SUMMARY: In New Orleans, Toups Meatery is determined to combat child hunger this summer by preparing and delivering up to 80,000 free meals, despite federal cuts to USDA programs affecting food banks. Co-owner Amanda Toups emphasizes the urgency, noting one in three local children are hungry. With traditional support dwindling, the program relies heavily on community donations and fundraising efforts, including the upcoming Toups Fest on June 22. Volunteers deliver meals weekly to families, aiming to ensure no child goes hungry. Toups urges the community to unite in supporting children, highlighting the importance of collective action to fight poverty and food insecurity.

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SUMMARY: Heavy rain returns Sunday with possible flooding, continuing a wet pattern through much of the week. A flood advisory was in effect for parts of the metro area Saturday afternoon, and today’s forecast calls for numerous showers and thunderstorms, especially in the afternoon and evening. Morning hours will be drier, but rainfall and heavy downpours are expected later on. Temperatures will reach the low 90s with high humidity, creating a muggy atmosphere. A tropical wave in the Caribbean remains disorganized, and the tropics are quiet for the next week. Conditions may improve slightly by Friday and Saturday, but heat and humidity will rise.

Heavy rain returns Sunday; flooding possible

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by Louisiana Illuminator, Louisiana Illuminator
June 15, 2025

Louisiana lawmakers adjourned the 2025 regular lawmaking session Thursday having passed a budget with hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure spending; bills aimed at lowering insurance races; and a massive rewrite of state ethics laws. 

In its early days, the eight-week session was at first dominated by a battle between insurance companies and the personal injury attorneys over how to lower car insurance rates.

That policy dispute also led to a showdown between Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple and Gov. Jeff Landry, both Republicans, over who should be held responsible for Louisiana’s sky-high insurance costs.

At the end of the session, the governor engaged in a power struggle with Senate President Cameron Henry over private school vouchers and prescription drug regulations. 

The following list evaluates how certain political figures and causes fared in the lawmaking session: 

WINNER: Senate President Cameron Henry

Henry, a Metairie Republican, resisted pressure from Landry and the conservative House to push through more radical policy proposals than he said the Senate, which has a more moderate approach to politics, felt uncomfortable adopting.

Despite a wave of attack ads in the media and pressure from the governor, Henry refused to fund an expansion of Louisiana’s private education voucher program. He also declined to force a Senate vote on a proposal to radically remake Louisiana’s pharmacy network, in spite of social media threats from Landry to force a vote on the issue. 

The Senate president blocked a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion policies that the House endorsed. His chamber also turned down a proposal from Landry to give the governor more control over licensing boards and commissions. 

TOSS-UP: Gov. Jeff Landry 

As noted above, Landry lost a couple of high-profile legislative fights with the Senate over his signature private education voucher initiative and prescription drug regulations.

Some of his strong-arm tactics also simply weren’t effective at getting his agenda passed, particularly in the Senate. 

Landry’s public rally with school children that was meant to pressure legislators into funding more vouchers didn’t elicit the response he wanted. The ultimatum he issued to call lawmakers back into a special session also didn’t force the Senate into passing the pharmacy bill he was backing. 

On other fronts however, he had legislative victories. He was largely able to get his agenda to address Louisiana’s car insurance crisis through the Legislature. A number of bills that reworked the way state agencies – including the Louisiana Workforce Commission, Department of Transportation and Development and the Department of Children and Family Services – function also passed. 

LOSER: Government transparency 

Lawmakers approve a handful of bills that will make it difficult to scrutinize government officials for inappropriate behavior, government corruption and conflicts of interest. 

House Bill 681 by Rep. Marcus Bryant, D-New Iberia, could subject people to jail time and fines if they post personal information about state lawmakers, statewide elected officials and Public Service Commissioners on the internet. 

It prevents the elected officials’ home addresses, phone numbers, personal email addresses, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, federal tax identification numbers, bank account numbers, credit and debit card numbers, license plate numbers from being published in government records or on a public website. Also protected under the law are marital records and birthdates. 

An official’s church, the school or daycare their child attends and the employment location of their spouse, children or dependents would also be shielded. 

Two other pieces of legislation that massively write government ethics and campaign finance laws would also lead to less disclosure of who is donating to and spending money on political campaigns. 

WINNER: Government corruption

Along with weakening public transparency laws, Landry and lawmakers have made it harder for the Louisiana Board of Ethics to charge any elected official, public employee or government contractor with wrongdoing. 

The change to the board’s investigative process may simply allow those accused of wrongdoing to run out the clock on the board’s ability to even bring charges against them, according to the board’s own members. 

The board is only given a year to investigate and charge a person with a violation before it reaches a legal deadline to do so. The new process for investigations is more time consuming and will make it difficult to finish on time, board members said. 

LOSER: Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple

Temple successfully pushed most of his legislative agenda through, but he lost a public feud to fellow Republican Landry over a bill that would allow the governor to cast blame onto him for the state’s insurance crisis. He will now have greater authority to reject insurance rate hikes, a responsibility he doesn’t want to have. He will now be open to criticism when he doesn’t turn down rate increases that are not popular with the public. 

WINNER: Insurance industry

Insurance companies are the real winners of Temple’s agenda of “tort reform” bills they have been trying to get on the books for years. The new laws are supposed to tamp down lawsuits and reduce the amount of money plaintiffs can recover from bodily injury accidents.

LOSERS: Carbon capture critics 

Carbon capture and sequestration made a cozy home for itself in Louisiana this session. Bills attempting to assert local control over where and whether projects to store injected carbon dioxide underground happen largely died in committees. 

Other moves to ban the practice entirely or tax CO2 injection also got little love. Surviving CCS measures that made it into law are provisions restricting the use of eminent domain for CO2 storage transport pipelines and keeping court venues for these eminent domain claims local to the parish in question. 

WINNER: Rep. Dustin Miller

Miller, an Opelousas Democrat, holds a key seat as chairman of the House Committee on Health and Welfare in a legislature where Republicans hold the supermajority. One of his bills was amended in the late stages of the session to prohibit companies from owning both drugstores and pharmacy benefit managers in Louisiana. Although the legislation was denied a final vote in the Senate on the last day of the session, Miller still received a bipartisan standing ovation from his colleagues in the House for his effort.

He did manage to finesse an exclusion for his home city in one of the year’s most contested bills. A statewide ban on speeding enforcement cameras everywhere but school zones will take effect Aug. 1, except in Opelousas.       

WINNERS: Public school teachers

Landry and lawmakers had initially said they would not give public school teachers another $2,000 pay stipend after a constitutional amendment to provide that money permanently failed to pass in March. They quickly backtracked, however, and ended up putting the teacher’s stipend back into the budget for the 2025-2026 school year.

The lawmakers are also putting another constitutional amendment on the ballot next year that would raise teacher pay slightly if the voters approve it. Teachers and school support staff would get $2,250 and $1,125 more respectively in their permanent pay if the ballot proposition passes. 

The teachers also successfully fought off legislation that would have made it harder for their unions to collect dues that are automatically deducted from paychecks. 

LOSERS: Abortion medication providers 

Doctors and activists who provide abortion-inducing medications to Louisianians could be sued under a proposal approved by lawmakers. 

House Bill 575 by Rep. Lauren Ventrella, R-Greenwell Springs, easily passed both chambers. She dubbed her proposal the “Justice for Victims of Abortion Drug Dealers Act,” though it would apply to all forms of the procedure. 

In addition to allowing out-of-state providers to be sued, it extends the window for filing litigation from three years to five. 

TOSS-UP: College athletes 

Louisiana college athletes will not be receiving a tax exemption on their name, image and likeness (NIL) income this year, as two proposals to do so stalled due to the state’s lean budget situation. But lawmakers may take another crack at it after a task force meets over the next year and submits recommendations for NIL legislation. 

But each Division I college athletics program in Louisiana will be the beneficiary of an increased gambling tax, which will send nearly $2 million annually to be spent on expenses benefitting athletes. 

WINNERS: Nursing home owners 

Nursing home owners were able to pass legislation that will limit the damages collected from wrongful death and injury lawsuits brought against their facilities. There are 60-plus pending lawsuits from former clients and their families against nursing home ownership groups across the state currently. 

LOSERS: Civil service workers 

Lawmakers approved a constitutional amendment that could weaken the state civil service system that provides protections to thousands of state employees. The proposal still needs approval from Louisiana voters before it’s enacted, but the fact that the bill made it out of the legislature this year signals that a two-thirds majority of lawmakers may no longer value a system that has held strong in Louisiana for roughly 70 years.  

WINNERS: DEI and academic freedom

A proposal that would have prohibited diversity, equity and inclusion practices across state government and prohibit state universities and colleges from requiring certain race and gender-based curricula for undergraduate students was purposefully stalled in the Senate. 

Henry, the senate president, said the measure was unnecessary. 

The bill was also opposed by The Louisiana chapter of the American Association of University Professors. 

LOSERS: People incarcerated on split-jury verdicts

Louisiana voters amended the state constitution in 2018 to eliminate convictions through non-unanimous juries in felony criminal trials, but the change didn’t apply to such verdicts before the change. Two years later, U.S. Supreme Court ruled that split-jury verdicts were unconstitutional, but it left it up to Louisiana to determine whether their ruling would apply to older cases.

Lawmakers have tried multiple times since then to provide an avenue for those convicted by non-unanimous juries to seek a review of their cases. Sen. Royce Duplessis, D-New Orleans, managed to get his bill through committee this year, but it was shot down on the Senate floor despite having the support of the Louisiana Republican Party and GOP Congressman Clay Higgins, an ardent anti-crime proponent.

WINNER: Children’s teeth 

Louisiana lawmakers opted against a conspiracy-theory fueled bill that would have prohibited public water systems from fluoridating their water. Water fluoridation is considered key in reducing dental complications in children. 

LOSER: Wetlands

It is now easier to build in Louisiana’s isolated wetland areas— kind of. The state adopted a new definition of what counts as a wetland with Senate Bill 94 by Senator Mike “Big Mike” Fesi, R-Houma, excluding areas cut off from surface water connection to rivers and lakes or surrounded by levees. 

Despite some legal confusion as to whether the legislation violates the Clean Water Act, there are now legal avenues to argue that these isolated wetland areas don’t need permits to drain, dredge and fill.

WINNER: Fortified roof program

Lawmakers have embraced the state’s fortified roof program as one of the only effective means of lowering homeowner insurance rates. This session, they established a new $10,000 income tax credit that should go a significant way in helping homeowners afford the hurricane-resistant roofs. 

WINNER: Saudi Arabia 

Louisiana has included $7 million in the state budget to spend on a LIV Golf League event that is expected to come to the Bayou Oaks golf course in New Orleans City Park next summer.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world with nearly $1 trillion in assets, owns LIV Golf.

LOSER: Science

The governor has signed a bill that bans the dispersion of chemicals for weather modification. Technological advances in  have safely produced results in rain-starved areas, but they have also launched far more unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Louisiana joins Florida and Tennessee with new laws based on this speculation, and similar legislation is under consideration in other states. 

Awaiting the governor’s signature is a bill that would allow the over-the-counter sale of ivermectin. The drug’s proponents praise it as a treatment for COVID-19 symptoms, though federal regulators haven’t approved it for that use.

Julie O’Donoghue, Piper Hutchinson, Wes Muller, Elise Plunk and Greg LaRose contributed to this analysis

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: Left-Leaning

This article from the Louisiana Illuminator exhibits a clear left-leaning bias in its framing, tone, and choice of language. While it presents factual reporting on Louisiana’s 2025 legislative session, it repeatedly casts Republican leaders—especially Gov. Jeff Landry—in a critical light, characterizing his policies as “radical” or “strong-arm tactics.” Terms like “government corruption” and “loser: science” carry a pointed evaluative tone, and the article emphasizes perceived negative outcomes of conservative legislation (e.g., weakened ethics laws, anti-DEI measures, anti-abortion efforts). Positive framing is more often applied to bipartisan restraint or Democratic figures, suggesting a clear but not extreme leftward tilt.