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GREENVILLE — A jury has acquitted a former engineer of charges of making false statements and obstructing justice during the criminal investigation of a 2017 military plane crash in Mississippi that killed all 16 service members aboard.

James Michael Fisher was found not guilty Thursday after an eight-day trial in federal court in Greenville.

Fisher had been the lead propulsion engineer at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex in Warner Robins, Georgia, in 2011. That’s when military investigators said civilian maintenance personnel failed to find defects in a cracked and corroded propeller blade that was installed on a KC-130T transport plane. Investigators said that propeller blade broke apart while the New York-based plane was in flight from Cherry Point, North Carolina, to El Centro, California, on July 10, 2017.

Fifteen Marines and one Navy corpsman were killed when the propeller blade slammed into the aircraft body, causing a shock that broke the plane into pieces in the sky and sent the wreckage plummeting into soybean fields near Itta Bena, Mississippi.

A federal grand jury in Mississippi indicted Fisher in 2024, who by then had retired. The indictment accused Fisher of lying to federal agents about changes to inspection procedures during a 2021 investigation, suggesting he was part of a cover-up that shifted blame to maintenance technicians.

Steve Farese, Fisher’s defense lawyer, said someone else cleared technicians to change how propellers were inspected while Fisher was in Brazil, and thus Fisher didn’t lie when he told investigators no documents allowing maintenance changes had been signed in 2011. Farese also said the propeller in question was worked on days before the form was signed, arguing the document allowing the change played no role in the crash.

“Nobody did it intentionally,” Farese told The Associated Press in a phone interview Monday. “As one witness said, there were 10 different ways for that blade to have through inspection and be missed or put back in the system accidentally. There were 10 different ways it could have happened. So there was no clarity in the trial as to exactly what did happen.”

Prosecutors didn’t immediately respond to a request seeking comment Monday. The indictment alleged that engineers at the Georgia base approved about 30 changes to propeller inspection procedures from 2008 to 2017, despite Fisher earlier not producing documents, and that investigators concluded “they could no longer trust Fisher.”

The plane was based at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, New York, and it was taking Marine special operations forces from North Carolina to Arizona for training. The crash was the deadliest Marine Corps air disaster since 2005, when a transport helicopter went down during a sandstorm in Iraq, killing 30 Marines and a sailor.

In the 2017 crash, six of the Marines and the sailor were from an elite Marine Raider battalion at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and were headed for pre-deployment training in Yuma, Arizona, the Marine Corps said Tuesday. The remaining nine Marines had been based in New York,

The debris spread across two to three miles of farmland near the Mississippi Delta town of Itta Bena, about 85 miles north of Jackson. Families gathered near the site a year later to dedicate a memorial to Yanky 72, the plane’s call sign.

After the crash, the Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force grounded some or all of their C-130s for a time, including examining and replacing propeller blades.

Mississippi voters will choose Democratic and Republican nominees for Congress on Tuesday.   

All four of Mississippi’s incumbent U.S. representatives and its incumbent junior U.S. senator are running for reelection in 2026. Party nominees chosen Tuesday will compete in the general election on Nov. 3. 

Republicans hold slight majorities in both chambers of Congress. Mississippi’s congressional delegation currently consists of five Republicans and one Democrat. The only member of the delegation not on the ballot Tuesday is Sen. Roger Wicker, who isn’t up for re-election until 2030.

Here is a breakdown of the candidates in each primary.

U.S. Senate

Democratic Primary: Scott Colom, the district attorney for Noxubee, Clay, Lowndes and Oktibbeha counties, is competing against Marine Corps veteran Albert Littell and Priscilla Williams-Till, a distant cousin of lynching victim Emmett Till. 

Republican Primary: Incumbent Republican Hyde-Smith is competing against physician Sarah Adlakha in the GOP primary. 

Hyde-Smith has the power of incumbency, existing campaign infrastructure and the endorsement of President Donald Trump. But national Democrats believe the junior U.S. senator is vulnerable and have said they’re willing to pour money into the state to try to flip a Senate seat blue in Mississippi. 

U.S. House District 1 

Democratic Primary: Cliff Johnson, a University of Mississippi law school professor, is running against former Marshall County state Rep. Kelvin Buck.

Republican Primary: Incumbent Trent Kelly is running unopposed in the Republican primary 

U.S. House District 2 

Democratic Primary: Incumbent Bennie Thompson is running against Evan Turnage, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Senate Conference Vice Chair Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Thompson is also attempting to stave off a challenge from Pertis Williams III, who has focused on agricultural issues. 

Thompson has represented the 2nd Congressional District, which covers Jackson and the Delta, since 1993. Thompson, a civil rights leader and former chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6th Capitol attack, is a towering figure in state and national politics. 

Republican Primary: Adams County Supervisor Kevin Wilson is squaring off against Ron Eller, a physician’s assistant and military veteran who is running again for the GOP nomination after losing to Thompson by nearly 25 points in 2024. 

U.S. House District 3 

Democratic Primary: Michael Chiaradio, a former baseball player turned regenerative farmer from New Jersey, is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination. Chiaradio told Mississippi Today he believes a localized message built around economic frustration can unite both disaffected conservatives and a fractured Democratic Party.

Republican Primary: Incumbent Michael Guest is running unopposed for the Republican nomination. Guest has sailed to general election victories three times since he was first elected in 2018. In 2024, he survived a primary challenge from the right that went to a runoff but ran unopposed in the general election.

U.S. House District 4 

Democratic Primary: Three candidates are competing for the Democratic nomination. They are Jeffrey Hulum III, a state representative from Gulfport, D. Ryan Grover, a business consultant who was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 2023 and Paul Blackman, a Navy veteran.

Republican Primary: Incumbent Republican Mike Ezell, first elected in 2022, is running against Sawyer Walters, who works for the Department of Marine Resources and serves as a lieutenant in the Mississippi Army National Guard.

When Pastor Frank Hall was a little boy in Greenville during the Civil Rights Movement, organizers refused to stop meeting at his neighborhood church, even as white supremacists attacked Black churches throughout the South. They showed him voting was a right you had to fight for.

Now, decades later, when Hall discovered that the Washington County Election Commission had moved over 2,000 voters to inactive status ahead of this year’s congressional primaries Tuesday without advance notice, he knew what he had to do: fight. 

“We are facing a critical moment with the Voter Roll,” a flyer from the election commission warned voters. “We are asking you to act now before Election Day.”

Those voters in Washington County were among the 50,000 registered voters who were made inactive in Mississippi due to address conflicts after Secretary of State Michael Watson rolled out a controversial method statewide last July as another way to perform the routine job of checking voters’ residences: using unverified credit data, according to a Mississippi Today analysis of voter records from Watson’s office.

Using the credit data, which comes from the consumer-reporting giant Experian, marks a departure from the verified government data that Mississippi and most other states have historically relied on to find out when voters move. But even among the few counties and states that have experimented with this new, commercial approach, Mississippi is an outlier: 

• Unverified data: Mississippi’s system lacks key safeguards to ensure voters aren’t mistakenly flagged as inactive because of inaccurate data. Under state law, county election commissioners make voters inactive without first asking them to verify their addresses. Because Experian also doesn’t verify the credit data handed down by the secretary of state, election commissioners may mark voters inactive based on information that was never verified at any point. 
• Reports of wrongful inactivations: Mistakes in the data may have led to mistakes in real life. Some Mississippi voters may have been put on the inactive list even though they still live at the same address, according to reports from affected voters who dialed in to the election-protection hotline run by the Jackson-based nonprofit One Voice. If they don’t vote in the next two general elections, they could be purged from the list altogether under state law.
• Little notice: Under state law, voters receive little notice that they’ve been made inactive beyond a single mailed card. Because of this, county election officials and voting-rights advocates worry that voters who were wrongly made inactive might not even know until they try to cast a ballot.

Washington County already had some of the lowest rates of registered voters in the state. Now, the number of inactive voters has nearly doubled to one in six people on the list of registered voters, according to statewide data from the secretary of state.

Across the state, the data shows that Wilkinson County has the highest rate of inactive voters, at 1 in 5 people on the lists.

Hall wasn’t made inactive, but he said the prospect would be unthinkable.

“I feel like my rights are being violated,” said Hall, who’s been spreading awareness of the surge, from his congregation to U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson. “If you take me off the (active) voting roll, you just took away what my foreparents fought for for years to try to get us this right.”

An unverified system

When Watson unveiled his office’s “partnership” with Experian, he wrote that it would preserve “election integrity” and “bring a new level of reliable data” for voter-roll maintenance. Watson, a Republican who serves as the state’s chief election officer, has touted both as key accomplishments of his time as secretary of state while he looks to run for a new elected office.

“We have really gotten to the point where we feel like we’ve done our duty, we’ve done our work at the secretary of state’s office,” Watson said at a forum last week. “I can walk out of there and feel like I’ve left the place better than I found it.”

But in a series of press releases announcing the partnership with Experian, the secretary of state’s office largely stayed quiet on how it ensured the information was reliable.

“It makes me really nervous,” Washington County Election Commissioner Jacqueline Thompson said. “That person could be removed, that person could if you don’t do your due diligence.”

The secretary of state’s office declined an on-the-record interview and did not respond to repeated requests for comment about how it checked the reliability of the credit data and fulfilled its legal responsibility to train election officials to use the new information in time for publication.

“The Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office does not have direct oversight of county election commissioners,” the office wrote in an emailed statement. “However, in any aspect regarding voter roll maintenance, we encourage local election officials to review all relevant information before making a decision on a voter’s status.”

But some election commissioners and voting-rights advocates worry that the new data has too many flaws, further limiting voting access in a state where voter turnout sank to its lowest level in 20 years in the last presidential election.

“We’re already in a state where we don’t have that many provisions that help us access the ballot box,” said Nsombi Lambright, executive director of One Voice. “In the end, we continue to put these measures in place that make it harder rather than make it easier. It’s just embarrassing.”

Mississippi election officials turn to data for debt collectors

When the secretary of state rolled out Experian’s credit data statewide in July, Mississippi emerged as one of the first states to turn to a tool traditionally used by debt collectors to track down hard-to-find consumers.

Voter-roll maintenance is a routine process done every year. A county’s list of registered voters can change constantly as people die or move away. 

At least four times a year, election commissioners are supposed to meet and consult state and national data sources on addresses and deaths to track down those changes and ensure that their county’s list of registered voters is accurate.

If the data indicates that a voter on the list has appeared to move from their registered home address, the election commissioners must flag the voter as inactive under state law.

Like most states, Mississippi has for years relied on official data from the U.S. Postal Service to track when voters move. But that system can only flag moves when people formally submit a paid notice to the Postal Service that they’ve relocated — something many never do.

To stay more up to date on voters’ moves, Mississippi and a handful of other jurisdictions, ranging from Orange County in California to states including Louisiana, Arkansas and West Virginia, have turned to what Experian calls its “most powerful locating product”: a massive credit database called TrueTrace.

Experian’s data links possible addresses to over 245 million consumers based on their spending activity on items like loans, rent payments and credit files. For most people, the database pulls a handful of suggested addresses based on their consumer activity. From these, Experian zeroes in on a single “Best Address,” which the company states is the place “where the consumer is most likely to be reached” — but not necessarily the person’s actual home address.

“Often, this will match their residence; however, we don’t verify residency,” the company wrote to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency responsible for assisting state and local election officials.

Experian declined a request for a interview.

“While Experian’s data and insights can assist with voter list maintenance efforts, all decisions related to voter registration policies, procedures and record updates are made solely by election officials in accordance with local, state and federal laws,” the company wrote in an emailed statement.

Jacqueline Thompson saw the new system in action when she attended a training session on voter-roll maintenance after the secretary of state rolled out Experian’s data. The system unexpectedly loaded a jumble of possible addresses linked to registered voters on the rolls.

“It just pulled up all these random addresses, and so a lot of people were asking the question about that,” Jacqueline Thompson said. “Then that’s when we were told that Experian is one of the tools that the SOS (Secretary of State) is using in elections to verify whether a person is local or not.

“But you have to be very careful with that.”

Not so careful

Even among the few jurisdictions that have rolled out credit data to maintain the voter lists, Mississippi’s approach goes further than many others — opening up the opportunity for election commissioners to mark voters inactive based on data that was never verified at any point.

Under this approach, One Voice received reports that Mississippi voters who work or do business across state lines, especially in border areas like Tunica, Washington and Wilkinson counties, were at greater risk of being mistakenly marked inactive.

Lambright explained that because much of these voters’ spending activity happens in a different state, Experian’s data could have incorrectly flagged them as living outside Mississippi.

“They’re having the address be more important than who you are,” Hall said.

Unlike numerous other jurisdictions using Experian credit data, Mississippi does not give voters an opportunity to verify their address before they’re marked inactive. As a result, the accuracy of the voter-maintenance process solely relies on the reliability of the data and the judgement used by the election commission.

In other jurisdictions that have rolled out Experian’s data, like Montana, Maryland and West Virginia, election officials used the information to identify voters who might have moved but then mailed them a notice asking them to verify their address. After, they had to wait to give the voter an opportunity to respond before changing their status.

In West Virginia and Montana, for example, that waiting period is 30 days.

Under Mississippi law, that notice, called a confirmation card, gets mailed out when election commissioners mark a voter as inactive. State Rep. Zakiya Summers, a Democrat from Jackson who previously served as a Hinds County election commissioner, said that the introduction of unverified data now casts doubt on what used to be a routine process.

“This process ultimately raises a lot of questions around how accurate this data is,” Summers said. “Is the process as transparent as it needs to be? Are these voters receiving the due process that they lawfully deserve?”

From her experience using Experian’s data to maintain her county’s voter rolls, Jacqueline Thompson said the voter-maintenance process outlined in state law could lack the necessary checks to account for flaws in consumer data. 

“Us as election commissioner, we want to protect the vote of the people,” Jacqueline Thompson said. “You have to just make sure and check and do your research, for instance, if Experian came in play with your information.”

While the actual task of voter-roll maintenance falls to election commissioners, Watson’s office is responsible for training election officials and maintaining the centralized, online system that commissioners use to maintain the voter rolls. 

It is largely up to each county’s election commission to determine how to handle Experian’s data, according to Jacqueline Thompson.

She said the unverified data puts the pressure on election commissioners to do their “due diligence” to ensure that voters aren’t wrongly made inactive and are aware when their status changes, especially because voters receive only one mailed notice under state law. 

In Washington County, Jacqueline Thompson said the election commission went beyond the requirements of state law by emailing, calling and even knocking on doors to notify voters once they were made inactive.

“We don’t want you purged, we don’t want you inactive,” Jacqueline Thompson said. “We want you to be fulfilling that civic duty, coming out to vote.”

‘They’re having the address be more important than who you are’

When Constance Slaughter-Harvey learned that her dad was forced to pay a poll tax to cast a ballot, just because he was Black in Mississippi, she committed herself toward protecting the right to vote. She became the first Black woman to graduate with a law degree from the University of Mississippi and oversaw voting for 12 years as assistant secretary of state for elections.

She never would have thought that unverified credit data would one day be used to maintain the voter rolls.

“I dedicated my life to making the right to vote accessible to all,” Slaughter-Harvey said. “This is making it more difficult and insulting to our efforts to eliminate voting barriers.”

Inactive voters aren’t barred from casting a ballot, but voting-rights advocates say they can face more barriers. They must vote on signed paper ballots at the polling place tied to the precinct they live in, instead of on the machines. As long as they still live in the county they’re registered in, they’ll be put back on the active rolls once they vote. If they live in a different county, they must re-register there.

However, paper ballots are subject to more scrutiny, and one that’s cast won’t necessarily be counted. Under state law, inactive voters’ ballots will count only if they affirm that they still live at their registered home address or an address in the same precinct.

Summers said that as election commissioner, she saw firsthand how voters could get discouraged when they found out they were inactive at the polls and had to take time to fill out a paper ballot.

“Most people have jobs where they have a very short window to vote on Election Day,” Lambright said. “They just leave, and they’re just like, ‘Oh, well, I’ll vote next time.’”

For advocates like Hall, the surge in inactive voters echoes a legacy of measures in Mississippi that have disproportionately limited Black voters’ access to the ballot — from intentional barriers, like poll taxes, to indirect obstacles, like felony disenfranchisement.

“We’re going to end up getting back to fighting for rights again, like we were in 1965 when they marched on Selma, Alabama, and Montgomery,” Hall said. “We’re going to have to go back to fighting for our voting rights.”

An August study by the EAC on Mississippi and other jurisdictions’ use of Experian’s data for voter-roll maintenance found that the data was more likely to suggest new addresses for counties with more voters of certain racial minority groups, including Black and Native American voters.

The study found that credit data could be an “additional new tool” for voter-roll maintenance, although more research had to be done on the accuracy of the information. But Amir Badat, a voting-rights attorney with the nonprofit Fair Fight Action, said the EAC’s findings could be a cause for legal concern. Under federal law, states must maintain voter rolls in a “nondiscriminatory” way.

“Whenever you’re introducing a dataset that’s not fully understood and that could have biases that we don’t fully understand, that is super concerning,” Badat said. “We have no information on how the use of this data was rolled out.”

The secretary of state’s office did not respond to requests for comment on how it ensured that voter-roll maintenance was done in a “nondiscriminatory” way with the new credit data, in compliance with federal law.

‘Reliable’ information?

The use of credit data for voter-roll maintenance in Mississippi is so new that Summers didn’t know it was even allowed under the law until Mississippi Today contacted her about it. She had never used anything other than verified government data to maintain voter rolls during her four years as an election commissioner.

But the state Legislature quietly opened the door for the secretary of state to turn to information beyond the government as a part of the voter-roll maintenance House Bill 1310 in 2023, which became law in January 2024.

Lawmakers hotly debated the bill for its provision to mark voters as inactive and eventually purge them if they didn’t vote within a series of elections. Supporters, including Sen. Jeff Tate, a Republican from Meridian, advocated that the bill would modernize voter-roll maintenance, especially as numerous counties grappled with inflated voter rolls. 

“When we have people on the rolls by name only and they are not actually living there, that is a vessel for fraud,” said Tate, who then chaired the Senate Elections Committee. “And yes, there is voter fraud. What this does is give our local election officials another tool to clean up their rolls.”

Currently, three of Mississippi’s 82 counties have more registered voters on the rolls than eligible voters in the Census. 

But opponents, including Summers, argued that the wording of the bill was so vague that it could be overly permissive.

Many states have laws in the books naming the exact sources that can be used for voter-roll maintenance, such as Postal Service data or death information from the Social Security Administration. But within HB 1310 was a little-debated clause that broadly allowed election officials to use “reliable information” indicating that a voter had moved from their registered residence as grounds to mark them inactive. 

The bill did not specify any standards that the information had to meet to be considered reliable, but did name examples of what would fit. All were government sources. The bill made no mention of credit data.

But in February 2025, a year after the bill the became law, Watson wrote that he was “excited to report” that HB 1310 allowed his office to sign a contract with Experian to roll out credit data for voter-roll maintenance statewide.

“We had some concerns that this process could unintentionally result in a form of voter suppression,” Summers said of HB 1310. “And we were really, truly concerned about this, particularly in those communities that are already facing barriers to participating in our elections.”

The voter-roll maintenance process outlined in HB 1310 — and its lack of verification checks — appears to conflict with the Department of Justice’s guidance on how states should comply with federal law. The department advises that states may wait to mark voters as inactive until they fail to return the notice verifying their address by the voter-registration deadline for the next election.

Mississippi doesn’t wait.

You can check your voter-registration status before heading to the polls at the secretary of state’s Y’All Vote website.

The Capitol was littered with dead bills after a major passage deadline Tuesday, most notably the House and Senate teacher pay raise proposals.

The bills were victims of ongoing, and often inexplicable, political infighting between House and Senate Republican leaders.

But the House on Friday attempted to revive its $5,000 a year teacher pay raise by grafting it onto another bill and passing it. It appears, amid public finger pointing between Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and House Speaker Jason White, the two chambers will try to negotiate a teacher pay raise as next year’s statewide elections loom.

Otherwise, the Mississippi Legislature is stumbling into the final weeks of this year’s session having so far failed at the two main goals its leaders outlined in January: expanding “school choice,” including using tax dollars for private schooling, and providing the first large teacher raise since 2022.

In other news from a busy week under the dome on High Street:

• The House, through an amendment, attempted to address the “alcohol crisis,” or shortage of wine and spirits from bungling at the state-run Alcoholic Beverage Control warehouse. SB 2838, now headed to the Senate, would allow businesses to – temporarily – buy alcohol directly from any licensed sellers in the country.

• Lawmakers are trying to rush passage of a bill that could allow Greenwood Leflore Hospital, on the brink of closure, to file for bankruptcy to aid the possible takeover of the hospital’s services by the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

• Tweaks to the Public Employee Retirement System were among the measures that died from feuding between the House and Senate GOP leadership last week. They were an attempt to address complaints from first responders, teacher and others about the sea change to the system lawmakers passed last year. The more austere retirement benefits passed last year, critics say, will make recruiting and retaining state workers even harder. Like the pay raise, the House is attempting to revive PERS changes.

Quote of the Week

“I’d like to announce my disappointment.” – Sen. Daniel Sparks of Belmont, as his chamber wrapped up business on Tuesday, the last day for House and Senate committees to pass bills originating in the opposite chamber. Hundreds of bills died with the deadline. “It’s shared by all,” replied Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.

In Brief

Casino revenue consistent as disruption looms

Mississippi casinos generated $2.43 billion in gross gambling revenue and $3.25 billion in total revenue in 2025, “nearly matching” the prior year, according to the Mississippi Gaming & Hospitality Association.

Gambling industry leaders convened at the Capitol for an annual state of the industry report, which outlined changes on the horizon that could prove disruptive.

As illegal online sports betting remains widespread in Mississippi, prediction market operators have expanded aggressively, arguing they are exempt from state laws banning mobile sports betting. The U.S. Supreme Court could curtail the expansion of prediction markets, but even if that happens, gaming regulators are even more concerned about the prospect of online casino gambling, or I-gaming, said Jay McDaniel, executive director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission.

Some of these disruptive forces have already led to casino closures. In 2025, another casino in Tunica closed marking further contraction in what was once Mississippi’s fastest-growing market. The Tunica region continues to struggle with decreasing demand and increased competition from Arkansas and Tennessee.  – Michael Goldberg

Budget negotiations ‘fruitful’

The House and Senate have begun negotiating a $7-billion state budget.

The two chambers have passed the budget bills that originated in their chambers, and now they will start debating bills from the other chamber.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Briggs Hopson said he recently had good discussions with his House counterparts and complimented them on negotiations so far.

“I think we’re working in really good faith right now,” Hopson said. “I think the discussions have been fruitful.”

Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg, said he plans to take the House’s budget bills up by the end of this week or early next week. – Taylor Vance

Bill would expand industrial site grants

HB 1633 would expand eligible expenses under the state’s industrial site matching grant program to include utility improvements and buying easements.

Gov. Tate Reeves has said that making more industrial sites “project-ready” is one of his top economic development priorities. Last year, he announced over $28 million in projects under the site development grant program. The Madison County Mega Site received multiple grants through the program and eventually became the home to an Amazon data center.

The bill, authored by Rep. Trey Lamar, a Republican from Senatobia, passed the Senate Finance Committee last week and heads to the full Senate. – Katherine Lin

By the Numbers

$65.3 million

Amount that state revenue for February fell short of the estimate lawmakers are using to set a state budget. That’s a 13.3% shortfall for the month. But through February, seven months into the fiscal year, total revenue is $99.5 million above the estimate.

More Legislative Coverage

‘It’s incredibly disappointing.’ Teacher pay raise bills die from politics in Legislature

Bills that would have increased teacher salaries died with a deadline at the Capitol on Tuesday, despite pleas from educators and advocates who have said for years that a teacher’s salary in Mississippi is unsustainable.  Read the story.

DraftKings and Entergy spent over $100K on a Super Bowl weekend for two Mississippi politicians, staffers and spouses

Sports gambling giant DraftKings and energy company Entergy spent a combined $107,398 on a 2025 Super Bowl weekend for House Speaker Jason White, House Public Utilities Chairman Brent Powell, White’s staff and a couple of their spouses. Read the story.

Senate committee advances plan to enhance transparency of pharmacy benefit managers

Independent pharmacists have warned year after year that their businesses could be forced to close because of low reimbursements from pharmacy benefit managers. Read the story.

More than 150,000 Mississippi children could avoid having their child support gambled away if lawmakers agree on proposals moving through the Legislature.

Lawmakers in both chambers of the Mississippi Legislature have advanced bills to intercept gambling and sports betting winnings from parents delinquent on child support. Some lawmakers have pushed for years to pass similar bills.

Federal data shows Mississippi has the worst child support collection rate in the nation and one of the highest rates of child poverty. The state collected just 53% of the support payments judges ordered parents to make in 2024, compared to 65% nationally.

There are 153,964 children in Mississippi whose custodial parents are owed child support, totaling $1.7 billion, according to data obtained by Sen. David Blount, the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Gaming Committee. He got those numbers, which run through Jan. 31, from the Mississippi Department of Human Services.

HB 520, authored by Rep. Jay McKnight, a Republican from Diamondhead, specifically targets cash gambling winnings and slot machine annuities. If a person has outstanding child support payments, casinos would be required to deduct the child support owed from the person’s winnings. SB 2369, authored by Rep. Walter Michael, a Republican from Ridgeland, contains many of the same provisions. 

The bills would require the state Gaming Commission to collaborate with MDHS, the state’s welfare agency that oversees the child support program, to maintain a database of individuals with outstanding child support.

Blount said the only difference between the House and Senate bills is that the House proposal allows people to challenge the withholding of their winnings in court. The Senate bill would allow people who have their winnings withheld to challenge their status on the database maintained by MDHS.

“I prefer the Senate bill, I hope they pass the Senate bill, but we want to get this done for the more than $1.5 billion of child support that is owed to the children of the state of Mississippi,” Blount said.

The proposals would mostly impact slot machine winnings of more than $2,000, Blount said, because gaming licensees are required to report those winnings to the Internal Revenue Service.

Similar laws already exist in several other states, including Louisiana. In the first nine years, the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services intercepted an average of nearly $1 million a year from casinos, according to the National Child Support Engagement Association. 

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, 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.

Mississippi now has the unfortunate designation of having the fifth-highest grocery prices in the country, estimated at $291 per week. In addition, changes in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) could reportedly increase costs and red tape, jeopardizing food assistance for 1 in 8 Mississippians.

As a longtime children’s pastor in Jackson and founder and chief executive officer of My Health My Mississippi, I hear from a lot of people who are struggling to put healthy food on the table. Those in rural areas with food deserts are among the hardest hit because discount and corner stores often promote unhealthy options like snacks, processed meats or packaged “meals” that can appear less expensive.

I have a solution that can help my fellow Mississippians save money, prevent and reverse some chronic diseases and even lose excess pounds. As a Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine Food for Life instructor offering virtual and in-person classes, I teach participants how switching to a whole food, plant-based diet can trim their waists and their grocery bills. When they learn how to do this, many are amazed. 

 I show people how to buy inexpensive, healthy, plant-based staples in bulk – even at dollar and discount stores – and turn them into a variety of tasty meals. 

For example, a large bag of generic oats can be used for a hot breakfast entrée that can be topped with canned fruit packed in juice, but it does triple duty when you also use it for the binder in a delicious bean burger, and as the base for healthy oatmeal cookies.

Moving onto dinner entrees, I often make an easy, gut-friendly black bean chili full of salt-free canned beans and tomatoes. It can be served as is with crackers one day, over brown rice with canned corn another and as tacos in corn tortillas a third time. It’s the same black bean chili, but its versatility allows leftovers to taste like brand-new meals. 

But the benefits don’t stop there.

Obesity and overweight have become chronic health problems in the United States. Data shows in Mississippi, some 40% of adults are obese. New research published in JAMA estimates that by 2035, nearly 47% of the U.S. population will also be in that category. 

Science supports that eating a whole food, plant-based diet can help people shed weight and reverse or prevent many diseases. 

Once they learn a few tips and tricks, my Food for Life students overwhelmingly find that switching to a whole food, plant-based diet is a simpler way of eating that’s better for their health and their wallet. 

And taste does not have to be sacrificed. 

Here in the South, I know how seriously people take their macaroni and cheese. A skeptical gentleman recently attended one of my live cooking classes in Jackson. I was thrilled when he tried my stove-top mac and “cheese” and deemed it the best he’d had in his life.

My recipe is made with russet potatoes, carrots, cashews and nutritional yeast. It costs less than $1.50 per serving and I contend it stands up to any artery-clogging, dairy-based macaroni and cheese. 

Charles Smith, a Food for Life instructor based in Jackson, retired from the insurance industry after 45 years and has served with his wife, Gail, as children’s pastors at New Horizon Church International for more than 35 years. He is the author of “7 Steps to Raising Amazing Children” and the founder of My Health My Mississippi, LLC. Inspired by his mother’s passing at age 58 due to obesity-related health issues, Charles committed to better nutrition. Over 20 years ago, during a month-long church fast without meat, he experienced renewed energy and embraced a plant-based lifestyle. Today, he is dedicated to educating and empowering others to live healthier, plant-based lives.

LUMBERTON — The Lumberton Main Street Association is forming a grant committee to pursue new funding for downtown businesses, beginning with a $10,000 facade grant as its first test case. 

The Mississippi Power Foundation awarded the funding to the association, which will distribute up to $2,000 per qualifying business in early April. Applications close April 9 and are open to Main Street Association members seeking to improve storefront exteriors. 

Downtown Lumberton has struggled with vacant storefronts and limited retail options in recent years. Association leaders say visible improvements are one way to shift that trajectory. 

John Maroney, executive director of the association, said the facade grant is designed to build momentum and establish a track record for future funding. 

“It is all about just kind of updating the facades of the front of buildings,” he said. “Then to create some pride in the building.” 

Maroney said the association considers five applications a successful first round. Strong participation would signal readiness for larger economic development grants. If interest is low, it could make securing additional funding more difficult. 

Unlike many facade programs, the grant does not require business owners to match the funds, lowering the barrier for participation and allowing the association to quickly gauge community buy-in. 

Alan Triplett, owner of Lumberton Cafe, is among the first applicants. If approved, he plans to use the funds for new signage and a fresh paint job. 

“You don’t have to match; you get up to $2,000 to improve your business. Who’s going to give you that money? It’s hard to get,” he said. 

Triplett and his wife moved to Lumberton in 2022 after nearly two decades running Finest Grind Coffee House in Ocean Springs. What began as retirement became an investment in a town he believes is gaining momentum. 

“As a small town, it takes a community to support the business, and then businesses have to support the community as well,” he said. 

Maroney said long-term success would mean more than fresh paint. He hopes improvements lead to increased customer traffic, stronger sales and a downtown that attracts additional businesses. 

“I want Lumberton to be a place where people, not this rundown city per se, but they see vision. They see what Lumberton can be,” he said.

The grant committee will continue identifying funding opportunities as part of a broader initiative to bring sustained economic development to the city. Applications for the facade grant should be sent to

Greenwood Leflore Hospital signed a letter of intent to discuss the possibility of the University of Mississippi Medical Center taking over its services, according to state and local officials and an excerpted document obtained by Mississippi Today. 

The public hospital in Greenwood has faced financial struggles for years and warned as recently as December that it was on the brink of closure because of debt owed to the Mississippi Division of Medicaid.

In a Friday filing in Hinds Chancery Court, Gary Marchand, the hospital’s former interim CEO who now serves as a consultant for the Greenwood Leflore Hospital’s board, said the hospital’s financial condition has not improved since December. He said if the Division of Medicaid resumes collecting the debt — which is scheduled this month — the hospital will likely be forced to close. 

“GLH is also exploring options to lease, sell or otherwise transfer the hospital to a larger healthcare system, which would allow GLH to continue to provide services to the people in its service area,” Marchand wrote. 

To allow for a possible transition, state lawmakers hurried Senate Bill 3230 through the legislative process this week to allow the public hospital to file for bankruptcy. The bill cleared both chambers Friday and will go to the governor’s desk in coming days. 

Sen. Rita Parks, a Republican from Corinth and chair of the Local and Private Committee, said Wednesday that lawmakers were rapidly moving the bill through the statehouse because it is necessary for Greenwood Leflore Hospital to file for bankruptcy so another entity can take it over. 

“We do have another hospital that is waiting at the door to come in,” said Parks, who did not name the hospital during the committee meeting or an interview with Mississippi Today. 

Christine Hemphill, a spokesperson for Greenwood Leflore Hospital, declined to comment. UMMC spokesperson Patrice Guilfoyle declined to answer questions about how a potential acquisition of Greenwood Leflore Hospital might affect services or its financial outlook.

An excerpted version of the Feb. 11 letter of intent, which is on UMMC stationery, outlines the terms for discussing a possible transaction in which Greenwood Leflore Hospital would contribute all land, facilities, assets and operations to UMMC, the state’s only academic medical center, or its affiliate. The donation would include clinics, ancillary facilities and physician practices, and it would give UMMC full authority and control over the hospital.

Representatives for the City of Greenwood and Leflore County, the joint owners of the hospital, and the hospital’s board signed the letter between Feb. 17 and Feb. 23, agreeing to the terms for negotiating the transaction.

“The purpose of this arrangement is to ensure financially viable healthcare services are available to the community served by GLH,” said the letter, signed by Dr. Alan Jones, UMMC’s associate vice chancellor for health affairs.

The letter of intent does not commit the Greenwood hospital to any agreement, but merely opens discussions into the matter with UMMC, said Leflore County Supervisor Anjuan Brown. He added that he is open to any arrangement — a sale, lease or continued county ownership — that would ensure medical care remains available in Leflore County. 

“My ultimate goal is to sustain, and have some type of medical care for our people in our city and our county,” Brown said. “I think UMMC is a great institution that could help our community.”

Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee Chair Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory, said he has been involved in discussions with UMMC about the future of Greenwood Leflore Hospital. He emphasized that he does not wish to impose a solution for the hospital upon the Greenwood area, but keeping the hospital in Greenwood open is a matter of “statewide interest.”

He said in discussions with UMMC he felt optimistic the medical center taking over the hospital could lead to more services available to the Greenwood area, though it may not return to its previous size. 

The hospital suspended the use of 173 beds in 2023 to control costs, according to a federal audit. 

Leflore County Board of Supervisors President Eric Mitchell confirmed that the board signed the letter of intent, but declined to comment further. 

Greenwood Mayor Kenderick Cox and City Council President Ronnie Stevenson declined to comment to Mississippi Today.

It is not the first time the hospital has discussed a potential agreement with the state’s largest public hospital system. UMMC and Greenwood Leflore Hospital entered into discussions about a possible partnership in the summer of 2022, but negotiations fell apart without a deal. 

The failed agreement with UMMC was one of many efforts the hospital made in recent years to shore up its bottom line. Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the hospital was losing up to $9 million a year, Marchand previously told Mississippi Today. To keep its doors open, the hospital shut down departments and clinics, went up for lease multiple times, drew down millions of dollars in credit, applied for grants from the state Legislature and pursued a more lucrative hospital designation.

The hospital faced yet another challenge in 2025 when it was forced to begin repaying funds to the Division of Medicaid that were disbursed as a part of a state program designed to support struggling hospitals. The program makes payments to hospitals based on previous years’ data and routinely reconciles payments to hospitals’ actual patient volumes. The high payments to Greenwood Leflore Hospital did not account for reduced patient volumes after the hospital closed its labor and delivery and intensive care units in 2022.

The repayments were paused until March to give the hospital time to secure a bond, an agreement reached at a December court hearing.

On Friday, Greenwood Leflore filed a supplemental affidavit to the hospital’s motion to stay recoupments. In the filing, Marchand wrote that Greenwood Leflore Hospital has in good faith exhausted all reasonable efforts to obtain a bond, including working with 10 surety companies through two agents and negotiating directly with the Division of Medicaid. Surety companies are specialized financial institutions that issue bonds to guarantee that a business will fulfill contractual obligations to another party.

The hospital needs four to six months to complete negotiations pertaining to the lease, sale or transfer of the hospital, and for the repayments to be stayed, Marchand said.

If the recoupments resume as scheduled for March, “the likelihood of successfully completing these negotiations will be irreparably harmed,” he said, pointing to the value of staff remaining at the facility and the ongoing maintenance of property and equipment. 

State lawmakers have crafted legislation to help the struggling hospital during this year’s legislative session, but many of the measures proposed to help Greenwood Leflore Hospital have died. 

On March 3, a bill died that would have required the Division of Medicaid to give providers 12 months to return funds if immediate repayment would cause financial hardship. The Senate Medicaid and Accountability, Efficiency, Transparency committees opted not to bring the measure up for consideration. A Senate bill with similar provisions was passed out of committee but died on the calendar Feb. 12. 

Lawmakers also advanced a separate proposal that would have allocated funds to parties seeking to buy or lease the hospital, but it died Feb. 12 without being taken up on the floor. The bill, authored by House Public Health and Human Services Chairman Sam Creekmore, would have authorized the city of Greenwood and Leflore County to sell or lease the hospital within the next year. It also would have appropriated $10 million to a potential new owner, provided they continue to operate the emergency room and swing-bed program.

Creekmore, a Republican from New Albany, said during a Feb. 3 House Public Health and Human Services committee meeting that he and Bryan met with the hospital board twice in recent months.

“It was evident they did not want to be in the hospital business anymore,” Creekmore said. “They want to sell or lease it.” 

According to the letter of intent signed by UMMC and Greenwood Leflore Hospital, the parties will not engage in other proposals of sale, transfer or merger of Greenwood Leflore Hospital for 180 days after the execution of the letter of intent. The hospitals can terminate their agreement to negotiate if they both agree or with 30 days prior written notice. 

After both legislative chambers killed the other’s teacher pay raise proposals this week, the House on Friday unanimously unveiled a new teacher pay bill, sharply criticizing the Senate in the process.

House leadership introduced the plan in a Senate education bill that originally dealt with school counselors. The latest House proposal would give all teachers a $5,000 pay raise, with special education teachers getting an additional $3,000. It would also raise assistant teacher pay by $3,000, school attendance officers‘ pay by $5,000 and school occupational therapists’ and licensed counselors’ pay by $6,000. 

“I feel like they need one more bite at the apple,” House Education Chairman Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville, said of the Senate. “And we’re going to give it to them.”

The bill also would cap superintendents’ salaries, correct the pay gap issue that educators face over the winter holidays, allow retirees to return to the classroom while drawing retirement benefits, include changes to the Public Employees’ Retirement System and establish an improvement program for districts rated “D” or “F.”

The raises would run the state $280 million a year, Roberson said, and would bump up the state allocation for funding each student from $6,961 to $7,482.

“Educators have spoken,” House Speaker Jason White said at a press conference Friday. “We have listened.”

The measure now heads back across the Capitol where senators could either agree with the new House plan, seek final negotiations between the two chambers or kill the plan altogether. 

Education policy issues have headlined the legislative session that started in January, and both the House and the Senate said raising teacher pay is a top priority. But the chambers haven’t seemed able to reach a compromise or work in tandem over the past two months on education issues — instead blaming each other for failed policies. 

The politics reached an inflection point when most education measures died on Tuesday, the deadline for committees to pass bills originating in the opposite chamber, including the House’s $5,000 proposal and the Senate’s $2,000 proposal.

The relationships have further devolved as school choice talks disintegrated. Earlier in the session, Senate leaders killed House Bill 2, White’s lengthy school choice package.

Both White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, through letters and press conferences, have pointed the finger at each other for why negotiations between the two have broken down.

“We are glad the House is coming back to the table for real negotiations on legislation to support our teachers,” Hosemann said in a statement. “This follows the House’s decision just over 48 hours ago to kill the Senate’s separate, fiscally responsible bills.”

Hosemann also wrote a letter this week to leaders of statewide education organizations — including Nancy Loome, executive director of public school advocacy organization The Parents’ Campaign —  expressing his disappointment that numerous education bills have died and taking issue with the omnibus policy approach the House has favored.

“It has been the position of the Mississippi Senate that matters of this magnitude deserve consideration as separate, standalone legislation,” he wrote.

He said that the Senate would continue to advocate for a teacher pay raise through an appropriations bill. However, that would be a one-time bonus and short-term solution because it wouldn’t change the statewide teacher pay scale.

White referred to Hosemann’s correspondence as “love letters” at his Friday press conference, as representatives lining the second-floor Capitol steps tittered. 

The political games have frustrated educators and advocates who say it’s unsustainable to live in Mississippi on a teacher’s salary. 

“It’s incredibly disappointing,” Jason Reid told Mississippi Today after both bills died this week.

Reid, a teacher in DeSoto County, drives a school bus before and after work to supplement his income. 

“Two months ago, it seemed both chambers were very committed to addressing the regional and national teacher pay raise gaps and teacher shortage,” he said. “Now, Mississippi teachers will fall even further behind their peers.”

Mississippi teachers are, on average, the lowest paid in the country at $53,704. Starting teachers make a little over $42,000. Educators say the low pay is driving the teacher shortage, which the Mississippi Department of Education puts at nearly 4,000 vacancies statewide. 

“I’m sorry for the politics that get into it, but the math is the math is the math,” White said. “Those teachers … find one this weekend and ask them, ‘Would you rather have $5,000 or would you rather have ($2,000)?’ It’s fairly simple.”

Legislators passed the last meaningful teacher pay raise in 2022, which educators told Mississippi Today was quickly rendered null by rising insurance premiums and inflation. Teachers say they’ve had to take second jobs and make hard financial decisions to live within their means in the years since.

During the 2022 teacher pay raise debate, legislators also squabbled and blamed one another for not negotiating in good faith on finding a compromise. That year, the House killed a Senate pay raise plan, and the Senate nearly killed the House’s proposal. 

But Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar called a late-night Education Committee meeting to advance the House proposal forward to meet a legislative deadline. During that meeting in 2022, DeBar thanked his Senate colleagues for putting their personalities aside and being “the adults in the room.” 

Four years later, legislative fighting has intensified, and both chambers appear willing to use parliamentary tools to put political pressure on each other, while teachers watch and wait.

“They’re continuing to play games with teachers,” said Sen. Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory and one of the longest serving lawmakers in the Legislature. “It’s the most frustrating thing. What’s going on down here is not normal.”