Free Republic

KEY POINTS $20 billion investment: Elon Musk’s xAI will build the MACROHARDRR data center in Southaven, Mississippi — the largest private investment in the state — as part of a Memphis-area cluster the company says will house the world’s largest supercomputer with 2 gigawatts of computing power. Environmental and community opposition: the NAACP, the Southern Environmental Law Center and local groups have raised air-pollution and environmental-justice concerns tied to xAI’s Memphis-area facilities, and a Southaven petition against the developments has more than 900 signatures. Generous incentives: under a 2024 data-center law Mississippi will waive state sales, corporate income and franchise...

Four Massachusetts residents are accused of using more than 100 stolen identities to get over $1 million in food stamps and pandemic-era unemployment benefits in a multi-state fraud scheme, federal prosecutors say. U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley said stolen identities from Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico were used to obtain $440,000 in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The defendants also allegedly submitted fraudulent documents in order to receive more than $700,000 in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance from Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Washington and Nevada. --snip-- Three defendants charged...

Stephen Spencer Pittman, Madison, Mississippi man arrested setting Jackson synagogue on fire after referencing Jewish religious institution as the ‘synagogue of Satan.’ Suspect is avid Christian and baseball fanatic and honor roll student. A 33-year-old man has admitted to starting a fire at a Mississippi synagogue on account of its ‘Jewish ties.’ Stephen Spencer Pittman, 19, of Madison, Miss., was charged Monday with maliciously damaging or destroying a building by means of fire or an explosive. In an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Mississippi on Monday, the FBI said the suspect confessed to lighting a fire inside the...

A suspect has been arrested after a fire tore through Beth Israel, the only synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi, on Saturday, leaving the congregation forced to rebuild from the ashes — again.Investigators have not yet determined a motive for the fire, which remains under investigation, but it comes amid a wave of antisemitic attacks in recent years.

Six people were killed in a series of related shooting in eastern Mississippi, according to authorities. Clay County Sheriff Eddie Scott on Friday said a suspect, later identified as 24-year-old Daricka Moore, was taken into custody. Online records show Moore was charged with first-degree murder. WTVA reported that a 7-year-old girl was among the victims. "Unfortunately tonight we have dealt with tragedy in our community. Multiple innocent lives lost due to violence. We do have the individual in custody and no longer poses a threat to our community," Scott wrote in a post he shared on Facebook. "I ask that...

Some of the Democrats who have been spiking the ball in the end zone after the passage of the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” probably didn’t read all of the finer details in the bill. They’ve been celebrating its passage along with Joe Biden as the “biggest climate legislation” to ever be passed. They have also been grudgingly thanking West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin for getting the bill over the finish line. But it turns out that Manchin snuck in a few items that haven’t drawn many headlines yet and the climate warriors aren’t going to be very happy about them....

More than three dozen missing children were rescued from sex traffickers in North Florida after a massive sting. The rescue effort, named Operation Northern Lights, found 43 missing children across 14 counties with more children found in other states, the US Marshals Service announced Thursday. Federal authorities said the youngest victims were one-year-olds and that one of the young victims had been abducted from Florida and located in Louisiana. Nine people were arrested after the staggering operation, which law enforcement said took two weeks to conduct. Additional charges could include human trafficking, child endangerment and custodial interference. The sting turned...

Camille Benson of Mississippi arrested for putting razor blades in loaves of bread at Walmart A Texas woman was arrested and charged after she hid razor blades and fish hooks in loaves of bread at Walmart stores in Biloxi, Mississippi. 33-year-old Camille Benson is accused of putting almost a dozen razor blades inside loaves of bread at two Walmart stores. Benson’s crime spree began on December 5 after a customer found a razor blade in a banana nut muffin. Investigators initially thought it was an isolated event; however, two days later, a customer at a neighboring Walmart discovered a razor...

A woman fatally shot a man who broke into her home According to WLOX, 29-year-old Dangelo Murphy was fatally shot by a woman after he reportedly broke into a home while armed with a hammer and a knife. The report states that law enforcement responded to a home in Gulfport, Mississippi at around 7 a.m. for reports of a man breaking into a home. After reportedly entering the home, the suspect encountered two women, who both had an active protection order out against him, per WLOX. Authorities said one of the women suffered a knife injury, although women managed to...

Mississippi turns a corner, but can the federal government?The future for our state looks bright. In just the past five years, Mississippi has seen more economic growth than in the entire 15 years before that combined.We’re on track to phase out the state income tax entirely, allowing families to keep more of what they earn. Mississippi has attracted a surge of new investment, and for the first time in years, our workforce participation rate is finally heading in the right direction.Zoom out, and the picture gets even better. Contrary to the endless gloom from the pundits, the American economy has...

A college student allegedly shouted “F*** the Jews” and threw coins at Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy outside a pizzeria in Starkville, Mississippi, on Friday. The outburst occurred while Portnoy was filming a “One Bite” pizza review. According to The New York Post, Patrick McClintock, 20, a mechanical engineering student at Mississippi State University, was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace on Monday. He withdrew from the university the same day. In a video circulating on X, the man can be heard making the antisemitic remark. Members of the crowd immediately condemn the slur as Portnoy turns toward the...

A Mississippi State University student has been arrested after yelling antisemitic comments at Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy. The arrest of 20-year old Patrick McClintock, a mechanical engineering student at MSU, came after Starkville police were “made aware of a video circulating online that depicted an individual yelling an antisemitic statement and throwing coins toward another person outside a local business”, the police department said in a statement. According to a video of the incident which has gone viral on social media, Portnoy could be seen recording a segment of his One Bite pizza review outside Boardtown Pizza & Pints...

The court agreed to hear the matter after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law in 2024. The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case addressing whether states may count ballots that arrive after Election Day. The Republican National Committee and Mississippi Libertarian Party challenged the state's law permitting the counting of ballots postmarked by Election Day should they arrive within five days, Politico reported. The court agreed to hear the matter after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law in 2024. President Donald Trump, for his part, has long been a...

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy was subjected to an antisemitic slur while filming content in Starkville, Mississippi on Friday, reported the New York Post. Portnoy was recording one of his signature “One Bite” pizza reviews outside what appeared to be Boardtown Pizza near Mississippi State University when a passerby shouted “F***k the Jews” toward him. The comment was immediately condemned by bystanders. “Why don’t you come in the camera, buddy?” Portnoy, who is Jewish, responded, gesturing for the man to approach. The individual then walked up to Portnoy and his cameraman, engaging in a brief, inaudible exchange before walking away....

HEIDELBERG, Miss. -- Monkeys being transported on a Mississippi highway escaped captivity Tuesday after the truck carrying them overturned, according to law enforcement. All but one of the escaped monkeys were killed, the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department said in a post on Facebook, warning that the monkeys were “aggressive." It is not clear how many monkeys were originally in the truck or how many were killed. The truck was carrying Rehsus monkeys, which typically weigh around 16 pounds (7.7 kilograms) and are among the most medically studied animals on the planet. They were being housed at the Tulane University National...

A federal judge overturned a former Biden-era rule that protected transgender healthcare under anti-discrimination measures. On Wednesday, Judge Louis Guirola Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi ruled in favor of a coalition of 15 Republican-led states. The complaint was filed regarding Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which the Biden administration interpreted to include provisions for transgender-identifying people to receive so-called “gender-affirming care.” The provision added gender identity to Title IX’s definition of discrimination “on the basis of sex,” which previously included discrimination based on sex characteristics and reproductive function. This rule prevented...

BILOXI, Miss. (WLOX) - Five shootings in 24 hours across the Magnolia state left at least 9 dead this weekend. Most of the shootings happened after high school football games on Friday night. The last two happened at Alcorn State and at a Jackson State University event at Veterans Memorial Stadium on Saturday. At Alcorn State, one person is dead, and two others were injured near the Industrial Technology Building. Officials said no arrests have been made at this time. Jackson Police Department Interim Chief Tyree Jones said a child was hit by gunfire near the tailgate section during JSU’s...

High school homecoming celebrations in Mississippi ended in gunfire, with two separate shootings on opposite sides of the state Friday night that left at least six people dead and many more injured, authorities said. Four of the dead were killed in downtown Leland, after a high school football homecoming game in the Mississippi Delta region on the state’s western edge, a state senator said Saturday. About 20 people were injured in the gunfire after people gathered in downtown Leland following the game, state Sen. Derrick Simmons said. Of the 20 wounded, four were in critical condition and flown from a...

This is why “the Mississippi Miracle,” the sobriquet for the extraordinary gains that students in the Magnolia State have made in reading in recent years, is a misnomer. There’s nothing miraculous about a state that adopts phonics and that sets high standards for its kids getting better results in reading instruction. This, to the contrary, is a predictable outcome, and a replicable one, as other Southern states that have taken up similar polices have shown. Mississippi went from 49th in fourth-grade reading results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress about a decade ago to ninth in 2024. Its low-income...

The death of a 21-year-old Black student discovered hanging from a tree at Delta State University in Mississippi has been ruled a suicide, police said Thursday. The body of the student, identified as Demartravion "Trey" Reed, was discovered by a faculty member around 7 a.m. on Monday hanging from a tree near the pickleball courts on the Cleveland, Mississippi, campus, according to the campus police department. The Mississippi State Medical Examiner's autopsy findings are "consistent with the initial investigation, determining the cause of death to be hanging and the manner of death as suicide," the Cleveland Police Department said in...