SUMMARY: National Tequila Day on July 24 is celebrated across Greater New Orleans with special deals and events at several local spots. Alma Cafe offers $5 margaritas, $3 tequila shots, $25 margarita pitchers, and $5 Honduran tacos. Tujague’s features the “King’s Cup” cocktail and tequila flights. Costera serves $10 well margaritas in various flavors from 4 to 9 p.m. Los Jefes Grill hosts a fiesta with $5 house margaritas all day and music by VDJ Emotion. Felipe’s Taqueria has margarita happy hour all day with app use, and Chili’s offers a $5 Tequila Trifecta special.

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SUMMARY: A broad, unorganized tropical disturbance near the northern Gulf is bringing heavy showers and thunderstorms, mainly off the river mouth and into the Gulf. The system has only a 10% chance of developing further due to strong wind shear and dry air but will move inland into Texas today or tomorrow, bringing significant rainfall. Over the next three days, scattered heavy showers and storms will continue, with isolated flood risks of 4 to 6 inches of rain possible, though most areas can expect 1 to 3 inches. After this wet period, weather will turn hotter and drier early next week.

Development remains unlikely, but the disturbance could slowly organize Thursday and Friday before moving inland this weekend.

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by Paige Gross, Louisiana Illuminator
July 24, 2025

The Trump administration wants to greatly expand the development and use of advanced artificial intelligence, including rolling back environmental rules to spur building of power-thirsty data centers and punishing states that attempt to regulate AI on their own.

The administration’s action plan, called “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” released on Wednesday, is a result of six months of research by tech advisors, after Trump removed President Joe Biden’s signature AI guardrails on his first day in office. The plan takes a hands-off approach to AI safeguards, and invests in getting more American workers to use AI in their daily lives.

“To win the AI race, the U.S. must lead in innovation, infrastructure, and global partnerships,” AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks said in a statement. “At the same time, we must center American workers and avoid Orwellian uses of AI. This Action Plan provides a roadmap for doing that.”

The action plan outlines three major pillars — accelerate AI innovation, build American AI infrastructure and lead in international AI diplomacy and security.

The Trump administration says that to accelerate AI in the U.S., it needs to “remove red tape,” around “onerous” AI regulations. The plan recommends the Office of Science and Technology Policy inquire with businesses and the public about federal regulations that hinder AI innovation, and suggests the federal government end funding to states “with burdensome AI regulations.”

The plan does say that these actions should not interfere with states’ ability to pass AI laws that are not “unduly restrictive,” despite unsuccessful attempts by Congressional Republicans to impose an AI moratorium for the states.

The plan also says that free speech should be prioritized in AI, saying models must be trained so that “truth, rather than social engineering agendas” are the focus of model outputs. The plan recommends that the Department of Commerce and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), revise the NIST AI Risk Management Framework to eliminate references to misinformation, DEI and climate change.

The Trump administration also pushes for AI to be more widely adopted in government roles, manufacturing, science and in the Department of Defense, and proposes increased funding and regulatory sandboxes — separate trial spaces for AI to be developed — to do so.

To support the proposed increases in AI use, the plan outlines a streamlined permitting process for data centers, which includes lowering or dropping environmental regulations under the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and others. It also proposes making federal lands available for data center construction, and a push that American products should be used in building the infrastructure.

The Action Plan warns of cybersecurity risks and potential exposure to adversarial threats, saying that the government must develop secure frontier AI systems with national security agencies and develop “AI compute control enforcement,” to ensure security in AI systems and with semiconductor chips. It encourages collaboration with “like-minded nations” working toward AI models with shared values, but says it will counter Chinese influence.

“These clear-cut policy goals set expectations for the Federal Government to ensure America sets the technological gold standard worldwide, and that the world continues to run on American technology,” Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio said in a statement.

The policy goals outlined in the plan fall in line with the deregulatory attitude Trump took during his campaign, as he more closely aligned himself with Silicon Valley tech giants, many of whom turned Trump donors. The plan paves the way for continued unfettered growth of American AI models, and outlines the huge energy and computing power needed to keep up with those goals.

In an address at the “Winning the AI Race” Summit Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump called for a “single federal standard” regulating AI, not a state-by-state approach.

“You can’t have three or four states holding you up. You can’t have a state with standards that are so high that it’s going to hold you up,” Trump said. “You have to have a federal rule and regulation.”

The summit was hosted by the Hill & Valley Forum, a group of lawmakers and venture capitalists and the All‑In Podcast, which is co-hosted by AI Czar Sacks, 

In addition to discussing the AI action plan, Trump signed executive orders to fast track data center permitting, expand AI exports including chips, software and data storage, and one that prohibits the federal government from procuring AI that has “partisan bias or ideological agendas.”

He spoke about the need for the U.S. to stay ahead in the global AI race, saying that the technology brings the “potential for bad as well as for good,” but that wasn’t reason enough to “retreat” from technological advancement. The U.S. is entering a “golden age,” he said in his speech.

“It will be powered by American energy. It will be run on American technology improved by American artificial intelligence, and it will make America richer, stronger, greater, freer, and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said.

During the address, Trump addressed his evolving relationship with tech CEOs, calling out Amazon, Google, Microsoft for investing $320 billion in data centers and AI infrastructure this year.

“I didn’t like them so much my first term, when I was running, I wouldn’t say I was thrilled with them, but I’ve gotten to know them and like them,” Trump said. “And I think they got to like me, but I think they got to like my policies, maybe much more than me.”

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI — one of the tech giants that stands to flourish under the proposed policies — spoke Tuesday about the productivity and innovation potential that AI has unlocked. The growth of AI in the last five years has surprised even him, Altman said. But it also poses very real risks, he said, mentioning emotional attachment and overreliance on AI and foreign risks.

“Without a drop of malevolence from anyone, society can just veer in a sort of strange direction,” Altman said.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

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Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Right-Leaning

The article presents a predominantly right-leaning perspective by emphasizing the Trump administration’s deregulatory approach to AI development, highlighting efforts to reduce federal and state regulations, roll back environmental protections, and prioritize American technological leadership and economic growth. The framing is generally supportive of the administration’s policies, reflecting conservative values such as deregulation, federal preemption over states, and promoting free market innovation. While it references concerns about AI risks, the overall tone favors expansion of AI industry influence with minimal government constraints, aligning with typical center-right to right-leaning policy priorities.