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Federal prosecutors accused a man in Louisiana of participating in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, then traveling to the U.S. on a fraudulent visa, according to newly unsealed court documents. Kati Weis reports.
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Tag: Louisiana
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Project connects Americans to the Dutch people who honor their relatives at World War II cemetery
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DALLAS (AP) — In the decades since June West Brandt’s older brother was killed in World War II, her kind and artistic sibling who loved to play boogie-woogie on the piano has never been far from her mind. So she was delighted to discover he’s also being remembered by a Dutch couple who regularly visit a marker for him at a Netherlands cemetery.
“It’s wonderful for me to know that someone is there,” said Brandt, 93, who lives near Houston.
Her introduction over the summer to Lisa and Guido Meijers came by way of a new initiative aiming to increase the number of connections between the family members of those buried and remembered on the walls of the missing at the World War II cemetery and the Dutch people who have adopted each one.
The project was spurred on by “The Monuments Men” author Robert Edsel, whose newest book, “Remember Us,” tells the story of the adoption program at the Netherlands American Cemetery. His Dallas-based Monuments Men and Women Foundation teamed with the Dutch foundation responsible for the adoptions to create the Forever Promise Project, which has a searchable database of the names of U.S. service members buried and remembered at the cemetery.
“I’d like us to find and connect as many American families to their Dutch adopters as is possible,” Edsel said.
Ton Hermes, chairman of the Foundation for Adopting Graves American Cemetery Margraten, said that while each of the about 8,300 graves and 1,700 markers for the missing at the cemetery near the village of Margraten have adopters, only about 20% to 30% of them are in contact with the service member’s relatives.
When the Meijerses adopted the marker for Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. William Durham “W.D.” West Jr. several years ago, they knew only basic information about the 20-year-old whose body was never recovered after his B-24 bomber was shot down over the North Sea on a mission into Nazi Germany.
Through talking with Brandt, they’ve learned that West was “quite a creative soul,” Lisa Meijers said.
“That obviously makes a huge change in how to remember someone,” she said.
Brandt said her brother loved to paint and played the piano by ear, and even though she was six years younger, they were “big buddies” growing up in the small western Louisiana city of DeRidder.
“We loved being together, so it was very hard when he left,” Brandt said.
Brandt’s daughter, Allison Brandt Woods, said it’s heartwarming knowing Meijerses are watching over the marker. Woods met up with them on a recent trip and hopes the connection between their families will continue with future generations.
The cemetery, Lisa Meijers said, is among many reminders of World War II in the southern Netherlands, which was liberated by Allied forces in September 1944 after over four years of Nazi occupation.
“We just really feel how extremely important it is to remember these things and to honor the sacrifices these people made for us,” she said.
The Meijerses, who have a 1-year-old son, visit West’s marker about once a month, bringing flowers.
Hermes said the program is so popular that there’s a waiting list to adopt a grave or marker.
Names on the walls for the missing were opened up for adoption in 2008, said Frans Roebroeks, secretary for the Dutch adoption foundation. The formal adoption process for graves began to take shape during a 1945 meeting of the Margraten town council.
“They were meeting to figure out the answer to the question: How do you thank your liberators when they are no longer alive to thank?” Edsel said.
Many initial adopters took on the grave of someone they had gotten to know.
“Once they heard their soldier was killed in action, the Dutch people decided to adopt his grave, to bring flowers and to correspond with the wives or mothers in the United States,” Hermes said.
Roebroeks said many of the graves have been cared for by the same family since the end of the war, including one that’s been passed down through his family. He said Army Pfc. Henry Wolf had stayed at his grandfather’s farm and became “like a son” to him.
Wolf’s grave has passed from Roebroeks’ grandfather to his mother and now to his sister, who will pass it to her daughter, he said.
“That grave stays in the family,” he said.
Edsel said that so far, over 300 families have asked to be put in touch with their adopters.
“And we’re just starting,” he said.
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Louisiana Lawmakers to Consider Changing 2026 Election Schedule Ahead of Redistricting Court Ruling
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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A day after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a significant redistricting case centering on Louisiana‘s congressional map, which has two majority-Black districts, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry announced that he is calling state lawmakers back to the Capitol to consider changes to next year’s election schedule, plans and code.
If the court strikes down the current political boundaries, pushing back the election schedule and deadlines could allow the GOP-dominated Legislature more time to craft a new map.
Unlike past special sessions called by Landry, there is only one item listed in his proclamation: “To legislate relative to the election code, election dates, election deadlines, and election plans for the 2026 election cycle, and to provide for the funding thereof if necessary.”
The special session is scheduled to begin Oct. 23 and must conclude by the evening of Nov. 13.
The Republican-led challenge before the high court is a case that could result in the weakening of a key tool of the Voting Rights Act, which helped root out racial discrimination in voting for more than a half century.
The current map is the result of a hard-fought battle by civil rights groups, who say Black voter strength previously, when only one of the state’s six congressional districts was a majority-minority district. That was the case even though Black residents account for about one-third of Louisiana’s population.
But opponents argue that the state’s new second Black majority congressional district, which helped flipped a reliably red congressional seat to blue, was unconstitutionally gerrymandered based on race.
During Wednesday’s arguments the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices seemed inclined to effectively strike down a Black majority congressional district in Louisiana because it relied too heavily on race.
If the court overturns the map, the ruling could open the door for legislatures to redraw congressional districts in Southern states, helping Republicans by eliminating majority Black and Latino districts that tend to favor Democrats.
The court is expected to rule by early summer in 2026.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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What to Know About Deporting Family Members of US Troops
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Trump’s new immigration tactics follow years of the military recruiting from immigrant communities to fill out its ranks and touting the immigration benefits for enlistees’ families.
Along with possible protection from deportation, enlisting in the military meant often meant deference in your family’s immigration cases and a better shot at a green card.
Those benefits were used by the armed forces to recruit more people, and, as of last year, an estimated 40,000 people were serving in the military without citizenship.
Under President Joe Biden, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement considered your and your immediate family’s military service as a “significant mitigating factor” when making immigration decisions, such as removal from the country.
The idea was to boost recruitment and maintain morale, fearing that it could take a hit if a service member’s family was deported.
What did the Trump administration change?
The administration issued a memo in February doing away with the older approach.
It said that immigration authorities “will no longer exempt” categories of people that had been afforded more grace in the past.
That included families of service members or veterans, said Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert.
Do certain crimes void the protections?
They can, but Stock said there’s no explicit list of convictions that would make someone ineligible for protections and that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services can waive factoring in criminal convictions in making an immigration decision.
Have other military members’ families been detained?
Will this impact recruitment to the U.S. Armed Forces?
The military has struggled in the past to meet recruitment numbers.
That’s partly because there aren’t enough U.S. citizens without immigrant family members to meet the need, said Stock, a retired lieutenant colonel in the military police, U.S. Army Reserve, who taught law at West Point during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
The immigration benefits for a recruit and their family were key to expanding the military’s ranks, said Stock, and recruitment would suffer without them.
The Marine Corps told The Associated Press last month that recruiters have been told that they “are not the proper authority” to “imply that Marine Corps can secure immigration relief for applicants or their families.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Supreme Court might upend Voting Rights Act and help GOP keep control of the House
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court may help the GOP keep control of the House of Representatives next year by clearing the way for Republican-led states to redraw election districts now held by Black Democrats.
That prospect formed the backdrop on Wednesday as the justices debated the future of the Voting Rights Act in a case from Louisiana.
The Trump administration’s top courtroom attorney urged he justices to rule that partisan politics, not racial fairness, should guide the drawing election districts for Congress and state legislatures.
“This court held that race-based affirmative action in higher education must come to an end,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in his brief. The same is true, he said, for using the Voting Rights Act to draw legislative districts that are likely to elect a Black or Latino candidate.
Too often, he said, the civil rights law has been “deployed as a form of electoral race-based affirmative action to undo a state’s constitutional pursuit of political ends.”
The court’s conservatives lean in that direction and sought to limit the use of race for drawing district boundaries. But the five-member majority has not struck down the use of race for drawing district lines.
But the Trump administration and Louisiana’s Republican leaders argued that now was the time to do so.
If the court’s conservatives hand down such a ruling in the months ahead, it would permit Republican-led states across the South to redraw the congressional districts of a dozen or more Black Democrats.
“There’s reason for alarm,” said Harvard law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulous. “The consequences for minority representation would likely be devastating. In particular, states with unified Republican governments would have a green light to flip as many Democratic minority-opportunity districts as possible.”
Such a ruling would also upend the Voting Rights Act as it had been understood since the 1980s.
As originally enacted in 1965, the historic measure put the federal government on the side of Blacks in registering to vote and casting ballots.
But in 1982, Republicans and Democrats in Congress took note that these new Black voters were often shut out of electing anyone to office. White lawmakers could draw maps that put whites in the majority in all or nearly all the districts.
Seeking a change, Congress amended the law to allow legal challenges when discrimination results in minority voters having “less opportunity … to elect representatives of their choice.”
In decades after, the Supreme Court and the Justice Department pressed the states, and the South in particular, to draw at least some electoral districts that were likely to elect a Black candidate. These legal challenges turned on evidence that white voters in the state would not support a Black candidate.
But since he joined the court in 1991, Justice Clarence Thomas has argued that drawing districts based on race is unconstitutional and should be prohibited. Justices Samuel A. Alito, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissented with Thomas two years ago when the court by a 5-4 vote approved a second congressional district in Alabama that elected a Black Democrat.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts wrote the opinion. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh cast the deciding fifth vote but also said he was open to the argument that “race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”
That issue is now before the court in the Louisiana case.
It has six congressional districts, and about one-third of its population is Black.
Prior to this decade, the New Orleans area elected a Black representative, and in response to a voting right suit, it was ordered to draw a second district where a Black candidate had a good chance to win.
But to protect its leading House Republicans — Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise — the state drew a new elongated district that elected Rep. Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat.
Now the state and the Trump administration argue the court should strike down that district because it was drawn based on race and free the state to replace him with a white Republican.
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Listen Live: Supreme Court hears Louisiana congressional map case with Voting Rights Act implications
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Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday is set to consider for the second time a long-running legal fight over Louisiana’s congressional map, a case that could have significant ramifications not just for political representation in the state, but also for its potential to weaken Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
At issue in the case is whether state lawmakers’ intentional drawing of a second majority-minority district — undertaken to remedy a likely violation of Section 2 — runs afoul of the 14th and 15th Amendments of the Constitution.
The high court initially heard arguments in March over whether to leave in place the House district lines re-drawn in 2024 to include a second majority-Black district. But the justices did not issue a decision in the case and instead scheduled it for re-argument in its new term, which began last week.
The case originally focused on a more narrow set of issues about the map, but in August, the Supreme Court asked Louisiana officials and voters involved in the challenge to address whether race-based redistricting comports with the Constitution.
That new question upped the stakes of the case, as Republicans in Louisiana urge the Supreme Court to forbid the consideration of race in the drawing of voting lines. A decision in the state’s favor could upend Section 2 and deal another blow to the landmark voting rights law more than 10 years after the Supreme Court gutted one of its key provisions.
The legal fight over Louisiana’s congressional map dates back to 2022, when GOP lawmakers in the state drew new House district lines after the 2020 Census. That map consisted of five majority-White districts and one majority-Black district. Nearly one-third of Louisiana’s population is Black, according to Census data.
A group of African American voters challenged the map as a violation of Section 2 because it diluted Black voting strength, they argued. A judge in Baton Rouge agreed, finding the map deprived Black voters of the chance to elect their preferred candidate, and she ordered the state to put a remedial map in place with a second majority-minority congressional district.
The new plan adopted by the Louisiana legislature in 2024 reconfigured the state’s 6th Congressional District, which state lawmakers said was in an effort to bring it into compliance with the Voting Rights Act. The new District 6 has a Black voting-age population of roughly 51% and stretches across the state from Shreveport, in Louisiana’s northwest corner, to Baton Rouge, in the southeast. Congressman Cleo Fields, a Democrat who is Black, was elected to represent the district last November.
State lawmakers said they had a political goal in mind, too, when recrafting the voting boundaries: to protect key Republican incumbents in the House, namely House Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Rep. Julia Letlow, who sits on the powerful Appropriations panel.
But after the new map was adopted, a group of 12 self-described “non-African-American” voters challenged the boundaries, alleging the new District 6 was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. A divided panel of three judges in Shreveport sided with the voters and found that the state legislature relied too much on race when it crafted the new map.
The case landed before the Supreme Court in its last term, and Louisiana Republicans joined with Black voters and voting rights groups in urging the justices to leave the new congressional map in place. But with the case set to be reargued, and the focus now on the constitutionality of race-based redistricting, state GOP lawmakers are no longer defending their district lines.
Instead, state officials are arguing that the there should be “zero tolerance for any consideration of race.”
“[R]ace-based redistricting mandated by Section 2 is unconstitutional because it violates basic equal protection principles: It uses race as a stereotype, uses race as a negative, and has no logical end point,” Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill, a Republican, and Solicitor General Benjamin Aguinaga wrote in a filing. “Accordingly, Section 2 is unconstitutional insofar as it requires race-based redistricting. “
The Trump administration is backing Louisiana and the “non-African-American” voters in the case and has urged the Supreme Court to tighten the standards for proving unlawful vote dilution under Section 2. The framework in place since 1986 requires plaintiffs to show racial polarization in voting, in addition to other preconditions.
“Too often, Section 2 is deployed as a form of electoral race-based affirmative action to undo a State’s constitutional pursuit of political ends. That misuse of Section 2 is unconstitutional,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a filing.
But lawyers for the voters who challenged the initial district lines, which were then redrawn to include a second majority-Black district, argue the new map largely prioritized Republicans’ political goals of protecting key incumbents. Any consideration of race, they said, was limited and driven by a compelling interest in addressing a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
“[T]he notion that the sun has set on the need for race-conscious remedial redistricting for identified instances of racial vote dilution is contrary to both the fact of ongoing discrimination in Louisiana and the text and purpose of [Section 2] as it was amended in 1982 and has been consistently interpreted by this Court ever since,” lawyers for the Black Louisianans wrote in a filing.
They warned that removing Section 2’s protections for minority voters in Louisiana “will not end discrimination there or lead to a race-blind society, but it may well lead to a severe decrease in minority representation at all levels of government in many parts of the country.”
Without the provision, “jurisdictions could simply eliminate minority opportunity districts even where they remain necessary for voters of color to have any opportunity to elect candidates of choice, wiping out minority representation and re-segregating legislatures, city councils, and school boards — as some have recently attempted to do,” lawyers wrote.
The Supreme Court is re-hearing the case involving Louisiana’s map just over two years after it upheld Section 2 and reaffirmed the framework for proving vote dilution set out in the 1986 ruling. The high court split 5-4 in that 2023 case, which involved a challenge to Alabama’s congressional map, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joining the three liberal justices in the majority.
While the high court rejected the chance to weaken Section 2, Kavanaugh suggested that there must be an end point for the use of race-based remedies. He wrote in a concurring opinion that “the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”
Both Kavanaugh and Roberts will be key as the Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of race-based map-making. The two justices also voted to outlaw the use of race as a factor in college admissions, a decision that came down in the same term as the Alabama voting rights dispute.
Roberts, in particular, has long denounced racial classifications. In a 2006 concurring opinion, the chief justice wrote, “it is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” He also authored the 2013 majority opinion that dismantled Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, writing, “our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”
A decision from the Supreme Court is expected by the end of June or early July.
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Supreme Court debate Louisiana redistricting case centering on Voting Rights Act
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Supreme Court set to hear arguments on pivotal Louisiana redistricting case
The Supreme Court is reviewing a case involving Louisiana’s congressional map and its implications for racial gerrymandering.
Updated: 4:54 AM PDT Oct 15, 2025
The Supreme Court is deliberating a case today that could reshape congressional redistricting nationwide, focusing on racial gerrymandering in Louisiana.States are allowed to redistrict based on party lines, but this case in the Supreme Court deals with gerrymandering along racial lines and could change who you’re voting for. If the Supreme Court justices get rid of Section Two, the last remaining part of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in redistricting, it could upend electoral maps nationwide.At issue is Louisiana’s congressional map, which has two majority Black districts. The state drew a new map in 2022, but civil rights advocates argued in federal court that it violated part of the Voting Rights Act because it only included one majority Black district. They won, and the state redrew the map, but a group claimed it was racist against them. A court agreed, leading to the current Supreme Court case.A ruling in favor of Louisiana could open the door for states with large minority populations, mostly red states in the South, to redraw congressional districts, essentially eliminating majority Black and Latino seats that tend to favor Democrats.”If the court, as I think some people expect, says you can’t use race ever anymore, or if the Voting Rights Act allows you to use race, then that violates the Constitution under the 14th and 15th amendments, then we are basically done with the Voting Rights Act,” American University Washington College of Law Professor Stephen Wermiel said.Once the Supreme Court hears arguments today, a decision will most likely be released in the late spring or early summer.Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:
WASHINGTON —The Supreme Court is deliberating a case today that could reshape congressional redistricting nationwide, focusing on racial gerrymandering in Louisiana.
States are allowed to redistrict based on party lines, but this case in the Supreme Court deals with gerrymandering along racial lines and could change who you’re voting for.
If the Supreme Court justices get rid of Section Two, the last remaining part of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in redistricting, it could upend electoral maps nationwide.
At issue is Louisiana’s congressional map, which has two majority Black districts. The state drew a new map in 2022, but civil rights advocates argued in federal court that it violated part of the Voting Rights Act because it only included one majority Black district. They won, and the state redrew the map, but a group claimed it was racist against them. A court agreed, leading to the current Supreme Court case.
A ruling in favor of Louisiana could open the door for states with large minority populations, mostly red states in the South, to redraw congressional districts, essentially eliminating majority Black and Latino seats that tend to favor Democrats.
“If the court, as I think some people expect, says you can’t use race ever anymore, or if the Voting Rights Act allows you to use race, then that violates the Constitution under the 14th and 15th amendments, then we are basically done with the Voting Rights Act,” American University Washington College of Law Professor Stephen Wermiel said.
Once the Supreme Court hears arguments today, a decision will most likely be released in the late spring or early summer.
Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:
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Las Vegas Sands Continues Pouring Money Into Texas Politics
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Posted on: October 14, 2025, 10:21h.
Last updated on: October 14, 2025, 10:32h.
- Las Vegas Sands remains invested in Texas politics
- Sands wants to build a casino resort in Dallas
- Sands is heavily backing Texas Senate candidate John Huffman
Las Vegas Sands has contributed millions of dollars to political races in Texas over the past few years. Despite little return on the many campaign contributions, the world’s largest casino operator by market capitalization is showing no signs of folding.
Texas Senate candidate John Huffman posted a photograph of his family looking over the Bellagio Fountains on X. Huffman is being heavily supported by the casino lobby and Las Vegas Sands, though he wrote in July that Las Vegas is not his “style.” (Image: X) According to campaign finance records disclosed by the Texas Ethics Commission, Texas Sands PAC last month gave state Senate District 9 Republican candidate John Huffman $500K. Huffman, a former city councilor and mayor of Southlake in the Dallas/Fort Worth suburbs, is a self-described “true fiscal conservative” who seeks to cut taxes and reduce regulation.
Sands sees Huffman as a possible state lawmaker who might get on board with the idea of casino gambling as an economic stimulator that could lessen the tax burden on Texans, and keep the many millions of gaming dollars from flowing annually to Oklahoma tribal casinos and commercial casinos in Lake Charles, La. Huffman’s chief opponent for the November 9 special election — Republican Leigh Wambsganss — is on record saying she doesn’t believe gambling is good for society.
The research is conclusive — gambling has a negative impact on families and has a detrimental effect on the community as a whole,” Wambsganss told the Texas Scorecard. “I do not think expanded gambling is right for Texas.”
Huffman says voters — not state lawmakers — should decide whether casinos are right for Texas.
If voters choose expansion, it should be limited, well-regulated, and focused on a small number of high-end destination resorts that create jobs and attract tourism,” Huffman said.
Sands’ largest shareholder is billionaire Dr. Miriam Adelson, who, along with her son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, controls the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks. In late 2023, the Adelsons bought a 69% position in the Mavs from Mark Cuban for about $3.8 billion.
Casino Lobby
Adelson’s late husband, Sheldon Adelson, the founder and longtime chair and CEO of Sands, had sought entry into Texas for many years. Adelson is carrying on her husband’s ambitions.
Adelson’s purchase of the Mavs is thought to give the businesswoman and philanthropist an upper hand in Austin in convincing lawmakers to consider gaming. Her crusade is supported by Cuban, who believes Texas needs to diversify its leisure travel attractions. Adelson and Cuban have suggested building a new NBA arena accompanied by an integrated resort casino.
Adelson and Sands are the lone financiers of Texas Sands PAC. In August, she gave $9.1 million to the political action committee. Sands gave $4,500.
Adelson is also a major backer of the Texas Defense PAC. That committee gave Huffman almost $600K. The Adelson-based committees collectively account for about 94% of Huffman’s total campaign war chest.
Political Irony
Huffman believes it’s quite ironic that Wambsganss opposes casinos in Texas, considering her family made money off gaming. Those claims stem from her husband previously being an investor in a skill gaming manufacturing company that primarily operated in Virginia, the state in which Wambsganss was born before moving to Texas as a child with her military parents.
Skill games in Virginia have been illegal since July 2021, though legal challenges continue. Skill games are slot-like machines that require players to identify winning paylines.
Huffman’s support of casinos is also a bit ironic. Last summer, he posted his family’s favorite cities across the US after being “blessed to travel to all 50 states.” His review for Las Vegas wasn’t exactly an endorsement.
We didn’t gamble — obviously — but we walked the Strip, marveled at the Bellagio Fountains, and soaked in the sensory overload. Glad the kids saw it, but no one was in a hurry to return. Just not our style,” Huffman summarized.
The Texas politician ranked Las Vegas No. 16 among 21 major cities they visited.
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Devin O’Connor
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A Long-Lost Ancient Roman Artifact Reappears in a New Orleans Backyard
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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A New Orleans family cleaning up their overgrown backyard made an extremely unusual find: Under the weeds was a mysterious marble tablet with Latin characters that included the phrase “spirits of the dead.”
“The fact that it was in Latin that really just gave us pause, right?” said Daniella Santoro, a Tulane University anthropologist. “I mean, you see something like that and you say, ‘Okay, this is not an ordinary thing.’”
Intrigued and slightly alarmed, Santoro reached out to her classical archaeologist colleague Susann Lusnia, who quickly realized that the slab was the 1,900-year-old grave marker of a Roman sailor named Sextus Congenius Verus.
“When I first saw the image that Daniella sent me, it really did send a shiver up my spine because I was just floored,” Lusnia said.
Further sleuthing by Lusnia revealed the tablet had been missing from an Italian museum for decades.
Sextus Congenius Verus had died at age 42, of unknown causes, after serving for more than two decades in the imperial navy on a ship named for the Roman god of medicine, Asclepius. The gravestone calls the sailor “well deserving” and was commissioned by two people described as his “heirs,” who were likely shipmates since Roman military could not be married at the time, Lusnia said.
The tablet had been in an ancient cemetery of around 20 graves of military personnel, found in the 1860s in Civitavecchia, a seaside in northwest Italy about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Rome. Its text had been recorded in 1910 and included in a catalog of Latin inscriptions, which noted the tablet’s whereabouts were unknown.
The tablet was later documented at the National Archeological Museum in Civitavecchia prior to World War II. But the museum had been “pretty much destroyed” during Allied bombing and took several decades to rebuild, Lusnia said. Museum staff confirmed to Lusnia the tablet had been missing for decades. Its recorded measurements — 1 square foot (0.09 square meters) and 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) thick — matched the size of the tablet found in Santoro’s backyard.
“You can’t have better DNA than that,” Lusnia said.
She said the FBI is in talks with Italian authorities to repatriate the tablet. An FBI spokesperson said the agency could not respond to requests for comment during the government shutdown.
A final twist to the story suggests how the tablet made its way to New Orleans.
As media reports of the find began circulating this week, Erin Scott O’Brien says her ex-husband called her and told her to watch the news. She immediately recognized the hunk of marble, which she had always seen as a “cool-ass piece of art.” They had used as a garden decoration and then forgot about it before selling the home to Santoro in 2018.
“None of us knew what it was,” O’Brien said. “We were watching the video, just like in shock.”
O’Brien said she received the tablet from her grandparents — an Italian woman and a New Orleans native who was stationed in the country during World War II.
Perhaps no one would be more thrilled by the tablet’s rediscovery than Sextus himself. Grave markers were important in Roman culture to uphold legacies, even of everyday citizens, Lusnia said.
“Now Sextus Congenius Verus is being talked about so much,” Lusnia said. “If there’s an afterlife and he’s in it and he knows, he’s very happy because this is what a Roman wants — to be remembered forever.”
Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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‘Louisiana Lockup’ detention center is punishing immigrants for the same crime twice, new lawsuit says
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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit on Monday, accusing Louisiana’s new immigration detention center, “Louisiana Lockup,” and the Trump administration of indefinitely locking up immigrant detainees in the facility and punishing immigrants for the same crime twice, in violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause.
The Louisiana facility opened on September 3, using the blueprint forged by Florida’s Alligator Alcatraz. After Republican Gov. Jeff Landry declared a state of emergency in July to expedite repairs to a section of the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana—a maximum-security prison notorious for violent and inhumane conditions—the state partnered with the Department of Homeland Security to add 416 immigrant detainee beds.
“This facility is designed to hold the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens,” and is meant “to consolidate the most violent offenders into a single deportation and holding facility,” Landry said during a press conference on opening day. “Angola is the largest maximum-security prison in the country,” he continued, “with 18,000 acres bordered by the Mississippi River, swamps filled with alligators, and forests filled with bears.”
“If you don’t think that they belong somewhere like this,” Landry said, referring to the incoming immigrant detainees, “you got a problem.”
But in the case of Oscar Amaya, a 34-year-old man who is currently detained at “Louisiana Lockup,” there may very well be a problem. The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana, argues that Amaya’s continued detention violates the Double Jeopardy Clause and is designed to punish him—again—for a prior conviction.
Although immigration detention is a civil penalty, double jeopardy applies if the civil sanctions are applied punitively. As the complaint, reviewed by Reason, points out, the punitive nature of imprisonment in a place like Angola is no secret. Rather, both Landry and Trump administration officials seem to relish in the facility’s violent past. “This is not just a typical [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] ICE detention facility that you will see elsewhere in the country,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem proclaimed during the facility’s opening. “This is a facility that’s notorious.…Angola Prison is legendary.”
Amaya fled Honduran gang life in 2005 and worked in the United States “without incident” until 2016, according to the complaint. That year, he was arrested and later “convicted of attempted aggravated assault, possession of a weapon (knife) for unlawful purpose, and unlawful possession of a weapon (knife).” Amaya was sentenced to four and a half years in prison, but was released after two years with good time credits.
After serving his time, Amaya was transferred to ICE custody. Although he was initially released with an ankle monitor due to a medical condition, he was taken back into ICE custody in 2023, where he remained while fighting his removal and worsening health.
In March of this year—nine years after his initial arrest—Amaya was granted Convention Against Torture protection after demonstrating that he will be, more likely than not, tortured if deported to Honduras. However, Amaya has remained in ICE custody without any active criminal or civil offenses pending against him. After receiving a final decision on his immigration proceedings, ICE denied his release, stating that the agency “expects to receive the necessary travel documents to effectuate [Amaya’s] removal,” which is believed to be practicable, in the public interest, and “likely to occur in the reasonable foreseeable future.”
But after six months of failed attempts to deport him to Mexico, the complaint argues, Amaya has been detained past the six-month timeline the Supreme Court deemed “presumptively reasonable” in Zadvydas v. Davis, a decision meant to prevent the “indefinite detention of aliens” that could raise “serious constitutional concerns.”
His indefinite lockup because of his prior crimes is also clearly unconstitutional since he’s already served the time for his original criminal conviction. “[Amaya’s] liberty is of extraordinary importance to this country: if he stays behind bars indefinitely, the Constitution becomes nothing more than a house of cards,” argue his attorneys.
Unfortunately, indefinite detentions like this are a feature, not a bug, of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. “To be clear: If you commit a violent crime in this country…we are going to prosecute you here, and we are going to keep you here for the rest of your life,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi at the opening press conference for “Louisiana Lockup.”
Amaya’s case joins a growing list of legal challenges lodged against state-run immigration detention centers popping up around the country, which are backed by $45 billion in funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in July. But as the Trump administration races to add more beds to detain an unprecedented number of immigrants, questions regarding due process and constitutional rights will keep mounting—rights designed to prevent the government’s abuse of power and endless legal harassment in the first place.
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Last of the 10 New Orleans Jail Escapees From May Is Captured in Georgia, Authorities Say
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ATLANTA (AP) — The only escaped Louisiana inmate who remained on the run following an audacious May jailbreak in which 10 men crawled through a hole behind a toilet has been found in Atlanta, the U.S. Marshals said Wednesday.
Derrick Groves was taken into custody in a house after evading authorities for nearly five months, Deputy U.S. Marshal Brian Fair confirmed. Sgt. Kate Stegall, a spokesperson for the Louisiana State Police, also said Groves was in custody after a brief standoff.
The other nine escapees had been recaptured within six weeks of breaking out of a New Orleans jail on May 16, and most were found still in Louisiana.
Groves, 28, had been convicted of murder and was facing a possible life sentence before the jailbreak. He had the most violent criminal record of the escapees and authorities had offered a $50,000 reward for tips that lead to his recapture.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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What to Know About Former LSU Receiver Kyren Lacy and New Video of a Fatal Highway Crash
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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana state police have released video evidence in a deadly 2024 car crash that authorities contend was caused by reckless driving by Kyren Lacy, a former Louisiana State University football star who took his own life days before a grand jury was convened to review the case.
The 11-minute video released Tuesday came in response to other footage given to a Louisiana TV station by Matthew Ory, Lacy’s defense attorney, who said it showed the former wide receiver couldn’t have caused the wreck because he was too far away from the collision. In a statement, Louisiana State Police defended their original findings that Lacy was responsible and urged the public “to rely on the full body of facts.”
Louisiana’s attorney general said this week the case remained under review but maintained that eyewitnesses identified Lacy as having put December’s deadly crash in motion. Louisiana Democratic lawmakers called for an investigation and LSU coach Brian Kelley faced renewed questions about the case.
Here are some things to know.
The fatal crash on a Louisiana highway
In December 2024, Lacy was allegedly “recklessly” driving a green Dodge Charger — speeding and crossing into the oncoming traffic lane to pass cars in a no-passing zone, according to Louisiana State Police.
In an effort to “avoid impact” with Lacy, a driver swerved and crashed head-on into another vehicle, police said. Herman Hall, 78, died in the crash.
Police said Lacy “fled” the crash scene without stopping to render aid or call 911.
The 24-year-old Lacy, who had declared for the 2025 NFL draft, turned himself into police and was booked on negligent homicide, felony hit and run and reckless operation of a vehicle. He was released on bail.
Days before a grand jury hearing on his case in April, Lacy died of an apparent suicide after fleeing a traffic stop near Houston and being pursued by police, authorities said.
Attorney says Lacy was too far behind crash to be blamed:
Nearly six months after Lacy’s death, his defense attorney on Friday went on a local news station in Houma, Louisiana, and presented what he says is evidence showing the LSU wide receiver was too far behind the deadly December wreck to be at fault.
Ory, who did not respond to email seeking comment, acknowledged that Lacy had passed multiple cars but questioned how Lacy could be responsible for a crash that occurred so far in front of him.
After Ory released footage of the crash, Louisiana State Police published their own video Tuesday. The agency detailed their findings, releasing a timeline, crash report, interviews with witnesses at the scene and surveillance footage — where the collision can be heard and Dodge Charger can be seen, but the wreck itself is out of view.
A narrator in the agency’s video said that state police “never reported” that the Charger “impacted” any of the involved vehicles.
“However, all evidence collected supports the conclusion that Lacy’s reckless operation of the green Charger in oncoming traffic triggered the chain of events involving the other drivers, ultimately resulting in the fatal crash,” the narrator said.
Calls for more investigations
On Monday, Louisiana’s Democratic Party called for Republican State Attorney General Liz Murrill to launch a “full-scale” investigation into the “wrongful accusations made against Mr. Lacy.”
In a statement to The Associated Press on Tuesday, Murrill said that she is reviewing all evidence in the case, but added that “the evidence is not disputed.”
She said that the Lafourche Parish District Attorney’s office was prepared to present evidence to a grand jury, which included showing that Lacy returned to his lane of travel while driving; “However, that does not absolve Kyren Lacy of responsibility in this matter.”
Murrill said that “every witness” identified Lacy’s green Dodge Charger as “having put the events in motion” that led to the deadly crash. Murrill said she is continuing to review evidence from state police.
Reaction in the football world
On Monday, LSU Football Coach Brian Kelly was asked about Ory’s comments.
“I thought that this is a process that takes time,” Kelly said. “I think I said back when this occurred that let’s wait until all the information comes out. For us to make these universal statements early on it just doesn’t serve anybody well.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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US Appeals Court to Reconsider Louisiana’s Ten Commandments Law It Struck Down
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(Reuters) -A federal appeals court will reconsider its recent decision declaring “plainly unconstitutional” a Louisiana law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in all classrooms of the state’s public schools and universities.
In a brief order, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said its 17 active judges will sit “en banc” to review the June 20 decision by a unanimous three-judge panel.
That decision was a victory for parents and students who said Louisiana infringed their First Amendment religious rights, and a defeat for Republicans and conservative groups who wanted expressions of faith to be more prominent in society.
In a joint statement, the ACLU and other groups representing the law’s opponents said they remain confident the principles underlying the First Amendment, “which guarantee religious freedom for all students and families, will prevail in the end.”
Spokespeople for Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, both Republicans, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The 5th Circuit is widely considered among the country’s most conservative federal appeals courts, though Democratic presidents appointed two of the three judges who struck down the Louisiana law.
Monday’s order set aside that decision. Oral arguments have not been scheduled.
FAMILIES CLAIMED LAW VIOLATED FIRST AMENDMENT
Louisiana’s law required the display of posters or framed versions of the Ten Commandments in K-12 schools and state-funded colleges.
Displays were to be at least 11 inches by 14 inches, with the Commandments being the “central focus” and printed in a large, easy-to-read font.
Nine families, including clergy, with children in public schools sued, saying the law violated the constitutional prohibition against state establishment of religion.
The law has not taken effect, after being blocked last November by a lower court judge.
Louisiana became the first U.S. state requiring displays of the Ten Commandments since the Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky law in 1980.
Arkansas and Texas passed their own laws in 2025 requiring similar displays, prompting lawsuits.
In seeking en banc review, Louisiana and school board defendants said the appeals court panel mistakenly relied on an abandoned Supreme Court precedent.
They also said the panel misapplied that court’s 2022 decision favoring a Washington high school football coach who prayed with players at the 50-yard line after games.
The case is Roake et al v Brumley et al, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 24-30706.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.
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ACLU Says ICE Is Unlawfully Punishing Immigrants at a Notorious Louisiana Detention Center
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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The immigration detainees sent to a notorious Louisiana prison last month are being punished for crimes for which they have already served time, the American Civil Liberties Union said Monday in a lawsuit challenging the government’s decision to hold what it calls the “worst of the worst” there.
The lawsuit accuses President Donald Trump’s administration of selecting the former slave plantation known as Angola for its “uniquely horrifying history” and intentionally subjecting immigrant detainees to inhumane conditions — including foul water and lacking basic necessities — in violation of the Double Jeopardy clause, which protects people from being punished twice for the same crime.
The ACLU also alleges some immigrants detained at the newly opened “Louisiana Lockup” should be released because the government failed to deport them within six months of a removal order. The lawsuit cites a 2001 Supreme Court ruling raised in several recent immigration cases, including that of the Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, that says immigration detention should be “nonpunitive.”
“The anti-immigrant campaign under the guise of ‘Making America Safe Again’ does not remotely outweigh or justify indefinite detention in ‘America’s Bloodiest Prison’ without any of the rights afforded to criminal defendants,” ACLU attorneys argue in a petition reviewed by The Associated Press.
The AP sent requests for comment to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry.
The lawsuit comes a month after state and federal authorities gathered at the sprawling Louisiana State Penitentiary to announce that the previously shuttered prison complex had been refurbished to house up to 400 immigrant detainees that officials said would include some of the most violent in ICE custody.
The complex had been nicknamed “the dungeon” because it previously held inmates in solitary cells for more than 23 hours a day.
ICE repurposed the facility amid an ongoing legal battle over an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” and as Trump continues his large-scale attempt to remove millions of people suspected of entering the country illegally. The federal government has been racing to to expand its deportation infrastructure and, with state allies, has announced other new facilities, including what it calls the “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana and the “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska. ICE is seeking to detain 100,000 people under a $45 billion expansion Trump signed into law in July.
At Angola last month, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters the “legendary” maximum security prison, the largest in the nation, had been chosen to house a new ICE facility to encourage people in the U.S. illegally to self-deport. “This facility will hold the most dangerous of criminals,” she said.
Authorities said the immigration detainees would be isolated from Angola’s thousands of civil prisoners, many of whom are serving life sentences for violent offenses.
“I know you all in the media will attempt to have a field day with this facility, and you will try to find everything wrong with our operation in an effort to make those who broke the law in some of the most violent ways victims,” Landry, a Republican, said during a news conference last month.
“If you don’t think that they belong in somewhere like this, you’ve got a problem.”
The ACLU lawsuit says detainees at “Louisiana Lockup” already were “forced to go on hunger strike” to “demand basic necessities such as medical care, toilet paper, hygiene products and clean drinking water.” Detainees have described a long-neglected facility that was not yet prepared to house them, saying they are contending with mold, dust and ”black” water coming out of showers, court records show.
Federal and state officials have said those claims are part of a “false narrative” created by the media, and that the hunger strike only occurred after inaccurate reporting.
The lawsuit was filed in Baton Rouge federal court on behalf of Oscar Hernandez Amaya, a 34-year-old Honduran man who has been in ICE custody for two years. He was transferred to “Louisiana Lockup” last month from an ICE detention center in Pennsylvania.
Amaya fled Honduras two decades ago after refusing the violent MS-13 gang’s admonition “to torture and kill another human being,” the lawsuit alleges. The gang had recruited him at age 12, court documents say.
Amaya came to the United States, where he worked “without incident” until 2016. He was arrested that year and later convicted of attempted aggravated assault and sentenced to more than four years in prison. He was released on good-time credits after about two years and then transferred to ICE custody.
An immigration judge this year awarded Amaya “Convention Against Torture” protection from being returned to Honduras, the lawsuit says, but the U.S. government has failed to deport him to another country.
“The U.S. Supreme Court has been very clear that immigration detention cannot be used for punitive purposes,” Nora Ahmed, the ACLU of Louisiana’s legal director, told AP. “You cannot serve time for a crime in immigration detention.”
Mustian reported from New York
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Here are 5 major Supreme Court cases to be argued this fall
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court opens its new term on Monday and is scheduled to hear arguments in 33 cases this fall.
The justices will hear challenges to transgender rights, voting rights and Trump tariffs and will reconsider a 90-year-old precedent that protects officials of independent agencies from being fired by the president.
Here are the major cases set for argument:
Conversion therapy and free speech: Does a licensed mental health counselor have a 1st Amendment right to talk to patients under age 18 about changing their sexual orientation or gender identity, even if doing so is prohibited by state law?
California in 2012 was first state to ban “conversion therapy,” believing it was harmful to minors and leads to depression and suicide. Other states followed, relying on their authority to regulate the practice of medicine and to prohibit substandard care.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal group, sued on behalf of a Colorado counselor and argued that the state is “censoring” her speech. (Chiles vs. Salazar, to be argued on Tuesday.)
Supreme Court Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., left, Clarence Thomas and Brett M. Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. attend inauguration ceremonies for Donald Trump in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20 in Washington.
(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Voting rights and Black majority districts: Does a state violate the Constitution if it redraws its congressional districts to create one with a Black majority?
In the past, the court has said racial gerrymandering is unconstitutional. But citing the Voting Rights Act, it also has ruled states must sometimes create an electoral district where a Black or Latino candidate has a good chance to win.
Otherwise, these minorities may be shut out from political representation in Congress, state legislatures or county boards.
But Justice Clarence Thomas has argued for outlawing all use of race in drawing district lines, and the court may adopt his view in a pending dispute over a second Black majority district in Louisiana. (Louisiana vs. Callais, to be argued Oct. 15.)
Trump and tariffs: Does President Trump have legal authority acting on his own to impose large import taxes on products coming from otherwise friendly countries?
Trump is relying on a 1977 law that empowers the president to act when faced with an “unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad. The measure does not mention tariffs or taxes.
In a pair of cases, lower courts ruled the tariffs were illegal but kept them in place for now. Trump administration lawyers argue the justices should defer to the president because tariffs involve foreign affairs and national security. (Learning Resources vs. Trump, to be argued Nov. 5.)
The high court will look at whether transgender athletes can compete in certain sports. Above, a 100-meter hurdles event during a track meet in Riverside in April.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Transgender athletes and school sports: Can a state prevent a transgender student whose “biological sex at birth” was male from competing on a girls sports team?
West Virginia and Idaho adopted such laws but they were struck down by judges who said they violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of laws and the federal Title IX law that bars sex discrimination in schools and colleges.
Trump voiced support for “keeping men out of women’s sports” — a characterization deemed false by transgender women and their advocates, among others. If the Supreme Court agrees, this rule is likely to be enforced nationwide under Title IX. (West Virginia vs. B.P.J. is due to be heard in December.)
Trump and independent agencies: May the president fire officials of independent agencies who were appointed with fixed terms set by Congress?
Since 1887, Congress has created semi-independent boards, commissions and agencies with regulatory duties. While their officials are appointed by the president, their fixed terms keep them in office when a new president takes over.
The Supreme Court upheld their independence from direct presidential control in the 1935 case of Humphreys Executor vs. U.S., but Trump has fired several such officials.
The current court has sided with Trump in two such cases and will hear arguments on whether to overturn the 90-year-old precedent. (Trump vs. Slaughter is due to be argued in December.)
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Planned Parenthood Closes Louisiana Clinics After 40 Years Due to Financial and Political Pressure
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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Planned Parenthood on Tuesday shuttered its two clinics in Louisiana over what the organization said were mounting financial and political challenges that made operating in the state no longer possible after more than 40 years.
The closures make Louisiana the most populous of just four states with no Planned Parenthood locations.
The exit underlines the pressures on Planned Parenthood as it warns of wider closures nationwide in the face of Medicaid funding cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill. The organization is also halting advocacy work in Louisiana, where the state’s Republican leaders have cheered on the closures.
The closures were “not the result of a lack of need” but rather the outcome of “relentless political assaults that have made it impossible for us to continue operating sustainably in Louisiana,” said Melaney Linton, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.
Supporters have said the closures will have a detrimental impact on Louisiana, where Planned Parenthood has never been licensed to perform abortions in the state but did provide other medical care services to nearly 11,000 patients last year at its Baton Rouge and New Orleans clinics.
Advocates and medical professionals fear that the organization’s departure will further exacerbate reproductive health care in a state that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows already has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country. In addition, a March report by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s office noted the state’s significant OB-GYN shortage and health care deserts.
Planned Parenthood warns of more closures
Earlier this year, five clinics in California and eight in Iowa and Minnesota shut their doors. In the past week, the Wisconsin affiliate announced that it would stop providing abortion and the Arizona affiliate said it would halt Medicaid-funded services.
Louisiana joins Wyoming, North Dakota and Mississippi as states where the organization is absent.
“This is a win for babies, a win for mothers, and a win for LIFE!” Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry posted on social media Tuesday.
High numbers of Medicaid patients
Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of services, including cancer screenings and sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment. Federal Medicaid money was already not paying for abortion, but affiliates relied on Medicaid to stay afloat.
In Louisiana, a state with one of the nation’s highest poverty rates, 60% of patients at Planned Parenthood clinics used Medicaid. Last year, the clinics in Louisiana provided nearly 30,000 tests for sexually transmitted infections, 14,400 visits for birth control, 1,800 cancer screenings and 655 ultrasounds.
Nearly a decade ago, Jordyn Martin said she turned to Planned Parenthood when she couldn’t afford medical services anywhere else. While at the clinic, a doctor offered Martin a free HIV test. A week later, she was diagnosed with the virus.
“Planned Parenthood saved my life,” said Martin, who went on to volunteer for the organization.
Connecting patients with new providers
Outside of the New Orleans Planned Parenthood clinic Tuesday, several people gathered and brought thank-you notes to the organization that has spent four decades in Louisiana. Inside the building, up until close, staff worked to connect patients with alternative health care providers.
Starting Wednesday, calls to Planned Parenthood numbers in Louisiana will be transferred to the nearest location in Texas or Arkansas.
Michelle Erenberg, the head of a New Orleans-based abortion rights group named LIFT, said people have been contacting her for help to find new clinics. She said it was important to connect people with providers but worries about the strain it will put on clinics that are already short-staffed.
“Whether patients are going to be able to get appointments quickly, or access all of the services that Planned Parenthood provided, is unknown at this point,” she said.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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New Orleans Police Official Says Crime Is Down After Governor Requests National Guard Troops
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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A top New Orleans police official on Tuesday welcomed the possibility of a National Guard deployment in his city but pushed back on suggestions of rising crime rates and said he was unclear on how the military might be used.
Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry is asking for up to 1,000 National Guard troops to help fight crime in his state, a request that comes weeks after President Donald Trump raised the potential of sending troops to New Orleans.
In a letter sent Monday to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Landry cited “elevated violent crime rates” in Shreveport, Baton Rouge and New Orleans and shortages in local law enforcement. But Hans Ganthier, the assistant superintendent of New Orleans’ police department, disputed that the numbers were up.
“Our crime rate is going down,” Ganthier told reporters.
New Orleans is on pace to have its lowest number of killings in more than five decades, according to preliminary data from the city’s police department. There have been 84 homicides in 2025 as of Sept. 27, including 14 revelers who were killed on New Year’s Day during a truck attack on Bourbon Street. There were 124 homicides last year and 193 in 2023, according to city figures. Armed robberies, aggravated assaults, carjackings, shootings and property crimes have also declined.
His recent plans to deploy National Guard troops in Illinois and Oregon follow a crime crackdown by military personnel in the District of Columbia, immigration enforcement in Los Angeles and the deployment of troops to Memphis. The president says the expansion into American cities is necessary, blasting Democrats for crime and lax immigration policies. He has referred to Portland, Oregon, as “war-ravaged” and threatened apocalyptic force in Chicago.
“We collaborate well with anyone, whether it is the state police, federal government, federal agents, different parishes, and the National Guard shouldn’t be any different,” Ganthier said. “If they can help us, be a multiplier for our forces, I welcome them.”
Louisianans react to possible troop deployment
Landry’s request proposes a deployment of troops to “urban centers” around the state under a mission that would “provide logistical and communication support, and secure critical infrastructure.” He said operations would follow established rules for use of force and prioritize community outreach to ensure transparency and trust.
New Orleans City Council President J.P. Morrell said during a Tuesday meeting that he had been hearing from street performers and others who were concerned that National Guard troops would disrupt the city’s traditions, such as brass band parades through the streets known as “second-lines.”
“The last thing they want is the National Guard stumbling across a second-line and trying to do crowd control on their own,” Morrell said.
Louisiana’s Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy said that while National Guard deployments to Louisiana cities is “not a permanent solution,” he does believe it will help deter crime.
“Increased law enforcement decreases crime, no matter the color of the uniform,” Cassidy told reporters Tuesday.
Deployment prospect in Chicago adds to tension
The federal immigration processing center in Broadview, a community of about 8,000 people just west of downtown Chicago, has been at the front lines of the immigration operation. It’s where hundreds of arrested immigrants are being processed for deportation or detention in neighboring states.
Armed immigration agents have used chemical agents and increasingly aggressive tactics against protesters that local police say are unnecessary, dangerous to residents and raise serious concerns.
“We are experiencing an immediate public safety crisis,” Broadview Police Chief Thomas Mills told reporters Tuesday.
In Oregon, Democratic Attorney General Dan Rayfield filed a motion in federal court Monday seeking to temporarily block the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard.
The motion is part of a lawsuit Rayfield filed Sunday, after state leaders received a Defense Department memo that said 200 members of the state’s National Guard will be placed under federal control for 60 days to “protect Federal property, at locations where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur.”
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Oregon Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek are among local leaders who object to the deployment.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday on X that the Memphis Safe Task Force, a collection of about a dozen federal law enforcement agencies ordered by President Donald Trump to fight crime in Memphis, Tennessee, is underway with 219 officers being deputized. Bondi said nine arrests were made on Monday.
Murphy reported from Oklahoma City. Associated Press reporters Sara Cline and Stephen Smith in New Orleans; Sophia Tareen in Chicago; Adrian Sainz in Memphis; and Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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South Carolina Prosecutor Seeks Death Penalty in Murder Case After Biden Reduced Sentence to Life
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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A local prosecutor in South Carolina said Tuesday he will seek the death penalty against a man whose federal death sentence for killing two bank employees in a robbery was commuted to life in prison by President Joe Biden at the end of his term.
Brandon Council, 40, did not appear in state court in Horry County as prosecutors formally let the court know that if he is convicted of murder they will ask a jury to sentence him to death.
State murder, armed robbery and other state charges against Council were dropped in 2019 after a federal jury found him guilty of similar charges and sentenced him to death.
But in December, Biden reduced the death sentences of 37 federal inmates, including Council, to life in prison, saying he felt the federal use of the death penalty had to stop and he did not want the next administration to resume executions he had halted.
That led Solicitor Jimmy Richardson to obtain new indictments against Council in Horry County in August which open the door to a state death penalty trial.
A deadly bank robbery leads to a death sentence
Council walked into the CresCom Bank in Conway in August 2017, waiting for a minute before shooting Donna Major as the stunned teller held papers in front of her face trying to protect herself. He then followed manager Katie Skeen into her office and shot her in the forehead as she hid under her desk, authorities said.
Council left the bank with $15,000. He was arrested in North Carolina several days later after buying a Mercedes with the stolen money, according to his confession read in court.
Families and law enforcement angry at Biden’s decision urged local officials to review cases. In Louisiana, prosecutors in Catahoula Parish were able to get a first-degree murder charge refiled against Thomas Steven Sanders in the 2010 death of a 12-year-old girl. That would allow the state to seek the death penalty against him.
Richardson said prosecutors had dropped the state charges in case anything ever happened to change the outcome of the federal case, including commuting his sentence.
“If there was a bump, we could always come in and try our case. And that’s why we dismissed them. So our powder could be dry,” Richardson told reporters after the hearing.
Families and Bondi angry about the commu
The other inmates who had their sentences reduced are being moved to Supermax prisons “where they will spend the rest of their lives in conditions that match their egregious crimes,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on social media last week.
Bondi called the commutations a betrayal of the families of victims and a stain on the justice system, comments that Richardson echoed when Biden’s decision was announced.
The bank teller’s daughter, Heather Turner, said the victims of the crimes weren’t considered.
“The pain and trauma we have endured over the last 7 years has been indescribable,” Turner wrote on Facebook, describing weeks spent in court in search of justice as “now just a waste of time.”
“Our judicial system is broken. Our government is a joke,” she said. “Joe Biden’s decision is a clear gross abuse of power. He, and his supporters, have blood on their hands.”
Council’s lawyers said he was remorseful
Attorneys for Council argued at his federal trial his life should be spared because of a troubled childhood, especially after the grandmother who raised him died. They said he showed remorse and cooperated with investigators.
After his arrest, Council asked investigators if the women at the bank were still alive and cried when he found out they were dead, investigators said.
“I’m a doofus. I’m an idiot,” Council told police. “I don’t deserve to live.”
Horry County had a second inmate have a federal death sentence commuted. Chadrick Fulks was convicted of kidnapping a woman from the parking lot of a Conway Walmart and killing her during a series of crimes across several states. His state charges were dismissed and court records indicate they have not been reinstated.
Biden did leave three men on federal death row.
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Louisiana’s governor asks for National Guard deployment to New Orleans and other cities
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Louisiana’s Republican governor asked for National Guard deployments to New Orleans and other cities, saying Monday that his state needs help fighting crime and praising President Donald Trump’s decision to send troops to Washington and Memphis.Gov. Jeff Landry, a Trump ally, asked for up to 1,000 troops through fiscal year 2026 in a letter sent to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. It comes weeks after Trump suggested New Orleans could be one of his next targets for deploying the National Guard to fight crime.Trump also sent troops in recent months to Los Angeles and his administration has announced plans for similar actions in other major cities, including Chicago and Portland, Oregon.Landry said his request “builds on the proven success” of deployments to Washington and Memphis. While Trump has ordered troops into Memphis with the backing of Tennessee’s Republican governor, as of Monday night there had yet to be a large-scale operation in the city.“Federal partnerships in our toughest cities have worked, and now, with the support of President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, we are taking the next step by bringing in the National Guard,” Landry said.Leaders in Democratic-controlled states have criticized the planned deployments. In Oregon, elected officials have said troops in Portland are not needed.In his request, Landry said there has been “elevated violent crime rates” in Shreveport, Baton Rouge and New Orleans as well as shortages in local law enforcement. He said the state’s vulnerability to natural disasters made the issue more challenging and that extra support would be especially helpful for major events, including Mardi Gras and college football bowl games.But crime in some of the state’s biggest cities has actually decreased recently, with New Orleans, seeing a particularly steep drop in 2025 that has put it on pace to have its lowest number of killings in more than five decades.Preliminary data from the city police department shows that there have been 75 homicides so far in 2025. That count includes the 14 revelers who were killed on New Year’s Day during a truck attack on Bourbon Street. Last year, there were 124 homicides. In 2023 there were 193.In Baton Rouge, the state capital, has also seen a decrease in homicides compared to last year, according to police department figures. Data also shows, however, that robberies and assaults are on pace to surpass last year’s numbers.___Associated Press reporter Sara Cline contributed to this report.
Louisiana’s Republican governor asked for National Guard deployments to New Orleans and other cities, saying Monday that his state needs help fighting crime and praising President Donald Trump’s decision to send troops to Washington and Memphis.
Gov. Jeff Landry, a Trump ally, asked for up to 1,000 troops through fiscal year 2026 in a letter sent to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. It comes weeks after Trump suggested New Orleans could be one of his next targets for deploying the National Guard to fight crime.
Trump also sent troops in recent months to Los Angeles and his administration has announced plans for similar actions in other major cities, including Chicago and Portland, Oregon.
Landry said his request “builds on the proven success” of deployments to Washington and Memphis. While Trump has ordered troops into Memphis with the backing of Tennessee’s Republican governor, as of Monday night there had yet to be a large-scale operation in the city.
“Federal partnerships in our toughest cities have worked, and now, with the support of President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, we are taking the next step by bringing in the National Guard,” Landry said.
Leaders in Democratic-controlled states have criticized the planned deployments. In Oregon, elected officials have said troops in Portland are not needed.
In his request, Landry said there has been “elevated violent crime rates” in Shreveport, Baton Rouge and New Orleans as well as shortages in local law enforcement. He said the state’s vulnerability to natural disasters made the issue more challenging and that extra support would be especially helpful for major events, including Mardi Gras and college football bowl games.
But crime in some of the state’s biggest cities has actually decreased recently, with New Orleans, seeing a particularly steep drop in 2025 that has put it on pace to have its lowest number of killings in more than five decades.
Preliminary data from the city police department shows that there have been 75 homicides so far in 2025. That count includes the 14 revelers who were killed on New Year’s Day during a truck attack on Bourbon Street. Last year, there were 124 homicides. In 2023 there were 193.
In Baton Rouge, the state capital, has also seen a decrease in homicides compared to last year, according to police department figures. Data also shows, however, that robberies and assaults are on pace to surpass last year’s numbers.
___
Associated Press reporter Sara Cline contributed to this report.
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