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In the past few years, you may have heard from New Orleans East residents fed up with illegal truck parking in their neighborhood. But did you know this problem has deep roots tracing back decades?

The context: By law, truck drivers have to pull over and rest after driving for several consecutive hours. But since the 1980s, a rapidly growing number of truckers on the road has outpaced the number of parking spaces available to them.

The lack of spaces is a national problem. When truckers are looking to rest and no spaces are available, they are put between a rock and a hard spot. Do they keep going and risk penalties, or do they pull over somewhere unauthorized and risk being ticketed?

Parking in the East: Because of the limited parking options in and around New Orleans, drivers sometimes opt to park in empty lots and neighborhoods in the East, which has upset some in the community.

When they park in residential areas, they can block access and destroy infrastructure, but parking in undesignated areas can also make drivers susceptible to crime.  

Things are changing: There’s both ongoing local research and proposed federal funds that could help alleviate some of the capacity problems in New Orleans.

Also, parking enforcement in the city is changing hands from the Department of Public Works to the New Orleans Police Department. The former could only operate during business hours and the latter can enforce parking violations around the clock.

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A new vending machine in the New Orleans Healing Center provides free access to birth control, emergency contraceptives, condoms, fentanyl test strips and Narcan.

“We’re trying to fill a gap that should not exist," said Victoria Coy, executive director of the Louisiana Coalition for Reproductive Freedom.

Coy blamed elected officials for increasingly restrictive federal and state reproductive healthcare policies. "Until we are able to vote them out, this is the kind of stopgap that we have to employ.”

The vending machine is accessible daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at 2372 St. Claude Ave.

To help keep the machine stocked, the public can donate items or money to the Birthmark Doula Collective, Women with a Vision, the Louisiana Coalition for Reproductive Freedom, the SHER Lab, the Louisiana Abortion Fund, ReJAC and Dar La Luz Consulting.

New Orleans East resident Luis Burke said he started seeing an uptick in stray animals in the neighborhood in January. It was just after Catahoula Crunch, a five-week-long surge of federal immigration officers in the region ordered by the Trump administration. Luis said he didn’t think that was a coincidence.

Ana Zorrilla, CEO of the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said the number of previously owned animals surrendered to the group in 2025 was nearly double the number of animals the organization took in during previous years. The Louisiana SPCA, which is based in Algiers, serves as animal control in New Orleans under a long-running contract with the city. 

In an interview, Zorilla attributed the increase not only to immigration arrests but also to families being unable to care for their animals due to financial hardship from sheltering in place out of fear of detention and deportation. 

On Saturday (May 16), Louisianians turned out to vote in the state’s closed-party primaries for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House races, navigating last-minute changes and widespread confusion after weeks of political upheaval.

The elections come amid an extraordinary level of turbulence after the U.S. Supreme Court voided the state’s congressional district map, which included two majority-Black House districts — both of them favorable to Democrats. 

The court’s decision, which weakened a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act, prompted Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, to abruptly suspend the state’s ongoing U.S. House primaries while the Republican-majority state legislature approves new district boundaries. 

In Gert Town, two progressive nonprofit groups — the  Power Coalition for Equity and Justice and Voice of the Experienced —  organized a get-out-the-vote protest. The Power Coalition is involved in one of a number of lawsuits against the state over the canceled primary election.

For some people, Election Day also presented an opportunity to galvanize people on a separate initiative: an effort to recall Landry. Outside Bywater Bakery, a line to sign the recall petition wound down and around the block, with many people in line wearing “I voted” stickers. 

A fast-moving bill in the Louisiana Legislature aims to expand the number of wood pellet mills in the state  — despite some lawmakers, including the bill’s sponsor, acknowledging they know little about the controversial industry.

Rep. Chuck Owen, a Republican from Vernon Parish, said he proposed House Bill 670 shortly after learning of the industry, which exports about $1 billion worth of pellets from Louisiana each year. Nearly all the production comes from two British-owned mills in central and north Louisiana that emit large – and sometimes illegal – quantities of air pollutants linked to cancers and other serious illnesses. 

Owen, whose district spans one of the state’s most timber-rich regions, said the goal of his bill is to make Louisiana a “premier location for wood pellet manufacturing.” The bill would streamline pellet manufacturing regulations and steer state resources toward workforce training, financial incentives, and infrastructure upgrades tailored to the industry’s needs. 

A home stadium for George Washington Carver High School is finally expected to break ground in June, following a nearly two-decade effort to bring a new high school playing field to the 9th Ward.  

The stadium, also known as the “Field of Dreams,” will house up to 3,700 spectators and will be “the crown jewel of New Orleans’ stadiums and athletic venues,” said former City Council president Arnie Fielkow, who now heads the board of nonprofit 9th Ward Stadium, Inc., the fundraiser for the stadium. A specific date for the groundbreaking in June has not yet been set. 

Fielkow said that student athletes in the city need more facilities. Most public schools on the city’s east bank play football games at Pan-American Stadium or Tad Gormley Stadium in City Park. On the West Bank, schools can play at Joe Brown stadium. But none of those properties are owned or managed by the Orleans Parish School Board, and none serve as any one school’s home field. 

The 9th Ward stadium was proposed as a way to change that, Fielkow said, becoming both Carver’s home field and a hub for football and soccer games for schools all over the city.

Keith Ezidore, a 73-year-old man who spent more than three decades in prison on a murder conviction that was overturned last summer, walked out of the St. James Parish Jail on Tuesday afternoon to cheers and applause from people gathered to witness the moment.

“I’m feeling better now. I’m free,” Ezidore said, leaving the jail bracing his steps with a rollator walker.

Ezidore, who traveled from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola to the parish jail Monday evening, had been sentenced to life in prison in 1993, convicted of second degree murder for the 1991 stabbing death of Ralph Flowers, a St. James Parish businessman in his mid-50s.

But Louisiana’s 5th Circuit Court of Appeal overturned that conviction last July after finding that prosecutors had illegally failed to turn over evidence that could have impacted the outcome of the case.

Since his conviction was overturned, Ezidore’s attorneys have been fighting to get him freed on bail pending a new trial. But the state Attorney General’s Office, which has handled Ezidore’s proceedings, sought to keep him locked up.

The Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on Ezidore’s release.

Ferdinand Lucien Rousséve’s work has withstood the test of time — and hurricanes. 

The first Black licensed architect in Louisiana designed the Central Congregational Church on Bienville Avenue in the late 1940s. It is still standing. 

“I have a strong conviction that it is our individual and collective duty to make our communities better places in which to live,” Rousséve said.

Rousséve lived up to his words through his craft and deeds. His buildings continue to stand across New Orleans, including the former Ashton Theater in Hollygrove.

The 5,074-square-foot theater, operated by the Fonseca family, featured a balcony. For nearly 30 years, it served the neighborhood by screening such films as “Citizen Kane” and “The Invisible Boy” before closing in 1958.

The building later housed the New Orleans Philharmonic and an art studio. 

Political analyst Robert Collins writes:

The May 16, 2026 statewide election is shaping up to be one of the most unusual ballots in recent memory. What would typically be a low-profile primary election has instead become a measure of voter anger and a test of a new closed primary system. 

This election is defined as much by what is not being decided as what is on the ballot. Following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, the state’s congressional map was struck down. Candidate qualifying had already closed in the House elections. Rather than following the regular order of allowing the state legislature to draw new maps that would take effect in the next election cycle in 2028, Gov. Jeff Landry issued an emergency order postponing U.S. House elections until after new maps can be drawn. 

The expectation is that the new maps will eliminate at least one Black majority district, and possibly two, thereby reducing Black representation in the state’s congressional delegation.

Responding to a new state law that resulted in the removal of Calvin Duncan from the office of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court clerk, the New Orleans City Council on Monday (May 11) voted to appoint retired Judge Calvin Johnson as interim clerk of court for Orleans Parish and called a special election to fill the position on a permanent basis. 

The latter council resolution would set a primary election for Nov. 3 and a runoff on Dec. 12. But it’s not clear that they will be allowed to take place.

The council’s votes came in spite of a warning from Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who, in a letter, said the clerk’s position has already been filled. According to Murrill, under the newly passed law — which abolished the position Duncan was elected to last year and consolidated the city’s two court clerk offices into one — the incumbent Clerk of Civil District Court Chelsey Richard Napoleon is now the Orleans Parish clerk of court and will remain so for a full four-year term. 

A flat expanse of swampland just 20 miles south of New Orleans, Barataria Preserve possesses all the postcard characteristics of Southeastern Louisiana. Spanish moss dangles overhead, cypress tree roots push up out of the dirt, and visitors with keen eyes may be rewarded by an alligator sighting.

Barataria Preserve is also similar to the rest of the marshes that line the Gulf Coast in that it is deeply vulnerable to coastal erosion and extreme weather. 

When Hurricane Ida made landfall in August of 2021, it submerged the entire preserve, which is a mostly freshwater landscape, in saltwater. It tore through Barataria, covering public areas with debris, damaging the roof of an administrative trailer, flooding the visitor center and maintenance building and shattered parts of boardwalk trails over the marsh, rendering them unusable. It was the worst storm damage the preserve had faced since Hurricane Rita hit in 2005.  

Now, five years later, the National Park Service is trying to stave off future damage with a two-year rebuilding process that began in February. In a region of the country that’s regularly hit hard by hurricanes, it’s a complex task.

The Amistad Research Center celebrated its 60th anniversary Wednesday (May 6) in the midst of political and economic instability that threatened the center’s existence last year.

The research center, housed at Tulane University in New Orleans, is the world’s oldest and largest independent archive preserving the history of African Americans and other cultural minorities. It credits itself as being the first institution to document the modern Civil Rights Movement in America. 

The anniversary comes one year after the center faced devastating funding cuts after the termination of federal grants it relied on. In March 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order shrinking the footprint of several federal programs, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which supported Amistad with five consecutive grants.

Under normal circumstances, Calvin Duncan, who was elected as clerk of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, would be taking office next week, ready to have a go at fulfilling a campaign promise to bring more transparency to the office. 

But things have not proceeded in a normal fashion. 

Republican state legislators have crafted a bill that would eliminate Duncan’s position if signed by the governor. The bill was passed in the state Senate, and it passed in the House with some amendments, meaning it had to be sent back to the Senate for approval.

Duncan, a political novice with national star power and a compelling personal story as a jailhouse lawyer, entered the race challenging the incumbent, Darren Lombard, for the role. He won the election with 68% of the vote, substantial support from the Orleans Parish electorate. The clerk, according to Louisiana’s constitution, should assume office on the first Monday in May after the election for a four-year term. 

I'm Robert Stewart, a reporter at Verite News. I’ve followed the clerk’s race and am keeping an eye on the bill as it makes its way through the legislative process. 

Ask me anything about Duncan, the court clerk role or the bill that would eliminate it, and I’ll be back here at noon on Wednesday, April 29, to answer your questions!

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