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1 month 2 weeks ago
One measure would extend the validity of medical cannabis cards while another would create the “Right to Try Medical Cannabis Act.”
Two bills related to Mississippi’s medical cannabis program passed in the House of Representatives this week.
One bill extends the timeframe for a patient’s follow-up visit to keep their medical cannabis card valid, while a second bill creates a system where patients suffering from debilitating or terminal conditions not already on the state’s list of approved conditions can petition to try medical cannabis.
By Jeremy Pittari - Magnolia Tribune on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Pictured is an adult male purple martin. (Photo courtesy of Purple Martin Conservation Association)
In a sure sign that spring is not far behind, the first purple martins of the year have been spotted in Mississippi.
The birds were seen on Jan. 31 in Gautier, Mississippi, by a purple martin enthusiast – one of many throughout the eastern and central United States who track and report on the birds’ annual migration on behalf of the Purple Martin Conservation Association (PMCA). The migration of these unique birds can be reported and tracked through a community science project called the Scout-Arrival Study.
By Special to The Sun-Sentinel on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Robert St. John says sometimes we’re too hard on Mississippi. We know the flaws. We’ve lived with them. But we can’t see the forest for the pine trees, as they say.
Marco had never seen a pine plantation.
By Robert St. John on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Below is an opinion column by Barrett Donahoe:
This is not about politics. It is about students. It is about families, and ensuring that every child—regardless of zip code or income—has access to an education that nurtures both the mind and the heart.
By Barrett Donahoe - Magnolia Tribune on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Below is an opinion column by Bobby Harrison:
The effort of Mississippi House leaders and others to expand programs providing public funds to private schools validates the oft-repeated quote that “history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
Efforts by Mississippi legislators to send public funds to private schools go back to at least the 1960s.
By Bobby Harrison - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Audience members express emotion as public comments are given during the DeSoto County School Board meeting in Hernando, Miss. on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
In DeSoto County, some community members and the school board want Michele Henley, the board’s former president, to resign. They say she wrote a letter and testified in support of a woman who was eventually convicted of sexual battery against a minor. Henley has denied those accusations.
By Leonardo Bevilacqua - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Below is an opinion column by Adam Ganucheau:
How Black representation at every level of government could be gutted if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.
Mississippi’s political system could soon look more like 1966 than 2026, and it’s time to acknowledge the full extent of the greatest threat to the American Experiment in decades
By ADAM GANUCHEAU - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Fredrick “Geno” Womack didn’t need to see the data to know that Jackson’s homicides had fallen.
Gone are the nightmarish days of 2020, when Womack, the executive director of Operation Good, said he could step outside his nonprofit’s south Jackson headquarters and smell the metallic scent of crystal meth in the air. It’s been years, he said, since he has seen an armed man roaming the sidewalks of McDowell Road.
By Molly Minta - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Lonnie Whiting Jr., a resident at the Unita Blackwell Stay Apartments in Mayersville, expressed joy in having electricity restored at the complex. "Everything is electric, so it was hard, but we making it," Whiting said on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Preparing to feed a revolving door of linemen Monday at her restaurant Chuck’s Dairy Bar, Tracy Harden recalled the winter storm of 1994, the last one that resembled what many Mississippians have lived through the past two weeks. It was then, 32 years ago, she stumbled upon a lineman she still knows well to this day.
“He was up top a light pole, and I saw him and I told my mom, ‘I’m going to marry that man up there,’” she said of meeting her now-husband, Tim.
By Alex Rozier - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Measures to improve prison health care access and create stronger safeguards against the denial of care in Mississippi prisons survived the first legislative deadline on Tuesday, but several also died.
The legislation is part of a reform package introduced by Rep. Becky Currie, the Republican House Corrections Chairwoman from Brookhaven.
By Michael Goldberg - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
The Senate Elections Committee adopted a measure on Tuesday that would, at least partially, restore the system to allow Mississippians to bypass the Legislature and put issues to a statewide vote.
The committee voted to approve Senate Concurrent Resolution 518, which would require initiative organizers to gather signatures from at least 10% of registered voters in the state, or roughly 170,000 signatures, before it can go on a ballot.
By Taylor Vance - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
The House of Representatives debate House Bill 2 on Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, at the State Capitol in Jackson. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
The Senate previously passed a $2K raise. The two chambers would have to reach an agreement.
Every Mississippi lawmaker has voted so far to give teachers a pay raise.
By Devna Bose and Michael Goldberg - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
There are moments in a republic when the noise of slogans must give way to the quiet insistence of conscience.
This is one of them.
We are told, almost daily, that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is pursuing the “worst of the worst.” Instead, the machinery of enforcement has turned its iron attention on those who have committed no crime beyond believing, worshiping, and hoping in the wrong direction.
By Joseph McCain on
1 month 3 weeks ago
A hallway remains empty in a closed area of the Delta Health System in Greenville, Miss., Tuesday, February 14, 2022. Credit: Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today
As Mississippi prepares to spend tens of millions of federal dollars to strengthen rural health care, lawmakers in both state legislative chambers have advanced bills aimed at increasing transparency and oversight.
By Gwen Dilworth - Mississippi Today on
1 month 3 weeks ago
“Are we really going to be the Gestapo?” podcaster Joe Rogan asked. “‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?”
Uproar over ICE and Border Patrol aggressive tactics has begun to breach President Donald Trump’s fortress.
“Hate to say it, but they are all lying,” posted lifelong Mississippi Republican Pete Perry on Facebook. “Denial of what we have seen, what has been put in front of us – them and us – and ignored and lied about. We saw it. They saw it. And they know we and everyone else have seen the truth.”
By Bill Crawford on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Over the past few years, Mississippi lawmakers have passed some critical conservative reforms. Last year, Mississippi became the first state in America to legislate to eliminate the income tax in 40 years. In 2022, we implemented flat tax reform. A few years before that, we passed important labor market reforms. In 2024, we reformed school funding to get more money into the classroom.
It is thanks to these flagship conservative reforms that Mississippi has enjoyed more economic growth in the past five years than over the previous fifteen combined.
By Douglas Carswell - Mississippi Center for Public Policy on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Maybe there’s something to this notion that weather extremes are getting greater. We had record breaking high temperatures in December and record breaking low temperatures in January.
January 31 beat the all-time low for that day by one degree. This year’s low was 16 degrees, lower by one degree than January 31, 1966. The high that day this year was 28 degrees, a whopping five degrees lower than the January 31, 1996 high of 33 degrees. And the wind was blowing at 25 knots. Brrr!
By Wyatt Emmerich on
1 month 3 weeks ago
“I’ve never been more disappointed in elected officials than I am this morning,” Reeves said of the Lt. Governor and Senate Education Chairman. He added that the Senate Education Committee is “where Conservative priorities go to Die. And where the Democrat philosophy still dominates.”
Governor Tate Reeves (R) took to social media early Wednesday morning to express his displeasure with how Republicans in the Mississippi Senate failed to back the House education freedom package put forward by Speaker Jason White (R).
By Frank Corder - Magnolia Tribune on
1 month 3 weeks ago
Senator Hyde-Smith was in the Oval Office with President Trump on Tuesday for the signing of appropriations bills.
Mississippi U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) joined fellow lawmakers for a White House signing ceremony for the Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations package in the Oval Office on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump (R) turned to the Mississippi senator and said, “Cindy Hyde, come on. Say something.”
By Frank Corder - Magnolia Tribune on
1 month 3 weeks ago
February may be a short month, but it’s packed with plenty of things to do all across Mississippi.
With only 28 days, February is the shortest month of the year, but it sure does have a lot going for it. Despite being a bleak month weather-wise, the famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, surely saw his shadow somewhere. Regardless, chances are good there are only six weeks left of winter.
By Susan Marquez - Magnolia Tribune on
