Louisiana Considered

In St. Bernard Parish, after years of decline, volunteers have started to restore part of Bayou Bienvenue’s marsh. And the project relies on an unlikely hero: glass bottles. Halle Parker, WWNO/WRKF Coastal Desk reporter, has the story.  The International Downtown Association released a report comparing Baton Rouge with similar small-to-mid-sized cities. It found Baton Rouge’s downtown saw 7% job g...

College basketball is back at the top of sports’ fans’ minds. The annual March Madness tournament kicked off this week. Two Louisiana men's teams — McNeese State and Grambling State — will compete. LSU will participate in the women’s tournament. Beyond what happens on the court, another question has dominated as of late: How much should college athletes be paid?  Jamira Mitchell is a Baton Rouge-b...

A group of self-described “non-Black voters” is suing Louisiana over the state’s new congressional maps. The suit alleges a new second majority-Black district violates racial gerrymandering laws.  The lawsuit is expected to go to court in early April, and could result in another shakeup in the state’s long running legal battle. Jared Evans, senior policy counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund,...

Louisiana is one of just nine states that still require students to pass exit exams in order to graduate. Briefly last year, there was an appeals process for students.  And while the change was widely supported by educators, it quickly became a political issue. Gov. Jeff Landry killed the policy as soon as he took office. So now, Louisiana is once again the only state where students can’t appeal....

It’s Thursday, and that means it’s time to catch up on politics with Stephanie Grace, The Times-Picayune/The Advocate’s editorial director and columnist. This week, she shares the latest on the start of the regular legislative session in Baton Rouge.  Under a law passed during the recent special session on crime, 17-year-olds can now be tried as adults in many criminal cases. Gov. Jeff Landry says...

Louisiana gives massive tax breaks to chemical manufacturers and the contentious program is facing renewed scrutiny.  Gov. Jeff Landry recently signed an executive order removing some job retention requirements from Louisiana’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program, known as ITEP.  Proponents of the change say it will stabilize the incentive program. While critics argue it removes a level of accountabi...

Faubourg Brewing, formerly Dixie Beer, has deep roots in New Orleans. Its new owner, a private equity firm, announced last fall that they would scale back operations locally due to crime and utility costs.  The decision left a lot of employees and beer fans scratching their heads, including Drew Hawkins, reporter at the Gulf States Newsroom. He recently published an investigation into the decision...

Beginning next year, Louisiana’s high school seniors will no longer have to complete the federal student aid form to graduate. The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted last week to scrap that requirement . Supporters of the move argued it put an undue burden on students and their families.  Aubri Juhasz , WWNO/WRKF education reporter, has been following this story from New Orlea...

It’s Thursday, and that means it’s time to catch up on politics with Stephanie Grace, the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate’s editorial director and columnist. We discuss how the state’s new Republican supermajority functioned during the legislature’s recent special session on crime/ And we look ahead to the regular session which starts on March 11.  The loss of protective marsh along Louisiana’...

You can go to some of the most remote corners of Louisiana and you still won’t have to look far to find a dollar store. In fact, the state has more than 650 Dollar Generals alone. A new report says the chains threaten small businesses and local economies. The Louisiana Workforce Commission shared a report last week with state legislators about the issue. Stephan Bisaha, reporter with the Gulf Stat...

On today’s Louisiana Considered , we hear how Baton Rouge Community College’s Port Allen branch is helping train truck drivers.  The school recently relaunched a course for students looking to get a commercial driver’s license, which is required to drive 18-wheelers and other large ground transport vehicles. The school hopes it can help address the state’s driver shortage.  Heather Guidry, BRCC’s...

Louisiana’s new insurance commissioner has laid out his plans to address the state’s insurance crisis. Tim Temple, a former insurance industry executive, says his approach takes aim at what he calls the state’s “heavy-handed” regulations.   Sam Karlin , an investigative reporter at The Advocate/Times Picayune, explains Temple’s philosophy and the ongoing debate over how to bring rates down.  Later...

Louisiana’s historic special session on crime has concluded after a brisk two weeks. Many of Gov. Jeff Landry’s high-priority bills passed, including a proposal to expand death penalty execution methods.  Molly Ryan , WWNO and WRKF’s state politics reporter joins us to talk more about the session’s conclusion. And we have a major education story out of New Orleans. The Orleans Parish School Board...

It’s Thursday and that means it’s time to catch up on politics. Lawmakers in the Louisiana House gave final approval to multiple controversial proposals Wednesday, including a measure that would treat 17-year-olds as adults in the state’s criminal justice system. We get the latest from Stephanie Grace , editorial director and columnist with The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate.   Later, we disc...

Louisiana lawmakers passed sweeping criminal justice reforms in 2017 aimed at reducing the state’s prison population. Now, lawmakers in Baton Rouge are considering bills that would undo those reforms. Proponents of the so-called tough-on-crime policies point to spikes in Louisiana’s crime rates since those reform laws went into effect.    But critics say the COVID-19 pandemic is to blame instead....

On today’s Louisiana Considered, we take a deep look at the state’s community college transfer rates to 4-year institutions.  Louisiana lags behind the U.S. as a whole, according to new research from the Aspen Institute and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. We dig into the data and discuss what’s so challenging about making the jump with Tania LaViolet , one of the report authors...

A bill that would expand execution methods in Louisiana is making its way through the legislature this week, as part of Governor Jeff Landry's special session on crime. One of the key groups fighting the bill is the Capital Appeals Project . Politics reporter Molly Ryan spoke to executive director, Cecelia Kappel, for more.   Plus, Charlotte Claiborne, executive director of the Bridge Center in Ba...

Newspapers have shaped the rich history of Louisiana for hundreds of years. On today’s Louisiana Considered, we’re joined by two experts at The Historic New Orleans Collection to discuss their upcoming event “Above the Fold: The History of Newspapers in Louisiana.” Plus, we’ll hear the story of a female newspaper publishing pioneer. Eliza Jane Nicholson was a small-town poet born in the 1840s in M...

It’s Thursday, and that means it’s time to catch up on politics. State lawmakers kicked off a special session on crime this week. We get the latest from Stephanie Grace , editorial director and columnist with The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate.  Later, we talk to Vincenzo Caronna , founder and CEO of Thrivvy. Caronna recently launched a new app that compares products from 30 local grocery sto...

Louisiana is infamous for its high incarceration rates. But that reputation didn’t happen overnight. A new book, "Prison Capital," explores the history of the issue, and efforts to push back on it over the past fifty years. Author Lydia Pelot-Hobbs joins the Gulf States Newsroom’s Kat Stromquist for more. Founded in 1784, the Prince Hall Masons is the oldest African American Masonic order. The org...

Some farmers along the Gulf Coast are responding to the problems of climate change by implementing production methods that replenish soil nutrients instead of depleting them. The Gulf States Newsroom’s Danny McArthur spoke with one farmer about her efforts to turn an old peanut farm into an Indigenous food forest in Alabama.   According to the Louisiana Department of Health, a person found incompe...

The small town of Lexington, Miss. has fewer than 10 police officers. That makes it one of the smallest to ever be investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice. The investigation began after residents said police harassed them and violated their civil rights.   Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s Michael McEwen and the Gulf States Newsroom’s Kat Stromquist join us to share what they have learned w...

University of Iowa basketball phenom Caitlin Clark is nearing the end of her collegiate career, and closing in on the all-time NCAA scoring record. That record currently belongs to LSU’s “Pistol Pete” Maravich, who scored 3,667 points in just 3 years before leaving for the NBA in 1970.  New York Times sports reporter and Louisiana native Jere Longman tells us more about Clark’s journey to take Mar...

About an hour north of Jackson, Miss. the Justice Department is investigating a small town’s police force. The allegations? Unlawful stops, retaliation, racist roadblocks and excessive force. As the Gulf States Newsroom’s Kat Stromquist reports, residents still worry they won’t see change. Property taxes are the basic means by which our government has money to operate, but many residents often don...

In 2022, the Library of Congress announced that the short film titled “Mardi Gras Carnival” has been added to the National Film Registry. The film, which captures about two minutes of the Krewe of Rex rolling through New Orleans in 1898, is this year’s oldest inductee. But this film was actually long thought to be lost. Until Mackenzie Roberts Beasley, an audiovisual researcher and archivist for t...