There are legal questions with Louisiana's indictment of New York doctor who prescribed abortion pills
In today's edition, we're covering a New York doctor's indictment in Louisiana for providing an abortion pill prescription via telehealth, the first state court hearing in N.C.'s Riggs-Griffin race and more.
Good morning. It's Friday, February 7, 2025 and in this morning's edition, we're covering a New York doctor being indicted in Louisiana for providing a prescription for an abortion pill via telehealth, The first state court hearing on GOP challenger's demand to throw out over 60,000 votes in N.C.'s still uncertified Supreme Court race is Friday, Feb. 7, Georgia's House speaker calls for database to track troubled students, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to build housing, charge below-market rents in an effort to retain educators in one of N.C.'s largest cities, and a whole lot more.
Media outlets and others featured in this edition: Louisiana Illuminator, State Court Report, NC Newsline, WyoFile, Next City, The 51st, Georgia Recorder, The 19th, Asheville Watchdog, Baltimore Banner, Los Angeles Public Press, Alabama Reflector, Mississippi Today, Inside Climate News, The Lens, North Carolina Health News
To continue reading the rest of each article, please click the link at the end of the excerpt.
If you're a North Carolina resident and voted in the N.C. Supreme Court race that is still not certified, please check the list of over 60,000 votes that Jefferson Griffin is trying to discard after narrowly losing to Allison Riggs.
Stephen Whitlow from Triangle Blog Blog has more information. Readers can also visit the Orange County, N.C. group's website The Griffin List to search names and more.
For more about the GOP challenger, check out The Assembly’s article by Jeffrey Billman and Michael Hewlett.
Louisiana, New York leaders spar after doctor indicted for out-of-state abortion pill prescription
Louisiana prosecutor says New York doctor should ‘come down here and answer the charge,’ though Gov. Kathy Hochul stands behind her state’s shield laws.
By: Lorena O'Neil - February 1, 2025
A Louisiana grand jury indicted a New York doctor and a Baton Rouge-area mother Friday on felony charges for allegedly causing a criminal abortion by giving her pregnant teen daughter medication obtained through the mail.
Soon afterward, officials from both states immediately went public with their stances on the case. It is the first criminal case of its kind since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, released a video calling the charges “outrageous,” saying it is why she signed “very tough” shield laws into place protecting telehealth providers.
“I will never, under any circumstances, turn this doctor over to the state of Louisiana under any extradition request,” Hochul said. “Republicans are fighting to have a national abortion ban that will deny reproductive freedom to women, not just in our state, but all across America. We must stand firm and fight this.”
Shortly after the governor’s video was published, The Illuminator spoke with 18th Judicial District Attorney Tony Clayton, a Democrat who is prosecuting the case alongside Republican state Attorney General Liz Murrill. He said he finds it “shocking” that Dr. Margaret Carpenter and representatives from her clinic are not going to come to Louisiana to be arrested and taken into custody.
“You broke the law in the state of Louisiana and you ought to come down here and answer the charges,” Clayton said.
Clayton was among the most ardent supporters of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s “tough on crime” legislation, including his successful push to treat 17-year-old violent offenders as adults in the state criminal justice system.
Landry’s office did not respond to the Illuminator’s request for comment, but the governor did reply to Hochul’s social media post. Carpenter provided “illegal abortion pills to a teen who didn’t want them,” Landry said. “This case is about coercion. Plain and simple.” he added.
Fixed it for you, @GovKathyHochul.
News flash, the American people aren’t falling for your lies!
This case is about coercion. Plain and simple. pic.twitter.com/7saVnsPJZh
— Governor Jeff Landry (@LAGovJeffLandry) January 31, 2025
The teenager’s mother posted bond late Friday after being taken into custody at West Baton Rouge Parish Jail. Her bond amount was not listed.
The Illuminator is not identifying the mother to protect her daughter’s identity.
Clayton and Murrill’s prosecution involves a law approved in 2022 that makes it a crime to knowingly cause an abortion with medication. It carries penalties of one to five years in prison and a fine range of $5,000-$50,000. The same measure also made it illegal to obtain such drugs through the mail from out of state.
Clayton claims the prosecution will provide evidence that the teen’s mother filled out an online questionnaire to order the pills from Carpenter’s company, Nightingale Medical. The mother paid $150 for the medication with her credit card and received it in the mail. Clayton alleges the teen’s mother gave her daughter an ultimatum to take the medication or move out of her house.
Choice of Law in an Era of Abortion Conflict
When a citizen of an anti-abortion state travels to another state to receive the procedure, which state’s law should apply?
By Roderick M. Hills Jr. Published: February 3, 2025
In October, then-candidate Donald Trump declared that the regulation of abortion was “up to the states to decide based on the will of their voters.” This federalism-oriented stance seemed to suggest that Trump might stand by his promise to leave regulating abortion “up to the states.”
But which states get to regulate which abortions?
Last week, a Louisiana grand jury indicted a New York doctor for allegedly mailing abortion-facilitating pills to a Louisiana teenager. In December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit seeking a $100,000 fine against the same doctor for mailing pills to a Texas woman. Texas also enacted S.B. 8, which creates a private cause of action allowing anyone to seek a $10,000 bounty from Texans the plaintiff believes are involved in abortion in Texas — or elsewhere. Texas women, therefore, could be liable to S.B. 8 “bounty hunters” for abortions they obtain in New York. New York has responded by enacting a so-called clawback statute allowing non-residents who obtain abortions in New York to sue for damages and attorneys’ fees anyone who brings an action against them based on such extraterritorial laws.
The challenge of sorting out states’ competing civil and criminal state jurisdiction over abortion has provoked a flurry of legal scholarship on the extraterritorial effect of state abortion regulations and judgments. For notable contributions just in 2023 and 2024, see this article on extraterritorial reach of criminal laws by Darryl Brown, this article on the extra-territorial reach of S.B. 8 judgments by Lea Brilmayer, and this article on abortion and choice of law by Paul Berman, Roey Goldstein, and Sophie Leff. These articles join an older line-up of scholarship on abortion and choice of law from Brilmayer, Seth Kreimer, and Richard Fallon.
A review of this literature and the legal doctrine on the constitutional limits of states’ legislative jurisdiction reveals three main conclusions. First, doctrine construing the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause and Article IV, Section 1’s Full Faith and Credit Clause provides some basis for limiting anti-abortion states’ enforcement of their abortion regulations against abortion providers in other states. Second, the doctrine is deeply uncertain: There are precious few precedents upholding states’ prohibition of their citizens’ actions when those actions are permitted by the law of the place where the actions occur. Third, whatever the theoretical justification for such grabby state behavior, there is a pragmatic argument in favor of the U.S. Supreme Court’s constitutionally requiring a territorial choice-of-law rule that would simplify the resolution of otherwise bitterly intractable interstate conflicts.
Constitutional Doctrines Governing States’ Legislative Jurisdiction
State legislatures do not have unlimited power to regulate actions outside their territory. Allstate Insurance v. Hague and Phillips Petroleum v. Shutts, decided in 1981 and 1985 respectively, hold that a state may not apply its law to a dispute absent some “significant contact or significant aggregation of contacts” between the dispute and the regulating state “creating state interests” that “ensure that the choice of [the regulating state’s law] is not arbitrary.”
The Hague and Shutts courts derived this requirement of “significant contacts” indicative of “state interests” from the Due Process Clause and the Full Faith and Credit Clause without much explanation of the quoted terms or their relationship to constitutional text. The general idea, however, is that each state must “respect the legitimate interests of other States and avoid infringement upon their sovereignty.” States without a sufficient interest in a dispute ought not to apply their laws to that dispute. But the Supreme Court has not provided much guidance about whether and how to identify the state with the predominant interest.
An Easy Case for Extraterritorial Regulation
Measured by this loose standard, extraterritorial legislative jurisdiction is sometimes uncontroversial. As Darryl Brown explains in a recent article, longstanding legal tradition permits states to regulate extraterritorial actions in one state that are intended to have effects in another state. If I stand on the Arkansas side of the Arkansas-Texas border and shoot someone in Texas, then Texas criminal law can be uncontroversially extended to my action, despite my pulling the trigger outside Texas, because the action in Arkansas has obvious and intended effects within Texas. (Believe it or not, state courts as late as the 1890s sometimes barred such extraterritorial enforcement of criminal law, but state legislatures have mostly overruled such formalistic territorialism).
Extended to the case of abortion, the logic of such effects-based jurisdiction suggests that there is no federal constitutional prohibition on Texas’s attorney general suing a New Yorker who sends abortion-facilitating pills to a Texas recipient. Put in the maddeningly vague terms of Hague-Shutts, the “contact” of both bullets and pills with a Texan while present in Texas is likely “significant” enough to indicate that Texas has an “interest” in controlling the out-of-state action that caused the contact.
Just because Texas is constitutionally permitted to regulate out-of-state abortion providers does not mean that Texas statutes have actually done so. Texas’s regulations of abortions repeatedly define “physician” as “an individual licensed to practice medicine in this state,” words that apparently exclude extraterritorial application to New York-licensed physicians. The Texas legislature could, however, amend the statute to extend the reach of the law to providers licensed in other states without offending any constitutional limitation.
Situations in which Extraterritorial Regulation Is a Harder Sell
Suppose, however, that a Texas citizen travels from Texas to New York to receive an abortion from a New York abortion provider. Can Texas regulate either the provider or its own citizen based solely on the latter’s domicile?
Federal appeals court: Riggs-Griffin dispute will stay in state court for now
Initial state court hearing on Griffin’s demand to toss 60,000-plus votes cast in last November’s Supreme Court election is set for Friday, Feb. 7
By: Lynn Bonner - February 4, 2025
In the push and pull over whether a Republican judge’s request to throw out more than 60,000 votes in his election contest should be considered in state or federal court, a panel of federal judges said Tuesday that the case will stay in state court for now.
However, the three-judge panel on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said the federal court will have jurisdiction over federal issues raised by the state Board of Elections.
Republican Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin wants to throw out more than 60,000 votes cast in last fall’s election for a state Supreme Court seat. He trails Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes and believes that eliminating votes his campaign says were illegally cast will push him to victory.
The state Board of Elections voted last year to dismiss his protests.
Griffin wanted the case heard in state court. His legal briefs say the issues involve state law. Republicans hold a majority on the state Court of Appeals and have a 5-2 majority on the state Supreme Court, though Riggs has recused herself from matters related to the case.
Riggs and the state Board of Elections wanted the case heard in federal court. The elections board said the issues involve federal laws such as the Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act.
Tuesday’s appeals court order may end up helping Riggs, said Carl Tobias, professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.
“It sort of gives Riggs two bites at the apple,” Tobias said in an interview.
“It may be the state system is satisfactory for Riggs,” he said. “If it’s not, she has available to her, perhaps, a federal remedy.”
When Griffin filed his lawsuit in state court, the state elections board had it transferred to federal court. A federal district judge then sent it back to state court. The elections board and Riggs appealed in an effort to get back to federal court. It was that appeal the Fourth Circuit panel heard on Jan. 27.
Griffin had asked the state Supreme Court to order the state Board of Elections to throw out ballots without having lower courts consider the case.
About two weeks ago, the state Supreme Court ordered Griffin to go through the normal appeals process, starting with Wake Superior Court. A hearing in Wake is scheduled for Friday.
Heavily amended immigration enforcement bill heads to Senate floor
Lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee stripped some of the measure’s strident elements but advanced it over a flood of concerned testimony from immigrant families.
Wyoming residents from mixed-immigration-status families fear a Torrington Republican’s deportation and detainment bill will bring racial profiling and arrests to immigrant communities.
Language in Sen. Cheri Steinmetz’s bill that ties local law enforcement to federal authorities and makes it illegal to transfer or shelter undocumented immigrants would cause irreparable harm to residents in the country both legally or illegally, Latino residents of Cheyenne told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday.
Senate File 124, “Illegal immigration-identify, report, detain and deport” would punish anyone who “attempt(s) to transport or move in the state” someone they know is in the country illegally with five years in prison or a $5,000 fine.
Cheyenne teacher Alexis Soto told senators that if Steinmetz’s bill passes, she could go to jail for taking schoolchildren she knows are undocumented on school trips. Like several people who spoke against the sweeping bill, Soto is a native-born U.S. citizen whose parents entered the country illegally, she said. Driving her undocumented family members somewhere could also land her in prison under the bill.
“Can we even go to church?” Soto asked senators, battling tears. “I just hope that you can see my side of things as a community member born and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming.”
The committee voted 5-0 to advance the bill to the Senate floor.
It will face three votes there. Senators appeared on the verge of killing the legislation at the meeting, with two committee members saying the draft was too riddled with legal and practical problems to advance.
In Nashville, CDFIs Are Helping Convert Motels Into Affordable Housing
A pair of mixed-income adaptive reuse projects are showing the way forward for housing conversions in the city.
Christopher C. Williams January 30, 2025
Nashville may be known for the Grand Ole Opry, for its iconic honky-tonks and for being the stomping grounds of a young Taylor Swift. But lately, it’s also attracting national attention for its growing shortage of affordable housing, high vacancy rates and soaring housing prices that are sparking alarming levels of homelessness and pricing out many residents.
Now, a Massachusetts-based community development financial institution and a local developer are working together to show that adaptive reuse of dilapidated or forgotten buildings — factories, warehouses, schools, hotels and more — could be the key to tackling Music City’s affordable housing shortage.
The previous year saw two motel-to-housing projects open in North Nashville, a developing community of Black and lower-middle class residents near downtown, marking the completion of Nashville’s first mixed-income pilot projects.
The first is The Wilder, a former Super 8 motel that’s now a refurbished three-story building with 97 studios that restricts 40% of its units for tenants earning at or below 75% of the area median income. Across the street sits its sister structure, the Perch at the Wilder. Once a King’s Inn Motel, it’s now a gleaming 55-unit workforce housing with 20% of its units set aside for tenants at or below 50% of AMI.
“Equitable housing isn’t an issue for tomorrow’s Nashville; it’s an issue right now,” says Clay Adkisson, a partner of Wilder Development, the developer of the projects. “The speed of adaptive reuse — as compared to traditional ground-up construction — is the only way we can compete against market forces, development timelines, and interest rates to keep affordable products coming online at a time when they are most urgently needed.”
The Wilder-Perch conversions might be relatively small in size, but Adkisson, CDFI advocates and local government and community supporters see these buildings doing as expected: revitalizing the community, creating jobs and enhancing safety as much as providing a roof over peoples’ heads.
These two mixed-income projects have won commitments from all the major stakeholders: BlueHub Capital, the CDFI that provided initial construction loans for both buildings; developer Wilder Development; and city officials. They could serve as a template for other adaptive reuse projects in Nashville and beyond.
Meet the lender
Several economic and societal trends are creating momentum for adaptive reuse. Online shopping is creating ghost strip malls and work-from-home has emptied office buildings from Seattle to Washington, D.C. Rehabbing old structures is cheaper than building new ones; artificial intelligence is speeding the development process; and more cities, including Nashville, are easing zoning restrictions and extending tax credits to curb their housing crises.
After overcoming zoning constraints, the search for funding is the biggest obstacle to adaptive reuse initiatives. That’s where CDFIs such as BlueHub come in. CDFIs aim to bridge the financial gap between developer equity and traditional banks, which typically shy away from these projects due to size, regulations and risks.
BlueHub, based in Roxbury, Massachusetts, has invested more than $3 billion in projects nationwide and has built, preserved or enhanced more than 33,900 units of affordable housing since the mid-80s. Like many other CDFIs, Bluehub sees providing safe affordable housing in mostly poor, urban and rural communities of color as a “cornerstone of its mission” to bridge the widening racial wealth gap.
The D.C. Council expels Trayon White over bribery charges
But he can still run to reclaim his seat in a special election that will take place in the next few months.
Martin Austermuhle
Feb 4, 2025
Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White may have wanted to be remembered for something, but probably not for being the first lawmaker ever expelled from the D.C. Council.
But that’s what happened on Tuesday afternoon when White’s colleagues unanimously voted to expel him following last year’s arrest and federal indictment on bribery charges. The vote was the result of an internal council investigation that said there was “substantial evidence” that the three-term councilmember did what federal prosecutors have accused him of: accepting $35,000 in bribes in exchange for helping a D.C. businessman keep and expand his contracts with the city.
White’s now-former colleagues were unpersuaded by his attorney’s arguments last week that the council’s investigation was unfair and potentially unlawful, nor did they give much credence to a last-minute lawsuit from some of White’s constituents arguing that his expulsion would unconstitutionally deny them representation on the council — especially since he was just re-elected last November. (A judge dismissed the lawsuit on Tuesday.)
“Councilmember Trayon White has been my colleague, I would dare say my friend, for over a decade. He’s been to my home, met my wife and kids … so this vote is not easy. I know how hard he has worked to represent the people of Ward 8,” said At-Large Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie.
“While this process is personally difficult … today’s action is fairly straightforward. It is not a tough question. What is right is right, what is wrong is wrong. We must follow the evidence and the facts, and this council has a responsibility to the residents of the District and Ward 8 to uphold our ethical standards of integrity and conduct,” he added.
“Trust is precious, trust is critical for an elected government, and we must act,” opined D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson.
Georgia House speaker calls for database to track troubled students, anonymous app to report threats
By: Stanley Dunlap - February 4, 2025
House Speaker Jon Burns announced Monday legislation to enhance school safety following last year’s deadly school shooting in Barrow County.
Burns, a Newington Republican, stated that House leaders would introduce legislation Tuesday calling for a statewide database to track student mental health histories, development of an app for anonymously reporting threats to schools and a requirement for school districts to create safety management plans.
The school safety proposal also includes an additional $50 million in one-time school safety grants, which would give each public school in the state $68,000 for safety upgrades.
The legislation would also offer tax incentives for the purchase of firearm safes and other safety equipment and strengthen criminal penalties for students and other individuals who target schools with terroristic threats.
Burns stressed the seriousness of copycat threats that often follow tragedies like the Apalachee High School mass shooting on Sept. 4 that killed two students and two teachers and injured several others.
The Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency would help develop the system tracking student mental health history and reported threats that would be investigated by school personnel, mental health professionals and law enforcement agencies to determine the seriousness. Burns said the plan would also create mandatory suspensions of students from school while the extent of their threats are investigated.
School security and student resource officers have remained in the national spotlight since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that resulted in the deaths of 20 children and six adult staff members.
Since then, there have been several other deadly school shootings across the country, including last year’s Barrow County incident that resulted in the arrest of 14-year-old Apalachee High School student Colt Gray who faces multiple homicide charges for the shooting.
Burns said the school safety plan is intended to ensure the safety of young people, teachers and other school staff.
“That’s why the House is taking the following measures to ensure a tragedy like what we witnessed in Apalachee never happens again in this state,” he said. “We know that failure to transfer and share information regarding the student who is accused of these horrific acts played a role in the deaths that unfolded that day. Our school safety plan will mandate participation in a statewide student information sharing and tracking database that will allow for timely transfer of relevant student data between school systems, law enforcement and mental health care professionals.”
A school district’s plan for rising rent and stagnant salaries: Teacher housing
In an effort to retain its educators in North Carolina’s most expensive city, Charlotte schools are planning on building housing and offering below market-rate rentals.
Reporting Fellow
Alexis Wray is a 2024-2025 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper reporting fellow. Applications for the next cohort are now open. Apply today!
In the most expensive city in North Carolina, affordable housing can be hard to find — and teachers are especially hard hit. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) is responding with a three-part plan to ensure district educators can make themselves at home.
The district launched the “At Home in CMS” initiative to retain and gain more teachers as it faced nearly 300 vacancies in 2024 throughout district schools. The program will offer apartments at below-rate rent, homeownership opportunities for teachers and eventually build its own housing development. CMS joins other school systems around the country grappling with rising housing costs and stagnant educator salaries.
“By investing in housing for our teachers, we’re also investing in the future success of our students,” said CMS Superintendent Crystal Hill during the program launch event.
CMS first discovered housing affordability was an issue for its educators through a district-wide survey in which half of the respondents reported spending more than 50 percent of their monthly income on their mortgage and utilities, with 61 percent of teachers saying housing may impact whether they continue to work with CMS.
Educators’ starting pay in Charlotte is $48,637 and the average rent is $1,950 a month. The average sale price of a home in Mecklenburg County is close to $577,000, according to Canopy Realtor Association. CMS teachers are strapped.
“We are working to design and support the full teacher life cycle, from our first touchpoint during recruitment through their full careers and all points — hiring, onboarding, beginning years, ongoing development, and recognition — in between,” said Jessica Saunders, media relations specialist for CMS. “At Home in CMS is crucial in helping us to recruit and retain educators, decreasing our vacancy rate and allowing our schools and our district to shift our focus on supporting the excellent ones we have here in CMS.”
NCDOT: Permanent road and bridge repairs from Helene damage will take years to complete
Agency estimates Buncombe County work will cost $200 million
by JOHN BOYLE February 5, 2025
While nearly all the Helene-damaged bridges in Buncombe County have been temporarily repaired, along with hundreds of roadbed washouts, permanent repairs on many of these sites may take years, cost millions of dollars and cause inconveniences in some cases for drivers.
The tropical storm, which hit the area Sept. 27, washed out 44 bridges in the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s seven-county Division 13, which includes Buncombe. By Jan. 28, the NCDOT and its contractors had 39 back in service.
“Most of them are temporary, one-lane structures,” said Jody Lawrence, assistant division construction engineer with the NCDOT, noting they were designed to foster quicker access to communities.
Chris Deyton, deputy division engineer with the NCDOT, said permanent bridge replacements are built for a 100-year lifespan and to withstand a 100-year storm event, “whereas these (temporary bridges) aren’t designed to that (standard).
“They can go in quicker, but they’re not designed to be there forever — they’re designed to be there for a few years till we can get the permanent one in,” Deyton said.
A spreadsheet the NCDOT provided of road damage sites in Division 13 shows 4,270 items. Of those, 428 involve bridge work or replacement. In Buncombe County, the spreadsheet shows 1,113 damage sites on tap, including 149 bridges.
“We have a lot more bridges in this part of the state than the rest of the state because of all the little streams and creeks that meander around through it,” Deyton said.
The NCDOT estimates Helene-related road repairs statewide will total about $5 billion, which includes $3.3 billion in Division 13 — about $200 million of that in Buncombe County.
Contracts coming soon for bridge work
Permanent work will start soon.
Lawrence said the DOT is in the process of awarding contracts, and all should be granted by the end of February or the middle of March. Many are for smaller, two-lane bridges.
“A lot of these that were washed out were single-span, short bridges, so they can be built in 90 to 120 days,” Lawrence said. “That will be the time frame (on construction).”
Larger, multispan bridges will take 18-24 months to build, Lawrence said.
“But that’s construction,” Deyton said. “The design, that will take a year or so up to that, a lot of times.”
Elon Musk’s gutting of USAID rips through Baltimore humanitarian groups
Meredith Cohn and Jasmine Vaughn-Hall. 2/5/2025
National security experts say the country will be less safe
The work of two Baltimore organizations charged with improving the health of millions of people around the world screeched to a halt this week when they lost their main funding source, the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Johns Hopkins University-affiliated Jhpiego and Center for Communication Programs have received stop-work orders, affecting at least 4,400 employees worldwide and programs that treat people with cancer and HIV, train local doctors and ensure the health of newborn babies in poor nations.
Seeming to cement the pause, virtually the entire staff of USAID was told Tuesday night by the Trump administration’s main cost-cutter, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, that they would be off the job by Friday and workers abroad would be brought home.
“It’s frightening,” said a worker at Jhpiego, who did not want to be named. The worker said staff was still reporting to work and were told they’d be paid at least until the end of February.
Armed federal agents conduct immigration raids at Denver, Aurora apartment complexes
The DEA posted a video of agents raiding an apartment with a smoke grenade and an unknown number of residents were boarded onto a bus
Jennifer Brown and Olivia Prentzel on Feb 5, 2025
Federal agents raided apartment buildings in Aurora and Denver on Wednesday morning, pounding on doors and taking an unknown number of immigrants into custody on a bus with bars on the windows.
At Cedar Run Apartments in Aurora, residents said more than 100 armed federal agents with 30-40 vehicles and tanks surrounded the complex shortly after 4 a.m. They pounded on doors, used smoke grenades and pushed doors open, residents said. Residents watched, taking videos and photos, as people were boarded onto a bus with their hands cuffed behind their backs.
Deicy Aldana was in bed when agents pounded on her door around 6 a.m., she said. When her father-in-law opened it a crack, agents pushed it open and asked what country they were from. When Aldana’s husband and his father answered that they were from Venezuela, they were taken away in plastic handcuffs, said Aldana, who is Colombian.
Both men have work permits and have applied for asylum to stay in the United States, she said. Neither are connected to any gang, she said. Her husband has been fixing air conditioners and her father-in-law works at a recycling facility, Aldana said. “They said that if all their papers are in order, they would be released in three to five hours,” Aldana said in Spanish as she stood on an apartment balcony. “They just took them without asking if they had documents.”
Ronald Sanchez, who is from Venezuela and arrived in Colorado just over a year ago, said he was awakened before dawn to his phone buzzing. People in the complex were messaging each other, saying, “Federal agents are here! Do not open your doors!”
“We can’t sit back and wait.” Altadena neighbors rush to support fire victims
With limited government resources in sight, community and mutual aid groups step up.
by Phoenix Tso 01/27/2025
The Arco at Woodbury and Fair Oaks Avenue didn’t have power on Jan 12th.
But hundreds of people showed up there anyway — not to fill up on gas, but to pick up, drop off, and sort through heaps of donated water, clothes and other necessities.
They ate arepas from the World Central Kitchen truck stationed in one corner. The Lady Lowrider Car Club parked their cars — including a shiny gray convertible and purple lowrider at the gas pumps and set up a canopy, where the members hung out “to help lift some spirits.”
The teeming corner of supportive neighbors and friends stood in stark contrast to the rest of the neighborhood. North of the gas station, homes were taped off —some still standing, some just a pile of debris, ash and chimneys. The streets over there were also blocked off, with police officers and National Guard troops standing guard at the entrances.
Pasadena resident Jorge Trujillo was greeting people and fielding donation offers in a relaxed but deliberate manner. He helped organize the Arco distribution site after spending the first few days of the Eaton Fire trying to save his friends’ homes. After more and more people learned about the distribution by word of mouth, donations poured in — from water to clothing to toilet paper and food, “a little bit of everything.”
“It’s a lot of neighbors, family, friends, and a whole bunch of strangers [who] are my friends now because they came to help,” Trujillo said a few days later when LA Public Press returned to the Arco.
But Trujillo said he hasn’t seen a lot of help from government agencies or officials. “I haven’t seen one government car out here giving food,” he said. Later, he added, “ They should be out here. We shouldn’t have to be out here doing this. Like what do we pay taxes for?”
Community members and mutual aid efforts are largely driving the on-the-ground relief efforts due to the Eaton Fire, which has damaged or destroyed more than 10,000 structures and killed at least 17 people.
Some efforts have been informal. Others were spearheaded by established organizations. But all of them share a common thread: deep ties to a community and stepping in to help in the face of what residents have characterized as an inadequate government effort.
Their response can be characterized as mutual aid, where people provide a need for each other, filling in the gaps of the official response. Different from charity work, mutual aid is often carried out by people who are in the same communities as those affected and who are often affected themselves. Mutual aid is also political, often acting as a foundation for people to learn about and organize for systemic change.
For Alabamians with mental illness, incarceration can be life-threatening
By: Ralph Chapoco - February 3, 2025
The worst moment for Stacey Fuller came at a Jefferson County jail prior to a scheduled transfer to a state prison.
“It was way overcrowded, the conditions were bad, the anger was building and the depression,” said Fuller, who was being held on a drug-related charge. “I started having really toxic thoughts about hurting other people.”
She filed a complaint and a request for mental health services to address her anguish.
A guard learned of the complaint and entered the cell block screaming, she said.
“She wanted to know who put this in and why, just screaming, ‘Who is the dumb hoe who put this in?’”
The guard pulled Fuller aside for a conversation.
“I stood up and walked down those steps,” Fuller said. “I think that was probably the worst moment. She took me down the hall and told me we don’t complain about stuff, that by putting in a request, they would deal with it when they dealt with it.”
Attorneys who litigate cases that involve people who deal with mental illness or a mental health crisis, along with advocates seeking to improve treatment and conditions for those with mental illness state that people suffering from mental illness who are incarcerated in Alabama’s jails are placed into harsh environments that can exacerbate their suffering and, in the worst cases, can result in their death.
According to experts interviewed, comparing the treatment of people dealing with mental health conditions and substance use disorders — in which people cannot control their use of legal or illegal drugs, alcohol or medications — across the nation is difficult because there is no standard for care, with local corrections officials left to decide the treatment options and protocols when they are in custody.
The number of people incarcerated with a mental illness in Alabama and around the country, as well as the types of mental illnesses those people have, is difficult to determine, because the data collection is not robust.
A 2009 study estimated that about 14.5% of the male population in jail nationwide and 31% of the female population had a serious mental health condition, from major depressive disorder to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
States have latitude in establishing the system to assist people in crisis in a carceral setting. Alabama leaves it up to the individual counties, particularly sheriffs’ departments, to decide on treatments, and more importantly, how much care people should receive.
But incarceration presents serious issues for people going through a mental health emergency.
“Prisons and jails are not built, just generally speaking, are not built to be places that address, effectively, a person’s mental health concerns,” said Latasha L. McCrary, a staff attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Health Department cuts clinical services at some county clinics following insufficient funding from Legislature
by Gwen Dilworth February 5, 2025
After the Legislature failed to give the state health department the funding it needed to fully staff county health departments, some no longer offer clinical services and the agency may close others.
County health departments now offer one of three levels of care as a part of a plan to ensure their sustainability in the face of limited and unpredictable funding.
Eight county health departments no longer offer the clinical services they have traditionally provided, like immunizations, preventive screening and reproductive health services. Instead, they serve as a connection point to other health departments with higher levels of care.
The reorganization is the county health departments’ “pathway for survival,” State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney told Mississippi Today.
Previously, clinicians rotated between county health departments, he said. The new system establishes consistent levels of care.
“That didn’t work,” he said. “But this is working.”
Health departments are now classified into three levels:
- Level 3 clinics, or “super clinics,” have a doctor or nurse practitioner on staff. They offer a full range of services, including family planning, immunizations, disease screenings and programming for mothers and children.
- Level 2 clinics have a nurse on staff and offer limited family planning services, immunization, disease screenings, programming for mothers and children and telehealth appointments.
- Level 1 clinics do not have a clinician on staff, and offer referrals, record services, federal programming for women and children and help people schedule rides to higher level clinics.
Some clinics offer Level 2 services on some days of the week and Level 3 services on others.
How the Money Stopped at One Environmental Nonprofit, Causing Hardship and Alarm
The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League always worked hard to be a good steward of public funds. But that didn’t seem to matter when its grant “disappeared.”
By Lisa Sorg February 6, 2025
Since late November, when the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, began tapping into a $365,000 grant as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, payroll had gone smoothly.
Each month, BREDL’s accountant would send the Environmental Protection Agency timesheets, and she would draw down the funds to pay the nonprofit group’s two project managers, as well as mileage and operational expenses related to an ambitious air monitoring project in marginalized communities.
Until Monday.
“She tried more than once, and it was as if the grant disappeared,” said Therese Vick, BREDL’s research director, who works in North Carolina.
“No accounts found matching that criteria,” read the screenshots reviewed by Inside Climate News.
Without the money, BREDL’s project was in limbo. The group has also spent thousands of dollars of its own money on the project.
“This is a blow,” Vick said. “We have worked really hard to be accountable for this grant.”
A hallmark of the Biden administration, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. It allocated $369 billion in federal funding for environmental projects, renewable energy and climate change mitigation. Nearly $20 billion went to North Carolina, passed through largely by the EPA.
But since President Donald Trump took office Jan. 20, there has been widespread confusion over the status of IRA money for projects both large—like those administered by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality—and small, like BREDL’s.
President Trump issued an executive order freezing all money authorized by the IRA and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Even after a federal judge blocked the order and forced the president to rescind it, the administration continued to issue conflicting statements about the availability of the funds.
An EPA spokesperson did not respond to direct questions about the IRA funding and instead provided a statement: “Neither EPA nor the Department of Justice can provide further information on pending litigation.”
The U.S. Department of Treasury’s site devoted to the IRA was down Feb. 5, with the message “Page Not Located.”
But a letter dated Feb. 4 from EPA acting Chief Financial Officer Gregg Tremi said the “agency’s financial system will now enable the obligation of financial assistance”—funds can be withdrawn—for IRA programs, Superfund, Brownfields and state and tribal assistance grants. “The disbursement of funds connected to this notice will continue.”
Planting a flag in the Lower 9 ‘wilderness’
Every year on August 29 – the day that Katrina hit, in 2005 – Green’s family gathers by the place where his mom’s house once stood, in shirts that read “Roof Riders.” Then they walk the route taken by the floating house, ending at the oak tree where it stopped.
by Katy Reckdahl February 1, 2025
This story is one of five stories in The Lens’ Embracing Katrina Narratives project.
For several years after the storm, Robert Green Sr., now 69, lived in a FEMA trailer next to a big American flag, two grave markers, and a sign that read, “Roots Run Deep Here.”
Though family often stopped through, he was largely alone on his block. He served as a neighborhood pioneer, handing neighbors cell-phone numbers he’d gleaned from storm-recovery workers and guiding countless reporters through the catastrophically damaged area.
He called his block “the wilderness.” There were no lights at night outside of his trailer. Nearby yards were heaped with wreckage and emptiness.
Some people were critical of the tour buses that began giving “disaster tours” through the city several months after the storm. Not Green. Buses and vans likely started driving down his stretch of Tennessee Street in January 2006, he says. About a week earlier, he had found his mother’s body on a roof down the street. Sometimes, the 2006 tour groups would stop and he would tell his story, his pain palpable. “I want people to know what happened,” he’d tell them.
He feels the same way about this week’s Super Bowl visitors: people have to know the truth. “You can’t ride through the 9th Ward even today and not see the effects of what Katrina did. To deny that is to turn your back on all the families who did not come back, the families who struggled to return.”
In 2009, Green moved into one of the Brad Pitt-planned Make It Right homes. When Pitt and his wife Angelina Jolie were in town, they would stop to see him and other early homeowners. Now, most of the Make It Right structures, including his, are suffering from the use of faulty materials and inexact construction. He posted a sign out front that reads, “Fix My House.”
The project was flawed, but it still had a positive overall influence, he believes. “No question about it,” he said. To him, the Make It Right project had finally attracted a critical mass of people back to the wilderness. And those people attracted more people to return to neighboring blocks, repopulating this part of the Lower 9. It was the catalyst they all needed, he said.
Now, every afternoon, multiple yellow school buses pass his house. “We have families here. Children,” he said. “A sign of progress.”
Successful rural county health program could go statewide—if politics don’t get in the way
The Healthy Opportunities Pilot has helped thousands of low-income NC residents by addressing nonmedical health needs, but its future depends on state lawmakers and a shifting federal landscape.
by Jaymie Baxley February 6, 2025
In 2022, North Carolina launched an experimental initiative to address the nonmedical health needs of low-income residents by using Medicaid dollars.
This first-in-the-nation effort, known as the Healthy Opportunities Pilot, has provided assistance to nearly 30,000 people across three largely rural regions of the state. Beneficiaries get deliveries of food, rides to doctor’s appointments and other services that are designed to combat the various social, economic and geographic issues that contribute to health disparities.
Only 33 of the state’s 100 counties are included in the pilot, but more communities could be covered if lawmakers vote to expand it.
The $650 million pilot was created through a waiver, issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, that allowed the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services to use federal Medicaid funds — usually earmarked for medical expenses — to address needs like food, transportation and housing. During the final weeks of the Biden administration, CMS approved a waiver extension that gives the department the option of taking the program statewide.
Kody Kinsley, the former NCDHHS secretary who spearheaded the program’s rollout, said expanding the initiative will require the blessing of the N.C. General Assembly, which must agree to match whatever funding is ultimately provided by the federal government.
Still, he believes the results will justify the investment. Early research shows the state is spending about $85 less in medical costs per month for each person participating in the pilot. Participation in the program has also been “associated with decreased emergency department utilization,” according to a report from the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina.
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