Latest news with #PlaqueminesParish
Yahoo
03-08-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Consent decrees force schools to desegregate. The Trump administration is striking them down
In late April, the Department of Justice announced that it was ending a decades-long consent decree in Plaquemines parish, Louisiana, in a school district that has been under a desegregation order since the Johnson administration in the 1960s. The Plaquemines parish desegregation order, one of more than 130 such orders nationwide, was in place to ensure that the school district, which initially refused to integrate, followed the law. Many consent decrees of the era are still in existence because school districts are not in compliance with the law. Some experts, including former justice department employees, say the change in direction for the department could be worrying. These orders 'provide students with really important protections against discrimination', said Shaheena Simons, who was the chief of the educational opportunities section of the civil rights division at the justice department for nearly a decade. 'They require school districts to continue to actively work to eliminate all the remaining vestiges of the state-mandated segregation system. That means that students have protections in terms of what schools they're assigned to, in terms of the facilities and equipment in the schools that they attend. They have protection from discrimination in terms of barriers to accessing advanced programs, gifted programs. And it means that a court is there to protect them and to enforce their rights when they're violated and to ensure that school districts are continuing to actively desegregate.' The justice department ended the Plaquemines parish desegregation order in an unusual process, one that some fear will be replicated elsewhere. The case was dismissed through a 'joint stipulated dismissal'. Previously, courts have followed a specific process for ending similar cases, one in which school districts prove that they are complying with the court orders. That did not happen this time. Instead, the Louisiana state attorney general's office worked with the justice department in reaching the dismissal. 'I'm not aware of anyone, any case, that has [ended] that way before,' said Deuel Ross, the deputy director of litigation of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF); the LDF was not specifically involved with the Plaquemines parish case. 'The government as a plaintiff who represents the American people, the people of that parish, has an obligation to make sure that the district has done everything that it's supposed to have done to comply with the federal court order in the case before it gets released, and the court itself has its own independent obligation to confirm that there's no vestiges of discrimination left in the school district that are traceable to either present or past discrimination.' Despite the district not proving that it is compliant with the order, the justice department has celebrated the end of the consent decree. 'No longer will the Plaquemines Parish School Board have to devote precious local resources over an integration issue that ended two generations ago,' Harmeet K Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the justice department's civil rights division, said in a statement announcing the decision. 'This is a prime example of neglect by past administrations, and we're now getting America refocused on our bright future.' But focusing on the age of the case implies that it was obsolete, according to Simons, who is now the senior adviser of programs and strategist at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. 'The administration is trying to paint these cases as ancient history and no longer relevant.' In 1966, the Johnson administration sued school districts across the country, particularly in the south, that refused to comply with desegregation demands. At the time, Plaquemines parish was led by Leander Perez, a staunch segregationist and white supremacist. Perez had played a large role in trying to keep nearby New Orleans from desegregating, and once that effort failed, he invited 1,000 white students from the Ninth Ward to enroll in Plaquemines parish schools. By 1960, nearly 600 had accepted the offer. Perez was excommunicated by Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel for ignoring his warning to stop trying to prevent schools run by the archdiocese of New Orleans from integrating. Perez attempted to close the public schools in Plaquemines parish, and instead open all-white private academies, or, segregation academies, which became a feature of the post-integration south. An estimated 300 segregation academies, which, as private schools, are not governed by the same rules and regulations as public schools, are still in operation and majority white. Students and teachers working in school districts today might be decades removed from the people who led the push for desegregation in their districts, but they still benefit from the protections that were long ago put in place. Without court oversight, school districts that were already begrudgingly complying might have no incentive to continue to do so. According to the Century Foundation, as of 2020, 185 districts and charters consider race and/or socioeconomic status in their student assignment or admissions policies, while 722 districts and charters are subject to a legal desegregation order or voluntary agreement. The justice department currently has about 135 desegregation cases on its docket, the majority of which are in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. 'Separate but equal doesn't work,' said Johnathan Smith, former deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division at the justice department. 'The reality is that students of color do better when they are in integrated classrooms … We know that the amount of resources that are devoted to schools are greater when there are a higher number of white students. So to have students attend majority-minority school districts means that they're going to be shut out, whether that's from AP classes, whether that's from extracurricular activities. All the activities that make it possible for students to fully achieve occur when you have more integrated classrooms.' Related: There was a deal to fix this Alabama community's raw sewage crisis. Trump tore it up over DEI 'Public education isn't just about education for the sake of education,' he added. 'It's about preparing people to be citizens of our democracy and to be fully engaged in our democratic institutions. When you have students that are being shut out from quality public education, the impact is not just on those communities. It's on our democracy writ large.' Smith, the current chief of staff and general counsel for the National Center for Youth Law, said that the decision 'signals utter contempt for communities of color by the administration, and a lack of awareness of the history of segregation that has plagued our nation's schools'. 'Even though we are 71 years after the Brown v Board [of Education] decision, schools of this country remain more segregated today than they were back in 1954,' he said. 'The fact that the administration is kind of wholeheartedly ending these types of consent decrees is troubling, particularly when they're not doing the research and investigation to determine whether or not these decrees really should be ended at this point.' Smith said that the decision in the Plaquemines parish case may be a 'slippery slope' in which other school districts begin reaching out to the Trump administration. 'The impact they can have across the country and particularly across the south is pretty huge,' he said. 'I worry that we're going to see more and more of these decrees falling and more and more of these districts remaining segregated without any real opportunity to address that.' Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
01-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project canceled
PLAQUEMINES PARISH, La. (WGNO) — The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project was officially canceled on July 17 in an announcement by the Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group. Amanda Moore, Senior Director of the Gulf Program for the National Wildlife Federation, said the project aimed to reconnect the Mississippi River to the delta and the Barataria Basin. Its goal was to restore the coastline and improve the health of the estuary. It was a major part of Louisiana's Coastal Master Plan. Slidell woman accused of buying Lamborghini while on government assistance The project began its design phase in 2013 and broke ground in 2023. Moore said it was looking at a 50-year timeframe and was estimated to build 5,000 acres in 10 years and 17,000 acres in 30 years. $618 million was already spent on the project and it was projected to cost close to $3 billion. 'Something that we always need to keep in mind with this project is that it's not just rebuilding wetlands,' Moore said. 'That's a big part, because that is obviously a storm surge buffer, but it's also restoring the function of the estuary. There's a lot of ecosystem benefits beyond just land being built.' Moore said the ecosystems in that area are dying out due to salinity changes, sea-level rise and the river being cut off from the delta. She said the project would have aimed to fix this. 'This project would keep giving benefits for generations using the natural processes,' Moore said. Hoop dreams add up for Gretna fifth grader The LTIG said the project was canceled due to multiple factors, such as a suspension of a federal permit by the Army Corp of Engineers and ongoing litigation. Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser said in a letter that the project had ballooned in price from $250 million to $3 billion. He also said the project would harm the dolphin population in that area as well as the oyster and shrimp industry. Haily Gentry, assistant director at the Tulane Institute on Water Law and Policy, said there was ongoing litigation against the project. Plaquemines Parish alleged that the state did not have the required permits related to elevated flood risk in the area. However, she felt that lawsuit probably would have been decided in favor of the state. Gentry said a lawsuit was filed by the Earth Island Institute, an environmental advocacy organization, alleging that the impacts of the project on local species had not been fleshed out. According to the Earth Island institute's release, they argue that the project would have introduced freshwater into a saline environment, buried existing wetlands and introduced toxic contaminants into the basin's environment. Heat relief resources, cooling centers available in New Orleans Moore said regardless, the fishing industry would be impacted by coastal erosion in the long run, whether the project goes forward or not. She argued that it ultimately would have improved the health of the ecosystem. Moore said mitigation efforts were already worked into the plan to protect the dolphins and the oyster industry. 'They were working with communities to come up with mitigation plans and they had hundreds of millions of dollars in mitigation funding to support those plans for communities,' Moore said. Gentry said there are remaining questions about what this cancellation will mean for the rest of Louisiana's Coastal Master Plan, as the project was a major component of it and much of the modeling and projections were made under the assumption that the project would move forward. She said it's also unclear what's going to happen with the money allocated for the project. It was funded using Deepwater Horizon's Oil Spill Posts New Orleans at-large candidates debate worker rights, city issues at forum Summer storms come back on Friday Favorite FQ restaurant may be forced to close Eastbank uses monster comeback to beat Mississippi in LLBWS Southwest Regional opener New Louisiana license plates showcasing the arts now available Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
The Guardian
24-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Consent decrees force schools to desegregate. The Trump administration is striking them down
In late April, the Department of Justice announced that it was ending a decades-long consent decree in Plaquemines parish, Louisiana, in a school district that has been under a desegregation order since the Johnson administration in the 1960s. The Plaquemines parish desegregation order, one of more than 130 such orders nationwide, was in place to ensure that the school district, which initially refused to integrate, followed the law. Many consent decrees of the era are still in existence because school districts are not in compliance with the law. Some experts, including former justice department employees, say the change in direction for the department could be worrying. These orders 'provide students with really important protections against discrimination', said Shaheena Simons, who was the chief of the educational opportunities section of the civil rights division at the justice department for nearly a decade. 'They require school districts to continue to actively work to eliminate all the remaining vestiges of the state-mandated segregation system. That means that students have protections in terms of what schools they're assigned to, in terms of the facilities and equipment in the schools that they attend. They have protection from discrimination in terms of barriers to accessing advanced programs, gifted programs. And it means that a court is there to protect them and to enforce their rights when they're violated and to ensure that school districts are continuing to actively desegregate.' The justice department ended the Plaquemines parish desegregation order in an unusual process, one that some fear will be replicated elsewhere. The case was dismissed through a 'joint stipulated dismissal'. Previously, courts have followed a specific process for ending similar cases, one in which school districts prove that they are complying with the court orders. That did not happen this time. Instead, the Louisiana state attorney general's office worked with the justice department in reaching the dismissal. 'I'm not aware of anyone, any case, that has [ended] that way before,' said Deuel Ross, the deputy director of litigation of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF); the LDF was not specifically involved with the Plaquemines parish case. 'The government as a plaintiff who represents the American people, the people of that parish, has an obligation to make sure that the district has done everything that it's supposed to have done to comply with the federal court order in the case before it gets released, and the court itself has its own independent obligation to confirm that there's no vestiges of discrimination left in the school district that are traceable to either present or past discrimination.' Despite the district not proving that it is compliant with the order, the justice department has celebrated the end of the consent decree. 'No longer will the Plaquemines Parish School Board have to devote precious local resources over an integration issue that ended two generations ago,' Harmeet K Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the justice department's civil rights division, said in a statement announcing the decision. 'This is a prime example of neglect by past administrations, and we're now getting America refocused on our bright future.' But focusing on the age of the case implies that it was obsolete, according to Simons, who is now the senior adviser of programs and strategist at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. 'The administration is trying to paint these cases as ancient history and no longer relevant.' In 1966, the Johnson administration sued school districts across the country, particularly in the south, that refused to comply with desegregation demands. At the time, Plaquemines parish was led by Leander Perez, a staunch segregationist and white supremacist. Perez had played a large role in trying to keep nearby New Orleans from desegregating, and once that effort failed, he invited 1,000 white students from the Ninth Ward to enroll in Plaquemines parish schools. By 1960, nearly 600 had accepted the offer. Perez was excommunicated by Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel for ignoring his warning to stop trying to prevent schools run by the archdiocese of New Orleans from integrating. Perez attempted to close the public schools in Plaquemines parish, and instead open all-white private academies, or, segregation academies, which became a feature of the post-integration south. An estimated 300 segregation academies, which, as private schools, are not governed by the same rules and regulations as public schools, are still in operation and majority white. Students and teachers working in school districts today might be decades removed from the people who led the push for desegregation in their districts, but they still benefit from the protections that were long ago put in place. Without court oversight, school districts that were already begrudgingly complying might have no incentive to continue to do so. According to the Century Foundation, as of 2020, 185 districts and charters consider race and/or socioeconomic status in their student assignment or admissions policies, while 722 districts and charters are subject to a legal desegregation order or voluntary agreement. The justice department currently has about 135 desegregation cases on its docket, the majority of which are in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion 'Separate but equal doesn't work,' said Johnathan Smith, former deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division at the justice department. 'The reality is that students of color do better when they are in integrated classrooms … We know that the amount of resources that are devoted to schools are greater when there are a higher number of white students. So to have students attend majority-minority school districts means that they're going to be shut out, whether that's from AP classes, whether that's from extracurricular activities. All the activities that make it possible for students to fully achieve occur when you have more integrated classrooms.' 'Public education isn't just about education for the sake of education,' he added. 'It's about preparing people to be citizens of our democracy and to be fully engaged in our democratic institutions. When you have students that are being shut out from quality public education, the impact is not just on those communities. It's on our democracy writ large.' Smith, the current chief of staff and general counsel for the National Center for Youth Law, said that the decision 'signals utter contempt for communities of color by the administration, and a lack of awareness of the history of segregation that has plagued our nation's schools'. 'Even though we are 71 years after the Brown v Board [of Education] decision, schools of this country remain more segregated today than they were back in 1954,' he said. 'The fact that the administration is kind of wholeheartedly ending these types of consent decrees is troubling, particularly when they're not doing the research and investigation to determine whether or not these decrees really should be ended at this point.' Smith said that the decision in the Plaquemines parish case may be a 'slippery slope' in which other school districts begin reaching out to the Trump administration. 'The impact they can have across the country and particularly across the south is pretty huge,' he said. 'I worry that we're going to see more and more of these decrees falling and more and more of these districts remaining segregated without any real opportunity to address that.'
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Venture Global subsidiary closes $4bn senior secured notes
Venture Global's subsidiary, Venture Global Plaquemines LNG (VGPL), has closed a $4bn offering of senior secured notes, aimed at refinancing existing debt and covering related expenses. The offering was divided into two series: a $2bn series of 6.50% senior secured notes due in 2034, and a $2bn series of 6.75% senior secured notes maturing in 2036. The 2034 notes are set to mature on 15 January 2034, and the 2036 notes on 15 January 2036. The latest issuance brings the total aggregate amount of senior secured notes issued by VGPL to $6.5bn since the Plaquemines LNG project's first phase began producing liquefied natural gas (LNG) in December 2024. The project is located in Plaquemines Parish in the US state of Louisiana, 20 miles south of New Orleans. Upon completion, the Plaquemines LNG facility is anticipated to possess an export capability of at least 20 million tonnes per annum. The initial issuance of $2.5bn in senior secured notes by VGPL was announced on 21 April 2025. VGPL plans to utilise the net proceeds from this offering to prepay certain amounts under its existing senior secured first lien credit facilities, and to pay fees and expenses associated with the offering. The notes have been guaranteed by Venture Global Gator Express, an affiliate of VGPL. They are secured by a first-priority security interest in the assets that also secure the existing credit facilities and the existing notes. In June 2025, Venture Global withdrew its application to build the Delta LNG export facility in Louisiana, opting instead to concentrate on the Plaquemines expansion project. "Venture Global subsidiary closes $4bn senior secured notes" was originally created and published by Offshore Technology, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
E&E News
13-06-2025
- Business
- E&E News
Venture Global ditches planned Louisiana LNG terminal
Natural gas exporter Venture Global has pulled an application with federal regulators for a liquefaction terminal in southeast Louisiana, citing plans to focus on a planned expansion of an existing export facility. In a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission this week, a Venture Global executive said the Virginia-based company has decided 'that pursuing the Delta LNG Project at this particular time would not be the best use of its corporate resources' or those of the agency. The project would have been located in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish. The Venture Global subsidiaries behind the project are 'withdrawing the Delta LNG Project from the Commission's Pre-filing review process,' Fory Musser, Venture Global's senior vice president of development, said in the Tuesday letter to FERC. Advertisement Venture Global is also the developer in Louisiana of the Plaquemines LNG terminal; the Calcasieu Pass LNG facility; and the CP2 LNG project, which launched some on-site work earlier this month. The CP2 LNG facility is the company's third liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility and was caught up in the Department of Energy's LNG permitting pause last year under former President Joe Biden.
