Several efforts to address some of Mississippi’s most urgent problems — its high risk of HIV transmission, the addiction and overdose crisis and the country’s leading rate of babies dying before their first birthdays — have suffered setbacks since the U.S. Health and Human Services agency rescinded over $230 million of public health dollars from the state this spring.

Unlike other attorneys general, Mississippi’s top lawyer, Lynn Fitch, has not joined a lawsuit that recouped billions of these dollars across the country.

In early April, a few days after the federal government withdrew $11.4 billion of promised public health funds, Democratic governors and attorneys general representing 23 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit alleging that the clawback was unlawful. In mid-M

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