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COMING SUNDAY: DOLL & TOY FUND ENVELOPES
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S at u r d ay, N ov e m b e r 1, 2025
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Judges order Trump to pay for SNAP
Rulings say administration must use emergency reserves during shutdown BY MICHAEL CASEY, GEOFF MULVIHILL and KIMBERLEE KRUESI
Trump’s administration must continue to pay for SNAP, the nation’s biggest food aid program, using emergency reserve funds during Associated Press the government shutdown. The judges in Massachusetts and BOSTON — Two federal judges ruled nearly simultaneously on Rhode Island gave the administraFriday that President Donald tion leeway on whether to fund
ä Shutdown made people rethink what to hand out for Halloween. PAGE 4A
and will delay payments for many beneficiaries whose cards would normally be recharged early in the month. The U.S. Department of Agriculthe program partially or in full for ture planned to freeze payments to November. That also brings uncer- the Supplemental Nutrition Assistainty about how things will unfold tance Program starting Saturday
INSECT DETECTIVES
Among bones and maggots, LSU researchers build database to help solve crimes
because it said it could no longer keep funding it due to the shutdown. The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net — and it costs about $8 billion per month nationally. U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat and the ranking
ä See SNAP, page 7A
Where did the city’s cash go? N.O. officials seek budget answers
BY BEN MYERS Staff writer
STAFF PHOTOS By JAVIER GALLEGOS
Alexa Figueroa, Ph.D. candidate, left, and Rabi Musah, chemist and Patrick F. Taylor Endowed Chair in Environmental Chemistry at LSU, check the development of maggots on Wednesday in the days-old corpse of a coyote that was left to decompose. BY EMILY WOODRUFF Staff writer
By the time the coyote had been in the field in Clinton for six days, there was little left but teeth, fur and bone. But when Alexa Figueroa, an LSU doctoral student, lifted up the leathered skin, a writhing mass of maggots revealed another world, very much alive, beneath the surface. One bug, a small black beetle with ridges along its back, caught the attention of entomologist Stephen Baca. He identified it immediately as Oiceoptima inaequale, the ridged carrion beetle, from his encyclopedic
knowledge of bugs. As it skittered across bone, fur and a churning heap of bugs, Baca plucked it out and dropped it in a vial. It’s a type of beetle they haven’t found before on the dozen or so animal carcasses they’ve set out to decompose at the Bob R. Jones Idlewild Research Station, all part of a project to document the bugs that start flocking to cadavers within minutes of death. “Oh, that’s fantastic,” said Rabi Musah, a chemist and professor at LSU, as she hovered over the
A beetle found in the decaying remains of a coyote
ä See INSECT, page 6A crawls on the hand of Alexa Figueroa.
After months of hand-wringing among New Orleans officials over a growing budget deficit, the city’s financial woes turned into a fullblown crisis with a stunning announcement two weeks ago: City Hall would soon run out of cash to make payroll. The $160 million deficit poses a daunting challenge, but it’s one that a new mayoral administra- ä Employees tion and City brace for C o u n c i l c a n impacts of the work through city’s budget over the next year. The sud- failures. PAGE 1B den cash shortage, on the other hand, needs an immediate fix to ensure 5,000 city workers keep getting paid. City officials say there is enough money in hand to pay workers through Nov. 12. They are now working feverishly to come up with cash to last through the end of the year, after Gov. Jeff Landry said a plan to issue short-term bonds would only be approved if the state took over city finances — a nonstarter for Mayor-elect Helena Moreno and her council allies. Other than a few public statements, officials in Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration haven’t fully explained how the cash crunch occurred, or just how much is needed. But those statements, coupled with a review of city and state records, is starting to fill in at least some pieces of the puzzle.
ä See BUDGET, page 6A
Head Start programs face uncertain future because of shutdown BY MARK BALLARD Staff writer
WASHINGTON — Along with food stamps, air travel and other casualties of the prolonged federal government shutdown, many Head Start programs will run out of money Saturday, threatening early learning, food assistance and health screenings for preschool-
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ers, as well as free child care and job training for their lower-income parents. About 10% of the programs nationwide won’t receive funds Saturday, affecting more than 58,600 children at 134 Head Start centers in 41 states, according to the National Head Start Association. In Louisiana, 1,344 children at more than a dozen centers, primar-
ily in New Orleans and Acadiana, have scrambled to cover the impact of not receiving checks. “We know that the affected grantees will likely stay open as long as they can using the revenue funds or other resources. But the longer the shutdown continues, the harder it’ll be for them to be able to hold on,” said Libbie Sonnier, chief executive officer at Louisi-
ana Policy Institute for Children, a New Orleans-based research nonprofit. Head Start serves about 13,800 of the 100,000 Louisiana children who live in households at or near the federal poverty line. “We also know that, when centers are forced to close, parents will have to make impossible choices of either going to work to
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sustain their family or not making an income and staying home with their children,” Sonnier said. Advocates see this latest hurdle as another unwelcome wrinkle in a yearlong struggle over the future of the 60-year-old program, says Teresa Falgoust, director of data and research with Agenda
ä See SHUTDOWN, page 7A
13TH yEAR, NO. 81