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Follow the decisions, people and policies shaping Baton Rouge and Louisiana.
Lindsay “Rubia” Garcia picked up a high-profile progressive endorsement this week from Baton Rouge activist and former U.S. Senate candidate Gary Chambers Jr., giving her campaign a fresh burst of visibility as Louisiana’s congressional elections remain caught in legal and political uncertainty. Garcia’s campaign announced the endorsement in a social media post featuring Chambers alongside…
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has suspended the state’s May 16 U.S. House primaries days before early voting was set to begin, throwing the congressional elections into chaos after absentee and mail-in ballots had already gone out and some voters had already cast ballots. The order applies only to Louisiana’s U.S. House races. Other contests scheduled…
The candidates came to the Harvey H. Benoit Community Center on Thursday night to talk about rural hospitals, data centers, wages, infrastructure, agriculture and the grinding affordability pressures facing Northeast Louisiana. But before the forum could fully settle into policy, the central question of the night was already hanging over the room: Would voters actually…
The Democratic candidates who showed up Wednesday night at Louisiana Tech University did not treat the May 16 primary as a sleepy intraparty contest. They framed it as a test of whether Louisiana voters are ready to demand more on health care, utility bills, rural jobs, public education, infrastructure and public accountability. The Ruston stop…
A new Emerson College Polling/KLFY News 10 survey, sponsored by KLFY/Nexstar Media, shows Louisiana’s Republican U.S. Senate primary locked in a tight three-way fight, with state Treasurer John Fleming narrowly leading U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow and incumbent U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy running third. The survey was conducted April 24-26 among 500 likely Republican primary voters….
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry is reportedly preparing to suspend next month’s U.S. House primaries so Republican lawmakers can redraw the state’s congressional map before voters cast ballots. Early voting is scheduled to begin Saturday, May 2. Landry’s announcement could come as early as Friday, according to the Washington Post, one day before voters were set…
The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais did not merely strike down Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district. It gave Louisiana Republicans a road map to do what they have wanted to do all along: return the state to a congressional map where Black voters, despite making up roughly one-third of the population, have a…
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana v. Callais, issuing a major voting rights decision that could reshape the state’s congressional map, place U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields’ seat in jeopardy, and make it far harder for voters to challenge maps that dilute Black political power. In a…
At a Democratic candidate forum in Shreveport Tuesday night, the biggest question was not simply who could win votes in Louisiana’s new closed primary system. It was whether the candidates could explain how they would protect ordinary families from being handed the bill for the state’s next round of big promises. The forum, moderated by…
Former Gov. John Bel Edwards endorsed Nick Albares on Tuesday in Louisiana’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary, giving Albares his most significant late boost less than three weeks before voters choose the party’s nominee. The endorsement lands at a consequential point in the race: after the Democratic candidates’ first major debate, with early voting approaching and…
At Southern University on Tuesday night, Louisiana’s three Democratic U.S. Senate candidates offered less of an ideological clash than three different arguments about what kind of Democrat can still compete statewide in a deeply red state. Nick Albares, Gary Crockett and Jamie Davis shared broad agreement on much of the Democratic policy baseline – protecting…
At the first stop of a new Democratic roadshow in Lafayette on Sunday, the candidates onstage did not spend much time debating where the party should stand. On most of the major questions — voting rights, abortion, health care, immigration, public education — they were broadly aligned. What the forum did reveal was something more…
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday handed Chevron and the oil industry a major win in one of Louisiana’s most important environmental cases, wiping away the legal footing beneath a $745 million coastal damage verdict and moving a key part of the fight into federal court, where oil companies generally believe they have better odds….
For a party that has spent years struggling to build credible federal campaigns in Louisiana, the first-quarter fundraising reports offered something Democrats do not always get in this state: signs of life. Several Democratic candidates posted respectable numbers in reports covering Jan. 1 through March 31, enough to show that there is still donor interest,…
House Speaker Mike Johnson made it official Wednesday: when forced to choose between the political demands of Donald Trump and the moral warning of the head of the Catholic Church, Louisiana’s most powerful Republican chose Trump. Asked about the growing clash between the White House and Pope Leo XIV, Johnson did not try to calm…
When President Donald Trump threatened this week that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran did not bend to his demands, the statement was so grotesque that it demanded more than the usual partisan reflex. It demanded a moral response. In Louisiana’s congressional delegation, two members supplied one. Congressman Cleo Fields treated Trump’s rhetoric…
For many Louisiana voters, Nick Albares is still an introduction. He is not a former statewide officeholder. He is not a longtime elected official with a built-in political base. And unlike some of the more familiar names in Louisiana Democratic politics, Albares comes out of the world of policy and nonprofit leadership more than the…
Former U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon has endorsed Nick Albares in Louisiana’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, giving Albares the support of a former congressman and past statewide Democratic nominee as the May 16 primary approaches. Melancon announced his endorsement in a campaign press release, praising Albares’ work on healthcare and framing him as a candidate…
President Donald Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget is not law – yet. Congress still has to pass actual spending bills. But presidential budgets still matter because they show what the White House is trying to protect, what it is willing to cut, and who it expects to absorb the damage. This one is pretty…
With less than a month before Louisiana Democrats choose their nominee for U.S. Senate, the party’s three candidates will share a debate stage April 21 in Baton Rouge in what is likely to be one of the clearest side-by-side tests of the race before voting begins. Nick Albares, Gary Crockett, and Jamie Davis are scheduled…
Rev. Larry Foy is running for Congress with an argument Louisiana voters do not hear very often from a candidate shaped by the church: faith is not a detour from progressive politics. It is what brought him there. For Foy, a Democrat running in Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District, the through line from ministry to public…
State Sen. Royce Duplessis is pitching his Louisiana Voting Rights Act as a state-level backstop at a moment when he says the federal one can no longer be taken for granted. Duplessis’ Senate Bill 365 would create a Louisiana Voting Rights Act, prohibit voter suppression and vote dilution, and establish a Louisiana Voting Rights Commission…
The five Democrats running in Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District offered few real policy clashes at a forum Tuesday night. Instead, the sharper divide was over style, strategy and how forcefully Democrats should confront both a radicalized Republican Party and their own party’s failures in places like rural Louisiana. That made the Young Democrats of Livingston…
Hundreds of Baton Rouge residents turned out Saturday at A.Z. Young Park outside the State Capitol for the latest “No Kings” rally and march, part of a broader national day of action organized through the growing anti-Trump protest movement. The Baton Rouge event was organized by Indivisible Baton Rouge as part of the March 28…
