The doctor defending Louisiana’s controversial execution method
Dr. Joseph Antognini travels across the nation, being paid over $500 an hour by government officials who rely on him to vouch for their execution protocols.
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This category showcases the lead coverage readers need to know, offering context, clarity, and insight into issues shaping New Orleans and beyond.
Despite spotty track record, Venture Global to become picture of new federal “energy dominance”
During a visit to Venture Global’s liquified natural gas plant in Port Sulphur, Gov. Jeff Landry and two members of President Trump’s cabinet told workers that securing U.S. energy dominance would build prosperity and world peace. Critics say that LNG is heading toward a glut, which will prompt prices to drop, leaving communities with little but the pollution left behind.
All in a Carnival’s Pay
High winds on Mardi Gras Day truncated Rex’s route and kept Zulu from downtown New Orleans, taking a toll on business owners and on local school bands, which went unpaid for Zulu and other weather-affected parades. Then Rex announced that it would pay the bands booked for its parade, raising questions about the history of band payments from krewes – and why those payments matter.
The Lens Carnival Edition 2025
Our reporters stayed on their beats, covering how Carnival affects the way New Orleans works - and doesn't work.
Redemption and the Ultimate Punishment
"I remember feeling a flush of anger that the State of Louisiana was giving Bordelon what he wanted, relief from his guilt," writes the author, who visited Angola with a film crew in 2010 as Louisiana was preparing to execute Gerald Bordelon. "My husband had died a few years before that, leaving me a widow and mother to two small children. Death, for me, was not something a governor should casually enter into with a signature — or that Bordelon could chase, to relieve his personal agony."
Renewable energy could meet the intense appetites of AI data centers. But Entergy is looking to fossil fuels.
Entergy, the Louisiana utility, has dragged its feet on renewables. Now, it seems that a proposed Meta data center in northern Louisiana might instead create an “urgent” push for dirty, fossil-fuel power. To power the center, Entergy will rely mostly on new gas-fired generators - paid for by ratepayers.
Taking in parades together, but apart
New Orleanians maintain certain traditions at Carnival parades. We say hello to strangers, tote wagons and folding chairs and blankets. But along the St. Charles parade route, we most often settle in areas with our people.
Scattershot statutes
Two decades of crotches as canvas
Best known for their merkins – pubic wigs – the Bearded Oysters have now been a symbol of feminist liberation for 20 years, within a few local parades, including Muses
The price of Passionfruit: how band directors balance the books
New Orleans band directors must see band as a small business, if they want to provide students — especially students in this high-poverty city — with instruments, uniforms, daily bus rides, food after parades, and all the tools they need to boost musicianship.
