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Federal authorities have arrested a California man accused of sending a bomb and death threat to a Mississippi Gulf Coast judge, the parent of a friend who went with Nolan Xavier Wells on the Fourth of July to Horn Island, where the Black teenager’s body was found two days later. 

Joseph Alfredo Vasquez Dumarce, 27, of Sacramento, faces a federal charge of interstate transmission of threatening communication. Conviction on that felony carries a maximum sentence of five years, a maximum $250,000 fine and up to three years of post-release supervision. 

On July 11, a Facebook user “yaeyae962” sent a direct message to a Jackson County chancery judge who is not named in the criminal complaint and only identified by the initials “A.C.” in an indictment, which were both unsealed Thursday. 

That judge, Ashlee Cole, posted online about receiving the threat and others from the user. Cole is the stepmother of Warren Hudson, who was part of the friend group with Wells who traveled by boat to Horn Island on July 4. 

Wells did not return to Ocean Springs with Hudson and other friends. Instead, the friends told investigators that Wells wanted to stay on the island and would get a ride back to the mainland. On July 6, a National Parks Service ranger found Wells’ body off the northwest tip of Horn Island. 

Investigators linked the Facebook account to Dumarce by tracing an email, IP addresses and a phone number to a Sacramento address. The complaint states records from the number show the phone number called office numbers for the Jackson County Chancery Court on July 11 around 1:30 a.m.  

The screenshot of the message included in the complaint shows a string of nearly a dozen messages sent together telling the judge that a bomb would arrive at her office and “blow you away when you see it.” 

The sender wrote that the explosive would leave blood everywhere and lead to a quick death, and told the judge to “ask god for forgiveness.” 

Dumarce was booked into the Sacramento County Jail on Wednesday on a federal hold, according to jail records. It is unclear whether he will be transported to Mississippi. 

He is listed on the California sex offender’s registry for a 2019 conviction of annoying or molesting a child and a 2020 conviction of harmful matter sent with intent of seduction of a minor. Dumarce was released from prison on the recent charge in 2023, according to the registry. 

Cole posted a statement July 7 to deny that her family was not hindering Wells’ death investigation.

The judge also posted about threats she had received on social media with screenshots of some allegedly sent by Dumarce under the username “yaeyae962.” That includes the messages cited in the court records and comments on photos on Instagram. 

The Jackson County Sheriff’s Department is investigating Wells’ death, and the sheriff reached out to the FBI to help investigate interstate threats that have been received by friends of Wells, their families, Wells’ parents and public officials working on the case. 

The day of Wells’ funeral, his estate began sending letters giving notice of an anticipated civil lawsuit. Recipients were directed to immediately preserve all evidence, including communications, photos, video, audio recordings, metadata and other types of records. 

Cole is one of the letter recipients, according to a copy of the letter addressed to her that was published by the Sun Herald. 

Wells’ parents, Christine and Elmore Wonsley, hired national civil rights attorney Ben Crump shortly after their son’s death. Crump  has called for an impartial investigation and has helped the family get an independent autopsy. 

On Thursday, the Wonsleys said the threats and character attacks against them will not stop them from advocating for Wells. 

The family of another friend who traveled to Horn Island with Wells is pursuing a defamation lawsuit against those spreading misinformation implicating Bart Edmiston Jr. in Wells’ death, which have come with safety threats, including death threats. 

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

Amid a national surge in arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of the largest ICE facilities in the country has become so crowded that people have been sleeping on makeshift beds on the floor, according to detainees there.  

Several detainees said that officials at the facility, the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez recently began placing three people in cells designed for two. Each cell is roughly 8 by 10 feet and contains the beds, plus a toilet, a sink, and shelves and containers for storage, according to detainees.

Andrei Zykov, who came to the United States from Russia, expressed frustration at the crowding in his cell.

“The confinement of a person in one cell is terrible, complete discomfort, little space, nothing to breathe, unsanitary conditions, possible conflicts, restless sleep,” he said. 

Zykov is one of several detainees who filed complaints to staff on their facility-issued tablets. He wrote that his cell smelled and was too small for three people, that the air-conditioner didn’t work and the toilet would not properly flush. 

“This is a violation of human rights,” he wrote. “Please be understanding.”  

A response sent to Zykov shows that the staff ruled his complaint unfounded, stating “the matter is temporary in nature and respectfully request your patience during this period.”

Zykov and others began collecting signatures for a complaint letter they submitted to the facility’s warden. Nearly 70 detainees signed it, according to a copy reviewed by Mississippi Today.

“Because of the limited space,” the letter says, “the third detainee must sleep with his head very close to the toilet, exposing him to unsanitary conditions, unpleasant odors, and an increased risk to his health and dignity.” 

An excerpt from the handwritten complaint nearly 70 Adams County detainees signed and submitted to the warden. 

Although the number of people being held at Adams has varied over time, it has for years been one of the largest ICE facilities in the nation. 

Numbers published by ICE in early July show that the facility’s average population this fiscal year has been 1,878. In late April, the number of detainees held in Adams County hovered between 1,400 and 1,200, according to those held there and a congressman who visited the facility. Detainees now estimate that the population has now crossed 2,000 in recent weeks, based on the number of meals detainees have been asked to help prepare — indicating a steep rise in a matter of months.

The facility capacity is 2,232, according to the website of CoreCivic, the prison company that runs the Natchez facility.

Nationally, the number of people booked into detention by ICE in June hit a high, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research center based in Syracuse University whose dataset begins in October 2018. 

In Natchez, one detainee, Melvin Funez, said 18 people were sleeping on makeshift cots and mattresses on the floor last week in his unit, one of many at the facility. Funez gets paid to help deliver commissary items to fellow detainees. During his rounds, he said he saw at least seven extra mattresses in each unit. Most of them were in “boats,” the bathtub-shaped plastic platforms that hold the mattresses, though some were directly on the floor, Funez said.

On Wednesday, Zykov said 15 detainees were in boats in his unit alone. 

Ryan Gustin, a spokesman for CoreCivic, said every detainee was provided with a bed. He did not respond to additional questions about the facility’s headcount or sleeping arrangements.

Update, 7/3/2026: This article has been updated to more accurately reflect the limitations of data from ICE.

The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality on Thursday announced a schedule to retire the 69 controversial, temporary gas generators in Southaven that xAI is using to power its data centers. Yet the agency is allowing some of the turbines to run past their original deadline by as much as five months.

In the order, the Elon Musk-owned data center company agreed to begin retiring the units on Aug 18.

Since August 2025, xAI — through a subsidiary, MZX Tech — has run trailer-mounted natural gas turbines to power its centers just across the state line in Memphis. The company is also planning a new center in Southaven as part of its vision to create the world’s largest “integrated supercomputer.”

XAI, though, has no air permit to run any of the 69 turbines. For the past year, Southaven residents have repeatedly raised alarms over unchecked, toxic releases from the facility, including chemicals such as nitrogen oxides that can cause respiratory issues. Neighbors have also complained about a constant humming noise coming from the power plant.

When the company first arrived to Southaven last year, MDEQ told xAI that it wouldn’t need a permit because the generators were “mobile” — they’re attached to trailers — and because they’re “temporary,” meaning they would run for less than 12 months. The permit exemption was “contingent” on those two factors, the agency wrote.

But in the July 30 order, the state agency said it would allow 13 of the generators to keep running past the original 12-month deadline. Under the newly agreed retirement schedule, three of those turbines can remain active up to five months longer.

The company requested the extension because of supply chain issues delaying 41 permanent turbines, which will have air permits, xAI is planning to bring to Southaven, the order said.

Mississippi Today asked MDEQ why the it chose to extend the deadline, but the agency declined to expand on what was in the order.

The most recently added temporary turbines, which came online earlier this month, will have to cease functions by July 14, 2027. A majority of the units will have to retire by next April.

Originally, xAI brought 18 generators to the Southaven facility last August. But the company slowly added more and more turbines, and did so without giving prior notice to the state. In May, after the number of units grew to 46, MDEQ told Mississippi Today that xAI didn’t have to notify the agency when it added more “temporary-mobile” turbines. When asked about any limit on the number of generators xAI could have without a permit, MDEQ said it was “evaluating the situation.”

Civil rights groups, environmental attorneys and Southaven residents have all contested MDEQ’s assertion that the xAI units do not need air permits. The NAACP filed a federal complaint over the matter in April, and locals near the facility followed suit in June.

Lawyers with the Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of the NAACP, argued MDEQ is misinterpreting a federal exemption that allows “portable” “nonroad engines” to run without a permit. That distinction is reserved for much smaller generators, they argued. Moreover, the Clean Air Act defines “stationary” turbines as “not self-propelled or intended to be propelled,” adding that they can be “mounted on a vehicle,” such as a trailer.

In a Thursday statement on its website, the company detailed efforts to address community concerns.

“We are rapidly removing these mobile turbines as we bring online permanent power from a 1.2 (gigawatt) power plant we are constructing under our Clean Air Act permit,” the statement said, adding that xAI was investing in new emission control technology to equip the mobile units with.

The company also said it was “investing millions of dollars in sound walls, silencers, and next-generation turbines with advanced quieting technologies through partnerships with the surrounding community.”

“We care deeply about being good neighbors and we regularly reconfigure power operations to reduce noise from the facility and minimize our impact on the local Southaven community,” xAI wrote.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Mr. McGill: 

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

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

Sincerely Yours, 

James M. Vardaman 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘It’s a lose-lose situation’

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

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

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

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

And sometimes, losing one means losing the other. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

McQueary did not respond to a request for comment.