Category: Louisiana News Feed

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The U.S. Interior Department on Friday canceled a rule meant to protect plants and animals that are determined to be threatened with extinction, the latest step by President Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle key provisions of the landmark Endangered Species Act at the behest of industry.

Instead of receiving automatic protections, imperiled species will need individualized protection plans once they are added to the threatened species list. That’s a potentially lengthy process in which companies could seek exemptions for oil and gas drilling, mining and other development where those species live.

Opponents said it would make it harder to save wildlife that’s awaiting federal protections and in danger of disappearing, such as monarch butterflies and alligator snapping turtles.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement that the Endangered Species Act had been used for too long “to stop almost any new project in America, driving up costs for families, weakening our competitiveness, and undermining our national security.”

“Success should be measured by species recovery and delisting, not by adding more species to the list,” Burgum added.

A second change finalized Friday requires officials to analyze economic impacts when deciding whether habitat is critical to a species’ survival. Critics say it gives corporations an opportunity to put their thumb on the scale so that officials will allow development in those areas.

“If you’re exempting certain industries that cause habitat destruction, in many instances you’ll be exempting the main threat to those species,” said Noah Greenwald with the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity.

Officials made similar changes during Trump’s first term but they were reversed under former Democratic President Joe Biden.

The rules that gave what some consider “blanket protections” to threatened species were first adopted for wildlife in 1975 and for plants in 1977.

Two groups, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Property and Environment Research Center, sued the Biden administration in 2024 after officials restored the blanket protections rule. They argued the rule unfairly imposed the same restrictions on landowners when a species’ status improves from endangered, which is more dire, to threatened.

That removed incentives for landowners to participate in species recovery, said Jonathan Wood, vice president at the Montana-based research center.

Wood said the Trump administration’s approach allows officials to “better reward progress and encourage proactive conservation.”

There have been no species added to the endangered or threatened lists in Trump’s second term. By comparison, more than 20 species were added in Trump’s first term, and about 60 during Biden’s presidency.

About 30 species are currently proposed to be listed as threatened. Besides monarchs and alligator snapping turtles, they include California spotted owls and various snakes, fish, clams and insects.

Changes to government policies for endangered plants and wildlife have come faster and extended further in Trump’s second term than in his first.

The administration in March exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said environmentalists’ lawsuits threatened to hobble domestic energy supplies as the U.S. wages war against Iran.

Last week, Interior officials sharply narrowed the definition of what constitutes “harm” to a species. The change would allow development on critical wildlife habitat so long as the animals themselves are not immediately killed or injured.

This week officials sharply reduced the amount of critical habitat in the U.S. Rocky Mountains designated for Canada lynx, forest dwelling wildcats that are threatened by climate change and other pressures.

Also this week, Burgum said in a visit to Montana that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would turn over more management authority for grizzly bears to states where the bruins live. That’s been a longstanding priority for the Republican governors of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.

The Endangered Species Act is credited with bringing back iconic animals including the bald eagle and American alligator from the brink of extinction.

Burgum noted Friday that 97% of the species that have been given protections still have them. That’s a frustration for Republican lawmakers who say species should be taken off the endangered and threatened lists more quickly once they’ve recovered.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Trump administration plans to open a 528-bed holding facility for migrant families and unaccompanied children next to an airport hub, positioning itself to speed up deportations.

The location in Alexandria, Louisiana, would remove logistical headaches caused by wrangling children from foster homes and shelters across the country and not having anywhere to put them during final preparations for flight. Those obstacles were apparent last year when Guatemalan children were awoken at night and given almost no time to get to Harlingen, Texas, where they waited on an airport tarmac for hours.

A federal judge prevented their deportation, but the chaotic episode illustrated the challenges authorities face because they don’t have anywhere to put families and children near the airport. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is calling the Alexandria facility a “staging area,” not a detention center, and says people would only be there a few days at most.

However, several immigration advocates expressed concern that children could be held at the new facility for weeks or months, which happened at other federal immigration holding sites. These advocates are also concerned about oversight, and say the facility represents a departure from how the government manages those children.

“It’s an expansion of the deportation system in ways we haven’t seen before,” said Leecia Welch, chief legal counsel at the nonprofit Children’s Rights. “There’s just so much that could go wrong with this facility.”

ICE has tapped a private prison company to run the deportation facility

Unaccompanied children who are in the U.S. without parents or close relatives are not taken to facilities overseen by ICE. Instead, the law says they must be swiftly placed in the care of state-licensed shelters and foster care programs.

Those are run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services. However, that agency isn’t involved in the Alexandria facility’s operation, according to a spokesperson at the airfield where it’s being built.

Instead, the facility would be run by a nonprofit arm of LaSalle Corrections, a private prison contractor, according to Ralph Hennessy, executive director of the England Airpark Authority. He said it could be operational as early as August.

ICE officials signed a contract late last month to build the facility at the former military base near Alexandria International Airport, roughly 175 miles (280 kilometers) northwest of New Orleans, Hennessy said.

It would operate as a 72-hour holding center for migrants awaiting deportation, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

Compass Connections, a Texas-based nonprofit that runs shelters for unaccompanied immigrant children, had originally been tapped to help operate the facility and laid out plans during a public presentation in February.

But the company’s president, Sonya Thompson, told the AP last week that it was no longer involved. She did not elaborate.

Officials have said the facility is for ‘self-deporting’ families

In public board meetings, airpark officials said the facility is a “humanitarian effort” for families that are “self-deporting.” Immigration advocates say families and unaccompanied children sometimes make that decision under pressure or because they don’t understand their options.

“These are people that are volunteering to go back home and they’re going back home as a family unit,” Hennessy told the AP.

The facility would sit next to the nation’s largest hub for deportations. More than 4,400 immigration enforcement flights came into and out of the Alexandria International Airport in 2025, according to data from the ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative of Human Rights First. ICE planning documents say families and children at the facility “are in the legal custody of ICE and can only be released at the direction of ICE.”

The agency has instructed contractors that families at the facility cannot be referred to as prisoners, detainees or inmates, records show. The agency ordered contractors to not use bars or cages when transporting families and unaccompanied children. The facility will not be required to engage in headcounts and should allow families to “wear their own clothes,” the agency added.

The private prison company runs other ICE detention centers

Louisiana-based LaSalle Corrections runs a range of private prisons and federal immigration detention centers throughout the South, including the “Louisiana Lockup” inside the state’s maximum-security prison in Angola.

The official contractor for the new ICE holding facility will be the company’s nonprofit arm, the LaSalle Family Foundation. According to its tax records, the nonprofit provides chaplain services and educational programming in correctional facilities.

However, LaSalle Corrections itself will be involved in operating the holding facility and ensuring compliance, the company’s chief financial officer, Tim Kurpiewski, wrote in an email reviewed by the AP.

LaSalle spokesperson Scott Sutterfield declined to comment.

The deaths of two detainees have been reported since April at a LaSalle-run ICE facility in the state.

Winn Correctional Center was also found in June to have violated standards governing environmental health and safety, food service, use-of-force, medical care and other subjects, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.

Louisiana’s attorney general was indicted Thursday over accusations she threatened the jobs of New Orleans leaders who fought a Republican-led overhaul of local courts in the heavily Democratic city.

The 16-count indictment against Republican Liz Murrill, handed up by a New Orleans grand jury, charges Louisiana’s first female attorney general with intimidation and malfeasance. At the center of the case are deepening rifts between state leaders in Louisiana, which is heavily Republican, and Democrats who control the state’s most prominent city.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry promised a swift pardon, saying Murrill would not have her reputation tarnished by an “Orleans Kangaroo court.” Mayor Helena Moreno, a Democrat, was among those who had accused the state’s top law enforcement official in May of making threats against public officials.

Murrill called the case against her “retaliatory, meritless, and unconstitutional.” Late Thursday, Murrill said she had filed for an emergency stay with the Louisiana Supreme Court.

“I will not back down. I will continue enforcing the law, fighting corruption, and doing the job the people of Louisiana elected me to do,” she wrote on X.

For months, political tensions intensified between Louisiana Republicans and New Orleans officials over a new law that abolished a court clerk office won by an exoneree, Calvin Duncan, who spent nearly three decades in prison. The change consolidated that job with another clerk’s office, which Republican supporters said would make the local judicial system more efficient.

The change was staunchly opposed by New Orleans leaders, and in May, the city council set a special election that would have given Duncan a chance to win the newly combined job. Murrill responded by warning local officials in letters that they could lose their offices for violating state “usurper” laws, which forbid support for an unauthorized officeholder.

“We’re very interested in elected officials in New Orleans not being intimidated or threatened by letter or any other way,” special prosecutor Laurie White told reporters.

Bond set for Louisiana attorney general

Bond for Murrill was set at $400,000 on Thursday, according to court records.

Landry said he was ordering state police to investigate what he called “alleged improprieties” of the grand jury and those who ran it.

“The criminal justice system is a circus at its finest in Orleans and we will not have any of that!” he wrote on X.

The Republican Attorneys General Association said that making statements to local officials — in writing — was simply “issuing a legal opinion and warning public officials about the law” as part of her official duties. It called the indictment “as outrageous as it is dangerous.”

Moreno, who was elected in January and was defiant after Murrill sent the letters, on Thursday called it a “matter for the courts” and did not directly address the allegations.

“My focus, as always, remains on fulfilling the responsibilities the people of New Orleans elected me to carry out,” Moreno said.

Elected clerk says state targeted him

Duncan has said he believes state officials were retaliating against him in eliminating the job he won with 68% of the vote. Murrill and Landry have long refused to acknowledge his innocence, though he’s listed on the National Registry of Exonerations.

Republicans have said the change was not personal and supporters have noted that the offices of criminal and civil clerks of courts are combined in other parishes.

Duncan was a jailhouse lawyer who later graduated from law school. He founded a nonprofit dedicated to expanding incarcerated people’s access to the court system and was the driving force behind a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended nonunanimous jury convictions.

Duncan spent more than 28 years in prison over a fatal shooting during a robbery in 1981.

The night before a 2011 hearing to consider new evidence, prosecutors offered to reduce Duncan’s sentence to the time he’d already served in prison if he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and armed robbery. Duncan took the deal and was freed but didn’t give up on clearing his name.

In 2021, a judge agreed that Duncan had been unjustly convicted and vacated his sentence altogether. Landry and Murrill have pointed to the 2011 plea deal in objecting to Duncan calling himself exonerated.

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Associated Press reporter Jack Brook in New Orleans contributed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump reshaped this year’s U.S. Senate map by sidelining some Republican incumbents and promoting loyalists to replace them. Now the question is whether he’ll put his money where his mouth is.

With four months to go until November’s elections, it’s still unclear how much MAGA Inc., the country’s largest political war chest with $382 million in the bank as of last month, plans to spend on key races. The silence has persisted even as Senate Republican leaders have urged Trump’s team, both privately and publicly, to pick up the tab for the president’s decisions.

Front and center is Texas, where Trump successfully endorsed fiery conservative Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn, a choice that some Republicans grumble has turned a safe election into a toss-up that will drain resources away from other battlegrounds. Democratic nominee James Talarico, a state lawmaker, has made Paxton’s history of corruption allegations a central target of his campaign.

“The president picked Paxton, and he’s got $350 million dollars,” Cornyn recently told Semafor. “I think he can spend his money.”

Another challenge has emerged in North Carolina, where Sen. Thom Tillis declined to run for reelection after feuding with Trump last year over healthcare spending. Trump backed Michael Whatley, his former handpicked chair of the Republican National Committee, to run instead, and Democrats hope to flip the seat with former Gov. Roy Cooper.

Some in Republican campaign leadership are expecting MAGA Inc. to pitch in for Whatley in North Carolina, where the state’s several metro media markets can be pricey.

Republicans will likely be able to count on generous support from well-funded official party committees, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this week should be allowed to make unlimited direct contributions to candidates’ campaigns. But even that sum falls short of what Trump has stockpiled in MAGA Inc. Even though the president is constitutionally barred from running again, he began raising money shortly after winning a second term, and he’s regularly held fundraisers at his resort properties where tickets cost $1 million per person.

James Blair, the former White House political director who left his government job to coordinate the president’s midterm efforts, was evasive in an interview with Sean Spicer, a former Republican spokesman who hosts a podcast.

“The president is going to expend substantial resources to win the midterms,” said Blair. “He cares deeply about the party winning.”

As a super PAC, MAGA Inc. can raise unlimited money from individuals and corporations. However, it is barred from coordinating with individual campaigns or national Republican committees, which adds to the sense of mystery surrounding its plans.

It’s been more than two months since Blair, along with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, pollster Tony Fabrizio and political adviser Chris LaCivita huddled at Washington’s Waldorf Astoria to discuss MAGA Inc.’s strategy.

The huddle was focused on assembling teams of vendors, such as advertisers, canvassing providers and digital media company leaders who had worked with the Trump team in key states during previous elections and who would be dispatched once plans were in place.

The president has spent much of the year waging a war of retribution against Republicans who have crossed him. He viewed Cornyn as insufficiently loyal, held a grudge against Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana for voting to convict him in an impeachment trial and assailed Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky as the “worst Republican Congressman in history.” All of them lost their primaries to Trump-backed challengers.

Cornyn’s loss weighs heavily on Senate Republicans, who suggest that Paxton could cost the party an extra $100 million to defend the seat.

Senate Leadership Fund, the principal super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, is still expected to spend money on advertising in Texas but not play a central role given its obligations elsewhere.

Democrats must net four seats to take the majority, and they see Alaska, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio as their best opportunities. The Senate Leadership Fund has already committed to spending $342 million across these four states, plus Iowa, Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire.

When Paxton came to Washington after winning the nomination on May 26, he had a cordial meeting with Thune focused on moving forward together, according to people with knowledge of the conversation who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Later that day, Thune suggested that Trump should be putting up money for a candidate whom Senate Republicans hadn’t asked for.

“We will do what we need to do to make sure the state stays red,” Thune told reporters. “But I’m certainly hopeful the president and the resources he can bring to bear will be engaged.”

“It’s going to be an expensive race,” he added.

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Associated Press White House correspondent Seung Min Kim contributed from Washington. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — As consumers worry about medication costs, states are trying to lower drug prices by reining in big companies that oversee prescription coverage for health insurers.

Some of those companies, called pharmacy benefit managers, also own pharmacies, and one of them, CVS, has spent millions of dollars fighting the regulations.

Affordability is a key issue ahead of this year’s midterm elections. Legislators in at least a dozen states passed laws this year to limit compensation to the companies, set minimum payments from the companies to pharmacists and require the companies to disclose more information to their clients, states and the public.

A Tennessee law will bar pharmacy benefit managers from operating retail pharmacies as of July 1, 2028, though CVS Health Corp. has filed a federal lawsuit to avoid having to close its 136 pharmacies there.

About 6 in 10 U.S. adults said in a poll conducted earlier this year by healthcare research nonprofit KFF that they were at least somewhat worried about being able to afford their prescriptions. About 4 in 10 said costs had led them not to take medications as prescribed within the previous year, either by taking less than the prescribed dose, using over-the-counter substitutes or not filling prescriptions.

Dozens of proposals emerge across the US

Pharmacy benefit managers, particularly CVS and two other large companies, handle most U.S. prescriptions.

Lawmakers in at least 26 states introduced more than 120 bills this year on PBMs, according to an Associated Press search using the bill-tracking software Plural, with about a quarter of the bills clearing at least one chamber.

The companies manage pharmacy claims for health insurers and negotiate with manufacturers over drug prices and what medications will be covered. Critics concede that the size of the top companies gives them leverage that health plans wouldn’t have on their own.

The benefit managers argue that they’re the only player in the drug supply chain created to help push drug costs down and they claim credit for an increased used of less-expensive generic drugs, now 90% of U.S. prescriptions.

“If PBMs already didn’t exist, you’d need to invent one,” said Prem Shah, president of the CVS Health group overseeing its pharmacy and PBM operations, in a recent interview. “Blaming PBMs for high drug prices is like blaming umbrellas for the rain.”

CVS fights restrictions in Tennessee

Drug companies, PBMs and their allies have spent at least $24 million on opposing broadcast and digital advertising since the start of 2025 to influence public opinion, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. CVS spent $4 million this year on ads opposing Tennessee’s new law.

CVS sued Arkansas last year after it enacted similar legislation, and a federal judge blocked its law. CVS also settled three lawsuits in which Louisiana accused it of unfair trade and deceptive practices in lobbying against legislation there last year, agreeing to pay $45 million without acknowledging wrongdoing.

The CVS lawsuit in Tennessee alleges that the company, which operates 9,000 pharmacies nationwide, is facing “naked protectionism” from lawmakers who operate independent pharmacies — including the law’s main sponsor, state Sen. Bobby Harshbarger and co-sponsor Sen. Shane Reeves.

Independent pharmacies say they’re being squeezed

In Knoxville, Seth White, who manages a CVS pharmacy, will have to find a new job if the Tennessee law stands, and he’s also worried about hundreds of its customers having to go elsewhere for their medications.

Some 900 miles (1,400 kilometers) away in Coldwater, Kansas, Lisa Gales is on the opposite side of the debate. She and her husband operate the Main Street Pharmacy, and she said they rely heavily on sales of non-pharmacy items to offset low reimbursements from pharmacy benefit managers.

Gales calculates she lost money on 86% of the prescriptions she filled last year. A new Kansas law will require PBMs to pay a $10.50 dispensing fee per prescription. Gales called it a “great win,” even though, “It’s still way under what it’s costing us.”

A new Louisiana law imposes an $11.81 dispensing fee. Another says PBMs must operate for the benefit of their health-insurer clients and people enrolled in health plans.

Critics deride each mandatory dispensing fee as an extra “pill tax” that will drive up consumers’ costs. Backers dispute that, saying the laws also limit what PBMs charge health plans for the cost of medications themselves — so that it’s often well below wholesale prices.

Pharmacy benefit managers push drugmakers to give big discounts on those wholesale prices but face criticism for keeping any portion of them. Some states now require PBMs to pass along all discounts.

Patients are watching the debate

It all worries consumers, particularly in small towns, who fear it could become harder to get their medications if PBMs squeeze independent pharmacies on reimbursements to the point of endangering their businesses.

In southeastern Kansas, Faith Sanders, a 79-year-old retired nursing home administrator, said the pharmacy in her hometown of Cedar Vale is important because without it people would have to drive 35 miles (56 kilometers) “to go out of town to get anything.”

For her many elderly neighbors, she said, “We get to the point where it’s hard for us to get out of town.”

Meanwhile, even some PBM critics question whether states can effectively regulate them. In Tennessee, state Rep. Robert Stevens, a Nashville-area Republican, told colleagues during a debate that cracking down on PBMs “needs to be done by Congress and not by us.”

Congress did pass new PBM regulations in February. One law will prevent PBMs from keeping any rebates they’ve negotiated on drug prices for health plans that supplement federal Medicare coverage for Americans over 64.

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This story has been updated to correct the name of CVS executive Prem Shah, not Prem Shaw.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Louisiana Republicans will nominate a candidate for U.S. Senate in a primary runoff Saturday, six weeks after denying Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy a shot at a third term.

Although President Donald Trump already achieved one of his top political goals with Cassidy’s defeat, Saturday’s runoff could further demonstrate his ongoing influence in Republican primaries as he tries to populate the halls of Congress with loyalists for his final two years in office. The seat is not a top target among Democrats looking to win back control of the chamber in November.

Republican U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming are the finalists for Cassidy’s now-open U.S. Senate seat. Trump encouraged Letlow to challenge Cassidy in the primary and endorsed her before she entered the race in January. Letlow took office in 2021 in a special election to replace her husband, Luke Letlow, who died from COVID-19 in 2020 before taking office. Fleming served in Congress for eight years leading up to Trump’s first term. He ran for U.S. Senate in 2016 but failed to make the runoff. Republican John Kennedy won the seat.

In the May 16 primary, Letlow placed first with about 45% of the vote, short of the majority required to avoid Saturday’s runoff. Fleming placed second with 28% of the vote, just ahead of Cassidy with about 25%.

Letlow led in small, mostly rural parishes across the state, with outright majorities in parishes in northeastern Louisiana and along the Mississippi border. Fleming mostly placed a distant second across the state. He performed best in northwestern Louisiana, with leads in nine rural parishes, but not in Caddo, home to Shreveport, where he finished a close second behind Letlow.

Cassidy was the top vote-getter in the state’s three most populous parishes, including Orleans Parish where he led Letlow by almost a three-to-one margin. But he barely outperformed Letlow in East Baton Rouge and Jefferson parishes.

The president’s endorsees have generally had a strong winning record at the ballot box, but his recent picks for governor of Iowa and Georgia lost their primaries. Trump endorsed South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette for governor ahead of the primary, but after she was forced to a runoff in a close vote, he announced he was backing both her and her opponent, state Attorney General Alan Wilson, who won the nomination on Tuesday.

Trump has reissued his endorsement of Letlow several times since January, including most recently in mid-June. He has not also endorsed Fleming.

Louisiana Democrats will also finalize their U.S. Senate nominee, with farmer Jamie Davis and Navy veteran Gary Crockett competing in the runoff.

Other primary runoffs on the ballot include Republican contests for Public Service Commission and state board of education, where incumbent board member and former Republican U.S. Rep. Joseph Cao faces a challenge from educator and business owner Ellie Schroder.

Primaries for U.S. House were were postponed to November after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s current congressional map, which includes a majority Black district that favors Democrats. Although the state had previously adopted a new primary system for congressional races, the postponed U.S. House races will revert to using an “open” or “ jungle ” primary system where candidates run on the same ballot regardless of party.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

When do polls close?

Polls close at 8 p.m. CT, which is 9 p.m. ET.

What’s on the ballot?

The Associated Press will provide vote results and declare winners in primary runoffs for U.S. Senate, state Public Service Commission and state school board.

Who gets to vote?

Registered party members may vote only in their own party’s primary runoffs. In other words, Democrats can’t vote in a Republican runoff or vice versa. Independent or unaffiliated voters who voted in a party’s primary on May 16 may only vote in that same party’s runoff. Independent or unaffiliated voters who did not vote in a partisan primary on May 16 may vote in either party’s runoff.

How many voters are there?

As of June 1, there were about 3 million registered voters in Louisiana. Registered Democrats and Republicans numbered about 1.1 million each, with registered Democrats at a slight advantage. About 819,000 voters were not registered with any party. The remainder were registered with other parties.

How many people actually vote?

About 832,000 Louisianans participated in the May 16 primary, or about 28% of registered voters. This includes about 347,000 registered Democrats and about 336,000 registered Republicans.

In 2022 when the state still used “open” or “jungle” primary rules for certain contests, turnout fell from 1.4 million in the November primary to about 439,000 in the December runoff, or about 47% of registered voters to about 14%.

How much of the vote is cast early or by absentee ballot?

About 33% of Democratic primary votes and about 31% of Republican primary votes in the May 16 primaries were cast early in-person or by mail.

As of Thursday, about 82,000 ballots from Republicans and about 61,000 ballots from Democrats had already been cast in Saturday’s runoffs.

When are early and absentee votes released?

Results from early and absentee voting are usually released by each parish in the first vote update.

How long does vote-counting usually take?

In the May 16 primary, the AP first reported results at 9:02 p.m. ET, or two minutes after polls closed. By 10:46 p.m. ET, more than 90% of the total vote had been counted. The last vote update of the night was at 1:30 a.m. ET with about 99.9% of total votes counted.

When will the AP declare a winner?

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

How do recounts work?

There are no automatic recounts in Louisiana, but a candidate may request and pay for a recount of absentee and early votes. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Are we there yet?

As of Saturday, there will be 129 days until the Nov. 3 general election and the Louisiana congressional primaries, and 168 days until the Louisiana congressional general election on Dec. 12.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2026 election at https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/.