A card that pays for classroom supplies for Mississippi teachers is activated too late to be useful, a new report from the auditor’s office says.
The Education Enhancement Fund, or EEF, procurement card program, which was established in 2012, gives every teacher $748 — over $27 million in total across the state — to buy supplies for their classrooms. But because the cards aren’t activated until August 1, $17.8 million of that money is locked when “teachers need it most,” the report concludes.
According to State Auditor Shad White’s office, three out of four classrooms will have already started school this year before teachers have access to the cards. That means teachers will have to dip into their own pockets to purchase the supplies or start the year without supplies they need.
“The ‘Mississippi Miracle’ in public education is a national success story, but sustaining that momentum requires classrooms to be equipped from the first day of class,” the report reads. “Activating cards by July 15th each year would eliminate this burden, put public dollars to work as intended, and ensure students walk into classrooms ready to learn.”
However, the state education department says it typically releases funds in July — information that agency officials say the auditor’s office omitted in its report.
Because the state changed vendors and new cards had to be issued, fiscal years 2025 and 2026 were exceptions, according to the education department. In fiscal year 2027, it will be possible to activate the cards anytime after July 1.
“It is always MDE’s intention to provide teachers with all available resources as expeditiously as possible,” a statement from the agency reads.
The August 1 activation date is sooner than in years past. For 10 years, the Mississippi Department of Education activated the cards by September 1. In 2022, legislation changed the cards’ activation date to help teachers access the money earlier.
“We’re glad that MDE is making the needed change of activating EEF cards before the school year starts in coming years,” White said in an emailed statement. “This will help ensure that teachers don’t have to go out-of-pocket for classroom supplies and have the classroom ready to help students succeed.”
Rebekah Staples, the chair of the Capitol Complex Improvement District’s Project Advisory Committee, told Mississippi Today after the group’s meeting on Thursday that the project to repave the road will eventually move forward, even though not much progress has been made on it.
“This is a project in which the Legislature has provided funding, and we intend to follow the law,” Staples said.
A 2024 Mississippi Today investigation revealed that House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, a Republican from Senatobia, helped steer $400,000 in state taxpayer funds to repave Simwood Place in Jackson, where he owns a house.
Simwood Place, located in the relatively affluent LoHo neighborhood of northeast Jackson, is roughly one-tenth of a mile long, with only 14 single-family homes.
State lawmakers and the Jackson City Council member who previously represented the area told Mississippi Today they did not ask state leaders to allocate money for the Simwood Place project.
Lamar did not return a request for comment and has previously declined to answer specific questions about the Simwood project.
A spreadsheet detailing the status of various CCID projects showed the Simwood project was still in the preplanning phase, and the comment on the project status simply said, “N/A,” meaning not applicable.
A spending bill passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Tate Reeves routed several projects through the CCID committee. The advisory committee is housed in the Department of Finance and Administration.
DFA is the primary agency responsible for state government financial and administrative operations, including employee payroll, employee insurance and maintaining state buildings. However, the Legislature has also tasked the agency with overseeing some operations of the CCID.
The peak time for asphalt projects in Mississippi typically runs from late spring to early fall. The Legislature in 2024 routed five projects, including the Simwood project, through the CCID committee.
It’s been one year since lawmakers appropriated the money for these projects, and most of them have either been completed or are ongoing, except for the Simwood project and infrastructure improvements to Jackson State University.
For the JSU project, the spreadsheet says the organization is waiting on an update from the university, while there’s virtually no update or comments on the Simwood project.
Liz Welch, the DFA director, told Mississippi Today that the agency is still planning on completing the Simwood project, but the organization has other infrastructure priorities that it’s currently tackling.
Editor’s note: This article contains a photo that some readers may find disturbing.
On an August afternoon in 2023, three inmates at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility evaded the notice of guards and slipped away from their housing unit.
They weren’t plotting to escape the Rankin County prison. Instead, they were on a rescue mission. On their shoulders, they carried a man whose legs seemed to be rotting from the inside out, his flesh cracking like leather left to shrivel in the sun.
The prisoners decided to take matters into their own hands. They headed for the office of corrections officials to find help and, without a guard stationed on the facility’s watchtower, made their way across the grounds.
When they reached the outside of a multipurpose building, they spotted Stephanie Nowlin and shouted her name.
“Think of it like a scarecrow, almost,” Nowlin said, recounting the episode in an interview with Mississippi Today. “It’s how they were carrying him, one on either side, and his arms were just off their shoulders.”
The image embedded itself in Nowlin’s mind, but it was only one moment among many that charted her course from high-ranking prison official to public critic of the system she once served.
Behind Bars, Beyond Care:
A Mississippi Today investigation into suffering, secrecy and the business of prison health care
For almost two years, Nowlin was one of Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain’s top lieutenants. Cain hired Nowlin after she had served time in prison herself and made her his government affairs coordinator. The pair developed such a close bond that she came to view him like a grandfather. Now, she is speaking out about what she said is widespread medical neglect and mismanagement inside the agency and its facilities.
An inmate’s leg at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility on Aug. 17, 2023. Credit: Stephanie Nowlin
Nowlin provided Mississippi Today with internal messages between current and former department officials showing officials criticizing VitalCore Health Strategies, the company contracted to provide medical care to Mississippi prisoners. The messages show that in private, officials lamented the quality of VitalCore’s health care services even as the company raked in hundreds of millions in public dollars — a money pot that has been growing larger for years.
Nowlin came forward after Mississippi Today reported on the House Corrections chairwoman’s allegations that MDOC is running a financial deficit for its medical program at the same time sick prisoners languish without proper care.
In response to Mississippi Today’s questions for that article, MDOC spokesperson Kate Head said the conditions inside Mississippi prisons exceed “constitutional standards” and denied any allegation that inmates receive care below such standards.
The statement compelled Nowlin to reveal what she said she and other prison officials have seen — neglect and mismanagement that contradicts MDOC’s claims that it provides inmates with proper medical care.
“It affected me tremendously. I could not sleep,” Nowlin said of the statement. “There are just so many things that are wrong with that.”
In a statement, Head did not respond to a detailed list of questions about the specific episode Nowlin mentioned, the internal communications obtained by Mississippi Today or the department’s provision of health care.
“The Mississippi Department of Corrections is restricted by federal law from disclosing or commenting on the medical condition and/or treatment of the inmate population,” Head wrote.
A VitalCore spokesperson did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls requesting comment. The company has previously said it provides “comprehensive and competent” health care services to Mississippi inmates.
Nowlin has filed state and federal lawsuits against MDOC related to a personal matter involving her former parole officer — a matter that predated her work at the department.
In interviews, Nowlin pointed to systemic problems, such as a backlogged and dysfunctional system for getting inmates critical medical services and assigning them to housing units.
The result, Nowlin said, is that sick inmates get lost in the correctional system — behind bars, beyond care.
“There are major damages being done. Not just to tax dollars but to real humans. People just like me who made mistakes and who shouldn’t suffer at the hands of egos, politics, laziness, hypocrites and more,” Nowlin said. “I’m ashamed of this system.”
From prisoner to prison official
Nowlin had first been inside the walls of the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility as a prisoner. She was incarcerated between January 2017 and July 2019 for aggravated DUI and served part of her sentence at CMCF.
After her release, Nowlin worked as an events director for a hotel. Outside of work, she attended church services and began sharing her perspective as a former inmate on how the state could better rehabilitate the people inside its prisons. One woman she met at church was a friend of Cain and, following a recommendation, Nowlin got in touch with him.
The two spoke for hours over the phone, and following an in-person meeting, Cain invited her to accompany him on a trip to the Angola State Prison in Louisiana, where he had been the warden. The pair attended Angola’s prison rodeo, a program Cain created that attracted national attention for the spectacle of events like bull riding and “convict poker.”
Cain touted the rodeo as a way to generate revenue for prisons and drive “moral rehabilitation” among inmates – an approach that often saw Cain push to incorporate religious teachings into prison programs.
Nowlin said she was hesitant to work in a system whose shortcomings she experienced firsthand, but Nowlin was swayed by the affection with which Cain interacted with inmates: “When I saw it firsthand, you see these people in the striped jumpsuits like I was and the way he treated these humans, I can’t even put it into words. I wanted to be a part of that.”
In the fall of 2022, she accepted a job as MDOC’s government affairs coordinator, a position that tasked her with supporting the agency’s interests at the Capitol and working onsite at prisons to develop reforms.
“Five years ago I was on much different grounds with MDOC. I am here to tell you, do not give up or lose hope,” Nowlin wrote in a Facebook post announcing her new job. “I’m so honored to be a part of Mr. Burl Cain’s team. Seeing the way these men respect him and what he has done for the forgotten inspired me more than I honestly think I have ever seen. I’m thankful and ready for the opportunity that I have been blessed with.”
Nowlin began working to alleviate what she said was a lengthy backlog for reclassification, the processes for updating an inmate’s custody level throughout their incarceration. Reclassification is supposed to ensure inmates are placed in the least restrictive environment possible while maintaining prison security. But Nowlin said MDOC didn’t employ enough case workers, and inmates would frequently get stuck in restrictive housing assignments for far longer than necessary.
That is what made CMCF a central focus of her work, and it is what brought her to the prison on Aug. 17, 2023.
‘He’s fine and noncompliant’
Nowlin said she had been tapped as a potential replacement for Cathy Fontenot, who worked as a consultant for MDOC, focusing in part on inmate classification and reclassification.
Fontenot previously worked under Cain at Angola as an assistant warden, and for a time handled public relations. Some credit Fontenot with helping to cultivate “the legend of Cain,” a narrative which casts Cain as a near-miracle worker who curbed the violence at what had been one of the South’s bloodiest prisons.
Fontenot is among a cohort of allies who followed Cain to MDOC after he resigned from his post at Angola in 2015 following allegations that he misused public funds. Cain denied wrongdoing and was never charged with a crime.
Nowlin began working with a team of case workers to help manage the department’s backlogged inmate reclassification system — a task she found intractable.
On that August day in 2023, Nowlin had been trudging through inmate reclassifications when she stepped outside to take a call. That is when, to her horror, she encountered the inmates carrying the man whose leg flesh appeared to be rotting. Mississippi Today is declining to publish the man’s name to protect his medical privacy.
The man’s fellow inmates carried him from “quickbed” — a unit for newly arrived inmates undergoing initial classification. It is comprised of inmate “zones” where inmates sleep on bunk beds in dormitory-style housing.
After seeing the man’s legs, Nowlin took photos and she called John Hunt, then the superintendent of CMCF, who has since become the corrections department’s deputy commissioner of institutions.
Hunt arrived, and he and Nowlin transported the sick inmate to the prison infirmary on a golf cart.
Once at the infirmary, Nowlin said, nurses declared the man “noncompliant” because he allegedly had not been taking his diabetes medication. The next day, Nowlin went to check on him and saw that medical staff had rubbed some sort of ointment on his leg and sent him back to his zone.
“That’s all they did,” Nowlin said. “They didn’t send him to the hospital. They didn’t do anything other than that.”
Nowlin also texted the photos to Jay Mallet, then MDOC’s deputy commissioner of institutions. Mallet, after seeing the man’s legs, said prison medical staff frequently declare sick prisoners “noncompliant” and send them back to their cells.
A transcript of texts about the inmate reads:
Mallet: Wait is that real
Mallet: What is that and how long has it been like that
Nowlin: Yes Jay! It’s his legs
Nowlin: I don’t know how long it’s been like that. The nurses keep trying to say he’s noncompliant with his meds, etc. they were going to just send him back. Hunt and I just drove him over on a cart and are having quickbed nurses clean him up. I don’t have any authority to ask any other questions but it’s so fking bad
Mallet: That is what medical does a lot of
Over the next few days, the pair engaged in another text exchange about the incident where Mallet, who was a member of MDOC’s executive leadership and one of the highest-ranking officials in the department, said VitalCore, which he referred to as VC, “sucks” – a statement he made the same year the state agreed to pay VitalCore about $100 million in taxpayer funds.
Nowlin: I honestly have no idea if they even cleaned up his legs
Mallet: VC sucks
Mallet also criticized medical staff for allegedly saying the man’s dire condition was partially due to his diet.
Mallet: What is medical saying
Nowlin: Pshhhh he’s fine and noncompliant … Bc he won’t eat right, like are you fking kidding me…
Mallet: What the hell is eating other than what’s served
Nowlin: Exactly. The main clinic was just about to send him back. Jay he couldn’t hold his eyes open
When discussing the man’s condition when he had allegedly fallen into a coma, Mallet also seemed to suggest people would lose their jobs.
Mallet: How is he
Nowlin: Still in quickbed and was in a coma on the bed
Mallet: Damn everybody gonna get run off smh
Mallet: Let me polish off this resume
A screenshot of a text message between between Stephanie Nowlin and former Mississippi Department of Corrections Deputy Commissioner of Institutions Jeworski “Jay” Mallett. Credit: Stephanie Nowlin
Mallet did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Nowlin was not able to confirm what happened to the inmate. Prison records do not show a man who meets his description as currently incarcerated, and parole records don’t show someone with his name as having been released over the past two years.
In interviews, Nowlin said the episode was not a gruesome exception to the routine process for evaluating and treating sick inmates in Mississippi’s prisons, but emblematic of a systemic problem.
The backlog
The sprawling CMCF was built on 171 acres in Pearl in Rankin County. It can house a little over 4,100 offenders, according to the corrections department. The prison is the first stop for people sentenced to serve time in Mississippi, and as such, conducts initial orientation and classification.
Inmates are classified and assigned to facilities based on a variety of factors, including “level of care designations,” which refer to their health care needs. MDOC says inmates are placed based on their needs and the space and security needs of the department, but the department doesn’t follow its own policies, Nowlin said.
Inmates are supposed to get reclassified on a continuing basis in order to evaluate their condition and behavior, but there aren’t enough case managers to stay on top of the process. As a result, inmates often get stuck in restrictive housing or in facilities that can’t accommodate their health care needs, Nowlin said.
As the classification backlog grew and the medical ailments of many inmates went untreated, VitalCore failed to keep its promises to expand prison health care services, text messages obtained by Mississippi Today allege.
Hunt, the current deputy commissioner of institutions, texted Nowlin that he was concerned about the care VitalCore was providing and said they promised to build a medical clinic in one of the prison buildings at CMCF, but never did.
“I’m worried about the medical back there too,” Hunt wrote. “VitalCore said they were going to put a small clinic in the hallway of A Building. They came and looked at the room and we cleaned it out for them, but it hasn’t gone anywhere.”
A screenshot of a text message between between Stephanie Nowlin and John Hunt, deputy commissioner of institutions for the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Hunt previously served as superintendent of the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. Credit: Stephanie Nowlin
In the next fiscal year, Mississippi is set to spend over $121 million on prison medical services, a number that has been climbing for years. Republican Rep. Becky Currie, the House Corrections chairwoman responsible for conducting oversight of MDOC’s budget, said there is little evidence that the money is being spent on providing quality care.
VitalCore officials “do nothing but pull these fat salaries from the contract and do absolutely nothing for the inmates,” Nowlin said.
More than one person at the top
Nowlin left MDOC in May of 2024 and now works as a legal administrative assistant at a law firm.
Cain, who plucked her from obscurity and elevated her to a powerful position helping to manage the system under which she was once jailed, is overseeing some problems that predated his tenure, Nowlin believes. The problems, she added, are system-wide.
“He disappointed me tremendously, but I think he wanted to clear his name from Angola and come over here,” she said.
“The way that this system is set up in the state of Mississippi, when you’ve got 20,000 inmates spread out all around, all of this corruption. It’s almost set up for anyone to fail, unless these legislators, along with many others, wake up and get on board and realize that it’s more than just one person at the top.”
One legislator, Currie, embarked on several tours inside Mississippi’s prisons. Once inside the grounds of these facilities, the lawmaker says she witnessed widespread suffering — suffering she believes is preventable.
Currie said she saw Hepatitis C and HIV patients denied lifesaving medication. She saw diabetics go untreated and cancer patients dying from lack of care. These are human costs, she said, of a state prison system where silence and secrecy conceal suffering: “It’s a kingdom, and they do not want you looking in.”
Double jeopardy does not apply, the state’s Court of Appeals narrowly said, when it ruled a former Ole Miss student acquitted by a judge should be tried again for the near fatal stabbing of a Tennessee man in 2019.
Union County Circuit Judge Kent Smith had ruled in 2023 that the prosecution violated Lane Mitchell’s constitutional right to compulsory process – specifically to command the victim to testify as a defense witness – in issuing an order of acquittal of attempted murder. The appeals court ruled the acquittal was not based on the evidence.
The 5-4 ruling sent the case back to the trial court. Appeals Court Judge John Weddle, formerly the district attorney of counties in northeast Mississippi, recused himself.
Mitchell’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment about whether he will appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court.
District Attorney Ben Creekmore recused himself from the case in 2021, which led the attorney general’s office to appoint two of its attorneys to prosecute the case. A spokesperson from the attorney general’s office confirmed the office would appoint prosecutors for a new trial.
In 2019, the then-18-year-old Mitchell stabbed Collierville resident Nathan Russell Rogers at the Tallahatchie Gourmet – a restaurant where Rogers had been a regular customer and visited after hiking in the area.
Mitchell said during trial and in court records that he believed Rogers had a weapon and he feared for the safety of a female waitress and his father who was working as a bartender. However, Rogers was unarmed.
Video footage from the restaurant also captured the leadup, stabbing and its aftermath. Stills from the video showed how Mitchell grabbed a knife from the bar and held it behind his back and watched for a few moments. As his father and Rogers began to struggle, Mitchell came up from behind Rogers and stabbed him three times in the neck.
Rogers nearly bled out and needed immediate surgery. As a result of the stabbing, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and was placed under his father’s conservatorship, according to court records.
Mississippi Today reported that Mitchell went on to attend another college in Tennessee and would have attended graduation before his trial.
Four days before trial, the defense tried to subpoena Rogers to testify. But when trial began and a jury had been impaneled, he did not show up. The defense filed a summons with a Tennessee court for him to be taken into custody and delivered to Union County, but the summons was never served.
The Shelby County probate court in Tennessee, which oversees Rogers’ conservatorship, quashed the request to bring Rogers to court in Mississippi, ruling that he was a disabled person who is incapable of testifying in any legal proceeding, including the one in which he almost died.
The Court of Appeal’s order notes that the defense did not attempt to appeal the probate court’s decision or ask for a continuance to appeal – ways to get Rogers to testify.
The appellate court’s majority opinion written by Judge John Emfinger focused on whether the court had the ability to hear the case and whether state law provided a valid way for the state to appeal.
Section 99-35-103(a) provides a way for appeals when an indictment is dismissed before a decision is made on the merits of the indictment.
“We find that subsection 99-35-103(a) does not contain any such limitation,” Emfinger wrote in the majority opinion. “Instead, it plainly and unambiguously applies to all efforts to dismiss a charging instrument, for any reason, at whatever time it may be filed.”
The majority also found that dismissing the indictment doesn’t prevent subsequent prosecution for the same offense. In appeal documents, Mitchell’s attorneys have said retrying him would violate his protection against double jeopardy.
Judges Jack Wilson, Anthony Lawrence III, David Neil McCarty and Amy Lassitter St. Pé joined the majority order.
Another focus of the decision was whether Judge Smith was correct to dismiss Mitchell’s charge and acquit him.
Smith identified the conservator, Bob Rogers, who is also the victim’s father, and his attorney as members of the prosecution team. During trial the judge bemoaned some of those actions, including how Bob Rogers was an impediment to the case and helped his son avoid testifying.
The Court of Appeals disagreed, saying Bob Rogers and his attorney were not part of the prosecution team, noting the state Supreme Court has determined that team consists of the investigative and prosecutorial personnel. The court also noted that Bob Rogers, as the conservator, was acting in his son’s best interest.
In a dissent joined by Judges Virginia Carlton, Deborah McDonald and Latrice Westbrooks, Chief Judge Donna Barnes argues the court does not have authority to hear the state’s appeal, so it must be dismissed.
The statute in which the state appealed has limited exceptions, and interpreting it as the majority does disregards plain reading of the statute and Mitchell’s constitutional rights, according to the dissent.
Timing of when an indictment can be dismissed matters because it can bring up concerns about double jeopardy – the protection of being tried twice for the same offense. Jeopardy attaches when a jury is impaneled or a trial begins where guilt may be imposed, which is what happened in Mitchell’s case.
In a separate dissent, Judge Latrice Westbrooks agreed with Barnes and emphasized the trial court’s constitutional and procedural rationales to enter a judgment of acquittal for Mitchell.
Westbrook said that it’s the state’s responsibility to ensure its primary witness is available and present to testify, and allowing the ruling would be a “double standard.” This is in contrast with how a trial may proceed if a defendant fails to appeal, she wrote.
Like Barnes, she disagreed with the majority of justices that the state had a legal means to appeal, including potential concerns of double jeopardy.
“The majority’s refusal to properly recognize the limits of our jurisdiction over an acquittal turns decades of constitutional law and criminal procedure on its head.”
Ambition Preparatory Charter School will expand to become the second charter high school in the state.
The Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board approved the expansion at its Monday meeting, while a handful of Ambition Prep students and administrators watched in the audience.
The school, which was opened by executive director DeArchie Scott in August 2019, currently serves kindergarten through eighth grade. The expansion will make Ambition Prep Jackson’s only charter high school.
Clarksdale Collegiate Public Charter School in the Delta will start expanding into high school grades next year to become the state’s first charter high school, and while the board authorized RePublic Charter Schools to open a high school in 2018, the charter network did not ultimately open one.
DeArchie Scott, founder of Ambition Preparatory Charter School, speaks to students and educators from across the state during the Mississippi School Choice Rally held Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023, at the the State Capitol. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
The board’s move is one that parents have been asking for since the school opened, Scott said.
“We are excited about the decision,” he said after the meeting. “It’s going to have a huge impact on our students. We’ve been telling our families who have been asking for this since kindergarten that we just have to see how we’re doing, and given our results, this is the right time.”
According to the charter authorizer board’s annual evaluation of the school’s performance, Ambition met expectations in the vast majority of categories during the 2023-2024 school year, though it did fall short in at least one instance of employee credentialing and had a high chronic absenteeism rate at 24%.
Lisa Karmacharya, executive director of the authorizer board, said she “couldn’t be more happy” that the charter’s expansion was approved. It’s the first school to take advantage of the board’s new expansion framework — Karmacharya said that Ambition put forward a strong plan and has set an example for other charters.
“Expanding grades will provide educational opportunities for students in communities that have been traditionally underserved and allow for students to continue their education in a structured and high performing school as evidenced by results on annual performance reports,” their expansion report reads. “Ambition Prep is committed to character development, leadership, and college readiness for all scholars now and in the future.”
Kyson Bailey, a rising 7th grader at Ambition, was one of the students in attendance at the Monday meeting. He said he’s looking forward to attending high school at Ambition in a couple of years.
“It’s a good opportunity, just them building on what we have,” he said.
The high school will open in fall 2027, and construction on new classrooms will start in January.
U.S. Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi is campaigning to lead the House Homeland Security Committee, according to the congressional news website Punchbowl News.
Guest, a Republican who has represented the state’s 3rd Congressional District since 2019, is one of four GOP members competing to lead the influential committee, according to the news outlet.
The House Republican Steering Committee will meet on Monday night to pick the next Homeland Security Committee.
The committee chairmanship opened up because the committee’s previous chairman, U.S. Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee, announced he would resign from Congress as soon as the House passed President Donald Trump’s latest spending bill, which he signed into law on July 4.
“I look forward to the possible opportunity to work alongside President Trump as Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security,” Guest told Mississippi Today in a statement. “As the former Vice Chairman of the Committee and the current Chairman of the Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement, I have unique leadership experience to bring to this role.”
The Mississippi Republican currently leads the House Ethics Committee. During his time chairing the bipartisan committee, he has successfully authored and pushed for a resolution to expel former New York Congressman George Santos from the House chamber.
He also led the Ethics Committee during its investigation and subsequent report into the alleged misconduct of former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida. Gaetz resigned from Congress before the committee’s work concluded on Gaetz, which meant the committee no longer had jurisdiction to investigate the Florida Republican.
President Donald Trump in 2024 nominated Gaetz to become attorney general, which prompted bipartisan pressure for the committee to release its report on the Florida congressman, even though Gaetz was no longer a member of Congress. Trump eventually withdrew Gaetz’s nomination.
The committee eventually voted to release the report, but Guest objected to the decision and wrote that it deviated from the committee’s longstanding traditions.
Should Guest become the new House Homeland Security Chairman, it would mean two Mississippians would become the top party leaders on the committee. U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson is currently the top Democrat on the committee.
Thompson served as chairman of the committee from 2007 to 2011, and from 2019 to 2023.
Before Guest became a member of Congress, he was a district attorney in Madison and Rankin counties.
A federal judge has temporarily paused enforcement of the state law that prohibits diversity, equity and inclusion programs from Mississippi public schools and universities.
U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate on Sunday approved the request for a temporary restraining order sought by a coalition of civil rights and legal organizations on behalf of students, parents and educators.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Mississippi Center for Justice are representing the plaintiffs, who filed the lawsuit alongside other groups on June 9 against the state’s education boards. Wingate heard arguments on June 24 from top lawyers from both organizations, as well as Special Assistant Attorney General Rex Shannon, who represented the state-agency defendants.
Shannon objected to the temporary restraining order in court and argued the plaintiffs didn’t have legal standing to file the lawsuit. He also admitted his office was limited in the arguments it could make because of the litigation’s compressed schedule.
The order is in effect for 14 days, and allows Wingate to extend it for an additional 14 days. Next, the plaintiffs plan to seek a preliminary injunction — a longer-lasting court order that would continue to freeze the state law.
The state could appeal Wingate’s decision to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, though it’s unclear if they will do so.
“In this Court’s eye, these accounts appear to reflect a broad, chilling effect across public institutions and community organizations,” Wingate wrote in his order, of individual reports about the impact of the bill. “The evidence, at this stage, demonstrates a clear and ongoing deprivation of constitutional rights in a manner not compensable by money damages — thus warranting injunctive relief.”
In April, legislators passed House Bill 1193, which prevents public schools from creating diversity, equity and inclusion offices, engaging in “divisive” concepts and hiring people based on their race, sex, color or national origin. The State Board of Education and the Institutions of Higher Learning recently approved policies that create a complaint and investigation process for violations to the law.
Local school boards have to create their own policies, too, which MCJ attorney Rob McDuff argued in court would be a lengthy and arduous process.
“This statute would throw our schools into chaos if it’s allowed to go forward,” he said. “As we approach the fall semester, teachers are preparing their lesson plans … people need to know that at least for the moment, enforcement of this law is going to stop while the court further considers the issues.”
Joshua Tom, ACLU of Mississippi’s legal director, said the law’s vagueness was unconstitutional.
“‘Engage’ is not defined,” he said. “How does a teacher or student ‘engage’? Do a mandatory reading? Talk about it in class? What if they go on a field trip and one of the concepts is introduced. Is that engaging? It’s not clear.”
He also noted that the statute was already making an impact — in an effort to comply with the law, the University of Mississippi withdrew its funding from Oxford’s annual Pride Parade a few weeks ago and prohibited university departments from marching in their capacity as professors, he said.
Professors and school officials have publicly criticized the bill and asked for clarification about its enforcement. One top Jackson Public Schools official submitted questions asking if celebrating Black History Month or if one of the district’s core values, “equity,” would lead to compliance violations.
Both parties will be back in federal court on August 5 to make their cases about a preliminary injunction.
The dichotomy that is Jason White was on full display during a speech he delivered during a recent lunch meeting of the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute of Government.
Some at the meeting most likely cursed House Speaker Jason White because of his work to eliminate the Mississippi income tax and because of his unapologetic support of sending public funds to private schools.
Darn that Jason White.
But many of the same people would praise the first-term Republican speaker for his past support of expanding Medicaid to provide health insurance for primarily the working poor and for his support of restoring voting rights for people convicted of felonies.
Thanks, Jason White, some might say, perhaps begrudgingly.
But those people should give White some credit. It was no small feat for White to publicly voice support for Medicaid expansion as he campaigned in 2023 to gather the votes to win the speakership. Before then it was rare for a Republican politician in Mississippi to even utter the words “Medicaid expansion.” Theoretically, White could have been putting his political future on the line.
But in 2024 after being elected speaker by his Republican caucus, White made a good faith but ultimately unsuccessful effort to pass an expansion bill. The proposal was defeated for multiple reasons.
But White has not ruled out the possibility of Medicaid expansion being revisited.
He said the state still needs to help struggling rural hospitals and to work to increase the number of Mississippians who have health coverage. And to achieve those goals, Medicaid expansion, despite changes made to the program in the so-called federal “Big Beautiful Bill,” appears to still be the best mechanism to help struggling hospitals and to ensure health care coverage for poor, working Mississippians.
Another proposal that many Republican leaders, including Gov. Tate Reeves, have opposed that White has embraced is restoring voting rights for people who have been convicted of felonies. In Mississippi people convicted of some crimes, even some relatively minor ones, lose their voting rights for life.
White recently said that he supports “addressing barriers to suffrage for those … who have served their time … paid their debt to society, paid all fines and fees. We are looking for a way to remove barriers for those folks to reengage with the community and be able to vote.”
But many of the same people who would support White’s efforts in health care and in expanding voting rights would curse the considerable political capital he spent to pass a bill that is intended to phase out Mississippi’s income tax, which accounts for about 30% of the state’s general fund revenue.
While White has stepped outside of the Mississippi Republican policy boundaries on some issues, he is right in line with many of his Republican colleagues on the issues of tax cuts and even of providing public funds to private schools. As a matter of fact, White admits he is more of an advocate on the private school voucher issue than many of his fellow House Republicans.
White’s background might help explain his diverse political philosophy.
White was elected as a Democrat in 2011 from a rural district where it would have been difficult for a Republican to win. The district was held by a Democrat — Mary Ann Stevens — who was voting with the burgeoning House Republican caucus. White ran as the candidate of the Democrats, who were desperately trying to maintain their House majority. He won, but the Democrats lost.
After that pivotal election, White saw the handwriting on the wall and changed parties. With that party switch, the Republican majority redrew House boundaries to create a district where White could win as a Republican.
But it is reasonable to assume that in many ways, White is still the person he was when he ran as a rural Democrat.
He is still from a poor, rural area where health care is at the top of mind — and where, often, health care is nearly non-existent.
And in his day-to-day activities, White, an attorney, crosses paths with people convicted of felonies who have paid for their mistake and want a chance to reenter society. That reentry for many includes voting.
And yes, there are struggling schools in the rural area where White lives in Holmes County.
Rightfully or wrongfully, White sees private school vouchers as a way for students trapped in struggling schools to have a better chance.
Many believe that it is wrong-headed thinking to take money from the struggling public schools that need all the help they can get, and that may be a reason to curse White. For others, though, his support of Medicaid expansion is a reason to praise him.
Shelves half-filled with books lined the walls of the muggy Bailey APAC Middle School library, where a handful of volunteers assembled equipment, painted ceilings and sorted through boxes.
One volunteer, wiping sweat from his brow, was Errick L. Greene, superintendent of Jackson Public Schools.
Jackson Public Schools held its annual Beautification Day on Friday. The event brings community members into schools to help prepare them for the first day, just days away. Greene joined hundreds of volunteers across the city.
After all, he was the one who established the event when he arrived at the district in 2018 — a district that was facing a potential state takeover and had lost some trust from its community.
“There’s no way to revitalize a district and do the heavy lifting that we needed to do without some kind of spark,” he said. “We were looking for those sparks — painting a mural or planting some flowers or helping a teacher to set up a classroom. This was an effort to create some shared ownership in our schools.
“You want families to feel like this is their school, because it is.”
Landscape work is performed at Bailey APAC Middle School during the school district’s Beautification Day in Jackson, Miss., on Friday, July 18, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Errick L. Greene, superintendent of Jackson Public Schools, walks with a student at Bailey APAC Middle School during the school district’s Beautification Day in Jackson, Mississippi, on Friday, July 18, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Volunteers work on the landscape at Bailey APAC Middle School during the school district’s Beautification Day in Jackson, Miss., Friday, July 18, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Jason Eifling and his daughter Mary Presley Eifling install computers at Bailey APAC Middle School during the school district’s Beautification Day in Jackson, Miss., on Friday, July 18, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Volunteers and teachers clean and move items in place at Bailey APAC Middle School during the school district’s Beautification Day in Jackson, Miss., on Friday, July 18, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Rose Wright works on the decorations in her classroom at Bailey APAC Middle School during the school district’s Beautification Day in Jackson, Miss., on Friday, July 18, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Marilyn Garcia paints the library ceiling at Bailey APAC Middle School during the school district’s Beautification Day in Jackson, Miss., Friday, July 18, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
School board attorney Dorian Turner assembles a bookshelf at Bailey APAC Middle School during the school district’s Beautification Day in Jackson, Miss., on Friday, July 18, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Errick L. Greene, superintendent of Jackson Public Schools, talks about the school district’s Beautification Day at Bailey APAC Middle School in Jackson, Miss., on Friday, July 18, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
That shared responsibility is essential, especially as federal education funding wavers, Greene said.
Voters had just approved a $65 million bond issue to pay for repairs and new classrooms in the district when Greene arrived in 2018. But he quickly realized Jackson Public Schools, which has many decades-old buildings, needed “two, three, maybe even four times more than that.”
“While I’m thankful, we’ve seen over time, the needs were just much, much, much greater,” he said.
As the district focuses on taking its schools to the next level, Greene said, the state needs to continue consistently and fully funding education, and the community needs to keep supporting its schools at events like Beautification Day.
Bailey in particular was humming with excitement on Friday morning. This year, students will be returning to the school’s original location where it was built in 1938. The school was closed for a few years while undergoing renovations, but in a few days, it will reopen as a 4th to 8th grade school after absorbing Wells APAC Elementary School.
For Rose Wright, a longtime history teacher at Bailey, it’s a homecoming.
“What I love about Beautification Day is that these are their children, and these parents are coming to help us help them,” she said, cutting decorations for her classroom. “I am just really excited to be at home.”
Outside in the sultry July heat, a group of dads dug up dead vines. Though it’s not his first time helping out during Beautification Day, Justin Cook, an attorney at the Mississippi Office of the State Public Defender, took off work this year to help prepare the school. He’s got two kids, a 5th grader and an 8th grader, who will learn in the new building.
“I thought it was important to do everything I could to make the transition easier,” he said. “Obviously, there’s going to be hiccups, and whatever we can do as parents and stakeholders to have that growing pains be as minimal as possible is essential.”
Events like Beautification Day, Greene said, don’t just deepen the relationship between the community and the district. They also show students that the community is invested in them, which is integral to their success.
“I grew up in Flint, Michigan, and so I know what it means to be in a community that is kind of dismissed,” he said. “I’ve found that here, there’s a great deal of pride — even where we as a school district had not delivered. The fact that we even have this kind of activity absolutely signals to young people that people care about you.”
Students roamed the school grounds and hallways, stepping around wood planks and cardboard boxes, peering into their new classrooms.
Kayley Willis, who will be in the 5th grade at Bailey this year, saw her school for the first time on Friday morning and explored the building with friends Anasia Hunter and Farah Malembeka, both rising 6th graders.
“It makes us feel proud that we actually have people who care about the school enough to come down here and help out,” Hunter said. “It really feels like they care.”
Tangled finances, thousands in personal loans and a political contribution from a supposed investor group made up of undercover FBI informants — this was all contained in a months-late campaign finance report from Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens.
Owens, a second-term Democrat in Mississippi’s capital city region, is fighting federal bribery charges, to which he’s pleaded not guilty. At the same time, his recent campaign finance disclosure reflects a pair of transactions that correspond with key details in the government’s allegation that Owens took money from undercover informants to pay off a local official’s debt.
Regarding payments from Facility Solutions Team — the company name used in the FBI sting — to former Jackson City Councilwoman Angelique Lee, Owens allegedly stated the need to “clean it out,” according to the indictment, which was unsealed in November.
“[L]ike we always do, we’ll put it in a campaign account, or directly wire it,” he said, the indictment claims. “[T]hat’s the only way I want the paper trail to look.”
Agents recorded hundreds of hours of conversations with Owens and other officials, and after his arraignment last year, Owens responded to the charges, saying, “The cherry-picked statements of drunken locker room banter is not a crime.”
Throughout 2024, a non-election year during which federal authorities allege Owens funneled thousands of dollars in bribes to Jackson’s city officials, Owens loaned his campaign more than $20,000, according to his campaign committee’s finance report. He’d won reelection in late 2023.
Owens and his attorneys did not respond to questions about his campaign finance report.
Owens’ report, filed May 30 – months late and riddled with errors – is the latest example of how Mississippi politicians can ignore the state’s campaign finance transparency laws while avoiding meaningful consequences. It’s a lax legal environment that has led to late and illegible reports, untraceable out-of-state money that defied contribution limits, and, according to federal authorities, public corruption with campaign finance accounts serving as piggy banks.
Enforcement duties are divided among many government bodies, including the Mississippi Ethics Commission. The commission’s executive director, Tom Hood, has long complained that the state’s campaign finance laws are confusing and ineffective.
He was also late filing in previous years, paying fines in some years and failing to pay the penalties in other years, according to records provided by the Ethics Commission.
The report, which Owens signed, is full of omissions or miscalculations, with no way to tell which is which. The cover sheet of the report provides the total amount of itemized contributions and disbursements for the year — $44,000 in and $36,500 out. But the body of the report lists the line-by-line itemizations for each, and when the Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today summed the individual itemizations, the totals didn’t match those on the cover sheet.
Based on the itemized spending detailed in the body of the report, Owens’ campaign should have thousands more in cash on hand than reported. In the report’s cover sheet, Owens also reported that he received more in itemized contributions during the year than he received in total contributions, which would be impossible to do.
While the secretary of state receives and maintains campaign finance reports, it has no obligation to review the reports and no authority to investigate their accuracy. Under state law, willfully filing a false campaign finance report is a misdemeanor. Charges, however, are rare.
Owens is the only local official in the federal bribery probe — which is set to go to trial next summer — who remains in office. The government alleged that Owens accepted $125,000 to split between him and two associates in late 2023 from a group of men he believed were vying for a development project in downtown Jackson. Owens accepted several thousand dollars more to funnel to public officials for their support of the project, the indictment alleges. The use of campaign accounts was an important feature of the alleged scheme, according to the indictment.
Owens divvied up $50,000 from Facility Solutions Team, or FST, into checks from various individuals or companies — allegedly meant to conceal the bribe — to former Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba’s reelection campaign, the indictment charged.
Lumumba accepted the checks during a sunset cruise on a yacht in South Florida, the indictment alleged. His campaign finance report, filed earlier this year, reflected five $10,000 contributions near the date of the trip, with no mention of FST.
Lumumba, who lost reelection in April, has pleaded not guilty.
While the indictment accused Owens of saying that public officials use campaign accounts to finance their personal lives, state law prohibits the use of political contributions for personal use.
The indictment alleges Owens accepted $60,000 — some for the purpose of funneling to local politicians — from the men representing themselves as FST in the backroom of Owens’ cigar bar on Feb. 13, 2024. On his campaign finance report, he listed a $12,500 campaign contribution from FST two days later, the same day the indictment alleges he paid off $10,000 of former Councilwoman Lee’s campaign debt. Lee pleaded guilty to charges related to the alleged bribery scheme in 2024.
Also on Feb. 15, 2024, the campaign finance report Owens filed shows a $10,000 payment to 1Vision, a printing company that used to go by the name A2Z Printing, for the purpose of “debt retirement.” Lee had her city paycheck garnished starting in 2023 to pay off debts to A2Z Printing, according to media reports. No mention of Lee was made in the campaign finance report filed by Owens. The printing company did not respond to requests for comment.
Campaigns are allowed to contribute money to other campaigns or political action committees. If Owens’ committee used campaign funds to pay off debt owed by Lee’s campaign, the transaction should have been structured as a contribution to Lee’s campaign and reported as such by both campaigns, said Sam Begley, a Jackson-based attorney and election law expert who has advised candidates about their financial disclosures.
The alleged debt payoff on behalf of Lee is not the first time Owens has described transactions on his campaign finance filings in ways that may obscure how his campaign is spending money. Confusing or unclear descriptions of spending activity are common on campaign finance reports across the state.
Owens previously reported that in 2023, he paid $1,275 to a staff member in the district attorney’s office who also worked on his campaign. The payment was labeled a reimbursement, which Owens explained in a May email to The Marshall Project – Jackson was for expenditures this person made on behalf of the campaign, “such as meals for volunteers/workers, evening/weekend canvassers, and election day workers.”
State law requires campaigns to itemize all contributions and expenses over $200. Begley said he believes Owens’ committee should have itemized any payments over $200 made by anyone on behalf of the campaign.
Upfront payments, with the expectation of repayment by the campaign, might also be considered a loan, according to a spokesperson for the secretary of state. Campaigns are barred from spending money to repay undocumented loans.
Since 2018, the Ethics Commission has had the power to issue advisory opinions upon request to help candidates and campaigns sort through laws that Hood, the commission’s executive director, said aren’t always clear.
The commission has issued just six opinions in seven years.
“I was surprised in the first few years that there weren’t more,” Hood said. “But now it seems to be clear that for whatever reason, most people don’t think they need advice.”
