By Niki Kelly | Editor-in-Chief
“Most of the time, though, if you really try to put yourself in their shoes, you realize that’s just people just like you but trying to survive. Trying to find a better way to live.” — Obenson Jean Gilles
Thousands of Haitians have called Indiana home in recent years. But the community is in a tailspin as they grapple with possible deportation. Meet some who are worried for themselves or their friends and family.
A law giving Gov. Mike Braun full control of the IU Board of Trustees is constitutional.
More than a dozen states — not Indiana — are suing the federal government over school mental health funding cuts.
A Haitian flag hangs in front of a store in Logansport on Tuesday, July 7, 2026. (Photo by Jack Forrest/Indiana Capital Chronicle)
Haitians who made Indiana home prepare for end of legal protections for thousands
By Jack Forrest
His given name is Obensley.
But during the process of immigrating to the United States from Haiti, he became Obenson. Obenson Jean Gilles.
In the 1990s, his grandfather left Haiti for a better life in the United States. In the tiny town where Jean Gilles was from, electricity in homes was uncommon. His grandfather, who wasn’t sent to school, didn’t know how to read or write. Still, he managed to get the money and paperwork for his family to immigrate. For that, he was a “hero,” Jean Gilles said.
In 2010, not yet a teenager, Jean Gilles left Haiti for his new home.
“It just felt like, you know, it was finally time to go to heaven,” he said.
COMMENTARY
Hoosiers still can't receive care at Indiana Planned Parenthood clinics. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Planned Parenthood doors are open, Indiana won’t let Medicaid patients in
By Rebecca Gibron
This month, patients across the country regained their right to use their Medicaid coverage at Planned Parenthood health centers. The one-year ban, which Congress enacted last year, has expired, and Medicaid patients are once again using their coverage at Planned Parenthood health centers across the country — but not here in Indiana.
For months, the state fought in court to make sure Indiana patients never regain that access. And this week, a federal court lifted a 13-year injunction, allowing the state’s purely political attempt to kick Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid.
NATIONAL NEWS
Student backpacks seen on the first day of school last year at Harborview Elementary School in Juneau, Alaska. Fifteen Democratic-led states are suing the Trump administration over cuts to a $1 billion school mental health grant program. (Photo by Corinne Smith/Alaska Beacon)
15 states sue Trump administration to block school mental health funding cuts
By Anna Claire Vollers
Fifteen states on Friday sued the Trump administration to prevent millions of dollars in cuts to school-based mental health funding.
The new lawsuit is part of an ongoing legal battle between Democratic-led states and the U.S. Department of Education over a mental health grant program that Congress established following the 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
(Tenor)
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