All three cited sources were fetched and verified; none are unreachable, no quote is fabricated, and the CHAMPIONED outcome does not overstate the evidence. SOURCE 1 (wicker.senate.gov, 2022, PRIMARY): the verbatim quote "This is the exact kind of hard infrastructure that our state needs." appears exactly on the page, and every fact in the bracketed summary is confirmed — Wicker personally hosted Michael Connor, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, to tour the flooding Pearl River basin in Hinds and Rankin counties; he secured $300,000 for the study; he announced $700,000 to finalize the federal validation study; and the $221 million Bipartisan Infrastructure Law commitment was pending a favorable record of decision. This documents active championing by Wicker (hosting officials, securing congressionally-directed funding), which is the core requirement for a CHAMPIONED rating and is more than a passive vote. SOURCE 2 (WLBT, 2026-02-26, SECONDARY): confirms the Jan 31, 2026 memorandum by Assistant Secretary Adam Telle directing the Corps to implement the Pearl River Basin Flood Control Plan and that construction is anticipated by end of 2026/early 2027; the headline "'Today is finally happening': Corps signs off on Pearl River flood control plan" appears verbatim. SOURCE 3 (SuperTalk, 2026, SECONDARY): confirms the Corps approved "Alternative D," a 1,200-acre lake along the Pearl River in Hinds and Rankin counties, that construction has not begun, and that officials expect to break ground in early 2027. The two 2026 sources documenting the decisive advancement do not name Wicker — the rating discloses this caveat honestly and calibrates confidence to 0.7 accordingly. Because the promise is directional ('advance toward breaking ground'), the project verifiably advanced from a validation-study stage to a fully approved, design-selected plan with construction imminent, and the primary source documents Wicker's active funding-and-advocacy role underpinning that trajectory, CHAMPIONED is defensible under the same bar applied to either party.