by Alex Rozier, Mississippi Today
March 18, 2025

County officials are continuing to tally damages throughout Mississippi, hopeful that the aftermath will qualify the areas for federal disaster assistance.

Gov. Tate Reeves said during a press conference Monday afternoon that the state will apply for aid through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but that more assessments are needed first.

The governor added that, based on previous experiences, there is a “high likelihood” the state will qualify for FEMA’s Individual Assistance, which provides resources directly to disaster victims. Reeves said he’s “hopeful” the state will also receive Public Assistance, which funds recovery for public buildings and infrastructure.

A dozen tornadoes landed in the state between Friday and Saturday, according to the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. In total, 23 counties took damage, Reeves said during a press conference at the Tylertown Baptist Church in Walthall County. Six people died in Walthall, Covington and Jefferson Davis counties, and 29 were injured in those places as well as Pike County. Reeves said on Sunday that 217 people were displaced from their homes. The governor also confirmed that three people who were initially missing have been found alive.

One of the two tornadoes that hit Walthall County traveled across the Louisiana state line, Reeves said, staying on the ground for over 70 miles.

“That is not usual,” said the governor, who signed a State of Emergency declaration on Saturday.

Walthall County Board President Doug Popwell said that while the county’s assessment on Monday morning estimated 35 to 40 homes damaged, the total will likely reach over 100. Popwell added that “a lot of” chicken farms were hit as well. He said the Salem Attendance Center, a K through 12 public school in Tylertown, and some churches were also damaged.

“It’ll make you sick to your stomach when you go around and see people you know without homes,” he said. “It’s by far the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

Popwell said this was as bad of a storm as he could remember in the county.

“We took a hard hit from (Hurricane) Katrina, and then in 2020 we had several bad tornadoes, but this is probably worse than either as far as the amount of lost homes,” he said.

He said Walthall County doesn’t have a long-term recovery committee, which the state recommends to help counties expedite the rebuilding process after a disaster. Popwell said they’ve received an “overwhelming” amount of food and water.

“More than anything, what we need right now is this (federal disaster) declaration from FEMA,” he said.

In Jefferson Davis County, emergency director Jocelyn Ragsdale emphasized that assessments were ongoing, so her estimates could change, but said as of now: 6o to 70 homes received damage, about 30 of which were destroyed; some chicken farms were total losses, and some county buildings also received damage.

Ragsdale said her area received similar damage from the Easter tornadoes of 2020.

“Total devastation,” she described. “We need as much help as we can get.”

President Trump has threatened to scrap FEMA altogether, something that would require congressional action. Last month, he approved making federal funds available to Kentucky and West Virginia, while threatening to attach strings to any money to help California recover from the deadly wildfires there. FEMA is also demanding the names of immigrants served by El Paso charities and local governments before reimbursing them for expenses.

When asked about potential changes to FEMA on Monday, Reeves said he wasn’t worried, emphasizing that disaster recoveries, as designed by the 1988 Stafford Act, are “state managed, locally executed, and federally supported.”

Both Popwell and Ragsdale said their respective counties did not have public safe rooms for residents to take shelter in prior to storms. Ragsdale said Jefferson Davis County is looking for funding to build a safe room.

In addition to the tornadoes, MEMA said that north Mississippi — in Prentiss and Tishomingo counties — received some flooding over the weekend (Tishomingo County emergency director Peyton Berklite said Monday no homes were damaged or trapped, though), and that there was a 3.0-magnitude earthquake in Magee on Saturday that hasn’t had any reported impacts. Reeves said on Sunday that power outages dropped from a high of 36,000 to below 8,000, with many of those being in Grenada and Walthall counties.

So far in 2025, Mississippi has already seen 57 tornadoes, according to preliminary data from the National Weather Service, by far the most of any state this year. Last week’s tornadoes came about a week and a half before the two-year anniversary of the 2023 tornado storm that devastated Rolling Fork, Amory and other parts of the state.

MEMA shared this link for information on where to find shelters as well as to make a donation. The agency advised anyone looking to help not to self-deploy to impacted areas, but instead to connect with volunteer groups.

Below are more images of the damages caused by the March 14 and 15 storms:

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

House and Senate leaders on Monday evening unveiled new plans to eliminate the state income tax and raise gasoline taxes — charting a path to more negotiations over the most notable legislative debate of the 2025 session. 

Monday marks the first time the Senate leadership has proposed a plan to eliminate the income tax, a significant move from its previous position wanting only to cut the tax that accounts for nearly one-third of the state budget.

Republican House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar said the move could bring the chambers closer to reaching a final agreement. 

“I can’t underestimate the importance of the Senate placing into written form and out in the open public that they are agreeing to eliminate the income tax,” Lamar said. “We’re willing to work with them. We are not willing to compromise on total elimination of the income tax and taking care of some the infrastructure needs we have.”

The House also changed its position Monday on a few key provisions. It agreed to increase the state’s net sales tax from 7% to 8%, down from the eventual 8.5% target the chamber had originally proposed. The revenue from this tax increase would provide $48 million annually to pay for infrastructure improvements via the State Aid Road Fund. The remaining funds would go into the state’s general fund.

It also changed what had been a new 5% sales tax on gasoline to a 15-cents-a-gallon excise tax increase, phased in at 5 cents a year over a three-year period. That would bring in approximately $23 million a year once fully phased in, Lamar said. This would be added to the current 18.4-cents-a-gallong excise Mississippi motorists currently pay.

The House plan would also cut the sales tax on groceries from 7% to 5%.

The new House plan would also create a new fund that gives those over the age of 65 property tax credits of $200 a year. This provision is designed to allay the concerns of senior citizens, who stood to benefit little from income tax elimination because Mississippi exempts retirement and Social Security income from state income taxes. 

However, the most surprising development was in the GOP-majority Senate, which finally answered calls from House leadership and Republican Gov. Tate Reeves to propose a plan that eliminates the income tax. 

READ MORE: Mississippi lawmakers struggle to reach tax agreement as federal cuts loom

Senators proposed phasing out the tax over an undefined period, but it would most likely take longer than the House has proposed. The House held to its position that the income tax must be eliminated by 2037.

Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann called the Senate plan fiscally responsible, while House leaders said a quicker timeline is needed for abolishing the tax to ensure that economic growth for the state. 

The Senate plan would decrease the 4% income tax rate — already among the lowest in the nation — by .25% each year from 2027 to 2030 and leave it at 3% in 2030. Afterward, the income tax would be reduced with “growth triggers” or at a proportional rate depending on the difference between the state’s revenue and spending plans that year. 

READ MORE: How soon we forget: Mississippi House push for record tax cuts revives fear of repeat budget crises

“We’re going to basically let our economy dictate the rate and how progressive we are in reducing the income tax on citizens in our state while protecting the core functions of government that we’re supposed to provide,” Senate Finance Chairman Josh Harkins said. 

Lamar said the Senate’s language on triggers, which he had not seen as of Monday afternoon, would be crucial to reaching a final agreement.

“The last thing we want to do is mislead the Mississippi citizens to have them believe they’re going to get their income tax eliminated and not (have it) actually work,” Lamar said. “So that trigger language will be key.”

The Senate plan also immediately reduces the sales tax on groceries from 7% to 5%, increases the gasoline tax by 9 cents over three years to fund infrastructure projects and overhauls the state public employee retirement system. 

Many Democrats are expected to oppose either plan. Democratic Sen. Hob Bryan of Amory said the new Senate plan marks a “sad day” in the state’s history because it forsakes the government’s responsibility to provide key services in one of the poorest states in the nation.

READ MORE: Legislature stumbles into final weeks of session in a tax-fight funk: Legislative recap

Bryan and others have warned that cutting revenue and upending the state’s tax structure in uncertain economic times — with potential massive cuts in federal money Mississippi relies on — is foolhardy.

“I know the snake oil salesman who showed up in Mississippi selling this bill of goods must be happy,” Bryan said. 

Despite the new offers from each side, the two chambers are still far apart in their negotiations and the Republican leadership of each has continued criticizing the other as the 2025 legislative session is scheduled to end in roughly two weeks.

Lawmakers will likely conduct negotiations on a final tax cut proposal in a conference committee. The deadline for them to reach a final agreement is March 29. If they don’t meet that deadline, they could try to suspend their rules. 

If the two chambers can’t reach an agreement, the governor could call them into a special session and try to pressure the two chambers to find a way to abolish what he and others call the “tax on work.” 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

by Sophia Paffenroth, Mississippi Today
March 17, 2025

Rape victims aren’t guaranteed a rape kit when they show up at a hospital emergency room – though it’s not clear how often they are turned away. 

“We cannot prosecute rape cases without forensic evidence, and we can’t obtain forensic evidence if hospitals refuse to perform rape kits,” said Rep. Dana McLean, R-Columbus, who was inspired to author legislation addressing the issue after hearing about sexual assault survivors who didn’t receive the care they needed from emergency rooms. 

While McLean’s bill passed unanimously in the House, it died in the Senate Public Health Committee after chairman Hob Bryan, D-Amory, chose not to bring it up before deadline. Bryan told Mississippi Today it was brought to him late in the session and he would like time to further study how specific language may adversely affect hospitals. 

But McLean revived her legislation by adding it to a Senate bill before the deadline Wednesday. 

McLean joined other lawmakers, law enforcement officers, and representatives from the Attorney General’s Office and the Center for Violence Prevention at a press conference last week to rally support for the legislation. 

Among the attendees was Rep. Becky Currie, R-Brookhaven, who worked as a registered nurse for 45 years and in the emergency room for 25 years. 

“If you’re an open ER and you can take a gunshot wound, how dare you not do a rape kit,” Currie said at the press conference. “This has to be done, and I am asking that the powers that be in this building – and we all know it can be done – give CPR to this bill so we can take care of patients when they come asking for help.”

McLean called her legislation a “three-pronged mandate” that guarantees rape victims proper care through adequate staffing, supplies and treatment. But she stressed that the legislation does not impose an additional staffing requirement. 

McLean has championed justice for sexual assault victims in the past, successfully passing legislation to change archaic language in the law, remove the spousal defense for rape, and streamline rape kit processing. 

Richard Roberson, CEO and president of the Mississippi Hospital Association, said he is grateful for the leadership of Attorney General Lynn Fitch and McLean in addressing what he calls “a critical issue.”

“To support this effort, we have proposed language to strengthen the bill, ensuring that emergency departments can fulfill their responsibilities to sexual assault survivors while maintaining their ability to provide life-saving care to all patients with emergency medical conditions,” Roberson said.

A spokesperson for the Association said they offered language to clarify that the standard is in line with EMTALA, the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires medical providers to stabilize everyone entering the emergency room before discharging or transferring them.

Requests for comment to the Mississippi Healthcare Collaborative, which represents dozens of hospitals that splintered off from MHA in 2024, were not returned.

Anyone working in an emergency room has the skills and is legally allowed to perform a rape kit, which comes with detailed instructions. McLean’s legislation would merely enshrine in law that hospitals have at least one provider – a registered nurse, advanced practice nurse, physician or physician assistant – who is willing and able to perform the rape kit. 

“It’s very simple, it’s a no-brainer,” McLean said. “They should be doing this already. It’s very unfortunate that we have to legislate this.”

Several advocates who work with rape victims told Mississippi Today that they have heard of cases where a rape victim was unable to get a rape kit after going to the emergency room.

Jackson-area hospitals are able to guarantee their patients get care from a highly trained nurse through agreements with the Center for Violence Prevention, explained the center’s executive director Sandy Middleton. 

“When a rape victim presents to their hospitals, they call us and we send our (sexual assault nurse examiner) and it’s a wonderful working relationship we have,” Middleton said.

This is a luxury not afforded to many hospitals around the state, which only has a total of seven SANE-certified nurses. 

But a provider doesn’t need to be SANE-certified in order to perform a rape kit on a patient. 

Rape kits come with instructions that are state-specific, and Mississippi’s has gotten particularly good feedback, explained Shalotta Sharp, registered nurse and special projects coordinator with the Mississippi Coalition Against Sexual Assault. 

“When other states look at our kits, they’re impressed with our details … It’s very user-friendly and that’s the reason we re-did the kit – to make it so accessible to other clinicians.”

Provider apprehension about doing the kits mostly comes from a lack of experience and anxiety about the gravity of the situation, according to Sharp.

“This recently happened,” Sharp recalled. “A nurse right out of nursing school had a sexual assault patient and called me in a panic, and I said, ‘Have you got the kit? I’m going to be right there with you.’ And because they’d never opened the kit, they didn’t realize the detailed instructions that were in there and the feedback was ‘Wow, that took a lot of the fear out of that.’”

Sharp said she makes herself available to providers who want phone support as they open a kit for the first time. 

“I feel like at this point, about 80% of Mississippi probably has my number,” she joked. 

Sharp also travels the state and provides informal training to providers at no cost to them or their hospital. 

For those interested in going the extra mile – though Sharp stressed these courses are not necessary to perform rape kits – she also provides formal training to become officially SANE-trained, which requires 40 hours of education, and further clinical training for those who want to become SANE-certified.

Sharp said her coalition will be available for support regardless of whether McLean’s legislation passes, adding that she hopes hospitals and other institutions have a voice in the conversation in the future. 

“Anything that they legislate, a requirement of any agency – I just feel like that agency needs to have representation at the table,” she said. 

The bill to which McLean’s amendment has been added will now go back to the Senate, where it will need to pass a full floor vote by March 27 to survive.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.