Louisiana
Services for people with disabilities could be eliminated under Landry budget plan • Louisiana Illuminator
Programs for medically vulnerable children, seniors and people with disabilities could be eliminated next year as a result of Louisiana’s looming budget deficit, officials with Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration said Friday.
Louisiana Health Secretary Michael Harrington laid out services he might be forced to cut if the governor and lawmakers reduce the state health care budget by $105.1 million to deal with a financial gap in the next fiscal year. He’s been told to expect a large cut as the state tries to figure out how it will cope with an automatic tax reductions scheduled for mid-2025.
Harrington said that $105.1 million cut to state health care services would balloon to an overall loss of $332.4 million with resulting federal funding reductions. The state would no longer be able to put up the money needed to draw down more dollars from the federal government for health care services.
Given the size of the cut the state health department anticipates, Harrington said there are few options for absorbing the budget reduction that don’t involve eliminating programs considered crucial for seniors, children or people with disabilities.
“Any of these kinds of cuts is going to naturally impact the most vulnerable,” Harrington said at a Louisiana House budget hearing Friday. “That’s what we [the health department] do. We take care of seniors and children.”
More than 90% of Louisiana’s $19.9 billion health care budget is spent on Medicaid programs, which pays for health care for people who are pregnant, low-income or disabled, according to Harrington. The bulk of that money, 71%, comes from the federal government, but the state is required to contribute funds in order to receive the federal support.
If forced to make a $105.1 million reduction, Harrington said the Landry administration would eliminate pediatric day care centers ($26.4 million) for families with medically fragile children. Money for a program that helps children with behavioral challenges, called the coordinated system of care, would also be reduced by $5.9 million.
The state would also scrap its Program for All Inclusive Care for the Elderly ($20.4 million), known as PACE, that assists older people so they can continue to live at home instead of going into nursing homes. Money for daytime supervision for seniors and adults with disabilities who cannot take care of themselves would also be lost ($9.1 million).
Transportation reimbursements for people with disabilities would also be scrapped ($1.8 million). Funding for medical residents who train to be doctors in Louisiana would also be reduced ($23.1 million).
Caregivers who help adults with disabilities and intellectual challenges would also see their reimbursement rates lowered again. Most of these rates have only been raised in the past couple of years after program directors long complained they weren’t able to hire staff at the low wages the state previously provided.
The state budget deficit plan also calls for reducing supplemental payments to hospitals for treating Medicaid patients by $69.4 million and eliminating an expected increase in funding for nursing homes that would have cost $67.8 million.
Republicans and Democratic lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee said they would be unwilling to make such cuts.
Rep. Jason Hughes, D-New Orleans, described the plan as inhumane, and Rep. Larry Bagley, R-Stonewall, said families would be unable to care for their loved ones without these programs.
“These are people that depend on us for their life,” Bagley said.
Other legislators questioned whether health officials under Landry, a Republican, had looked deep enough at its nearly $20 billion budget to find alternative ways to save money. Many of the programs put on the chopping block were also proposed for elimination when Landry’s predecessor, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, faced a budget deficit eight years ago.
Rep. Tony Bacala, R-Prairieville, said the health department has never fully accounted for the hundreds of thousands of people removed from Medicaid following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that the program has significantly fewer people in it, the health agency should have some spare money in its budget that could be used to keep these programs whole, he said.
Bacala also alleged the health department ended fiscal year 2023-24 in June with $75 million in leftover state funding, which means some of that money should be available to cover the $105.1 million cut.
“You continue to say we need more money to cover 300,000 less people [in the Medicaid program],” Bacala said.
Louisiana is facing a budget deficit of $587 million next year largely because of a planned cut to the state sales tax from 4.45% to 4%. State lawmakers could avoid major budget reductions if they voted to keep the sales tax rate at the current level, but legislative leaders have said the conservative anti-tax Louisiana House of Representatives is unlikely to do so.
Lawmakers are more likely to look at expanding the sales tax to new items and services as well as eliminating other tax exemptions to make up some of the revenue. Louisiana Revenue Secretary Richard Nelson has proposed a tax on streaming services such as Netflix as well as services like auto detailing for the first time.
If the Legislature chooses to keep a 2% tax on business utilities that is supposed to expire July 1, 2025, it would also generate $220 million and lessen the deficit. Moving $320 million the state generates through a vehicle sales tax from transportation projects into health care services, higher education and other programs could also help close the budget gap.
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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