Wrongfully sentenced to death at 16, Shareef Cousin survived a decade behind bars before being exonerated and released. Three decades later, he is determined to find his own sense of freedom, through a cross-country journey with his son.
The writer doesn’t take issue with the science behind the new Tulane study, but rather some of the social-policy assumptions built into the recommendation.
Though Louisiana legislators again introduced the "Medical Freedom Act," which prohibits vaccine requirements, the version that made it through the Louisiana House was amended so that it did not apply to schools or daycares. There is widespread bipartisan support for school vaccine protocols - and here's why, says the writer, the co-director of Louisiana Families for Vaccines.
My mother has been saying it my whole life. Fifty-one years of hearing it. And on May 16, 2026, the same day she passed away and left me with the torch to continue this work, 800,000 people proved she was not just warning us.
Louisiana needs a stable, science-based coastal strategy rather than a political one.
As a former teacher, it’s easy for me to connect those involved with last year’s jailbreak with their past, as students who went through the storm, were displaced, and returned to schools in tumult.
A Baton Rouge teenager once appeared on camera as proof that violence prevention could work. Two years later, he is charged in a shooting that killed 17-year-old Martha Odom. Their stories are not separate tragedies. They are connected by the same policy choices, budget cuts and abandoned promises that leave one child dead and another held by a system that failed to hold him sooner.
"Understand how the term relocation hits when you use it for those of us who have made lives here," writes 11th-generation New Orleanian Christopher Ard. "Maybe try 'abandon' or 'give up on.'"
The Supreme Court on Monday — just five days after the court’s Callais decision — issued an order putting the ruling into effect immediately, bypassing a 32-day period that the court would have ordinarily waited before sending the judgment back to the lower courts.
In New Orleans, the lack of surgical techs is already compounding the existing problems hospitals face. But most training efforts across New Orleans and Louisiana remain largely rooted in traditional models, with newer approaches still in early stages of adoption.
