Politics
Delayed Louisiana Primaries Stoke Confusion at Ballot Box
The signs were stark, in bold, capital letters at early voting sites in Louisiana on Saturday: “ATTENTION! NOTICE OF CANCELLATION.”
The normally scheduled House primaries had been scrapped, the bulletins said, and any votes cast for those races would not be counted. It was an unusual message directed at Louisianians who showed up for the first day of early voting, and a reflection of the dizzying scramble that is playing out after the Supreme Court struck down the state’s congressional map.
The court’s ruling prompted Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, to delay House primaries, but to allow other contests to move ahead on May 16. The governor’s directive faces legal challenges and mounting concern about voter confusion.
Some early glimpses of bewilderment came into focus on Saturday. Outside of Baton Rouge City Hall, Linda Thomas felt compelled to double check with a poll worker that she would be able to have her vote counted.
“That was my biggest concern,” said Ms. Thomas, who voted along with her daughter and great-granddaughter. “Would my vote count?”
The Supreme Court’s decision, which said that Louisiana’s map was an illegal racial gerrymander, could have major national implications that extend well beyond this year’s elections. But some of the most immediate effects are in the state at the center of the case, where both parties are now bracing for a turbulent election season.
“It’s a huge mess,” said Lionel Rainey III, a Republican strategist in Louisiana. “It’s a nightmare scenario for election officials, and there is going to be unquestionably mass confusion at the polls.”
Some political organizations, such as the Democratic National Committee, have scrambled to set up efforts to educate voters on the shifting timelines.
“People keep calling us — I mean, voters think that the election has been canceled,” said Ashley Shelton, the president of the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, a local civil rights organization in Louisiana.
Republicans are also taking to social media to encourage their constituents to vote. The campaign of one Senate candidate, John Fleming, Louisiana’s state treasurer, was sending out texts and emails to try to inform voters that the Senate primary was moving forward on schedule.
“Some people think that all races are delayed,” he said in an interview on Saturday, warning that some confused voters “could end up just saying: To heck with it.”
David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group that advises election officials, warned that “radical change like this results in voter confusion.”
“And voter confusion, often if not almost always, results in lower turnout,” he added.
The upheaval in Louisiana is the latest turn in a lengthy fight over congressional boundaries.
With Republicans defending a narrow House majority, voters across the country had already been caught in a partisan redistricting battle started by President Trump and Republican lawmakers in Texas that has extended to Democratic-led states.
The Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday raised the standard for what can be considered an intentional dilution of minority voter power, opening the possibility for another wave of redistricting in Southern states with significant numbers of Black voters.
Two Republican-led Southern states, Alabama and Tennessee, are convening special legislative sessions ahead of their primary elections to consider new maps that would likely dilute at least one majority-Black district in each state. That could upend existing primary campaigns and send voters into new districts, paired with different communities and unfamiliar representatives.
Louisiana has been mired in litigation over its maps for years since it first redrew them following the 2020 census. But the state’s primary was already ripe for confusion because of a separate change. While Louisiana had long held open primaries that advance the top two candidates, regardless of party affiliation, it shifted to closed party primaries long before the Supreme Court ruling.
“That was going to be confusing in and of itself” for some voters, said Cameron Henry, the president of the Louisiana State Senate, and a Republican. As the Republican majority considered how to handle the aftermath of the ruling, he added, “anything we can do to reduce the amount of confusion that’s already surrounded this election cycle would be beneficial for everybody.”
The Louisiana secretary of state’s office did not respond to requests for comment about voter education plans in the state. But in her statement announcing the primary change, Secretary of State Nancy Landry (who is not related to the governor) said notices would be placed at early voting locations and shared a similar message online.
Mr. Landry and other state officials have argued that it would be unconstitutional to operate another House election under a map rejected by the nation’s highest court. “Louisiana is following the law,” he wrote on social media on Friday.
Critics see politics as an overarching factor: A new Louisiana map is likely to help Republicans win control of at least one additional district. Because Black voters in the South have largely backed Democrats in recent years, splitting up or diluting majority-Black districts is likely to hand Republicans an advantage.
Changing the timing and mechanics of the election so late in process is a massive logistical undertaking, according to former election officials. Voter logs need to be updated and new ballots printed, among other tasks.
“People have this perception that there’s two days a year that elections happen, but they have no idea of all the things that go into elections,” said Kathy Boockvar, the former top elections official in Pennsylvania and a Democrat. She said that, in her experience in Pennsylvania, work for a May primary began in December.
Adding another full primary election, Ms. Boockvar said, would also further tax the “thinly stretched, underfunded, understaffed and overworked” election officials, require more poll worker recruitment and likely add a significant new cost to the state.
While special elections for resigning or deceased candidates can sometimes lead to a bifurcated primary calendar, splitting up ongoing elections in Congress has little precedent in modern American elections. Those challenging the legality of the delayed House primaries have pointed to absentee ballots that have already been completed for the primary.
The change has rattled the closely-watched G.O.P. Senate primary in which Senator Bill Cassidy, a second-term incumbent who voted to convict Mr. Trump in his impeachment trial after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, is laboring to hold off challenges from Mr. Fleming and Representative Julia Letlow, who has the endorsement of both Mr. Landry and Mr. Trump.
“The way that the election has transpired — that has almost treated the voters with disrespect,” Mr. Cassidy told reporters on Saturday after casting his ballot early. “You’ve got to be really focused to understand that there’s an election that starts today.”
Danny Bosch, 32, a Baton Rouge lawyer who voted on Saturday, said he understood that the House contests were being delayed, but that he made a selection for that office anyway, because “it was there” as he cast his ballot.
“I’m sure a lot of people are confused about it,” he said of the primary election.
Politics
Judge orders Trump administration to restore national park signage on climate change, slavery
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore signs related to topics such as climate change, slavery and Indigenous and LGBTQ+ history that were removed under an executive order to purge language at national parks that allegedly cast America in a negative light.
The order has prompted the removal of mentions of President Washington’s slaves at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, signs regarding climate threats at Fort Sumter in South Carolina and a pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City, according to the lawsuit challenging the action.
In California, language related to the internment of Japanese Americans at the Manzanar National Historic Site, as well as the history of Indigenous people in Death Valley and Muir Woods came under scrutiny.
A preliminary injunction was issued Friday by U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston, who sided with a coalition of conservation and historical groups and ordered all language removed under the order to be reinstated before the Fourth of July. Earlier this year, another federal judge ordered the signage related to Washington’s slaves restored.
In Friday’s injunction, Kelley accused the Trump administration of seeking “to rewrite the Nation’s history with a white-out pen,” and said that national parks play an important role in telling the multifaceted history of America, including “the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
“Because Defendants deemed it important to strip the parks of these undeniable truths in anticipation of the 250th Anniversary of our great Nation,” she wrote, “it is equally important that our shared history be honestly told and fully restored by the 250th Anniversary to properly honor the remarkable achievements of the United States.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of the Interior dismissed the ruling as the work of a “liberal activist judge.”
“The Department will look at our appeal options while we celebrate UFC Freedom 250 on the South Lawn of the White House this weekend in honor of our nation’s 250th with the greatest president in the history of our country — President Donald J. Trump,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Trump initially signed the executive order in March 2025, arguing that a revisionist movement is seeking to undermine American history by replacing objective fact with a distorted, ideologically driven narrative.
“Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed,” the order stated.
Under the order, more than 430 sites under the purview of the National Park Service were told to review language on monuments, memorials, statues and markers to ensure they didn’t disparage Americans past or present, with a close eye on language added during former President Biden’s administration. QR codes were also added at sites encouraging visitors to report any signs they believed violated the order.
In February, a coalition including the National Parks Conservation Assn., American Assn. for State and Local History, Assn. of National Park Rangers and Union of Concerned Scientists filed a lawsuit in federal court in Boston alleging that the order was erasing American history and science.
“National parks serve as living classrooms for our country, where science and history come to life for visitors,” Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources at the parks conservation association, said in a February statement. “As Americans, we deserve national parks that tell stories of our country’s triumphs and heartbreaks alike. We can handle the truth.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Politics
Video: Trump’s Name Is Removed From Kennedy Center Facade
new video loaded: Trump’s Name Is Removed From Kennedy Center Facade
transcript
transcript
Trump’s Name Is Removed From Kennedy Center Facade
Workers removed President Trump’s name from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday following a judge’s order.
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“Even though we can’t see it yet, I’m just really, really feeling hopeful right now. I also hope that it falls, like, right now.” “Take it down, take it down, take it down.” “Now this tarp, that’s a Trump thing. Covering it up, not wanting the public to see his name come off of this vanity project that he has created.”
By Cynthia Silva
June 13, 2026
Politics
Workers rip Trump name from Kennedy center facade months after it goes on, hours after failed appeal
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Workers began tearing President Donald Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center facade Friday after an appeals court denied a request from the Kennedy Center’s board to block a judge’s ruling that Trump’s name be removed.
Workers erected scaffolding around the Washington, D.C., landmark Friday and began removing the Trump name from the signage that had previously read “The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts.”
The Kennedy Center board had approved the addition of Trump’s name in December, claiming that the move was in recognition of Trump’s accomplishments in saving “the institution from financial ruin and physical destruction.”
Workers affixed Trump’s name to the facade the next day.
TRUMP’S NAME ADDED TO KENNEDY CENTER FOLLOWING UNANIMOUS BOARD VOTE TO RENAME HISTORIC BUILDING
Construction workers build scaffolding near the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts sign in Washington, D.C., on June 12, 2026. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Now, however, the Trump name is coming down, despite numerous attempts at stays from the Kennedy Center board.
The board filed both a stay pending appeal and an immediate administrative stay, arguing the name should not be removed before the matter gets an appellate review.
But an appeals court denied the request for an immediate administrative stay.
OBAMA-APPOINTED JUDGE WITH TIES TO ANTI-TRUMP CONSPIRACY THEORY HIT WITH MISCONDUCT COMPLAINT
People watch construction workers build scaffolding near the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts sign in Washington, D.C., on June 12, 2026. The Kennedy Center board sought an emergency appeal to block a court order requiring the removal of President Trump’s name, but a judge denied the request. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The board then filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals, but a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit denied it.
The board had requested a pause in the enforcement of Judge Christopher Cooper’s ruling that Trump’s name be removed, but Cooper, a U.S. District judge, denied the request Friday.
Cooper maintained in an opinion on his ruling that the Kennedy Center’s name can only be changed or modified through an act of Congress.
Trump slammed Cooper’s decision in an excoriating late May Truth Social barrage, writing “Trump Hating Judge wants to keep it open because his wife probably told him to do so,” while pointing out the fact that Cooper’s wife, Amy Jeffress, is a former Obama-era Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney who represented a number of high-profile Trump critics.
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A composite photo shows a worker on a lift at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, alongside U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who ruled that President Donald Trump’s name be removed from the building. (Getty / and the U.S. District Court of D.C.)
Fox News Digital contacted the White House and the Kennedy Center for additional comment.
Fox News’ Jasmine Baehr and Bill Mears contributed to this report.
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