Support for Louisiana.

The state we're in is provided by every day.

I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together, together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred B and Ruth B Zeigler Foundation and the Zigler Art Museum, located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.

Generally considering how much money they had, they spent it on some really smart things.

A quick wrap up of this year's session.

And other sessions on the books.

And what it means for the state.

Men are a little higher risk for health issues than women are.

Men are less likely to seek medical help.

My mom likes it, and I like it because it's about science and math and me and my mom both like science and math.

And it's finally summer for kids in Louisiana.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Kara St.Cyr And I'm Andre Moreau.

Mass shootings are dominating the news cycle these days.

So far this year, as of June 5th, 246 such shootings in America.

That number from the Gun Violence Archive.

It's a database that records gun violence in the US.

You can find them on Twitter at gun deaths.

On Capitol Hill, some congressional members have scramble to enact tougher gun laws, but they've been met with opposition.

The House passed a gun control bill that would raise the age of gun ownership to 21, ban the sale of semi-automatics and make tighter restrictions on gun storage regulations.

The bill is expected to fall apart in the evenly divided Senate, where some lawmakers are negotiating lighter, more lenient amendments.

The deal is still on the table.

The massacre in Uvalde, Texas, has put actor Matthew McConaughey front and center.

Uvalde, population 15,000.

It's his hometown.

He took the podium at the White House news conference this week urging for gun reform.

He spoke on behalf of parents and children and rob elementary school where 19 children and two teachers died.

A Miami day wanted to be a marine biologist.

She was already in contact with Corpus Christi University of A&M for future college enrollment.

Nine years old, May Day cared for the environment so strongly that when the city asked her mother if they could release some balloons into the sky in her memory, her mom said, oh, no, maybe they would want to litter my they wore green, high top converse with a heart.

She had hand drawn on the right toe because they represented her love of nature.

Camilla's got these shoes.

Can you show these shoes, please?

Wear these everyday green converse with a heart on the right toe.

These are the same green converse on her feet that turned out to be the only clear evidence that could identify her after the shooting.

Have had that.

A very powerful plea coming from McConaughey.

But in Louisiana, the regular session of the state legislature has ended but the governor has called for a special session to begin next Wednesday, June 15th.

Still unsettled Louisiana's congressional map.

A federal judge rejected the redistricting map that lawmakers adopted earlier this year.

U.S. District Judge Shelley Dick ruled the map was a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

She also ruled that it must be fixed by June 20th.

Now, June 20th is the final day of this brief special session.

Secretary of State Kyle O'Dwyer says that deadline doesn't allow enough time to rework the map.

Judge Dicks says it's more than enough time and the delay would only harm voters who sued the state.

So what I can tell you is that in the next day or so, I will be issuing a call for a special session to do exactly what the middle district of Louisiana has told us to do.

What is required by Section two of the Voting Rights Act, but is required by basic fairness and basic math And that is to come in and redraw the district.

And so I'll be doing that in the next day or two, because we don't have longer than that.

And now let's look at some of the other news making headlines across the state.

Starbucks employees in Louisiana are beginning to unionize.

In New Orleans, one of the chain's coffee shops got enough votes to join Workers United, making them the first chain in Louisiana to do so.

This comes on the heels of a series of wins for Starbucks employees around the country.

Just last week, an Alabama store voted 27 to one to join.

The push to organize has been sparked by years of employee complaints about being overworked and understaffed.

Starbucks says the company works better when corporate workers directly deal with employees.

A hazing investigation is underway in Lafayette.

The Pi Kappa Alpha chapter at Yale was suspended after a hazing incident involving sleep deprivation and strength training exercises.

In March.

Eight men involved were issued misdemeanor summonses by the campus police.

Seven of them were current students and 2022.

One was no longer attending the university.

To expand a pair, sheriff's are facing charges for reportedly committing fraud.

Both deputies, Michael Arthur and Andre Weber were charged with theft.

And malfeasance.

In a statement, the sheriff's office wrote that the two men were getting payments for security work and off duty security work, while one the clerk at the sheriff's office Lawmakers are starting to announce their bids for the state treasurer.

Representative Scott McKnight in East Baton Rouge Parish put in his bid to take over after John Schroeder, who's expected to run for governor in 20, 23 elections, start October 14th next year.

On Saturday, June 4th, New Orleans Habitat for Humanity held its first ever Pride billed LGBTQ plus community members and supporters gathered to help build a home for a New Orleans mother and her twin ten year old sons.

The family will move into the new three bedroom, two bathroom house in a few months.

And another session is in the books.

That's what Governor John Bel Edwards said this Monday.

After the 2022 legislative session at 6 p.m., there were few controversial topics put a spotlight on Louisiana's lawmakers.

The governor says he is pleased overall with the way the session concluded.

Tonight, a recap of what happened.

An unprecedented number of mass shootings and resurfacing debates about abortion rights colored much of the news cycle.

This session with a microscope on Louisiana's lawmakers, each debating where the state will stand.

Now, the session is on the books and quite frankly, I'm very happy with the way the session turned out.

But as the.

Clock struck 6 p.m. on Monday at the Capitol, the session wrapped without the usual confusion and last minute votes of previous sessions.

Governor John Bel Edwards says this year was a successful one.

You don't always get everything that you want.

Sometimes you get some things you don't want, but on balance, very pleased with what's happened.

When session first began in March.

Lawmakers were given a $39 billion budget to work with.

They voted on a 1500 dollar annual pay raise for teachers, plus a $750.01 for supporting staff.

Legislators also put some money aside for infrastructural improvements.

300 million was put toward a new Mississippi River Bridge.

Both items were included in the proposal the governor announced at the beginning of the session.

That he was especially pleased with the money put aside for early childhood education.

We know that we have too many kids who by the second grade are not reading at grade level and they're not performing other things at grade level either.

And we don't do a very good job of catching them up.

The truth is, no state does a very good job of catching them up.

But we have too many of our kids, more than other states who are behind so early childhood is so important to prevent those children from being behind in the first place.

And so this is what I mean when I talk about transformational change for our state.

And if we will find the will and muster the discipline to make sure that we maintain these investments for a generation it will change our state in ways that we can hardly fathom today.

The budget vote wrapped on May 19th, freeing up time for lawmakers to focus on other pressing and even controversial issues.

The bill to arm teachers with guns died in the Senate in the final hours of session.

At one point, the bill would have nixed the permit requirement for gun owners.

21 and older But after news of the shooting and you've already Texas lawmakers rewrote the language to arm teachers instead.

I do believe that we need to look in things like expanding background checks.

I don't know that there should be any commercial purchases of firearms, whether they happen at a typical retail establishment, whether they're online, whether they're at a gun show, they ought to all have to have a background check.

And then I think we have to look at red flag laws.

How do we take guns from people who have demonstrated that they are a serious risk of harm to themselves and others?

And there are some other states who really do that extremely well, and that's where we have to look.

But some controversial legislation did pass.

If Roe versus Wade is overturned, then abortion will become illegal in Louisiana.

The session lawmakers took it a step further by subjecting doctors who perform abortions to ten years in prison.

Governor Edwards was not fully on board with the legislation.

He'd hoped for more exceptions for rape and incest.

I favor those exceptions.

And I do it.

It's it's not easy for people.

And I understand that I've got a long history as a legislator, as the governor, being pro-life myself.

However, I believe that the force of law should not compel a lady or a girl to carry rapist's baby to term.

Among other polarizing topics, SB 44 The Women in Sports Bill, which would stop trans girls from playing with biological girls and youth sports.

The governor vetoed the bill last year, prompting an override veto session that ended in failure.

But this time, both the House and Senate passed it, and the governor said he would not veto it a second time.

Louisiana is now the eighth state to implement such a law.

I've allowed that bill to become law without my signature, not because I thought the bill was good.

And you all know my views on it haven't changed.

Once again, a brief special session starts next Wednesday, June 15th.

It will end on June 20th.

So let's delve into what happened at the state capitol.

And for that I've got Melinda Taylor, research director of PAS, and Greg Hilburn of USA Today Network.

We've got, of course, money.

The overriding issue, abortion trends, gun rights, education.

And Melinda, you have written a commentary already for PA, so let's start with you.

Well, I mean, from from our perspective, the big issue of the session was the budget.

I mean, the money, they had so much money that came in, they had $3.7 billion in just short term.

Revenue from state surplus from federal pandemic, aid from money that was recognized after they had already adopted the budget for this year.

So they just had a lot of money and that drove policy pretty much all session long.

They used it to put record amounts of money in higher education and K-through-12 teacher pay raises.

They spent record amounts of money on infrastructure projects.

They also, unfortunately, wasted some money in PA's mind on pet projects for legislative districts back home.

Yeah, well, there are a lot of pork projects like that.

There are more than $100 million of that.

Hundred million.

Yeah.

So it's it's a lot that may be a historic figure in terms of how much they directed that way.

But look, generally considering how much money they had, they spent it on some really smart things.

They made investments in paying down debt.

They made investments in education areas that everybody agrees the state should spend more money on.

They made investments in these big megaprojects that the state has not spent any money on for years.

But that the state has wanted to do for decades.

So so they did some really smart things and hopefully put the state on a better financial footing long term.

What did your viewers talk about more than anything that you covered?

Well, hot button issues, abortion.

And I think that's not only just in Louisiana, but nationally, because as you know of the leaked opinion of the Supreme Court, it appears that Roe v Wade might be overturned.

So anti abortion rights bills were at the top of mind of my readers and so were gun issues, which is also on everybody's mind because of equality and other buffalo and other mass shootings everywhere.

As you know, Louisiana has been a state that you could generally count on for restrict abortion rights laws, bills.

And that's the will of the people.

I think they said through in a in a 2020 amendment to the Louisiana Constitution and 62% voted in favor of an amendment that said abortion should not be a guaranteed right if it was ever overturned by the Supreme Court.

But the real controversy is there some people who are anti abortion rights were upset that they didn't include exceptions for rape or incest.

And there was some really heated debate and compelling arguments on the on the floor of the of the House chamber and Senate chamber about you know what 11 or 12 year old who who might have been raped and would have to carry a baby to term.

And you know those hard kind of issues in the end they passed this bill which is a trigger bill.

In other words, if Roe v Wade is overturned, then Louisiana will automatically ban abortions.

There was an original bill in 2006 to do that this kind of cleans it up, finishes it off, put a bow on it and that's where we are.

OK, there's that trans.

Well transgender sports ban.

This was the second year that Beth Marcell, the senator from Frecklington, a Republican senator from Franklin had brought this bill, as you remember, last year.

Vetoed by the governor.

Was vetoed by the governor.

The bill bans transgender athletes from competing on girls and women's sports teams.

Senator Mazie brought the bill back again this year.

It passed with a bipartisan margin again.

This time, the governor allowed it to become law without his signature while still objecting to it.

Education huge for part of what people or money making money moneywise spending gas, et cetera.

Those are all huge for everybody.

Right?

Right.

And education, they did some they did a lot of things this year.

But again, a lot of it was driven by money.

They gave K-through-12 teachers a 1500 dollar pay raise.

They gave support workers a $750 pay raise.

That is less than what the governor wanted.

He wanted $2,000 and $1,000 for those raises.

But the legislature was concerned about the ongoing financial impact to the state on that.

But they also invested $84 million in new funding for early childhood education, which is a big area of interest for PA and for so many organizations, because that is where you can make the most difference.

And the legislature spent a lot of time debating literacy issues.

Obviously, Mississippi has done some great things in terms of advancing the reading skills of younger readers, and Louisiana is sadly trailing Mississippi on that front.

And so legislators have started looking at more literacy, literacy assessments for children and new ways to get books in the hands of children and to try and invest in literacy initiatives to help them get long term education skills.

Let's just touch overall on the climate.

What did you come away with on that?

And you may write about that.

Certainly you feel it.

We all feel it.

The climate continues to be more divisive, doesn't it.

At the Capitol?

It is.

It is more partizan than it used to be.

And some of that is because term limits have cleared out people who had long term relationships, who had been there for years and years, and the new people coming in seem to model more their more of their behavior on the things that are done in Congress.

And in Washington.

And also, I mean, younger people are coming into the Capitol and they've grown up in a more partizan environment than perhaps the people who came before them.

I think when you see a lot of these culture war issues that the legislature has debated, even if they don't end up passing these things, it does create friction among the groups.

And that friction sort of bleeds into everything else that they're doing.

So, Greg, what's that going to say going forward?

Well, I think you'll continue to see an even greater divide now here, of course, in Louisiana, that divide is smaller among the minority because Republicans now control a near supermajority in the legislature.

They do in the Senate and are, I think, two short in the House.

So that divide between those two groups is big, but there's there's really no way to fight back much for the Democrats right now.

All right, guys, thank you so much for your input in depth and love to hear the analysis thank you.

Thanks to you.

It seems like men will do almost anything before going to the doctor.

The Cleveland Clinic found that men will prefer cleaning the bathroom or mowing the lawn.

Instead, but if they're avoiding these appointments, they're missing important checkups.

That's why this men's health month bendaroos general experts are asking more men to get screened before it's too late.

A man is more likely to complete household chores or go shopping with a loved one than visit the doctor, even if something is wrong.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, men are far less likely to seek medical help than women.

Jacob Wood at Baton Rouge General Hospital says that's not far from the truth.

I think men tend to not go to the doctor for a couple of reasons.

One is it just doesn't seem very macho to go get checked out and have somebody tell you if there's something wrong with you.

The other one is fear.

There's some fear of going and finding out what may be wrong, and they just don't want to peek under the hood.

And see if there's if there's something wrong there.

So I think it's a combination of both of those.

And for different people, it's one more than the other.

In addition to that, some men don't want to change their lifestyle The Cleveland Clinic found that 36% of the men surveyed didn't want to admit they had unhealthy eating habits or made bad health choices.

46% said they were just embarrassed.

Woods says these types of hiccups make men more susceptible to long term health risks, like cancer or high blood pressure.

Women are more likely to have high blood pressure, more likely to have heart disease, obviously more likely to have prostate cancer, which is one of the things that we screen for.

And you know, across the board, men are a little higher risk for health issues than women are, partly because women are better at the screening and prevention and partly just because of the genetics of being male.

Men are also more at risk for lung cancer, liver cancer and Parkinson's.

Wood says that these types of illnesses can sometimes develop under the radar, so you might not be able to detect them until the symptoms are present, which can be dangerous or even fatal.

Men between 30 and 50 are in a combination situation where they really need to be going to the doctor more than the ones that are younger than that and are less likely to go to the doctor than they need to be.

So as they get on past 50 into their sixties and even older, they tend to get a little more likely to come in and be seen.

But that really needs to start before that so we can prevent those things that they end up coming and seeing us for when they're 67 and things have started falling apart that we could have started preventing when they were 42.

Wood says that screenings and general checkups should become more common, especially because the risks associated with men's health change all the time.

The screening recommendations are always in the process of being updated and changed.

And so just because you went and saw your doctor, you know, two or three years ago, and we're told, hey, everything's good, does not mean that you don't need to go back in and have another checkup because age recommendations change things like colonoscopy has changed from 50 down to 45.

And so people like me who.

Are.

Between 45 and 50, have all of a sudden found themselves to be in a situation where they need a screening that previously wasn't needed.

So going in and, and going over those preventive care aspects on a regular basis helps you not fall behind on the recommended screening protocols.

All right.

Banners General Hospital is hosting a Men's Health screening day on June 25th on their main campus.

Be sure to stop by for a checkup.

Andre.

I was scheduled to clean my bathroom, but I will make a change.

I think you need to change that screen.

Definitely go get a screening.

That's it is a kids takeover around the studios and grounds of LP.

Summer camp is underway.

Here's a look at some of the fun and some of the learning.

If you are cooking something and you're mixing ingredients together.

You take them out or take them apart afterwards.

So what we do every day is a different thing.

And we use a PBS character.

Two episodes that we borrow the idea from making a cardboard city.

The murals that they're doing on the glass here actually came from an episode of My Allergies where I'm really drawing a dog.

What is an Angel Doll?

My teacher says I should be an artist.

So that's what I'm going to be.

We went outside with the iPads.

The theme was Eleanor wonders why, and she's very curious about things in nature.

And we took the iPads out.

They took pictures and they're in the process of making their own little photojournalist with the pictures that they.

Took a little photo book.

A little photobook.

So it's teaching them and it's allowing them during the summer to what.

Explore.

We have some children that may go to underprivileged schools where those resources are not available right now until COVID.

They have been doing virtual learning, so they were not able to get out that much.

We use a lot of STEM projects, so they're able to do a lot of things with the STEM project.

And most of all, it's the creativity of what they want to see.

This year, they're creating a city.

I'm done with the cardboard hospital.

I'm going to start to make a card for dentist's office and stuff.

So whoever needs clean teeth, they can just go to the office.

I'm working on a chocolate factory because I am like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

And it's really fun because you can see all kinds of stuff because we're all working on different things.

I know it's what you cook, somebody that cooks things.

We take every single activity from PBS Learning Media.

We don't invent anything.

It's all ideas that are there.

So the teachers do have access log in.

They can get the same ideas that we do here at camp, but they materials activities.

So really, it's just for everybody.

My mom likes it and I like it because it's about science and math and me, I'm mom both like science and math.

I want to be a scientist and a doctor.

It's just another example of how leave PBS is children's education.

Exactly.

And we have fun with the kids, and learning is supposed to be fun.

And that's what we try to establish here is a learning great environment.

And today is the last day, so we won't see them around here anymore.

Very sad about it.

They were adorable this summer.

And everyone That is our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything LPI any time, wherever you are with our LPB PBS.

You can catch LPB News and Public Affairs shows as well as other Louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years.

And please, like us on Facebook, Twitter, Tick-Tock and Instagram for.

Everyone here at Louisiana Public Broadcasting, I'm Andre.

Moreau and I'm Kara St.Cyr.

See you next time.

That's the state we're in.

Support for Louisiana.

The state we're in is provided by.

Every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages.

Before they happen.

Together, together, together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred B and Ruth B, Zigler Foundation and the Zigler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall, the museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana, and the foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.