The State That Says Yes

Not long ago, Mississippi was a byword for failure. It ranked at the bottom of national rankings for income, education, and health outcomes, a state that American elites reached for when they needed a cautionary tale.

That image, Governor Tate Reeves would like you to know, is out of date. Since taking office in 2020, Mississippi’s governor has announced more than $70 billion in new private-sector capital investment—nearly two-thirds of the state’s GDP at the time of his inauguration and nearly ten times as much as his predecessor attracted during the latter’s eight years in office. In the first week of 2026, Reeves announced another $20 billion from Elon Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence company. Reeves and others attribute this investment to the state’s “insane execution speed” and a governing philosophy built around saying yes.

At the same time, the state’s public schools have produced what education reformers call the “Mississippi Miracle”—some of the most dramatic early literacy gains in the country. The state’s overall educational ranking has climbed from 48th to 16th. A black fourth-grader in Mississippi is now two and a half times more likely to read proficiently than a black fourth-grader in California. (Reeves has not been shy about pointing this fact out to California Governor Gavin Newsom.)

None of this happened by accident. Reeves has a clear governing philosophy: cut red tape, train the workforce for the jobs of the future, say “yes” to investment faster than anyone else, and trust that prosperity will follow. While others merely talk about it, he is delivering a genuine abundance agenda.

I spoke with Governor Reeves about what Mississippi’s transformation reveals about American competitiveness, the politics of artificial intelligence, the fight over data centers and energy, and why he thinks opposition to technological progress amounts to “civilizational suicide.” This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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Shawn Regan: America is in a period of intense competition with China and other adversaries—involving critical minerals, artificial intelligence, energy production, and advanced manufacturing. You’ve described those who want to prevent America from advancing technologically as engaged in “civilizational suicide.” What are the major trends you’re watching, and what worries you about America’s ability to rise to this moment?

Tate Reeves: What will America look like five years from now, 15 years from now? A lot is going to depend on the decisions we make today. I’d go even further and say that, while this may not be traditional warfare, America is at war with China and our other adversaries across a number of areas. America will either outbuild and out-train China in AI, energy, semiconductors, or critical minerals, or we will lose. In Mississippi, the policies we are implementing are proving we can still win.

The trends I’m looking at: we’re seeing AI compute demand explode; data centers are doubling every 18 to 24 months. I’m seeing the urgent need for always-on baseload power, for onshoring chips, and for securing critical minerals. We’re working with the administration on a number of these areas. Talent pipelines are going to be our decisive edge. The places that train their own people will own the jobs of the future, and that will provide a national security advantage.

The things that worry me are regulatory paralysis, lawsuits, endless delays, hesitation—the things that will hand China the lead while America debates. Mississippi didn’t wait for Washington. We chose to lead, and that’s the model America needs to adopt right now.

SR: You may be presiding over the most dramatic state economic transformation happening anywhere in the country. Most people don’t grasp that yet. What explains it? What does Mississippi know that other states don’t?

TR: I have a fundamental belief that all societies and all jurisdictions have challenges. But we don’t have very many challenges that couldn’t be addressed if every person in our state had access to two things: the skillsets they need, and the opportunity to get a job that pays $70,000 to $90,000 a year. If everybody has those two things, most of the other challenges would take care of themselves. So that’s our fundamental, core belief, and we’ve focused our efforts on what we can do to train our workforce not for the jobs of the last 50 years, but for the jobs of the next 50 years.

Because of that, our per-capita and family incomes are rising faster than virtually anywhere else in America. Here’s how we got from where we were to where we are now—and where we’re shooting for in the future.

Number one, we get deals done. We have modernized our laws, streamlined our regulations; put in tax incentives, site-readiness grants, and regulatory efficiency to make investment predictable and efficient. We focus on results. We try to help companies grow, innovate, and scale as quickly as possible. In Mississippi, state and local economic developers work as one team.

Number two, we have a speed-to-market strategy. Our competitive advantage is that we can help companies go from spending money to making money faster than in any other place. When Elon Musk announced his $20 billion project in Mississippi, he congratulated his team and Mississippi’s team on “insane execution speed.” We pride ourselves on that.

The third thing: we have strategic incentives and tools. Our MFLEX program, our signature universal tax incentive, gives companies access to resources and support through their growth phase. We guide companies through the process, and we connect them to our workforce development team at what we call Accelerate Mississippi.

The fourth thing we do well is infrastructure and workforce. We completely restructured our state workforce investment board to ensure we are training people in fields where there are actually jobs available—and not only jobs available, but higher-paying jobs. We’ve also taken advantage of the fact that we are well-located in the United States. We have a strong logistics network.

The results speak for themselves. We’ve announced over $70 billion in new private-sector investments in our state. When I became governor, our total GDP was about $110 billion. My predecessor announced $7.2 billion in total capital investment in eight years. We’ve announced over $70 billion in the last six years. Our speed, our incentives, our infrastructure, and our workforce make Mississippi a place where companies want to be.

SR: People talk about states as laboratories of democracy. But ultimately, America’s competitiveness depends on whether states collectively create conditions for growth. What have you learned governing Mississippi that you think more states, both red and blue, should be doing?

TR: I believe in federalism. But it worries me greatly that the divide in business-friendly policies between states like Mississippi and states like California keeps growing. We’re seeing individuals and companies vote with their feet and moving to the Southeast and away from places with tremendous assets like California and New York.

That worries me, because while I’m excited Mississippi is performing well on a relative basis, I want America to succeed. The easy thing for me to do would be to take the formula we’re using now and stay very quiet about it. But I want others to take advantage of it.

Some of the things we’ve done to be successful: we cut red tape and aligned our incentives with business needs to attract corporate investment. We believe that speed, clarity, and predictability matter almost as much as anything—even tax rates. We can get deals done quickly, and we’ve proven that. What can other states learn? Shovel-ready sites and workforce readiness are tangible, replicable advantages that make a state like Mississippi stand out.

The federal government needs to streamline federal permitting. I think the Trump administration understands that. But particularly federal permitting for environmental, infrastructure, energy, defense, and critical mineral projects. The federal government can also empower states to design workforce programs to train talent for high-demand industries of the future and allow states to act quickly. And it would be a far better use of federal resources to train individuals to work and get a job rather than the old model of transfer payments that incentivize people not to work.

Advanced manufacturing is an area I’ve spent a lot of time talking about. Mississippi never gave up on manufacturing. Because of that, we have an employee base with a long history of doing manufacturing. As manufacturing has become more advanced, we’re ready to take a little bit of training to be able to do those jobs.

SR: “Abundance” has become a buzzword among progressives who have noticed that blue states systematically undermine their own policy goals by restricting the supply of things they claim to want: housing, clean energy, affordability, upward mobility. Why do you think that is, and what does Mississippi’s experience tell us about what it actually takes?

TR: Many of these blue states are exactly wrong on so many policies because their fundamental view is in centralized decision-making. They think that the best decisions come from government—and that the larger the government, the better the decision-making. That’s just fundamentally wrong. I believe in the power of the individual and giving individuals the ability to make decisions for themselves.

In Mississippi, we aren’t heavy-handed. We try to unlock processes and resources, and then we support our local communities in addressing the opportunities they have and the threats they encounter. There is no “one size fits all.” We’ve got to build trust with our local communities and lean in together with them in solving their challenges.

Mississippi is truly the most affordable state in America to invest in, to live in, to work in, and to retire in. And that’s why we’re finally seeing significant population movement into our state. We really do believe we can compete with anyone, anywhere in the world, if given a fair opportunity.

In blue states, it’s a top-down strategy. In my state, it’s a grassroots strategy that respects the will of people and inspires them to be greater. I believe that success begets success, and the more wins we have in Mississippi, the more our communities want to win.

SR: Mississippi has become known as a state that says “yes” to big projects. How do you think about the trade-offs? What do you say to constituents who have genuine concerns about a specific project in their community? And where, if anywhere, is there a line?

TR: Being a “yes state” does not mean we say “yes” to everything. It means we give companies and potential investors clear answers quickly. I’ve been involved in the legislative process in my state now for 23 years, and the thing I’ve learned over that tenure is that, for many investors who are looking for predictability, oftentimes the second-best answer they can hear is “no”—because no means no. If we can get to “yes,” we want that, but if the answer is no, we tell them quickly so they can move on.

Our goal is speed, transparency, and predictability, so that both the potential corporate partner and our local communities are not left waiting in uncertainty. When legitimate concerns are raised, we sit down and hear them. If they are legitimate, either we find a way to address those concerns, or we move on. But sometimes the concerns expressed, in my view, are not valid.

A lot of it is protectionism. I used an analogy on social media the other day: there’s no doubt in my mind that the buggy-makers didn’t like the work of Karl Benz and Henry Ford, right? It’s not that their complaints weren’t legitimate—the car makers were threatening to put them out of business. But we can’t stifle innovation to protect one individual or one company or one interest.

We try to be completely honest and transparent, and that gets us a long way toward building community support on the larger projects.

SR: The politics of AI and data-center development are genuinely complicated right now. Bernie Sanders has called for a federal moratorium on data-center construction, framing it as a labor issue. But the opposition isn’t only from the Left—surveys suggest it’s surprisingly bipartisan at the local level. Where do you see the politics of AI heading, and how do you make the affirmative case to a skeptical constituent—even a Republican in a rural county—that data-center development is actually good?

TR: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with individuals expressing their concerns—and where those concerns are legitimate, I want to hear them. But when it comes to these large capital investments, I’ve yet to run into a scenario where a lot of the stated concerns are actually warranted.

People talk about how data centers are large consumers of energy. That’s a fact. The question then becomes: Who pays for that energy? In our state, we have a structure in place to ensure that the everyday consumers are not picking up the tab for the large data centers.

The second argument regards water. That subject is certainly worth a conversation, and there are some cases where it may be an issue. In our AWS transaction [a $3 billion Amazon data-center project in Vicksburg, announced in 2025], we’ve cut a deal where we are working through the county. The company is guaranteeing a fee-in-lieu payment to the county to build their water and wastewater facilities, and they’re using all gray water. So, there’s not going to be any negative effect from a water perspective.

My opinion is that much of the naysaying surrounding these large projects is driven not by people who are opposed to data centers but by people who are opposed to more energy in America. That’s just not a way for America to win in the long term.

SR: Every major technological transformation has produced both enormous wealth and genuine dislocation. What do you say to the people who want America to dominate these industries in the abstract but are genuinely uncertain—or even fearful—about what it means in their own daily lives?

TR: I appreciate those concerns, and I understand them. But I’ve asked a rhetorical question on social media: Who would you rather have in charge of our technology for the world, the United States of America, or the People’s Republic of China? We don’t need to make this overly complicated. I choose us.

Mississippi is choosing training and leadership over fear. That’s how America wins the future. My view is: AI is not going to take your job; someone using AI will. We’re making sure that in Mississippi, that someone is one of our neighbors. Change is hard, but quitting is harder. I believe that if we properly train, Americans will come out on top.

SR: A decade ago, Mississippi was a national symbol of educational failure. Today it has some of the most impressive gains in the country. Tell me about the “Mississippi Miracle,” what it’s produced, and what it demonstrates about the relationship between funding and educational outcomes?

TR: We use the term Mississippi Miracle all the time. The Mississippi Miracle is actually a phrase coined by the New York Times. I have joked that I choked on my catfish when the New York Times wrote something positive about Mississippi.

But the Mississippi Miracle really wasn’t a miracle at all. It was the result of bold, conservative policy reforms. And what we’ve proven is that, even in public education, bold, conservative policy reforms can lead to incredible results.

We fully reformed our educational system. Everybody wants to point to one item, but there were eight or ten different policy changes that made a difference. We instituted school choice for students with special needs, through ESAs [Education Savings Accounts]. We allowed students in failing districts to go to public charter schools. We changed the way we rated school districts. We consolidated school districts to get more money into classrooms. We passed the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, which says that if you’re not reading at a certain level at the end of third grade, you don’t go to fourth grade. We invested in reading coaches and math coaches.

These conservative reforms have been incredible. In fourth-grade reading and fourth-grade math, Mississippi is number one in the nation in gains over a ten-year period. Overall, our fourth-graders now rank ninth in America in reading scores and 16th in math. Our overall educational system that was once ranked 50th is now ranked 16th.

And I want to point out: these conservative reforms are not just helping some of our kids in some of our districts. In Mississippi in 2013, African-American fourth-graders, when compared with their peers around the country, scored 45th. Last year, black Mississippi fourth-graders scored number three in America. Hispanic children in Mississippi: number one in America when compared with their peers in reading, and number two in math. A black child in Mississippi is two and a half times as likely to be reading proficiently in fourth grade as a black child in California.

The conservative reforms work for children of all backgrounds. That is the Mississippi Miracle. If more states would implement what Mississippi did, America would be in far better shape—because right now, Mississippi is shining among the 50 states, but America is still in the lower quartile of the 40 industrialized nations in a lot of these statistics. We’ve got to fix that.

Photo by: Ron Buskirk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images