by Taylor Vance and Devna Bose, Mississippi Today
July 28, 2025

A ruling from a federal judge in Mississippi contained factual errors — listing plaintiffs who weren’t parties to the suit, including incorrect quotes from a state law and referring to cases that don’t appear to exist — raising questions about whether artificial intelligence was involved in drafting the order.

U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate issued an error-laden temporary restraining order on July 20, pausing the enforcement of a state law that prohibits diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools and universities. 

Lawyers from the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office asked him to clarify the order on Tuesday, and attorneys for the plaintiffs did not oppose the state’s request. On Wednesday, Wingate replaced the order with a corrected version.

His original order no longer appears on the court docket, so the public no longer has access to it. The corrected order is backdated to July 20, even though it was filed three days later.

“Our attorneys have never seen anything like this,” a Mississippi Attorney General’s Office official told Mississippi Today, speaking only on background because the litigation is pending.

Some attorneys who have reviewed the ruling questioned whether artificial intelligence was used to craft the order. Wingate did not respond to repeated questions about the order or whether he or his staff used AI to prepare it.

The original order lists plaintiffs such as the Mississippi Library Association and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., who have never been involved in the pending litigation and who do not even have cases pending before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. 

Wingate’s original order also appears to quote portions of the initial lawsuit and the legislation that established Mississippi’s DEI prohibition, making it seem as though the phrases were taken verbatim from the texts. But the quoted phrases don’t appear in either the complaint or the legislation. 

Wingate’s corrected order still cites a 1974 case from the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, Cousins v. School Board of City of Norfolk. However, when Mississippi Today attempted to search for that case, it appears that either it does not exist or the citation is incorrect. 

Christina Frohock, a University of Miami law school professor who studies the dangers artificial intelligence poses to the integrity of the legal system, said a common way attorneys are getting caught using AI is due to “hallucinations,” or instances where AI programs cite cases that don’t exist or use fabricated quotes. 

Frohock was hesitant to draw conclusions about the errors in the Mississippi ruling and attribute them to AI, but she was similarly perplexed by how basic facts from the case record were incorrect. 

“I actually don’t know how to explain the backstory here,” she said. “I feel like I’m Alice in Wonderland.”

Attorneys have an ethical obligation to make truthful representations in court, so when they are caught using artificial intelligence, judges have applied sanctions and demanded explanations. Just this month, a federal judge in Colorado ordered two attorneys to pay thousands in fines after they used AI to write a mistake-riddled court filing.

But there’s little recourse when the tables are turned. 

“If an attorney does this, a judge can demand explanations, but it’s not true in the other direction,” Frohock said. “We will probably never know what happened, unless an appellate court demands it.”

Parties in the case will meet again Aug. 5 to argue about a preliminary injunction in the case. 

Wingate, 78, was nominated to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate that same year. He served as chief judge of the Southern District from 2003 to 2010. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Attorneys baffled by federal court order with factual errors appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The article reports on factual errors in a federal judge’s court order, raising questions about the possible use of artificial intelligence in drafting the document. It presents information from multiple perspectives, including legal experts and involved parties, without endorsing any ideological position. The tone remains neutral and focuses on the procedural and ethical implications of the errors, avoiding partisan framing. The coverage neither supports nor criticizes specific political views but rather highlights concerns about legal integrity and technology’s role in the judiciary, maintaining an objective stance overall.

by Katherine Lin, Mississippi Today
July 28, 2025

It’s been a disparate few years for Mississippi’s agriculture sector. Even as natural disasters and trade wars have caused row crop prices to decline, record high beef prices, growing poultry production and hundreds millions of dollars in federal disaster payments have bolstered the sector.

Some farmers have reported that federal payments have been slower and lower than needed as they continue to feel the impacts of bad weather in 2023 and 2024 exacerbated by low prices, high costs and trade wars. In Mississippi, row crops, which include soy beans, cotton and corn, have been among the hardest hit.

“This is one of the worst years for row crops,” said Dr. Joshua Maples, an agricultural economist at Mississippi State University. 

Row crops, especially soybeans, are an important part of Mississippi’s economy with soybean production valued at over $1 billion. Farmers are still recovering from the effects of past severe weather conditions and the outlook for 2025 is not promising with higher than normal rainfall that may result in a lower crop yield.

The prices of row crops have declined since 2022 leading to smaller profits for farmers who are struggling to break even with high production costs. As a result of 2018 tariffs, China, the biggest importer of soybeans in the world, shifted to buying more from South America, a loss that the U.S. industry has not recovered from.

The bright spots in the agriculture industry have been the livestock and poultry industries. Poultry, the largest agriculture sector in Mississippi, grew by 10% according to data from the Mississippi State University Extension largely due to strong production.

But livestock saw the most growth, with a 14% increase.

“Livestock is the shining star of Mississippi,” said Mike McCormick, a cattle farmer and president of the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation. Beef prices have soared due to historically low numbers of cattle in the United States. As of January 1, 2025, there were 86.7 million head of cattle in the United States, the fewest since 1951. 

While cattle farmers are currently seeing higher returns, they struggled for years with drought and weak profit margins leading to smaller herds. Farmers are trying to grow their herds but the process will likely take a few years, so beef prices will likely continue to be high.

In 2024, the state’s agricultural nominal GDP remained relatively unchanged with a decrease of 0.4% while the overall state GDP grew by 4.2%.

Agriculture GDP makes up around 2% of the state GDP. At the end of June, data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed that in the first quarter of 2025, Mississippi’s economy grew 0.7%.  The agriculture sector was the largest contributor to growth of any industry at 0.83%. This was the third straight quarter that agriculture had the largest GDP growth rate in the state.

But agriculture GDP growth in the first quarter of this year was largely due to $120 million in direct payments from the federal government to Mississippi farmers.

“It’s not reflective of the reality farmers are facing right now,” said Andy Gipson, Mississippi’s agricultural commissioner on a recent episode of Mississippi Today’s podcast The Other Side, of what would appear on paper to be robust growth in farming output.

These payments are part of the American Relief Act that was passed in December 2024 that set aside more than $30 billion in direct payments to farmers to help with losses from economic changes and natural disasters. The money is being paid out through multiple programs, including the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program, or ECAP, and the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program, or SDRP. The commodity program helps farmers impacted by increased production costs and falling crop prices while the disaster program helps those affected by severe weather in 2023 and 2024.

 “The $120 million is about 3.5% of the total GDP the state gained from ‘Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting’ in 2024,” said Dr. Sondra Collins a Senior Economist at the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning. She expects to see the impact of these programs on GDP throughout the year as applications continue to be submitted and money is paid out. 

McCormick’s family has been farming in Mississippi since the 1820s and says this is one of the most challenging periods for farmers since the farm crisis of the 1980s. 

“Farming has always been a risky business,” said McCormick.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Some hope, some worries: Mississippi’s agriculture GDP is a mixed bag appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The article presents a balanced, factual overview of Mississippi’s agricultural economy without promoting any ideological stance. It reports on the challenges faced by farmers due to weather, trade, and market factors alongside the positive growth in livestock and poultry sectors. The tone is neutral, relying on data and quotes from economists and industry representatives without editorializing. The inclusion of federal disaster payments is explained as a factor affecting GDP figures but is not framed with partisan judgment. Overall, the article adheres to straightforward reporting of economic conditions and policy impacts without evident bias.

by Gwen Dilworth, Mississippi Today
July 25, 2025

The committee tasked with advising the Mississippi Division of Medicaid met Friday for the first time in a year and a half. 

The meeting in Jackson was a primer on Medicaid programs and provided a financial update for new members, most of whom were appointed in 2024 but have not yet participated in a meeting. 

The Medicaid Advisory Committee offers expertise and opinions to the state Medicaid program about health care services. It is made up of doctors, hospital executives, managed care organization representatives and other Medicaid stakeholders. 

It includes two members of the recently formed Beneficiary Advisory Council, a group of Medicaid members and their families who advise Medicaid on their experience with the program. 

New federal policy seeks to heighten the role that beneficiaries play in shaping Medicaid programs and policy by mandating that members of the council serve on the Medicaid Advisory Committee. Ten percent of the group must be composed of beneficiaries or their families, a proportion that will rise in the coming years. 

Both committees are mandated by the federal government to meet quarterly. 

The last Medicaid Advisory Committee meeting, formerly known as the Medical Care Advisory Committee, was held on Dec. 8, 2023. 

Meetings were first set back in 2024 because state leaders, who were formerly charged with selecting members, were slow to make appointments. A meeting scheduled for October was postponed after former executive director Drew Snyder announced his resignation. 

Meetings were then delayed further while the agency worked to sort out a discrepancy between state law and new federal guidelines, which mandated that committee appointments be made by the executive director of Medicaid and include members of the then-unformed Beneficiary Advisory Council. The new guidelines took effect this month. 

State lawmakers proposed language in several bills earlier this year during the legislative session that would have conformed state law to federal regulations. Two such bills were vetoed by the governor. 

Medicaid Executive Director Cindy Bradshaw said the agency decided to “honor the language” of the vetoed bills, conforming to federal guidelines without updating state law. 

The committee’s recommendations have played a crucial role in crafting state Medicaid policy in the past. In 2023, the advisory group’s recommendation contributed to the Legislature’s passage of extended Medicaid coverage for new mothers. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Medicaid advisory committee meets appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The article reports on the Medicaid Advisory Committee’s recent meeting in a straightforward, factual manner without expressing ideological opinions. It focuses on procedural updates, federal and state policy interactions, and the committee’s advisory role, presenting information about appointments, regulatory compliance, and policy outcomes like extended postpartum coverage. The language is neutral and descriptive, avoiding partisan framing or advocacy. The piece reports on the actions and positions of state officials and legislators without endorsing any political stance, adhering to objective journalism standards. Therefore, it reflects balanced coverage without discernible political bias.