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What Trump’s education shakeup could mean for a Louisiana school Sen. Bill Cassidy’s wife started • Louisiana Illuminator

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lailluminator.com – Marina Villanueve, Hechinger Report – 2025-02-10 05:00:00

What Trump’s education shakeup could mean for a Louisiana school Sen. Bill Cassidy’s wife started

by Marina Villanueve, Hechinger Report, Louisiana Illuminator
February 10, 2025

Alcide Simmons said he has only one word to describe what it was like for his daughter, Brooke, as she struggled to spell and read: “torture.”

“‘Spell ‘duck,’ Brooke,” Simmons recalled. “And it would be, ‘P, C, K, something,’ no matter how many times.”

His wife, Leslie Johnson-Simmons, said she saw her creative, smart and chatty daughter retreat into herself as she tried to learn to spell like other first graders in her class at a private school in Louisiana.

“She began to clam up, and that wasn’t my child,” Johnson-Simmons said.

Screening revealed that Brooke had dyslexia — a common learning disability stemming from neurological differences that make it difficult to identify sounds and associate them with letters and words. When her private school told the Simmons family they would have to shell out up to $10,000 a year for once-a-week personalized reading instruction and other services, they decided to transfer their daughter to Louisiana Key Academy.

Now, Brooke, a fifth grader, is thriving at the charter school, her parents say, and each day receives 90 minutes of specialized reading instruction alongside a small group of other students.

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The school, which serves more than 700 students on three campuses in the state, was co-founded in 2013 by Laura Cassidy, a retired breast cancer surgeon whose husband is Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy — the new chair of the Senate committee whose role includes overseeing education. The Cassidys have a daughter with dyslexia and have long advocated for similar students and their families.

Nationwide, about 15% of students, or 7.5 million children, receive special education services. Most attend traditional public schools, but a growing number are enrolling at specialized charter schools like Louisiana Key Academy. The federal government plays a role in serving those students by issuing guidance, defending their right to a “free appropriate public education” and providing money. Louisiana Key Academy, for example, received $165,000 in special education funds in 2023, the most recent year for which data was available; including pandemic relief and school lunch money, federal funds made up 18% of the $11.6 million in revenue it reported that year.

President Donald Trump has vowed to shrink the federal government’s role in education. Already in his first weeks in office, he’s sent the education world into a tailspin by trying to impose a temporary freeze on federal grants and loans and signing an order to expand school choice, among other actions. He is also reportedly preparing an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education, with the ultimate goal of eliminating it altogether. Families and advocates are watching to see how the new administration’s approach will alter the day-to-day reality for students who rely on special education services.

A class at Louisiana Key Academy’s Baton Rouge campus in December 2024. (Kathleen Flynn for The Hechinger Report)

Laura Cassidy said in a December phone interview that she doesn’t believe Congress will make sweeping cuts to federal special education funding.

“I don’t think that’s going to go away,” said Cassidy, but if it does, she hopes the state will make up the difference. Of the funding freeze, she wrote in an email, “Any disruption in funding would be a problem. But our state superintendent assures us all is OK.”

Cassidy said federal funds provide critical support to the school. But she added that she prefers state oversight over education and allowing parents to exercise school choice.

“I think it’s easier if most of the control is in the state,” Cassidy said.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, in an interview with The Hechinger Report, said he was hopeful about Trump’s approach to education, given the nation’s dismal reading scores.

“One of President Trump’s great gifts is that that guy will break an egg and he will look at things differently,” Cassidy said. “And so I think we need to kind of bring new, fresh eyes to this problem, and to say, ‘Sure, it’s status quo, but is status quo always the way to be if status quo is giving you failure, failure, failure?’”

Laura Cassidy said she and her husband’s experience advocating for their daughter fueled her passion for ensuring that students with a learning disability can access the instruction and support they need — no matter their family’s income.

“It can be very devastating for a family and a student to not be identified and get the education that they need, and it really impacts their whole life,” she said.

Cassidy said she and other parents who launched the school decided a public charter school would give them the flexibility and funding to provide that access. Unlike private schools, charter schools don’t charge tuition, but like private schools, they are exempt from some local and state laws — including rules concerning union contracts and teacher certification — that traditional public schools must abide by.

Lisa Card, lower school principal of Key Academy’s Baton Rouge campus, said parents come to the school exasperated, feeling like they’ve fought for years to help their children learn a fundamental skill.

“They’re in tears,” she said. “They’re angry.”

Most states, including Louisiana, now provide universal screening in early grades for dyslexia, but older students don’t typically qualify, according to Harvard Graduate School of Education professor Nadine Gaab. Parents and special education advocates say it remains complicated and costly to obtain a diagnosis and get needed support for children of any age. Louisiana Key Academy provides screenings and evaluations for free, through the Baton Rouge-based Dyslexia Resource Center.

A teacher assists a student at Key Academy in Baton Rouge. (Kathleen Flynn for The Hechinger Report)

On a typically balmy December afternoon, a dozen students in teacher Olivia LeDuff’s fourth-grade structured language arts class at Louisiana Key Academy discussed the book “Hatchet,” which tells the story of a young boy surviving in the wilderness after a plane accident leaves him stranded.

LeDuff said “Hatchet” is above the students’ reading level — but that she played them an audio recording of the book to help work on their vocabulary. She said the bulk of the class is spent on what’s called phonological awareness: working with and manipulating
words and sounds.

“We play lots of word games,” she said. “We do rhyming. We do adding and deleting phonemes. We teach them that a phoneme is a single speech sound so they know how to break it up.” For example, the word “cat” is broken down as “cuh-at.”

A large body of research, known as the science of reading, stresses that all students need instruction in phonics and other reading skills. A 2022 series by APM Reports found that for decades, schools have relied instead on curricula urging students to learn to read by relying on clues like context.

At Louisiana Key Academy, teachers approach nearly every subject with the needs of students with dyslexia in mind. That could mean, for example, a science instructor providing additional help with scientific vocabulary or a math teacher breaking down word problems. Nationwide, researchers are calling for teachers to embed reading instruction into content classes.

Of 80 teachers at Key Academy campuses, Laura Cassidy said 14 have undergone two-year intensive training to become certificated academic language therapists and two have completed one year of training. Another 28 are in training or waiting to take the exam. Three dozen other teachers have taken an online course on dyslexia and are receiving other professional development, according to Cassidy.

Cassidy says small class sizes, of roughly a dozen students per teacher at the Baton Rouge campus, allow teachers to provide more one-on-one help. The school spends $18,476 per student per year, according to the state’s report card, compared to a state average of $15,393.

“It’s an expensive model,” Cassidy said. “So obviously any funding we get, including that from special ed, is very important.”

Critics of school choice have long argued that charter schools divert public money from local school districts while spending more taxpayer dollars per student.

Cassidy praised Louisiana’s pro-school choice policies and embrace of specialized schools.

“I’m hoping that’s where education goes, where it’s really tailored specifically to the needs” of students, she said. In a Jan. 30 email, she wrote that she was not yet familiar with the details of Trump’s executive order expanding school choice released the previous day.

Louisiana Key Academy is one of 176 specialized charter schools in 23 states that focus on students with disabilities, according to an October report by the Center for Learner

Equity that relied on 2020-21 data, and the number of students with disabilities served by these schools has more than doubled since 2012.

With specialized charter schools on the rise, some researchers and groups, including the National Council on Disability and the Center for Learning Equity, have questioned whether they conflict with decades of law and precedent upholding the right of children with disabilities to learn in a general classroom alongside peers without disabilities when possible.

Under the 50-year-old law now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, students with disabilities should be educated in a general classroom “to the maximum extent appropriate.”

There is an exception under the law, for “when the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily.”

A student at Key Academy in Baton Rouge works on her story map. (Kathleen Flynn for Hechinger Report)

Research has found that inclusion in the classroom benefits students’ personal and social development.

“Inclusion matters, full stop,” said Jennifer Coco, senior director of strategy and impact at the Center for Learner Equity. “On a human level, we prioritize learning environments that include all types of kids, because it doesn’t feel good to be excluded.”

Some special education advocates also point out that a student’s needs can change over time and that segregating them in a specialized charter devoted to their disability might keep them from progressing or learning alongside their peers when they are ready.

Under federal law, there are no hard and fast rules around how long a student can stay in a separate setting.

In a 2018 report to the White House, the National Council on Disability said that specialized charter schools are not “automatically appropriate for all students with the same disability.” The report stressed: “While charter schools focusing specifically on students with disabilities offer a valuable opportunity for some students, these schools run counter to the legal presumption in favor of education in the general education classroom.”

The council urged parents and school personnel to regularly assess whether students at specialized charter schools still need to attend such a school.

Cassidy said she’s aware of such concerns — and that the school is focused on evaluating students to see whether their reading skills have improved enough to return to a general classroom.

She said that returning to a general education classroom is easier for students who enroll and get help earlier. A student in first grade, for example, may be ready to leave the school by fourth grade if they show progress in reading fluency. But “very few” students at Louisiana Key Academy enter in first grade, she said, with the majority arriving when they’re older and thus needing more prolonged help.

By some conventional measures, Louisiana Key Academy is not performing well: Its Baton Rouge campus scored an F for student performance on the Louisiana Department of Education’s report card system in the 2022-23 school year. Its 43.4 performance score was a slight improvement over the year prior, when it received a 39.8. The score looks at how students are mastering content for their grade level.

The report card says “urgent intervention is required” for students of color and economically disadvantaged students, who performed far worse than students at the vast majority of schools in Louisiana. Overall, about 70 percent of students at the campus are identified as African American, and nearly three-quarters as economically disadvantaged.

Still, the school has a B rating for student progress.

Cassidy said the student progress rating shows the school is making a difference. She said the low scores on student performance reflect how behind students are when they arrive at the school.

“We’re getting kids in the third and fourth grade when we would like them in the first grade,” Cassidy said. She added that schools like Louisiana Key Academy serve a crucial role in a system that’s failing some children right now. “We’re truly changing lives,” she said. “It’s just slower than I would like.”

Students at Louisiana Key Academy receive daily small-group help with reading skills. (Kathleen Flynn for The Hechinger Report)

Trump appears determined to shake up the education system. Like other Republicans before him, including former President Ronald Reagan and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, he has called for the closure of the Department of Education, whose agencies include the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.

The department also funds more than 50 technical assistance centers that help states and districts serve students with disabilities and provides grants to state education departments, universities and nonprofits for topics ranging from parent training to teacher professional development.

The conservative policy blueprint Project 2025, some of whose architects have joined the Trump administration, urges lawmakers to send federal special education funding directly to school districts in the form of “no-strings attached” block grants, instead of to states first. Project 2025’s authors also want lawmakers to move oversight over whether states are complying with special education law, including ensuring schools follow a child’s Individualized Education Program, to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Trump’s January announcement freezing federal grants and loans (an order rescinded the next day after an outcry) was also outlined in Project 2025, as was his call to cut the Department of Education.

Sen. Cassidy, who took over the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this year, told The Hechinger Report that he doesn’t believe Congress has enough votes to abolish the Department of Education.

“I don’t think a single Democrat would vote for it,” he said.

Still, Cassidy said he wants to look at other potential reforms.

Project 2025 proposes folding the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights into the Department of Justice — a move that critics say would jeopardize federal oversight over discrimination.

Cassidy noted that the DOJ prosecutes Medicaid and Medicare fraud with the cooperation of the Department of Health and Human Services. “We have to look at it,” he said of the Project 2025 proposal. But he added, “there’s a lot of precedent for this in other agencies.”

He has also spoken in support of Project 2025’s push to reform how schools like Louisiana Key Academy get their special education funding by providing them direct, no-strings attached block grants. “My gosh, if you could block grant those dollars to the state for the primary and secondary education and give them more freedom to do what they’re supposed to do, that would be a good thing,” Cassidy told the television station KSLA.

Students raise their thumbs in response to their teacher at Key Academy in Baton Rouge. (Kathleen Flynn for Hechinger Report)

The federal government already doles out money in block grants for other spending categories, but critics have long noted that previous block grants have resulted in less funding for affected programs. For example, a sweeping 1981 bill consolidating 75 programs into nine new block grants ended up reducing overall funding by 12%, or $1 billion, according to a 2022 report by the Congressional Research Service.

It’s unclear what exactly a no-strings block grant would mean for schools, according to Tammy Kolbe, principal researcher of education systems and policy at the nonprofit American Institutes for Research. Kolbe has researched how the existing formula already doles out fewer special education dollars per child to states with the largest populations of children ages 3-21.

And advocates for special education, including Katy Neas, CEO of advocacy group The Arc of the United States, say they’re concerned that a no-strings attached block grant would weaken protections for students with disabilities.

“That’s a concern because we know that states and districts in too many places are struggling right now to meet their obligations to these students,” said Neas, whose nonprofit serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. “And what we need is more intense focus on helping schools do the job that they want and need to do. And I don’t see how taking away the specific sort of guardrails of the federal law will help them do that.”

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Back at Louisiana Key Academy on an afternoon before Christmas break, Brooke Simmons grinned as she talked about an upcoming field trip to a science museum and Secret Santa with her classmates. “I have a lot of friends, and I like talking to them a lot,” she said.

Dressed in a uniform paired with a pink bow and glimmering necklace, Brooke said she appreciates the small breaks and lighthearted approach the school provides for quizzes, tests and exams.

“At this school, they give us motivation,” Brooke said. “They’ll probably, like, throw in a little joke in the middle of it.”

Her parents say they’re overjoyed by her renewed confidence and proud of her love of reading and art.

Alcide Simmons said he doesn’t understand calls to shutter the Department of Education.

“We need that oversight,” he said. “Absolutely.”

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Contact reporter Marina Villeneuve at 212-678-3430 or  villeneuve@hechingerreport.org

This report was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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.

News from the South - Louisiana News Feed

Drowned child recovers thanks to oxygen chamber, but insurance did not approve

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www.youtube.com – WWLTV – 2025-09-09 19:20:27

SUMMARY: In 2018, Will Boyton’s 3-year-old son, Robert, drowned and was without oxygen for nearly an hour. Despite hospitals urging them to give up hope, Will insisted on hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatment, inspired by its success in brain injury cases. Robert began treatments at Harch Hyperbarics, showing rapid improvement: from unresponsive and bent backward to recognizing family and laughing within days. Over years, combined with stem cell therapy, Robert vastly surpassed his initial brain-dead prognosis. Though studies and treatments show promise in severe brain injuries, insurance refuses to reimburse these costly treatments, as the FDA hasn’t approved them.

For years, Medical Watch has covered adults and children with brain injuries, coming to New Orleans from around the world, for a treatment considered controversial.

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Wagers on touchdowns, strikeouts and even penalties: States eye limits on prop bets

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lailluminator.com – Kevin Hardy – 2025-09-09 09:00:00


Since the 2018 Supreme Court ruling legalizing sports betting, states like Maryland and New Jersey have seen a surge in wagering, with new concerns over proposition (“prop”) bets. Prop bets, wagering on specific player stats or in-game events, are popular but raise issues of gambling addiction, player harassment, and game integrity. New Jersey Assemblymember Dan Hutchison has introduced legislation to ban live in-game prop bets due to financial harms and addiction risks. Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine advocates an outright ban following suspicious betting incidents involving MLB players. While the industry warns that bans risk pushing bettors to illegal markets, sports leagues support restrictions on certain prop bets to protect athletes and game fairness.

by Kevin Hardy, Louisiana Illuminator
September 9, 2025

As a bankruptcy attorney, New Jersey Assemblymember Dan Hutchison said he sees clients “all the time” whose betting on football and baseball quickly leads to missed car payments, delinquent mortgages and, ultimately, bankruptcy.

The rise of live, in-game bets — in which a gambler could place more than 200 individual bets during a baseball game if they wager on each pitch thrown — has only amplified his misgivings.

“And I’m like, are you kidding me? I mean, they’re betting on the next pitch, the next play, and it’s constant,” he said. “There’s no pause. It’s just not healthy.”

Worried that those bets can worsen problem gambling and threaten the integrity of sports, Hutchison, a Democrat, introduced legislation to ban New Jersey gambling licensees from offering live bets on individual plays during sporting events.

That bill illustrates growing state interest in regulating proposition bets, commonly called prop bets, a form of sports betting that is popular with fans but worrisome for sports leagues and state officials nationwide.

Unlike wagering on which team will win or the point spread of a game, prop bets can center on the performance of an individual player or even a single play that doesn’t necessarily affect the outcome of a contest. Prop bets can include trivia, such as the color of the Gatorade dumped over the Super Bowl’s winning coach, or specific stats, like how many touchdowns a certain quarterback will score during a game or which team will score first.

Critics say prop bets are easier for athletes to manipulate than the outcome of an entire game. They also make individual players more susceptible to online harassment from gamblers and increase the frequency of betting, thus raising the risk of addiction.

Ohio’s Republican governor has called for the nation’s first outright ban on prop betting on professional sports. Already, at least 15 states ban prop betting in collegiate sports, according to data maintained by the American Gaming Association, a trade group.

The heightened focus on prop bets comes amid a rapid rise of legal sports gambling, which is operational in 38 states and the District of Columbia. (Missouri plans to launch its new voter-approved program this December.) While legal betting has boosted state revenues and reshaped sports fandom, Hutchison said bankruptcy attorneys across the country are getting a preview of the financial wreckage it can wreak.

He said some clients are so distraught, he worries about potential suicides related to out-of-control gambling debts.

“That’s the reality of what’s going on. But they don’t make it seem like that when they’re doing these commercials during the football games: It’s normal, everybody does it, if you don’t do it, you’re not enjoying yourself,” he said. “That’s the glamour side of it. I deal with the other side.”

The industry’s rapid rise

The liberalization of sports gambling was made possible by a 2018 Supreme Court decision to strike down a federal law prohibiting gambling.

Since then, legal gambling has transformed the fan experience and propelled sportsbooks into major industry players: Americans are expected to wager an estimated $30 billion in legal sports betting on the NFL this season, according to the American Gaming Association. With so much money and energy flowing into gambling, academic researchers are increasingly raising concerns about the mental and financial consequences.

“The speed at which gambling has been marketed and legalized in this country is way faster than guardrails have been set to protect consumers and to try to give resources for problem gambling,” said Stephen Shapiro, a University of South Carolina professor who researches sports gambling.

Shapiro said a potential ban on prop betting in Ohio would prove a “big step” in gambling regulation. But he expects fierce opposition from the industry and consumers alike.

“They’re very popular. They’re arguably as — if not more — popular than betting on just individual games,” he said. “ … So I think there’ll be some backlash, but I also think over the next few years … there’s going to be an appetite for setting guardrails.”

The speed at which gambling has been marketed and legalized in this country is way faster than guardrails have been set.

– Stephen Shapiro, a University of South Carolina professor who researches sports gambling

The American Gaming Association, which represents casinos and sportsbooks, says that such restrictions would only drive gambling to illegal venues such as offshore betting platforms, where consumers have no protections.

But some sports leagues are ready for more restrictions on prop bets. The NCAA, the governing body for major college athletics, has been pushing federal and state leaders to ban prop betting in college sports.

The organization says 1 in 3 high-profile college athletes has received abusive messages from gamblers — the majority directed toward basketball players during tournament season. Just 12 days after North Carolina legalized sports betting last year — including prop bets on players — the University of North Carolina’s Armando Bacot reported receiving more than a hundred abusive social media messages for not accumulating enough rebounds in a game.

Women’s basketball student-athletes received about three times the number of threats as men’s basketball student-athletes, according to the NCAA.

In a March awareness campaign, NCAA President Charlie Baker said the abuse threatens the well-being of student-athletes and the overall environment of college sports.

“We need fans to do better,” he said in a statement at the time. “We need states to do better and ban player props that target student-athletes and enable detrimental abuse.”

And professional teams have their own concerns. Last month, ESPN reported the NBA and its players union supported further limits on certain prop bets. This summer, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters he would like to see some limits on prop bets.

“There are certain types of bets that strike me as unnecessary and particularly vulnerable,” Manfred said, according to Yahoo Sports.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wants to ban prop bets after gambling allegations against Guardians players

In late July, Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine called on state regulators to outright ban all prop bets — a request he asked the professional sports leagues to support.

DeWine’s proposal followed the suspensions of Cleveland Guardians’ pitchers Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase, who are being investigated by MLB. A sports betting integrity firm reportedly flagged two specific pitches Ortiz threw in early June that coincided with a pair of prop bets.

“The harm to athletes and the integrity of the game is clear, and the benefits are not worth the harm,” DeWine said in a July news release. “The prop betting experiment in this country has failed badly.”

The Ohio Casino Control Commission, which regulates sports betting, did not answer Stateline’s questions about the governor’s request. On Aug. 13, the agency said its investigation into the suspicious betting on the Guardians was ongoing.

In a statement responding to DeWine, the American Gaming Association said the Ohio incident is actually evidence that regulated gambling works: “It detects potential misconduct, it reports it, and it helps hold bad actors accountable,” said Joe Maloney, the association’s senior vice president of strategic communications.

In an interview, Maloney said eliminating legal prop betting will only move that activity into unregulated markets with no transparency. He said prop bets are a reflection of sports fandom: Bettors like to wager on their favorite players notching touchdowns or 3-pointers.

“It increases a fan’s engagement with the game they love, with the player they love. And so the idea that eliminating a legal betting market for someone really interested in increasing the level of engagement is going to prevent that activity, it’s just not the case,” Maloney said. “ … It simply will just move the activity into the shadows.”

Leagues endorse some limits

But the leagues are pushing for certain parts of the game to remain off-limits in legal betting markets.

Major League Soccer, for example, successfully pushed Illinois regulators last year to ban wagering on whether yellow and red penalty cards will be shown during a match and whether a specific player will receive a yellow or red card penalty.

Similarly, the state in February banned prop bets on NFL player injuries, player misconduct, officiating assignments, replay results and the first play of the game, following lobbying from the league.

Illinois Gaming Board spokesperson Beth Kaufman told Stateline the regulatory agency doesn’t maintain a list of specific prop bets that are allowed. But the board does require licensees to receive approval from the agency for specific wagers offered, she said.

“The IGB regularly monitors ongoing trends and developments in the industry and in major sports for any possible impact to the integrity of sports wagering in Illinois,” she said in a statement.

The NFL has pushed for similar rule changes in other states.

During a late August news briefing on gambling, David Highhill, the league’s vice president for sports betting, said the NFL has consistently objected to certain bets that raise integrity risks and provide limited fan engagement. Those include bets about officiating or player injuries and bets that are controllable by a single player on a single play.

“So things like ‘will this kicker miss a field goal’ are things that we’ve worked collaboratively across the board with operators to make sure those types of wagers are not offered,” he said.

In New Jersey, Hutchison said he doesn’t want to ban all sports betting or even all prop bets. And he knows his bill targeting so-called micro bets — those live, play-by-play bets — will face opposition, both from the industry and sports gamblers.

An avid sports fan himself, he said he doesn’t waste his money gambling on his beloved Philadelphia Eagles: “They don’t build all of those casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas because they pay out winners,” he said.

He said he’s not looking to end legal sports betting, but does think New Jersey needs to instill consumer protections and have a meaningful policy conversation about the societal costs of gambling.

New Jersey lawmakers are also considering a separate bill to ban player-specific prop bets on college sports.

The Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey says it has experienced a nearly 300% increase in calls to its problem gambling hotline since the Garden State launched legal sports gambling in 2018.

In a July statement, Luis Del Orbe, executive director of the nonprofit council, which contracts with the state on gambling addiction issues, urged lawmakers to approve the bill to ban live, in-game bets. The organization says those high-frequency bets can trigger instant dopamine releases in the brain’s reward system, fostering compulsive behaviors that can lead to addiction.

“By limiting the proliferation of micro betting, this legislation takes an essential step toward protecting citizens from the harmful effects of reckless gambling practices,” Del Orbe’s statement said.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Louisiana Illuminator, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

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.

The post Wagers on touchdowns, strikeouts and even penalties: States eye limits on prop bets appeared first on lailluminator.com



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: Center-Left

The content presents a balanced view on the issue of sports betting regulation, highlighting concerns about problem gambling and the social costs associated with certain types of bets, particularly prop bets. It features perspectives from Democratic lawmakers advocating for consumer protections and regulation, as well as industry representatives warning against overregulation. The article also references bipartisan actions, including Republican officials supporting bans on specific bets. Overall, the piece leans slightly left by emphasizing public health and regulatory measures but maintains a generally centrist tone by including multiple viewpoints and avoiding partisan rhetoric.

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Morning Forecast – Tuesday, Sept. 9th

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www.youtube.com – KTVE – 2025-09-09 08:23:02

SUMMARY: Tuesday morning starts cool with clear skies and temperatures in the upper 50s. A few clouds and isolated showers may appear in eastern parishes and parts of Mississippi but will remain outside the main area. The region will stay mostly sunny and dry through the weekend, worsening moderate drought conditions in Arkansas. Temperatures will rise steadily, reaching the upper 90s by the weekend due to a persistent upper-level ridge over the Southern Plains. High pressure will maintain dry air and stable conditions, limiting storms. Overall, expect sunny skies, dry air, and near-zero precipitation chances throughout the forecast period.

Skies remain clear this morning as temperatures have fallen to the upper 50’s, making for a nice and cool start for this Tuesday morning. A few clouds are possible for our eastern parishes in the MS River Valley as pop-up showers and storms will be possible across parts of Mississippi this afternoon but staying outside our coverage area. More clouds could linger into tomorrow but staying mostly sunny, nonetheless. The forecast looks to stay dry all the way through the weekend, which does not help in the current moderate drought conditions in Arkansas. Temperatures will also be on the climb pushing back to the upper 90’s by the weekend.

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