Coast and culture

By Greg LaRose | Editor-in-Chief

Keep an eye out for local flooding over the course of the week, as a tropical weather system will unleash downpours through much of Louisiana. This bad boy doesn’t even have a name.

By Elise Plunk

Coastal restoration leaders, political pundits and everyday people in Louisiana are seething after a recent study said New Orleans and other coastal communities in the state have reached a “point of no return” against climate change. 

But the scientists who live and work on Louisiana’s coast say that, while the science of rising seas is accurate and urgent, the study should act as a call to action rather than cause people to lose hope. 

By Tim Henderson

The richest 1% of Americans held nearly a third of the country’s total wealth at the end of 2025, the largest percentage the Federal Reserve Board has recorded since it started monitoring the numbers in 1989. In 1990, the share was 22.5%.

The latest percentage, 31.9%, is likely the largest since the end of World War II, possibly heralding a return to the extreme wealth inequality of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And it is likely to balloon further as a result of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and other pro-business policies.

By Wes Muller

Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry is giving voting system vendors another chance to get their systems certified as potential replacements for the state’s decades-old machines, though it could take another year before any new machines reach the polls.

Louisiana has been trying to buy new voting machines for at least a decade. But every previous attempt has encountered delays or outright cancellations as a result of vendor disputes and conspiracy-fueled political pressure.

By Jamiles Lartey, The Marshall Project

The South is increasingly a crucible for national fights that are not merely Southern. Dobbs v. Jackson came out of Mississippi and changed abortion law for the entire country. Callais came out of Louisiana and sits at the center of the current fight over race, representation and the Voting Rights Act. If you’re thinking about law, politics, voting or justice in the U.S., you’re thinking about the South.

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