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Multiple phone calls. A car pool to the Madison County Circuit Clerk’s Office, where Zemaryiah Johnson had cast an affidavit ballot. And then instructions that she had to go somewhere else entirely, in an adjoining Mississippi county.

All that to ensure that Johnson, an 18-year-old freshman at the historically Black Tougaloo College, would have her vote counted — for Scott Colom, the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate.

“It’s like going back in time,” Johnson said.

The long, slow count in the tight race between Colom and the Republican incumbent, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, reached a critical deadline on Tuesday, the last day that affidavit ballots could be fixed — a process known as curing — and that mail-in ballots postmarked on Election Day could arrive. Recent days have highlighted the problems and frustrations that Mississippi’s strict election laws can cause in such a tight contest.

Organizers, community leaders and lawyers spent Tuesday scrambling to ensure the final tranche of ballots were in order. By the end of the day, Colom, who would be the first Black senator elected from Mississippi since Reconstruction, led Hyde-Smith by just over 2,600 votes, but an unknown number of affidavit ballots and 2,578 still uncounted absentee-by-mail ballots could still determine the winner.

“Votes should be counted, and that’s all we’re concentrating on today,” Hyde-Smith told reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

She added: “We’re just looking for the conclusion of our race.”

In Jackson, Colom and his allies have been calling on Mississippi to expand its voting process, by among other things, setting up an early voting period that many other states share. He also questioned whether “there may be some disadvantages to our potential to lead in D.C.,” given that he couldn’t join new lawmakers in orientation on Capitol Hill.

Michael Watson, Mississippi’s secretary of state, had “created chaos” with the affidavit rules and should apologize for the delay, Colom said on Tuesday, during a visit to the Hinds County Sheriff’s Office.

Watson said that as of 5 p.m. Monday more than 15,500 affidavit ballots had been processed. Just over three-quarters of them had been accepted, he said. He did not say how many ballots were left.

Mississippi and Alaska are the only states yet to declare a winner in their Senate contests, but Mississippi is drawing closer. State law does not allow for a recount of votes in a statewide election, nor will there be a runoff.

The tussles over affidavit ballots have also drawn attention to a decision from July 2025, when Watson’s office announced a partnership where data from Experian, the credit reporting agency, would be used as part of the agency’s maintenance of the state’s voter rolls.

Under the partnership, some registered voters identified as having a new address were labeled “inactive,” meaning they had to fill out an affidavit ballot if they showed up to vote. On Election Day, some voters — though it was unclear how many — found themselves mistakenly marked as having moved or inactive.

Scott Anderson, an Experian spokesman, said the agency hadn’t worked with Mississippi since early last year, and that the sharing of “supplemental address information” at the time “was not designed or intended to validate voter records.”

Watson defended the affidavit ballot process in a statement on social media last week as “a safety net for errors” during voter roll maintenance that would result in “more accurate voter rolls” and “decrease opportunities for voter fraud.”

Over the last week, affidavit ballots have been processed by hand, as election commissioners checked to see whether each voter was in the system, or if someone had arrived to “cure” a ballot with proper identification. That has created considerable friction.

“Seeing people genuinely have to call every day and have to go up there every day and exhaust their finances with gas and their energy to do things like this — it’s almost like they want people to get tired,” Johnson said.

The process proved especially confounding for many Mississippi college students, including at Tougaloo, which straddles Hinds and Madison counties, two of the state’s largest. The geographic positioning had sowed confusion, since some students lived in one county but tried to vote in the other.

Terry Rogers II, 21, a senior studying political science, drove students in a college van between the two counties, as he wrestled with each student’s particular instructions on where to go to check a ballot.

“Think about how many others did not have the opportunity and have advocates like that,” Rogers said. 

Lyric Wise, 18, a freshman at Tougaloo, said elections officials were sending students around in circles. Wise has already made two trips to the Madison County Circuit Clerk and was set to board Rogers’s shuttle to the Hinds County Circuit Clerk on Tuesday afternoon.

Cortorian Keeton, 22, a Tougaloo senior who managed to resolve his ballot problem, said he had never seen friends and peers so engaged in the political process: “A lot of people mad, a lot of people happy, a lot of people want Mississippi to stay the same and a lot of people want Mississippi to be different,” he said.

But even some organizers who lamented the hurdles for voters basked in the attention of the nation and the pride they said they felt in Mississippi’s civic engagement.

“People are actually looking at Mississippi right now,” said Jada Barnes, the field director for Mississippi Votes Action Fund. Over wings and pizza in the organization’s Jackson office, volunteers spent Monday evening calling voters, checking to see if they had voted using an affidavit ballot or fielding questions about the process.

The state’s voters, she said, “really beat the odds.”

One of those voters, Heather Holland, 28, said that since she got married in 2022, she had cast her ballot several times in Jackson County, a Republican stronghold on the Gulf Coast. But last Tuesday, when she showed up to vote, her registration turned up under her maiden name, requiring her to file an affidavit ballot.

“It could make a difference,” Holland, a Democrat, said on Tuesday. She reached out to volunteers to make sure that her vote had been counted.

On Tougaloo’s campus on Tuesday, Rogers printed off fliers with a QR code that directed students to a state website that allows people to check the status of their ballots. With about 40 fliers in hand, Rogers joined other students who had gathered steps away from the Woodworth Chapel, a haven of the Civil Rights movement where leaders like Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer had spoken, and opened the driver-side door for the final trip on Tuesday.

His next destination: Jackson State University, another historically Black college where students had reported problems filling out affidavit ballots. More ballots needed curing.

All eyes remained fixated on the Hinds County Election Commission Tuesday, hoping that outstanding ballots from the area could determine the outcome of a nail-biter U.S. Senate race between Democrat Scott Colom and Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. 

The Associated Press late Tuesday afternoon reported that Colom led Hyde-Smith by 2,604 votes with around 97% of the vote counted, but it still has not called the race.   

Tuesday at 5 p.m. was the deadline for voters who had to cast affidavit ballots on Election Day because of issues with providing valid photo identification to return to their local circuit clerks’ offices and present a valid form of ID to “cure” their ballot. 

LIVE: 2026 Mississippi election results

It was also the deadline for local election officials to receive late-arriving, mail-in absentee ballots that were postmarked by Election Day. 

Counties have until Friday to transmit their official election results to Secretary of State Michael Watson’s office, but officials in Hinds County, the state’s largest county and a Democratic stronghold, are expected to upload the results of their outstanding affidavit ballots on Wednesday, an attorney for the county told Mississippi Today. 

Hyde-Smith and Colom each on Tuesday continued to say they have a path to victory. 

Hyde-Smith, notorious for refusing to answer reporters’ questions in Capitol hallways, returned to Washington on Monday and initially declined to answer questions. On Tuesday she briefly told the media she was “feeling very optimistic” about winning reelection but refused to elaborate on the math behind her optimism. 

Colom, at an event thanking Hinds County Sheriff’s Department deputies, said he believed that once Hinds County reports the remainder of its ballots, it will likely be enough for him to be declared the winner. 

“The reality is she can’t point to a direction where she has a possibility to win, right?” Colom said of Hyde-Smith. “If she thinks she truly has the ability to win, explain how.” 

As election commissioners across the state continued to process the thousands of remaining affidavit ballots by hand, scores of election attorneys and a coalition of community and advocacy organizations that work on voting rights monitored the process.

Max Meyers, an attorney with the NAACP, said at an event on Monday night that he had not found any major issues with how election commissioners were processing the ballots and that they were continuing to “do their jobs.”

“I haven’t had to send any angry letters, which has been great,” Meyers said. “I haven’t had to set foot in a courtroom, which is lovely.” 

After county officials certify the election results, it’s possible that a campaign or political party could file litigation to contest the results or ask for a recount. 

Mike Hurst, chairman of the Mississippi GOP and general counsel to the Republican National Committee, previously said at a press conference that the party will “fight like hell” to ensure every legal ballot cast is counted and is prepared to “avail ourselves of every legal resource” available.

Colom said that Hyde-Smith needs to “accept the will of the voters,” but he’s also prepared to litigate.  

It’s unclear how litigation would play out. Mississippi has no recount law, and there is no clear process spelled out in state law for someone to challenge the results of a general election for a state office. 

Some University of Mississippi students and parents are calling on officials to address concerns about campus climate and culture after a video showing white students making racist gestures outside a Black student’s apartment went viral. 

Parents have emailed Chancellor Glenn Boyce and other university leaders calling for the students to be suspended or expelled. Other social media commenters have pointed to Ole Miss’ history of racism, while students have demanded a thorough investigation. 

They’ve also expressed outrage and disappointment about the latest incident. 

Kristina Pluta of Utah, whose son Jansen is a sophomore at UM, said she felt shocked and disgusted when she first saw a video of the incident on Instagram Saturday night. Racism and hatred are learned behaviors that can be unlearned, she said. 

“There has to be consequences and the university should hold the students’ behavior accountable,” said Pluta, who is white. 

“I just hope the girls that did it will be able to learn from this experience. I want them to grow beyond their ignorance and prejudice that informed their behavior.” 

On Friday night, a doorbell camera recorded three young white women making ape-like gestures and noises as they walked past Ole Miss student Jakiyra Metcalf’s apartment door. Metcalf posted the video on TikTok and tagged the university in the caption with the question, “what do we have to say about this??”

By Tuesday, the TikTok video had more than 12.6 million views, about 1 million likes and more than 37,000 comments.

It has drawn national media attention and sparked outrage and criticism over the apparent use of the racist trope and behavior at the university. The university has tried over the last several decades to distance itself, amid fits and starts, from a history of racism.

Metcalf could not immediately be reached for comment.

Alaina Kunes, one of the students identified making gestures in the video, issued a statement Tuesday apologizing for the incident. She said she didn’t know the race of the students in the apartment.

University leaders have said they’re investigating the incident. Shawnboda Mead, UM’s vice chancellor for student affairs, condemned the behavior in a statement published Sunday.

The incident has contributed to many students feeling “unwelcomed and unsafe,” Demetrick Stringer Jr., president of the university’s Black Student Union, said in a statement released Sunday. In addition to an investigation, he called for campus officials to support the affected students and make stronger efforts to educate students about the university’s values. 

“We believe this moment calls for education,” Stringer wrote. “The students involved are new to our community and we encourage the University to strengthen how first year students are introduced to the University creed and its commitment to respect for the dignity of each person, so that no student has this experience again.” 

Taylor Winfield, a senior multidisciplinary studies major, said the incident also prompted criticism from social media commenters of Black students who chose to attend Ole Miss rather than one of Mississippi’s historically Black universities. 

Winfield said Black students have a place at Ole Miss and can help change campus culture by being a part of it. 

“It’s been a great place for us,” said Winfield, who is Black. “No matter the situation, it’s still our home.” 

But for Kierah Robinson, a junior political science major, the university’s response doesn’t fully address Black students’ concerns. 

The students targeted by the gestures shouldn’t have to question their safety and comfort in their own home, she said. Robinson identifies as Black. 

“The psychological feeling of not feeling safe or feeling like you belong in the spaces you have a right to occupy is a form of racial violence,” Robinson said. 

The university should be transparent about its investigation and any disciplinary process while maintaining privacy limits, she said. 

The incident cannot be separated from the university’s history of racism, Robinson said. 

That history includes a riot in 1962 when James Meredith attempted to enroll and students’ pro-Palestinian demonstrations in 2024, when counter-protestors shouted racist remarks such as “hit the showers” and “your nose is huge.”   

University officials should engage with Black students about what it would take to make them feel safer and more welcomed on campus, she said. While the university has taken steps to address its past, Robinson said that progress doesn’t mean the work is finished. 

“We can care deeply about our school and still hold it accountable,” Robinson said. “Racism exists everywhere and wanting better for institutions means being willing to challenge it at the same time.” 

Business leaders, politicians and educators learned about the importance of financial and economic literacy at the Mississippi Council on Economic Education’s annual fundraiser. 

“If we all begin making decisions from a place of being better informed, we can make a meaningful impact on our families, schools, communities and society,” said Jaqueline Brown, a teacher from Okolona High School who received the award for economics teacher of the year at the Tuesday event.

The nonprofit works to increase economic and financial literacy by providing training and resources to students, adults and K-12 teachers in the state. Brown has completed all of the council’s certifications for teachers in subjects such as economics and entrepreneurship.

“You take teachers such as myself who come from rural communities,” Brown said. “We’re able to take those courses to become teachers of personal finance, economics, entrepreneurship and college and career readiness. And we’re better informed to bring that information back to our students.”

During this year’s legislative session, the lawmakers passed a bill expanding the requirement for financial literacy education for public school students. This is part of an expanding national effort to require financial education. 

“You’re going to see so much financial literacy coming forward from this where our children have a future because they will be more educated,” said Secretary of State Michael Watson, who was inducted into the council’s hall of fame during the event. 

“So only by understanding that by having financial literacy, and raising your economic intelligence, will we be able to be full participants in this economy and thus in the broader civil system,” said Kai Ryssdal, the host and senior editor of the public radio news program “Marketplace.”

Ryssdal talked with Bridget Bodnar, director of podcasts and co-host of his program’s kids podcast “Million Bazillion,” about the larger economic forces at play and how that impacts the lives of everyday people.

“We use business and the economy as a lens to tell stories about this society, and we do it in a way that we hope is accessible,” Ryssdal said. 

“You can tell someone how to manage a budget, but if they don’t understand the broader forces at play, why it matters what (Federal Reserve Chair) Kevin Warsh is doing and what that will mean to them, they don’t have the full picture,” Bodnar said. 

Mississippi Today Ideas is a platform for thoughtful ideas to be shared 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.  

My brother Andrew was 20 years old when the Ku Klux Klan murdered him in Mississippi on June 21, 1964, along with James Chaney and Michael Schwerner. They were there to work alongside Black Mississippians registering to vote.

Sixty-two years later, students at Jackson State, Alcorn State, Tougaloo College and the University of Mississippi, campuses where the Andrew Goodman Foundation’s Vote Everywhere program is active, are likely among the thousands of Mississippi voters whose affidavit ballots remain unresolved. 

An affidavit ballot is what Mississippi calls a provisional ballot or ballots that for various reasons must undergo additional scrutiny. Some may have used an affidavit ballot because they did not have a photo identification on them. Others because a poll worker could not find their name on the rolls. Estimates of what is still unresolved statewide run from 12,000 to 18,000 ballots, in a U.S. Senate race that has not been called.

Before the election, Mississippi marked 230,107 registered voters inactive. Secretary of State Michael Watson’s office flagged them by using address data from Experian, the credit bureau, under a $50,000 contract last year to clean the rolls statewide. Mississippi Today has reported that the data is unverified and wrongly inactivated legitimate voters.

This is problematic for a college student. Dorms often lack an individual mailing address the voting system recognizes. A verification letter sent to a residence hall may have nowhere to land. The student never sees it, never responds and gets flagged. The Mississippi Free Press reported this problem a week before the election, and Election Day is when it came due.

No law was passed to do this. No legislator voted for it. A for-profit vendor’s address file decided which young voters would spend Election Day exercising their right to vote and which would spend it arguing with a poll worker. That is the newest barrier, and it sits on top of the old ones.

Mississippi is one of only three states with no in-person early voting. It is one of 13 states requiring an excuse to vote by mail. It has no online voter registration. Polls are open from 7 in the morning until 7 at night on a Tuesday, which is a workday. A Jim Crow era provision still imposes a lifetime voting ban for certain felony convictions, affecting nearly 70,000 Mississippi residents. When researchers rank the states on ballot access, Mississippi finishes last or next to last.

The remedy itself is problematic. Students who voted by affidavit because they had no photo ID have until close of business on Tuesday to appear in person at their county circuit clerk’s office with acceptable identification. Not online. Not by mail. In person, during business hours, in a short time frame.

For a student at Alcorn State in Lorman, it means getting to Port Gibson, 11 miles away, with no public transportation. A 19-year-old without a car has no way to make her or his  own vote count.

Here is what Mississippi students did anyway. Turnout rose about 35% over the last midterm in 2022, from roughly 710,000 votes to more than 950,000. Thirty Mississippi students trained as poll monitors with the Andrew Goodman Foundation, ACLU of Mississippi and Mississippi Votes, from Jackson State, Alcorn State and Tougaloo. Eleven of them drove up from Alcorn State for the training.

Through our partnership with the ACLU, students worked 44 precincts, serving as nonpartisan poll observers in Florida, Georgia and Mississippi, and in Arkansas supporting ballot curing and watching the count.

That is the hard work the Andrew Goodman Foundation exists to do. We support nonpartisan student organizers with a modest stipend, and the campuses they organize are their own. They are not volunteers brought in from out of state. Some of them are the 19-year-olds waiting to find out whether their own ballots will count.

Andrew did not go to Mississippi because it was easy. He went as a student himself because it was the right thing to do even though it was hard work. People there had been asking for help from allies for a long time. What has changed in 62 years is not the difficulty. It is that the students doing the asking now live there.

So this is not a request for sympathy for Mississippi students. They do not need it. It is a request for three specific things.

Cease using unverified commercial credit data to decide who stays on the voter rolls. If a state buys a database and acts on it, the burden of proving an address wrong belongs to the state, not to a college sophomore.

Treat a dormitory as a residence. A student who lives in one has an address for every purpose except, apparently, this one.

And give Mississippians what voters in most other states already have: early voting, and the ability to register online.

Sixty-two years is a long time to still be arguing about whether young people in Mississippi have equal access to the ballot box. Those students have already made their case. They registered their classmates, they trained as poll monitors, they showed up on a Tuesday between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Many of them and other Mississippians are now waiting to learn whether the ballots they cast will be counted at all.

David Goodman is the brother of Andrew Goodman and a board member of the Andrew Goodman Foundation, a nonpartisan organization that trains and supports student voting advocates in 25 states and the District of Columbia.

NEW YORK — The National Urban League will open a museum this weekend in Harlem dedicated to the civil rights struggles in the North, the first of its kind in New York City.

Located in the Urban League’s Manhattan headquarters, the Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem explores the region’s lesser-known histories of the Civil Rights Movement and the local changemakers and artists whose contributions helped shape politics and culture worldwide. With nearly 12,000 square feet of permanent and rotating exhibits and galleries, organizers say they hope to remind visitors of their “collective power” in the present.

“We want people to know that they are key participants,” Jennifer Scott, the museum’s founding executive director and chief curator, told The Associated Press during an exclusive preview of the space.

“History is living, it’s unfinished, and we can impact it,” she said.

Scott is a national public history scholar with experience preserving Black history in museums and research centers across the country. She led the design of a permanent interactive installation and an inaugural set of rotating exhibitions.

Marc Morial, the Urban League’s president and CEO, underscored the importance of establishing the museum just blocks from such key historic and cultural landmarks as the Apollo Theater and The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He attributed the same intentionality to the naming of the museum, and its specific mention of “this iconic American place called Harlem.”

“Designating this the Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem anchors it to a place, and this place tells the story,” Morial told the AP before the museum’s opening. “From this place, we’re telling the story of this place.”

Dozens of museums devoted to civil rights are scattered across the U.S., most of them in Southern states. While others explore themes of arts and culture or review specific moments in African American history, the organizers contend that there has never been a premier civil rights museum located in the northern United States.

Civil rights history ‘with all of its beauty, and with all of its warts’

The museum’s multimedia installations cover centuries of social justice history and culture. The inaugural exhibits recount the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the first and second waves of the Great Migration of Black families from the Deep South, and the story of the Civil Rights Movement and its modern impacts.

In several exhibits, audio recordings relay speeches of civil rights leaders and oral histories of people interviewed about their experiences. Feedback walls invite guests to share if they’ve participated in a protest or read a banned book.

Throughout the museum’s curation process, Scott prioritized immersion not only through mediums but through the stories that the Urban League chose to represent. “We wanted people to see themselves,” she said. “It’s a very diasporic representation and storytelling approach.”

As a self-described proponent of intersectional solidarity, Morial echoed the importance of celebrating a diverse range of perspectives from people who rallied alongside African Americans in the northern fight for civil rights.

“We don’t want this great concept, equal opportunity and diversity, to be suppressed,” he said.

Some of the narratives displayed have been targeted in recent years as part of a push to sanitize the way American history is told. Last year, the Trump administration ordered a review of U.S. museums under federal guidance for narratives it deemed “divisive, race-centered ideology,” urging them to “instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”

Martha Biondi, a professor of history and Black studies at Northwestern University whose work has advanced the awareness of New York’s civil rights struggles, underscored the importance of preserving that history today.

“If America’s going to become a true multiracial democracy, we have to stop sanitizing our past and we have to tell the true stories,” Biondi said.

The importance of preserving the urban Civil Rights Movement was compounded by the current political climate, said Morial, adding that the museum retells history “with all of its beauty, and with all of its warts.”

“This history is not going to be minimalized or suppressed in any way,” he said.

The social justice struggle, from New York and Harlem

Morial and Scott lamented how the history of institutionalized racism in the North has often been overshadowed or even lost, while stories of the struggles in the Deep South are far more widely recognized.

For Scott, preserving forgotten accounts as part of the historical record is a personal passion and a priority. From reliving the prime of nightlife in the Harlem Renaissance, to reading through legacy ethnic media like the New York Amsterdam News alongside Jet and Essence magazines, she said, the museum is “just scratching the surface” in uncovering local stories.

“It’s important to me and to all of us here who work at the museum, because we don’t want those stories to be erased ever again,” Scott said. “It started long before us, and we want it to continue after, so people are always feeling empowered to create the change that they desire.”

The Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem will celebrate its grand opening with invited elected officials and other guests on Saturday. With plans to educate and involve the community in the museum’s programming, Morial was optimistic about both the future of the museum and of the movement it showcases.

“This museum is not static, and we’re going to continue to evolve the exhibitions,” he said. “We are just getting started.”

U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche presented Jackson Mayor John Horhn with a symbolic $64 million check Monday, possibly giving Mississippi’s capital city a surge of funding to hire more police officers, rebuild its forensic lab and expand drone surveillance of suspected criminals and abandoned properties.

Under Jackson’s form of government, the city council must now decide if it will accept the money. Council members authorized the Jackson Police Department to apply for the U.S. Department of Justice’s new Model Cities initiative grant earlier this year.

Horhn heralded the potential investment, saying at Monday’s press conference at City Hall that Jackson “is dealing with scarce resources.”

“We are ideas rich and we are money poor,” Horhn said. 

The mayor’s comment drew chuckles from state officials, including Gov. Tate Reeves, whose presence at City Hall is a rare sight. Reeves, a Republican, has sometimes clashed with leaders of the Democratic-led city over policing.

“Today is a good day for the people of Jackson, which means today is a good day for the state of Mississippi,” Reeves said. “And, also, today is a bad day for the criminals who wish to do us harm.” 

Blanche said the widespread support among state officials for Jackson’s application is why the Justice Department selected the city out of 47 applicants. He said the money would become available early next year and that residents would see results “almost right away.”

“You’re going to have more cops on the street, and the cops on the street will be working with better equipment, better technology and better information,” Blanche said. 

In its grant application, JPD wrote that it hoped to use the federal money to expand its network of cameras housed at the Real-Time Command Center and create a database linking 911 calls to abandoned properties in the city. 

Taken together, Police Chief RaShall Brackney said these efforts will reduce violent crime “before it arrives” in Jackson.

“We have to change the conditions” that foster violence, the chief said. “Not simply manage the consequences.” 

Hours before the press conference, the ACLU of Mississippi released a statement saying the partnership could trample civil liberties. 

In an email, Candi Richardson, the ACLU of Mississippi’s communications director, expressed worry that Horhn and other Jackson officials were too trusting of the Trump administration in respecting the rights of Black Jacksonians, low-income communities, immigrant families and unhoused individuals.

“The more likely outcome: The Trump administration will hijack this funding to increase control of Jackson law enforcement agencies and communities and push its ideological obsession, racism, and approach of loyalty over law,” Richardson wrote. 

Horhn previously told Mississippi Today that he had not heard concerns from any constituents about a potential federal takeover of the Jackson Police Department. 

Two residents of the Jackson metro area whose family members had been killed spoke at the press conference in support of the grant.

Violet Horne, who lost two sons to gun violence in 2024, said she hoped the grant would lead Jackson to “a chapter where jurisdiction and boundaries do not become barriers to justice.” 

In addition to Jackson, the Justice Department also awarded grants to Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Jacksonville, Florida; and St. Louis.

Unlike other federal law enforcement grants, the Model Cities Initiative will be administered through a “cooperative agreement,” giving the DOJ an active role in implementation. The grant requires participating cities to comply with certain Trump administration priorities, including immigration enforcement and efforts to ban homeless people from sleeping in public.

That is why the initiative has proved controversial in other Democratic-led cities, including Charlotte and New Orleans. 

During the press conference, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward alluded to controversies in cities that ultimately decided against applying for the grant, saying that “public safety is not controversial.”

Another concern from civil liberties advocates: The Justice Department has touted its Memphis Safe Task Force as a prototype for the Model Cities Initiative grant. In one year, officers working under the task force fatally shot four people and made more than 23,000 arrests, mostly for nonviolent offenses following traffic stops conducted on one in three residents. 

In a letter supporting the grant application, Horhn wrote that Jackson had seen “meaningful reductions in homicides and other violent crime” under Brackney. 

However, statistics show otherwise. By Aug. 3, the date on the letter that Horhn submitted to the federal government, 54 homicides occurred in Jackson. During that same period in 2024, the city had 44 homicides in Jackson, according to WLBT’s Homicide Tracker. 

“That’s not what we looked at,” Blanche said. “What we looked at is, do we have motivation and commitment from leadership that we can work together?” 

JPD’s grant application sought $125 million over three years. The department proposed to use most of the money to create a specialized gun-crimes unit focused on “repeat shooters.” 

“We cannot arrest our way into community stability,” Brackney said. “We cannot technology our way into trust.”

The press conference was scheduled to be held on the steps of City Hall, but officials moved it inside because of an unrelated demonstration by voting rights advocates chanting “count every vote” outside the Hinds County Courthouse.

Mississippi will receive nearly $205 million for the second year of a national program that aims to improve rural healthcare, federal officials announced Monday. 

The state’s total award for the 2027 fiscal year is about $1.2 million less than its first-year award announced last December for the five-year Rural Health Transformation Program, though its amount exceeded the award made to the average state. 

Awards were made to all 50 states as part of the $50 billion federal investment in rural healthcare. Like last year, Texas and Alaska received the largest shares of funding, while Connecticut and New Jersey received the smallest amounts. 

“Rural Americans have life expectancies three years shorter than their urban peers, but President Trump’s Rural Health Transformation Program is funding the historic investments necessary to close that gap,” said Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. “States have already put these resources to work bringing better care closer to home for their rural communities, and CMS looks forward to helping them build on that progress in the coming year.”

The $50 billion funding program was tacked on to President Donald Trump’s tax-and-spending law passed in July 2025, which is expected to result in significant reductions in federal Medicaid spending in rural areas. Congressional Republicans added the money for rural health to soften the blow associated with those cuts. 

Rural areas are expected to face an estimated $137 billion in cuts to federal Medicaid spending over 10 years, meaning Rural Health Transformation Program funds will offset roughly a third of those cuts, according to analysis from KFF. 

Changes to federal Medicaid payment rules are expected to reduce net payments to Mississippi providers by about $100 million annually beginning in July 2028, according to the Mississippi Division of Medicaid’s strategic plan published in July.

Half of the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program funding is to be distributed evenly among all states with approved applications over five years. Awards for the other half of the funding are informed in part by states’ progress implementing their approved plans, according to CMS.

A federal annual report showed that Mississippi had committed over $94 million in program funding as of July 31, including assessments of the state’s rural healthcare and emergency medical services capacity, and grants for technology upgrades, telehealth and facility improvements. Over $10 million was obligated for program operations. 

Gov. Tate Reeves in October announced $32 million in grant awards for healthcare workforce development and psychiatric emergency services.

The state closed applications last week for a statewide health information exchange to allow health care providers to securely share patient information and coordinate care. A vendor has not yet been announced. 

The state is seeking applications for small rural providers to adopt or replace electronic health records, and for innovative pilot programs to improve healthcare.

Hinds County Election officials are on pace to finish counting affidavit ballots in Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race by the end of Monday, and expect to upload results on Wednesday, an attorney for the county told Mississippi Today.

The results in Mississippi’s most populous county and a Democratic stronghold could cement the outcome of the Magnolia State nail-biter between Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom. The narrow margin between Hyde-Smith and Colom has already shocked many across the nation, but it has remained too close to call since Election Day. Colom led by nearly 2,600 votes with nearly 1 million votes cast and thousands yet to be reported.

Hinds County early Monday still reported about 7% of the vote outstanding, as officials there and in other counties continue processing affidavit ballots.

Tony Gaylor, an attorney for the Hinds County Board of Supervisors, said counting most affidavits would likely conclude on Monday. But voters who had issues with their IDs have until 5 p.m. Tuesday to “cure” their ballots with the circuit clerk.

Secretary of State Michael Watson on Monday said that 2,732 absentee mail-in ballots remain outstanding statewide, and 14,239 affidavit ballots have been processed, with around 77% of them being accepted.

The commission then will refer the ballots to the Hinds County Resolution Board, which makes determinations on affidavit ballots after initial eligibility checks.

“I think by the end of the day they’ll probably finish counting the affidavits,” Gaylor said. “They won’t be uploaded until Wednesday, when the (Hinds County) Resolution Board has the final count.”

The resolution board will “go over all of the accepted affidavits,” and the accepted ballots will be added to the vote tally. After that happens, Gaylor said, the commission would likely be able to upload results.

READ MORE: DeSoto County, a Republican stronghold, key to Scott Colom’s midterm election performance

READ MORE: Turns out, Mississippi voters were paying attention in the Colom, Hyde-Smith Senate race

Under state law, counties have until Nov. 13 to certify their election results. A legal challenge could then ensue if one of the campaigns challenges accepted ballots, a potentially messy process that could entail filing lawsuits in separate county courts.

The fundraising arm of the Senate Republicans has demanded election officials around the state separate and preserve affidavit ballots. Democratic election lawyers and voting rights advocates have said they are confident Colom will win and called for affidavit ballots to be reviewed in public.

Mississippi has a “bottom-up” system of election administration, where 82 county circuit clerks and election commissions are responsible for processing their own affidavit and absentee ballots.

Voters who cast affidavit ballots only need to return to their local circuit clerk’s offices if they experienced voter ID issues at their polling place so that they can present a valid ID.

The outage could impact some voters who are trying to obtain a valid photo ID to cure an affidavit ballot in the election.

Hyde-Smith had not published a statement since Friday and has not done a public event since her election night watch party, in which she all but declared victory. On Friday, she vowed to “see this through to the very end!”

Since election night, Colom has travelled the state thanking supporters and promoting local businesses.

“We’re confident that once every lawful vote is counted, he’ll be Mississippi’s next U.S. senator,” said Gerard Henderson, Colom’s campaign manager, in a statement on Monday. “Thank you to everyone who got us here and believes Mississippi Matters!”

Update, 11/9/2026: This article has been updated with numbers of absentee and affidavit ballots provided by the secretary of state on Monday.

Johnny M. Moore envisions a future where Rust College becomes the heart of Holly Springs. 

It’s one of several ambitions Moore has as president of the historically Black college, which is celebrating its 160th anniversary this month. The celebration also included Moore’s inauguration Friday as Rust’s 13th president. 

But realizing Moore’s vision will require revitalizing the small, private liberal arts college, which has experienced declining enrollment, rising tuition and leadership turnover in recent years. 

A decade ago, Rust enrolled more than 1,000 students. By the 2024-25 academic year, enrollment had fallen to 467 students. Tuition has increased from $9,900 in 2022-23 to more than $13,000 in 2023-24. And just 12% of students who entered Rust in 2018 graduated within six years.

Addressing those challenges will require adapting Rust’s academic programs and providing students with more support to earn a degree, Moore said. 

One of Moore’s priorities is to expand career and workforce opportunities for Rust students, including those who may not need the traditional four-year college degree. 

One example of that effort is a partnership that was launched in 2025 with the Mississippi Center for Innovation and Technology and Cisco Systems to offer a workforce certificate program to prepare students and local residents for cybersecurity jobs. The initiative aims to provide students with more flexible paths to employment while strengthening the college’s academic offerings, Moore said. 

“It’s not enough just to get people here,” he said. “It’s not enough to just retain them and graduate. We have to make sure we get them a job.”

Addressing barriers to a degree

Supporting students through graduation is also another priority for Moore. As a first-generation college student from rural Arkansas, he said he understands the barriers students face when pursuing higher education. 

Black students make up 92% of the college’s enrollment. More than half of students come from outside Mississippi. Many also rely on the federal Pell grant to afford college, Moore said. 

The college offers a one-stop shop on campus where students can receive assistance with class registration, financial aid and other concerns. Other campus resources include a food pantry, career clothing closet, emergency financial assistance, scholarships and work-study opportunities. 

Aubree Dillon, a junior mass communications major, said Moore often walks the campus and talks with students about work opportunities, student life and dormitories. His presence has made a difference in her college experience. 

“A lot of people may not think that it’s a big deal for your college president to make an effort to ask you questions or try to get to know you personally,” Dillon said. “But, that’s the great thing about being at a small school. Your leadership and president care, and that matters.” 

Moore and the college’s leadership are also working with students, faculty, alumni and other stakeholders to develop a strategic plan, which he expects to release next fall. 

The plan comes after several leadership transitions. Ivy Taylor, the institution’s first woman president, served from 2020 to 2023. Two interim presidents led the college before Moore was named in July 2025. 

Moore previously served as chancellor of Arkansas State University-Newport and president of Philander Smith University, a historically Black university in Arkansas. He also led Pierpont Community and Technical College in West Virginia. 

His experience attending and eventually leading an HBCU has shaped his approach to leading Rust. 

“I know the power of these institutions,” said Moore, who is also a Philander Smith alumnus. “So, it’s only fitting that I finish my career at an HBCU.” 

For alumni, the new leadership comes at a significant moment in the college’s history. 

Focusing on a legacy

The college was founded in 1866, just after the Civil War, and counts civil rights activist and journalist Ida B. Wells among its former students. It is one of Mississippi’s oldest private colleges and oldest historically Black one. 

“Our founders understood that freedom was not complete without education,” Moore said. “So we inherited this legacy to build upon it, so other generations can appreciate their worthiness of legacy.” 

Moore is working to preserve that legacy by addressing the college’s challenges. 

He has regularly met with alumni chapter presidents since taking office to seek their input on enrollment, recruitment and ways to strengthen the college’s visibility, said MeShonya Wren-Coleman, president of the Rust College International Alumni Association. Some of that feedback has led to raising the college’s social media profile  and staffing changes, she said.

Wren-Coleman said she appreciates Moore’s willingness to listen to alumni and address longstanding institutional concerns. 

“He’s not putting a Band-Aid on things that need to be fixed,” Wren-Coleman said. Instead, she said, Moore is solving problems.

She also emphasized the importance of Moore’s alumni engagement and how it lends to the financial support and restoration of the future of the HBCU. 

“Our commitment to Rust College alums isn’t limited to financial contributions,” Wren-Coleman said. “We set the example for our students and future generations when we raise money for scholarships, recruit students because we show the transformative  power of education, community and leadership for the school.” 

Moore’s ambitions also extend beyond Rust’s campus to Holly Springs, a city of 6,400 residents about 35 miles southeast of Memphis. His vision for the college town includes more partnerships with local high schools, economic development and projects with local businesses. 

For Moore, strengthening Rust also means strengthening the surrounding community. 

“When Rust grows, our community grows with us,” Moore said. “That is what has sustained this institution for 160 years, and it is what will sustain it for generations to come.”