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Attorney General Lynn Fitch said she and other Mississippi officials are joining the Trump administration to fight fraud and “protect American taxpayers from … grift”

“With the support of the U.S. Department of Justice, my office is standing up Joint Task Force Vigilance with our two U.S. attorneys and the FBI to surge resources and personnel to make Mississippi safer, protect Mississippi taxpayers and restore law and order,” Fitch said in a press release. “This first-of-its-kind task force will bring the full authority of our office to bear on con artists, grifters, fraudsters and scammers.”

Fitch said her office has been awarded over $2.5 million in federal money to form the task force. Anti-fraud efforts pushed by the White House will also include the Mississippi secretary of state, state auditor, state treasurer, U.S. attorneys and FBI offices. This is part of a new Southeast Regional Fraud Enforcement Partnership that includes officials from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina.

This is part of a “war on fraud” that President Donald Trump announced earlier this year, which included the creation of a new anti-fraud division in the DOJ and a “fraud czar” position that the administration at one point said would be run out of the White House.

Critics of the administration’s push said it appears to be aimed at targeting political foes of the White House, including blue state officials, ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

Mississippi Today Ideas is a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share their ideas about our state’s past, present and future. Opinions expressed in guest essays are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Mississippi Today. You can read more about the section here. 

The age-old expression “Money doesn’t grow on trees” applies in most cases with the exception of a branch on my family tree, the one grown by my father, Jim Money Vardaman. 

The idiom reminds us that money is a limited resource that must be earned and spent carefully. As it happens, my father wrote a book on the subject of trees and money entitled “How To Make Money Growing Trees.” You can find my dad’s contributions to sustainable tree farming alongside his Big Year birdwatching memoir entitled “Call Collect, Ask For Birdman” in the U.S. Library of Congress, where there is also a pile of nonfiction titles that recognize his grandfather, James Kimble Vardaman, as one of the most racist figures in American political history.

I have a wish that history and people who respect it will also one day recognize his grandson, my father – a World War II combat hero, a pioneer of forestry science and the visionary behind what has become the modern sport of birdwatching. 

Money is also my middle name. It was given to me by my dad, and I suppose my mother, Virginia, liked the sound of it, too. For over 40 years, my father carried his folded USD in a 14-karat gold money clip engraved with the initials MIMMN – which stood for Money Is My Middle Name. He was clever, and he had a lot of fun with the audacity of the word over the years. He never minded explaining to people where the name came from – and neither have I.

It’s a family surname rooted in the Mississippi Delta and an ancestor named Hernando Money, a cousin and political ally of my great-grandfather, a former Mississippi governor and staunch segregationist recognized in history books as “The Great White Chief.”

Gov. Vardaman and Sen. Money are also the reason why Money – a small community outside of Greenwood where white men kidnapped 14-year-old Emmett Till before torturing him to death – also has the same name. 

Both Vardaman and Money were long dead by the time Till’s murder occurred in 1955, but the evil that men do lives long after them, to loosely quote both Shakespeare and journalist Ralph McGill, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his work on the subject on the segregated South.

In 1958, McGill wrote, “Let’s face the facts. This is a harvest. It’s the crop of things sown.” In his book “The South and the Southerner” first published in 1963, McGill described Gov. Vardaman as a “twig bender” who used populist rage to twist minds into limbs that grew history in the wrong direction. In1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. also published his open “Letter From Birmingham Jail” in which he recognized McGill as a rare white ally who “had written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms.” 

My father also sent a letter commending McGill in April 1963 on the 15th – a day before King’s dispatch from a jailhouse in the Jim Crow South. His own letter was postmarked from my hometown of Jackson, a city that was harvesting so many seeds of racial violence that it claimed the life of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in June of the same year. The letter my father wrote McGill on the subject of the South and Southerners, like the grandfather he never knew, was short and to the point: 

Dear Mr. McGill: 

I enjoyed every word of The South and the Southerner and heartily agree with you, even if you did spend three pages taking the hide off my grandfather. 

From your studies of the origins of Southern traditions and attitudes, do you think it logical that a twig-bender produced a forester in two generations?

Sincerely Yours, 

James M. Vardaman 

Mr. McGill never responded nor published his letter, but thanks to a series of journalistic lucky breaks nearly 30 years later, my father came to find out that Ralph McGill not only read his letter, he kept it in his pocket while he attended the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention in Washington. The convention, which was held April 17–20, 1963, was a pivotal event in the timeline of the Civil Rights Movement, and while my father was not at the Statler-Hilton in person, his letter was. 

The reason I have a copy of my father’s sentiments on segregation in 1963 is that he sent them to me in another letter that I have treasured since I received it in October of 1989. The next year, I graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi and moved to midtown Atlanta, where I learned a lot about why its citizens changed a street named Forrest Avenue to Ralph McGill Boulevard in 1980. 

When my own father graduated from the University of Michigan in 1942, he had no choice but to go Camp Shelby in south Mississippi and be trained by the United States Army for combat as a field artillery specialist.

The birdwatching student of forestry spent the next three years applying himself in the interest of ending World War II, and he also wrote his mother diligently, with loving detail and penmanship, about the birds he saw as he fought his way across Europe to eventually earn a Silver Star for gallantry in action during the Ardennes Offensive, also known as the “Battle of the Bulge.”

After he satisfied his combat obligation, he attended the “Big Three” Allied conference in Potsdam, Germany, as an assistant to his uncle, J.K. Vardaman, who was serving in the capacity of naval aide to President Harry Truman. My father, then a lieutenant, continued to write a flurry of elegantly detailed letters which is why he referred to the ones he sent my grandmother between July 17 and Aug. 2, 1945, as his “Diary of Potsdam.”

I celebrated what would have been his 105^th birthday this year by taking a copy of it to Independence, Missouri, to ask a scholar at the Truman Research Library if he thought my father represented an excellent example of an evolutionary branch in the history of a family tree, and I was told I should “write a book” on the subject. I thanked him for the interest and time and left him a copy of my father’s 1980 memoir “Call Collect, Ask For Birdman” for his personal library of great history books. 

It is easy to find “twig benders” like Gov.  James K. Vardaman recognized in history, and I am writing this in the hope that his grandson, Jim Money Vardaman, will one day be recognized as the branch-building champion of trees and birdwatching.

Emily Money Vardaman was raised in Mississippi, educated by Jackson Public Schools and is a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi. She has spent most of her professional life selling things, including seven years of carrying Electrolux vacuum cleaners door-to-door in the Atlanta Metro Area. A lifelong music enthusiast, in 2023 she launched an amateur podcast devoted to musical instrument history called “The Lipstick Pickup.” Since 2005, she and her husband Kevin, a fellow Mississippian, have lived in Nashville, Tennessee.

Mississippi students seeking short-term workforce training can now qualify for thousands in federal financial aid to help cover their program costs. But, only a dozen programs are expected to be eligible by 2027, despite hundreds of courses being offered at community colleges across the state.

Congress expanded the federal Pell Grant program, which helps low-income students pay for higher education, last year to cover certain short-term workforce training programs. The new Workforce Pell Grant program change took effect July 1. 

But, before institutions can offer aid to students, the state must approve eligible programs to qualify for the federal Pell Grant program. State officials finalized the formal program approval process at the end of June. The first programs may be available as early as January 2027, said Courtney Taylor, executive director of AccelerateMS, the state’s workforce development agency. 

Instead, the state’s workforce board is beginning with a group of high-demand fields such as construction, advanced manufacturing and healthcare to qualify for the federal aid. Job training programs such as line work and commercial truck driving could be options for students in the future. 

The state’s community and technical colleges will likely offer these programs that are in fields with available jobs employers want to fill immediately, Taylor said. 

Job training programs have to meet federal requirements to receive Workforce Pell at least a year before seeking approval from the state, Taylor said. The agency expects very few applications to be submitted for programs this year, she said. 

“While we’ve had these programs for some time, it may take us a year before we can start offering it,” Taylor said. “The most important thing is not creating duplicate programs and ensuring they are viable and lead to a job and livable wage for individuals.” 

If students want to enroll in a short-term job training course today, about 250 to 300 programs at the state’s community colleges are immediately available to them, Taylor said. Students can request career training program information through their local community college or find options on AccelerateMS’s website. Programs such as emergency medical technicians, plumbing, welding and HVAC are all immediate options for students, Taylor added.

Public and private colleges, trade schools and proprietary institutions that want to get federal money must identify eligible job training programs that demonstrate they meet federal employment and earnings benchmarks. These schools must obtain approval through the state’s new three-step approval process, said Rachel Partrick, deputy executive director of programs at the Mississippi Community College Board.  

“Are we excited? Absolutely! Will we have a lot of programs ready? No,” Partrick said. 

Institutions will have to submit formal applications to the state’s Workforce Investment Board. The board will consult with Gov. Tate Reeves to ensure short-term programs are “high skill, high wage” and meet current employer demands, according to Mississippi’s Workforce Pell Program Approval Policy Process manual. AccelerateMS will be responsible for accepting applications and annually reviewing and monitoring job programs that meet federal guidelines. 

Schools will also need to work with the state and federal government to prove that at least 70% of job training program graduates are employed and that their wages are higher than 150% of the federal poverty line, according to federal guidelines. By 2029-30, states must begin reporting on job program completers who find work in fields related to their training. 

The state’s existing workforce data system gives Mississippi an advantage when it comes to tracking metrics such as job program graduates and median earnings, Taylor said. But officials expect new measures for data collection to expand as colleges seek approval for eligible programs.

The expansion of the federal aid program could also be an opportunity for Mississippi to address its workforce shortages and increase the number of residents who complete job training or higher education by 2030. As of 2026, 48.8% of Mississippians ages 25 to 64 had a degree, credential or industry certification beyond high school, slightly higher than the national average of 43.6%, according to the Lumina Foundation.

Workforce Pell also fits into the state’s broader push to tie education to employment. Senate Universities and Colleges Committee Chairwoman Nicole Boyd, a Republican from Oxford, has spearheaded the effort. She said she sees the new federal program as a possible way to help residents achieve a quality life. 

“This is a great opportunity to strengthen our state’s workforce, economy and put families on a path to prosperity,” Boyd said. “The Legislature has worked to strengthen Mississippi’s workforce by supporting policies that connect education to employment. As Mississippi implements Workforce Pell, we are laying the foundation for eligible training providers to expand access to high-value programs that lead to meaningful careers and support our state’s continued economic growth.”

Scott Colom, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Mississippi, will campaign with Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland in Jackson on Saturday. 

Alsobrooks, who was first elected in 2024, will participate in a maternal health panel discussion with Colom on Saturday morning in downtown Jackson. The two will later participate in a voting rights town hall with Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson and Mississippi NAACP Director Charles Taylor on Saturday evening. 

Alsobrooks is the third Black woman elected to the U.S. Senate and is the first Black person to represent Maryland in the Senate. 

The Maryland senator will be the first Democrat from outside the Magnolia State to campaign for Colom in his home state. In April, U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, came to Mississippi for a fundraiser for Colom’s opponent, Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. 

Hyde-Smith, Colom and independent candidate Ty Pinkins will compete in the general election on Nov. 3. 

Mississippi and the U.S. are experiencing the steepest drop-off of participation in the nation’s largest anti-hunger program in nearly 30 years following federal cuts made last summer by Congress and President Donald Trump, experts say. 

In April, 43,000 fewer Mississippians had access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program than nine months earlier. Mississippi’s decline of 12% in the program previously known as food stamps is slightly higher than the national average of 11%, according to recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

“And it’s not because the need is any lower,” said Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, during a July 22 press conference.

In fact, food insecurity in the U.S. is the highest it’s been in a decade, according to the most recent data. 

Regulations that Congress passed through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and that Trump signed into law last July have changed the face of SNAP. Stricter work requirements subjected previously-exempt older adults and caregivers to more paperwork. An already burdened system became more strained, at a time when the same federal law posed new fines for states with high error rates in eligibility determinations. 

A payment error rate measures how accurately each state determines the number of SNAP dollars an eligible person receives. In May, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves praised the Mississippi Department of Human Services for lowering the state’s error rate and qualifying for a lower penalty. 

MDHS Communications Director Mark Jones previously told Mississippi Today the department was able to achieve this by providing more training for staff who determine if people are eligible to receive SNAP and by reminding recipients about the importance of updating income changes to ensure their paperwork is accurate. 

However, experts say it’s problematic that delaying or denying benefits to an eligible family does not count as an error.

“That creates an enormous incentive for states to slash their error rates by any means necessary,” Jones Cox said. “And that’s what we’re seeing.”

The decline is outpacing even the government’s predictions. Shortly after Congress passed Trump’s megabill last year, the Congressional Budget Office predicted SNAP enrollment would decrease by 2.4 million people nationwide. To date, enrollment has decreased by 4.5 million people. 

At least a third of those people are children, according to data from 19 states. Mississippi does not track data on children. 

Dr. Patricia Tibbs, president of the Mississippi chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said she worries about the effect that the decrease in enrollment will have on the next generation. Nutrition is one of the most influential determinants of health – and children are the most vulnerable.

“It’s children we’re talking about,” Tibbs told Mississippi Today. “They don’t choose their families’ income.”

Politicians should look at SNAP as a return on investment, Tibbs said. Access to healthy foods helps Mississippi children grow into productive citizens, saving the state millions of dollars on more complex issues that arise from inadequate nutrition. Tibbs also said increased investment in SNAP could boost the state’s workforce participation rate, currently the second-lowest in the country. 

“Hospitalizations, developmental services, special education, mental care, chronic disease treatment – those are all down the road, if we don’t focus on nutrition,” Tibbs said.

‘It’s a lose-lose situation’

In 2019, Debra Expose of Jackson, a single mother of five children ages 2 through 12, began facing severe financial hardship after divorcing the father of her eldest daughter. Expose said she doesn’t receive child support for any of her children, despite being their primary caregiver and picking up most of the costs of child rearing. 

Over the years, Expose has worked at Walmart, Kroger, Xerox and for the city of Jackson as a crossing guard. Most recently, she worked for the United States Postal Service. She resigned last year due to the lack of family leave, flexible hours and affordable childcare. 

SNAP has been a lifeline for Expose as she looks for a more family-friendly job. Now, she said she worries that federal cuts and pressure on states to lower error rates will mean increased red tape that could put food out of reach for her family. 

Expose said paperwork delays are already commonplace. Every six months at her recertification appointments, she routinely gets kicked off the program for one to three months, she said. Even when she submits her paperwork early, caseworkers do not get to her case in time to prevent her from losing coverage, she said. That has meant making difficult decisions, such as whether to put food on the table or keep the lights on. 

And sometimes, losing one means losing the other. 

“Am I gonna lose my power that’s gonna help me keep the food fresh and able to be eaten? It’s a lose-lose situation,” Expose said. 

Safia Malin is policy director for the nonprofit One Voice, a Jackson-based civic engagement group. She said hearing from people such as Expose should be a central part of how lawmakers develop public policies. In Mississippi, it’s not. Formal opportunities for constituents to provide testimony do not exist in the state Legislature. 

“There is so much we can learn from data and numbers, but also from real live human beings who are withstanding the impacts and figuring out how to make ends meet,” Malin said. “We know that the unfortunate reality for so many folks is that a reduction in benefits for them just means they’ll be forced to go without.”

Although the Mississippi Legislature doesn’t have the power to reverse or delay federal cuts to social safety net programs, Malin urged the Mississippi Department of Human Services to make sure it is not lowering its error rate by cutting eligible people. 

Malin also recommended the Legislature adopt a system called “simplified reporting,” as every other state has done, to administer SNAP. Malin believes it would reduce the number of errors – without cutting eligible families – and save the state money that could go back into the program. 

As situations such as Expose’s become more common, repercussions will be felt for decades, said Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. 

He said that includes not only the long-term health conditions resulting from inadequate nutrition but also the effects of chronic stress on children living in food-insecure homes. Studies show that toxic stress, including prolonged and extreme economic hardship, can impair cognitive development and leave children more vulnerable to physical disorders such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, as well as mental health issues such as depression and alcoholism. 

“To the extent that we are making policy decisions today about foregoing the opportunity to feed hungry children, we are having consequences that will haunt us going forward a generation from now,” Racine said. “And it’s entirely avoidable.”

The University of Mississippi is suing two former football players who transferred to LSU, alleging they failed to compensate the school for their departure as required by revenue-sharing agreements they had signed in early January.

The lawsuits were filed against edge rusher Princewill Umanmielen and offensive lineman Devin Harper. Ole Miss seeks $550,000 from Umanmielen and $400,000 from Harper, according to the lawsuits filed Monday in Lafayette County Circuit Court in Oxford, Mississippi.

The lawsuit stems in part from former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin’s high-profile departure for LSU late last season. LSU declined comment on Wednesday.

College athletes have been able to transfer far more freely in recent years without having to sit out a year, as was once required by the NCAA. There have been scattered disputes between players and their former schools over compensation agreements; earlier this year, Washington quarterback Demond Williams Jr. said he would return to the Huskies after his school was reportedly prepared to pursue legal options to enforce his lucrative name, image and likeness contract.

In a statement released to reporters, Ole Miss said it “values its student-athletes and is committed to honoring all obligations made to them.

“In return, the university expects that same commitment from its student-athletes and their representatives in upholding their contracts,” the school said.

Ole Miss said revenue-sharing agreements signed by both players included a provision requiring them to compensate the university with a predetermined amount if they departed before fulfilling their commitment.

“The University of Mississippi has a responsibility to enforce its contractual terms, and this position is consistent with the actions of other institutions in the current landscape of college athletics,” the Ole Miss statement said. “The university attempted to amicably resolve this matter prior to filing.”

Kiffin left Ole Miss following its regular-season finale against Mississippi State in late November. Kiffin initially asked to continue coaching the Rebels in the College Football Playoff after he’d accepted the position at LSU, but Ole Miss declined and appointed then-defensive coordinator Pete Golding as Kiffin’s replacement. Golding coached Ole Miss to the national semifinals.

After the Rebels’ playoff run ended, Umanmielen and Harper transferred to LSU.

Umanmielen had nine sacks and 13 tackles for loss as a junior last season for the Rebels. Harper was a freshman reserve in 2025, appearing in six games.

Mukta Joshi is an investigative reporter at Mississippi Today. She is spending a year as a New York Times Local Investigations fellow examining immigration and criminal justice issues. She can be reached at mukta.joshi@nytimes.com.

A Rankin County jail guard who was caught on camera in 2022 punching an inmate and breaking his jaw will now police schoolchildren in the county. 

In a Facebook post Tuesday, the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department shared that Jordan McQueary, the former guard, had been assigned as a school resource officer, and congratulated him on completing his law enforcement training. 

In a video that surfaced in January, McQueary can be seen lunging and punching an inmate in the face, knocking him to the ground, after a verbal altercation. The inmate, Dustin Rives, suffered a fractured jaw and developed a deep infection during the following month, ultimately requiring surgery. 

In his incident report, McQueary quoted Rives as saying to a female guard, “Shut up, bitch, before I punch you in the face.” Rives said he did use that language, but said it was directed at the male trusty who accompanied the guards, not the female guard. 

“Before inmate Rives could do anything kind of harm to another officer, I struck him and placed him on the ground,” McQueary wrote. 

David Fathi, director of the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union who reviewed the incident for Mississippi Today, said punching a detainee could only be justified in self-defense, which was not the case according to McQueary’s own report.

Jason Dare, attorney for the sheriff’s department, said, “The single slap in response to Rives (1) calling a female jailer a “b****”, (2) threatened to punch her,  then (3) raising his right fist to follow through with his threats, appears permissible under Fourteenth Amendment standards.” 

About a minute and a half after McQueary punched Rives, McQueary can be seen escorting the inmate away with his hands behind his back, pants pulled down and genitals exposed. “I was begging them to pull up my pants,” Rives wrote in his 2022 complaint to the department. “They laughed and said they wouldn’t.”

Rives was one of at least nine jail inmates who filed complaints or federal lawsuits alleging that McQueary had assaulted them. As is true for other lawsuits against the department, most were filed by inmates themselves, without lawyers, and nearly all were dismissed. 

Dare said none of the pro se claims filed against McQueary resulted in a finding of impropriety against him.

A supervisor closed Rives’ complaint three days after he filed it, and Rives said he never heard from the department again. 

The supervisor wrote that the department had provided a “satisfactory response,” involving scheduling a medical appointment and informing Rives that he had a right to press charges against McQueary after he was released. The supervisor’s report did not indicate whether McQueary was questioned or disciplined about the incident. 

Mississippi Today and The New York Times had previously uncovered allegations of widespread violence in the jail and a culture of brutality condoned and encouraged by top officials.

In 2024, the sheriff’s department honored McQueary for his “outstanding” work in the jail. 

“School resource officers protect children from violence. So the question is — would parents, children, teachers, and/or faculty feel safe with Deputy McQueary protecting their school?“ Dare said. “Based on the totality of unmanipulated facts, Deputy McQueary appears capable of protecting a school and helping to maintain a safe, secure learning environment.”

McQueary did not respond to a request for comment. 

The parents of Nolan Xavier Wells and families of two other Black teenagers who died this year under unclear circumstances say they will not stop until they have answers and justice. 

Christine and Elmore Wonsley traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, and stood Thursday with the family of Daniel Erving, who died in Texas in April, and Tyler Smith, who died in Kentucky on July 4 – the same day Wells went missing from Horn Island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast. 

Their attorneys say each teen was in the company of mostly white groups before they died. 

“Nobody in all three of the questionable deaths of these 18-year-old young Black kids, nobody has been held accountable in any way,” said attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Wells’ parents and helped bring the families together at the National Urban League’s annual conference.

Wells traveled by boat with white friends to Horn Island on July 4, but he did not return with them to Ocean Springs. A park ranger found his body in the water off the island two days later. 

Preliminary findings from an independent autopsy released last week list Wells’ manner and cause of death as undetermined. The pathologist said more investigation is needed to rule out foul play and drowning. Results of the first autopsy, conducted by the state medical examiner’s office, have not been released.

On Thursday, attorneys for Wells’ family said they have hired an audio engineer expert to review a dispatch call made by his friends when their boat was taking on water, and an oceanic expert to look more into how the tides were moving when Wells went missing.  

While Wells’ death has attracted national attention, Crump said few people outside of Texas or Kentucky likely know about Erving and Smith and what happened to them. He also said there are similarities between Erving’s and Wells’ cases. 

Tameca Erving remembers how her son left on April 13 to hang out with two white friends. She thought they were staying around the neighborhood, but they left to go fishing at Lake Ray Hubbard outside Dallas. 

She reported him missing around midnight after he didn’t return. Days later, Daniel Erving’s body was pulled from the lake and his death was ruled an accident from drowning from jumping off a bridge, according to the state autopsy. 

Erving said she does not believe her son drowned because he was healthy and a member of the swim team. An autopsy report found he had an unobstructed airway, she said, which is not a sign of drowning. 

During the press conference, Crump said the two white people Erving was with threw away his clothes and phone, deleted messages from Erving’s phone and chose not to go to authorities. 

Erving said her son was set to graduate in May but did not because of what was done to him.   

Months later, a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old were arrested and charged with tampering with evidence but not with Erving’s death, which his mother called offensive. She is calling for murder charges and her legal team is working to have Erving’s case presented to a new grand jury. 

In Kentucky, Smith went to a Fourth of July house party in Lexington, where he died of a gunshot wound to the head. Authorities said his death was accidental and the shot was self-inflicted. 

His family also disputes the finding about this death, which they say relied on party attendees who said Smith shot himself while playing Russian roulette, his grandmother Necee Anderson said at the Thursday press conference. The family has pushed police to test the gunshot residue on Smith’s hands, which she said did not happen. 

Days later, police arrested a 20-year-old and charged him with tampering with evidence, as happened after Erving’s death in Texas. 

“I’m not afraid to go to hell and sit with the devil,” Anderson said about her family’s continued pursuit of answers and justice. 

On Thursday, Wells’ parents said his loss has been one of the most difficult things they have navigated. On top of grief and unanswered questions, they said they are dealing with having their characters attacked. 

Christine Wonsley, Wells’ mother, said those attacks will not stop her from advocating for her son. 

“All of these distractions, other questions, the people, the attacks people have sent our way. Just know, we will not be distracted,” she said. 

She and her husband were asked about potential defamation lawsuits people may face for public speculation about their son’s death. Crump said he is aware of that effort and also called it a distraction. 

On Wednesday, a 20-year-old former teammate who was by Horn Island the day Wells went missing announced he was suing anyone involved in spreading misinformation about him that has compromised his safety. 

In a statement, the family of Bart Edmiston Jr. said he had nothing  to do with Wells’ death. He said he drove his own boat to the island and helped Wells’ friends fix their boat when it took on water. It is internet personalities and sleuths who have wrongly implicated him in the death, the family said. 

“We grieve for the loss of Nolan, but as a family, we are also concerned for the lives of our children and the safety of others being “convicted” in a court of public opinion without facts — indeed contrary to known evidence,” the family said in its statement. 

Cease and desist letters have begun to go out in anticipation of a defamation suit, and more letters are expected, Edmiston’s attorney, Russell Latino, who is also publisher of the Magnolia Tribune site, wrote on Facebook. 

In a statement Thursday, state Rep. Jeffrey Hulum, a Democrat from Gulfport who is running for a U.S. House seat, said private citizens have threatened elected officials on the Coast with defamation lawsuits. He said when elected officials promise to hold people accountable for threats, that promise should cover everyone.

Hulum mentioned the two autopsies that have been performed. 

“Those are the public facts, and they do not support anyone saying that Nolan Wells drowned or that Nolan Wells was murdered,” Hulum said. “The honest answer today is that no one outside that process knows exactly what happened to him, and anyone claiming otherwise is replacing the judicial process with a false narrative.” 

Hulum said premature statements cause damage.

“This is not a red herring and it is not a political football. It is about the tragic death of a bright young man who lost his life far too soon,” he said. “It is about the fact that every mother should know, to the fullest extent possible, what happened to cause the death of her child.”

Correction, 7/30/2026: The headline has been updated to show Nolan Xavier Wells’ correct last name.

After nearly 60 years, the Rankin County School District has been released from a federal desegregation order put in place to curb racial discrimination. 

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Kristi Johnson declared that racial segregation no longer exists in how students are zoned or transferred to district schools and classes or how staff and faculty are assigned to schools. The court also found that students of all races are subjected to equitable discipline practices and have access to extracurricular activities in the district.

“The Court finds that the District’s current policies and practices are race-neutral and comply in good faith with the Court’s orders and the District has done everything practicable to eliminate the vestiges of discrimination,” Johnson wrote.

The court will no longer monitor whether the district is discriminating against Black students and staff. The district no longer discriminates against Black students or operates a dual school system, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. 

At a September hearing, attorneys for the plaintiffs, some of whom were in attendance, argued school desegregation persists in Rankin County schools. Erica Frankenberg, an education professor at Penn State who researches racial desegregation, found in an investigative report that the district missed between 20 and 30 opportunities to diversify its staff, passing on qualified Black applicants in favor of white ones.

Attorneys remarked the district had one Black teacher in the gifted and talented program.

John Hooks, an attorney for Rankin County schools, reminded the court at the September hearing that Brandon Elementary was designated a National Blue Ribbon School for closing the achievement gap for Black students in 2021.

Black students post higher graduation grades and lower drop-out rates in the district, he added.

Rankin County schools join the Copiah County School District, which was released from its desegregation order in August. In Mississippi, 28 school districts remain under desegregation orders. 

Only two other southern states, Alabama and Georgia, have more districts that are monitored for vestiges of segregation by a federal judge.

The federal monitoring of Rankin County schools came about as a result of a lawsuit brought by local Black students. In 1967, Kenneth Adams and other Black children sued the district for discriminating against Black students and operating a dual school system for them. The court ordered a freedom of choice plan for students within the district, and later, in 1970, ordered the district to desegregate its schools across six metrics, ranging from how students are zoned to district schools to staff assignments to schools.

For the subsequent decades, district officials provided the court with annual reports on the racial composition of staff assignments and student enrollment, among other data. District officials were tasked with ensuring no schools in the district had a student population that was overwhelmingly Black or white. White student populations at schools had to be between 46.59% and 86.59% in the 2023-24 school year. 

The goal was that each school roughly represented the diversity districtwide. Rankin County schools are approximately 27% Black and 62% white.

The court ensured compliance through district data. Since the September hearing, the court received at least five reports from the district detailing the racial demographics of students at each school and among student transfers between schools. The district also gave the court the racial breakdown of its teachers and administrators.

Twelve schools fell outside of the range set by the court to determine racially identifiable schools over the past five years.

In October 2019, the court stopped monitoring whether new construction and building closures disproportionately disadvantaged Black students or staff. That year, the court also stopped monitoring the race of all district bus drivers. Both decisions came after the court ruled that district leaders no longer discriminated in decisions related to district expansion, school construction and abandonment of buildings and supplies.

Rankin County’s release from its desegregation order has followed several others in the region. The Department of Justice under President Donald Trump has signaled willingness to release more school districts from desegregation orders. More school districts were released from desegregation orders during Trump’s first administration than under the past four presidents.

“From the very first, federal supervision of local school systems was intended as a temporary measure to remedy past discrimination,” Johnson cited a prior ruling. “Now, after almost 60 years, the Court concludes its supervision.”

Mississippi could grow its population, strengthen its workforce and boost its economy if employers offered more family-forward policies – and doing so wouldn’t be that hard, researchers argue in a new report by the Mississippi Early Learning Alliance. 

Those policies include paid leave, childcare assistance, flexible scheduling and health-related benefits. Even modest changes could increase employee retention and productivity and put millions more dollars into the state’s economy, said researchers for the nonprofit group, which is dedicated to improving early learning and child development outcomes in the state. 

“Too often, family-forward workplace policies are seen as nice-to-have benefits or feel-good ideas,” Biz Harris, executive director of the Mississippi Early Learning Alliance, told Mississippi Today. “But the reality is that they’re some of the most effective tools employers have to address the workforce challenges they’re already facing.” 

Mississippi has the nation’s second-lowest workforce participation rate, with nearly half of its adults unemployed. Childcare challenges cost the state an estimated $673 million a year, including $553 million in employer losses from absenteeism and employee turnover. More than half of Mississippi parents report missing work because of childcare access, and some leave their jobs altogether. 

And Mississippians are leaving more than just their jobs. The state’s population has declined or remained unchanged nearly every year since 2014, leading to what policy analysts have dubbed “the brain drain.” Jackson is one of the fastest-shrinking U.S. cities. Meanwhile, neighboring states such as Alabama and Arkansas are growing. 

The good news, according to the report, is that employers don’t have to look out of state for solutions. Several Mississippi companies are already implementing strategies that help attract and keep working parents. 

Mississippi Power, a utility company headquartered in Gulfport, offers up to 12 weeks of paid maternity leave, two weeks of paid parental leave and 12 weeks of paid adoption leave, according to the report. 

Toyota Mississippi, a manufacturing plant in Blue Springs, includes an on-site childcare center offering 24/7 services to align with employees’ shifts. 

Many family-forward policies don’t require significant financial investments, the report noted. Offering flexible workday start and end times costs employers nothing and can help employees navigate school or daycare drop-off and pick-up times. A private lactation space in an existing area of the workplace can improve employee satisfaction without requiring major structural shifts for an organization. 

The report also encouraged employers to invest in health benefits that are specifically geared toward supporting families, such as a low-deductible family insurance plan. 

Mississippi Early Learning Alliance helped develop a childcare tax credit for businesses that contribute to the cost of childcare for their employees. The group created an economic impact calculator to help businesses understand how much money they could save by investing in childcare. 

Family-forward policies can start small but have profound impact, Harris said. And not just for working parents, but for the next generation. 

Studies show that when working parents have access to robust paid leave and affordable, high-quality childcare, children bond better and benefit cognitively and emotionally. Those children grow up and become stronger contributors to the communities where they’re raised. 

“Supporting caregivers and parents during the earliest years of a child’s life isn’t separate from building a stronger economy,” Harris said. “It’s how we build one.”