Cameron Everest Brand of Pass Christian is charged with murder and aggravated assault, jail records show. Bay St. Louis Police Chief Toby Schwartz said in a news release that police identified Brand as the sole shooter through witness and victim statements.

An 18-year-old and a 16-year-old died in a New Orleans hospital, Schwartz said. The Orleans Parish coroner did not return a phone call seeking to confirm their identities.

Friends and family identified them as De’Arreis “DD” Smith, 18, and Haeleigh Stamper, 16, classmates at Hancock High School.

Smith was a senior getting ready to graduate, according to Kecia Sams, who considered him an adopted member of her family.

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“De’Arreis Smith was an amazing soul, a loyal friend, brother and uncle,” Sams told Nola.com. “He was loved by many and will be missed so very much by his family.”

A GoFundMe account was set up to help with funeral expenses for Stamper. In the posting, the organizer, Lillie Smith, described the teen as a “sweet soul.”

“Her beautiful smile would light the whole room up,” Smith said.

Brand was arrested at his home in neighboring Pass Christian and taken to jail, Schwartz said. Bay St. Louis Municipal Court Judge Stephen Maggio denied Brand bail, and he was being held in the Hancock County jail. It is unclear if Brand has a lawyer who could speak for him.

Students had gathered for a party at the home on a sparsely populated road after Bay High School’s prom. Local news outlets reported that trails of blood could be seen on the pavement Sunday outside the home, while cars were peppered with bullet holes. The home is less than a mile from Bay High.

Police said the six victims wounded by gunfire ranged in age from 15 to 18. All were taken to area hospitals, some by helicopter.

Casey Woods, an 18-year-old student at Pass Christian High School, told the Sun Herald of Biloxi that he was at the party with a girlfriend. He told the paper he saw Brand talking to people and then walking away before he returned and the shooting started.

“Me and my girl looked up and saw sparks coming from the gun,” Woods said, adding many people ran into the woods.

Both of the teens who died had attended nearby Hancock High School in Kiln, officials in that school district said. Two more Hancock High students were shot and wounded, as were two students from Bay High. Those are the only two public high schools in Hancock County, on the western end of the Mississippi Gulf Coast between New Orleans and Gulfport.

“Our hearts are broken as we mourn the tragic loss of two Hancock High School students who were victims of the shooting in Bay St. Louis last night,” the Hancock County school district said in a statement, saying counselors would be available Monday at school. “Let us come together as a community to show our support and love during this difficult time.”

Sandra Reed, superintendent of the Bay St. Louis-Waveland school district, said both of the wounded Bay High students were expected to recover. Bay High Principal Amy Necaise said the school was making faculty and staff available on campus Sunday afternoon to counsel students.

WTVA-TV reported video boards inside the Ole Miss football stadium showed a message saying the “Thought You Should Know” singer had lost his voice and was unable to perform, adding that people would be refunded their money where they bought the tickets.

Some people expressed anger on social media because the announcement of the cancellation came after the opening acts had performed.

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While Wallen is one of country music’s biggest stars, he’s no stranger to controversy. He was caught on camera in 2021 outside a home in Nashville, Tennessee, yelling profanities and a racial slur. He apologized at the time but was suspended indefinitely from his label and his music was pulled by radio stations and streaming services.

The year before, Wallen was arrested for public intoxication and disorderly conduct after getting kicked out of a downtown Nashville bar.

The sudden cancellation concluded what was supposed to be two consecutive nights of performances by one of the hottest stars in country music. Saturday night’s show appeared to be a huge success with thousands showing up for the first concert in the stadium’s history.

The indictment of former wrestler Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr., 40, of Madison, Mississippi, was unsealed Thursday, two days after it was issued by a grand jury in Jackson.

It is the latest development in a sprawling Mississippi corruption case involving wealthy and well-connected people receiving contracts from the state Department of Human Services from 2016 to 2019.

DiBiase was a WWE wrestler in the 2000s and 2010s, and is the son of WWE Hall of Famer Ted DiBiase, known on stage as The Million Dollar Man.

The indictment accuses him and co-conspirators, including former Mississippi Department of Human Services director John Davis, of fraudulently obtaining federal money and using it for their own benefit.

According to the indictment, Davis directed funds from The Emergency Food Assistance Program and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to two nonprofit organizations — Family Resource Center of North Mississippi Inc. and Mississippi Community Education Center.

Davis directed the organizations’ directors to award contracts in 2017 and 2018 to DiBiase’s companies, Priceless Ventures LLC and Familiae Orientem LLC, for social services that the companies did not provide, the indictment said.

“DiBiase allegedly used these federal funds to buy a vehicle and a boat, and for the down payment on the purchase of a house, among other expenditures,” the Justice Department said in a news release Thursday.

The Associated Press left a phone message with DiBiase’s attorney Thursday, seeking comment on the indictment.

DiBiase is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to commit theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, six counts of wire fraud, two counts of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds and four counts of money laundering.

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If convicted, he would face up to five years in prison for the conspiracy count, up to 20 years for each wire fraud count and up to 10 years for each count of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds and for each count of money laundering, the Justice Department said.

Davis pleaded guilty last year to charges tied to welfare misspending in state’s largest public corruption case.

DiBiase’s brother, former pro wrestler Brett DiBiase, has pleaded guilty to state and federal charges tied to the case.

The welfare misspending scandal has ensnared high-profile figures, including retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre, who is not facing criminal charges but is among more than three dozen defendants in a civil lawsuit that the current Human Services director filed to try to recover some of the welfare money wasted while Davis was in charge.

Mississippi has ranked among the poorest states in the U.S. for decades, but only a fraction of its federal welfare money has been going toward direct aid to families. Instead, the Mississippi Department of Human Services allowed well-connected people to fritter away tens of millions of welfare dollars from 2016 to 2019, according to the state auditor and state and federal prosecutors.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families money helped pay for pet projects of the wealthy, including $5 million for a volleyball arena that Favre supported at his alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi, Mississippi Auditor Shad White said. Favre’s daughter played volleyball at the school starting in 2017.

Tornadoes touched down into the night, laying waste to homes and businesses and stripping bark and limbs off trees, as part of a sprawling storm system that also brought wildfires to the southern Plains and blizzard conditions to the Upper Midwest.

The dead included four in the small town of Wynne, Arkansas, Cross County Coroner Eli Long told KAIT-TV. Other deaths were reported in Illinois and Indiana.

Wynne City Councilmember Lisa Powell Carter said the town about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Memphis, Tennessee, was without power and roads were full of debris.

“I’m in a panic trying to get home, but we can’t get home,” she said Friday night. “Wynne is so demolished. … There’s houses destroyed, trees down on streets.”

In Belvidere, Illinois, a tornado collapsed the roof of the Apollo Theatre as 260 people attended a heavy metal concert, killing one person and injuring 28, five of them severely, officials said.

People rushed to lift the collapsed part of the ceiling and pull people out of the rubble, Gabrielle Lewellyn, who had just entered the theater, told WTVO-TV.

“They dragged someone out from the rubble, and I sat with him and I held his hand and I was (telling him) ‘It’s going to be OK.’ I didn’t really know much else what to do,” Lewellyn said.

The venue’s Facebook page said the bands scheduled to perform were Morbid Angel, Crypta, Skeletal Remains and Revocation.

The storms also killed three people in Sullivan County, Indiana, Emergency Management Director Jim Pirtle said in an email. Some residents were missing in the county seat, Sullivan, near the Illinois line about 95 miles (150 kilometers) southwest of Indianapolis.

In the Little Rock area, at least one person was killed and more than two dozen were hurt, some critically, authorities said.

The tornado in Little Rock tore first through neighborhoods in the western part of the Arkansas capital and shredded a small shopping center that included a Kroger grocery store. It then crossed the Arkansas River into North Little Rock and surrounding cities, where widespread damage was reported to homes, businesses and vehicles.

Little Rock resident Niki Scott took cover in the bathroom after her husband called to warn her of a tornado. She could hear glass shattering and emerged to find that her house was one of the few on her street that didn’t have a tree on it.

“It’s just like everyone says. It got really quiet, then it got really loud,” Scott said afterward, as chainsaws roared and sirens blared.

In the evening, officials in Pulaski County announced a confirmed fatality in North Little Rock.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders activated 100 members of the National Guard to help local authorities respond throughout the state.

In northern Mississippi’s Pontotoc County, the state emergency management agency confirmed one death and four injuries.

The storms struck just hours after President Joe Biden visited the Mississippi community of Rolling Fork, where tornadoes last week reduced destroyed parts of town.

Authorities in Tipton County, north of Memphis, said a tornado appeared to have touched down near a middle school and other locations. Sheriff Shannon Beasley said on Facebook that homes and structures were severely damaged.

Tornadoes also caused sporadic damage in eastern Iowa. One veered just west of Iowa City, home to the University of Iowa. Video from KCRG-TV showed toppled power poles and roofs ripped off an apartment building in the suburb of Coralville and damaged homes in the city of Hills.

Nearly 90,000 customers in Arkansas lost power, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks outages. Hail broke windows on cars and buildings northeast of Peoria, Illinois, and over 109,000 customers lost power Friday night. Outages were also reported in Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Indiana and Texas.

Meanwhile, blizzard conditions whipped parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, cutting power to some customers in the Twin Cities area, as the system smothered a broad swath of the country home to some 85 million people.

Nearly 100 new wildfires were reported Friday in Oklahoma, according to the state forest service, and firefighters hoped to gain ground against them Saturday. Fires will remain a danger through the week, especially for northern and western parts of the state.

Crews battled several blazes near El Dorado, Kansas, and some residents were asked to evacuate, including about 250 elementary school children who were relocated to a high school.

___

DeMillo reported from Little Rock. Associated Press writers around the country contributed to this report.

At least 26 people were killed and dozens of others were injured in Mississippi as the massive storm ripped through more than a half-dozen towns late Friday. A man was also killed in Alabama after his trailer home flipped over several times.

“Everything I can see is in some state of destruction,” said Jarrod Kunze, who drove to the hard-hit Mississippi town of Rolling Fork from his home in Alabama, ready to help “in whatever capacity I’m needed.”

Kunze was among volunteers working Sunday at a staging area, where bottled water and other supplies were being readied for distribution.

Search and recovery crews resumed the daunting task of digging through flattened and battered homes, commercial buildings and municipal offices after hundreds of people were displaced.

The storm hit so quickly that the sheriff’s department in Rolling Fork barely had time to set off sirens to warn the community of 2,000 residents, said Mayor Eldridge Walker.

“And by the time they initiated the siren, the storm had hit and it tore down the siren that’s located right over here,” Walker said, referring to an area just blocks from downtown.

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The mayor said his town was devastated.

“Sharkey County, Mississippi, is one of the poorest counties in the state of Mississippi, but we’re still resilient,” he said. “We’ve got a long way to go, and we certainly thank everybody for their prayers and for anything they will do or can do for this community.”

President Joe Biden issued an emergency declaration for Mississippi early Sunday, making federal funding available to hardest hit areas.

“Help is on the way,” Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said at a news conference with local, state and federal leaders.

Recovery efforts in Mississippi were underway even as the National Weather Service warned of a new risk of more severe weather Sunday — including high winds, large hail and possible tornadoes in Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

A tornado touched down early Sunday in Troup County, Georgia, near the Alabama border, according to the Georgia Mutual Aid Group. Affected areas included the county seat of LaGrange, about 67 miles (108 kilometers) southwest of Atlanta

About 100 buildings were damaged, with at least 30 uninhabitable, and five people suffered minor injuries, officials said. Many roads, including Interstate Highway 85, were blocked by debris.

Two tigers briefly escaped from their enclosures at Wild Animal Safari in Pine Mountain, Georgia, after the park sustained extensive tornado damage. “Both have now been found, tranquilized, and safely returned to a secure enclosure,” the park said on Facebook. None of its employees or animals were hurt, it said.

Outside of Rolling Fork, a tornado ripped apart the home where Kimberly Berry lived in the Delta flatlands. The twister left only a foundation and a few belongings — a toppled refrigerator, a dresser and nightstand, a bag of Christmas decorations, some clothing.

Berry said she and her 12-year-old daughter huddled and prayed inside a nearby church as the storm roared outside.

“I didn’t hear nothing but my own self praying and God answering my prayer. I mean, I can get another house, another furniture. But literally saving my life — I’m thankful,” she said.

Following Biden’s declaration, federal funding will be available for recovery efforts in Mississippi’s Carroll, Humphreys, Monroe and Sharkey counties, including temporary housing, home repairs, loans covering uninsured property losses and other individual and business programs, the White House said in a statement.

The twister flattened entire blocks, obliterated houses, ripped a steeple off a church and toppled a municipal water tower.

Based on early data, the tornado received a preliminary EF-4 rating, the National Weather Service office in Jackson said in a tweet. An EF-4 tornado has top wind gusts between 166 mph and 200 mph (265 kph and 320 kph).

In Rolling Fork, the tornado reduced homes to piles of rubble and flipped cars on their sides. Other parts of the Deep South were digging out from damage caused by other suspected twisters.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said 25 people were confirmed killed in Mississippi, 55 people were injured and 2,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. High winds, hail and strong storms were expected for parts of Alabama and Georgia on Sunday, the National Weather Service said.

The tornado that slammed into Rolling Fork tore across Mississippi for about 59 miles (95 kilometers) over a period that lasted more than one hour, the National Weather Service said in a preliminary report Sunday. The tornado was an estimated three-quarters of a mile wide at some points, according to the preliminary estimate.

The supercell that produced the deadly twister also appeared to produce tornadoes causing damage in northwest and north-central Alabama, said Brian Squitieri, a severe storms forecaster with the weather service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

In Georgia, Rachel McMahon awoke Sunday to news from her father that the Troup County motel he’d been staying in was destroyed. She said her dad, who is disabled, took shelter in the bathtub when the tornado hit.

He was badly shaken up, but not injured. She had to walk the last half-mile to his motel because of downed trees.

“SO thankful my dad is ok,” she posted on Facebook, along with photos and videos of the damage: houses with gaping holes in roofs, massive tree trunks snapped in half and powerlines dangling every which way.

___

Associated Press journalists Leah Willingham in Charleston, West Virginia; Jim Salter in O’Fallon, Missouri; Lea Skene in Baltimore; Jeff Martin in Woodstock, Georgia; Christopher Weber in Los Angeles, and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.

“We lost everything but got out alive,” he said, holding his young granddaughter in his arms.

Stories were similar throughout the town of just over 200 people, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of the state capital of Jackson. Devastating accounts of utter destruction, incredible survival and tragic deaths followed Friday’s twister that killed at least 25 in Mississippi and one in Alabama as it surged nearly 170 miles (274 kilometers) across the Deep South.

Residents sat in folding chairs outside the mud-splattered ruins of beloved family homes as people came by in all-terrain vehicles and golf carts packed with bottles of water to distribute. A line of cars was parked on the road from first responders and family who had driven in to help with clean up and rescue efforts.

Remnants of the storm and reminders of its ferocity were everywhere.

A child’s Shrek doll lay face down in the dirt next to a pile of broken plywood and branches, feet from a busted-up refrigerator with its back torn clean off. Limbs from several fallen trees blocked a school bus. Outside the wall of what used to be a house, a bike lay upside down in another pile of debris.

Lakeisha Clincy, Yaclyn James and Shaquetin Burnett had just returned to their Silver City home from an evening out in the nearby town of Belzoni when the tornado struck. They parked in their driveway and opened the car doors, but it was too late.

“I saw houses flying everywhere,” Burnett said. “The house on the corner was spinning.”

They closed the car doors and waited.

“It only lasted about three minutes, but it was the longest three minutes I’ve ever had,” Clincy said. “This I will never forget.”

They exited the car to find their house destroyed. Officials later transported them by bus to a hotel, where they fell asleep sometime after 4 a.m. They didn’t know where they would sleep Saturday night.

Christin George said her parents and grandmother narrowly escaped when the tornado blew out the windows and ripped off part of the roof of their home.

She said her parents huddled behind a door that hadn’t been hung yet and threw a blanket over her grandmother to shield themselves from the glass that “shot down the hallway and peppered everybody.”

“Everything else around them is just gone,” she said, at times clutching her hand to her chest. “They were lucky. That’s all there is to it.”

Christine Chinn, who’s lived in Silver City her whole life, sought refuge with her husband and son in the hallway, covering themselves with a blanket as they desperately sought to protect themselves. After the storm, the roof was gone on the home where she’s lived for 17 years and cars were upended in her yard.

“It just got calm and all of sudden everything just — like a big old train or something coming through,” she said, adding that much of her belongings weren’t salvageable.

She said she was very scared and had never experienced anything like it.

That same fear gripped residents of Rolling Fork, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) away, as the twister flatted the town of just under 2,000 people.

Derrick Brady Jr., 9, said he tried to cover his 7-year-old sister Kylie Carter with his body as the tornado moved over their home. He had to dive in the bathtub as his mom pushed herself up against the bathroom door, trying to keep it closed. He described the sensation of feeling both pushed and pulled by the twister’s force.

“I was scared, but I was brave that time,” he said. “We had to say our own prayers in our heads.”

Wanda Barfield, grandmother of Derrick and Kylie, said she was running around the devastated town Friday night and Saturday trying to account for loved ones. After the storm hit, she kept calling family members’ cell phones, but no one answered. She found her sister-in-law dead amid the wreckage, she said.

She said her family is doing the best they can to survive.

“Our life is more important than anything else. You can get a job, money, car, clothes, shoes — you can get all that,” she said. “For me, and for my house, we’re going to serve the Lord.”

James Hancock was helping with search and rescue efforts in Rolling Fork late Friday as the storm tore through town.

He was part of a crew who forced open a store that community members started using to care for injured people. It took two hours for ambulances to maneuver through debris-filled streets to get to the store to start tending to them, he said. As he moved from the ruins of one home to the next, he said he could hear people crying out in the dark.

“You could just hear people needing help, and it was just devastating,” he said.

___

Rush contributed from Portland, Oregon. Associated Press reporters Emily Wagster Pettus and Leah Willingham contributed from Rolling Fork, Mississippi and Charleston, West Virginia.

The tornado devastated a swath of the town of Rolling Fork, reducing homes to piles of rubble, flipping cars on their sides and toppling the town’s water tower. Residents hunkered down in bath tubs and hallways during Friday night’s storm and later broke into a John Deere store that they converted into a triage center for the wounded.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency announced late Saturday afternoon in a tweet that the death toll had risen to 25 from 23. Four people previously reported missing have been found, but dozens also were injured.

“There’s nothing left,” said Wonder Bolden, holding her granddaughter, Journey, while standing outside the remnants of her mother’s now-leveled mobile home in Rolling Fork. “There’s just the breeze that’s running, going through — just nothing.”

Other parts of the Deep South were digging out from damage caused by other suspected twisters. One man also died in Morgan County, Alabama, the sheriff’s department there said in a tweet.

“There’s nothing left,” said Wonder Bolden, holding her granddaughter, Journey, while standing outside the remnants of her mother’s now-leveled mobile home in Rolling Fork. “There’s just the breeze that’s running, going through — just nothing.”

Throughout Saturday, she and others walked around dazed and in shock as they broke through debris and fallen trees with chain saws, searching for survivors. Power lines were pinned under decades-old oaks, their roots torn from the ground.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves issued a State of Emergency and vowed to help rebuild as he headed to view the damage in an area speckled with wide expanses of cotton, corn and soybean fields and catfish farming ponds. President Joe Biden also promised federal help, describing the damage as “heartbreaking.”

The damage in Rolling Fork was so widespread that several storm chasers — who follow severe weather and often put up livestreams showing dramatic funnel clouds — pleaded for search and rescue help. Others abandoned the chase to drive injured people to the hospital.

But it didn’t help that the community hospital on the west side of town was damaged, forcing patients to be transferred.

Sheddrick Bell, his partner and two daughters crouched in a closet of their Rolling Fork home for 15 minutes as the tornado barreled through. His daughters wouldn’t stop crying. He could hear his partner praying out loud beside him.

“I was just thinking, ‘If I can still open my eyes and move around, I’m good,’” he said.

Rodney Porter, who lives about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Rolling Fork and belongs to a local fire department, said he didn’t know how anyone survived as he delivered water and fuel to families there.

“It’s like a bomb went off,” he said, describing houses stacked on top of houses. Crews even cut gas lines to the town to keep residents and first responders safe.

The warning the National Weather Service issued as the storm hit didn’t mince words: “To protect your life, TAKE COVER NOW!”

Preliminary information based on estimates from storm reports and radar data indicate that it was on the ground for more than an hour and traversed at least 170 miles (274 kilometers), said Lance Perrilloux, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Jackson, Mississippi, office.

Mississippi Mar 25

‘This I Will Never Forget': Survivors Recount Harrowing Moments After Deadly Southern Tornadoes

“That’s rare — very, very rare,” he said, attributing the long path to widespread atmospheric instability. “All the ingredients were there.”

Perrilloux said preliminary findings are that the tornado began its path of destruction just southwest of Rolling Fork before continuing northeast toward the rural communities of Midnight and Silver City before moving toward Tchula, Black Hawk and Winona.

The supercell that produced the deadly twister also appeared to produce tornadoes that caused damage in northwest and north-central Alabama, said Brian Squitieri, a severe storms forecaster with Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

In northern Alabama’s Morgan County, a 67-year-old man who became trapped beneath a trailer that flipped over during severe overnight storms was rescued by first responders, but he died later at a hospital, AL.com reported.

Even as survey teams work to assess how many tornadoes struck and their severity, the Storm Prediction Center is warning of the potential for hail, wind and possibly a few tornadoes Sunday in parts of Mississippi and Louisiana.

Cornel Knight told The Associated Press that he, his wife and their 3-year-old daughter were at a relative’s home in Rolling Fork when the tornado struck. He said the sky was dark but “you could see the direction from every transformer that blew.”

He said the tornado struck another relative’s home across a wide cornfield from where he was. A wall in that home collapsed and trapped several people inside.

Royce Steed, the emergency manager in Humphreys County where Silver City is located, likened the damage to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“It is almost complete devastation,” he said after crews finished searching buildings and switched to damage assessments. “This little old town, I don’t know what the population is, it is more or less wiped off the map.”

In the town, the roof had torn off Noel Crook’s home, where he lives there with his wife.

“Yesterday was yesterday and that’s gone – there’s nothing I can do about it,” Crook said. “Tomorrow is not here yet. You don’t have any control over it, so here I am today.”

The tornado looked so powerful on radar as it neared the town of Amory, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Tupelo, that one Mississippi meteorologist paused to say a prayer after new radar information came in.

“Oh man,” WTVA’s Matt Laubhan said on the live broadcast. “Dear Jesus, please help them. Amen.”

Now that town is boiling its water, a curfew in effect.

More than a half-dozen shelters were opened in the state to house the displaced.

“It’s a priceless feeling to see the gratitude on people’s faces to know they’re getting a hot meal,” said William Trueblood, emergency disaster services director for the Salvation Army’s Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi Division, as he headed to the area, picking up supplies along the way.

He said they’re hearing at least 19,000 homes were impacted by the severe weather.

Still, there were signs of improvement. Power outages, which at one point were affecting more than 75,000 customers in Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama, had been cut by a third by midafternoon Saturday, according to poweroutage.us.

Meteorologists saw a big tornado risk coming for the general region as much as a week in advance, said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Walker Ashley.

Tornado experts like Ashley have been warning about increased risk exposure in the region because of people building more.

“You mix a particularly socioeconomically vulnerable landscape with a fast-moving, long-track nocturnal tornado, and, disaster will happen,” Ashley said in an email.

___

Associated Press writer Emily Wagster Pettus in Rolling Fork, Mississippi; Michael Goldberg in Silver City, Mississippi; Jim Salter in O’Fallon, Missouri; Rick Callahan in Indianapolis; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington; Robert Jablon in Los Angeles; Seth Borenstein in Kensington, Maryland; and Jackie Quinn in Washington, D.C. contributed to this report.

But until now, Mississippi was without a state fruit.

That changed this week thanks to fourth-grade pupils at the Mannsdale Upper Elementary School in Madison, Mississippi, a suburb of Jackson. 

Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill naming the blueberry the state fruit and it was their idea.

Their teacher, Lisa Parenteau, told the Madison County Journal that they took on “Project Blueberry” as it was dubbed after learning that students in Kansas had lobbied their legislature to make the plum their state fruit.

“I Googled it and saw we in fact didn’t have one,” she said. She encouraged them to do some research, through which they learned that the blueberry was responsible for nearly $2 million in state tax revenue.

State Rep. Jill Ford of Madison County sponsored the bill.

“I am overwhelmed that we have been able to watch this go from nothing but a good idea to be manifested into an actual law,” Ford said.

The pupils visited the Mississippi State Capitol and gathered around the governor as he signed the bill. 

“I am just beaming with pride,” Parenteau said 

Brett DiBiase faces up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine for his plea to conspiracy to defraud the federal government.

He pleaded guilty in December 2020 to a state charge of making false representations to defraud the government. State sentencing was delayed, and DiBiase has been cooperating with state and federal investigators looking at others in the case, Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens said.

Owens and Mississippi Auditor Shad White announced DiBiase’s federal guilty plea.

“I applaud our federal partners for continuing to pursue federal charges for each and every individual responsible for stealing from Mississippi’s most needy and vulnerable citizens,” Owens said Thursday. “This case is far from over and both the state of Mississippi and the U.S. government will continue to pursue all those involved in this fraud, regardless of their position or standing.”

White said the auditor’s office will continue to assist prosecutors as they decide who will face criminal charges.

“I’m pleased that our work uncovering the largest public fraud in state history continues to result in convictions,” White said.

John Davis, who was Mississippi Department of Human Services executive director from 2016 to mid-2019, pleaded guilty last September to state and federal charges tied to misspending of money through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program.

Davis’ state court charges were mostly tied to welfare money spent on DiBiase, including $160,000 for the former wrestler’s drug rehabilitation in Malibu, California.

Davis, DiBiase and four other people were indicted on state charges in the welfare misspending case in February 2020.

Two of those indicted, a mother and son who ran a nonprofit organization and an education company, pleaded guilty in April 2022 to state charges of misusing welfare money, including on lavish gifts such as the first-class airfare for Davis. Nancy New and Zachary New ran the organization that funneled welfare money for DiBiase’s drug rehab. They agreed to testify against others.

The welfare scandal has ensnared high-profile figures, including retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre, who lives in Mississippi. Favre has not faced criminal charges but is one of more than three dozen defendants in a civil lawsuit that the current Human Services director filed to try to recover some of the welfare money wasted while Davis was in charge.

Welfare money helped fund pet projects of the wealthy, including $5 million for a volleyball arena that Favre supported at his alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi, the state auditor said. Favre’s daughter played volleyball at the school starting in 2017.

In 2021, 102 newborns in Mississippi were treated for the sexually transmitted disease, up from 10 in 2016, according to an analysis of hospital billing data shared by Dr. Thomas Dobbs, the medical director for the Mississippi State Department of Health’s Crossroads Clinic in Jackson, which focuses on sexually transmitted infections. 

Dobbs, the state’s former health officer, said he’s spoken with health care providers who “are absolutely horrified” that babies are being born with the disease, and in rare instances dying from it.

“This seems like something that should have happened a hundred years ago, not last year,” said Dobbs, who is also a dean at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. “There’s really kind of a shock.”

The Mississippi State Department of Health does not formally track congenital syphilis deaths but said there was at least one baby who died in 2021. 

Read the full story here at NBCNews.com.

Thomas Edwin Loden Jr., 58, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. by Sunflower County Coroner Heather Burton. He’d been on death row since 2001, when he pleaded guilty to capital murder, rape and four counts of sexual battery against Leesa Marie Gray. She was stranded with a flat tire in June 2000 when Loden forced her into his van.

Gray’s mother, Wanda Farris, attended the execution at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, about 130 miles (210 kilometers) north of the capital, Jackson. Mississippi’s most recent execution was in November 2021.

Earlier this month, a federal judge declined to block Loden’s execution amid a pending lawsuit by him and four other Mississippi death row inmates over the state’s use of three drugs for lethal injections, a protocol they allege is inhumane.

During the execution, Loden wore a red prison jumpsuit and was covered by a white sheet. Brown leather straps held him down on a gurney.

Before the injection started, Loden said he was “deeply remorseful.”

“For the past 20 years, I’ve tried to do a good deed every single day to make up for the life I took from this world,” Loden said. “I know these are mere words and cannot erase the damage I did. If today brings you nothing else, I hope you get peace and closure.”

He concluded his last words by saying “I love you” in Japanese, officials said.

Grey had been working as a waitress at her uncle’s restaurant in northeast Mississippi during the summer ahead of her senior year of high school. On June 22, 2000, she left work after dark and got a flat tire.

Loden, a Marine Corps recruiter with relatives in the area, stopped at around 10:45 p.m. and began talking with her about the flat. “Don’t worry. I’m a Marine. We do this kind of stuff,” he said.

Loden told investigators he became angry after Gray allegedly said she would never want to be a Marine, and he ordered her into his van. He spent four hours sexually assaulting her before strangling and suffocating her, he told investigators.

The following afternoon, court records say “Loden was discovered lying by the side of a road with the words ‘I’m sorry’ carved into his chest and apparent self-inflicted lacerations on his wrists.”

Farris described her daughter as a “happy-go-lucky, always smiling” teenager who aspired to become an elementary school teacher.

“She wasn’t perfect, now, mind you,” Farris said. “But she strived to do right.”

Farris declined to speak to reporters following the execution.

A week earlier, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate ruled the execution could proceed, saying the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld a three-drug lethal injection protocol in Oklahoma as recently as seven years ago.

In November, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey sought a pause in executions and ordered a “top-to-bottom” review of the state’s capital punishment system after a series of failed lethal injections.

Mississippi has done “mock executions and drills” on a monthly basis to avoid a botched execution, Jeworski Mallett, deputy commissioner of institutions for the Department of Corrections, told reporters.

The Department of Corrections revealed in court papers in July 2021 that it had acquired three drugs for its lethal injection protocol: midazolam, which is a sedative; vecuronium bromide, which paralyzes the muscles; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Since 2019, only Alabama, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Tennessee have used a three-drug protocol, said Jim Craig, a MacArthur Center attorney, speaking at a November court hearing.

Craig said a majority of death-penalty states and the federal government used a three-drug protocol in 2008, but the federal government and most of those states have since started using one drug.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 27 states have the death penalty. There are 36 inmates on death row in Mississippi.

Death Penalty Action, a group opposed to capital punishment, convened a news conference Tuesday in front of the state capitol.

“Clearly, something in him snapped for him to commit such a horrific crime,” said Mitzi Magleby, a spokesperson for the Mississippi chapter of Ignite Justice, an organization that advocates for criminal justice reform. “Mr. Loden was immediately remorseful. Shouldn’t there be room for grace and mercy in such a situation?”

Loden hoped his execution would be the country’s last, his attorney Mark McDonald said in a statement following the execution.

At a news conference Wednesday, Burl Cain, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, said Loden fully cooperated with officials.

“He professed his sorrow. But he was quite upbeat and he ate hardy,” Cain said. His last meal included two bone-in fried pork chops, sweet potatoes, and peach cobbler with ice cream.

Farris, the victim’s mother, told The Associated Press on Friday that she forgave Loden years ago, but did not believe his apology.

“I don’t particularly want to see somebody die,” Farris said. “But I do believe in the death penalty. … I do believe in justice.”

Mark Wells, 51, of Biloxi initially fled the scene in a Tesla before turning himself in, Bay St. Louis Police Chief Toby Schwartz said in a news release.

The nose was not found as the victim was taken to a hospital, NBC affiliate WXXV reported.

Officers responding to a complaint of an assault at the Hollywood Casino Monday night arrived to find a victim with a disfiguring facial injury, the statement said.

“The investigation determined that suspect, Mark Curtis Wells, bit the nose off of the victim,” Schwartz said.

Officers were told that Wells and the victim had been arguing throughout the day over a golf game they played at the resort’s course.

Wells was charged with felony mayhem and booked on into the Hancock County jail, where he paid the required 10% of a $50,000 bond himself and walked out within the hour, WXXV reported.

According to the Biloxi Sun Herald, Wells faces up to seven years in prison if convicted of the felony, which state law defines as a premeditated “crime committed with the intent to kill in which the suspect mutilates, disfigures, disables, or destroys someone’s tongue, eye, lip, nose, limb or another body part.”

An official at the jail wouldn’t say whether Wells has a lawyer who could comment on his behalf.

The National Weather Service had warned that strong twisters capable of carving up communities over long distances were possible as the storm front moved eastward from Texas. They were fueled by record high temperatures and threatened a stretch of the United States where more than 25 million people live.

A total of 73 tornado warnings and 120 severe thunderstorm warnings were issued from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday morning, said Matthew Elliott, a meteorologist at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

Two people were killed in the Flatwood community just north of the city of Montgomery. “They were in their home that was struck by a tree due to the tornado,” said Christina Thornton, director of the Montgomery County Emergency Management Agency.

Others in the tight-knit community narrowly escaped with their lives: Caroline Bankston said she and Tim Wiseman were watching the news and trying to figure out where the twister was when she looked out the window and realized it was on top of them. They ran to a safer corner as the roof caved in, burying their sofa in debris.

“We just prayed, prayed, prayed, ‘Please God Please take care of us. Please,’ and he did. You can replace stuff, but you can’t replace a person,” Bankston said, her voice still trembling. “We were just sitting there on the couch. Thank God we moved.”

Search and rescue teams would continue going door to door until everyone’s accounted for, Montgomery County Sheriff Derrick Cunningham said.

Isaiah Sankey, who represents Flatwood as vice chairman of the Montgomery County Commission, expressed grief for the lives lost and vowed that installing storm shelters will be a priority.

“When we do rebuild, we will have storm shelters,” Sankey said. “We have got to prepare for these unforeseen circumstances.”

The NWS confirmed that tornadoes touched down in Mississippi. Lowndes County Emergency Management Agency Director Cindy Lawrence told NBC affiliate WTVA-TV the people inside the grocery store made it out safely, but the building was damaged. Images of the wreckage shared by NBC affiliate WTVA-TV showed homes and businesses damaged and a fire station shredded.

In the west Alabama town of Eutaw, video from NBC affiliate WPMI showed the destruction of an apartment complex where several families lived. The building’s roof and several walls were blown off, exposing bedrooms inside apartments and debris around the property. No severe injuries were reported and 15 displaced families were moved to a shelter at a local high school.

“We’ve got power lines, trees just all over the road,” said Eutaw Police Chief Tommy Johnson. “In the morning when we get a little daylight, we’re going to do a door-by-door search to make sure no one is trapped inside or anything like that.”

A suspected tornado damaged numerous homes during the night in Hale County, Alabama, where the emergency director said more than a third of the people live in highly vulnerable mobile homes.

“I have seen some really nice mobile homes tied down, but they just don’t stand a chance against a tornado,” Hale County Emergency Management Director Russell Weeden told WBRC just ahead of the storm.

Two other people were injured as the storm tore apart homes in Caldwell Parish, Louisiana, Sheriff Clay Bennett told KNOE-TV.

Hail stones crashed against the windows of City Hall in the small town of Tchula, Mississippi, where sirens blared and the mayor and other residents took cover. “It was hitting against the window, and you could tell that it was nice-sized balls of it,” Mayor Ann Polk said after the storm passed.

High winds downed power lines, and flooding was a hazard as more than 5 inches (13 centimeters) of rain fell within several hours in some places. More than 50,000 customers in Mississippi and Alabama were without electricity Wednesday morning, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility outages.

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Forecasters had been warning of the potential for a tornado outbreak for several days ahead of the storm. Elliott, who coordinates the warnings, said it took a lot of work to get the word out as people celebrated the holidays, and it seemed that people were taking the threat seriously.

“It’s a very vulnerable part of the country for tornadoes — especially tornadoes after dark,” Elliott said. “We all have to work together to get the best results on these types of events that could potentially lead to lots of devastation.”

Record high temperatures in Texas and Louisiana intensified the storm front before it moved into Mississippi and Alabama, forecasters said Wednesday.

Shreveport, Louisiana heated up to 81 degrees (27.2 Celsius) on Tuesday; and Tyler, Texas hit 82 degrees (27.8 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service in Shreveport. Both those marks broke the old record of 80, set in 1949, the weather service said.

Jeff E. Martin and Michael Warren in Atlanta, Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas; Michael Goldberg in Jackson, Mississippi; and Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this report.

Jackson’s Deputy Police Chief Deric Hearn identified the boy as Markell Noah, according to NBC affiliate WLBT-TV.

Noah was originally considered missing, but later found dead at an abandoned Jackson house.

Following the boy’s death officers arrested two juveniles and one 21-year-old adult Friday.

Police said the two juveniles are being charged with murder and the adult is being charged with accessory after the fact of murder.

No further details were given at the time, but police said an investigation is ongoing.

A white father and son have been indicted by a grand jury on multiple charges, including attempted murder, 10 months after a Black FedEx driver alleged he was chased and shot at after dropping off a package in a Mississippi city.

Gregory Case and his son Brandon were indicted this month by a Lincoln County grand jury on charges of attempted murder, conspiracy to commit the crime of murder and shooting into a motor vehicle in connection with the alleged Jan. 24 attack on D’Monterrio Gibson in Brookhaven, about 55 miles south of Jackson. The population of Brookhaven is about 59% Black and 39% white, according to the most recent census data.

Gregory Case was originally arrested in February on investigation of conspiracy and Brandon Case on suspicion of aggravated assault. The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department said that bond was set at $500,000 for each man for the upgraded charges and that they both bonded out. They have not yet been arraigned before a circuit court judge, and a trial date has not yet been set. Brandon Case’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment. It was not clear whether Gregory Case had retained an attorney.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com

News outlets reported at least seven overnight fires were confirmed by officials. At least two of the buildings set ablaze were churches. Another one of the fires broke out on Jackson State University’s baseball field.

“I’ve been here for 30 years. This is a major occurrence,” Patrick Armon, assistant fire chief for the Jackson Fire Department, told WAPT-TV. “This is not something we normally go to. We have about a third of our department on sites.”

No injuries were reported. Authorities are searching for one suspect, according to Armon and the Jackson Police Department. They did not provide the person’s name or a suspected motivation behind the fires.

Officials started to receive calls about several fires starting around 2:45 a.m. Officials said six of the seven fires were put out by 6 a.m. Epiphany church burned for more than four hours before the fire was extinguished.

Llyod Caston, 73, an elder at Epiphany, was awoken around 4:00 a.m. by a call from a family member who lives in the church’s neighborhood. Alerted to the fire, he left his home and arrived at the church around 4:30 a.m. to find the building “fully enflamed.”

“I was hurt,” Caston said as he thought back to seeing the church engulfed in flames.

The fire department was on the scene attempting to put out the fire when Caston arrived. He stayed about an hour and left before the fire had been extinguished. “There wasn’t nothing we could do but sit and watch,” Caston said. “That was it.”

“It destroyed the church and everything in it,” Caston said. The church is 85 years old, and renovations to the building’s interior had just been completed in March.

Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba addressed the fires at a Tuesday city council meeting.

“We don’t yet know who or why, but I want to thank the firefighters because they were able to respond to that and still get back to the stations, so that people could set up for voting precincts,” Lumumba stated.

With an election Tuesday morning, no polling places were reported to have been impacted by the fires.

“Change has come, and it will continue to happen,” Madison Harper, a senior at Leflore County High School, told a racially diverse audience at the statue’s dedication. “Decades ago, our parents and grandparents could not envision that a moment like today would transpire.”

The 1955 lynching became a catalyst for the civil rights movement. Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago so the world could see the horrors inflicted on her 14-year-old son. Jet magazine published photos of his mutilated body, which was pulled from the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi.

The 9-foot (2.7-meter) tall bronze statue in Greenwood’s Rail Spike Park is a jaunty depiction of the living Till in slacks, dress shirt and tie with one hand on the brim of a hat.

The rhythm and blues song, “Wake Up, Everybody” played as workers pulled a tarp off the figure. Dozens of people surged forward, shooting photos and video on cellphones.

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Anna-Maria Webster of Rochester, New York, had tears running down her face.

“It’s beautiful to be here,” said Webster, attending the ceremony on a sunny afternoon during a visit with Mississippi relatives. Speaking of Till’s mother she said: “Just to imagine the torment she went through — all over a lie.”

Mississippi has the highest percentage of Black residents of any state, now about 38%. Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, whose district encompasses the Delta, noted that Mississippi had no Black elected officials when Till was killed. He said Till’s death helped spur change.

“But you, know, change has a way of becoming slower and slower,” said Thompson, the only Black member of Mississippi’s current congressional delegation. “What we have to do in dedicating this monument to Emmett Till is recommit ourselves to the spirit of making a difference in our community.”

The statue is a short drive from an elaborate Confederate monument outside the Leflore County Courthouse and about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the crumbling remains of the store, Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market, in Money.

The statue’s unveiling coincided with the release this month of “Till,” a movie exploring Till-Mobley’s private trauma over her son’s death and her transformation into a civil rights activist.

The Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., the last living witness to his cousin’s kidnapping, wasn’t able to travel from Illinois for Friday’s dedication. But he told The Associated Press on Wednesday: “We just thank God someone is keeping his name out there.”

He said some wrongly thought Till got what he deserved for breaking the taboo of flirting with a white woman, adding many people didn’t want to talk about the case for decades.

“Now there’s interest in it, and that’s a godsend,” Parker said. “You know what his mother said: ‘I hope he didn’t die in vain.'”

Greenwood and Leflore County are both more than 70% Black and officials have worked for years to bring the Till statue to reality. Democratic state Sen. David Jordan of Greenwood secured $150,000 in state funding and a Utah artist, Matt Glenn, was commissioned to create the statue.

Jordan said he hopes it will draw tourists to learn more about the area’s history. “Hopefully, it will bring all of us together,” he said.

Till and Parker had traveled from Chicago to spend the summer of 1955 with relatives in the deeply segregated Mississippi Delta. On Aug. 24, the two teens took a short trip with other young people to the store in Money. Parker said he heard Till whistle at shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant.

Four days later, Till was abducted in the middle of the night from his uncle’s home. The kidnappers tortured and shot him, weighted his body down with a cotton gin fan and dumped him into the river.

Jordan, who is Black, was a college student in 1955 when he drove to the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner to watch the murder trial of two white men charged with killing Till — Carolyn’s husband Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam.

An all-white, all-male jury acquitted the two men, who later confessed to Look magazine that they killed Till.

Nobody has ever been convicted in the lynching. The U.S. Justice Department has opened multiple investigations starting in 2004 after receiving inquiries about whether charges could be brought against anyone still living.

In 2007, a Mississippi prosecutor presented evidence to a grand jury of Black and white Leflore County residents after investigators spent three years re-examining the killing. The grand jury declined to issue indictments.

The Justice Department reopened an investigation in 2018 after a 2017 book quoted Carolyn Bryant — now remarried and named Carolyn Bryant Donham — saying she lied when she claimed Till grabbed her, whistled and made sexual advances. Relatives have publicly denied Donham, who is in her 80s, recanted her allegations. The department closed that investigation in late 2021 without bringing charges.

This year, a group searching the Leflore County Courthouse basement found an unserved 1955 arrest warrant for “Mrs. Roy Bryant.” In August, another Mississippi grand jury found insufficient evidence to indict Donham, causing consternation for Till relatives and activists.

Although Mississippi has dozens of Confederate monuments, some have been moved in recent years, including one relocated in 2020 from the University of Mississippi campus to a cemetery where Confederate soldiers are buried.

The state has a few monuments to Black historical figures, including one honoring civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer in Ruleville.

A historical marker outside Bryant’s Grocery has been knocked down and vandalized. Another marker near where Till’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River has been vandalized and shot. The Till statue in Greenwood will be watched by security cameras.

Jordan won applause when he said Friday: “If some idiot tears it down, we’re going to put it right back up.”

The day care’s owner, Sheila Sanders, is not facing charges. She has said that at least four of the employees were fired after the video came to light.

The videos — one filmed in September and another this month — were posted on social media. They show a day care worker at Lil’ Blessings Child Care & Learning Center in Hamilton, an unincorporated community in northeast Mississippi, wearing a Halloween mask similar to the one in the “Scream” movies and yelling at children who didn’t “clean up” or “act good.”

Children can be seen bawling, cowering in fear and at times running from the masked employee. Another employee gives directions, singling out which children have acted good or bad. The employee in the mask is shown screaming inches away from children’s faces, the video showed.

Monroe County Sheriff Kevin Crook said in a news release that four of the women each face three counts of felony child abuse. A fifth woman, he says, faces charges of failure to report abuse by a mandatory reporter and simple assault against a minor — both misdemeanors.

“They can’t use corporal punishment, so we think they were using the mask to try to scare the kids into doing what they were supposed to be doing,” Crook said.

Crook said his office, the county prosecuting attorney and the district attorney met earlier this week with the children’s parents about the case. On Wednesday, at least one set of parents signed felony child abuse complaints, he said, adding a judge issued warrants Thursday for the women.

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Crook said all five live in the area. Sierra McCandless, 21; Oci-Anna Kilburn, 28; Jennifer Newman, 25, and Shyenne Shelton, 28, are accused of three counts of felony child abuse, the sheriff’s statement said.

Another woman, Traci Hutson, 44, faces charges of failure to report abuse by a mandatory reporter and simple assault against a minor — both misdemeanors, he added.

At a hearing, bond was set at $20,000 each for McCandless and Kilburn and $15,000 each for Newman and Shelton. Because she faces misdemeanor charges, Hutson was not required to post bond.

It was not immediately known if any of those facing charges have attorneys who could speak on their behalf.

Katelyn Johnson, a parent, told ABC News that she was shocked after seeing the videos.

She said her 2-year-old son is still showing signs of trauma and has difficulty sleeping through the night, adding of the footage, “it’s not a joke. And it’s nothing to laugh at.”

“Whether they had a mask on or a mask off, their behavior was unacceptable. My blood pressure was raised. It broke my heart for my child. I was angry,” she said.

Crook told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal that the felony charges will ultimately be presented to the grand jury to determine if there’s enough evidence for formal indictments, which could lead to court trials.

“It’s just a shame it happened and this is where we’re at. Hopefully, people will learn from it,” Crook said. “It can tear a community apart. Everybody who was a part of it knew each other in some shape or form. It’s a lot of emotions to deal with, and our job is to cut through those emotions, find the facts and present those facts.”

The governor at the time, Republican Phil Bryant, texted in 2019 with Favre, who wanted to build an indoor practice facility for the University of Southern Mississippi’s football team. Bryant told him federal money for children and low-income adults is “tightly controlled” and “improper use could result in violation of Federal Law.”

Text messages between Bryant and Favre are in court documents filed Friday by Bryant’s lawyers, which seek to show the governor was willing to help Favre raise private money for the volleyball facility starting in 2017 and was unaware for more than two years that welfare money was going to the project.

Mississippi’s largest-ever public corruption case has ensnared several people, including a pro wrestler whose drug rehab was funded with welfare money.

The state has filed a civil lawsuit against Favre and others to recover more than $20 million in misspent welfare money intended to help needy people in one of the country’s poorest states. Bryant and Favre are not facing criminal charges, and Bryant is not among those named in the state’s civil lawsuit.

A former director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, John Davis, pleaded guilty Thursday to federal and state felony charges in a conspiracy to misspend welfare money. Davis was appointed by Bryant in February 2016 and fired by him in July 2019. Davis has agreed to testify against others.

Attorneys for a nonprofit organization being sued, Mississippi Community Education Center, sent a subpoena to Bryant in late July, seeking communication between the former governor and any other person about the volleyball arena.

The nonprofit was run by Nancy New and her son, Zachary New, who in April pleaded guilty to state charges of misusing welfare money. They also agreed to testify against others.

In the court filing Friday, Bryant objected to producing documents unless it was under a protective order to prevent public release of the contents.

“This motion was brought in bad faith and solely to annoy, embarrass, and oppress Governor Bryant because he refused to turn a blind eye to the crimes perpetrated by New and Davis,” Bryant’s attorneys wrote.

Favre’s request for money from the Mississippi Department of Humans Services to fund the football facility went nowhere. Favre made the request July 28, 2019, as he was unsuccessfully trying to recruit the son of another retired NFL player, Deion Sanders, to the university in Hattiesburg.

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Favre played football at the University of Southern Mississippi before going to the NFL in 1991. Bryant and New are also alumni, and Favre wrote to Bryant that having an indoor practice facility would give the football program “instant credibility.”

Favre’s daughter started playing volleyball at the university in 2017. The new court papers said Bryant first learned Favre was trying to raise money for a volleyball arena on April 20, 2017, when Favre texted the governor to say he and his wife, Deanna, were building the facility.

“I need your influence somehow to get donations and or sponsorships,” Favre texted Bryant. “Obviously Southern has no money so I’m hustling to get it raised.”

The documents said Bryant replied a few hours later, “Of course I am all in on the Volleyball facility. … One thing I know how to do is raise money.'”

In July 2017, Favre texted Bryant about the volleyball facility again, asking “if we can find a contractor that would say hey rather than give you money I’ll build for free!! Maybe you know of someone.”

Bryant replied he was “all over it.”

“It is important to note that, in these early text messages, Favre never mentioned the use of public funds, much less the use of TANF funds for the construction of the facility,” Bryant’s attorneys wrote Friday. “At this time, the discussions between Favre and Governor Bryant were focused on private donations and corporate sponsorships.”

In July 2017, court records show Davis and Nancy New met about using welfare money to fund the volleyball arena, with Davis committing $4 million. New’s nonprofit later paid Favre $1.1 million for speaking engagements to help him pay for the arena. Favre never made the speeches and later repaid the money, although he has not repaid $228,000 in interest.

Bryant’s attorneys wrote that the governor first learned Human Services was involved with funding the volleyball arena in a text message he received from Favre on July 16, 2019. “I want you to know how much I love Nancy New and John Davis,” Favre wrote. “What they have done for me and Southern Miss is amazing.”

Favre wrote there were plans to do workshops and youth clinics in the volleyball facility with a program run by Nancy New.

“And also I paid for 3/4 of Vball facility and the rest was a joint project with her and John which was saving me 1.8 million,” Favre texted Bryant. “I was informed today that she may not be able to fund her part. I and we need your help very badly Governor and sorry to even bring this up.”

Bryant’s attorneys wrote that “Favre began a campaign to aggressively lobby the governor to help him cover the debt on the USM Volleyball Center.” They also wrote Favre had not paid for three-quarters of the construction costs, and Human Services committed more than $1.8 million to the project.

According to Friday’s court documents, Bryant and Favre met Sept. 4, 2019, with the new Department of Human Services director, retired FBI agent Christopher Freeze. Favre texted Bryant after the meeting: “We obviously need your help big time and time is working against us.” Favre also mentioned the volleyball facility could be named for Bryant, who was in his final months as governor.

Bryant responded: “We are going to get there. This was a great meeting. But we have to follow the law. I am to old for Federal Prison.” He added a smiling emoji with sunglasses.

Newly revealed text messages show how deeply a Mississippi governor was involved in the state paying more than $1 million in welfare money to Brett Favre to help fund one of the retired NFL quarterback’s pet projects.

Instead of the money going to help low-income families in one of the nation’s poorest states, as intended, it was funneled through a nonprofit group and spent on a new $5 million volleyball facility at a university that the football star and the governor both attended.

One of the texts from 2017 showed Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, who left office in 2020, was “on board” with the arrangement. The state is suing Favre and others, alleging they misspent millions of dollars in welfare money. The director of the nonprofit has pleaded guilty to criminal charges in Mississippi’s largest public corruption case in decades.

The texts were in documents filed Monday in state court by an attorney for the nonprofit, known as the Mississippi Community Education Center. Messages between Favre and the center’s executive director, Nancy New, included references to Bryant. The documents also included messages between Bryant and Favre and Bryant and New.

New pleaded guilty in April to charges of misspending welfare money, as did her son Zachary New, who helped run the nonprofit. They await sentencing and have agreed to testify against others. Favre has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing.

“Just left Brett Farve,” Bryant texted New on July 16, 2019, misspelling the athlete’s last name. “Can we help him with his project. We should meet soon to see how I can make sure we keep your projects on course.”

New responded: “I would appreciate having the opportunity to follow through with all the good things we are working on, especially projects like Brett’s.”

Later that day, New texted Favre to let him know she was meeting with the governor.

“I love John so much. And you too,” Favre responded to New, referring to the Mississippi Department of Human Services director at the time, John Davis.

The texts also showed discussion between Favre and New about arranging payment from the Human Services Department through the nonprofit to Favre for speaking engagements, with Favre then saying he would direct the money to the volleyball facility at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Favre played football at the university, located in Hattiesburg, before going to the NFL in 1991. His daughter began playing on the school’s volleyball team in 2017.

According to court documents, Favre texted New on Aug. 3, 2017: “If you were to pay me is there anyway the media can find out where it came from and how much?”

New responded: “No, we never have had that information publicized. I understand you being uneasy about that though. Let’s see what happens on Monday with the conversation with some of the folks at Southern. Maybe it will click with them. Hopefully.”

Favre replied: “Ok thanks.”

The next day, New texted Favre: “Wow, just got off the phone with Phil Bryant! He is on board with us! We will get this done!”

Favre responded: “Awesome I needed to hear that for sure.”

According to a previous court filing, New’s nonprofit made two payments of welfare money to Favre Enterprises, the athlete’s business: $500,000 in December 2017 and $600,000 in June 2018.

On Dec. 27, 2017, Favre texted New: “Nancy Santa came today and dropped some money off (two smiling emojis) thank you my goodness thank you.”

“Yes he did,” New responded. “He felt you had been pretty good this year!”

Attorneys for Favre did not immediately respond to a phone message Wednesday from The Associated Press. NBC News was first to report that the FBI has questioned Favre in the matter, but there is no indication Favre is a target of the FBI’s criminal investigation.

In a July 11 court filing, New’s attorney wrote that Bryant directed her to pay $1.1 million in welfare money to Favre through the education center for “speaking at events, keynote speaking, radio and promotional events, and business partner development.”

In July, a Bryant spokesperson said allegations that the governor improperly spent the money are false and that Bryant had asked the state auditor to investigate possible welfare fraud.

Billy Quinn, an attorney representing Bryant, told the AP on Wednesday that Bryant did not direct New to make the $1.1 million payment to Favre. Quinn said a careful examination of court records will show “there’s no proof that occurred. And that’s because it didn’t.”

Bryant served two terms as governor and could not run again in 2019 because of term limits. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Mississippi.

In May, the Mississippi Department of Human Services filed a civil lawsuit against Favre, three former pro wrestlers and several other people and businesses to try to recover millions of misspent welfare dollars. The lawsuit said the defendants “squandered” more than $20 million from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families anti-poverty program.

About 1,800 Mississippi households received payments from the program in 2021, according to the Department of Human Services. A family of three must have a monthly income below $680 to qualify, and the current monthly benefit for that family is $260. Payments are allowed for up to five years.

In pleading guilty, Nancy and Zachary New acknowledged taking part in spending $4 million of welfare money for the volleyball facility.

The mother and son also acknowledged directing welfare money to Prevacus Inc., a Florida-based company that was trying to develop a concussion drug. Favre has said in interviews that he supported Prevacus.

Mississippi Auditor Shad White said Favre was paid for speeches but did not show up. Favre has repaid the money, but White said in October that he still owed $228,000 in interest.

In a Facebook post when he repaid the first $500,000, Favre said he didn’t know the money came from welfare funds. He also said his charity had provided millions of dollars to poor children in Mississippi and Wisconsin.

Author Jeff Pearlman is warning readers not to buy his “largely glowing” biography on Hall-of-Fame quarterback Brett Favre after text messages uncovered earlier this week revealed that Favre and former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant diverted welfare funds to build a new volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Pearlman’s book, “Gunslinger: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre,” was published in 2016. Pearlman said Tuesday that the biography was “fairly positive” despite the fact he included anecdotes about Favre’s “grossness, addiction, treatment of women.”

“Looking at it now, if I’m being brutally honest—I’d advise people not to read it,” Pearlman wrote on Twitter. “He’s a bad guy. He doesn’t deserve the icon treatment. He doesn’t deserve acclaim. Image rehabilitation. Warm stories of grid glory.”

Pearlman continued to call Favre’s manipulation of welfare funds “so grotesque, so monstrous. I don’t know how someone like that looks in the mirror.”

Favre, 52, played football at Southern Miss from 1987 through 1990 and is arguably the school’s most notable alumnus — other than Bryant, who served as governor of Mississippi from 2012 to 2020. Favre’s daughter, Breleigh, played volleyball for the Golden Eagles from 2018 through 2022. 

The text messages between Favre and Bryant’s staff, which were filed Monday in the state of Mississippi’s civil lawsuit over misspent welfare funds, ranged from 2017 through 2019 and show that about $5 million was funneled to build the new volleyball center on campus.

Most notable amongst the collection of texts are those filed by an attorney representing Nancy New, founder of the Mississippi Community Education Center. New’s center was tasked with helping the state of Mississippi by spending tens of millions in federal welfare funds, instead, the money was diverted in a scheme that state auditors claim misspent $77 million — the largest case of public fraud in Mississippi history.

“If you were to pay me is there any way the media can find out where it came from and how much?” Favre asked New in 2017.

New has since pleaded guilty to 13 felony counts of briber, fraud, and racketeering, according to reports.

Favre’s attorney, Bud Holmes, denied the allegations that the three-time NFL MVP knew the volleyball stadium was being funded by welfare money.

“Brett Favre has been honorable throughout this whole thing,” Holmes told Mississippi Today.

Bryant has also denied his role in diverting welfare funds to build the stadium.

Favre and Bryant have been not been criminally charged, and reports indicate that the Southern Miss volleyball stadium is not part of the state’s civil lawsuit.

For Pearlman, the text messages did enough damage to Favre’s reputation for the author to distance himself entirely from the 2016 biography.

“So, sincerely, don’t buy the book, don’t take it out from the library. Leave it,” Pearlman concluded.

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Cory Wayne Patterson, 29, was uninjured after the rough landing shortly after posting a goodbye message to his parents and sister on Facebook, authorities said at a news conference. The message said he “never actually wanted to hurt anyone.”

After an anxious morning of watching the plane’s meandering path overhead, Tupelo Mayor Todd Jordan called the resolution “the best case scenario.”

No one was injured.

Patterson was employed fueling planes at the Tupelo Regional Airport, giving him access to the twin-engine Beechcraft King Air C90A, police Chief John Quaka said.

It was not immediately known why, shortly after 5 a.m., the 10-year Tupelo Aviation employee took off in the fully fueled plane. Fifteen minutes later, Patterson called a Lee County 911 dispatcher to say he planned to crash the plane into a Tupelo Walmart, Quaka said. Officers evacuated people from the Walmart and a nearby convenience store.

“This is more likely a crime of opportunity,” said Quaka, adding that the airport’s tower is not staffed until 6 a.m.

Police negotiators were able to make contact during the flight and convince Patterson to land, but he didn’t know how. He was coached by a private pilot into nearly landing at the Tupelo airport but he aborted the attempt at the last minute and resumed the flight, authorities said.

A negotiator re-established contact around 10 a.m., and learned Patterson had landed in a field and was uninjured, Quaka said. The plane landed near Ripley, Mississippi, about about 85 miles (140 kilometers) southeast of Memphis, Tennessee, and about 45 miles (70 kilometers) northwest of Tupelo.

“There’s damage but believe it or not, the aircraft is intact,” the chief told reporters.

Patterson, whose Facebook page said he is from Shannon, was charged with grand larceny and making terroristic threats. Quaka said federal authorities also could bring charges. Police said Patterson is not believed to be a licensed pilot but has some flight instruction.

Jordan said Patterson contacted family members during the flight. The mayor said he hopes Patterson “will get the help he needs.”

“Sorry everyone. Never wanted to actually hurt anyone. I love my parents and sister this isn’t your fault. Goodbye,” read Patterson’s Facebook message posted at about 9:30 a.m.

Peter Goelz, former managing director at the National Transportation Safety Board, said the vulnerability of small airports, which cater to small planes and corporate jets, has worried security experts for years.

“If you’ve got a trained pilot who can get in and grab a business jet, you’ve got a pretty lethal weapon there,” he said.

Ripley resident Roxanne Ward told The Associated Press she had been tracking the plane online and went to her father-in-law’s house with plans to go into the basement for safety. She said she heard the thud as the plane hit the ground on her father-in-law’s property.

She and others got onto four-wheelers to ride over.

“As soon as it crashed, police were there and waiting,” said Ward, who watched from a distance. “Police coaxed him out. They yelled at him, ‘Arms in the air.’” She said the pilot got out of the plane without resisting police.

Michael Canders, director of the Aviation Center at Farmingdale State College in New York, called the incident “a wake-up call” for general aviation airports and their staff.

The Transportation Security Administration requires annual training emphasizing a “see something, say something” approach to try and prevent a scenario like what police believe occurred in Tupelo — an employee with access to aircraft, Canders said.

“This very thing is discussed in the course, the potential for somebody gaining access and intent on damage,” he said. “It’s dependent on all of those who work at an airport. If you see someone you don’t recognize or some unusual activity, you’re supposed to report that.”

An online flight tracking service showed the plane’s swirling path through the sky early Saturday.

Leslie Criss, a magazine editor who lives in Tupelo, woke up early and was watching the situation on TV and social media. Several of her friends were outside watching the plane circle overhead.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in this town,” Criss told AP. “It’s a scary way to wake up on a Saturday morning.”

Goelz said the FAA and Department of Homeland Security would likely examine the incident and issue guidance focused on tightening up security, a potentially costly prospect.

“For an airport like Tupelo, for them to crank up security for Saturday morning at 5 a.m., when their tower doesn’t open until 6 — that’s expensive,’’ Goelz said. “They’re not going to have the funds unless the feds are going to provide it.’’

The airplane drama unfolded as tens of thousands of college football fans were headed to north Mississippi for Saturday football games at the University of Mississippi in Oxford and Mississippi State University in Starkville. Tupelo is between those two cities.

Jane and Daniel Alsup stood out in their front yard near where the plane landed and watched it circle low over the pine and oak trees.

“He left for a while, then we heard him come back. Just a few seconds later, we heard a big old ‘flump’ and he landed out in the soybean field,” Jane Alsup said.

Daniel Alsup said the plane landed on the other side of some trees, so they did not see it hit the ground.

“This was the best place it could have happened,” he said of the rural landing site.

____

Wagster Pettus reported from Jackson, Mississippi. Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo in New York, Kathleen Foody in Chicago and Paul Wiseman in Martinsburg, West Virginia, contributed to this report.

Jackson’s residents were already under a boil-water order before flooding from the Pearl River exacerbated long-standing problems at one of the city’s two water treatment plants.

Officials said they made progress overnight in refilling tanks, treating water and increasing pressure at the O.B. Curtis Water Plant, the facility at the root of the latest water woes. Residents closer to the facility had pressure approaching normal levels, the city said in a news release, but added that many in the city still had little or no water pressure.

“It’s quite unnerving,” Jackson resident Shirley Harrington said Thursday. “It’s like playing Russian roulette. You don’t know if you’re going to wake up with water, don’t know if you got water, don’t know what condition the water is in. There’s so many statements: ‘Do not drink,’ ‘Do not use,’ ‘You can use, but don’t drink,’ so you’re like, ‘What do I really do?’”

At a midday news conference with Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and other officials, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced the opening of seven sites for distributing drinking water, non-potable water and hand sanitizer. He said 600 National Guard members were aiding the response. The seven new “megasites” follow smaller scale distribution efforts at city fire stations, churches, nonprofits and businesses.

“To everyone in the city: I know that you are dealing with a profoundly unfair situation,” Reeves said. “It’s frustrating, it’s wrong and it needs to be fixed.”

The governor and Mississippi Emergency Management Agency director Stephen McCraney promised that the state would look for long-term solutions to the city’s water problems.

The water crisis affects the city’s 150,000 residents — many of whom have been unable to take showers or flush toilets — plus an estimated 30,000 who come into the city to work at businesses without water pressure, Reeves said.

Reeves said those businesses are suffering major economic harm because of the crisis. McCraney said the state will look into the availability of federal Small Business Administration loans to aid them.

City communications director Melissa Payne said all of the water system’s customers — 46,000 residential accounts and 6,000 commercial — were affected by low water pressure at some time during the crisis. The latest available figures from the city showed that 80% of the water system’s customers had little or no water as of Wednesday morning. It was unclear how many had been substantially restored as of Thursday.

Jackson schools held classes online Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and some restaurants closed. Portable toilets are parked outside the Capitol. Jackson State University brought in temporary restrooms for students.

Reeves declared a state of emergency Monday night after excessive rainfall and flooding from the Pearl River exacerbated problems at the treatment plant. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for the state. Biden called Lumumba on Wednesday to discuss response efforts, including support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers.

“We are doing everything we can to make sure we’re helping the people of Mississippi,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday. “We are in close touch.”

Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Deanne Criswell plans to visit the state Friday, Jean-Pierre said.

Thursday morning, the city reported “significant progress” in restoration efforts at the treatment plant, with output measuring 78 pounds per square inch, approaching a goal of 87 PSI.

“There are still challenges to navigate as the intake water source changes chemistry again. Operator schedules have been adjusted to increase coordination between shifts,” the city statement said.

In addition to on-site repairs, the city is working to obtain more chemicals needed for treatment.

___

Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/mikergoldberg.

____

Associated Press video journalist Stephen Smith in Jackson and writer Kevin McGill in New Orleans contributed to this report.

The 73-year-old tree-cutter hauled bags of ice into his truck at a gas station on his way to a job Wednesday after several days without water.

“What can I do? I’m just a pawn in a chess game,” he said during one of multiple trips to and from the store. “All I’ve got to do is just try and live.”

People waited in lines for water to drink, bathe, cook and flush toilets Wednesday in Mississippi’s capital. The city water system partially failed early this week after Pearl River flooding exacerbated longstanding problems in one of two water-treatment plants.

President Joe Biden late Tuesday approved an emergency declaration for the state of Mississippi. On Wednesday, he called Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba to discuss response efforts, including support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers. The mayor also said he had a separate telephone conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Beyond addressing the immediate crisis, Biden said he wants to provide federal support for the long-term effort to rebuild Jackson’s aging water infrastructure, which has been unreliable for years.

Lumumba said Jackson’s water system is troubled by short staffing and “decades of deferred maintenance.” He said the influx of water from torrential rain changed the chemical composition needed for treatment, which slowed the process of pushing water out to customers.

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A city news release said the main water-treatment plant had “challenges with water chemistry” Wednesday, which led to a drop in output of water. That caused depletion of water tanks and a sharp decrease in water pressure.

Even before the service disruption, Jackson’s 150,000 residents had been boiling their drinking water for the past month because officials said it could cause digestive problems.

Brown said Wednesday that he’d stopped at the grocery store to buy four cases of water before picking up the ice. A lifelong Jackson resident, he said people there have been living without access to consistent water for years — even when there is pressure, residents often have to boil it to drink and cook.

A cold snap in 2021 left tens of thousands of people without running water after pipes froze. Similar problems happened again early this year, on a smaller scale.

“It will get right one day,” Brown said. “When, I have no idea.”

Like many cities, Jackson faces water system problems it can’t afford to fix. Its tax base has eroded the past few decades as the population decreased — the result of mostly white flight to suburbs that began after public schools integrated in 1970. The city’s population is now more than 80% Black, with about 25% of its residents living in poverty.

Lumumba said Tuesday that fixing Jackson’s water system could run to “quite possibly the billions of dollars.” Mississippi is receiving $75 million to address water problems as part of a bipartisan infrastructure bill. Jackson is receiving about $31 million through the EPA’s revolving loan funds for treatment and distribution system improvements.

During a Wednesday news conference, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the EPA is deploying personnel to Jackson for an emergency assessment of the treatment plants and to streamline the delivery of repair equipment. FEMA has personnel at the state emergency operations center and is coordinating with the state emergency management team to identify needs, she said.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency for Jackson’s water system Tuesday. The state will try to help resolve problems by hiring contractors to work at the O.B. Curtis water treatment plant — the facility at the root of Jackson’s water woes. The plant was operating at diminished capacity with backup pumps after the main pumps failed “some time ago,” Reeves said.

In a video posted to Twitter, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said an emergency rental pump had been installed Wednesday at the O.B. Curtis. Broken pumps at the plant resulted in decreased water pressure and some outages.

In a news conference Wednesday, Lumumba said city officials expected water pressure to start increasing later in the evening.

Bobbie Fairley, who has lived in Jackson her entire life, owns Magic Hands Hair design in south Jackson. The 59-year-old said she had to cancel five appointments Wednesday because she needs high water pressure to wash chemicals out of hair during treatments.

She has had to purchase water to shampoo hair to try fit in whatever appointments she can. When clients aren’t coming in, she’s losing money.

“That’s a big burden,” she said. “I can’t afford that. I can’t afford that at all.”

Jackson State University had to bring in temporary restrooms for students and was waiting on the delivery of portable showers Wednesday, President Thomas Hudson said.

Hudson said the city’s water issues have been an ongoing challenge for the historically Black university as it has worked to attract students.

“It does make it difficult in terms of what we’re trying to do, our core mission, which is education,” Hudson said.

He said the university is starting work on a plan for a standalone water supply system using some of the federal funding made available to historically Black colleges and universities.

Shannon Wilson, whose daughter just started her sophomore year at Jackson State, said her daughter’s dorm regained some pressure, but the water coming out is brown. Her daughter left to stay with a friend off campus. But Wilson, who lives in St. Louis, can’t help but worry about her.

“We are feeling helpless,” Wilson said. “Being over 500 miles away from Jackson, there is nothing I can do but worry.”

___

Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Parts of Jackson were without running water Tuesday because flooding exacerbated longstanding problems in one of two water-treatment plants. The city of 150,000 had already been under a boil-water notice for a month because the Health Department found cloudy water that could cause digestive problems. Long lines have formed each day for limited supplies of bottled water at distribution sites.

Restaurant owner Derek Emerson told The Associated Press on Tuesday that water problems “are making it impossible for us to do business in Jackson, Mississippi.” Emerson and his wife, Jennifer, own the upscale Walker’s Drive-In, and he said they have been spending $300 a day for ice and bottled water in the past month.

“I love doing business in Jackson, and I like the people of Jackson,” Emerson said. “I just — I hate dealing with the problems.”

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency for Jackson’s water system on Tuesday. The state will try to help resolve problems by hiring contractors to work at the treatment plant, which was operating at diminished capacity with backup pumps after the main pumps failed “some time ago,” Reeves said.

And President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration request for the state of Mississippi, directing his administration to surge federal assistance to the region, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted late Tuesday.

Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said Jackson’s water system is troubled by short staffing and “decades of deferred maintenance.” He said the influx of water from torrential rain changed the chemical composition needed for treatment, which slowed the process of pushing water out to customers.

Lumumba is Democrat and was not invited to the Republican governor’s Monday night news conference. Although the two politicians are often at odds, Lumumba said Tuesday that he’s having productive discussions with the Health Department and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and he’s grateful for the state’s help.

Like many cities, Jackson faces water system problems it can’t afford to fix. Its tax base has eroded the past few decades as the population decreased — the result of mostly white flight to suburbs that began after public schools integrated in 1970. The city’s population is now more than 80% Black, with about 25% of its residents living in poverty.

Low water pressure left some people unable to take showers or flush toilets and officials said the low pressure caused concern for firefighting. Those who did have water flowing from the tap were told to boil it to kill bacteria that could make them sick.

Jackson schools held classes online Tuesday and Wednesday, and some restaurants closed. Jackson State University brought in temporary restrooms for students, and Jackson State football coach Deion Sanders said the water crisis left his players without air conditioning or ice at their practice facility. In a video that one of his sons posted to social media, Sanders — also known as Coach Prime — said he wanted to move players into a hotel so they could shower.

“We’re going to find somewhere to practice, find somewhere that can accommodate every durn thing that we need and desire to be who we desire to be, and that’s dominate,” Sanders said. “The devil is a lie. He ain’t going to get us today, baby.”

The problems at the water treatment plant came after the city appeared to largely avoid widespread flooding from a Pearl River swollen by days of heavy rain. One home was flooded Monday but the mayor said the water did not rise as high as expected. Earlier projections showed about 100 to 150 buildings in the Jackson area faced possible flooding.

The National Weather Service said the Pearl River crested Monday short of the major flood stage level of 36 feet (10.97 meters). Parts of Jackson flooded in 2020 after the river topped that level.

Jackson has two water-treatment plants, and the larger one is near a reservoir that provides most of the city’s water supply. The reservoir also has a role in flood control.

The mayor said Monday that low water pressure could last a few days, but by Tuesday he said some customers were regaining service.

“We have seen steady improvements in the system,” Lumumba said.

Jackson has longstanding problems with its water system. A cold snap in 2021 left a significant number of people without running water after pipes froze. Similar problems happened again early this year, on a smaller scale.

Lumumba said last week that fixing Jackson’s water system could cost $200 million, but Tuesday he said the cost could run to “quite possibly the billions of dollars.” Mississippi is receiving $75 million to address water problems as part of a bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Jackson resident Bernard Smith said he filled containers with water Monday night in case his home lost service. He bought bottled water Tuesday and said he hopes Jackson is on track to solve its water woes.

“Sometimes you’ve to go through the hardship to get back to the good ship,” Smith said.

Jacob Blair Scott pleaded guilty to charges of sending a false distress call that led to a Coast Guard search; illegally shipping weapons across state lines and giving false information, according to court records.

A federal judge will sentence Scott in November. He was already sentenced to serve 85 years in prison in Mississippi after he was convicted of sexually assaulting a girl and impregnating her when he was 40 and she was 14.

Scott was facing charges of assaulting the girl when he faked his death in July 2018. The Orange Beach Police Department responded to a call for assistance and found a small boat in the Gulf of Mexico, about a mile away from shore, with a gun tied to it. The dinghy was empty except for a suicide note.

Authorities searched for a body for more than a week in the Gulf of Mexico.

Scott was captured in early 2020 at an RV park in Oklahoma, where he was living under another name.

A Mississippi jury in June convicted him of multiple sexual battery and child abuse charges.

According to the Sun Herald, the victim tearfully testified at the trial about how Scott had sexually assaulted her at least 30 times over several months beginning in 2016 and ending in 2017 when she learned she was pregnant.

Scott is a military veteran who was awarded a Purple Heart in 2011 for injuries he received while deployed in Iraq, according to the U.S. Marshals Service, which had once listed him as one of its 15 most-wanted fugitives.

Airbnb apologized after a TikTok video went viral criticizing the description of a cottage in Greenville. The bed and breakfast was marketed as an “1830s slave cabin.”

The “meticulously restored” property, complete with a new television and premium streaming channels, was described as a “tenant sharecropper’s cabin and a medical office for local farmers and their families to visit the plantation doctor.”

The listing caught the attention of Wynton Yates, a Black lawyer from New Orleans.

“How is this okay in somebody’s mind to rent this out? A place where human beings were kept as slaves?” Yates asked in his video.

In response to the video, which has been viewed over 2.7 million times, Airbnb said properties that formerly housed enslaved people have no place on the site.

“We apologize for any trauma or grief created by the presence of this listing, and others like it, and that we did not act sooner to address this issue,” the company said in a statement.

Airbnb said it removed the Mississippi listing from its site and is doing the same for other listings known to include former slave quarters in the United States.

In a follow-up video, Yates posted what he said was a statement from the cabin’s owner, Brad Hauser. The statement includes an apology for providing guests a stay at the “slave quarters” behind an antebellum house that is now a bed and breakfast.

“I also apologize for insulting African Americans whose ancestors were slaves,” the statement reads.

The statement also alleges the previous owner mischaracterized the property’s history as a former slave cabin connected to a plantation.

Hauser said he became the cabin owner three weeks ago, WLBT-TV said.

In an unpublished memoir obtained by The Associated Press, Carolyn Bryant Donham says she was unaware of what would happen to the 14-year-old Till, who lived in Chicago and was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was abducted, killed and tossed in a river. Now 87, Donham was only 21 at the time. Her then-husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam were acquitted of murder charges but later confessed in a magazine interview.

The contents of the 99-page manuscript, titled “I am More Than A Wolf Whistle,” were first reported by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. Historian and author Timothy Tyson of Durham, who said he obtained a copy from Donham while interviewing her in 2008, provided a copy to the AP on Thursday.

Tyson had placed the manuscript in an archive at the University of North Carolina with the agreement that it not be made public for decades, though he said he gave it to the FBI during an investigation the agency concluded in 2007. He said he decided to make it public now following the recent discovery of an arrest warrant on kidnapping charges that was issued for Donham in 1955 but never served.

“The potential for an investigation was more important than the archival agreements, though those are important things,” Tyson said. “But this is probably the last chance for an indictment in this case.”

In the memoir, Donham says she attempted to help Till once he’d been located by her husband and brother-in-law and brought to her in the middle of the night for identification.

“I did not wish Emmett any harm and could not stop harm from coming to him, since I didn’t know what was planned for him,” Donham says in the manuscript compiled by her daughter-in-law. “I tried to protect him by telling Roy that ‘He’s not the one. That’s not him. Please take him home.’” She claims in the manuscript that Till, who had been dragged from a family home at gunpoint in the middle of the night, spoke up and identified himself.

Donham adds that she “always felt like a victim as well as Emmett” and “paid dearly with an altered life” for what happened to him.

“I have always prayed that God would bless Emmett’s family. I am truly sorry for the pain his family was caused,” she says at the end of the manuscript, which is signed “Carolyn” but indicates that it was written by her daughter-in-law Marsha Bryant.

The memoir is remarkable not only because it’s the most extensive account of the sensational episode ever recorded by Donham, but also because it contains contradictions that raise questions about her truthfulness through the years, said Dale Killinger, a retired FBI agent who investigated the case more than 15 years ago.

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For instance, Donham claims in the memoir to have yelled for help after being confronted by Till inside the family grocery store in Money, Mississippi, yet no one ever reported hearing her screams, Killinger said. Also, Donham never previously mentioned that she and Roy Bryant chatted about the abduction. In the manuscript, she says they did.

“That seems ludicrous,” Killinger said. “How would you have a major event in your life and not talk about it?”

The Justice Department closed its most recent investigation into the case in December and Mississippi authorities haven’t given any indication they plan to pursue the kidnapping warrant or other charges against Donham. But the Till family is pushing authorities to act.

Keith Beauchamp, a filmmaker whose documentary preceded the Justice Department probe in which Killinger was involved and that ended without charges in 2007, said the memoir shows that Donham “is culpable in the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Louis Till and to not hold her accountable for her actions, is an injustice to us all.”

“Our fight will continue until justice is finally served,” Beauchamp said.

It was Beauchamp, along with two of Till’s relatives, who discovered the arrest warrant with Donham’s name on it earlier this month in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse.

Tyson, the historian who provided the roughly 35,000-word manuscript to the AP, helped spur the government’s most recent investigation into the killing by publishing a book in 2017 in which he quoted Donham as saying she lied when she claimed Till grabbed her, whistled and made sexual advances. In the memoir, however, she claims Till did do those things. During the most recent investigation, Donham told the FBI she had never recanted, the Justice Department said.

Tyson said Donham’s statements in the memoir exonerating herself of wrongdoing need to be taken with “a good-sized shovel full of salt,” particularly her claim that Till identified himself to the men who took him from the family home and later admitted killing him.

“Two big white men with guns came and dragged him out of his aunt and great-uncle’s house at 2 o’clock in the morning in the Mississippi Delta in 1955. I do not believe for one minute that he identified himself,” Tyson said.

Neither Donham nor any of her relatives have responded to messages and phone calls from the AP seeking comment. It is unclear where Donham currently lives or if she has an attorney. Her last known address was in Raleigh, North Carolina.

___

Reeves reported from Birmingham, Alabama. He is a member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity Team.

Physicians at Jackson Women’s Health Organization have been trying to see as many patients as possible before Thursday, when, barring an unlikely intervention by the state’s conservative Supreme Court, Mississippi will enact a law to ban most abortions.

Amid stifling summer heat and humidity, clashes intensified Wednesday between anti-abortion protesters and volunteers escorting patients into the clinic, best known as the Pink House.

When Dr. Cheryl Hamlin, who has traveled from Boston for five years to perform abortions, walked outside the Pink House, an abortion opponent used a bullhorn to yell at her. “Repent! Repent!” shouted Doug Lane.

His words were drowned out by abortion rights supporter Beau Black, who repeatedly screamed at Lane: “Hypocrites and Pharisees! Hypocrites and Pharisees!”

Abortion access has become increasingly limited across wide swaths of the U.S. as conservative states enact restrictions or bans that took effect when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

The court, reshaped by three conservative justices appointed by former President Donald Trump, issued the ruling June 24. But the Mississippi clinic has been inundated with patients since September, when Texas enacted a ban on abortion early in pregnancy.

Cars with license plates from Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas have been driving through Jackson’s Fondren neighborhood to bring women and girls— some of whom appeared to be teenagers — to the Pink House. Drivers parked on side streets near the clinic in the shade of pink and purple crepe myrtles, their car air-conditioners blasting as they waited.

Diane Derzis, who has owned the Mississippi clinic since 2010, drove to Jackson to speak at the Pink House hours after the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

“It’s been such an honor and a privilege to be in Mississippi. I’ve come to love this state and the people in it,” Derzis told those gathered in the sweltering heat.

The Supreme Court ruling was in a case called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — the clinic’s challenge of a 2018 Mississippi law to ban most abortions after 15 weeks. The Pink House had been doing abortions through 16 weeks, but under previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings, abortion was allowed to the point of fetal viability at about 24 weeks.

Mississippi’s top public health official, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, was named in the lawsuit, but has not taken a public position about the case. The state’s Republican attorney general urged justices to use the case to overturn Roe v. Wade and give states more power to regulate or ban abortion.

Derzis told The Associated Press after the ruling that she didn’t regret filing the lawsuit that eventually undercut nearly five decades of abortion case law.

“We didn’t have a choice. And if it hadn’t been this lawsuit, it would have been another one,” said Derzis, who also owns abortion clinics in Georgia and Virginia, and lives in Alabama.

The Mississippi clinic uses out-of-state physicians like Dr. Hamlin because no in-state doctors will work there.

As the Pink House prepared to close, Dr. Hamlin said she worries about women living in deep poverty in parts of the state with little access to health care.

“People say, ‘Oh, what am I supposed to do?’” she said. “And I’m like, ‘Vote.’”

Shannon Brewer, the Pink House director, agrees low-income women will be most affected by being unable to get abortions in-state.

Brewer told the AP the anti-abortion protesters know her by name and yell at her but she tunes them out.

“They don’t say a lot to me anymore other than, you know, ‘You’re coming to work to kill babies,'” Brewer said. “I’ve been here for 20-something years. So, it’s like when I get out of the car I don’t really hear it because it’s like the same thing over and over and over again.”

Some staffers were expected to be in the Pink House on Thursday for paperwork ahead of its closure, but no procedures.

With the Mississippi clinic closing, Derzis and Brewer will soon open an abortion clinic in Las Cruces, New Mexico, about an hour’s drive from El Paso, Texas, — calling it Pink House West. Hamlin said she is getting licensed in New Mexico so she can work there.

Mississippi and New Mexico are two of the poorest states in the U.S., but have vastly different positions on abortion politics and access.

Home to a Democratic-led legislature and governor, New Mexico recently took an extra step to protect providers and patients from out-of-state prosecutions. It’s likely to continue to see a steady influx of people seeking abortions from neighboring states with more restrictive abortion laws.

One of the largest abortion providers in Texas, Whole Woman’s Health, announced Wednesday that it is also planning to reopen in New Mexico in a city near the state line, to provide first- and second-trimester abortions. It began winding down operations in Texas after a ruling Friday by the state Supreme Court that forced an end to abortions at its four clinics.

Standing outside the Mississippi clinic on June 24, Derzis was pragmatic about the future of the building she had painted bright pink several years ago.

“This building will be sold and maybe someone will knock it down and make a parking lot here,” Derzis said. “And that will be sad, but she served her purpose and many women had their abortions here.”

____

AP writer Susan Montoya Bryan contributed from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Allen, 29, was four months pregnant when Hurricane Ida ripped through her Houma, Louisiana, community. She spent three nights in the remnants of a house with a torn roof and no electricity. Her car was all she had left. So Allen — along with her 6-year-old daughter, her mother and a niece — fled in it to the rural Mississippi town of Kosciusko, where family lives.

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Her first priority was finding a doctor to check on her baby boy. But the lone local obstetrician splits her work between two rural counties and wasn’t taking new patients. Allen couldn’t find another doctor even within an hour’s drive — certainly not one who’d take a patient without insurance or an ID, which was destroyed in her home by Ida.

Finally, a Jackson-area hospital that turned her away suggested the Sisters in Birth clinic. On that last tank of gas, she arrived in a panic. Would they see her? Had the stress of the storm affected her pregnancy? Where would she go if this place turned her away?

Almost all the mothers served at the clinic in Mississippi’s capital are Black women without insurance, like Allen. Many haven’t been to a doctor for years, until they became pregnant and qualified for Medicaid. Most are at risk for conditions such as hypertension and heart disease. Nearly all have nowhere else to go.

Clinic CEO and founder Getty Israel says Mississippi leaders are failing these women every day. As state Republican officials spend time and resources trying to ban abortion and awaiting a ruling that could overturn Roe v. Wade, advocates say nothing is being done to support women who choose to give birth.

“We’re doing everything wrong,” Israel said. “Mississippi is pro-birth, but not pro-life. If we really are a pro-life state, we have to do more than try to end abortion and make sure that women are healthy.”

Mississippi has the highest infant death rate in the nation, and Black babies die at roughly twice the rate of white children, federal statistics show. Mississippi also ranks among states with the highest maternal death numbers, with Black women again disproportionately affected. And rural hospitals are closing at an alarming rate, leaving gaps in health care, while about 20 percent of Mississippi women are uninsured, according to census figures.

All these issues plagued Mississippi before the pandemic, but Israel and others said COVID-19 made matters worse, with overwhelmed hospitals and a flailing economy.

Israel opened her clinic amid the pandemic need, in June 2021. She wanted to teach patients, especially Black women who she’s seen taken advantage of in the medical system, how to take control of their bodies and advocate for themselves.

Sisters in Birth is a midwifery clinic that provides education and care to pregnant patients — ultrasounds, prenatal vitamins, checkups with the nurse midwife and doctor on staff. But Israel also tries to focus on more than medical care; she said she takes a holistic approach to women’s physical, social and emotional health.

The clinic’s community health workers help create eating and exercise plans, meet with patients at home, and join them in the hospital for labor. Employees help with enrollment in Medicai d and community college. In particular, Israel wants Sisters in Birth to address any health disparities before patients — many of whom are at risk for complications given demographics and prior lack of access to care — give birth and offer them social support.

When Allen arrived, she was greeted by art of female activists on the comforting sea green walls: Toni Morrison, Dolores Huerta and Madonna Thunder Hawk. Magazines with Black women on the covers sit in front of colorful couches.

Staff members agreed to see Allen — a single mother and waitress who lost her job of 12 years during the pandemic — without insurance. They helped her submit a Medicaid application, set up exercise and nutrition plans, and offered her gas money to get home.

“I felt like I could finally breathe,” Allen said.

Once she reached month seven, Allen said thanks to Sisters in Birth, she’d already had more medical care than in her entire last pregnancy. Israel calls her on days when the clinic is closed to check in.

The stability has helped her transition to life in Mississippi — finding a place to live, replacing documents, enrolling for food stamps — all while pregnant.

“They know me by name when I walk in,” she said. “You don’t have to remind them who you are and what you’re going through.”

Now, Israel wants to expand — but she needs money to do it. With the help of Mississippi’s only Black and Democratic congressman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, she is pursuing $3 million in federal money from the Community Project Funding program to open Mississippi’s first birth center. She imagines a place where Black women can give natural births and reclaim their agency.

Currently, there’s a nurse midwife on staff — one of a handful of midwives in Mississippi. Despite shrinking numbers, there’s a rich history of midwifery in southern states. For generations, most Black babies were delivered by midwives because of racist policies that barred Black women from hospitals. In the late 1950s and 1960s, midwives were pushed out of the industry as hospitals became desegregated and white physicians sought control over the birth market.

Israel wants to hire more midwives, for a total of four, and offer training. She also plans a cabin for women to stay so they’re on site and supported before labor.

Although Sisters in Birth does not provide abortions — the clinic generally doesn’t counsel women on them, either, as the focus is providing services to women who want to give birth — Israel expects that if abortion banned, she’ll see an increase in patients.

“Poor women who are now pregnant, because they can’t get an abortion, will be looking for clinics like mine that don’t have a limit on the number of Medicaid patients they accept,” she said. “Support makes a difference, whether a woman wants to have an abortion or not.”

She wants to be able to support more women, and for them to have the opportunity to give birth at the center instead of at hospitals. There, Israel said she often sees doctors pushing inductions and cesarean sections that aren’t medically necessary. Federal data show Mississippi has the highest rate of c-sections in the U.S. Black women have experienced the highest c-section delivery rates in the country since the 1990s.

In 2018, a five-year study conducted by the federal government comparing birth centers with other forms of maternal birth care for women on Medicaid revealed a dramatic reduction of preterm, low-weight and cesarean births for patients at birth centers. The results showed a reduction in racial inequities — there were no differences by race for rates of cesarean birth and breastfeeding, for example — and Israel wants to replicate that for the women of Mississippi.

Yasmin Gabriel of Jackson said she sought out Israel’s clinic because she wanted to have a woman of color in the room when she gave birth.

“So often, we just get ignored,” she said. “I wanted our babies to come into this world without stress, without me having anxiety, because of the fact that I’ve experienced other people not listening to our threshold of pain or listening to what we would desire.

“I just wanted to make sure that I had someone who looked like me who understood what I was going through.”

A jury convicted Jacob Blair Scott of Moss Point, Mississippi, on Thursday. Jackson County Circuit Judge Kathy King Jackson sentenced him to 85 years in prison, saying it is essentially a life sentence. She also ordered him to pay $10,000 in fines.

“The evidence is overwhelming,” Jackson said. “It’s more evidence than I’ve probably ever seen.”

The Sun Herald reported Scott was emotionless when a jury found him guilty of nine counts of sexual battery, four counts of touching a child for lustful purposes and one count of child exploitation.

Scott, 45, is a military veteran who was awarded a Purple Heart in 2011 for injuries he received while deployed in Iraq, according to the U.S. Marshals Service, which had once listed him as one of its 15 most wanted fugitives.

Scott was supposed to turn himself in to face charges of assaulting the girl, but he faked his death in July 2018 by leaving a small boat with a gun and a suicide note in Orange Beach, Alabama, WLOX-TV reported.

Authorities found little evidence of a suicide but searched for a body for more than a week in the Gulf of Mexico. Scott was captured in early 2020 at an RV park in Oklahoma, where he was living under another person’s name.

During the trial, the victim cried as she testified that Scott sexually assaulted her at least 30 times beginning in 2016 and ending in 2017 when she learned she was pregnant. She said she gave birth to the baby.

District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath and Assistant District Attorney Justin Lovorn excoriated Scott for trying to blame his mental state, a failing relationship and even the victim for the sexual assaults.

“This is the first time in my 18 years I have ever seen anything so brazen and so vile,” McIlrath said. “This is about blaming the 14-year-old. This whole trial was about humiliating the 14-year-old who had no choice.”

Before sentencing, Scott blamed his mental issues, post-traumatic stress and other disorders for affecting his mental state when he committed the crimes. He pleaded with the judge to look at his medical record and how he was heavily medicated and suffering from depression and relationship problems that he said clouded his judgment.

“I was a good man,” Scott said “This ain’t who I am.”

McIrath called Scott’s defense a “hail Mary” tactic to try to get leniency. Before handing down the sentence, the judge said she didn’t believe Scott.

The lawsuit says the defendants “squandered” more than $20 million in money from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families anti-poverty program.

The suit was filed less than two weeks after a mother and son who ran a nonprofit group and an education company in Mississippi pleaded guilty to state criminal charges tied to the misspending. Nancy New, 69, and Zachary New, 39, agreed to testify against others in what state Auditor Shad White has called Mississippi’s largest public corruption case in the past two decades.

In early 2020, Nancy New, Zachary New, former Mississippi Department of Human Services executive director John Davis and three other people were charged in state court, with prosecutors saying welfare money had been misspent on items such as drug rehabilitation in Malibu, California, for former pro wrestler Brett DiBiase.

DiBiase is a defendant in the lawsuit filed Monday in Hinds County Circuit Court, as are his father and brother who were also pro wrestlers, Ted DiBiase Sr. and Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr.

Ted DiBiase Sr. was known as the “The Million Dollar Man” while wrestling. He is a Christian evangelist and motivational speaker, and he ran Heart of David Ministries Inc., which received $1.7 million in welfare grant money in 2017 and 2018 for mentorship, marketing and other services, according to the lawsuit.

White last year demanded repayment of $77 million of misspent welfare funds from several people and groups, including $1.1 million paid to Favre, who lives in Mississippi. Favre has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing.

White said Favre was paid for speeches but did not show up. Favre has repaid the money, but White said in October that Favre still owed $228,000 in interest. In a Facebook post when he repaid the first $500,000, Favre said he did not know the money he received came from welfare funds. He also said his charity had provided millions of dollars to poor children in Mississippi and Wisconsin.

Months ago, the auditor’s office turned over the demands for repayment of misspent welfare money to the Mississippi attorney general’s office for enforcement. White said in a statement Monday that he knew the attorney general’s office eventually would file suit.

“I applaud the team filing this suit and am grateful the state is taking another step toward justice for the taxpayers,” White said. “We will continue to work alongside our federal partners — who have been given access to all our evidence for more than two years — to make sure the case is fully investigated.”

The lawsuit filed Monday said Favre at one time was the largest individual outside investor and stockholder of Prevacus, a Florida-based company that was trying to develop a concussion drug. The suit said that in December 2018, Favre urged Prevacus CEO Jake VanLandingham to ask Nancy New to use welfare grant money to invest in the company.

The suit also said Favre hosted a Prevacus stock sales presentation at his home in January 2019, attended by VanLandingham, Davis, Nancy New, Zach New and Ted DiBiase Jr., and that an agreement was reached to spend “substantial” welfare grant money in Prevacus and later in its corporate affiliate PreSolMD Inc.

The suit said the stock was in the names of Nancy New and Zach New but was also for the financial benefit of Favre, VanLandingham and the two companies. The lawsuit demands repayment of $2.1 million in welfare grant money that was improperly paid to the two companies in 2019.

The Associated Press on Monday called a number once listed for Favre Enterprises and a recording said it was no longer in service.

Attorney General Lynn Fitch and Gov. Tate Reeves said in a joint statement Monday: “Our purpose with this suit is to seek justice for the broken trust of the people of Mississippi and recover funds that were misspent.”

Davis was chosen to lead the Department of Human Services in 2016 by then-Gov. Phil Bryant — who, like Reeves, Fitch and White, is a Republican. Davis retired in July 2019 and is awaiting trial on criminal charges in the misspending.

Brett DiBiase pleaded guilty in December 2020 to one count of making a false statement. He said in court documents that he had submitted documents and received full payment for work he did not complete. He agreed to pay $48,000 in restitution and his sentencing was deferred.

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Harrison County Coroner Brian Switzer identified the possible suspect as 32-year-old Jeremy Alesunder Reynolds.

Gulfport Police Department’s incoming chief, Adam Cooper, said Reynolds holed up at a Gulfport convenience store after fleeing from a stolen vehicle. Gulfport is just west of Biloxi, where the shootings took place at the Broadway Inn Express motel.

Switzer told news outlets that motel owner Mohammad Moeini, 51; Laura Lehman, 61; and Chad Green, 55, were killed at the motel. Lehman and Green both lived and worked at the motel.

WXXV-TV reported that one witness described a shocking scene at a grocery store, with people fleeing.

Police said that after the motel shootings, another man was shot during a carjacking in Gulfport, and he later died in surgery. Switzer identified him as William Waltman, 52.

Cooper said police fired teargas into the store where Reynolds was holed up. After trying to negotiate with him and getting no response, police went into the store and found him dead, Cooper said. An autopsy will be performed to determine how he died.

No deaths were reported from the storms late Tuesday and early Wednesday, officials said.

A tornado that struck Springdale and the adjoining town of Johnson, about 145 miles (235 kilometers) northwest of Little Rock, about 4 a.m. injured seven people, two critically, said Washington County, Arkansas, Emergency Management Director John Luther. He had no additional information about them.

The National Weather Service said that tornado would be rated “at least EF-2,” which would mean wind speeds reached 111-135 mph (178-217 kph).

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“Search and rescue teams have been deployed, as there are significant damages and injuries,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said.

In northwest Missouri, an EF-1 tornado with wind speeds around 90 mph (145 kph) struck St. Joseph on Tuesday night, according the weather service. That tornado damaged two homes, but no injuries were reported there.

Another EF-1 tornado with wind speeds around 100 mph (160 kph) touched down briefly before dawn Wednesday in a rural subdivision 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Dallas, damaging two roofs, the weather service reported.

The storms come a week after a tornado in a New Orleans-area neighborhood carved a path of destruction during the overnight hours and killed a man.

Damage was extensive in Springdale, including to an elementary school gymnasium and a warehouse, KFSM-TV reported. The Springdale School District, which is the largest in Arkansas, canceled all classes Wednesday.

“We have some commercial buildings and residences and everything in between … with severe storm damage,” Luther said.

About 80,000 power outages were reported in Texas and Louisiana, about 56,000 in Louisiana, where storms have passed.

Tornado warnings were in effect Wednesday afternoon in southeastern Arkansas, western Mississippi, northeastern Louisiana and a tornado watch remained in effect in parts of eastern Arkansas.

A tornado watch was issued for most of Arkansas, northern Louisiana, southern Missouri, southeastern Oklahoma, and northeast Texas through early Wednesday afternoon.

Strong winds in Louisiana overturned semitrailers, peeled the roof off a mobile home, sent a tree crashing into a home and knocked down power lines, according to weather service forecasters, who didn’t immediately confirm any tornadoes in the state.

Nearly 90,000 homes and businesses were without power from Texas to Mississippi, where downed trees blocked a street in the capital city of Jackson.

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said all of Mississippi and parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee were at the greatest risk for severe weather Wednesday. More than 8 million people live in that area, which includes the cities of Memphis, Tennessee; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Jackson, Mississippi; and Montgomery, Alabama.

Schools in Memphis and dozens in Mississippi closed early or conducted classes online as a precaution against having children in crowded buildings or on buses.

“Today’s weather may not impact some folks while others may experience one of the worst days of their life,” Stephen McCraney, executive director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said in a briefing.

Officials in various Mississippi counties were opening safe locations for people worried about staying in their home during the storm. In Louisiana, officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency advised people living in temporary housing such as trailers after Hurricane Ida to be on the alert and know where to go in case they need to evacuate.

Nearly 190 years later, experts say, it’s still the only whaler known to have gone down in the Gulf of Mexico, where the threat of enslavement at Southern ports posed a risk for Black and mixed-race men who often were part of whaling crews.

Researchers checking out odd shapes during undersea scanning work on the sandy ocean floor believe they’ve finally found the shipwreck about 70 miles offshore from Pascagoula, Mississippi. It was documented in February by remotely operated robots in about 6,000 feet of water.

Not much is left of the two-masted wooden brig thought to be Industry, a 65-foot-long whaler that foundered after a storm in 1836. An old news clipping found in a library shows its 15 or so crew members were rescued by another whaling ship and returned home to Westport, Massachusetts, said researcher Jim Delgado of SEARCH Inc.

Melville’s “Moby-Dick; or, The White Whale,” published in 1851, told the story of American whaling from a Northeastern view. The discovery of Industry shows how whaling extended into a region where relatively little is known about whaling despite the Gulf’s extensive maritime history.

“The Gulf is an undersea museum of some incredibly well-preserved wrecks,” said Delgado of SEARCH Inc., who a few years ago helped identify the remains of the last known U.S. slave ship, the Clotilda, in muddy river waters just north of Mobile, Alabama.

The find also sheds light on the way race and slavery became entangled in the nation’s maritime economy, said historian Lee Blake, a descendant of Paul Cuffe, a prominent Black whaling captain who made at least two trips aboard the Industry.

Southern slave owners felt threatened by mixed-race ship crews coming into port, she said, so they tried to prevent enslaved people from seeing whites, Blacks, Native Americans and others, all free and working together for equal pay.

“There were a whole series of regulations and laws so that if a crew came into a Southern port and there were a large number of mixed-raced or African American crew members on board, the ship was impounded and the crew members were taken into custody until it left,” said Blake, president of the New Bedford Historical Society in Massachusetts. Black crew members also could be abducted and enslaved, she said.

Images of Industry captured by NOAA Ocean Exploration aboard the research ship Okeanos Explorer show the outline of a ship along with anchors and metal and brick remnants of a stove-like contraption used to render oil from whale blubber at sea, elements Delgado described as key evidence that the wreck was a whaling vessel.

The Industry photos pale in comparison to those recently released of Endurance, which sank in 10,000 feet of frigid Antarctic water a century ago and is incredibly well preserved. Bottles believed to date to the early 1800s are visible around Industry, but no ship’s nameplate; what appears to be modern fishing line lies near the metal tryworks used to produce oil from whale fat.

The Gulf was a rich hunting ground for sperm whales, which were especially valuable for the amount and quality of their oil, before the nation’s whaling industry collapsed in the late 19th century, said Judith Lund, a whaling historian and former curator at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts.

“In the 1790s there were more whales than they could pluck out of the Gulf of Mexico,” she said in an interview.

While at least 214 whaling voyages ventured into the Gulf, Lund said, ships from the Northeast rarely made extended port calls in Southern cities like New Orleans or Mobile, Alabama, because of the threat to crew members who weren’t white. That may may have been a reason the whaling ship that rescued Industry’s crew took the men back to Massachusetts, where slavery was outlawed in the 1780s, rather than landing in the South.

’’The people who whaled in the Gulf of Mexico knew it was risky to go into those ports down there because they had mixed crews,” said Lund.

Toby Price, who worked at Gary Road Elementary School in Byram, a suburb in metropolitan Jackson, said he was asked to set up a Zoom class for the kids, and later asked to read them a book.

“I text my boss, she said, ‘Well, go ahead and read.’ I wasn’t planning on reading, but I went ahead and grabbed one of my books that I had nearby. One of my favorites. I read it: ‘I Need a New Butt!’ It’s hilarious,” he said in a phone call with NBC News Wednesday.

Price, who was assistant principal at Gary Road for three years, said he used to read the book at his previous school and didn’t think twice about sharing it with the second-graders. “I never had an issue with it,” he said. “It’s just a fun, silly book.”

The school took issue with it, telling Price that it was inappropriate because it used words like “butt” and “fart” and included cartoon images of a child’s butt. NBC affiliate WLBT of Jackson reported that the superintendent of the Hinds County School District wrote in Price’s termination letter that he showed “a lack of professionalism and impaired judgment” when he picked the book. For those reasons, he was fired.

The school district could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.

Price said that the school’s reaction was unwarranted and that silly books should be allowed, to encourage further reading.

Read the full story here on NBCNews.com

The FedEx driver, 24-year-old D’Monterrio Gibson, was not wounded in the Jan. 24 incident. One of his attorneys, Carlos Moore, said Thursday that he believes police are not taking the investigation seriously. Two white men are facing charges, but Moore said the state needs to upgrade those charges to attempted murder.

Moore said Gibson had done nothing wrong before two white men tried to stop him, with one of the men holding a gun.

“He was simply Black while working,” Moore said during a news conference.

A Justice Department spokesperson confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday that the department received a request to look into the case and will review the request to determine any next steps.

Gibson said he was wearing a FedEx uniform and was driving an umarked van that FedEx had rented when he dropped off a package at a house in south Mississippi. He said as he was leaving, he noticed a white pickup truck pulling away from another house on the same large lot.

He said the pickup driver tried to cut him off as he left the driveway. Gibson swerved around him and then encountered a second man who had a gun pointed at the van and was motioning for him to stop. Gibson said the man fired as he drove away, damaging the van and packages inside. He said the white pickup chased him to the interstate highway near Brookhaven before ending the pursuit.

Two white men from Brookhaven, 58-year-old Gregory Charles Case and his son 35-year-old Brandon Case, were arrested and released on Feb. 1. Police told local news outlets that the elder Case was the suspected pickup driver, while Brandon Case was the man in the street. Gregory Charles Case is charged with conspiracy. Brandon Case is charged with aggravated assault.

The attorneys who represent the men — Terrell Stubbs for the father and Dan Kitchens for the son — did not immediately respond to two phone messages that the AP left for each of them Thursday. A person in Stubbs’ office said he was in court, and a person in Kitchens’ office said he was out of the office.

Gibson said Thursday that he is seeking mental health treatment and is on unpaid leave from his job.

“I have real bad anxiety since the incident,” Gibson said.

Jim Masilak, manager of media relations for FedEx, said in response to questions from AP Thursday: “FedEx takes situations of this nature very seriously, and we are shocked by this criminal act against our team member. … The safety of our team members is our top priority, and we remain focused on his wellbeing. We will continue to support Mr. Gibson as we cooperate with investigating authorities.”

Nobody was injured but the chase and gunfire have sparked social media complaints of racism in Brookhaven, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south of the state capital, Jackson. The local NAACP chairman has called on city’s Black police chief to resign, but the chief says he has no intention to do so.

“I’m not going anywhere until God makes that decision,” Collins told the Daily Leader. “That’s between me and God. Until God calls me I’m not worried about what anybody says.”

Moore compares the incident to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was running empty-handed through a Georgia subdivision in 2020 when three white strangers chased him down and blasted him with a shotgun. The white men, including a father and son, were convicted of murder and sentenced to life. Defense lawyers said they suspected Arbery had committed crimes in their neighborhood, but prosecutors said there was no evidence of that. The three still face a federal hate crime trial.

About 68% of Brookhaven’s 12,000 residents are Black. The city is in Lincoln County, where District Attorney Dee Bates said information will be presented to a grand jury for a decision on charges once police complete their investigation of the Gibson incident. Witnesses, including Gibson, will be able to testify.

James A. Bryant II of Los Angeles, another of the attorneys representing Gibson, said Thursday that Gibson experiences pain knowing that people tried to harm him because he is Black.

“That has to be the most frightening experience one could face as a young Black man,” Bryant said. “And then not only that — they continued to chase him until they got to the freeway. So what would have happened if they were able to cut him off?”

____

Associated Press writer Kevin McGill in New Orleans contributed to this report.

___

This story was first published Feb. 10, 2022. It was updated on Feb. 12, 2022 to correct the driver’s name. He is D’Monterrio Gibson, not Demonterrio Gibson.

California, New York, Minnesota and Massachusetts rounded out the top five with life expectancies slightly over 80 years. Overall, the average life expectancy in the U.S. was 78.8 years.

Reasons for lower life expectancies were not given in the report. However, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Mississippi had the highest rate of poverty in 2019, with 19.6% of people in the state living below the poverty line. According to a study conducted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, there is a link between income and life expectancy. 

The states with lower life expectancies tended to be in the South, and the five states with the lowest life expectancy before Mississippi also had high poverty levels in 2019: West Virginia had 16% of people living below the poverty level, Alabama had 15.5%, Kentucky had 16.3%, Tennessee had 13.9% and Arkansas had 16.2%.

Hawaii had 9.3% of people living below the poverty line.

The life expectancy in all states could possibly be lower now due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, death rates rose 17 percent.

The life expectancy report, published Feb. 10, was created by using mortality statistics, population estimates and Medicare data for people 66 to 99 years old.

Here is the complete list from the 2019 report by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics:

1. Hawaii
2. California
3. New York
4. Minnesota
5. Massachusetts
6. Connecticut
7. New Jersey
8. Washington
9. Colorado
10. Vermont
11. Utah
12. Oregon
13. Idaho
14. Rhode Island
15. New Hampshire
16. Wisconsin
17. Nebraska
18. Virginia
19. Florida
20. Iowa
21. Illinois
22. Arizona
23. North Dakota
24. Texas
25. Maryland
26. Montana
27. South Dakota
28. Pennsylvania
29. Maine
30. Kansas
31. Delaware
32. District of Columbia
33. Nevada
34. Michigan
35. Alaska
36. Wyoming
37. North Carolina
38. Georgia
39. Indiana
40. Missouri
41. New Mexico
42. Ohio
43. South Carolina
44. Louisiana
45. Oklahoma
46. Arkansas
47. Tennessee
48. Kentucky
49. Alabama
50. West Virginia
51. Mississippi

House clerk Andrew Ketchings spoke to reporters Wednesday, answering a question that has been all the buzz at the state Capitol: Where’s Bilbo?

People starting noticing in recent weeks that a bronze statue of the late governor had disappeared. It was on display for decades — first in the center of the Capitol, and since the 1980s in a House committee room.

“It was purely my decision, 100%,” Ketchings told The Associated Press and Mississippi Today.

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As clerk, Ketchings has the power to authorize paint jobs, new carpet and other maintenance for spaces used by the state House of Representatives.

He said a work crew moved the Bilbo statue on a Saturday in October, at a cost of about $4,000 to $5,000, paid by public money. It is now covered by a fire-resistant blanket, in a large closet behind one of the Capitol elevators.

Bilbo was a Democrat known for racist rhetoric. He was governor from 1916 until 1920 and again for the 1928-1932 term. He was in the U.S. Senate from 1935 until he died in 1947.

Ketchings said he had been bothered by the statue for years “because of everything he stood for.”

“It was way past time to do it. I just read through a lot of his quotes that were offensive,” said Ketchings, who was a Republican Mississippi House member from 1996 to 2004.

The Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus often meets in the room where the Bilbo statue was last on display, and Black lawmakers in the past have asked for the statue to be moved. The figure is approximately life-sized, at 5 feet, 2 inches (158 centimeters). People sometimes hung their coats or purses on its outstretched arm.

Statues of Confederate soldiers and generals have been removed from public display in several places across the South in recent years amid debates about how the U.S. should acknowledge troubling parts of its history.

In the summer of 2020, Mississippi legislators voted to retire the last state flag in the U.S. that prominently featured theConfederate battle emblem. Months later, voters approved a new Mississippi flagwithout Confederate imagery.

During Bilbo’s last campaign in 1946, a group of Black Mississippi residents filed a petition with the U.S. Senate, saying Bilbo had used “inflammatory appeals” to white people and incited violence that discouraged Black voters from participating in the Democratic primary, according to theU.S. Senate. A bipartisan group of senators traveled to Mississippi to hear testimony. A majority of them sided with Bilbo and said he should be seated, but a minority wrote a report saying Bilbo had used “vile, contemptible, inflammatory and dangerous language.”

Less than a month into the 2022 legislative sessions, battles over the future of abortion already are setting up around the U.S. Republican lawmakers are proposing new restrictions modeled after laws in Texas and Mississippi that present a direct challenge to the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, while some Democratic-led states are working to preserve or expand access.

The activity in state legislatures was anticipated after the U.S. Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, signaled it was ready to make seismic changes to the nationwide right to abortion that has stood for nearly half a century. If the court overturns Roe v. Wade entirely, the decision on whether to keep abortion legal would fall to the states.

More than 20 states already have laws on the books to ban or dramatically restrict abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned. As legislative sessions begin, several are considering new bans.

“This could be a really, really dramatic year in terms of people’s ability to access abortion care and to decide if, when and how they become a parent,” said Kristin Ford, vice-president of communications and outreach at NARAL Pro-Choice America, a pro-abortion rights group. “At this time next year, we could be looking at a scenario in which more than half of the country has lost access to abortion … It will have consequences for everyone.”

Against that backdrop, California lawmakers will consider plans this year to become a “sanctuary” for those seeking reproductive care. That could include paying for travel, lodging and procedures for people coming from other states.

“We are confronting an all-out assault on reproductive freedom in America. There are powerful forces working tirelessly to drag us backwards. But here in California, we are not going back,” said Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, as state lawmakers proposed eight bills on Thursday. “We will continue to fight for reproductive freedom.”

Susan Arnall, director of outreach for the anti-abortion Right to Life League, said other Democratic-led states are likely to follow California’s lead. Her organization is fighting the legislation introduced in the nation’s most populous state.

Even so, she said abortion opponents have gained the upper hand throughout the U.S.

“Life is winning … and the abortion industry is losing,” Arnall said.

Other Democratic-leaning states are not yet copying California, though New Jersey recently became the 15th state to protect the right to abortion in state law, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights think tank. Vermontcould move toward enshrining “reproductive autonomy” in its constitution this year. In Michigan, abortion-rights groups are seeking an amendment enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution.

Meanwhile, at least seven states could follow Texas, which has already effectively banned abortions after six weeks with a law strategically written to avoid a federal court challenge. The Supreme Court has allowed the law to remain in effect, even though it appears to contradict the Roe decision.

Similar proposals have been introduced in Ohio, Alabama, Oklahoma, Missouri, Florida and Arizona. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a possible 2024 presidential contender, released a proposal on Friday modeled after the Texas law. She said it would “ensure that both unborn children and their mothers are protected in South Dakota.”

Other states that already have six-week bans on the books also could amend those measures to look more like the Texas law so they can take effect, said Katie Glenn, government affairs counsel at Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group.

The Texas law is unusual because it allows private citizens to file civil lawsuits against anyone who helps someone else get an abortion after six weeks. It has made legal challenges difficult because the government is not involved in enforcement.

More than a dozen states have passed abortion bans after six weeks but have seen those efforts blocked by the courts. That has made the Texas model more attractive to conservative lawmakers.

“Our message to lawmakers is, ‘Full steam ahead.’ If you have felt like maybe something’s not worth doing because it might be enjoined or you’re worried about it, this is a great opportunity for state lawmakers to let the Supreme Court know, ‘We’ve got this,’” Glenn said.

Meanwhile, at least three Republican-led states — Arizona, Florida and West Virginia — are weighing bans on the procedure after 15 weeks, similar to the Mississippi law that the Supreme Court appeared to view favorably during arguments in December. Under Roe, abortions are legal until the point a fetus can survive outside the womb, which is usually around 24 weeks.

In Florida, which currently allows abortions up to that point, GOP legislative leaders are optimistic about a proposal to ban it after 15 weeks, with some health-related exceptions but none for rape and incest.

“There’s a lot of pro-life legislation. We’re going to be welcoming it,” Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters earlier this month. He is up for reelection this year and is considered a top Republican presidential hopeful for 2024.

In another major shift last year, the Food and Drug Administration made a regulatory change that allows people access to abortion medication by mail after obtaining a prescription online. That promises to be another front in the legal debate over abortion. Some states could allow pharmacists to opt out of dispensing the drugs if they oppose abortion.

Last year, eight states passed measures restricting abortion medication sent through the mail in anticipation of the FDA decision. A handful of states, including Republican-led Iowa, will debate bills on the topic this year, said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst at the Guttmacher Institute.

Last year was the “worst year for abortion rights” since the Roe decision in 1973, Nash said, with over 100 restrictions enacted in the states.

“It just feels like the state sessions in 2022 are also going to be very active on abortion restrictions,” she said. “It feels like we’re at the beginning of another wave.”

__

Associated Press writer Don Thompson in Sacramento, Calif., contributed to this report.

When Ashley Heun’s daughter brought home a school letter requesting her signature, she read it several times before realizing she wasn’t mistaken.

“I decided words and social media is a good tool and I would use that to rally the troops to change this and to really let the school know how exactly tone-deaf it was,” Heun, 45, told TODAY.

In the letter from Southaven Middle School sent Tuesday, parents received information about helping girls develop a healthy body image. The school’s solution? Shapewear, in part. The parents were given the option to choose whether their daughters “may receive the healthy literature, shapewear, bras, and other products” through the school’s counselors.

If the parent decided to opt in, more information was needed, like sizes.

The Southaven, Mississippi stay-at-home mom of a teenage girl and 11-year-old son said she felt “really angry” and wrote the school with her concerns.

In response, Heun heard back on Wednesday and received an apology in person from the principal at school, who told her they have decided to cancel this program.

DeSoto County Schools confirmed that it has since been “discontinued.”

“The district has been made aware of the parental permission form sent to parents by Southaven Middle School,” Lauren Margeson, the DeSoto County Schools’ assistant to the superintendent, told TODAY.

“District officials understand how this type of information causes serious concern from parents,” Margeson explained.

Heun felt that the school had “really good intentions” in sending out the information but felt it was “kind of ill conceived” and wanted to change that. She added that body image issues affect boys, too.

Since sharing her concerns over social media, Heun said she received more support, including hearing from body positivity advocate and podcaster Julia Parzyck, who she said plans to reach out to the principal and work on “putting better information out there for all children.”

Heun said this experience has empowered her to “advocate for any girl who feels ‘less than’ because of her body size.”

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Officials with the nonprofit law center said the recipients were selected in consultation with members of the Congressional Black Caucus to assist with current and future programming. Grants were awarded to:

— The “Mothers of Gynecology” monument in Montgomery, which recognizes enslaved women who were the subject of medical experiments by Dr. J. Marion Sims, a white, 19th century physician credited as a key founder of modern gynecology.

— The Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts in Eatonville, Florida, named for the Black author and anthropologist who depicted African American life in the South in the early 1900s.

— The Thiokol Memorial Project, Inc., which recalls and honors the 29 people who were killed and 50 others who were hurt when a rocket motor factory exploded and burned in Woodbine, Georgia, on Feb. 3, 1971.

— The Fannie Lou Hamer Civil Rights Museum in Belzoni, Mississippi, named for a leading activist of the era.

— The Cecil Williams South Carolina Civil Rights Museum, located in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and the state’s only museum dedicated to the struggle for equal rights.

Tafeni L. English, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s civil rights memorial center, told a briefing that museums contribute to a more enlightened and empathetic society.

“As communities of all sizes around the globe confront racism, discrimination and oppression, the commitment of museums, to tell the stories of their communities, in addition to the commitment to diversity equity accessibility and inclusion, has never been more important than it is today,” she said.

This is Machen’s fourth holiday season with Amazon, and Martinez’s fifth. After losing their jobs at an ambulance company and then losing their home, the couple decided to live on the road full time in 2017.

“And we don’t really see an end in that,” Machen said. “Amazon was our first work-camping job, and Amazon showed us that we could live like this, that we could afford to live like this, and it has been our fallback every single winter.”

Machen and Martinez are part of a niche program called Amazon CamperForce, which gained notoriety when it was featured in the film “Nomadland” as the character Fern’s seasonal gig. Fern was played by Frances McDormand, who won an Oscar for her performance.

Amazon started hiring hundreds of CamperForce workers in 2008 at just one location, Coffeyville, Kansas. In 2020, it spanned 13 sites in eight states. This year, the program doubled for a total of 26 CamperForce sites across 14 states.

“Amazon is trying to address this general seasonal labor shortage any way they can,” said Manuel Pastor, a labor professor who heads up the University of Southern California’s Equity Research Institute. “There are so many folks who, during the pandemic, chose to retire early, that this is a way of supplementing their income and fitting in with their lifestyle.”

Martinez said it’s not all about money, or lack thereof.

“I don’t want people to think that we do this because we can’t afford something else,” Martinez said. “We do this because we like to do it and our kids enjoy it. And if they ever say they don’t want to do it, we would settle down for them.”

The three-month assignments at Amazon fill the family’s bank account, allowing Machen and Martinez to only work sporadically at minimum wage jobs the rest of the year while they travel the country in their RV.

Amazon says the average CamperForce starting salary is $18 per hour, with a sign-on bonus of up to $3,000. Machen and Martinez say they make a base salary of $15 per hour and were not offered a sign-on bonus. Amazon also says CamperForce workers are eligible for basic life and accidental death and dismemberment benefits after 30 days and medical and prescription benefits after 90 days. The longest assignments are just over that, ranging from six to 14 weeks.

Amazon also helps CamperForce workers with the cost of their campground for the duration of the assignment, although that benefit has changed significantly this year. Previously, Amazon paid campgrounds up to $550 per month for each site its workers occupied. This year, Amazon changed that to $480 per month per worker and turned it into taxable income, adding $120 to weekly paychecks.

“If you’re a couple and you only have to pay for one campsite, it works out well,” Martinez said. “But if you’re a single, you’re a little bit out of money.”

Until this year, Amazon also lined up campgrounds near each warehouse, making payments to campgrounds directly. Now, campers are responsible for finding their own sites.

“There were a lot of people this year, I know, that dropped out of different facilities because they couldn’t find a place,” Machen said. “There’s a lot of parks that are 55-plus in these areas that they’re sending people to. There’s a lot of parks that are maxed out, they don’t have any space. There’s a lot of parks that close down in the winter time.”

Andre Woodson, an Amazon spokesperson, said the changes were made “to provide all CamperForce employees more flexibility in selecting campgrounds.” He also said Amazon has a dedicated CamperForce support team, with leaders at each site who workers can call for urgent help with anything related to the program, including campsite issues.

Amazon says it starts the CamperForce hiring process in July of each year, recruiting from booths at popular RV shows like Quartzsite in Arizona and in online communities of work-campers. This year, Amazon offered part-time and grocery positions for the first time.

Candidates must be at least 18, have a high school diploma or equivalent, be able to stand or walk four to 10 hours a day, and lift up to 49 pounds. They must reside in an RV at a campground for the duration of the assignment and aren’t allowed to park overnight on Amazon property. 

Other retailers are following Amazon’s lead. JCPenney launched a “Camp Crew Program” in 2019, hiring up to 100 employees each season at eight U.S. warehouses at an average starting salary of $18 per hour with an extra $100 weekly stipend toward RV site reservations. Electronic component distributor Digi-Key started a similar program this summer, hiring more than 250 campers to pick and pack at its warehouse in Minnesota for $18-$20 per hour. The program is still ongoing and includes a fully paid, prearranged RV site, as well as flexible timing for the thousands of work-campers who also are hired on for the seasonal sugar beet harvest.

Amazon will open the first CamperForce 2022 applications in January, giving previous employees like Machen and Martinez a head start on choosing their assignment location.

Watch the video to see a day in the life of Machen and Martinez, and the work they chose at a new Amazon returns center just over the Mississippi border from Memphis, Tennessee.

On Sunday, police discovered what’s believed to be the body of Felicia Cox on land that had once belonged to her family in Pontotoc County. The remains will be taken to the state crime lab for an autopsy and DNA testing to confirm their identity, according to Pontotoc County Coroner Kim Bedford.

Last month, David Neal Cox became the first inmate executed in Mississippi in nine years, put to death for killing his estranged wife, Kim Kirk Cox, and sexually assaulting her young daughter as her mother lay dying. Cox pleaded guilty in 2012 to capital murder for the May 2010 shooting death. He also pleaded guilty to multiple other charges, including sexual assault.

Cox had dropped his appeals, filing court papers calling himself “worthy of death” before the state Supreme Court set his execution date.

Questions had remained about whether David Cox was responsible for the 2007 disappearance of Felicia Cox, his brother’s wife, who was last seen in a neighboring county. Her daughter, Amber Miskelly, recently told NBC affiliate WTVA of Tupelo that David Cox was the last person to see her mother alive.

Ahead of the scheduled execution, which took place Nov. 17, Miskelly wrote Cox a letter pleading for a location of the remains.

“I thought I had more time,” Miskelly said to WTVA.

On Oct. 26, David Cox told his attorneys he killed Felicia Cox in 2007, providing detailed instructions on where investigators could find her remains and waiving his attorney-client privilege after death, according to John Weddle, the district attorney for several northern Mississippi counties. It’s not clear if this followed Miskelly’s letter.

The information was presented to Weddle’s office two days after Cox’s execution, the district attorney said last week, adding that David Cox has been a longtime suspect in his sister-in-law’s disappearance.

“Our office is greatly indebted to many as we reflect on the discovery of what appears to be the remains of Felicia Cox today in Pontotoc County,” Weddle said Sunday in a statement posted to his official Facebook page. “We are thankful the family can now begin the process of giving Felicia Cox a burial.”

The U.S. Supreme Court appeared poised Wednesday to side with Mississippi in its bid to uphold a 15-week abortion ban. Justices heard just under two hours of oral arguments in the most direct challenge to Roe v. Wade in nearly decades. NBC News reports a majority of the court’s conservative justices suggested they were prepared to discard the court’s previous standard that prevented states from banning abortion before a fetus becomes viable, which is generally considered to be at about 24 weeks into a pregnancy.

North Texas attorney Eric Cedillo is a clinical professor of law at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He said the decision from the court has the potential to overturn the 1973 landmark decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States. The central framework suggested women have a constitutional right to an abortion in the first two trimesters of pregnancy when a fetus is unable to survive outside the womb, roughly between 22 and 24 weeks.

“The State of Mississippi has maintained that viability is not the standard that the Supreme Court should be using,” Cedillo said. “Now they’ve turned around and they’ve basically said that there is no inherent, there’s no constitutional right for a woman to have an abortion – that Roe v. Wade and [Planned Parenthood v.] Casey have it wrong, ultimately.”

Cedillo said the decision could come down to Brett Kavanaugh, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

“There are three safe justices in terms of maintaining Roe v. Wade. Three liberal justices, as they’re referred to. Chief Justice Roberts has historically relied on past precedent in denying some of these cases,” he said. “You’ve got four justices who would adhere to Roe. It’s that fifth on the other side, which may be Brett Kavanaugh that makes the decision or determination that Roe v. Wade be overturned or Casey be overturned.”

He noted Texas is one of 12 states that currently have “trigger laws” which go into effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

“What those will do in the state of Texas will be a complete ban against abortions. It will happen 30 days after Roe v. Wade or Casey is overturned,” he said. “Once that happens, it’s very possible that if it does go that far… that the state will have a complete ban on abortions and make it a felony for a doctor to do an abortion.”

Kimberlyn Schwartz with Texas Right to Life said they were optimistic over what they heard Wednesday.

“It’s really telling to see kind of which way the justices are leaning. I think the most likely outcomes are going to be this court, in this case, will either substantially weaken Roe v. Wade or might overturn Roe v. Wade altogether,” Schwartz said. “The legislative strategy of Texas Right to Life has been exactly what Mississippi is doing here, which is to point the court’s direction to the humanity of the pre-born child.”

A decision from the court is expected around June.

“So, we have plenty of time to lay that foundation to prepare for hopefully, a post-Roe world where we empower our pregnancy centers in our communities to be able to serve these women to choose life,” said Schwartz.

In a statement to NBC 5 Wednesday, the CEO of Whole Woman’s Health Amy Hagstrom Miller called 2021 “an unprecedented ambush on abortion rights and independent clinics are leading the fight back.” There are four clinics in Texas operated by Whole Woman’s Health.

Hagstrom Miller also criticized the U.S. Supreme over the current Heartbeat Act in Texas, which bans abortions after six weeks.

“Today marks 91 days since Texas’ SB8 abortion ban took hold. And for the past 31 days, the Supreme Court has been sitting on it – allowing the most cruel and radical abortion ever seen in the USA to take hold. Their lack of intervention is sending a strong, clear message: abortion rights are not guaranteed. Yet, we dig deep because we know that we stand in the light. We know that providing abortion is a moral good for our communities. We know our work is ESSENTIAL,” the statement reads.

Update: Arguments began at 10 a.m. ET. You can listen here.

The Supreme Court is about to hear arguments in the most significant abortion case in decades, throwing into doubt the future of Roe v. Wade and other longstanding rulings that have upheld the right to an abortion.

The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, will be heard Wednesday starting at 10 a.m. ET. It centers on a Mississippi law that would ban almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Lower courts blocked the law, ruling that it violates the rights enshrined by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Roe in 1973, as well as in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Taken together, those rulings have held that states cannot ban abortion before the point of fetal viability — around 24 weeks of gestation — and that laws restricting abortion should not pose an “undue burden.”

The Mississippi case marks the most direct challenge to those rulings in nearly three decades. It will be heard by a historically conservative high court, in which six of the nine justices were appointed by Republican presidents, including three by former President Donald Trump.

The petitioners, Mississippi state health officials Thomas Dobbs and Kenneth Cleveland, argue that the 15-week abortion ban should be upheld because the U.S. Constitution does not support a right to abortion. Since the law is at odds with the pre-viability abortion protections of Roe and Casey, the petitioners argue that the precedent established by those two cases should be overturned.

“Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong,” Mississippi argued in a court brief. “The conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text, structure, history, or tradition.”

The state officials also say that Roe and Casey are outdated, pointing to advances made in the accessibility of adoption services and contraception, as well as “scientific advances” made about our understanding of fetuses.

If the Supreme Court does not overrule Roe and Casey outright, Mississippi said, “it should at a minimum” uphold the state’s 15-week abortion ban and rethink the protections for pre-viability abortions.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only abortion provider in Mississippi, in court filings urged the Supreme Court to “reject the invitation to jettison a half-century of settled precedent and to abandon a rule of law that this Court has said uniquely implicates the country’s ‘confidence in the Judiciary.'”

Because pregnancy “so intensely impacts a woman’s bodily integrity, her liberty interests are categorically stronger than any state interest until viability,” the provider argues.

The right to choose whether to have an abortion, established by Roe and reaffirmed by Casey over the course of two generations, “has been further cemented as critical to gender equality,” the clinic says.

The court is expected to issue its ruling by early July.

Oral arguments in Dobbs will come before rulings arrive on a pair of cases challenging a restrictive Texas abortion law. The court fast-tracked those cases after its handling of disputes surrounding the Texas law generated controversy and criticism.

In September, a bare majority of five justices voted not to block the implementation of a Texas law, SB 8, which empowers private citizens to enforce a ban on most abortions after as early as six weeks of pregnancy. The late-night ruling on the “shadow docket,” in which Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s minority of liberals, sparked fiery condemnations from abortion advocates and exacerbated their fears that abortion rights face an existential threat.

At least one public opinion poll conducted after that ruling showed Supreme Court approval at an all-time low. A number of conservative justices, including Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett, spoke out in defense of the court amid the barrage of criticism.

The court in late October effectively combined two separate challenges to SB 8 and scheduled them for briefing and argument on an expedited basis. But the justices only considered the question of whether the petitioners had the ability to challenge the law, with its unusual enforcement mechanism, in a lower court.

Critics say the law, by relinquishing enforcement powers from state officials and giving them instead to private citizens, was designed to evade judicial scrutiny. Meanwhile, abortion advocates say clinics in neighboring states have been overwhelmed with Texas patients traveling long distances for care.

With hundreds ofdemonstrators outside chanting for and against, the justices led arguments that could decide the fate of the court’s historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion throughout the United States and its 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed Roe.

The outcome probably won’t be known until next June. But after nearly two hours of arguments, all six conservative justices, including three appointed by former President Donald Trump, indicated they would uphold a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

At the very least, such a decision would undermine Roe and Casey, which allow states to regulate but not ban abortion up until the point of fetal viability, at roughly 24 weeks.

And there was also substantial support among the conservative justices for getting rid of Roe and Casey altogether. Justice Clarence Thomas is theonly member of the court who has openly called for overruling the two cases.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, asked whether the court would be better off withdrawing completely from the abortion issue and letting states decide.

“Why should this court be the arbiter rather than Congress, the state legislatures, state supreme courts, the people being able to resolve this?” Kavanaugh asked. “And there will be different answers in Mississippi and New York, different answers in Alabama than California.”

Abortion would soon become illegal or severely restricted in roughly half the states if Roe and Casey are overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. Legislatures in many Republican-led states are poised for action depending on the Supreme Court’s ruling. On Wednesday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit vacated previous rulings that had blocked a Tennessee law that included banning abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected — about six weeks — and ordered a rehearing by the full court.

People of color and lesser means would be disproportionately affected, supporters of abortion rights say.

The court’s three liberal justices said that reversing Roe and Casey would significantly damage the court’s own legitimacy.

“Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked.

In unusually strong terms for a high-court argument, Justice Stephen Breyer warned his colleagues they “better be damn sure” before they throw away the established abortion decisions.

Public opinion polls show support for preserving Roe, though some surveys also find backing for greater restrictions on abortion.

Among the conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts appeared most interested in a less sweeping ruling that would uphold the Mississippi law but not explicitly overrule Roe and Casey.

“That may be what they’re asking for, but the thing at issue before us today is 15 weeks,” Roberts said, alluding to Mississippi’s call to overturn the broader cases in addition to upholding its own law.

More than 90% of abortions are performed in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, well before viability, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

About 100 patients per year get abortions after 15 weeks at the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s lone abortion clinic. The facility does not provide abortions after 16 weeks.

Even upholding the 15-week ban would mean rejecting the decades-old viability line. Abortion rights supporters say that would effectively overturn Roe and leave no principled line for when abortions might be banned.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, another Trump appointee, suggested the lack of a rigorous alternative might be a reason to overrule Roe and Casey entirely.

“You emphasized that if 15 weeks were approved, then we’d have cases about 12 and 10 and 8 and 6, and so my question is, is there a line in there that the government believes would be principled or not,” Gorsuch asked Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden administration lawyer supporting the Mississippi clinic.

“I don’t think there’s any line that could be more principled than viability,” Prelogar said.

Supporters of both sides in the abortion debate filled the sidewalk and street in front of the court, their dueling rallies audible even from inside the building. Opposing signs read such sentiments as “Her Body Her Choice” and “God Hates the Shedding of Innocent Blood.” The court stepped up security measures, including closing off some streets around the building.

Perhaps in recognition of the gravity of the issue before them, the justices took the bench at 10 o’clock without any smiles or the private jokes they sometimes share.

The case came to a court with a 6-3 conservative majority that has been transformed by the justices named by Trump —Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

A month ago, the justices also heard arguments over a uniquely designed Texas law that has succeeded in getting around the Roe and Casey decisions and banned abortions in the nation’s second-largest state after about six weeks of pregnancy. The legal dispute over the Texas law revolves around whether it can be challenged in federal court, rather than the right to an abortion.

The court has yet to rule on the Texas law, and the justices have refused to put it on hold while the matter is under legal review.

The Mississippi case poses questions more central to the abortion right. State Solicitor General Scott Stewart said Roe and Casey “haunt our country” and “have no basis in the Constitution.”

He compared those decisions to Plessy v. Ferguson, the infamous Supreme Court ruling from 1896 that justified official segregation before it was overruled by Brown v. Board of Education 58 years later.

“We’re running on 50 years of Roe. It is an egregiously wrong decision that has inflicted tremendous damage on our country and will continue to do so and take innumerable human lives unless and until this court overrules it,” he said.

The Mississippi clinic argued that those two cases were correctly decided and have been relied on by women and their partners for nearly a half century, a point also made by Justice Elena Kagan.

The abortion decisions are “part of the fabric of women’s existence in this country,” she said.

Barrett approached the issue of women’s reliance on the abortion rulings from a different vantage point. She suggested that so-called safe haven laws in all 50 states that allow mothers to relinquish parental rights mean women can’t be forced into motherhood, which could limit employment and other opportunities.

“Why don’t the safe haven laws take care of that problem?” she asked.

Barrett, with a long record of personal opposition to abortion, acknowledged the court still has to deal with the issue of forcing women to remain pregnant against their will.

She described such a pregnancy as “an infringement on bodily autonomy, you know, which we have in other contexts, like vaccines.”

In its earlier rulings, the court has rooted the right to abortion in the section of the 14th Amendment that says states cannot “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

Same-sex marriage and other rights, based on the same provision but also not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, could be threatened if Roe and Casey fall, the administration argues.

Abortion arguments normally would find people camped out in front of the court for days in the hope of snagging some of the few seats available to the public. But with the courthouse closed because of COVID-19, there was only a sparse audience of reporters, justices’ law clerks and a handful of lawyers inside the courtroom.

If the court issues its decision in late June it will be a little more than four months before next year’s congressional elections, and could become a campaign season rallying cry.

___

Associated Press writer Parker Purifoy contributed to this report.

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources announced the effort on Thursday.

Scientists want to hear about sightings from Dec. 1 to March 1 in Texas as well as North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

The observations should be reported at JourneyNorth.org.

Researchers say the information may help conservation efforts by determining if the butterflies can spend the winter as non-breeding adults in the southern U.S.

Monarch populations have declined significantly over the past two decades.

A Lyft driver who was kidnapped by a teen rider, shot seven times and left in the Mississippi woods said she gathered strength to drag herself to safety by thinking of her loved ones.

Brandy Littrell recounted the Tuesday ordeal in an interview with NBC affiliate WLBT of Jackson.

She told the news station that the suspect drove her to the woods and told her to get down on her knees before he shot her and drove away in her car.

“I realized I wasn’t dead, that I hadn’t bled out,” she said.

The teenager confessed to the crimes involving the Lyft driver, Jackson police said. It was not clear Friday if he had made an appearance in court, or if he was represented by an attorney.

Read the full story here on NBCNews.com