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Mukta Joshi is part of The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship.

A letter sent Tuesday by Sen. Roger Wicker to the secretary of Homeland Security lent credibility to residents’ fears that federal officials were planning to buy a Byhalia, Mississippi, warehouse to convert into a massive immigrant detention center.

In his letter to Secretary Kristi Noem, Wicker wrote that it had come to his attention that immigration officials were in the “final stages” of the purchase and that the warehouse would have at least 8,500 beds, making it larger than any existing immigrant detention center by far.

The letter does not explain where the Republican senator got his information about the warehouse purchase. His office did not return calls and emails seeking clarification.

Wicker’s letter said many of his constituents had voiced concerns regarding “public safety, medical capacity, and economic impacts” because Byhalia, a town of less than 2,000 people about 40 miles south of Memphis, does not have the infrastructure to handle so many detainees. 

The potential purchase of the Byhalia warehouse is one of several across the country that have faced opposition after local residents were told they were being scouted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Under the Trump administration, ICE has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire industrial warehouses, part of a $45 billion plan to expand detention facilities as agents ramp up efforts to detain and remove immigrants.

Enforcement actions by ICE have sparked unprecedented resistance in several cities across the country, which in recent months have seen major demonstrations that intensified after masked ICE agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis. 

A spokesperson for ICE did not respond to a request for comment. 

For weeks, some residents of Byhalia had feared the warehouse would be a part of the effort to expand ICE detention. Local government officials in mid-January had said they had no information and did not know if the plans were real.

The whispers began when an apparent screenshot of a list of addresses started circulating on social media and in community group chats. It was described online as a leaked ICE document that included the locations of “processing sites” and “mega centers.” Alongside each address was additional information, including the number of beds, square footage, and the dates and times of proposed site visits.

The list included the Byhalia warehouse, which is owned by JLL Real Estate. When local residents, including Democratic congressional candidate Cliff Johnson, showed up on Jan. 16 at the listed time, a group of people appeared to be touring the warehouse.

Chelsea Howard, an activist from neighboring DeSoto County, said sheriff’s deputies arrived soon after and asked the citizens to leave.

Fox13 Memphis reported that the sheriff’s department had confirmed that the call to the department had been made by “federal officials” who wanted trespassers removed from the property. 

Brokers for the property listed on the JLL Real Estate website did not respond to a request for comment.

Mississippi Today reporters Mina Corpuz and Gwen Dilworth contributed to this article.

The House voted Wednesday, for the third year in a row, to legalize online sports betting in Mississippi.

Proponents say this could generate tens of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue, but critics warn it would fuel gambling addiction and hurt brick-and-mortar casinos.

The approval of HB 1581 sets the House up for another showdown with the Senate, where legislation to legalize online betting has died amid opposition from the casino industry and concerns over gambling addiction. The measure is mostly the same as one the House passed last year, but an amendment introduced on the House floor before the bill passed Wednesday, with an 85-31 vote, marks a significant change. The amendment would require Mississippi to eventually make a one-time $600 million transfer from its Capital Expense Fund to help shore up the state’s pension system.

In remarks on the House floor, Gaming Chairman Casey Eure, a Republican from Saucier who authored the bill, said Mississippians have attempted to place around 10 million online sports wagers in Mississippi since September of 2025. Of those, he said, 81,000 traveled to other states to bet. These figures show that Mississippi is missing out on between $40 million and $80 million a year in taxes as a black market continues to thrive, he said.

“These are Mississippi residents crossing into other states, and the outcome of that is that Mississippi receives zero tax revenue, there’s zero oversight, zero consumer protection against these people placing bets, and problem gambling goes undetected and unmanaged,” Eure said.

The bill would require gambling platforms to partner with a brick-and-mortar casino before operating in the state, and casinos would be allowed to partner with up to two platforms. The gambling platforms would be required to utilize geofencing technology intended to ensure that wagers are only accepted from players located within Mississippi.

It would also create a $6 million fund, generated from taxes on sports betting and replenished each year until 2030, that casinos could draw from if their revenues decrease as a result of legalized online betting. Any money remaining in that fund would be diverted to the Public Employees’ Retirement System, which has unfunded liabilities of about $26 billion.

Tying online betting legalization to PERS is the primary change in this year’s legislation. The amendment approved on the floor and authored by Rep. Hank Zuber, a Republican from Ocean Springs, would allow for tax revenue from mobile sports betting to keep flowing to PERS as long as the pension system’s assumed investment return rate stays at or above what it was on January 1, 2020. If that rate drops below the 2020 level, the money would stop flowing to the pension system.

Most notably, once the pension board sets its assumed return rate at or above that 2020 benchmark, the state must make a one-time $600 million transfer from the Capital Expense Fund into the pension system. The Capital Expense Fund pays for things such as equipment purchases and infrastructure projects, such as water systems and emergency repairs to state buildings.

Democratic Reps. Robert Johnson of Natchez and Omeria Scott of Laurel said it would be unwise to divert money away from the Capital Expense Fund amid budgetary pressure from state tax cuts and slashes to federal programs by the Trump administration.

“When we talk about taking 600 million out of (the Capital Expense Fund) is this an appropriate fast-paced use of these funds?” Johnson said.

The House and Senate are still at loggerheads over how to shore up the Public Employees’ Retirement System. The Senate has already sent the House a bill to put half-a-billion dollars of the state’s current surplus into PERS, in addition to putting $50 million a year over the next decade. House leaders have proposed a recurring revenue stream for PERS, either from the state lottery or by legalizing mobile sports betting.

When the bill passed out of committee on Monday, some House lawmakers said the legislation wouldn’t do anything to stop platforms from partnering only with the state’s largest casinos, raised concerns over gambling addiction and questioned the revenue-generating potential of mobile betting amid the rise of largely unregulated prediction markets.

Addressing concerns over addiction, Eure said his bill would require gambling companies to collect player data to identify problem gamblers and to implement age verification services on their platforms.

The bill would also permit the Mississippi Department of Human Services to identify gambling winners who owe child support and to have casinos withhold gaming winnings, a policy some lawmakers have been trying to pass for years.

Senate Gaming Chairman David Blount, a Democrat from Jackson who has thus far opposed mobile sports betting legalization, did not take up a similar bill in his committee. He told Mississippi Today in January that the rise of “prediction markets,” exchanges where people bet on the outcomes of future events, erodes the revenue the state could generate through traditional online betting. These markets, dominated by platforms such as Kalshi, are different from traditional sports betting because traders set prices.

Under the Trump administration, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has taken a lax approach to regulating prediction markets, allowing platforms to expand their offerings in states around the country, including states such as Mississippi, where mobile sports betting remains illegal.

Traditional sports betting giant DraftKings, which has lobbied Mississippi House Speaker Jason White to legalize online betting, launched its own prediction market product last month.

Eure told Mississippi Today that he agreed that prediction markets would cut into the revenue online betting would produce. But he said the U.S. Supreme Court could resolve ongoing legal challenges involving platforms such as Kalshi, and that federal regulation could help Mississippi claw lost revenue back.

HB 1581 now heads to the Senate for consideration.

As Mississippi prepares to spend tens of millions of federal dollars to strengthen rural health care, lawmakers in both state legislative chambers have advanced bills aimed at increasing transparency and oversight. 

In December, Mississippi was awarded nearly $206 million as a part of the Rural Health Transformation Program. This fund was designed to support rural health care and offset the disproportionate impact already-struggling rural hospitals are expected to bear as a result of federal spending cuts Congress passed into law last summer. All 50 states were allocated funding as a part of the five-year, $50 billion program, which will be doled out in annual installments. 

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves led Mississippi’s application for the funds, with support from the  Mississippi State Department of Health and Division of Medicaid. According to a December press release, Reeves’ office will also oversee and coordinate distribution of the one-time funds. 

Some lawmakers, including House Speaker Jason White, have expressed frustration with their limited role in the funding application process. Senate Public Health and Welfare Chairman Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory, echoed those concerns during a committee meeting Feb. 3.

“There is a feeling among some of us in the Legislature that at minimum, the Legislature should have some input into those funds,” Bryan said. “I’m of the old school that it’s always useful to have people sit around a table and have a conversation and try to work something out, but none of that has occurred yet.” 

A bill passed the House Wednesday with a vote of 121-1 to enhance legislative oversight. The Senate Public Health and Welfare committee passed a similar bill Tuesday. Both would require state agencies that distribute grants or funding under the program to submit quarterly reports to the Legislature. 

The bills would also require vendors or subcontractors, including those tasked with performing a statewide assessment of rural health needs, providing medical equipment, creating workforce programming or designing a statewide health information system, to be selected by a competitive bidding process. 

The legislation would prioritize subgrantees in rural areas and, for medical equipment or facility upgrades, those that have not received appropriations for similar projects in the past five years.

“House Bill 1067 does not pick winners and losers,” said Public Health and Welfare Chairman Sam Creekmore, the Republican from New Albany who sponsored the bill. “It simply says if you want to do business in Mississippi on this $206 million program, you’ll compete in daylight and we’ll send the money out as grants — we deliberately point out — toward the rural communities with the least resources and the most to lose.”

Reeves did not respond to a request for comment on the bills or his engagement with the Legislature on the program. 

Ryan Kelly, the executive director of the Mississippi Rural Health Association, said he supports efforts to steer funding to rural areas or programs that benefit rural communities. Urban providers that do not directly serve rural areas should not receive the funds, he said. 

“It’s not for them,” Kelly said. “It’s for rural providers that are struggling.”

Nationally, supporters have lauded the Rural Health Transformation Program as a boon for struggling rural hospitals, which will allow states to make innovative investments in care. But critics have called the fund a “Band-Aid,” pointing to the fact that it will not offset funding cuts to hospitals, or a “slush fund” that could enable state leaders to fund pet projects or providers in urban areas with little oversight.

In Mississippi, cuts to state-directed payments, which help hospitals offset low Medicaid payments, will amount to a loss of $160 million a year statewide beginning in 2029, Mississippi Medicaid Director Cindy Bradshaw told lawmakers last September. 

Mississippi’s application for the funding includes a plan for program oversight. An organization will help to distribute the funds, track milestones, evaluate outcomes and ensure compliance, according to the application. The state issued a request for qualifications to hire a company to fulfill these tasks in December. 

Mississippi plans to fund an array of projects. The program application proposes using the funding to perform a statewide assessment of rural health needs, which it projects will be complete in September, to inform funding decisions for the program. The state will conduct procurement for these services, according to the application.

Other proposed uses of funding included in the application include: 

• Creating regionalized EMS systems to share data and resources.
• Piloting a program that encourages EMTs to treat patients in place and reduce unnecessary emergency room visits.
• Establishing remote medical assistance and nurse navigation lines for real-time symptom assessment, treatment planning and care coordination support.
• Developing workforce recruitment incentives like signing bonuses, relocation support and retention awards, establishing “earn while you learn” programs and increasing residency slots in rural areas.
• Funding technology upgrades for rural health providers, including upgrades to outdated electronic health record systems and for enhanced cybersecurity.
• Creating a statewide health information exchange to support real-time data sharing between providers.
• Supporting purchases of telehealth equipment and subsidizing provider reimbursements for telehealth care.
• Funding infrastructure projects, including facility upgrades, clinic expansions and equipment acquisition. 

The governor’s office published a copy of the state’s full application with funding estimates redacted. 

Nationwide, states’ programs are being led by a range of state agencies. Most programs are being led by state departments of health or Medicaid divisions, according to a report from Princeton University’s State Health & Value Strategies program. Mississippi and New Hampshire are the only states where the governor is leading implementation. 

States’ awards averaged $200 million this year, ranging from $147 million to $281 million. Mississippi received $260 million — above the median award — but ranked lower when compared to its rural population. 

According to a report from KFF, Mississippi received $118 per rural resident — roughly $40 below the national average — while several states received over $500 per rural resident. More than half of Mississippi’s rural hospitals are at risk of closing, one of the highest rates in the nation, according to a recent report by the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. 

Half of the $50 billion federal program is to be distributed evenly among all states with approved applications. Awards for the other half of the funding are determined based on a formula that calculates states’ rurality, the quality of its application and implementation of several policies aligned with the White House’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.

Mississippi has recently taken steps to adopt policies that receive higher scores, including reestablishing the Presidential Fitness Test in schools and seeking a waiver to restrict purchases of sugary foods and drinks through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in October.

Scoring also privileges states that have eliminated or loosened certificate of need laws, which require hospitals to obtain permission from the state before opening new facilities and services or purchasing expensive equipment this session. 

A bill raising the threshold that triggers state approval for capital improvements passed the Legislature on Jan. 28. Lawmakers are weighing additional changes to the law. 

State legislators have taken additional steps to exert greater control over parts of the program’s rollout. On Jan. 21, the House passed a bill to designate a state-recognized health information exchange, an element included in the state’s Rural Health Transformation Program application. The measure would require that a single nonprofit entity be selected by the health department through a competitive bidding process to build an information system used by all state hospitals and community mental health centers to share patient admission, discharge and transfer data, as well as bed availability. 

Some lawmakers raised concerns about patient data sharing on Jan. 21, but a proposed amendment to require patients to opt in to the system failed. The bill was sent to the Senate Public Health and Welfare committee for consideration. 

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, states’ funding through the program for coming years will hinge on their progress implementing the proposed initiatives. This makes it especially important to demonstrate measurable impact and maintain transparency, said Khaylah Scott, program manager for the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program.

“The ball is really in our court to perform well and follow through on our promises,” Scott said.

Every Mississippi lawmaker has voted so far to give teachers a pay raise. 

House Bill 1126, which was passed unanimously on Wednesday, would raise teachers’ annual salaries by $5,000. The Senate unanimously passed its own $2,000 teacher pay raise bill last month. Senate leaders said they want to increase that number by the end of the session. 

The House bill would increase the state’s minimum annual teacher salary from $41,500 to $46,500 and would also give special-education teachers another $3,000 a year. The House raise proposal would cost $225 million a year, according to House Education Committee Chairman Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville.

Mississippi educators have been asking for another raise since their last meaningful one in 2022, which teachers say was quickly eaten up by inflation and rising health insurance premiums. Mississippi teachers are, on average, the lowest paid in the country. The new rate would put Mississippi’s starting teacher salary right at the national average, according to the National Education Association. 

But the House bill also addresses another major complaint from educators, thanks to an amendment made during discussion on the House floor: Teachers going more than a month without a paycheck over the holidays. 

State law currently requires that teachers be paid by the end of their last working day in December, which can come early in the month. Then, most don’t receive another paycheck until the end of January. Educators say it can make the holiday season stressful, on top of trying to make ends meet on low pay. 

The bill, which was passed out of two House committees yesterday right before a deadline, would require that districts pay teachers at least once a month — up to twice a month — and remove the language that requires their December payday to be teachers’ last working day that month. That means teachers could get their December salaries later in the month, addressing that weeks-long gap between paychecks. 

The law could also pave the way for more districts to adopt bimonthly pay, which state law has allowed since 2022. Only four of Mississippi’s 138 school districts have adopted it, a Mississippi Today analysis found. 

Superintendents previously told Mississippi Today that paying teachers consistently through the holiday months could be a recruitment strategy in a state struggling to fill thousands of vacancies. 

The bill would allow lawmakers to give assistant teachers a pay raise in the future, though a raise isn’t included in the current language. A previous House Bill that included an assistant teacher raise was killed by the Senate Education Committee on Tuesday afternoon. 

Roberson told Mississippi Today that lawmakers will try to hammer out the details for an assistant teacher raise later in the session. 

House Bill 1126 also addresses superintendents’ pay, which state leaders have increasingly scrutinized and claimed takes up a disproportionate amount of school funding. The bill would cap school superintendents’ maximum pay at 250% of what they would make as a teacher based on their experience, education and local district supplements.

The state’s base per-student spending would also increase by $500 under the bill to $7,447 per student. 

Also included in the legislation: Earlier retirement eligibility provisions for first responders and state employees, a program focused on improving underperforming districts and pay raises for school attendance officers, school psychologists and occupational therapists. 

The Senate and House now have each other’s teacher pay bills before them.

The Senate Elections Committee adopted a measure on Tuesday that would, at least partially, restore the system to allow Mississippians to bypass the Legislature and put issues to a statewide vote. 

The committee voted to approve Senate Concurrent Resolution 518, which would require initiative organizers to gather signatures from at least 10% of registered voters in the state, or roughly 170,000 signatures, before it can go on a ballot. 

The committee’s chairman, Republican Sen. Jeremy England of Vancleave, said the measure is a work in progress, but he wanted to advance the bill ahead of Tuesday’s key legislative deadline for the Senate to continue debating the measure.  

The Mississippi Supreme Court invalidated the state’s initiative process in 2021 over technicalities, and the Legislature has not been able to reach a consensus on how to restore it to voters ever since. 

“When we have something and get it taken away from us, we want it back,” England said. 

As it’s currently written, England’s resolution would allow a ballot initiative to change or create state law, but not the state Constitution, as the previous ballot initiative system provided. It would also prohibit initiatives related to abortion and the state’s public pension system. 

The Jackson County lawmaker said he doesn’t have any concerns about Mississippians voting on a statewide ballot to keep Mississippi’s strict abortion laws in place. 

But he worries that out-of-state interest groups would “put a target” on the state and work to overturn the state’s abortion laws because a Mississippi law is what led to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.  

If voters approve an initiative, England’s measure prevents the Legislature from passing a law to undo or change it for a period of two years, unless the Legislature votes, by a three-fifths margin, to change it because of an emergency circumstance. 

The measure is several steps away from becoming a reality. It now heads to the full Senate floor, where at least two-thirds of the chamber’s members have to approve it before it can advance to a House committee. If it passes the Legislature, the initiative process would have to be ratified by voters in a statewide election.

Mississippi voters’ right to ballot initiative is in the state Constitution, but it was nullified by the state Supreme Court in 2021 in a ruling over a medical marijuana initiative because of language referring to the state’s old number of congressional districts.

The last day for the chamber to adopt the measure on the Senate floor is Feb. 12.

Measures to improve prison health care access and create stronger safeguards against the denial of care in Mississippi prisons survived the first legislative deadline on Tuesday, but several also died.

The legislation is part of a reform package introduced by Rep. Becky Currie, the Republican House Corrections Chairwoman from Brookhaven.

Her effort to ensure more Mississippi prisoners receive the medical care they need follows tours of prisons she took around the state and findings reported in Mississippi Today’s “Behind Bars, Beyond Care” series. The ongoing investigative series has documented potentially thousands of prisoners living with hepatitis C going without treatment, an untreated broken arm that resulted in amputation and delayed cancer screenings one woman said led to a terminal diagnosis. An ex-corrections official said people are experiencing widespread medical neglect in Mississippi’s prisons and turned over internal messages to Mississippi Today bemoaning the care provided by VitalCore Health Strategies, the state’s private medical contractor for prisons.

Tuesday night was the deadline for committees to pass general bills and constitutional amendments originating in their own chamber.

Currie told Mississippi Today she looks forward to passing her bills that survived the deadline on the House floor and plans to work with Senate colleagues to send the bills to Gov. Tate Reeves. She also managed to get a bill passed that contains sections of state code that could allow her to revive some of the dead legislation later.

Below is an overview of the prison health care bills that survived the deadline and those that died.

Alive

Creating a hepatitis C and HIV program in Mississippi prisons: House Bill 1744 would require the creation of a hepatitis C program and an HIV program aimed at improving the treatment available to prisoners. The program would be overseen by the state Department of Health and the prison medical contractor, which is currently VitalCore. Additionally, it instructs the state to develop a plan focused on improving the health of female prisoners.

An October Mississippi Today report revealed that only a fraction of Mississippi prisoners diagnosed with hepatitis C receive treatment, which has allowed the treatable infection to develop into a life-threatening illness for some.

Providing prisoners with protective equipment: HB 1444, introduced for the second year in a row by Rep. Justis Gibbs, a Democrat from Jackson, would ensure that if prisoners are forced to use strong cleaning chemicals, prison officials must provide them with protective equipment such as face masks, gloves, protective helmets and eye protection. The legislation is a response to the case of Susan Balfour, who died of breast cancer after she said prison health care providers failed to offer her necessary medical screenings and treatment.

Taking power to award health contracts away from the Corrections Department: HB 1692 would transfer responsibility for soliciting proposals for the prison health care contract currently held by VitalCore from the Department of Corrections to the Department of Finance and Administration. Currie said she does not want VitalCore to have carte blanche to renew its multi-hundred-million-dollar contract in 2027.

Mississippi selected VitalCore for a three-year contract worth over $357 million in 2024. The company won out over Wexford Health Sources and Centurion of Mississippi, both companies that have held the contract for prison medical services in the past, in a competitive bidding process. VitalCore was awarded over $315 million in emergency, no-bid state contracts from 2020 to 2024.

Prison omnibus bill: HB 1751 contains code sections for many of the individual policies that Currie has introduced. This bill could serve as a vehicle to revive other measures that died with Tuesday night’s deadline and for negotiations with the Senate on policies that might stall in the chamber.

Dead

Requiring medical kiosks for prisoners: HB 1740 would have mandated that prisoners have access to communal kiosks where they could request medical attention. The bill would have allowed officials to track whether prisoners have been seen by medical professionals or not. Often, there are conflicting claims between prisoners and VitalCore about the care provided by the company. VitalCore owns prisoners’ medical records and is not required to divulge them if a prisoner claims to have been denied care. The legislation would have also prevented VitalCore from charging prisoners for medical services.

Currie said the bill was designed to prevent prisoners from suffering the fate of Christopher Boose, the subject of an October Mississippi Today report. Boose, a Newton County man whose one-year sentence for a Drug Court infraction led to a lifetime as an amputee after he says he was denied treatment for a broken arm that turned into a sepsis infection.

Redirecting funds from private law firm to legislative watchdog for prison health audit: HB 1745 would have redirected funds awarded to Butler Snow, a politically connected law firm in Mississippi that MDOC retained over the summer to monitor VitalCore. The Corrections Department entered into the agreement with Butler Snow after the Legislature in 2025 appropriated $690,000 to monitor and review the health contract with VitalCore and provide a report to lawmakers by Dec. 15.

That was news to Currie, who, despite her position as House Corrections chairwoman, was first informed of the agreement in December. MDOC has not issued a public statement about the agreement, which was first reported by Mississippi Today after the outlet obtained a letter Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain sent to a top Senate lawmaker months after the agreement had been approved. 

Currie said she wanted to take back the rest of the money awarded to the firm and give it to PEER, the state’s legislative watchdog committee, to conduct an audit of VitalCore.

Remove requirement for advance notice before prison visits: HB 1748 would have removed a requirement in state law that members of the Legislature must give advance notice to the Corrections Department commissioner before being admitted into correctional facilities. Many of the findings that informed Currie’s push to clean up prison health care resulted from tours she took of prisons around Mississippi. But giving advance notice before visits could allow prison officials to hide what could be routine shortcomings, Currie said.

The deadline for bills to advance out of their chamber of origin is Feb. 12

ROLLING FORK – Preparing to feed a revolving door of linemen Monday at her restaurant Chuck’s Dairy Bar, Tracy Harden recalled the winter storm of 1994, the last one that resembled what many Mississippians have lived through the past two weeks. It was then, 32 years ago, she stumbled upon a lineman she still knows well to this day. 

“He was up top a light pole, and I saw him and I told my mom, ‘I’m going to marry that man up there,’” she said of meeting her now-husband, Tim. 

In a nearly seven-year span that has delivered more disasters to the south Delta than most see in a lifetime, Harden has grown her restaurant into a haven for local survivors and first responders. First, in 2019, was the longest backwater flood the area had seen since 1927, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic that started the following year. Multiple tornadoes struck Sharkey and Issaquena counties between 2022 and 2025, including the March 2023 outbreak that killed 22 people and left much of Rolling Fork unrecognizable. 

After Winter Storm Fern blasted Mississippi over the Jan. 24-25 weekend, Harden kept Chuck’s running on generators offered by friends. Most of the 4,000 people spread out across rural Sharkey County – where Rolling Fork is located – lost electricity when the storm first struck. Immediately, Harden made sure any lineman working in the area was fed. 

“A lot of times we just think about what we are going through in the moment and not who’s really out there trying to get (the power) back on for you,” she said. 

While about half of Rolling Fork was still in the dark last Friday – six days after the storm hit – 90% of the city had the power back on by Monday, Mayor Eldridge Walker said. 

The city of about 1,500 was still working through tests with the state Department of Health to lift its boil water notice that started about a week ago when the storm took out power to the city’s drinking wells. That problem was hardly unique to the south Delta area – as of Tuesday, 117 systems in Mississippi impacted by the storm had issued boil water notices, the state Health Department announced.

The small town of Cary, a 10-minute drive south of Rolling Fork, was running its water system with a generator as of Friday, said Natalie Perkins, deputy director of Sharkey County Emergency Management. 

Brenda McGee, one of about 225 residents in Cary, said her connection shut off altogether for two days. While it was back on as of Monday, the water from her tap was discolored and “stinks,” McGee said. 

Valerie Clay, who also lives in Cary, lost power for about a week, and with that all the food in her refrigerator. Because she drives 45 minutes to Vicksburg to get groceries, Clay said she buys about a month’s worth of food at a time. 

Mayersville, a town of about 200 people just west of Rolling Fork in Issaquena County, used its multipurpose facility to feed and house residents who lost power or heat. Mayor Linda Short-Williams, whose office is in the same building, said the whole county lost electricity from the storm and her town’s lights just came back on over the weekend. 

Despite warnings, Short-Williams said she didn’t expect an ice storm to have such an impact there. 

“None of us fathomed that we would be affected as bad as we were,” she said. 

Mayersville resident Melvin Carlisle, who works at a cotton gin, said he came back home over the weekend after losing power for seven days. Carlisle estimated he lost a couple weeks’ worth of food.

“I’m in the process of throwing it all out,” he said. “I’m crazy about my deer sausage.”

Perkins, the deputy emergency manager, said the string of recent disasters has recalibrated her mindset. 

“It’s worn people down,” she said. “It just continues that feeling of, almost desperation. What’s going to happen next? I’ve learned not to ask that question.”

Rolling Fork is still waiting to hear whether the federal government will provide more funding to recover from the 2023 tornado, Eldridge told Mississippi Today. Repairs to city hall, the police station and fire station are still in the “working stage,” the mayor said. 

“We’ve not heard anything definitive enough to say we’ve got the funding coming so we can move,” Eldridge said. “We’re still in the waiting mode.”

While the repeated catastrophes have pushed many in the south Delta to their limits, the events have also revealed a unifying resilience among locals. Harden, the owner of Chuck’s Dairy Bar, called it a “a blessing to have so many people committed to a town that has hurt so much.” 

“A lot of people would’ve run away. Some people did, but our businesses and a lot of our people have stood strong,” she said, adding that Winter Storm Fern “is just another thing we’ve gotta get through.” 

During the 2023 tornado outbreak, several stragglers took shelter in the restaurant’s coolers, the only part of the building that stayed intact. Even after the destruction, the institution stayed alive, serving hot food out of a trailer for about a year.

When the recent freeze first hit, Harden said they fed about 60 linemen a day. As of Monday, that number grew to 160. When asked how linemen knew to come to Chuck’s, she choked up.

“They just know,” Harden said, wiping away tears. “We’ll help any way we can.”

Fredrick “Geno” Womack didn’t need to see the data to know that Jackson’s homicides had fallen. 

Gone are the nightmarish days of 2020, when Womack, the executive director of Operation Good, said he could step outside his nonprofit’s south Jackson headquarters and smell the metallic scent of crystal meth in the air. It’s been years, he said, since he has seen an armed man roaming the sidewalks of McDowell Road.

A violence interrupter, Womack said he and his colleagues are encountering less conflict to moderate. They’re seeing more disputes end in social media posts than gunshots.

“I don’t have to hang as many of those up in my office,” he said, nodding toward a commemorative shirt with a young man’s face on it. 

Earlier this year, local law enforcement released numbers backing up Womack’s observation: By the end of 2025, police in Jackson recorded 74 homicides that had occurred within city limits. The Jackson Police Department recorded 63 of those, with the rest occurring in Capitol Police’s jurisdiction.

It’s the lowest number of killings the city has seen in years, virtually half the high water mark of more than 150 in 2021. Police officials celebrated the reduction, praising their recent efforts in collaborative and technology-driven policing. 

But tell it to Terry Williams, a south Jackson pastor and retired security guard, and he’ll tell you why he doesn’t believe that story. 

In recent weeks, Williams’ neighborhood between Terry Road and Interstate 55 has seen a spate of bloody incidents: A man was shot and found dead inside a burning car before the New Year. In the first homicide of 2026, a dead man with a gunshot wound to the buttocks was found lying in a yard. Days later, a man, his wife and their friend were shot at while sitting in their car. 

While killings in Jackson have declined significantly, the drop coincides with a national trend, with some analyses showing the city’s homicide rate still ranks among the highest in the country.

“In my opinion, sometimes numbers are projected just to make it seem like things are under control,” Williams told Mississippi Today. “Crime is out of control.” 

Womack and Williams are alike: They are close in age, the same race and part of a similar community. Yet the two men’s differing perceptions of public safety in Jackson underscore a complicated truth in the city once labeled “America’s murder capital,” where crime is often studied systemically but experienced individually.

“It can be one murder in the city of Jackson, and when it’s affecting you, crime is bad,” Womack said. 

The competing realities may be exacerbated by poor recording of crime statistics. While the city’s homicide numbers from 2020 to 2025 made national headlines, data corresponding to the wave of killings cannot be pulled from the FBI’s national repository. The gap leaves calculations up to individual researchers or the media and makes it difficult to accurately compare Jackson’s homicide rate to cities across the country. 

Plus, in a longstanding policy about the “proper use” of its statistics, the FBI has “strongly discouraged” observers from using its statistics to compile rankings or compare the number of homicides in one city to another, but news outlets across the country have continued to do so. 

This leaves little common ground between Jacksonians like Williams — those who regard the city as unsafe — and those who say the city’s crime is unfairly characterized by conservative politicians, suburban outsiders or the media. 

“Why can’t the decrease be celebrated at least for five minutes before we are reminded that it’s still not good enough,” said Jhai Keeton, a real estate investor and the city’s former director of planning and economic development, in response to a recent analysis from WLBT showing Jackson remains the “deadliest city in nation.” 

The distrust is inextricable from the racism facing the 85% Black city, said Christopher Routh, a former Hinds County public defender who still tries cases in the city. It’s common for Jacksonians to be asked about their experiences with crime or to hear racist jokes about how they live in a war zone, he said. 

Not only that, but the recent homicide wave was one justification for depriving Jackson’s city government of resources, Routh said, when the Legislature poured funding into the state-run Capitol Police.

“It taps very clearly into our racial history,” Routh said. “Crime is the blinking neon sign that everyone uses to hate on Jackson.” 

Living in the neighborhood on the news

A few years ago, Williams was standing in his yard when a man walked by and asked him for a cigarette. He asked the man what was wrong. 

“My brother stabbed me,” Williams recalled the man saying before continuing on his way. 

Williams, who bought his south Jackson house with his wife in 2008, said he interacts with just a few of his neighbors. Williams didn’t know the man who had been stabbed, but the encounter made Williams feel that simply existing in this community puts him in harm’s way.

“It affects everybody, whether people say it does or not,” Williams said. 

Other than his home, which he likes, Williams said his relationship to safety living in south Jackson won’t change unless he sees the city take steps to address crime — preferably in the form of more officers patrolling his neighborhood.

It frustrates Williams, whose resume of nationwide security jobs includes Jackson’s municipal jail, that he pays taxes but does not see police on his streets. He thinks that’s because he lives among “the outcasts” — in a neglected zone once home to working-class white people that now has mostly Black residents. 

“They call Jackson a city,” he said. “I call it a town, because a city would manage its territory a whole lot better.” 

Speaking of territory, Williams lives in JPD’s Precinct 1, which covers the southern region of the city and is home to 70,000 people, according to the department’s public presentations. 

JPD has considered the precinct a crime “hotspot” for years now. Last year, 24 — or 38% — of the city’s homicides occurred in this precinct, followed by 18 homicides in Precinct 3 in parts of northwest and west central Jackson, 13 in Precinct 2 in far west Jackson, and eight in Precinct 4 in northeast Jackson, according to the department.

In an interview, JPD’s Precinct 1 Capt. Kendrick Williams (no relation) answered a question about the recent wave of violent incidents in Terry Williams’ neighborhood by saying, “Crime is down across the city.” He could not recall the number of homicides in his precinct in the last year. He also said he could not discuss the recent spate of violent incidents in Terry Williams’ neighborhood because of “active investigations.” 

“Where there is crime, period, it’s going to be of concern to me,” Capt. Williams said. 

The captain said his precinct is home to many homeless people and abandoned properties, which contribute to residents’ perceptions of safety. Nonetheless, he said he wants Jacksonians in his precinct to feel safer. His patrol officers spend their days responding to calls, going “where the need takes us.” 

“We have to see if there’s a way we can help them all, and the only way to gauge that is to see how much we can help everyone and change the narrative of how people feel,” Capt. Williams said. “If a person feels safe, then I feel like I’ve done my job.”

Terry Williams is left to grapple with the reality of living in a neighborhood that others often hear about from the news. As the sun set on a recent weekday, one woman warned this reporter to go home before dark as she picked up a little black dog and hustled up her stoop. 

Centralized numbers unavailable

In addition to their lived experiences, residents have contended with inaccurate or incomplete crime data from the city in the past, spurring skepticism toward any reported progress.

JPD notifies the public of homicides through press releases to news outlets throughout the city, but the department previously released its homicide numbers through two primary outlets: weekly crime stats on the city’s website and annual crime reports from the FBI. 

Beginning in 2019, two problems arose that led the department to ultimately revamp both processes. That year, local TV station WLBT discovered JPD was releasing lower year-to-date numbers of major crimes, such as homicide and grand larceny, on days the stats were shared with the public. Soon after, JPD began releasing monthly instead of weekly crime reports. Then it ceased routinely releasing numbers altogether in the summer of 2020. 

Meanwhile, the FBI started using a new data system. In late 2020, JPD stopped supplying its figures after becoming one of thousands of police departments that lacked the right technology to report to the FBI. 

The FBI’s numbers for JPD picked back up last year. Even then, the numbers appear incomplete, with JPD reporting 26 homicides in Jackson last year.

Statistics for Capitol Police, which also just began reporting homicides to the FBI last year, also appear to be partial figures, with the FBI’s database showing 10 homicides for that agency instead of 11. Capitol Police Chief Bo Luckey said his department has been working to upgrade its database ever since he took office in 2022. 

“Look, this whole process of trying to get this system up and running, it’s been a nightmare,” Luckey said. “As an administrator, you want to make sure that the intel — the data that you’re collecting, the cases you’re reporting on — you want to make sure they’re as accurate as possible. Whenever you know that you have a system that’s not up to par, it’s very frustrating.” 

JPD did not respond to questions about why its figures are incomplete in the FBI’s database. 

So what do the missing figures mean for Jacksonians? Those who want to know the number of homicides in their city must then turn to local news outlets, which all feature different counts. For instance, in 2021 — the year widely agreed to be the city’s deadliest — WLBT reported 160 killings, while the Clarion Ledger reported 157.

Justifiable homicides included in JPD’s yearly count

When figures are available, Womack said, the numbers often lack context that could help Jacksonians understand what they mean for their city. 

In the criminal justice context, the labeling of a death as a homicide means a person was killed by another. Along with the coroner, police are supposed to investigate to determine if that is what happened. 

Once officers conduct their investigations into suspected Jackson homicides, the count may change. For instance, police departments only count homicides that occurred in their jurisdiction — meaning if someone were found dead in Jackson but killed elsewhere, JPD would not count the killing toward the city’s total. 

The scenario played out last year when a man named Bernard Mack was found deceased in a car on Ridgeland Drive in south Jackson. One news outlet ran a headline saying the man was “killed inside vehicle in Jackson,” though JPD and the Hinds County Sheriff’s Office had quickly learned he was killed in nearby Edwards. 

Not all homicides lead to criminal cases. The figure also includes justified homicides — those committed in self defense. 

Last year, two homicides that occurred in south Jackson were cases of self-defense, according to a list the department provided to Mississippi Today. 

But the majority of killings in the city, Womack and city officials agree, stem from “interpersonal conflict.” Few are random. Understanding the circumstances can be important to feelings of safety across the city, Womack said, but residents are not usually shown the full picture. 

Womack keeps his own spreadsheet of homicides in the south Jackson area his men patrol. He puts the killings into four categories — street, drugs, domestic and interpersonal — for the purpose of prioritizing where to send his violence interrupters to stop retaliatory killings. 

Interpersonal killings are the most prevalent and the easiest to isolate, Womack said. The cases often go like this: Two friends get into an argument, then one shoots and kills the other. While family members may want revenge, Womack said he’s had success helping them understand what went wrong in their loved one’s relationship. He said a similar trend occurs in domestic killings involving couples.

Street-related killings — those involving multiple groups — are the most likely to get out of control. 

“It all started over a girl, but everybody forgot about that, and now it’s, ‘He shot my homeboy,’ so it’s back and forth killing,” Womack said.  

In almost every killing, Womack said, poverty is a factor because he is working in a community mostly void of economic opportunity. For instance, Womack said young men involved in a rap group caught up in a street dispute may have banded together to make money. 

“But they don’t tell the story like that,” he said. “They tell the story based on what looks the most dire for Jackson.” 

This may cause some residents to feel threatened, like they’re next, Womack said. If news outlets more frequently named the realities underlying these incidents, Womack said, it may not change the overall picture of danger in the city, but it could help residents understand if they are truly at risk.

“I’m not gonna say it would make Jackson look safer, but it would change a person’s mindset about what’s really going on,” he said. “The way they tell it on the news, people don’t even want to get out on the interstate when they ride through Jackson, because they make Jackson sound like the worst place ever.” 

Perception becoming reality

Kempt brick homes with clean-cut lawns line the streets of the diverse neighborhood where Lashia Brown-Thomas lives. 

A few years ago, the then-JPD officer recalled that a white man with “tattoos everywhere” knocked on her front door asking for the location of the nearest Walmart. Through her Ring camera, she told him to get off her porch.  

The brief encounter is the scariest thing that’s happened to Brown-Thomas, who became Ward 6’s councilwoman in 2025, in her recent memory. But she said that’s not the perception many Jacksonians have of her community. 

“People have stamped south Jackson,” she said. 

This is not to say Brown-Thomas is without concerns. In fact, she has so many it’s hard to know where to start. Driving around south Jackson’s hilly streets, the councilwoman talked about the future she’d like to see for her ward, but she kept interrupting herself to point out the problems she sees — an abandoned home with a mishmash of objects littering the yard, a disheveled man walking by the road, a utility pole featuring dangling wires that once had copper, a dingy gas station known for shoot-outs. 

What’s the solution? She’d like to see more Jacksonians visiting her community, which she thinks will only be possible with more police and economic investment. Specifically, Brown-Thomas hopes Capitol Police will expand further south, an agency whose patrol cars, she said, are more conspicuous than those of the department she served in for 25 years. 

“We need more visibility with officers,” Brown-Thomas said. “People want to feel safe, and if people cannot feel safe, they will not come to the area.” 

This also means changing an assessment that Brown-Thomas, Williams and Womack all agree on: Outsiders come to south Jackson to commit crime because of the perception that they can get away with it in this part of town, creating a cycle of crime that repels law-abiding Jacksonians. 

Another solution may lie in encouraging more Jacksonians to simply get out of their bubbles. 

Stephen Brown, a hip-hop artist and producer who recently took over operations of south Jackson’s Riverside Collective coffee shop, grew up in south Jackson. Not once can he recall stepping foot in north Jackson. 

“I thought all of north Jackson was the same,” he said. “Anything past High Street was where rich white people stay.” 

Then, in high school, he made a friend who lived in Tracewood, and he realized that north Jackson, just like south Jackson, was not a monolith.

Correction 2/4/2026: This story has been updated to reflect that the homicide figures were released in January.

Mississippi’s political system could soon look more like 1966 than 2026, and it’s time to acknowledge the full extent of the greatest threat to the American Experiment in decades.

Within months, more than 1 million Black Mississippians could lose meaningful representation in Congress and at every level of government — not because they stopped voting, but because the U.S. Supreme Court may soon make it legal to erase their power.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 effectively ended the Jim Crow era, codifying voting rights and political representation for Black people and other marginalized races in Mississippi and other Deep South states.

All these generations later, the VRA is still the legal framework from which nearly every other battle for racial equality stems. It is the sole reason Black Mississippians have the ability to sit in Congress, in the Legislature, on city councils and on the bench. It is why federal courts have repeatedly stepped in to stop state lawmakers from drawing districts or enacting laws designed to preserve white political dominance.

Today, alarmingly, it stands on the brink of collapse. The U.S. Supreme Court, deliberating a case titled Louisiana v. Callais, appears poised to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the central provision that has protected minority voters from discriminatory maps and election systems for 60 years. In practical terms, it would remove the last major federal barrier preventing Southern states from engineering political structures that dilute Black votes.

In one fell swoop, conservative justices could open wide the door for the wholly legal return of Jim Crow-style systems and laws to Mississippi intended to keep Black voters from having a fair shake. This impending ruling would deal a devastating blow to the generations-long fight for racial and class equality in a state that arguably has never achieved it.

If the U.S. Supreme Court hands down this ruling, Mississippi’s power structure would have the permission to do four things that would transform the state’s political makeup and harken back to pre-civil rights movement days.

1) Mississippi’s lone Black-majority congressional district could disappear. Mississippi’s seat is among 27 congressional districts held by Black or Brown incumbents nationwide that Republicans could quickly redraw, according to voting rights organization Fair Fight. This effort is a priority of President Donald Trump and his administration, and it is deeply personal for Mississippi Republicans.

For generations, GOP leaders have demonized Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, a vocal Trump critic. If given the green light, they would likely erase his district overnight, redistributing its Black voters into four safe Republican seats. The result would be devastating: more than 1 million Black Mississippians — even those outside the district who consider him their congressman — would lose representation in Washington.

2) State legislative districts could be redrawn to weaken Black representation at the Capitol. Another Fair Fight analysis shows that at least 29 of Mississippi’s 60 Black-majority legislative seats could be eliminated. These districts exist largely because federal courts, enforcing the Voting Rights Act, required them. Without that oversight, they could vanish.

Black lawmakers are already largely excluded from policymaking. Redistricting without VRA protections would deepen Republican supermajorities, weaken checks on harmful legislation and reduce funding for neglected communities. Moderate GOP voices would lose what little leverage and coalitions they currently have, and radical proposals would become easier to pass.

3) Republicans could move to consolidate control of the courts. With the legislative and executive branches already secured, lawmakers could redraw judicial districts to weaken the electoral prospects of Black judges. The result could be fewer Black Mississippians on the bench and diminished confidence in the justice system.

The ultimate target would be the appellate courts. Today, only one of nine Mississippi Supreme Court justices and two of 10 Court of Appeals judges are Black — an imbalance now being challenged in federal court. That disparity could worsen under a weakened Voting Rights Act.

4) Local governments could revive Jim Crow–era voting systems. Without VRA protections, lawmakers could allow cities and counties to return to at-large elections — one of Mississippi segregationists’ most effective tools for neutralizing Black political power. Even in diverse communities, white voters often dominated citywide and countywide races, ensuring Black candidates rarely won.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act forced many local governments to adopt single-member districts that gave Black voters a fair chance to elect their own representatives. If that protection is overturned, leaders could gut representation on city councils, school boards and county boards. Over time, this would shape who gets hired as teachers and police officers, which neighborhoods receive investment and whose concerns are taken seriously by those in power.

If any of this sounds alarmist, take a close look at recent history.

Some Mississippi Republicans are already publicly testing how far they can go once federal oversight weakens. Auditor Shad White, a statewide elected official and likely 2027 gubernatorial candidate, has publicly urged his colleagues to use the Supreme Court’s impending ruling to dismantle the state’s Black congressional district.

Mississippi lawmakers have repeatedly pushed discriminatory maps. After three of the last four census cycles, federal judges have ordered Mississippi to redraw legislative districts that diluted the Black vote. As recently as two years ago, courts mandated new maps and special elections after finding clear violations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The same provision that’s now under threat remains the backbone of ongoing litigation. A federal lawsuit is currently challenging whether Mississippi’s Supreme Court districts weaken Black voting power. The plaintiffs’ case rests squarely on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Civil rights leaders understand what is at stake. Even now, they are working to prepare for a legal landscape without federal protection. In January, they partnered with the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus to introduce the Robert G. Clark Jr. Voting Rights Act, named for the first Black lawmaker elected after 1965. Few expect it to survive in a Legislature controlled by white Republicans. As everyone expected, however, two versions of the bill died in committee Tuesday after Republicans declined to even take them up for a vote.

They are bracing for the worst, preparing to fight, organize and adapt if the tools of Jim Crow are once again legalized.

Two things could, in the coming days, make this column read not as a dire warning but as unfounded fear: 

1) The Supreme Court could decline to gut the Voting Rights Act. Chief Justice John Roberts appears to be the decisive vote. But his record offers little reason for optimism. As a young Reagan-era Justice Department lawyer, Roberts wrote that the VRA is “the most intrusive interference imaginable” in state and local governance. He later cast the deciding vote in the 2013 Shelby decision that dismantled federal oversight of Southern voting laws. During oral arguments last fall, he suggested Section 2 itself may be unconstitutional. Taken together, it is difficult to imagine him choosing now to preserve the law.

2) Mississippi Republicans could choose not to codify the disenfranchisement of Black voters. Supporters of this view often point to House Speaker Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, both seen as relatively moderate and respectful. But neither has meaningfully empowered Black lawmakers, and both have sidelined their Black colleagues on recent votes tied directly to race. Hosemann is in his second and final term because of limits on the lieutenant governorship, and White’s political identity is a moving target. What is certain is that future leaders will remain loyal to a national party actively working to weaken the Voting Rights Act and urging states to exploit the loss of federal oversight. There is little reason to expect restraint, now or certainly later.

Across Mississippi and the South, civil rights leaders are asking themselves painful questions: How do you fight when the system itself is rebuilt to work against you? When does resistance give way to survival? Can this state endure without a federal backstop?

These are not abstract worries. They are urgent fears rooted in lived history — days that are not very far in the past. The Supreme Court’s decision will not determine whether Mississippi becomes racist again. We know racism never fully disappeared, regardless of the laws on the books.

What it will determine is whether the federal government continues to stand between vulnerable communities and those who would strip away their political voice. It will decide whether true progress and racial equity remain imperfect but possible ambitions, and whether this American experiment collapses under its own contradictions.

Sixty years ago, Mississippi’s elders had a name for a system that denied political power, economic opportunity and legal protection. They called it Jim Crow.

History is knocking again. How are we going to answer?

States slammed by a deadly, multiday winter storm that left hundreds of thousands of people without power in bitter cold are looking to a slimmed-down Federal Emergency Management Agency for support.

The immediate aftermath of the wide-sweeping storm — and the recovery process on the horizon — will provide another test for the second Trump administration’s reshaped disaster response agency.

Trump has approved emergency declarations for 12 states. That opens pathways for state governments to access federal assistance for immediate, life-saving needs, at FEMA’s discretion.

The declarations allow hard-hit states such as Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi to tap into federal resources as state and local governments work to restore power, clear roads, and otherwise lessen the disaster’s overall impact.

FEMA announced in the immediate aftermath of the storm that it would deliver medical equipment, 485,000 meals, 770,000 liters of water, 2,200 cots, 90 generators and 71 semi trucks with drivers to staging sites in Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia. FEMA’s distribution centers hold additional resources, including generators, millions of meals and liters of water, and more than 650,000 blankets.

The federal government will cover 75% of the costs for these emergency protective measures, up to $5 million. 

FEMA announced Friday that it will deliver more than $11 million in combined emergency assistance funding to Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana to expedite immediate disaster response following the storm. The funding includes $3.75 million each to Mississippi and Tennessee, and $3.79 million to Louisiana to reimburse the states for actions already taken and sustain states’ response efforts.

FEMA in action

FEMA’s assistance has proved useful in Louisiana, said Mike Steele, communications director at the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. In that state, damage largely impacted rural areas where fewer personnel are available to juggle the many moving parts of emergency response.

One of FEMA’s Incident Management Assistance Teams has been on the ground in Louisiana since the worst of the weather hit, helping identify and coordinate any needed federal support. FEMA has also provided generators, ready-to-eat meals and water for local and state responders to distribute.

Louisiana plans to seek more federal help with debris removal and full reimbursement from the federal government for emergency services costs in the first 30 days of disaster response. Louisiana officials met Jan. 28 with regional FEMA administrators to begin discussions about long-term needs.

Mississippi has likewise distributed generators, water, meals, cots, blankets and tarps from FEMA, Gov. Tate Reeves said in a Jan. 28 news conference. The state has received more than 350 requests for supplies from 40 counties, Reeves said.

“When a tornado hits or when a hurricane hits, when it is over and leaves the state, then you can immediately go to work trying to figure out how to cut your way through to help people,” he said. “Ice storms are different, because although the precipitation stopped in Mississippi mostly midday on Sunday … it was the fact that the temperatures never got above freezing, particularly in the north part of the state.”

States have deployed their national guards to deliver supplies to areas in need. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers helped Mississippi install generators where needed, and Corps  employees will help local governments in Louisiana begin to take stock of the damage.

In Tennessee, more than 300,000 households and businesses experienced power outages at the storm’s peak, and more than a week after the storm, more than 19,000 customers in Nashville remained without power. Hundreds of linemen and vegetation crews have been working around the clock to restore power.

FEMA is sending two, 20-person teams to Tennessee to assist in removing debris that is blocking roads and hindering power restoration efforts, said Kristin Coulter, communications director for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency. The federal agency also delivered generators, emergency supplies, water, meals, blankets and cots to Fort Campbell — located north of Nashville on the Tennessee-Kentucky border — to be used at the state’s request.

Arkansas found less immediate need for federal help. “The state has not identified any immediate federal resource needs at this time,” a spokesperson said. “We remain in continuous communication with FEMA partners as local assessments continue.”

Disaster meets an agency in flux

It’s typical for presidential administrations to grant emergency declarations in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, if it’s clear a state may not be able to handle the response on its own.

Beyond providing supplies and financial support, “FEMA also becomes sort of the brain, if you will,” coordinating complex logistics between local, state and other federal agencies involved in disaster response, said Sara Hamideh, an associate professor specializing in disaster recovery at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.

But emergency declarations have a narrow timeframe. Programs offering more substantial, longer-term federal aid require a separate, major disaster declaration, which Trump has yet to approve for any of the affected states. Trump has similarly not yet approved assistance for individuals, which can include support services and financial aid for people who are uninsured or underinsured.

But Hamideh cautioned against the misconception that “if you get a presidential declaration, FEMA will make you whole, which was never meant to be the case.”

Trump’s administration has been more hesitant to issue major disaster declarations amid talk of shrinking, reforming or even eliminating the agency.

The president and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have pledged to cut waste and shift more disaster-recovery responsibilities to states. They have also slimmed the agency’s ranks over the past year. FEMA lost 2,446 employees between Jan. 1 and June 1 in 2025 — a decrease of 9.5% of the agency’s workforce — the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported. Multiyear contracts for thousands of FEMA workers will expire this year, adding to uncertainty about the agency’s future resources. 

FEMA also announced the cancellation of its two largest hazard-mitigation programs in 2025.

Last spring, Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee waited weeks for the Trump administration to approve more robust federal aid after tornadoes and severe flooding caused tens of millions of dollars of damage. 

That delay — and in some cases, initial denial — of public assistance to rural communities and individuals facing expenses bigger than their budgets spurred concern. Ultimately, Trump approved tens of millions of dollars in both individual and public assistance to the affected states.

FEMA did not respond to questions about how staff reductions and policy shifts have affected how the agency is responding to January’s winter storm.

Hamideh said some reform is needed: Over the past few decades, some FEMA programs have disincentivized states from taking their own measures to reduce risk or secure insurance to help cover damages when a disaster happens. But she added cuts to staff are concerning, particularly those to data- and risk-strategy roles and to call center and casework staff.

“The reform that we need is not cutting funds, is not reducing support for local and state governments,” she said. “It’s increasing support enabling them to take pre-disaster, long-term mitigation resiliency actions to reduce the losses that then become the burden on taxpayers when FEMA has to respond.”

What’s next?

Major disaster declarations typically occur after states compile damage assessments and submit applications for aid to FEMA.

The agency uses per capita cost as a benchmark to gauge whether local and state governments can handle recovery without federal help. Those thresholds currently stand at $4.72 per capita for counties, and $1.89 per capita for states. 

But this information serves only as a guideline. Presidents have sole authority to approve or deny a disaster declaration, regardless of whether a state or county meets those thresholds, and not all programs are offered for every disaster. The reasoning behind declaration decisions is not public record.

In the meantime, states hit by the storm are focused on immediate disaster response, clearing debris and restoring power. 

“We’re starting to ask the parishes or the locals that have come out of the fight mode to go into recovery mode and make sure they’re tracking everything, asking their people to report damage and businesses to report downtime,” Steele said.

Tennessee is also working with county governments to record damage and determine whether the impact meets the federal criteria to request assistance through a major disaster declaration.

By early this week, Mississippi officials said 51 counties reported damage to at least 369 homes, 26 businesses and 20 farms. The state said at least 62 public roads had major damage and at least 20 had minor damage.

The governor said he expects numbers to rise as assessments continue.

“This continues to be an all-of-government approach,” Reeves said. “We obviously have a lot of experience with natural disasters, but ice storms are just a little bit different.” 

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.