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lorenaoneil.com
Lorena O’Neil
@lorenaoneil.com
15K followers 1.8K following 260 posts
NOLA freelancer reporting on repro health, politics, culture, tech

Contributing writer at Rolling Stone & nonprofit newsroom @lailluminator.bsky.social

Bylines: The GuardianUS, Elle, The LA Times, Marie Claire, Jezebel

https://www.lorenaoneil.com
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Before calling New Orleans "quite bad" and threatening to send the National Guard here, Trump once called it a "sexy city" and hyped up a Trump Tower NOLA (which never happened despite post-Katrina promises) @rollingstone.com www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...
Screenshot of Donald Trump in a masquerade mask to promote Trump Tower New Orleans with the caption "live it yourself"
September 3, 2025 at 9:25 PM
lorenaoneil.com
Also… please don’t miss the intro website Trump Tower New Orleans had. It featured Trump, Don Jr. and Ivanka in masquerade masks. Just in case you need a pick-me up today for whatever reason.
August 30, 2025 at 2:17 PM
lorenaoneil.com
Even Louisiana state lawmakers are confused about the legality of mifepristone and misoprostol, as was shown recently while talking about new legislation that would allow families to sue over suspected abortions. (HB575 is a bill to keep an eye on as it heads to state senate.)
Even among state lawmakers who approved the law, confusion reigns. At a Louisiana House committee hearing last month, Rep. Lauren Ventrella, R-Greenwell Springs, said that last year “we made it illegal to prescribe” mifepristone and misoprostol. However, both can still be legally prescribed by health care providers with the proper licensing for Schedule IV drugs. When the law reclassifying the medication passed, its supporters repeatedly stated they were not restricting access to the medication for people who needed it for reasons outside of abortion. When Ventrella misspoke, she was introducing House Bill 575, which would allow families to sue over suspected abortions. Attorney General Liz Murrill has referred to the law as “another tool in the toolbox” that could be used against out-of-state doctors who prescribe abortion medication to patients in Louisiana. Murrill is currently prosecuting at least two cases involving a New York doctor who allegedly prescribed medications to pregnant women in Louisiana. So far, New York’s shield laws, which protects abortion providers, have held up against states that have tried to prosecute doctors. Ventrella’s bill awaits Senate floor action with less than a week remaining in the legislative session.
June 6, 2025 at 3:16 PM
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One mother who miscarried said: "I was denied misoprostol, essentially leaving me with my dead baby inside of me even longer because the pharmacist said he couldn’t give it to me. It was more horrific than it needed to be.”
In another instance, a pharmacist refused to fill a prescription for misoprostol ahead of an IUD insertion, telling the patient “he thought she was going to use it for an abortion,” wrote the doctor. There were also multiple accounts of misoprostol being prescribed for miscarriages, but pharmacists delayed filling prescriptions until they spoke to the doctor on the phone. In one instance, the mother who miscarried filed a complaint with the city health department. “I was denied misoprostol, essentially leaving me with my dead baby inside of me even longer because the pharmacist said he couldn’t give it to me,” the mother wrote. “It was more horrific than it needed to be.”
June 6, 2025 at 3:10 PM
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The political assault on the medications continues to ramp up on the state & national level. La. doctors detail challenges accessing misoprostol for their patients. One OB had to manually dilate their patient's cervix because they couldn't get misoprostol for a hysteroscopy
The New Orleans Health Department has been tracking complaints from health care providers and patients who have struggled with misoprostol access since October. The medical professionals and patients were provided anonymity to encourage feedback. One doctor wrote they had trouble accessing the drug to provide to a patient going through a hysteroscopy, a medical procedure in which the doctor examines a woman’s uterus using a thin, lighted tube. “I was unable to get misoprostol in pre-op for [a] patient undergoing hysteroscope,” the provider wrote. “Therefore [I] had to manually dilate [the] cervix multiple times causing unnecessary harm to the patient.” Another doctor said they couldn’t complete a biopsy, so they prescribed misoprostol to a patient in order to try the procedure again after softening her cervix. The doctor included the patient’s diagnosis of abnormal bleeding on the prescription, and that the patient was not pregnant. The pharmacy refused to fill the prescription until the doctor got on the phone to confirm the medication was not being used to end a pregnancy. “This could lead to a delay in diagnosis of cancer,” the doctor wrote.
June 6, 2025 at 3:06 PM
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An October entry says: “The problem with most revolutionary acts is that the message is lost on normies." It mentions Unabomber Ted Kaczynski: "By committing indiscriminate atrocities — he becomes a monster, which makes his ideas those of a monster, no matter how true."
The writer goes on to say “Ted K.”, presumably the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, made some “good points on the future of humanity, but to make his point he indiscriminately mailbombs innocents.” “By committing indiscriminate atrocities — he becomes a monster, which makes his ideas those of a monster, no matter how true. He crosses the line from revolutionary anarchist to terrorist — the worst thing a person can be.” As the entry continues, the writer talks about how rebelling against the “deadly, greed-fueled health insurance cartel” shouldn’t involve bombing the headquarters because that might make it seem like “the unjustified anger of someone who simply got sick/had bad luck and took their frustration out on the insurance industry, while recklessly endangering countless employees.”
June 5, 2025 at 2:26 PM
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The Manhattan DA provided images of what they say are handwritten notes Luigi Mangione wrote in the months leading up to the assassination of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson. rollingstone.com/culture/cult...
@rollingstone.com
An entry from the notebook in question, dated Aug. 15, 2024, states the writer was in San Francisco for a month at the time. “I finally feel confident about what I will do,” the entry says. “The details are coming together. And I don’t feel any doubt about whether it’s right or justified. I’m glad — in a way — that I’ve procrastinated [because] it allowed me to learn more about UHC. [Indecipherable] would have been an unjustified catastrophe that would be perceived mostly as sick, but more importantly unhelpful. Would do nothing to spread awareness/improve people’s lives.”
June 5, 2025 at 2:20 PM
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Mangione's lawyers request is for his hand shackles to be removed, not his leg shackles. Their argument is that Mangione has not shown himself to be a security or flight risk and he's often visited (unshackled) in a large open room with children present.
Mr. Mangione has been held in federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center ("MDC") located in Brooklyn, New York, since December 19, 2024. During the 167 days in pre- trial detention, Mr. Mangione has not been a security or flight risk requiring special, restricted or different treatment than any other general MDC inmate. He has never been cited by officers for misconduct, nor has he ever been punished or restricted; he has not exhibited any uncooperative behavior and has not been placed in any specially restricted location such as the Special Housing Unit ( also known as "the SHU"). In fact, he has been assigned to a work detail and is in the general population. To further illustrate this point, counsel visits Mr. Mangione nearly daily in the common visitor area at the MDC-a large open room with rows of small plastic chairs and no barriers between people or groups, where unshackled inmates meet with their families and where visitors and lawyers walk freely to buy food from vending machines and heat their food in a microwave. There are often dozens of people (including young children, babies, family members and others) sitting arms-length apart in the same large area as a completely unshackled Mr. Mangione. In other words, Mr. Mangione is treated just like any other pre-trial detainee, not like someone who is a heightened security or flight risk.
June 3, 2025 at 9:09 PM
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The lawyers mention that a photograph of Mangione's shackled ankles garnered more than 36 million views at his Feb. 21 appearance
Although Deck and Best refer to cases in trial and sentencing postures, the rationale underlying these decisions equally applies in Mr. Mangione's case given the high-profile nature of the three concurrent prosecutions. While there is obviously no jury in the courtroom for the prejudicial restraining of Mr. Mangione, because of the unprecedented public interest in these cases, Deck and Best still apply. Every court appearance is widely covered by the news and social media-providing video footage, still images, court sketches, online content and multiple purported "documentaries" where actors attempt to recreate every alleged aspect of this case. In fact, after the February 21, 2025, court appearance, images of Mr. Mangione in handcuffs and a bulletproof vest were featured in major news organizations such as Reuters, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Post, BBC and NBC, as well on social media platforms such as X and Reddit, to name only a few. These news and social media articles attract millions of views. For example, one photograph of Mr. Mangione's shackled ankles while seated in this Court was posted on X and has garnered more than 36 million views. Consequently, given that Mr. Mangione will be photographed and sketched at the next appearance in court and potentially video recorded, 2 the repeated imagery of Mr. Mangione in shackles with a bulletproof vest unjustifiably prejudices Mr. Mangione in the eyes of future jurors by portraying him as a dangerous person who requires special security treatment in court.
June 3, 2025 at 9:08 PM
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Luigi Mangione's lawyers request to remove bulletproof vest and hand shackles ahead of his appearance on June 26 at state court. "To counsel's knowledge, there have been no threats to Mr. Mangione's safety, and the only one wishing to execute him is the federal government."
before this Court, and there is no reason for him to be wearing one now. To counsel's knowledge, there have been no threats to Mr. Mangione's safety, and the only one wishing to execute him is the federal government. Wearing a bulletproof vest therefore serves no other purpose than to prejudice Mr. Mangione in the media and before future potential jurors. Each time Mr. Mangione has appeared in federal court (both in December 2024 and more recently in April 2025), he was wearing neither a bulletproof vest nor arm restraints of any sort, only leg shackles-which is what we are requesting here. Notably, counsel did not even have to request that Mr. Mangione appear with his hands unrestrained, as the U.S. Marshals Service removed his restraints on their own as is standard. There is no justification to treat Mr. Mangione's security protocol differently in state court than in the more serious federal court case where he faces potential execution. That Mr. Mangione's state court appearances have cameras in the courtroom (as opposed to federal court) does not suddenly turn Mr. Mangione into more of security threat that requires shackles and a bulletproof vest in the courtroom, especially given that the state and federal cases involve identical allegations.
June 3, 2025 at 9:07 PM
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"If the president is in any way confused about his responsibility, he should resign. Trump wants to transform the definition of what it means to be an American — from upholding the Constitution and our freedoms — to a pledge of loyalty to him." - @aoc.bsky.social
Photograph of President Trump in the oval office Photograph of Rep. AOC from profile, black and white, walking through Congress
May 30, 2025 at 2:10 PM
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I asked @aoc.bsky.social about the Trump administration deporting U.S. citizen children with cancer: "If this president is breaking the Constitution and if he’s starting to deport and force out U.S. citizens from this country, that, to me, is shut-it-down territory." @rollingstone.com
Switching to immigration, I’ve been reporting on U.S.-citizen children who are being illegally removed from the country, one of whom was a four-year-old boy in active treatment for metastatic cancer. He’s the second U.S.-citizen child with cancer that President Trump has deported. How do you think the public should be responding to this? Listen, I come from a background of organizing. If this president is breaking the Constitution and if he’s starting to deport and force out U.S. citizens from this country, that, to me, is shut-it-down territory. We’ve seen collective action happen before, and mass civil resistance is one of the critical pieces that we have, and it requires both, right? We need Democrats that are willing to stand up and brawl and not be afraid to fight on these issues, and we need mass collectives of people organizing in the streets. I believe that it’s always been that combination that is able to stop the encroachment of authoritarianism and fascism.
May 30, 2025 at 1:42 PM
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We spoke about the dreaded disappearing ellipsis — that feeling when you can see someone typing and then it stops. "At any age, that ellipsis will kick your butt," Akil said laughing.
In true Blume style, Akil also incorporated a central issue affecting people today — technology. “The phone is a big character in the show, because there’s a lot of duality to the phone,” she says. Throughout the series, the characters use phones to connect and disconnect via blocked messages, lost voicemails and unfinished texts. In the premiere, the drama revolves around the dreaded disappearing ellipsis — that feeling when you can see someone typing and then it stops.
May 10, 2025 at 1:21 AM
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"I posit that the Black boy is the most vulnerable [person in society]," Akil told me. "Mentally, emotionally, physically." She developed the adaptation in 2020.
Akil’s “Forever,” set in 2018 Los Angeles, stars Michael Cooper Jr. and Lovie Simone as the teenage leads — though the roles are gender-swapped from the novel. In 2020, while Akil was developing the adaptation, she tried to think of who the most vulnerable person is in society. “I posit that the Black boy is the most vulnerable,” she says. “My muse is my oldest son, and through the portal of him I got to go into the generation and just really start to look at what was going on.” While working on the project, she realized there are few depictions of boys and young men whose story is anchored in love, rather than relegating love to a side plot. “Mentally, emotionally, physically — they too deserve to fall in love and be desired and have someone fall in love with them,” she says. “And for Keisha — his honesty was attractive to her. How often do we ever really see that level of vulnerability be the leading guy?”
May 10, 2025 at 1:20 AM
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In the case of the other family, where the mom was pregnant, a judge has issued a clarification of the May 16 hearing about what happened. He revealed he received the case one minute before the plane carrying the families reached El Paso on the way to Honduras.
The other mother who was deported is currently pregnant. She brought her two-year-old U.S. citizen daughter known as VML, and her older sibling, with her to what she thought was a routine check-in on April 22. Three days later, all three of them were on a plane to Honduras, landing before a judge could hear the court case attempting to delay their removal. In both situations, attorneys say they were working on alternate lawful custodians to take care of the children. Yesterday, a federal judge in Louisiana, Terry Doughty, issued an order clarifying the scope of an upcoming hearing on May 16 where he will determine whether VML’s mother consented to her daughter’s removal. In the order, it’s revealed that the case was assigned to him at 8:14AM on April 25, and the court immediately began considering the petition. A minute later, the plane carrying VML from Alexandria, Louisiana, reached El Paso, preparing for its final leg to Honduras. “The court sought to call VML’s mother to have her attest that she consented to her child being removed with her,” wrote Doughty. “That didn’t happen. Now we are here.”
April 30, 2025 at 8:58 PM
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This family had an immigration attorney present when they arrived at the check-in and she says officials refused to let her attend with her client. By the next morning, the family was in Honduras
New Orleans attorney Erin Hebert, from Ware Immigration Law, said the child’s mother was told to bring him and his seven-year-old sister to a check-in in order to copy their passports. The children were dressed in their school uniforms and expected to return to class after what they thought would be a routine appointment. Instead, ICE officials refused to let Hebert come in with the family. “They refused to allow me to go back into the appointment,” Hebert tells Rolling Stone. “I want to be clear — they sequestered her from me.” Hebert said she sat in the waiting room until somebody came out and told her all three of them had been detained. “When I demanded information about where they’d been taken, where they were going, they refused to tell me,” she says. Hebert sprung into action to try and file court motions to delay the deportation but by the next morning, the family was already in Honduras. The children left in their school uniforms, without any of their belongings. The child with cancer did not have his medication with him. “This is a U.S. citizen child with a serious medical condition,” says Hebert. “I can’t think of a more vulnerable position to be in than that child. I am not easily shocked by the injustices that I have seen in my career, but this shocked me.”
April 30, 2025 at 8:57 PM
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DHS identified the mothers who were deported and continued doubling down on their claim they chose to bring their children with them. Attorneys for both moms vehemently deny this, and say the families are seeking medical care in the aftermath
“By naming these families publicly, DHS isn’t just trying to deflect rightful blame – it’s exposing these families to real danger,” Mich Gonzalez, one of the family’s attorneys, tells Rolling Stone. In a press release issued Wednesday morning, the National Immigration Project of National Lawyers Guild stated, “This is not just a violation of trust; it is a reckless act that puts real lives at risk and underlines the lack of concern for the safety and welfare of these children and their families…. The mothers were forcibly deported, and their U.S. citizen children were taken with them under duress. No safe or practical alternative was provided to allow the children to remain in their country of birth.” Gonzalez, who co-founded Sanctuary of the South, says the families are “still navigating how to seek medical care to address the impacts to their physical and mental health following this ordeal.” In addition to one of the mother’s seeking perinatal care and one of the children’s treatment for cancer, Gonzalez says the impact of the event itself and the ensuing aftermath has the families fearing for their safety.
April 30, 2025 at 8:54 PM
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Death Penalty Action executive director Abraham Bonowitz released a statement calling it a “hypocritical political stunt” by Bondi.
Screengrab of: “This is yet another disturbing reminder that our society values certain lives more than others,” said Bonowitz. “Just in recent months, another individual who many would classify as “the worst of the worst,” who killed multiple people in a mass shooting in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, was appropriately punished without the death penalty. While we do not condone the murder of Brian Thompson, his life did not matter more than the lives of regular people who were simply out ‘shopping while Brown.’” “We urge the Attorney General to rescind her call for the death penalty,” he continued. “Should Luigi Mangione be found guilty after a fair trial, we demand that the Trump Administration pursue an alternative punishment, one that can hold him accountable without killing him.”
April 25, 2025 at 6:47 PM
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Rep. Josh Carlson (R) proposes replacing the word “intentionally” with “knowingly” and removes “physical” to describe the use of force or intimidation. The bill details 18 examples of force, control or intimidation and removes references to outpatient abortion facilities.
Some of the examples of coercion are specific, such as kidnapping or blackmail, but others leave wide room for interpretation. One example says “restraint of speech or communication with others” can count as intimidation or control, including “interference with the use of mail, telephone, or money.” Another cites “isolation of an individual from others” or “exploitation of needs for food, shelter, safety, affection, or intimate or marital relationships.
April 7, 2025 at 10:40 PM
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The teams that focused on preventing domestic abuse and sexual assault were both entirely dismantled. Survivors are the ones that are going to be impacted the most by these layoffs.
Intimate partner violence, for example, primarily affects women, and the Intimate Partner Violence Prevention team was dismantled. The team worked with state and local domestic violence coalitions to put prevention strategies in place. All of the employees working on rape prevention education were also placed on leave. They’d funded and evaluated programs aimed at reducing sexual violence, especially in communities with marginalized individuals. They provided funding to state coalitions which distributed the money to rape crisis centers and local organizations and educated communities on resources they had available. One program that was funded was a hotspot mapping app called “Like a Girl.” If girls and women don’t feel safe in a neighborhood they can mark the spot on the map and then that data can be used to target high-impact areas and see if there are improvements that can be made to the area, like adding streetlights or using other proven ways of reducing violence. “This will close a lot of doors for sexual assault survivors that relied on these programs,” says a health scientist on the violence prevention team who asked to remain anonymous.
April 7, 2025 at 2:55 PM
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Louisiana OB-GYN Dr. Nicole Freehill is extremely worried about all of the CDC cuts, particularly to IVF research: "If this administration is so pro-life, why are they cutting this?"
Freehill also says she was concerned about how cuts to the Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) team will affect fertility research. “That’s an ever-changing field, trying to find the best techniques to help patients get pregnant and stay pregnant,” she says. “A lot of these patients have tried for years, they want to be parents. If this administration is so pro-life, why are they cutting this?” Among the employees who were cut were researchers who studied contraception, abortion, and fertility. For example, staffers would investigate success rates of IVF across clinics nationwide. The CDC is one of the only federal agencies tracking success rates and overseeing fertility clinics. The IVF cuts were especially ironic, considering Trump recently declared himself the “fertilization president’ at a Women’s History Month event at the White House on March 26 when talking about the executive order he signed pledging to expand access to fertility treatment.
April 7, 2025 at 2:54 PM
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The entire Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) team was laid off. That program was developed to identify women and infants at high risk of health problems, with the goal of reducing infant mortality and morbidity.
“We cannot understand factors associated with poor pregnancy outcomes without surveillance like PRAMs,” Taylor says. The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate of all high-income countries, and experts fear that reducing research on prevention will make things even worse. “If we don’t understand those factors, U.S. maternal morbidity and mortality will continue to worsen. This means more women will die.” “Black women in America are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, we know this in large part because of the data collected and analyzed by the CDC,” says Jennifer Driver, who runs the reproductive rights council at the State Innovation Exchange, a strategy center collaborating with state lawmakers on progressive public policy.
April 7, 2025 at 2:53 PM
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"Without the support staff, we can't do our science" one principal investigator and neuroscientist at NIH tells me.
A tenured principal investigator at NIH who leads a neuroscience lab tells Rolling Stone that the layoffs have completely shaken up the agency. “Even though the surface message is that they’re keeping the scientists, without the support staff, we can’t do our science,” they say. “People today feel devastated and hopeless,” says the neuroscientist, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing their job. “When the HHS Secretary talked about the need to invest in science and medicine, it felt like they wanted us to be able to achieve our mission. But what’s happening today — we feel like the rug’s being swept out from under us, and we don’t know who’s not going to be safe tomorrow.” Several senior leaders at both the CDC and NIH were reassigned from HHS to Indian Health Services (IHS), which provides medical resources to Native American Tribes, multiple sources confirmed. The positions could require relocating to more rural locations like Alaska, Montana, and New Mexico. Because the jobs are far away from their homes, some officials saw it as a way to force them out. They were also concerned that if they rejected the reassignment, this could risk them losing their pensions.
April 2, 2025 at 3:28 PM
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Also gutted? Two of the three branches of the CDC's Division of Reproductive Health.
“You don’t expect your whole program to be wiped out,” a staffer in the reproductive health division tells Rolling Stone. “It’s heartbreaking.” For example, the team that worked on the contraception guidelines all received emails that they were let go today. The guidelines are used as a standard of care by OB-GYNs, midwives, and primary care doctors. “Without CDC’s contraception guidelines, more women will die as pregnancy is the most dangerous thing a 20 or 30 year old will do in the U.S.,” adds the staffer.
April 2, 2025 at 3:26 PM
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“The amount of knowledge that is being purged today at CDC is just tragic," said one CDC staffer. Another told
@swin24.bsky.social: "Shitshow is an understatement."
Samantha, who worked at the CDC’s Division of Environmental Health and Science Practice (DEHSP), says her entire division was eliminated. That includes the Asthma and Air Quality Branch, the Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch, the Climate and Health Activity branch, and the Water Food and Environmental Health Services, among others. Approximately 2,400 employees have been impacted in the CDC. “They are firing whole organizational units,” says Samantha. “These are people that have 30 years of service, people with children, veterans, there was no thought put into trying to retain people that have institutional knowledge.”
April 2, 2025 at 3:24 PM