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    ‘You had to fend for yourself’: Hurricane Katrina haunts New Orleans as Trump guts disaster aid

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    View image in fullscreenDarren McKinney grew up in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward. When Hurricane Katrina struck 20 years ago this week, he watched his neighborhood wash away. From his second-floor apartment, he saw flood waters rise up to his window.“I had no food at all, no water, no electricity,” he recounted one rainy day this month, while taking a break from his job leading home restoration in the neighborhood as field operations director of the non-profit lowernine.org.After being trapped inside for four days, city officials rescued McKinney in a boat and dropped him off on a nearby bridge. He was told a military truck would bring him to an emergency shelter in the city’s Superdome, but a vehicle never arrived because the shelter reached capacity. He was forced to walk to an evacuation point downtown.“You had to fend for yourself,” he said. “There just wasn’t enough shelter, wasn’t enough support.”Friends helped McKinney evacuate to Houston, Texas. Months later, when he returned to the city, he found his home in “real bad condition”. He eventually settled into a trailer provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).During his stay in the temporary home, he began to hear news reports that some Fema trailers were found to have high levels of the harmful chemical formaldehyde. With nowhere else to stay, he tried to ignore those reports.“What could you do?” he asked.The federal response to Katrina, particularly by Fema, came under intense scrutiny after the hurricane, which killed at least 1,833 people. In New Orleans, residents spray-painted curses at Fema on their boarded-up homes and wore T-shirts around the city that bore the slogan: “FEMA – Federal Employees Missing in Action.”Some on the right have called to shrink the agency or even abolish it. In recent months, the Trump administration has picked up on those calls, defunding key Fema programs, laying off hundreds of staffers, and threatening to dismantle the agency completely. But McKinney believes the administration’s policies will leave New Orleans worse prepared for future hurricanes.“You don’t know when you’re gonna have another disaster like that,” he said. “For people that don’t have money, without Fema, how you going to help them out?”In recent weeks, Donald Trump has walked back promises to abolish Fema. But disaster management experts fear the changes he has made will still leave the US just as underprepared to take on a hurricane like Katrina as it was in 2005.“It has been so demoralizing to realize how closely aligned we have become again to what Fema looked like pre-Katrina, and how quickly we’ve backslid on the progress of the last 20 years,” said Samantha Montano, a disaster response expert at Massachusetts Maritime Academy and author of the book Disasterology.‘State-led, federally supported’Since re-entering the White House in January, Trump has repeatedly called for states to bear more responsibility for disasters, signing a March executive order saying municipalities should “play a more active and significant role” in national resilience and preparedness.“If they can’t handle it, they shouldn’t be governor,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in June, as he spoke about a plan to “wean” states off Fema assistance.But states have always led disaster response, said Craig Fugate, who directed Fema between 2009 and 2017.“The current administration says states should lead, we should support, [but] that’s what it’s always been,” he said. “The federal government, at the direction of the president, through Fema, supports the governor.”Cuts at Fema could have particularly negative implications for poor, climate-vulnerable states like Louisiana, which received the most direct assistance from Fema between January 2015 and April 2024, according to data collected for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Disaster Dollar Database.“For states that are oftentimes underresourced, Fema gives the support that is needed to navigate disasters, both in the form of financial assistance and providing technical expertise,” said Reggie Ferreira, who directs the disaster resilience leadership academy at Tulane University in New Orleans.But even wealthier states will probably struggle to weather disasters without the agency’s support, said Montano.“The importance of Fema really just can’t be overstated. They’re the last line of defense that we really have in moments of crisis,” she said. “We know that our state and local capacity to respond to disasters in most parts of the country is relatively limited. And we know that our needs related to disasters are increasing in the context of climate change.”‘Brain drain’After Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005, the support Fema was able to provide had dwindled due to policies enacted by former president George W Bush.“When Katrina happened, it’s really important to remember that Fema had just gone through a shock of their own,” said Montano. “Going into Katrina, Fema was deeply unprepared as an agency, which is a huge reason for the failure in the response.”In the wake of the 2001 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched a government-wide reorganization to focus on the threat of terrorism, cutting disaster programs and, in 2003, stripping Fema of its independent, cabinet-level status. The agency was then absorbed into the newly created Department of Homeland Security.“The attention was only on terrorism at the expense of anything else,” said Fugate.The shifts at Fema led to a mass exodus of staff. Some – including senior leadership – were relieved of their duties and reassigned to terrorism-related posts, while others who were reportedly frustrated with the restructure resigned.That “brain drain” was a key reason that Fema was not able to provide an adequate response to Katrina, said Montano.Fugate said what is happening at the agency today was “very similar” to that moment. Under Trump, an estimated one-third of Fema’s workforce has been eliminated due to layoffs, firings and voluntary buyouts.In recent weeks, the Trump administration has also reportedly sent some remaining Fema staff to help speed the hiring of immigration enforcement agents. Lt Gen Russel Honoré, who led the military response to Hurricane Katrina, had choice words about the decision. “That adds insult to injury,” he said. “I really think these fucking people are stuck on stupid.”The staffing cuts threaten the relationships between state and federal officials, said Stephen Murphy, former planning section chief for New Orleans’s homeland security and emergency preparedness office. That could make disaster response less efficient.“When you have a strong team, a network, everybody has built trust in one another because they’ve been out there together, they’ve bled for one another,” said Murphy, who now leads Tulane University’s disaster management program. “When you disrupt that, you’re playing with fire.”View image in fullscreenThe federal changes are difficult to witness, said Murphy, who said Katrina inspired his career in disaster response. When it struck, he had moved to New Orleans only six weeks earlier to pursue a graduate degree in bioterrorism. Classes had not even started when, as Katrina was gaining strength over the Gulf of Mexico, he decided to evacuate his new home.“As I was pulling out of my neighborhood, some new friends that I’d met in town said: ‘Hey, where are you going? We’re going to have a party,’” he remembered from his New Orleans office. “I had my kayak in my truck, and I asked: ‘OK, you want me to leave this for you?’ I didn’t realize how terrible a joke that would be.”In its aftermath, Murphy decided to devote his life to better managing disasters like Katrina, as did many others in the field.“There’s been tremendous improvements and growth since then,” said Murphy. “To dismantle a lot of what has been done does feel like a little bit of a gut punch.”Cutting funding, undercutting progressAfter Katrina, Fema also increased funding for disaster relief and mitigation. But under Trump, billions of those dollars have dried up.“A lot of the federal grants and money that helped fortify some of the most vulnerable areas, including New Orleans, are getting clawed back,” said Murphy. “You can’t just turn the spigot off and expect the system to still work.”View image in fullscreenSome of the Trump administration’s actions at Fema directly violate policies enacted by lawmakers to prevent future botched disaster responses, said Honoré. That includes the president’s January appointment of a new administrator for the agency.The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, which Congress passed in 2006, requires all Fema administrators to have experience in disaster management. The provision was inspired by Bush’s Fema administrator, Michael Brown, who was critiqued for his limited background in the field.In the 19 years since the bill’s passage, only “seasoned emergency managers” have succeeded Brown, said Honoré. But that all changed when Trump picked David Richardson – who appears to have no disaster management experience – for the post, he said.Before leading Fema, Richardson oversaw a Department of Homeland Security program focused on weapons of mass destruction. In a June briefing, Richardson told personnel he was unaware that the US had a hurricane season, which the White House later said was a “joke”.The 2006 policy also empowered Fema to act with greater flexibility and clearer authority in emergency management, and designated its administrator as a principal presidential adviser. Trump does not appear to be following those provisions, Honoré said.As deadly floods overwhelmed Texas last month, Fema officials told CNN they were not able to pre-position search and rescue crews in the region because Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, insisted upon personally approving all agency contracts and grants over $100,000 before funds were disbursed.“Genius,” Honoré said sarcastically.This week, Fema employees wrote to Congress warning that the Trump administration’s changes at the agency could lead to another “catastrophe” on the scale of Hurricane Katrina. “The agency’s current trajectory reflects a clear departure from the intent” of the 2006 legislation, they wrote.View image in fullscreenDaniel Llargués, Fema’s acting press secretary, dismissed the criticisms voiced in the letter telling the New York Times the Trump administration “is committed to ensuring Fema delivers for the American people” and to cutting “red tape, inefficiency and outdated processes” in the agency. Fema did not respond to questions from the Guardian for this article.Equity threatenedIn the absence of federal support after Katrina, many advocacy groups worked to fill the gaps, particularly in the low-income communities of color that found it disproportionately difficult to rebuild.Even those non-governmental efforts have been undermined by Trump’s policies, said McKinney, the field operations director of lowernine.org.The organization has for years hosted international volunteers, but fewer want to travel to the US amid Trump’s immigration crackdown, he said.In May, the president also gutted AmeriCorps, leaving lowernine.org with fewer hands to help with their home construction efforts.“They cut the AmeriCorps funding [one] afternoon in the middle of a workday,” said Laura Paul, executive director of lowernine.org. “Our team had just taken a wall down on someone’s house that they were living in, and they just put their tools down and walked off site.”View image in fullscreenTrump has also ended grants to some environmental justice groups, including in New Orleans, further threatening efforts to promote equitable disaster recovery, while gutting Biden-era equity-focused government initiatives, including within Fema.“Fema, obviously, was not perfect in any way after Katrina,” said Montano. “But a lot of the progress on equity is just gone.”‘More support, more help’The scrutiny federal disaster response has received since Katrina is warranted, but Trump has moved in the wrong direction, said Betina James, a resident of New Orleans’s Hollygrove neighborhood.View image in fullscreen“We want more support, more help, not for them to take all that help away,” she said.From a senior citizens community meeting at the Hollygrove-Dixon Neighborhood Association’s Life Transformation Community Center this month, James recounted her experience after Katrina destroyed her house: Fema denied her request for a temporary shelter for two months, and when they finally approved it, the agency provided her with a trailer that had “no floor in the bedroom”.“It was just covered with carpet with nothing under it, so if you stepped on it, you’d go straight through to the ground,” she said.Officials provided a replacement, but living in it made her feel nauseated with burning eyes and itchy skin. She believes it was contaminated.At the senior citizens meeting, a dozen other residents chimed in with their harrowing Katrina experiences: stepping over human corpses in the streets and being left without shelter and financial aid. Some said they had even failed to receive adequate assistance during more recent disasters such as 2021’s Hurricane Ida.View image in fullscreenBut those experiences should push officials to improve Fema, not gut it, said Terry Caesar, another senior attending the meeting.“It used to be when things broke, we took it to the shop to fix it,” he said. “You’re not supposed to throw it out.” More

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    New Orleans mayor indicted for corruption over alleged bodyguard romance

    The New Orleans mayor, LaToya Cantrell, was indicted by a federal grand jury Friday on corruption charges involving a purported romance with her former bodyguard.Cantrell, 53, thus became the first New Orleans mayor in the city’s 307-year history to be charged by the US government with crimes while still in office.The indictment against Cantrell came after she drew scrutiny for an alleged affair with a now retired New Orleans police officer who had served as her bodyguard. Cantrell and the bodyguard, Jeffrey Vappie, allegedly plotted to foster their personal and romantic relationship while he was clocked in at work and being paid to provide her with protection.As Guardian reporting partner WWL Louisiana reported, Cantrell also allegedly arranged for Vappie to accompany her on at least 14 out-of-state trips, including to Scotland and the United Arab Emirates, claiming concerns about her safety that required protection. The trips cost the New Orleans’ city government more than $70,000, not counting Cantrell’s travel expenses, the charging documents filed on Friday said.The pair were also accused of using a city-owned apartment on the edge of New Orleans’s Jackson Square, in its historic French Quarter neighborhood, to spend time together while Vappie was supposed to be on duty.Cantrell and Vappie, 52, are accused of then seeking to cover up the relationship by using an encrypted messaging program and deleting at least some of the 15,000 messages they exchanged, as well as lying to federal agents, grand jurors, colleagues and the public.When a New Orleans resident took photos of the Cantrell and Vappie dining together and drinking wine, the mayor filed a police report and temporarily obtained a restraining order, he said.Friday’s charges also allege that Vappie “attempted to persuade” New Orleans’s interim police superintendent from December 2022 to October 2023, Michelle Woodfork, to “make it right” and exonerate him as investigators circled.Cantrell then met with Woodfork – in front of Vappie – and told her she would not be offered the long-term superintendent’s post, the indictment contended.Cantrell and Vappie are facing charges of wire fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to commit both of those crimes, false statements and untrue declarations to a grand jury.Vappie had already been charged in July 2024 – shortly after he retired from the New Orleans police – with wire fraud and lying to FBI agents.The allegations against him and Cantrell called to mind the 2018 scandal that cost the Nashville mayor, Megan Barry, her job and centered on an affair with her bodyguard, Robert Forrest. Prosecutors who obtained the 2024 charges against Vappie alleged he researched that case online two years beforehand.Friday’s charges against Cantrell also come after the September 2024 indictment of New Orleans businessman Randy Farrell. Farrell was charged with exchanging gifts with the mayor so she would allegedly fire a municipal employee who was investigating Farrell’s building inspection company.Among the alleged gifts were tickets to a January 2019 New Orleans Saints football game, which was being played with a Super Bowl appearance on the line, a cellphone and lunch at an upscale Ruth’s Chris Steak House in the city.Vappie and Farrell had pleaded not guilty to the charges previously filed against them.While the Donald Trump-led US justice department obtained the indictment against Cantrell about seven months into the Republican’s second presidency, the federal investigation into the mayor began while Joe Biden – her fellow Democrat – was in his second full year in the Oval Office.The timing of Friday’s indictment coincided with the grand jurors being scheduled to wind down their work. Such panels are typically in place for six months, but this one had been extended twice since first convening in February 2024.Cantrell’s lawyer, Eddie Castaing, initially limited his media comments to confirming that a grand jury indictment had been returned against his client. He also told the Associated Press that Cantrell’s name was read aloud by a federal magistrate judge as a defendant.At a press briefing, the acting US attorney in New Orleans, Michael Simpson, accused Cantrell and Vappie of “an incredible betrayal” of the public’s trust in its own government.Cantrell, a native of Compton, California, had been a New Orleans city council member before winning election as its first-ever female mayor in November 2017.She succeeded Mitch Landrieu, who later worked for Biden’s White House as its infrastructure czar.The Cantrell administration’s first four-year term was partly marked by its guiding the city through the Covid-19 pandemic. And, in 2019, New Orleans registered a 47-year low of homicides.Cantrell was re-elected in November 2021, and her second term has been considerably turbulent.The federal investigation began with 2022 subpoenas issued regarding an image consultant she employed. Her husband – Jason, with whom she had a daughter – unexpectedly died in August 2023.And, as the AP noted, her civic profile receded as she locked herself into feuds with a hostile city council while alienating former confidantes as well as supporters. The city council responded by weakening the mayor’s power through voter-approved changes to the municipal governing charter.Cantrell and her remaining allies maintain that, as a Black woman, she has been treated differently from her male predecessors.Simpson on Friday denied that race or gender factored into the investigation against Cantrell.Cantrell was term-limited from seeking another stint as mayor and is due to leave office in January. Several candidates have signed up to run to replace her in a primary election set for October.Only one other person who has served as New Orleans mayor has been charged with federal crimes: Ray Nagin.Nagin was the New Orleans mayor when the failure of federal levees there during Hurricane Katrina on 29 August 2005 destroyed the city and caused about 1,400 deaths. He was convicted in 2014 on charges of bribery, honest services wire fraud, money laundering, filing false tax returns and conspiracy, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.The Associated Press and WWL Louisiana contributed reporting More

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    US immigration officials release Iranian woman nabbed from her home’s yard

    Federal immigration officials have released an Iranian woman whom they allowed to stay in the US without legal status for the last 47 years, until agents in tactical gear and unmarked vehicles suddenly nabbed her in front of her New Orleans home on 22 June – the day after American forces bombed Iran.A letter-writing campaign extolling decades of community service by Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian, 64, and care for her neighbors in the quiet Lakeview section of the city helped get her case in front of Steve Scalise, the Republican US House majority leader, and then top Trump administration officials, Kashanian’s neighbor and longtime friend Connie Uddo said.“We got a little over 200 letters in just a week,” Uddo said. “People were calling constantly.”She recounted how Scalise, their community’s congressperson, “was inundated with phone calls and emails and said he had to take a look”. Scalise and his staff met with Kashanian’s family, researched her case, spoke with Trump administration officials and got it to federal immigration officials.Kashanian’s American husband of 35 years, Russ Milne, and their 32-year-old daughter, Kaitlynn, are now able to pick her up from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention center in Basile, Louisiana – three hours west of New Orleans – and bring her home.Kashanian came to the US legally on a student visa in 1978, when she was just 17. She tried to stay beyond her visa by seeking asylum after the anti-American Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution seized control of her home country in 1979. But court records show she was denied asylum in 1984 and lost her last appeal in 1993.She also tried to get permanent legal residency – colloquially known as a green card – in her 20s by marrying a US citizen, but she admitted it was a sham and got divorced. A federal court ruled in 2001 that the fraudulent marriage disqualified her from ever getting legal status by getting married, no matter how legitimate. The court acknowledged her marriage to Milne was “bona fide” but ruled that she couldn’t overcome the sham one from her 20s.Still, Stephanie Hilferty, a Louisiana state House member and Republican from the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, said Kashanian’s case deserved a second look. And she worked with Kashanian’s family to gather letters about Kashanian’s character and dedication to America, hoping to get them in front of Donald Trump.Scalise also spoke with Russ and Kaitlynn Milne about Kashanian’s case. Scalise then spoke with the Trump administration, ensuring that Ice officials reviewed her file and read the hundreds of letters Hilferty had collected.Kashanian’s court records show immigration officials ordered her deportation several times since 1983. But each time, they made her departure voluntary because of what the court called her “good moral character”. And for the last two decades, a judge allowed her to stay as long as she continued to follow the law and checked in regularly.She has no criminal record and her family says she’s never missed an immigration check-in appointment. But she was never able to attain legal immigration status despite obeying the rules the government and courts imposed on her so she could stay.Scalise’s office is planning to work with Kashanian’s attorney to help her pursue asylum or permanent residency under current immigration laws, which have changed since she first pursued those avenues four decades ago.The timing of Kashanian’s detention came just after the US’s 21 June airstrikes in Iran. Those bombings coincided with the ramping-up of deportations of Iranians by the Trump administration.Kashanian’s Ice detention also came amid a nationwide crackdown by the agency, which has seen tens of thousands of immigrants detained, often by masked agents, plunging many communities into fear and outraging civil liberties advocates. More

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    Trump officials deport two-year-old US citizen and mother of one-year-old girl

    The Trump administration has deported a two-year-old US citizen “with no meaningful process”, according to a federal judge, while in a different case the authorities deported the mother of a one-year-old girl, separating them indefinitely.Lawyers in the two cases, the first in Louisiana and the second in Florida, say their clients were arrested at routine check-ins at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) offices and were given virtually no opportunity to speak with them or family members.They are the latest examples of the White House cracking down on documented immigrants, including green card holders and also even citizens who have the status by birth or naturalization. The unorthodox policy and the frequent avoidance of due process has brought about a clash with the judicial branch of the US government in a battle over the constitution.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), National Immigration Project and several other allied groups said in a statement that deporting children who are US citizens, as in these two cases, are a “shocking – although increasingly common – abuse of power”.US district judge Terry Doughty in Monroe, Louisiana, said the two-year-old girl, who was referred to as VML in court documents, was deported with her mother to Honduras.“It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a US citizen,” said the judge.He scheduled a hearing for 19 May “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process”.VML was apprehended by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) on Tuesday with her mother, Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela, and older sister when Villela attended a routine appointment at its New Orleans office, according to a filing by Trish Mack, who said the child’s father asked her to act as the child’s custodian. The girl’s father is seeking to have her returned to the United States.Immigrants of all sorts with cases in process, pending appeals or parole, have routinely been required to regularly check in with Ice officers, sometimes for many years. And so long as they had not violated any regulations or committed any crimes, they were usually sent on their way. Now, as the Trump administration pushes for the mass arrest and deportation of immigrants, check-ins have become increasingly fraught.According to Mack, when VML’s father briefly spoke to Villela, he could hear her and the children crying. According to a court document, he reminded her that a US citizen “could not be deported”.However, prosecutors said Villela, who has legal custody, told Ice that she wanted to retain custody of the girl and take her to Honduras. They said the man claiming to be VML’s father had not presented himself to Ice despite requests to do so.VML is not prohibited from entering the US, federal prosecutors said..She was among two families deported from Louisiana, also including one pregnant woman, the advocacy groups noted.The Department of Homeland Security and the justice department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.“These actions stand in direct violation of Ice’s own written and informal directives, which mandate coordination for the care of minor children with willing caretakers – regardless of immigration status – when deportations are being carried out,” the ACLU said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn Florida, meanwhile, a Cuban-born woman who is the mother of a one-year-old girl and the wife of a US citizen was detained at a scheduled check-in with Ice in Tampa, her lawyer said on Saturday.Heidy Sánchez was held without any communication and flown to Cuba two days later. She is still breastfeeding her daughter, who suffers from seizures, her lawyer, Claudia Cañizares, said.Cañizares said she tried to file paperwork with Ice to contest the deportation on Thursday morning but Ice refused to accept it, saying Sánchez was already gone. Sánchez is not a criminal and has a strong case on humanitarian grounds for staying in the US, Cañizares said.Donald Trump, whose presidential campaigns have focused heavily on immigration, said earlier this month he wanted to deport some violent criminals who are US citizens to El Salvadoran prisons, where he removed hundreds of Venezuelans and some Salvadorans last month without even a court hearing. He sent them to a brutal prison for suspected gangsters and terrorists, claiming they were all violent criminals when it has since been argued that most were not and even if they were they had the right to due process.The comments from Trump about sending US citizens or what he termed “home grown” criminals to another country to be incarcerated have alarmed civil rights advocates and is viewed by many legal scholars as unconstitutional.The US supreme court has ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Maryland resident Kilmar Ábrego García, who was sent to the country on 15 March with hundreds of others despite a US court order protecting him from deportation.Opinion polls in the last week show Trump struggling for approval with voters who were surveyed, including on some of his hardline anti-immigration tactics.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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    New Orleans woman sues after being accused of stalking the city’s mayor

    A New Orleans woman once accused of stalking by the city’s mayor, LaToya Cantrell, turned the tables on Friday with a $1m-plus federal lawsuit accusing the elected official, her chief of staff, and eight members of the city’s police department of civil rights violations and defamation.Anne W Breaud’s lawsuit says Cantrell falsely accused her of following and harassing her. It also claims Cantrell’s chief of staff and members of the police department improperly accessed state and federal information on Breaud.Cantrell earlier this year filed a state court lawsuit accusing Breaud of stalking. But after a protective order against Breaud was initially issued, the lawsuit was thrown out, and Cantrell was ordered to pay Breaud’s legal costs.Defendants in the lawsuit filed on Friday include Cantrell, her chief of staff, the city and its police department, as well as three police officers identified by name and five officers who are not identified by name in the lawsuit. The police department declined to comment on pending litigation on Friday. The city also declined to comment in a release from Cantrell’s press secretary, saying its position would be made public in court filings answering the lawsuit.Sparking all the litigation were two photographs Breaud snapped from the balcony of her French Quarter apartment in April, showing Cantrell and a police bodyguard, since retired, dining and drinking on the balcony of a restaurant across a narrow street.Breaud said she sent the images to a police watchdog group, the Metropolitan Crime Commission. The pictures fueled controversy over Cantrell’s personal relationship with the bodyguard, Jeffrey Vappie.Vappie, who is not a defendant in the lawsuit, was criminally charged in federal court last week with wire fraud involving allegedly filing false payroll documents and lying to FBI agents about his relationship with the mayor. Vappie’s attorneys have declared him innocent. His first court appearance is set for 7 August.Cantrell, according to the lawsuit, accused Breaud of not only turning her pictures over to local media, but also of following Cantrell and taking and distributing another photo, all of which Breaud denies.“While Cantrell falsely painted herself as the victim of a pattern of stalking, harassment and intimidation by Breaud, it is Cantrell who has engaged in a pattern of harassment and character assassination against Breaud, a person wrongly accused by Cantrell of stalking solely because Breaud captured a photograph of Cantrell and Vappie in a compromising position,” the lawsuit states.The lawsuit accuses the police defendants of illegally obtaining information about her on state and national databases, and she contends that Cantrell and her chief of staff made it public.The lawsuit seeks a court finding that Cantrell and the other defendants violated Breaud’s civil rights and her constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure, violated federal privacy and computer fraud laws, and defamed her. It also seeks $500,000 in actual damages, including emotional stress, litigation costs and time lost defending against Cantrell’s allegations, plus $500,000 in punitive damages and other damages in unspecified amounts for alleged violations of state law. More

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    Assured Kamala Harris cuts a transformed figure in New Orleans – and carefully avoids any mention of Biden’s fitness for office

    The ideal understudy is talented but inconspicuous, prepared at all times to step into the top role and yet content to never do so.In New Orleans, at the 30th annual Essence Festival of Culture, gone was the Kamala Harris of the drab brown, chair-matching suit and the halting, technical commentary about American policy needs. That was the Harris who spoke here in 2019, then a Democratic presidential primary contender trailed by fewer than 10 reporters.Instead, on Saturday, Harris – dressed in a bright teal suit and tailed by a press contingent which had expanded to more than four times its previous size – spoke to a standing-room-only crowd in a room equipped to seat more than 500 people.In what was billed as an on-stage conversation with Essence CEO Caroline Wanga, Harris confidently offered a blend of standard campaign-season talk – a recitation of the Biden-Harris administration’s major policy accomplishments with dire warnings about the dangers posed by a possible second Trump term and the critical importance of the choice that voters will face in just 122 days – blended with the language of women’s empowerment.To say that Harris assiduously avoided any mention of recent questions about Biden’s fitness for office would be an overstatement, and Wanga did not ask or seemingly make room for the issue gripping much of Washington. In the past week, the fallout of the president’s shaky debate performance on 27 June has manifested in calls for him to drop out of the race, with a handful of Democratic lawmakers joining the chorus. Many of those same critics are now hoping Harris might be the new nominee in November.For those inclined to read tea leaves, there may well have been more there in New Orleans. Harris encouraged the audience to embrace ambition and the difficulty of cutting new, and even history-making, paths.“I beseech you, don’t you ever hear something can’t be done,’ Harris said. “People in your life will tell you, though, it’s not your time. It’s not your turn. Nobody like you has done it before. Don’t you ever listen to that.“I like to say, ‘I eat no for breakfast,’” she said.View image in fullscreenHarris had been introduced as a woman “doing the heavy lifting”, “smart”, “tough”, and a “proven fighter for the backbone of this country”. Then she entered and exited to the sound of a Beyoncé-Kendrick Lamar collaboration, Freedom, at the point where Beyonce sings, “Singin’, freedom, freedom, Where are you? … Hey! I’ma keep running.”While Biden has insisted he will remain in the race amid what he has described as a subset of Washington insiders and op-ed writers insisting he should step aside, Harris’s poll numbers have improved and her public speeches and commentary – once a much maligned element of her time on the national political stage – have become more assertive and assured.Harris has spent recent months crisscrossing the country speaking about threats to reproductive rights, maternal mortality, economic opportunity and inclusion. And in New Orleans, Harris described the election as more important than “any in your lifetime”, adding that democracy may not survive a second Trump term. Trump, she said, was a convicted felon whom the supreme court had just granted immunity from prosecution.Harris also spoke about an array of the administration’s efforts to resolve the problems that vex the lives of Americans, including many in the room: a cap on the price of insulin paid by those enrolled in Medicare; expanded access to public health insurance for low- to moderate-income women after giving birth, the period in which many fatal complications arise; and billions in student loan debt forgiven. When Harris called for those who had seen some of their student debt forgiven, hundreds of hands went up in the room.“You got that because you voted in 2020,” Harris told the audience.View image in fullscreenAnd, she said, there was work that remained such as reducing the cost of childcare for all Americans to no more than 7% of household income, and work on the cusp of being done. This included the administration’s efforts to remove medical debt from the calculus that generated credit scores and made it hard for some Americans to rent an apartment or purchase a car.Leshelle Henderson, a nurse practitioner from Cleveland providing family medicine and psychiatric care, said she was trying to serve her community and a country in the midst of a mental health crisis. And she was working double time to pay off hundreds of thousands in student loans, none of which had been forgiven. She came to Essence Fest for fun but wanted to hear the vice-president speak about student loan forgiveness and what a second Biden-Harris administration would do for the economic fortunes of Black men and women.That was before the event.“I liked what I heard,” Henderson said. “I did, but want to hear more. Honestly, I think what we heard tonight is the next president of the United States. Isn’t that something?” More

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    New Orleans magician says he made AI Biden robocall for aide to challenger

    A magician in New Orleans says he was the person who used artificial intelligence to create an audio recording of Joe Biden used in an infamous robocall and that he was paid by a consultant for the president’s primary challenger, Dean Phillips.NBC News reported Paul David Carpenter, who holds multiple world records and also works as a hypnotist, provided it with text messages, call logs and payment documentation to back up his claims.Carpenter claimed he was hired by Steve Kramer, a consultant for Phillips’s campaign, to use AI to mimic Biden’s voice discouraging people from voting in New Hampshire’s 23 January primary.“I created the audio used in the robocall [but] I did not distribute it,” Carpenter reportedly told NBC. “I was in a situation where someone offered me some money to do something and I did it.“There was no malicious intent. I didn’t know how it was going to be distributed.”The audio recording is currently under investigation by law enforcement officials, and prompted the US government to outlaw robocalls using AI-generated voices.Carpenter told NBC it was “so scary” how easy it was for him to produce the fake audio, saying it took less than 20 minutes and cost him $1. In return, he was paid $150, as documented in Venmo payments from Kramer and his father, Bruce Kramer, that Carpenter reportedly supplied to NBC.He also shared what he described as the original robocall audio file, which he manufactured with software from ElevenLabs, an AI firm that touts its ability to create a voice clone from existing speech samples.NBC said Kramer, a veteran political operative, did not comment on Carpenter’s version of events and would soon publish an opinion piece that would “explain all”.In a statement, Phillips’ campaign said it was “disgusted to learn that Mr Kramer is allegedly behind this call”.“If it is true that Mr Kramer had any involvement in the creation of deepfake robocalls, he did so of his own volition, which had nothing to do with our campaign,” said the campaign’s press secretary, Katie Dolan.“The fundamental notion of our campaign is the importance of competition, choice and democracy,” she added. “If the allegations are true, we absolutely denounce his actions.”Federal Election Commission records show that in December and January, the Phillips campaign paid nearly $260,000 to Kramer, who once worked on the 2020 presidential campaign for Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.NBC said it found no evidence to suggest the Minnesota congressman’s campaign had instructed Kramer to produce the audio or disseminate the robocall.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCarpenter describes himself as a “digital nomad artist”, and perhaps his biggest previous claim to fame was setting the world records for fastest straitjacket escape and most fork bends in under a minute.“The only thing missing from the political circus is a magician, and here I am,” Carpenter joked.Carpenter has no fixed address but lists himself as a resident of New Orleans. Videos and images online show him in the streets of the city’s famed French Quarter neighborhood.New Hampshire authorities by 6 February issued cease-and-desist orders and subpoenas to two Texas companies believed to be linked to the robocall – Life Corporation, which investigators alleged was the robocall’s source, and Lingo Telecom, which they said transmitted it.After news of the robocall became known, the Federal Communications Commission ruled unanimously to either fine companies using AI voices in their calls or block any service providers that carry them.Phillips’ campaign has done little to affect Biden’s status as the presumptive Democratic nominee for November’s presidential election. On Thursday, the congressman floated the idea of running for the White House on a “unity ticket” with Nikki Haley, who was on track to lose the Republican primary to Biden’s presidential predecessor Donald Trump.Edward Helmore contributed reporting More

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    Republican victory in Louisiana signals hard-right turn for once bipartisan state

    When Louisiana’s attorney general, Jeff Landry, won the open gubernatorial primary on 14 October, it not only ended eight years of relatively productive bipartisan control of the state’s government: it marked a hard-right shift in Louisiana’s politics that could set back environmental policy and human and civil rights for decades to come.Landry’s outright victory in the jungle primary – a system unique to Louisiana, in which all voters, regardless of party, vote on all candidates at the local, state and federal levels – shocked voters and pundits in the state alike. Landry was long favored to triumph, but it was expected he would be forced into a runoff. Ultimately, the state’s Democratic party offered no meaningful resistance to Landry’s campaign, and he cruised to a win, capturing more than 50% of the votes cast in a low-turnout race.The morning after the election, Robert Mann, a political science professor at Louisiana State University and a frequent critic of Landry, announced he would be leaving his position. He said he had no confidence the school’s administration would protect him from the changing political headwinds.To outsiders, Mann’s reaction may seem dramatic. Louisianans understood fully: in 2021, Landry used his office to try to pressure LSU into dismissing the professor over his argument that the university needed to require students to test regularly for Covid-19.The incident wasn’t isolated. In February 2021, Landry filed a lawsuit against the Times-Picayune reporter Andrea Gallo over her investigation into sexual misconduct charges against one of his closest aides. Landry ultimately lost his meritless case.As Gallo noted, winning wasn’t necessarily the point.“I think that it sends a very clear message to reporters, and to the public of Louisiana, that if you request documents from the attorney general’s office you better watch out, because you might be subjected to a lawsuit,” Gallo told the US Press Freedom Tracker, a website that documents attacks on media in the United States.In 2022, Landry had a simple message for women in Louisiana who opposed the abortion ban that took effect when the US supreme court eliminated the rights Roe v Wade had once established.“If you don’t like the laws in the state, you can move,” Landry said.Of course, most people in Louisiana – where the median income is just over $27,000 a year – can’t just pick up and leave. Which means they’re all but stuck with Landry as governor for at least four years come January.In his election’s immediate aftermath, Landry moved to shore up his control of an already conservative legislature. Within three days, the state senator Cameron Henry, a hardline conservative and Landry ally, had cleared the field to become his chamber’s next president.While Republicans have controlled both chambers throughout the eight years the outgoing Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, has spent in office, the senate’s leadership in particular has been generally less hardline than either rank-and-file members or Landry.Critically, they have worked with both Edwards and Democratic lawmakers on a host of issues.Landry, of course, is having none of that. As the Times-Picayune also noted when writing about Henry’s ascension, Landry has made it clear in private conversations he wants people loyal to him in key leadership roles.That means he is unlikely to face resistance to many of his policies. For women, Black people, the LGBTQ+ community and others in the hard right’s crosshairs, that’s an ominous possibility.Landry opposes any form of minimum wage and is generally hostile to so-called “welfare net” programs designed to help lower-income and working-class people. He backed a plan to make public juvenile court records public – but only in the state’s predominantly Black parishes.Although that bill died in the senate, it faces a significantly brighter future next year with Landry in the governor’s office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIndeed, Edwards and his veto pen were able to either stall or beat back entirely a host of measures that could re-materialize.Those include a “don’t say gay” bill banning classroom discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity, anti-drag measures, additional restrictions on access to healthcare for trans people, further criminalization of abortion and contraceptives, and deeper erosion of the state’s barely existent gun control measures.Even the state house member Ray Garofalo’s widely ridiculed bill requiring schools to teach the nonexistent “good” side of slavery could be resurrected.Environmental protections will also be on the chopping block. Landry memorably heckled Barack Obama during the former president’s 2011 State of the Union address, holding up a sign that said “drilling = jobs”. With the petroleum industry still one of Louisiana’s single most powerful forces, areas like Cancer Alley – a stretch along the Mississippi River overrun by refineries and pollution – will probably be especially hard-hit as Republicans roll back the state’s modest pollution controls.“On social welfare issues, we’ll be Florida on steroids,” said JP Morrell, the New Orleans city council president and a former state legislator. Though a Democrat, Morrell’s stint as a state lawmaker saw him successfully move some legislation – and blunt some of his conservative counterparts’ worst bills – in part because he was able to establish working relationships with key Republicans.Morrell contends that will be an even more important skill for Democrats now that Landry is governor and Republicans have a stranglehold on both chambers.But with a supermajority in hand, Republicans won’t necessarily need Democrats. For instance, one area Democrats and Republicans have worked together on during Edwards’s governorship has been the annual spending bills. Edwards’ Republican predecessor, Bobby Jindal, left the state government’s books in shambles thanks to his relentless effort to slash spending on education and social services.Edwards, by contrast, will leave office with a $330m surplus.While memories of Jindal’s disastrous tenure are still fresh in Louisiana’s collective conscience, Landry and most Republican state legislators are budget hawks. In fact, Republicans are already discussing significant changes to the tax code that would reduce what wealthy people and corporations pay – even as they are contemplating a new round of cuts to education and other safety net programs.“It will be like the Jindal years, but worse” if Republicans decide to go that route, Morrell said.That means Democrats, who represent large urban areas like New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport, will be spending whatever political capital they have accumulated simply protecting their communities.Invoking his city’s status as the most culturally relevant on the global stage, Morrell said: “For better or for worse, you have to protect New Orleans from the worst of it. You’re not going to save the rest of the state.” More