The state Senate Republican leadership didn’t plan to fail on a Mississippi tax overhaul. It failed to plan.
And when pressed late in the 2025 legislative session to come up with a proposal to counter the House Republican leadership’s sweeping bill, Senate leaders did so behind closed doors and hurriedly.
The result: a majority of legislators passing a tax overhaul bill full of math errors that accidentally did what Senate leaders didn’t want. And it stripped out safeguards for taxpayers that both the House and Senate leadership said were prudent.
No matter how much Gov. Tate Reeves praises House Bill 1 as “one big, beautiful bill,” borrowing a phrase from President Trump as he signed it into law, it was passed through secrecy, subterfuge and error, not representative democracy.
Had the Senate perhaps taken a little more time, allowed more input from and access to its strategizing from rank-and-file lawmakers, and who knows, maybe even a little crowd-sourcing allowing the public to scrutinize the bill before passing it, maybe the blunder could have been prevented.
And while House leaders should receive praise for coming up with an initial public-facing tax overhaul plan through months of public hearings and forums, that’s not what was passed into law. House leaders played a game of secret squirrel to pass the Senate’s mistakes into law. Then instead of negotiating in good faith to fix the problems, House leaders tried to shanghai the Senate in backroom negotiations to pass a few plums they wanted, such as legalized online sports betting and a sales tax increase.
The end result: Historically bitter infighting among state GOP leaders to the point they couldn’t even pass a state budget, their main job. And we have communications between Mississippi’s top legislative leaders and governor, all Republicans, that these days are often reduced to mean tweets or Facebook posts about each other, not earnest negotiations.
Mississippi government’s default setting is secrecy, from public records and meetings to access to elected officials, and it has never served our citizens well. From a black-ops agency that spied on its citizens for nearly two decades to festering, generational government corruption that has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, secrecy is neither good politics nor good policy.
Major, sweeping state policy should be conducted in the open and with public input. But as the national and world economies plunge into turmoil that is sure to impact Mississippi, our new tax code lacks safeguards that both House and Senate leaders said were needed — all because of secrecy and lack of planning and communication.
Driving down roads in south Jackson in recent weeks, residents were inundated with placards of smiling faces and names in bright, bold fonts of people hoping to be the next Ward 6 councilman.
In some neighborhoods, the streets were as littered with campaign signs as they are overgrown lots and abandoned properties in between neatly kept homes.
“The homes in the surrounding area and businesses in Ward 6 have been decimated. It looks like a bomb went off,” said Sylvia Walker, Ward 6 board member for the Jackson Association of Neighborhoods. “We’ve seen the businesses hollow out and nothing come back in. It’s disheartening. It’s sad.”
Walker said the image of south Jackson must be interrogated. Not enough people are talking about the good happening in Ward 6, she said.
“South Jackson is very diverse and not just one specific area,” said Walker. “I think the biggest misconception is that south Jackson is just full of dilapidated homes, and the people are poverty-stricken and destitute, and that’s not true.”
Ward 6 has the largest population of Jacksonians, with just over 23,000 people. It also has the highest number of Black residents, according to data from the City of Jackson’s website.
Jackson also has a high number of abandoned properties owned by the state. According to data from the Secretary of State’s office, there are about 1,900 tax-forfeited properties in the City of Jackson.
There will be a Democratic runoff on April 22 between two candidates for the Ward 6 city council seat. Emon Thompson Sr. garnered 714 votes and Lashia Brown-Thomas came in second with 652 votes. Voter turnout was low, with less than 3,200 votes cast in a ward with a voting age population of more than 16,000. There were nine contenders for the coveted council seat, more than any other council race.
Candidates for the coveted Ward 6 seat envision a more beautiful, thriving south Jackson. After a stacked primary, two candidates have made it to the runoff to replace Aaron Banks, former council person who faces criminal charges for allegedly accepting cash bribes in exchange for his vote on a development project. He pleaded not guilty.
Banks is familiar with the image problem in south Jackson. He said he’s made progress with more demolitions and landscaping work done than others in the past. This includes the demolition of Casa Grande Apartments and Appleridge Shopping Center.
“I’ve always said that I would serve two terms, and we got a lot of work done,” Banks said in a recent interview with Mississippi Today.
Lashia Brown-Thomas
Brown-Thomas said that crime and blight are the biggest issues affecting Ward 6. The law enforcement officer wants to hold people accountable for their part in the perceived image of a decaying south Jackson.
“The city has codes, and if these people are not holding up to the codes, they need whatever punishment there is,” Brown-Thomas said. “If they aren’t holding the property up, then they should not have the property.”
She said that if she’s elected, she’ll work to get police officers higher wages, and will remain transparent and available to constituents.
“It’s not going to happen overnight, but it will take some time,” Brown-Thomas said. “I’m not saying it’s going to come in a year, not even two years, but we have to address the issues first, then everything else will fall in line.”
Emon Thompson Sr.
Thompson Sr., a business owner and retired veteran, said that a lot of the issues with blight comes down to enforcement.
“We need to, first of all, clean up our blighted properties by using the laws that we already have,” Thompson said. “The city already has ordinances with enough teeth to deal with blight.”
South Jackson voters don’t turn out like they should, he said, which can lead to a distrust in the system. He hopes, if elected, to be able to reach constituents where they are and keep them a part of the process in restoring their communities, like water improvement or curbing crime.
“Out of the 40 something thousand people that’s in south Jackson, maybe 3,900 people vote in the municipal elections,” he said. “They don’t have faith in the government anymore.”
“…If there’s a reason why we’re not getting any services out here, then I want to make sure I communicate that with a constituent so they can continue to have hope,” he said.
Representative Ronnie Crudup, Jr., D-Jackson, said that residents’ migration out of Jackson creates bigger issues for communities.
“To me, blight is just a symptom of a larger problem. The people are leaving the city of Jackson, and the population is decreasing,” Crudup said. “When people leave the properties, you end up with squatters and vagrants who move into these properties and tear them up.”
Crudup has been renovating and demolishing blighted properties in south and west Jackson for nearly eight years. So far, he said he’s renovated about 35 homes.
“Even though we are demoing and tearing down one or two properties, when people leave, that leaves other ones there,” he said. “You got all these blighted properties all around south and west Jackson, and some even in parts of north Jackson now, because people are leaving.”
He said the one thing that’s needed most: more funding from all levels of government for blight mitigation work.
“There needs to be more money from the legislature, but there needs to be more money allocated from the city council too,” Crudup said. “I think the city is going to have to take clean up efforts to a higher circumstance, and let the legislature see that they’re serious about this, and also get the county involved and let them know ‘Hey, we need all the help we can get.’”
And, the perception that city leaders have abandoned south Jackson is not necessarily right. Former Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson said that blight is an issue that affects not only south Jackson but all parts of the city. Mitigating blight is going to take an intergovernmental approach, he said.
“I know that in some cases, some people feel they’ve been sort of abandoned, but I don’t think that’s the case,” Johnson said. “It may be a lack of resources to attack the problem and it’s going to require all governments to work together.”
Walker said she remembers when the city’s southern boundary changed and her neighborhood, which had been part of Byram, came inside Jackson city limits. A small portion of her ward was annexed by the city of Jackson in 2006 as part of Byram’s reincorporation. In the last couple of decades, she said she’s seen people be forced out of their homes due to the recession. Others simply chose to leave.
“We’ve had a turnover, but the neighborhood is still relatively stable,” Walker said. “When we moved in, a lot of people moved out.”
Walker said that while her neighborhood isn’t struck by blight, she sees abandoned properties while making her way through the community and near her church.
When thinking of a candidate that she would want to vote for, Walker said she’s looking for a good communicator who can be an advocate for the ward.
“We need someone that’s forward thinking. Someone that has the best interests of the residents of south Jackson and an understanding of the vast diversity of the ward,” she said. “Someone that’s able to work with other members of the City Council. Someone able to work with our board of supervisors and state legislators to find solutions to some of these issues.”
Banks said that his greatest achievement as city councilman was hosting quarterly town hall meetings to inform his constituents on the importance of ordinances and legislation created to better their lives.
“There’s one piece of legislation that deals with overhanging tree limbs and limbs. That idea came from a constituent,” he said. “When you see constituents being able to give informed ideas on legislation, which is the job of a council member, I think that’s an achievement because then what that says is there’s involvement in the process.”
“I hope the next person will understand that communicating with the people is key, and that the people of Ward 6 are resilient,” Banks said. “As long as they continue to communicate and stay in the scope of their job and work with the administration, there’s a lot that can be done.”
After over three hours and two executive sessions on Tuesday, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality’s Permit Board denied Drax’s application to become a “major” source of Hazardous Air Pollutants, or HAPs. The new permit would have allowed the company’s wood pellet facility, Amite BioEnergy, to release more potentially harmful air pollutants than what its currently allowed under state regulation.
Drax, a British wood pellet manufacturer, opened the facility just outside downtown Gloster in southwest Mississippi in 2016. The company turns locally sourced wood into pellets that it then ships to other countries for their clean energy goals, although many scientists believe the practice is actually more harmful than other energy sources in terms of net carbon emissions. Drax and other wood pellet companies have faced a wave of both local and international scrutiny for repeated air emissions violations across multiple Southern states.
Drax Group, a U.K.-based energy company that operates a wood pellet production plant in Gloster, has caused concern in the small Mississippi town due to its industrial pollution. Credit: Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
In 2020, MDEQ fined Drax $2.5 million for underestimating certain pollutants it had released into the air since 2016, one of three times the state has fined the facility and one of the largest such penalties in the state’s history.
Last year, the state fined Drax $225,000 for releasing over 50% more than its permitted limit of HAPs into the air. Shortly after, MDEQ announced Drax’s application to upgrade the facility from a “minor” source of HAPs to a “major” source. Doing so would have removed the limit over how much HAPs the facility could release, but it also would have put in stricter regulation over the rate at which it released HAPs.
Jaricus Whitlock, MDEQ’s Air Division Chief, explained that Drax has come into compliance since the fine by lowering production. Drax officials, though, told the Permit Board that in order to produce as much as its permit allows, it would need to exceed the “minor” source allowance for HAPs.
After some confusion among the Permit Board over whether Drax’s actual output of HAPs would increase, Whitlock clarified: “There is a guarantee that actual emissions will increase (if Drax was given “major” source status), and based on my speculations, (HAP emissions) could very likely increase above those thresholds (that Drax currently has to stay under).”
Gloster residents and protesters gather at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on Thursday, March 28, 2024, to protest against the pollution caused by Drax Biomass Inc. Amite Bioenergy in Gloster. Credit: Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
Residents and activists argued that Drax shouldn’t simply get to raise the amount of pollution it can release because it failed to meet its current limit. Jimmy Brown, a Gloster resident and vocal critic of the wood pellet facility, compared Drax’s request to getting caught speeding and then asking the Department of Transportation to raise the speeding limit.
“I’m gonna get mad and say, ‘I can’t do 70 no more, I need to do 80,’” Brown said. “Do you think the (government) is going to listen to me and raise the speed limit for me? But that’s what Drax is asking this board to do today.”
Before it voted, the Permit Board heard impassioned pleas from Gloster residents who believe Drax’s pollution has caused them respiratory issues. A group of residents took a charter bus early Tuesday morning to attend the hearing.
“How many of us have to die for these pellets to be made?” cried Carmella Causey, who said she has to carry an oxygen tank with her everywhere she goes.
Carmella Causey listens as other Gloster residents express their concerns about the industrial pollution caused by Drax Group, a wood pellet-producing company, in Gloster, Miss., on Friday, Feb. 16, 2024. Credit: Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
Out of six voting, five Permit Board members sided with denying Drax’s permit request, and one abstained. The room in MDEQ’s downtown Jackson building filled with applause after the vote. Chairman Doug Mann cautioned that MDEQ may revisit the issue in the future.
“Drax has a lot of resources and a lot of scientists, and there’s probably a way we can clean all this up,” Mann told the room.
Charlotte Keys, a pastor from Columbia, then wandered, unprompted, up to the podium facing the board members to deliver a closing sermon.
“I’m grateful good neighbors showed here how to be good neighbors,” Keys said.
A state commission scrubbed academic research from a database used by Mississippi libraries and public schools — a move made to comply with recent state laws changing what content can be offered in libraries.
The Mississippi Library Commission ordered the deletion of two research collections that might violate state law, a March 31 internal memo obtained by Mississippi Today shows. One of the now deleted research collections focused on “race relations” and the other on “gender studies.”
The memo, written by Mississippi Library Commission Executive Director Hulen Bivins, confirmed the scrubbing of scholarly material from a database used by publicly funded schools, libraries, community colleges, universities and state agencies. The database, MAGNOLIA, is funded by the Mississippi Legislature.
Bivins’ memo was emailed to a small group of library and academic administrators who oversee the state-run research database, telling them state laws affecting library collections prompted the deletion.
“In this challenging time with many different viewpoints concerning library materials and material content your willingness to work with these issues is appreciated,” Bivins wrote. “The deletion of these two databases shall be permanent until such time as when the Legislature changes their position regarding the content of materials made available in Mississippi libraries.”
The memo did not cite the specific state laws that prompted the deletion of research material related to race and gender. But in a phone interview, Bivins cited a 2023 law that regulates digital resources available to minors in public libraries, focusing on “obscene materials.” Bivins said there were other laws that warranted the deletion, but he could not remember all of the specific laws when asked.
Bivins said the Library Commission received a tip in late February or early March that the two databases might violate state law. By the end of March, the material had been deleted.
“In all cases we comply with state law,” Bivins said. “We’re not acting fast. We are acting as we discern.”
The two research collections state officials ordered for deletion included material from professional journals, conference papers, books, student dissertations, periodicals and newspaper articles.
The Gender Studies Database included academic content from 377 peer reviewed journals. Subjects include, “Gender inequality, Masculinity, Post-feminism (and) Gender identity.” The other deleted database, titled “Race Relations Abstracts” focused on a wide range of subjects, including “Ethnic studies, Discrimination, Immigration studies (and) Ideology.”
A screenshot of the MAGNOLIA website. Credit: Special to Mississippi Today
A current employee at a public library, who was granted anonymity by Mississippi Today to discuss internal orders handed down by state officials, said the research collections are compiled by librarians in a process that can take months. Students and academics use the collections to wade through a vast assemblage of research, a process that could now be upended based on political motives, the employee said.
“You have to know what you’re looking for rather than clicking on the guide and having all this information here where you can go through it,” the employee said. “That’s the big problem, it’s crippling a lot of the research. It takes so much more time to have to individually go through every book.”
In his memo, Bivins said individual libraries could potentially maintain two databases at their own cost through EBSCO, the platform that feeds information into MAGNOLIA, the state run database. But library employees were left uncertain about what sort of academic material might violate state law, and what other research could be wiped from the state database without warning.
Democratic Rep. Jeffrey Harness, a Black lawmaker who has spoken out against a recent law passed by the Legislature to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs, said the removal of scholarly material from library databases would provoke backlash in a state where minorities have fought for equal access to education.
“There was a lot of sweat and hard work put into this research. This is an attempt to erase history and make history the way they want it to be interpreted,” Harness said. “When you do things like this, take away that important content, they’re creating a powder keg. I’m just going to tell you, the Republicans are creating a powder keg. People are not going to stand for this.”
The memo was sent out on the same day Mississippi lawmakers filed their final version of House Bill 1193. The measure bans diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from public schools across the state education system.
The DEI ban approved by the Legislature had been a subject of public debate for months. The measure is headed to Gov. Tate Reeves, who is likely to sign the bill into law and let it take effect on July 1. Bivins said he had not heard about the state DEI ban and that it did not influence his memo.
The wiping of academic material unfolded at the same time lawmakers were at loggerheads over the state budget. They ultimately adjourned their regular session without passing a budget to fund state entities, including the Library Commission, which receives about $1.3 million to operate the MAGNOLIA database.
The Commission has asked for another state appropriation to maintain the database, but hasn’t received any assurance their request would be honored.
Editor’s note: Former state Rep. Cecil Brown, who was involved in the budget process as a member of the Legislative Budget Committee from 2004 until 2012 and earlier as the state fiscal officer, explains how the state budget process works. Brown also references that the Legislature ended the 2025 session without a budget, which is not how the process is supposed to work.
This is an attempt to shine light on the Mississippi state budget process and make it understandable. Unfortunately, as we recently learned, when politics get involved, things don’t go as planned.
The state budget is the document created by the state Legislature that tells government officials how much money is available to spend for the upcoming fiscal year and how it should be spent. State law requires a balanced budget. Operating expenses cannot exceed available revenues. The current total annual state budget is about $28 billion, consisting of $13 billion in federal funds, $7 billion in general funds $700 million in “state support special funds” and $7.8 billion in “other special funds.”
The “general fund,” is the pot of money collected by the state from sales taxes, income taxes, use taxes and various other taxes and fees. “Special funds” are for the most part dedicated to specific uses. For example, fuel taxes are used primarily on highways.
All federal funds and many special funds have dedicated uses and are not available for general purposes. General funds, state support special funds and some other special funds can be used for the general needs of government. They are spent on K-12 education, universities and community colleges, the state’s portion of Medicaid costs and all the other legitimate obligations of state government.
The state’s fiscal year begins July 1 and ends on June 30 of the succeeding year. For example, we are currently in the 2025 fiscal year that began on July 1, 2024, and will end on June 30, 2025. Each state budget is for one year only and is adopted by the state Legislature in the legislative session that precedes the beginning of the fiscal year.
The budget process begins in the summer before the following legislative session. Staff work is performed by the Legislative Budget Office (LBO), a group of professionals who work for the Legislature. Each state agency submits a detailed budget request outlining their anticipated financial needs for the following year and number of personnel they need to carry out their missions. Requested increases require explanation and larger items such as equipment require detail analysis. The starting point for every agency budget is the money and personnel they have for the current year. Detailed analysis will be provided for new programs that require additional funding. Reductions such as non-recurring needs for new equipment also are considered.
All the agency budget requests then go to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC) to be considered for the “budget recommendation” provided to the Legislature to consider in the upcoming legislative session. The JLBC is composed of six members of the House and six members of the Senate. In addition, the committee also includes the speaker of the House and the lieutenant governor who alternate yearly as the chair of the panel.
While LBO is working on the spending side of the budget, another group of professionals is working on the revenue side. This “revenue estimating committee” is a group of experts who look at current tax collections and other state revenues, economic forecasts and changes to estimate how much money will be available for the general fund for the following year. After all the analysis is done, the JLBC will put all the numbers together to present a complete budget recommendation to the House and Senate during the first week of the legislative session. At that time, the budget is reduced to a series of revenue and expenditure (appropriation) bills. To become part of the budget, each bill must be passed by the House and Senate and approved by the governor.
The JLBC and the governor will meet with the revenue estimating committee to adopt a revenue estimate. That estimate sets a limit on how much the Legislature can appropriate during the session. Major changes in economic outlook might require changes in the estimate and the amounts available to spend.
During the session, everything works on a time schedule – when bills must be introduced, when they must be passed by the various committees and by the House and Senate. Failure to meet a deadline can kill a bill. One-half of the appropriations bills that are part of the budget will start in the House and one-half in the Senate. Legislators often introduce appropriations bills that are outside the budge recommendation. Most of those are never considered by the committees.
Appropriation bills can be amended in the committee, passed or killed by vote. Occasionally a bill will be amended, but most pass as introduced. After that, the full house of origin will vote on the bill, and if the bill passes it will go to the other house for consideration. If the two houses cannot agree on an appropriation or revenue bill, the bill will be referred to a conference committee where three members from each body will try to resolve the differences. Most of the appropriations bills go to conference. For a bill to be finally passed, it must pass both houses in the exact same form. After passage, the bill will go to the governor who can sign it into law, veto it or let it become law without his signature. A veto can be overridden by a 2/3 vote of each house.
This year, because of internal legislative politics, the Legislature adjourned without passing a budget. The only solution is a special legislative session. If appropriations bills are not passed by June 30, state government will shut down. Nobody, including employees, can get paid. Only the governor can call a special session, and he will set the agenda. Typically, the governor will not call a session until the legislative leaders assure him they have reached an agreement.
In the end, a state budget will be adopted. Not everyone will be satisfied, but that is the nature of the democratic process.
College basketball’s Cinderella has died, and with her, so much of the NCAA Tournament’s magic has been laid to rest. Both were victims of the out-of-control transfer portal and the almighty NIL dollar.
Another way of putting it: March Madness isn’t so mad any more.
Rick Cleveland
You may like that. I do not. For me, the beauty and allure of the tournament always has been when the unthinkable happens, like two years ago when 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson shocked No. 1 seed Purdue. There was often drama, if not magic, when the monumental upset almost happened but did not, such as in 1986 when Lafayette Stribling’s Mississippi Valley State team led for most of the game before narrowly losing to overall No. 1 seed Duke.
The 2025 NCAA Tournament, one of the most predictable on record, ended Monday night with an exciting, remarkably well-played game. Florida defeated Houston 65-63. It seems appropriate that one of the Gators’ heroes was 23-year-old Mississippian, Alijah Martin, a graduate student from Summit in Pike County, who transferred to Florida after playing four seasons at Florida Atlantic. Mid-major transfers played critical roles for power programs throughout the tournament.
This Final Four consisted of all No. 1 seeds. Two No. 12 seeds won a first-round game, but there were no real stunners where a team seeded 13 or above advanced. Arkansas, a 10-seed from the SEC, was the only double-digit seed to make the Sweet 16. All the other 15 were 6-seeds or higher.
There were no stunners. No school named Oakland beat a blue blood like Kentucky. No UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) upset Virginia. No Bucknell beat Kansas. Those ships have sailed away, perhaps forever.
This year’s biggest upset came when McNeese State defeated Clemson. And that one gets an asterisk because McNeese State reportedly out-spent many power conference schools with NIL money in the transfer portal.
“Follow the money,” longtime college and NBA coach Tim Floyd, a Hattiesburg native, says. “In college basketball today, recruiting is basically buying. For the most part, low- and mid-majors simply can’t compete financially with the power conference teams.”
Belmont University of Nashville was one of those low-to-mid major schools that might have pulled a gigantic upset in this year’s NCAA Tournament. The makings of an NCAA Sweet 16 team were there from last year’s 22-12 team. But then, power forward Malik Dia transferred to Ole Miss, point guard Jacobi Miller transferred to Maryland and small forward Cade Tyson transferred to North Carolina. Strike one, strike two and strike three: Belmont was out. Ole Miss, Maryland and North Carolina all made the NCAA Tournament; Belmont, which still somehow managed to win 22 games, did not.
Belmont was not alone. Across the land, richer teams from the power conferences cherry-picked from low-and-mid major teams, buying their best players with higher NIL packages. Stetson, a mid-major powerhouse in 2023-24, lost all five starters and all top reserves through the transfer portal. A team that won 22 games a season ago won only eight this past season.
Florida Atlantic shocked everyone by going to the Final Four in 2023, then made the NCAA Tournament again in 2024. The Owls won 60 games over those two seasons. Then, Coach Dusty May left for Michigan and nine — count ’em, nine — players, including Martin, left via the transfer portal. Cinderella no more, FAU was essentially a .500 team this past season.
Mississippian Kermit Davis has been on both sides of the NCAA power divide. He coached at Middle Tennessee State for 16 seasons before a five-year run at Ole Miss. In 2016, his Middle Tennessee team, a 15-seed out of Conference USA, shocked Tom Izzo and Michigan State 90-81 in one of the biggest upsets in college basketball history.
Davis doesn’t know if the same feat would be possible today.
Kermit Davis, Jr. Credit: Mark Humphrey, AP
“I am not sure we could have afforded to hold that team together in today’s college basketball climate,” Davis said. “I know we couldn’t have held them together for that next season.”
What a lot of people might have forgotten is that Davis’s Blue Raiders won 31 games and beat another Big Ten team, Minnesota, in the 2017 NCAA Tournament.
“Today, all those players would have left Middle and have been playing for Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee or somebody like that,” Davis says. “And you couldn’t blame them. There’s so much money out there. I’m not sure it’s good for college basketball overall, but it’s just the way it is.”
Floyd, who coached at Idaho and New Orleans before jobs at Iowa State and Southern Cal later in his career, strongly believes the new trend isn’t good for the NCAA Tournament or for college athletics in general.
“It used to be that if you had a couple holes in your roster, you would go the junior college route for immediate help,” Floyd said. “Now, you just pluck then away from smaller four-year schools and leave them high and dry. It’s professional basketball without salary caps or contracts. It’s crazy as hell.”
And, at least for this one observer, it has stolen much of the madness from March.
The word “bittersweet” doesn’t do justice to the news we share today. After six years with Mississippi Today, Marshall Ramsey, our editor-at-large and beloved editorial cartoonist, will be leaving the newsroom to launch the Mississippi Media Lab at the University of Mississippi’s School of Journalism and New Media. In this first-of-its-kind position, Marshall will serve as editor of the journalism school’s media lab and as the civic engagement coordinator for the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation, where he will serve as a liaison between the center, the school and the broader community.
Marshall joined our newsroom in December 2018 with decades of editorial cartoons under his belt. He’d been nominated for multiple Pulitzer Prizes, published numerous books, hosted television and radio programs and emceed nearly every event in the state. He brought to Mississippi Today his insatiable appetite for community connection, levity and creativity. He helped us build our brand of accountability reporting into a household name, and he gave readers across Mississippi hope, humor and an illustrative critique of current events. He is simply irreplaceable, and we will miss his presence in the newsroom and on the website.
Of Marshall’s many admirable qualities, his bravery will always be the one I admire most. Marshall often tells the story of getting a cancer diagnosis and being made part time at his newspaper job on the same day. He does so with his signature comic style, but what he doesn’t share is the tenacity and gumption it took to reinvent himself. He grew his artistic talent as a cartoonist into a full-time gig as a creative entrepreneur. His social media became a brand of its own, and Marshall Ramsey fans are a dedicated and loyal bunch to this day. Through his public speaking engagements, Marshall gave Mississippians what they hadn’t seen before: a mix of sarcasm and empathy that resonated deeply and profoundly for folks from all walks of life. From there, he developed television and radio programs that highlighted the creative spirit of our state but never shied away from the hard-truths that inspire the artistic process.
As an editorial cartoonist, Marshall’s pen spared no one and never played favorites. Marshall amplified the work of our journalists through his editorial cartoons and always had the backs of our reporters, and of our readers. We, as a team, never cease to be amazed by how he can capture the essence of a 7,000-word story in a single cartoon. He’s helped us all laugh to keep from crying, and to collectively seethe when words can’t do justice. For that, we as Mississippians are grateful.
Mississippi Today is growing, and for that we are grateful, but we won’t be posting a job description to replace Marshall Ramsey. That is simply impossible. What we will be doing is cheering on his work at Ole Miss, collaborating closely with the students and projects he leads and continuing to publish his original cartoons weekly for our readers. We are immensely proud of the accomplishments Marshall has made during his years in our nonprofit newsroom, and we are exponentially hopeful for the influence he will have on a new generation of journalists and newsroom leaders.
For nearly three decades, a little-known federal agency has provided millions of dollars in support and funding to Mississippi’s colleges and universities museums, to libraries and to cultural institutions, including the Margaret Walker and COFO Civil Rights Center at Jackson State University.
In 2011, the state’s largest historically Black university’s cultural center and museum, received a $48,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Libraries Services. The grant paid for staff to travel and learn about the historical preservation work from larger museums and institutions across the country.
“That grant was my professional development,” Robert Luckett, director of the cultural center said. “It was so important and has been foundational for all of the work we’ve done at Jackson State for the last fifteen, sixteen years.”
But, Jackson State isn’t the only Mississippi college that has benefitted from funds from IMLS, and the federal agency has flowed millions of dollars in grants to the state.
In 2022, Mississippi State University received a $74,000 grant to fund its Office of Museum Services and a $50,000 grant from the American Rescue Plan for Museums and Libraries to train and hire students from underserved communities to assist with biological collection and conservation. That same year, Northwest Mississippi Community College received $33,000 from the agency to support a series of community engagement discussions for students around racial injustice, mental health and stress in the post COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020, Hinds Community College Utica’s campus received a $101,000 grant from IMLS’s Museums Grants for African American History and Culture to establish an oral history project for Black rural Mississippians and provided technology and equipment to record stories for residents who couldn’t make it to the campus museum. The federal agency also awarded $500,000 to the University of Mississippi through its Save America’s Treasures program and in 2010 a $450,000 grant to its Modern Political Archives to preserve and digitize 3,800 audio and visual recordings.
The Margaret Walker Center, which houses oral histories, manuscripts, book collections and history archives of Black Mississippians, and operates as the Black Studies Institute for Jackson State University, has been a cornerstone of cultural development for students.
Now, with an executive order from President Donald Trump, which led the federal agency’s nearly 70 employees to be placed on administrative leave last week, the future of the Margaret Walker Center’s work remains unclear.
The move to shut down IMLS comes weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to scale down six other federal agencies to “the minimum presence,” according to The Washington Post.
The agency’s funding, which is less than one percent of the federal budget, has dolled out millions of dollars to museums, libraries and institutions. But, in states like Mississippi, where access to traditional resources and support for cultural institutions may be near to none or nonexistent, the agency’s funding has been essential in providing tools to do important work, Luckett said.
Out of the eight full-time staff members at the cultural center, two staff and a graduate fellow who works to digitize the historical archives is funded by subgrants of IMLS through the Smithsonian Institute, another national cultural institution facing cuts by the Trump administration. These jobs on the digital humanities staff could be in jeopardy.
Robert Luckett, director of the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University. Credit: Jacson State University
Earlier this year, Luckett said his team applied for another grant from IMLS to pay for their renovation project of Ayer Hall, the oldest building on Jackson State University’s campus and home to the Margaret Walker Center. The grant funding will provide support for staff to move its collections into a safe environment.
Luckett said the cultural center was supposed to be notified in June if they receive the grant. But, with the changes to the agency, he’s unsure of what comes next.
“We don’t have the funding to do this,” Luckett said. “We’ll be back to square one.”
Other cultural institutions and organizations across the state such as the Mississippi Humanities Council, which currently has 35 open subgrants to various state colleges and universities, were reeling after hearing a major defunding announcement.
In a late night email, the organization learned their grant through the National Endowment of Humanities had been terminated. The national organization has provided more than 400 grants in Mississippi, including colleges in the state.
Sweeping cuts at IMLS and the National Endowment of Humanities threaten the future of established museum and library programs at local colleges from panels, literary festivals, history tours, youth education workshops and other public programs.
“In [Mississippi] our greatest strength is our history and culture,” Stuart Rockoff, executive director of the Mississippi Humanities Council, said. “Our grants and our programs have helped highlight that especially in smaller towns and rural areas of our state.”
The state’s cultural organization doled out various grants to Mississippi’s public universities and colleges, including a $8,400 grant to the Margaret Walker Center last year, which held a panel discussion on local activism in reflection to Mississippi’s civil rights movement history.
Luckett said protecting the state’s historical collections and providing access to them are key components for the curriculum for students at Jackson State University to engage in scholarship and research.
“These skills are not politicized,” Luckett said. “These are important learning tools for any student of any discipline.”
While it’s easy to ignore the federal agency being closed, the outside impact that such a small agency has on the country is remarkable, Luckett added.
“These are public servants doing these jobs, who are committed and who aren’t willing to get rich,” Luckett said. “This assault on IMLS is something we should all be worried about.”
The National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report last week in its investigation of the UMMC helicopter crash in March that killed three crew members.
AirCare 3 – one of four helicopters in UMMC’s critical care transport program – was destroyed March 10 after it crashed on a grass field in Canton.
The pilot and two UMMC employees died in the crash: Cal Wesolowski of Starkville; Dustin Pope, a flight nurse and the base supervisor for AirCare in Columbus; and Jakob Kindt, a critical care paramedic from Tupelo. Denton, Texas-based Med-Trans Corporation provides helicopters and pilots to UMMC.
The preliminary report does not identify the cause of the crash, and the final report could take one to two years to be completed, National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman told press after the crash.
The flight was headed to its home base at Golden Triangle Regional Airport in Columbus after the crew completed a patient transport to St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson and topped off its fuel at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, according to the report.
The flight was classified as low-risk by the operator’s safety management system.
The helicopter communicated with air traffic control at Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport and terminated communication about five minutes before the accident, after the pilot reported “clear to the north.”
The helicopter flew over the Ross Barnett Reservoir northeast of Jackson and reached an altitude of 2,500 feet above mean sea level before it began to descend north of the reservoir.
The flight nurse transmitted a message to the UMMC’s aircraft communications center about halfway through the descent. “We’ve got a major problem, we are having an emergency landing in a field right now, ops are not good, controls are giving us a lot of trouble, coming in fast,” he said.
No further radio transmissions were recorded from the helicopter.
The helicopter impacted multiple trees south of a flat grass field in the Pearl River State Wildlife Management Area before coming to rest in the field.
A manager at Turcotte Fish Hatchery 700 yards from the accident site heard a “boom” or “explosion” while the helicopter was still airborne. He did not hear engine sounds after the boom and did not see smoke or fire coming from the helicopter while it remained airborne, he told the National Transportation Safety Board in a postaccident interview.
It appeared the pilot was “having trouble controlling” the helicopter, and that the tail was pitching up and down, he said. The craft did not descend straight down but was “coasting,” in a 40 to 45 degree angle descent.
The time from “boom” to impact with the ground was about 15 seconds, he reported.
The helicopter was destroyed by a post-impact fire that burned for three hours. Fire department units deployed 1,300 feet of hose after the initial fire suppression, which was carried out using tank water. Water was then shuttled to the site for the remainder of firefighting.
The National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration, Med-Trans Corporation and Colorado-based Global Medical Response, the company that owns Med-Trans, traveled to the site of the crash but were unable to functionally test any of the helicopter systems due to the fire damage.
Wesolowski, the pilot, was hired by Med-Trans in September 2024 and passed a competency checkride in October. He had completed over 10,000 hours as a helicopter pilot, according to the report.
The helicopter, a Eurocopter EC135 P2+, was inspected two and a half hours before the accident. It was manufactured in 2012 and transferred to the Med-Trans operating certificate in 2020.
There have been 12 other crashes involving the Eurocopter EC135 since 2005, according to publicly available information from the National Transportation Safety Board.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued an airworthiness directive pertaining to the helicopter model three days before the crash, to take effect March 24, 2025. Airworthiness directives are legally enforceable regulations to correct an unsafe condition in a product.
The directive was “prompted by reports of malfunctioning emergency fuel shut-off switches on the warning unit,” and mandated inspections of certain switches on the warning units and depending on the result of the inspections, replacing or repairing the warning unit.
AirCare flights were temporarily grounded after the crash but have now resumed operations.
