- Important state and national stories, market and business news, sports and entertainment, delivered in quick-hit fashion to start your day informed.
In Mississippi
1. Sports agent invests $2 million in Miss. State athletics
Mississippi State Athletics announced Friday that Bo and Nikki McKinnis, longtime supporters of Mississippi State from Nashville, Tennessee, have invested $2 million to help strengthen the athletic department’s competitive resources.
The university said this gift to the State Excellence Fund will further drive the momentum of Mississippi State Athletics and support the dedicated efforts to elevate the department and its athletic programs to new heights.
McKinnis owns McKinnis Sports Management in Nashville, serving as the agent for professional baseball players.
2. Farmers tell MS lawmakers of their struggles
WLBT reports that farmers are raising a red flag to say they’re struggling to make a profit.
“The forecast for 2025 continues to be as bleak as 2024,” Tripp Hayes told the Senate Agriculture Committee, as reported by WLBT.
“As the state looks to change its tax policies, we ask that the legislature ensure that agriculture is not the victim of unintended consequences, or that the tax burden gets shifted to the goods and services that power our industry,” added Hayes.
National News & Foreign Policy
1. President Trump wins dust up over return of illegal immigrants to Colombia
As The Hill reported, the White House said Sunday night “that a U.S.-Colombia agreement had come together in the wake of a back-and-forth between the two countries over topics including immigration and tariffs.”
“The Government of Colombia has agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement emailed to The Hill late Sunday.
“Based on this agreement, the fully drafted IEEPA tariffs and sanctions will be held in reserve, and not signed, unless Colombia fails to honor this agreement,” she added. “The visa sanctions issued by the State Department, and enhanced inspections from Customs and Border Protection, will remain in effect until the first planeload of Colombian deportees is successfully returned.”
The Hill noted that earlier in the day, Trump had threatened Colombia with tariffs and travel prohibitions for refusing to allow planes with illegal immigrants land and return the persons onboard.
2. DOJ making “a conservative U-turn”
The Wall Street Journal reports that interim officials at the U.S. Department of Justice – even before Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi is confirmed – has begun driving a conservative U-turn at the agency.
“They replaced a Biden-era memo telling prosecutors to show leniency to some drug offenders with a new policy calling for the pursuit of the most serious charges and the stiffest penalties for all crimes,” WSJ reported. “They halted much of the department’s civil-rights and environmental work. And they transferred more than 15 career employees to relatively marginal positions, part of a broader effort to ultimately thin the workforce. That was just the first week.”
Sports & Entertainment
1. Chiefs-Eagles to play in Super Bowl LIX
In a rematch from three years ago, the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles will meet in New Orleans on Sunday, February 9, for Super Bowl LIX.
The Chiefs held on for a 32-29 win over the Buffalo Bills on Sunday while the Eagles ran the Washington Commanders off the field in a blowout 55-23 win.
When the Chiefs and Eagles met in the 2022 Super Bowl, Kansas City won 38-35. If the Chiefs can win in two weeks, they would be the only team in NFL history to win three consecutive Super Bowls.
2. Southern Miss men’s basketball coach earns 150th win
Head men’s basketball coach Jay Ladner picked up career win 150 on Saturday night as Southern Miss (9-11, 4-4 Sun Belt) won 67-59 over Louisiana (6-15, 4-5 Sun Belt). The win was Ladner’s 73rd at USM.
The conference win was the Golden Eagles’ first road win of the season.
The Golden Eagles are back in action at Troy on Monday night.
Markets & Business
1. Chinese AI startup sends stock futures downward
CNBC reports that stock futures were down sharply on Monday “on concern about an artificial intelligence stock bubble popping because of the emergence of Chinese startup DeepSeek that possibly made a competitive AI model for a fraction of the cost.”
“Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 387 points, or 0.9%, while S&P futures shed 2.3%. Nasdaq 100 futures slid 3.9% amid a big decline in technology shares,” CNBC reported. “Last week, DeepSeek released an open source AI model that reportedly outperformed OpenAI’s in several tests. The company had launched an open source large-language model in December for what it says was less than $6 million.”
CNBC added, “While Wall Street questions that figure, the foreign startup is still raising concern that the billions being spent to build out big AI models could be done for much more cheaply.”
2. Costco holding on to DEI policies for now
FoxBusiness reports on the push and pull among Costco investors.
“Costco shareholders may have overwhelmingly rejected a challenge to the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies on Friday, but the activist investors leading the charge against the wholesaler club’s ‘woke’ business practices say the fight is far from over,” FoxBusiness reported.
As FoxBusiness noted, the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (NCPR) was pushing for “Costco executives to investigate the risks the company’s business posed to the company’s bottom line, but the grocery club chain’s board of directors unanimously came out against their effort.”
Costco is a high-profile holdout from the rising tide of companies rolling back or abandoning their DEI policies, added FoxBusiness.
