Kratom, often seen in smoke shops or convenience stores, is not technically a drug but is used by some to help quit addictive opioids. However, its impact isn’t universally positive. In Louisiana, two bills are under debate: one proposes a total ban on kratom, while the other aims to regulate its packaging and sale, allowing continued access for those who benefit from it. Illuminator editor Greg LaRose examines both perspectives, sharing personal stories and scientific insights. The episode also addresses misinformation surrounding kratom in Louisiana and other states with varying regulations. Listen to The Light Switch podcast on Spotify or Apple for more.
You might have heard of kratom – but it’s more likely you’ve seen it, or at least the word – written in neon on the front of a smoke shop — or on a little bottle next to the checkout at a convenience store.
Technically, kratom is not a drug, but some people use it like one. In many cases, they’re using it to help them get off of drugs, like highly addictive opioids.
But there are other kratom stories, and they don’t have happy endings.
There are two bills being debated in the Louisiana Legislature – one seeks to ban kratom entirely, and the other would regulate how it’s packaged and sold, keeping it available for people who say it’s changed their lives for the better.
In this episode, Illuminator editor Greg LaRose explores both sides of the kratom issue. You’ll hear from the people it affects, good and bad and explore the science behind substance and the disputes over it.
Plus, we’ll chip away at the misinformation that surrounds the political debate – here in Louisiana and in other states that have chosen to regulate, ban and un-ban the substance.
How to listen:
Please subscribe and rate The Light Switch on Spotify or Apple.
Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
The content presents a neutral exploration of the kratom debate, examining both sides of the issue without expressing a strong ideological stance. It highlights the contrasting perspectives regarding kratom’s regulation, mentioning both the arguments for banning it and those for keeping it available. The inclusion of voices from individuals who have benefited from kratom, as well as those who have experienced negative consequences, suggests a balanced approach. Additionally, the mention of misinformation around the debate indicates an attempt to address a complex issue without taking a particular political side.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Emilee Calametti | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-05-16 12:45:00
A recent audit reveals the town of Melville faces ongoing financial struggles after four years of operating losses. The town’s utility system lacks meters at most residences, causing rampant utility theft and unresolved bill payments, including many officials with overdue accounts. The audit highlighted failures such as non-payment of payroll taxes, inadequate documentation, and repeated past audit findings. Melville’s net position declined due to rising expenses, especially in public safety. Despite receiving federal grants, the town’s financial health is worsening. To address these issues, Melville plans to propose additional sales and property taxes and reduce departmental spending.
(The Center Square) — A recent audit report showed the town of Melville is still experiencing financial hardship after four years of losses.
“The town has experienced significant operating losses over the past four fiscal years,” the auditor’s report said. “The town’s utility system doesn’t feature meters at most residences, and many sections of the utility system cannot be cut off individually, which has made utility theft rampant.”
The Louisiana Legislative Auditor released a report that detailed many financial shortcomings for the town, including non-payment of all required payroll taxes to the Internal Revenue Service and the Louisiana Department of Revenue.
The town also did not keep adequate documentation, according to the report, to reconcile underlying meter deposit liability to individual account balances. Many elected officials with past-due accounts were found after not enforcing a uniform cutoff policy for non-payment of utilities.
The town has reportedly received large federal grants to assist with issues, but the auditor said, “The town’s financial position is rapidly deteriorating.”
This is not the first audit showing troubles for the town. Back in 2022, reports showed many town officials owed the federal government for payroll taxes. The previous audit specified 10 findings for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2020. Five of those findings were repeated from previous audits.
According to the report, the town’s net position decreased by $9,746 from governmental activities due to an increase in public safety expenses. Business-type activities also decreased the net position by over $134,000 from transfers to support governmental activities.
The audit statement of activities showed general government expenses at $486,302, with public safety expenses totaling $232,988. The total expenses for all governmental activities were $733,678.
To rectify these issues, the town plans to add an additional sales tax to the election ballot, an additional property tax and will try to reduce departmental spending. Many of the findings were reported to have happened under different administration.
Emilee Ruth Calametti currently serves as Staff Reporter for The Center Square covering the Northwestern Louisiana region. She holds her M.A. in English from Georgia State University and an additional M.A. in Journalism from New York University. Her articles have been featured in DIG Magazine, Houstonia Magazine, Bookstr, inRegister, EntertainmentNOW, AOL, MSN, and more. She is a Louisiana native with over seven years of journalism experience.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
The article primarily reports on the financial struggles of the town of Melville, Louisiana, based on an audit report. It focuses on factual details such as operating losses, issues with utility systems, tax non-payment, and actions to address financial difficulties, such as proposed taxes and spending cuts. While the article covers the negative findings of the audit and the town’s financial decline, it does not advocate for any particular ideological perspective or propose solutions that align with a specific political viewpoint. It presents the information in a straightforward manner, without a discernible bias in terms of tone or language. The reporting is neutral, fact-based, and centers on the town’s economic challenges without endorsing or criticizing any political position.
In March 2024, U.S. Supreme Court arguments focused on medication abortion, the most common abortion method in 2023. The Trump administration, influenced by far-right-funded white papers claiming higher risks with mifepristone, is reviewing the drug’s safety. Anti-abortion groups cite these papers, which reproductive health experts criticize for overstating adverse events by broadly classifying emergency visits. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the findings “alarming” and ordered the FDA to conduct a full review, potentially revising drug labels. Advocates warn this could restrict access to medication abortion, despite decades of research affirming its safety and efficacy.
The Trump administration has agreed to review the safety and efficacy of abortion pills, based on white papers funded by far-right organizations, which reproductive health experts say are unscientific and contradict decades of research showing low rates of serious adverse events for the most common form of abortion.
But during a U.S. Senate hearing Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the findings “alarming.” He said he would order the Food and Drug Administration to “do a complete review” of the mifepristone-misoprostol regimen — but first he suggested the drug label “should be changed,” based on the data the anti-abortion movement has used to lobby Trump officials for the past two weeks.
Kennedy was answering a question from U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), whose attorney wife argued against the safety of mifepristone before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2024. The senator has been part of a strategy, which began after FDA approval in 2000, to restrict or ban medication abortion at the federal level. Earlier Wednesday, more than 100 groups sent the HHS secretary and the FDA commissioner a petition to restrict the use of the two-drug regimen.
Some anti-abortion activists see this as a significant win.
“The opportunity that this information provides to all of us, I believe, is the single biggest pro-life breakthrough since the overturn of Roe versus Wade, and we all know what a huge landmark that was,” said longtime movement leader David Bereit on a webcast Wednesday night. “And now we have an opportunity to continue to advance the cause of life.”
Bereit is the executive director of the Life Leadership Conference, a multimillion-dollar venture founded this year to help fund anti-abortion projects, according to the National Catholic Register.
Data-driven strategy to convince Trump’s FDA to review abortion drug
Self-published in late April by the Ethics & Public Policy Center and the Foundation for the Restoration of America, the white papers found that about 11% patients who took mifepristone experienced serious adverse events, which is 22 times higher than what’s on the current drug label for mifepristone.
The FDA’s prescribing label for mifepristone under the brand name Mifeprex says that based on U.S. and non-U.S. clinic studies, serious adverse reactions were reported in less than 0.5% of women.
The Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC) and the Foundation for the Restoration of America papers say their high sample size (865,727 “prescribed mifepristone abortions”) and recent time frame (2017 to 2023) make theirs the most comprehensive studies on the matter and trump the hundreds of peer-reviewed studies that have to-date found low rates of serious adverse effects.
Reproductive health researchers and fact-checkers have criticized the EPPC’s broad classification of serious adverse events and pointed out that the analysis still shows low rates of the more serious risks typically linked to medication abortion, such as sepsis (0.1%), transfusion (0.15%), and hospitalization related to the abortion (0.66%).
Wednesday’s joint letter to HHS and the FDA, signed by Americans United for Life and more than 100 anti-abortion groups, describe their evidence as sufficient proof for the FDA to, even before evaluating new data, “reinstate the previous protections for women prescribed mifepristone.”
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The FDA lifted “previous protections” between 2016 and 2021, following emerging safety data, that allowed people to get medication abortions up to 10 weeks’ gestation instead of seven, no longer required multiple in-clinic visits, and allowed the medicines to be prescribed via telemedicine and sent through the mail. These changes have made medication abortion the most accessible form of termination and have allowed abortion rates to rise in a country where more than half the states have banned abortion partially or outright.
That’s why medication abortions have become a target of the anti-abortion movement.
Previous papers finding that mifepristone was unsafe were produced by the Charlotte Lozier Institute in 2021 and 2022 and cited by a federal judge in a lawsuit brought by anti-abortion doctors that was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court last year. It has since been revived with new plaintiffs. Those papers were peer-reviewed and published by the major academic publisher Sage. But under scrutiny, they were eventually retracted for methodological flaws and undisclosed conflicts of interest related to the peer review. The Charlotte Lozier researchers took legal action against Sage, arguing the retractions were political and that a pro-abortion bias exists in science and academia. A spokesperson for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which is the parent organization of Charlotte Lozier, said neither organization was involved in producing or funding the most recent analysis.
This time, the groups sharing these claims with federal and state lawmakers have not publicly disclosed the source of the data nor the people who conducted the research.
“In the research that went into this, there were a number of doctors and scientists and data scientists who helped with this analysis, but for fear of reprisal, for fear of retaliation, they need to keep their names quiet,” said John T. Anderson, the Ethics & Public Policy Center’s president, who co-authored his organization’s white paper with director of data analysis Jamie Bryan Hall, on Wednesday’s webcast.
John Mize, the CEO of Americans United for Life, said he proposed using health insurance claims data to uncover health harms from medication abortion during an interview with the organization last year.
Mize said he quickly learned that groups in the anti-abortion movement were already beginning to comb claims data. The Ethics & Public Policy Center paper has spread as part of a multifaceted legal and messaging strategy, which Politico recently reported has been internally dubbed “Rolling Thunder” and includes trying to bring False Claims Act cases against doctors who tell patients the drugs are safe, based on the paper.
Mize acknowledged this paper was not peer-reviewed or published in a journal, which is standard in credible scientific research, but he said it wasn’t meant to stand as evidence alone. He said the goal was to get the FDA to review medication-abortion safety, and reconsider new regulations.
“I’m not saying that this is, like, definitive proof,” Mize told States Newsroom. “But it points in the direction that the FDA should say, ‘You know what? Maybe we need to do more to research this.’”
The Ethics & Public Policy Center advocates for policies restricting abortion and helps train physicians to testify against abortion in legislatures and in the courts. The organization was on the advisory board of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the controversial presidential blueprint that President Donald Trump distanced himself from during the campaign but has since begun to implement, including on abortion.
On EPPC’s board of directors sit two powerhouses of the Christian right movement: Princeton University professor Robert P. George and Leonard Leo, the co-chairman of the influential legal network the Federalist Society. Leo is credited with hand-picking Trump’s first three Supreme Court nominees, whom Trump promised were open to overturning Roe v. Wade, and with it almost 50 years of federal abortion rights.
EPPC’s communications director Hunter Estes said their research project began last fall and was done separately from the paper published by the Foundation for the Restoration of America, a nonprofit run by far-right political operative Doug Truax. Truax is also the founder and CEO of a health insurance group based in Illinois. He declined to comment. The Foundation paper lists no author and credits the research to “our clinical team of board-certified obstetrician-gynecologists.”
Breaking down the claims
Reproductive health experts told States Newsroom that the sweeping claims in the white papers largely rely on stretching the standard definition of serious adverse events, lumping in deadly infections like sepsis with emergency visits that could be merely observational; preexisting chronic conditions; and instances where an additional treatment was needed to complete the abortion.
“The coding of all emergency department visits as serious adverse events to me suggests they don’t understand abortion,” said Ushma Upadhyay, an epidemiologist at the University of California San Francisco, who has been researching mifepristone safety for most of her career. “There’s demonstrated research that people are more likely to go to the emergency room if they live further away from the abortion provider and … they want reassurance about their symptoms. That is not a serious adverse event.”
Estes defended including emergency room visits in the list of serious adverse events, even though the FDA does not explicitly. He said his team only counted emergency room visits that were related to the abortion and were more serious than “mild cramping.”
“Thus, if a woman took the chemical abortion pill and then got into a car accident or broke a bone, that did not count,” Estes told States Newsroom in an email. “This led us to exclude 72% of emergency room visits that took place within 45 days of abortion from our analysis.”
Another major red flag for reproductive health researchers is that the anti-abortion groups have not named their data source or specific codes used.
Both groups say they analyzed commercially available all-payer health insurance claims for the years 2017 through 2023. The EPPC paper says the database it used “includes information on hospital and office visits, diagnoses, procedures, and prescriptions processed through private health insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, TRICARE, and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The data excludes transactions for which the insurer is also the provider (as is the case with some HMOs and much VA care), as well as cash pay transactions (which are disproportionately common for abortion). This dataset provides longitudinal tracking of medical diagnoses, procedures, and prescriptions for each patient.”
Estes said the paper’s description of their dataset should be enough to replicate it.
“We are not legally permitted to share that information or provide the data set,” Estes said. “However, these datasets are both widely used. … Large companies throughout the health care and health insurance industries almost certainly have access to the data we used, as do many researchers who publish in academic journals.”
But Julia Strasser, a reproductive health researcher and professor at George Washington University’s Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity who regularly works with claims data, said she couldn’t identify the EPPC’s data source. She said there’s a high learning curve for understanding and analyzing this data. And she said claims databases vary widely.
“It might be the highest number of patients, but there are a lot of problems with this study,” Strasser said. “In public health in general, it’s rare that there is one single study or one single publication that is sort of the silver bullet that proves or disproves something. It’s about the totality of the evidence. And we have 100 studies about mifepristone in the real-world context in the last 25 years that are showing that it’s safe and effective.”
But it’s enough to compel the Trump administration to take action on medication abortion, something abortion-rights advocates say could create major barriers to getting care even in states with major abortion bans or restrictions. The EPPC paper does not report any findings related to telemedicine abortion, but asserts the FDA should return to previous protocols that did not include telemedicine while reviewing the data further. It also suggests the agency should “reconsider its approval altogether.” The administration has not yet announced any restrictions on medication abortion.
“It is terrifying to think that our access to safe FDA-approved medications turns on President Trump’s gut instinct rather than credible scientific evidence,” said Americans Civil Liberties Union attorney Julia Kaye on a webinar with other abortion-access advocates Thursday. “There is still time for President Trump to make good on his campaign promise not to strip away access to medication abortion, but all signs right now suggest that this FDA review based on junk science is just about fulfilling the wish list of anti-abortion extremists.”
Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Left-Leaning
This content reflects a left-leaning perspective as it strongly critiques the Trump administration’s efforts to review and potentially restrict the abortion pill mifepristone based on research funded and promoted by far-right and anti-abortion organizations. The article emphasizes reproductive health experts’ and abortion rights advocates’ views that the studies used to justify restrictions are unscientific or flawed, and it highlights concerns about maintaining access to safe medication abortion. While it reports on the anti-abortion movement’s strategies and claims, the overall framing and language favor reproductive rights and skepticism toward the regulatory review initiated by conservative actors.
Congressional Republicans aim to cut billions in federal spending by overhauling student loan repayment and reducing federal student aid. The House Education Committee approved a reconciliation bill to save $350 billion over 10 years, proposing repeals of subsidized loans and the Grad PLUS program, capping federal aid, and tightening Pell Grant eligibility. The package enforces “skin-in-the-game” for colleges, holding them partly accountable for loan non-repayment. It also eliminates the Biden administration’s SAVE plan, replacing it with two repayment options. Critics warn these changes risk making college costlier, limit access, and push borrowers toward risky private loans, undermining affordability and protections.
WASHINGTON — Students and families could see significant changes to how student loans are repaid as well as cuts to federal student aid as congressional Republicans look to slash billions of dollars in federal spending to offset the cost of President Donald Trump’s sweeping agenda.
Republicans are using the complex reconciliation process to move a package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber, avoiding the Senate’s 60-vote threshold that generally requires bipartisanship.
The House Committee on Education and Workforce approved its portion of the package in a party-line vote in April, pushing GOP lawmakers a step closer to potentially securing key changes to student loan repayment options and Pell Grant eligibility.
Chairman Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican, said the 103-page bill would save taxpayers more than $350 billion over 10 years and “bring much-needed reform” on “simplified loan repayment, streamlined student loan options, and accountability for students and taxpayers.”
But the bill has drawn criticism and worry from student advocates and congressional Democrats over how the proposed changes would impact higher education affordability and access.
Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director at the Student Borrower Protection Center, told States Newsroom that the advocacy group was “really troubled to see House Republicans take such a drastic approach to their efforts to address the college affordability crisis.”
“Unfortunately, this bill will make college more expensive for families and students and will make it significantly more risky for students and families just trying to pay for college, and it’s also going to make student loan debt significantly more expensive for millions of borrowers across the country,” she said.
Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the committee, echoed the concerns of student advocacy groups.
The Virginia Democrat said the bill would “increase costs for colleges and students,” “limit students’ access to quality programs” and take “all the so-called ‘savings’ to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthy and the well-connected.”
Here’s a breakdown of some of the major changes outlined in the House education panel’s portion of the package:
The bill would repeal subsidized loans — where the federal government pays the interest on the loan while a borrower is in school — for borrowers beginning July 1, 2026, according to the committee’s summary.
For unsubsidized loans disbursed on or after July 1, 2026, the maximum annual loan limit would be amended to the “median cost of students’ program of study.”
The total amount of federal student aid a person could receive annually would also be capped at the “median cost of college.” According to the committee, this is defined as “the median cost of attendance for students enrolled in the same program of study nationally and calculated by the (Education) Secretary using data from the previous award year.”
Aggregate limits, or the maximum amount a student can borrow, would cap at $50,000 for undergraduate programs; $100,000 for graduate programs; and $150,000 for professional programs, such as law or medical school.
The bill also repeals the Grad PLUS program and places new restrictions on Parent PLUS loans.
Undergraduate students would be required to “exhaust their unsubsidized loans before parents can utilize Parent PLUS to cover their remaining cost of attendance,” according to the panel’s summary.
Canchola Bañez noted that the repeal of the Grad PLUS program would increase the likelihood that students would have to take out loans in the private market to fill gaps they would have normally filled by using Grad PLUS loans.
“We know that private loans have much less protections and consumer protections for borrowers,” she said, adding that “the more we push folks out of the federal market and into the private market, the less students and borrowers have access to those protections should things go wrong after school.”
‘Skin-in-the-game accountability’
The package also proposes “skin-in-the-game accountability” for colleges and universities, and institutions would have to pay the federal government “a percentage of the non-repayment balance associated with loans disbursed on or after July 1, 2027,” according to the panel’s summary.
Preston Cooper, senior fellow in higher education policy at a right-leaning think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, said “essentially, for colleges whose borrowers require some of this repayment assistance, if their payments are too low to cover interest on their loans, or they require that principal credit, the colleges will have to cover a share of the costs.”
“They won’t have to cover all the costs — the government will pay some of it — but they will have to cover some of the cost of providing borrowers with that repayment assistance, and I think the idea here is to create better incentives for colleges to make sure that they’re not loading students up with unnecessary debt,” he said.
Pell Grant eligibility
The bill redefines full-time enrollment for Pell Grants — a federal government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college.
The legislation raises the minimum number of credit hours to qualify for the maximum Pell Grant award from 12 credit hours per semester to 15 credit hours. Students would also be ineligible for a Pell Grant if their Student Aid Index — a formula-based number to determine financial aid eligibility — equals or surpasses twice the amount of the maximum Pell Grant.
Pell Grant eligibility would also be expanded for those in short-term programs between eight and 15 weeks long.
Repealing the SAVE plan
The bill creates just two repayment plans — a Standard Repayment Plan and a Repayment Assistance Plan, while eliminating the Biden administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan, which is currently tied up in federal court.
The Standard Repayment Plan includes fixed monthly payments and repayment terms between 10 to 25 years depending on how much one borrows, per the committee, while the Repayment Assistance Plan calculates payments based on a borrower’s total adjusted gross income.
The Repayment Assistance Plan also includes a minimum $10 monthly payment and “offers balance assistance to borrowers making their required on-time payments by waiving unpaid interest and providing a matching payment-to-principal of up to $50,” according to the panel.
Cooper said the Repayment Assistance Plan “fixes one of the long-standing problems in the income-driven repayment system for student loans, which is that a lot of borrowers’ payments don’t cover their accrued interest, which means that they see their balances rise over time.”
Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Right
The content is reporting on the proposed changes to federal student aid and loan repayment options under Republican-led efforts, focusing on how these changes align with President Trump’s agenda. The tone is mostly factual but highlights both Republican claims of cost-saving reforms and Democratic concerns about increased costs for students. The inclusion of statements from right-leaning and left-leaning sources provides a balanced representation of the issue, though the framing of the proposed changes as “drastic” and detrimental to students’ financial well-being suggests some opposition to the policy from those critical of Republican proposals. Overall, the article maintains a neutral stance but leans slightly towards a conservative perspective, emphasizing the Republicans’ intent to streamline and reduce government spending.
