Louisiana
US Senate passes bill by Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy restricting how social media targets youth
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan U.S. Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a historic package of restrictions — co-sponsored by a Louisiana senator — that cracks down on how social media companies interact with children and teenagers.
A pair of bills were merged and passed on a 91-3 vote that would require social media platforms to take steps to prevent online exploitation, such as cyberbullying, body shaming and sexual recruiting. The legislation also would expand existing privacy protections to forbid the collection of personal data from children under the age of 16.
The legislation still must clear the U.S. House before heading to the president’s desk.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Benton, said Tuesday he generally backs the legislation. President Joe Biden has indicated he would sign it into law.
“The internet is an integral part of children’s lives today. It is time our laws reflect this new reality,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge. “These bills provide parents the tools to safeguard their kids online.”
He was one of the two main sponsors for the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, called COPPA 2.0. Along with expanding existing parental consents on data collection, COPPA 2.0 bans advertising targeted at youth.
The bill builds on a law passed in the 1990s primarily sponsored by then-Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-Chackbay, and Sen. Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts.
Cassidy also was a co-sponsor of Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, which would require online platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent harm to users.
The bills arose as parents began questioning the connection between online usage and increased suicide and other anti-social behavior among their children.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has declared children’s mental health has become a national emergency. The federal Centers for Disease Control & Prevention found that in 2021, one in three high school girls contemplated suicide.
Cassidy blamed digital platforms which collect data from users and then compile algorithms that target advertising and content at specific individuals. He pointed to studies that linked online usage to increased dangerous behavior by children. He also noted that a Harvard University study in 2022 calculated that the major platforms earned about $11 billion from selling data-driven advertising and content that targeted U.S. users under the age of 17.
The effort to pass online restrictions for children bogged down as Big Tech argued the provisions violated First Amendment rights.
Cassidy countered that accepted law has long allowed for marketing carve-outs for the First Amendment, such as a ban on advertising cigarettes to youth.
Markey, who cosponsored COPPA 2.0 with Cassidy, said the bill updated 1990s legislation addressing children’s television programming that essentially was just advertising goods to kids. Markey said he and Tauzin added parameters as the digital sphere expanded. The new bills would provide updates to reflect the way social media does business now.
“The United States Senate will finally send a message to Big Tech that the days of indiscriminately tracking and targeting children and teens are over in our country. That their privacy-invasive business models must change,” Markey said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said “this moment is when the Senate said, ‘There have been horrible abuses. We must end them, and we will.’”
Schumer lauded the bipartisan effort to overcome opposition and get the long-stalled package moving again.
“The House should pass these bills as soon as they can,” he said.
Johnson said in a statement shortly after the Senate vote that he’s committed to finding consensus in the House.
“I am looking forward to reviewing the details of the legislation that comes out of the Senate,” he said. “Parents should have greater control and the necessary tools to protect their kids online.”
Louisiana’s junior senator, John N. Kennedy, R-Madisonville, was among the 91 senators backing the legislation. The three “no” votes were Sens Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon.
Louisiana
Entergy Louisiana’s claim customers will save thanks to Meta deal greeted with some skepticism
NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – Meta is building a multi-billion dollar data center in northeast Louisiana and Entergy Louisiana is a huge part of the project’s equation.
“We did reach agreement with Meta to expand or have a new agreement, actually, for the data center at their Richland Parish site,” Phillip May, CEO of Entergy Louisiana told Fox 8 on Monday (March 30).
“This new agreement will require us to build seven new generators. Each of those generators will be about 750 megawatts each. So, about 5,200 megawatts of new, efficient, modern gas-fired generation.”
May pointed to other benefits.
“That generation will come with hydrogen capability and carbon-capture availability as well, as well as additional 2,500 megawatts of solar, three separate battery projects, and up rates on our nuclear plant,” May said.
May said the agreement with Meta ultimately will benefit Entergy Louisiana customers by $2 billion.
“This thing is structured to save our customers over $2 billion, over the life of the 20-year contract,” he said. “And Meta is fully paying for the cost associated with these assets over that 20-year period.”
He was asked how what Entergy plans to generate for Meta, in terms of megawatts, compares to what it is generating now for other customers.
“This amount of generation is about 50% more than is currently deployed by Entergy Louisiana,” May said.
But the deal concerns the utility watchdog Alliance for Affordable Energy.
“We haven’t had nearly enough time to review this most recent application, which, by the way, has a lot of redactions. So there’s an awful lot of information that the public, and certainly we, have not seen yet to really be able to analyze and say, indeed, all of these savings are going to come to fruition,” said Logan Burke, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy.
The group is concerned about what could happen in years to come.
“The way regulation works in the state of Louisiana is, once this infrastructure is approved to be built, is deemed prudent and in the public interest, it means that utilities will be able to recover those costs from whatever customers they have going forward. And if, in fact, Meta winds up no longer being a customer after 15 or 20 years, that’s billions of dollars in costs that ratepayers will be on the hook for,” Burke said.
Fox 8 asked May if Entergy Louisiana customers could end up paying more down the line as a result of the agreement.
“No. In fact, the opposite is true,” May said. “Our Entergy customers will see lower rates than what they otherwise would have been.”
The deal still needs approval from the Louisiana Public Service Commission.
“Well, the next thing that has to happen is a proper investigation,” Burke said. “The proceeding in which Entergy is filed for approval from the commission is underway now. It means that organizations like the Alliance and like the Public Service Commission have a responsibility to look at these books, to look at these agreements, and see if they are stable and what kinds of protections need to be put in place.”
May said he thinks approval could come before year’s end.
“The filing with the PSC has already occurred. I’m sure the LPSC will take it up, hire outside counsel in the things that they do, have a thorough investigation of this proposal,” May said. “We believe this could work through Louisiana Public Service Commission’s lightning initiative, that will allow it to be approved by the end of this year.”
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Bill Advances Honoring Shreveport Civil Rights Icons
Louisiana lawmakers move forward with bill honoring Shreveport civil rights icons Reverend Harry Blake Senior and Virginia Green Evans.
(The Center Square) − Louisiana lawmakers have filed more than 20 bills this session touching on artificial intelligence, but only a narrow slice of them has moved so far.
The clearest momentum has come on bills dealing with child exploitation. Senate Bill 42 by Sen. Rick Edmonds, R-Baton Rouge, which prohibits using artificial intelligence to create child sexual abuse materials, passed the Senate 36-0 and was sent to the House the next day.
Senate Bill 110 by Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek, bars using a child’s image to train an artificial intelligence model to produce child sexual abuse materials, also advanced out of the Senate and is now pending in the House Administration of Criminal Justice Committee. But the broader regulatory push has moved far more slowly.
Rep. Josh Carlson, R-Lafayette, told The Center Square the efforts have run into familiar resistance from business groups wary of state-by-state regulation.
“Anything that effects business they say is bad for business,” Carlson told The Center Square.
Carlson has a bill that would create a Louisiana AI Bill of Rights, restrict certain chatbot uses involving minors, create disclosure rules for bots and AI-generated advertising, and bar the state from contracting for AI products tied to foreign countries of concern. Carlson is still working to get his bill added to the Commerce committee’s agenda.Another bill that has managed to make progress is HB190 by Rep. Laurie Schlege, R-Metarie. It passed the House 98-0. Two days after, an op-ed submitted to The Center Square from Citizens for a New Louisiana charged the law as “one that threatens to stifle innovation, burden small businesses and startups.” The op-ed suggested amending the bill, but Schlegel hasn’t budged so far.
Senate Bill 246 by Sen. Jay Luneau, D-Alexandria, was scheduled for Senate floor debate Monday but was postponed twice, first to Tuesday and then to Wednesday. The delay followed Luneau’s promise to the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry that he would amend the bill after the group sent a memo warning it could create “unnecessary compliance burdens for businesses operating across the state.”
“AI systems are inherently interstate and global, making them better suited for a consistent federal framework rather than fragemented state oversight,” the memo continued. “SB246 risks placing Louisiana at a competitive disadvantage while duplicating efforts more appropriately handled by Congress.” The memo mentioned a December executive order from the Trump administration which instructed federal officials to identify “onerous” state AI laws and said states with such laws could be barred from receiving certain remaining BEAD broadband funds, to the maximum extent allowed by federal law.
Louisiana has $800 million in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program funding that could be revoked. Responding to questions about concerns that his bill might violate that order, Edmonds told The Center Square, “I don’t see this as over regulation.” He said that, so far, he has heard no concerns with his bill.
Edmonds acknowledged concerns that overregulation could inhibit the use and development of AI, but said that his bill was specific and would not.
LAKE CHARLES, La. (KPLC) – The Venture Global CP2 construction site in Cameron has been cleared after a bomb threat was made Sunday, according to a spokesperson from Venture Global.
The bomb threat came in around noon on Sunday, according to officials. Louisiana State Police hazmat and bomb squads were called to investigate.
No shelter in place was deemed necessary and no roads were closed, according to the Cameron Parish Sheriff’s Office.
A Venture Global spokesperson released the following statement:
“Venture Global was made aware of a bomb threat at our CP2 site and immediately activated our established emergency response protocols. We are coordinating closely with state and local authorities as they investigate. The safety and security of our employees and the surrounding community remain our highest priority.”
Copyright 2026 KPLC. All rights reserved.
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