OurTupelo

The recent announcement that state Agriculture and Commerce Commissioner Andy Gipson plans to run for governor has fueled speculation about who will be running for what office in a wide open 2027 Mississippi election cycle.

Will all or any of the combination of Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, Auditor Shad White, Attorney General Lynn Fitch enter the gubernatorial donnybrook? Who will be the Democratic Party standard bearer, and will Democrats field competitive candidates for any of the other down-ticket statewide offices that could be vacant based on who is running for governor?

Perhaps, most importantly, will billionaire businessman Thomas Duff of Hattiesburg enter the gubernatorial race after showing numerous signals that he intends to?

But before the 2027 elections roll around there will be another consequential statewide race in Mississippi: for the U.S. Senate in 2026.

Incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith will be running in her third U.S. Senate race, and she surely hopes it will be her first easy one. Her first race, a special election in 2018 after longtime Sen. Thad Cochran retired, was the closest non-party primary U.S. Senate race in modern Mississippi history. Hyde-Smith, running then as the interim appointment of former Gov. Phil Bryant, captured 53.6% of the vote compared to 46.4% for former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and congressman Mike Espy in the special election held to fill out Cochran’s term.

Trent Lott’s first race for the U.S. Senate was almost as close in 1988, when he won 53.9% to 46.1% against 4th District U.S. Rep. Wayne Dowdy. And in a 2008 special election, Republican Roger Wicker, appointed by Gov. Haley Barbour to fill a vacancy left when Lott retired, garnered 55% to 45% by former Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove.

But after those relatively close elections, both Lott in 1994 and Wicker in 2012 had easier second elections.

Lott captured 69% of the vote against former state Sen. Ken Harper of Vicksburg. Wicker, on the other hand, had a little tougher race against Albert Gore, winning 57% to 40.6%. Gore was little known and underfunded, but was in many ways an attractive candidate with a noteworthy resume. Interestingly, Gore, like Wicker, was a Pontotoc County native.

In Hyde-Smith’s second race, she again faced Espy in a rare Mississippi campaign when the Democrat raised more money than the Republican. It is practically unheard of in the South — and assuredly in Mississippi — for a Democrat to raise more campaign funds than an incumbent Republican senator. Espy did.

Still, Hyde-Smith, who remains Mississippi’s only woman elected to a federal office, won 54.1% to 44.1%, but the campaign was far from easy for her.

The trend for decades has been that once a U.S. Senate seat is won in Mississippi, the incumbent holds the post for a long time with minimal opposition.

Hyde-Smith is still looking for that minimal opposition race. Will 2026 be when Hyde-Smith finally has an easy path to victory like other incumbent Mississippi senators normally have in their reelection efforts?

Perhaps hoping to ensure that easier path, President Donald Trump already has endorsed Hyde-Smith for her 2026 campaign.

But Trump also endorsed her in 2018 and 2020. Those endorsements did not result in easy campaigns for Hyde-Smith. In both of those campaigns, Hyde-Smith underperformed Trump’s Mississippi results.

Democrats Ty Pinkins and Albert Littell, both of whom have military backgrounds, already have announced their candidacy for 2026. Speculation is that District Attorney Scott Colom of Columbus also will challenge Hyde-Smith. And on the Republican side, author Sarah Adlakha, a Gulf Coast resident who works in health care, also has announced her campaign.

Whether other candidates emerge remains to be seen. And whether Hyde-Smith can experience a less stressful 2026 also remains to be seen.

So far the campaigns have not been as easy for her as for other incumbent U.S. senators from Mississippi.

Mississippians next week will start paying higher taxes at the gas pump but lower taxes at the grocery store.

A new state law that raises Mississippi’s gasoline tax by 3 cents a gallon and cuts the state grocery tax by 2% will take effect on Tuesday, along with other statutes the Legislature passed and governor signed into law earlier this year. 

Mississippi currently has a flat 18.4 cents a gallon excise tax on fuel, one of the lowest gas taxes in the nation. The law will raise the tax to 21.5 cents a gallon this year, then increase it three cents a year until July 1, 2027. At completion, the state gas tax will be 27.4 cents a gallon, a 9-cent total increase. 

Proceeds from the tax will go toward building and maintaining state roads specified by the Mississippi Department of Transportation. 

Mississippi also has a 7% sales tax on non-prepared food, commonly called the grocery tax. The tax, the highest of its kind in the nation, will be reduced to 5% in July. Municipalities around the state receive a portion of this sales tax. The new law ensures cities will receive a larger diversion rate, and be “made whole” from the cut. 

“The decrease is part of House Bill 1 that passed during this year’s Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature,” Revenue Commissioner Chris Graham said in a press release. “We are excited to be able to administer this reduction to help provide relief on the cost of groceries to Mississippi families.”

Mississippians will also see a reduction in the state income tax rate because state officials are still phasing in a 2022 law that is reducing the income tax to 4%. The Legislature this year passed a new law that will reduce the 4% tax rate in 2027 to 3% over four years. Starting in 2031, the remaining 3% tax will be eliminated over time, based on economic growth triggers. 

 In addition to the tax overhaul, other laws will also go into effect on July 1, including:

Direct wine shipment

A new law legalizes shipping some wines to Mississippians’ homes. Supporters pushed to allow direct wine shipment for over a decade before they succeeded this session. Mississippi was one of only a handful of states that didn’t allow direct shipment. 

Under the new law, shippers must obtain a permit from the Department of Revenue to ship wine, and they are capped at 12 nine-liter cases of wine annually to any one address. The measure also restricts citizens to ordering only certain specialty or rare wines that may not be available at Mississippi package stores. The law aims to generate taxes by enacting a 15.5% tax on direct wine shipments. Some of the tax revenue will fund mental health programs.

Kratom banned for people under 21

Mississippi will limit kratom purchases to people 21 and older and outlaw more potent forms of the herbal substance. The new law institutes fines for people under 21 who buy or possess kratom and retailers that sell it to them. The measure also bans synthetic kratom extracts, which are considered more dangerous than “pure” forms of the herbal substance because of their higher potency. 

More than thirty counties and cities in Mississippi already restrict or ban kratom products, which can be found widely in gas stations and tobacco or vape shops. Any ordinances that have been adopted by municipalities or counties to regulate or ban kratom will remain in effect. 

Rape kit mandate 

Mississippi hospitals will now be required to perform rape kits on sexual assault victims who come to their ERs. A new law mandates all hospitals stock rape kits, have a provider available to perform a rape kit, and that they do not turn rape victims away. 

The legislation was inspired by several cases where survivors did not receive routine treatment at hospitals, according to sexual assault advocacy organizations. 

Turkey stamps 

Mississippi hunters must obtain a turkey stamp before harvesting the wild birds, a new state law requires. The measure requires in-state hunters to purchase a $10 turkey stamp and out-of-state hunters to pay a $100 fee for the stamp. In addition to the new stamp, the law still requires hunters to obtain a normal hunting license. 

Proponents of the measure said the stamp fees would be used to maintain and improve turkey-hunting lands around the state.

Neighborhood kids loved civil rights hero Medgar Evers. As he drove down the street, they called his name and begged him to play football. His daughter, Reena, was the weight on her father’s ankles when he did sit-ups. They watched “Popeye” together. 

“He would go to a record player and put on a 33 with Chubby Checker, and he would twist the night away,” Reena Evers-Everette recalled.

Those were just a few of the details shared at the Daddys’ Daughters Panel on Thursday night, an event where daughters of men killed while at the center of the civil rights movement shared intimate stories about life with their fathers.

Panelists included Reena Evers-Everette, daughter of Mississippi NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers, Bettie Dahmer, daughter of Vernon Dahmer, and Kerry Kennedy, daughter of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Joy Reid, political commentator and former MSNBC national correspondent, moderated the panel, one of a series of events honoring the legacy of Medgar Evers.

Reid also joined writer and professor W. Ralph Eubanks on Friday to discuss ‘The Power of the Word.’” Moderated by Ebony Lamumba, the panel explored the role of storytelling in the fight for racial justice.

All the “daughters” panelists shared memories about their fathers.  

Vernon Dahmer, who was murdered after offering to pay poll taxes for African Americans in Forrest County so they could vote, played make believe with her tea set and taught her how to drive a standard shift truck, Bettie Dahmer said. 

His house was a refuge for the local community. He hosted Fourth of July picnics and allowed Boy Scout troops to camp on his land.

“It was safe,” Bettie Dahmer said. “We had other places where kids could come and be safe.”

That was until Jan. 10, 1966, when Klansmen attacked their home near Hattiesburg while the family slept, firing guns into the home. Vernon Dahmer grabbed his shotgun and fired back, enabling his family to escape out a back window, but flames from the blaze seared his lungs. He died a day later. 

Evers-Everette, whose father was shot in the back in the driveway of their Jackson home on June 12, 1963, says she was her father’s “princess.” 

“Love is what resonates throughout my life, because that’s what I grew up with and that’s what my father instilled in us,” she said.

The panelists spent time honoring their mothers. Years after her father was murdered for fighting for voting rights, Bettie Dahmer’s mother Ellie would serve as an election commissioner. 

Evers-Everette credits her mother, Myrlie Evers, with the phrase “You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.” 

Myrlie Evers later served as chairman of the NAACP.

Kerry Kennedy said her father, who as U.S. attorney general enforced civil rights legislation and as a senator advocated for voting rights and against discrimination, ran towards fires started during a civil rights protest instead of watching them on TV. He was assassinated after winning the California Democratic primary for president in 1968. Kerry Kennedy argued that Americans should adopt the stance her father had about taking action.

“We need our country today to run into the flames,” said Kerry Kennedy. “Because our country is on fire.”

The daughters talked about how to continue the legacies of their fathers and mothers.

“I hope each and every one of you understands the importance of the vote. It’s not just going and doing a checkmark. It’s a checkmark for your life,” Evers-Everette said. 

She hoped attendees would “remember that.”

“If you honor them, and you honor our fathers and our mothers — do something about it,” she said.

At the Panel of the Word, Reid, who wrote a biography of Medgar and Myrlie Evers, also spoke on the Pentagon’s proposal to’ rename the Navy cargo ship USNS Medgar Evers and the renaming of the oiler USNS Harvey Milk as the USNS Oscar Peterson.

Reid described history as “a series of stories of people who, through their resilience, survived enslavement, survived Jim Crow, survived hate, survived fear, and survived the abandonment of the federal government of our communities, and their stories collectively are what make history.” 

“And so, when you don’t know the impact of those stories, it’s easy to do a thing like strip Harvey Milk’s name off of a Navy battleship…threaten to do the same to USNS Medgar Evers,” she said.

Referring to scholar Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s concept of “the single story,” Eubanks warned about anti-Diversity, Equity and Inclusion backlash in classrooms. “What is being imposed on us is — trying to impose on us — is a single story, and there is a real danger in that,” he said.

“I mean, think about what is happening with the DEI legislation in this state…Oxford, Mississippi, has 45 working writers, and…probably half of their work, including my own, could be banned,” he said.

Eubanks referred to the state’s new anti-DEI law, which prohibits public schools and state colleges and universities from a variety of practices related to DEI. This includes engaging in “divisive concepts.”  The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi and several other civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging the law. A federal judge is considering issuing a restraining order to block the law from going into effect.

Answering an audience member’s question, Reid and Eubanks both spoke on how Mississippi and the South are precursors to current national policies.

“So what’s happened is these Southern states have developed a version of what we’re now facing nationally, and so the shock is north of the Mason-Dixon line,” said Reid.

“We’re all living in Mississippi now,” said Eubanks. “Everybody in this county has at least one foot in Mississippi whether they want to admit it or not.”

The superintendents for Leake County and Hollandale school districts and a consultant have been indicted on four federal counts of conspiracy to commit embezzlement, theft and bribery.

According to the indictment, Earl Joe Nelson, while superintendent of Clarksdale Municipal School District and now Leake County School District, and Mario D. Willis, as superintendent of Hollandale School District, allegedly paid each other tens of thousands of dollars in school funds for consultant services that were never rendered from November 2021 until at least June 2023.

Additionally, the duo is accused of stealing U.S. Department of Education funds that were intended for their respective districts. 

A St. Louis-based consultant and teacher, Moneka M. Smith-Taylor, has also been indicted on bribery charges in connection with the case. She allegedly received more than $250,000 from Willis for consulting services that were never provided over the course of two years.

She returned part of that money to Willis in the form of a cash kickback in return for the consulting contract, the indictment says.

A spokesperson for the Mississippi State Department of Education directed Mississippi Today to local school boards, who make personnel decisions for their respective districts, for comment.

The job status of the two superintendents is unclear. District officials could not be reached by presstime, but Willis is still listed as the superintendent of Hollandale School District and Nelson is still listed as the superintendent of Leake County School District in the state education department’s online directory.

It’s also unclear whether the defendants have a lawyer who could speak on their behalf.

Editor’s note: This essay is being published on the 10-year anniversary of the week that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled there is a constitutional right to gay marriage. The essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

“I don’t want you to have a hard life.” Those were my mother’s words to me as we stood in the hallway of my parents’ home in Leland in 2008. At the time, I was a 20-year-old college student, home that weekend from Ole Miss.

My mother had sensed that I had been growing distant, reluctant to talk to her on the phone, and pulling away generally from my family. She knew — as mothers often know — that to become fully myself I thought I needed to leave my family behind. I thought they wouldn’t understand.

She stopped me in the hallway and asked what seemed like a simple question: “Eric, are you gay?” In the ensuing conversation, I officially came out to my mother, who like my father, brother and sister, had known all along. Though she was not surprised by the confirmed knowledge of her middle child being gay, what she said next surprised me. “I don’t want you to have a hard life.”

I recoiled from her words at that moment. I did not appreciate the link she made between me being gay and my life being harder as a result. Knowing her work in healthcare, I did not appreciate what I assumed was her subtle link between being gay and adverse health outcomes. I wanted to believe then — as I still do now — that to be gay does not immediately equate a harder life. I wasn’t naive enough to think that life wasn’t hard, but I believed in my bones that the fact of one’s sexuality shouldn’t be a primary reason for it. I believed that to be gay was no different than one’s eye color or height: an inescapable and unavoidable biological fact.

Since that 2008 conversation, living an “out” life seems to have gotten a bit easier as reflected in national numbers. A 2024 Gallup poll found that nearly one in 10 Americans identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community. All in all, in the 12 years that Gallup has tracked LGBTQ+ identification in the United States, the rate of self-identification has nearly tripled.

While there are various explanations for this statistical change, many queer people prior to this administration believed our lives would not be made harder by being who we are and living our lives openly and authentically.

These national numbers reverberate locally. Recent numbers indicate that there are 93,300 LGBTQ+ adults in Mississippi, around 4.1% of the state’s total population. Further, despite a history of exclusion, LGBTQ+ folks in Mississippi raise and sustain families.

In a 2022 article for Mississippi Today, Nigel Dent related how “the percentage of same-sex parents in Mississippi is higher than the nation at 25.7% in Mississippi versus 17.2% nationally.” In 2022, Mississippi had the nation’s highest rate of same-sex couples raising children, an inversion of statistical realities that often place our state at the bottom of lists. The unexpected fact that same-sex couples in Mississippi are raising families at such rates should be a banner of pride for our state.

Mississippi is not an anomaly in the South. In 2023, the Williams Institute found that 35.9% of all of those who identify as LGBT (the center’s chosen acronym), more than five million people, live in the U.S. Southeast, more than any other region in the country. Chances are most Southerners today know someone who is lesbian or gay or bisexual or transgender. Beyond those of us who are LGBTQ+ in Mississippi, many of us have brothers or sons, sisters or daughters, mothers or fathers, cousins or chosen kin, who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer.

LGBTQ+ Mississippians are woven into the fabric of many of our daily lives, contributing to our economy, our culture, our sense of place, our ideas of community, family and home. The rainbow connection we create is being felt across the state.

In Jackson, Mississippi Capital City Pride hosts year-round events covering the state’s queer history and culture and the Jack Myers house opened in 2024 as the first LGBTQIA+ shelter in Mississippi. Since 2008, Tupelo has hosted a Pride parade as does the Biloxi-based Gulf Coast Association of Pride.

College towns such as Hattiesburg (Pine Belt Pride), Oxford (Oxford Pride), and Starkville (Starkville Pride) also host annual pride events and year-round programming. I attended this year’s Oxford Pride, where hundreds marched in full technicolor despite changing political dynamics and institutional support. In Water Valley, Violet Valley Bookstore is one of the nation’s most revered LGBTQ+ independent bookstores and is annually featured in a graphic from Oprah Daily.

Across many fields and walks of life, we are shaping our home state, creating and making the lives of all Mississippians better, easier, more beautiful and fulfilling. Why would we want to listen to rhetoric and support policy that makes the lives of any group of Mississippians harder? Why would we want to make the lives of LGBTQ+ Mississippians harder? Why would you want to make your son’s or your daughter’s or your friend’s or your co-worker’s life harder? What purpose does that serve? Whose purposes does it serve?

Today politicians across the country feel emboldened to advocate to make my life and the lives of folks like me harder in this politically divisive moment. Political leaders are positioning themselves to pass legislation that would strip away rights already codified and set a foundation for further intrusion into the lives and freedoms of LGBTQ+ Americans.

The following is but a sampling of our current moment: on March 8, 2025, Donald Trump posted a crossed-out pink triangle on his Truth Social, evoking the Nazi persecution of gay men. Republican leaders in five states—Michigan, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota—have suggested the Supreme Court overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage. Idaho and North Dakota have already passed such legislation. Four additional states—Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas—have introduced legislation that would create a separate category of legal marriage called “covenant marriage,” that could only take place between a man and a woman.

On June 10, the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the US, approved a resolution calling for the overturning of Obergefell as they deem it “def[ies] God’s design for marriage and family.”

Executive orders have forced the National Park Service to remove “transgender” and “queer” from the Stonewall monument website irrespective of any consideration of the historic facts pertaining to that site. Transgender flags are no longer allowed at Stonewall “officially,” though visitors continue to bring trans flags to leave at the site.

With the fate of Medicaid in limbo, some insurance companies now feel comfortable denying coverage for PrEP, or Pre-exposure Prophylaxis, a routine treatment that significantly lessens one’s risk of contracting HIV. With the defunding of the federal USAID and PEPFAR in the balance, access to HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention protocols has been interrupted globally.

As with any virus, HIV does not discriminate based upon gender or sexual identity, and an HIV diagnosis, while no longer fatal for most in the United States, does indeed make life more difficult for whoever it impacts.

Under the new leadership of Kristi Noem, Homeland Security has quietly moved to eliminate a ban on surveillance based on sexual orientation and gender identity leading many to speculate that the agency will now increase targeted surveillance on gender and sexual minorities.

Finally, executive orders, policy reversals and legislation targeting trans Americans are too many for one list to capture. Regarding the executive order against trans people serving in the US Military and using the pronouns of their choice in such service, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes called the policy “unadulterated animus.” Absolute hostility: a policy reversal that exists for no other reason than for one group to be hostile toward another group of fellow Americans.

Aren’t we better than this?

In Mississippi, some state officials continue to vilify groups of fellow Mississippians without regard for expertise or diligently consulting established facts on a given issue. Adding fuel to the flames of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment without any grounding in evidence, such leaders strive to make the lives of a group of fellow Mississippians harder for no other reason than political utility.

What tangible benefit is there for a straight Mississippian to tell a trans Mississippian that they don’t exist? There is none. It is the politics of cruelty, plain and simple, a refusal, as Jane Fonda stated at the SAG awards earlier this year, to “give a damn” about someone different from you.

In Mississippi, only five cities — Clarksdale, Holly Springs, Jackson, Magnolia, Rosedale — and no county have passed ordinances to protect LGBTQ+ Mississippians from discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations. If federal mandates are removed or held in the limbo of ongoing legal challenges, then, only 6% of LGBTQ+ Mississippians will be protected from discrimination under local law.

With recent rhetoric and proposed actions from federal and local governments, one can only imagine how the lives of LGBTQ+ Mississippians may be about to get harder. And to be clear, some folks within our community will be hit harder than others.

“I don’t want you to have a hard life.” Seventeen years later, I understand now where my mom was coming from. She was coming from a place of care and concern for her child. Her words were not about who her son was but who other people were. She knew in her wisdom and experience that she would not be able to control how my life would be made manifestly more difficult by the actions of others who did not see, love and know me as unconditionally as she did. She knew people feared what they could not understand and that the so-called “marginal” among us will always be our most vulnerable.

My mother has been a healthcare provider since she was 15 years old in our native Mississippi Delta. She has often repeated a mantra attributed to Hippocrates, known best to us as the author of the Hippocratic Oath: first, do no harm. In a medical setting, such advice is often more idealistic than practical. Doctors and nurses must often react to extraordinary situations comparing risk and benefit for a myriad of treatments. Many treatments — such as those for cancer — often cause significant short-term harm in service of hoped-for long-term healing.

But the point is that many healthcare providers like my mother operate under the basic assumption that they should not cause further harm to their patients. That to heal, one must first aim not to make the problem worse.

I’ve been thinking in the last few months of the words harm and hard in conjunction. What if we simply told our politicians and representatives not to make it harder? No matter what you do — no matter what mistakes you may make in the process — no matter what ideological system aligns with your personal values — no matter from whom comes your campaign financing — no matter what your political party — can you first promise to not make it harder for any of us?

Can that be your first guiding principle and most basic commitment to all of your constituents? It would be nice to believe that public servants get into that line of work because they already adhere to that foundational ethic.

“I don’t want you to have a hard life.” Life is hard. I know of few people from all walks of life who have not gone through hard times. But we should expect our leaders not to go out of their way to make it harder for any one of us.

We should hold our leaders accountable when they attempt to target any group of us in ways that will make life harder for that group and, by the way, do little if anything at all to benefit those of us who are not in the targeted, oft-marginalized, group.

As a native Mississippian, my life hasn’t always been easy. But who I am in my full authenticity has prepared me to weather the hard times and cherish the easy ones.

In March of 2025, I attended my cousin’s marriage in Pass Christian; there, she married her long-term boyfriend. The weekend after, my partner and I attended his cousin’s marriage in Georgia. There, his cousin married his long-term girlfriend. Two straight-marriages in two weekends. Good times. Easy times. Fun times. Family time.

When I was growing up, I never dreamed that the legal path for me to marry the man I now call my partner would be as easy as it has been since 2015, since the Obergefell ruling. As my partner and I watched our cousins walk down the aisle to meet their beloveds and commit to them to weather life’s storms, for better or for worse, I prayed that option remains viable for us, two men who by the grace of God found each other. I pray, too, that marriage remains a legal option for all couples like us well into our nation’s future. Life is so much easier when you walk it with someone you love by your side. Love should be enough.

In 2008, a few months after I officially came out to my mother in that hallway conversation, my older sister got married. The easiest conversation I ever had about being gay was with my sister. The conversation was easy because it never took place. My sister knew; she knows. And yet, she didn’t need me to go through the hard part — the difficult step — of having that conversation where I described my supposed difference in contrast to her assumed normalcy.

My sister made it easy because all that mattered to her is that I’m her younger brother. For her, that was, and is, enough. No need to make it any harder than that.

Eric Solomon, PhD, is a graduate of Emory University and the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College at the University of Mississippi. He grew up in the Mississippi Delta and is a lifelong Southerner. His work has been featured in Southern Cultures, Southern Spaces, south, South Atlantic Review, Studies in the Literary Imagination, Mississippi Quarterly, the North Carolina Literary Review, among others. Solomon is an instructor of English and Southern Studies at Ole Miss.

Four years ago, agents from the state auditor’s office arrested Tunica nonprofit operator Mardis Jones in what the office trumpeted as the second-largest embezzlement case in its history and demanded Jones return over $1 million to the state.

The charges accused Jones of stealing $750,000 from a home rehabilitation program he was supposed to be administering while turning away needy rural residents living in crumbling houses.

But his defense attorney attacked holes in the case, and last month, a local jury found Jones not guilty of the criminal charges. Now, the state has made no indication it will bring a civil case to try to claw back the money from him.

Jones’ nonprofit Tunica County Housing Inc. secured a subcontract with the county through the North Delta Regional Housing Authority in 2014 to run the county’s home rehabilitation program funded with casino revenue. For his work, vetting applications and managing expenses, Jones earned $12,000 a month.

At the core of the criminal case were “strange money transfers” and a finding that several of the people whose applications for home rehab were approved allegedly never received any repairs to their homes. According to the auditor’s office, investigators found less than 20% of the nearly $2 million Jones’ nonprofit received went to the contractors working to rehab homes.

“Once again, an arm of government trusted a private organization to run a government program, and a large percentage of the program’s spending was flat out stolen,” State Auditor Shad White said in a press release after the arrest.

Attorney General Lynn Fitch echoed White, saying, “These funds – hundreds of thousands of dollars – were meant to help the elderly, handicapped, and poverty stricken. But the funds never got to the vulnerable citizens who needed it most.”

Jones’ lawyer Carlos Tanner explained to Mississippi Today that the program operated with an extreme backlog, and that “some of the people they were claiming didn’t get their houses done actually did” by the time the trial was held this year.

The program was poorly administered, Tanner said, meaning that even if a person’s application was approved and a rehab contract prepared, county officials could direct Jones to put someone else’s repair job ahead of his or hers.

“But just because it was run like a first weekend lemonade stand does not mean Mardis Jones stole money,” Tanner said.

Tanner said the investigators gathered paltry evidence, only looking at details that fit their narrative. While Jones did earn a large salary through his contract, Tanner said prosecutors never presented evidence that Jones converted money that was supposed to be used on home rehabilitation to his personal use.

Investigators got a warrant to seize Jones’ electronics, Tanner said, but “they never bothered to search it.”

“The two OSA (Office of the State Auditor) officials who were running the investigation, I questioned them about it during trial, and neither of them could tell me where the computer was, where the phone was, or what the contents were,” Tanner said.

Jacob Walters, a spokesperson for the auditor’s office, defended the way the investigators handled the case, saying, “The state auditor’s office is never going to turn a case we investigated over to a prosecutor unless we’re fully confident in the work that we did.”

At the time the auditor’s office announced the Jones arrest, it also said it delivered a demand letter ordering Jones to repay over $1 million, the money it alleged he stole plus interest and investigative expenses.

It’s up to the attorney general or local district attorney to decide how to prosecute auditor investigations, or in Jones’ case, what happens to the civil demand now that a jury found him not guilty in the criminal case.

When a person receives a demand alongside his or her arrest, regardless of what happens with criminal charges, the claw back can be enforced through civil litigation — much like the case against several defendants in a stunning Mississippi Department of Human Services fraud case, which began in 2020 and has yet to be resolved. Walters said the demand against Jones is still the office’s next-largest in history, second only to the welfare scandal.

The government might choose to pursue civil litigation, even if criminal prosecution is unsuccessful, because there is a lower burden of proof to win civil cases.

But the attorney general’s office told Mississippi Today last month that it had not received the Jones demand letter from the auditor, meaning it has nothing left to enforce.

Walters said the auditor’s office sent the letter along with the case file four years ago, but that with a turnover in attorneys prosecuting the case, the auditor had to resend the file last year. If the attorney general’s office no longer possesses the demand document, Walters said, “it’s an incredibly easy problem to resolve.”

“Just reach out to us with a single phone call or email and we can get it to you,” Walters said.

After the interview, the auditor’s office sent the demand letter by email, and the attorney general’s office confirmed it was received.

A new Mississippi law that restricts diversity, equity and inclusion policies in education will harm the way schools teach about important historical events and people who challenged racism and segregation, Judy Alsobrooks Meredith says.

She is the wife of James Meredith, the man who faced a violent white mob when he became the first Black student to enroll in the University of Mississippi in 1962.

More than 100 relatives, friends and admirers gathered Wednesday night at Hal & Mal’s restaurant in Jackson to celebrate Meredith’s 92nd birthday. Many posed for photos with him, and Judy Alsobrooks Meredith spoke on behalf of the family.

She said the new anti-DEI law will make educators reluctant to teach about her husband or other important figures including Medgar Evers, the Mississippi NAACP leader who was assassinated in Jackson in 1963, and his wife, Myrlie Evers, who is still living and who became a civil rights leader in her own right.

“Y’all better start teaching your kids and your grandkids who they are,” said Alsobrooks Meredith, as the Evers’ daughter, Reena Evers-Everette, stood nearby.

A federal judge heard arguments Tuesday in a lawsuit that seeks to block the anti-DEI measure, which became law when Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed it in mid-April.

The law prevents public schools from creating diversity, equity and inclusion offices; hiring people based on their race, sex, color or national origin; or engaging in “divisive” concepts, including teaching that a person “by virtue of his or her race, sex, color, national origin, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive.”

Legislative Democrats argued that the restrictions will force teachers to minimize ugly parts of history, including slavery and segregation. Republicans who pushed for the law said DEI concepts divide people into victims and oppressors.

With restrictions in schools and universities, Alsobrooks Meredith said it’s more important than ever for people to share their own family histories.

“Young people, start recording when you hear old folks talking … when you hear your mother, your grandmother, your great-grandmother talking about some stuff, start hitting the record button. Just do that. You’ve got to preserve,” she said. “To say that Medgar Evers and Myrlie Evers and James Meredith … they never existed. Well, that’s a lie born in hell.”

When incoming Jackson mayor John Horhn takes the reins next week, he will have the power to renegotiate many of the city’s hundreds of contracts, but with a notable exception: The hotly-debated garbage collection contract. 

Generally, new mayors and governing boards possess the power to void and renegotiate contractual decisions made by their predecessors. But this rule does not apply to contracts that are time-specified by statute, such as the six-year solid waste collection contract penned by the city last year.

Since the Jackson City Council agreed to a $64-million contract with the New Orleans-based, minority-owned Richard’s Disposal in 2024, the city’s garbage contract likely won’t be reopened until at least 2030, after Horhn’s first term ends. 

But the new mayor is expected to take a host of other contracts under review when he takes office on July 1. 

Robert Gibbs, the chair of Horhn’s transition team, said they have obtained lists of hundreds of city contracts and grants to review with an eye toward efficiency and effectiveness but that it’s too early to say which ones could be renegotiated. 

“For instance, when there has been a man shortage problem, (the city of Jackson has) been able to enter into contracts with companies that brought the manpower and the know-how,” Gibbs said this week on Mississippi Today’s political podcast The Other Side. “As we’ve looked at those, some of those are working very well, and we may very well continue those. But in other instances, there’s been a loss of employees for whatever reasons, and those departments have to be built back up.” 

Gibbs added the transition team has heard complaints from local contractors who feel the city has been unreceptive to doing business with them. 

An attorney, developer and local contractor himself, Gibbs was involved in the yearslong dispute between outgoing Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and the city council over selecting a new garbage vendor, which spanned from 2021 to 2024. Gibbs’ company served as the minority subcontractor for Waste Management, the company that formerly held the contract and was vying for a renewal. 

“You always hear about the dollar circulating in the community seven, eight times, and that’s important for your community to be profitable. But if those dollars go and leave your community, then you lose that seven or eight times effect,” Gibbs said. “And that’s what I’m afraid we’ve done with a couple of contracts in the city of Jackson.”

The pledge to review contracts has been welcomed by some city council members, including Ashby Foote, a representative for Ward 1 who has vocally opposed numerous city agreements in recent years, including the garbage contract. 

“So much of this stuff has been outsourced because we haven’t had the personnel to do stuff that should’ve been done internally,” Foote said. 

In particular, Foote noted that last year he voted with a majority of the city council to pay $700,000 to a local engineering firm for what he described as a one-year “contract to review contracts” in the public works department.

While Horhn will likely have the opportunity to renegotiate that contract early in his first term, he won’t be able to touch the garbage collection agreement without some effort. 

In general, new mayors and governing boards in Mississippi have the power to rescind or modify city agreements, because that is what they’ve been elected to do, said Pieter Teeuwissen, a Hinds County Court judge. 

But that rule does not apply to certain time-limited obligations that governments can enter, such as the issuing of municipal bonds, the leasing of sixteenth section lands or the collection of solid waste. 

“The general rule is you want to give each successor governing authority as much opportunity as possible to have a say in the business of the city or county,” Teeuwissen said. “But the Legislature in its infinite wisdom has decided that certain types of contracts ought to carry a specific time. Someone who is buying $40 or $50 million in government debt doesn’t want to have to worry every four years that they’re gonna get canceled.” 

The rules around time-limited contracts were the subject of a lawsuit that Teeuwissen brought against Hinds County for terminating his contract as board attorney before its one-year period expired. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with him.

In the case of solid waste collection, state statute permits municipalities to sign six-year contracts, with options to extend the contract through four additional one-year periods. 

This could be because garbage collection is considered an essential city service, Teeuwissen theorized, but he noted that almost any contract can be renegotiated if one party is intent on it, even as these laws are poorly understood by many attorneys in Mississippi.

“A good lawyer and a good set of facts can get you out of almost anything,” he said. 

Marcus Wallace, a well-known city subcontractor, ran for mayor in the Democratic primary in part because he was unhappy with Lumumba’s approach to contracting. He said he’s hopeful the incoming administration will prioritize local contractors who can keep the city’s money in Jackson.  

“Let the big companies pave your State Streets and your Northside Drives and Woodrow Wilsons, but when you go into these neighborhoods and these smaller streets – like a Valley Street – allow the smaller companies to do those jobs,” he said.  

“We gotta start peeling back the layers to help businesses grow, and I really think Mayor-elect Hohrn is gonna do that part,” he added.

Richard Jordan, Mississippi’s longest serving and oldest death row inmate, died by lethal injection Wednesday evening at the Mississippi State Penitentiary nearly 50 years after he kidnapped and murdered Edwina Marter. 

The 79-year-old Vietnam War veteran who experienced post-traumatic stress disorder was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. 

“First I would like to thank everyone for a humane way of doing this. I want to apologize to the victim’s family,” Jordan said, adding thanks to his wife and lawyers and asking for forgiveness. 

“I love you very much,” he said as his last words. “I will see you on the other side, all of you.”

Prison officials confirmed Jordan was unconscious after injecting a sedative before following with injection of two other injection drugs – a check ordered by a federal judge who greenlighted the execution late last week. This was part of a federal lawsuit challenging the lethal injection protocol in which Jordan was a lead plaintiff. 

In January 1976, Jordan found himself desperate for money and made a plan to kidnap the family member of a bank employee and demand funds. The Vietnam War veteran had a job lined up and had moved his family to Louisiana, only to find the position was filled, according to his clemency petition. 

He spent a few days looking for work before calling the Gulfport bank where Charles Marter worked as the commercial loan agent. Jordan found the man’s address in the phonebook and went there, posing as an electric company worker to get the banker’s wife, Edwina, to open the door at gunpoint. Her toddler son was left unharmed at home. 

Jordan had Edwina drive to the DeSoto National Forest. As she tried to run away, Jordan shot in her direction, hitting her in the head. Afterwards, he called Edwina’s husband to demand $25,000 in ransom. After two failed money drops, Jordan was arrested. 

He went to trial that year and received a death sentence, only for it to be overturned multiple times due to questions about the legality of Mississippi’s death penalty law. It wasn’t until 1998 and four trials later that the sentence stuck. Then Jordan began years of appeals. 

Eric and Kevin Marter, the now-adult sons of Edwina, and her husband Charles did not travel to Parchman to witness the execution, but Edwina’s brother planned to attend with help of his family, Kevin Marter said. 

Family members left without offering comment. 

Ahead of the execution, Eric Marter said he wanted Jordan’s sentence to be carried out sooner rather than almost 50 years later after his mother’s death. 

“I don’t want him to get what he wants,” Marter, who was 11 in 1976, said about Jordan’s efforts to fight his death sentence. 

Jordan’s wife, Marsha, witnessed the execution along with his attorney Krissy Nobile of the Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel and his spiritual adviser, the Rev. Tim Murphy. Such advisers have been allowed to accompany death row inmates since a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

After the execution, Attorney General Lynn Fitch said her office has pressed for justice and was pleased to be able to provide the Marter family, friends and the community with closure. 

Leading up to the execution, Jordan petitioned the U.S Supreme Court and the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to step in. The appeals court denied a stay of execution Tuesday, and the high court denied request for a stay and writ of certiorari Wednesday afternoon – about an hour before the execution. 

Tuesday evening, Gov. Tate Reeves reviewed Jordan’s clemency petition and said he would not intervene in the execution, noting circumstances of the crime, how Jordan admitted his guilt, multiple trials and appeals. 

Frank Rosenblatt, a professor at the Mississippi College School of Law, submitted the clemency petition that included letters of support from at least a dozen people, including Jordan’s wife, his sister and a pastor. 

“Richard is all of these things: a patriot; a Vietnam Veteran; a man of faith; a good son, brother, and friend; and he is an exemplary inmate who has worked to prevent this type of crime from happening ever again,” Rosenblatt wrote in Jordan’s petition. 

Organizations including Death Penalty Action and Catholic Mobilizing Network circulated petitions that called on Reeves to stop Jordan’s execution citing similar factors, including how he experienced post-traumatic stress disorder from his military service. Death Penalty Action’s petitions were delivered to the governor’s office Tuesday. 

During an afternoon news conference, Parchman Superintendent Marc McClure said Jordan seemed talkative and was telling stories about his past. He had been moved to a holding cell Sunday evening, and before the execution he visited with family, his attorneys and spiritual advisers. 

He requested chicken tenders, French fries, strawberry ice cream and a rootbeer float for his last meal, prison officials said at the earlier news conference. 

Starting in the afternoon, demonstrators gathered outside Parchman in the Delta and the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson. Death Penalty Action also hosted a virtual vigil. 

Minutes before the execution, a group gathered outside the prison entrance and offered prayers for Edwina Marter, her family, Jordan and his family. Among them were Rev. Jeff Hood, an Arkansas-based spiritual adviser who has accompanied 11 death row inmates to the execution chamber and has spoken out against the death penalty. 

Jordan’s execution is the third in the past decade, with the most recent taking place in December 2022. 

Thirty six people remain on death row in Mississippi, and the Attorney General’s Office is seeking execution dates for three – Willie Jerome Manning, Robert Simon Jr. and Charles Ray Crawford. 

The Associated press contributed to this report