TAPPED OUT

BOUT A WEEK AFTER THE CATASTROPHIC collapse of his city’s water system, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba gathers his advisers in a second-floor conference room at city hall. Mississippi’s Republican governor, Tate Reeves, had given a press conference the day before to announce that running water had been restored, though the city still remained under a boil-water order for the foreseeable future. Reeves also used the opportunity to offer pointed words about the city’s Democratic administration. Lumumba—who once pledged to make Jackson “the most radical city on the planet”—had allowed the water system to fall apart out of sheer incompetence, Reeves seemed to claim on Sept. 5. “The solutions to this problem are not radical,” Reeves said. “Prioritize basic services—water, sewer, trash.