By Greg LaRose | Editor-in-Chief
We’re monitoring news on two fronts. Candidates who advanced from Saturday’s party primary are either back to work on their runoff campaigns or savoring victory. Meanwhile, state lawmakers head into the final two week’s of the legislative session.
U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, with his wife Dr. Laura Cassidy by his side, addresses his supporters as he concedes his primary election contest during an event at Boudreaux’s Caterers on May 16, 2026, in Baton Rouge. (Michael DeMocker/Getty Images)
By Illuminator staff reports
Cassidy’s political demise began more than five years ago when he was one of seven Republican U.S. senators who voted to convict Trump during his impeachment trial over the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection attempt at the U.S. Capitol. The president made his snub of Cassidy official in January when he cajoled Letlow into running with a public endorsement, even before she had declared her candidacy for Senate.
Eddie Hawkins of Scotlandville, a volunteer with the Power Coalition, holds a sign outside a Baton Rouge precinct urging voters to reject all five state constitutional amendments on the ballot Saturday, May 16, 2026. (Wes Muller/LAI)
By Julie O’Donoghue
For the second year in a row, Louisiana voters delivered a stunning defeat to Gov. Jeff Landry by rejecting a slate of constitutional amendments he supported. Landry backed four of the five amendments on Saturday’s ballot. His political organization, Protect Louisiana Values, devoted $1 million to a campaign to get them approved.
MORE ELECTION COVERAGE
St. John the Baptist Parish President Jaclyn Hotard stopped a local publicly owned theater from screening a documentary about Denka, a chemical manufacturer that has shuttered is plaint there. (LAI photo illustration)
By Tristan Baurick, Verite
A documentary centered on a small Mississippi River parish had been racking up awards, earning prizes at film festivals in San Francisco, London and Milan. But when residents of St. John the Baptist Parish tried to screen “The Big Sea” at a publicly owned theater, Parish President Jaclyn Hotard intervened, shutting down the event without explanation.
By Jonathan Shorman
For the past two decades, the Supreme Court has advanced the idea that federal courts should not order major changes close to an election to limit voter confusion. But election law experts and one of the court’s liberal justices say the Supreme Court is wielding — or disregarding — the principle unevenly in ways that aid Republicans.
COMMENTARY
By Andrea Hagan
Malcolm X warned us more than 60 years ago what gets sold to Black folks in the marketplace of American dreams. He was talking about the gap between the image of America that gets marketed and the reality that gets lived. He was talking, though he could not have known it, about exactly the kind of moment LSU coach Lane Kiffin described in a Vanity Fair interview.
NEWS FROM THE STATES
Bill would require auto expungement of eligible drug offenses | MO Independent
Payments finally land for Everglades ICE facility | FL Phoenix
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