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The award-winning musical “Come From Away” lands in Jackson, Mississippi, at a time when its true, uplifting story of cross-border bonds and international unity may feel more like a relic of days gone by. Perfect timing to inspire the hope and connection that is at the show’s heart, cast members say.

New Stage Theatre is among the first regional theaters, and first in the Southeast, to mount a production of the hit Broadway musical, which ended its North American tour just weeks ago. Performances are May 27-June 8.

The musical is based on actual events in the immediate aftermath of the shocking tragedy of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when the shut down of U.S. airspace forced hundreds of planes to divert to Canada. Thirty-eight flights were forced to land in Gander in Newfoundland, a small town facing the sudden influx of about 7,000 people stranded far from home. Their hospitality and volunteer efforts are at the core of a joyous musical.

“Come From Away” unfolds in storyteller fashion, as an ensemble cast of 12 morphs into some 50 characters in dozens of scenes over the fast-paced musical’s 90-minute run time. The Celtic-inspired folk rock score links to Newfoundland’s musical heritage, and scrims hand-painted by Scenic Designer Braden Graves evoke the province’s landscape. A dozen chairs and a few tables are about the only props, as the actors, through costume bits, accents, physicality and sheer skill, sweep audiences along.

The custom motorized and programmable turntable on stage, newly engineered and built from scratch by the theater’s production team, keeps the story in motion. At 24 feet in diameter at its max, the turntable also adds a significant asset to New Stage’s drama toolkit, available for future productions and possible rental. “The stars aligned for me this season” and for this show, Technical Director Richard Lawrence said, with a crew that included three welders and an engineer. He chuckled, recalling nightly worries whether it would work. Once they mounted it, he rounded up a dozen crew members to stand on it, to test. “We turned it. And it worked. And I cried,” he said, laughing in relief.

About a week before opening night, actors had just finished a run-through, but had yet to experience their first “ride-through” on the turntable set. “This is magic!” veteran actor Ray McFarland (here in his 51st New Stage show) gushed as he eyed the stage’s new feature. “I’ve never seen this except on, like, Broadway — this big of a turntable. Hats off to the tech crew.”

With the emotional peaks and valleys of “Come From Away,” fresh in mind, actors reflected on memories and feelings its stories call up, from the anguish and scary confusion of the 9/11 attacks to the way this fleshes out a historical event some were too young to understand in the moment.

Actor John Howell saw the Broadway production, the same day he visited the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in 2018. “It really brought it to life in a way that a museum can’t do, because it was the personal stories of these people who actually experienced this — all these different points of view … and all of them have different reactions and needs and losses. Very powerful.”

Actor Hosea Griffith, a French Elementary first-grader in 2001, said the news arrived just after students finished their Pledge of Allegiance and “You’re a Grand Old Flag” morning routine. The principal told teachers to turn on their TVs. He saw the adults slump, their energy evaporate. “The whole mood of class and of that day — the life was sucked out of it.”

For Lauren Parkinson, 2 at the time with no firsthand memory of 9/!!, “This show has revealed a lot to me about that day that I could never learn from watching videos on YouTube. … This is making it real for me in a brand new way.”

McFarland, who had returned to Jackson after a 15-year stint in New York, thought of people he knew who worked in the Word Trade Center and had the searing thought, “We’re at war.” 

“If you’re old enough to remember, it will grab you in a very personal moment,” he said of the show. “You will remember things that happened that day, as clear as a bell. It will also help you remember all of the good that came out of it, because, as we watched on the TV, the world came to take care of us. We took care of each other, and that’s what this show is about.”

The show is more about the aftermath of 9/11, and how people banded together and coped. Many times, people cope with humor, “and there’s some stuff in this show that’s just downright funny,” McFarland noted.

“You have all these people from all these cultures from all around the world stuck here in this teeny tiny Canadian town, and it’s hilarious what happens because of that,” Parkinson said.

The musical lands in Jackson at a time when President Trump’s musing about Canada as a 51st state, tariff talks and more in recent months has eroded relations between the two nations. It delivers real-life historical perspective and a reminder of the healing power of strong bonds that can last years.

“It could not be at a better time,” McFarland said. “We need to take care of each other and come together more than we have in decades right now.”

“I think this show might be a tonic to audiences,” Howell said. “It might be something that they need right now.”

Said McFarland: “It’s not just about taking care of each other, personally. It’s about taking care of America. We took care of America back then.”

“And Canada helped us,” Howell was quick to add. 

“On the individual level, people care about each other,” he said. “Whatever their political leanings may be and where that takes them, when it comes down to the wire and people are in a crisis, they will come to each other’s aid, regardless of where they live, regardless of who they’re having to assist.”

Griffith said, “People just see humanity on that stage, just humanity, and realize that there is humanity in all of us. And though we are different, we’re not too much different.”

Performance times are: 7 p.m. May 27-31 and June 3-7; 1 p.m. June 4; and 2 p.m. June 1 and 8. Tickets are $50 adults, $45 seniors/students/military. Visit newstagetheatre.com, email tickets@newstageheatre.com or call 601-948-3533. The theater is located at 1100 Carlisle St. in Jackson.

The Road to Omaha now has its road map, and we should hear no complaints from Hattiesburg, Starkville or Oxford. As per usual, Mississippi will be well represented in the NCAA Baseball Tournament.

Ole Miss and Southern Miss will both host NCAA Regionals and Mississippi State, after a season in which it fired the head coach, is in the tournament as a 3-seed at Florida State. You won’t see that happen often.

First things first: Ole Miss, the No. 10 national seed, will play Murray State Friday night at 7 p.m. Southern Miss, the 16-seed, will play Columbia University Friday night at 6 p.m. State plays Northeastern, which has won 26 straight games, Friday night at 6:30 at Tallahassee.

In the other half of the Oxford regional, Georgia Tech plays Western Kentucky. In the other first round game at Hattiesburg, Alabama plays Miami. At Tallahassee, host Florida State will play Bethune-Cookman.

You ask me, both Southern Miss coach Christian Ostrander and Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco have big decisions to make. Both teams have established pitching aces in USM’s JB Middleton and the Rebels’ Hunter Elliott. Do you start your ace against the weaker 4-seed, or do you save him to pitch against a decidedly more formidable opponent on Saturday? Clearly, State interim head coach Justin Parker doesn’t face the same quandary. You go with your best when facing a higher seed with a 26-game win streak – no matter what league they play in.

The old school approach is that the next game is the most important game. In other words, throw you ace. Keep in mind also, you need for your game one starter to go as deep as possible into the game, saving your bullpen arms for a long weekend. The flip side: Having your best pitcher available to start the second game gives you a decided edge going against your opponent’s No. 2 pitcher.

Bianco’s decision is complicated by the fact that Murray State, the Missouri Valley Conference regular season and tournament champions, is one of the nation’s best No. 4 seeds. The Racers have won 39 games and seven for their last eight. In mid-week regular season games, the Racers lost 8-7 in 10 innings at Ole Miss and won at Kentucky 5-4. Using golf terminology, Murray is no gimme. The Racers hit .301 as a team. Still, I’d lean toward holding Elliott for either ACC regular season champ Georgia Tech or Western Kentucky.

At USM, Ostrander must strongly consider holding Middleton, the recent Ferriss Trophy winner and likely All-American and high MLB draft choice. Columbia, the Ivy League regular season and tournament champ, hits at a .290 clip but, at least on paper, has pitching issues. The Lions’ team earned run average is 6.57 and opponents are hitting .290 against them. Me? I’d take my chances with Matt Adams, who has been really good of late, against Columbia, and then have Middleton, he of the 10-1 record and .168 opponents’ batting average, to go against Alabama or Miami. Southern Miss has won all six of Adams’ most recent starts, and he threw seven innings of four-hit, shutout baseball against Old Dominion in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament.

More college baseball observations:

• The SEC placed a record 13 teams in the tournament, which represents roughly 20 percent of the field. The only SEC selection I’d quibble with: Kentucky, at 29-24 and losing its last four and seven of its last 10 games.

• Color me surprised the Troy Trojans were left out of the 64-team field. Troy finished 39-21 and was nationally ranked for much of the season. Troy was the nation’s only team that hadn’t lost a weekend series until being swept in the last series of the regular season by Southern Miss. The Trojans did lose six of their last eight, and it now seems certain that the 2-1 loss to USM in the Sun Belt semifinals probably kept them out. 

• Ole Miss, picked to finish 15th in the SEC, is instead the 10th national seed. Mike Bianco deserves strong consideration for any Coach of the Year honor out there.

• Looking ahead: The Oxford Regional is matched with the Athens Regional, meaning if the No. 1 seeds advance, Ole Miss would play a Super Regional at Georgia, a team the Rebels did not play in 2025. The Hattiesburg Regional is matched with the Nashville Regional, which means Southern Miss, the No. 16 national seed, would play overall 1-seed Vandy if both teams advance. The Tallahassee Regional is matched against the Corvallis Regional, which means State would likely head far to the west if the Bulldogs can advance.

• Southern Miss has now achieved nine consecutive 40-win seasons. No other Division I baseball team in the country has done that. This will be the Golden Eagles’ ninth consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance (not counting the 2020 season curtailed by Covid).

Just before municipal elections this year, the city of Jackson quietly settled a more than decade-long battle over public transportation standards for people who have disabilities. 

In January, Disability Rights Mississippi and Jackson reached a settlement agreement establishing standards that JTRAN, Jackson’s transportation system, must continue to reach for in the coming months. Otherwise, the city could face further legal action from disability advocates. 

While it may be considered progress for the city, the conclusion of the lawsuit was not publicized earlier this year as the mayor ran unsuccessfully for reelection, though he generally touted improvements in JTRAN during the campaign. Materials from Mayor Chokwe Lumumba’s campaign highlight updates to JTRAN’s bus fleet, as well as securing more than $20 million in federal funds to improve Jackson’s transit system. 

Scott Crawford, the lead plaintiff in the 2008 lawsuit, which led to a 14 year-long consent decree, said the settlement agreement is a move in the right direction. 

“The notion that the consent decree could last forever is just not realistic. You can’t tie up a court system overseeing a transit system forever. That is not practical, and I’m the lead plaintiff,” said Crawford, JTRAN Paratransit Advisory Committee Chairperson. “You can’t have courts overseeing a system forever, so they needed it off the docket. That’s just a pragmatic fact of life. We had it in place for 14 years, and that’s a very long time.”

Those standards include ensuring that 95% of telephone hold times are not longer than three minutes and 99% are not longer than five minutes. It also states no more than 10 trip denials in a month, which occurs when JTRAN cannot provide a trip or when JTRAN offers a trip with a pick-up or drop-off time differing by more than 60 minutes from the requested time.

In addition, the settlement agreement focuses on the timeliness of passenger pickups, with at least 90% of all pickups occurring within the on-time pickup window, which is 30 minutes, and 95% of all pickups within 45 minutes.

“To be accurate and clear, we’ve only met that standard one month, so we’re not there yet. Nobody’s declaring victory. It’s a work in progress,” Crawford said. 

Minutes from April’s JTRAN Paratransit Advisory Committee meeting provides data that shows trip cancellations were down in January and February. Excessive ride times were up, with a few rides lasting longer than 120 minutes. The settlement agreement says that the city shall not provide excessively long trips for more than 5% of paratransit trips in a month, and no trip should be longer than 120 minutes.

“We have been in the range of 78% to 85% (for on-time dropoffs) in the last several months. I hope we can get up to 90% for Paratransit on-time performance. That would be an acceptable level of timeliness when you’re trying to get to appointments,” he said. “If you’re the medical provider or you’re the employer, you really want your folks to be on time for their appointments and their jobs, so it matters.”

The city of Jackson contracted with MV Transportation to manage transportation services, including JTRAN bus drivers, in January of 2024. Last fall, the Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 1208, which represents the drivers, went on strike against MV Transportation due to concerns such as long hours, wrongful terminations and safer working conditions. The strike lasted two weeks. 

Christine Welch, deputy director for the Office of Transportation, said that one thing JTRAN needs now is more bus drivers.

“It’s across the board. Drivers,” Welch said. “Currently we have about 54, 55. The desired number is hopefully about 60 drivers.”

JTRAN’s buses are ADA accessible, she said, meaning that people with disabilities can ride fixed routes or paratransit. But paratransit comes with some limitations. 

“You have to first be certified for that service based on your medical disability,” she said. “It’s a door to door service, curb to curb. Our services operate within three-fourths of a mile of a fixed route.”

Crawford said that one way to ensure JTRAN meets the standards agreed to in the settlement is for the city to hire more bus operators and pay them a fair wage. 

MV Transportation’s current job listings for CDL drivers in Jackson come with a starting pay of about $16-an-hour. The city is also seeking an associate planner who will aid JTRAN in managing paratransit services.

“I think public transit is worth its weight in gold. I think we underpay our transit staff, and that would help. That’s one way to fix this, but trying to convince lawmakers is an uphill battle,” Crawford said. “These are professionals who are doing a stressful job, and they need to be paid like it.” 

Greta Martin, litigation director for Disability Rights Mississippi, said that the protection and advocacy organization will continue to monitor data that the city of Jackson provides to them on a monthly basis. 

“For every piece of data that we get from the city of Jackson, there is some kind of number that they have to stay within,” Martin said. “It’s kind of a wraparound situation that we have. We’re making sure that we keep an eye on the data, but we’re also trying to work with the city, knowing that they have their own limitations, but then we also want to be accountable to the community and understand what their perspective is as people that utilized the services.”

Martin said by ending the consent decree and reaching a settlement agreement, it allows the city and her organization to direct time and resources toward improving public transit and quality of life for people who have disabilities. 

“That was the point of filing the litigation to begin with, to hold them accountable for the services they should be providing people with disabilities in the city,” Martin said. “I hope it fosters a collaboration with the city so that not only will they lean upon us for these issues involving public transit, but also that they will lean upon us for making the city of Jackson more accessible as a whole.”

Martin has represented plaintiffs in the JTRAN lawsuit since she started at the legal advocacy organization seven years ago. A little over a year ago, the city hired Martin’s husband, Drew Martin, as its lead attorney. The plaintiff’s lawyer said she’s received more feedback from the city attorney’s office in the last year than at any other point in the litigation. 

She quipped that may be because “my husband sees my name on the email and says, ‘I better answer it.’”

“I’ll take my wins anywhere I can find them for people with disabilities,” Greta Martin said.

Gov. Tate Reeves announced on Friday that he intends to call a special legislative session next week for lawmakers to pass a state budget.

The move comes after House Speaker Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, both Republicans, said separately that they had reached a handshake deal on a $7 billion state budget, which was supposed to have been passed earlier this year in regular session.

Reeves, a Republican, said he informed Hosemann and White on Friday that he intends to call a special session for the middle of next week.

“The proposed budget does not materially increase state spending, is fiscally conservative, and will help us to continue Mississippi’s historic economic momentum,” Reeves said in a statement posted on social media. “I’m proud of the work we’ve done to reach this agreement. I’d like to thank Mississippi’s legislative appropriators for working diligently throughout the budget negotiation process. I’m excited to get the special session completed and look forward to quickly passing the budget.”

Multiple legislators told Mississippi Today that House Speaker Jason White’s office notified them that the special session would begin on Wednesday morning, though the governor has not yet publicly said when it will begin.

Mississippi lawmakers must return for a special session because they adjourned their 2025 regular session earlier this year without passing a budget. Lawmakers were mired in political infighting over tax reform and capital projects, including many lawmakers’ pet projects in their districts.

The Senate wanted to spend only on projects for state agencies, universities and colleges. The House believed there was enough money to fund projects in counties and municipalities around the state, in addition to the state projects.

The political reality is that legislative leadership tightly controls the bulk of the local projects in what’s often referred to as the “Christmas Tree bill.” Leadership can use these projects to reward people who buy into their agenda and punish members who buck the leadership.

Such special projects for back home are often a key focus of rank-and-file lawmakers who don’t have prominent leadership roles at the Capitol.

Legislators must return to the Capitol to pass a budget in special session before the new budget year begins July 1. Failure to pass a new state budget by the end of June could result in some agencies shutting down until they are funded.

President Donald Trump on Friday approved Mississippi’s request for federal assistance to help recover from deadly tornadoes and severe weather that left damage spread across the state on March 14 to 15.

“That’s good news,” said Walthall County Emergency Director Royce McKee on Friday, over two months since the storms hit. “Everybody will be happy we can start picking up the debris. People will start to see the light at the end of tunnel.”

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said it didn’t know yet how much money would come to the state. MEMA did confirm that the federal government would cover 100% of costs for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Individual Assistance aid — a program that sends direct payments to those affected by the storms — and 75% of costs for FEMA’s Public Assistance, which pays for repairs to public infrastructure. The state and local governments will split the remaining those costs.

The 11 counties that qualified for Individual Assistance are: Covington, Grenada, Issaquena, Itawamba, Jefferson Davis, Leflore, Marion, Montgomery, Pike, Smith and Walthall. The 17 counties that qualified for Public Assistance are: Calhoun, Carroll, Covington, Grenada, Humphreys, Issaquena, Itawamba, Jefferson Davis, Lee, Leflore, Marion, Pike, Prentiss, Sharkey, Smith, Walthall and Washington.

Residents impacted by the storms can apply for assistance through this online portal, by calling 1-800-621-3362, or on FEMA’s mobile app.

The March storms killed seven Mississippians and injured dozens of others, while damaging nearly a thousand homes, according to MEMA’s tally. Of those homes, the storms destroyed 164, and left another 204 with “major damage,” which usually means a home is no longer habitable.

In Walthall County, McKee said over 100 homes were destroyed or received major damage. The biggest priority with FEMA’s support, he said, is taking care of displaced residents who are either living in hotels or staying with family.

“We’re a poor county and have a lot of people that don’t have insurance,” McKee said. “It’ll be leaps and bounds for them trying to get back to normal.”

Starting next week, FEMA will have in-person stations in Mississippi to enroll storm victims in assistance programs. MEMA Director of External Affairs Scott Simmons said the state agency will soon make information on those locations available on its website.

In Leflore County, where the storms damaged 314 homes, Emergency Director Fred Randle said it took a while for insurance companies to reach some places, and even then there were “a lot” of costs that insurance didn’t cover.

“We had a lot of people (where) it was two weeks before the insurance adjuster could get out and check their home because there was so much damage everywhere,” Randle said, adding that while it was nerve-wracking waiting over two months for the decision on FEMA aid, it was good news to receive going into the holiday weekend. “It’ll help us tremendously. Something to help celebrate.”

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

If Mississippi has taught me anything, it’s that federal policy rarely trickles down as promised. For people with disabilities, especially in our state, Medicaid isn’t a political talking point—it’s survival.

Medicaid pays for in-home support, daily nursing care, medications, equipment and community access. Without it, the alternative is often institutionalization, isolation or worse.

But under the Trump administration’s proposed budget, this vital program is facing devastating cuts. Medicaid is on the chopping block, and Mississippi is standing directly in the path of the blade.

Recently, I spoke with a mother in the Mississippi Delta whose son has a rare degenerative condition. He’s nonverbal, uses a wheelchair and needs help with every aspect of daily life. For the past three years, Medicaid has provided her a modest stipend to be his paid caregiver—allowing her to stay home, care for him full-time and keep him out of a facility 90 miles away.

“If they cut this program,” she told me, “I’ll have to go back to work. But no one else can care for him. What happens to him then?”

She already knows the answer: He’ll be institutionalized. Not because he needs to be — but because that’s the only option left when Medicaid collapses and the community-based care disappears.

The Kaiser Family Foundation ranks Mississippi as one of the states most vulnerable to federal Medicaid cuts. We rely on federal funds for nearly three-quarters of our Medicaid budget. Unlike wealthier states, we don’t have the cushion (or the political will) to fill the gap if that money disappears.

And it’s not just one program on the line. The Urban Institute outlines how slashing HHS funding will kneecap services that help disabled people live independently. That includes everything from personal care attendants to case managers to basic home health. Families as Allies of Mississippi and the Mississippi Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities have issued repeated warnings, but so far, the response from many of our lawmakers has been silence.

We’ve seen this film before. And we won’t like the ending: more people forced into institutions, more families pushed to the brink and more lives lost. 

Even the Right Is Blinking. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri — hardly a progressive firebrand — was publicly opposing the Trump administration’s cuts in a recent New York Times op-ed. 

For those not familiar with Sen. Hawley’s typical position, this should raise alarm bells. 

“Medicaid isn’t a handout,” he writes. “It’s a commitment to human dignity.”

For once, he’s right. Message to current administration: If your policy has lost even Josh Hawley, maybe it’s time to ask yourself what exactly you’re defending.

What’s happening in Washington isn’t abstract. This is a direct threat to people in Mississippi, especially those with disabilities.

More than 700,000 Mississippians — about a  quarter of the state’s population — rely on Medicaid or the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to the Mississippi Division of Medicaid website.  Medicaid covers 1 in 3 Mississippians with disabilities.  Medicaid provides not only health care, but also essential supports like personal care services, durable medical equipment and access to home and community-based services that allow people to live independently instead of being institutionalized.

The latest GOP proposals in Congress may avoid the most dramatic cuts for now, but they still set the stage for devastating consequences. Policies like work requirements and funding clawbacks are being framed as “moderate reforms,” but let’s be clear: they target the very people Mississippi’s system is already failing, including low-income families, disabled residents and rural communities with limited alternatives.

National experts at KFF warn that cuts of this scale could force states to reduce benefits, tighten eligibility  or shift costs in ways that make care harder to access. Recent Axios reports say Medicaid work requirements could lead to hundreds of thousands losing coverage. This is not because people can’t work, but because navigating paperwork shouldn’t be a condition for staying alive.

As of this week, Mississippi’s delegation has been largely silent, but the health care system they claim to protect is already in crisis. If these policies move forward, they’ll be accelerating a slow-motion disaster. 

The question isn’t whether cuts are “technically moderate.” The question is: Who gets left behind and who’s counting on us not to notice?

Here’s the deal: Medicaid in general is and never will be perfect. But when it’s paired with deep underinvestment and a cruel federal rollback, it stops being a policy failure and starts being a moral one. 

Mississippians with disabilities aren’t asking for special treatment. They’re asking to live in their homes. To go to school. To survive. If you gut Medicaid, you don’t just cut cost — you cut people off from their futures.

And from where I sit, the view is clear: We must sound the alarm, raise our voices and refuse to be complicit in policies designed to leave our most vulnerable behind.

Bio: A Tishomingo County native, Greta Kemp Martin is an attorney who advocates for the disabled as litigation director of Disability Mississippi. She is an Ole Miss alum and holds a law degree from Mississippi College School of Law. She and her family live in Jackson. 

With just over a month before a new fiscal year starts, House and Senate leaders have sent Gov. Tate Reeves a proposed budget for approval. 

House Speaker Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said separately that they have reached a handshake deal on a $7 billion state budget, which was supposed to have been passed earlier this year in regular session.

Still, Reeves will ultimately have to give sign-off on it and order a special legislative session before all 174 lawmakers can consider it. 

Hosemann, the Senate’s presiding officer, told Mississippi Today in a statement that: “The House and Senate have come to an agreement on the budget. We have notified the Governor and are awaiting the call for special session.”

White gave a similar account on SuperTalk radio station this week and predicted lawmakers will vote on the budget to fund government services “within the next couple of weeks.” 

Mississippi lawmakers control the purse strings and the budget process. But they adjourned their 2025 regular session earlier this year without passing a budget because of political infighting. Now, legislators must return to the Capitol to pass a budget in a special session before the new budget year begins July 1.

The state Constitution gives the governor the sole power to call a special session, and Reeves alone sets the parameters for what lawmakers can consider in a special session. 

Reeves’ office did not respond to a request for comment on what his criteria will be for approving the budget before he calls the special session. But he told reporters earlier this year at a press conference that he wants legislative leaders to send him a fiscally responsible budget. 

White and Rep. Karl Oliver, a Republican from Winona who serves as a House appropriations chairman, previously said that most state agency budgets will have level funding, with only increases for the public pension system and insurance costs. 

One of the significant points of contention between the two chambers has been how to spend cash not allocated to government operations. Lawmakers typically spend this money on capital projects across the state — including many lawmakers’ pet projects in their districts. 

The Senate wanted to spend only on projects for state agencies, universities and colleges. The House believed there is enough money to fund projects in counties and municipalities around the state, in addition to the state projects. 

The political reality is that legislative leadership tightly controls the bulk of the local projects in what’s often referred to as the “Christmas Tree bill.” Leadership can use these projects to reward people who buy into their agenda and punish members who buck the leadership. 

Such special projects for back home are often a key focus of rank-and-file lawmakers who don’t have prominent leadership roles at the Capitol.

READ MORE: Mississippi lawmakers end 2025 session unable to agree (or even meet about) state budget: Legislative recap

A major flashpoint in the project funding debate appears to be money for installing a new interpretive center at the Vicksburg National Military Park, the hometown of both Hosemann and Senate Appropriations Chairman Briggs Hopson.

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History helps manage the exhibits of the park, and state money typically flows through the agency. Because the state agency helps manage the area, this was part of the Senate’s justification for the project.

However, the House leadership has apparently balked at the request and views the Senate’s attempt to secure money for the park as an attempt to steer dollars to its favorite project while preventing spending on any pet projects for the House.

In the remaining weeks before his scheduled execution, Richard Jordan, Mississippi’s oldest and longest serving death row inmate, is looking for ways to fight his death sentence. 

Jordan was sentenced to death for the kidnap and murder of Gulfport resident Edwina Marter in January 1976. Marter’s sons, who were 3 and 9 at the time of her death, and her husband are still alive, according to public records. About a decade ago, her family told The Advocate they were hoping to receive closure from the execution after years of its delay. 

The decision to let the execution proceed rests in the hands of the Mississippi Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court and a federal district court judge – two courts that have rejected his previous requests and a judge who has allowed another execution to be carried out while a challenge to the state’s execution protocol continues. 

Attorneys filed two motions asking the Mississippi Supreme Court to rehear its denial of the 78-year-old’s petition for post conviction relief and to rehear its order setting his execution. 

They wrote that when the court denied his post-conviction relief petition, it “misapprehended the facts and the law.” To fix it, Jordan asked the court to vacate his death sentence or at a minimum return it to the trial court for another look. 

His attorneys argue Jordan’s death sentence is not valid because in 1976, when the murder was committed and Jordan was sentenced, Mississippi and all other states had ceased executions based on a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Furman v. Georgia that capital punishment was unconstitutional. 

On July 2, 1976, four months after Jordan was sentenced, the Supreme Court overturned this ruling in Gregg v. Georgia. Mississippi passed a statute allowing discretionary death penalty sentences in 1977.

“Here, because there was no constitutional provision for the death penalty at the time of Jordan’s offense, his death sentence is unconstitutional,” the May 15 filing states. 

Jordan went to trial multiple times and his sentences were overturned. His death sentence did not stick until decades later in 1998. Since his first trial, Jordan has been incarcerated for nearly 50 years. 

In another recent court filing, Jordan’s attorneys argue the state’s motion to set Jordan’s execution didn’t follow state law because he has not exhausted all state and federal remedies. 

Jordan asked the U.S. Supreme Court in March to hear his case. As of May, that petition for writ of certiorari is awaiting a decision. The state opposes and has asked the high court not to take up Jordan’s petition, saying the Mississippi Supreme Court was correct in its ruling. 

That petition centers around his access to a mental health expert separate from the prosecution to develop and present sentencing mitigation as an indigent defendant, which was established as a constitutional right through the U.S. Supreme Court’s Ake v. Oklahoma decision. The other issue is how the Mississippi Supreme Court handled Jordan’s Ake claims in his appeal and post-conviction. 

At trial, Jordan was evaluated by a state psychiatrist whose report was also given to the prosecution, which his attorneys argue undermined his mitigation case since the Ake decision specified the evaluation was to be used on the indigent defendant’s behalf.

The petition states he was not diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from his combat service in Vietnam, but instead incorrectly as having antisocial personality disorder. 

“Review of that decision is manifestly warranted to ensure appropriate respect for this Court’s decisions, vindicate the supremacy of federal law, and ensure that those defendants in Mississippi whose mental health will be an issue at trial receive the right to the expert assistance to which the Due Process Clause entitles them,” the March court filing states. 

Additionally, Jordan and fellow death row inmate Ricky Chase are lead plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the drugs used for lethal injection. 

Since 2022, the state has since added alternative execution methods if lethal injection drugs aren’t available: execution by gas chamber, electrocution or firing squad. To date, a handful of states have used these other methods, including the use of nitrogen gas in Alabama and firing squad in South Carolina. 

The Mississippi lawsuit did not stop the December 2022 execution of Thomas Loden, another inmate who was part of the legal challenge. 

The same day Jordan’s attorneys filed motions with the Mississippi Supreme Court, Jordan and Chase filed a motion with U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate, asking for him to order the state to provide essential documents to the plaintiffs about the state’s possession and planned use of execution drugs as well as documents related to the most recent executions of David Cox in 2021 and Loden. 

Plaintiffs wrote that access to this information would help them seek an injunction to stay Jordan’s execution and help with discovery, which is the process of obtaining evidence from other parties before trial. Trial for the lawsuit has been scheduled for Dec. 1, 2025. 

“It is unconscionable for Defendants to seek the execution of Richard Jordan while continuing to stonewall Plaintiffs’ repeated demands for supplementation of discovery in this case,” a May 14 court filing states. 

Weeks before the city could conclude its “100 Days of Peace” initiative, Jackson ousted the director of its Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery.

Keisha Coleman had led the less than 3-year-old office, a key piece of outgoing Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s efforts to tamp down on crime, since January 2023. 

She was by Lumumba’s side earlier this year when he announced, weeks before losing reelection, that the office had awarded $150,000 to community-based organizations working to prevent violence. The press conference marked the beginning of 100 Days of Peace, also known as 100 Days of Action, an initiative that was to feature events like town halls, trainings and listening sessions and conclude with a sneaker ball to celebrate the Jacksonians working to reduce violence. 

But if an event required funding, it did not happen, Coleman said, and she’s doubtful it will. Just a few months later, on May 7, Coleman said she received her termination letter from Lumumba’s chief of staff, Safiya Omari.

The alleged stated reason? The trauma recovery specialist had spoken to the mayor’s electoral opponent at a festival to celebrate south Jackson, Coleman wrote in an email to other city officials obtained by Mississippi Today.

“The termination, verbally framed as a ‘loyalty’ issue, follows repeated attempts to hold the administration accountable for gross misuse of public funds and nepotism that jeopardized critical community safety programs,” Coleman wrote. 

In an interview, Omari said she could not discuss personnel matters but called Coleman’s allegations “false and misleading.” The chief of staff also said she could not discuss how the allegations are misleading, “because then that would involve me talking about her.”

Coleman alleged in a pointed May 7 email to city council members that over her time as director, Omari and the mayor’s executive assistant, Tiffany Murray, blocked her efforts to get the new office up and running by stymying Coleman’s ability to spend city funds. She wrote that they prevented her from using empty office space to host workshops and slowwalked the distribution of city funding meant to create a youth engagement center. 

“OVPTR’s mission—to reduce violence and trauma in Jackson—has been crippled by Dr. Omari’s actions,” Coleman alleged. 

The office was launched in 2023 with a $700,000 grant from the National League of Cities, a nonprofit. Despite being the office’s director, Coleman wrote that the mayor’s office did not grant her access to spend city funds until the beginning of this year, making it difficult to execute events. 

“Most of the work was done from my personal funds and people in the community who supported the work,” Coleman wrote. 

Reached at her office line, Murray said she did not have any comment at this time.

Coleman told Mississippi Today that she doesn’t want the termination to overshadow the office’s work. On June 3, Jackson will hold a General Election for mayor, in which Democratic nominee and longtime state senator John Horhn is the expected winner.

“I do want to keep a good standing in the community in the event that John Horhn does come in and I want to advocate for that office,” she said. “I don’t want to diminish what’s going on there and the importance of that work.”

City spokesperson Melissa Payne told Mississippi Today that while it had not been long since Coleman left the city, several applicants had already interviewed for the position. 

“Her staff is still working, and they’re still doing what they need to do,” Payne said. 

But in the email, Coleman alleged that she had recently put one of her two subordinates — Omari’s son, Kuwasi Omari — on a performance improvement plan for “chronic tardiness, absenteeism, incompetence to the role, and failure to complete tasks or submit weekly reports.” Coleman also alleged Omari used her position by “withholding staff hires in order to hire her son.”

Kuwasi Omari, listed online as the office’s community outreach specialist, did not return Mississippi Today’s messages. His 45-day improvement plan was set to end on May 8, Coleman wrote, but the city fired her on May 7.

Responding to this allegation, Omari, whose other son works as a community services coordinator in the city’s department of human and cultural services, said that Kuwasi Omari is responsible for a program the office is running that works with boys at Lanier High School, which involves plans for a community clean-up.

“Let me just say this: It was certainly her right as his director to do that, but contextually I will say that the only real work that has taken place in the office,” Omari said before pausing. “Okay, no, I won’t say that.”

The office will be without a director until at least July 1, when a new mayor comes in, after the city council instituted a hiring freeze Tuesday. Omari said this means that events like the sneaker ball probably won’t happen.

“Having an idea and making statements doesn’t mean that the work to make those things happen has taken place,” Omari said.

The council’s decision to freeze hiring came after WLBT reported the city had hired Lumumba’s former election opponent-turned-campaign supporter in the 2025 Democratic primary, David Archie, a former county supervisor, as a staff assistant to the mayor. 

The city also recently brought on Tariq Abdul-Tawwab, a former employee of the third party manager over the city’s water utility, JXN Water, which reportedly fired him in 2023, as a deputy director in the city’s public works department. He was recently described as a director at one JXN Water’s staunchest critics, the nonprofit People’s Advocacy Institute founded by the mayor’s sister and where Abdul-Tawwab’s wife works.

The Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery was established as an office under the mayor’s executive branch. In response to a recent public records request, the City Clerk told Mississippi Today that the city does not have an overall organizational chart, but provided several departmental organization charts.

The mayor’s office was not among them.

One of the violence prevention office’s goals is to quantify the impact of violence prevention work in Jackson through data. In the press conference earlier this year, Lumumba cited data showing that efforts by local organizations, including credible messenger groups, have ushered in long periods without violence in some of the most troubled areas of the city.

“I don’t have access to that data, as you know Keisha is no longer with us,” Omari said, “so we’re trying to figure out how we’re gonna move forward with the data that has come in, as well as a lot of the data I’m sure is coming directly from JPD, and everybody has access to that.”  

Coleman had told Mississippi Today earlier this year that her office was developing a public-facing data dashboard making it easier to examine crime trends and patterns in the city.

The office’s work has been supported by local advocacy organizations, and Horhn previously told Mississippi Today that he did not have plans to close the office. 

But under the current administration, Coleman wrote her efforts were not receiving adequate support. 

In one example, she alleged that she had repeatedly asked to use empty office space in a city building on North State Street to host events like youth workshops. But in front of the mayor, Omari and Murray told her “no,” Coleman alleged, because that space was going to become Lumumba’s second office.

“This directly denies community of service, support, and resources that would assist in the goal of the OVPTR,” Coleman wrote. “As of today, the space has yet to be used.” 

The $50,000 grants that Lumumba announced earlier this year, the first transfers from the office to outside organizations, represent some of its largest expenditures, according to public records obtained by Mississippi Today. As of March, the office had reported spending nearly $430,000 since its inception, the bulk of it categorized under wages and benefits and the credible messenger grants. Coleman alleged that part of the money was used to pay Murray’s salary, “despite providing no operational support.”

The records show it has spent $1,200 on office supplies, $12,000 on travel and nearly $4,000 on data processing equipment, though if the office has conducted crime stats analysis to inform evidenced-based approaches to violence interruption, it has not publicized any such reports.

Coleman urged in her email that the office has remaining sources of funds that are at risk: A little over $200,000 the city council allocated to the office for a youth engagement center, and about $270,000 left from the National League of Cities. 

“This is not an attempt to smear this administration,” Coleman wrote in the email. “This is me being proactive because there is over $470,000 of funds out there that someone will have to answer for and I will NOT be thrown under the bus because I’m no longer there to speak for myself.” 

Omari said the youth engagement center will open sometime this summer at the currently defunct Mary C. Jones Center that is being rehabilitated with funds from the facilities department. The $202,000, Omari added, will be used for programming.

“I know when I looked a couple months ago, the money hadn’t even been set up in our budget,” Omari said.

The city did provide Coleman with one bit of support, she wrote. But it was apparently fleeting. 

“Outside of the one time in March 2024 (that) Tiffany gave me a realm (sic) of copy paper, I’ve purchased, on my own, copy paper, office supplies, flyers, rack cards, brochures, etc. just to have an operational office,” Coleman wrote.