By Greg LaRose | Editor-in-Chief
What we’re watching today: The Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee meets at the State Capitol this afternoon and is expected to advance congressional redistricting bills to reduce the state’s number of majority-Black districts. Be sure to check out the News from the States section below for the latest on Alabama’s maps.
A New Orleans city worker wears body armor and a face covering as he measures the Jefferson Davis monument on May 4, 2017, a week before it would be removed.(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
By Julie O’Donoghue
State legislators are considering a proposed law that would transfer any “historical statue or monument” owned by a government and removed from a public display over the past 20 years to the Office of State Parks. As the measure has advanced, there’s been next to no mention of the Confederate monuments it would impact.
Protesters hold a coffin for “Democracy” as they march down Tulane Avenue in New Orleans on Monday, May, 4, 2026, in opposition to Gov. Jeff Landry’s order to suspend U.S. House elections in Louisiana and eliminate the clerk of criminal court’s position. (Greg LaRose/LAI)
By Greg LaRose
The New Orleans City Council has placed an interim clerk in charge of its recently consolidated court system and set a special election to fill the job permanently. Both moves clash with a new law the Landry administration backs, along with other proposals with the same objective to downside the city’s courts.
The Louisiana Supreme Court building on Royal Street in New Orleans. ( Jarvis DeBerry/LAI)
By Wes Muller
The U.S. Constitution and the Louisiana Constitution guarantee criminal defendants the right to a trial by jury, and state law also lets a defendant waive that right in a noncapital felony case. That would change under proposed constitutional amendment that’s close to final approval in the legislature.
By Sofia Resnick
People in states with abortion bans or diminished abortion access continue to depend on abortion providers prescribing the Food and Drug Administration-approved mifepristone-misoprostol regimen through telemedicine and sending it to patients by mail. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has argued how the FDA policy was created is flawed, and that it interferes with the state’s abortion ban.
COMMENTARY
By Andrea Hagan
At the exact moment Louisiana began to look like a representative democracy on the map, the state’s political machinery has moved with lightning speed to undo it. The Louisiana Legislature rarely moves that fast for failing schools or rural hospitals, but reacts with hyperspeed when Black political power starts to line up with the numbers.
D.C. DIGEST
NEWS FROM THE STATES
Police, mayors rally to save Medicaid for homeless, parolees | UT News Dispatch
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