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Five months after the Trump administration closed investigations into law enforcement agencies across the country, the Justice Department has signaled that it will continue its investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. 

Rankin County NAACP President Angela English said a Justice Department official recently  informed her that Attorney General Pam Bondi had authorized federal investigators to move forward with the Rankin County investigation after months of uncertainty about whether it would continue under the Trump administration. 

English has been coordinating with Justice Department officials since they began investigating the department in 2023, after a group of sheriff’s deputies and a Richland police officer, some of whom called themselves the “Goon Squad,” tortured two Black men during a late-night raid. 

Last year, the six officers were sentenced to federal prison for their roles in the incident, and dozens more people have since accused Rankin County deputies of abuse. 

“We need people to be held accountable for what they’re doing,” English said. “We need people to come forward and tell their own stories.”

After learning that the investigation would continue, English organized a listening session to help investigators connect with more alleged victims of the sheriff’s department.

The session will be held Nov. 1 at the Mount Elam Family Life Center in Pearl, where attendees will have an opportunity to share their experiences in private and submit their claims to the Justice Department.

“I have not seen where the Department of Justice has signaled anything regarding the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department,” said Jason Dare, the department’s attorney and spokesperson. “The RCSD will continue its cooperation with the investigation in order to show that all aspects of the department’s policing are within constitutional boundaries.” 

The Justice Department launched an investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department in September 2024, after Mississippi Today and The New York Times exposed a pattern of torture by Rankin deputies stretching back nearly two decades and involving at least 20 deputies. 

The federal agency did not respond to requests for comment on the investigation, but in July, it denied a Freedom of Information request filed by Mississippi Today seeking the status of its Rankin County investigation, saying the records “pertain to an ongoing law enforcement proceeding.” 

While the investigation had not formally been abandoned, its future was uncertain under the Trump administration, which has moved to scuttle most of the Justice Department’s ongoing investigations into law enforcement agencies accused of civil rights violations. 

In May, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced it was closing eight investigations into police departments in Arizona, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, Oklahoma and Louisiana. 

The division also dismissed lawsuits and investigations into the Louisville and Minneapolis police departments, which were responsible for the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. 

Civil rights advocates said the sweeping changes signaled an end to the department’s longstanding practice of holding abusive law enforcement agencies accountable. 

“The Trump administration is essentially giving a green light to police abuse and unconstitutional policing,” Jarvis Dortch, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, said in a May statement.

Survivors of the Goon Squad’s abuses said news of the investigation came as a relief. 

Rick Loveday, a former jail guard who said he was brutalized by Rankin County deputies when they raided his home in 2018, said he was excited to hear the Justice Department was continuing its investigation. 

“ They did a bunch of bad stuff,” Loveday said. “Fate caught up with some of them, but they still haven’t been punished, really, for what they’ve done.”

FLOWOOD – On the eve of the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, members of the Mississippi Building Code Council sat befuddled inside a conference room a stone’s throw from the Jackson airport. 

The council’s leaders agree Mississippi would benefit from a statewide, uniform building code – a policy experts widely believe improves an area’s chances of surviving destructive weather. By lowering risk, strengthening buildings also helps against rising insurance rates. 

“It’s kind of like the three little pigs: You want the straw, the sticks or the brick?” said Jennifer Hall, vice president of the council. “I want the brick.” 

But the Legislature, the council also agreed, has no interest in expanding regulations. If anything, lawmakers are more interested in weakening what rules are in place. 

“There is a movement at the Capitol right now to do away with regulations,” Hall said at the meeting. 

After seeing the impact Katrina had on weaker homes and businesses in 2005, lawmakers in 2014 passed a statewide building code, requiring construction to meet modern standards. But the 2014 law included a key caveat: Within four months of the new regulation going into effect, any city or county could vote to opt out. As it turned out, most did just that. 

Resilience experts, public officials and coastal residents who talked to Mississippi Today pointed to crucial policies to enhance local fortitude against future disasters: funding for mitigation and strong building codes. Yet while research suggests Mississippi is as vulnerable to climate change as anywhere in the country, state leadership has failed to embrace either strategy over the last two decades. 

“Mississippi has had the opportunity to do this for years,” said Julie Shiyou-Woodard, president of Smart Home America and a Pass Christian native. “Sadly, it’s going to show. The choices we made in Mississippi after Katrina, you will see that when we get hit with a direct category 3 (hurricane) again. It will be clear.”

‘A silly question, Senator’

Mike Chaney, a Republican who has been the state’s insurance commissioner since early 2008, estimated that two-thirds of Mississippi’s counties opted out of the 2014 building code standards. Now, just about half of the state has “fairly decent” codes, Chaney said. The lower six counties– including three that touch the Coast – adopted codes shortly after Katrina, although most are now outdated, a federal database shows. The many places in the state without codes altogether are going to “hurt in the long run,” Chaney said.

Hall, who is also executive director of the Mississippi Manufactured Housing Association, said “the only way” lawmakers could have passed the 2014 bill was to allow cities and counties to opt out.

Mississippi Today reached out to several government agencies and organizations, and no one in the state, it appeared, tracked which areas have what building codes. The 2014 law gave no one the authority to actually enforce the codes it put into place, Hall said. In other words, there’s no accountability at the state level, even for the cities and counties that didn’t opt out in 2014.

Last year, the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety ranked Mississippi’s codes near the bottom among coastal states. The impact a lack of codes has on life-safety and property damage “has unfortunately been exposed in recent tornado outbreaks” in the state and “would be exploited in a hurricane impact,” the report said. 

Over the last decade, tornadoes, strong winds and thunderstorms have directly killed 67 people in Mississippi, national storm data show. Also, including hurricanes, those storms have caused over $740 million in property damage in that time.

Disaster and insurance experts also point to mitigation grants as a necessary step toward local resilience. Alabama, Louisiana and other states have launched grant programs to help homeowners in high-risk areas pay for improvements that are often cost-prohibitive otherwise. 

The Mississippi Insurance Department first established its home mitigation program in 2007, but it didn’t receive funding from the state until 2024 when lawmakers set aside $5 million for the department to do a test run. 

With grants up to $10,000, the program paid to upgrade and strap roofs onto homes, protecting against high winds and water leaks. After slowly rolling out the program, which Chaney said was done to avoid mishaps, the state funded improvements to 28 homes. 

In a dispute that played out in news stories and on social media over the summer, legislators were critical of the department’s ability to run the program. Particularly, Sen. Scott DeLano, a Biloxi Republican, said he disagreed with Chaney’s approach. 

DeLano and other lawmakers slammed the Insurance Department for only doing 28 homes, said Chaney provided scant details about how the program would run, and argued the program should go through an independent contractor. 

As a result, the Legislature omitted funding for the program this past session, and killed a bill that would have paid for the grants through fees from insurance companies. Republican Sen. Walter Michel of Ridgeland presented the bill on Chaney’s behalf. 

Some of the criticisms about the pilot fell flat, Mississippi Today found. For instance, DeLano and others pointed to the success story in Alabama – which leads the nation with over 51,000 “FORTIFIED” homes – and said Mississippi should mimic its neighbor to the east. But the Alabama Department of Insurance told Mississippi Today that its program is run almost entirely in-house. 

Chaney’s office pushed back on criticism over the results of its pilot program, arguing it executed more grants than other states in its first year. 

At a Senate committee meeting in January, DeLano criticized Chaney, who was sitting a few feet away, for not also requiring counties to have up-to-date building codes before residents could receive a grant. Doing so would attract more insurance companies into the state, the senator said. 

 After Chaney said he would only support the idea in a separate bill, DeLano fired back: 

“Are you really for mitigation then?” 

“That’s a silly question, Senator,” Chaney responded. 

Responding to Mississippi Today about the exchange, Chaney’s office said requiring a county to have certain building codes would only hold up mitigation progress. 

The two elected officials agreed about the importance of a mitigation program, but each side accused the other of not playing ball. DeLano said Chaney hasn’t provided details of his proposal, and Chaney said DeLano wouldn’t meet with him to discuss the proposal. 

Multiple people told Mississippi Today the distrust between the two sides traces back to 2016, when the state nearly lost $30 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds meant for retrofitting 2,000 homes on the Coast. An Office of Inspector General report recommended FEMA suspend the program after finding the state had spent over $30 million and did work on only 945 homes. 

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency fired the employees it claimed were responsible for the blunder. The agency eventually resumed the program and ended up with $19 million in federal funds, it told Mississippi Today. 

But Rep. Kevin Ford, a Republican from Vicksburg, said lawmakers still have a “bad taste in their mouth.” When asked if the earlier scandal is why the Legislature hasn’t funded the program for roughly a decade, Ford said, “Yes, 100%. There’s no doubt.”

“What it sounds like to me is there is a trust issue,” said Chris Monforton, CEO of Habitat for Humanity of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, referencing the OIG report. Monforton, who worked with the insurance department to start its pilot program, said the pilot was “very similar” to how Alabama established its mitigation grants. 

When asked about the issues from 2016, DeLano didn’t go so far as to tie it to his disagreement with Chaney, but said “we know the history of mitigation programs in our state.” 

Ford, who wrote a competing mitigation bill in the House this past session, argued that Chaney as an elected official shouldn’t have control over the millions of dollars that would fund the program, suggesting the money could be tilted towards potential voters. 

Chaney strongly disagreed with using an outside company to run the program, arguing a contractor would be more expensive and not subject to the same oversight as the insurance department. Both Ford and Michel said they would reintroduce their bills in the 2026 legislative session, and it’s unclear if either side is willing to compromise.

Rep. Jerry Turner, a Republican from Baldwyn, is the House Insurance Committee chairman and has served at the Capitol since 2004. When asked why it took 17 years for the state to fund a mitigation program, Turner said, “I’m not trying to dodge a bullet or pass a buck, but I think you’d be better served if you talked to the people on the Coast and the insurance (department).”

“I’m not siding either way,” he added. “ I’ll do anything I can to get this thing started off because I think it’s something that the citizens of the state of Mississippi deserve.”

‘The market will collapse’

The parallel rise of disaster risks and insurance costs in the nation’s poorest state begs the question: What will happen if neither trend slows down?

Chip Merlin, an attorney who specializes in insurance claims for homeowners and who worked with Mississippians after Katrina, said eventually communities will have to migrate.

“I think we’re starting to see it already,” Merlin said, pointing to parts of California and Florida that have seen residents leave because of climate risk. “There’s an emotional aspect of once your home gets damaged by flood, wind, wildfire, that I don’t want to be in harm’s way anymore. And people look for a place where it’s less emotionally taxing to live.”

David Baria, a Democratic former state lawmaker from the Coast, said he ran for office in 2007 largely because of the local issues with insurance he witnessed after Katrina. 

Baria called it “a slog” to get any kind of insurance reform passed. He introduced bills in 2017, 2018 and 2019 to fund a mitigation grant program. None made it out of committee. 

“ There were many bills that I attempted to pass to rein in insurance company practices to improve the lot of homeowners, to strengthen structures, and they were routinely opposed by the insurance industry and the leadership of both the Senate and the House,” said Baria, who served in both chambers. 

Both Merlin and Baria criticized Mississippi leadership for not better protecting policyholders, especially around delaying or denying claims after a disaster. 

In 2024, a New York Times analysis of an insurance study looked at which parts of the country pay the most in home policy premiums relative to their house’s value. The analysis found that, throughout Mississippi, that ratio was “much higher” than the national average.  

Smart Home America, a nonprofit based in Mobile, Alabama, has helped strengthen homes and design policy in over 20 states. Shiyou-Woodard, its president and CEO, said she “worked closely” with Chaney’s office to kickstart Mississippi’s mitigation program, and it was on the right track until the Legislature cut its funding. 

While policy around mitigation can face obstacles, such as building contractors not wanting to deal with the extra cost of complying with new codes, Mississippi’s lack of local resilience comes down to those in the Capitol, she said. 

“Mississippi is a black hole,” Shiyou-Woodard said, explaining that its neighboring states are ahead of the game. “Why is it not catching up? There should be no reason. It has the same risk as Louisiana, the same risk as Alabama, what’s the problem? The problem in Mississippi has been political will.”

When asked what would happen if the state doesn’t act to lower the risk for homeowners, she pointed to Louisiana, which has only recently seen insurance improvements after a slew of companies pulled out due to frequent disasters. 

“When Mississippi gets hit with a significant wind event, the market will most likely collapse,” she said. “And that’s not fortune telling. That’s just based on the market, and they’re not getting ahead of it.”

CORRECTION 10/20/25: This story was updated to reflect that the home mitigation program just paid for roofing.

Rep. Robert Johnson III of Natchez, leader of Mississippi House Democrats, says the GOP leadership’s push for “school choice” is out of touch with rank-and-file Mississippians, many Republican lawmakers and educators. He also makes an announcement about his plans for his own political future, often the subject of much speculation. 

Absentee voting has begun for several special legislative elections in Mississippi, which have the potential to add more Democratic seats in a state controlled by Republicans. 

​​A federal three-judge panel ordered Mississippi to conduct special elections for 14 legislative seats this year because the court determined lawmakers diluted Black voting strength when they redrew districts in 2022.

Seven races are on the ballot for the Nov. 4 general election: six in the Senate and one in the House. But most of the attention will be on three specific elections that were at the heart of the federal litigation. 

SEE THE MISSISSIPPI TODAY 2025 SPECIAL ELECTION GUIDE

The state complied with the federal panel’s order by creating two majority-Black Senate districts with no incumbents in them and by significantly redrawing one House district. 

Senate District 2 contains portions of DeSoto and Tunica counties. Charlie Hoots is the Republican nominee, and Theresa Isom is the Democratic nominee. Neither has been elected to the Legislature before. 

Sen. David Parker, a Republican from Olive Branch, was the incumbent in this district, but he announced over the summer that he would not run in the new district. 

Senate District 45 includes portions of Forrest and Lamar counties. This is a new district without an incumbent. Johnny DuPree is the Democratic nominee, and Anna Rush is the Republican nominee. DuPree is the former mayor of Hattiesburg, and Rush is an attorney in Hattiesburg. 

House District 22 involves portions of Chickasaw, Clay and Monroe counties. Jon Lancaster is the Republican nominee, and Justin Crosby is the Democratic nominee. 

Unlike the two Senate races, Lancaster is an incumbent, currently in his second term. First elected as a Democrat in 2019, Lancaster switched to the Republican Party in 2021. 

Republican House members are expected to fight to keep Lancaster in office, while national and state Democratic leaders are hoping to flip a GOP seat to a Democratic one in a rural area. 

Seven candidates are also vying for a state Senate seat left open by John Horhn after he became Jackson’s mayor in July. He had represented District 26, which spans across north Jackson into parts of rural Hinds and Madison counties, since 1993.

READ MORE: Senate District 26 Special Election Guide

Unlike the other races, the seven candidates in the Hinds County race will appear on the ballot without a partisan affiliation.

Voters have until noon Nov. 1 to cast an absentee ballot in person at their county circuit clerk’s office. To vote by absentee, a voter must provide a legal excuse for being unable to vote in person on Nov. 4.  

If voters have questions about voting on Election Day, they can contact their local circuit clerk or the secretary of state’s elections hotline at 1-800-829-6786. For more voter information, visit the secretary of state’s Elections and Voting Portal.

LELAND — A frenzy of gunfire after a high school football game earlier this month in a small Mississippi Delta town has claimed a seventh victim as a 25-year-old woman died of her wounds around a week later, medical officials said.

Authorities have not disclosed a possible motive for the shooting in Leland, but the FBI says it may have been “sparked by a disagreement among several individuals.” At least nine people have been arrested, several of them charged with capital murder.

The death of Ebanee Williams was reported Friday by the coroner’s office in Hinds County, which encompasses the state capital, according to a news release Saturday from LaQuesha Watkins, the coroner in Washington County where Leland is located.

More than a dozen people were wounded in the shooting, and several were taken to other cities for medical care. The violence broke out late in the evening of Oct. 11 as people were gathered in Leland’s tiny downtown to celebrate homecoming weekend. It is the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Leland, on the state’s western edge, is home to fewer than 4,000 people, and the FBI’s Jackson Field Office has been posting pictures of suspects wanted for questioning.

Witnesses described a chaotic aftermath with people wounded and bleeding as four people lay dead on the ground. Days later, tattered yellow police tape lay tangled at the scene in front of a boarded-up storefront not far from City Hall.

People in Jackson, Hernando, Greenville, Gulfport, Oxford and other Mississippi cities took part in “No Kings” rallies Saturday to protest policies of President Donald J. Trump.

Demonstrators at rallies across the U.S. criticized ICE raids, the deployment of National Guard troops to Democratic-run cities, the federal government shutdown and redrawing of some states’ congressional districts to favor Republicans.

Trump and many of his supporters labeled the events as “Hate America” rallies.

Hundreds of people at a rally on the south lawn of the Mississippi Capitol chanted, “Vote them out.”

“We’re here, you know, fighting for our democracy,” Clinton resident M.D. Whitfield said at that rally. “We’re fighting for due process.”

The infant mortality rate, a stat that tracks deaths of infants before their first birthdays, in many Southern states is higher than average for the U.S. — Mississippi’s health department even declared a state of emergency this year after the rate of infant deaths increased.

Lawmakers and medical experts say that health care spending cuts and restrictions on services could make things worse.

“These are states that historically have struggled both with infant mortality and maternal mortality,” Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock told NOTUS. “Medicaid is part of a safety net that impacts overall health. When that safety net is broken, things like infant mortality are impacted as well as chronic disease.”

READ MORE: Mississippi health officials declare emergency over infant mortality rate

Democrats warn that a confluence of factors could lead to fewer people accessing care, potentially with dire consequences. The reconciliation bill that became law this summer cuts $1.1 trillion in Medicaid. Enhanced subsidies in the Affordable Care Act will expire in December, resulting in increased premiums in 2026 for millions if not extended — something Democrats have demanded in exchange for their votes to reopen the government — and potentially lowering the rate of people getting care. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that by 2034, the number of people left uninsured could increase to 11.8 million.

States in the South would be disproportionately affected if the enhanced ACA subsidies aren’t extended. According to analysis from the Urban Institute, Louisiana would see the steepest decline in subsidized marketplace enrollment in the country.

Many of these states — including Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia and North Carolina — have traditionally had infant mortality rates on the higher end of the spectrum. Nationwide, the infant mortality was 5.61 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2023; in Mississippi, which has the worst rate of infant mortality, the rate was 8.94 deaths per 1,000 live births. That number climbed in 2024 to 9.7 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Dr. James Bauerband, a retired OBGYN based in Georgia, told NOTUS that the strain that Medicaid cuts have put on rural hospitals could cause the infant mortality rates in Southern states to increase.

“I understand you don’t want to have to insure people that could get insurance on their own and want to incentivize getting a job and getting good insurance,” Bauerband said. “But, there has to be the safety nets, and I think that making sure Medicaid is well-funded is something they really ought to do.”

Alison Gemmill, an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, recently did a study analyzing the impact that the Dobbs Supreme Court case decision had on infant mortality in states and found that there were “higher than expected” mortality rates “in states after adoption of abortion bans.”

She said the Trump administration’s termination of the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System could lead to a lower understanding of infant mortality. The monitoring system collected insights from moms before and after giving birth, asking questions regarding alcohol use and stress during pregnancy, among others.

“Those are all things that we can’t capture in a birth certificate data source,” Gemmill said. “And that was a really important data for people like me to figure out what’s going on with pregnancy health in the nation, in a state over time. And they completely canceled that program.”

“So now it’s like we don’t even have the data to inform strategies on how to improve rates of pre-term birth infant mortality,” she added.

Democrats believe these reforms have lasting consequences.

“Not enough mamas get prenatal care, partly because of cost, and partly because of access,” Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said. “Finding places that can treat them can be a real challenge. The Medicaid cuts will impact infant mortality, both for the people who are cut out of health care access, and also for people who depend on rural hospitals and community health centers that can’t survive the cuts and will close.”

Republicans have also raised concerns about infant mortality rates. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican whose state has more than 60 rural hospitals, told NOTUS that he wants to extend the funding for rural hospitals provided under the law from 2026 to 2030.

If changes take effect after that time, cuts to Medicaid could cause infant mortality rates to go up, he said.

“I want to make sure that that doesn’t happen,” he told NOTUS. “Under the president’s reconciliation bill, there’s increased funding for rural hospitals now for the next couple of years. … I want to see that extended.”

Some of the Republicans who voted against the reconciliation bill stopped short of saying its Medicaid cuts could affect infant mortality rates.

“We’ve had an infant mortality rate problem in this country for years,” Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who cited health care as her reason for voting against the reconciliation bill, told NOTUS. “This is not new, and it does warrant research to find out why we also have huge racial disparities in maternal mortality rates.”

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who also voted against the bill, called the country’s infant mortality rate “unacceptably high,” with root causes including poverty and substance abuse. However, he didn’t see the correlation between Medicaid cuts and infant mortality rates.

“I haven’t seen any data,” Tillis said. “Maybe some people would say that. But they’d have to be statistically, not politically, motivated to catch my attention. I just haven’t studied it.”

Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt called on Democrats to support her legislation to help support women during the prenatal, postpartum and early childhood years of pregnancy. Britt told NOTUS that she will continue to work across the aisle to address it.

“That’s something we’ve got to get to the bottom of … find out what is the root cause,” Britt said.

This story is provided by a partnership between Mississippi Today and the NOTUS Washington Bureau Initiative, which seeks to help readers in local communities understand what their elected representatives are doing in Congress.

Mississippi has one of the nation’s highest percentage of Black state legislators.

That should not be a surprise since Mississippi has the highest percentage of Black people of any state in the nation.

Despite Missisisppi’s large Black population, without the Voting Rights Act of 1965 the number of African Americans serving in the Mississippi Legislature would be far fewer than it is now. There is no disputing the fact that the Voting Rights Act has resulted in more Black people serving in the Mississippi Legislature and indeed in every level of government in the state – from the local to the national level.

Even with the Voting Rights Act, the number of majority-Black districts in the Mississippi Legislature – about 34% of the 174 seats – is less than the percentage of Black people in Mississippi’s total population – about 38%.

Before the Voting Rights Act, there were no elected Black officials in Mississippi during the 20th century except for those in the all-Black town of Mound Bayou. 

This past week, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments on whether the section of the Voting Rights Act that ensures a certain level of minority representation in the drawing of political boundaries, such as for state legislative seats, city council seats and U.S. House seats, should be repealed.

Louisiana, which was forced by the courts to draw a second majority-Black congressional district this decade to meet the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, argued before the court that race should not be a factor in redistricting. Louisiana was assisted by President Donald Trump’s administration in its arguments.

The case before the Supreme Court is a big deal. A decision by the court to gut the Voting Rights Act could provide a monumental boost to the desperate and unprecedented efforts of the Trump administration to convince some states to redraw their congressional districts to provide Republicans more safe seats before the 2026 midterm elections. The effort is part of a strategy by Trump to hold onto the small Republican majority in the U.S. House.

It appears some members of the Supreme Court – perhaps a majority – believe that the protections from racial discrimination provided by the Voting Rights are no longer needed. The nation has moved beyond that, they argue.

No doubt, there has been substantial progress made toward halting racial discrimination since the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.

But it is worth remembering that in the 2010s, provisions of the Voting Rights Act were used to successfully argue a Mississippi Senate seat that covered 102 miles in various nonsensical directions on the fringes of the Delta was drawn to dilute the Black vote while protecting a white incumbent. Or more recently, the principles of the Voting Rights Act were followed to create three additional majority-Black districts in the Mississippi Legislature.

And it is worth pointing out that state Auditor Shad White, a Republican who aspires to be Mississippi’s next governor, took to social media to celebrate the possibility of the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

“I hope they will rule that the kind (of) gerrymandering that has protected Bennie Thompson for years is out,” White wrote. “If they do, Mississippi should immediately move to create simple districts that are not gerrymandered to protect Bennie Thompson.”

Thompson, first elected to the U.S. House in 1993, is Mississippi’s lone Black congressman. He has been the only Democrat in the state’s delegation in Washington since early 2011, when 22-year Rep. Gene Taylor left office after losing to a Republican in south Mississippi.

Perhaps Auditor White does not know that Thompson lobbied the Mississippi Legislature to draw his district more compact after the 2020 Census. But the Legislature opted to draw Thompson a sprawling district that extends almost the length of the western side of the state – at least in part to protect Republican congressmen by packing as many Black residents as possible into Thompson’s district and keeping the other three districts whiter.

In a 2018 interview with Mississippi Today, Thompson spoke of the impact of the Voting Rights Act.

As a student at Tougaloo College in the 1960s, he was working in the Delta to help register Black people to vote when he had a conversation with his mother, who said, “You know we don’t vote here in Bolton. It was a shock to me that I was up in Sunflower County helping register Black people to vote and even in my hometown they didn’t enjoy the same luxury.”

Thompson said that his father, an auto mechanic who died in 1964 before passage of the Voting Rights Act, never voted. His mother, a school teacher, did and most likely cast her first vote for her son when he ran and was elected in 1969 to the Board of Aldermen in his hometown of Bolton.

Without the Voting Rights Act, that would not have been possible. And without the Voting Rights Act today, it is safe to assume there would be fewer Black people elected to office, not just in Mississippi but throughout the nation.

Some might say that is a good thing. But is it really?

Mental health reporter Allen Siegler recently published a series of stories investigating how Mississippi’s elected officials have been managing about $124 million of Mississippi opioid settlement money — money that the state is receiving as a result of lawsuits against companies that profited off a devastating overdose crisis.

His findings were staggering.

Most of the money spent so far has been for lawyers’ fees or stuff that isn’t related to addiction, like police cameras and fiber optic cable installations.

And it’s not that the crisis is over — more people are dying now than seven years ago, when the biggest lawsuit was filed. But less than 1% of the Mississippi money has actually been used to stop the problem.

This project took over three months to report and write, and there were plenty of weird things that happened along the way. So Allen answered questions from our readers on Reddit, taking them behind the scenes on what it takes to undertake such an investigation.

You can read the conversation below. This includes guidance on how people can file a Freedom of Information Act request to access public records (with a link to a sample FOIA request you can use) and other actions community members can take to ensure these funds are used to address the problems highlighted in the lawsuits.

If you want to be alerted about future AMAs with our reporters, sign up here.

Some questions have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What can we do to help pressure whoever is in charge of distribution of the funds?

Q: I see a lot about police funds and even some that explicitly state money was put towards guns. My understanding is that some funds were allotted to counties to be used at their discretion.

Q: Are any of these funds discussed with constituents, or does it seem to entirely be at the whims of the ones in charge? How can we know whether or not they will a) use the remaining funds at all b) use them for anything remotely related to dealing with the supposed target issue?

Q: Could you give a rundown of how one goes about requesting (or accessing) these documents?

Q: How are other states handling/distributing funds to address opioid overdoses? Who should the public turn to for recommendations on how best to use these funds to address the problems? Health professionals? Law enforcement officials? Local Politicians? How can the public be more involved?

Q: Why would the crowd that diverted welfare money to a volleyball stadium with little consequences be expected to do the right thing with the settlement money?

Q: Are there any accountability frameworks that would allow the money to be used in a way that it benefits the actual victims of the opioid crisis?

Q: How will the One Big Beautiful Bill impact mental health and those that work in this field in private practice, agency settings and psychiatry hospitals?

Q: Has any of the spending been audited so far?

Q: How will the settlement be spent?

Q: A lot of states are using the opioid settlement to purchase equipment like Reassurance Solutions cell monitoring devices; basically vital sign radars that go in county detention centers and jails to monitor for overdoses (which happen most often within the first 24 hours of incarceration). Is tech like that a viable option for Mississippi’s funds?

Q: Grant decisions will be determined by the legislature. Will there be any opportunity for public comment on the grants recommended to the legislature?

Q: Did you find that Mississippi officials resisted sharing records or delayed responses? If so, how did you overcome that and what rights do regular residents have to push back when agencies ignore or stonewall?

Q: Who is responsible for making sure this money is spent on addiction treatment instead of unrelated projects?

Q: When you filed 147 records requests, how many governments actually complied fully and how many gave partial or no responses?

Q: Were there clear reporting requirements for these funds, or is it left up to local officials to decide what to disclose?

Q: From your experience, what is the most effective way for everyday citizens to get attention on financial mismanagement of public records, media coverage, state agencies, or something else?

Q: If Mississippi is spending less than 1% of opioid settlement money on the crisis itself, what avenues are there for residents to push for change? Lawsuits? Federal oversight? Public campaigns?

Q: How were local needs assessed, what outcomes will be measured to determine program effectiveness due to funding, and how are programs or intervention evaluated & will the results be shared publicly? 

Q: Can you let me know if ANYONE/ ANYWHERE has purchased or contemplated purchasing Fentanyl test strips?