It’s the first of June, which also means it is the first day of hurricane season. Kace Kieschnick reports.
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Today is the last day of the 2026 legislative session. Andrew Greenstein reports.
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Registration for a new round of fortified roof grants opens today. Joe Gallinaro reports.
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The start of June in Louisiana doesn’t just mean the beginning of summer; it’s also the start of hurricane season. LSU Health Climatologist Barry Keim says this year’s season has been forecasted to be below average, with a predicted total of eight to 14 named storms, thanks to El Niño conditions.
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While there may be fewer named storms forecasted overall, models still predict the formation of one to three major hurricanes. Keim says to stay alert, because all it takes is one storm to ruin your year.
Cut 5 (09) “…relatively quiet season.”
Keim says the start of the season is a great time to make preparations in case of a storm. Test flashlights, batteries and generators, and make sure your family is on the same page in case of evacuation.
Cut 6 (07) “…just be prepared.”
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The 2026 legislative session comes to an end at six this evening, and lawmakers will be in an all-out game of Beat The Clock to get those last-minute bills onto Governor Landry’s desk. While this year’s session will forever be remembered for the congressional map redistricting that lawmakers suddenly became tasked with in the latter part of the session, Barry Erwin, the chief policy officer of Leaders for a Better Louisiana, says it was actually quite productive. He says lawmakers passed several bills aimed at strengthening Louisiana’s workforce.
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Erwin says most bills seeking to make changes to the TOPS program went nowhere this year, but he says this is likely not the last of the discussion.
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Erwin says one surprising bill that ultimately became law is one that gives colleges and universities a great deal of flexibility to raise tuition.
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Registration for a new round of fortified roof grants opens today. Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple says it opens at eight this morning.
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This round of funding will be for three-thousand roofs, and Temple says history has shown that the number of people registering for the lottery will exceed that number several times over.
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Temple says this year, they’re focusing on areas within a 130-mile-an-hour wind zone. Therefore, the eligible area is expanded to include Acadia, Jefferson Davis and Lafayette parishes, as well as portions of eight other parishes previously excluded from the program.
Cut 12 (08) “…hurricane-force winds.”
The grants will be for ten-thousand dollars each, and the three-thousand people who receive those grants will be selected at random on June 22nd.
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After the Senate gave its final legislative passage of the new congressional map, the Public Affairs Research Council issued new commentary on the map that Governor Landry quickly signed into law. Research Director Melinda Deslatte says the new map essentially undoes the work of the legislature in 2024, when Landry called them into a special session just after taking office to redraw the map to comply with a judge’s order to create a second majority-Black district.
Deslatte says now that the map has been signed into law, the next stop will very likely once again be the courts.
Cut 14 (08) “…this map stands.”
Deslatte says a fair congressional map is something that precisely no one at the Capitol can agree on, and the battle has actually been going on for many years, even before the 2022 drawing of the map that started the chain of events that has led us to this point.
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Cut 17 (24) “…build it together.”
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