LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau

Published: May 13, 2026

By: Avery White, Gracie Thomas and Sheridan White, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE, La. — At 4:25 a.m. Wednesday – following a marathon, overnight hearing – a Senate committee approved new Congressional maps for Louisiana, sending the bill to the full Senate.

A bill eliminating one of Louisiana’s two majority-Democratic districts advanced from a Senate committee on a 4-3 vote early Wednesday morning following more than nine hours of testimony, setting the stage for Republican voting majorities in five of the state’s six congressional districts. 

The vote, which came at 4:25 a.m. Wednesday, amid a packed hearing room filled with bleary-eyed participants, is the next step in a tense redistricting battle following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on April 29 declaring one of Louisiana’s two Democratic districts unconstitutional for racial gerrymandering. 

The 5-1 map created by Senate Bill 121, authored by Sen. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, was one of two presented to the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. The other bill, SB 407 by Sen. Edward Price, D-Gonzales, which failed on a 4-3 vote, would have maintained two Democratic-majority districts.

“We’re a democracy, and democracy rules,” Morris said, explaining why Republicans had the power under the Supreme Court ruling to establish the new districts. “The Greeks invented it, and that means majority rules. If the minority doesn’t like it, I understand they don’t like it.”

Read more at WWLTV.

Published: May 14, 2026

By: Avery White, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE — A bill to protect university faculty academic speech died in a Senate committee Tuesday.

The House bill authored by Rep. Chuck Owen, R-Rosepine, in its original form would have prohibited professors from receiving punishments for things said in the classroom or research topics. However, it was heavily watered down before advancing from the House floor.

The bill was kept in committee by Senate Judiciary A, on a 4-1 vote.

“I’m very frustrated,” Owen said.

As created, the bill provided protections and civil remedies for university staff who faced retributive action based on academic speech, allowing for punitive damages up to $500,000 and fines up to $100,000 against the university.

Read more at The News Star.

Published: May 12, 2026

By: Izzy Wollfarth, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE – A House resolution directing auditors to determine how much state and federal money has been spent on programs requiring Louisiana universities to increase the number of minority students survived after a tense debate in the House Appropriations Committee Monday.

Rep. Aimee Adatto Freeman and Rep. Alonzo Knox, two New Orleans Democrats, moved to involuntarily defer, or effectively kill, the resolution. But the committee voted 11-7 Monday to send the measure to the House Committee on Education for further discussion.

The resolution defines “underrepresented minorities” as all races other than white or Asian and includes students who are non-residents or whose race is either unknown or not reported.

If the full House were to pass the resolution, it would direct auditors at the Louisiana Board of Regents, which oversees higher education, and university systems to tally funds expended by from 2021 to 2026 for staffing, programming, technology and grants aimed at increasing minority enrollment.

Rep. Jack “Jay” William Gallé, Jr., R-Mandeville, on behalf of Rep. Josh Carlson, a Republican from Lafayette, who authored the bill, said the resolution was good practice.

Read more at KATC.

Published: May 11, 2026

By: Veronica Camenzuli, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE – Republican Monroe state Sen. Jay Morris said someone left a voice mail threatening a mass shooting at his legislative office after he was accused by the Democratic Party of using a racial slur toward a Black party executive in a tense public hearing May 8.

Morris said he didn’t refer to Democratic Party executive director Dadrius Lanus as “boy” as the party accused, and a review of the audio and video from the hearing appears to back him up.

The May 8 hearing was to consider a bill from Morris to redraw Louisiana’s unconstitutional congressional map that will almost certainly reduce the state’s majority Black districts from two to one or zero.

Morris did turn to the audience that included Lanus during the May 8 hearing and say, “Y’all need to shut up.”

In a speech on the Senate floor May 11, Morris blamed the Democratic Party for advancing what he told USA Today Network is a lie.

Read more at Shreveport Times.

Published: May 11, 2026

By: Veronica Camenzuli, Gracie Thomas and Avery White, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE – After a tumultuous day-long hearing Friday, lawmakers will try to break through the tension this week and propose new maps for Louisiana’s six congressional districts.

A Senate panel is expected to resume debate Wednesday, and what it decides could largely carry through both chambers as the Legislature scrambles to draw new maps before the session ends June 1.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently declared that Louisiana’s current mix, with four Republican districts and two Black-majority ones, was unconstitutional. The ruling struck down key parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, with six of the nine justices saying racial factors could no longer play a significant role in drawing the maps.

Noting that one-third of the state’s residents are Black, minority leaders testified in favor of keeping the two majority-Black districts, while dozens of their supporters in the hallways shouted “shut it down” as the Senate and Governmental Affairs committee also considered maps with 5-1 and 6-0 Republican advantages.

“Today, here in Louisiana we’re being tested, and the whole world is watching,” said U.S. Rep Troy Carter, a Democrat from New Orleans. “The question before us is not merely about lines on a map. The question before us is whether we will honor the principle that every citizen deserves equal protection of the law.”

Read more at KATC.

Published: May 8, 2026

By: Veronica Camenzuli, Gracie Thomas and Avery White, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE, La. — A debate over choosing Louisiana’s new congressional district maps grew heated between state senators inside a Senate committee room and as a protest developed in the hallway outside Friday.

The meeting, which included comments from the public criticizing the idea of decreasing Louisiana’s Black majority districts, lasted over eight hours, and the committee had two recesses to ease rising tensions.

There were several overflow rooms for the crowd of people who came to speak in support and opposition of maps that would have two Black majority districts or eliminate one or all minority districts.

The crowd included dozens of people spilling out into the hallways listening in via a Bluetooth speaker brought by a member of the public.

The meeting of the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee centered on whether Louisiana should have six solidly Republican districts, revert to one majority Black Democrat and five Republican districts like the previous congressional map, or keep two majority Black Democrat districts.

Read more at WWLTV.

Published: May 7, 2026

By: Sheridan White, Kylah Babin and Izzy Wollfarth, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE – As Louisiana lawmakers draw new congressional maps, one concern is how the changes might affect the districts of U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and dilute Republican support in other areas, legislators said.

Prodded by President Donald Trump, national Republican leaders have urged lawmakers in politically red states to create as many Republican districts as they can to try to maintain control of the U.S. House.

After the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana map with four Republican and two Democratic districts, the Republican-led state Legislature is facing pressure from some conservative groups to draw new maps that could represent a clean 6-0 Republican sweep.

But some lawmakers, lobbyists and political consultants say that creating six Republican districts could fan racial tensions and leave some districts with a small margin for error and the possibility of Democratic upsets in future elections.

Reverting to a 5-1 map similar to what Louisiana had two years ago, they say, might enable Republicans to create five districts that would be almost impossible for the Democrats to breach.

Read more at WBRZ.

Published: May 7, 2026

By: Izzy Wollfarth, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE — Under a bill that advanced through the Senate Judiciary C Committee Tuesday, the public would be barred from accessing juror information.

The Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure states that juror names are to be published in each parish’s official journal, local newspaper or on the door of the courthouse.  

Rep. Debbie Villio, R-Kenner, sought to change the current process and protect juror information including jurors’ identities, their telephone numbers, emails, home address and anything related to their image and likeness.

The current bill states that juror information would be disclosed only at the discretion of the court and if a juror list is submitted to local government.

Villio said it is a simple bill and “a measure to protect juror privacy.”

Read more at Daily Advertiser.

Published: May 5, 2026

By: Kylah Babin, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE –  After the discovery of new street-drug variants being used in New Orleans during Super Bowl LIX and Mardi Gras in 2025, an LSU lab is seeking to expand the use of wastewater treatment methods to help identify drug-use patterns across Louisiana.

The LSU Environmental Chemistry Lab is one of the few labs in the country that uses a method of wastewater analysis that allows samples to be run through an instrument so that the drug can be broken down into detectable compounds.

“It provides an early detection,” said Ramesh Sapkota, a graduate student who assisted with the research that centered on New Orleans wastewater during the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras.

Sapkota added that these scientific techniques would help public health officials and immunity services respond sooner to drug issues in an area.

Last year, the lab discovered seven new deadly variants of nitazenes in New Orleans. Nitazenes are manmade drugs and are highly addictive, even more so than other opioids such as morphine and fentanyl. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, some of these nitazenes can be 50 times more potent than fentanyl and 1,000 times more potent than morphine.

Read more at American Press.

Published: May 5, 2026

By: Kylah Babin and Sheridan White, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE –  U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields told the Baton Rouge Press Club Monday that Louisiana voters should vote as normal in elections for the U.S. House of Representatives even though Gov. Jeff Landry suspended voting in those races in the wake of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the state’s congressional districts were unconstitutional due to racial gerrymandering.

“At the end of the day, the Supreme Court did not say, ‘Halt the election,’ nor should it, and we’re going to let the Supreme Court make a decision fairly soon about whether or not Louisiana can do what it did,” Fields said. “That’s why I’m urging voters to actually go out and cast their votes for the whole ticket.”

Fields, a Baton Rouge Democrat, represents the snake-like congressional 6th District that was created by the Legislature in 2024 to give Louisiana a second majority-Black district. It was that district that drew most of the Supreme Court’s attention in its 6-3 vote on April 29 that ordered the state to once again redraw its congressional maps.

After Landry suspended the U.S. House primary elections based on the court’s ruling, Fields joined several other candidates in filing a federal lawsuit challenging the decision to suspend the congressional primary elections after voting had already begun. Election day is May 16, but absentee and early voting has already begun using the original ballot.

Fields and the other plaintiffs said suspending the elections mid-cycle violates the First, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, particularly after some voters had already begun casting ballots.

Read more at Minden Press-Herald.