LUY-Development

Category: Louisiana News Feed

  • Trump’s showdown with Republican Sen. Cassidy: Inside the blow-up on Capitol Hill


    WASHINGTON (AP) — “Would you really like to know?” Sen. Bill Cassidy asked President Donald Trump.

    Just hours after refusing to sign a bipartisan housing bill that Republicans hoped would boost their election-year prospects, the president was attending a private lunch Wednesday with the Senate GOP. Trump wondered aloud how anyone could have voted for a war powers resolution a day earlier that seeks to block further U.S. military action against Iran.

    Cassidy, one of the four Republicans who backed the measure, was ready with an answer.

    “I stood and said, ‘You have not told the American people what’s going on,’” Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, recounted to reporters afterward. “This is supposed to last four weeks. It’s lasted four months. Our original objectives have not been achieved.”

    Things deteriorated from there.

    When Cassidy told Trump he would continue voting for war powers resolutions until there’s a congressional briefing on developments in Iran, the senator recalled that Trump “did not particularly care for my comments” and “raised his voice.”

    Trump repeatedly told Cassidy to sit down, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private meeting. At one point, the president called the senator a “lunatic,” the person said.

    Cassidy acknowledged losing his temper, which he said was “not appropriate.”

    “But I again matched his tone and volume,” Cassidy said, before recalling that he eventually sat down. “And so I sat down and tried to de-escalate. I guess my point is, though, that the American people need to know more than we’re being told.”

    Within hours, Cassidy was invited to the White House to receive the briefing he had requested with Vice President JD Vance and Trump envoy Steve Witkoff. Cassidy then stood down, returning to the Capitol and casting a late-night vote against a similar war powers resolution. This time, Republicans blocked the measure.

    “I want to thank Vice President Vance and Special Envoy Witkoff for the thorough briefing this afternoon on Iran,” Cassidy posted on X. “I appreciate the quick invitation to the White House to address many of my concerns.”

    A remarkable exchange between a GOP senator and Trump

    Still, the back-and-forth was a remarkable exchange between a two-term Republican senator and a president from his own party. It’s a departure from the posture many congressional Republicans have adopted during Trump’s second term as they mostly avoid criticizing him in public while expressing frustration in private.

    And the comments reflected the growing unease among congressional Republicans about the durability of their thin majorities on Capitol Hill in this year’s elections, particularly in the turmoil of the Iran war. And it reflected the long-festering enmity between Trump and Cassidy that came to a head this year.

    Trump effectively ended Cassidy’s political career by backing a Republican rival in Louisiana’s Republican primary. Cassidy last month became the first incumbent senator in 14 years to lose a primary, driven largely by his vote to convict Trump in the impeachment trial for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    Cassidy said Trump brought up his election defeat as they argued. He described the president’s comments as part of “whatever comes to mind as to demean another person.”

    Before his losing the primary, Cassidy spent much of his time trying to make amends, largely supporting the president’s policies and nominees. He has taken a tougher stance since losing his primary, freed from having to face Republican voters who remain loyal to Trump.

    “It does not appear, although I don’t know for sure, that the course of (the Iran war) is going the way that we were told,” Cassidy said. “And so I make no apologies for standing up to the president, if you will, trying to demand that more information be shared with the Senate, and more information be shared with the American people.”

    Republicans try to play down the episode

    Cassidy’s colleagues didn’t offer robust support, with Trump in the room, though Cassidy said they didn’t have much of a chance.

    “The president just kind of talked and talked and talked and talked and talked,” Cassidy said.

    The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on Cassidy’s characterization of the meeting and some Republicans tried to play down the clash.

    “Y’all act like no one ever yelled at each other,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, told reporters.

    Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican and former college football coach, described the encounter as “halftime talk” in the aftermath of the senator’s defeat.

    “Probably needed to be said, end of the day,” he said. “I think they got a lot of — both of them — got a lot off their chests.”

    Others noted dryly that the meeting had been advertised as a chance for Trump and the Republicans to get on the same page.

    “That was quite a unity message,” said Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger just weeks after Cassidy.

    Asked if he was being sarcastic, Cornyn stepped into an elevator and let the doors close.

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    Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.


  • Supreme Court rules Rastafari man can’t sue Louisiana prison officials who cut his dreadlocks


    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday barred a former Louisiana inmate from suing prison officials who cut off his dreadlocks in violation of his Rastafari religious beliefs.

    The justices condemned what happened to the former inmate, Damon Landor. But they ruled that a federal law designed to protect the religious rights of inmates does not permit lawsuits for money damages against individuals even when rights are violated.

    The high court, in a 6-3 decision, agreed with lower courts that without exception had ruled that the law, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, can’t be used to hold those who violate inmates’ rights financially responsible.

    The justices refused to apply the rationale from their decision in 2020 that allowed Muslim men to sue over their inclusion on the FBI’s no-fly list under a sister statute, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

    The Justice Department, which argued against the plaintiffs in the no-fly list case in President Donald Trump’s first Republican administration, had sided with Landor.

    Nothing in the law dealing with prisoners’ religious rights authorizes lawsuits against individual officers, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.

    In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that state prison officials will have little incentive to abide by federal law. “It is not often that a real-life incident so clearly illustrates Congress’s reasons for adopting legislation, or the Constitution’s wisdom in enabling it,” Jackson wrote in an opinion that was joined by her two liberal colleagues.

    No one defended what happened to Landor during his five-month prison term in 2020. When he entered the prison system, he carried a copy of an appeals court ruling in another inmate’s case holding that cutting religious prisoners’ dreadlocks violated the federal law.

    At his first two stops, officials respected his beliefs. But things changed when he got to the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Cottonport, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest of Baton Rouge, for the final three weeks of his term.

    A prison guard took the copy of the ruling Landor carried and tossed it in the trash, according to court records. Then the warden ordered guards to cut his dreadlocks. While two guards restrained him, a third shaved his head to the scalp, the records show.

    Landor sued after his release, but lower courts dismissed the case. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lamented Landor’s treatment but said the law doesn’t allow him to hold prison officials liable for damages.

    Louisiana wrote that “the state has amended its prison grooming policy to ensure that nothing like petitioner’s alleged experience can occur.”

    The Rastafari faith is rooted in 1930s Jamaica, growing as a response by Black people to white colonial oppression. Its beliefs are a melding of Old Testament teachings and a desire to return to Africa. Its message was spread across the world in the 1970s by Jamaican music icons Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, two of the faith’s most famous exponents.

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    Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.


  • Tropical storm remnants drench Gulf states after tornadoes hit the Midwest


    NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The remnants of Tropical Storm Arthur battered parts of the southeastern United States with drenching rains and strong wind on Thursday, tearing through buildings, flooding homes and launching water rescues along the Gulf Coast.

    Severe weather also pummeled parts of the Midwest, where a separate line of strong storms knocked down structures and left tens of thousands of residents without power.

    Arthur was the first tropical storm of the season in the Atlantic basin, and although it quickly downgraded within a day of forming, the lingering system created dangerous conditions in Louisiana and Mississippi. In one rural Louisiana parish, more than 2 feet of rain fell in 48 hours and most of that soaking came Thursday, said Donald Jones, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Lake Charles.

    It flooded at least 200 homes in Avoyelles Parish, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) northwest of the state capital, Louisiana state Rep. Daryl Deshotel said.

    “Even by this region’s standards, that’s catastrophic rain,” Jones said.

    Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said in a social media post Thursday night that a worker on a county road crew in the southwestern part of the state had been killed while helping with storm cleanup operations. The cause of the death was not disclosed.

    Thirty homes below the Anchor Lake dam in southern Mississippi were being evacuated as a precaution due to concerns that rising waters could overwhelm the spillways and compromise the structure, Reeves said. Residents in the area were being encouraged to seek higher ground.

    Coni Dubois said several inches of water flooded her home overnight in Houma, southwest of New Orleans, but others in the community had worse damage. She’s lived through many hurricanes and other storms, but never witnessed thunder and lightning like this.

    “It was unbelievable, it literally sounded like hell broke open,” Dubois said. “I thought for sure we had a tornado on top of us. The lightning and the thunder was so consistent, the whole house was lit up like daylight for about 20 minutes.”

    The National Guard and state wildlife officials were working with rescue crews, officials said.

    One tornado had been confirmed in Avoyelles Parish in central Louisiana, along with three others near New Orleans, the weather service said.

    Louisana Gov. Jeff Landry declared a state of emergency for some storm-hit areas, and the town of Cottonport in Avoyelles Parish said it was turning off water service overnight “to manage our resources and allow our system to recover.” It urged residents to limit water use and to fill pots and other containers before the water was shut off.

    Amid relentless rainfall in central Louisiana, Cody Coco said he rescued stranded workers — waist deep in water —- at a cypress sawmill operation he runs near his home in Avoyelles Parish. He said the water has continued to rise all throughout the day.

    Coco, 40, said he also used a boat to rescue the four pigs he kept in a pen. Video he shared on his Facebook page shows the hogs swimming out of their enclosure in a torrent of murky water. Coco says they are now safe on higher ground.

    “If I’d left them in the pen, they’d have drowned,” Coco said. “They were happy to see me.”

    New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno posted a video on Facebook describing relatively minor damage and cleanup efforts. Ahead of the storm, police prepared boats and set up barricades in flood-prone areas. They also opened sandbag distribution sites across Louisiana.

    Just across the Mississippi River in Avondale, a tornado wrecked four homes, Jefferson Parish spokeswoman Rachel Strassel said. Two people were hospitalized with minor injuries and later released.

    The Midwest was also dealing with damage after a strong line of storms.

    A tornado was reported Wednesday evening near Effingham, Illinois, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of Springfield. Several people suffered minor injuries, officials said.

    Firefighters responded to damaged homes, collapsed structures, car crashes, downed power lines, gas leaks and blocked roads, Effingham Fire Chief Brant Yochum said.

    The National Weather Service in Lincoln, Illinois, confirmed two tornadoes, including one Wednesday with maximum winds of 116 mph (186.8 kph) in the Charleston area. The EF2 tornado lifted the roof off a home and flipped a semi-truck, injuring one person.

    Marla Washburn and her husband, Todd, hunkered down in their basement as a suspected tornado tore through their neighborhood about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north in Blue Mound. They could hear debris smacking into their house and a school across the street lost its roof, which came crashing onto their home.

    “The whole house shook,” Washburn said in a phone interview, adding that the neighborhood looks like Armageddon.

    “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but we’re OK,” she said. “You look at it and you go, ‘I don’t even know where to start to clean up.’”


  • Families of kids with disabilities warn Education Department changes could break a flawed system


    For months, and sometimes longer, parents of kids with disabilities say they have waited for the Education Department to make progress on their complaints of bullying or other discrimination.

    Now that the department is offloading civil rights enforcement and special education, some parents and advocates warn a process that has largely been stalled since President Donald Trump took office will see only more chaos and roadblocks.

    “It’s to the point I don’t even check in anymore with the attorney,” said Nicole May, an Ohio mother. May filed a complaint in spring 2024 with the department’s Office for Civil Rights, alleging her teenage daughter was bullied over her hearing aids and was getting in trouble in class because she couldn’t hear her teachers. More than two years later, the case lacks a resolution.

    Under the changes announced Tuesday, the Department of Justice will take over civil rights enforcement in schools, and the Department of Health and Human Services will oversee special education. The moves help fulfill Trump’s campaign promise to dismantle the Education Department. Linda McMahon, the education secretary, pitched the changes as a way to get more help to families of kids with disabilities.

    Advocates said special education doesn’t belong in a health department, which usually treats disabilities as conditions to manage, instead of differences in how children learn. The top Republican on the Senate education committee agreed, saying he’d pursue legislation to keep special education out of Health and Human Services.

    Some families already are taking discrimination cases elsewhere

    For many, though, the response to the announcement was a sigh of resignation.

    The Education Department’s civil rights office had long been the last resort for parents who believe their child is facing discrimination at school, with a mandate to review all complaints. Under Trump, the backlog of cases has ballooned, and resolutions have dwindled. Increasingly, attorneys say they are turning elsewhere to try to obtain justice for children.

    The reaction is a marked change from a year ago, when parents and attorneys were in a panic as Education Department staff and attorneys were slashed.

    The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services has shrunk by roughly a third since 2024, and the Office for Civil Rights is roughly 40% smaller. Meanwhile, in the Department of Justice, the Education Opportunities Section has shrunk by half, according to estimates provided by Justice Connection, a network of department alumni.

    “I think a lot of people are mad, but they are like, ‘What are we going to do?’” said Emily Harvey, the co-legal director at Disability Justice, formerly Disability Law Colorado, who has watched her cases languish.

    When Trump took office, she had a federal complaint pending, alleging some Colorado schools were illegally rejecting enrollment from kids outside their neighborhood boundaries because they had disabilities. Harvey also has a case pending at the Department of Justice, alleging a district south of Denver restrained and secluded disabled students hundreds of times, even though the practice is supposed to be reserved for emergencies.

    “I feel like they’re probably collecting dust on a virtual shelf somewhere,” Harvey said.

    In response to the federal backlog, she helped to push for a new state law that expands the types of civil rights cases Colorado education officials can pursue.

    States across the U.S. already investigate various special education complaints, including when parents allege schools aren’t following a child’s individualized education program, or IEP. But the Colorado legislation, signed into law in May, allows the state to pursue the types of cases typically handled at the federal level, such as those involving allegations of discrimination and harassment.

    Harvey said she didn’t think the federal civil rights office was ever perfect. “But I think it’s become even less help for people who are trying to resolve issues,” said Harvey, who worked as an Education Department civil rights attorney in 2020 and 2021.

    Boston-area special education advocate Craig Haller said he’s heard nothing on a complaint he filed early last year with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Ever since the Trump administration started dismantling the department, he has leaned more on Massachusetts’s state system for resolving special education matters.

    He recently used that system to help a student whose high school didn’t take into account his special education plan when it suspended him.

    “I got it fixed for my client,” Haller said. But without the federal Office for Civil Rights, “I can’t get it fixed systematically.”

    Department workers say the dismantling has made their jobs harder

    While only Congress can close the Education Department, McMahon, a billionaire and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, has signed 10 additional agreements to give department functions to other federal agencies.

    So far, those agreements have not reduced the number of employees working on specific programs. But the union that represents department workers says staff have run into issues with equipment and access at their new postings.

    “It’s hard to describe how inefficient the implementation of the (agreements) has been,” said Rachel Gittleman, the union’s president.

    The Education Department said Wednesday the latest agreements will help the Office for Civil Rights run “more effectively and efficiently.”

    “Compliance and enforcement of federal civil rights laws will remain a priority,” the department said in a written statement.

    Taken together, the fracturing of programs, enforcement and oversight for disabled students across multiple agencies raised questions of what would fall through the cracks, special education advocates said.

    Robyn Linscott, who directs education and family policy at The Arc of the United States, a major disability rights group, recalled attending a three-hour listening session the Education Department hosted in January. Families, educators and advocates described barriers to accessing proper support and services. Although they acknowledged breaks in the system, not a single parent advocated for moving oversight of special education to Health and Human Services.

    Still, she isn’t surprised the Trump administration moved the program anyway.

    “It has only been 24 hours, but I think we anticipated this move for over a year,” she said on Wednesday.

    In Congress, senators from both sides of the aisle said they would try to stop the move to put special education in Health and Human Services.

    Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said he would “publicly commit” to working with his Democratic colleague, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, on legislative action that would push the administration to change course. Cassidy, who lost a primary election this spring and has less than six months left in his Senate term, has personal knowledge of the education challenges faced by kids with disabilities: His wife co-founded a network of charter schools for students with dyslexia.

    If special education is moved, he said Wednesday, it should go to the Labor Department. That agency, he said, is better positioned to support people with disabilities as they learn and work.

    Ultimately, what matters to parents is whether they can get the services their children need, said Rob Harris, an IEP advocate in Colorado. Families spend an inordinate amount of time navigating systems that should be working together to serve children, but often aren’t. Harris has navigated those systems himself: His 19-year-old daughter is blind.

    “Families don’t experience the government through organizational charts,” Harris said. “We experience it through the services our children receive.”

    ___

    Associated Press writers Bianca Vázquez Toness and Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

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    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.


  • A city’s push for facial recognition on public buses ignites debate over security and privacy


    Officials in Kansas City, Missouri, are preparing to equip cameras on some public buses with facial recognition software capable of identifying passengers who appear on a list of banned riders or missing persons.

    Supporters and opponents alike view the effort as a major litmus test for tapping the AI-powered software on a U.S. public transportation system, positioning Kansas City as the latest epicenter of a fierce debate over whether the safety benefits of artificial intelligence are worth the privacy costs.

    “The idea of running face recognition on a camera that is pointed on live spaces in public is a line that until recently has never really been crossed in the last 25 years,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the Project on Speech, Privacy and Technology at the American Civil Liberties Union.

    The state of Missouri declined to help fund the project as expected due to concerns with the facial recognition component. Still, the city is pushing ahead with local and federal money, said Tyler Means, chief mobility and strategy officer at the Kansas City Transportation Authority.

    “Privacy is always a tricky thing,” Means said. “We’ve always had cameras on our buses. It’s just new technology. I think in time it’ll smooth over and people will realize, ‘Well, it didn’t really feel any different.’”

    Cameras that recognize a face

    SafeSpace Global, the Knoxville, Tennessee-based company partnering with Kansas City to run the cameras, started using live facial recognition years ago to alert nursing homes when residents left the building, then brought the technology to correctional institutions and schools. Kansas City’s buses represent the company’s inaugural venture in transportation.

    Images captured by cameras aboard the buses would immediately be checked against any active alerts, generated when a missing person, banned rider or someone on a law enforcement watch list designated by the transportation authority is identified.

    If no match or safety issue is detected, the facial data won’t be retained. After the buses return to the depot, the transportation authority would archive the regular video footage on a local server for up to five years.

    “It’s not sitting there filming all the time,” SafeSpace Global CEO Scott Boruff said. “It just captures the face and goes away.”

    But Stanley with the ACLU warned that it’s nearly impossible to limit the scope of a surveillance project when artificial intelligence is involved.

    “It may be used for a very narrow watch list today, but there are very good reasons to think it’ll expand over time,” he said.

    Backers of the effort point out that security cameras are already found nearly everywhere — even on Kansas City’s buses — and some law enforcement agencies have used facial recognition software to identify suspects spotted on video.

    Cameras with other types of AI-powered software have been installed on public buses and school buses in other cities to read the license plates of nearby vehicles and ticket the ones spotted committing infractions such as illegally parking in a bus lane. Privacy advocates are concerned about those devices as well, but they’re particularly alarmed by cameras that could actively record faces even when no crime is committed.

    “City residents should not be guinea pigs for transit systems to test Silicon Valley’s latest unproven, biased surveillance tech,” said Will Owen, communications director for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

    Lessons from elsewhere

    Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, police in Tampa, Florida, used facial recognition cameras in the Ybor City neighborhood to search for crime suspects, but there was immediate opposition and the program was soon abandoned, Stanley said.

    More recently, New Orleans police secretly relied on facial recognition surveillance cameras run by a private company despite a city ordinance prohibiting the technology, The Washington Post reported last year. Although the program was believed to have been paused, Stanley wrote a report for the ACLU last month that found it was still operating in some capacity, citing emails an activist obtained through an open records request.

    Detroit partnered with some gas stations and liquor stores in 2016 to install high-definition cameras that relayed live feeds of violent crimes directly to the police department. But after a New York Times investigation found footage was paired with facial recognition software to make arrests, some of the accused filed successful lawsuits claiming they were wrongly targeted due to faulty technology that misidentified Black suspects.

    James Craig, the police chief at the time, said officials felt the backlash and changed the rules over how facial recognition could be used without scrapping the program entirely. But he still advocates for the technology, provided it’s used correctly, and says it would be a shame for cities to abandon one of their best tools for securing the streets.

    “If the police department or the city doesn’t have the insights to build in strong policies, transparent policies and accountability, the knee jerk reaction is, ‘Well, let’s just ban it,’” Craig said.

    KC delays rollout, eyes ‘bigger’ plan

    The cameras were expected to be installed on Kansas City’s buses this spring, but organizers halted the effort just before launch, derailing hopes that they would be up and running in time for the World Cup matches the city began hosting this week.

    The delay was partly technical — a need to upgrade Wi-Fi routers to support both the cameras and a new fare collection system on the buses — and partly financial due to state government funding falling through, illustrating the headwinds U.S. cities often encounter when seeking to deploy facial recognition.

    Despite the delays, Means said he’s confident the program will launch this year and “a little bit bigger” than initially planned, with potentially as many as 30 buses instead of the nine that had been planned under the pilot.

    Boruff, the SafeSpace Global CEO, said the company is ready to start installing the Kansas City cameras as soon as the money comes through, although it’ll likely take three to four months to configure the software for the city’s specific needs.

    Ryana Parks-Shaw, a City Council member serving as mayor pro tem, said she’s not disappointed that the rollout has been delayed.

    “I think they need to take their time and do it right,” Parks-Shaw said. “I believe that any use of this kind of technology must be approached carefully, transparently and with clear guardrails.”

    As for securing buses during the World Cup without the facial recognition cameras, Means said the reconfigured plan includes up to 40 more officers patrolling stops and transit centers.

    “We’re kind of going old school to address what we hoped the technology would do,” he said.


  • Tropical Cyclone Arthur weakens to a low pressure area along the upper Texas coast


    COVINGTON, La. (AP) — Tropical Storm Arthur was downgraded to a low pressure area along the upper Texas coast Wednesday night but forecasters expected its remnants to bring life-threatening flooding and days of heavy rains to parts of the southeastern United States, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

    Arthur was the first tropical storm of the season in the Atlantic basin and it’s expected to keep weakening as it moves inland over southeastern Texas and western Louisiana, then cross the southeast Thursday through Friday. Maximum sustained winds were around 35 mph (55 kph).

    All coastal watches and warnings were discontinued Wednesday night, but flooding was likely through Friday over parts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and the Florida Panhandle, the hurricane center said.

    In Louisiana and Mississippi, some communities had set up locations for residents to collect sandbags and cleared debris from drainage systems.

    “The main threat from Arthur is going to be a prolonged, multiday, heavy rainfall event that could produce dangerous to life-threatening flash flooding,” National Hurricane Center director Michael Brennan said.

    The storm spun off the Texas coast on the same day a World Cup match took place in Houston but did not disrupt the contest, which was played indoors. Heavy storms in the Houston area earlier in the week had canceled outdoor watch parties and fan events.

    New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno said police were preparing boats and setting up barricades in known flood areas. Collection points for residents to fill sandbags also sprung up around the state.

    “We both decided we got so much rain yesterday at our house that it was probably a good idea just to pick up a few bags,” said Luke Barwick, who filled sandbags at a collection center in Covington, Louisiana.

    After being inundated with heavy rain earlier this week, parts of central and south Mississippi braced for a second wave of potential flooding.

    Officials in Picayune, Mississippi, located about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of New Orleans, declared a state of emergency Tuesday after downpours brought nearly 7 inches of rain in six hours. On Wednesday, city officials gave out thousands of sandbags and put emergency responders on standby.

    Arthur is expected to produce rainfall totals of 5 to 10 inches (13 to 25 centimeters), with isolated higher totals near 20 inches (50 centimeters).

    Swells generated by Arthur are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip-current conditions along the northwestern Gulf Coast for the next couple of days, forecasters said. Tornadoes were possible through Thursday.

    Arthur formed as some areas along the Texas coast had already been drenched by bands of heavy storms that caused flooding and high waters. Near Houston, a 15-year-old drowned Tuesday after entering the water of a retention pond while playing near a construction zone, according to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office. ___ Fischer reported from Miami. Associated Press writer Sophia Bates in Jackson, Mississippi, contributed to this report.


  • Rapper Mystikal sentenced to 20 years in Louisiana rape case


    NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The rapper Mystikal, who received multiple Grammy nominations in the early 2000s, will serve 20 years in prison for raping a woman at his Louisiana home in 2022.

    Mystikal, whose given name is Michael Lawrence Tyler, pleaded guilty to third-degree rape in March with a sentencing cap of 20 years, five years less than the maximum punishment for the crime. His plea deal reduced the charge from first-degree rape, which carries an automatic life sentence.

    Days before his Tuesday sentencing hearing, he asked a judge to withdraw his guilty plea, saying he “did not have sufficient opportunity to fully consider the consequences,” according to ABC affiliate WBRZ.

    The victim spoke in court before sentencing and asked the judge to give Mystikal the maximum sentence, WBRZ reported. She reportedly said the rapper had punched her, choked her, pulled out her braids and forcibly raped her at his home in Prairieville, about 18 miles (29 kilometers) from Baton Rouge.

    “If I did that to you, I deserve the max sentence,” he said in response, according to the local TV station.

    A lawyer for the rapper did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Mystikal has been held without bond at the Ascension Parish Jail since his arrest in 2022.

    The Louisiana rapper rose to national recognition in the 1990s and is known for his 2000 hit “Shake Ya A(asterisk)(asterisk),” which was nominated for a Grammy in the best rap solo performance category.

    In 2003, he pleaded guilty to sexual battery and was sentenced to six years in prison. That same year he was a Grammy nominee in two categories: best rap album for “Tarantula” and best male rap solo performance for his single “Bouncin’ Back (Bumpin’ Me Against The Wall).”


  • Rain along the Gulf Coast could become the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season


    MIAMI (AP) — A cluster of storms along the Gulf Coast could become the first named tropical storm of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, the National Hurricane Center said.

    The storms threatened to bring heavy downpours that could lead to dangerous floods across southern states including Texas and Louisiana. The system was centered Tuesday afternoon about 55 miles (85 kilometers) south-southwest of Corpus Christi, Texas, according to a hurricane center advisory.

    National Hurricane Center director Michael Brennan said meteorologists are expecting the system to strengthen, possibly into a tropical storm by early Wednesday. But coastal areas could experience tropical storm conditions this week, even if the system doesn’t officially get a name, Brennan said.

    “The main hazard with these types of systems is largely the flooding from the heavy rainfall,” Brennan said. “And we could see potentially life-threatening flash and urban flooding across the Texas coast eastward into central Mississippi through Thursday. Prolonged rainfall may extend the flood threat into the weekend.”

    Tornadoes were possible from the upper Texas coast across southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, forecasters said.

    The storm’s maximum sustained winds were around 30 mph (45 kph) Tuesday, just shy of the 39 mph (63 kph) needed to be named a tropical storm. The system had a 70% chance of forming into a tropical cyclone over the next two days, the hurricane center said.

    Houston, where a World Cup match between Portugal and the Democratic Republic of the Congo is scheduled for Wednesday, has been under a flood warning since Monday. The stadium is covered, and no plans have been announced to move or reschedule the match.

    By Thursday, the storms could drop 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) of rain, with isolated totals of a foot (30 centimeters) in coastal areas.

    A tropical storm watch was already in effect from Sargent, Texas, to Morgan City, Louisiana. Rough surf could cause rip currents along the Gulf for the next couple of days.


  • Indiana becomes the latest state to receive flexibility from Trump on federal education spending


    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is giving Indiana more flexibility over how it decides to spend its federal grant money, the third state to receive such exemptions from the Education Department as it seeks to “return education to the states.”

    Indiana’s plan will consolidate $50 million in federal money from five funding streams into one with fewer spending restrictions, similar to exemptions over federal spending granted to Iowa and Louisiana earlier this year. State officials said the waiver would reduce the costs associated with compliance and documentation by about $20 million.

    Education Secretary Linda McMahon approved the state’s plan at an event Tuesday in Indiana, appearing with state Secretary of Education Katie Jenner and Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican.

    Jenner said the state welcomes the expanded control over federal money.

    “As states, we have significant control over education in that we set the standards, we can choose our curriculum, we can design our assessments,” Jenner said. “But when it comes to federal funding, our hands have always been tied. Until now.”

    The Education Department sends billions of dollars each year to American schools, based on funding levels set by Congress. The money makes up a small but critical part of most school district budgets, arriving in dozens of separate grants and funding streams set aside for specific purposes.

    Waivers from the federal government have been offered for years, and were widely used during the pandemic. Under the Trump administration, which has vowed to dismantle the federal Education Department, they have gained traction as a new way to reduce the federal footprint in state and local education decisions.

    Indiana’s waiver is also the first granted by the Trump administration that allows a change in accountability systems, allowing Indiana to reduce how heavily academic indicators are weighted in school performance scores.

    Still, the department can grant only so much flexibility. Indiana’s request sought to create a school choice program by giving money set aside to improve low-performing districts to higher-performing ones that enroll students from other schools, but that was denied.

    An Education Department official said that proposal was not approved because it would have changed how funds are allocated to recipients, an explicit restriction on the secretary’s waiver authority.

    Iowa’s plan faced similar hurdles. The state originally sought flexibility for major grants like Title I, which sends more than $100 million to Iowa schools with high percentages of low-income students, and to consolidate 10 funding streams into a single grant. The department approved a much smaller waiver — collapsing four funding streams totaling $9.8 million for programs that fund teacher training, English learners, after-school programs and academic enrichment.

    More waivers are likely to come, as a handful of conservative-led states have either expressed interest or submitted their own proposals for expanded flexibility.

    President Donald Trump’s administration has described the waivers as an effort to empower state leaders and minimize administrative burden.

    At the same time, Trump has lent support to a growing school choice movement. States are using taxpayer money to finance kids’ private school or homeschooling expenses, encouraging them to leave public school. The federal government is set to launch its own school choice program next year.

    Programs supported by federal money often support disadvantaged students, such as additional funding for rural schools, low-income schools and English-language learners.

    Without these explicit designations, critics say, money for vulnerable populations may be rolled into more general spending initiatives that do not specifically address the challenges those students face. The three waivers approved so far roll funding set aside for English-language learners into a broader spending pool.

    The Education Department also approved Indiana’s request for a unified school accountability system that relies on benchmarks developed by the state. The new system places a greater focus on college and career readiness.

    Denise Forte, CEO of EdTrust, a group that advocates for educational equity, criticized the waiver and the new accountability system for limiting transparency and accountability and for de-emphasizing reading and math scores.

    “The Department of Education will allow Indiana to rewrite its accountability system in a way that will mask student performance and move millions of dollars in dedicated funding away from students who need it most,” Forte said in a statement.

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    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.


  • Climate change makes once-rare coastal floods more likely, study says


    Extreme floods that once swamped coastal communities only rarely are becoming far more common as climate change caused by humans pushes sea levels higher, according to new research published Wednesday. Experts say the findings are crucial for making plans about floods and coastal infrastructure as the planet warms.

    These big coastal floods happen when high tides and storm surges — the amount above normal tide level — combine with seas that are already rising. Those pile on top of natural climate patterns and other human influence.

    Climate change has strengthened storms like Hurricane Ian, which caused significant flooding in 2022, scientists say. Flooding threatens hundreds of millions of people each year in low-lying coastal areas across the globe. It also causes billions of dollars in damage and can be deadly.

    Floods that historically had a 1% chance of striking a coastline in a year are now about 12 times more likely, on average, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Wednesday. Those events have become about four times more likely due to human-driven climate change, the research shows.

    Researchers looked at how often extreme sea level events — which cause coastal flooding — happen by considering long-term records from tide gauges at more than 100 sites, as well as using climate modeling. The study looked at the increase from 1900 to 2005. It was limited through 2005 because after that, there weren’t enough models that could point to instances of human-driven climate change. The researchers said their findings likely understate today’s risk, because human contributions to changes in coastal extremes have only increased since then.

    Researchers looked at which changes were caused by human activity, natural forces or shifts in the landscape. Although sea level changes earlier in the 20th century could mostly be chalked up to natural forces, the scientists found that since the 1960s, human-caused warming was the main reason sea levels are going up.

    A separate study published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday also supports the idea that extreme ocean heights come from climate change, specifically around 58% of the days with big floods from 2000 to 2018. Climate change has also, on average, nearly tripled the number of days where the sea tops extreme flood levels since the 1970s, according to that study.

    “Essentially every coastal flood today has human fingerprints on it through climate change,” said Ben Strauss, chief scientist at Climate Central and a co-author of the Science Advances study. “Without the extra bit of sea level rise caused by global heating, most of these events would not have reached the status of flood.”

    The research in Nature Climate Change didn’t fully examine individual human factors, said Sönke Dangendorf, the lead author, but he noted greenhouse gases — the result of burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal — are the most significant.

    “Since the 1970s, it’s by far the dominating factor, and this is of course not good news,” said Dangendorf, also an associate professor at Tulane University. He said the threat is growing, and communities need to do more to prepare.

    Jeff Williams, a retired United States Geological Survey oceanographer who wasn’t part of either study, said the research shows that planners need to take the growing threats into account. They should also think about how much money they’ll need to increase coastal protection, he said, and figure out who pays for it.

    The current protections for New Orleans, for instance, “will likely not be adequate beyond the next couple decades,” Williams said.

    Nations across the globe are increasingly using renewable energies like solar and wind. Last year, clean power generation exceeded overall global electricity demand growth, and the share of renewables hit more than one-third of the world’s electricity mix for the first time.

    Even in the United States, where the Trump administration has boosted fossil fuels, solar is growing as coal power declines. As such, scientists have recently said the world is no longer on track for the worst case scenario for warming — but it’s also not on track to the best case, either.

    “The impacts, even of a relatively little sea level rise, can be pretty impactful on our coasts,” Dangendorf, the Tulane author, said.

    “There is a silver lining because we have control about how much we emit, right?” he said. “So we can stop that development, at least to some degree.”

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    Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

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    Read more of AP’s climate coverage.

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    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.