BY DOUG GRAHAM | Staff writer U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brought his “Make America Healthy Again” push to Baton Rouge on Friday, as Gov. Jeff Landry signed two pieces of legislation aligned with the MAHA movement. “We have a chronic disease epidemic in this country now, and it's unlike anything that humanity has ever faced,” Kennedy told a crowd Friday at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. “We are literally the sickest nation in the world,” he said. Read more about Friday's event. Kelly Orgeron, the ex-wife of LSU football coach Ed Orgeron, is entitled to half the money the coach received from his buyout from the university, a cool $8.13 million, according to a ruling handed down Friday by the Louisiana Supreme Court. Ed Orgeron led LSU to a national championship in January 2020, but he and the school decided to part ways after the 2021 season. Read the justices' reasoning behind the ruling. In a state where nearly 1 in 4 students was chronically absent in 2024, schools in West Baton Rouge Parish found ways to lower absenteeism this school year, seeing improvement every month. “Our teachers are excited, our principals are excited,” Superintendent Chandler Smith said. “We attribute a lot of our growth and academics to the decrease in chronic absences.” Read more about how things improved. | 