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YALOBUSHA COUNTY — Power outages and icy, blocked roads caused by Winter Storm Fern were more than an inconvenience for Rubijo Purdy. They were a threat to her life. 

Without electricity in her home, Purdy couldn’t charge the ventilator she needs for help breathing at night. 

After a couple of days without the ventilator and supplemental oxygen, she had to get help. Each day, for three days, she pulled the 20-pound device up a hill from her home to her car parked on the nearby main road. 

Purdy has osteoporosis. Using a cane, she ducked under fallen pines and climbed over collapsed cypresses in her driveway. She carefully crossed the icy mud and gravel path up the hill.

She was afraid she wouldn’t make it, but she did. She drove to a nearby hospital, where staff  charged her ventilator. By the end of that week on Jan. 31, a concerned community member used a chainsaw to cut the fallen limbs and trees, and a neighbor lent her a generator. 

More than two weeks after the ice storm, Yalobusha County residents are still facing persistent power outages and dead trees that loom ominously over bedrooms and porches.

Yalobusha County is in heavily wooded and hilly north central Mississippi, about a two-hour drive north of Jackson on I-55.

On Thursday, more than a third of the county’s roughly 12,500  residents were still without power — including Purdy. Uprooted and mangled trees piled up in many front yards in the county. Clearings and stumps replaced areas that once were densely wooded. County government workers in T-shirts and with bags under their eyes tended to their cold and hungry — residents in an agricultural complex outside Coffeeville. 

Twenty-nine deaths are attributed to the ice storm so far, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency announced Friday.

As of Tuesday morning, roughly 1,100 customers, or 14%, were still without power in Yalobusha County — the second-highest percentage of any county in Mississippi. Only Benton County in the northeast corner of the state had a higher percentage of residents without electricity, at about 33%. 

Yalobusha County officials estimate it will take 60 days to remove all storm debris from local roads with financial help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Mississippi Emergency Management agency.

The cold snap from Fern didn’t last long, but the damage did. Workers are still cleaning up fallen trees and broken limbs. They’re still repairing downed power lines.

“It’s like a tornado went through here,” Purdy said, pointing to stretches of forest where nearly every tree was either bent or snapped. She drove over at least four downed power lines that lay loose on the road like shriveled, black ribbons. Still more hung above the road through bent branches like drooping, thin garlands.

Tempers flare amid ongoing storm recovery

County leaders opened a warming shelter and emergency supplies depot in the county multipurpose building as soon as roads were safe for travel. 

But some locals still without power are criticizing the speed of local leaders’ response, and county officials are trying to be more transparent about the recovery effort. They’re posting regular updates on Facebook. At supervisors’ meetings, they are explaining the process of accepting bids for contracted county work.

Frustrations over the storm recovery have fueled discontent. 

On Thursday, the Yalobusha County Sheriff’s Office shared in a Facebook post that deputies are now guarding linemen, who have been threatened. A later post announced the arrest of Douglas Pullen, who deputies charged with telephone harassment, which they say was directed toward Tallahatchie Valley Electric Power Authority and its employees.

At a meeting of the Yalobusha County Board of Supervisors on Thursday, President Cayce Washington said Brad Robison, CEO of Tallahatchie Valley Authority Electric Power Association, relocated his family after receiving death threats. A majority of the remaining Mississippians without power are TVA Electric Power Association customers concentrated in Yalobusha, Tallahatchie, Lafayette, and Panola counties.

As linemen worked their way down country roads in bucket trucks, county officials were choosing contractors to clear the twisted trees in their way. The forest surrounding the community had thinned noticeably, with mangled trunks and sideways branches.

By Thursday morning, the corner conference room on the third floor of the Yalobusha County Circuit Courthouse was full of contractors, some from as far as Texas and as near as Picayune. Washington passed their requests for proposals to the other board members seated in red cushioned high back chairs.

FEMA and the MEMA would help fund debris removal across the county. The county had to hire a company to remove storm debris, a firm to monitor that company, and a consultant to ensure the process follows federal and state guidelines. 

After two hours of deliberation, supervisors approved a debris removal contract with Texas-based TFR Enterprises for roughly $3.4 million, which was calculated by the county based on the contractor’s rate per cubic yard.

The costs of the storm and rural life

For county residents in the more rural neighborhoods, the ice storm’s devastation proved particularly costly. The bucolic charm and affordable living came at the cost of proximity to emergency services. It also meant that people live with energy infrastructure that’s more susceptible to extreme weather.

Purdy lives in an area so rural the road doesn’t appear on Google Maps. Mobile homes and shacks sit beside multilevel estates and A-frames. The neighborhood has families from various income brackets.

Purdy also lived through the 1994 winter storm, which caused extensive damage including about $1.3 billion in damaged timber, more than 8,000 downed utility poles, lost water service for 741,000 customers and up to 300,000 Entergy customers without power in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, according to the National Weather Service.

Last week, about five power lines were still down on Purdy’s street, with snapped trees propping up the wires.

“We all like to live in the woods,” Purdy said, “but when this happens, boy, it gets costly.”

Meanwhile, county residents who could not leave their homes are figuring out ways to prepare meals and stay warm without power. They’re also covering unexpected costs for fuel, batteries and trips to the laundromat.

Diane Watson-Williams stayed in a room at the closest available hotel — nearly an hour and a half away in Tunica. She estimated that she has spent more than $1,000 on delivered meals and restaurant takeout.

“It’s been a really rough week and a half,” she said. 

Williams sent some of her family members to stay with a relative in Nashville, but she couldn’t leave her disabled father alone in his home. She was nervous of the loose power lines and meters, and the risk of electrical fires. 

She has been juggling family obligations and work, driving for access to reliable Wi-Fi to complete her work as an escrow agent. Williams said she is grateful to receive regular updates from Tallahatchie Valley EPA, but she wonders where they were immediately after the storm.

“I feel like the county within itself has been forgotten about,” she said. “After those first two nights, it had gotten really cold for me, and I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

Over a half dozen Yalobusha County residents told Mississippi Today they are depleting their savings as local schools and job sites remain closed. Utility poles and trees still block roads across the mostly rural county.

Williams had to throw away hundreds of dollars of food, as well. She hopes her insurance company will reimburse her hotel room cost, but she said the power company wouldn’t confirm the power outage so she could qualify. 

Other residents might face unexpected medical costs. 

Timmy McCoy, a nurse practitioner at Progressive Health of Batesville hospital, has seen an uptick in hypothermia patients. Many patients have also sought care for broken hips and other injuries from falls.

“The only thing that I know that we can do is just pray and keep looking forward,” he said. “The people in Yalobusha have been Yalobusha County strong.”

Volunteers and community groups are also helping residents by providing storm recovery essentials. 

The Yalobusha County Multipurpose Building outside Coffeeville is temporarily a warming center and supply depot.

A crew prepared and served meals with help from World Central Kitchen and Gunny Cole, a Tennessee-based U.S. Marine Corps veteran and perennial volunteer in wake of natural disasters in the region. The American Red Cross donated blankets for distribution. 

Darrel Cole, a county resident, said he has felt immense gratitude for the county government workers who ensured he received a propane tank and other supplies. In the remote area where he lives, many homes had damage to roofs and vehicles. Large branches nearly missed his mobile home but did nick his porch.

“This community stood together,” he said. “It’s a small place. Everybody knows everybody. There’s a lot of people helping out, some that I grew up with, some that I haven’t seen in years.”

Mack Parker, a Lions Club International member, survived the 2021 winter storm that led to a grid failure where he lived in central Texas before he moved to Yalobusha County. He felt more connected to the community in the wake of the winter storm. 

“It’s important to know your neighbor because you never know who is going to be in need,” Parker said. “It’s just been crazy to see the magnitude of it. Everyone has been impacted.”

Update, 2/10/2026: This story has been updated with power outage numbers for Tuesday morning, Feb. 10.

Senate President Pro tem Dean Kirby, a Republican from Pearl, gives an update on school choice, state support for areas devastated by the winter storm, and serving in the position known as “the senators’ senator.” Kirby said the state will help areas hit by Winter Storm Fern, but says damages will be in the billions and full recovery will be a long-term process.

Bill Cork, director of the Mississippi Development Authority, on Monday made the case that Mississippi’s economy is ascendent, citing multi-billion dollar deals, strategic efforts from his office and the governor and new jobs.

At the Stennis Capitol Press Forum, Cork, who was nominated by Gov. Tate Reeves in December of 2023 to run the state’s economic development agency, gave the audience a recap of MDA’s accomplishments in 2025. He said the state saw over $21 billion in capital investment in 2025, in addition to a $20 billion xAI deal that was announced in early 2026. 

Cork said that he is frequently asked whether Mississippi can deliver the workforce a project needs. He thinks it’s possible to “move the needle for Mississippi by recruiting companies that take lower-skill, lower-wage employees and convert them int0 the high-skill, high-wage, family sustaining careers.” 

He cited Accelerate Mississippi, the state’s workforce development program launched in 2021, as an example of how the state has better positioned itself to meet business needs and attract new investment. This includes changing from corporate incentives that are paid up front to a tax credit system based on metrics such as investment and making sites ready for investors. 

Recently, data centers have been a top source of capital investment for the state and across the South, including a large deal with Amazon for Mississippi. Cork talked about the advanced computing, sophisticated technology, jobs and innovative engineers that come with these projects, benefits beyond the millions of local taxes data centers bring.

Data centers are cropping up all over the South with plentiful land, energy availability and friendlier regulations. In the past few years, five clusters have been announced across Mississippi. But some residents have raised concerns about impacts to the water and air quality, noise pollution, the relatively few jobs these projects bring considering the investment, and primarily, energy utility costs for customers.

Cork said that he does not want data centers to raise electricity rates customers pay. He added that some companies are investing to expand the existing grid, such as Amazon, or provide their own power, such as xAI. In addition, the state is looking to expand energy production.  

“I think the more important question we need to ask about data centers is what is each individual data center doing and scrutinize them on a one-off basis rather than lumping them all into one,” Cork said.

Most of the slides Cork presented on Monday can be seen on MDA’s website. 

Mississippi environmental officials will hold a hearing Feb. 17 where members of the public can comment on a proposed permit to run 41 new turbines at xAI’s facility in Southaven. 

The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. at Northwest Mississippi Community College’s DeSoto County campus in Southaven.

The public has until the day of the hearing to submit comments to the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality through the agency’s website or in writing to the Mississippi Environmental Quality Permit Board at P.O. Box 2261, Jackson, MS 39225. 

The company, owned by Elon Musk, is looking to add the turbines to its facility that help power large data centers just outside Memphis. The news comes just after Mississippi leaders boasted about a record-setting $20 billion investment from the company to build a new data center in Southaven. With this new investment, the state now has five large data center projects in the works.

In recent months, residents in north Mississippi criticized the state for allowing xAI to run 18 “temporary-mobile” turbines without an air permit. As of Dec.18, xAI had added nine more turbines – bringing the total to 27, MDEQ said, adding that the turbines have “air pollution control devices.”

The agency contends that those turbines fall under an exception that lets the generators run without a permit as long as they operate for less than a year.

The other 41 turbines at the site, though, won’t be temporary, meaning they require an air permit. Specifically, they will have the potential to emit volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide, the hearing notice says. Exposure to those chemicals can lead to a wide range of health impacts, including nausea, headaches and respiratory issues, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Neighbors of the facility have complained about constant humming noises from the turbines since August, despite Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite saying months ago he expected it would be a temporary issue. 

Just north in Memphis, xAI already has faced similar public criticism over using temporary turbines to run its two data centers there. But after receiving pushback from groups such as the NAACP and Southern Environmental Law Center, xAI eventually applied for air permits for its Memphis centers before moving the smaller, temporary turbines to Mississippi.

Data centers are sprouting up across the United States to power the AI boom. Recently, there’s been a flurry of projects across the South. While these projects are bringing in billions of dollars in investment, they are also drawing concerns over the large amount of water and energy that these projects demand. 

Does new EPA rule change permit requirements for xAI?

On Jan. 15, the federal Environmental Protection Agency finalized new air pollution standards that include a subcategory for temporary generators. While the new rules create a lower standard for temporary turbines, attorneys and Mississippi regulators disagree over how those requirements apply to the xAI site.

“The rule does not mandate that permitting authorities issue air permits for temporary turbines,” MDEQ spokesperson Jan Schaefer wrote in an email. “That decision remains with each state, based on its own permitting regulations.”

Moreover, “portable” turbines are exempt from Mississippi’s air permitting laws, Schaefer added, saying “nothing in the new EPA rule changes that determination.” 

Amanda Garcia, an attorney who led the Southern Environmental Law Center’s fight against xAI in Memphis, said MDEQ is misinterpreting the new rules. She argued the rule doesn’t create an exemption for portable turbines. The new standards lower the regulatory burden for temporary turbines, but the EPA still requires them to have permits, Garcia said. 

“While that burden may be reduced, EPA does not leave it up to states to decide whether to require permits for temporary turbines,” she said. “State air agencies are not free to follow less stringent rules than EPA’s, and MDEQ must comply with the Clean Air Act.”

Mississippi Today has made multiple attempts to clarify with the EPA its own standards. In November, when asked whether MDEQ was following federal law, EPA instead blamed Democrats for the recently ended federal government shutdown, adding that it was working “expeditiously” to finalize its new rule. 

When reached on Jan. 29, the agency again provided little clarity, telling Mississippi Today instead to ask the state environmental agency about specific cases.

“It should be noted that source-specific air permitting questions are necessarily case-specific, often because their answers depend on a variety of factors and applicable requirements that may differ depending on the specific location of the source,” the EPA replied in an email.

In a recent interview on Fox Business, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency was working “very closely” with officials in Shelby County, Tennessee – where Memphis is located – and Mississippi “as they go through their permitting process to allow xAI to go forward.” Speeding the permitting process to “unleash energy dominance” is a “top priority” for President Donald Trump, Zeldin added. 

Seeing who is at the front door before you open it can mean the difference between danger and safety, or even life and death for a domestic violence survivor. 

To help victims stay safe and potentially document the presence of an abuser, the state attorney general’s office on Monday announced a partnership with Amazon, which is donating 1,000 Ring doorbell and outdoor video cameras to the Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

“When that victim is going through that long, hard journey to survivorship, anything we can all do that helps restore their sense of security, their safety and their peace of mind is so important,” said Attorney General Lynn Fitch during a press conference. 

The domestic violence coalition will distribute the cameras to the state’s dozen domestic violence service organizations to get them to survivors across Mississippi. Each camera comes with a complimentary subscription that covers the lifetime of the device. 

Joy Jones, executive director of the coalition, said the Ring cameras will go to people who have left a shelter and are in independent or transitional housing.

The coalition received the cameras toward the end of last year, and some of the service organizations started giving them out to survivors for Christmas.

“They’re not just cameras,” Jones said. “They’ll help survivors reclaim a sense of control and security in their homes.” 

In addition, the donated cameras can help domestic abuse survivors navigate the justice system. 

Fitch said the donated cameras could be valuable for survivors who have a domestic abuse protection order and are trying to keep an abuser from getting near them. If that person comes onto their property, the camera could capture the individual’s presence, verifying that the order has been violated.

Ashla Hudson, a member of the domestic violence coalition, sees the donated cameras as a way to help keep victims and survivors aware of their surroundings and support their safety. 

She is the mother of Carlos Collins, a nurse who lived in Jackson and was allegedly killed by an ex-partner in April 2024. Hudson said her son’s Ring camera captured footage of his attack, and that video is a key part of the murder case. The first degree murder trial for Marcus Johnson, who allegedly shot Collins multiple times, began Monday in Hinds County Circuit Court. 

“If something does happen, (the footage) can strengthen their cases,” Hudson said about how Ring cameras can be useful for survivors. 

Fitch is among several attorneys general who have partnered with Ring and domestic violence coalitions to receive donated cameras from the company in recent weeks.  

Ring has collaborated with the National Network to End Domestic Violence since 2022. The company has donated nearly $12 million worth of doorbell and outdoor cameras to over 750 nonprofit organizations, said Terreta Rodgers, head of community engagement for Amazon in Mississippi. 

The technology company started its donation program in 2021 after learning from a Texas domestic violence organization that reported success with Ring. One of the survivors who received a camera was able to activate her safety plan when her camera alerted her that her abuser was at her residence with a weapon, Rodgers said. 

Fitch said she has made domestic violence a priority during her time as attorney general through resources through the office’s Bureau of Victim Assistance, registries for law enforcement and the courts to track domestic violence incidents and protection orders and training for law enforcement to handle domestic violence calls. 

President Donald Trump’s approval of a federal disaster declaration request from Mississippi will assist in the response to the winter storm that caused widespread damage in the state in late January. Gov. Tate Reeves had sent the request three days prior on Feb. 3.

Thousands in north Mississippi still had no power Monday, more than two weeks since the storm. State emergency officials confirmed Friday the death toll from the disaster had reached at least 29.

The federal declaration Friday included approving public assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which goes toward repairs for infrastructure such as roads and government buildings. The federal government has not made a decision about individual assistance for the state, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Scott Simmons said.

Simmons said the state is “nowhere near” finished with its damage assessment, which FEMA uses as a basis for approving different types of assistance.

The federal government has stepped in to provide food and supplies across Mississippi, and on Friday approved replacement benefits for SNAP recipients in 15 counties. But it could take a while before residents see direct support through individual assistance, officials told Mississippi Today last week. While a state’s damages have to reach a firm threshold for Public Assistance, FEMA has less rigid guidelines for approving individual assistance.

Funding through public assistance is available for the following places: Alcorn, Bolivar, Calhoun, Carroll, Grenada, Holmes, Humphreys, Issaquena, Leflore, Montgomery, Sharkey, Sunflower, Warren, Washington, Webster, and Yazoo counties and for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

Funding for emergency protective measures, which is a subcategory of Public Assistance, is also available in: Adams, Attala, Benton, Claiborne, Coahoma, DeSoto, Hinds, Jefferson, Lafayette, Lee, Marshall, Panola, Pontotoc, Prentiss, Quitman, Tallahatchie, Tate, Tippah, Tishomingo, Tunica, Union and Yalobusha counties.

Republicans House Speaker Jason White and Gov. Tate Reeves face a difficult political situation after the ignominious death last week of House Bill 2, White’s big, beautiful school choice bill.

They both went on social media rants about the Senate GOP leadership, accusing their fellow Republicans of being in cahoots with leftists, liberals, Democrats, the ACLU … perhaps even Che Guevara and the Symbionese Liberation Army? White and Reeves also have pointed out these closeted liberal Republican senators even, gasp, defied President Donald Trump.

So, if this measure to have tax dollars pay private school tuition for some students is the most important issue facing Mississippi and the key to being a loyal, rock-ribbed Republican, then it should follow that White would try to revive the measure legislatively.

Or, Reeves could call lawmakers into a special session to try to force it. Otherwise, White and other House leaders could try to shut other legislation down to force the Senate back to the table.

But all of those moves are fraught with political and practical problems.

The first is, it’s pretty clear that many Mississippi Republican lawmakers oppose it, including a sizeable chunk of White’s own House caucus.

Seventeen of 78 House Republicans voted against it. White managed to get it passed by only a two-vote margin. This was only after some heavy vote whipping and a couple of Republicans appearing to “take a walk” to avoid voting.

Opposing Trump in the Mississippi statehouse might get a lawmaker in trouble. But opposing educators and parents back home, no matter your party, will get your picture taken off the wall as they say in the Legislature. There have been numerous past examples, including some very notable, very conservative Republican legislators.

Numerous senators avow that House Republicans, including some who voted for the measure, have over recent weeks anxiously questioned them, hoping the Senate would kill it.

Reviving the measure might require forcing the House to vote on it several more times. Some of White’s Republicans who reluctantly went along for the first ride might not be up for that. And having the House kill the measure after raising such a stink about those sorry Senate Republicans would be something of a boondoggle.

Forcing lawmakers into special session — perhaps even a session-within-a-session — on the issue would present Reeves with a similar scenario. He can force lawmakers into session and set the agenda, but he can’t make them vote the way he wants. He’s been very conservative in the use of his special session power, and vowed in the past not to force one when there’s no compromise afoot.

He’s a lame duck, but still has a long way to go in his second term.

It’s likely White and Reeves will do some political calculus and determine this is not the hill to die on. Of course Trump could change that calculus if he were to get intensely involved. But he appears to have bigger issues to deal with at the moment.

For now, White and Reeves might have to settle with firing social media missives at the Senate.

Some GOP senators last week were not happy with some of the incoming slings and arrows. As for White questioning their conservative or Trump bona fides, they noted he pushed for “Obamacare expansion” a couple of years ago. And as for Reeves accusing them of trying to “do it in the dark and hide it from MS conservatives on a a deadline day,” they noted he’s the same feller who last year intentionally signed into law a major tax change they opposed but voted for mistakenly because of a typo.

Some other news of note last week:

• The House and Senate appear at odds over state help for winter storm-ravaged areas. The Senate voted to give the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency $20 million for initial response. House leaders appear unhappy with MEMA’s initial response, and say they’re looking for ways to more directly help communities.

• Gov. Tate Reeves signed into law changes to the state’s long-debated certificate of need system. This is aimed at allowing hospitals to more easily expand services. The law will also limit the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s exemptions from certificate of need laws.

• The House, for the third straight year, voted to legalize online sports betting. It also, in the same bill, voted to make a $600 million infusion to the state government pension plan.

Quote of the Week

“They’ll write an article about him if he goes to the Super Bowl.” – House Speaker Jason White. White was joking with the House about Mississippi Today reporting last year of a trip he and some of his staff took to the Super Bowl, compliments of lobbyists pushing for legalization of online sports betting. The House adopted a resolution commending Jamal Roberts, a Meridian native who won on “American Idol,” but Roberts could not attend the House adoption because he had obligations to appear at the Super Bowl, prompting White’s joke.

In Brief

AI regulation bill: ‘These are real kids’

Anxiety about artificial intelligence’s potential harm is rising, and Mississippi lawmakers are considering addressing it with regulations.

A bill passed by the Senate on Wednesday would make it illegal to distribute AI-generated content without the subject’s consent. Senate bill 2046 gives Mississippians property rights to the use of their image and likeness and a legal way to protect themselves.

AI technology is able to generate increasingly realistic videos but is still new and relatively unregulated. The bill’s author, Sen. Bradford Blackmon, a Democrat from Canton, told Mississippi Today, “This is not theoretical. These are real kids, real classrooms facing real consequences from fake content.” – Katherine Lin

More public records exemptions proposed

House Bill 1468, one of the last bills to pass out of committee before the Feb. 3 deadline, could allow more information to be withheld from public records requests.

The bill from Republican Rep. Brent Anderson of Bay St. Louis adds broad definitions of “personally identifiable” and “protected” information to the Mississippi Public Records Act. The bill covers any information that could identify an individual alone or when combined with other information and explicitly requires government agencies to conduct a case-by-case assessment on records requests.

The bill also has law enforcement implications. Agencies could potentially select cases to redact names from police incident reports, which have been used in the past to identify officers accused of misconduct. The broad nature of the definitions created by the measure raises questions over whether government agencies would have much wider discretion to leave specifics out of records requests. – Michael Goldberg

House considers sales tax diversion study

The House Ways and Means Committee has passed a bill that would create a study committee to evaluate Mississippi’s sales tax diversion to cities.

The governor would appoint a representative from a city with more than 50,000 residents and a representative from a town with fewer than 50,000 to serve on the committee. Legislators and representatives of business groups will also be on the committee.

Current law requires the Mississippi Department of Revenue to collect the state’s 7% sales tax, but remit 18.5% of the total to cities and towns.

Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, a Republican from Senatobia, told Mississippi Today that several cities, including Oxford, had requested the legislation. – Taylor Vance

Mandatory computer science courses proposed 

A pair of companion bills before the House and Senate would require computer science courses for high school graduation. 

Rep. Kevin Felsher, a Republican from Biloxi who authored the bill in the House, said the bill would prepare students to deal with artificial intelligence. 

A Senate bill would require that students graduate with some level of financial literacy. Sen. Daniel Sparks, a Republican from Belmont, said his proposal is essential for students’ futures — and Mississippi’s. 

“It’s not that a lot of Mississippians aren’t trying and working hard,” he said. “They just were not guided at the time when they were making those important decisions. I think more financial acumen … will help our people make better decisions across the board.” – Devna Bose

Bill would provide more $ for gifted education 

The Senate passed a bill that would increase school funding for gifted students and gifted education, after notable back-and-forth.

Sen. Brice Wiggins, a Republican from Pascagoula who authored SB 2293, defended his bill, saying it was “about time” the Legislature stood behind the state’s gifted students. 

But Sen. Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory, argued that other state education funds aren’t directed toward specific populations. For example, even though special education students draw an increased amount in the formula, state law doesn’t require that money is spent on special education, he said. 

The bill now heads to the House.  – Devna Bose

By the Numbers

$132 million

The amount state revenue through January is up over the prior fiscal year, a 3% increase.

More Legislative Coverage

House votes to legalize online sports betting and divert $600M to pension system

Proponents say this could generate tens of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue, but critics warn it would fuel gambling addiction and hurt brick-and-mortar casinos. Read the story.

House passes pharmacy benefit manager reform bill in Mississippi

The House on Wednesday passed a bill aimed at increasing regulation and transparency of pharmacy benefit managers, an issue advocates argue is critical to protecting patients and independent pharmacists in Mississippi against the risk of rising drug costs. Read the story.

Podcast: With U.S. Supreme Court likely to dismantle Voting Rights Act, MS lawmakers push for state version

State Rep. Zakiya Summers has filed the House version of the “Robert G. Clark Jr. Voting Rights Act.” It’s an effort to get out in front of what many expect will be the further dismantling of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Listen to the podcast.

Lawmakers have not unveiled a new map of Mississippi Supreme Court districts, but they still could before the adjournment of their 2026 session. 

The House and Senate have advanced so-called “dummy bills,” which are empty placeholder bills that meet legislative deadlines, but would not actually change state law without more work. These bills allow lawmakers to keep studying an issue and propose changes. 

The reason lawmakers are considering changing the Supreme Court districts is because U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock ruled last year that the districts violated the Voting Rights Act because one of the districts dilutes Black voting strength. She later ruled that the Legislature should be granted the opportunity to redraw the districts to comply with federal law. 

The two top legislators who will lead negotiations over redrawing the districts are House Judiciary B Chairman Kevin Horan, a Republican from Grenada, and Senate Judiciary A Chairman Brice Wiggins, a Republican from Pascagoula. 

Both lawmakers told Mississippi Today they intend to comply with the order, but Horan said the Legislature should consider all options because the U.S. Supreme Court could upend redistricting in the coming weeks. 

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering a case, Louisiana v. Callais, that deals with congressional districts, but the ruling could apply to Mississippi’s judicial districts. The central question in the case is whether factoring race into the drawing of congressional districts violates the U.S. Constitution.

A majority of the justices at the nation’s highest court signaled they were open to rolling back the federal Voting Rights Act, a Civil Rights era federal law that helps prevent discrimination whenever legislative bodies draw districts. 

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Mississippi, the Southern Poverty Law Center and private law firms on behalf of a group of Black Mississippians filed a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act against the state over the Supreme Court districts. 

Judge Aycock in Mississippi ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, but the state defendants appealed her ruling to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Even though the state appealed, it did not ask Aycock to pause lower-court proceedings while the appeal played out. 

The Fifth Circuit, however, did pause its appellate proceedings until the U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision in the Louisiana case. 

If Mississippi lawmakers redraw the Mississippi Supreme Court districts, it would be the first time lawmakers have redrawn them since 1987. 

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 main district at issue in the case is the Central District, which comprises many parts of the majority-Black Delta and the majority-Black Jackson Metro area. Currently, two white justices, Kenny Griffis and Jenifer Branning, and one Black justice, Leslie King, represent the district. 

Last year, Branning, a white candidate who described herself as a “constitutional conservative” and was backed by the Republican Party, defeated longtime Justice Jim Kitchens, who is white but was widely viewed as a candidate supported by Black voters. 

No Black person has ever been elected to the Mississippi Supreme Court, in the state with the highest percentage of Black residents, without first obtaining an interim appointment from the governor, and no Black person from either of the two other districts has ever served on the state’s high court. 

The oft-repeated mantra of the school choice crowd, or those wanting to give public funds to private schools, is that public education needs competition.

They might be right.

There may be nothing better for public education than competition – competition among legislators trying to outdo each other to provide funds for public education.

On the opening day of the 2026 session, the Mississippi Senate passed a bill that would provide public school teachers a $2,000 per year pay bump. Not to be outdone, the House passed its own bill last week that would provide a $5,000 per year raise for public school teachers, plus an additional $3,000 raise for special education teachers.

The House and Senate, both controlled by Republicans, would eventually need to agree on a single plan to send to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves. At this point, it is hard to fathom that the final pay raise for teachers will be much less, if any less, than $5,000.

Once that carrot is dangled, it will be hard to take back.

And if the Legislature eventually agrees on the House’s $5,000 proposal, coupled with the teacher pay raise passed by the Legislature in 2022, it would indeed be historic.

Two raises approved over a four-year span would come close to rivaling the multi-year teacher salary increase passed by the Legislature more than two decades ago.

In the 2000 session, at the behest of Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, the Democratic-controlled Legislature approved a $338 million pay raise that was fully enacted in 2005. At the time, teacher pay increased from an average of $31,892 per year to $41,445, or a jump of 30%, according to reporting by the New York Times from the 2000s.

The new proposal approved by the House would increase the average teacher salary by little less than 10% .

This year’s $5,000 pay raise would come on top of the 2022 legislation that increased teacher salaries an average of $5,140 a year, or or a little more than this year’s House plan.

The historic 2000 pay raise came after Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck and House Speaker Tim Ford, both Democrats, said the state could not afford it. They spoke in unison, until Tuck (who would become a Republican more than two years later) got cold feet and reversed her position during the 2000 session and called for moving teacher pay to the Southeastern average without telling Ford. The speaker responded by saying he would support moving teacher pay to the national average – an example of legislative competition at work. 

Mississippi has raised teacher pay multiple other times through the years, perhaps most notably in 1988 under Democratic Gov. Ray Mabus when the average salary for teachers was increased 18%, according to The Associated Press.

Despite all these efforts, Mississippi teacher salaries have perpetually remained near or at the bottom nationally. House Education Committee Chairman Rob Roberson, a Starkville Republican, said the additional $5,000 the House is proposing this year would move the state to near the top in pay for starting teachers at $46,500 annually.

“But remember, this is a moving target,” Roberson said, explaining that other states are not standing still. He said legislators must revisit the issue constantly.

It is of note that the House leadership passed the pay raise out of committee on a key deadline day and then quickly passed it on the floor without a dissenting vote.

Before the recent action on the pay raise, the signature effort of House Speaker Jason White and his leadership team during the 2026 session in terms of public education was the thus far unsuccessful efforts to take public funds and direct them to private schools. Many argued that making public schools compete directly with private schools for state funds would force them to improve.

There is little evidence of that in other states. As a matter of fact, some states with strong voucher systems have seen student test scores regressing, while Mississippi has seen academic improvement in public schools even as it provides only limited opportunities for public money to be spent in private schools.

But it does appear that competition among legislative leaders to garner credit for supporting public education is real. 

White’s aggressive effort to pass the public funds to private schools legislation has sparked the ire of many public education advocates.

Whether that was the intent or not, White most likely would say it was not, he and his leadership team needed an action to elicit good will among public education advocates.

The pay raise does that.

As stated earlier, competition can be good – even for the public schools.