by Julie O'Donoghue, Louisiana Illuminator
June 26, 2024

Gov. Jeff Landry cut $1 million in state funding from the largest homeless shelter in Lafayette because of the help its operator, Catholic Charities of Acadiana, provides to immigrants.

“Part of Catholic Charities mission is to support the influx of illegal aliens into our country. Taxpayers should never foot the bill for nonprofits who are contributing to the illegal immigration crisis our nation is facing,” Landry said in a written statement Wednesday. “I don't believe the majority of our legislators would support this either.” 

Landry removed the money for the organization after state lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to include it earlier this month. The funding was not intended for the group's immigrant services. It would have helped pay for an emergency homeless shelter serving eight parishes in Acadiana.

Catholic Charities is now scrambling for a new source of support to help keep its shelter open just a few days before its new budget cycle starts July 1. Spokesman Ben Broussard said the cut will have a “crippling impact” on the largest shelter for homeless people in the Lafayette region. 

The facility overwhelmingly serves Louisiana citizens. More than 80% of the people who used it last year came from the Acadiana area, and over 90% were state residents. In total, it housed 410 people last year and has 87 people under its roof currently, Broussard said. 

Landry, who is a Catholic and a Lafayette Parish resident, said he wasn't convinced the charity should receive government support.  

“I look forward to understanding in greater detail why Catholic Charities needs taxpayers dollars and how they would use that money,” he said. 

Since Landry took office in January, he has made fighting illegal immigration a priority, even though states generally have to concede enforcement to the federal government.

One of his first acts as governor was to require the state to track and collect data on immigrants. Landry then spent $3 million to send 150 Louisiana National Guard members to Texas to help monitor the Mexico border. 

His efforts to hold a local Catholic Charities chapter responsible for the church's long-held views on immigration is in keeping with national conservatives. 

Republicans in Congress threatened to pull federal funding from Catholic Charities last year over the nonprofit's aid to immigrants at the Mexico border. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, announced an investigation into a Catholic organization assisting migrant workers in El Paso last winter. 

The New York Times reported earlier this month that people who work for Catholic Charities and other religious-based groups that assist immigrants are being harassed and attacked by right-leaning extremists across the country. 

Locally, Catholic Charities of Acadiana offers legal services to immigrants, including help with seeking citizenship, protected status and work authorization. The group also works with people who qualify for federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which prevents deportation of immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. 

Catholic Charities of Acadiana lists these programs on its website, but the webpage for immigrant programs disappeared from public view for a few hours Wednesday after Landry vetoed the group's shelter funding. After a reporter asked for more information about the services, the page came back. 

Broussard declined to comment on the changes to the website or to provide more information about the group's immigration outreach.

The Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops, which represents the church and charity organizations statewide, has clashed with Landry on other immigration policies.

The bishops opposed two new laws Landry backed. The first empowers local law enforcement officials to arrest people they suspect of entering the country illegally. The second is a so-called anti-sanctuary city provision, meant to force cities, such as New Orleans, to police immigrants aggressively if they are undocumented.

“[Help for] immigrants and refugees has been a core service of the Catholic Church forever,” said Tom Costanza, the chief state lobbyist for the Catholic Church in Louisiana.

The governor might have targeted Catholic Charities of Acadiana for a cut, but he didn't remove all the money in the state budget for the organization. The group is still slated to receive $2.7 million in public funding to purchase generators for its buildings, including its shelter facility and soup kitchen that serves free, hot meals to people experiencing hunger.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and X.

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by Lia Chien, Louisiana Illuminator
June 26, 2024

WASHINGTON – Democratic U.S. House members pushed for legislative action to address gun violence Wednesday, the day after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared the issue a public health crisis.

Murthy released a 40-page advisory Tuesday. It called gun violence the leading cause of death for children and adolescents, causing just over 4,600 deaths in 2022. More than 48,000 Americans died from gun violence in 2022, an increase of 16,000 from 2010, according to the report.

The report counted mass shootings, suicides by firearm and firearm injuries. According to the advisory, 79% of U.S. adults experience stress from the possibility of a mass shooting and youth are over 20% more likely to use antidepressants following exposure to fatal school shootings.

The advisory came after a weekend of mass shootings in Alabama, Ohio, and Arkansas.

Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Democrat from Florida, hosted a press conference to applaud the surgeon general and urged his House colleagues to pursue more gun reforms.

“This declaration is a significant step forward in the fight to protect our communities and our children because it's a holistic thing,” he said. “It looks at ending gun violence in many different ways.”

Frost, the youngest member of Congress and former March for Our Lives national organizing director, listed ideas to address gun violence in the advisory.

That list included regulations to keep guns out of “the wrong hands” through measures such as universal background checks.

The government could also support community violence intervention, such as programs in high-risk communities designed to deter gun violence and help those affected.

Finally, and “one of the most important,” said Frost, is “creating a society where people don't feel the need to use guns to solve their problems in the first place.”

Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat from California, urged her congressional colleagues to use the “renewed sense of urgency” created by the report to require universal background checks and safe storage of firearms.

“Just basics,” she said.

Frost and Lee were joined by Dr. Joseph Sakran, an anti-gun activist and trauma surgeon and associate director of emergency general surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, a city plagued by gun violence.

He called the advisory “a historic step” that will “empower policymakers and push them to develop programs and policies that will impact not just cities but the entire country.”

He also referenced upcoming elections that he said would determine what gun reform measures could pass.

Red flag bill

In a separate press conference Wednesday, Democratic Reps. Mike Thompson and Salud Carbajal of California, Lucy McBath of Georgia, Joe Neguse of Colorado and Robin Kelly of Illinois announced they would file a measure to force a floor vote on a bill McBath introduced.

The bill would allow federal courts to issue risk protection orders. It would allow police or family members to ask a court for a temporary order, preventing people at risk of harming themselves or others from possessing or purchasing firearms.

According to Everytown, a gun safety advocacy group, 21 states have adopted similar laws. Research has shown they reduce firearm suicides and stop mass shootings, according to studies in Indiana, Connecticut and California.

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In 2022, Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Community Safety Act. The legislation provided funding and support for states with red flag laws to ensure they are “constitutionally implemented,” according to the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.

Thompson, the chair of the House Democrats' Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, said McBath's bill would help complement the 2022 law.

“Congresswoman McBath's bill will ensure that the work that we did in that legislation and the money that we're able to secure can be better spent across all 50 states and save lives,” he said.

Thompson said a discharge petition, a procedural tool to force a floor vote, is the only way to bring the bill to the House floor because House Republican leadership opposes gun control legislation.

Republican opposition

Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, has not been in favor of gun control legislation and told Fox News last year he doesn't see gun laws as being effective.

McBath told reporters Wednesday she hopes rank-and-file Republicans buck their party leaders on the bill. She said that in private conversations, many Republicans have agreed with her that Congress should pass gun reform.

“I think they're just afraid to stand on the other side of their Republican colleagues,” McBath said. “But I think deep down they know that they have constituents that are dying unnecessarily.”

Neguse, the assistant Democratic leader, echoed McBath's concerns over Republican inaction and urged Republican colleagues to support McBath's bill.

“Talk is cheap,” Neguse said. “There's an opportunity for so-called moderate Republicans in the House Republican Conference to prove that they support these red flag laws. They can do so by simply walking onto the floor and signing the discharge petition.”

Frost, in the opposite press conference, also shared his Democratic colleagues' belief that Republicans will help pass gun reform laws. He referred to the surgeon general's advisory, and urged listeners to use the statistics to support their cause.

“If we focus on the science and the data of this, I think there are some hearts and minds we can change on the Republican side to actually get things like universal background checks passed,” he said.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and X.

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by Ashley Murray, Louisiana Illuminator
June 26, 2024

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to rule on whether presidents enjoy total criminal immunity, delaying one of the most consequential legal decisions in U.S. history and likely closing the door on former President Donald Trump facing his federal election interference trial before November.

Trump, the presumed Republican presidential nominee who is entangled in several criminal cases, already faces a July sentencing for a New York state conviction on 34 felonies for falsifying business records ahead of the 2016 election.

Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments in the immunity case on the last day of their term, April 25, and have held the case in their hands since late February.

Opinions are scheduled to be released on Thursday and Friday, but the court does not disclose which ones in advance. Trump is set to debate President Joe Biden on Thursday night at CNN studios in Atlanta, with the campaign for the presidency in full swing.

The question before the court is whether U.S. presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for any official acts taken while in the Oval Office.

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Trump pressed the matter to the Supreme Court after a lower court in January denied his claim that he should not face federal charges that allege he schemed to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss by knowingly spreading falsehoods, conspiring to create false slates of electors in several states and egging on supporters who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. 2021.

U.S. Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith urged the Supreme Court in December to leapfrog the appellate court level and expedite a ruling on presidential immunity. At the time, Trump's trial for the election subversion charges had still been set for March 4. The justices declined Smith's request.

‘De facto' immunity

Critics of the Supreme Court accuse the bench's conservative justices, including three Trump appointees, of purposely delaying the ruling to keep Trump out of the courtroom before November's election.

“By preventing (a) trial before the election, they have de facto provided him with immunity, regardless of what the substance of the decision may eventually hand down,” Michael Podhorzer, president of the Defending Democracy Project, told States Newsroom Wednesday.

The anti-Trump advocacy organization has been closely monitoring the former president's legal cases.

Podhorzer blamed the justices for not taking up the case in December.

“Then they waited as long as they possibly could to now rule on it, and they created this crisis. They are basically putting their thumb on the scale in this election,” he said.

Defining ‘official acts'

The justices appeared skeptical in April as Trump attorney D. John Sauer argued a broad definition for what constitutes a president's “official acts.”

Under his view nearly everything done during a presidential term would count as an official act, including Trump's efforts to interfere with Congress' certification of the 2020 presidential election results.

In jaw-dropping moments throughout Trump's appeal, Sauer argued before Supreme Court justices and a lower appellate panel that presidents could order the assassination of a political rival without facing legal accountability — that is, if he or she is not first impeached by the U.S. House and convicted by the Senate.

Trump and supporters of the presidential immunity argument contend that allowing criminal prosecution of former presidents will open a “Pandora's box” of political targeting by opponents.

They also accuse Smith of political interference for bringing charges against Trump as he eyed a second term. Smith announced the four-count indictment in early August 2023.

Meanwhile, opponents of such immunity, including several who served in previous Republican administrations, warn of “terrifying possibilities” should a president be free from the threat of criminal liability.

Several conservative justices hinted that the case should be returned to the lower courts, where a clear line between official acts and private conduct can be drawn.

That could eat up additional weeks or months, further diminishing any slight possibility that Trump's election interference trial would happen prior to the November election.

Podhorzer said a further delay sets up a “showdown between the ordinary function of the criminal justice system, which would have Trump go on trial, (and) the normal operation of our presidential elections in which there would be no encumbrance on Trump's ability to campaign.”

All proceedings at the lower court level have been put on hold until the Supreme Court issues its decision.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and X.

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