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The families of four men who died or allegedly were beaten in encounters with Mississippi law enforcement gathered outside the state attorney general’s office Thursday to urge officials to stop denying them access to video capturing the incidents, years after they happened.

The families said officials have blocked them for up to three years from viewing video footage and other key police records that could shed light on what happened, leaving them with unanswered questions. Those cases are:

• Dexter Wade, 37, who was struck and killed by an off-duty officer driving a Jackson Police Department SUV in March 2023. His death garnered national attention. The department buried the father of two in an unmarked grave and did not notify his family until five months after he was killed.
• Jason Simmons, an armed 40-year-old from Saucier who was shot and killed in June by deputies with the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department after they arrived to pick him up for a court-ordered mental health evaluation, according to police. Simmons’ family said he struggled with substance abuse and mental health issues.
• Jayden Bridges, 22, of Pinola, who died in a car chase with a Mississippi Highway Patrol trooper in Copiah County last year after police suspected he was the subject of reports of drag racing in the area, according to the sheriff’s office.
• Raju Brandon Neapollioun, a Hattiesburg man who is now disabled from traumatic brain injuries after Deputy Sheriff Kelby Lewis allegedly beat him while he was an inmate at the Forrest County Adult Detention Center in 2023, according to a dismissed civil suit that Neapollioun filed against Lewis and the sheriff’s office.

As members of the public, the families have the right to request access to the information under state law, which broadly allows public records to be “available for inspection by any person,” with limited exceptions. But Bobby DiCello, the families’ civil-rights attorney, said state and local officials have continuously denied their requests, citing ongoing investigations into the incidents.

“If the video shows things that are bad, things that are inhuman, things that are wrong, things that are wicked, let it into the light,” DiCello said. “Let it be known.”

Like many states, Mississippi allows law enforcement to reject requests for information that may “harm” an investigation into illegal or potentially illegal activity, including officer misconduct. Unlike a handful of jurisdictions, such as Minnesota, Mississippi does not make exceptions for video of the incident, including for the victim’s relatives.

“Too often, incidents like these are hidden behind closed doors. Families like us, standing here today, are left searching for answers,” said Latarran Young-Neapollioun, Raju Neapollioun’s wife. “Seeing these many families here today only further verifies that Mississippi is still burning.”

Many questions, few answers

Before deputies shot and killed Simmons at his parents’ home, his cousin Niecee Rogers said the family always saw themselves as “pro law enforcement.” That all changed one evening last June, when his mother, Cynthia Simmons, called the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department for help while her armed son struggled during a mental-health episode.

“Her call for the sheriff’s office should not have been the death sentence for Jason,” Rogers said.

When deputies arrived, Simmons’ parents said their son believed the officers were trying to kill him. The sheriff’s office said Simmons opened fire and barricaded himself in a shed on the property, resulting in a four-hour standoff with the SWAT team.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said around 10 p.m., Simmons displayed a firearm, sparking an exchange of gunfire between him and the officers that left him dead. Cynthia Simmons said her son was shot eight times: Six bullets went into his back, and two into his arms.

Eleven months later, his family said they still haven’t been able to access video of the incident showing why deputies shot and killed Simmons. The quest for transparency brought them from Harrison County to Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office in downtown Jackson Thursday, where they called for the sheriff and attorney general to release footage of the shooting.

DiCello said the four families’ intentions weren’t to sue law enforcement, but to seek closure by fully understanding what happened to their loved ones through the information that police have. 

Over the last year, Jayden Bridges’ family has sought access to police dashboard camera footage in the hopes of getting answers to the questions that have lingered in his death in a car chase with a state trooper, beyond officers’ accounts.

The Copiah County Sheriff’s Department said his death occurred after state troopers noticed Bridges, driving a black Dodge Charger, and another car preparing to start a race after receiving reports of drag racing in the area.

According to police, a trooper pursued Bridges with his lights and siren while Bridges drove off at a high speed. Bridges and the trooper then lost control of their vehicles, and Bridges’ car hit a tree. He was later pronounced dead while the trooper had injuries that were not life-threatening.

Bridges’ relative, Junkevious Mack, denied officers’ allegations that Bridges was planning to race his car and that he crashed simply after losing control of his vehicle. Instead, Mack said the trooper maneuvered his vehicle to stop Bridges, causing the Charger to veer off the road into a tree.

Bridges’ family has unsuccessfully requested access to footage from the trooper’s dash camera documenting the chase. 

Families call for reform of public records law

When officers shoot civilians, the incident sparks an examination by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation under state law. The bureau reviews police records capturing the incident and shares findings with the attorney general’s office, which is responsible for prosecuting the shootings.

From there, the attorney general presents the findings to a grand jury, which then decides whether to issue an indictment for criminal charges.

The process can take years. Throughout it, state law allows officials to block the public from accessing information if the release might “harm the investigation” or “jeopardize” the attorney general’s ability to prosecute the case. This can include information ranging from police video to the names of the officers who shot the victim.

MBI has previously said its policy is to decline to release the names of officers involved in a shooting unless a grand jury decides to charge them. 

If the officers are never indicted, the information may remain hidden.

Joe Fouche, a former police chief who is now working to connect the families with mental-health support as they grieve, told Mississippi Today that during his time working in law enforcement, he saw officers attempt to keep the public from accessing video and other records documenting police shootings.

He joined the families in calling for Mississippi to reform state law to allow the relatives of a victim of force by law enforcement to view video footage of the incident.

“You think we’re going to use it to harm you,” DiCello said of state and local officials. “I promise you, if your biggest fear is what some of these families would do with that information, then you’ve got a bigger problem than them.”

Madeline Nguyen is a Roy Howard Fellow at Mississippi Today.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that people in all states can continue to access a key abortion medication through the mail. The ruling lasts indefinitely while an anti-abortion lawsuit continues. 

This is the latest development in a case Louisiana filed last year against the Food and Drug Administration, claiming that the availability of mifepristone via telehealth undermines that state’s abortion ban.

After the Dobbs decision overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022, 13 states enforced total abortion bans. Paradoxically, abortions across the U.S. increased since then, and states have sought other ways to mitigate the number of abortions taking place. 

Through a series of rulings over the past two weeks, access to mifepristone has been restricted and expanded several times: 

• On May 1, a lower federal court granted Louisiana’s request and rolled back telemedicine access to mifepristone. 
• On May 4, the Supreme Court put that ruling on hold for one week, through an “administrative stay,” allowing telemedicine prescriptions of mifepristone to continue. 
• On Monday, the Supreme Court temporarily extended full access to mifepristone through Thursday. 
• On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that full access to the drug would continue for the duration of the lawsuit. 

While there is no way to know how the case will turn out, it’s meaningful that the nation’s highest court made a substantive decision, said Mary Ziegler, a law professor and abortion historian at the University of California Davis. In maintaining access to the medication, the court sided with the drug’s manufacturers, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, which appealed the ruling that would require patients to see a doctor in person to receive mifepristone. 

“It means the court to some extent must think that Danco et al have a good argument,” Ziegler said. “But we have absolutely no idea why, because they didn’t say anything.”

The consequences of the case will be felt by Mississippians “in a really, really big way,” Ziegler said. In 2023, two-thirds of abortions in the U.S. were medication abortions.

Medication accounts for 100% of abortions in Mississippi, which has a near-total abortion ban, Ziegler said. Each month, anywhere from 200 to more than 600 Mississippians use these drugs to terminate a pregnancy, according to research published by KFF.

For now, the high court’s decision allows providers and patients to resume the status quo — an “urgently needed relief after weeks of disruption,” Kelly Baden, vice president for public policy at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research and policy organization, said in a press release. “But we are not fully celebrating yet, since this baseless litigation will continue in lower courts and other threats to mifepristone and abortion access overall loom large.”  

Attorneys for the state of Mississippi presented arguments on Thursday to dismiss a federal lawsuit accusing it of discriminating against the city of Jackson by withholding $36 million in pandemic recovery funds meant for infrastructure improvements.

On behalf of two Jackson residents and the city’s NAACP chapter, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed the complaint last summer. The lawsuit, which is asking the court to order the release of the funds to the city, focuses on extra barriers state lawmakers enacted for Jackson to access matching funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.

The SPLC is accusing the state, through three different state agencies in their official capacity, of racially discriminating against Jackson by requiring the majority Black city to submit a plan to receive matching funds through the state’s Municipality & County Water Infrastructure grant program, which would have gone to help repair the city’s struggling water system. The state Legislature, which created the MCWI program in 2022, didn’t include such a requirement for any other city.

U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate, who is overseeing the federal receivership of Jackson’s water and sewer systems, is also presiding in this case. The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, which administered the MCWI grants, the State Treasury of Mississippi, and the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration are listed as defendants in the case.

A lawyer from the state attorney general’s office argued on Thursday that injuries included in the lawsuit are a result of the broader Jackson water crisis, not the specific lack of ARPA funds.

The plaintiffs’ “beef” is with the city of Jackson or federal receiver JXN Water, not MDEQ director Chris Wells or State Treasurer David McRae, attorney Lisa Reppeto argued to Wingate.

Moreover, ordering the state to now release the funds to the city would violate federal deadlines around obligating ARPA funds, she added. The law requires funds to be committed by the end of 2024 and spent by the end of 2026.

Jackson was awarded $36 million in matching funds in November 2022, SPLC attorney Crystal McElrath said. Shortly after, Wingate appointed JXN Water manager Ted Henifin to run the city’s water system, leaving little time for Jackson officials to access those funds, McElrath said.

When asked whether the city ever did submit a plan, McElrath pointed to previous spending plans published by Jackson officials, including a 2021 letter then-Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba sent to state leaders as well as the city’s 2012 infrastructure master plan. Reppeto countered that such plans couldn’t apply to MCWI requirements because they predated ARPA spending.

McElrath said the state has only sent $4 million of the matching funds to JXN Water, leaving $32 million that Mississippi officials are still holding onto.

Wingate closed Thursday’s hearing by saying he would meet with the parties next Monday morning before deciding whether to dismiss the case or to continue with the state’s other arguments for dismissal.

Two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, senators in that state passed a plan Thursday that would eliminate a majority-Black district while giving Republicans a chance to win an additional seat in this year’s midterm elections.

The new U.S. House districts, which still need House approval, would be used for primary elections poised to be postponed from Saturday until November.

The high court’s ruling has led to a flurry of redistricting efforts in Southern states as Republicans seek to capitalize on a weakened federal Voting Rights Act. While most of those efforts are voluntary, Louisiana must redraw its U.S. House map in response to the ruling that it had illegally used race to gerrymander a majority-Black district.

The debate over the shape of Louisiana’s new districts is playing out as South Carolina’s governor ramps up pressure on lawmakers to also redistrict ahead of the midterms. President Donald Trump has encouraged numerous Republican-led states to redraw House voting districts to their advantage in a bid to hold on to control of the closely divided chamber in November.

READ MORE: Lt. Gov. Hosemann forms committee to study Mississippi redistricting

Republicans think they could win as many as 15 additional House seats in seven states that already have adopted new voting districts. Democrats think they could gain up to six seats from two other states because of new House districts. But there’s no guarantee those seats will turn out as expected. Litigation is continuing in some states, and voters will have the ultimate say on who wins.

Louisiana map erases snaking district

Legislation in Louisiana seeks to address the Supreme Court ruling by scrapping a district that snakes over 200 miles northwest from the capital, Baton Rouge, to Shreveport, creating a voting bloc with a majority of Black residents. Democratic U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields represents the current 6th District.

Under the new plan, that district would instead be clustered around predominantly white communities in the Baton Rouge area and southern Louisiana.

The new plan keeps a New Orleans-based, majority-Black district represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Troy Carter while also adding a portion of Baton Rouge to it.

Fields, a Baton Rouge resident, said he won’t decide whether to seek reelection until the maps are finalized. But he said he won’t challenge Carter in a primary.

The newly proposed House map is similar to one used in 2022 that resulted in five Republicans and one Democrat winning election. Republican state Sen. Jay Morris said the new map packs Democrats into the 2nd District held by Carter to allow Republicans to prevail elsewhere.

“These maps are drawn to maximize Republican advantage for the incumbent Republicans that we have in Congress,” Morris said.

Democratic state Sen. Sam Jenkins suggested Republicans are “using partisanship as cover for discriminatory practices against a group of people, particularly Black voters and Democrats.”

“If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck,” Jenkins said.

“It’s not quacking,” Morris said.

“It’s quacking pretty loud, it’s quacking all over the state,” Jenkins replied.

Republican senators defeated an alternative from Democrats that would have kept two Democratic-leaning districts. Republicans opted not to pursue a 6-0 Republican map because it was infeasible, said Louisiana Senate President Cameron Henry, a Republican.

A federal judge struck down Louisiana’s 2022 map for violating the Voting Rights Act. Then in 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Alabama had to create its own second largely Black congressional district. In light of the Alabama ruling, the Louisiana Legislature passed a revised map, creating a second majority-Black district that was used in the 2024 elections. That map also was challenged, leading to an April 29 Supreme Court ruling that Louisiana’s districts relied too heavily on race.

Louisiana House primary could shift to November

After the Supreme Court ruling, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry postponed Louisiana’s U.S. House primaries, which were scheduled for Saturday.

A bill given final approval Wednesday by the Legislature would shift the election to an open primary on Nov. 3. All U.S. House candidates, regardless of their party affiliation, would be on the ballot for voters in their district. If no one wins a majority outright, the top two vote-getters would enter a run-off on Dec. 12.

A new qualifying period for House candidates would run from Aug. 5-7.

The system is similar to how Louisiana’s congressional elections previously occurred. Landry pushed the Legislature to end the state’s unique jungle primary system in 2024. Closed party primaries went into effect this year, and more than 250,000 votes already had been cast, according to the Louisiana secretary of state. The canceled congressional votes would be shielded from public records law.

Rep. Beau Beaullieu, the bill’s Republican sponsor, said that with congressional redistricting, there would not be sufficient time for closed primaries and a primary run-off before the Nov. 3 general election.

A closed primary remains in place for Louisiana’s U.S. Senate race, which has not been suspended and pits incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy against Trump-backed challenger U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow.

South Carolina likely to work overtime on redistricting

Leaders in the South Carolina House said they expect to take up a congressional redistricting bill Friday after Republican Gov. Henry McMaster calls them into special session. The regular legislative session is supposed to end Thursday, but McMaster’s call would extend it.

It could be next week before the House can finish the redistricting bill, which would also move congressional primaries to August, Republican House Majority Leader Davey Hiott said. All primaries are currently scheduled for June 9. Early voting begins May 26, and that’s likely the deadline to finish redistricting, he said.

The redistricting work “will be long. It will be boring. It will be confrontational,” Hiott told reporters.

If the proposal passes the House, it then heads to a more skeptical Senate, where Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Luke Rankin has said he will “demand the process” without elaborating. During the last regular redistricting at the start of the decade, Rankin’s committee held a month of meetings across the state and encouraged the public to submit its own maps.

Only one of South Carolina’s seven U.S. House seats currently is held by a Democrat — longtime Rep. Jim Clyburn. Some Republicans worry it is impossible to guarantee seven GOP districts in a state where the Democratic presidential candidate has gotten more than 40% of the vote every election this century. There are also concerns about holding two statewide elections in a little over two months. South Carolina’s elections leader said it may require employees to work 24 hours a day.

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Associated Press journalists Jack Brook reported from Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Jeffrey Collins from Columbia, South Carolina; and David A. Lieb from Jefferson City, Missouri.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann on Thursday announced he is forming a select committee for state senators to study redistricting over the summer and fall. 

Hosemann, in a news release, said Senate Pro Tempore Dean Kirby, a Republican from Pearl, will lead the committee, and he expects it to gather information on potentially redistricting congressional,  state legislative and state Supreme Court districts in light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court’s Callais decision. 

“I look forward to reviewing the committee’s recommendations,” Hosemann said. 

READ MORE: Speaker Jason White says House will consider redistricting during 2027 legislative session

Other senators who will serve on the committee are Republicans Briggs Hopson of Vicksburg, Josh Harkins of Flowood, Brice Wiggins of Pascagoula, Jeremy England of Vancleave, Lane Taylor of Philadelphia, Mike Thompson of Gulfport, Daniel Sparks of Belmont, and Democrats Derrick Simmons of Greenville and Angela Turner Ford of West Point. 

Hosemann’s decision follows House Speaker Jason White’s recent announcement that he has created a select committee to study redistricting ahead of the 2027 legislative session. 

Gov. Tate Reeves had previously called for lawmakers to return to Jackson in a special session next week to redraw state Supreme Court districts, but he cancelled the session. Some Republicans are calling for lawmakers to redraw congressional districts in a way that makes it harder for longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson to win reelection.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Republican senators in Louisiana advanced a plan Wednesday to eliminate one of two majority-Black congressional seats before the November midterm elections while Georgia’s governor announced he will call lawmakers back to work to redraw legislative voting districts for the 2028 elections.

The developments showed the far-reaching ripples of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down Louisiana’s congressional map as an illegal racial gerrymander, weakening the protections of the federal Voting Rights Act. The decision has prompted Republican-led states to try to dismantle districts with large minority populations that have elected Democrats.

Since the court’s ruling, Tennessee and Alabama already have acted to implement different House maps that could help Republicans win an additional seat in the November elections, where control of the closely divided chamber is at stake. A similar effort fizzled Tuesday in the South Carolina Senate but may not be over.

READ MORE: Gov. Reeves calls off Mississippi’s special session on judicial redistricting

READ MORE: Trump pushes Mississippi to redraw congressional districts after Supreme Court ruling. But legal and political hurdles loom

The redistricting efforts to undo minority districts are the latest in a 10-month-long national redistricting battle that already has involved about one-third of the states. It gained steam when President Donald Trump urged Texas Republicans last year to redraw House districts in an attempt to win more seats in the midterm elections. Democrats in California responded with their own new districts. Numerous Republican states have redistricted since then.

Republicans think they could gain as many as 15 seats so far from new House maps in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama. Democrats, meanwhile, think they could gain six seats from new maps in California and Utah. The Virginia Supreme Court last week struck down a redistricting effort that could have yielded four more winnable seats for Democrats.

Georgia is the first to target the 2028 elections

Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called a special legislative session on redistricting to begin June 17, the day after runoffs will settle party nominees for the November elections. Kemp has said he doesn’t want to change Georgia’s voting districts for this year’s elections, because some ballots already have been cast for Tuesday’s first round of primaries.

The governor’s proclamation is the first to focus on the 2028 elections since the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Louisiana case. Other states could follow, including Democratic states such as New York that were already looking at ways to enact new legislative districts by the next presidential election.

By acting now, Georgia Republicans could guard against the possibility that a Democrat could win the governor’s race in November and veto new voting districts if the legislature had waited to act until its regular session next year.

Five of Georgia’s 14 U.S. House members are Black Democrats. The easiest target for Republicans could be U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop’s district in southwest Georgia. Republicans could also try to pick off one or more of the four Democrats who represent parts of the Atlanta area, but spreading out too many Democrats could make more Republican districts competitive.

Kemp’s proclamation allows new boundaries not only for U.S. House districts but also for the state Senate and state House. A court previously ordered some state House and Senate districts be redrawn to help Black voters elect more candidates, voiding a map the GOP-controlled legislature drew after the 2020 Census. Republicans could choose to revert to that map or take a more aggressive path, especially in the 180-member House, where the GOP’s majority has shrunk over time to 99 seats.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock said Wednesday he would “fight this with everything I have.”

“There is an extreme movement in this country that will stop at nothing to hold on to power, even if it means stripping representation away from millions,” Warnock wrote in an online post.

Louisiana map resembles 2022 districts

The Louisiana Senate could vote Thursday on the new House map advanced by a redistricting committee.

The plan keeps a New Orleans-based, majority-Black district represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Troy Carter while also including a portion of Baton Rouge. It significantly reshapes the 6th District, represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields, which currently snakes northwest from Baton Rouge to Shreveport to create a second majority-Black district. That district would instead be clustered around predominantly white communities in southern Louisiana around Baton Rouge.

Fields, a Baton Rouge resident, said he won’t decide whether to seek reelection until the maps are finalized. But he said won’t challenge Carter in a primary.

“I’ve said from day one, I have no interest in running against Troy Carter. Period,” Fields told The Associated Press. “The real issue is not whether I serve another second in Congress. The real issue is whether or not a person like me will have the opportunity to serve in Congress.”

State Sen. Jay Morris, a Republican who sponsored the revised map, said the new districts are very similar to those used in 2022 that resulted in five Republicans and one Democrat winning election.

A federal judge struck down the 2022 map for violating the Voting Rights Act. Then in 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Alabama had to create its own second largely Black congressional district.

In light of the Alabama ruling, the Louisiana Legislature passed a revised map, creating a second majority-Black district that was used in the 2024 elections. That map also was challenged, leading to last month’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Louisiana’s districts relied too heavily on race. The Supreme Court followed with a decision also overturning a judicial order mandating that Alabama use a House map with two largely Black congressional districts.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry postponed Louisiana’s U.S. House primaries, scheduled for Saturday, until either July 15 or a date to be determined by the Legislature to allow time for new districts to be put in place.

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Associated Press journalists Jeff Amy reported from Atlanta and David A. Lieb from Jefferson City, Missouri.

The Pearl River map turtle, named for the intricate, map-like details on its blue and yellow skin, earned Endangered Species Act protection in 2024 after 16 years of efforts to protect the species from habitat loss, poaching and controversial flood control projects. Environmental groups also filed multiple lawsuits with hopes of reversing the turtle’s decline.

The proposed plan estimates it will take about 60 years and $4.5 million to achieve recovery goals. Top priorities include funding research and monitoring programs, as well as breeding turtles in captivity, should research point toward this as a need, and releasing them into the wild. Preserving and restoring river habitat and water quality on private and public property is also part of the plan.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that fewer than 22,000 Pearl River map turtles remain in the wild, though this number might include similar looking species such as the Pascagoula and Barbour’s map turtles.

Pearl River map turtles are slow to reproduce, with females taking up to 10 years to become mature enough to lay eggs. The turtles are believed to have a life span of 30 years, though more research is needed to be certain.  

The native mussels Pearl River map turtles rely on for their food supply have dwindled, but the species has adapted well by eating invasive clams, according to the UFWS draft recovery plan. But the turtles aren’t reproducing fast enough to keep up with other environmental changes such as sea level rise, river dams and increasingly volatile flood and drought conditions in the Pearl River basin. 

In order for the species to no longer be considered federally threatened, the Fish and Wildlife Service would need to identify turtles of all ages throughout its population range, reproducing on their own in the wild, over the next 30 years. Turtle populations would need to be stable or expanding in at least eight sites throughout the Pearl River and its tributaries — a total of 795.1 river miles.  

There would need to be at least one population site each on the Strong River in south-central Mississippi; the Bogue Chitto River, which spans from southwest Mississippi into Washington Parish in Louisiana; and the Yockanookany River in central Mississippi. At least another five population sites would need to be directly on the Pearl River. 

The turtles’ range, in order for the plan to be considered successful, would also need to be at least about what it was at the time of listing as a federally threatened species. Current habitat threats would need to be addressed and managed to a degree that the turtle population has what it needs to eat, breed and live.  

If all of these goals were met, the turtle could then be removed from the federal threatened species lists. 

Costs and specific goals would be subject to change throughout the decades-long period of recovery efforts, according to the drafted plan. Ultimately the Pearl River map turtle’s survival will depend on the federal government, state governments, non-governmental organizations, landowners and public support. 

The public, advocacy groups and agencies at the local, state and federal level can comment on the draft recovery plan in writing until May 22 by emailing Mississippi_field_office@fws.gov or sending written comments to the Mississippi Ecological Services Field Office in Jackson. 

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.

Despite a longtime nationwide backslide in learning, a new report has found that Mississippi continues to outpace most of the country in post-pandemic recovery. 

Mississippi ranks No. 7 out of 38 states in academic growth in math and No. 7 out of 35 states in reading between 2022 and 2025, according to an Education Scorecard analysis released Wednesday. 

The Education Scorecard examines how students in third to eighth grades are recovering from learning losses, amid what researchers say is a national reading recession that predates the COVID-19 pandemic’s disruptions in schooling. Researchers from Harvard and Stanford universities and Dartmouth College analyzed students’ state test scores from more than 5,000 school districts in 38 states, allowing comparisons across districts and states. 

What researchers found was sobering: Only five states plus the District of Columbia had meaningful growth in reading test scores from 2022 to 2025. Nationally, students remain nearly half a grade level behind pre-pandemic reading scores and only slightly better in math. 

While schools have focused on catching students up academically since the pandemic, reading test scores were falling long before then — since 2013 for eighth graders and 2015 for fourth graders, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

“The pandemic was the mudslide that had followed seven years of steady erosion in achievement,” said Thomas Kane, a Harvard professor who helped create the Education Scorecard.

Mississippi showed negligible growth in average reading scores during that time frame: 0.03 grade levels higher in reading in 2025 than in 2022. And the average student is performing 0.22 grade equivalents below 2019 levels. 

In math, the average student in Mississippi performed 0.4 grade levels higher in 2025 compared with 2022, but 0.31 grade equivalents below 2019 levels. 

Almost every state in the analysis saw improvements in math test scores from 2022 to 2025.

Across the country, the states that improved reading scores all had one thing in common: They ordered schools to teach with a phonics-based approach known as the “science of reading.” 

For years, schools taught reading using approaches that de-emphasized phonics and encouraged strategies such as guessing words based on context clues. As reading scores tumbled over the past decade, parents, scholars and literacy advocates pushed for teaching methods that align with decades of research about how kids learn to read — largely by sounding out words.

The South was quick to adopt the approach. For the last decade, the region has led the way on education reforms, bucking an established trend of landing at the bottom of education rankings. Southern states were quick to change to research-based teaching methods, and states have paid to train and coach teachers.

According to the scorecard, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Kentucky all improved both math and reading test scores since 2022.

Mississippi adopted a law in 2013 requiring phonics-based instruction for elementary students and deploying reading coaches for teachers across the state and saw significant progress on NAEP scores for the following decade. This year, the Mississippi Legislature extended that reading initiative into higher grades in an attempt to extend those gains, and established a math act modeled after the reading act. 

That said, “science of reading” reforms do not guarantee success, the researchers found. Some states, including Florida, Arizona and Nebraska, changed parts of their reading instruction but still saw test scores fall.

And even though absenteeism declined in most states, chronic absenteeism, or students missing more than 10% of the school year, remains a looming threat in Mississippi and other states. Chronic absenteeism hovers around 28% in Mississippi, almost 13% above pre-pandemic levels.

The report also found that federal pandemic relief to schools — which totaled about $2.52 billion or $5,700 per student in Mississippi — was tied to gains in high-poverty districts. Post-pandemic recovery has been U-shaped, the report’s authors said, with larger improvements among the highest-income and the lowest-income school districts in the country. 

The report’s authors recommend that in light of dried up federal funding, Mississippi should focus dollars on middle- and high-poverty districts that trail their pre-pandemic achievement levels. They also recommend focusing efforts on lowering student absenteeism and pairing rising star districts with peers. 

One such district in Mississippi is Starkville Oktibbeha Consolidated School District, which is outperforming its peers in both math and reading. 

“Sustained progress doesn’t happen by chance — it comes from aligning strong instruction, empowered leadership, and intentional supports, so every student has the opportunity to succeed,” Starkville Oktibbeha Superintendent Tony McGee said in a press release about the Education Scorecard report.

While the Jackson County Utility Authority was able to quickly repair a leak that dumped approximately 550,000 gallons of untreated sewage into the Pascagoula River this past weekend, officials say the issue is part of a larger infrastructure need decades in the making.

The leak has led the state to issue a water contact advisory on Monday.

Eric Page, the authority’s executive director, said recent rainfall put stress on the sewer system, causing a section of a line installed roughly 50 years ago to rupture. Pascagoula officials alerted the utility about the leak on Saturday night and it was able to fix the leak Sunday afternoon, Page said.

“ We’re thinking that the pressure over time, the stress that was on the pipe from that rain event, then the amount of sewage that it was having to pump because of the stormwater infiltration into the sewer system, it just ultimately collapsed,” Page told Mississippi Today.

The Mississippi Department of Enviornmental Quality issued the water contact advisory for Comynie Bayou and the stretch of the Pascagoula River between the west end of Delmas Avenue south to the river’s mouth. “A number of residences” are near where the line break happened, Page said, adding that people use that stretch of the river for recreational boating.

While workers were able to fix the leak within a day, the utility director said the cast iron pipe that failed is part of a four-mile line installed in either the 1960s or 1970s that needs replacing.

“ We’re evaluating as part of our capital improvements plan strategy how to replace that pipe sometime over the next couple of years,” Page said. “The cost for that replacement project would end up being probably well in excess of $10 million. So that’s not something you can just do on a whim.”

The Mississippi Legislature created the Jackson County Utility Authority in 2006. Before then, the utility was part of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Regional Wastewater Authority, which was established in 1981. The regional authority inherited the sewer infrastructure from local entities, Page said.

Last weekend’s sewer leak is just the latest wastewater issue on the Coast. State officials in recent years have raised the alarm on untreated sewage from houseboats pouring directly into the Pascagoula River, the Roy Howard Community Journalism Center reported last year. While MDEQ said water testing showed no signs of contamination, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources called it a “huge issue.”

Mississippi beaches have also struggled for years with water contact advisories due to high bacteria levels. While those are usually the result of “natural reasons” such as “high winds and significant rainfall,” they also can occur after a sewer line break, MDEQ’s website says. Just since 2024, the agency has issued 97 advisories due to “probable high bacteria levels” as part of its Mississippi Beach Monitoring Program.

Gov. Tate Reeves on Wednesday morning said he will cancel a special legislative session set for next week to redraw Mississippi’s state Supreme Court districts, but he indicated the state will redraw its four congressional districts at some point. 

Reeves, on SuperTalk radio, indicated that it would be difficult for the state to redraw the congressional districts in time for the upcoming midterm election and that it could hurt Republicans overall in congressional races if Mississippi did so.

Still, he stressed he wants the state to redraw congressional districts in the future and said Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson’s hold on one of Mississippi’s four congressional seats will end soon.

“The tenure of Congressman Bennie Thompson reigning terror on the 2nd Congressional District is over,” Reeves said. “It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when.” 

Reeves, a Republican, said his reason for calling off next week’s special session is the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturning an order from U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock that found the Mississippi Supreme Court districts violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting Black voting power. Aycock had ordered the state to redraw them. 

But even though the appellate court tossed out Aycock’s initial order, it doesn’t mean that the litigation ended entirely. 

The plaintiffs in the case and the state, which is the defendant, filed a joint request with the 5th Circuit to overturn the lower court’s order and remand it for further legal work. 

The reason the parties asked to file additional arguments with Aycock is to debate, again, whether the districts violate the Voting Rights Act, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent landmark ruling in the Louisiana v. Callais case.

So Aycock could still rule at a later date that the districts violate federal law and again order the state to redraw them. She recently ordered the parties to file a joint status report by May 26 outlining how the case should proceed. 

The parties have not filed any recent court papers, but the Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the parties involved in the litigation, previously said in a news release that it believes even under the new Callais standards, the state Supreme Court districts are discriminatory and violate federal law. 

The governor, however, said he wants the Legislature to redraw the state’s congressional and legislative districts in the future. He said he’s working closely with the Trump administration to determine when the state should move.

Even though the governor’s only agenda item for the special session was judicial redistricting, several Republican state lawmakers and President Donald Trump pressured Reeves to add congressional redistricting to the session as part of the president’s push to redraw many congressional districts into safe Republican ones.

Mississippi has already held primary elections for congressional seats, so Mississippi would have to nullify its party primaries and hold another round of elections to redistrict in time for the November midterms. 

“It’s complicated,” Reeves said. “Every issue surrounding redistricting is complicated, and I think it is fair to say that we are looking at every potential option as to what they may look like, and when is the best time to look at it.” 

If the state tossed out its primary elections results, Reeves said the state could set a nationwide precedent that would allow both Republican and Democratic-led states to cancel out primary elections. He said that could thwart what is expected to be a large net gain for Republican-leaning districts nationwide in the upcoming midterms.

But the governor said he expected lawmakers to redraw congressional, state legislative and state Supreme Court district lines between now and the 2027 statewide election cycle. 

House Speaker Jason White last week announced that he has formed a select committee that will study redistricting over the summer and fall and make recommendations.

The governor did not call anyone by name, but he said that certain officials who are considering a statewide run in 2027 have made redrawing congressional districts a top issue on social media recently and that they don’t understand how complex the issue is. One of the most vocal proponents of redrawing the districts is state Auditor Shad White, who is a likely candidate for governor next year. 

“This is going to be the silly season in Mississippi politics,” Reeves said.