WRKF News

The Louisiana House of Representatives voted Thursday to approve a congressional map backed by Republican legislative leaders that includes only one majority-Black congressional district, two days after the Louisiana Senate approved a similar measure.

Senate approves congressional map despite Democrats’ and civil rights groups’ opposition and a last-minute revelation that a firm hired by GOP legislative leaders offered input behind closed doors.

Punching two more channels upriver from the Bonnet Carré Spillway could bolster habitat nearby while lessening the environmental harm caused farther south, according to a recent Tulane University study.

The leading proposal from GOP leadership would maintain the current racial makeup of House districts.

A Republican-controlled Senate committee voted down five proposed maps that would’ve created a second majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana, earning sharp criticism from civil rights groups that have been closely watching the process.

In the first vote of the state’s once-in-a-decade redistricting session, a Republican-controlled Senate committee voted down five proposals that would have given Louisiana a second majority-Black congressional district and advanced instead a GOP-backed plan that civil rights groups claim violates federal law.

After three days of silence, Gov. John Bel Edwards has called a Tuesday afternoon press conference to address growing concerns about his handling of the death of Ronald Greene after an Associated Press report revealed that Edwards received a text message about the violent circumstances of the incident just hours after it occurred in 2019.

In Louisiana, a state where roughly one-out-of-three residents are Black, only one of the state’s six congressional districts has a majority Black population where voters of color stand a chance of choosing who will represent them.

After driving record-high COVID-19 infections in Louisiana and across the country, state health officials said Thursday that the omicron surge has peaked in Louisiana as a whole, but warned that cases are still rising in some regions of the state.

COVID-19 hospitalizations are now twice as high in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama as they were two weeks ago, contributing to now record hospitalization numbers nationwide.