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Whites Only

The disaster the justices have unleashed has its roots in one of the darkest periods of our history.

Former EPA officials: Trump administration is allowing data centers to make people sick

Former EPA officials warn that rapid AI data center expansion, combined with weakened federal pollution safeguards, could increase health risks associated with air pollution and fossil-fuel-powered energy production. Their report identifies at least 30 federal actions they say could make a more polluting data center…

The unpopular vote: why the Clancy mistrial proves the system worked

The jury room can risk becoming a mere numbers game — a race to a unanimous verdict that targets dissenting voices rather than thoroughly analyzing the testimony. But when a single juror holds out, they force evidence-driven deliberations rather than verdict-driven ones.

Katrina 21: Care forgot. We didn’t.

Twenty-one years after Katrina, New Orleans is still here — not because we can take a beating, but because we keep choosing one another.

Behind The Lens Podcast: Contempt of court (audio)

This week on Behind The Lens, a federal judge takes an extraordinary step in response to the illegal detention of an Ethiopian man living in the United States, holding an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official in contempt of court after the official twice ignored the judge’s orders. Reporter Delaney Nolan and…

Loud enough for Washington to hear

Residents of the enclaves of District 6 carry a shared inheritance: cancer, pennies-an-hour wages, broken sewer lines, and highways aimed at their front doors. When divided into separate voting districts, those griefs were left unheard and isolated.

Behind The Lens Podcast: Clean slate and school bells (audio)

Criminal justice reporter Bernard Smith looks at a law passed by the Louisiana Legislature three years ago to automatically clear eligible criminal records. Despite its promise of a cleaner slate, the effort has yet to get past the starting gate because of technological hurdles. Smith explains what is preventing the…

Ribbon of Black enclaves reflects deep Louisiana history

The neighborhoods that the old 6th District gathered up—strung along rivers, railroads, and interstates from Shreveport to Baton Rouge—are the exact communities left scattered apart by two centuries of plantations, Jim Crow, and systemic disinvestment.

Court deems Black cultural connections as race, not culture

In every corner of the now-scuttled 6th District, Black residents tell of deep connections through Louisiana history, food, and today’s struggles. But this spring, the nation’s highest court concluded that those voters share only race, not a cohesive culture.

Meta hides data center info as it pushes more risks to Entergy’s customers

Despite last Wednesday's procedural setback, the PSC's final decision on all these new gas plants is not scheduled to take place until December 16th. "The fight isn’t over, writes Paul Arbaje, as he outlines the substance of Meta's proposal and why it’s a risky proposition for Louisiana ratepayers.

The Voices in Our World

A series by Louisiana for Children’s Rights, in partnership with The Lens, that elevates the voices and experiences of Black youth currently or formerly detained in the Orleans Parish juvenile jail

Trump approval of a gigantic offshore Louisiana LNG port ignores significant risks

Constructing the massive Delfin LNG deepwater export terminal 40 miles off the Louisiana coast could threaten protected marine life, exacerbate the state’s already poor air quality, and contribute to heating our planet, writes attorney Lauren Parker of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.

The future of farming cannot be built on forced labor

Louisiana deserves a correctional system that prepares people for successful re-entry, an agricultural system built on dignity rather than exploitation and a public conversation honest enough to recognize that slavery's legacy is not only in the past.

Black and white Louisiana churches split over $250B Meta data center

As Meta’s massive AI data center, the most expensive in the nation, transforms rural Richland Parish, Louisiana's Black and white churches are divided over whether technological progress represents a God-given opportunity or a powerful new force likely to deepen inequities.

The fields confessed

A federal judge agreed that Angola works men into the ground in unconstitutional heat. Then he said he could not make it stop. “The fields did not change,” writes Andrea Hagan. “The law that was supposed to govern them did.”

A New Orleans Katrina kid takes the head office at Warren Easton

Incoming principal Kendall McManus-Thomas returns to Easton as a pathbreaker who grew up in pre-Katrina schools, experienced the disaster and all of its chaos as a displaced high school student, and went on to become the first Black man to head up Franklin High School.

The fields have a stadium now

The NAACP should help top Black student athletes forgo SEC money and honor the NAACP voting-rights boycott — without having to take a back seat.

All cities are mortal

For those of us concerned with New Orleans’s survival and that of vulnerable communities like it, we must finally acknowledge a startling reality: New Orleans can only be saved if it first accepts that it might not be.