The Lens Nola

#NewStoryAlert🚨 On Monday, the French Quarter Management District’s security and enforcement committee took the first step toward drone response in New Orleans, as it voted to finance one $250,000 NOPD drone and docking station.

✍ Joshua Rosenberg

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#TheLensNola🔍 Gov. Landry says getting more visas is the state congressional delegation’s “lane to drive.”

✍ Julie O'Donoghue, Louisiana Illuminator

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#crawfish #foreignworkers #louisiana

#TheLensNola🔍 Because of decades of high-stress and deficient healthcare, a 59-year-old in prison has a ‘geriatric morbidity’ that's equivalent to a 75-year-old on the outside.

✍ Bernard Smith

Full story 🔗: buff.ly/RNNDwgs

#geriatricmorbity #prison #aging

#OPINION His hope is for a second chance not to live a life of leisure, but to live a life of purpose under the weight of his past, to test the rehabilitation he claims in the real world.

✍ Terrance Winn

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#TheLensNola🔍 #solomonbirdsong #angolaprison

#TheLensNola🔍 The additional six-month deployment will involve approximately 120 National Guard members—down from the 350 who were working during Carnival.

✍ Greg LaRose, Louisiana Illuminator

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#nationalguard #neworleans #deployment

Fifteen years of stories that matter. Fifteen years of accountability, transparency, and community-driven reporting. Come celebrate this milestone with us and be part of the next chapter of journalism that serves New Orleans💛

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#TheLens15 #15yearanniversary #TheLensNola

#TheLensNola🔍 The storm-prone city is making its local utility design a $28 million incentive program to get hundreds more backup batteries into homes and businesses.

✍ Julian Spector, Canary Media

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#powerplant #entergyneworleans #batteryincentives

#OPINION As more gas moves hundreds of miles by pipeline to an increased number of LNG export terminals licensed by the Trump administration, more pipeline leaks and explosions seem inevitable.

✍ Roishetta Ozane and Lauren Parker

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#LNG #pipelineexplosion #louisiana

#TheLensNola🔍 Despite the stringent abortion ban, AG Liz Murrill said almost 1,000 abortions per month are administered in Louisiana through medication obtained from out of state.

✍ Greg LaRose, Louisiana Illuminator

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#trumpagency #abortiondrugs #FDA

#OPINION “We are not just statistics,” the writers emphasize. “We are families living in the shadows of corporate greed, forced to inhale the very toxins that threaten our lives.”

✍ Roishetta Ozane and Jasmine Gil

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#cameronparish #LNG #gaspipelineexplosion #TheLens

#TheLensNola🔍 Louisiana is among the worst-performing states in maternal and infant health outcomes. Now the city health department offers home visits in those crucial first months.

✍ Rosemary Westwood, WWNO

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#maternalhealth #infanthealth #louisiana

#LensCarnivalEdition⚜ I remember float riders leaning forward, stretching toys and trinkets toward a sea of Black children, only to snatch them back at the last second, enjoying the pain they inflicted.

✍ Nikki Byrd

Full Story: buff.ly/fOUMalA

#TheLensNola🔍 Like New Orleans, many small cities and towns are grappling with aging infrastructure and frequent boil-water notices.

✍ Elise Plunk, Louisiana Illuminator, Lucas Dufalla, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Phillip Powell, Arkansas Times

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#OPINION The oil industry is spending millions in taxpayer subsidies to hide emissions underground rather than transitioning to renewables.

✍ LTG Russel L. Honoré (Ret.)

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#carboncapture #oilindustry #louisiana #TheLensNola🔍

#OPINION Data centers are created by the nation’s wealthiest companies, like Meta. But in Louisiana, utility billpayers could cover up to 75% of AI data-center costs, thanks to a fast-track policy quietly passed by Louisiana regulators.

✍ Paul Arbaje, The Equation

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#TheLensNola🔍 Lawyers for residents say that zoning that concentrates pollution in Black districts is a violation of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.

✍ Adam Mahoney, Capital B

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#canceralley #pollution #environmentalracism #stjamesparish

#LensCarnivalEdition⚜️ Curfews and court rules shape Carnival for thousands in New Orleans who are on probation or parole. Others find themselves self-isolating after the trauma of doing time.

✍ Bernard Smith

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#probation #parole #carnivalseason #neworleans

#LensCarnivalEdition⚜️ In two 9th Ward schools, Abramson and Douglass, students lean on discipline, music, and one another as they prepare for New Orleans Carnival — and for life beyond the parade route.

✍ Gus Bennett

Full story: buff.ly/E6CGD9k

#frederickadouglasshighschool #abramsonsciacademy

#LensCarnivalEdition Nothing is more fun than watching a group of hip-swinging, raddy-walking, second-lining women, says babydoll Denise Augustine, founder of the New Orleans Voodoo Babydolls, who plans to ‘lay down her umbrella’ and retire...

✍Denise Augustine

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“Throw me my Motha Mista, alive well before age fifty and dancing whole,” writes poet MonaLisa Saloy. This poem kicks off this year’s Lens Carnival Edition, a collection of stories, photography, and poetry.

✍ MonaLisa Saloy

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#throwmesomethinmister #mardigras

#TheLensNola🔍 In St. Bernard Parish, fishing deckhands fear death and detention amid regular immigration sweeps - not by ICE, but the Coast Guard. Critics say the Trump administration is undermining the Coast Guard’s other missions...

✍ Delaney Nolan

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#TheLensNola🔍 Carbon capture hasn’t delivered major climate benefits — and the plants would still emit thousands of tons of pollution.

✍ Ames Alexander, Floodlight

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#blueammonia #carboncapture #CFIndustries

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#independentnews #TheLensNola🔍 #honestjournalism #Louisiana

#OPINION At first, the writer’s mom wasn’t sure if she should support her daughter’s human-rights work. “She was very very cautious. It was really hard.”

✍ Katy Reckdahl

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#sweater #ICE #TheLensNola🔍

#TheLensNola🔍 After hard work in the sun on the Farm Line, he’d fall asleep, only to be visited by nightmares, Chadarius Morehead testified on Thursday, in the ongoing federal trial that will determine the constitutionality of forced field labor at Angola.

Bernard Smith

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#TheLensNola🔍 A grassroots environmental group says this week’s explosion of a natural gas pipeline in Cameron Parish is why its community air monitoring mission needs to be expanded.

✍ Elise Plunk, Louisiana Illuminator

Story 🔗 : buff.ly/vPEjWbB

#cameronparish #pipelineexplosion #airmonitoring

#OPINION The U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the central provision that has protected minority voters from discriminatory maps and election systems for 60 years.

✍ Adam Ganucheau, Deep South Today

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Black history is New Orleans history. From civil rights to culture, from neighborhoods to City Hall—Black New Orleanians have always led the way. The Lens is proud to chronicle that legacy and uplift the voices that keep this city moving forward🖤

#TheLensNola🔍 #BlackHistoryMonth #neworleans

#TheLensNola🔍 A message to all city leaders and adults from “The Seven That Make It Happen,” a youth council of Black teenagers ages 16 and 17, who are detained pre-trial in Orleans Parish’s juvenile jail.

By The Seven That Make It Happen

Full Story: thelensnola.org/2026/02/04/n...

#TheLensNola🔍 The court will determine whether forced prison field labor is unconstitutional and in violation of federal disability law

✍ Bernard Smith

Full Story🗞: buff.ly/bkSva9o

#angolafarmline #lawsuit #Louisiana