Mississippi’s Welfare Mess—And America’s

Writing out what happened in Mississippi, I am not quite sure whether to laugh or cry. Just before the coronavirus pandemic hit, then-Governor Phil Bryant schemed to loot money from a government program for destitute children and redirect it to Brett Favre, the legendary Green Bay Packers quarterback, as part of a ploy to get a new volleyball facility built at the university attended by Favre’s daughter.

That is just one of any number of jaw-dropping stories emerging from a massive state-welfare-fraud scandal, bird-dogged by tenacious reporters, including and . Over the years, Mississippi officials took tens of millions of dollars from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families—the federal program frequently known simply as “welfare”—and wasted it on pointless run by their political cronies. Money meant to feed poor kids, sham leadership-training schemes, fatherhood-promotion projects, motivational speeches that never happened, and those volleyball courts.