LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau

Published: February 21, 2024

By: By Elizabeth White, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE – Louisiana lawmakers voted to join 27 other states that allow citizens to carry a concealed handgun without permits or training as a deterrent to rising crime. 

The vote came in committee on a hectic day of legislative action that passed a flurry of anti-crime bills urged by the newly-elected Republican Gov. Jeff Landry who has vowed to take a tough anti-crime stance. 

Tuesday was the second day of a special session focused on crime and law enforcement issues. A number of bills passed senate and house committees and moved on to other law enforcement panels before they will almost-surely go to the full senate and house for final passage.  Landry has said he will sign into law everything that has moved so far to his desk.

Read more at Minden Press-Herald.

Published: January 17, 2024

By: Piper Naudin, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE—The Louisiana Senate voted 27-11 Wednesday to approve a congressional redistricting map that would provide two majority-minority districts and has the support of Gov. Jeff Landry.

The bill next goes to the House, where a map that draws the districts somewhat differently was approved by a committee Wednesday. The full House will decide how it wants to proceed.

Both maps would turn the 6^th district seat now held by Republican U.S. Rep. Garrett Graves into the state’s second a majority-minority district and locate much of it in the center of the state.

Read more at Concordia Sentinel.

Published: July 21, 2023

By: Myracle Lewis, Amelia Gabor and Birdie O’Connell, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE — Beverly Shabazz did not have a job and was seven months pregnant with her second child when her husband, Milton X Scott, was shot and killed outside their home in 1973 by FBI agents attempting to arrest him.

“I was thinking I have these two kids to raise,” she said. “I don’t have any help from their father, and it was a while before I could adjust to the situation.”

Shabazz depended on Social Security benefits for their children and then went back to school so she could work as both a cosmetologist and an elementary school teacher. As they grew up, the children hardly saw her, and they missed the emotional support and stability that their father could have provided.

It was a loss compounded by the fact that the shooting arose from a case of mistaken identity. The FBI agents had thought Scott was an Army deserter, and the fatal battle outside his door would not have happened if they had known he had never been in the Army. 

“The toughest day of my life happened before I was even born,” his son, Milton Scott Jr., said recently.

Read more at Verite News.

Published: July 19, 2023

By: By Allison Allsop, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE–Lawmakers on Tuesday overrode the governor’s veto of a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors. 

That was the only veto override that made it through both the House and Senate, and lawmakers called an end to the special session late in the day.

Gov. John Bel Edwards had vetoed the gender-affirming care bill, authored by Republican Rep. Gabe Firment of Pollock. Now that more than two-thirds of the members in both chambers voted to override that veto, the bill will make it impossible for youth to receive any type of care for gender dysphoria including hormone treatment, gender reassignment surgery and puberty blocking drugs. 

The new law takes effect on Jan.1, 2024. 

Read more at Minden Press-Herald.

Published: July 16, 2023

By: Myracle Lewis, Amelia Gabor and Birdie O’Connell LSU Manship School News Service

On a hot, quiet morning in July 1973, 21-year-old Milton Scott heard a loud knock on the front door of his Baton Rouge home.

Scott was lying in bed with his pregnant wife, now Beverly Shabazz, and their 2-year-old daughter, Andrea. He felt uneasy about a bloody nightmare he’d had that night.

“I had to do everything I could do to calm him down, to let him know that he was just having a bad dream,” Shabazz said before releasing a loud sigh.

But the unconscious terror would soon become reality.

Read more at The Advocate.