The Advocate 07-15-2025 by The Advocate

Court OKs plan to close Education Dept.

Nearly 1,400 employees expected to be laid off

BY MARK SHERMAN Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The Supreme Court

is allowing President Donald Trump to put his plan to dismantle the Education Department back on track — and to go through with laying off nearly 1,400 employees. With the three liberal justices

in dissent, the court on Monday paused an order from U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston, who issued a preliminary injunction reversing the layoffs and calling into question the broader plan. The layoffs “will likely cripple the department,” Joun wrote. A federal appeals court refused to put the order on hold while the administration appealed. The high court action enables the administration to resume work on winding down the department one of Trump’s biggest campaign promises.

across the Country.” He said the decision will allow his administration to begin the “very important process” of returning many of the department’s functions “BACK TO THE STATES.”

In a post Monday night on his social media platform, Trump said the high court “has handed a Major Victory to Parents and Students

The court did not explain its decision in favor of Trump, as is customary in emergency appeals. But in dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor complained that her colleagues were enabling legally questionable action on the part of the administration.

“When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” Sotomayor wrote for herself and Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said it’s a “shame” it took

Camp Beauregard name returning to facility

BY ALYSE PFEIL Staff writer

Effective Monday, the Louisiana National Guard Training Center Pineville will once again be called Camp Beauregard at the direction of Gov Jeff Landry, the Guard announced.

Dating back to 1917, the name of the military installation previously honored Confederate Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard. But the name Camp Beauregard was changed in 2023 to Training Center Pineville, following a trend of removing references to Confederate soldiers

Now, Camp Beauregard will honor Capt. Jacques Toutant Beauregard, a member of the Louisiana Militia who fought in the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, the National Guard said.

The name change is in line with federal military installations that are returning to “known names” and is being undertaken at the direction of Landry, the Guard’s commander in chief, said National Guard spokesperson Lt. Col. Noel Collins.

Last month, the administration of President Donald Trump returned seven Army bases to their original names after they had been changed in 2023 to avoid

honoring Confederate leaders.

In a social media post Monday morning, Landry lauded the change with a photo of tombstone inscribed with the term “wokeism.”

“Let this be a lesson that we should always give reverence to history and not be quick to so easily condemn or erase the dead, lest we and our times be judged arbitrary by future generations,” Landry’s post stated.

Asked if the revival of the Camp Beauregard name is meant to acknowledge P.G.T Beauregard and how the name change ﬁghts “wokeism,” Landry spokesperson Kate Kelly responded by

noting that Jacques Toutant Beauregard is the father of P.G.T Beauregard. P.G.T Beauregard was a prominent Confederate general, commanding the troops who opened ﬁre on Fort Sumter at the outset of the Civil War. After the war was over, however, he was part of a coalition that unsuccessfully tried to integrate Black and White Louisianans.

Landry’s approach of returning the Pineville installation to a previous name but recognizing an alternative service member with the same last name mirrors the approach the Trump

Fatty liver drug shows promise in Tulane study

Treatment could clear cells that set stage for disease

BY EMILY WOODRUFF

Staff writer

Fatty liver disease affects more than a third of adults in the United States, a silent epidemic closely tied to obesity and diabetes. In Louisiana, where both conditions are more common than the national average, doctors suspect the disease is even more widespread, often going undetected until it becomes life-threatening.

Scientists from Tulane University are part of a multiuniversity team exploring a potential new treatment that could stop the disease before it turns deadly In a study published earlier this year in

ä See LIVER, page 4A

Fall to bring all-charter system

BY CHARLES LUSSIER Staff writer

A yard sign popped up earlier this month in front of Bethany Church’s Baker campus announcing the arrival of a new school: “Come Home to Baker: Park Ridge! Now Enrolling.” Less than 2 miles north Bethany’s previous tenant erected a sign of its own in front of the closed White Hills Elementary: “New Home of GEO Prep Baker.” The changes of address for Park Ridge Elementary and GEO Prep Baker come just weeks before the start of the 2025-26 school year They are the latest developments in the unusual school war that has engulfed this small suburban city of 12,000 residents north of Baton Rouge. In just over a decade, Baker has gone from having ﬁve traditional public schools to ﬁve charter schools. Charters are public schools run privately

ä See BAKER, page 4A

The name of Camp Beauregard was changed in 2023 to Training Center Pineville.

PROVIDED PHOTO

The new tenants at Bethany Church’s Baker campus posted signs on July 7 proclaiming the arrival of a new school, Park Ridge Achievement Academy Park Ridge is replacing another charter school, GEO Prep Baker, that spent the past three years at Bethany.

BRIEFS FROM WIRE REPORTS

Cuomo continues run for N.Y. mayor despite loss

Former Gov Andrew Cuomo launched an independent run for New York City mayor on Monday, restarting his campaign after a bruising loss to progressive Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary

In a video, Cuomo announced he would remain in the race to combat Mamdani, a democratic socialist state lawmaker, who the former governor said “offers slick slogans but no real solutions.”

“The ﬁght to save our city isn’t over,” Cuomo said “Only 13% of New Yorkers voted in the June primary The general election is in November and I am in it to win it.”

Critics of Mamdani’s progressive agenda, which includes higher taxes on the wealthy, have called on donors and voters to unite behind a single candidate for the November election.

The current mayor, Eric Adams, is also running as an independent in the general election, as is former prosecutor Jim Walden. Curtis Sliwa, founder of the 1970s-era Guardian Angels anti-crime patrol, is on the Republican line.

Cuomo’s decision to press on in the race is the latest chapter in his comeback attempt, launched almost four years after he resigned as governor in 2021 following a barrage of sexual harassment allegations. He denied wrongdoing, maintaining that the scandal was driven by politics.

Elmo’s hacked X account posts racist messages

Sesame Workshop was trying to regain full control over its Elmo account on the X platform Monday after a hacker gained access and posted a string of racist and antisemitic messages.

“Elmo’s X account was compromised by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts. We are working to restore full control of the account,” a Sesame Workshop spokesperson said Monday Sesame Workshop is the nonproﬁt behind “Sesame Street” and Elmo.

The account was compromised over the weekend and instead of the usual posts of encouragement and kindness, Elmo’s 650,000 followers were given antisemitic threats and a profane reference to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafﬁcking investigation. Those tweets were soon deleted. X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Officials: Man smashes Stone of Destiny case

LONDON A man from Australia has been charged with “malicious mischief” for allegedly smashing a glass case holding the Stone of Destiny, an ancient symbol of Scottish nationhood.

Arnaud Harixcalde Logan, 35, appeared at Perth Sheriff Court on Monday to face the charge, which is similar to vandalism.

Logan, whose address was given as Sydney, wasn’t asked to enter a plea and was ordered detained until a hearing next week.

Police said that they were called to a “disturbance” at Perth Museum in central Scotland on Saturday, after reports of a kilt-wearing man attempting to smash the case containing the royal rock.

The 335-pound sandstone block is also known as the Stone of Scone — and was used in the crowning ceremonies of medieval Scottish monarchs at Scone Abbey, near Perth. It was stolen by England’s King Edward I in the 13th century and taken to Westminster Abbey in London, where it was installed under the seat of the coronation chair It has been used in coronations at the abbey ever since.

CORRECTION

The Advocate on Saturday reported incorrectly that proposed contracts for servicing air-conditioning and heating systems at Baton Rouge public schools represent a shift from monthly to multiyear billing. They do not. That error led to mathematical errors in calculating the monthly cost of the contract, comparing that cost with past monthly costs as well as determining how much money would be left over to replace old systems over the next four years. The Advocate regrets the errors.

Trump threatens Russia with tariffs

President boosts U.S. weapons for Ukraine

BY CHRIS MEGERIAN and ILLIA NOVIKOV Associated Press

WASHINGTON President

Donald Trump on Monday threatened Russia with steep tariffs and announced a rejuvenated pipeline for American weapons to reach Ukraine, hardening his stance toward Moscow after months of frustration about unsuccessful negotiations for ending the war

The latest steps reflect an evolving approach from the Republican president, who promised to swiftly resolve the war started by Russian President Vladimir Putin when he invaded Ukraine three years ago.

Trump once focused his criticism on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he described as unwilling to compromise, but more recently has expressed growing irritation toward Putin.

“My conversations with him are very pleasant, and then the missiles go off at night,” Trump said. He complained that “it just keeps going on and on and on.”

Trump said he would implement “severe tariffs” unless a peace deal is reached within 50 days. He provided few details on how they would be implemented, but he described them as secondary tariffs, meaning they would target Russia’s trading partners in an effort to isolate Moscow

in the global economy In addition, Trump said European allies would buy “billions and billions” of dollars of U.S military equipment to be transferred to Ukraine, replenishing the besieged country’s supplies of weapons. He made the announcement in the Oval Ofﬁce alongside NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.

Included in the plan are Patriot air defense systems, a top priority for Ukraine as it fends off Russian drones and missiles.

Doubts were recently raised about Trump’s commitment to supply Ukraine when the Pentagon paused shipments over concerns that U.S stockpiles were running low Rutte said Germany, Finland, Canada, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Denmark would be among the buyers to supply Ukraine. He said “speed is

of the essence here,” and he suggested that some weapons would be rushed to Ukraine and later replaced with purchases from the U.S.

Later Monday, Zelenskyy posted about having spoken with Trump by phone and said he “discussed the necessary means and solutions with the President to provide better protection for people from Russian attacks and to strengthen our positions.”

Zelenskyy added that Trump had “agreed to catch up more often by phone and coordinate our steps in the future.”

Trump has long boasted of his friendly relationship with Putin, and he repeatedly asserted that Russia was more willing than Ukraine to reach a peace deal. He also accused Zelenskyy of prolonging the war and called him a “dictator with-

out elections.” But Russia’s relentless onslaught against civilian areas of Ukraine wore down Trump’s patience. In April, Trump urged Putin to “STOP!” launching deadly barrages on Kyiv, and the following month said in a social media post that the Russian leader “has gone absolutely CRAZY!”

While Rutte was in Washington, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv

Zelenskyy said he had “a productive conversation” with Kellogg about strengthening Ukrainian air defenses, joint arms production and purchasing U.S. weapons in conjunction with European countries, as well as the possibility of tighter international sanctions on the Kremlin.

“We hope for the leader-

ship of the United States, because it is clear that Moscow will not stop unless its ambitions are stopped by force,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram.

Russia has pounded Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, with hundreds of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles that Ukraine’s air defenses are struggling to counter June brought the highest monthly civilian casualties of the past three years, with 232 people killed and 1,343 wounded, the U.N. human rights mission in Ukraine said.

At the same time, Russia’s bigger army is making a new effort to drive back Ukrainian defenders on parts of the 620-mile front line.

Trump conﬁrmed the U.S. is sending Ukraine more badly needed Patriot air defense missiles and that the European Union will pay the U.S. for the “various pieces of very sophisticated” weaponry A senior Russian lawmaker, Konstantin Kosachev, said Trump’s plan had “only one beneﬁciary the US military-industrial complex.”

Germany has offered to ﬁnance two Patriot systems, government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said Monday in Berlin. The country has already given three of its own Patriot systems to Ukraine.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius was traveling to Washington on Monday to meet with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Israeli strikes kill at least 31 in Gaza, officials say

U.N.

agencies warn of fuel

crisis

BY WAFAA SHURAFA, FATMA KHALED and SALLY ABOU ALJOUD Associated Press

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip

Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight killed at least 31 people, according to local hospitals, as U.N. agencies warned on Monday that critical fuel shortages put hospitals and other critical infrastructure at risk.

The latest attacks came after President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held two days of talks last week that ended with no sign of a breakthrough in negotiations over a ceaseﬁre and hostage release.

Twelve people were killed by strikes in southern Gaza, including three who were waiting at an aid distribution point, according to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, which received the bodies. Shifa Hospital in Gaza City also received 12 bodies, including three children and two

women, after a series of strikes in the north, according to the hospital’s director, Dr Mohammed Abu Selmia.

Al-Awda Hospital reported seven killed and 11 wounded in strikes in central Gaza.

The Israeli military says it only targets militants and tries to avoid harming civilians. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in densely populated areas.

Separately, three Israeli soldiers were killed in northern Gaza, according to the military A military ofﬁcial, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said on

Monday that they died in an explosion in their tank, apparently after it was hit by an anti-tank missile, though the incident was still being examined.

U.N. agencies, including those providing food and health care, reiterated a warning made at the weekend that without adequate fuel, they “will likely be forced to stop their operations entirely.”

In a joint statement, they said that hospitals are already going dark and ambulances can no longer move. Without fuel, transport, water production, sanitation and telecommunications will shut down and bakeries and community kitchens can-

Officials: Suspect in Ky. shooting had domestic violence hearing the next day

BY BRUCE SCHREINER Associated Press

The man accused of a shooting rampage Sunday at a rural Kentucky church after wounding a state trooper had been expected in court Monday for a domestic violence hearing, a local official said.

Police say Guy House, 47, shot the trooper during a traffic stop near Lexington’s airport, fled in a carjacked vehicle then opened fire at Richmond Road Baptist Church, killing two women and wounding two men before

ofﬁcers fatally shot him.

House went to the church looking for the mother of his children but his domestic violence hearing did not involve her the Lexington HealdLeader reported, citing a sister of the woman, Rachael Barnes. Matt Ball, a deputy clerk for family court in Fayette County, conﬁrmed to The Associated Press that House had been scheduled for the domestic violence hearing on Monday Police say Beverly Gumm, 72, and Christina Combs, 34, were killed in the shooting. One of the

wounded men was being treated for critical injuries and the other was in stable condition, police said. The trooper was in stable condition, police said.

“Preliminary information indicates that the suspect may have had a connection to the individuals at the church,” Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers said at a news conference Sunday The shootings remain under investigation, Weathers said. The trooper stopped House after receiving a “license plate reader alert,” police said.

not operate, they said.

The agencies confirmed that some 150,000 liters of fuel entered Gaza last week the first delivery in 130 days. But they said it is “a small fraction of what is needed each day to keep daily life and critical aid operations running.”

“The United Nations agencies and humanitarian partners cannot overstate the urgency of this moment: fuel must be allowed into Gaza in sufﬁcient quantities

and consistently to sustain lifesaving operations,” they said. The agencies signing the statement were the U.N. humanitarian ofﬁce OCHA, food agency WFP, health organization WHO children’s agency UNICEF, the agency helping Palestinian refugees UNRWA, population agency UNFPA, development agency UNDP and UNOPS which oversees procurement and provides management services.

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By EVAN VUCCI

President Donald Trump, right, shakes the hand of NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Monday during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By MAyA ALLERUZZO Smoke rises Monday from an Israeli bombardment in the northern Gaza Strip near the Israel-Gaza border

Flames tear through Mass. assisted-living facility

Authorities say 9 killed as residents

were trapped inside

BY MICHAEL CASEY, KIMBERLEE KRUESI, PATRICK WHITTLE and HOLLY RAMER Associated Press

FALL RIVER, Mass. — Flames roared through an assistedliving facility in Massachusetts, killing nine people and trapping residents inside including some who leaned out of windows and screamed for help, authorities said Monday. At least 30 people were hurt.

A firefighters union said inadequate staffing hindered the response to the blaze and contributed to the death toll, though the mayor criticized that characterization, and the fire chief suggested no number of first responders would have been enough. Meanwhile, several residents who praised firefighters and police for heroic rescue efforts said staff members did little to help.

“They didn’t knock on one door,” Robert Cabral said.

“They just ran.”

Fireﬁghters responded to the Gabriel House facility in Fall River, about 50 miles south of Boston, at about 9:50 p.m. Sunday and were met with heavy smoke and flames at the front of the building. The Bristol County District Attorney’s Office

said in a statement that the ﬁre’s cause does not appear to be suspicious at this time.”

Its origin remains under investigation, authorities said.

Lorraine Ferrara, one of about 70 residents at the facility, awoke to a neighbor pounding on her door She tried to make her way through the smoke in the hallway but retreated to her room as the sprinkler system shot hot water onto her back.

As her room filed with smoke, Ferrara opened her window and yelled. A fireﬁghter broke the window and carried her down the ladder she said.

“I really thought I was going to die,” she said “I thought there was no way out.”

That fear mixed with anger as she watched two employees run from the building.

“They left us alone and ran out into the parking lot,” she said. “I was hanging out the window — ‘Help! Help!’ and they just kept running.”

The dead ranged in age from 61 to 86, authorities said. The Bristol County District Attorney’s Office identified seven of the deceased as Rui Albernaz, 64; Ronald Codega, 61; Margaret Duddy, 69; Robert King, 78; Kim Mackin, 71; Richard Rochon, 78; and Eleanor Willett, 86. The office said a 70-year-old woman and 77-year-old man were still pending notification of family

Gabriel House opened in 1999 and has 100 units, according to Massachusetts Executive Office of Aging

and Independence. Its website promotes studio apartments “for those seniors who cannot afford the high end of assisted living” as well as group adult foster care within walking distance of shopping, restaurants and churches.

“If an emergency occurs, no matter the time, there will be someone ready to help,” the website states.

Dennis Etzkorn, the facility’s owner, declined to comment Monday but officials said he was cooperating with what Fire Chief Jeffrey Bacon called “a very extensive investigation.”

District Attorney Tom

Quinn called the fire a “terrible tragedy” in a statement that also commended first responders “bringing many of the residents to safety while being confronted with very difficult circumstances.”

About 50 firefighters responded to the scene, including 30 who were off-duty. Police also helped break down doors and carried about a dozen residents to safety Five injured firefighters were released from the hospital Monday

“You couldn’t have had enough people here to save everybody that needed help last night,” Bacon said.

But officials with the firefighters union said the closing of fire companies and cutbacks on staff have been a problem for decades.

If staffing had been at the nationally recommended level, eight more firefighters would have been at the scene Sunday night, said Edward Kelly, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters union.

“There’s no doubt that would’ve made a difference in the amount of people that we lost to this terrible fire last night,” Kelly said. “Lives would’ve been saved if the Fall River Fire Department

was adequately staffed.” Capt. Frank O’Reagan said there was no breathing equipment available when he arrived, so he started going door to door on the third ﬂoor without an air tank.

“First room, empty Second door I kicked in, body Next room, empty Next room, body,” he said “I searched as much as a could but after a while you just can’t take that much smoke.”

O’Reagan’s brother and fellow firefighter Michael O’Reagan said he was shocked that 40 minutes after ﬁreﬁghters arrived, a large part of the building had not been searched.

“We did the best we could with what we had, and what we had was not enough,” said Michael O’Reagan, president of the Fall River ﬁreﬁghters union.

Mayor Paul Coogan said the ﬁre department is staffed based on the recommendation from the ﬁre chief.

“We staff the ﬁre department at the number the chief asked for,” he said “We’re not even 24 hours into this and that’s going to be a priority not the families?”

The Rev Michael Racine, the city’s fire chaplain, spent the night blessing the bodies of the dead and trying to console survivors, families, staff members and firefighters.

“Nobody in that department has seen what we saw last night. Nobody,” Racine said. “We’ve seen fatalities, which we don’t want to see, but nobody’s seen anything like last night.”

Search for missing in Texas floods resumes in some areas

Officials: Rain hampered efforts

BY GABRIELA AOUN

ANGUEIRA,

NADIA LATHAN and JIM VERTUNO Associated Press

KERRVILLE, Texas For a second straight day, rain forecasts hampered the search Monday for people still missing after deadly ﬂoods pummeled Texas this month, as ofﬁcials made plans to drain reservoirs in the search for victims. While some crews resumed the search along the Guadalupe River on Monday, others held off, wary of the forecast. Officials also asked for patience, saying some have been threatened for their perceived lack of action that could have prevented the deaths at least 132 people in the July 4 storm.

The ﬁrst pause in search efforts due to the weather came Sunday in Texas Hill Country, where the soil is still primed for enhanced water runoff.

More than 160 people are unaccounted for in Kerr County alone, and 10 more in neighboring areas. Texas Hill Country is a popular destination for tourists where campers seek out

spots along the river amid the rolling hills.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said during a commissioners’ meeting Monday that it’s been difﬁcult to determine exactly how many tourists were in the area when the ﬂooding occurred.

“We’ve heard accounts of trailer after trailer after trailer being swept into the river with families in the them. Can’t find the trailers,” Kelly said. “It’s what we don’t know We don’t know how many of them there are.”

Kelly said he’d been told of one trailer that was found “completely covered in gravel” 27 feet below the surface of the river He said sonar crews have been searching the river and local lakes and more are expected to arrive.

Commissioner Don Harris said officials plan to drain two reservoir lakes on the river

“Who knows how many out there are completely covered,” Harris said The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Urban Search and Rescue teams fully resumed operations on Monday, said Obed Frometa, FEMA Blue Incident Support Team information ofﬁcer

Levi Bizzell, a spokesperson for the Ingram Volunteer Fire Department, which has been organizing about 200 searchers, said the department suspended operations for the day on Monday because several inches of rain were expected to fall on Kerr County by late afternoon.

“Everybody here wants to be out there working,” Bizzell said. “They literally come in the morning whether they are tired or not, and they just want to get out there and work because they want to ﬁnd closure for these families.”

Kerr County meanwhile advised all volunteers to leave the river area and move to higher ground, saying only those teams working under the direction of Kerr County Emergency Operations Center Unified Command were permitted in the response zone.

In Kerrville, about 100 miles west of Austin, local ofﬁcials have come under scrutiny over whether residents were adequately warned about the rising water on July 4.

Authorities in Kerrville went door-to-door to some homes early Sunday warning that ﬂooding was again possible, and pushed phone

alerts to area residents.

Kerr County commissioners asked the public for their patience as the search and cleanup continues. Commissioner Rich Paces said during a meeting Monday morning that he has received death threats.

“They’re just playing a blame game,” Paces said.

During a special Kerrville City Council meeting, council member Brenda Hughes also complained of threats to city ofﬁcials and staff, which she did not detail, and called for increased security at

City Hall.

“We’re not only dealing with all of the aftermath of this tragic event, but now we have to worry about threats that are coming to staff, targeted threats that are specific to individual staff members,” she said.

BY SAM MCNEIL Associated Press

BRUSSELS EU trade ministers agreed Monday that U.S President Donald Trump’s announcement of 30% tariffs on the European Union was “absolutely unacceptable,” and they are studying a new set of countermeasures to respond to the move. The ministers met Monday in Brussels following Trump’s surprise announcement over the weekend of such hefty tariffs, which could have repercussions for governments, companies and consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. The EU is America’s biggest business partner and the world’s largest trading bloc.

unacceptable.” He said that the commission was sharing proposals with the 27 member countries “for the second list of goods accounting of some $84 billion worth of U.S. imports. They will now have a chance to discuss it. This does not exhaust our toolbox and every instrument remains on the table.”

Lars Løkke Rasmussen, foreign minister of Denmark, which recently assumed the presidency of the EU, said the ministers vowed to work together in negotiating a trade deal with Washington or agreeing on countermeasures

for Mexico, are set to start on Aug. 1 and could make everything from French cheese and Italian leather goods to German electronics and Spanish pharmaceuticals more expensive in the U.S., and destabilize economies from Portugal to Norway Meanwhile, Brussels decided to suspend retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods scheduled to take effect Monday in hopes of reaching a trade deal with the Trump administration by the end of the month. The “countermeasures” by the EU, which negotiates trade deals on behalf of its 27 member countries, will be delayed until Aug. 1. Trump’s letter shows “that we have until the ﬁrst of August” to negotiate, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels on Sunday Šefcovic, said negotiations would continue Monday EU trade officials plan how to counter Trump’s ‘unacceptable’ 30%

Maroš Šefcovic, the EU’s trade representative in its talks with the U.S., said after the meeting that it was “very obvious from the discussions today, the 30% is absolutely

“The EU remains ready to react and that includes robust and proportionate countermeasures if required and there was a strong, feeling in the room of unity,” Rasmussen told reporters after the meeting. The tariffs, also announced

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By STEVEN SENNE

Michael Pimentel, center, a resident at the Gabriel House assisted-living facility in Fall River, Mass., receives assistance Monday from an emergency medical worker outside a temporary shelter after a fire that killed at least nine.

viacontracts. The wealth of competitionis strange in part because Baker has only about 1,600 school-age children. About 1,000 have been attending the city’straditional public schools

What makes Bakerattractive to charter companies, though, is its proximity to Baton Rouge, the northern part of East BatonRouge Parish and East and West Feliciana parishes.

State Rep. Barbara Carpenter lives in Baker and her late husband, Dana,served on the city school board for years. She said she’s disturbed by and struggles with the ﬂurry of changes.

“I have aPh.D. and Iaminthe stateLegislature and I’m having difﬁculty understanding it,”said Carpenter,D-Baton Rouge. “So imagine people who havetheir kidsinthe system. I’m not sure that agood job has beendone to explain to families and residents what is coming down the pipe.”

Three of thecharters —GEO Prepaswell as Impact Charter School and Advantage Charter Academy —aren’tlimited to students from Baker and actively recruit throughout the area. The two newest charter schools, Park Ridge and Baker High, are limited to the city’sboundaries Impact Charter also recently moved abruptly from one partof Bakertoanother—partofa ﬁght betweenanoustedold leadership and anew set of managers. Impact’snew management balked at the pricey lease atits historic home at 4815 Lavey Lane. The old management responded by serving them with an eviction notice for nonpayment. Impact immediately cleared out its staff andits 400 students. It leased from the Baker school district themuch less expensive former Baker Heights Elementary, less than amile away Impact’smanagement change was prompted by adamning investigative audit of the 11-yearold school, which has prompted a series of court battles.

Only Advantage Charter, home to almost 700students, is not undergoing big changes, operating at aconverted Walmart on Plank Road. The late changes in school ad-

NAME

Continued from page 1A

administration has taken recently Fort Polk in Vernon Parish was among the seven Army bases whose names changed.

For years, it honored Leonidas Polk, aConfederate general, slave owner and Louisiana’sfirst Episcopal bishop. Then in 2023 it was changed to Fort Johnsonto commemorate Sgt. William HenryJohnson,a Black Medal of Honor recipient who fought with French forces on the front linesof World WarI Now the Army base, again known as Fort Polk, is named after Gen. James

LIVER

Continued frompage1A

Nature Aging, the team found that adrug called 753b cleared out harmful agingcells knownassenescent cells. Sometimes called “zombie cells,” they build up in the liver as people age or develop obesity and diabetes The cells no longer function properly,but they don’t die off. Instead, they linger in the body,increasing inflammation and damaging nearby tissue, which sets the stage for disease.

Senescentcells areakey feature of chronic liver disease, said Liya Pi, apathologist at Tulane School of Medicine and an authorof the study

The drug can clear senescent cells and reduce the development of liver disease to ﬁbrosis and the most common type of liver cancer, she said.

The disease, now called MASLD (metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease), was previously known as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

Fromleft,Kevin Teasley, chief executiveofficer and founder of GEOAcademies; Glennish Howard,counselor; BryanHookfin, dean of culture; and Shirlon Norman, regional chief academic officer,smile as asign went up on Thursdayat5200 BentleyDriveannouncing the arrival of anew school, GEOPrep Baker.GEO is taking up residence in the former White Hills ElementarySchool, located on the northeast edgeofthe Baker city limits. GEOPrepBaker has spent thepast three years at leased space at BethanyChurch’s Baker campus

dresses in Baker were set in motionbythe ongoing state push to take over two “F”-rated schools in Baker Baker’straditional public schools havehovered around thebottom of state academic rankings since 2003, when thecity broke away from the parish school system. The Baker district’s problems started worseningin2014 when the ﬁrst charter schools openedthere

GEO Prep Baker,the city’sthird charter school, opened in 2022 and has about125 studentsinkindergarten to third grade. It is expanding up to eighth grade andexpects to double enrollment thisyear.It will receive its ﬁrst school report card this fall. Its parent organization,Indiana-based GEOAcademies, runs three other charter schools in Baton Rouge and all have “B”letter grades. Meanwhile,Baker Heights Elementary and Baker Middle schools slid to “F” letter grades and stayed there. Last year, the city school district sent the state improvement plans for the schools

but got little feedback. Worrieda statetakeoverwas imminent,the Baker School Board on Feb. 11 voted to close both Baker Heights andBaker Middle andmerge them with itshighest performing school, Park Ridge Magnet Undeterred, thestate’sBoard of Elementary andSecondaryEducation voted to take over the lowperforming schools anyway and selected GEO torun them.

Thestate informed Baker it would soon take over the 5903 Groom Road campus of Baker Middle;Park Ridge is next door and operates in tandem with the neighboring campus. Simultaneously,GEO began advertising the opening of anew school it called BakerAcademy Thenextday,the BakerSchool Board took the dramaticstep of hiring Helix CommunitySchools, kicking off athree-month-long transformation of thedistrict’stwo remaining schools —Baker High and ParkRidge —intocharters That resets the school accountability clock,delayingand perhaps

averting astate takeover

Helix is led by Preston Castille, who is also the elected BESE representative forthe districtthat includesBaker.Castille wasthe only BESE memberwho opposed the state takeovers, expressing concern that they would bankrupt Baker schools.

Castille said theimminent seizure of Baker Middle sparked his interest in ﬁnding an alternative locationfor Park Ridge. Castille said Bethanyleaders reached out to himabout alease afterhearing the news of the state takeovers, thinking GEO would be moving out of their space and occupying Baker Middle.

The takeovers, however,were halted April 21 by State District Judge Tarvald Smith, who ruled thestate lost that option when it failed to accept or reject the improvement plans submitted by Baker. Smith’sdecision,however, is being appealed.

The ruling left GEO in alurch. The charter organization returned to Bethany with anew offer to

renewits lease, but Bethany ultimately opted forHelix.

“This is essentially our HurricaneKatrina because we’ve lost our building,” said GEO founder and CEO Kevin Teasley

When asked about the change in tenants, Bethany Church issued a statement: “Bethany simply made abusiness decision regarding the leasing of the Baker Campus. We wish GEO great success. Bethany is just excited that there is so much interest in theBaker community and we hope that both GEO and Helixare able to make apositive impact on the area.”

On July 7, Helix announced the move on social media: “Our Park Ridge Bethany campus is full of wonderful amenities such as science labs,playrooms, afull-size kitchen andcafeteria, outdoor playgrounds, auditoriums andone of the largest gymnasiums in thecity.” Helix will continue to usethe GroomRoad campus for “electives andextracurriculars,especially those centered around the arts.”

With Bethany no longer an option, GEO ultimatelyfound anew landlord in the East Baton Rouge Parish school system.

Built in 1960, White Hills Elementarywas closed in 2024 and merged with Brownﬁelds Elementary,located south of Baker.White Hills’Bentley Drive campus,just astone’sthrow from the city limits of Baker,has remained vacant since.

The parish School Board is set to lease White Hills to GEO for $23,333 amonth.

GEO’s Teasley thanked school district staff for “being so generous and gracious in working with us on this lease” along with East Baton Rouge Superintendent LaMont Cole, saying that “he moved heaven and earth to help us.”

“Weneed to celebrate the collaborationbetweentraditional schools and charter schools,” Cole said. Cole saidheagreed to help becausehewants allchildrentolearn in asafe environment and get a good education.

“Honestly for me, as unpopular as it is in somecircles, it’s about children,” Cole said. “And when I learned that children werenot going to have aplace to go to school, even though it wasn’tone of our schools, Isaid if Icould do anything to assist, Iwould.”

Email Charles Lussier at clussier@theadvocate.com.

H. Polk, who was awarded the Silver Starfor service in World WarII. The Battle of NewOrleans was fought by American forces against theBritish army and was thelastmajor battle of theWar of 1812.

“By restoring the name Camp Beauregard, we honor alegacy of courageand service that dates backover twocenturies,” Landry said in astatement. “Captain Jacques Toutant Beauregard stood at the front lines in defense of New Orleans during one of our nation’s most deﬁning battles.”

Maj. Gen. ThomasFriloux, adjutant general of theLouisianaNational Guard,said, “We’renamingour premier traininginstallation after an American hero and patriot whofought forthe freedom

It rarely causes symptoms in early stages.

“It’sapoorly recognized disease,”said Dr.George Therapondos, ahepatologist at Ochsner Health who was not involved in the study “Mostpeoplewill nothave symptoms untilthey developliver failure or liver cancer.”

Louisiana has one of the country’s highest rates of liver cancer,with liver and bile duct cancers occurring more often than in nearly any other state, according to federal cancer data. For both mortality and incidence, Louisiana ranks ﬁrst among states over the last ﬁve years.

Therapondos said thecondition is likely even more prevalent due to the state’s high rates of obesityand diabetes,and encouraged screeningfor peoplewith risk factors. Patients with obesity or diabetes withnormal liver enzyme tests may still have the disease.

“Even if your liver tests are normal, you may actually have some disease if you are at risk,” hesaid For most patients, lifestyle changes such as weight loss and managing blood sugar

of thecityofNew Orleans, theState of Louisiana, and the United States of America againsta foreign invader.”

According to the National Guard, Capt.Beauregard was amember of the Third Regimentofthe Louisiana Militia, aprecursor of the National Guard.Thatgroup led the first land engagement in the Battle of New Orleans on Dec. 23, 1814, against Gen.EdwardPackenham and the British army, theGuard said.

“Webelieve that thepatriotism andheroism that he showed is something that all of our Louisiana National Guardsmen can and should aspire to,” Collins said.

Email AlysePfeilatalyse. pfeil@theadvocate.com.

canhelpprevent serious complications. Buttreatment options for advanced disease are limited. One drug is currentlyapproved. In severe cases, aliver transplant maybethe only option. Donor organs remain in short supply The 753b compound is still in early development. It has only been tested in mice, and researcherssay it will be years before it could be ready for human trials. Still, Pi hopesthe drug could eventually be used alongside existing therapies to better manage diseaseprogression.

Email Emily Woodruff at ewoodruff@theadvocate. com.

PROVIDED PHOTO

Immigration crackdown hits nursing homes

BY MATT SEDENSKY

AP national writer

NEW YORK Nursing homes al-

ready struggling to recruit staff are now grappling with President Donald Trump’s attack on one of their few reliable sources of workers: immigration.

Facilities for older adults and disabled people are reporting the sporadic loss of employees who have had their legal status revoked by Trump. But they fear even more dramatic impacts are ahead as pipelines of potential workers slow to a trickle with an overall downturn in legal immigration

“We feel completely beat up right now,” says Deke Cateau, CEO of A.G Rhodes, which operates three nursing homes in the Atlanta area, with one-third of the staff made up of foreign-born people from about three dozen countries.

“The pipeline is getting smaller and smaller.”

Eight of Cateau’s workers are expected to be forced to leave after having their Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, revoked TPS allows people already living in the U.S. to stay and work legally if their home countries are unsafe due to civil unrest or natural disasters and during the Biden administration, the designation was expanded to cover people from a dozen countries, including large numbers from Venezuela and Haiti.

While those with TPS represent a tiny minority of A.G. Rhodes’ 500 staffers Cateau says they will be “very difﬁcult, if not impossible, to replace” and he worries what comes next.

“It may be eight today, but who knows what it’s going to be down the road,” says Cateau, an immigrant himself, who arrived from Trinidad and Tobago 25 years ago.

Nearly one in ﬁve civilian workers in the U.S. is foreign born, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but as in construction, agriculture and manufacturing, immigrants are overrepresented in caregiving roles More than a quarter of an estimated 4 million nursing assistants, home health aides, personal care aides and other so-called direct care workers are foreign born, according to PHI, a nonproﬁt focused on the

caregiving workforce.

The aging of the massive Baby Boom generation is poised to fuel even more demand for caregivers, both in institutional settings and in individuals’ homes. BLS projects more growth among home health and personal care aides than any other job, with some 820,000 new positions added by 2032.

Nursing homes, assisted-living facilities, home health agencies and other such businesses were counting on immigrants to ﬁll many of those roles, so Trump’s return to the White House and his administration’s attack on nearly all forms of immigration has sent a chill throughout the industry

Katie Smith Sloan, CEO of LeadingAge, which represents nonproﬁt care facilities, says homes around the country have been affected by the immigration tumult Some have reported employees who have stopped coming to work, fearful of a raid, even though they are legally in the country Others have workers who are staying home with children they have kept out of school because they worry about roundups. Many others see a slowdown of job applicants

“This is just like a punch in the

gut,” she says.

Rachel Blumberg, CEO of the Toby and Leon Cooperman Sinai Residences in Boca Raton, Florida, has already lost 10 workers whose permission to stay in the U.S. came under a program known as humanitarian parole, which had been granted to people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela She is slated to lose 30 more in the coming weeks with the end of TPS for Haitians.

“I think it’s the tip of the iceberg,” says Blumberg, forecasting further departures of employees who may not themselves be deported, but whose spouse or parent is.

Blumberg got less than 24 hours’ notice when her employees lost their work authorization, setting off a scramble to ﬁll shifts. She has already boosted salaries and referral bonuses but says it will be difﬁcult to replace not just aides, but maintenance workers, dishwashers and servers.

“Unfortunately, Americans are not drawn to applying and working in the positions that we have available,” she says.

Front-line caregivers are overwhelmingly female and a majority are members of minority groups,

Continued from page 1A

the Supreme Court’s intervention to let Trump’s plan move ahead.

“Today, the Supreme Court again conﬁrmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about stafﬁng levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies,” McMahon said in a statement.

A lawyer for the Massachusetts cities and education groups that sued over the plan said the lawsuit will continue, adding no court has yet ruled that what the administration wants to do is legal.

“Without explaining to the American people its reasoning, a majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have dealt a devastating blow to this nation’s promise of public education for all children. On its shadow docket, the Court has yet again ruled to overturn the decision of two lower courts without argument,” Skye Perryman president and CEO of De-

mocracy Forward, said in a statement.

The Supreme Court has handed Trump one victory after another in his effort to remake the federal government, after lower courts have found the administration’s actions probably violate federal law Last week, the justices cleared the way for Trump’s plan to signiﬁcantly reduce the size of the federal workforce. On the education front, the high court has previously allowed cuts in teacher-training grants to go forward Separately on Monday, more than 20 states sued the administration over billions of dollars in frozen education funding for after-school care, summer programs and more.

Education Department employees who were targeted by the layoffs have been on paid leave since March, according to a union that represents some of the agency’s staff. Joun’s order had prevented the department from fully terminating them, though none had been allowed to return to work, according to the American Federation of Government Employees

Local 252. Without Joun’s order, the workers would have been terminated in early June.

The Education Department had said earlier in June that it was “actively assessing how to reintegrate” the employees. A department email asked them to share whether they had gained other employment, saying the request was meant to “support a smooth and informed return to duty.”

The current case involves two consolidated lawsuits that said Trump’s plan amounted to an illegal closure of the Education Department.

One suit was filed by the Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts along with the American Federation of Teachers and other education groups. The other legal action was filed by a coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general. The suits argued that layoffs left the department unable to carry out responsibilities required by Congress, including duties to support special education, distribute financial aid and enforce civil

according to PHI, earning an average of just $16.72 hourly in 2023.

Long-term care homes saw an exodus of workers as COVID made an already-challenging workplace even more so. Some facilities were beginning to see employment normalize to pre-pandemic levels just as the immigration crackdown hit, though industrywide, there is still a massive shortage of workers.

Some in the industry have watched in frustration as Trump lamented how businesses including farming and hospitality could be hurt by his policies, wondering why those who clean hotel rooms or pick tomatoes deserve more attention than those who care for elders. Beyond rescinded work authorizations for people living in the U.S., care homes are having difﬁculty getting visas approved for registered nurses and licensed practical nurses they recruit abroad.

What used to be a simple process now stretches so long that candidates reconsider the U.S. altogether, says Mark Sanchez, chief operating ofﬁcer of United Hebrew, a nursing home in New Rochelle, New York.

“There are lines upon lines upon lines,” says Sanchez, “and now

they’re saying, ‘I’m going to go to Canada’ and ‘I’m going to go to Germany and they’re welcoming me with open arms.’”

Looking around a facility with a majority-immigrant staff, the son of Filipino immigrants wonders where his future recruits will come from.

“I don’t have ICE coming in my door and taking my people,” Sanchez says, “but the pipeline that was ﬂowing before is now coming in dribs and drabs.”

Long-term care workers are routinely lured away not just by hospitals and doctors’ ofﬁces, but restaurants, stores and factories. Half of the average nursing home’s staff turns over each year, according to federal data, making the attraction and retention of every employee vital to their operation.

Robin Wolzenburg of LeadingAge in Wisconsin began working to place an influx of people from Afghanistan after the U.S pulled out its final troops four years ago and thousands of refugees arrived in her state. Care homes began hiring the refugees and were so delighted with them, some facilities began hiring refugees who arrived from Ukraine, Somalia and Congo. Though many homes had employee retention rates around 30%, Wolzenburg said the figure was above 90% with refugees.

Trump has halted most refugee admissions, meaning Wolzenburg’s successful outreach program has no new arrivals to target.

“It’s been really devastating,” Wolzenburg says. “Our communities that were actively working with the resettlement agencies are not seeing those referrals to longterm care like we were. There’s no refugees coming in.”

Lynne Katman, the founder of Juniper Communities, which runs 21 facilities across five states, says it’s hard enough to find the right workers with a passion for older adults. Now, just as homes gird for an influx of residents brought on by the country’s demographic shift, they’re facing another challenge to a stable workforce.

“The work is hard. It’s not always been the highest paying job that one can get,” she says. “But many of the immigrants who actually have chosen this work consider caregiving a noble profession.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO By JOSE LUIS MAGANA Clsoing the Department of Education was one of President Donald Trump’s biggest campaign promises.

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By REBECCA BLACKWELL

A woman uses a walker on July 4 as she exits an assisted-living building at the Toby and Leon Cooperman Sinai Residences in Boca Raton, Fla

17% duty imposed on Mexican tomatoes

The U.S. government said Monday it is placing a 17% duty on most fresh Mexican tomatoes after negotiations ended without an agreement to avert the tariff.

Proponents said the import tax will help rebuild the shrinking U.S. tomato industry and ensure that produce eaten in the U.S. is also grown there. Mexico supplies around 70% of U.S. tomato market, up from 30% two decades ago, according to the Florida Tomato Exchange.

Opponents, including U.S. companies that grow tomatoes in Mexico, said the tariff will make fresh tomatoes more expensive for U.S. buyers.

In announcing its withdrawal from the Tomato Suspension Agreement, the Commerce Department said in late April that it had been “flooded with comments” from U.S. tomato growers who wanted better protection from Mexican imports

But others, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Restaurant Association, had called on the Commerce Department to reach an agreement with Mexico.

Ice cream makers to drop artificial dyes

Ice cream makers representing about 90% of the U.S. supply of the frozen treat have pledged to remove artiﬁcial dyes from their products in less than three years, federal health ofﬁcials said Monday

The move is the latest voluntary effort by food manufacturers to heed calls from the Trump administration to remove synthetic dyes over concerns about potential health effects. In recent weeks, companies including Nestle, Kraft Heinz and General Mills said they would pull artificial colors from their foods, too.

“This is a Renaissance moment for health in America,” U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary said at a news conference.

About 40 makers of ice cream and frozen dairy desserts said they would remove seven petroleum-based dyes from their products by 2028, according to Michael Dykes, president of the International Dairy Foods Association.

The colors are Red 3, Red 40, Green 3, Blue 1, Blue 2, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6. The trade group wouldn’t identify the ﬁrms, although Turkey Hill Dairy chief executive Andy Jacobs joined the gathering.

Starbucks workers asked to return to HQ

Starbucks is requiring some remote workers to return to its headquarters and increasing the number of days that corporate employees are required to work in an ofﬁce. In a letter to employees posted Monday, Starbucks Chair and CEO Brian Niccol said corporate employees would need to be in the ofﬁce four days a week starting in early October instead of three days a week.

The Seattle-based company said that all corporate “people leaders” must be based in either Seattle or Toronto within 12 months. That is a change from February, when it required vice presidents to relocate to Seattle or Toronto.

Starbucks said individual employees working under those leaders would not be asked to relocate. But the company said all hiring for future roles and lateral moves will require employees to be based in Seattle or Toronto.

Niccol said affected workers who choose not to relocate will be eligible for a onetime voluntary exit program with a cash payment.

U.S. manufacturers are stuck in a rut

BY PAUL WISEMAN AP economics writer

WASHINGTON Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much, but they share a conviction that the government should help American manufacturers, one way or another Democratic President Joe Biden handed out subsidies to chipmakers and electric vehicle manufacturers. Republican President Donald Trump is building a wall of import taxes — tariffs — around the U.S. economy to protect domestic industry from foreign competition.

Yet American manufacturing has been stuck in a rut for nearly three years. And it remains to be seen whether the trend will reverse itself.

The U.S. Labor Department reports that American factories shed 7,000 jobs in June for the second month in a row Manufacturing employment is on track to drop for the third straight year

The Institute for Supply Management, an association of purchasing managers, reported that manufacturing activity in the United States shrank in June for the fourth straight month. In fact, U.S. factories have been in decline for 30 of the 32 months since October 2022, according to ISM.

“The past three years have been a real slog for manufacturing,” said Eric Hagopian, CEO of Pilot Precision Products, a maker of industrial cutting tools in South Deerfield, Massachusetts. “We didn’t get destroyed like we did in the recession of 2008. But we’ve been in this stagnant, sort of stationary environment.”

Big economic factors contributed to the slowdown: A surge in inﬂation, arising from the unex-

U.S lawmakers focusing on pro-crypto legislation

BY ALAN SUDERMAN AP business writer

Bitcoin continued its rapid climb and hit another all-time high Monday as U.S. lawmakers begin a week focused on passing pro-crypto legislation.

Data from CoinMarketCap showed bitcoin climbed above $123,000 early Monday, up from about $108,000 only a week ago

The world’s oldest and most popular cryptocurrency is currently the ﬁfth-most valuable asset class in the world at $2.4 trillion, giving it a higher market cap than Amazon. The enthusiasm for bitcoin comes as the U.S. House is set to take up several pieces of cryptocurrency-related legislation in what’s been dubbed “crypto

pectedly strong economic recovery from COVID-19, raised factory expenses and prompted the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates 11 times in 2022 and 2023. The higher borrowing costs added to the strain. Government policy was meant to help.

Biden’s tax incentives for semiconductor and clean energy production triggered a factory-building boom — investment in manufacturing facilities more than tripled from April 2021 through October 2024 that seemed to herald a coming surge in factory production and hiring. Eventually anyway

But the factory investment spree has faded as the incoming Trump administration launched trade wars and, working with Congress, ended Biden’s subsidies for green energy Now, predicts Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, “manufacturing production will continue to ﬂatline.”

“If production is ﬂat, that suggests manufacturing employment will continue to slide,” Zandi said. “Manufacturing is likely to suffer a recession in the coming year.”

Meanwhile, Trump is attempting to protect U.S. manufacturers — and to coax factories to relocate and produce in America by imposing tariffs on goods made overseas. He slapped 50% taxes on steel and aluminum, 25% on autos and auto parts, 10% on many other imports.

In some ways, Trump’s tariffs can give U.S. factories an edge. Chris Zuzick, vice president at Waukesha Metal Products, said the Sussex, Wisconsin-based manufacturer is facing stiff competition for a big contract in Texas. A foreign company offers much lower prices. But “when you throw the tariff

on, it gets us closer,” Zuzick said “So that’s definitely a situation where it’s beneﬁcial.”

But American factories import and use foreign products, too — machinery, chemicals, raw materials like steel and aluminum. Taxing those inputs can drive up costs and make U.S. producers less competitive in world markets.

Consider steel. Trump’s tariffs don’t just make imported steel more expensive. By putting the foreign competition at a disadvantage, the tariffs allow U.S. steelmakers to raise prices and they have. U.S.-made steel was priced at $960 per metric ton as of June 23 more than double the world export price of $440 per ton, according to industry monitor SteelBenchmarker In fact, U.S. steel prices are so high that Pilot Precision Products has continued to buy the steel it needs from suppliers in Austria and France — and pay Trump’s tariff.

Trump has also created considerable uncertainty by repeatedly tweaking and rescheduling his tariffs. Just before new import taxes were set to take effect on dozens of countries on July 9, for example, the president pushed the deadline back to Aug. 1 to allow more time for negotiation with U.S. trading partners.

The ﬂip-ﬂops have left factories, suppliers and customers bewildered about where things stand. Manufacturers voiced their complaints in the ISM survey: “Customers do not want to make commitments in the wake of massive tariff uncertainty,” a fabricated metal products company said.

“Tariffs continue to cause confusion and uncertainty for long-term procurement decisions,” added a computer and electronics ﬁrm.

Wall Street holds near its record amid tariff doubts

BY STAN CHOE AP business writer

NEW

week” in Congress. Lawmakers have been under pressure from President Donald Trump and the big-spending crypto lobby to pass legislation quickly That includes a bill passed last month by the Senate that would regulate a type of cryptocurrency known as stablecoins. The House is also set to take up a cryptocurrency market structure legislation that is far more sweeping. Trump, once a skeptic of the industry, has vowed in his second term to make the U.S. the global capital of crypto. Meanwhile, he and his family have moved aggressively into nearly every corner of the industry: mining operations, billion-dollar bitcoin purchases, a newly minted stablecoin and a Trump-branded meme coin. The crypto industry has rapidly become a major player in Washington after feeling unfairly targeted by the Biden administration. The industry spent huge amounts on last year’s elections and has been spending heavily on

lobbying and other inﬂuence efforts this year

Bitcoin has seen a signiﬁcant rebound since April, when it brieﬂy dipped below $75,000.

Spot bitcoin ETFs are becoming increasingly popular since launching last year and several publicly traded companies have made using debt and stock sales to buy bitcoin their primary business strategy

Created in response to the 2008 ﬁnancial crisis, bitcoin has taken a highly volatile path to mainstream acceptance. Its backers say the asset is like a “digital gold” that can act as a hedge against central bank and government malfeasance. Only 21 million bitcoins will ever be created.

“Bitcoin’s price is ﬁnally catching up to what’s been building under the surface,” said Adam Back, CEO of the crypto company Blockstream. “This is institutional demand aligning with bitcoin’s fundamentals, and a ﬁxed supply doing what it was designed to do.”

U.S. stock indexes hung near their records on Monday following President Donald Trump’s latest updates to his tariffs, as speculation continues on Wall Street that he may ultimately back down on them. The S&P 500 edged up by 0.1% to pull within 0.2% of its all-time high set on Thursday The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 88 points, or 0.2%, and the Nasdaq

climbed 0.3% to set a

Stock indexes elsewhere around the

were mixed in their

rst

after Trump announced plans over the weekend for 30% tariffs on goods from Mexico and the European Union. They won’t take effect until Aug. 1, the same deadline that Trump announced last week for updated tax rates on imports from Japan, South Korea and a dozen other countries The latest postponements for Trump’s tariffs allow more time for him to reach trade deals with other countries that could lower the tariff rates and prevent pain for international trade. They also feed into speculation that Trump may ultimately back down on his tariffs if they end up creating too much damage for the economy and for ﬁnancial markets. If Trump were to enact all his proposed tariffs on Aug. 1, they would raise the risk of a recession. That would not only hurt U.S voters but also raise the pressure on the U.S. government’s debt level relative to the economy’s size, particularly after Washington approved big tax cuts that will add to the deﬁcit.

“We therefore believe that the administration is using this latest round of tariff escalation to maximize its negotiating leverage and that it will ultimately de-escalate, especially if there is a new bout of heightened bond and stock market volatility,” according to Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, global head of equities at UBS Global Wealth Management.

“As usual, there are many conditions and clauses that can get these rates reduced,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. “That’s probably why the market might not like the tariff talk, but it’s not panicking about it either.” For the time being, all the uncertainty around tariffs could help keep markets unsteady This upcoming week has several potential ﬂashpoints that could shake things.

On Tuesday will come the latest reading on inﬂation across the United States. Economists expect it to show inﬂation accelerated to 2.6% last month from 2.4% in May

Companies are also lining up to report how they performed during the spring. JPMorgan Chase and several other huge banks will report their latest quarterly results on Tuesday followed by Johnson & Johnson on Wednesday and PepsiCo on Thursday Fastenal, a distributor of industrial and construction supplies, on Monday reported a stronger proﬁt for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its stock rose 4.2%, though it also said that market conditions remain sluggish Shares of Kenvue rose 2.2% after the former division of Johnson & Johnson said CEO Thibaut Mongon is stepping down. Kenvue, the maker of Listerine and Band-Aid brands, is in the midst of a strategic review of its options, “including ways to simplify the company’s portfolio and how it operates,” according to Larry Merlo, the board’s chair Waters slumped 13.8% after saying it had agreed to merge with Becton, Dickinson and Co.’s biosciences and diagnostic solutions business in a deal valued at roughly $17.5 billion. In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.42% from 4.43% late Friday In stock markets abroad, indexes fell across much of Europe. Germany’s

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO By JULIA DEMAREE NIKHINSON

President Donald Trump visits with workers as he tours U.S. Steel Corp.’s Mon Valley Works-Irvin plant in West Mifflin, Pa. Administrations both Republican and Democratic are in agreement that American manufacturers need help.

More than 20 states sue over frozen education funds

BY BIANCA VÁZQUEZ TONESS Associated Press

EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I.

— More than 20 states sued President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday over billions of dollars in frozen education funding for after-school care, summer programs and more Some of the withheld money funds after-school and summer programming at Boys & Girls Clubs, the YMCA or public schools, attended by 1.4 million children and teenagers nationwide. Congress set aside money for the programs to provide academic support, enrichment and child care to mostly low-income families. But Trump’s administration recently froze the funding, saying it wants to ensure programs align with the Republican president’s priorities.

Led by California, the lawsuit alleges withholding the money violates the Constitution and several federal laws. Many low-income families will lose access to after-school programs if the money isn’t released soon, according to the suit. In some states, school restarts in late July and early August. The Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Darleen Reyes drove through a downpour last week to take her son to a free Boys & Girls Club day camp in East Providence, Rhode Island. She told camp administrators the ﬂash ﬂood warning would have kept her away but her son insisted on going.

Before kissing his mother goodbye, Aiden Cazares, 8, explained to a reporter, “I wanted to see my friends and not just sit at home.” Then he ran off to play In Rhode Island, the state stepped in with funding to keep the summer programs running, according to the East Providence club, and the state has joined the federal lawsuit. Other Boys & Girls Clubs supported by the grants have found ways to keep open their summer programs, said Sara Leutzinger, vice president for communications for the Boys & Girls Club of America. But there isn’t the same hope for the after-school programming for the fall.

Some of the 926 Boys & Girls Clubs nationwide that run summer and after-school programs stand to close if the Trump administration doesn’t

release the money in the next three to five weeks, Leutzinger said. The clubs receive funding from the federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers program

The YMCA and Save the Children say many of the centers they run are also at risk of shuttering.

“Time is of the essence,” said Christy Gleason, executive director of the political arm of Save the Children, which provides after-school programming for 41 schools in rural areas in Washington state and across the South, where school will begin as soon as August. “It’s not too late to make a decision so the kids who really need this still have it.”

Schools in Republican-led areas are particularly affected by the freeze in federal education grants. Ninety-one of the 100 school dis-

Fire that destroyed Grand Canyon lodge allowed to burn for days

BY ROSS D FRANKLIN and JOHN SEEWER Associated Press

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK,Ariz. — A wildﬁre that tore through a historic Grand Canyon lodge and raged out of control Monday had been allowed to burn for days before erupting over the weekend, raising scrutiny over the National Park Service’s decision not to aggressively attack the ﬁre right away

The wildfire along the canyon’s more isolated North Rim, where most visitors don’t venture, was burning quickly with no containment, fire officials said. No injuries had been reported, but more than 70 structures were lost, including a visitors center and several cabins.

At first, the fire didn’t raise alarms after igniting from a lightning strike on July 4 Four days later, the Park Service said the fire was being allowed to burn to benefit the land and fire crews were keeping close watch

“There are no threats to infrastructure or public safety at this time,” the park said on Facebook.

Then three days later, on Friday, fire officials and the park service sent out warnings to “evacuate immediately” as the fire grew by nearly eight times within a day to more than 1.4 square miles.

Arizona Gov Katie Hobbs called for a federal investigation into the Park Service’s handling of the ﬁre.

“The federal government chose to manage that ﬁre as a controlled burn during the driest, hottest part of the Arizona summer,” the governor said in a social media post Sunday. She will be meeting with leadership in the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior soon to learn more about the decisions made in managing the wildfire, Hobbs’ spokesperson Christian Slater said in an email.

Authoritiesfirstuseda“confineandcontain” strategy but shifted to aggressive suppression as the fire — one of two that firefighters are dealing with on the North Rim rapidly grew because of hot temperatures, low humidity

and strong wind gusts, ﬁre ofﬁcials said.

The Associated Press left phone and email messages Monday with a park service spokesperson seeking comment about how the ﬁre was managed.

The fire destroyed the Grand Canyon Lodge, the only lodging inside the park’s North Rim, along with employee housing and a wastewater treatment plant, park Superintendent Ed Keable said Sunday Park ofﬁcials have closed access for the rest of the year to the North Rim, a less popular area that draws only about 10% of the Grand Canyon’s millions of annual visitors.

Hikers in the area were evacuated and rafters on the Colorado River which snakes through the canyon, were told to bypass Phantom Ranch, an outpost of cabins and dormitories. Trails to the area from the canyon’s North and South rims also were closed

From the air plumes of black smoke could be seen rising above the canyon walls and haze ﬁlled parts of the park. From the park’s South Rim, visitors took pictures on Monday of the smoke blanketing the canyon in the distance.

The fire flared up Saturday night, fueled by high winds. Firefighters managed to make progress, using aerial fire retardant drops near the lodge before they had to pull back because of a chlorine gas leak at the water treatment plant, the park service said.

Hikers also were evacuated over concern that the poisonous, heavier-than-air gas could sink downhill, into the canyon.

White House says it won’t publish climate report on NASA website

BY SETH BORENSTEIN AP science writer

WASHINGTON The Trump administration on Monday took another step to make it harder to ﬁnd major, legally mandated scientiﬁc assessments of how climate change is endangering the nation and its people. Earlier this month, the official government websites that hosted the authoritative, peer-reviewed national climate assessments went dark. Such sites tell state and local governments and the public what to expect in their backyards from a warming world and how best to adapt to it. At the time, the White House

said NASA would house the reports to comply with a 1990 law that requires the reports, which the space agency said it planned to do But on Monday, NASA announced that it aborted those plans.

“The USGCRP (the government agency that oversees and used to host the report) met its statutory requirements by presenting its reports to Congress NASA has no legal obligations to host globalchange.gov’s data,” NASA Press Secretary Bethany Stevens said in an email. That means no data from the assessment or the government science ofﬁce that coordinated the work will be

on NASA, she said. On July 3, NASA put out a statement that said: “All preexisting reports will be hosted on the NASA website, ensuring continuity of reporting.”

“This document was written for the American people, paid for by the taxpayers, and it contains vital information we need to keep ourselves safe in a changing climate, as the disasters that continue to mount demonstrate so tragically and clearly,” said Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. She is chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy and co-author of several past national climate assessments.

so we can ensure the success of our students.”

The Ofﬁce of Management and Budget said some grants supported left-wing causes, pointing to services for immigrants in the country illegally or LGBTQ+ inclusion efforts.

But Congress’ appropriation of the money was in a bill signed by Trump himself, said Maurice “Mo” Green, North Carolina’s Democratic superintendent of public education. “To now suggest that, for some reason, this money is somehow or another needing review because of someone’s agenda, I think is deeply troubling,” Green told reporters Monday after North Carolina joined the federal lawsuit.

subtraction, learned about pollination, watched a nature video and ate club-provided chicken nuggets. Veteran teachers from his school corrected him when he spoke without raising his hand and offered commonsense advice when a boy in his group said something inappropriate.

tricts that receive the most money per student from four frozen grant programs are in Republican congressional districts, according to an analysis from New America, a left-leaning think tank. New America’s analysis used funding levels reported in 2022 in 46 states.

Republican officials have been among the educators criticizing the grant freeze.

“I deeply believe in fiscal responsibility, which means evaluating the use of funds and seeking out efficiencies, but also means being responsible releasing funds already approved by Congress and signed by President Trump,” said Georgia schools superintendent Richard Woods, an elected Republican. “In Georgia, we’re getting ready to start the school year so I call on federal funds to be released

In North Carolina, about 40 schools are already in session, so the state is already trying to ﬁgure out ways to keep programs going, using state and local money, along with some federal money that has not expired.

The freeze affects programs including mental health services, science and math education, and support for students learning English, North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson said, with the most severe effects in smaller, rural school districts. The freeze could also lead to approximately 1,000 teachers and staff being laid off, Jackson said.

At the East Providence summer camp, Aiden, a rising third grader, played tag, built structures with magnetic tiles, played a fastpaced game with the other kids to review addition and

“When someone says something inappropriate, you don’t repeat it,” teacher Kayla Creighton told the boys between answering their questions about horseﬂies and honeybees. Indeed, it’s hard to find a more middle-of-the road organization in this country than the Boys & Girls Club. Just last month, a Republican and a Democrat sponsored a resolution in the U.S. House celebrating the 165-year-old organization as a “beacon of hope and opportunity.” The Defense Department awarded the club $3 million in 1991 to support children left behind when their parents deployed for the Persian Gulf. And ever since, the Boys & Girls Club has created clubs on military installations to support the children of service members. Military families can sign up their kids for free.

“I suspect they will realize that most of those grants are ﬁne and will release them,” said Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education policy think tank, speaking of the Trump administration’s review of the 21st Century Community Learning Center grants.

Powell seeks watchdog review of

overhaul of Fed building

BY CHRISTOPHER RUGABGER AP economics writer

WASHINGTON Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has asked an inspector general to review the cost of the central bank’s building renovations that White House officials have attacked as “ostentatious.”

A spokesperson for the inspector general, an independent watchdog, conﬁrmed the request and declined further comment. The request was previously reported by Axios.

The Fed has been renovating two of its ofﬁce buildings in Washington for several years at a current cost estimate of about $2.5 billion, $700 million more than originally expected. The project was first approved by the Fed’s governing board in 2017. Trump administration ofﬁcials have seized on the expense and some alleged amenities in the remodeled buildings to extend their criticism of Powell, whom the president has attacked for not reducing the Fed’s short-term rate.

On Thursday, Russ Vought, the president’s top budget adviser, said that President Donald Trump is

“extremely troubled” about the “ostentatious overhaul” and suggested that it may be violating local building rules.

The letter represented a sharp escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to gain greater control over the Fed, an independent agency charged with seeking stable prices and maximum employment Independence from day-today politics has long been seen as a critical element in the Fed’s ability to achieve those goals.

Trump has repeatedly demanded that Powell cut the short-term interest rate that the central bank controls, in part because the president believes it will lower the government’s borrowing costs.

Trump in April threatened to ﬁre Powell, though he later backed off those threats after stock prices fell in response. The Supreme Court has since signaled that the president doesn’t have the authority to remove the Fed chair over a disagreement about interest rates.

The law governing the Fed does say that the chair can be fired “for cause,” such as wrongdoing by the chair or neglect of duty Powell’s

term as chair ends in May 2026.

Vought’s letter criticizes Powell’s management of the Fed, suggesting that the administration could be trying to build a case to remove the chair for cause.

“I still think it’s unlikely, but not impossible that Trump would try to replace Powell before his term was up,” Stephen Moore, a former adviser to Trump and an economist at the Heritage Foundation, said. The letter charges that the Fed altered its building plans without notifying a Washington planning commission, known as the National Capital Planning Commission, and may be in violation of its rules. Trump recently appointed two close aides to the commission. Over the weekend, the Fed said in a post of “frequently asked questions” on its website about the building project that it is “not subject to the direction” of the commission and has only complied with its directives voluntarily The Fed also said that it is accountable to the Senate and House of Representatives, and is also overseen by the independent inspector general, not the White House.

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By SOPHIE PARK

Girls read an Amelia Bedelia book Thursday during the East Providence Boys & Girls Club Summer Camp at Emma G. Whiteknact Elementary School in Providence, R.I.

PHOTO PROVIDED By CAREN CARNEy

Smoke rises Thursday as fires burn at the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

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LOUISIANA AT LARGE

Reader marks100 years

Bob Stuart was born July 14, 1925.

For most of his 100 years, Stuart has started his day withthe morning paper.The Advocate began in 1842, but on the very day he was born, it became a morning paper Reading the paper is justone part of his morning routine. At 11 a.m., he heads to theBaton Rouge Country Club to exercise.

“I do that about an hour and ahalf of exercising each day —onabicycle, treadmill and weights,” the centenarian said. “AndIlet thetrainers tell me what to do, but they don’tstay there hovering over me.”

His history with the newspaper includes astint as adelivery boy backinthe late 1930s.

He picked up his papers at the City News Stand, on the corner of Third Street and NorthBoulevard.

“I had the State Capitol on my route,and Igot 60 paid-up subscriptions,”hesaid.

Stuart has been alive for just over 40% of the nation’shistory

Whenasked for advice on navigating these troubled times, Stuart just shakes his head.

“I’ve been asked this question so many times,” he said, with a chuckle.

His guidance for others echoes what his mother told him.

He has lived his life by her advice and believes it could come in handy to others.

“My mother said, ‘Bob, stay in the middle of the road. Whatever you do, stay in the middle of the road,’”hesaid. “And, Ialways did.”

His interpretation of his mother’sinstructionscenterson moderation —not veering too far to either extreme in thought, behavior or lifestyle. Through the years, he has seen her advice as areminder to avoid risky extremes, whether recklessness or rigidity,tostay grounded and be thoughtful, measured in decisions.

In short: be steady

He says that whenever he has found himself getting in trouble of any sort, or overindulging, thanks to his mother’sadvice, he knew it was time to reevaluate and get back in line Witnesstohistory

He remembers so many major newsevents that most people alive today only know about from history class —the Great Depression and Pearl Harbor,to name afew

“The Depression news was always there,” he said. “But we didn’tknowasmuch about it then. Our parents didn’tlet us know that we were poor.”

During the Depression, he recalls, the land where the State Police headquarters now stands was home to people who had lost everything —well-educated individuals who had left their families and lived there in desperation. Stuart was one of seven children. When his twin brother joined the Navy in the summer of 1943, he joined the Merchant Marines. That service did not qualify him for the GI Bill once he was out. Later,hewas drafted to serve in Korea, where he worked in counterintelligence. He graduated from Baton Rouge High and LSU, where he was acheerleader at both Once home, Stuart went to work for Buquet and LeBlanc, Inc., GeneralContractors, acompany he eventually owned. He retired in the late 1980s and consulted into the early 2000s. One of his strengths, according

ä See RISHER, page 2B

METRO

Councilagain rejectsbudget

Gonzales memberscitemovetoprivatize positions

The tension over Riley’sadministration has been growing over the course of his ﬁrst sixmonths in ofﬁce.

BY CHRISTOPHERCARTWRIGHT

Staff writer

Six months into Gonzales Mayor TimRiley’sterm, his administrationisinastandoff with some City Council members over theproposed general fundbudget. On Monday —44days into the city’sfiscal year withoutanapproved budget the council again voted against the proposal.

around $22.3 million in expenditures for the ﬁre andpolice departments, city administration, general government, sanitation, recreation and streets and drainage.

The five-membercouncilfirst rejected the general fund budget, which is funded mostly by property and sales taxes, at its May 27 meeting. The budget plan, which remainsunchanged fromthe time it was ﬁrstvoted down,includes

Louisiana lawrequirescitiesto operateathalf the previous year’s budget until anew one is ratiﬁed.

No cuts have been madesince the endofthe previous ﬁscal year on May 31, but with only $11 million thecitywould have to pare back in the future if anew budget isn’t approved by the council, according to the city administration.

Much of thedispute stems from council concerns about where the money will go,especially following multiple longtime staff departuresfromCity Hall, including theinterim cityclerk.

Rileyhas yettonominate areplacement cityclerk for the coun-

ciltovote on. Instead, contractors replaced engineering and ﬁnancial staff rolesearlierthis year with thecouncil’sconsent. But someare questioning rising costs andadditionalrequests to privatizemore positions.

At Monday’smeeting, Riley introduced the same general fund budget submitted in May.Council member Kirk Boudreauxwas absent,but in astatement read by council member Tyler Turner he statedhewas on avacation planned more than ayear in advance. With Turner and council member Terri Lambert voting it down again, the end of the dispute remainsunclear

Council members Cynthia Gray Jamesand EddieWilliamsvoted in favor of the budget, tying the vote andcausing the measure to fail again.

Mississippi sprints

On June 26, Boudreauxand Turner released aletter saying that “there has been adramatic change in various vital positions in the administration.”

They pointed to thedepartures of the city’sengineer,attorney, code enforcement officer and finance director since November The financedirector also served as the interim city clerk. Those positions have now gone to private companies at themayor’srequest and with the council’s approval. At the Jan. 13 meeting, they approved All South Consulting Engineers to fill the city engineer role nottoexceed $250,000 That contractor subsequently assumed control of planning and zoning following astaff departure

La.observatory makes spacebreakthrough

Site detectsbiggest blackholemerger ever observed

BYCLAIREGRUNEWALD Staff writer

It took lessthanasecond for the space observatory hidden in Louisianawoods to detect the mostmassiveblackholeeverobserved Only one-tenth of asecond to be exact.

That’show long it took for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-WaveObservatory in Livingston to detect the collision of twomassiveblackholes creating abinary black hole with the largest mass observed in space.

LIGO detectors madehistory in 2015 forthe first timewhen it detected gravitational waves from blackholes.Since that ﬁrst detection, it hasdetected about 300 black hole mergers. The merging of thetwo black holes well beyond the Milky Way galaxy createdablack hole that is approximately 225times the massofthe sun, according to

LIGO. This mass puts it in arare category of blackholes calledintermediate-mass black holes. The most massive black hole merger previously detectedin2021had a total mass of 140 times of the sun. LIGOscientists officially announced thisdiscovery Monday in Glasgow at ajoint conference on relativity and gravitation, andgravitational waves. LIGO Livingston with its twin detectorinHanford,Washington,detected theblack hole merger in November 2023. After studying themerger,LIGO wantedtowait to announce it at theconference in frontofscientistsaroundthe world, said LIGO Livingston head Joseph Giaime Giaimesaid it’s surprising to see black holes have this much mass.

“There’ssometheories that say it’sdifﬁcult to make ablack hole from an old star in thatsize,” he said. Ablack hole canformfromthe death of amassive star, but it can be difficultfor it to carrythat much mass, Giaime said.

The 0.1-second signal stood out

One man was killed and another person was critically injured after an early morning shooting on South Sherwood Forest Boulevard,BatonRouge police said. Byron Howard, 44, was in the driver’sseat of acar at 2:30 a.m. Sunday in the 6000 block of South Sherwood Forest Boulevard when he anda passenger were shot multiple times, policesaid. Both were transported to the hospital, where Howard died of hisinjuries. The othervictim is in critical condition,police said Theinvestigation is ongoing. Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to call the Baton Rouge Police Department’s ViolentCrime Unit at (225)3894869 or Crime Stoppers at (225) 344-7867. Gonzales woman, 56, killed in boat crash Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheriesagents areinvestigating aboating death that occurred Friday in

Iberville Parish. According to the agency’s news release, the body of JenniferHarrison, 56, of Gonzales, wasrecovered fromthe East Upper Grand Rivernear Plaquemine. Authoritiessaidagents received acall about midnight about asingle-boat crash in the area. Preliminary information suggests that Harrison wasa passenger in an 18-footboat with another driver during the incident. At some point between 11 p.m. andmidnight, the boat struck alog in the river,and ejectedbothHarrisonand the driver into thewater,the release says.

Both Harrison and the driver were recovered from the water

The driverwas airlifted to a hospital, while Harrison’sbody wasturned over to the Iberville Parish Coroner’s Office to determine an official cause of death, the release added. Wildlife andFisheries’ Enforcement Division is leading an investigation on theincident. Officials said it is unclear whether Harrison or the driver

STAFF PHOTO By JAVIER GALLEGOS

The Hammond High School football team sprints up the Mississippi River leveeduring practice on Thursday

Belgian company building electric cranes in La.

BY STEPHEN MARCANTEL Staff writer

The Belgian company E-Crane continues to grow its Louisiana customer base

The company recently ﬁnished a second E4000 electric equilibrium crane, dubbed the Creole King. The largest-of-its-kind crane is going to a Louisiana-based company, Cooper Consolidated, said E-Crane U.S. CEO Steve Osborne.

But other Louisiana companies have contracted with E-Crane ever since the company planted its feet in the Port of Iberia in December 2023.

Five-S Group Rigid Constructors and Patriot Construction, which all have space in the Port of Iberia, are purchasing six cranes. The company also has contracts in Mississippi.

The Acadiana region was a great ﬁt for the company, Osborne said “There’s a broader workforce for supporting industrial here, because you have a big oil and gas industry, you have ports, you have waterways,” Osborne said. “Compared to where we’re based in central Ohio, it’s more of a real farming

RISHER

Continued from page 1B

to his daughter Sally Stuart Morgan, is his ability to look to the future

“He is always looking forward and his aim is true,” she said.

The Stuart Special For the last few weeks, Stuart has been looking forward to his 100th birthday party, which happened Sunday afternoon at the Baton Rouge Country Club.

More than 250 people came to celebrate the milestone birthday with the Stuart family, including folks he hired in the 1970s at Buquet and LeBlanc.

Several guests mentioned the birthday boy’s signature drink, the Stuart Special — a drink he has ordered so often that he printed up business cards with the recipe to hand to waitstaff.

He asks for two double rocks glasses ﬁlled to the top with ice and a teaspoon.

BLOTTER

Continued from page 1B

were wearing lifejackets at the time of the crash.

Officials recover 71-year-old’s body

Deputies with the East Feliciana Parish Sheriff’s Ofﬁce recovered the body of a 71-year-old woman on Saturday, a week after she had last been seen. Sheriff Jeff Travis said the remains of Mary M. “Peggy” Wilson were found about 4 p.m. Saturday a few hundred yards from her house on Billy Goat Road in Wilson.

The Louisiana State Police Aviation Unit, Department of Public Safety and Corrections personnel, Louisiana Search and Rescue K9 dog teams, Acadian Ambulance Service and volunteers had helped conduct the daylong search for Wilson, Travis said in a news release. Officials are investigating her death but say foul play is not suspected. The East Feliciana Parish Coroner’s Office has yet to release the official cause of her death.

Man arrested in fatal December shooting

A man has been arrested in a fatal shooting that happened in December, Baton Rouge police said.

On Dec. 21, ofﬁcers found Derrick Lee, 48, suffering from a gunshot wound in the 1100 block of North 36th Street, the Baton Rouge Police Department said in a news release. Lee was transported to the hospital, where he later died. Otis Douglas, 23, was arrested and booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on a count of seconddegree murder police said Monday

community There’s not that big workforce.”

Construction at its warehouse and facility will be completed in the next few months.

“It’s been a little bit challenging because we’ve been using the facility as we’re doing the improvements,” Osborne said.

The Creole King is one of the two largest cranes the company has supplied to a U.S. company

The machine will be mounted on a barge and will handle bulk materials, predominantly grain, in the Creole King’s case.

E-Crane has built around 10 E4000 cranes for companies across the globe since its founding in the 1990s, building 300 cranes in total.

Cooper Consolidated provides barge, marine and logistic services along the Mississippi River

The company began as the Cooper Group in 1905 and opened its ﬁrst midstream operation in LaPlace in 1995.

ThecompanyrenamedtoCooper Consolidated when Cooper Group and Consolidated Terminals and Logistics Company combined in 2003, according to the company’s website.

His instructions include ﬁlling one of the glasses with Smirnoff Vodka. Then, add two olives and a twist of lemon.

His son, Rob Stuart, president and CEO of the LSU Foundation, said his father’s daily commitment to exercise, especially in his later years, is a factor to his long life.

“His longevity is certainly attributable to the positive attitude toward life he always maintained during both the good times, but particularly during the times of adversity,” Rob Stuart said. Morgan said her father has a knack for doing the right things.

“And his commitment to integrity has always allowed him to get a good night’s sleep,” said Morgan. “He enjoys uplifting others, which lifts him up as well, as he never dwells on the negative but faces any situation conﬁdently.”

Happy birthday, Bob.

Email Jan Risher at jan. risher@theadvocate.com.

E-Crane officials

Aaron Bennett, from left, vice president of business development; Lieven Bauwens, owner; and Steve Osborne, U.S. CEO stand Friday in front of a crane.

E-Crane has built the largest electric crane of its class.

The clamshell grabber can pick up 35 tons of grain.

The company showcased the crane at its Port of Iberia facility in New Iberia on Friday.

PHOTO By LEE BALL

Continued from page 1B

clearly and was about 20 times louder than the typical detector noise the two observatories typically detect. To ensure this was not a random blip in the data, LIGO performed careful statistical checks. Scientists also discovered that the two black holes involved were likely spinning about 400,000 times faster than Earth, almost as fast as theoretically possible.

Giaime said discovering a black hole with this much mass challenges the theories that astrophysicists and astronomers have about how black holes form. He said the formation of this speciﬁc black hole could have been the result of previous mergers, which would explain how it’s able to have this much mass.

“It’s a wonderful picture, all in one wonderful event,” he said.

Giaime said the reason LIGO is able to detect more and more black hole collisions — and detect

the largest ever is because it keeps improving its gravitational waves detector

Funding scare

LIGO Livingston has been in the news recently not just for a new discovery, but for being in danger of being on the chopping block after the Trump administration’s proposal for the federal budget request for 2026. The budget proposal would cut $5.2 billion, or 57%, of the National Science Foundation’s $9 billion annual budget. Under

in February

After Finance Director Brandon Boylan announced in March he would be leaving, the council approved the consulting ﬁrm Faulk & Winkler to help with ﬁnances and budget.

Narrowly approved

At Monday’s meeting, Riley broke a tie to approve a $135,000 contract with South Central Planning and Development to perform the city’s planning and development work.

That company will now take over the planning and zoning work that All South had been performing. Wade Petite, who describes himself as the city’s chief of staff, said extra work had led to higher invoices from All South. Petite is also the founder of The Pelican Post, which publishes local news and opinion content online.

“We had to spend more money on consultants, right, because we still need the function done, but we don’t have any in-house personnel to do it,” he said. In an email Petite provided to The Advocate, All South Vice President Jared Bauer wrote that the high costs were due to the rapid departures and having to fill in the gaps. According to the email, which was sent to Riley Petite and the City Council, All South charged around $73,000 on engineering and around $108,000 on planning and zoning.

“While we do not do this type of work every day, we were asked to fill a void if we could, and have (in my opinion) gotten the City over a significant hurdle,” he wrote. He also recommended finding a different firm to do the work long-term. Petite added that the city has advertised the empty positions but that almost none of the applicants are qualified to assume the city roles. “I’ve been doing, tracking government stuff for a long time,” Petite said last week. “I know how this stuff works. It is very hard to compete with the private sector in Ascension Parish.” Disputed chief of staff Petite’s role in the government has also caused friction. On the city website and in emails and conversations, he says he is the Gonzales chief of staff. The city has never had such a position, and the council never approved the creation of such a role or the appointment of Petite.

In a statement provided July 8 by Boudreaux and Turner, the two highlighted their concerns over Petite’s experience.

“Councilman Turner and myself have serious concerns about the challenge the Mayor faces in managing the City, ﬁnancially and otherwise without experienced support,” Boudreaux wrote last week. “The Mayor has made it clear that he intends to have Petite play a signiﬁcant role in his administration no matter the circumstance.” Petite said he and Riley have been friends for more than a decade, and he intends to work in the city government even if his title is different.

the proposed federal budget, only one LIGO observatory would operate with a reduced level of spending.

Last week the United States Senate subcommittee that oversees federal science agencies’ budgets discussed only cutting $16 million from NSF a stark contrast to the proposed $5.2 billion cut. However the committee has not moved forward with this proposal yet.

Email Claire Grunewald at claire.grunewald@ theadvocate.com.

“I don’t care what my title is; I’m going to be performing the same functions I’ve served the mayor with from day one,” he said. An old city ordinance states the council has the authority to create or abolish city positions. Riley said he sent a letter to the Louisiana Attorney General’s Ofﬁce requesting an opinion on the ordinance and if it’s an infringement on the mayor’s power The ofﬁce has yet to publish a response.

Email Christopher Cartwright at christopher cartwright@theadvocate.

STAFF PHOTO By JAVIER GALLEGOS

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in Livingston detected the collision of two massive black holes that created a binary black hole with the largest mass ever observed in space.

STAFF PHOTO By JAN RISHER

Bob Stuart, left, greets guests at his 100th birthday party at the Baton Rouge Country Club on Sunday. Stuart turned 100 on Monday.

Fernandez,Armondo

St.Catherine

Obituaries

Bagalman, Paul Michael

Dr. Paul Michael Bagalman, 89, of Metairie, Louisiana, passed away peacefully on June 23, 2025

Born in NewOrleans on April 19, 1936, Dr. Bagalman was the son of the late Boris and Anne (Zion) Bagalman. He was predeceased by his cherisheddaughter, Jill Erin Bagalman, whopassed away in 2023.

He grewupina house just off the main campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge attended LSU as an undergraduate, and then continued to LSU Medical School, earning his M.D. in 1961 After completing his internship at Charity Hospital in New Orleans (1961-62), he spent ayear in residencyatCleveland Metropolitan General Hospital. Discovering that Cleveland winters weren't for him, he returned to Charity Hospital to finish his Internal Medicine residency(1963-65).

Dr. Bagalman served in the United States Air Force from 1965-67 and was Chief of Medicine at the 439th USAF Hospital at Misawa Air Force Base. He was awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal and the National Defense Service Medal; he was in the USAF reserve until 1972.

Following his activeduty service, Dr. Bagalman returned to New Orleans as aFellow in Cardiology at Touro Infirmary in 196768, during which time he met his wife, Catherine Carol (Dixon) Bagalman, whom he married in 1968. He continued to practice medicine until his retirement in 2001, but maintained his medical license throughout his life via continuing education as he always kept up with the latest developments in the field. Dr. Bagalmanalso served as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine for Tulane Medical School from 1973 to 1993. He was amember of both the Orleans Parish Medical Society and the Louisiana State Medical Society.

Dr. Bagalman rarely missed aday at the gym, where he would lift weights and bend ears in roughly equal proportion. He was afan of Big Band andClassicalmusic, an avid reader, and alifelong cruciverbalist.Heenjoyed action movies (the more stuff that blew up, the better) and was an amateur magician. In retirement, Dr. Bagalman studied Spanish and piano.

He is survived by his beloved wife of 56 years, Carol Bagalman; his son and daughter-in-law, Michael David Bagalman andSonya Sklaroff; and his two grandchildren, Nathaniel and Natasha Bagalman.

Cannon, Shirley M.

Shirley Michael Cannon, 84, passed away quietly at her home on July 11, 2025, after alengthy illness. She was born in Galvez, Louisiana on October 27,1940 to Alton and Lena P. Michael and was married to Elmo J. Cannon for 61 years. She held jobs as a seamstress clerk and secretary. She lovedsitting on the porch, cutting the grass and traveling. Shirley leaves behind her daughter, Shelley C. Floyd; son,

Michael J. Cannon; grandchildren, Aaron and Lauren Floyd;step- grandchildren, D.J, Eric HunterArmstrong and MichaelWarrick; nephew, CharlesE.Rogers; sisters-in-laws, Nell Holton,Velma Garza and Annette Smithhartand her belovedAunt, Betty Pearson.She is preceded in death by herhusband, Elmo J. Cannon; parents Alton and Lena P. Michael; sisterElsie M. Rogersand goodfriend and sister-inlaw, Helen Castillo. Avisitation willbeheld on Tuesday, July 15, 2025, from 5:00 -7:00 PM at Ourso Funeral Home, 13533AirlineHighway,Gonzales, Louisiana, 70737. The funeral service willbegin at 10:00 AM the followingday,July16, 2025, in the Ourso Chapel.Interment to follow at Galvez Pentecostal Church Cemetery.

Coleman, Joe Alton

JoeAltonColeman, Jr. bornFebruary 5, 1961 Joe transitioned from earthtoeternity Sunday June 29, 2025 Joe was known to many as aMASTER MECHANIC Joe leaves lovingmemories withfamily and friends Special Thanks toBaton Rouge HealthcareStaff, Modern Hospice,Notre Dame Hospice. Memorial services at Miller &Daughter Mortuary ThursdayJuly 17, 122:00 5905 Zachary-Slaughter Hwy, Zachary, La. 70791

Fernandez, Armondo Ricardo

ArmondoRicardo Fer‐nandezwas born on Dec. 2, 1998. He wasa native of Donaldsonville, Louisiana. Armondo departed on July 05, 2025 at theage of 26. He issurvivedbyhis parents Bryant, Sr.and Meyoshie J. Fernandez,two sisters BiancaFernandez andBri‐ana Green, onebrother BryantFernandez Jr., nu‐merousother relativesand friends.Hewas aloving and caring man with a heart of gold. He will be truly missed.Visiting9am onTuesday,July15, 2025 at St. CatherineofSienna Catholic Church,421 St Patrick St., Donaldsonville, until Mass of Chrisian Bur‐ial at 11. Rev. Raphael Asika,Celebrant.Interment inAscension Catholic Cemetery, Donaldsonville Pleasevisit www dembyandson.com to sign the guestbook

Francis,

Claudia Marie Francis was born on July 27, 1955, in New Orleans, Louisiana—she passed awayonJuly 4, 2025.Funeral Mass Services will be held at St. Catherine of Sienna Church, 421 Saint Patrick Street, Donaldsonville, Louisiana,on Thursday, July 17at11a.m. Claudia is survivedbyher daughter Cheron Michelle (Irving) Johnson, her grandchildrenVictoria, Claudia,and Keith Jr her brothers, William Francis, Stanley Francis, Kenneth Francis, Fareed Shakir, and ahost of nieces, nephews, and otherrelatives and friends. Sheispreceded in death by herparents, Willie and Florida Francis and siblings,JoAnn (Francis) Ricardo, Maxine(Francis) Tircuit,Lionel Francis, Linda (Francis)Julien, and Alicia (Francis)Jones.

LeGrange,Carlton Babes

With heavyhearts, we announce thepassing of Carlton LeGrange, owner & founderofCarlton's Seafood,beloved husband, father, grandfather, brother, son, and friend.Carlton passed away on June 28, 2025, just weeks after celebrating his 66thbirthday. A proud Louisianan and lifelong ambassador of Cajun culture, Carlton'slifewas a testament to family,food, laughter, and faith. Carlton had amagnetic personality—he couldwalkinto a room fullofstrangers and leave with aroomfull of friends. His charm, generosity,and warm spirit were his signature, and his smilewas unforgettable. He was also anatural storyteller, always ready with atalethatbrought people together. Bornand raised in Bayou Pigeon, Louisiana, Carlton grew up in the heart of his family's first restaurant—openedin1959 and lovingly called "the End of theWorld."Itwas there that he, alongwith his brothers, developed theroots of what would become alifelong dedication to thefoodindustry. Carlton then moved to BatonRouge at theage of 13 and went on to play football at Central High School where he metBrenda, the love of his life.They married on June 16, 1979, and recently celebrated 46 years of marriage; apartnership builtonlove, strength,and shared purpose. Carlton and Brenda openedand ran 8restaurant locations together dating back to the1980s, introducing theirfamily to thewhirlwind world of seafood, service, and community. He later became known throughout Baton Rouge and beyond as the go-toman forcrawfish. If youwanted crawfish done right,you called Carlton He brought people together throughfood, hospitality,and heart—buildingnot just abusiness, buta legacy. Beyond therestaurant world, Carltonhad apassionfor outboard motorboat racing.Hewas fearless on thewater, piloting high-speed boatswithintensity and joy. ForCarlton, racing wasn'tjust aboutspeed, it was about competition, camaraderie and thethrill of theride. Histimeonthe water was yet anotherway he lived life wide open and without hesitation.His other passionwas crawfishing.The joy on his face when he lifted acrawfish trap fullof crawfish like no other. Carltonleavesbehindhis loving wife who he adored immensely, Brenda LeGrange; and their 3children,who held averyspecial place in his heart: Jonathan LeGrange(Tina), JacobLeGrange,and Jennifer LeGrange, who proudly carries on thefamily tradition at Carlton's Seafood on Hooper Road.Heisalso survivedbyhis 2grandchildren, AbigailPendarvis (Jace)and Jayden LeGrange, who brought so much prideand joy to his life.Inaddition, he is survivedbyhis siblings, Clifford "Chachie" LeGrange III(Diane), Cindy LeGrange Jones (Richard), Carey LeGrange(Kay); father and mother in-law,Hilton& Joyce Davis; and many belovednieces and nephews. Carlton is preceded in deathbyhis parents, Cliffordand Joy LeGrange; and hissiblings, Curtis "Rucky" LeGrange, CandyLeGrange, Cherie LeGrangeMcCormick, Clint LeGrange, and Chad "CharlieMac" LeGrange. Rest high, Carlton. Your workon this earth is done—and done well. Youwillbe missed every day. WE LOVE DEARLY. DON'T EVER FORGET IT!!!! Relatives and friends are invited to join thefamily forthe visitation at St.Alphonsus Catholic Church, 14040 Greenwell SpringsRd, Greenwell Springs, LA 70739 on ThursdayJuly 17th, 2025, from 9:00 AM until theMass of ChristianBurial at 11:00 AM. Burial willfollow at Greenoaks Memorial Park, 9595 FloridaBlvd, Baton Rouge, LA 70815. Please visit www.greenoaksfuner als.com to leavecondolencestothe family

In loving memory of Caroll"Ray" Marchand May 9, 1950 -July 11, 2025 Caroll"Ray" Marchand, age75, of BatonRouge, Louisiana, passed away July 11, 2025.

BornMay 9, 1950, in Plaquemine. Ray grew up in Port Allen. He attended HolyFamily School in Port Allen, Holy Cross High School in NewOrleans and graduated from LSU. Ray worked at Marchand Construction, where he became co-ownerwithhis brotherMike,and continued to workevenyears afterheretired.Ray possessed adeepfaith and lovedManresa and his Small ChristianCommunity that he and Nancy have been apartoffor over 30 years. Raywas an avid outdoorsman. He enjoyed beingonthe water with family and friends, watching thesunrise and in the woods,where it was nice and quietand he could read his books and occasionallysee adeer.

Raywas an amazing husband, father, neighbor and friend.Likea great oak, his branches and roots reachedfar into the community. With undoubted strength, wisdom, and a greatsense of humor he anchored thepeople around himinloveand greathugs.

Rayissurvivedbyhis wife of 54 years, Nancy Levert Marchand;their son Adam Marchand (Leah Marchand); twograndchildren that he adored:Madison and Alex; abrother Mike Marchand (Lisa Marchand); their threechildren Elizabeth, Catherine and Mikey; twogreat nieces Ashley Bourgeois; (Miles Bourgeois)andtheir three children: Ashton, Paulina, and Jean Marie;Amy Johnson, (Ryan Johnson); and their threechildren: Stafford, Claireand Margaret; twosisters-in-law Sandra Fauver and Beverly Hulinand their families

He wasprecededin death by hisparents, Carroll"Ray" andJuanita Marchand, Sister Paula Marchand andbrother Alan Marchand. Visitation will be held on Tuesday, July 15, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Rabenhorst Funeral Home on GovernmentStreetinBaton Rouge.A secondvisitation will take place on Wednesday, July 16, from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. at St.Aloysius Catholic Church,followed by aFuneral Mass at 11:00 a.m. Burial will follow at RoselawnMemorialPark. In lieu of flowers, the familyasks that you consider adonation to St Aloysius Church in Baton Rouge,Holy CrossHigh School in NewOrleans,or to an organizationyou know he would have loved.

ParkerII, John Charles

John Charles ParkerII, 79, of Baton Rouge,died surroundedbyloved ones on July 11, 2025, at theBaton Rouge General Medical Center.Hewas born on March30, 1946, to John Charles ParkerI andMargaret Griffin Parker, in New Orleans, LA. Charles attended lstrouma High School, earning all-cityand statebasketballhonors, before moving on to play for andgraduate from Southeastern Louisiana University. He married KatyWatkinsonAugust 2, 1969. Theyhad twochildren,Ashley and Scott. The familyjoinedthe congregation of St John's United Methodist Churchin1979. By trade he was apartner in theCPA firmHawthorn, Waymouthand Carroll, retiringhaving workedthere for hisentire career.He lived an exciting andvariedlife, from hisexperience as abasketballplayer,toworkingasacollege radio DJ andfreelance photographer. He went on to serve as long-time ChairmanofLSU Baseball Coaches Committee during thelate80s to early 2000s. Oneofhis favorite places on theplanetwas theSan

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Juan MountainsinSouthwest Colorado. Charles is survived by wife Katy, Ashleyand John Steinmetz, Scott and Zully Parker, and grandchildrenHanna Steinmetz, ParkerSteinmetz, and Cooper Steinmetz. He wasprecededin death by hisparents John C. andMargaret, andsister Margaret ParkerLowry. Visitation will be held at RabenhorstFuneral Home on Government St.on TuesdayJuly15, 2025, from 4:00 pm until 6:00 pm. The burialwilloccur the following day at thehistoric American Cemetery in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Memorials or donations may be made to therecipientofyourchoice in his honor

Claudia Marie

of Sienna Catholic Church,421 St.Patrick St Donaldsonville at 11am

Collins, Brittany Immaculate ConceptionCatholic Church at 11am

Borskey, William CharletFuneral Home inZachary

Marchand, Caroll'Ray'

OPINION

OUR VIEWS

Make paid parental leave for teachers apriority

We often say how muchwevalue the work that teachers do, but actions speak louder than words. That’swhy Louisiana should do everything it can to ensure the teachers who care for our children have the timetocare for their own. It may come as asurprise thatmany districts in Louisiana offer no paid parental leave to teachers. Asurvey of adozen districtsbythis newspaper found that of those who had their policiesreadily available online, only one Orleans Parish —offered any kind of paid leave to new parents.

No state body keeps information on parental leave policies of districts, but reporting by staff writer Elyse Carmosino found thatmany offer only the bare minimum.

Federal law allows for unpaid family leave after the birth of achild for90days. But for many teachers, taking time off without pay is unrealistic. Teachers typically get 10 days of paid sick leave per year.Itcan take years of accumulating time off in order to cobble together enough leave to have achild. So new parentsare left to apply for extended medical leave, take out a short-term disability insurance policy or rely on other measures to ﬁll the gap. Some have been able to make do thankstothe generosity of other teachers, who can donatetheir unused sick days to help acolleague.

Needless to say,itdoesn’thave tobethisway In many Southern states, paid parental leave for teachers has moved tothe top of the agenda. Alabama’snew law allows for eight weeks of paid parental leave fornew mothers and two weeks for new fathers. And seven other states offer some kind of paid parental leave forteachers.

In the recent legislative session, abill by state Sen. Sam Jenkins, D-Shreveport,that would have given teachers six weeks of paid leave following the birth or adoption of achild was ultimately pulled due toconcerns about the estimated $15 million price tag. Now,a study group appointed by the Legislature seeks to pin down the costs, and Jenkins plans to reintroduce arevised bill next session.

We understand that in the astate already grappling with ateacher shortage, apaid leave policy would make it harder for districtsto ﬁll classrooms.

But we note that states withparental leave for teachers have seen tangible beneﬁts. In Tennessee, turnover dropped by 22% and retirements by 25% two years after it approved paid leave. That’sto say nothing of intangible beneﬁts like reduced stress and greater job satisfaction for teachers, which studies have also shown. In Louisiana, we have lauded the strides made in the classroom in recent years with improved scores on national assessments. The question now is will the statepass the test in how we treat our teachers?

Theforgotten soulswho helped build Swaggart’s legacy

Since his death, JimmySwaggart has been lavished with praises, well-earned, at homeand abroad for the empire he built in the name of the Lord. Yetthere is another side to his mission that has gotten less notice.

In the ﬁrst parish Iserved, there were twoelderly housebound sisters Ifrequently visited. Theyounger,Hazel, was wheelchair-bound, blind and nearly deaf; her older sister,Aurelia, made alife of caring for Hazel.

During my visits, conversation competed withthe sound from TV broadcast of evangelists, nearly every hour of every day.The women’s favoritewas Swaggart,who preached —and always asked for money.The sisters, withonly Social Security for all their needs, sent him every penny theycould —sometimes more;then theywent hungry.Extended family helped, as did our church, when the need was greatest; some of thatwent to BrotherSwaggart, too. The ﬂeet of airplanes, the international travel, the host of folks collecting money,often camefrom the Hazels and Aurelias. The only envelopes the sisters received from the Rev Swaggart’sministry were requests formoney; all theygot were their precious broadcasts. Swaggart’sministry was grand and meant muchtountold numbers of folks who found life and hope in his words and prayers —including my impoverished homebound sisters. Ionly wished it had less to do with cashand more about caring for the needy PAMHARTMAN Denham Springs

Budget bill’s uglinessonfull display

What’ssobeautiful about abill thatwould cause around 17 million Americans to lose health care coverage and an estimateof 267,550 Louisianans to lose their Medicaid over the next 10 years? Those who really need Medicaid won’tsave on their taxes thatsupposedly make up for loss of their health insurance.

Sen. Bill Cassidy and House Speaker Mike Johnson, bothfrom Louisiana, should be ashamed.

LYNLUNSFORD St. Gabriel

Howcan journalists, like James Finn, distort truth with half-truths andlies as in his article “Trump is charging immigrants undera WWII-eralaw.” Is it really so difﬁcult to be truthful andsay this is aboutillegal immigrationinthe headline? President Donald Trump hasstated he is forimmigration, as longasitispursuedlegally.The issue is illegal immigration. Iampart-Spanish on my father’s side andhave severalhundredLatina cousins, of Mexican descent, in Downey,California,just outside L.A., and every oneofthemwill tell youthe illegalimmigrants in this country need to be thrown out. Why is it they see whatFinn cannot? WhyisitLakenRiley’sparents, alongwith so many othercrime victims, see whatFinn cannot? In addition, Finn really made sure to say this is because of an “old” law.Ifthis is an “old” law, then he should saythe same thing aboutlaws against theft andmurder. Thoselaws go back to the Ten

Commandments? Why don’tyou callthose laws “old” laws as well? U.S. immigrationlaws go back furtherthanWorld WarII—soI guess they’re “old” also?Whathypocrisy!

Ilaughedathis comments about Trump redirecting federallaw enforcementaway frompriorities, suchasrooting outpublic corruption. Iguess he was talking about rooting outthe Bidenadministrationpublic corruption? It’seasyto seehow fervently the Department of JusticewentafterHunterBiden. Thenhesaysthese arethe leastcoveted assignments —sowhat? Apparently,Finn would preferthey do something like investigating President Trump again. The work theydoisdirected by the U.S. attorneygeneral,just as was the case when the department was investigating President Trump, but now they’re ﬁnally doing something useful forthe American people

Irecently hadthe privilege of travelingto Washington to attendanadvocacy training hosted by the Child Care forEvery Family Network. Alongside fellowadvocates from the Geaux Far LouisianaCoalitionand our national partners, Ihad theopportunity to meet withofﬁces of Louisiana’sfederal delegation to discuss theurgentneed for increased investments in earlylearning and care.

At atimewhen familiesacross our state are lacking access to child care andother essential support services, advocacy could not be more important. Whenchildren are left without quality care andparents are forced to makeimpossiblechoices, our communities suffer. We mustensurethat every child in Louisiana hasthe opportunity to thrive,and that starts withmeaningful investments in earlycare andeducation. Our voices matter.Whether through a phone call, aletter or showing up at community events, we allhavea roletoplayin shaping policies that reﬂect ourvalues and priorities. Iencourage everyone to stay engaged, speak up, andstandwithLouisiana’s children and families. Together,wecan build astrongerfuture for all of us.

CRYSTAL ELLIS Baton Rouge

We romanticize thepasttoour detriment

“Make America great again” is someone’sopinion that, currently,things are not so great, and in the past, we weremuch better.Some might argue that the decade after World WarII, America wasthe strongest. Back then, our military was absolute, all people of color weresecond-class citizens at best, gays still hid in the closet, polio wasrampant and women knew their place was pregnant, at home, in the kitchen, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the man of the house. Much of what Iwitness today is adedicated movement towards the return to that golden age of yesteryear.Are we willing to pay the price of this regression?

DAVID W. EARLE Baton Rouge

DUDLEY GARIDEL Baton Rouge

ESSENCE FESTIVAL’S FUTURE

EssenceFestival, athree-day celebrationofBlack culture, has been astapleofNew Orleanssummerseasonfor decades, drawingvisitorsfromaroundthe world. Themostrecentedition earlierthismonth,though, sparkedseveral controversiesinvolving scheduling,setup andpartnerships. Organizers saytheyare listeningtoconcerns andthatthe festivalwillneedmorestate and localsupport to be successful.Wereceivedseveral viewsonwhat it will take to make Essencea winner again. Here’s what they said:

This Blackwoman andher besties have fallen outoflovewithEssence

Iwas an Essence Festival fanfor decades. Along with my beloved pack of girlfriends, I ﬁrst attended in the early 2000s and we all fell in love with the annual event.

about color themes, hats and breathable fabrics to beat the Louisiana heat

It was hardly afullhouse inside the Caesars Superdome ahead of alatenight, early morning Lauryn Hill performance at the Essence Festivalof Culture on July4

or put the question in the group chat about who would make the trip to the BigEasy

That’swhy I’m so disillusioned with how we have been sold out by Essence Festival, which has revealed itself to care more about green dollarsthanBlack women. For me, attending the festival was an extension of the love and reverence Ifelt forEssence magazine. Like so manyBlack woman, Igrew up running to the mailbox to get the latest edition so Icould study and admire the images of the beautiful Black women icons that we didn’tsee in most publications —Diana Ross, Lena Horne, Aretha Franklin. Essence Festival continued this celebration of Black women. It connected us with our past whilewedoubled down on our personal connections and saw the brilliant Black women icons of the future.

The festival was the essence (see what Idid there)ofsisterhood, where Black women, old and young, light and dark, big and small, could come together and love on one another Who loved on Black women like that? Nobody.Not until Essence Fest.

Being there felt like along overdue patonthe back for just being us. When my besties and Imade our plans to attend, it didn’tmatter who the headliner was or what acts would be performing or how much money we had in the bank.

If we had to, we’d take out payday loans to bankroll theJuly trip to New Orleans. We’d start planning our outﬁts,sending photos in ourgroup chats

We’d pack our most stylish-butcomfortable shoes to be set to dance thenightaway to Frankie Beverly and Maze at theSuperdome.

It became one of the highlights of our year

Butrecently,wehad the uneasy feeling thatthe festival and itsorganizers have lost their way Instead of celebrating Black women, the festivalwas about celebrating the culture. The panels were more“universal.” It seemed less afamily affair and more like afree-for-all to attract new attendees. Our Essence Fest, the event we were excited to call our own, was being marketed to the masses.

Iknew the tide had shifted when the lineup included theBlack Eyed Peas. Nothing against the group, but the core crowd, Black women, wanted Frankie, not Fergie. Imean, she’scool, but there was acollective eye roll in Section 122 when she took the stage.

Essence took our loyaltyfor granted, assuming we would ignore or be blind to what was happening and come every year like we’ve always done. They acted like we needed them and they didn’tneed us.

So Black women swung away

Onebyone my friends stopped joining me for our annual ﬁeld trip.

Everyyear,Ifelt more disconnected from the festival. The last timeIattended,itfelt— Iamalmost embarrassed to say it —like amoney grab.

Therewas no heart, no soul and no celebration of Black women.

This was no family affair; this was all about ﬁnances. This wasn’tfor the culture, it was for the coin.

Oneyear,there were 21 of us who attendedthe festival, but this year,not oneofmyfriends even mentioned it. Nobody asked who was in the lineup

Essence stopped caring about us, so we stopped caring about itsfestival.

And to add insult to injury,this year, Essence Festivaltook sponsorship dollars from Target.

Yes, the same Target that rolled back its DEI and folded on its promises like acheap card table during an intense game of dominoes at the family cookout

The Target that donated $1 million to Donald Trump’sinauguration fund afterheinsulted Vice President Kamala Harris by calling her “lazy as hell,” “stupid,” “slow,” witha“low IQ.”

If the organizers co-sign withTarget and Target co-signs on Trump’sracist tropes, aren’tthey signing on to what Trump said about Madame Vice President?

In case the organizers hadn’theard, we’re boycotting Target right now

And the check from Target was the ﬁnal insult to the thousands of Black women who weren’tinthe Caesars Superdome this year

We’re done with Targetand those who associatewiththem,including Essence Fest

In thewords of Maya Angelou, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.The ﬁrst time.

Yes, sister

The famous quote, often attributed to Alexander Hamilton, reminds us that“Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.

Essence Fest fell for Target and its attendance fell right along with it.

Sheletta Brundidge is CEO of a Black-focused marketing company and aformerLouisiana resident now living in Minnesota.She can be found at ShelettaMakesMeLaugh.com

Let’s invest in theparty with a purposelikewedoinother events

business events.

Challenges and lessonslearned from another Black-runfestival

Ivividly remember the very ﬁrst National Fried Chicken Festival opening its gates in 2016 at atiny park in New Orleans called Lafayette Square. What unfolded that day is etched into my memory,not only because over 30,000 people showed up, far surpassing expectations, but because many walked away frustrated. The lines were too long. The site was too small. The restaurants ran out of food. It was hot. Some even called it adisaster What people didn’tsee were the months of planning, the late nights, the process of learning how to build afestival from scratch with intention, the risks we took to create something fresh, joyful and uniquely ours. But none of that mattered in the moment. What mattered was that people were disappointed. And that mattered to me

Thirty years ago,what began as a one-time celebration of Black excellence has now grown into one of the most powerful cultural, economic andsocial festivals in theworld —the Essence Festival of Culture. As someone who was there from the beginning, Iknow ﬁrsthand just how far we’ve come —and how important it is that we don’tlet this jewel slipthrough our ﬁngers. Iwas ayoung New Orleans City Council member when then-Mayor Marc Morial —now presidentand CEO of the National Urban League— extended the city’sarms to welcome Essence for what was then envisioned as aone-year event. Ihad theprivilege of working closely with him to help weave Essence into the permanent cultural fabric of New Orleans. What followedwas more than we could’ve ever imagined. Over the last three decades, theEssence Festival has grown into aglobal destination for music, art, commerce,

activism andsisterhood. It’sbecome amultiday,multimillion-dollarinfusion into the lifeblood of New Orleans ﬁlling hotel rooms, energizing restaurants and small businesses, andbringingvisitors from around the world to experience the soul of our city.It’snot just aparty.It’saparty with apurpose.

Yes, this year brought some hiccups —late starts, scheduling confusion andawell-documented debacle with thesuper lounges. But Essence has acknowledgedthoseshortcomings and pledgedtodobetter moving forward. And it deserves that opportunity.Any majorevent with this kind of scale andlegacy deserves grace —and commitment— from those of us who beneﬁtfrom its presence.

That’swhy I’m calling on ourstate andlocal leaders to step up. Just as we invest signiﬁcant resources to attract Super Bowls, Final Fours, Sugar Bowls andnational conventions, we must bring that same energytoEssence. This festival brings in millions of dollars, global visibility and immeasurablegood will —and yetittoo often has to ﬁght forthe same basic support routinely given to sports or

Investing in Essenceisinvesting in New Orleans. It’s investing in tourism, economicdevelopmentand cultural pride.It’sinvesting in the countless jobs that depend on that summer boom —from hotel housekeepers and ride-share drivers to vendors, artists andlocal entrepreneurs.

I’m committed to working with city andstate leaders, New Orleans &Co., the hotel andtourism industry and Essenceleadership to ensure we do more than just talkabout supporting this festival —weactually do it. That means long-term investment, infrastructure support andreal marketing partnerships that treat Essencelike the world-class eventthatitis.

The Essence Festival is not just an event. It is an institution. It is the crown jewel of New Orleans’ summer season Anditisour responsibility to protect it, nurture it and investinits future.

Let’sdothe right thing —for the culture,for theeconomy andfor the soul of ourcity

Rep. Troy A. Carter Sr.represents Louisiana’sSecond District in Congress.

So, we went back to the drawing board. We listened, really listened to the critiques. We overhauled our operations, moved to a larger venue, doubled the number of food vendors, revamped crowd ﬂow and reﬁned the overall experience. And the next year,we got better.Every year since, we’ve gotten better.That’s the beauty and the burden of creating something you love: Youmust be willing to let it grow through its growing pains.

That’swhy I’m rooting for the Essence Festival.

Ifully acknowledge that the Essence Festival and the National Fried Chicken Festival are not the same, not in size and scale, scope and certainly not in the decades of cultural legacy that Essence carries. FCF is younger and smaller,but while the celebration looks different, the spirit behind both events is the same.

This summer,like many who call New Orleans home or who make the Essence pilgrimage each July,I watched the public conversation turn sharp.

Some of the critiques were fair.Someweren’t.

But here’swhat Iknow to be true: If you’re doing something of impact, you’re going to be criticized. And if you’re doing it while Black, at scale and in public, that criticism will be

louder,less forgiving and often layered with expectations that others don’thave to carry But that doesn’tmean you fold. It means you evolve. Essence Festival is more than aweekend event. It is asymbol of Black cultural expression. Areunion. A marketplace. Astage for our music,our businesses, our stories and our joy It’swhere entrepreneurs launch, artists rise and connections deepen. For 31 years, it’sbeen apulse point in the Black experience. And yes, Ibelieve it will continue to be all of those things, as the Essence team listens to its audiences, learning and growing from it. What people are asking for isn’tperfection. They’re asking for intention. For clarity.For care. They’re asking for an experience that honors the commitment they make, by saving up money to book ﬂights, gathering friends and showing up expecting to see Black excellence while indulging in Black culture. We’ve been there. The National Fried Chicken Festival was born out of that same hunger: to create something where culture, community and celebration meet. We’ve stumbled, too. But we never let amisstep stop us from getting back up. So to the team behind Essence Festival: This moment is hard, but it’snot the end. It’sacall. Take the feedback. Sit with the hard truths. Center the community.Invite new voices to the table. Reimagine without losing the soul. Don’tfear the critiques, use them to sharpen your vision. That’s what leadership looks like. Because at the heart of it, Essence Fest and FCF are kin. Black-owned. Built with love. Held to higher standards. And still, we rise. We don’tcancel what we’ve built; we improve it. That’show we honor those who camebefore us and inspire those who will come next.

That’sthe legacy we owe ourselves: not just to create, but to continually rise, reﬁne and reclaim the spaces that celebrate who we are. Because when Black festivals thrive, our culture and businesses thrive, and that’s always worth ﬁghting for Cleveland Spears III is the founder and executive producer of the National Fried Chicken Festival

STAFFFILE

PHOTO By KEITH SPERA

Cleveland Spears III

GUEST

COLUMNIST

SECMEDIA DAYS DAY1

FALSESTARTS

Kellychanges up routinetoshake LSUout of 5-year skid in season openers

BY WILSONALEXANDER Staff writer

ATLANTA— If you spent time around LSU’s summer workouts, you would notice constant reminders of the season opener Clemson paw printsdecorate bagsthatget hit every day.Screens above all thesquat racks say “1-0” on them. Strengthcoaches play distracting music at times, trying to prepare the players for aroad game LSU has lost five straight seasonopeners, including the first three undercoachBrian Kelly.The Tigers have not wontheir first game since the 2019 national championship season, and Kelly recognizedheneededto try something new.HesaidLSU “circled” the first game, which he had neverdone before.

BY KOKI RILEY Staff writer

MORE INSIDE

THREE ANDOUT PAGE 4C

NOTEBOOK. PAGE 4C ON STAGETUESDAY PAGE 4C

“I felt like Ineeded to change the way we lookedatthe opener,” Kelly saidMonday at SEC media days. “And so that was aspeciﬁcmindset change of how we would go attack Game 1.

“There will be some other things that I’m not going to get into relative to how we prepare our team. Butthat was adecision that Ineeded to make after critically looking at not having success in the ﬁrst game.”

It won’tbeeasy.Clemson broughtback

mostofits team after reaching the College FootballPlayoff by winning the ACC, including projected ﬁrst-rounders in quarterback Cade Klubnik, defensive lineman Peter Woods and defensive end TJ Parker It’saprime-time game inside Memorial Stadium, and LSU has started the season with atrue road gameonly once during its losing streak.

“Weneeded to do some things differently this year,and that is embrace this opener,” Kelly said. “And embracing it in amanner thatthis is abig game. It’satangible goal for our football team to wanttobe1-0.”

In the past,quarterback Garrett Nussmeier said,LSU thought toomuchabout tryingtowin thenational championship

ä See KELLY, page 4C

LSUraises stakes with personnel investment

ATLANTA— It doesn’ttake aCollege Football Hall of Fame pedigree to know that LSU and coach Brian Kelly are all in forthis football season. Kelly put up acool $1 million from his own

NIL era —but his money went to the Tiger Athletic Foundation’sscholarship fund. However you ﬁgure it, when it was all done in February,LSU raised $3.23 million from atotal of 1,600 boosters. The seed money Kelly put in (I imagine he will still be able to keep up the car payments) paid off handsomely, though he madeitclear it won’t be an annual thing.

“I’m not going to do amillion every year,no,” Kelly said with agrin Monday as he wasthe ﬁrst coach to speak at SEC media days at the College Football Hall of Fame.

Kelly will be apermanent resident here one day as an inductee, makenomistake about that. The question is whether all the money and all the players the Tigers have brought in over the past year will result in a ﬁfthmodernera national championship for LSU

The immediate question is can LSU snap a ﬁve-gamelosing streak in season openers —three straight under Kelly,ashehimself brought up Monday when talking to reporters —with abig winAug. 30 at Clemson? Then

ä See RABALAIS, page 4C

LSU had four players and four high school signees selected on Day2 of the 2025 MLB Draft on Monday, ending thedraftwith nine players and eight recruits picked by major-leagueclubs.

Junior Daniel Dickinson, junior JaredJones, junior right-hander Jacob Mayers and junior left-hander Conner Ware were drafted on Monday Dickinson landed with the MilwaukeeBrewersin thesixth round. Jones was picked by the Pittsburgh Pirates in theninth round alongwith Mayers, who wasselected by the Boston Red Sox.The NewYork Mets pickedWare in the 15th round Junior right-hander Kade Woodsalsowas selected in thedraft. He had entered thetransferportal in June after throwing only 22/3 innings across two seasons for the Tigers. The Atlanta Braves picked Woods with the No. 307 pick in the 10thround. Sophomore left-hander Kade Anderson, redshirt sophomore right-hander ChaseShores, junior righthander AnthonyEyansonand juniorEthanFrey were pickedinthe first three rounds on Sunday On the high school side, catcher Landon Hodge, right-hander MiguelSime andleft-hander Briggs McKenzie were selected in thefourth round, and right-hander River Hamilton was picked in the 11th round. Hodge wasselected by theChicago White Sox; Simewas picked by the Washington Nationals; McKenzie landedwith the Atlanta Braves; and Hamilton wasscooped up by the Detroit Tigers. They joined third basemanBrady Ebel,outfielder and catcher Jaden Fauske, shortstop Quentin Young andoutfielder Dean Moss among the LSU signees

LSUgym assistant Gnat leaves program

BY SCOTTRABALAIS Staff writer

Ashleigh Gnat is stepping off themat forthe last time.

takes initiative and is constantly moving and doing things.

whowere selected in the draft. Ebel, Fauske,Young andMoss heard theirnames calledSunday night. Notable names who were notselected in the draft andare on track to return to LSUinclude junior right-handerZac Cowan, juniorcenter fielder Chris Stanfield andredshirt sophomore right-hander Jaden Noot. All three Tigers will have achancetoexpand their roles on next year’steam with Cowan getting apotentialopportunityasastarting pitcher,Stanfield having the chance to move up the lineup, andNoot with a chance to earn aspotinthe rotation. Dickinson was the first Tiger from this past season’steam pickedonMonday, goingNo. 185 overall to Milwaukee. After transferring to LSU from Utah Valley last

The LSU gymnastics great has decided to leave coaching after five yearsasan assistantcoach with the Tigers and one prior season at PennState, Gnat announced Mondayonsocial media.

It’sachoice she said has been a long time coming.

“It’s definitely been alot of thinking and processing,” Gnat said. “The thing Ifearmost is people thinking Imade this decision lightly.Ididn’t. It’snever been on my radar to eventually be ahead coach, but when the opportunity cametocoach here, I knew Icouldn’tmiss it. But Ialso told myself Ididn’tknowhow long I’d do it for.”

LSUgymnastics coach Jay Clark, who also coached andrecruitedGnat as an assistant under long-timeformer coach D-D Breaux, described Gnat’sdeparture as “a huge loss.

“Wecertainly will missher presence andpersonalityand all thecontributions she makes, all the stuffadministratively she does behind thescenes,” Clark said. Bugs’ is aperson who

“But more than anything, for me personally,it’sa hit because we are so close. Having coached herand watched hergrowinto thecoach she is now, Iconsider her one of my dearest friends in the world.”

Gnat indicated to Clark when the season began in January that this probably would be her ﬁnal year of coaching, but he said herdecisionwasn’tfirm until after theTigers won theirsecondstraight SoutheasternConference championship meet in March.

The Lake Mary,Florida,native is planning to move to Tampa, Florida, to be with longtime boyfriend Jarret DeHart. The former LSUand Tulane baseball playeris based in Tampaasthe director of hitting for the New York Yankees organization.

“We’ve been in along-distance relationship since college,” Gnat said of DeHart. “Interms of why (she is leaving), Ideﬁnitely wanted asense of family lifeand want to start afamily.Turning 30 put things in perspective forme.”

Gnat said she is going to work for GK Elite, the leotard company that supplies outﬁts forLSU,in sales. Another former LSU great, Rheagan Courville,isLSU’srepresentative forGK.

Scott Rabalais

STAFF PHOTO By HILARySCHEINUK

LSU first basemanJared Jones, right, greets second baseman Daniel Dickinson after scoringonMarch 11 at Alex Box Stadium.Both players were selected Monday in the MLB draft.

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By HUNTER DAWKINS LSU coach Brian Kelly discusses the upcoming season during

will

McIlroy embraces love at British Open

BY DOUG FERGUSON

AP golf writer

PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland Rory McIlroy practically had Royal Portrush all to himself Monday morning, but not for long. By the time he finished his first practice round for the British Open — his first time back on these links in 2,187 days — there was a big crowd that weathered rain and sunshine to see him finish.

The circumstances are far different now

McIlroy remembers being illprepared for the wave of emotions that hit him on the ﬁrst tee in 2019. He has tried to forget the opening tee shot that sailed out-of-bounds and led to a quadruple bogey. And there was thunderous support for him on that Friday when he made a furious rally only to miss the cut by one shot. On Monday, he walked over to dozens of spectators wanting his autograph, including on one large

Sinner

BY HOWARD FENDRICH AP tennis writer

ﬂag of his native Northern Ireland with emblems of all four majors in each corner

The pressure to perform has not left But that ﬂag was an example that he returns home to Northern Ireland to be celebrated as much as the fans want to see him end a special year on a spectacular note.

This was different from 2019, when he wanted to treat that British Open like any other, ignoring that it was the ﬁrst time golf’s oldest championship was on his home soil in 68 years.

“I think in ‘19, I probably tried to isolate, and I think it’s better for everyone if I embrace it,” he said. “It’s nice to be able to accept adulation, even though I struggle with it at times. I think it’s more embrace everything that’s going to come my way this week and not try to shy away from it or hide away from it. And I think that’ll make for a better experience for everyone involved.”

He is rarely home these days, living in Florida, preparing to move to London, traveling the world for golf. There was never a reason to be at Royal Portrush — caddie Harry Diamond came over a few weeks ago on a scouting trip — but it felt good to be home.

“When I was looking at the calendar for 2025, this was the tournament that was probably circled, even more so than the Masters for different reasons,” he said.

“It’s lovely to be coming in here already with a major and everything else that’s happened this year.”

That “everything else” was the Masters, the major that teased him for so many years and then brought him so much joy when he won in a playoff to complete the career Grand Slam.

The next two months were a struggle, from listless play to so much fatigue from questions of “What now?” and how to reset goals. He went six straight

rounds at majors without talking to the media. He didn’t seriously contend in any of his six tournaments.

“I think everyone could see over the last couple of months how I struggled with that. I’ve done something that I’ve told everyone that I wanted to do, but then it’s like I still feel like I have a lot more to give,” McIlroy said. “I probably just didn’t give myself enough time to let it all sink in.”

But coming back to these parts has recharged him. He nearly won the Scottish Open last week, losing on the back nine to Chris Gotterup, ﬂew straight over to Portrush on Sunday night and checked into his hotel at 1 a.m. He was on the ﬁrst tee six hours later

“By the time I got to the back nine today, there was a nice crowd out there,” McIlroy said. “After the 18th and seeing all the kids and signing autographs, it’s really, really nice, and I’m sure that’ll just build as the week goes on.”

says he needed to beat rival

LONDON Jannik Sinner needed this victory He wanted to win Wimbledon, of course, and it would have meant a lot to him no matter who the opponent was in the ﬁnal.

That this championship, his fourth at a Grand Slam tournament, came via a win over Carlos Alcaraz made it all the more signiﬁcant to Sinner — and to the future of their burgeoning rivalry for many years to come.

“It is important, for sure,” the No. 1-ranked Sinner said Sunday night after prevailing 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 against No 2 Alcaraz, “because when you lose several times against someone, it’s not easy.” Sinner had lost five matches in a row against Alcaraz, none more disheartening than the one they played last month in the French Open final. Sinner grabbed a twoset lead in that one, then held a trio of championship points, before losing in five sets after 5 hours, 29 minutes.

“I keep looking up to Carlos, because even today, I felt like he was doing couple of things better than I did,” Sinner said. “So that’s something we will work on and prepare ourselves, because he’s going to come for us again.” Perhaps as soon as the U.S. Open, which starts in New York on Aug. 24 and where Sinner is the reigning champion. They will

be seeded No. 1 and No. 2 again, so could only meet there in another

ﬁnal Alcaraz won the trophy at Flushing Meadows in 2022, beginning a stretch in which he and Sinner have combined to win nine of the past 12 majors. That includes the last seven, leaving zero doubt that these two young guys — Sinner is 23, Alcaraz is 22 — have pushed themselves way past everyone else in the game.

“I’m just really, really happy about having this rivalry with him. It’s great for us, and it is great for tennis. Every time we play against each other, our level

is really high,” Alcaraz said. “We don’t (see) a level like this, if I’m honest with you. I don’t see any (other players) playing against each other (and) having the level that we are playing when we face each other.” Both serve well, although Sinner was better at that Sunday Both return well, although, again, Sinner was superior over these particular three hours. Both cover the court exceedingly well — Alcaraz is faster; Sinner has a bigger reach and is a better slider Both hit the ball so, so hard — Alcaraz is more prone to the spectacular; Sinner is as pure and consistent a ball-

LSU women’s basketball to play in Virgin Islands

The LSU women’s basketball team announced Monday that it will travel to the U.S. Virgin Islands in November to play two nonconference games.

The Tigers will ﬂy to St. Thomas Island to compete in the 2025 Paradise Jam Tournament. A win over Marist in their opening game on Nov 28 will set them up for a title matchup with either Miami of Ohio or Washington State on Nov 29. LSU previously had ﬁnalized one other nonconference battle: a road contest against Duke in the annual ACC/SEC Challenge.

This is the ﬁfth consecutive season in which LSU has scheduled November games at a tropical locale since coach Kim Mulkey arrived. Last year, the Tigers traveled to The Bahamas.

Wemby says he’s cleared to play basketball again

San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama expects to play this coming season and has been fully cleared after dealing with deep vein thrombosis in his shoulder for the past few months, he told the French newspaper L’Equipe in remarks published Monday

A person familiar with the situation later told The Associated Press that the Spurs have received word that Wembanyama has been cleared to resume play and, barring anything unforeseen will be able to fully participate in training camp when it opens this fall.

“I’ll ﬁnally be able to play a bit of basketball again,” Wembanyama said.

The fact that Wembanyama has been cleared suggests that his type of DVT was provoked, which would rule out a genetic predisposition to a clot returning.

Cavs reward president of hoops operations Altman

Cleveland Cavaliers president of basketball operations Koby Altman has signed a contract extension through the 2029-30 season, a person with knowledge of the deal said Monday General manager Mike Gansey and assistant GM Brandon Weems also received extensions. Altman has been with Cleveland since 2012. He has been in his current position since January 2022 after being named general manager in July 2017.

The Cavaliers won 64 games this past season and finished with the best record in the Eastern Conference for the first time since 2016, when they won their only NBA championship. Cleveland swept Miami in the first round but was eliminated by eventual Eastern Conference champion Indiana in five games in the conference semifinals.

Jets extend WR Wilson with $130 million deal

Alcaraz

striker as there is.

One other contrast, usually, is that Alcaraz shows emotion, whether via yells of “Vamos!” or the sort of point-to-his-ear-thenpump-his-fist celebration he did after winning Sunday’s opening set by stretching and reaching low for a cross-court backhand to close a 12-stroke point.

Sinner is far more contained. Even his arm-raised victory poses are mild-mannered.

Sunday, though, there were more visible displays. He even shouted “Let’s go!” after one point. Later, he shook his racket overhead while the crowd roared after a well-struck backhand. When he took a set with a forehand winner, Sinner held a pose, then lifted a ﬁst.

“You saw a bit more energy from him in the big moments,” said one of Sinner’s coaches, Darren Cahill, “and a bit more focus to knuckle down and make sure that, when he had his nose in front, that he kept on closing the door against Carlos.”

Both players spoke about their matchup motivating them to work hard to try to improve.

“It gives me the opportunity to just give my 100% every practice, every day Just to be better thanks to that,” said Alcaraz, who won the past two Wimbledon titles and was 5-0 in Grand Slam finals before Sunday “The level that I have to maintain, and I have to raise, if I want to beat Jannik is really high.”

The New York Jets and wide receiver Garrett Wilson have agreed on a four-year, $130 million contract extension, a person familiar with the situation said Monday Wilson, drafted 10th overall in 2022, was the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year that season and has more than 1,000 yards receiving in each of his ﬁrst three years — the ﬁrst player in franchise history to do so. In all, Wilson has caught 279 passes for 3,249 yards and 14 touchdowns.

The extension represents a signiﬁcant commitment from general manager Darren Mougey and new coach Aaron Glenn, who have focused on making the roster younger in their ﬁrst offseason together in New York.

U.S. men’s soccer team sets 2 October friendlies

The United States will play Ecuador and Australia in October friendlies as preparation for next year’s World Cup. The No. 15 Americans will meet No. 25 Ecuador on Oct. 10 in Austin, Texas, and No 24 Australia four days later in Commerce City, Colorado, the U.S. Soccer Federation said Monday Coming off its 2-1 loss to Mexico in the CONCACAF Gold Cup ﬁnal, the U.S. plays No. 23 South Korea on Sept. 6 in Harrison, New Jersey, then faces No. 17 Japan three days later in Columbus, Ohio. Following the October friendlies, the U.S. will have a pair of exhibitions in both November and March After the World Cup roster is set, the Americans will have a pair of sendoff matches in June.

ASSOCIATED PHRESS PHOTO By PETER MORRISON

Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland signs autographs on the 18th green after a practice round for the British Open on Monday at the Royal Portrush Golf Club in Northern Ireland. McIlroy completed the career Grand Slam earlier this year

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By KIN CHEUNG

Jannik Sinner left of Italy celebrates with the trophy after beating Carlos Alcaraz, right, of Spain to win the men’s singles final at Wimbledon on Sunday in London.

Southern defensiveend

CkelbyGivens

chases down

Texas Southern running back

Chaunzavia Lewis last season in Houston. Givens was named the preseason SWAC DefensivePlayer of the year

PHOTO By THOMAS B. SHEA

Givens highlights Southern’s All-SWAC preseasonpicks

BY TOYLOYBROWN III Staff writer

The Southwestern Athletic Conference announced its preseason football selections on Monday Coach Terrence Graveshad several Southern players recognized enteringthe season, butnone more prominently than Ckelby Givens.

The 6-foot-3, 250-pound senior defensive end was named the preseason SWAC Defensive Player of the Year and put on the preseason All-SWAC ﬁrst-team defense. Last season, Givens was the SWAC co-Defensive Player of the

Year andmadeThe Associated Press FCSAll-America secondteam defense after having 73 tackles, 261/2 tackles for loss and 12 sacksin13games. Also on the first-teamdefense are senior linebacker Vincent Paige, who had 84 tackles and41/2 sacks last season, and graduate cornerback Horacio Johnson, who had74 tackles and two interceptions last year On the All-SWAC second-team defense is sophomore Herman Brister,who had 62 tackles and two interceptions in 2024.

TheJaguars hadonlyone offen-

sive player acknowledged, with tight end Dupree Fuller.The graduate made the All-SWAC secondteam offense in 2024 after having 30 receptions for 370 yards and two touchdowns. The All-SWAC preseason football teams were voted on by the conference’shead coaches and sportsinformation directors. Southern’sseason opener will be against North CarolinaCentral on Aug. 23 at Center Parc Stadium in Atlanta.

Email Toyloy Brown III at toyloy.brown@theadvocate.com.

Former SU star Thibodeaux picked in 16th round

BY TOYLOYBROWN III

Staff writer

Cardell Thibodeaux’soutstanding play in 2025 was rewarded with aselection in the MLBdraft on Monday TheSouthern baseballstar was picked by the San Diego Padres with the 490th pick in the 16th round. The last Jaguars player drafted was JaveyanWilliams in 2019. He was the656th pick in the 22nd round. Before Thibodeaux wasselect-

GNAT

Continued from page1C 1C

Born into agymnastics family

—mother Joan competed for the U.S. in the 1972 Munich Olympics and father Ray wasa member of LSU’slong-defunct men’sprogram —Gnat quickly captured astarring role as the Tigers rose from a solid program to nationalcontender during hercareer from 2014-17

“When Iwas recruited, we were ranked 12th and neverreally got above 12th exceptfor one or two times,”Gnat said.

By her seniorseason, LSUwon its ﬁrst SEC team title since 1981 and was NCAA runner-up three times in 2014, 2016 and 2017.

“Towatch it grow and expand and watch our coaches pourthemselves into the program, it’sbeen agift to be part of it,” Gnat said. She won 62 individual titles,in-

Continued from page1C

summer,hehad a.315.batting average with 12 home runs and a.984 on-base plus slugging percentage. He posted thosenumbers despite playing with abrokenhamate bone in hislefthand from the first game of the Baton Rouge regional until the final out of the College World Series when LSU defeated Coastal Carolina. Dickinson also played stellar defense at second base for the Tigers, committing just four errors. Three rounds needed togoby before the next LSU player was selected as the Pirates picked Jones in the ninth round with the No. 263 overall pick. Jones returned to LSU for his junior seasondespite being drafteligible last summer as asophomore. He hit 22 home runs this season, posting a1.027 on-base plus slugging percentageand finishingthird on LSU’sall-timecareer home runs list with 64. Jones hit 28 home runs as asophomore and 14 as afreshman on the 2023 national championshipteam. Thenext Tiger selected came five picks later when theRed Sox

ed,heexcelledinseven games in the MLB Draft League. The 21-year-old had a.423 batting average, a.545 on-basepercentage, a.654 slugging percentage, nine RBIs, three doubles and ahome run.

The junior had an illustrious 2025 season.The Lafayette native was the SWAC Player of the Year andwas named to the National CollegeBaseball Writers Association Division IAll-America third team. He was the only HBCUplayer to makeany ofthe All-America

cluding the2017NCAA ﬂoor championship,and four SEC titles, including vault, beam and ﬂoor that same year.Gnat’s win totalistied for ninthinprogram history,and her nine perfect 10sare tied for second amongTiger gymnastsbehind onlyHaleighBryant’s 18.

Gnat earned 17 All-America honors during hercareer,and in 2017 won theAAI Award, given annually to the nation’stop senior gymnast.

Forall hersuccessasagymnast,

Gnat said her greatest moment came in the 2024 NCAA final. LSU’s balance beam coach, shewas on the podium and was the first one to embrace AleahFinnegan when her9.95performance captured the Tigers’long-awaited first national championship “Those two days (after the semifinals), knowingwewould finish on beam, that was something,” she said. “That was thepinnacle moment of my entire time here.”

DaxDathe, asixth-yearsenior right-handed pitcher fromDivision II AngeloState, is transferring to LSU, he announcedonsocial media Monday

Datheposted a2.99 ERA in 721/3 innings thispastseason at Angelo State. He struck out 98 batters andtossedtwo complete games. Along withstatinghis decisionto transfer to LSU,Dathe also noted that recentNCAArulechanges permittedhim to playaseventh seasonnext spring Dathebegan hiscareer as atwowayplayeratHoustonin2020, appearinginjust four gamesfor

Ex-QBBridgewater gets suspendedfrom high school coaching

By The Associated Press

MIAMI Former NFL quarterback Teddy Bridgewater saidhe hasbeen suspendedfromcoaching his former high school team in Miami because he provided players with financialbenefits that he said he’d reported to the school.

The32-year-old Bridgewater, who played for the Saints from 2018-19, publicizedaction taken against him by Miami Northwestern High School in asocial media post in which he also reafﬁrmed his desire to continuing coaching the team for which he once played.

“I’mnot going anywhere,” Bridgewater’ssocial media post said. “And if it comes down to it, Iwill volunteer from the bleachers like Iused to in 2018 and 2019 when no one had aproblem.”

Amessage left for school administrators on Monday was not returned

Last fall was Bridgewater’s ﬁrst season coaching his former school, which he led to aClass 3A statechampionship beforesigningwith Detroit in late Decembertoserve as abackup forthe playoff-bound Lions. He wound up seeing his only action in the postseason, completing his only pass for3 yardsina divisional-round loss to Washington.

Bridgewater had written in an earlier social media post that he paid for rides, meals and treatment for players last season This year,hesolicited donations to help cover those costs. He said in his morerecent post thathereported those payments to the school.

Drafted 32nd overall out of Louisville by Minnesota in 2014, Bridgewater appeared in 79 regular-season NFL games during 10 seasonssplit amongthe Vikings, New Orleans, Carolina, Miami, Denver and Detroit.

teams Thibodeaux finishedhis season first in the country in slugging percentage(.828), secondinbatting average (.435) andsecondin on-base percentage(.541). In 49 games, he alsohad 73 runs scored, 71 RBIsand 18 homeruns, which were first, fifthand secondinthe SWAC, respectively

Thibodeaux entered the transfer portalonJuly 1after his one season at Southern. He started his career at UL-Monroe, where he stayed for two seasons.

Gnat saidshe expects to remain highlyconnected to theLSU program “I look forward to supporting them,” she said. “I’llbeback all thetime for alumni weekends and summer camps.”

Four seniorstakeextra year

Four gymnasts from the 2025 team have decided to return for an extra season in 2026: Chase Brock, Alexis Jeffrey,Tori Tatumand Kathryn Weilbacher

Brock, whose 2025 season was cutshort in FebruarybyanAchillestendoninjury,will be asixthyear Tiger

“Theywillprovide us with stability,” Clark said. “Their experience and leadership in the room will be important. Had they not come back, we only had one natural senior on the team in Ashley Cowan. This bolsters ourupperclass when we have so many newfaces with our freshmen and our transfers.”

the Cougars before transferring to Grayson Collegeand batting .329 with a3.92 ERA in twoseasons. He then spent the 2023 campaign at TexasTech, where he appearedinjust ﬁvegames. He transferred to Angelo State after that year and had a4.85 ERA in hisﬁrst season there.

Dathe is the sixth playerto transfer to LSU this offseason, joiningleft-handerRyder Smart, left-hander SantiagoGarcia, left-hander DannyLachenmayer, inﬁelder Seth Dardar and inﬁelder Chandler Simpson KokiRiley

scooped up Mayers with the No. 268 overallselection. Mayerstransferred to LSUfrom Nicholls State last summer and posted a4.80ERA in 15 innings. He struck out 36.1% of thebatters he faced but also walked nearly 28% of the hittershesaw.Heallowed just four hits. Before transferring to LSU, Mayers had a4.58 ERAin18appearancesinhis second season at Nicholls. He also started 15 games andposted a2.02 ERA as afreshmanatNicholls. Five roundspassed before the next LSU player was selected when theMets picked Ware with theNo. 463 pick. He struggled in his only season in BatonRouge despite astrong fall.Hehad a5.48ERA andwalked 7.59 battersper nine innings in 211/3 innings this season.

LouisianaTechgets OK to move to SBC

BY BRETTMARTEL AP sportswriter

TheSun Belt Conference has approved aproposal to extend a membership invitation to LouisianaTech, aperson familiar with thesituation said.

The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity on Monday because the Sun Belt hasnot announced the membership offer,and Louisiana Tech has notannounced itsdecision to acceptitand leaveConference USA. The person said it is not clear how soon the Bulldogs will join the Sun Belt, but that it could be as early as the 2026 football season if the university is able to negotiate adeparturefrom Conference USA at the end of the 2025-26 academic year

Another personfamiliar with thesituationsaidLouisiana Tech had notified Conference USA commissionerJudy MacLeod of its intent to movetothe Sun Belt. That person spokeoncondition of anonymity because MacLeod

He was acandidate to crack the starting rotation to beginthe season and started on the mound in LSU’swin over Dallas Baptist in February.Afterthat outing, he never threw more than three innings in agame forthe rest of the year The first LSU signee, and the firstoverall player, selected on Day 2was Hodge, who went No. 106 overall.

Hodge is the No. 65 player in TheAthletic’sdraft rankings,the No.164 player in MLB.com’slist andthe No. 215 player in the draft according to ESPN.Heattended Crespit CarmeliteHigh in California and is the No.8catcher in thenation, accordingtoPerfect Game.

Five selections later,the NationalspickedSime. He attended Poly Prep Country Day School in New York andposteda 1.13 ERAwith 89 strikeouts in 491/3 innings last season.Heisthe No.85player in ESPN’sdraft rankings and the No. 86 playerinMLB.com’slist. To round out abusy fourthround forLSU signees was McKenzie, whowas pickedwiththe No. 127 overallselection.

McKenzie is theNo. 69 overall player in MLB.com’sdraft rankings, theNo. 73 playerinESPN’s draft listand the No.79playerin

had not yet commented publicly on the matter,which was ﬁrst reported by ESPN

The Sun Belt hasbeen exploringthe possibilityofadding ateamsince Texas State announced in late Junethatitwould be leaving forthe Pac-12.

The addition of Louisiana Tech would restore SunBelt football to a14-team league and also place Tech in same league as several current, former or newregional rivals, including UL-Monroe, UL, SouthernMissand SouthAlabama “The @SunBelt conference just got even more interesting!” Louisiana Gov.Jeff Landry wrote in asocial media post. “Congratulations, @LATech. Looking forward to some great in state rivalries going forward!” Meanwhile,Louisiana Tech’s move wouldmarkthe 10th departure from Conference USAsince 2022 —alist that includes Southern Miss, Texas-San Antonio, Charlotte, Old Dominion, Rice, North Texas, Marshall, Florida Atlantic and Alabama-Birmingham leaving the league.

the draftaccording to The Athletic. He attended Corinths Holders High in North Carolina andisthe No. 10 left-handed pitcher in the country, per Perfect Game. Seven rounds passedbeforeanotherLSU signeewas selected in Hamilton. The Oregon native was selected with the No. 399 overall pick. Hamilton is the No. 99 player in MLB.com’srankings. He attended Sam Barlow High in Oregon and was previously committed to Oregon State before ﬂipping his pledge to LSU.

Email Koki Riley at Koki.Riley@ theadvocate.com.

STAFF FILE

PHOTOByDAVID GRUNFELD Saints quarterback TeddyBridgewater lookstopass late in agame against the TampaBay Buccaneers on Oct. 6, 2019, in NewOrleans.

FILE

SECMEDIA DAYS

THREEAND OUT: SCOTTRABALAISBREAKSDOWNDAY 1INATLANTA

SEC SCHEDULINGREDUX

1

Everytime SEC commissionerGreg Sankey talks to reporters, he expects questions about apermanentfootball schedule format.“I (would) liketoget out of the football scheduling decision questions,”hesaid,“so that suggests alonger term(format) would be better.” Reading betweenthe Sankey tea leaves, he appears to favoreight SEC games instead of nine since manyschools playbigtime nonconference rivals. He saidto expecta format soon but would not offer adate.

2 THELANORRISSELLERS FACTOR

Shane Beamersaidhis firstteam at South Carolina in 2021 was predicted to win twogames. In 2025, the Gamecocks are being talked about as aCFP contender, with quarterback LaNorris Sellers,a darkhorse Heisman contender,the biggest reason why. He was injuredjust before halftime of last year’s36-33 home losstoLSU.Thisyear Sellersand South Carolina visit TigerStadium on Oct. 11ina sneakybig matchup for both teams

ON STAGETUESDAY

AUBURN

LAST YEAR:5-7 (2-6 SEC)

COACH:Hugh Freeze (3rd year)

PLAYERS:QBJacksonArnold,DLKeldric Faulk, C

VANDYDREAMING BIG

3

Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia looked likeaPark Avenue doorman with his darksuit and bowtie, andhis Commodores are used to being adoormat for SEC foes. But aftershockingNo. 1Alabama in 2024, the ‘Doresare aiming to knock the door down. No, really.“The mission ain’t finished We want to win anational championship,” Pavia said with astraight face.Ifyou can’t dream biginJuly,when can you? Vandyhosts LSUonOct. 18.

TENNESSEE

LAST YEAR:10-3 (6-2 SEC)

COACH:Josh Heupel (5th year)

PLAYERS:LBArion Carter,DTBryson Eason,TE Miles

Kelly: WR NicAnderson doingﬁne aftercar crash

BY WILSON ALEXANDER and SCOTT RABALAIS Staff writers

Notebook

in Stockton?Smart didn’t signa transferquarterback after Carson Beck left for Miami, and nowhe’sbringing the redshirt junior whostarted the Sugar Bowl to mediadays.Things canchange, butall indications arethatStockton is nowinchargeofthe powerhouse Bulldogs offense.

RABALAIS

Continued from page1C

the Tigers make the 12-team College Football Playoff,which would be their ﬁrst CFP berthsince winning the 2019 nationaltitle? All important questions, of course. This is aseason of urgency for theTigersno doubt, and everyone involved withLSU knows it.

“When you go in our building, all 105 players are thinking we can be national champions,” linebacker WhitWeekssaid. Yousee that confidencenot only bought with themoney Kelly andthe Tigers are putting toward landing atop-10 recruiting class and the nation’sNo. 1transferportal classbut also with the coachingand player personnel staff that has been built. Every one of Kelly’sposition coaches now have ties to Louisiana. Transferportal or no, the state always will bethe bedrock of LSU’sprogram thankstothe seemingly eternal spring of football talentthe Bayou State produces. For Exhibit Awegive you one of LSU’smost recent 2026 commitments, U-High defensive tackle Lamar Brown, the nation’sNo. 1overall prospect per ESPN. In the constant battlefor talent, you have to have people who have the ties to the homeland. Then there is the front office sideof things. Kelly brought back Austin Thomas in January 2024 from OleMiss tobehis generalmanager —his first GM,a position that used to be an exclusivepro sports term. As college sports have become more pro-like, for good or bad, schools such as LSUhave had to invest in player personnel experts.The task has gotten far toobig for the head coach and his position coaches to deal with any longer “I think we all canagree that thetop teams need to recruitatthe highestlevel,” Kelly said. “But you also havetohave the infrastructure to retain them. Howdoyou retain them? Through contractsand revenue sharing and building trust.

“So this whole operation is not just about recruiting. It’s evaluations. It’s personnel. It’s relationships.All of these things areso

KELLY

Continued from page1C

trying to win the national championship instead of focusing on the first game. Nussmeier, asenior,has not won aseason opener going into his ﬁfthyear at LSU.

“At LSU, there’salways an expectation, right?” Nussmeier said. “There’s always an expectation to compete for anational championship. Ithink in the past, we’ve kind of looked too forward to that and always talked about where we wanted to be at the end of the season, instead of focusing on where we had to start.”

That’swhy LSU put 1-0 on the weight room screens and Clemson logos on the bags, creating dailyvisual reminders. Players said strength and conditioning coach Jake Flint also has emphasized the importance of taking

Kitselman

THEBUZZ:Nooffseason storycommanded more headlines than Tennessee’s messy breakup with Nico sagathat forced the title-contending Vols to make alate terback. Heupel settled on Appalachian State transfer Joey void, butdid he playhis cards right? We’ll soon find out.

TEXAS

3-3 (7-1 SEC)

Sarkisian (5th year)

PLAYERS:QBArch Manning,LBAnthonyHill, S

Michael Taaffe

THE BUZZ:All eyes are on Manning,the NewOrleans native whohails fromfootballroyalty.Hebacked up Quinn Ewers for twoyears. Nowhe’sthe face of aTexas program hungry forits first national title since 2005. Last season, theLonghorns lost to national champion Ohio State in the CFP semifinals ReedDarcey

important if you want to continuously be one of thetop schools in the country bringingintalent. Acquisition of talent, recruiting retention, answers all of those really important things to being achampionship program.

Youcould say Kelly and Thomas have taken their transfer portal acumen and trained it on theplayer personnel wing of the LSU football complex.They recently hired Kelvin Bolden away from Ole Miss as theassistant general manager.They brought in Amite native Sam Petitto, previously director of player personnel for national champion Ohio State, to becomethe director or scouting and personnel strategy. AndNew Orleansnative and LSUgrad Jeff Martin, last at USC before he worked afew years in private business, is now executivedirector of player personnel.

“I think coach Kelly and everybody upstairs have done aremarkable job just adapting, getting ahead of the times,” Tigers quarterback GarrettNussmeier said.

theseason one gameatatime. Kelly compared theapproach to when he puts aclock in frontof himduring hisown workouts.

“This is aclock in front of themsaying, ‘This is where we start this,’ ”Kelly said. “And then it becomes 1-0 every week after that.”

In the pastfive years, LSU lost the first game by multiple scores three times. Twoofthose cameinEdOrgeron’s finaltwo seasons. Under Kelly, LSU lost 24-23toFlorida Stateinhis first yearand 27-20 to Southern Cal last year.Its worst opening loss in the past five yearswas 45-24 to Florida Stateatthe startof the2023 season

“We’reawarethatwe’ve lost thelast ﬁve openers,” Nussmeier said. “And Ithink our awarenessofthat situation andour awareness of whowe’re playing kind of led into the 1-0mindset. Ithink it’skind of acombination of both.” LSUscheduled the Clemson

“Our program in general, everybody’s bought in to what the expectations are. Not just theplayers. It’s coming from the entire staff.”

Weeks, ajunior,has noticedthe changes in approach during his time at LSU.

“It’s acommitment to winning,” he said.

“I thinkcoach Kelly is doing the best job in the country right now bringing people in who have been around winning teams, been on championship teams and bringing them to LSU just to help us even more.”

There are no guarantees all this investment of manpower and money will pay off in another national championship trophy forLSU. Another huge question: Is all of this viable in thelong term?

“I thinkwestill have to be thinking about how we continue tobuild support forNIL,” Kelly said, “because it’snot going away, nor should it.Like revenue sharing. We’re in the ﬁrst stages of where we need to be, but we have to still be moving in that direction.”

game sixyearsago. As thelosing streak grew,therehas been a thought that LSU should change itsapproach toscheduling the ﬁrst game.But that likely won’t happen for at least another year In the second part of the home-and-home series, LSU hostsClemson to start the2026 season. It does not have an openinggameonthe books for 2027. The following twoyears, LSU already has scheduled opening games against SMU.

“Weknow we’re going into a tough environment toplay,and Ican’tbemore excited to be doing that,” juniorlinebacker Whit Weeks said. “You cometoLSU to play the best, and Clemson is one of the best teams in the country.Why wouldn’tyou want to go play them?”

It’s not just Clemson logos on bags and 1-0 on the screens. During team runs, Flintblasts music that alot of the players don’tlike, trying to emulate aroad game.Seniorwide re-

ceiverChris Hilton called it a “distraction tactic.” Flint blasts music the players enjoy during a break between sets, referredto as halftime. Then, he goes back to theunpopular songs.

“We’ve never done anything like that before,” Nussmeier said.

Could focusing on one game backfire? Not only does LSU open at Clemson, it appears to have afront-loadedschedule, playing Florida, Ole Miss and SouthCarolina within the ﬁrst seven weeks

What if so much pressure gets put on the ﬁrst game that, if LSUloses to Clemson, it can’t rebound? Nussmeier dismissed that idea.

“If it doesn’tgothe way we wantittogo,” Nussmeier said, “then we’reback to going 1-0 again.”

For more LSU sports updates sign up for our newsletter at theadvocate.com/

ATLANTA— LSU wide receiver Nic Anderson was in acar crash Friday night and needed medical treatment, coach Brian Kelly told The Advocate, but he’sexpected to practice at the start of preseason camp. Kelly said the crash wasn’t“as bad” as a January single-car wreck involving LSU redshirt freshman quarterback Colin Hurley,who has since rejoined the team Anderson, an Oklahoma transfer,will miss about aweek before returning to the offseason program

“Itwasn’tquite as bad as Colin Hurley’s, which was life-threatening, but enough that he had to get checked in and stayed overnight forobservations,” Kelly saidMondayatSEC media days. “But he comes out of it really good.”

Aftertransferring in December,Anderson was limited during spring practice witha hamstring injury,Kelly said. Anderson missed almost the entire 2024 season with an injury “Wedidn’twant to get into asituation where, as youknow,the medicalissues with him at Oklahoma were real,” Kelly said. “So, we just wantedtobecareful with him.”

The nature of Anderson’sinjury at Oklahoma hasbeen vague.Oklahoma coach Brent Venables told reportersthatAnderson suffered aquadriceps injury,but ESPN described the issue as ahip injury

As aredshirt freshman two years ago, Andersonrecorded 31 catches for798 yards and10touchdowns, whichset an Oklahoma freshman record. A6-foot-4, 216-pound sophomore, he wasconsidered one of the top available players in the transfer portal.

“Wethink that this is going to be short term,aweek or so, and then he’ll be back at it,” Kelly said.

Injury updates

Six months after suffering an ankle injury that required surgery, LSUlinebacker Whit Weeks is getting closer to afull return.

“I ﬁnally feel like myself again,” Weeks said. “These past couple weeks, especially in July,I’ve been able to play every snap that we go during practice.

“It’sexcitingtosee because theroadto recovery was long. Imean, Ihad apretty nastyankle injury. To be back on the football ﬁeld is really abreath of fresh airfor me.” Weekswas carted offthe field at the Texas Bowl, ending abreakout sophomore year.Heneeded surgery to repair abroken ﬁbula, asource said, but he has been regaining his strength and confidence. He credited the LSU athletic training and strength staff.

“They’ve helped me tremendously throughout this process,” Weeks said. “I’ve really put alot of trust in them to get me back, and they’ve done it. They’ve gotten me back.”

Weekshas been on what Kelly described as a“pitch count” to ease him back into the training program. Kelly said theexpectation remains that Weeks and senior linebacker Harold Perkins will be full participants at the start of preseason camp. Perkins is recovering from an ACLinjury suffered in Week 4last fall.

“Within this past week,” Weeks said, “meand Harold have both been able to go full practices, full racks, everything.”

KiffintrollsFreeze

OleMisscoach Lane Kiffin was put in the position of trying to defuse what recently looked like acase of social-media trolling directed at Auburn coach HughFreeze Freeze hasbeen criticized forplaying too much golf in the offseason and was pictured in May with atrophy he helped his golf club winover arival club. Kifﬁn, notorious for his online zingers, posted a photo on Xwiththe response, “Great job Coach!! Game is on (ﬁre emoji).”

Asked about it Monday,Kifﬁnsaid: “I like coach Freeze. Ihaveathing with him, going back afew years ago, andhe, like, posted apicture in response to me, of some2-pound bass or something like that.

“So, I’ve kind of always posted bigger ﬁsh pictures back toward him. So it had nothing to do with his golf game, which it sounds like he’sdoing amazing at that.

“AndIwas fishingyesterday.People wanttosay that ﬁshing is like golﬁng. It’s the dead period.”

Stay tuned for Freeze’sresponse when he speaks here Tuesday afternoon.

Proposingorpassing (out)?

LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier was asked what was morenerve-wracking: proposing earlier this monthtolongtime girlfriend Ella Springfield or throwing a fourth-and-5 touchdown pass to AaronAnderson leading to an overtimevictory last October against Ole Miss.

“Proposing, deﬁnitely,” said Nussmeier, decked out in aplaid purple suit. “I kind of blacked out.”

STAFF FILE PHOTO By HILARy SCHEINUK LSUlinebacker Whit Weeks pressures Oklahoma’sJacksonArnoldonNov.30atTiger Stadium.

Both All-Star teams announce starting lineup

BY RONALD BLUM AP baseball writer

ATLANTA— ShoheiOhtaniwill bat leadoff as the designated hitter for the National League inTuesday night’sAll-Star Game at Truist Park, and the Los Angeles Dodgers star will be followed in thebatting order by left ﬁelder Ronald Acuña of the host Atlanta Braves.

Arizona second baseman Ketel Marte will hitthird in the batting order announcedMonday by Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, followed by Los Angeles

first basemanFreddie Freeman, San Diego third baseman Manny Machado, Dodgers catcher Will Smith, Chicago Cubs right fielder Kyle Tucker, New York Mets shortstopFranciscoLindorand Cubs center fielder PeteCrowArmstrong. Pittsburgh right-hander Paul Skenes will start his second straight All-Star Game, Major League Baseball announced last week. Detroit left-hander Tarik Skubal will makehis first All-Star start for the American League.

“I think when you’re talking about the game, where it’sat, these two guys …are guys that you can root for,are super talented, are going to be faces of this game for yearstocome,” Roberts said.

Detroit second baseman Gleyber Torres will lead offfor the AL,followed by Tigers left ﬁelder Riley Greene, NewYork Yankees

American League Starters r-replacement; u-unavailable Catcher: Cal Raleigh, Mariners First base: Vladimir GuerreroJr.,Blue Jays Second base: Gleyber Torres, Tigers Thirdbase: INF r-Junior Caminero, Rays Shortstop: Jacob Wilson,Athletics Designated hitter: Ryan O’Hearn, Orioles Outﬁeld: Riley Greene, Tigers,Javier Báez, Tigers, Aaron Judge, Yankees Pitcher: Tarik Skubal, Tigers Reserves Pitchers u-Garrett Crochet, RedSox,uYusei Kikuchi, Angels, u-Max Fried, Yankees u-Jacob deGrom, Rangers, Shane Smith, White Sox, u-Hunter Brown, Astros,Kris Bubic, Royals, Bryan Woo, Mariners, r-Drew Rasmussen, Rays,r-Casey Mize,Tigers, r-Carlos Rodón, Yankees,r-Joe Ryan,Twins Aroldis Chapman, RedSox,r-Carlos Estevez, Royals, Josh Hader, Astros, Andres Muñoz Mariners Batters CAlejandroKirk, Blue Jays,INF Jonathan Aranda, Rays,INF Brandon Lowe,Rays, INF Alex Bregman, RedSox,INF Jazz Chisholm Jr., Yankees,INF JeremyPeña, Astros, INFBobby Witt Jr., Royals, INFJosé Ramírez, Guardians, INF Isaac Paredes,Astros, INF Zach McKinstry, Tigers,INF Maikel Garcia, Royals, DH Brent Rooker, Athletics, OF Byron Buxton, Twins, OF Steven Kwan, Guardians, OF Julio Rodríguez, Mariners,OFRandy Arozarena, Mariners

right fielder Aaron Judge, Seattle catcher Cal Raleigh, Toronto first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Baltimore designated hitterRyan O’Hearn, Tampa Bay thirdbasemanJuniorCaminero, Tigers center fielder Javier Báez andAthletics shortstop Jacob Wilson. Ohtani led off forthe AL in the 2021 All-Star Game,when the twoway sensation also was the AL’s starting pitcher.Hehit leadoff in 2022, then was the No. 2hitter for the AL in 2023 andfor theNLlast yearafter leaving theLos Angeles Angels for theDodgers.

Skenes and Skubal are 1-2 in av-

National League Starters Catcher: Will Smith, Dodgers

First base: Freddie Freeman, Dodgers

Second base: Ketel Marte, Diamondbacks

Thirdbase: MannyMachado, Padres

Shortstop: Francisco Lindor,Mets

Designated hitter: Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers

Outﬁeld: Ronald AcuñaJr.,Braves, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Cubs,Kyle Tucker, Cubs

Pitcher: Paul Skenes, Pirates

Reserves Pitchers—Clayton Kershaw,Dodgers (Legend Pick), ChrisSale, Braves, u-Zack Wheeler,Phillies,Logan Webb, Giants,uRobbie Ray, Giants, u-Freddy Peralta, Brewers, MacKenzie Gore, Nationals, u-Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Dodgers,u-Matthew Boyd,Cubs, r-Andrew Abbott, Reds,r-DavidPeterson, Mets, r-Jacob Misiorowski, Brewers,Edwin Diaz, Mets, Jason Adam, Padres, Randy Rodriguez,Giants,r-Robert Suarez, Padres, r-Trevor Megill, Brewers,r-AdrianMorejon, Padres Batters— CHunter Goodman, Rockies INF Pete Alonso, Mets,INF Elly De La Cruz, Reds,INF Brendan Donovan, Cardinals,INF Matt Olson, Braves,INF EugenioSuárez, Diamondbacks, DH Kyle Schwarber, Phillies, OF Corbin Carroll, Diamondbacks, OF Kyle Stowers, Marlins,OFFernando Tatis Jr., Padres, OF James Wood, Nationals

eragefour-seamfastball velocity amongthose with 1,500 or more pitches this season, Skenes at 98.2 mphand Skubal at 97.6mph, according to MLB Statcast

A23-year-oldright-hander, Skenesis4-8 despite amajor league-best 2.01 ERA for thePirates, who arelastinthe NL Central. The 2024 NL Rookie of the Year has 131 strikeouts and 30 walks in 131 innings. Skubal, a28-year-old left-hander is the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner.Heis10-3 with a2.23 ERA, striking out153 andwalking 16 in 121 innings.

Robotumpires to make All-Star Game debut

BY RONALD BLUM AP baseball writer

ATLANTA TarikSkubal views the strike zone differently than robot umpires.

“I have this thing where Ithink everything is astrike untilthe umpire calls it aball,”Detroit’s AL Cy Young Awardwinnersaid ahead of his start for the American League in Tuesdaynight’s All-Star Game.

MLB has been experimenting with the automated ball-strike system in the minor leagues since 2019 and will use it in an All-Star Game forthe ﬁrsttime Tuesday Each team gets twochallenges andretains the challenge if it is successful.

“Pitchers think everything is astrike. Then you go back and look at it,and it’s two, three balls off,”Pittsburgh ace Paul Skenes, starting his second straight All-Star Game for the National League, said Monday “Weshould notbethe ones that are challenging it.”

MLB sets the topofthe automatedstrike zoneat53.5% of a batter’sheight andthe bottomat 27%, basing thedecision on the midpoint of the plate, 81/2 inches fromthe front and81/2 inches from the back. That contrasts with the rule book zone called by umpires, whichsays the zone is acube.

“I did afew rehabs starts with it.I’m OK with it.I thinkit works,”saidthree-timeCyYoung Award winner Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers. “Aaron Judge and Jose Altuve should have different-sized boxes. They’ve obviously thought about that. As long as that gets ﬁgured out, Ithink it’ll be ﬁne.”

Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred anticipates the system will be considered by the sport’s 11-man competition committee,

which includes six management representatives.

Many pitchers have gravitated to letting their catchers and managerstriggerball/strike appeals. Teamswon 52.2% of theirchallenges during the spring training test.Batters won exactly 50% of their596 challengesand the defense 54%, with catchers successful 56% of the time andpitchers 41%.

Hall of Famer Joe Torre, an honorary AL coach, favors the system. After his managing career,heworkedfor MLBand helpedsuperviseexpandedvideo review in 2014.

“You couldn’t ignore it with all the technology out there,” he said. “You couldn’tsit and make an excuse for, ‘Look at what really happened’ the next day.”

Now 84, Torre recalled how his Yankees teamsbeneﬁtted at least twicefrom blown calls in the postseason, including one involving the strike zone.

With the 1998 World Series opener tied and the bases loaded with two outs in the seventh inning, Tino Martineztooka 2-2 pitch from San Diego’sMark Langston that appeared to be a strike but was calledaball by Richie Garcia.Martinezhit a grand slam on the next pitch for a9-5 lead, and the Yankees went on to afour-gamesweep.

Asked whether he was happy therewas no robotumpire then, Torre grinned and said: “Possibly.”

Then he added without a prompt: “Well, not to mention the homerun that Jeter hit.”

His reference was to Derek Jeter’shomerun in the 1996 AL Championship Series opener, when 12-year-old fan Jeffrey Maier reached over the wall to snatchthe ball abovethe glove of Baltimore right ﬁelderTony Tarasco.

Curveballs on declineas velocity obsessionincreases

BY RONALD BLUM AP baseball writer

ATLANTA— Curveballs have been thrown acurve by amodern gamevaluing velocity over variety, disappearingfrom the major leagues by more than 20,000 annually

The Athletics have thrown curves on just 2.5% of their pitches this season. The overall big-league ﬁgure dropped from 10.7% in 2019 to 8.1% last year, thelowest since MLB starting tracking in 2008, before rising slightly to 8.5% this season.

There were 22,962 fewer curveballs in 2024 than ﬁve years earlier

“You don’treally see alot of people throwing 12-6 curveballs anymore,” TampaBay pitcher ShaneBaz said.“They’d rather have ahard cutter/slider.It’sa lot easier forguys to throw asweeper than it is a12-6 curveball.”

Baz’s28.1% is seventh in curveball use amongthose who have thrown at least 1,000 pitches this season. Charlie Morton of Baltimore, ﬁrst at 39%, learned to throw ahook from his dad.

“He was reading some article or maybe he was reading some pitchingbook,” the41-year-old right-hander said. “You basically throwitlike you’re re-throwing aknife.” Hall of Famer Candy Cummings, a145-game winner, is creditedwithinventingthe curveball in 1863 when he was 14, discovering the movement when he threw sea shells into the Atlantic Ocean. Someattribute the curve to amateur pitcher Fred Goldsmith in 1870.

With an average velocity of 80.2 mph, curves are the slowest and loopiest of breaking pitches, often disrupting the timingofbatters set for smoke.

Thephrase “thrown acurveball” has become part of the English language.

Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan and Clayton Kershaw were among the consummate curveballers, bamboozling batters as balls they gave up on dropped likehang gliders into the strike zone.

“It’sbecomeanindustry of throwing over pitching,” New York Yankees senior adviser Omar Minaya said. “Whenyou pitch, you use differentpitches. What we’reseeinginthe industryasa whole,especiallywith

showcases, is people are looking more at velocity thanpitchability —asascout, Isaid that unfortunately.”

Nike’s“Chicks Digthe Long Ball” commercial deﬁnedbaseball in theSteroidsEra.These days the slogan might as well be: “Velo Rules!” There werejust 214 pitches of 100 mphormore in 2008. There were arecord 3,880 twoyears ago, and this year is on track for3,252. In tandem,starting pitcher use has dropped. Starters have averaged just under 51/3 innings this season, down from 61/3 innings in the 1980s. Their pitch countaverages85.7, down from 97 in 2010. Those missing hooks have been replaced by sliders, sweepers and slurves. They are 22.6% of pitchesthisyear, up from 13.9% in 2008, and their average velocity has risen to 84.8 mph from 83.4 mph.

Colorado throws curves the mostoften at 15.6%, not that it hasbrought anysuccess to a team that entered thebreak at 22-74, on track fora37-125 ﬁnishand the post-1900record for losses.

The Athleticshaven’t thrown 10% curveballs since 2017.

“If youlook around the game, swing andmiss hastaken more of apriority, so guys aretrying to throw more sweepers with morehorizontal movement, or they’re trying to throw the slider really hard at the bottom of the zone,” Athletics pitching coach ScottEmerson said. “They’re worried about contact with the curveball.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By JEFF CHIU

Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers scores againstthe SanFrancisco Giants during the 11th inning of a game SundayinSan Francisco. Ohtani will leadoff theAll-Star Game for the National League

AP PHOTO By STEPHANIE SCARBROUGH Baltimore Orioles starting pitcher Charlie Morton delivers during the second inning against the Newyork Mets on Thursdayin Baltimore.

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By MIKE STEWART

Cal Raleigh of the SeattleMariners competes during the MLB All-Star Home RunDerbyonMonday in Atlanta. Raleigh is the first catcherand switch-hitter to win the event, besting Junior Caminero of the Tampa BayRaysin

Tour Statistics

Through July 13 FedExCupSeason Points 1, Scottie Scheffler, 4,056. 2, Rory McIlroy,3,219. 3, Sepp Straka, 2,583. 4, Justin Thomas,2,254. 5, Russell Henley,2,246. 6, Ben Griffin, 2,212. 7, J.J. Spaun, 2,097. 8, HarrisEnglish, 1,732. 9, Tommy Fleetwood, 1,717. 10, Keegan Bradley,1,715. Scoring Average 1, Scottie Scheffler, 68.424.2,RoryMcIlroy 69.024. 3, TommyFleetwood, 69.797. 4, Sepp Straka, 69.807. 5, Russell Henley,69.989. 6, Harry Hall, 69.997. 7, J.J. Spaun, 70.012. 8, Ben Griffin, 70.058. 9, Justin Thomas, 70.066. 10, Thorbjorn Olesen, 70.085. Driving Distance 1, AldrichPotgieter, 328.2. 2, Rory McIlroy, 322.2. 3, Michael Thorbjornsen, 319.2. 4, Niklas Norgaard, 319.1. 5, Jesper Svensson, 319. 6, Nicolai Hojgaard, 317.5. 7, Kurt Kitayama, 317.2. 8, Chris Gotterup, 316.6. 9, Will Gordon, 316.1. 10, Rasmus Hojgaard, 315.8. Driving Accuracy Percentage 1, Paul Peterson,73.88%.2,Aaron Rai 73.62%. 3, Ben Kohles,72.68%.4,Collin Morikawa,71.90%. 5, Takumi Kanaya,70.62%.6, Andrew Putnam, 70.23%. 7, Zach Johnson, 69.84%. 8, Lucas Glover, 69.18%. 9, Brice Garnett, 68.66%. 10, Brandt Snedeker, 68.55%. Greens in Regulation Percentage 1, 10 tied with 00%. Total Driving 1, Rico Hoey,58. 2, Michael Thorbjornsen, 68. 3, Thomas Rosenmueller,76. 4, Kevin Roy,78. 5, Alex Smalley,88. 6, Luke List, 90.7 Kevin Yu,99. 8, Ricky Castillo, 101. 9, Isaiah Salinda, 106. 10, Kris Ventura, 108. SG-Putting 1, Sam Burns, .950. 2, Taylor Montgomery,.819. 3, Harry Hall, .789. 4, Rory McIlroy 754. 5, Sam Ryder, .750. 6, SamiValimaki, .638. 7, Jacob Bridgeman, .587. 8, Nico Echavarria, .580. 9, DennyMcCarthy, .552. 10, DannyWillett, .547. Birdie Average

1(tie), Sepp Strakaand JustinThomas, 4.52. 3, Harry Hall, 4.47. 4, JakeKnapp, 4.42. 5(tie), ScottieScheffler and Michael Thorbjornsen, 4.38. 7, Nicolai Hojgaard, 4.37. 8, KeithMitchell, 4.34. 9, Collin Morikawa, 4.3. 10, AkshayBhatia, 4.25. Eagles (Holes per) 1, AlejandroTosti,66.9. 2, Steven Fisk,73.4. 3, ScottieScheffler, 83.1. 4, CharleyHoffman, 84. 5, DavidSkinns, 88.2. 6(tie), Kurt Kitayama and Karl Vilips, 90. 8, ScottieScheffler, 92. 9, Chan Kim, 96.5. 10, Cam Davis, 97.2. Sand Save Percentage 1, 10 tied with .00%. All-Around Ranking 1, Scottie Scheffler, 206. 2, KeithMitchell, 282. 3, Sepp Straka, 302. 4, Kevin Yu,330. 5, Alex Smalley,342. 6, Nicolai Hojgaard, 359. 7, Rory McIlroy, 363. 8, Sam Burns, 370. 9, Keegan Bradley,392. 10, Kevin Roy,395. LPGA Tour Statistics Through July13 Scoring 1, Jeeno Thitikul, 69.24. 2, Nelly Korda, 69.69. 3, Angel Yin, 69.75.4,Minjee Lee, 69.91. 5, Somi Lee, 70.06. 6, HyoJoo Kim, 70.14. 7, Jin Young Ko,70.23. 8, YealimiNoh, 70.24. 9, HyeJin Choi,70.26. 10,Rio Takeda, 70.34. Driving Distance 1, Polly Mack, 289.17. 2, Julia Lopez Ramirez 286.66. 3, Auston Kim, 284.36. 4, Emily Kristine Pedersen,282.87. 5, Maude-Aimee Leblanc,279.24. 6, Bailey Tardy, 278.72. 7, BiancaPagdangnan, 277.9. 8, Nanna Koerstz Madsen, 277.77. 9, Weiwei Zhang, 277.68. 10, ALim Kim, 277.02. Greens in Regulation 1(tie), Haeran Ryu and RioTakeda, .77%. 3, Nanna Koerstz Madsen, .76%.4 (tie), Allisen Corpuz,Yealimi Noh and Jeeno Thitikul .75%. 7, 4tied with .74%. Putts per GIR 1, Jeeno Thitikul, 1.71. 2(tie), Yuka Saso and Yahui Zhang, 1.72. 4, Minami Katsu, 1.73. 5, Angel Yin, 1.74. 6(tie), AriyaJutanugarnand HyoJoo Kim, 1.75.8,10tied with 1.76. Birdies 1, Rio Takeda, 213.2,Celine Boutier, 207. 3, Somi Lee, 201. 4, AyakaFurue, 195. 5, Auston Kim, 188. 6(tie), Minami Katsuand Jeeno Thitikul,186.8(tie), Mi Hyang Leeand Minjee Lee, 185. 10, Nelly Korda, 183. Eagles 1, Mi Hyang Lee, 10.2,Madelene Sagstrom, 9. 3(tie), Yealimi Noh and RioTakeda, 8. 5 (tie), Somi Lee, Chanettee Wannasaen, Angel Yin and InaYoon, 7. 9, 11 tied with 6. Sand Save Percentage 1, XiaowenYin, .67%. 2, Miyu Yamashita, .61%. 3, HyoJoo Kim, 59%.4(tie), AriyaJutanugarn, Minjee Leeand JennyShin, .58%. 7 (tie), Hannah Green and JinHee Im, .57%.9 2tied with .56%. Rounds Under Par 1, Rio Takeda, .71%. 2, Somi Lee, .68%. 3, Celine Boutier, .63%.4,Hye-Jin Choi 70%. 5, Jeeno Thitikul, .78%.6(tie), AyakaFurue and Mi Hyang Lee, .60%.8,Minjee Lee, .67% 9, Jin Hee Im, .61%. 10,Angel Yin, .72%. 11, Miyu Yamashita, .62%

Cycling

Monday 10th Stage A103-mile ride from Ennezat to Le Mont-Dore PuydeSancy 1. Simon Yates,Great Britain, Team Visma Lease aBike, 4:20:05 2. Thymen Arensman, Netherlands,INEOS Grenadiers, 4:20:14 3. Ben Healy,Ireland, EF Education-EasyPost, 4:20:36. 4. Ben O’Connor,Australia,Team JaycoAlUla, 4:20:54. 5. Michael Storer, Australia,Tudor Pro Cycling Team, 4:21:28. 6. Joe Blackmore, Great Britain, Israel-Premier Tech,4:24:02. 7. Anders Halland Johannessen, Norway, Uno-XMobility,4:24:43 8. LennyMartinez, France, Bahrain Victorious, 4:24:56.

9. Tadej Pogacar, Slovenia,UAE Team Emirates-XRG, same time 10. Jonas Vingegaard, Denmark, Team Visma ‘Lease aBike, same time. Also 12. Matteo Jorgenson, United States,Team Visma ‘Lease aBike, 4:24:59. 23. Sepp Kuss, United States, Team Visma Lease aBike, 4:26:03. 29. Quinn Simmons, United States,Lidl-Trek 4:27:46. 73. William Barta, United States, Movistar Team, 4:37:22. 86. Neilson Powless, United States,EF Education-EasyPost, 4:46:03 Overall Standings 1. BenHealy,Ireland, EF Education-EasyPost, 37:41:49. 2. Tadej Pogacar, Slovenia,UAE Team Emirates-XRG, 37:42:18. 3. Remco Evenepoel, Belgium, Soudal QuickStep, 37:43:18. 4. Jonas Vingegaard, Denmark, Team Visma Lease aBike, 37:43:35. 5. Matteo Jorgenson, United States, Team Visma ‘Lease aBike, same time 6. KevinVauquelin, France, Arkea-B&B Hotels, 37:44:15. 7. Oscar Onley,Great Britain, Picnic PostNL, 37:45:13. 8. Florian Lipowitz,Germany, RedBull— BORA —hansgrohe,37:45:23. 9. PrimozRoglic, Slovenia, RedBull—BORA —hansgrohe, 37:45:30. 10. Tobias Johannessen,Norway,Uno-X Mobility,37:46:52. Team Standings 1. Team Visma‘ Leasea Bike,113:06:32. 2. UAETeam EmiratesXRG, 113:23:17. 3. Decathalon AG2R La MondialeTeam, 113:34:44. 4. Groupama-FDJ, 113:35:39. 5. Arkea-B&B Hotels, 113:36:13. 6. RedBull —Bora—Hansgrohe, 113:40:22. 7. Ineos Grenadiers, 113:43:10. 8. EF Education—EasyPost, 113:46:08. 9. Movistar Team,113:53:42. 10. Total Energies, 113:58:14.

College baseball

LSWAAll-Louisiana team First team PKade Anderson LSU, So. PAnthonyEyanson, LSU, Jr. PIsaac Rohde,LSU Shreveport, Sr PMichaelLombardi,Jr., Tulane CDiegoAragon, LSUShreveport, Sr 1B Jared Jones, LSU,Jr. 2B Connor Rasmussen, Tulane,Jr. 3B Josh Gibson, LSUShreveport, Sr SS StevenMilam, LSU,So. OF Derek Curiel, LSU, Fr OF Cardell Thibodeaux,Southern, Jr. OF Conor Higgs, UL, Sr. DH Ethan Frey LSU, Jr. UTL Bryce Calloway, UNO,Sr. Second team PBrennan Stuprich,Southeastern, Gr. PCasan Evans,LSU,Fr. PDravenZeigler, LSUShreveport, Jr. PCobe Reeves, LSUShreveport, Sr CConnor O’Neal,Southeastern, So 1B Ryan Brome,Southeastern, Sr. 2B Daniel Dickinson, LSU,Jr. 3B Alex Dupuy,LSU Eunice, So SS TysonLeBlanc,LSU Eunice,So. OF Ryan Davenport, LSUShreveport, Sr OF JakeBrown, LSU, So. OF GarrettFelix, Loyola (N.O.), Gr. OF Jackson Syrin, LSU Shreveport, Sr DH SebastianMexico,Louisiana Tech,Jr. UTL Aidan Mouton LSU Eunice,Fr. Honorable mention Pitcher: Alec Beversdorf, LSUEunice;Zac Cowan, LSU; Catcher: Luis Hernandez,LSU; First base: Austin Gomm, LSUShreveport; Jackson Legg, LSUEunice; Second base: Brandon Mooney,Loyola (NewOrleans); Vantrel Reed,LSU Shreveport; Third base: Rocco Gump, NorthwesternState; Shortstop: TJ Salvaggio, Southeastern Outﬁeld:

HARDSCAPING

Afun, fulﬁlling DIY project

You’ve heard of landscaping. How about hardscaping?

GARDEN NEWS

Hardscapes are the manmade features that bring form and function to our landscapes, providing acontrasttoliving elements such as plants, trees and turf otherwise known as softscapes. Hardscapes and softscapes both play important roles in Louisiana landscapes,where our climate is conducive to year-round outdoor livingand entertaining.

“Plant blooms come and go Some of them only last aseason;some of them last multiple years,” said Damon Abdi, an assistant professor of landscape horticulture at the LSU AgCenter Hammond Research Station. “But awell-builthardscape is going to give youreturns 365 days ayear.”

Hardscapes are more than just places to host gatherings or enjoy some time outdoors. They add deﬁnition to the overall environment and offer a chance to incorporate different shapes, textures and colors.

LSU AGCENTERPHOTO By OLIVIA McCLURE

Features such as thisoutdoor fireplace at the LSU AgCenter Hammond Research Station are called hardscapes. They can provide both aesthetic and practical benefits.

Hardscapes can even help you cut back on maintenance. Think about it: Materials like concrete, stone and brickdon’t have to be watered or mowed to look beautiful.

Many hardscapes can make for fun, fulﬁlling do-it-yourself projects. Apatio is agood starting point —aperfect way to spruce up the backyardthis summer To build apatio, Abdi suggests following thesesteps:

n Call 811. “Make sure that you’re not going to have any utilities that are going to get in the way,” Abdi said. “That can be adangerous and expensive issue.” n Mark the footprint for the patio.

n Excavate about 4to5inches of soil

n Create abase layer.“Adding in gravel with ﬁnes and compacting that is going to give you areallysolid surface to continue your construction,” Abdi said.

n Topthe gravelwith a1-inch layer of sand. Smooth the sand

n Install stone on top. “You can use pavers, you can use bluestone, you can use natural stone,” Abdi said. “There’sa whole range of options to ﬁt your tastes.” There are plenty of other hardscapes to consider, and they canserve many different purposes. How wouldyou like to use your outdoor space?

‘I CAN’TBELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING’

Twosouth Louisiananatives gettheir shots in newAri Astermovie with JoaquinPhoenix

BY JOYHOLDEN Staff writer

For south Louisiana natives

Blane Aranyosi and Kaleb Naquin, taking afew risks to pursue their dreams in ﬁlm is worth it. Driving to New Mexico and paying for their hotels were smallpricestopay when they got cast in thelatest Ari Aster feature, “Eddington,” starring Pedro Pascal, Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone. Although their routestoNew Mexico were quite different, the two actors found themselves workingtogether in the odd town of Truth or Consequences,New Mexico. Aranyosi,aHammondresident and Hungarian Settlementnative, has worked as astand-in for the last 10 years in the New Orleans film world. He wenttoacting school in New York for two years before returning to Louisiana for the big ﬁlm boom in the2010s.

He has stood in forKeanu Reeves,Taron Egerton, Josh Hutchersonand most recently, Joaquin Phoenix. As astand-in, Aranyosi functions as the rough draft foreach scene, blocking for light and cameras before the ﬁnal draft star actor performs.

“I don’treally feel like I’m an actor yet,” Aranyosisaid. “I’ve dabbledinitsome. I’vestumbled down adifferent paththan mostpeople —asa stand-in for actors.”

Working mostly in New Orleans, Aranyosi hadn’thad much luck with jobs out of Louisiana. Production companiesusuallypreferto use local hires that they don’thave to payfor travel and accommodations. He says he just hastoshow up and prove himself.

‘I have ajob to do’

For“Eddington,”Aranyosi got the cameratestjob, which he says is like ajog beforearun. He toldthem he would drive out there and pay for his

hotel.After a16-hour drive withhis best friend, Aranyosi was ready to prove himself. He even went to the local Walmart and bought an outﬁt to matchPhoenix’ssheriffcostume to show hiscommitment —a white button down, jeans, boots, acowboy hatand glasses. He got the stand-in job and worked every day Phoenix did. Afterputting in many hours as Phoenix’s stand-in,Aranyosi’s

Starbox Falafel is located at 4353 S. Sherwood Forest Blvd. in Baton Rouge.

BYJAN RISHER Staff writer

Aysar Mohammad wanted two things —authentic Arabic food and “to makeaboom in the city.” So,

sion —hedecidedtochange the name.However, he didn’tchange it much. “I took off the ‘ck’ and changed it to ‘ox,’”hesaid. The newrestaurant name is “Starbox Falafel,”

From left, mutual friend HenryFrost, Blane Aranyosi and Kaleb Naquin get abeer together to celebrate success

PROVIDED PHOTOS

Blane Aranyosi on the set of ‘Eddington’ as Joaquin Phoenix’s stand-in.

Potato masher worksfor eggsalad

Dear Heloise: Apotato masher is terriﬁcfor making an egg salad. It helps break up hardboiled eggs faster and better —Adele Bloom, via email

Excludingfamily

Dear Heloise: Iwanted to write in regarding the recent letters printed from seniors who had to tell family and friends that they may visit theirlakehouseor vacation home by invitationonly The most wonderful memories of my life are from the times I spent at my grandparents’ as achild. Did the children make messes, raid the refrigerator, and eat all the snacks?Absolutely! But laterinlife, our grandparentsdeveloped dementia and cancer.They begged us,

By The Associated Press

“Please don’tsend me to anursinghome.” They wanted to pass on at home surrounded by family

Co-workers suddenly inviting themselves over

Hints from Heloise

So,all the children and grandchildrencametogethertofeed them, bathe them, and love on them

Formyhusband’sparents andmine, thankfully we were with them at home when they passed.

Seniors, you better use all the timeyou haveleft to love on yourfamily and notexclude them. Asad picture is visiting a nursing homeand seeing seniors diealone after staring at the walls for years withoutone visitor —R.D.S in North Carolina

Send ahint to heloise@heloise. com.

TODAYINHISTORY

Today is Tuesday,July 15, the 196th day of 2025. There are169 days left in the year

Todayinhistory

On July 15, 1799, the Rosetta Stone, akey to deciphering ancient Egyptian scripts,was found at Fort Julien in theNile Delta during the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt

Also on this date:

In 1834, the SpanishInquisition was abolished more than 350 yearsafter its creation.

In 1870, Georgia became the last Confederatestate to bereadmitted to the Union.

In 1913, DemocratAugustus Bacon of Georgia became the ﬁrst person elected to the U.S Senate under the terms of the recently ratiﬁed 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for popular election of senators.

In 1916, The Boeing Company, originally known as PaciﬁcAero Products Co., was founded in Seattle.

In 1975, three American astronauts blasted off aboard an Apollo spaceship hours after twoSoviet cosmonautswere launched aboarda Soyuzspacecraft fora mission that included alinkupof the two ships in orbit.

In 1976, a36-hour kidnap ordeal beganfor 26 schoolchildren and their bus driver as they were abducted near Chowchilla, California, by three gunmen and imprisoned in an underground cell. (The captives escaped unharmed; the kidnapperswere caught.)

In 1996, MSNBC, a24-hourallnews network, made its debuton cable and the internet.

In 1997, fashion designer Gianni Versace, 50, was shot dead outside his Miami Beach home; suspected gunman Andrew Phillip Cunanan, 27, was found dead eight days later, asuicide. (Investigators believed Cunanan killed four other people before Versace in across-country rampage that beganthe previous March.)

In 2002, John Walker Lindh, an American who’d fought along-

side the Taliban in Afghanistan, pleadedguilty in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, to two felonies in adeal sparinghim life in prison.

In 2006, Twitter (now known as X) was launched to thepublic. In 2019, avowed White supremacist JamesAlex FieldsJr. was sentenced byastate court to life in prison plus 419 years for killing oneand injuring dozens when hedeliberately drove his car into acrowd of anti-racism protestersduring arally in Charlottesville, Virginia. (The previous month, Fields received alife sentence on 29 federal hate crime charges.)

In 2020, George Floyd’sfamily filed alawsuit against the city of Minneapolis and the four police officers charged in his death, alleging theofficers violated Floyd’srightswhen they restrained him andthat thecity allowed aculture of excessive force, racism and impunity to flourish inits police force. (The city would agree to pay $27 milliontosettle thelawsuit in March2021.)

Today’sbirthdays: Actor Patrick Wayne is 86. R&B singer Millie Jackson is 81. Singer Linda Ronstadtis79. Author Richard Russo is 76. MusicianTrevon Horn is 76. Arianna Huffington, co-founder of TheHuffington Post, is 75. Former professional wrestler and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura is 74. Actor Terry O’Quinn (TV:“Lost”)is73. Rock drummer Marky Ramone is 73. Rock musician Joe Satriani is 69. Model Kim Alexis is 65. Actor Willie Aames is 65. Actordirector Forest Whitaker is 64. Actor Brigitte Nielsenis62. Rock drummer Jason Bonham is 59. TV personalityAdam Savage (TV “MythBusters”) is 58. Actor-comedian Eddie Griffin is 57. Actor-screenwriter Jim Rash (TV:“Community”) is 53. Actor Scott Foley is 53. Actor Brian Austin Green is 52. Singer Buju Banton is 52. Actor Diane Kruger is 49. Actor Lana Parrilla is 48. Actor Travis Fimmel is 46. Actor-singer Tristan “Mack” Wilds is 36. Actor Iain Armitage (TV: “Young Sheldon”) is 17.

LSU AGCENTER PHOTO By OLIVIA MCCLURE Apatio canprovide an outdoor gathering spot

HARDSCAPING

Continued from page1D

Perhaps having friendsover and cooking for them is your thing. An outdoor kitchen may be in order.Orwould you rather aquiet retreat for relaxing and reading? Acomfy swing shaded by astylish pergola could be the ticket. Youcan warm up on chilly fall and winter evenings withanoutdoor ﬁreplace. Retaining walls keep soil in place and lend structure.Shorter seat walls canset

Dear Miss Manners: Ijust moved into anew home, and Iwanted to keep that information private at theplace where Iamtemporarily working. I’m not particularly close to anyone there. Several people are nice to me, but not to thepoint of being friends.

Well, word got out about my house, and now several people have invited themselves over or hinted as much. None of these people have ever socialized with me, so I ﬁnd it odd and awkward that they would suddenly invitethemselves.

ity with which somepeople state their demands

Buttogive aspeciﬁcexcuse is to admit that the matter is open for discussion.

your friend by offering double condolences —for losing her husband, and also forhaving arude daughter

off patios or other areas while creatingextra seating. Don’tforgetabout pathwaysthrough the garden, which holdpractical and aesthetic appeal. Abdihas written detailed how-to guidesfor some of these hardscaping projects.You can ﬁnd them by searching www LSUAgCenter.com for “Landscape Ornamental Series.” Simplerhardscapingprojects canbeeffective,too.One wellplaced boulder orbench can sometimes be all that asmall garden needs. Even justafew steppingstones can make an impact.

Judith Martin MISS MANNERS

Idon’tentertain anyway,but I know tellingthem that will not work. I’m just really bothered that they say,“You’ll have to inviteusover.”

What would you do? Ineed alist of excuses!

Gentlereader: No, you need only one: “I’m not planning anything.” Or fewer than one, if that is possible: astrained smile and silence. Miss Manners understands that people who have trouble saying no might be sorry to disappoint those who importune them. Or they may be cowed by theauthor-

MOVIE

Continuedfrom page1D

acting opportunity arrived. While on settoward the end of ﬁlming, Lars Knudsen, Aster’sproducing partner,approached Aranyosiwith aspur-of-the-moment roleasa nurse. Aster had madechanges to thescript, and Aranyosi seized the chance to act opposite of Phoenix instead of stand in his place.

“Apartofmewaslike,‘OhmyGod, Ican’t believe this is happening.’But then another part of me is like, ‘I have ajob to do,’”Aranyosi said.

Houma native Naquin was with Aranyosi at aRaising Cane’sinAlbuquerque when Aranyosigot the news of his changing role. Naquin was working in movies as an extra in Louisiana, but he noticed apattern when he keptgetting moved up to the front forscenes. These instances encouragedhim to try for amore substantial role.

He tried local theater at the Thibodaux Playhouse, but he said that he bombed. He attendedan open casting callfor aSonic commercial, booked that andthen worked as an extra in some ﬁlms. Naquin said that when he saw “Hereditary” by Aster he knew he had to be an actor

“So Istarted takinglessons with Jim Gleason, who’sthe SAG-AFTRA president of New Orleans,” Naquinsaid. “Eversincethen, I’vehad to network alot, do alot of independent stuff, and slowly but surely make connections. Ihad theright agents, andthe right opportunities cameatthe right time, and here we are.”

He auditioned for the film “Eddington” witha six-second video and found out he got thejob over amonth later.His role in the film takes place during aprotest —look for him credited as “Young Man ANTIFA.” As afan of Aster and thefilm company A24, working on a film of this magnitude was a dream cometrue forNaquin. Aster,the director of “Eddington,” is known for his boundary-

STARBOX

Continuedfrom page1D

to show people what real Arabic food tastes like,” Mohammad said.

“Everything here is made from scratch.Everything is fresh.”

The restaurantofﬁcially opened forbusiness on July 4, with hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days aweek at 4353 S. Sherwood Forest Blvd., in Baton Rouge.

Mohammad has lived in Baton Rouge for 11 years. The Palestinian native is also theowner of Family Deals Liquidation andFurniture, withtwo locations in BatonRouge (onFlorida Boulevard and Government Street), one on the West Bank and one in Columbus,Ohio.

He says adisappointing trip to Starbucks inspired the Baton Rouge restaurant’s name.

“Onetime, IgotoStarbucks.I atefalafeland tortilla,aSpanish food,” he said. “WhenItasted the falafel, Isaid, ‘This is not falafel.

He decided he could build a kitchen that made authenticArabic food, including falafel.

“Tomakefalafel,you have to have chickpeas staying in water,

Yousay you are busy?

“Well, when will you be free?” they will ask.

Yousay that the house is not ready forvisitors?

“That’sall right; we don’t expect it to be in perfect shape.”

Yousay you have guests coming? “We’d love to meet them.”

Andsoon. If you don’tsupply material, they can’targue.

Dear Miss Manners: Iwas visiting a dear friend’shome afew days after her husbanddied. While Iwas there, her adult daughter arrived from out of town. Ihad not met her before. We were introduced, and then I said, “I’msorry foryour loss.” She immediately said, “I hate it when people say that,” and continued to complain about people always saying that. What was Isupposed to say in response? Iwas speechless.

Gentlereader: Good. Because you wouldn’thave wanted to upset

Dear Miss Manners: Iam64years old. My mother insists that when Iamoffered another helping of food, it’srude formetoreply “No, thank you, I’mfull.” She says Ishould just say “No, thank you” and leave it at that because no one wants to know whether I’mfull. If Isay that Iamfull, she frowns and gives me awithering look. In fact, she gives me the same look whenIjust say “No, thank you” because she always thinks I’m going to add that Iamfull. However,many of my other relatives regularly say that they are full! Is my momright?

Gentle reader: Always. And Miss Manners agrees that picturing your full stomach has abad effect on other people’sappetites.

Sendquestions to Miss Manners at herwebsite, www missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mailtoMiss Manners, Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City,MO 64106.

‘Eddington.’

set of ‘Eddington.’

pushing films like “Midsommar,” “Hereditary” and “BeauIs Afraid.” This new ﬁlm is adark action comedy that centers on apolitical rivalry and apolarized small town during the COVID pandemic. LouisianaboysinNew Mexico

Before meeting in NewMexico, Aranyosi and Naquin didn’tknow each other,but after afew weeks ﬁlming in TruthorConsequences, they have bonded forlife. Amutual friend from Thibodeaux, Henry Frost, an actor who has beenMatthew McConaughey’sstand-in, was instrumental in helping the two get to knoweach other in “Eddington.” He met Aranyosi on set of the ﬁlm

cleaningfor two days. We do that. Then, we add the onions, garlic and other spices,” he said. “A lot of people told me they didn’tlike Arabicfood. Itell them that they need to try real Arabic food.”

Regarding the unusual namefor hisrestaurant,Mohammadsaid that he was “looking forsomething

“Free State of Jones,” and he went to E.D. WhiteCatholic High School with Naquin. He told Naquin that Aranyosi was in New Mexico and that they had to meet Naquin stayed with Aranyosi for his ﬁrst week in town. He credits Aranyosi’s experience withhelping him adjust on location.

“Honestly,without Blane, Idon’t know how Iwould have made it out there,” Naquin said. “Just a lotoftraveling, alot of nights, a lot of different events, costume ﬁttings and going from Albuquerque to Truth or Consequences. If I had to do that alone, Iwould have been lost. So, I’m very thankful for Blane already being there.”

The film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival,and Aranyosi bought aticket to France for achance to see it.Hecaught up withthe producers, andtheygot him asuit anda ticket to thescreening. He walked thered carpet, sat in the front row and attendedthe after party withthe cast.

“These guys are like our idols. You’re trying to show them how much they mean to you, but they’re giving it back to you,” Aranyosi said. “Then they’re telling you, like howimportant youare.Itwas so surreal.”

“Eddington” will be released on July 18 in theatersnationwide.

Email Joy Holden at joy.holden@ theadvocate.com.

to makeaboom in the city.”

The restaurant also servesa variety of desserts, including Dubai chocolate,crepes,baklava, wafﬂes and more.

“Everything is madefresh in my kitchen,” Mohammad said.

The restaurant has tables inside and adrive-thru.The pitabread is clearlymade from scratch —pillowyandfresh.Thefriedkibbeisexcellent —stuffed with meat and pine nuts. Thegrape leaves are small, but tasty.The gyro, made with the delicious pita, is also awinner

The “gourmet hummus” is enough to feed acrowd andis toppedwithbeef shawarma. The menu is extensive, andnot all items areavailable yet, but allin all, it’sanimpressive start for the restaurant with afunny name. Originally,Mohammad registered the restaurant name “Starbucks Falafel” with the Secretary of State and other required agencies before deciding to change to “Starbox Falafel.”

In acrowdedfood scene, Starbox Falafel is alreadyliving up to its nameand its owner’sdream Email Jan Risheratjan.risher@ theadvocate.com.

STAFF PHOTO By JANRISHER Falafel, top; fried kibbe, right; and grapeleaveswithtzatzikiare available from Starbox Falafel in Baton Rouge.

PROVIDED PHOTOS

Blane Aranyosi as Joaquin Phoenix’sstand-in on the set of

Kaleb Naquin, on the left,grins withone of hisheroes, director Ari Aster,onthe

CANCER (June 21-July 22) You can dream, but don't go overboard. Too much of anything will lead to backtracking. Take your time and consider every angle. Charm trumps aggression, and kindness outmaneuvers intimidation.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) Your charismatic presentation will captivate people who can contribute to your success. Personal improvements are evident. Let domestic improvements enhance your professional life.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Choose your confidants cautiously to avoid emotional backlash. Share information with people whohavesimilarconcerns.Avoidpeople trying to convince you that they know what's best for you.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23) Keep a low profile. The less others know about you and what you're up to, the better. Change begins with you and what you know; learn and practice until you are ready to show off your skills.

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 22) You'll shine at events if you display your talents. An opportunity will develop if you are gracious with your time, talent and advice. Apply what you discover about yourself to your everyday routine.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 23-Dec. 21) Hold tight; don't feel obligated to share every detail with everyone you encounter. There is safety in silence when you are trying to get something done without interference.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) Engage in events that connect you with people

heading in the same direction. Invest your energy into an outlet that propels you toward your desires. Spend time with someone who makes you shine.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) Make your surroundingsmoreconducivetoyourneeds. How you feel in your chosen environment will determine your accomplishments, so strive for peace of mind.

PISCES (Feb. 20-March 20) Make a to-do list and get moving. The sooner you rid yourself of the pressure that comes with unfinished business, the more you will enjoy the rewards. Your happiness is your responsibility.

ARIES (March 21-April 19) A change will clear your head and help you envision lifestyle choices. Set a budget and make some necessary cuts. Leave nothing to chance regarding your home, family and finances.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20) Interact with others, fulfill your promises and let what you do for people lead the way. Less talk and more action will offer hope, boost your reputation and be your calling card.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20) Trust your instincts, not your emotions. Home improvements or lifestyle changes will brighten your day. Spending time with someone you love will lead to special plans or projects.

By Andrews McMeel Syndication

FAMILY CIrCUS

Celebrity Cipher cryptograms are created from quotations by famous people, past and present. Each letter in the cipher stands for another.

TODAy'S CLUE: U EQUALS G

CeLebrItY CIpher

For better or For WorSe

And erneSt

SALLY Forth

beetLe bAILeY

Mother GooSe And GrIMM

LAGoon

Sudoku

InstructIons: Sudoku is anumber-placing puzzle based on a9x9 grid with several given numbers. Theobject is to place the numbers 1to9 in the empty squares so that each row, each column and each 3x3 box contains the same number only once. Thedifficulty level of theSudoku increases from Monday to Sunday.

Yesterday’s Puzzle Answer

nea CroSSwordS La TimeS CroSSword

THewiZard oF id

BLondie

BaBY BLueS

Hi and LoiS CurTiS

Bridge

BY PHILLIP ALDER

Gioacchino Rossini, an Italian opera composer who died in 1868, said, “One cannot judge ‘Lohengrin’ from afirst hearing, and Icertainly do not intend to hear it asecond time.”

At the bridge table, do not judge adeal totally from your first glance; give it a second look to check that you have not missed something. So, have asecond sliceoftoast this morning. South is in four spades. West leads the heart king and continues withthe heart queen. How shoulddeclarer plan the play?

Pre-empts are apain. South’s sequence shows avery strong four-spade bid, because an immediate four-spade overcallwouldalsobestrong. When you intervene over apre-empt, assume your partner has six or seven points and base your actionsappropriately. So, jumping straighttofourspadessuggestsarounda working20-count.Thissequencepromises more. Here, of course,North couldn’t care less!

South hasnine top tricks: six spades, one diamond and twoclubs. At first glance,heneedstheclubfinessetowork. However,there is asecond chance diamonds might break 3-3.

Afterruffingthesecondheart,declarer shouldcash the spadeace, then play the diamond ace and another diamond. Suppose East winsand leads athird heart.

Declarer ruffs high and plays another diamond. In amoment, South will draw trumps ending withdummy’sspade 10 and cashthe high diamond. But note that if diamonds had split 4-2, theclub finesse wouldstill have been available. For more on thisdeal,tune in tomorrow. ©2025 by NEA,Inc., dist.

By Andrews McMeel Syndication

Each Wuzzle is awordriddlewhich creates adisguised word, phrase, name, place, saying, etc. For example: NOON GOOD =GOOD AFTERNOON

Previous answers:

word game

InsTRucTIons: 1. Words must be of fourormore letters. 2. Words that acquire fourletters by the addition of “s,”such as “bats” or “dies,” are not allowed.3 Additional words made by adding a“d” or an “s” may not be used. 4. Proper nouns, slang words, or vulgar or sexually explicit wordsare not allowed

ToDAY’s WoRD FIEnDIsH: FEEN-dish: Perversely diabolical.

Average mark16words

Time limit 30 minutes

Can you find 24 or morewords in FIENDISH?

YEsTERDAY’s WoRD —cAssoWARY

crass craw cross crow across assay away awry scar scary scow soar sora sway orca wary racy rosy