Free Republic

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger became the latest enemy of President Donald Trump’s to lose a Republican primary on Tuesday. Billionaire Rick Jackson and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones advanced to a runoff election for the GOP nomination for Georgia governor — locking out Raffensperger, who rose to prominence defending Georgia’s 2020 election results but struggled to gain traction among his party’s increasingly MAGA base. Raffensperger’s defeat is another sign of Trump’s grip on the GOP, following the president’s wins ousting state Republican senators who clashed with him over redistricting in Indiana and Sen. Bill Cassidy’s loss in Louisiana on...

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy is facing a serious challenge for his seat, five years after voting to convict Donald Trump on impeachment charges following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Trump has endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow, but the field also includes well-known state Treasurer John Fleming. If no candidate gets majority support, the top two vote-getters will advance to a primary runoff. Whoever emerges from the Republican contest will be heavily favored in the general election.

Bill Cassidy voted to convict Donald Trump in February 2021. Louisiana Republicans spent five years deciding what to do about it. On Saturday, they gave their answer. Cassidy, who has represented Louisiana in the U.S. Senate since 2015, did not finish in the top two of the Republican primary. He will not advance to the June 27 runoff. His Senate career is over. The two candidates who did advance, Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow and State Treasurer John Fleming, now face each other in a runoff that will determine which of them represents the Louisiana Republican Party against the Democratic nominee...

Polls close in 10 minutes................. Standby................. Result tallies at link as they come in...............

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday ensured that the abortion pill mifepristone can continue to be available by mail without an in-person appointment with a clinician. A ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on May 1 had imperiled widespread access to the pill. Now, the Supreme Court has granted emergency requests brought by drugmakers Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro seeking to block that ruling. The decision, a loss for the state of Louisiana, ensures there will not be any disruption to the availability of the drug as litigation continues. On May 4, in an order...

The process of relocating people from New Orleans should start immediately, as the city has reached a “point of no return” that will see it surrounded by the ocean within decades due to the climate crisis, a stark new study has concluded. Ongoing sea-level rise and the erosion of wetlands in southern Louisiana will swallow up the New Orleans area within a few generations, with the new paper estimating the city “may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century”. Low-lying southern Louisiana faces multiple threats, with rising sea levels driven by global heating,...

Senator Bill Cassidy is trailing in polls and prediction odds in the Louisiana Republican Senate primary against his Trump-backed challenger Representative Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming. Cassidy, one of the seven Republican senators who voted to impeach Trump following the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, is facing two conservative rivals in the May 16 primary. The primary tests whether Trump’s once iron grip on GOP primary voters has softened amid his waning nationwide approval rating and if Republicans are willing to support a Trump critic in a solidly conservative state. Trump backed Letlow, who represents the state’s...

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, at risk of further distancing himself from President Donald Trump as his primary election draws closer, says the administration isn’t doing enough to restrict access to abortion pills. Cassidy, one of the few remaining Republicans in Congress who voted to convict Trump at his impeachment trial after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, on Tuesday accused the administration of moving too slowly in reviewing the safety of the abortion medication mifepristone. Many expect the review won’t be complete until after the midterm elections in November. The issue has renewed relevancy, though, as Louisiana is...

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision on the landmark voting rights case of Louisiana v. Callais, while arguments were heard in the Virginia Supreme Court in Scott v. McDougle. In Callais, the Supreme Court held that Louisiana’s congressional map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Yesterday, the Supreme Court ordered that the judgment be issued to the lower courts immediately, rather than in 32 days, allowing Louisiana to redraw its congressional maps immediately. In McDougle, the state held a referendum vote to temporarily amend the state’s constitution to allow...

Republican South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace named several lawmakers Monday who she claims used a congressional “slush fund” to cover up alleged sex scandals. Mace said she uncovered 1,000 pages of documents detailing how certain lawmakers allegedly evaded consequences for sexual scandals, according to a Monday post on X. Mace originally subpoenaed the House Oversight Committee in March in light of a string of sexual scandals that resulted in two resignations from Congress. (RELATED: REPORT: Two GOP Lawmakers Go Head-To-Head In Push To Expel One Another) Notably, Mace said that these documents are only from the last 22 years, claiming...

The Supreme Court on Monday night granted a request to immediately finalize its opinion in Louisiana v. Callais, in which it struck down that state’s congressional map, to allow Louisiana to draw a new map in time for the 2026 elections. That map is expected to favor Republicans, who currently hold four of the state’s six seats in the U.S. House of Representatives but could pick up one or even two more under a revised map. The court’s decision drew sharp criticism from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the lone dissenter. Jackson argued that the court’s ruling “has spawned chaos in...

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) is falling slightly behind his GOP challengers ahead of Louisiana’s Republican primary, according to a new poll. The incumbent senator is currently in third place among likely Republican primary voters in the state, according to an Emerson College poll released Thursday. Louisiana State Treasurer John Fleming (R) received 28 percent of respondents’ support, and Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.) received 27 percent while Cassidy garnered 21 percent. Twenty-two percent of the poll’s respondents said they are currently undecided on their vote in the state’s May 16 Republican primary election, which is now less than three weeks away....

The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Louisiana v. Callais et al has inevitably drawn strong criticism. In ruling that electoral districts cannot be redefined along racial lines, the Court stands accused of “gutting” the Voting Rights Act, crippling civil-rights law and effectively disenfranchising minority voters. But the Court’s decision was correct on the merits. It also represents a great retrenchment that’s taking place in American politics. The rules by which our political system operates have been overdue a revision – not the rules codified in the Constitution but the thicker web of precedents and practices that have served as a...

A New Orleans sheriff has been indicted with 30 felony offenses in connection with a jail break last May, in which 10 inmates escaped. On Wednesday, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced that Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson had been indicted by a special grand jury convened to investigate the May 16 escape at the Orleans Justice Center. “While Sheriff Hutson did not personally open the doors of the jail for the escapees, her refusal to comply with basic legal requirements and to take even minimal precautions in the discharge of her duties directly contributed to and enabled the escape,”...

The decision could touch off a scramble by Republicans to redraw majority-minority congressional districts, especially in the South, that could cost many Black Democrats their seats.The Supreme Court on Wednesday sharply weakened a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act, a ruling that limits the consideration of race in drawing voting maps and could usher in Republican gains in the House.The decision is expected to touch off a scramble by Republicans to redraw majority-minority districts, especially in the South. New districts could shift the balance of power in Congress by imperiling the reelection prospects of some Black Democrats, possibly...

The U.S. Supreme Court on April 29 limited the use of race-based redistricting in a legal challenge to Louisiana’s congressional map. The nation’s highest court ruled 6–3 in Louisiana v. Callais that race could not be used when drawing boundaries for the state’s electoral districts. The case rests on whether a lower court-ordered creation of a second black-majority congressional district in Louisiana was constitutional. A federal district judge had ordered the state to create the second district to comply with the anti-discrimination provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act.

An American soldier stationed at Fort Polk in Louisiana was arrested last week after he told users on the popular messaging platform Discord that he planned to conduct a mass shooting at a synagogue. Jakob Marcoulier, 22, was arrested on Thursday and charged with transmitting a threat in interstate commerce after the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center received a tip in February that he had made threats toward synagogues, according to the US attorney’s office for the Western District of Louisiana. According to court documents, the FBI obtained audio from Discord in which Marcoulier allegedly said, “After this deployment if...

The Baton Rouge Police Department confirmed at least 10 people are hurt, including two in critical condition, following a shooting at the Mall of Louisiana. According to Chief TJ Morse, there is no threat to the public at this time. The shooting happened around 1:22 p.m. on Thursday, April 23, near the food court area. Morse said it is not a random act of violence, but rather two groups of people who got into an argument inside the food court and started shooting at each other. “Unfortunately, there were some innocent people that were in the area that might have...

Authorities in Louisiana are searching for answers after a man shot and killed eight children, including seven of his own, and critically wounded two women, including his wife, in Shreveport, La., early Sunday, in the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in more than two years. “I just don’t know what to say, my heart is just taken aback,” Shreveport Police Chief Wayne Smith said at a news conference. “I cannot begin to imagine how such an event could occur.” The gunman, identified as 31-year-old Shamar Elkins, was killed during a police pursuit after hijacking a car, according to police.

Eight children were killed ​in a mass ‌shooting on Sunday in Shreveport, Louisiana. Shreveport Police Department spokesperson Christopher Bordelon told NBC that the ​victims ranged in age ​from 1 to 14​. According to Bordelon, the suspected gunman hijacked a car after ‌the ⁠shooting and was eliminated by police who opened fire...