By Greg LaRose | Editor-in-Chief
“This notion that Louisiana is a red state is just a notion,” - U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, in response to statistics on the first day of early voting in Louisiana for the Nov. 3 election.
Black voter turnout was higher than normal on the first day of early voting for the Nov. 3 election in Louisiana. (Photo by Matthew Perschall/Louisiana Illuminator)
By Julie O’Donoghue
Black voters made up a larger share of participants on Louisiana’s first day of early voting than they have in almost every other election over the past 18 years, making Democrats cautiously optimistic about the U.S. Senate race.
Electric bikes and electric scooters parked on a street in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Megan Henry/Ohio Capital Journal).
By Anna Claire Vollers
A string of high-profile deaths and injuries involving electric scooters and bikes is spurring states and cities across the country to crack down on them. Their regulations, many of which were originally written to manage the glut of low-speed rideshare scooters nearly a decade ago, haven’t kept pace, some experts say, and they’ve left city officials scrambling to do more.
State Rep. Stephanie Hilferty, who is running for the state Public Service Commission, has received more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from groups and people connected to utilities that the commission regulates. (Photo illustration by Bethany Atkinson/Deep South Today)
By Katie Jane Fernelius & Brianna Sosa | Verite News
In her bid to join the Louisiana Public Service Commission, state Rep.Stephanie Hilferty, R-New Orleans, has received more than $137,000 in campaign contributions from people and groups connected to some of the very companies that she would be in charge of regulating if elected. The contributions come as the Public Service Commission has been at the center of high-stakes decisions over the buildout of power-hungry AI data centers around the state.
By Tim Henderson
The current Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts claims to have expelled nearly a million people through July of this year, but those include both voluntary returns and people turned around at the border, according to a new analysis by the former chief statistician for the Department of Homeland Security.
By Kevin Hardy
State and local government employees report high levels of job satisfaction across the country, but face significant rates of burnout and on-the-job harassment. That’s according to a new national survey of nearly 5,000 public servants across all 50 states from The People Lab at Harvard University’s Kennedy School.
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