The Times-Picayune 12-31-2025

Page 1

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INSIDE TODAY: SUGAR BOWL PARADE BULLETIN

N O L A.C O M

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W e d n e s d ay, d e c e m b e r 31, 2025

BRASS BANDS &BARRICADES

One year after deadly New year’s Day attack, the party on Bourbon Street continues amid the grief

$2.00X

N.O. crime numbers down for third year Positive figures come as National Guard members begin deployment in city

BY JOHN SIMERMAN and MISSY WILKINSON Staff writers

STAFF PHOTOS By ENAN CHEDIAK

Kala Elkinton, left, hugs Sarah Beasley after dancing with some street performers playing by one of the street barricades on Bourbon Street on Sunday. BY JENNA ROSS Staff writer

Jennifer Jones was a rainbow in motion. Each inch of her outfit, from the parasol she was waving above her head to her stepping, twirling, kicking feet was covered in colorful feathers, tulle or beads. It was 5 p.m. and a bit of light remained in the sky, but the party had already started on Bourbon Street. Jones was bopping to R&B pumped from an empty bar, to a beat blasting from a passing car, to a wisp of a tune from a tourist’s cellphone. But earlier that Sunday evening, stepping onto her city’s most famous street, her thoughts had turned dark. The New Orleans resident was remembering the events of a year ago, when a man had barreled his truck down this iconic stretch of bars and restaurants, commerce

On a balmy September afternoon in Central City, Danny Allen was canvassing for the Ubuntu Village New Orleans Peace Ambassadors program when he heard a nearby dice game turn heated. Seven or eight young men had been gambling for a pot of a couple hundred dollars. After one player won the money and tried to walk away, another had a different idea. “You gonna’ put my (expletive) money back,” the loser said. The threat made Allen’s “antennae go up,” he said. A Calliope projects native and director of the intervention program, Allen has made defusing potentially deadly conflicts his life’s work. Another advocate shot him a look: “This could go left,” Allen recalled. He and his team pulled the young man aside. “You say you do this to take care of your grandmother. So are you going to risk doing life in Angola for a dice game?” Nobody went to the hospital or jail that day. And while it’s impossible to measure success by tallying the crimes that never happened, it marked a win in a year seemingly full of them.

ä See CRIME, page 5A

Jennifer Jones dances with street performers on Bourbon Street on Sunday.

STAFF PHOTO By DAVID GRUNFELD

The NOPD investigates a double homicide in October. Scenes like this one were fewer in New Orleans in 2025, as the number of murders declined to around a 50-year low.

ä See BARRICADES, page 4A

Hundreds reporting chemtrail sightings in Louisiana New law requires DEQ to track reports

shapes up above, or in one case, an “Acura logo.” The supposed culprit: chemtrails, a long-debunked conspiracy theory that scientists say is not acBY SAM KARLIN Staff writer curate. The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the agency The reports are alarming. Angry residents say the Louisi- charged with regulating the state’s ana skies are being sprayed with expansive petrochemical industry chemicals, creating “tic-tac-toe” among other sectors, has collected

WEATHER HIGH 59 LOW 42 PAGE 8B

more than 400 such reports since just this summer, when the Republican-led Legislature passed a bill requiring it to track such reports. A handful of Republican state lawmakers have encouraged their constituents to write in, propping up the conspiracy theory that the condensation trails airplanes leave behind are, in fact, dangerous chemicals or heavy metals.

The new law passed by the Legislature did more than require DEQ to collect such reports. It also banned climate geoengineering and cloud seeding, which are real technologies designed to combat climate change or generate greater precipitation for agricultural or other purposes. Neither is used in Louisiana, according to state and federal regulators.

Business ...................10A Commentary ................7B Nation-World................2A Classified .....................8D Deaths .........................4B Opinion ........................6B Comics-Puzzles .....4D-7D Living............................1D Sports ..........................1C

The debate about chemtrails among state lawmakers prompted a clash over long-standing farming practices, nascent climate technology and outright conspiracies. And as a result, the state environmental regulator is now required to collect reports of such alleged activities. Records show that more than

ä See CHEMTRAIL, page 4A

13TH yEAR, NO. 141


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