For complete transparency I have known the terminated officer for about 10 years. I will say that he was never burdened by the extreme weight of intelligence or common sense.
I posted back in June when I arrived in Sudbury for my Open Window Summer.
First off, I want to thank everyone I met and interacted with for showing me a good time. I did not realize how much my New Orleans accent was really going to make me stand out, but on my second day a woman looked at me and said "That's quite an accent you got on you there!" When I was out and about I got more than a few compliments on my drawl. I wound up picking up some of the local lingo and working it into my vocabulary. I went from "Where y'at?" to "How ya doin' bud?" when friends called.
I hope that everyone in Sudbury really appreciates that a great city you reside in. There are problems like there are everywhere, but it seems like there is a real effort to find solutions. The homeless are an eyesore, but they also seem pretty benign. The loiter in the downtown, but head out to their camp when the sun goes down. I feel that if Sudbury had the ability to re-green your community from the moonscape hell of the 1970s to what it is today the other problems should be minor compared to that.
The nightlight in Sudbury was always great. My only gripe was that the few local breweries seemed to close really early, but I would just pregame there before moving along to the main events of the evening.
The amount of lakes and trails was totally insane. I felt so connected to nature this summer.
I left town on Saturday and by the time I reached Kentucky the temperatures were already 39C. I was ready to turn abound and head back to Sudbury. I am planning on spending next summer in BC, but I will definitely be returning to Sudbury in the future.
I love your city.
Weeks after the Justice Department launched an internal probe into allegations that a veteran federal prosecutor in New Orleans concealed a workplace relationship from superiors, he no longer works for the U.S. Attorney’s Office here.
It was unclear whether the prosecutor, Jordan Ginsberg, was fired or resigned. People familiar with the situation described Ginsberg’s departure on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Ginsberg until recently served as criminal chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the 13-parish Eastern District of Louisiana. His LinkedIn page was updated recently to describe himself as a “former federal prosecutor.” The page now says he worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office from 2009 until this month.
In an emailed statement Thursday, Ginsberg thanked the U.S. Attorney’s Office and said he looked forward to his career’s “next chapter.” He did not comment on the DOJ review that preceded his departure.
“For more than 17 years, I had the extraordinary privilege of walking into court and proclaiming, ‘Jordan Ginsberg on behalf of the United States,’” he said. “I never regarded that honor lightly, and I will always be grateful to the United States Attorney's Office for entrusting me with that responsibility.
“I leave with profound gratitude for the experience and for the many people who made it what it was,” he said, “and I am excited to begin the next chapter of my career.”
An anti-public corruption specialist, Ginsberg was suspended in June as the internal review unfolded. Sources told The Times-Picayune at the time that he had been accused of failing to disclose a relationship with an office legal assistant.
The allegations alarmed DOJ officials, who feared a public relations debacle because the scandal echoed aspects of the office’s high-profile prosecution of New Orleans’ former mayor, LaToya Cantrell. A 2025 federal indictment which Ginsberg was instrumental in securing accused Cantrell of defrauding taxpayers by taking leisure trips with her alleged paramour, former police bodyguard Jeffrey Vappie, on the city’s dime. She and Vappie have pleaded not guilty to the charges in the indictment.
Ginsberg was formally withdrawn from the Cantrell prosecution team in June as prosecutors prepared for a since-delayed trial. Colleagues later filed to remove him from several more criminal cases.
Officials have released few details about the situation, including the employment status of the legal assistant with whom Ginsberg was alleged to have held the relationship, what the internal Justice Department review uncovered and whether that inquiry remains ongoing.
U.S. Attorney David Courcelle, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to lead the office last year and made Ginsberg the office’s criminal chief, issued one statement in June saying only that Ginsberg was on leave pending the review of what Courcelle termed “employee misconduct.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office did not respond to requests for comment on Ginsberg’s departure from the office or the internal review. A Justice Department spokesperson in Washington, D.C. did not respond to a request for comment. A DOJ spokesperson previously said the department “declines to comment on personnel matters.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jordan Ginsberg, left, stands near a wall at the side of the room as he and Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Moses, right, listens to Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Simpson for the Eastern District of Louisiana talk about the indictment of New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell on Friday August 15, 2025. The two men are the lead prosecutors of the case.
In June, legal observers told The Times-Picayune that any seeming parallels between Cantrell’s case and allegations facing Ginsberg are unlikely to weaken the prosecution of the former mayor because, at first glance, they do not appear to involve alleged impropriety in the handling of the case against her.
Some observers, however, noted that prosecutors might be inclined to avoid it coming up in defense motions or at hearings. So far, neither defense team has mentioned the controversy in proceedings tied to Cantrell’s case.
Cantrell’s attorney, Eddie Castaing, declined to comment this week on Ginsberg’s departure. Shaun Clarke, a lawyer for Cantrell’s former bodyguard Jeffrey Vappie, also declined to comment.
Cantrell’s trial has been stalled repeatedly by logistical issues unrelated to the allegations involving Ginsberg, who led a team of prosecutors that secured her indictment last year from a federal grand jury.
Prior to the indictment, the case had sputtered as prosecutors confronted obstacles in corralling key witnesses, the challenge of relatively small sums of money involved in Cantrell’s alleged corruption, and shifting priorities at the Justice Department under President Donald Trump.
When Cantrell was finally indicted last summer, the charges focused on a narrower set of conduct than investigators had pursued and many legal observers had anticipated. Ginsberg joined the grand jury foreperson in presenting the indictment to a magistrate judge, then looked on as Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Simpson briefed reporters.
Cantrell’s trial had been set for Oct. 19. Last month, U.S. District Judge Wendy Vitter punted it to March, citing defense lawyers’ busy schedules and a packed trial docket.
Vitter’s order postponing the trial did not mention the allegations facing Ginsberg.
WASHINGTON – Louisiana hospitals are reporting a surge of uninsured patients seeking treatment, many of whom dropped their policies when Congress last year didn’t extend the subsidies that helped lower-income workers buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
Recent federal reports show that about 3 million fewer enrollees nationally kept the subsidized coverage offered to people who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, the state-federal medical insurance coverage for low-income residents, but not enough to buy the policies on their own.
Louisiana was among the states that saw the biggest proportion of ACA Marketplace enrollees dropping their coverage, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of federal reports released at the end of July. The state went from 264,790 enrollments in March 2025 to 195,759 for the same time this year – a 26% decrease.
KFF is a prominent Washington-based health care think tank.
Health care affordability is a key issue in the November 3 midterm elections that will decide which party controls the U.S. House and, perhaps, the U.S. Senate.
Democrats accuse Republicans of tearing care away from constituents. The GOP and the Trump administration argued taxpayers were subsidizing health insurance for too many people with good incomes. They also argue the decline in coverage is less a result of increased prices and due more to its effort to rid federal healthcare programs of “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Adjacent to the political fray on Capitol Hill, hospitals nationally and in Louisiana report losing millions of dollars so far this year because providers are legally required to provide treatment regardless of whether the patient can pay – and, with the government’s decision to lower its expenditures by not renewing the enhanced subsidies, the number of those patients is going up.
“This is a policy problem that will have very human consequences,” said Ryan Cross, chief government relations officer for the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System Inc., which owns hospitals and clinics in Louisiana and Mississippi. That includes Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, the state’s largest.
“We’ve seen 2,500 more uninsured patients visit our emergency departments during the first 6 months of 2026 compared to the same time in 2025,” Cross said, adding that uninsured behavioral health admissions increased 113% during the same time period.
That translates into financial losses for healthcare providers.
Lake facilities, for instance, wrote off about $2.3 million more in bad debt for April through June – a 23.4% increase compared to January, February and March, Cross said.
Cross explained that someone with insurance can pay for managing their health conditions. Many patients, not just those who are low-income, can’t afford the expenses on their own and rely on insurance to cover costs.
“When that congestive heart failure goes unmanaged because they don't seek care, they don't refill their meds and it flares up, it can be life threatening and very expensive,” Cross said. “It’s much cheaper and much healthier for them to seek that care on the front end than have to show up in an ambulance at my emergency room.”
Baton Rouge General Hospital reports about 3,000 more patients arriving without insurance.
“Healthcare is already a business with pretty thin margins, so we’re always looking for ways to be more efficient. That’s everything from how we purchase supplies to how we staff our departments. At the end of the day, our goal is to make sure we're using our resources wisely so we can continue providing great care for our community,” hospital administrators said in a statement.
Other health care providers across Louisiana have privately raised similar concerns.
The big national chains are warning their shareholders of the losses. Some are considering dropping services, like behavioral health, to help make ends meet, according to a new report prepared by researchers at the Urban Institute, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Plus, the 276 Affordable Care Act insurers are raising premiums, filing show – for the second year in a row – by about 15% more for 2027 policies according to a KFF analysis released last week.
“We’re closely watching the trends. It’s a growing problem. We have to have an honest conversation about it in Washington,” Cross said.
Up in Washington, U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, said he’s heard from a lot of Louisiana hospitals and healthcare providers.
“The facts are clear. Louisiana experienced one of the nation’s largest Marketplace enrollment declines because families could no longer afford coverage after the enhanced premium tax credits expired and premiums surged. That’s not fraud or abuse; that’s working families being priced out of health insurance,” Carter said.
Set up under the Affordable Care Act, sometimes known as Obamacare, the marketplace covers the gaps for people who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, the state-federal government insurance, but too little to buy policies on the open market. The various policies provide differing levels of coverage through private health insurers.
Obamacare also provided a range of subsidies, mainly based on annual income and household size, for those who couldn’t fully afford the costs. Depending on income, many policyholders ended up not having to pay out of pocket for any insurance expenses, while others paid reduced amounts.
During the COVID pandemic, the Trump and Biden administrations lowered Medicaid qualifications to make sure more people had insurance coverage. As the pandemic lessened, the Biden administration expanded who could receive subsidies to buy policies in the ACA marketplace.
Those subsidies were set to expire December 31, 2025. Republicans argued against extending the subsidies and Democrats argued to continue them.
That debate caused a 43-day shutdown of the federal government late last year.
The expiration of subsidies was expected to leave 24.2 million Americans — small businesses, gig workers, independent contractors, early retirees and others — paying more, many twice as much for their health insurance this year compared to last, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated 2 million people in 2026 could no longer afford health insurance and would drop their policies, with increasing numbers thereafter. The Urban Institute calculated 5 million would lose insurance because the financial cushion was removed.
Republicans generally argue that the enhanced tax breaks, which cost upwards of about $30 billion to help cover about 10% of the population, unnecessarily spent taxpayer money on families with six-figure incomes.
KFF recently published an analysis of the government’s numbers and found every state — except New Mexico, which covered the lost subsidies for its citizens, saw decreases in ACA Marketplace enrollments. That’s a total of three million nationwide dropping out, leaving 19.6 million beneficiaries.
Just how this decline happened is the source of differing interpretations.
Republicans, who fret over escalating costs, say the drop in coverage is a result of their successful effort to rid government-subsidized health care of waste, fraud and abuse, which they say is using up money to fund healthcare for the truly needy.
Democrats, whose worry too many are going uninsured, point to government policies that have made insurance too expensive and too difficult for many to get.
The government reports and KFF analysis of those numbers don’t detail why the ACA Marketplace policies were dropped.
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services recently stated that 5.6 million people were improperly enrolled in 2025 and that 2.9 million were removed for a variety of reasons. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a press conference that his agency had uncovered instances of fraud, such as brokers who signed up people without their knowledge.
Others have a different take.
Courtney Foster, a senior Medicaid policy advisor for the progressive think tank and advocacy group Invest in Louisiana, based in Baton Rouge, said the most likely reason is because enrollees couldn’t afford to continue paying such high rates on their incomes.
“We saw a huge drop off of people who maybe had originally selected the plan, but then once it came time to actually pay that premium for whatever reason, didn’t,” Foster said.
“Many employers may not be able to offer health insurance to their employees and may send them to the marketplace. But the employees, when they find that the coverage options are limited and really expensive, then they may have to make some really difficult choices.”