Mississippi Department of Human Services. 

In recent weeks, the department’s director,  Bob Anderson, has expressed a commitment to exploring a funding model that advocates proposed months ago as a solution to the child care crisis. 

That model involves using funds from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families from past years. Fully addressing the waitlist – and resolving child care needs for each household – would cost $50 to $60 million, according to Anderson. At the end of January, Anderson said the department has roughly that much unallocated money.

Lawmakers have criticized Anderson for waffling on the amount of money he’s requesting for child care. At several recent hearings, Anderson testified that he would welcome as much as the Legislature was willing to give. However, he did not ask for additional child care funding, citing other priorities, including federal costs for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that shifted to the state as a result of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. 

“DHS has drawn a lot of scrutiny for asking for just level funding,” Rep. Cheikh Taylor, a Democrat from Starkville and chair of the Mississippi Democratic Party, told Mississippi Today. “We need solutions, and sometimes, a budget that is well-crafted and curated can help that conversation. So, if they need $30 million, we need to know.”

During a Legislative Black Caucus hearing on Jan. 28, Rep. Zakiya Summers, a Democrat from Jackson, asked Anderson, “Have you ever heard of the saying ‘a closed mouth don’t get fed’?” 

Summers urged the agency to request what it needs to resolve the crisis, and has told Mississippi Today she is looking into all options, including using general funds, state health department funds and workforce development funds. 

Sen. Nicole Boyd, a Republican from Oxford, on Thursday mentioned another bill she hopes will alleviate stress on parents struggling to find affordable child care. 

Senate Bill 2867 would amend a policy passed in 2023 called the Child Care Tax Credit. This policy offers a 50% income tax credit to employers who either provide their employees with child care during work hours or provide at least $6,000 in a stipend to a licensed child care provider for their employees. The program has had virtually no uptake. Lawmakers, however, hope that will change if they lower the threshold to $3,000. 

Meanwhile, child care providers are asking for substantial and immediate public investment in the child care voucher program, which they say is critical. 

“It’s not a giveaway,” said Theophilus King, who runs Christian Mission Learning Center in Jackson, which lost more than half of its 120 children since April. “What you’re doing is you are simply allowing parents to go to work and their children to have quality, affordable child care that will prepare them for school.”