While celebrating the win, activists noted that "construction of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline continues in other parts of the Atchafalaya Basin" and vowed to keep fighting to completely shut down the project

On the campaign trial, Gov.-elect John Bel Edwards promised time and again that he would expand the rolls of Medicaid on his first day in office. His promise to reverse repeated rejections of expanded Medicaid by Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal and open the government health insurance program to more low-income workers was a cornerstone of the Democrat’s campaign. But legal realities have caused Edwards to back off, at least for the time being, while his incoming administration works through a legal glitch raised by the Legislature’s fiscal advisers.

United Houma Nation renews fight for federal recognition in the face of sinking lands and environmental disasters

In a new feature, Bloomberg zeros in on the impending closure of Baton Rouge General Medical Center’s Mid City emergency room, calling it “a real-world ripple effect of the ideological clash over President Barack Obama’s health-care law.”

This week the Durham, North Carolina-based nonprofit MDC released its latest State of the South report highlighting how the American dream of intergenerational upward mobility is more elusive for young people born at the bottom of the income ladder in the South than anywhere else in the country.