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BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA
W e d n e s d ay, O c t O b e r 15, 2025
BR leaders discuss Guard presence
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Trump uses shutdown to restructure government Actions make stoppage unlike any the nation has ever seen
BY LISA MASCARO
AP congressional correspondent
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By GEORGE WALKER IV
Members from the 117th Military Police Battalion of the National Guard and a Memphis Police Department officer conduct a community safety patrol at Tom Lee Park in Memphis, Tenn., on Sunday.
Residents, officials divided on deployment plans BY PATRICK SLOAN-TURNER Staff writer
More than two weeks have passed since Gov. Jeff Landry asked the U.S. Department of Justice to activate 1,000 National Guard troops in Baton Rouge and other Louisiana cities. While deployment has not yet been approved — and no timeline or specific role has been set — city-parish leaders have varying ideas of what they want that presence to look like
or whether they want the Guard here at all. East Baton Rouge Parish MayorPresident Sid Edwards is not opposed to the National Guard patrolling Baton Rouge streets but doesn’t want a militarized force aggressively policing his constituents. “To me, it’s being a presence in the city … being visible, being around,” Edwards said. “What I don’t want is take-down soldiers. I don’t want them coming in here and busting down doors and doing raids and
those type things.” Not everyone is open to the idea. Following Landry’s public request, all five Democratic members of the East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Council — whose districts are largely concentrated in North Baton Rouge, the area hit hardest by violent crime — called on Edwards to reject the governor’s plan. Still, Edwards said he’ll take the extra manpower. He and some
ä See GUARD, page 9A
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is making this government shutdown unlike any the nation has ever seen, giving his budget office rare authority to pick winners and losers — who gets paid or fired, which programs are cut or survive — in an unprecedented restructuring across the federal workforce. As the shutdown enters its third week, the Office and Management and Budget said Tuesday it’s preparing to “batten down the hatches” with more reductions in force to come. The president calls budget chief Russ Vought the “We’re being “grim reaper,” and Vought has seized on the opportunity to able to do fund Trump’s priorities, pay- things that we ing the military while slashing were unable to jobs in health, education, the do before.” sciences and other areas with actions that have been critiPRESIDENT cized as illegal and are facing DONALD TRUMP court challenges. Trump said programs favored by Democrats are being targeted and “they’re never going to come back, in many cases.” Speaking during an event at the White House, Trump added, “We’re being able to do things that we were unable to do before.” With Congress at a standstill — the Republicanled House refusing to return to session and the Senate stuck in a loop of failed votes to reopen government as Democrats demand health care funding — the budget office quickly filled the void. Vought, a chief architect of the conservative Project 2025 policy book, is reshaping the size and scope of federal government in ways similar to those envisioned in the blueprint. It is exactly what certain lawmakers, particularly Democrats,
ä See SHUTDOWN, page 6A
Roman grave marker found in N.O. yard Archaeologists uncover 2,000-year-old tombstone
BY POET WOLFE Staff writer
Daniella Santoro and her husband, Aaron Lorenzo, were doing yard work at their New Orleans home in March when he found a marble slab beneath a lemon tree, hidden under a tangle of thick vines and dirt. Santoro heard Lorenzo call for her: “You’ve got to come see this.” The couple looked closely at the stone and noticed Latin letters carved across it. Santoro, an anthropologist at Tulane Uni-
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versity, was “immediately fascinated” by the discovery, imagining that it was a grave marker left behind by the home’s previous owners for a family member. She reached out to colleagues in Latin and classical studies, who suggested the slab might be something far more unlikely — an authentic Roman tombstone. They were skeptical, but it turned out that the improbable theory was correct. The stone was a 2,000-year-old grave marker for Sextus Congenius Verus, a second-century soldier and sailor in the Roman Imperial Navy. “It was very quick,” Santoro said. “Once I put out the energy that I needed help with it, New Orleans delivered.” The discovery, unearthed in a backyard
in the Carrollton neighborhood, set off a global mystery that eventually led local experts to a port city north of Rome — a journey that underscored New Orleans’ instinct to preserve history, even when it belongs to another continent. Susann Lusnia, an associate professor in classical studies at Tulane, was “floored” when she first saw a photo of the tombstone. “It was pretty clear to me that it was an original Roman inscription,” Lusnia said. “But it was also very hard to believe at that moment that there’d be something like this in a backyard here in New Orleans.” Using key phrases from the stone’s
PHOTO PROVIDED By DANIELLA SANTORO
An ancient Roman tombstone was found in the ä See MARKER, page 11A backyard of a New Orleans home in March.
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