Remarkable Ole Miss freshman running back Quinshon Judkins won the C Spire Conerly Trophy Tuesday night and many Jackson State fans – and some media – are calling it a travesty.
If the tables were turned – if JSU’s Shadeur Sanders had won – Ole Miss fans and probably some media would be outraged.
Rick Cleveland
That’s just the way it is for individual awards in the sporting world.
This column comes with this disclaimer: I voted for Judkins. It was a difficult choice. Shedeur Sanders, a player I have much admired and praised often in this column, led an undefeated Jackson State team to the SWAC championship. He completed 70% of his passes for more than 3,000 yards and 32 touchdowns (with only six interceptions). As his daddy, the coach, said, “As Shedeur goes, we go.” JSU has gone far.
In the run-up to the Conerly I heard many Ole Miss (and State) fans say something like, “Yeah, Sanders is obviously good, but look at the competition he plays against. He’s not throwing for all those yards against Alabama and LSU.”
Sanders can’t help that. Steve McNair, Jerry Rice and Walter Payton didn’t play against Alabama and LSU either. I voted for McNair and Rice to win the Heisman Trophy and would have voted for Payton if I had had a vote back when Walter played at JSU. It is up to the individual voter to decide how a player’s talents translate to a higher level of competition. I believed both Rice and McNair were the most outstanding college players in the country — at any level — when they played. Doug Flutie won the Heisman instead of Rice. Rashaad Salaam won instead of McNair. You decide who was the better player in either case. I stand by my votes.
The Heisman is supposed to go to the most outstanding player in the country and the Conerly is supposed to go to the most outstanding player in the state. I voted for Judkins because I thought he was Mississippi’s most outstanding player. In my mind, it was close. How close? Had Sanders won, I would not have been surprised, nor disappointed. Do I think Shedeur Sanders would be a great player in the SEC? Yes, I do.
But again, having to make a choice between the two, I thought Judkins was the more outstanding player. Blending quickness, speed, power and toughness, Judkins ran for 1,476 yards and right at six yards per carry. He scored 16 rushing touchdowns and another on a pass reception. He ran for 214 yards against Texas A&M, 205 yards against Arkansas, 135 yards against Alabama, 139 against Auburn and 111 against LSU. He led the SEC in rushing and touchdowns. Before doing all that, he had to beat out Zach Evans, a former five-star recruit who ran for over seven yards per carry in two seasons at TCU.
Ole Miss has been playing football for 129 years. Nobody in school history has ever run for so many yards – not Deuce McAllister, not Joe Gunn, not Charlie Flowers, not anyone.
As I wrote recently, Judkins reminds me most of the great Walter Payton. That is not a comparison I make flippantly. He runs with similar relentlessness. When people tackle him, it hurts them worse than it hurts him. He is just 19 years old. Barring injury and with continued hard work, he can become one of the greatest backs ever.
Shedeur Sanders, who will lead his team in the SWAC Championship game Saturday, was terrific as a freshman, better as a sophomore. In my mind, Judkins was a whisker better. For that matter, Mississippi State’s Emmanuel Forbes, the third Conerly finalist, might have been the best cornerback in the country. And there were other strong candidates — a testament to the quality of college football played in the Magnolia State.
Embattled prosecutor Doug Evans, who tried Curtis Flowers six times for murder and saw his convictions overturned on appeal, lost his bid to become judge for the 5th Circuit Court to Winona Municipal Court Judge Alan “Devo” Lancaster.
With about 85% of precincts reporting in Tuesday’s runoff, Evans, district attorney for the 5th circuit, received about 30% of the vote and Lancaster won with 70% of the vote, according to unofficial election results.
“I am truly humbled by the overwhelming support I received during the campaign,” Lancaster wrote on his campaign Facebook page Tuesday night. “I want to thank everyone for not only their votes, but the kind words, encouragement, and prayers. I look forward to being your new Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit.”
Lancaster is a partner at the Lancaster Taylor Law Firm in Winona. He has been a municipal judge in Winona since 2010 and attorney for Montgomery County Economic Development since 1986.
The Circuit Court district includes Attala, Carroll, Choctaw, Montgomery, Grenada, Webster and Winston counties. The winner will succeed Judge George Mitchell, who died in April.
Lancaster and Evans were the top two vote-getters to emerge from a five-way election on Nov. 8. Other candidates in the race were Ackerman attorney Kasey Burney Young, Kosciusko attorney Doug Crosby and Louisville attorney Zachary Madison.
Evans, who has been the district attorney of the district for over 30 years, could have become a judge in the same district where the U.S. Supreme Court said he prevented Black people from serving as jurors, including in Flowers’ case.
Evans first tried Flowers in 1997 for the killings of four people at the Tardy Furniture store in Winona.
He secured four death penalty convictions for Flowers, but those were overturned by state and federal courts. In two trials, a jury didn’t reach a unanimous verdict.
The U.S Supreme Court overturned Flowers’ conviction in 2019.
In September 2020, Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office, which replaced Evans as lead prosecutor in Flowers’ case, dropped charges against Flowers after he spent 23 years in prison, most of it on death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
In 2021, Flowers sued Evans in federal court for misconduct, which Evans has denied. U.S. District Court Judge Neal Biggers Jr. ordered the case stayed until May 1, 2023.
Just across the Mississippi River bridge from Natchez are the Louisiana towns of Vidalia, Ferriday and other communities where there are people who have health care coverage through the expansion of Medicaid.
Those Louisianans, if they are in the correct Medicaid health care network, can obtain medical services across the bridge in Mississippi at Merit Natchez hospital. People in Mississippi, of course, also can receive health care at Merit, one of the largest health care providers in southwest Mississippi.
But those Mississippians cannot take advantage of Medicaid expansion to help pay their medical bills because Mississippi, unlike Louisiana, does not have Medicaid expansion.
“Expanding Medicaid was Gov. (John Bell) Edwards’ first official act when he took office in 2016,” Laura Leist, a spokeswoman for the Democratic governor, told Mississippi Today via email. “He often says it’s the easiest big decision he’s made as governor.”
Kay Ketchings, a spokesperson for the Natchez hospital, said Merit will work with Louisianans who are not in network to provide them medical care as it will with Mississippians who have no access to Medicaid expansion. But Merit Natchez, like other Mississippi hospitals, have a difficult time collecting payment from many poor people who are not covered by Medicaid expansion. They often do not have the money to pay, leaving hospitals to eat those costs or pass the costs on to other patients.
“Medicaid covers the most vulnerable residents in Mississippi …,” Ketchings said. “It is an important step toward advancing the overall health of Mississippians because it provides sustainable coverage for continued access to preventive care and physician assistance with chronic conditions. Like others in healthcare, we are supportive of efforts to expand coverage for vulnerable Mississippians.”
Louisiana is one of the few Southern states to expand Medicaid. Medicaid provides health care coverage for primarily the working poor who earn up to 138% of the federal poverty level or about $18,750 for an individual. The federal government pays 90% of the cost plus substantial incentives for the states that have not expanded Medicaid to do so.
South Dakota voters earlier this month voted to expand Medicaid. Now 11 states, mostly in the Southeast, have not taken advantage of the expansion as is offered as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
A map of the states that have not expanded Medicaid looks much the same as a footprint of the NCAA’s Southeastern Conference with four notable exceptions – Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky and Missouri. Those four states, including two contiguous to Mississippi, have expanded Medicaid.
Of the 11 states that have not expanded Medicaid, seven have schools in the Southeastern Conference, and all seven have higher percentages of their population uninsured or lacking health care coverage than does the nation at a whole.
The four SEC states that have expanded Medicaid have higher percentages of their population with health insurance coverage than those that have not expanded Medicaid.
“Today, more than 747,000 of Louisiana’s working poor have access to health care, including mammograms and other preventive heath screenings, mental health resources and substance abuse services,” said Leist. “Louisiana’s uninsured rate has dropped from 22.7% in 2015 prior to expansion to just 9.4%, and rural hospitals that were on the verge of closing before expansion have been able to stay open and continue serving their communities.”
In Mississippi, the Hospital Association, with many of its member medical centers in financial straits, is one of the most vocal supporters of Medicaid expansion. Mississippi’s State Health Officer Daniel Edney has said that 38, or 54%, of the state’ rural hospitals are in danger of closing. Hospital Association officials say Medicaid expansion would provide a boost to those struggling hospitals by decreasing the amount of uncompensated care they deliver.
But Mississippi political leaders have blocked efforts to expand Medicaid. They have provided a litany of reasons for opposing the expansion, ranging from the state cannot afford it to not wanting to expand welfare programs in the state.
Susan Dunlap, a spokesperson for Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, said Medicaid expansion has been a positive in the Bluegrass state.
“Costs to the state have matched what was anticipated,” she said. “Expansion of this program resulted in economic growth through increased state and local tax revenue, the creation of new jobs and additional (health care) provider revenue.”
She said the expansion has resulted in people being able to get medical care, including important but non-life threatening procedures, such as knee replacements, shoulder surgeries and tonsillectomies.
In three Southern states, Louisiana, Arkansas and Kentucky, Medicaid was expanded under Democratic governors. But in those states, the expansion has been largely supported by Republican-controlled legislatures that have not tried to repeal the program. And in Arkansas, it has been continued under a Republican governor. And Arkansas-Gov. elect Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former spokesperson for President Donald Trump, has not advocated for the repeal of that state’s version of Medicaid expansion. In Arkansas, the state uses the federal Medicaid expansion matching funds to purchase private insurance for those who otherwise would be eligible for the Medicaid expansion program.
“They continue to use it. They continue to take down federal dollars. It has been a good thing for everybody, including the state, the patients and the providers.”
The states with the highest uninsured rates in the nation are primarily Southern states that have not expanded Medicaid. Texas is the highest at 18.4%, while Georgia and Florida are at 13.2% followed by Mississippi at 13%, according to a recent report by the Health Foundation.
The national uninsured rate is 9.2%, according to the same study. The Southern states that have expanded Medicaid all have uninsured rates near or below the national average. Kentucky’s uninsured rate is 6.4%.
Uninsured rates across the national have declined significantly since the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act that also includes the health care exchange that allows people to buy insurance coverage in most cases with the help of a government subsidy.
But there are people who do not qualify for health insurance policies through the health care exchange because their income is below a certain level. The architects of the Affordable Care Act envisioned they would be covered through Medicaid expansion, not contemplating there would be states like Mississippi that opted not to participate in the program.
PEARL – A forensic clinic serving sexual assault survivors in central Mississippi has created a new evidence collection kit that aims to help survivors, law enforcement and prosecutors.
Bridge Forensic Clinic, which is operated by the Center for Violence Prevention, consulted with forensic experts, law enforcement and nurses to create a new evidence kit – commonly called a rape kit – which hasn’t been updated in over 15 years, according to the clinic.
A sexual assault survivor can choose to undergo a forensic medical exam to collect evidence, which can be used in a case and prosecution. A medical worker preserves evidence such as clothing and blood and photographs the person’s body for signs of bruising or injuries.
“Much of the healing of victims comes from results in the justice system,” said Sandy Middleton, executive director for Center for Violence Prevention.
Beth McCord, operations manager of the Bridge Forensic Clinic, led the process to update the rape kit.
The previous kit had 21 steps. The new one has nine. Some steps were able to be eliminated or consolidated due to changes in the lab that processes evidence from the kits and how the clinic’s nurses work with survivors.
“We don’t want to create any more trauma or cause any more trauma to them by doing this exam,” she said. “This exam is for (the survivor) as well as the law enforcement. We’re trying to help them provide these samples with hopes to get DNA back.”
McCord said the goal is for the kits to be manufactured by the end of the year and available for distribution in early 2023.
Bridge Forensic Clinic has three sexual assault nurse examiners including McCord who collect evidence for rape kits. The Center for Violence Prevention also has relationships with five local hospital emergency rooms, allowing SANE nurses to collect kit evidence there.
Last year, the clinic’s SANE nurses served about 230 people, which includes collecting evidence for rape kits, McCord said.
Between 2019 and 2021, statewide there were prosecutions for 20 rapes, 167 statutory rapes and 481 sexual assaults, according to statistics provided by the center.
Middleton said these numbers show Mississippi does not do a good job at prosecuting these kinds of cases and that there are likely more survivors who chose not to seek medical attention or report to the police.
In response to a continued rise in sexual assaults and a lack of prosecution of those crimes in the state, Bridge Forensic Clinic organized a kit review committee with the goal of making changes to the rape kit.
Evidence from a rape kit can be used if a survivor chooses to report a sexual assault to police. Law enforcement will bring the kit to the state crime lab for analysis. McCord said the wait can be between six to 12 months for results from a rape kit.
Nearly half of all states in the country have a backlog in testing and processing rape kits, according to End the Backlog.
That backlog exists for a number of reasons, including a lack of policies and protocols to test kits, a lack of training or gaps about sexual assault, a lack of resources and whether the perpatrator’s identity is known and outdated or unclear lab policies, according to the organization.
On Tuesday, McCord and Middleton said it is difficult to know how many untested rape kits there are in Mississippi because there is not a central place where they are stored. Kits are often housed in evidence storage of police departments and sometimes at hospitals.
“It’s hard to know where our backlogs are because we don’t know where our kits are,” Middleton said.
Missisisppi and Maine are the only states that have not had comprehensive rape kit reform, according to a map by End the Backlog.
In the past several years, state lawmakers have introduced legislation about testing rape kits, but those bills failed.
Middleton hopes to see legislation that supports use of the new kits and ways for the center to continue to help survivors in the upcoming legislative session.
Mississippi Today is seeking an experienced reporter to join our health team.
The Community Health Reporter will be a cornerstone member of our health team. Launched earlier this year, the team serves Mississippians with access to data, fact-finding and dissemination of in-depth and explainer public health journalism. This team reports on how the health care system works, and in many cases does not, for Mississippians. We dig deep on how health care providers, hospitals, insurers, governments and consumers are interconnected and impacted, with an eye for equity and access. Our readership includes thought leaders and everyday Mississippians who need accurate and easy-to-understand information on public health matters.
The ideal journalist will be someone with reporting experience who understands the health care considerations of rural and suburban Mississippians alike. This candidate will serve on a four-person team — including an editor, two reporters and a photojournalist — to focus on daily/breaking news stories as well as deeper-dive investigative features, to explore our state’s complicated public health framework and bring some much-needed transparency to its processes.
Mississippi is a gold mine for eager journalists. In this position, you’ll travel the state and meet a diverse range of residents. Between the state’s abortion ban that ultimately led the highest court in the nation to strike down Roe v. Wade, a massive insurance dispute between the state’s largest hospital and largest insurer, an ongoing political battle over Medicaid expansion, and the state’s long-standing, poor public health outcomes, the stories to be told here are limitless.
Expectations:
Work with a small team of journalists who are focused solely on health in Mississippi.
Develop your own health story ideas as well as collaborate closely with a small team of like-minded journalists
Get people to talk, finding willing sources and protect them while telling sensitive and timely stories
Build trust: Many people who have been impacted by poor health services in Mississippi have been victims of predatory actions from other journalists or media outlets. This will require empathy, patience and savvy.
Work with our Audience Team and data and visual journalists to create compelling story presentations.
It’s a plus if you have:
Mississippi reporting experience.
Experience writing a combination of both longform stories and investigations.
A demonstrated ability to work quickly under tight deadlines.
A knowledge and understanding of nonprofit journalism.
Experience working in a collaborative newsroom setting.
What you’ll get:
The opportunity to work alongside award-winning journalists and make significant contributions to Mississippi’s only fully staffed, nonprofit, nonpartisan digital news and information source.
Highly competitive salary with medical insurance, and options for vision and dental insurance.
Cell phone stipend.
29 days paid time off.
Up to 12 weeks of parental family leave, with return-to-work flexibility.
Simple IRA with 3 percent company matching. Group-term life insurance provided to employees ($15,000 policy).
Support for professional training and attending industry conferences.
How to Apply:
We’re committed to building an inclusive newsroom that represents the people and communities we serve. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply for this position, including women, people of color, LGBTQ people and people who are differently abled.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it filed the interim proposal for overseeing Jackson’s water system, which the city council approved on Nov. 17, making the agreement available to the public.
The parties await a federal court’s approval before the agreement, which is set to last a year, takes effect. The DOJ also filed a new complaint against the city for its inability to comply with previous enforcement from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The order names Ted Henifin as Jackson’s interim third-party manager. Henifin, a senior fellow at the nonprofit U.S. Water Alliance, managed the Hampton Roads Sanitation District in Virginia Beach from 2006 until 2022, overseeing the city’s sewer system.
The goal of the interim agreement, according to the order, is to stabilize Jackson’s water system while the city and federal government look at long-term solutions, through litigation or a consent decree.
Henifin’s job, as the order lays out, will be to “operate, maintain, and control” the water system in compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act, as well as to make capital improvements, including specific projects prioritized in the order. The order also gives the third-party team authority over Jackson city employees and contractors to carry out those projects.
The order gives the third-party leadership broader spending authority than what the city would normally have. For instance, under the order, the management team won’t have to comply with state laws regulating how a governing body procures contracts. The order writes instead that the third-party team “will use best efforts to have the procurement process be competitive, transparent, and efficient.” The order requires that the manager consult with the city attorney over any contracts longer than a year.
The document also gives Henifin and his team power to make rate changes for Jackson water customers.
Within 60 days, Henifin will have to make a funding strategy, which will include a short-, medium- and long-term — over 5 years — spending plan and schedule for the water system. In that plan, Henifin can propose rate changes as well as governing alternatives.
If the plan does include a rate change for customers, the order requires the mayor to put the change before the city council. But even if the city council doesn’t approve the rate change, the order gives the third-party manager the authority to change the rates anyway, as long as it’s been more than a year since the last rate adjustment. City officials last raised rates in December 2021.
Under the order, the third-party manager does not have the authority to consolidate, or regionalize, Jackson’s water system, or allow another governing body to operate the system.
The agreement also stipulates that documents in the third-party manager’s possession are not subject to public records laws because it is not a federal, state or local agency. The order does require the manager to make a website to inform the public with status reports, requests for proposals, and quarterly updates.
The federal court, after approving this order, would have authority over how Henifin’s team is complying with the agreement to manage Jackson’s water system.
The order lists 13 projects as priorities for the management team to facilitate:
Operations and management contract
Winterization of both treatment plants
Corrosion control
Implement an alternative water source plan
Distribution system study, analysis and implementation, including replacing water lines, prioritizing any lead lines found
System stabilization plan, including a sustainable revenue model
SCADA system improvements, including sensors, actuators
Assess and repair chemical systems at plants and wells
Chlorine system improvements at O.B. Curtis
Intake structure repairs
Restore redundancy at treatment facilities, including pumps
Sludge assessment and removal at water storage facilities
Assess power vulnerability
The agreement gives Henifin’s team a $2.98 million budget for a 12-month period. That total includes $400,000 for Henifin’s salary, travel and living expenses; $1.1 million for staff pay and expenses; $1.4 million for contractor and consultant support; and $66,000 for other expenses, such as phones, computers, and insurance.
The order states that the budget won’t be funded by customers’ water bills. The city will pay for the budget with money from the EPA and other grants.
Gov. Tate Reeves applauded the news, saying in a statement that it’s “excellent news” that “Mayor (Chokwe Antar Lumumba) will no longer be overseeing the city’s water system.”
Reeves also announced that he authorized MEMA to commit $240,000 from the state’s Disaster Mitigation Fund “as a bridge” to help during the transition of control over the water system.
The DOJ also filed a new complaint against Jackson on Tuesday requesting a court-ordered injunction to require the city to comply with federal drinking water laws.
The complaint notes the city’s inability to comply with previous enforcement actions issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, including an Administrative Order issued in July, 2021.
The filing details various violations of that order:
Staffing shortages: in just four months of operation this year, J.H. Fewell didn’t have a certified Class A operator in at least 15 instances, according to the complaint.
Not implementing an alternative water source plan during boil water notices.
Turbidity in the water.
Not beginning the process to rehabilitate filters at J.H. Fewell on time.
Not implementing the city’s corrosion control plan at J.H. Fewell.
The complaint also notes that, because of the system’s deficiencies, contaminants are either present or likely to enter the system.
“State and local actions have been insufficient to prevent the threat of additional failures,” the complaint says. “Such failures are likely to continue to occur, whether under normal working conditions or in extreme weather events.”
Attorney General Lynn Fitch has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to deny the Biden Administration’s bid to reinstateits student debt relief plan.
Earlier this month, the Biden Administration petitioned the Supreme Court to lift an injunction imposed by a lower court and allow the plan to go forward. The administration cited the impact that legal limbo would have on “millions of economically vulnerable borrowers,” including many of the nearly 439,000 Mississippians with student debt.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett had already twice declined to review the program, but this time, the court asked the Republican attorneys general challenging the plan to respond to Biden’s request to lift the injunction.
The amicus brief that Fitch signed onto, along with attorneys general from 16 other states, calls the plan “illegal, and blatantly so” as well as “among the most egregious examples of unauthorized executive action in American History” due in part to its impact on the federal deficit.
“As the Attorneys General note in their briefs, Congress has repeatedly considered student loan forgiveness and failed to pass it, and President Biden’s actions here are merely an attempt to bypass the Constitutional checks and balances meant to protect the people from administrative overreach,” Michelle Williams, Fitch’s chief of staff, told Mississippi Today in a statement.
All told, the plan, which would forgive up to $20,000 in student debt per borrower, would cost the federal government about $430 billion over 30 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“The President is attempting one of the largest wealth transfers in American history,” the brief reads. “More precisely, he has proposed to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in student loans. But no law permits the President to do this. And the President has no inherent constitutional authority to forgive student debt.”
In defending the plan, the Biden administration has repeatedly cited the HEROES Act, a law passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks that permits the president to forgive student loans during a “national emergency.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has been considered a national emergency since President Donald Trump issued a proclamation in March 2020. When Biden announced his student debt relief plan in August, he said it was intended to provide “ families breathing room as they prepare to start repaying loans after the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic.”
But Fitch and other AGs in the brief claim the HEROES Act does not “clearly” authorize the president to cancel student debt in the way Biden intends to. The brief also claims the COVID-19 pandemic no longer constitutes a national emergency.
“More important, even assuming the COVID-19 pandemic at some point qualified as a “national emergency,” certainly it does not qualify today, when American life is mostly indistinguishable from what it looked like in pre-pandemic times,” the brief states. “But even though COVID-19 is now irrelevant to nearly all Americans, the entire country remains in a state of declared disaster.”
The Republican-led legal challenges have already resulted in the U.S. Department of Education making a number of tweaks to the program, including removing about 800,000 borrowers from eligibility whose loans are backed by the federal government but held by commercial banks and closing the online application portal.
Biden has also extended the pause on student loan repayment until the legal challenges are resolved or June 30, 2023, whichever comes first. Biden had said the pause would expire at the end of this year.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a statement from Attorney General Lynn Fitch sent after the story originally published.
Former NFL quarterback Brett Favre nagged former Gov. Phil Bryant for help funding a new volleyball facility at his alma mater and a pharmaceutical start-up he had invested in.
Bryant’s subordinates then funneled a total of $7.1 million in federal welfare funds to the two projects, plus another $1.1 million to Favre himself, within what officials have called the worst public fraud scheme in state history.
Favre now says he’s receiving all the blame while officials are letting Bryant off the hook.
In a new motion to dismiss civil charges against him, Favre argues the state welfare department, Mississippi Department of Human Services, has neglected the roles of former Gov. Bryant and the auditor Bryant appointed, Shad White, in the misspending of millions of welfare funds.
“MDHS also has ignored the numerous public officials responsible for overseeing MDHS, such as former Governor Dewey Phillip Bryant and current State Auditor Shad White, who, despite his statutory obligation to conduct annual audits of MDHS, did not ‘question’ MDHS’s transfers of tens of millions of dollars to MCEC (Mississippi Community Education Center) until 2020, nearly five years after those transfers began,” reads Favre’s motion, filed by his Austin, TX-based attorney Eric Herschmann.
The welfare department’s civil suit, filed last May, alleges Favre agreed with MDHS Director John Davis and nonprofit founder Nancy New to transfer $2.1 million in funds from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to a pharmaceutical company called Prevacus, in which Favre was a major stakeholder. The suit also alleges Favre took $1.1 million in TANF funds for work he didn’t conduct.
Favre denies both allegations, alleging MDHS has fixated on the two items Favre publicly supported — Prevacus and the volleyball project — as a way of “blaming Favre, publicizing his involvement, and bringing its baseless claims against him in this lawsuit.”
The civil suit, which targets 38 individuals or companies, only seeks to recoup $24 million of at least $77 million that forensic auditors found was misspent. Favre argued MDHS is “selectively suing only a fraction of those who allegedly received the funds, while inexplicably ignoring the numerous other recipients.”
Favre has received significant national coverage in recent months for his proximity to a deal in which officials converted $5 million in welfare funds to build a state-of-the-art facility for University of Southern Mississippi’s volleyball program, where his daughter played. The fraud scheme, which involved dressing up the stadium up to appear as a wellness center for impoverished Mississippians, led to a criminal conviction against New’s son Zach New.
Favre has not faced any charges in connection with that deal. Gov. Tate Reeves directed the welfare agency not to include the volleyball project — the largest known purchase within the scandal — in its civil suit.
But in his motion, Favre called out the former governor and others for perpetuating the scheme.
“Davis and New did not (and could not have) authorized structuring the $5 million in funding as a sublease on their own,” the filing reads. “They needed and obtained the approval and assistance of other State officials and agencies—including Governor Bryant, the Attorney General, the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning, Southern Miss itself, and the Southern Miss Athletic Foundation.”
The motion also confirms that then-Southern Miss Athletic Director Jon Gilbert introduced Favre to New, who sat on the Southern Miss Athletic Foundation board.
“New was well connected with numerous Mississippi officials, including Davis and then-Governor Bryant, and close friends with Governor Bryant’s wife Deborah Bryant,” it said.
The money in question flowed through New’s nonprofit, Mississippi Community Education Center, or MCEC, and therefore out of sight from public view. Favre zoned in on New’s connections to state officials, even corralling current Gov. Reeves into his rebuttal.
“State officials like Davis, former Governor Bryant, and current Governor Reeves were aware that New, through MCEC, used State money to provide services and funding to various State initiatives, through, among other things, the Family First Initiative of Mississippi, an anti-poverty program which was started by Governor Bryant in conjunction with other state officials,” his filing reads. “Deborah Bryant and New hosted fundraisers together at the governor’s mansion. Governor Reeves even filmed a campaign ad in 2019 at New’s school.”
For years, the misspending went unnoticed by the state auditor’s office as MDHS dismantled internal controls, failing to keep so much as a list of organizations it funded.
Bryant appointed White, his former campaign manager, to state auditor in July of 2018. White’s investigation into welfare misspending began after an MDHS employee brought a small tip about Davis’ potential fraud to Bryant in June 2019.
White made six arrests in the case, including Davis and New, in February 2020. The payments to Prevacus were central to the indictment. A day earlier, Bryant had scheduled a meeting with Prevacus’ founder Jake Vanlandingham, a Florida neuroscientist who offered the governor stock in the company in exchange for his help, according to texts Mississippi Today obtained two years later. The texts showed Favre had even excitedly texted Bryant to tell the governor when they finally started receiving funding from the state in early 2019.
Days after the arrest, Bryant cut ties with the scientist and White publicly named Bryant as the “whistleblower” in the case.
“State Auditor White—who was previously Governor Bryant’s campaign manager and policy director and was appointed State Auditor by Governor Bryant—made this (whistleblower) designation knowing that Governor Bryant was both aware of and supported MCEC’s payments to Prevacus at issue in this lawsuit, as well as its $5 million payment to Southern Miss in connection with the construction of a wellness center,” Favre’s filing reads.
In Favre’s motion, his first significant jab in the case, the athlete argues that the welfare department has targeted him for his celebrity in an attempt to divert attention away from its own wrongdoing.
Mississippi Today first connected Favre to the welfare scandal in February 2020 in its reporting on the welfare-funded volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi and Favre’s attempts to lure Prevacus to Mississippi with Bryant’s help. White made the first official finding against Favre in his annual audit released in May of 2020. The report noted that his company, Favre Enterprises, received $1.1 million under a promotional contract, including supposed appearances at which “the individual contracted did not speak nor was he present for those events.”
Favre has repeatedly denied that he failed to fulfill the terms of his agreement with the nonprofit. Mississippi Today obtained a 2018 invoice that shows conservative talk radio network SuperTalk ran Favre’s ad promoting Families First more than two dozen times during a three-month period.
“As to the $1.1 million MCEC paid Favre,” Favre’s motion reads, “it did so in exchange for Favre agreeing to perform services for MCEC, including recording a radio advertisement promoting Families First of Mississippi, a program launched by Governor Bryant, in conjunction with MDHS and MCEC, to provide services to needy Mississippians.”
Favre returned the $1.1 million — a fact he laments is missing from MDHS’s complaint — but the auditor’s office maintains that he still owes interest on the funds.
“It’s ludicrous to say that Mr. Favre has been singled out in any way,” the auditor’s office said in a statement Monday evening. “And as far as our office is concerned, Mr. Favre remains liable for $228,000 in interest for nonperformance of the contract in question.”
