Louisiana
Louisiana takes first steps toward closed primary elections supported by Gov. Jeff Landry
Louisiana is taking the first steps toward changing its elections to a closed primary system favored by new Republican Gov. Jeff Landry as part of a Special Session of the Legislature.
Republican Lafayette Rep. Julie Emerson’s House Bill 17, which is supported by Landry and legislative leadership, would require closed primary elections for federal and state offices and local judges but keep Louisiana’s current “jungle primary” system for most other local races like sheriffs, district attorneys and police juries.
Emerson’s bill is set to get its first hearing Tuesday morning in the eight-day session that began Monday. Currently, Louisiana only conducts closed primary elections for presidential primaries.
In his address to the Legislature, Landry called Louisiana’s current system in which all candidates regardless of party run against each other in an open primary where all voters can participate “a relic of the past which has left us dead last.”
“It is time to rewrite our story and move to a similar system we have already tried, tested and still use in presidential primaries today,” Landry said.
In a closed primary system, recognized political parties would have their own elections with the winners advancing to a general election in which all voters could participate. Candidates without party affiliations would automatically advance to the general election.
Louisiana’s jungle primary system, in which the two candidates who received the most votes regardless of party affiliation advance to the general unless a candidate takes more than 50% of the votes, is unique in America, although there are many other states with some form of open primary elections.
Supporters in both camps each released competing polls they paid for that bolstered their arguments.
One good government group, Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, directly opposes closed primaries and a second, Council for a Better Louisiana, said the short session doesn’t provide enough time to fully debate its merits.
“The unnecessary switch could cost more, confuse voters and disenfranchise those that don’t belong to either the Republican or Democratic party,” PAR said in a commentary. “The Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana believes the public receives no benefit from such a move.”
Louisiana Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy has been the most prominent political voice supporting keeping the current system.
“It’s going to cost $90 million, money that could be spent on roads, making our streets safer and lowering the cost of property and casualty insurance instead of spent on more elections,” Cassidy said of moving to closed primary election. “It disenfranchises 800,000 Louisianans who are no party. Sorry, you’re not in our club. We’re not going to let you in.”
But Landry, fresh off his stunning outright primary win last fall, wields enormous power out of the gate with a super majority of Republicans in both the House and Senate who aren’t likely to buck the governor this early in his reign.
He won election to Congress more than a decade ago during Louisiana’s brief experience with closed primaries and has has long supported making the switch permanent.
“It is fair and it is common sense,” he said. “And, for our independent or no party voters who by their own choice decide not to join a political party – their voice is heard and counted … on a simpler, shorter, clearer November election ballot containing generally one Democrat, one Republican and ballot qualified independent candidates.”
More: Jeff Landry calls session to draw new congressional, Supreme Court maps, change elections
Greg Hilburn covers state politics for the USA TODAY Network of Louisiana. Follow him on Twitter @GregHilburn1.
Louisiana
How to watch Louisiana baseball vs Cincinnati in Starkville Regional
WATCH: Louisiana baseball HC, players talk series win vs No. 20 Coastal Carolina
Hear from UL baseball’s HC Matt Deggs, pitcher Ty Roman and infielder Owen Galt following its 2-1 series win vs Coastal Carolina.
For the second day in a row, Louisiana baseball has its back against the wall in the NCAA Tournament Starkville Regional.
The No. 25 Ragin’ Cajuns (40-24) secured their 40th win of the season and kept their postseason dreams alive by beating Lipscomb 10-4 in an elimination game on Saturday, May 30. Now, the pressure is back on for seventh-year coach Matt Deggs and his squad as they face No. 24 Cincinnati (38-21) in another win-or-go-home matchup on Sunday, May 31 in Starkville, Mississippi.
Against the Bisons, UL used four pitchers, and in total has used seven of its arms so far in tournament play. One of the Cajuns’ fresh arms heading into the matchup against the Bearcats is senior Andrew Herrmann. The lefty made his latest appearance during the Cajuns’ Sun Belt Conference tournament run on May 24.
While the Cajuns come into the match with some momentum, Cincinnati enters the match with a chip on its shoulder after losing its first game of the tournament on Saturday against regional host Mississippi State.
Watch Louisiana baseball vs Cincinnati on ESPN+
What channel is Louisiana baseball vs Cincinnati on?
TV: None
Livestream: ESPN+
Radio: Varsity Network, 96.5 FM
Louisiana vs. Cincinnati will be available live on ESPN+ streaming for the first game of Day 3 of the Starkville Regional. Jack Kizer and Jack DeLongchamps will provide commentary from Dudy Noble Field.
What time does Louisiana baseball play Cincinnati?
Date: Sunday, May 31
Time: 2 p.m. CT
Location: Dude Noble Field, Starkville, Mississippi
The Louisiana vs. Cincinnati game starts at 2 p.m. Sunday at Dudy Noble Field in Starkville, Mississippi.
Starkville Regionals schedule
Friday, May 29
- Game 1: Mississippi State 10, Lipscomb 1
- Game 2: Cincinnati 12, Louisiana 2
Saturday, May 30
- Game 3: Lipscomb 4, Louisiana, 10
- Game 4: Mississippi State vs Cincinnati, 8 p.m. CT
Sunday, May 31
- Game 5: Louisiana vs Cincinnati, 2 p.m. CT
- Game 6: Winner G5 vs Mississippi State, 7 p.m. CT
Monday, June 1
- Game 7: If necessary, TBD
Shannon Belt covers high school sports and the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow her high school and Cajuns coverage on Twitter: @ShannonBelt3. Got questions regarding HS/UL athletics? Send them to Shannon Belt at sbelt@gannett.com.
Louisiana
Louisiana Gov. signs Caleb Wilson Hazing Prevention Act
BATON ROUGE, La. (Louisiana First) — The Caleb Wilson Hazing Prevention Act has been signed into law by Gov. Jeff Landry.
This comes after HB 636, authored by Rep. Vanessa LaFleur (D-Baton Rouge), was signed by the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate on May 19.
The measure redefines hazing, mandates annual prevention training, and strengthens penalties for student organizations involved in hazing.
The legislation is named after a Southern University student who was killed in 2025 after being punched in the chest with boxing gloves during an unsanctioned, off-campus fraternity hazing ritual.
The law will go into effect on August 1.
Latest News
Louisiana
As Seas Rise, Louisiana Faces a Choice: Plan for Movement or Let Crisis Decide – Inside Climate News
The shoreline of Louisiana has never been still or fixed, though recent generations have treated it as such.
Since the last ice age roughly 20,000 years ago, around when people arrived in what is now the United States, sea levels have repeatedly reshaped aspects of the Gulf Coast. But today, human-caused warming is accelerating that ancient process, pushing Louisiana’s dynamic shoreline into conflict with cities, roads, ports and levees built to contain and stabilize nature.
A new study in Nature Sustainability argues that this history is a guide to what comes next. Coastal Louisiana, the authors write, is ground zero for coastal climate adaptation: a place where rising seas and sinking land are already reshaping where people live, and where planning for movement could offer more agency than crisis-driven displacement.
“We have got to remember that when people first came to North America 20,000 years ago, there had already been a lot of climate change,” said Jesse Keenan, a co-author of the paper and professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning at Tulane University. “There’s been a lot of sea level rise in the region, and Indigenous populations have always moved with that shoreline.”
In geologic time, he added, “New Orleans has been there for just a blip. We’ve got to get it out of our heads that this is terra firma.”
The physical stakes are still stark. Southern Louisiana is facing a convergence of rising seas, wetland erosion, stronger storms and land subsidence, much of it worsened by decades of oil and gas canals cut through the coast. The state contains what theIPCC has identified as the world’s most exposed coastal zone, where the shoreline is projected to move more than 30 miles inland of New Orleans.
By comparing today’s warming trajectory with the last interglacial period roughly 125,000 years ago, when global temperatures were similar and seas were much higher, the new study estimates that the region could eventually face three to seven meters of sea-level rise and lose as much as three-quarters of its remaining coastal wetlands.
Keenan emphasizes that the point is not to forecast a sudden disappearance, but to widen the planning lens: if the coast is already moving, Louisiana has a chance to decide how people, infrastructure and economies move with it.
The danger is assuming everyone has the same ability to act on that choice. Social mobility, he said, depends on financial mobility— which means adaptation cannot simply tell people to move to safer ground. It has to move opportunity, too: jobs, industries, schools and affordable housing beyond the form of voluntary buyouts, a common managed-retreat tool in which governments purchase flood-prone homes and return the land to open space.
“Outmigration is often framed as tragedy or failure, but in some cases it signals agency,” said Brianna Castro, a co-author of the paper, who highlights that this is a chance to plan around choices people are already making.
Nearly all of Louisiana’s coastal zone has lost residents since 2000, and since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, about a quarter of Orleans Parish’s population has left the area, while more than half of rural Cameron Parish has relocated.
“If you build jobs and you build homes, specifically affordable homes, [on] safer ground, people will come,” said Castro, who is a professor of urban sustainability at Yale University’s School of the Environment.
The opportunity, she argues, is to make those moves possible before crisis forces them on harsher terms—with schools, housing and work in places where communities can carry culture forward rather than be scattered by disaster. New Orleans at its core, she said, is not confined to its current footprint.
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“We’re not going to ‘lose’ New Orleans,” she said. “New Orleans has an incredibly rich local culture, and that will carry across the lake.” What must change, she argued, is the assumption that a moving coast can be met with immovable systems.
That idea resonates beyond Louisiana. Vivek Shandas, a professor of earth, environment and society at Portland State University who was not involved in the study, said the paper widens the frame from emergency response to long-term adaptation.
“We’ve been resettling for hundreds of thousands of years as a species,” Shandas said. “I think we’ve gotten really complacent with thinking that once we’ve set up a place and invested in it that it has to be like that forever. But the Earth is a very dynamic and incredibly fluid system.”
For that reason, he said, Louisiana is a “bellwether” for the rest of the country—a place where planners, policymakers and communities can study what adaptation strategies work before the same pressures intensify elsewhere.
“It’s super important for people to recognize that what we’re ultimately calling for in this paper is a public, private, and civic engagement with adaptation policy, planning and practice,” said Keenan.
The study points to immediate action projects, including reviving the canceled Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion—a $3-billion coastal restoration project designed to reconnect the Mississippi River with the Barataria Basin, the rapidly disappearing wetland area on the west bank of the river south of New Orleans—and advancing the Breton diversion on the other side of the Mississippi River.
Unlike dredging, which moves sediment once and deposits it in place, river diversions are designed to restore a more continuous flow of sediment into wetlands, mimicking the processes that built the delta over thousands of years. Dredged material can create land, Keenan said, but it does not sustain the same root systems and ecological processes as a living riverine system.
“We’ve got a big challenge here, but this isn’t about the challenge. This is about the opportunity,” he said. “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. There is so much economic opportunity to engage with people and to build things. Data centers won’t give people more jobs, but adapting to climate change just might.”
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