At least 3 dead in Mississippi after likely tornadoes sweep through the state

by Associated Press, Mississippi Today
March 15, 2025

Violent tornadoes ripped through parts of the U.S. this weekend, killing at least three people in Mississippi and damaging several communities across the Magnolia State.

Two separate likely tornadoes hit Walthall County on Saturday afternoon, killing three people near Darbun along Bethlehem Loop Road, according to the county’s Emergency Management Director Royce McKee.

Walthall County Sheriff Kyle Breland told WLBT there are also injuries, collapsed homes, and trees blocking roadways in the county.

The National Weather Service in Jackson on Saturday afternoon had issued a tornado emergency for two separate tornadoes that moved through Walthall County. That rare official designation of a “large and dangerous tornado” continued into Marion, Lawrence and Jefferson Davis counties. Numerous other tornado warnings were issued before storms cleared out of the state by Saturday late afternoon.

Before sunrise early Saturday morning, a likely tornado ripped through the Elliott community in Grenada County, destroying several homes and damaging other buildings. No fatalities were reported in that storm.

“All of a sudden, it got like a freight train,” Robert Holman told FOX Weather of the Elliott storm. “Then all of a sudden, we just heard stuff just falling all on the house.”

The storms knocked out power to about 25,000 people across the state.

Though Mississippi was in the Saturday bullseye for the tornado outbreak, the same storm system affected much of the U.S. over the weekend.

The number of fatalities increased after the Kansas Highway Patrol reported eight people died in a highway pileup caused by a dust storm in Sherman County Friday. At least 50 vehicles were involved.

Missouri recorded more fatalities than any other state as it withstood scattered twisters overnight that killed at least 12 people, authorities said. The deaths included a man who was killed after a tornado ripped apart his home.

“It was unrecognizable as a home. Just a debris field,” said Coroner Jim Akers of Butler County, describing the scene that confronted rescuers. “The floor was upside down. We were walking on walls.”

Dakota Henderson said he and others rescuing people trapped in their homes Friday night found five dead bodies scattered in the debris outside what remained of his aunt’s house in hard-hit Wayne County, Missouri.

“It was a very rough deal last night,” he said Saturday, surrounded by uprooted trees and splintered homes. “It’s really disturbing for what happened to the people, the casualties last night.”

Henderson said they rescued his aunt from a bedroom that was the only room left standing in her house, taking her out through a window. They also carried out a man who had a broken arm and leg.

Officials in Arkansas said three people died in Independence County and 29 others were injured across eight counties as storms passed through the state.

“We have teams out surveying the damage from last night’s tornadoes and have first responders on the ground to assist,” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on X.

She and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp declared states of emergency. Kemp said he was making the declaration in anticipation of severe weather moving in later Saturday.

On Friday, meanwhile, authorities said three people were killed in car crashes during a dust storm in Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle.

Tornadoes hit amid storm outbreak

The Storm Prediction Center said fast-moving storms could spawn twisters and hail as large as baseballs on Saturday, but the greatest threat would come from winds near or exceeding hurricane force, with gusts of 100 miles per hour possible.

Significant tornadoes continued to hit Saturday. The regions at highest risk stretch from eastern Louisiana and Mississippi through Alabama, western Georgia and the Florida panhandle, the center said.

Bailey Dillon, 24, and her fiance, Caleb Barnes, watched a massive tornado from their front porch in Tylertown, Mississippi, about half a mile (0.8 km) away as it struck an area near Paradise Ranch RV Park.

They drove over afterward to see if anyone needed help and recorded a video depicting snapped trees, leveled buildings and overturned vehicles.

“The amount of damage was catastrophic,” Dillon said. “It was a large amount of cabins, RVs, campers that were just flipped over — everything was destroyed.”

Paradise Ranch reported on Facebook that all its staff and guests were safe and accounted for, but Dillon said the damage extended beyond the ranch itself.

“Homes and everything were destroyed all around it,” she said. “Schools and buildings are just completely gone.”

Some of the imagery from the extreme weather has gone viral.

Tad Peters and his dad, Richard Peters, had pulled over to fuel up their pickup truck in Rolla, Missouri, Friday night when they heard tornado sirens and saw other motorists flee the interstate to park.

“Whoa, is this coming? Oh, it’s here. It’s here,” Tad Peters can be heard saying on a video. “Look at all that debris. Ohhh. My God, we are in a torn …”

His father then rolled up the truck window. The two were headed to Indiana for a weightlifting competition but decided to turn around and head back home to Norman, Oklahoma, about six hours away, where they encountered wildfires.

Wildfires elsewhere in the Southern Plains threatened to spread rapidly amid warm, dry weather and strong winds in Texas, Kansas, Missouri and New Mexico.

A blaze in Roberts County, Texas, northeast of Amarillo, quickly blew up from less than a square mile (about 2 square kilometers) to an estimated 32.8 square miles (85 square kilometers), the Texas A&M University Forest Service said on X. Crews stopped its advance by Friday evening.

About 60 miles (90 kilometers) to the south, another fire grew to about 3.9 square miles (10 square kilometers) before its advance was halted in the afternoon.

High winds also knocked out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, according the website poweroutage.us.

Extreme weather encompasses a zone of 100 million people

The deaths came as a massive storm system moving across the country unleashed winds that triggered deadly dust storms and fanned more than 100 wildfires.

Extreme weather conditions were forecast to affect an area home to more than 100 million people. Winds gusting up to 80 mph (130 kph) were predicted from the Canadian border to Texas, threatening blizzard conditions in colder northern areas and wildfire risk in warmer, drier places to the south.

The National Weather Service issued blizzard warnings for parts of far western Minnesota and far eastern South Dakota starting early Saturday. Snow accumulations of 3 to 6 inches (7.6 to 15.2 centimeters) were expected, with up to a foot (30 centimeters) possible.

Winds gusting to 60 mph (97 kph) were expected to cause whiteout conditions.

Evacuations were ordered in some Oklahoma communities as more than 130 fires were reported across the state. Nearly 300 homes were damaged or destroyed. Gov. Kevin Stitt said at a Saturday news conference that some 266 square miles (689 square kilometers) had burned in his state.

The State Patrol said winds were so strong that they toppled several tractor-trailers.

Experts said it’s not unusual to see such weather extremes in March.

Mississippi Today editors contributed to this Associated Press report. Bruce Shipkowski reported from Toms River, New Jersey. Julie Walker reported from New York. Rebecca Reynolds contributed from Louisville, Kentucky. Jeff Roberson in Wayne County, Missouri, Eugene Johnson in Seattle and Janie Har in San Francisco contributed.

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

House and Senate negotiations over proposals to drastically overhaul Mississippi’s tax code appear to be at a standstill as lawmakers weigh the impact federal spending cuts could have on one of the nation’s poorest and most federally-dependent states. 

With only weeks left in the 2025 session, lawmakers are pushing different proposals behind the scenes to see if Mississippi can pull off an experiment that no other state has accomplished: Eliminating an income tax after having it on the books for more than a century.

The negotiations, which House Speaker Jason White said “appeared to have stalled” last week, are unfolding as the Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress are floating massive spending cuts. Mississippi relies on the federal government for revenue more than almost any other state, with more than 40% of its annual budget coming from federal dollars. Deep federal spending cuts alongside the elimination or drastic reduction of the state income tax could reduce Mississippi’s ability to fund services, experts told Mississippi Today.  

The House leadership, early in the session, advanced a proposal that would eliminate the income tax over the next decade, trim the state’s grocery tax, raise sales taxes and add a new sales tax on gasoline. 

Weeks later, the Senate passed a less ambitious tax plan that cuts the income tax, raises the gasoline tax over several years and trims the grocery tax. The plan does not fully eliminate the income tax, which the House leadership and Republican Gov. Tate Reeves say is their main focus. 

Proponents of eliminating the income tax say doing so would unleash economic growth by attracting corporate investment and new residents fleeing higher-tax states. Such growth would offset potential revenue losses in a state that has enjoyed a budget surplus in recent years, they argue.

Economists, however, are divided on whether such growth would blunt the impact of potential budget shortfalls in a poverty-stricken state.

Neva Butkus, a senior analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, published an analysis late last month on the tax proposals moving through each chamber. The organization’s modeling estimates the Senate plan would result in $876 million in lost revenue. The House plan would reduce state revenues by $2.1 billion compared to taxes today – a 30 percent reduction of the state’s current general fund, the organization projected. These numbers are for the state general fund and do not deduct the tax increases in the respective plans that would generate revenue for roads and local governments.

“At a time when states across the country are forecasting deficits or anticipating slowing revenue growth, Mississippi lawmakers are debating deeply regressive and expensive tax cuts that would overwhelmingly benefit their state’s richest residents,” Butkus wrote. “Cutting revenues while shifting taxes away from the state’s richest residents to low- and moderate-income families who already struggle to make ends meet is shortsighted.”

Republican House Speaker Jason White, one of the loudest voices calling for income tax elimination, said the federal cuts floated by national Republicans thus far haven’t convinced him legislators should hold off on approving new tax cuts. 

He told reporters this week that House leaders have continued to meet with Senate officials to work out a deal. He remains flexible on what a final proposal could include, but remains committed to finding a path to complete elimination of the income tax, instead of just a cut. 

“The Senate has kicked around this idea that they might entertain total elimination, but over a very long period of time,” White said. “We’re trying to see exactly what that looks like, should it involve (revenue growth) triggers. We would be open to triggers … For us, if we’re going to go that far on some of these issues, we would want to include total elimination.”

White and other proponents of income tax elimination view the income tax as an unfair burden on working people. Nine other states — including nearby Florida, Texas and Tennessee — don’t have a state income tax. Proponents of elimination argue that Mississippi is at a competitive disadvantage.

Leaders of the 52-member Senate have been tighter-lipped, but they’ll likely meet before a key Tuesday deadline to either offer their original tax cut plan again or advance a new proposal for the House to consider. 

Senate Finance Chairman Josh Harkins, the chamber’s lead negotiator, told Mississippi Today that the Senate wants to cut taxes but would only agree to a plan that won’t drain state coffers.

And the Flowood Republican says his Senate colleagues are deeply concerned that the tens of billions the state receives from the federal government every year could be frozen or reduced by the spending cuts congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump are considering.

“Any cuts that the federal government is contemplating are going to trickle down at some level, and it’s going to impact us,” Harkins said. 

House and Senate leaders both want tax cut legislation to be paired with a plan to ensure the state’s employee retirement system, which has debt of roughly $25 billion, remains solvent for the long term. But they haven’t reached consensus on how to do that.  

An unknown variable in the legislative equation is what Republican Gov. Tate Reeves is willing to do to achieve his stated goal of eliminating the income tax. 

In social media posts, Reeves has repeated his support for total elimination of the income tax, and dared the Senate, which is led by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, to oppose the policy. But the second-term governor has offered no plan of his own this year and has largely been absent from the Capitol during the debate. If the two chambers cannot agree on a final plan, he could call them into a special session and use his bully pulpit to try to force a compromise. 

READ MORE: ‘Not COVID. It’s Trump’: Lawmakers prepare for tumultuous Trumpenomics by … upending state tax structure

While the state’s top politicians debate whether Mississippi, a state that has failed to fix its high poverty rate and whose agencies continue to deal with costly lawsuits and federal investigations, national experts have cautioned that drastic tax cuts alongside a reduction in federal funding could cripple the state economy if lawmakers aren’t prudent. 

Justin Theal, senior officer at The Pew Charitable Trusts, said across the country state budget stresses are more widespread than they have been at any time since at least the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, before any federal cuts were on the table.

This trajectory means legislators will need to consider how changes at both the state and federal levels could put state revenues at risk of chronically falling short of ongoing spending, Theal added.

“Federal spending cuts could ripple through Mississippi’s broader economy, particularly in sectors that depend on federal funding, contracts, or employees,” Theal said. “This could, in turn, increase demand for public services at a time when budget flexibility is already tightening.”

States that have a smaller tax bases stand to bear the brunt of slashed revenues and cuts to federal programs, said Lucy Dadayan, principal research associate with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

“The uncertainty is even bigger for states like Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and other states that have high reliance on federal funding and low fiscal capacity.” 

In late February, the Republican-controlled U.S. House passed a GOP budget blueprint with $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and $2 trillion in spending cuts despite fierce opposition from Democrats and discomfort among some Republicans.

A significant chunk of the federal budget is spent on health care, food stamps, student loans and other social service programs, which Democrats and even some Republicans worry could be on the chopping block. The implications could be dire for a poor state like Mississippi, some fear.  

“While other states are preserving revenues in anticipation of reductions to federal dollars that help deliver programs like SNAP, Medicaid, and education resources, Mississippi lawmakers are instead considering costly and regressive tax cuts,”  Butkus wrote.

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

A bill that would make it easier for K-12 students to transfer to other public schools outside their home districts, one of the last “school choice” measures to remain alive this session, died in the House this week.

That came after Senate leaders said House legislation easing public-to-public transfers, or “portability,” did not have the votes to pass that chamber.

The House initially responded to the Senate with a list ditch attempt to keep the measure alive by inserting language from the legislation into an unrelated bill. But Rep. Jansen Owen, the bill’s sponsor, said he knew the move would be challenged with a parliamentary point of order. Owen said opposition to portability, which he called the most basic of school choice measures, was rooted in outdated arguments.

“The opposition, they were citing things like the change in school culture and property values, which sounds a lot like the 1960s segregationist movement,” Owen said. “The only thing we were doing here was telling the school district they can’t tell me ‘no’ when I want to send my kid to another public school district. But that’s too much for Nancy Loome.”

Nancy Loome, director of the public education advocacy group, The Parents Campaign, said the measure would have harmed public school students because transportation was not provided. Few children would have real “choice,” and many would be left in schools with further reduced resources, Loome argued.

Republican House Speaker Jason White has been angered by the Senate killing most of the House’s education agenda this session, and has criticized fellow Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who oversees the Senate.

“No need to send a milquetoast, very lame Senate Education agenda back to the House, it’s not even worthy of discussion,” White said in a social media post responding to a Magnolia Tribune report. “… We showed the Senate what Mississippi’s education future looks like with the House bills, and they wholeheartedly rejected them without so much as a whisper. Mississippians are beginning to take notice of the Lt. Governor and his Senate leaders doing the bidding of the status quo.”

Bills remain alive this session that would increase tax credits available to private schools through the Children’s Promise Act.

White vowed to try other measures again next year.

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