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Mississippi Supreme Court Justice David Ishee was unable to qualify for reelection this year because of a federal court order preventing the state from using the existing Mississippi Supreme Court district map in future elections. 

Liz Jonson, a spokesperson for Secretary of State Michael Watson, told Mississippi Today in a statement that Ishee was unable to qualify by the Feb. 2 deadline because U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock issued an August 2025 order that found the state Supreme Court districts violate the federal Voting Rights Act. 

Aycock’s order, which stems from a federal lawsuit where plaintiffs argued that the state’s current Supreme Court districts illegally dilute Black voting strength, enjoined the state from using the existing map in future elections.

But the federal ruling does not mean Ishee, who is elected from south Mississippi, would have to vacate his seat soon. His term doesn’t expire until January 2028, which should give Mississippi lawmakers and the federal court time to adopt a new map.  

Ishee is the only high court justice up for reelection this year, and he was the only candidate who attempted to qualify for the election, according to the secretary of state’s office.

Ishee told Mississippi Today that whenever the Legislature adopts a new map, he intends to run for reelection. 

“I’m definitely running as soon as I get the opportunity,” Ishee said. 

Current state law establishes three distinct Supreme Court districts, commonly referred to as the Northern, Central and Southern districts. Voters elect three judges from each of these districts to make up the nine-member court. 

The Central District, which includes much of the majority-Black Delta and Jackson metro areas, was a central focus of the federal litigation. Aycock ruled that the plaintiffs showed their configuration weakens Black voting strength.

State officials have appealed Aycock’s ruling to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, but they did not ask Aycock to pause lower-court proceedings while the appeal plays out.  

The 5th Circuit, however, did pause its appellate proceedings until the U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision in the Louisiana v. Callais decision, a case that could upend the Voting Rights Act and redistricting across the country. 

Until the appellate courts rule differently, Aycock’s order barring the state from using the current map remains in effect. Because of that injunction, the secretary of state’s office has concluded that no candidate, including Ishee, may qualify for a seat under the now-unenforceable district boundaries. 

Aycock allowed the Legislature to redraw the districts during its 2026 session, which is currently ongoing. Legislative leaders have advanced placeholder measures to meet legislative deadlines while the Legislature continues negotiations. Lawmakers have not unveiled a new map for the districts. 

Leaders in both chambers have stated that they intend to comply with the federal court’s order, but they have also signaled that they are closely monitoring developments at the U.S. Supreme Court with the Louisiana case. 

Senate Judiciary A Chairman Brice Wiggins, a Republican from Pascagoula who is the lead Senate negotiator on redrawing the court districts, said that he and other lawmakers are moving towards having a new map by the end of the legislative session.

University of Mississippi Medical Center clinics across the state will remain closed and elective procedures are canceled through Wednesday as officials respond to a cyberattack that targeted the state’s only academic medical center.

Patients across Mississippi have missed health care appointments and surgeries since the cyberattack, which occurred Feb. 19 and compromised the health care system’s IT network, forcing the shutdown of computer systems that hold patients’ electronic health records.

The medical center has released few details about when it expects to resume normal operations, how extensive the attack was, what the attacker has demanded or whether any data was compromised. Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for the medical center, confirmed the attacker has made financial demands in a Tuesday interview with SuperTalk. 

“Our highest concern is getting our services back open to be able to take care of our patients,” Woodward said. “But very quickly right after that is the integrity of our patient data.”

Ransomware, or malicious software that holds computer systems or data hostage in demand for a payment, has increasingly targeted health care organizations with the aim of garnering large payouts by disrupting critical infrastructure, said Dr. Christian Dameff, an associate professor and co-director of the Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity at the University of California San Diego. 

Recovering hospital computer systems is often a labor and time-intensive process that involves rebuilding infrastructure, patching security gaps and ensuring that infiltrators no longer have access to the system, Dameff said. He said the breach at UMMC appears similar to other sophisticated attacks, which typically take more time to rebuild. 

“It’s not uncommon to see a ransomware attack like this last weeks to months,” Dameff said. He added that the impact of a cyberattack can persist for years after the intrusion. 

A 2020 cyberattack on the University of Vermont Medical Center resulted in the academic medical center losing access to its electronic medical record system for 28 days and cost the system about $65 million, according to Vermont Public. Like the attack on UMMC, it led to canceled health appointments and impeded residents’ access to specialized care.

Ashly Thompson is a Forest resident with neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that causes benign tumors to grow on nerve endings. She underwent surgery at UMMC on Feb. 11 to remove tumors on her arms, legs, face and stomach, a procedure that required a skin graft. 

Thompson was scheduled for follow-up appointments Feb. 19 — the first day of the cyberattack — and the following Wednesday, but both appointments were canceled. On Monday, she told Mississippi Today that her skin was growing over her stitches, a complication that has resulted in infection in the past, and that she had run out of pain medication. 

She went to a separate, local emergency department Monday, but staff told her they could not remove the stitches and recommended she return to her surgeon, which she said caused her anxiety because she did not know when she would be able to have her stitches removed or pain medication refilled. 

UMMC contacted Thompson Tuesday morning to inform her she is scheduled for a post-operative care appointment on Friday as a part of the medical center’s effort to schedule time-sensitive appointments. 

The public hospital system is operating a triage line as of Monday to field calls from patients, such as requests for medication refills or postoperative care visits, according to a hospital social media post. The call line, which can be reached at 601-815-0000, will prioritize time-sensitive needs. 

“Teams are working around the clock to restore full operations and help as many people as quickly as we possibly can,” said the hospital’s statement. 

Large-scale attacks can also affect nearby hospitals that aren’t under attack, creating what Dameff called a cyberattack “blast radius.” His 2021 study of a month-long ransomware attack on a single San Diego hospital found that emergency rooms at two nearby hospitals saw higher patient volumes, longer wait times, more stroke patients and more instances where patients left the hospital without seeing a doctor. 

This is not the first time a cyberattack has affected hospitals in Mississippi. In December, Singing River Health System on the Gulf Coast shut down some computer systems after identifying a “potential cyber incident.” In 2023, separate attacks affected Singing River Health System and OCH Regional Medical Center in Starkville.

There are few clear national standards for responding to cyberattacks on health care organizations, Dameff said. Plans for responding to the infiltrations are often not comprehensive enough or drilled in advance, and almost all hospitals struggle during the recovery process. 

Some states have made efforts to increase hospital security against cybersecurity intrusions. In 2024, the New York State Department of Health imposed new cybersecurity regulations for all general hospitals. Maine lawmakers are currently considering legislation that would require hospitals to develop plans for cybersecurity attacks after cyberattacks last summer shut down several Maine hospitals, according to the Maine Wire. 

A comprehensive plan to respond to cybersecurity attacks requires both preventive measures and preparation for the worst, Dameff said. 

“We need to spend time and money trying to prevent these attacks,” he said. “But, we have to prepare for when we go down, because that is inevitable.”

Cyberattackers frequently employ “double extortion” tactics, meaning they demand payment not only to restore access to a hospital’s computer system but also to prevent the release of stolen data, Dameff said. Paying the ransom does not necessarily accelerate the recovery of computer systems, he said, yet organizations sometimes choose to pay in order to avert a potential data breach.

Federal agencies, including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, have been assisting UMMC in the recovery process. 

UMMC facilities include seven hospitals and 35 clinics statewide, and it operates the state’s only Level 1 trauma center. Roughly 10,000 people work for UMMC, making the health care provider one of the state’s largest employers, and UMMC’s annual budget amounts to about $2 billion. 

Emergency departments at UMMC hospitals in Jackson, Grenada, Madison County and Holmes County remain open, according to a Saturday statement from the hospital. 

The shutdown also disrupted county health departments, which rely on the same electronic health record system. Although the system was taken offline as a precaution, health departments continue to accept patients as usual, said Mississippi State Department of Health spokesperson Greg Flynn.

Christopher Boose, the subject of an October Mississippi Today article whose arm was amputated after he was allegedly denied timely treatment for a broken bone in a Mississippi prison, has settled a federal lawsuit with VitalCore Health Strategies.

Boose, 40, in June sued the Kansas-based company contracted to provide prison health care and reached out to Mississippi Today after the outlet began publishing its Behind Bars, Beyond Care series. The series has documented alleged denial of health care for people in Mississippi prisons. Boose and his attorneys say his story is a case study of how routine injuries in prison escalate into permanent harm.

For Boose, a one-year sentence for a Drug Court infraction became a lifetime sentence as an amputee after he fell off his bunk bed and developed sepsis at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, the Newton County man said in interviews and in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. Southern District of Mississippi. Boose said he was denied treatment for a week, as sepsis spread through his arm and doctors had to amputate it after he almost died.

READ MORE: Cruel and unusual? Untreated broken arm in a Mississippi prison results in amputation

A VitalCore spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the settlement or the issues raised in the lawsuit.

Boose sought $5 million in damages in his initial complaint. He said he signed a nondisclosure agreement that precludes him from revealing how much he received from the settlement. But the 40-year-old Newton County man, who has been unable to work since leaving prison missing an arm, said the settlement was a relief. 

“I’m blessed,” Boose said.

In his lawsuit against VitalCore, Boose argued that systemic neglect gave way to “cruel and unusual punishment,” which violates the Eighth Amendment under the Constitution.

Based on recent legal data, Boose’s settlement could be an outlier. In 2024, Business Insider examined nearly 1,500 cases in federal appellate courts that involved Eighth Amendment claims. The news outlet found that only 1% of prisoner claims succeed, with almost half failing to meet the strict deliberate-indifference standard. 

In February of 2023, Boose, a Mississippi State University graduate and former Wells Fargo employee, was arrested for violating the terms of a Drug Court program. He was sentenced in Newton County Circuit Court to complete alcohol and drug treatment in prison, a sentence designed to be a one-year rehabilitative term, his attorney said.

But when Boose arrived for his sentence, it took months before he received any of the drug treatment mandated by the judge, he said in an interview.

On Dec. 15, 2023, Boose took a shower and returned to his cot in “quickbed” — a unit where inmates sleep on bunk beds in dormitory-style housing. While climbing up to his bed, he slipped and fell onto the floor, his side bearing the brunt of the impact.

Over the next week after his fall, Boose’s arm started to swell. He said he repeatedly asked for help, to no avail. As the swelling worsened, he periodically lost consciousness, prompting other inmates to ask guards for help on his behalf. 

Boose believes he would have died had it not been for a routine sweep by an officer with a dog searching for drugs. The officer saw the state of Boose’s arm and urged prison officials to take him to the hospital. Once there, doctors found “massive tissue and muscle damage from the bacterial infection” caused by the delay in treating Boose’s broken arm, his attorneys wrote in the complaint. His arm was amputated at the shoulder.

House Corrections Chairwoman Becky Currie, a Republican from Brookhaven, has highlighted Mississippi Today’s report on Boose at legislative hearings and while advocating for House Bill 1740. The bill would require prisons to give prisoners access to communal kiosks where they could request medical attention. That bill died, but other measures to ensure prisoners receive necessary medical care are still alive in the 2026 legislative session.

“We don’t want people in a jail cell for one year to fall off a bunk accidentally, get no help and lose his arm,” Currie said. “It’s time for this to stop.” 

Introducing, Mississippi Explained: our weekly news quiz to test your knowledge of this week’s news 🧠

Lawmakers have until March 3 for committees to consider general bills and constitutional amendments that originated in the other chamber. Among the bills pending:

• Senate Bill 2522, which would create a program to help cover tuition and books for students seeking to earn an associate degree or credential that could lead to in-demand careers.
• Senate Bill 2445, which would require audits for community mental health centers and eliminate an office that provides independent oversight of the Department of Mental Health.

Quiz question: At what stage of the lawmaking process do most Mississippi legislative bills fail to advance?

Email your answer to newsletter@mississippitoday.org with your first name and last initial, and we’ll shout you out in the next quiz post on Monday, March 2.

Think you know the news? Take more quizzes like this one: sign up for The Today, our daily newsletter, and never miss a chance to test your knowledge.

Sens. Kamesha Mumford of Jackson and Justin Pope of Pope (yes, Pope) share their insight and experiences as freshmen lawmakers, at the halfway point of their first legislative session. The two say they’ve quickly realized legislating centers around relationships made at the Capitol and how one works with others.

When Mississippi officials informed Mary Anderson that her uncle died in prison, they told her he had suffered a heart attack.

“They mentioned nothing about anything else,” she said.

But now, the FBI is investigating the 2025 death of Melvin Cancer at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility as a homicide, and the guards as alleged perpetrators.

It is the first time in at least the last decade that officials have confirmed that an incarcerated person was killed by a use of force by prison security.

Information uncovered this month by Mississippi Today and The Marshall Project-Jackson revealed he died from blunt force trauma.

Cancer died shortly after being “involved in an altercation with Correctional Officers” at the Rankin County facility, according to a recent report the state Department of Public Safety sent to the U.S. Justice Department.

The death comes after fellow prisoners repeatedly complained about the 53-year-old’s lack of personal hygiene. On Jan. 22, 2025, several corrections officers went into Cancer’s cell to take him to the shower.

“He was transported to another building, where he collapsed in the shower area,” the report stated. “Cancer was transported to a medical facility where he was pronounced deceased.” 

Cancer had been serving eight years in prison after pleading guilty to a 2019 aggravated assault in Hinds County.

After prison officials’ initial mention of cardiac arrest as the reason for Cancer’s death, Anderson heard from other incarcerated people that her uncle was taken into the shower and beaten, she said. “The whole story started changing,” Anderson said. 

Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said Feb. 19 in a statement that, “The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation has turned its files and findings over to the FBI regarding the case involving the in-custody death of Melvin Cancer.” 

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Corrections declined to comment on the death, citing an ongoing investigation. 

The federal probe into Cancer’s killing comes after a joint investigation by Mississippi Today, The Marshall Project-Jackson, Clarion Ledger, Hattiesburg American and The Mississippi Link found that prison understaffing and gang violence likely contributed to the killings of nearly 50 incarcerated people, including Cancer, since 2015. Only eight cases led to criminal convictions.

Of the 45 killed, 20 died by blunt force trauma. These include beatings at the hands of cellmates and other incarcerated people.

Bailey Martin, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety, said the bureau has only investigated one death caused by use of force by guards within state prisons since 2015.

Within the past decade, federal prosecutors have convicted at least seven former Mississippi Department of Corrections staffers for assaults on incarcerated people. Melvin Hilson, a former deputy warden with the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman’s K-9 division, was convicted and sentenced to 24 months in prison in 2022 after beating a man who was waiting to see a medical provider in 2016. 

Two former prison officers and a case manager were convicted in the 2019 beating of a woman at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. According to court documents, they punched, kicked and beat the woman with a pepper spray canister as she lay in a fetal position. Three former officers were also convicted in a 2016 beating at the same prison.

Following the news team’s 2025 investigation, state Rep. Becky Currie, a Republican from Brookhaven, introduced a prison death oversight bill that passed the House unanimously on Feb. 10 and is now before the state Senate Corrections Committee. House Bill 1739 would require that an oversight task force review the deaths of state prisoners and make recommendations to prevent future deaths.

At least eight men have died in MDOC custody this year, according to news reports. 

Currie said earlier this month that prisoners often die under opaque circumstances, with no explanation from prison officials.

“One of the things I want us to look at is the deaths that happen. We had three deaths in the prison system last week. They were in their 20s and 30s,” Currie said. “Whatever it is that the inmate is dying at 20 and 30 years old every week from, this task force will look into that.”

Mississippi Today’s Michael Goldberg contributed to this report.

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for its newsletters, and follow on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.

A former adviser to President Donald Trump took his first stab Monday at questioning Mississippi’s former welfare director, the federal government’s star witness in an ongoing trial of a former pro wrestler accused of theft. 

Eric Herschmann, the Austin-based ex-Trump adviser who recently took over as lead attorney for defendant Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr., didn’t grill John Davis so much as paint the disgraced ex-welfare director as a well-meaning bureaucrat surrounded by enablers. 

Then-Gov. Phil Bryant nominated Davis to lead the Mississippi Department of Human Services in 2016 and the agency racked up $100 million in questioned purchases in a 2019 audit. Davis pleaded guilty to state and federal conspiracy charges in 2022 and he awaits sentencing as he cooperates with prosecutors in DiBiase’s case.

Herschmann asked Davis about requests he received from Gov. Bryant’s wife, Deborah Bryant, such as for help building a palliative care facility – a project that planners initially considered funding with welfare dollars and naming after the first lady but was later taken on by University of Mississippi Medical Center and named after a former state lawmaker. The lawyer evoked scenes of lawmakers calling on Davis to discuss ways to improve their communities.

“Sometimes you would listen to what they said?” Herschmann asked, “Because you thought it was the right thing to do?”

Yes, Davis responded, and Herschmann continued: “You always tried to do the right thing?”

“I don’t want to sit here and act like I’m an innocent person,” Davis said. “I tried to do my very best.”

Herschmann asked if Davis ever met alone with people who sought his agency’s support, and Davis said he always had attorneys in tow. “Because that way you have a witness,” Herschmann added.

In the government’s opening statements in the DiBiase trial last month, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Meynardie called Davis the “big villain in this case.” Davis was instrumental in pushing $3 million in federal funds from his agency to DiBiase through what prosecutors call  “sham contracts,” while DiBiase argues he was a lawful contractor. 

DiBiase, a WWE wrestler-turned-motivational-speaker, is facing 13 criminal counts including conspiracy, wire fraud, theft of federal funds and money laundering in a broader alleged scheme to raid the state’s federal public assistance agency. 

Meynardie said DiBiase showered affection on Davis, and in turn, Davis showered him with taxpayer money, most of which flowed through agreements with two nonprofits selected to privatize the state’s welfare delivery system. The prosecutor also said one of the nonprofit directors, Christie Webb, will testify that she only inked the deals with DiBiase under duress, and that when she finally pushed back, she was punished.

Webb hasn’t testified yet, but Davis rejected this telling on the stand Monday. Funding cuts to Webb’s organization were due to a government shutdown and other funding shortfalls, Davis said, and he never intended to retaliate against her. Davis also said Webb had secretly recorded him.

When the jig was up in June of 2019, Davis said the first call he got was from Republican Gov. Bryant, who summoned Davis to his office. Davis testified Monday that the governor told him the people of Mississippi would be disappointed, because they’d thought they’d had a “great Christian guy leading DHS.”

After that meeting, auditors began digging into Davis’ dealings, starting with his work with a couple of wrestlers – DiBiase and his younger brother Brett DiBiase, who pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge in 2023.

But Davis testified that he never received a kickback. Sure, the nonprofit directors once gave him a $500 gift card for Christmas, but “you weren’t soliciting” Herschmann asked, and Davis said no. 

The older DiBiase brother’s trial, which began Jan. 6, had a five-week delay after the lead defense attorney, Scott Gilbert, experienced a health issue on Jan. 14 while cross examining Davis. DiBiase’s team asked for a mistrial, and U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves rejected the request. 

Herschmann, who joined DiBiase’s case shortly before trial began, is familiar with the facts of the larger welfare scandal because he represents retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre in the welfare department’s ongoing civil lawsuit over the alleged misspending.

DiBiase primarily retained Herschmann to examine one witness, former deputy state auditor Stephanie Palmertree, whom the attorney has repeatedly alleged fabricated evidence to the government – which her lawyer denied. After Gilbert’s medical incident, Reeves appointed Herschmann as a court-funded fulltime lawyer for DiBiase.

Gilbert, who is seeking election for a circuit court judge seat in Rankin and Madison counties, was not in court Monday. Herschmann again argued for a mistrial, saying he had scheduling conflicts and that it would be impossible for another attorney to become familiar with the case any time soon. There are, after all, at least 6 million pages of evidence associated with the case.

“This case is pregnant with text messages. There’s text messages everywhere,” Reeves said at one point, referencing a dispute between parties over the formatting differences between documents gathered by each side.

In response to the defense’s mistrial attempt, the prosecution noted how many resources the court had already used to bring the case this far.

“Starting over is a big deal, and it’s going to be very hard to pick another jury,” U.S. Department of Justice trial attorney Adrienne Rosen said. 

Reeves determined Herschmann and Gilbert’s co-counsel, Sidney Lampton, could adequately represent DiBiase for the remainder of trial beginning Monday. 

The prosecution said it hoped to finish with its witnesses by the end of this week, at which point the defense will have its turn. There could be more hiccups before the widely anticipated resolution of the DiBiase case – the only criminal case within the welfare scandal to go to trial so far. Herschmann said he had a planned religious trip to Israel next week, and Reeves is scheduled to be out the second week of March. 

Lawyers have said roughly 100 potential witnesses could be called. So far, the prosecution has only reached its fourth witness, Davis. He is expected to return to the stand Tuesday.

Two weekends into it, the college baseball season is but a puppy. Nevertheless, we can make at least one observation:

Our Mississippi teams have really high ceilings. They can play ball. Omaha is not out of the question for any of the three.

Mississippi State, Ole Miss and Southern Miss, all nationally ranked in all polls, are a combined  22-1. State and Ole Miss are both 8-0, albeit against lesser competition. Southern Miss, playing top shelf foes early, is 6-1, has won six straight and this past weekend won the prestigious Round Rock Classic, knocking off Purdue, traditional powerhouse Oregon State and Baylor on consecutive days.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

State readies for big weekend

Brian O’Connor’s first Diamond Dogs came into the season with sky-high expectations and have done nothing to dash those. Led by slugging third baseman Ace Reese, the Bulldogs are hitting .341 as a team with eight home runs through eight games.

For his part, Reese is hitting .500 with two dingers and seven doubles. Perhaps the more pertinent news is that State pitching had one a much better job of throwing strikes in the early going, fanning 101 batters while walking only 22, a nearly 5-to-1 ratio. Opponents are hitting only .204

All this comes with this caveat: Troy, a traditionally strong program off to a disappointing 3-4 start, is by far the best foe the Bulldogs have played. State has sandwiched weekend sweeps of Hofstra and Delaware around midweek victories over Troy and Alcorn State.

The competition level rises exponentially this weekend when State goes to the Amegy Bank College Baseball Series at Arlington, Texas, to face Arizona State, Virginia Tech and No. 1 ranked UCLA on consecutive days. We will know much more then.

And then, two days after squaring off against No. 1, the Bulldogs will play Southern Miss in Hattiesburg. We’ll know even more.

State opens the SEC season March 13 at Arkansas.

Ole Miss has nation’s best albeit-too-early RPI

Badly underrated (at least in my opinion) in preseason polls, Ole Miss has started fast and even ranks No. 1 in much-too-early power ratings (ratings percentage index, or RPI). The Rebels have weekend sweeps of Nevada and a good Missouri State program and two mid-week wins over Arkansas State and Jackson State.

Similarly to State, the competition gets a lot better fast. The Rebels will play Baylor, Ohio State and Coastal Carolina in the Bruce Bolt College Classic this weekend in Houston. Yes, we’ll know a lot more about the Rebels, too.

What we know for certain now is that Ole Miss has left-handed ace Hunter Elliott back for Friday nights, and if he’s not the most accomplished college baseball lefty in the land, he’s in the first sentence of any discussion. 

What we also know is that the Rebels will continue to live and die with the long ball. You wouldn’t want to play them in Home Run Derby.

Ole Miss has already hit 15 dingers, led by Judd Uttermark’s six. That’s right: six, in eight games. The beer showers are coming early and often in Oxford. 

The Uber-strong Uttermark, who hit 22 homers last year, crushed one over the left-field wall Sunday into a howling north wind, a rare feat at Swayze Field. As Mike Bianco put it, “When he hit it I just stood there. Judd is a little different human being than most who play here.”

Ole Miss begins its SEC schedule March 13 at Texas.

Southern Miss sweeps at Round Rock

Chris Ostrander’s Golden Eagles lost their season opener to Cal-Santa Barbara and their All-American ace Jackson Flora. Since then, Southern Miss has reeled off six straight wins against formidable foes. At Round Rock, the Eagles toppled Purdue 5-4, No. 11 Oregon State (three national championships in the last two decades) 9-4 and Baylor 5-1. Five, if not all six, of the Eagles’ victories have come against teams likely to be playing in the post-season.

The early hitting star has been senior Joey Urban, who has used the whole field, from foul line to foul line, for a .458 average (with two homers and a triple) against mostly top-notch pitching. He leads the team in batting average, hits, slugging percentage and walks.

As Joe Paul, Southern Miss president and perhaps its No. 1 baseball fan, puts it: “Joey Urban is a professional hitter.”

The Golden Eagles are deep, both in the everyday lineup and on the mound. One stat Ostrander, a pitching guru, probably doesn’t like is that pitching has allowed 25 walks and hit nine batters in just the seven games. But, again, you have to consider the competition, which won’t get any easier any time soon.

Southern Miss was hosting Alabama on Monday night before heading to always-tough Louisiana Tech for a three-game weekend series, and then returning home to play Mississippi State on March 3. 

All these bouts against heavyweights should have the Eagles more than ready when the Sun Belt Conference season begins March 13 at Arkansas State. 

And there’s good baseball elsewhere…

Division II powerhouse Delta State has fired off to a 9-2 start, 6-0 in conference play, including a three-game road sweep rival Union University this past weekend. Coach Rodney Batts almost completely overhauled the Statesmen roster, bringing in 28 new players. Among those is relief pitcher Dawson Muenzenmay, formerly of Northwest Rankin High School and Hinds Community College, who has two victories and two saves in his first five appearances. He has not allowed a run and struck out 12 in eight innings.

William Carey has won five straight and 11 of its first 16 games under Bobby Halford, the winningest coach in Mississippi college baseball history. 

Pre-season SWAC favorite Jackson State, 3-4, faces an unusually busy week with a Tuesday double-header against Tougaloo and four games this weekend (Alcorn State on Friday, Mississippi Valley and UNC-Ashville on Saturday, and UNC-Ashville again on Sunday.) No doubt, the six-game week will stress Coach Omar Johnson’s pitching staff, which has struggled thus far.

A House bill aimed at increasing public school accountability in Mississippi awaits consideration in the Senate. 

House Bill 1234, authored by Republican Rep. Zachary Grady of D’Iberville, would require public schools to publish data in a dashboard on the Mississippi Department of Education’s website. 

Some of the required data would include monthly revenue and sources, vendor contracts, truancy and absenteeism rates, number of long-term substitute teachers and student-to-teacher ratios. Schools already regularly provide much of this information to the state education agency.

The bill to ramp up oversight of public schools comes as some lawmakers say they’re unwilling to impose extra accountability measures for private schools, even if they were to receive state money through school choice programs. 

READ MORE: School choice debate: Should private schools have to meet state standards if they take public money?

Proponents of the bill say that Mississippi public schools, in light of recent district takeovers and missing financial audits, need more oversight. But House Bill 1234 has drawn criticism from public school advocates, including Nancy Loome, leader of The Parents’ Campaign. She said the bill is especially egregious given House leaders’ stance opposing accountability measures for private schools and state leaders’ scrutiny of school administrative costs.

“This will be a big administrative cost,” she said. 

Under the proposed bill, districts would have to publish this information in the dashboard by September 30, 2026.

Districts that fail to report the data timely could have state funding withheld, according to the bill. 

House Bill 1234 has been referred to the Senate Education Committee, the same committee that killed a similar bill last year.

After numerous hearings over the last year, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate, as acting chief executive officer of Jackson’s historically troubled water and sewer system, granted a 12% rate increase sought by the third-party manager he appointed. 

Depending on usage, residential customers’ bills may increase by an average of $8 to $10. The average bill for a household of four is currently a little under $80 a month, according to JXN Water. 

In the Monday order, Wingate granted JXN Water’s requested hike while also ordering the utility to pursue some of the alternative collection methods proposed by Jackson officials and other opponents of the rate increase. Opponents had called the increase unaffordable for a city where 1 in 4 residents live in poverty. 

But the rate increase is necessary, Wingate wrote, to cover the water utility’s $1.2 million monthly shortfall. 

“We, the Court and the citizenry of Jackson, nonetheless, are in a tragic Catch-22,” he wrote. “Without the revenue from paying customers today, JXN Water cannot obtain the resources to fix the billing system and identify the ‘free riders’ tomorrow.”

In a press release, Jackson Mayor John Horhn noted a delay in federal funds reallocated to JXN Water last year is forcing the city to pay $1.5 million in bond debt service. 

“Our position is simple,” Horhn said. “Jackson residents deserve a water system that is funded fairly, not on the backs of the people who can least afford it. We will meet our legal obligations, but we will also keep pushing for solutions that use existing tools like better collections, honest billing, and already-approved federal funds before asking every household to pay more each month.”  

Wingate wrote in the order he was also troubled that rate-paying customers were shouldering the utility’s quest for financial stability. So he directed his court-appointed manager, Ted Henifin, to pursue several “needed structural reforms.” 

“Where a system is operating in violation of federal mandates, the remedy is compliance, not delay,” he wrote. 

The potential reforms include expediting the billing of 4,000 unmetered properties throughout the city of Jackson, opening an in-person service site where residents can discuss their bills, creating a publicly available “sample bill” to help Jacksonians understand their charges, and enhancing the debt collection of more than $74 million in outstanding arrears. 

Wingate also directed Henifin to study whether it is possible to pursue tiered billing, so that customers can save on their water bill by using less water. JXN Water has previously said this could pose issues for renters who live in apartment buildings with a single meter. 

In an effort to help Jacksonians afford the rate increase, JXN Water’s spokesperson Aisha Carson said the utility is opening more kiosks throughout the city where residents can pay without added service fees. There is already a kiosk at the Jackson Medical Mall. 

JXN Water has been financially buoyed by $150 million in federal subsidies since it was created in the wake of the city’s 2022 water crisis. The dissipation of those funds was one reason Henifin began arguing for the rate increase. 

Some have questioned how Henifin spent the federal subsidies. Wingate also wrote that he is going to conduct a “forensic analysis” of JXN Water’s expenditures. 

READ MORE: Shutoffs loomed in third year of receivership. Can Jackson afford its own water system?