Louisiana Voice

A New Orleans reader sent the following letter that was posted on FB, supposedly by a school superintendent, in response to Tub-A-Lardo Trump and his secretary of education demanding that school districts gut equity programs:

Secretary of Education and WWE faux-wrestling promoter, Linda McMahon, and the Trump administration gave schools 10 days to gut their equity programs or lose funding. One superintendent responded with a letter so clear, so bold, and so unapologetically righteous, it deserves to be read in full.

April 8, 2025

To Whom It May (Unfortunately) Concern at the U.S. Department of Education:

Thank you for your April 3 memorandum, which I read several times — not because it was legally persuasive, but because I kept checking to see if it was satire. Alas, it appears you are serious.

You’ve asked me, as superintendent of a public school district, to sign a “certification” declaring that we are not violating federal civil rights law — by, apparently, acknowledging that civil rights issues still exist. You cite Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, then proceed to argue that offering targeted support to historically marginalized students is somehow discriminatory.

That’s not just legally incoherent — it’s a philosophical Möbius strip of bad faith.

Let me see if I understand your logic:

• If we acknowledge racial disparities, that’s racism.
• If we help English learners catch up, that’s favoritism.
• If we give a disabled child a reading aide, we’re denying someone else the chance to struggle equally.
• And if we train teachers to understand bias, we’re indoctrinating them — but if we train them to ignore it, we’re “restoring neutrality”?

How convenient that your sudden concern for “equal treatment” seems to apply only when it’s used to silence conversations about race, identity, or inequality.

Let’s talk about our English learners. Would you like us to stop offering translation services during parent-teacher conferences? Should we cancel bilingual support staff to avoid the appearance of “special treatment”? Or would you prefer we just teach all content in English and hope for the best, since acknowledging linguistic barriers now counts as discrimination?

And while we’re at it — what’s your official stance on IEPs? Because last I checked, individualized education plans intentionally give students with disabilities extra support.

Should we start removing accommodations to avoid offending the able-bodied majority? Maybe cancel occupational therapy altogether so no one feels left out?

If a student with a learning disability receives extended time on a test, should we now give everyone extended time, even if they don’t need it? Just to keep the playing field sufficiently flat and unthinking?

Your letter paints equity as a threat. But equity is not the threat. It’s the antidote to decades of failure. Equity is what ensures all students have a fair shot. Equity is what makes it possible for a child with a speech impediment to present at the science fair. It’s what helps the nonverbal kindergartner use an AAC device. It’s what gets the newcomer from Ukraine the ESL support she needs without being left behind.

And let’s not skip past the most insulting part of your directive — the ten-day deadline. A national directive sent to thousands of districts with the subtlety of a ransom note, demanding signatures within a week and a half or else you’ll cut funding that supports… wait for it… low-income students, disabled students, and English learners.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. A moral victory for bullies and bureaucrats everywhere.

So no, we will not be signing your “certification.”

We are not interested in joining your theater of compliance.

We are not interested in gutting equity programs that serve actual children in exchange for your political approval.

We are not interested in abandoning our legal, ethical, and educational responsibilities to satisfy your fear of facts.

We are interested in teaching the truth.

We are interested in honoring our students’ identities.

We are interested in building a school system where no child is invisible, and no teacher is punished for caring too much.

And yes — we are prepared to fight this. In the courts. In the press. In the community. In Congress, if need be.

Because this district will not be remembered as the one that folded under pressure.

We will be remembered as the one that stood its ground — not for politics, but for kids.

Sincerely,

District Superintendent

Still Teaching. Still Caring. Still Not Signing.

(I do not know if this is a real response or the creative work of a very clever person, and I do not care. I am posting it either way because I can absolutely validate the perspective.)

At least one member of Louisiana’s congressional delegation is doing his job.

U.S. Rep. Troy A. Carter, Sr. (D-LA) continued doing the job he was elected to do (as opposed to doing the what a hack reality show host and the world’s richest man want) in a 36-hour-long Energy and Commerce Committee business meeting debating the Republican partisan budget reconciliation bill. Under this plan, Republicans will impose $715 billion in Medicaid cuts.

Carter invited Katie, Coye, Connor and Cooper Corkern from Louisiana to join him as an example of a local family who will be devastated by these Medicaid cuts. Connor John Corkern was born 18 years ago with a congenital brain malformation. His parents were shocked at the news of his diagnosis as his mother Katie’s pregnancy was uneventful.

At just six weeks old, Connor’s parents were told that his brain malformation was so significant that he would need one on one care for all aspects of his life. He was blind, developmentally delayed, had poor muscle tone, was fed through a tube, had numerous types of seizures every day, had an underdeveloped pituitary gland, needed hormone replacement medications, had an immune deficiency disorder, and was nonverbal. Coye, a Louisiana law enforcement officer, and Katie, a Special Education Teacher, spent much of their time with Connor at Children’s Hospital in New Orleans as their son’s seizures and illnesses turned into life-threatening events.

After nearly a decade of being on a waiting list for a home and community-based disability waiver, Connor was given an emergency New Opportunities Waiver (NOW) in 2015. The NOW waiver afforded them Medicaid despite their income, and with that came help in caring for Connor at his own home with his parents and two brothers. Connor’s skilled nurse has been with him for 10 years now. She cares for Connor while his parents work. Connor has also had wonderful direct support professionals who assist him in the evenings while his parents bring his brothers to and from extracurricular activities and events.

When Connor was first diagnosed, his physicians warned his parents that his life was extremely fragile and there was a high chance he would not survive childhood.  On May 7, 2025, Connor graduated from high school with his peers.

“We’re here because the Republican Majority is attempting to do exactly what they promised: rip people’s health care away from them,” said Carter.“Under this plan, Republicans will impose drastic Medicaid cuts–which will result in millions of Americans losing their health care, destroy our hospitals and close the nursing homes our parents and grandparents rely upon while blowing-up states’ budgets, including Louisiana’s.

These cuts will put the elderly, the disabled, and our children at risk – all so they can give trillions of dollars in tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations. Simply put- this is cruel, inhumane and wrong.

“Connor’s story is an example of why Medicaid is so important for countless families across the United States. Republicans need to know that these cuts are not just numbers on paper, these are decisions with real-life consequences that will hurt our people. Medicaid plays a crucial role in providing life-saving care to millions of Americans and Louisianians, and it’s essential that we continue to support and strengthen this program – not make it harder for people to access care.

Let’s make it easier for children, like Connor, and their families to access these critical services made possible through Medicaid, not harder. Connor’s story could be any family’s story. The story of our family should not be written in a genetic lottery. Every family is precious.”

View video from Tuesday’s meeting HERE, HERE and HERE and below are a couple of photos from the family’s time in Washington.

Now, the question of the day is: where the holy hell are Republicans Julia Letlow, Steve KKK Scalise, Mike “I’m proud to have a porn monitoring app on my phone” Johnson and Super Cop (as in public information officer) Clay Higgins and fellow Democrat Cleo Fields while Carter was doing his job?

A story by Julie O’Donoghue in the Louisiana Illuminator last Tuesday caught my eye.

Actually, it was her opening paragraph, or as we call it in the trade, the lede, that got my attention – which is, after all, the purpose of a lede: to grab the reader’s attention.

“Louisiana lawmakers,” O’Donoghue wrote, “are quickly moving legislation that would dramatically expand the types of gifts elected officials and government employees could receive while doing their jobs.”

Boiling it down even further, it was the phrase “quickly moving” that sent up the red flags and set off bells and whistles. That’s “quickly moving,” as in too quickly. Those bills that legislators push so strongly and seek quick passage for are generally what are referred to as “snakes,” as in something to be killed.

The sneak amendment that Sen. Neil Riser pushed through on the very last day of the 2014 legislative session that would’ve given then-State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson a generous bump in his retirement of something on the level of an additional $23,000 or $43,000 per year (depending on whom you asked) comes to mind. That amendment passed but was later thrown out when then-Sen. DAN CLAITOR of Baton Rouge filed suit to rescind the increase.

Actually, there are two such bills that address much the same issue: ethics.

Both bills were submitted by Republicans and if you haven’t noticed, it’s the Republicans who pretend to claim the high moral ground: family values, responsible spending and ethics. Yet, it seems to be Republicans who most often get caught committing sexual hanky-panky (of course, there are Democrats who stray as well, but the scales tip decidedly to the right), who increase the federal deficit and who seem to be constantly trying to weaken the state’s ethics and campaign finance laws (see Govs. Bobby Jindal and Jeff Landry).

There are HOUSE BILL 596 by Rep. Mark Wright (R-Covington) which generally eliminates campaign reporting laws, and HB 674 by Rep. Beau Beaullieu (R-New Iberia), which pretty much guts ethics laws.

So you can make your own determination as to what they say, here are the actual copies of HB 596 and HB 674 in their entirety. The full House was SUFFICIENTLY SATISFIED to pass the bill by a UNANIMOUS 96-0 VOTE with eight members not voting. It now goes to the Senate for consideration.

Now throw in HB 160 by Rep. Kellee Dickerson (R-Denham Springs), and you have the perfect Republican ethics trifecta.

Wright’s bill was originally scheduled to be heard by the House and Governmental Affairs Committee last Wednesday but was not brought up for consideration. HB 674 is pending before that same committee.

Dickerson did present her bill to the H&GA Committee – if you want to call it that. You’ll need to scroll to the 16-MINUTE MARK of the nearly three-hour committee meeting to see for yourself.

For a former TV news personality, she was terribly ill-at-ease, fumbling with her notes far too much at the outset. She eventually got around to calling HB 160 a “strong bill to make a strong difference,” but made her pitch in an embarrassingly weak manner, filled with vague, unsubstantiated claims. It’s no wonder the committee never even voted on her bill.

Basically, what HB 160 would do would be to prohibit anonymous complaints to the State Ethics Board, instead allowing the accused to face his or her accuser. It would not only require that a complaint be made in writing, but that the complainant would be required to file the complaint “in person with the Board at the offices of the ethics administration.” There would be monetary penalties in the form of legal fees for any complainant who “knowingly and willfully files a false ethics complaint.”

Okay, no problem with assessing attorney fees against someone who files a trivial complaint for the wrong reasons, but to require face-to-face confrontation when an employee may wish to file a complaint against a supervisor whom he believes to be in violation of ethics laws only invites retribution. Moreover, requiring a complainant in say, Shreveport, to journey all the way to Baton Rouge is a bit burdensome.

Now, compare red state Louisiana’s 17-year trend toward weakened ethics laws (dating to the onset of Bobby Jindal’s first term as governor in 2008) with that of blue state Maryland (seven of its last nine governors were/are Democrats)  which has just enacted TOUGH NEW ETHICS LAWS in response to the ethical lapses of former Gov. Larry Hogan, a (ahem) Republican.

It’s almost as though there’s this big mural being painted to illustrate more precisely just which party is only pretending to represent morality and virtue.

On Friday, The Atlantic moved a story into my email inbox that bore the headline, “TYRE NICHOLS AND THE END OF POLICE REFORM.”

What followed was a 960-word essay by writer David Graham about the now-defunct special Memphis police squad that called itself SCORPION (apparently members deemed it such an elite force that it deserved no less than the use of all caps in its name) which literally beat Nichols, an unarmed black man, to death.

The five officers apparently considered themselves so immune from responsibility that they carried out their brutality – in full view of SkyCop a Memphis surveillance camera – in the confidence that they would not be held accountable.

Turns out they were partially correct. Though they were fired soon enough and their SORPION union disbanded, three of the officers walked after their acquittal earlier in the week. Two others had already pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

Now, The Atlantic is one of the last great American publications and Graham certainly possesses greater street creds than most writers plying their trade these days. But calling the Memphis travesty the “end of police reform”?

I’m afraid that ship sailed long before the Nichols killing – right here in Louisiana, in fact – in places like Union Parish. And Baton Rouge. And Ouachita Parish. And Franklin Parish.

In fact, LouisianaVoice has published some 175 stories about State Police misconduct all over Louisiana – from Monroe to Houma, from Lake Charles to New Orleans and most of which went not only unpunished, but was covered up in elaborate efforts to shield miscreant officers. And those don’t even include the sheriffs featured in my book, Louisiana’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption, which exposed sheriffs who ran drugs and prostitution, routinely beat prisoners for entertainment, sanctioned killings, enriched themselves unethically and harassed citizens.

Those include:

The acquittal of State Trooper Jacob Brown for the 2019 beating of AARON BOWMAN, an African American that left Bowman, of Monroe with a broken jaw, broken ribs and a gash to his head. He struck Bowman 18 times with his flashlight and between 2015 and 2021, the year he resigned, he was involved in 23 use of force incidents, 19 of which targeted black people, according to the Associated Press. In 2024, he applied for more than $210,000 in legal fees he said the state owed him as the cost of his defense.

The 2020 beating of ANTONIO HARRIS, a black man, in Franklin Parish by three State Troopers, including Jacob Brown, also implicated in the beating of Bowman above, and Dakota DeMoss, one of several State Troopers involved in the beating of Ronald Greene in May of 2019.

Brown was also captured on video slamming DeShawn Washington against the hood of a police cruiser during a 2019 traffic stop. An Associated Press INVESTIGATION revealed a pattern of concealing beatings at the hands of State Police.

Bowman and Harris were lucky. They survived their beatings. Greene did not. Officers told Greene’s mother that he died as the result of an accident when his car collided with a tree but the damage to his car was only minor and a body cam video that surfaced much later (after officers initially said there was no video) showed him pleading for his life as cops piled on.

When an investigation into the lies and coverup of events surrounding Greene’s death and widespread cheating at the State Police Academy, rather than investigate the events themselves, State Police brass PORED THEIR EFFORTS into trying to determine the SOURCE OF INFORMATION LEAKS.

Trooper KORY YORK, who had faced the most serious charges of the five officers indicted in the case after video showed him dragging Greene by his ankle shackles, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor batter and received only a year’s probation, was allowed to retire and to qualify for his pension of nearly $83,000 per year. Two other troopers involved in the Greene beating death, Dakota DeMoss and John Peters, had their charges of obstruction of justice dismissed. Despite the beating and tasing death of Greene, those were the only charges against DeMoss and Peters.

As if the attempts at covering up their misdeeds were not enough, the Special Legislative Committee to Inquire into the Circumstances and Investigation of the Death of Ronald Greene held one or two perfunctory hearings and then QUIETLY FADED AWAY, more or less confirming the contention by LouisianaVoice that it never really intended to delve too deeply into the issue in the first place.

And then there’s the so-called “BRAVE CAVE” warehouse operated by Baton Rouge Police Department’s “Street Crimes Unit.” Eerily reminiscent of the Memphis PD’s SCORPION outfit, local cops would take suspects to the warehouse where as many as 1,000 suspects were strip searched and even beaten. Like SCORPION, BRPD’s Street Crimes Unit has been disbanded.

All of which brings us full circle back to that headline in The Atlantic. The “End of Police Reform,” it seems, occurred well before the acquittals of those three Memphis cops. And the argument could be made that that ending took place right here in Louisiana.

A friend alerted me to an interesting story that illustrated the courage of U.S. Sen. John N. Kennedy in confronting difficult situations. It seems that like Col. Bone Spurs his own self, he hits the bricks, cuts and runs, vamooses, bails, takes a walk and otherwise opts out.

There don’t seem to be sufficient verbs for what Kennedy did, But NewsNation’s CHRIS CUOMO certainly gave it the old college try when Kennedy scooted away from a scheduled live interview on Tuesday, just five minutes before air time. Who knew he could move so fast? Like they say, when the going gets tough, the tough take a powder.

It seems that he learned it wasn’t going to be a softball Fox News-type of question-and-answer session but instead, was going to include some tough questions for which his Foghorn Leghorn approach wouldn’t suffice. “Seeya!”

Cuomo, who said Kennedy didn’t so much as call him, text him or make any other effort to contact him to cancel. The show’s host said Kennedy blew him off after learning that the interview would include questions about El Presidente Tub-a-Lardo’ demand for the freedom of a 2020 election denier TINA PETERS, who was jailed over an election security breach last year.

“He doesn’t even call me himself. He just bails,” Cuomo said of Kennedy’s no-show. “Mr. Man’s Man. Mr. ‘I’m a straight shooter.’” It’s “very poor form,” Cuomo added while accusing Kennedy of puling a “punk-ass move. I’ve been in this business a really long time and nobody does that unless they’re a coward,” he spewed.

Further venting, Cuomo expressed his disgust with the pollical climate when he said officials are “more afraid of getting caught saying something that will offend the president than any kind of duty, any kind of morality, any kind of philosophy, any kind of principle. They are about nothing but fealty.”

Ouch. That’s gonna leave a mark. Looks like someone left Mr. “I-have-a-platitude-for-everything” speechless for a change because as of Wednesday morning, Kennedy had not uttered a peep about the cancellation.

And while we’re on the subject of Kennedy, here are a few more votes by Kennedy and Sen. Bill Cassidy which further display that fealty alluded to by Cuomo.

Voting in lock-step with the Party of Trump (it ceased being the Republican Party back in 2016), the two Louisiana senators, with absolutely no free will of their own (except for the animalistic instinct of self-survival, which pitifully takes precedent over – again quoting Cuomo – any kind of principle, they:

Voted along Trumpian lines on a motion to proceed on House Joint Resolution 60 which provides for congressional disapproval of the rule submitted by the National Park Service as it relates to motor vehicle use restrictions in the 1.2-million-acre GLEN CANYON NATIONAL RECREATION AREA in Arizona and southeast Utah. The motion PASSED BY A 53-47 VOTE-..

Voted with an identical 53-47 MAJORITY (again, along Trumpian lines) to confirm Frank Bisignano as commissioner of the Social Security Administration. A self-described “Doge person,” Bisignano, as president and CEO of Fiserv, established a slash-and-burn reputation for cutting to the bone with massive layoffs. Writer Branko Marcetic said that “Maybe no part of the Trump administration’s program of dismantling federal government agencies has generated as much concern as its drastic cuts to the SSA, the agency responsible for trillions of dollars’ worth of payments to retirees, people with disabilities, and millions of other Americans, and which is already seeing its workers laid off en masse, its offices shuttered, and some of its core services ended.” Another write, Jessica Corbett, said that Bisignano “is also a liar,” claiming he was “not involved in all the chaotic and destructive changes at the Social Security Administration: the hollowing out of the agency, the stealing of our most sensitive data, the harmful and poorly rolled out policy changes, their sudden reversals, and more. However, there are well over a dozen long-serving civil servants, identified by a brave whistleblower, who CAN VALIDATE that he is lying.”

Voted with the 53-45 majority (alas, again along Trumpian Party lines) in favor of HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 61 for congressional disapproval of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants: Rubber Tire Manufacturing,” proving once again that politicians are far more knowledgeable about environmental concerns than the scientists in the agency created to deal with that specific subject.

Voted in lock-step with the Trumpian majority of 53-46 in favor of proceeding on SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION 13 providing for the congressional disapproval of the rule by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of the Department of the Treasury relating to the review of application under the BANK MERGER ACT. Now you really gotta wonder about this one: the author of the resolution is none other than the junior senator from Louisiana, one John Neely Kennedy. Not sure what his motives are for this bill but I bet if you sniff around long enough, you’ll pick up the scent of bank lobbyists and maybe a little campaign money floating around from a few prominent bankers.

Or could it be that Sen. Kennedy has some bank stock in his portfolio and he stands to make a killing if a certain merger that we don’t yet know about is allowed to go through?

The following isn’t about Kennedy; it’s about four of the six Louisiana members of the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, and the most cringe-worthy vote yet. It is the perfect illustration of just how far our gutless wonders are willing to go to please the aforementioned Herr Tub-a-Lardo.

In somewhat confusing verbiage, it’s the vote on ordering the previous question on House Resolution 377 which provides for consideration of HOUSE RESOLUTION 276.

And what is H.R. 276 you ask? Why, it provides for the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, of course. With veterans homeless and/or needing mental health care; with housing costs spiraling out of control; with impending runaway inflation caused by insane tariffs; with college costs becoming more and more out of the reach of students; with looming threats to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; with an egomaniac president choking off critical grants for scientific research by foundations and universities and with a host of unqualified cabinet members too numerous to list here, we waste time on crap like indulging an overweight, mentally underdeveloped psychopath by passing a meaningless resolution to rename a body of water? Are you kidding me?

As might be expected, the four members of the Party of Trump fell in line, as required, behind this silliness (as did every single member of the party who voted – 14 did not vote as was the case for 13 Democrats). The final tally was 206 to 200 in favor of this life-altering piece of legislation which was fast-tracked past such things as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza in order to massage the ego of this physically big (as in grossly overweight) but mentally miniscule sad excuse for a leader. Voting yes, predictably, were Reps. Julia Letlow, Clay Higgins, Steve KKK Scalise and House Mouthpiece Mike “I have a porn-detector app” Johnson. The two Democrats, Reps. Troy Carter and Cleo Fields, voted no.