The Acadiana Advocate 01-06-2026

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What will be the big stories in 2026?

Trials, budgets, leadership and more to impact Lafayette Staff reports In 2025, Acadiana saw a historic snowstorm, the culmination of a yearslong investigation into a bribery scheme in the District Attorney’s Office, the end of Joseph Savoie’s era at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and several big development stories.

In 2026, several of those stories will continue to play out, plus we’ll be keeping a close watch on Lafayette Parish Mayor-President Monique Boulet’s plans to revitalize an important corridor and the Lafayette Parish school system’s budget issues.

Here are the stories Acadiana Advocate reporters are following and will report on in 2026.

Johnston Street revitalization project

STAFF PHOTO By LESLIE WESTBROOK

Chris Disher, co-founder of Cajun Broadband, speaks during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the expansion of internet service into Vermilion Parish last month at the LSU AgCenter Cooperative Extension Building in Abbeville.

BY JENNA ROSS

Staff writer

ABBEVILLE — At an event celebrating the completion of another project by Cajun Broadband, the little internet company that could, there were speeches by local officials, a video message from Gov. Jeff Landry and a ribbon-cutting.

And there was seafood gumbo, cooked the night before by Chris Disher, the company’s co-founder.

His grandmother made her gumbo with tomatoes, but Disher skipped them, knowing the crowd, and used shrimp and oysters harvested from parish waters.

The gathering in Vermilion Parish, like much of what Cajun Broadband does, had a personal feel that belied a bigger truth: The company is among those leading Louisiana’s push to bring speedy internet to the state’s rural reaches.

This fall, it won $18.2 million in federal funding from the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program, or BEAD, to connect another 4,000 homes and businesses.

This month, they’ll be among the

ä See STORIES, page 6A

STAFF PHOTO By JENNA ROSS

Matthew Disher splices fiber in a Cajun Broadband truck for a Maurice home in December.

companies breaking ground with Acadiana, in a doughnut-like shape that funding: “We’re small, so we can surrounding Lafayette. In 2023, build fast,” Disher said.

Inc. Magazine named it among the Already, the Broussard-based comä See INTERNET, page 4A pany provides fiber internet across

CDC cuts vaccine recommendations

health and vaccination rates in Louisiana.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reduced the number of vaccines recommended for all children from 17 to 11. Vaccines for reBY EMILY WOODRUFF Staff writer spiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, hepatitis A and B, influFederal officials made sweep- enza, rotavirus, COVID-19 and ing changes to U.S. vaccine meningococcal disease, as well policy Monday, sharply cutting as vaccines for dengue and methe number of recommended ningococcal B in certain places childhood immunizations, a ä See VACCINE, page 4A move that could impact public

PAGE 6A

STAFF FILE PHOTO By BRAD BOWIE

A revitalization project for Johnston Street, including safety upgrades and more efficient intersections and traffic flow, is expected this year.

Defiant Maduro pleads not guilty to drug charges

BY MICHAEL R. SISAK, LARRY NEUMEISTER and ERIC TUCKER

Health experts criticize childhood policy changes

WEATHER HIGH 79 LOW 63

Johnston Street, one of Lafayette’s major thoroughfares, will see a major revitalization that is expected to include safety upgrades and more efficient intersections and traffic flow.

The ambitious project, which has been floated for decades, has a more concrete plan under Boulet. It has received more than $40 million in local, state and federal funding, including $8 million dedicated to safety between Bertrand and Churchill drives.

Boulet’s agenda for the corridor includes comprehensive drainage improvements, upgrading utilities to remove the aging utility poles, more efficient intersections and traffic flow, improved sidewalks and bike lanes and landscaping and design improvements, and more funding is expected via grants, state approvals and allocations from Lafayette Consolidated Government’s capital improvement program budget, she previously said.

— Adam Daigle, Acadiana business editor, and Stephen Marcantel, staff reporter

INSIDE

ä Cuba faces uncertain future after U.S. topples Maduro. Page 2A ä U.S. allies, adversaries critique NEW YORK — A defiant Nicolás Venezuela actions at U.N. meeting.

Maduro declared himself “the president of my country” as he Page 3A

Associated Press

IMAGE FROM WABC TV VIDEO

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is taken off a helicopter on his way to Manhattan Federal Court on Monday.

protested his capture and pleaded not guilty Monday to federal drug trafficking charges that the Trump administration used to justify removing him from power in Venezuela.

“I was captured,” Maduro said in Spanish as translated by a court-

Business ...................10C Commentary ................3B Nation-World................2A Classified .....................4B Living............................5C Opinion ........................2B Comics-Puzzles .....7C-9C Metro ...........................1B Sports ..........................1C

room interpreter before being cut off by the judge. Asked later for his plea to the charges, he stated: “I am innocent. I am not guilty. I

ä See MADURO, page 4A

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Jury selection begins in trial of ex-Uvalde officer

BRIEFS

FROM WIRE REPORTS

Child, uncle killed in Israeli strike in Gaza

DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli strike in Gaza on Monday hit a tent housing displaced people, killing a 5-year-old girl and her uncle and wounding two other children, hospital officials said.

The strike took place in the Muwasi area northwest of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, officials at Nasser Hospital said. The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify those details. Family members wept over the bodies as they were brought to the hospital.

The dead are among the more than 400 people killed in Gaza since an October ceasefire began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The Israeli military said on social media it struck a Hamas militant who planned an imminent attack on Israeli troops in the southern Gaza Strip. It said the strike complied with the ceasefire agreement, and was done in a targeted way to mitigate civilian harm.

It was not immediately clear if the statement referred to the fatal tent strike. The military also said that, because of continued ceasefire violations, it had begun striking Hezbollah and Hamas terror targets in southern and eastern Lebanon.

Hegseth censures Sen. Kelly over video

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Monday that he censured Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona over the former Navy pilot’s participation in a video that called on troops to resist unlawful orders.

Hegseth said the censure — by itself simply a formal letter with little practical consequence — was “a necessary process step” to proceedings that could result in a demotion from Kelly’s retired rank of captain and subsequent reduction in retirement pay.

Investigating and now punishing a sitting U.S. senator is an extraordinary move for the Pentagon, which until President Donald Trump’s second term had usually gone out of its way to act and appear apolitical. A legal expert says the choice to go after a lawmaker will complicate an already unique case.

In a lengthy post on social media, Kelly said he “never expected” what he called an “attack” from Trump and Hegseth, recounting his 25 years of Navy service as well as combat and space missions.

Calling Hegseth’s move “outrageous” and “un-American,” Kelly said he would fight the censure “with everything I’ve got — not for myself, but to send a message back that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government.”

The censure comes after Kelly participated in a video in November with five other Democratic lawmakers — all veterans of the armed services and intelligence community — in which they called on troops to uphold the Constitution and defy “illegal orders.”

Trump, a Republican, accused the lawmakers of sedition “punishable by DEATH” in a social media post days later.

Swiss police identify all 116 injured in bar fire

CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland — Swiss police said Monday they’ve identified all the people who were injured in the fire that tore through a New Year’s celebration in a crowded bar. They put the total at 116, more than two-thirds still in hospitals.

Authorities had previously given a figure of 119 injured, on top of the 40 people killed.

But police said Monday that three people admitted to hospitals on the night of the disaster in Crans-Montana had been linked in error to the blaze at the crowded Le Constellation bar.

The injured include 68 Swiss citizens, 21 French nationals, 10 Italians, four Serbs, two Poles and one person each from Australia, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Portugal and the Republic of Congo, according to a police statement. There were also four dual nationals: of France and Finland, France and Italy, Switzerland and Belgium, and Italy and the Philippines.

are FBI agents, Man charged nesses rangers with the Texas Department of Public Safety, over response to school employees and fammembers of the victims. school shooting ilyNearly 400 officers from

BY VALERIE GONZALEZ

Associated Press

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By RAMON ESPINOSA

Workers fly the Cuban flag at half-mast on Monday at the Anti-Imperialist Tribune near the U.S. embassy in Havana in memory of Cubans who died two days before in Caracas, Venezuela, during the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces.

Cuba sees uncertainty after Venezuela attack Country mourns officers officials say killed when U.S. captured Maduro

BY DÁNICA COTO and ANDREA RODRÍGUEZ Associated Press

HAVANA — Cuban officials on Monday lowered flags before dawn to mourn 32 security officers they say were killed in the U.S. weekend strike in Venezuela, the island nation’s closest ally, as residents here wonder what the capture of President Nicolás Maduro means for their future.

The two governments are so close that Cuban soldiers and security agents were often the Venezuelan president’s bodyguards, and Venezuela’s petroleum has kept the economically ailing island limping along for years. Cuban authorities over the weekend said the 32 had been killed in the surprise attack but have given no further details.

The Trump administration has warned outright that toppling Maduro will help advance another decadeslong goal: Dealing a blow to the Cuban government. Severing Cuba from Venezuela could have disastrous consequences for its leaders, who on Saturday called for the international community to stand up to “state terrorism.”

On Saturday, Trump said the ailing Cuban economy will be further battered by Maduro’s ouster.

“It’s going down,” Trump said of Cuba.

“It’s going down for the count.”

Many observers say Cuba, an island of about 10 million people, exerted a remarkable degree of influence over Venezuela, an oil-rich nation with three times as many people. At the same time, Cubans have long been tormented by constant blackouts and shortages of basic foods.

And after the attack, they woke to the once-unimaginable possibility of an even grimmer future.

“I can’t talk. I have no words,” 75-yearold Berta Luz Sierra Molina said as she sobbed and placed a hand over her face.

Even though 63-year-old Regina Méndez is too old to join the Cuban military, she said that “we have to stand strong.”

“Give me a rifle, and I’ll go fight,” Méndez said.

Maduro’s government was shipping an average of 35,000 barrels of oil daily over the last three months, about a quarter of total demand, said Jorge Piñón, a Cuban energy expert at the University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute.

“The question to which we don’t have an answer, which is critical: Is the U.S. going to allow Venezuela to continue supplying Cuba with oil?” he said.

Piñón noted that Mexico once supplied Cuba with 22,000 barrels of oil a day before it dropped to 7,000 barrels after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Mexico City in early September.

“I don’t see Mexico jumping in right now,” Piñón said. “The U.S. government would go bonkers.”

Ricardo Torres, a Cuban economist at American University in Washington, said that “blackouts have been significant, and that is with Venezuela still sending some oil.”

“Imagine a future now in the short term losing that,” he said. “It’s a catastrophe.”

Piñón noted that Cuba doesn’t have the money to buy oil on the international market.

“The only ally that they have left out there with oil is Russia,” he said, noting that it sends Cuba about 2 million barrels a year.

“Russia has the capability to fill the gap.

Do they have the political commitment, or the political desire to do so? I don’t know,” he said.

Torres also questioned whether Russia would extend a hand.

“Meddling with Cuba could jeopardize your negotiation with the U.S. around Ukraine. Why would you do it? Ukraine is far more important,” he said.

Torres said Cuba should open its doors to the private sector and market and reduce its public sector, moves that could help prompt China to step in and help Cuba.

“Do they have an alternative? I don’t think they do,” he said.

Man detained, accused of breaking windows at Vance’s Ohio home

BY ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and KATHY MCCORMACK Associated Press

A man who broke windows at Vice President JD Vance’s Ohio home and caused other property damage was detained early Monday, the U.S. Secret Service said.

The man was detained shortly after midnight by Secret Service agents assigned to Vance’s home, east of downtown Cincinnati, agency spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. The vice president and his family were not at home, having returned to Washington on Sunday after a weekend there, his office said.

The Secret Service heard a loud noise at the house around midnight and found a person who had broken a window with a hammer and was trying to get in, according to two law enforcement officials who were not publicly authorized to discuss the investigation into what happened and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The man had also vandalized a Secret Service vehicle on his way up the home’s driveway, one of the officials said.

A law enforcement official identified the suspect as William Defoor, 26, who public records list as living in Cincinnati. Calls to the listings for possible relatives and an attorney who previously represented Defoor were not immediately returned.

Defoor is set to be arraigned Tuesday

IMAGE FROM WCPO 9 NEWS VIEO

Officials inspect broken windows and other property damage at Vice President JD Vance’s Ohio home on Monday in eastern Cincinnati.

on misdemeanor charges of vandalism, criminal trespass, criminal damaging and obstruction of official business, court records show.

Vance expressed gratitude to the Secret Service and Cincinnati police for responding quickly to the incident in a post on the social platform X. “I appreciate everyone’s well wishes about the attack at our home,” Vance tweeted. “As far as I can tell, a crazy person tried to break in by hammering the windows.”

Court records show that Defoor faced an earlier charge of vandalism in 2024 and agreed to treatment under the county’s Mental Health Court system.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A former school police officer in Uvalde, Texas, who was part of the slow law enforcement response to one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history went on trial Monday on charges that he failed to protect children from the gunman.

Adrian Gonzales, one of the first officers to respond to the 2022 attack, is charged with 29 counts of child abandonment or endangerment in a rare prosecution of an officer accused of not doing more to save lives. Authorities waited more than an hour to confront the teenage shooter who killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary.

Gonzales has pleaded not guilty, and his attorney has said the officer tried to save children that day.

Jury selection began Monday at a Texas courthouse where prospective jurors were asked what they knew about the response and their impressions of what happened. Judge Sid Harle said the court was not looking for jurors who know nothing about the shooting but wants those who can be impartial.

About 100 people were dismissed after saying they already formed opinions.

One man said more officers should be on trial, while a teacher said she would throw herself in front of her students to protect them.

Bill Turner, a special prosecutor, told potential jurors they would need to consider whether the inaction of the officer proved harmful.

“If there is a duty to act and you fail to act, that’s child endangerment,” he said.

The judge said the trial was expected to last about two weeks.

Among the potential wit-

state, local and federal law enforcement agencies responded to the school, but 77 minutes passed from the time authorities arrived until a tactical team breached the classroom and killed the shooter, Salvador Ramos. An investigation later showed that Ramos was obsessed with violence and notoriety in the months leading up to the attack.

Gonzales and former Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo were among the first on the scene, and they are the only two officers to face criminal charges over the response. Arredondo’s trial has not been scheduled.

The charges against Gonzales carry up to two years in prison if he is convicted.

Police and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott initially said swift law enforcement action killed Ramos and saved lives. But that version quickly unraveled as families described begging police to go into the building and 911 calls emerged from students pleading for help.

The indictment alleges Gonzales placed children in “imminent danger” of injury or death by failing to engage, distract or delay the shooter and by not following his active shooter training. The allegations also say he did not advance toward the gunfire despite hearing shots and being told where the shooter was.

State and federal reviews of the shooting cited cascading problems in law enforcement training, communication, leadership and technology, and questioned why officers waited so long.

According to the state review, Gonzales told investigators that once police realized there were students still sitting in other classrooms, he helped evacuate them.

Some family members of the victims have said more officers should be indicted.

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U.S. allies, adversaries critique Venezuela strike Lassen, Danish ambassador U.N. meets to the U.N. She also defended Venezuto discuss attack, ela’s sovereignty, saying “no should seek to influence Maduro capture state political outcomes in Venezu-

BY FARNOUSH AMIRI and JENNIFER PELTZ Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS — Both allies and adversaries of the United States on Monday used an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to voice opposition to the audacious U.S. military operation in Venezuela that captured leader Nicolás Maduro.

Before the U.N.’s most powerful body, countries critiqued — if sometimes obliquely — President Donald Trump’s intervention in the South American country and his recent comments signaling the possibility of expanding military action to countries like Colombia and Mexico over drug trafficking accusations. The Republican president also has re-upped his threat to take over the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of U.S. security interests.

Denmark, which has jurisdiction over the mineral-rich island, carefully denounced U.S. prospects for taking over Greenland without mentioning its NATO ally by name.

“The inviolability of borders is not up for negotiation,” said Christina Markus

ela through the use of threat of force or through other means inconsistent with international law.”

While French President Emmanuel Macron recently endorsed Maduro’s capture, its U.N. envoy was slightly more critical Monday, saying any violations of international law by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, which include the U.S., erodes “the very foundation of the international order.”

“The military operation that has led to the capture of Maduro runs counter to the principle of peace dispute resolution and runs counter to the principle of nonuse of force,” said Jay Dharmadhikari, deputy French ambassador to the U.N. U.S. envoy Mike Waltz defended the operation in Ve n e z u e l a as a justified and “surgical law enforcement operation,” calling out Waltz the 15-member council for criticizing the targeting of Maduro.

“If the United Nations in this body confers legitimacy

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By FRANK FRANKLIN II

People listen as Venezuela’s U.N. Ambassador Samuel Moncada speaks Monday during a meeting of the Security Council at U.N. headquarters. on an illegitimate narco-terrorist with the same treatment in this charter of a democratically elected president or head of state, what kind of organization is this?” said Waltz, who is Trump’s former national security adviser.

Maduro’s 2024 reelection was widely disputed.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement that he is “deeply concerned that rules of international law have not been respected with regard to the 3 January military action.”

He said the “grave” action by the U.S. could set a precedent for how future relations

between nations unfold.

Even with the strong support for Venezuela’s sovereignty, its envoy called on the U.N. to go beyond veiled comments and condemnation. Ambassador Samuel Moncada urged the Security Council to demand that Washington release Maduro and his wife.

“If the kidnapping of a head of state, the bombing of a sovereign country and the open threat of further armed action are tolerated or downplayed, the message sent to the world is a devastating one: namely that the law is optional, and

that force is the true arbiter of international relations,” Moncada said.

He warned that other countries can’t afford to look away: “Accepting such a logic would mean to open the door to a deeply unstable world.”

Neighboring Colombia described the raid as reminiscent of “the worst interference in our area in the past.”

“Democracy cannot be defended or promoted through violence and coercion, and it cannot be superseded, either, by economic interests,” Ambassador Leonor Zalabata said.

The biggest critics of U.S. foreign policy, China and Russia, which are also permanent members of the Security Council, called for the U.N. body to unite in rejecting America turning back to an “era of lawlessness.”

Maduro, like his predecessor, forged a close relationship with Russia, while China was the main destination for most Venezuelan oil.

“We cannot allow the United States to proclaim itself as some kind of a supreme judge, which alone bears the right to invade any country, to label culprits, to hand down and to enforce punishments irrespective of notions of international law, sovereignty and nonintervention,” Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said.

His own country’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has drawn widespread condemnation within the U.N. and from the U.S., although the Trump administration is engaging with Russia in hopes of brokering an end to the fighting.

The U.S. seized Maduro and his wife early Saturday from their home on a military base and put them aboard a U.S. warship to face prosecution in New York in a Justice Department indictment accusing them of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy. Maduro declared his innocence during his first appearance in a Manhattan courthouse Monday.

Walz drops bid for third term as Minnesota governor

BY STEVE KARNOWSKI and BILL BARROW Associated Press

ST PAUL, Minn. — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Democrats’ 2024 candidate for vice president, is ending his bid for a third term amid President Donald Trump’s relentless focus on a fraud investigation into the state’s child care programs and its Somali community.

Less than four months after announcing his reelection campaign, Walz said Monday that negative attention and Republican attacks have contributed to an “extraordinarily difficult year for our state,” making it impossible for him to serve full time as governor while also being a candidate to keep his job.

“Every minute that I spend defending my own political interest would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who want to prey on our differences,” Walz

MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO PHOTO By KEREM yÜCEL

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz holds a news conference Monday at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, Minn. said at the state capitol. “So I’ve decided to step out of this race, and I’ll let others worry about the election while I focus on the work that’s in front of me for the next year.”

Walz did not take questions from reporters after speaking for about seven minutes, much of which involved repeating his earlier written statement announcing his decision.

“Donald Trump and his allies — in Washington, in St. Paul and online — want to make our state a colder,

meaner place,” Walz said, referring to the Trump administration withholding funds for the programs and the Republican president’s attacks on Somali immigrants in Minnesota.

Walz did not explicitly acknowledge the impact of a viral video from a rightwing influencer who claimed he’d found rampant fraud at day care centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis. But the Trump administration has cited the video in its decision to cut off certain federal funding

streams, and the video’s creator, Nick Shirley, was happy to take credit for the governor’s decision.

“I ENDED TIM WALZ,” Shirley posted Monday on social media.

Trump wrote on social media that Walz was not running “because he was caught, REDHANDED” with “stealing Tens of Billions of Taxpayer Dollars,” an accu-

sation against the governor that lacked evidence despite widely acknowledged fraud problems. The president said Walz “has destroyed the State of Minnesota.”

Walz’s exit scrambles the contest in a Democraticleaning state that Republicans have insisted they can win. Democrats hold 24 of 50 governor’s seats nationwide, with 36 seats, including Min-

nesota’s, on the ballot this year.

Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar is considering entering the Minnesota race, according to a person close to her. The person, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the senator, who ran for president in 2020, has not made a final decision.

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Paris court finds 10 guilty of cyberbullying French first lady

BY SYLVIE CORBET

to pedophilia. Some of the posts were viewed tens of thousands of times.

PARIS — A Paris court on Brigitte Macron didn’t Monday found 10 people attend the two-day trial in guilty of cyberbullying October. Speaking on TF1 France’s first lady, Brigitte national television Sunday, Macron, by spreading false she said that she launched online claims about legal proceedings to her gender and sex“set an example” in the fight against hauality, including allerassment. gations that she was Her lawyer, Jean born a male.

Ennochi, said MonOne defendant was sentenced to six day that “what is immonths in prison, portant is that there while eight were B. Macron are immediate cyhanded suspended berbullying awaresentences between four and ness trainings, and for some eight months. All 10 were of the defendants, a ban on ordered to attend cyberbul- using their social media accounts.” lying awareness training.

Her daughter, Tiphaine The court pointed to “particularly degrading, insult- Auzière, testified about what ing, and malicious” com- she described as the “deteriments referring to false oration” of her mother’s life claims suggesting that Bri- since the online harassment gitte Macron was transgen- intensified. “She cannot ignore the horrible things said der and a pedophile.

“Repeated publications about her,” Auzière told the have had cumulative harm- court. She said the impact has extended to the entire ful effects,” the court said.

The defendants, eight men family, including Macron’s and two women ranging in grandchildren.

One of the defendants, a age from 41 to 65, were accused of having posted nu- property asset manager, remerous comments falsely ceived a six-month prison claiming that the wife of sentence. Under French law, President Emmanuel Ma- the sentence may be served cron was born male and lik- at home, possibly while ening their 24-year age gap wearing an ankle monitor Associated Press

or following other requirements set by a judge.

Defendant Delphine Jegousse, 51, who is known as Amandine Roy and describes herself as a medium and an author, is considered to have played a major role in spreading the rumor after she released a four-hour video on her YouTube channel in 2021. She was given a six-month prison sentence.

The X account of Aurélien Poirson-Atlan, 41, known as Zoé Sagan on social media, was suspended in 2024 after his name was cited in several judicial investigations.

Poirson-Atlan was given an eight-month prison sentence, along with another defendant, a gallery owner.

The one defendant not given a prison sentence was a teacher, who apologized during the trial. He will have to attend the cyberbullying awareness training.

Several will see their online access suspended for six months on the social media where they made their posts.

All 10 were also sentenced to jointly pay $11,675 in compensation to Brigitte Macron for moral damage.

The sentences were proportional to the seriousness of the comments, the court stressed.

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INTERNET

building and kept working,” said Lewis, Cajun’s managing director.

When Louisiana’s Granting Underserved Municipalities Broadband Opportunities, or GUMBO, program was announced, Disher bought a nice tie and went door to door, parish to parish. In late 2022, with nearly $20 million in GUMBO funding, Cajun Broadband installed some 90,000 feet of fiber in St. Martin Parish.

It was the first completed project in the state under GUMBO, whose mission is in its name. Cajun Broadband competed with and beat bigger companies to nab GUMBO funds, said Veneeth Iyengar, executive director for the Louisiana Office of Broadband Development and Connectivity.

“They bootstrapped this busi-

ness,” he said. “They saw a need in their community that was not fulfilled, and they decided to bootstrap it through entrepreneurial capitalism and build a business which is now impacting thousands of lives.”

Still, the business has stayed small and nimble. Ask an employee how many of them there are, and they’ll begin ticking off names, counting the number on two hands. It feels like family, said Steven Creduer, field supervisor.

“I’m leaving my house to go to my other house.”

Disher’s son, Matthew, works in the field as a splicer now. Romero’s daughter works for the company, too.

Employees exchange “Merry Christmas” texts with customers.

Many of them had long struggled to use Zoom, to upload and to stream, and were thrilled to spot Cajun Broadband’s trailer on their rural roads. Technicians see firsthand how people rely on the internet for necessities, from health care to homework.

“People are really happy you’re there,” Disher said.

A Louisiana-born-and-educated engineer, Disher hadn’t yearned to be an entrepreneur, the 55-yearold said. “I never wanted to do anything on my own.”

For years, he worked for General Electric in the oil fields of Singapore and Brazil, eventually supporting six regions from Broussard — but traveling often.

Then GE downsized, and Disher lost his job.

With his wife’s encouragement, he became Cajun Broadband’s first full-time employee, he said. “She just kept saying, ‘You can do it, you can do it.’ ” At first, he felt responsible to his family, his mortgage in mind. Then, he felt responsible for the company’s employees, their families in mind. Now, he feels responsible for the region and its residents.

Several broadband customers were at the LSU AgCenter office in Abbeville for last month’s ribboncutting, which marked the completion of three broadband projects in Vermilion Parish comprising some 500,000 feet of fiber to 1,750 homes and businesses.

Among the beneficiaries: Michelle Romero, a 38-year-old mother, nurse and health coach who can now upload her workout videos in a few minutes, rather than several hours. (Disher used healthier oils in his gumbo, knowing she’d be in the crowd.)

And there’s the North Vermilion Youth Athletic Association, which for years had struggled to make credit card sales in its concession stand using Cox internet.

“We had issues on top of issues,” said Josh Broussard, the nonprofit’s president.

Cajun Broadband offered the athletic association free hookups, Wi-Fi service and boosters in exchange for some publicity. Now, the park has strong enough service to fuel live scoreboards and stream games, Broussard said, which means that they can host regional tournaments.

Broussard, who played sports at the park as a child, said the change is much needed.

“I saw what it was, and I just want to improve it,” Broussard said, “and make it better than what it was when we were there.”

schedule based on no scientific input on safety risks and little transparency will cause unnecessary fear for patients and doctors, and will make America sicker,” Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, said.

The Louisiana Department of Health has followed CDC recommendations related to childhood vaccination schedules in the past.

In an email, Health Department spokesperson Emma Herrock said the agency would “continue to follow CDC guidance,” suggesting that it would reduce the number of vaccines recommended to all children.

Louisiana’s recently appointed surgeon general, Dr. Evelyn Griffin — an obstetrician-gynecologist named to the post by Gov. Jeff Landry in December — is expected to play a central role in the state’s vaccine policy.

Griffin was appointed last year to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices by Kennedy after he removed all 17 sitting members of the panel. She was among those who voted to end the longstanding universal recommendation for hepatitis B vaccination at birth in December, a move that drew national attention and criticism.

Dr. John Schieffelin, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Manning Family Children’s in New Orleans, said in an interview Monday that vaccines for

diseases that the CDC no longer universally recommends, such as influenza, RSV and rotavirus, have reduced the burden at his hospital in recent years, which were often “jam-packed” with kids with those illnesses every winter.

“If this recommendation is put in place and it’s followed, then over the next few years we’re just going to see a really, really large number of kids sick with these diseases that are preventable,” Schieffelin said. “Unfortunately, we’ll see several additional pediatric deaths every year.”

Louisiana has at times outpaced the entire country for flu and RSV rates. The state’s childhood vaccination rates have dropped several percentage points since 2019, and state health officials have recently reversed policies aimed at broadening the number of people who receive vaccines.

Last year, then Surgeon General Dr. Ralph Abraham stopped mass vaccinations, such as drive-thru flu fairs, and told Health Department employees they should not recommend specific vaccines. In December, Abraham was sworn in

by Kennedy as the principal deputy director of the CDC. Louisiana’s vaccination rate declines have come amid a wave of state legislation aimed at weakening vaccine requirements. Questioning some vaccines can affect uptake of others as well, Schieffelin said.

“If the government is questioning its utility and safety, then the general public does as well, and we’re going to see a real significant drop in vaccination coverage,” he said.

Another concern is the removal of the vaccine for hepatitis A, where transmission has historically been linked to raw seafood.

Louisiana had an outbreak in 2018 and 2019.

“For Louisiana, that one is really of concern,” Scheiffelin said. “We have a lot of people who love raw oysters.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the overhaul was in response to a request from President Donald Trump in December. Trump asked the agency to review how peer nations approach vaccine recommendations and consider revising U.S. guidance accordingly.

HHS said its comparison with 20 peer nations found that the U.S. was an “outlier” in both the number of vaccinations and the number of doses it recommended to all children. Officials with the agency framed the change as a way to increase public trust by recommending only the most important vaccinations for children to receive.

“This decision protects children, respects families, and rebuilds trust in public health,” Kennedy said in a statement Monday.

Trump, reacting to the news on

his Truth Social platform, said the new schedule is “far more reasonable” and “finally aligns the United States with other Developed Nations around the World.”

Among those left on the recommended-for-everyone list are vaccines against measles, whooping cough, polio, tetanus, chickenpox and human papillomavirus, or HPV. The guidance reduces the number of recommended vaccine doses against HPV from two or three shots depending on age to one for most children.

Medical experts said Monday’s changes without what they said was public discussion or a transparent review of the data would put children at risk.

“Abandoning recommendations for vaccines that prevent influenza, hepatitis and rotavirus, and changing the recommendation for HPV without a public process to weigh the risks and benefits, will lead to more hospitalizations and preventable deaths among American children,” said Michael Osterholm, of the Vaccine Integrity Project, based at the University of Minnesota.

Federal officials emphasized that all vaccines included under the prior schedule will remain available and fully covered by government insurance programs, including Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Vaccines for Children program.

Continued from page 1A

fastest-growing companies in the U.S. — landing at 603 out of 5,000 and fourth among those based in Louisiana.

“We kept doubling the size every year,” Disher said, “because we didn’t understand just how big this need was in the rural communities.”

But it started in 2017 with an antenna in a pine tree.

Disher’s two then-teenage sons had been nagging him for years about the slow, spotty internet.

One Sunday before church, they’d hooked up their Xbox for a software update, “and the game wasn’t even 5% done updating after being gone for like three and a half hours,” said his son Matthew.

Meanwhile, Disher’s friend, neighbor and now partner Jimmy Lewis, an IT professional struggling with his own internet service, had been driving by an empty tower on his way to work each day.

He wondered: What if we put an antenna on that?

They got the OK, grabbed a chain saw and mounted a dish.

“And Chris is hollering up at me, ‘We’ve got 60 megs!’” Lewis said. “‘We’ve got 60 megs!’”

They hooked up one neighbor, then another, then 10. They kept their day jobs, at first, working nights and weekends.

Within two years, they had more than 1,000 customers, said Daniel Romero Jr., operations manager.

(Disher declined to give a current count, but the company’s website touts “nearly 10,000 customers across seven Louisiana parishes.”)

“We just kept going and kept

VACCINE

Continued from page 1A will now be recommended only for high-risk groups or for “shared clinical decision-making,” which means discussions between patients and providers.

“President Trump directed us to examine how other developed nations protect their children and to take action if they are doing better,” said Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a vaccine skeptic who said the move was made “after an exhaustive review of the evidence.”

Trump administration officials said the overhaul, a move long sought by Kennedy, won’t result in families who want the vaccines losing access to them, and said insurance will continue to pay. But medical experts said the decision creates confusion for parents and could increase preventable diseases.

Among the critics of the move was U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician trained in treating liver disease, which can be caused by hepatitis B, one of the vaccines removed from the recommended schedule. Cassidy, who voted to confirm Kennedy, spoke out against the decision on social media Monday.

“Changing the pediatric vaccine

MADURO

Continued from page 1A am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country.”

Maduro’s court appearance in Manhattan, his first since he and his wife, Cilia Flores, were seized from their Caracas home Saturday in a stunning middle-ofthe-night military operation, kicked off the U.S. government’s most consequential prosecution in decades of a foreign head of state. She also pleaded not guilty.

The criminal case is unfolding against a broader diplomatic backdrop of an audacious U.S.-engineered regime change that President Donald Trump has said will enable his administration to “run” the South American country.

Maduro, 63, was brought to court under heavy security early Monday — flown by helicopter to Manhattan from Brooklyn, where he is jailed, and then driven to the courthouse in an armored vehicle.

He and Flores were led into court just before noon.

Both were in leg shackles and jail-issued garb, and both put on headsets to hear the English-language proceeding as it was translated into Spanish.

As Maduro left the court-

STAFF PHOTO By LESLIE WESTBROOK

Company founders and state and local officials hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the expansion of Cajun Broadband into Vermilion Parish at the LSU AgCenter Cooperative Extension Building in Abbeville on Dec. 9.

room, a man in the audience denounced him as an “illegitimate” president.

As a criminal defendant in the U.S. legal system, Maduro will have the same rights as any other person charged with a crime in the country — including the right to jury trial. But, given the circumstances of his arrest and the geopolitical stakes at play, he’ll also be nearly — but not quite — unique.

That was made clear from the outset as Maduro, who took copious notes throughout the proceedings and wished Happy New Year to reporters as he entered the courtroom, repeatedly pressed his case that he had been unlawfully abducted.

“I am here kidnapped since Jan. 3, Saturday,” Maduro said, standing and leaning his tall frame toward a tabletop microphone. “I was captured at my home in Caracas.”

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a 92-year-old jurist who was appointed to the federal bench in 1998

by Bill Clinton, interrupted him, saying: “There will be a time and place to go into all of this.” Hellerstein added that Maduro’s lawyer could do so later.

“At this point in time, I only want to know one thing: Are you Nicolás Maduro Moros?”

“I am Nicolás Maduro Moros,” the defendant re-

sponded.

Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, said he expects to contest the legality of his “military abduction.”

Pollack, a prominent Washington lawyer whose clients have included WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, said Maduro is “head of a sovereign state and is entitled to the privileges and immunities that go with that office.”

Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega unsuccessfully tried the same immunity defense after the U.S. captured him in a similar military invasion in 1990.

But the U.S. doesn’t recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state — particularly after a muchdisputed 2024 reelection.

Flores, who identified herself to the judge as “first lady of the Republic of Venezuela,” had bandages on her forehead and right temple. Her lawyer, Mark Donnelly, said she suffered “significant injuries” during her capture.

A 25-page indictment accuses Maduro and others of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. They could face life in prison if convicted.

Among other things, the indictment accuses Maduro and his wife of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders of those who owed

them drug money or undermined their drug trafficking operation. That included the killing of a local drug boss in Caracas, the indictment said.

Outside the courthouse, police separated those protesting the U.S. military ac-

tion from pro-intervention demonstrators. Inside the courtroom, as the proceeding wrapped up and Maduro prepared to leave, 33-yearold Pedro Rojas stood up and began speaking forcefully at him in Spanish.

Rojas said later that he had

been imprisoned by the Venezuelan regime. As deputy U.S. marshals led Maduro from the courtroom, the deposed leader looked directly at the man and shot back in Spanish: “I am a kidnapped president. I am a prisoner of war.”

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The Acadiana Advocate ● theadvocate.com ● Tuesday, January 6, 2026 ● 5A

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6A ● Tuesday, January 6, 2026 ● theadvocate.com ● The Acadiana Advocate

Acadiana Forecast TODAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

lll

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

ALMANAC

AIR QUALITY

LAFAyETTE THROUGH 5 P.M. MONDAy

YESTERDAY

TEMPERATURE

High/low Normal high/low Record high Record low

MODERATE

69°/45° 62°/43° 79° in 2025 23° in 1969

MAIN POLLUTANT Particulates

READING 62

TODAY

PRECIPITATION

Sunny to partly cloudy

Partly sunny HIGH

LOW

HIGH

79° 63°

Local Summary

A couple of showers

LOW

HIGH

79° 63°

LOW

79° 68°

A shower and t-storm

HIGH

LOW

79° 56°

Cooler; a p.m. shower

HIGH

Clouds and sun

LOW

HIGH

64° 45°

LOW

61° 38°

Partly sunny today with the temperature near the record of 80 set in 1894. Winds southwest 7-14 mph. Mainly clear tonight; fog late. Winds southwest 4-8 mph. Sunshine and a few clouds tomorrow.

National Summary

Ice will build up from parts of Minnesota to portions of Wisconsin and Michigan today. Rain and drizzle will begin to move into the Northeast with freezing rain and snow at night in northern New york and New England. Heavy rain and mountain snow will focus on the Pacific Northwest with travel problems. Most other areas will be dry.

LOUISIANA FORECAST

RIVER STAGES MISSISSIPPI

Monroe 76/53

Shreveport 79/50

Jackson 74/58

Longview 78/47

Many 75/56

Hattiesburg 78/62

Alexandria 76/60

Memphis Vidalia-Natchez Red River Landing Baton Rouge Donaldsonville Reserve New Orleans OHIO

Cairo COMITE

Near Olive

Baton Rouge 79/63 Beaumont 79/62

Port Arthur 76/62

Lafayette

AMITE

Near Darlington Denham Springs Port Vincent

New Orleans 78/62

Lake Charles 76/61

TICKFAW

Montpelier Holden

Houma 80/62

ATCHAFALAYA

Shown is today’s weather. Temperatures are today’s highs and tonight’s lows.

TIDES HIGH

First FT. LOW

Lake Pontchartrain (Tchefuncte River) 9:29a 0.5 Shell Beach 3:49a 1.3 South Point, Marsh Island 3:37a 1.3 Cypremort Point 10:26p 1.0 Grand Isle (Barataria Pass) 11:54p 0.6 Mississippi River (Southwest Pass) 11:07p 0.8 Wine Island 12:25a 1.0

FT.

9:12p -0.2 2:24p -0.4 10:15a -0.7 2:11p -0.6 10:26a -0.4 8:38a -0.5 11:28a -0.5

HIGH

Second FT. LOW

--------7:56p 1.2 -----------------

FT.

--------11:23p 0.9 -----------------

Forecasts and graphics, except KATC forecasts, provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2026

Simmesport Melville Krotz Springs Butte La Rose Bayou Sorrel Morgan City

FLOOD STAGE 24-HOUR STAGE CHANGE

34 48 48 35 27 22 17

-2.30 14.40 17.50 6.50 4.10 2.29 2.70

-0.21 -0.19 -0.95 -0.22 -0.01 -0.13 -0.11

40

13.97

+0.21

19

-1.43

none

18 29 8

-0.97 10.10 1.35

+0.04 -0.02 +0.35

13 15

1.63 0.81

-0.03 -0.01

47 34 29 20 12 6

5.97 3.81 3.64 2.53 3.00 1.92

-0.31 -0.33 -0.14 -0.49 +0.50 -0.82

Sunrise today Sunset tonight Moonrise today Moonset today

LAST

7:05 a.m.

5:23 p.m.

9:09 p.m.

9:39 a.m.

Today

City

Austin Boston Dallas Fairbanks Honolulu Las Vegas Louisville Miami Nashville

The World Amsterdam Bangkok Barcelona Berlin Brussels Cairo Dublin Frankfurt Havana Hong Kong Jerusalem

Lo

W

Hi

Lo

W

84 36 76 -3 80 58 60 82 65

54 34 47 -15 72 43 41 64 45

pc c s sn sh pc c pc c

80 42 77 -12 81 59 56 81 62

65 33 62 -34 69 42 42 66 46

c r pc sn sh pc s pc s

New Orleans Orlando Philadelphia Phoenix Pittsburgh Raleigh St. Louis San Diego Tampa

36 89 50 28 34 72 41 32 82 63 60

31 70 32 21 28 53 34 22 59 52 40

sn s pc c sn pc pc pc s s pc

37 85 49 29 35 76 41 30 83 63 63

33 68 38 15 31 57 35 28 62 54 47

sn s c s sn pc sh pc s s pc

Kuwait City London Madrid Mexico City Montreal Moscow New Delhi Paris Rome Stockholm Tokyo

-10

-0s

0s

STAFF FILE PHOTO By LESLIE WESTBROOK

FULL

JAN 18

JAN 25

FEB 1

City

Hi

Today

Wednesday

Lo

W

Hi

Lo

W

78 81 46 71 49 66 57 68 76

62 56 40 53 37 49 35 55 62

s s c c r pc pc pc s

77 79 53 63 41 70 61 67 77

65 58 35 51 34 42 48 56 62

pc pc pc r c pc s pc pc

66 40 43 75 22 20 63 36 55 28 51

43 35 24 41 20 18 43 27 37 14 39

s pc pc pc pc sn pc s r sf s

69 41 46 76 33 23 63 36 48 23 46

44 35 30 46 29 14 42 33 30 17 37

s pc c pc sn sn pc sn pc c pc

10s 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s 100s 110s

SOLUNAR TABLE The solunar period schedule allows planning days so you will be fishing in good territory or hunting in good cover during those times. Major periods begin at the times shown and last for 1.5 to 2 hours. The minor periods are shorter.

Today Wed. Thu. Fri. Sat. Sun. Mon.

Major

Minor

1:37a 7:50a 2:32a 8:43a 3:22a 9:33a 4:08a 10:18a 4:50a 11:01a 5:31a 11:42a 6:12a 12:23p

Major

Minor

2:02p 8:14p 2:55p 9:06p 3:43p 9:54p 4:28p 10:39p 5:11p 11:21p 5:53p ---6:35p ----

Shown are areas of precipitation and high temperatures for the day.

STAFF FILE PHOTO By BRAD BOWIE

Jack Montoucet, former secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, leaves the federal courthouse in Lafayette on June 12.

FIRST

Weather (W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, sh-showers, t-thunderstorms, r-rain, sf-snow flurries, sn-snow, i-ice.

Attendees listen to the music of Dobet Gnahoré during the 2025 Festival International de Louisiane. The festival board has announced a fundraiser to help offset the rising costs of booking non-U.S.-based bands. of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Montoucet is accused of conspiring with Dustry Guidry and Leonard Franques, both of Acadiana, to funnel paying customers to online hunting, fishing and boating courses offered by Franques’ company.

Montoucet was to receive kickbacks for awarding the Wildlife and Fisheries contract to

NEW

Wednesday

Hi

Buc-ee’s construction delayed

Former Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Jack Montoucet is scheduled for trial in Lafayette in 2026 on federal bribery charges.

A federal grand jury in Lafayette in May returned an indictment charging Montoucet with one count of conspiracy to commit bribery and wire fraud, three counts of wire fraud and one count

JAN 10

SOURCE: AIRNOW.GOV

THE NATION AND WORLD

Continued from page 1A

Montoucet trial set for May

MAIN POLLUTANT Ozone

SUN AND MOON

STORIES

Lafayette will have to wait a bit longer for brisket on the board and beaver nuggets. The opening of the Lafayette Buc-ee’s, the massive Texas-based gas station, has been delayed to 2028.

When Buc-ee’s bought the 42 acres at the northeast corner of Interstate 10 and Louisiana Avenue in December, it indicated construction on the $82 million project would begin in early 2025, and the store would open in the second quarter of 2026.

Site work began early last year, but frequent rain and other factors resulted in an initial delay on the project.

Plans include a 74,000-squarefoot store along with about 120 gas pumps and nearly 700 parking spaces, along with public infrastructure improvements to Louisiana Avenue.

— Adam Daigle, Acadiana business editor

GOOD

24 hours through 5 p.m. Mon. 0.00” Month to date (normal) Trace (0.95”) year to date (normal) Trace (0.95”)

Franques.

He pleaded not guilty and has a federal trial date of May 11.

If convicted, Montoucet could face up to five years in prison on the conspiracy count, and up to 20 years in prison on the wire fraud and money laundering counts, and a fine of up to $1 million.

— Claire Taylor, staff reporter

Festival International fundraising In November, Festival International de Louisiane’s board of volunteers announced a fundraiser to help offset the rising costs of booking non-U.S.-based bands for Lafayette’s globally renowned international music and arts festival.

Festival International will celebrate its 40th year this year, and the organization has gained a reputation as the premiere launching pad for international artists looking to tour in the U.S. The festival’s prominence has also created opportunities for Louisiana’s homegrown artists to meet talent buyers and book their own international tours, particularly in Europe and Canada.

Bringing international bands to Festival International has grown more expensive over the decades, and costs such as visa and IRS adjudication fees now consume around 30% of their international artist budget. While expenses have

grown, the process has also gotten lengthier and more uncertain, limiting the range of acts that programming director Lisa Stafford can book with assurance that the band will get to Louisiana on time.

Festival International announced the fundraiser with the goal of boosting their international artist budget for the 40th anniversary festival, taking place April 22-26 in downtown Lafayette. They also look forward to premiering a new aspect of the festival in 2026 — a music market for artists from Louisiana and Canada, in an effort to continue to enhance the event’s role as a catalyst for artists to connect across borders.

The market, called “Connexion Acadie-Louisiane,” will function similarly to the former Louisiana International Music Exchange event at Festival International, a music showcase for industry professionals that ended in 2019.

— Joanna Brown, staff reporter

UL leadership, finance changes The University of Louisiana at Lafayette is working through two major issues: finding a permanent president and balancing its budget.

The school has been without a permanent leader since July 31, when longtime President Joseph Savoie stepped down. Since then, it’s had two interim presidents,

Jaimie Hebert, who previously and again serves as provost, and Ramesh Kolluru, the former vice president of research and economic development.

The University of Louisiana system, which oversees the school, announced a timeline for an official search in December. The first meeting will be Jan. 14, and finalists are expected to be presented to the full board on Feb. 27. The search committee is composed of voting and nonvoting members.

The next president will inherit a rocky financial situation. When Hebert was interim president, he announced a $25 million deficit and a $25 million budget shortfall.

Since that announcement, there have been layoffs, position eliminations and consolidations, retirements and resignations.

In a December town hall, Kolluru told faculty and staff that, with continued budget restrictions, he expected UL to end the fiscal year with a $10.5 million budget deficit.

— Ashley White and Megan Wyatt, staff writers

Lafayette Parish schools budget The Lafayette Parish school system will likely face another challenging budget cycle.

The district, like many other public school districts nationwide, is dealing with a decline in enrollment. The district is funded in part by a combination of federal and state grants, property and sales taxes, and per-pupil funding. Fewer students means less per-pupil funding.

It has also struggled with rising insurance costs, a unique challenge for the district since it is self-funded.

The district made cuts last year to create a balanced $805 million budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

Those cuts were made through job consolidations and eliminations, a district optimization plan and other changes.

The budget process typically begins in the fall, and preliminary work is done between schools and departments and the accounting and budget departments. A series of special board meetings will be scheduled in April and May to present the proposed budget, which must be adopted by the board, typically at its June meeting.

— Ashley White, staff reporter This story was produced using stories Acadiana Advocate’s reporters have covered throughout 2025. Reach the newsroom at acadiananews@ theadvocate.com.

METRO

T H E A D V O C AT E.C O M

Jan Risher LOUISIANA AT LARGE

Hosting a vision board brunch For five years, I’ve spent the first Saturday of the year hosting a vision board brunch for dozens of women. With our house fire in August, I wasn’t sure I would be able to pull it off in the small home we’ve rented, but on Saturday, 37 women showed up to focus on their visions for the new year.

Our small home was wall-towall women — sitting crisscross-applesauce on the floor, in chairs, on the sofa and joyfully spilling out into the backyard.

The event is simple to organize. I provide Champagne to toast the new year, poster boards, glue sticks, scissors and a few magazines. They brought more magazines, ephemera and a table full of food to share.

The event reminds me that wonderful conversations, cooperation and good things happen when people are task-focused and busy with their hands.

An hour into the vision board process, this group of women, many of whom had never met, were helping each other — working individually and together.

“I’m looking for pictures of dogs,” one woman said.

“I’m looking for a large G,” another one said.

My new friend, Rebecca DeLatin, who lives next door to our rental home, said she loved how flipping through a random magazine would cause a phrase or photo to jump out at her.

“I found the phrase ‘happy place’ that was a perfect positive encapsulation of all my decluttering and organization goals,” she said. “I enjoyed hearing from my neighboring vision boarders, ‘I’m looking for a fork,’ or ‘I’m looking for books,’ and then suddenly they’d appear in my magazine.”

Sara Kleinpeter, of Baton Rouge, said the process helps her to close out the prior year with reflection and to build upon it in the new year.

Peggy Giglio, from Lafayette, drove over with her 15-year-old daughter, Kellen, to join the vision board party.

“Even with the best of intentions, I rarely give myself meaningful space and time to reflect and set thoughtful intentions,” Giglio said. “I don’t think too much while scanning the magazines. I tend to act on impulse and feeling. I don’t get to do that in life very often as an attorney.”

Giglio keeps her vision board up in her kitchen throughout the year. She looks at it every day of the year — and says she appreciates that it feels honest.

Watching the mother and daughter sit in the light of our open front door working on vision boards was a beautiful thing. Kellen Giglio said her board was more about life in general than the upcoming year.

She had visions of New York City and all sorts of other goal-oriented images and words.

“It shows a lot of my future aspirations, and I will use it to remind myself to become the person I want to be through hard work and focusing on myself,” Kellen Giglio said.

For those working outside, the tiny pieces of cut paper occasionally blew away, causing one woman to lose “radical feminism” for at least an hour.

She recovered it by the end of the day.

A cut-out “2026” blew into another woman’s mimosa. She found another “2026,” but I thought the orange-juice-soaked one was too nice not to use. So, I put it on my vision board. Another young woman said, “Scratch and sniff.”

In general, those working outside were much quieter than the raucous group inside.

ä See RISHER, page 4B

|

T u e s d ay, J a n u a ry 6, 2026

1Bn

Officials sign deals with ICE Sheriff’s Office to enforce immigration laws

BY STEPHEN MARCANTEL Staff writer

The Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office has signed two agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that would allow deputies to conduct immigration enforcement throughout the parish.

The agreement, signed Dec. 11, allows sheriff’s deputies to interrogate and arrest those suspected of entering the country illegally, according to the ICE 287(g) program website.

The 287(g) program authorizes ICE to give state and local law enforcement agencies the authority

to perform immigration officer functions under ICE direction and oversight.

The Sheriff’s Office signed up under the program’s Task Force Model and Warrant Service Model.

The Lafayette Police Department is not listed as a participating agency.

“We’re already keeping everything as it is,” Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Sgt. Chris Cormier said.

The Task Force Model allows the Sheriff’s Office the authority to interrogate and arrest without a warrant any person believed to be in the country illegally, accord-

ing to a memorandum of agreement between ICE and the Sheriff’s Office. The model allows law enforcement to enforce limited immigration authority with ICE oversight during routine police duties.

The agreement would also allow the Sheriff’s Office to issue immigration detainers, to serve and execute warrants and take custody of people arrested by ICE. The Warrant Service Model allows ICE to train, certify and authorize local enforcement to serve and execute warrants on those suspected of being in the country illegally who are being held in the parish jail.

Day-to-day functions at the Sheriff’s Office would not increase, with immigration functions carried out alongside normal operations, Cormier said.

“This would allow field officers to be able to execute certain things, but we’re not going on raids and special operations or anything,” Cormier said.

ICE would serve in a supervisory role for the agency, and any charges would require approval from an ICE supervisor.

Jail capacity would not increase under the agreement, and no immigration arrests have been made since it was signed, Cormier said.

Fewer than 20 officers are signed up for the task force, and fewer than 10 are signed up for the warrant team, officials said.

STAFF PHOTOS By LESLIE WESTBROOK

READy TO ROLL ABOVE: Lafayette Parish MayorPresident Monique Boulet and Chris Villemarette, president of the Greater Southwest Louisiana Mardi Gras Association, are joined by other local Mardi Gras organizers and royalty as they raise the flag to kick off Carnival season on Monday at City Hall in Lafayette.

LEFT: Slices of king cake are ready to serve during the ceremony.

Local radio personality Sulphur woman accused Smallwood dies Sunday of shooting daughter Community mourns loss of beloved KFXZ host

BY JA’KORI MADISON Staff writer

Stephanie Smallwood, a beloved Acadiana radio personality and host, died after being ill for several months.

Smallwood fell ill in October and officially retired Dec.1, according to Delta Media Corporation, which announced her death in a statement on Sunday.

As the backbone of KFXZ

Z105.9, a Delta Media Corporation radio station, for more than 12 years, Smallwood became a trusted voice in Acadiana, according to the station. She began her career at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s K RV S F M - 8 8 Smallwood student station and later spent 14 years in local television news at KATC, where she served as assignments editor before returning to radio.

ä See RADIO, page 4B

A 28-year-old woman was arrested by Sulphur police after her 1-year-old daughter was fatally shot.

Around 8:21 p.m. Thursday, the Sulphur Police DepartCRIME ment was called BLOTTER to a shooting at a home on Advocate Quelqueshue staff Street, according reports to a news release from the department.

When they arrived, officers found the child dead. Police said the girl was shot by her mother, Kristin

Bass.

Bass was taken into custody and booked with a count of firstdegree murder. She was transferred to the Calcasieu Parish Correctional Center with bail set at $10 million.

Those with any additional information on the case are asked to contact Sgt. Jeremy Cain at (337) 527-4558.

Man booked in arson that damaged 2 homes A suspect has been arrested in a December arson that damaged

ä See BLOTTER, page 4B

OPINION

2B ● Tuesday, January 6, 2026 ● theadvocate.com ● The Acadiana Advocate

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T H E A D V O C AT E.C O M/opinions

OUR VIEWS

New fines for distracted driving a good step to reduce accidents Along with the new year came a raft of new Louisiana laws, many of which will garner little public attention.

But we’d like to highlight one change connected to an existing law: Those caught using a cellphone or other device in their hands while their car is moving can now be fined $100, or $250 if the violation occurs in a school or construction zone.

The law under which the fines were enacted actually took effect Aug. 1, but the Legislature gave residents until Jan. 1 as a grace period, during which only warnings were issued.

Distraction was a major factor in almost a quarter of fatal crashes in Louisiana in 2023, according to the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission. A higher percentage of serious injuries, 32%, were attributable to inattention or distracted driving. The commission includes distracted driving among its “Deadly 4” factors in crashes, along with not using seat belts, impaired driving and aggressive driving.

Under the provisions of the new law, tickets for using a cellphone while driving can only be issued as secondary violations, meaning a motorist cannot be stopped solely for cellphone use unless in a school or construction zone. And hands-free functions, such as voice-text, loudspeaker calls and GPS functions, can still be used.

The law only applies while the vehicle is moving, so drivers who are parked or at a red light can still have the device in their hand. And there are exceptions, such as to report a crime, accident or medical emergency.

Slidell Republican Rep. Brian Glorioso, who sponsored the bill, said his goal was to help educate drivers and reduce the number of accidents from distracted driving. Several other states have enacted similar statutes, Glorioso noted last year.

Beyond the laudable benefit of reducing injuries and deaths, Glorioso and Gov. Jeff Landry pointed to the possibility for insurance rate reductions as a result of the new law.

“If you quit texting and driving, there’s less accidents,” Landry said.

Obviously, both of these outcomes would be welcome.

We are glad to see the new law take full effect, and we hope enforcement is both firm and fair.

Sending texts, checking apps or looking at messages while behind the wheel will be a hard habit for many of us to break. We hope the new law will educate people about the dangers, and even persuade them not to pick up their phones in the first place. The prospect of a fine could also help folks learn to wait.

That sting is far less painful than confronting a crippling injury or the death of a loved one because somebody was glancing at a screen instead of keeping their eyes on the road.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ARE WELCOME. HERE ARE OUR GUIDELINES: Letters are published

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The Advocate | The Times-Picayune require a street address and phone number for verification purposes, but that information is not published. Letters are not to exceed 300 words. Letters to the Editor, The Advocate, P.O. Box 588, Baton Rouge, LA 70821-0588, or email letters@ theadvocate.com.

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YOUR VIEWS

Immigration enforcement that goes after workers counterproductive

National debt column should spark change, but it won’t My compliments to David Thomas on his guest column of Nov. 21, titled “National debt is the biggest risk U.S. faces.” He provided some startling statistics: The interest on the current, nearly $40 trillion, debt is $900 billion annually, and at the historic rate of growth, the debt will be $80 trillion in 2035 and $160 trillion in 2044.

Regardless of what you may think of Elon Musk, he was correct in stating that our country can and will go bankrupt if dramatic action is not taken and taken soon. Attempts by other countries to print money to resolve financial problems have resulted in catastrophic hyperinflation.

Thomas rightly noted that both political parties participate in spending beyond our means. Fiscal responsibility requires asking people to pay for the government programs they believe are needed or telling them no. There is no collective political will to do either; the focus is all short-term on gaining or retaining power in the next election, largely through promises that will result in more debt.

While eliminating fraud and waste should always be vigorously pursued, avoiding bankruptcy will require “we the people” to consent to both spending cuts and tax increases.

The spending cuts will principally involve eliminating federal funding for non-governmental organizations, quickly phasing out federal funding for programs that should be state and local responsibilities and instituting full-time work requirements, without waivers, for working-age citizens receiving public assistance — Medicaid, SNAP, public housing, etc. Taxes will need to be increased primarily to save Social Security and Medicare for current and future generations. Since “we the people” are unlikely to consent, federal bankruptcy seems inevitable.

Under those circumstances, spending cuts and tax increases will happen anyway, but with much greater pain.

Perhaps Thomas will provide another column with advice on how we can prepare.

I thank you for your coverage of Operation Catahoula Crunch. I am very concerned about the manner in which arrests and detentions are being made. I am in favor of identifying illegal immigrants among those arrested for a felony and processing these persons for deportation. But it is not productive to our nation or economy to take deportation action against persons simply working here. Please stop arresting people working in health care, agriculture, construction or otherwise; we need these workers. Rather than going to worksites to arrest people, how about sending federal resources to help the workers needing to gain legal status?

The current operations by Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in south Louisiana are creating fear and terror among mostly law-abiding persons.

I would welcome an investigation by our Louisiana representatives in Congress. I know we can do better.

ERIC KALIVODA Baton Rouge

Repeating myths about immigrants and taxes betrays larger bias By all means, give facts about undocumented immigrants and taxes. A letter presents well-worn falsehoods about undocumented immigrants’ tax and financial status.

Jessie LeBlanc asserts wrongly that: 1. Because they are not citizens, many do not pay the 6.2% FICA tax, and employers do not pay the matching 6.2% FICA tax. This results in them not contributing 12.4% to our Social Security coffers.

2. In many cases, illegal immigrants pay no local, state or federal income taxes.

3. A large part of the income they make returns to their country of origin.

Many undocumented immigrants in the U.S. pay Social Security taxes through payroll deductions, but they are generally ineligible to receive Social Security benefits.

The writer ignores that some citizens avoid paying into the Social Security system, and it is well known.

Yes, undocumented immigrants are legally required to pay federal and state income taxes on income earned in the U.S., and many do. They also pay

C. RAY HALLIBURTON JR. Baton Rouge

Washington politics seems upside down

sales tax and property taxes.

No, undocumented immigrants don’t send most of their U.S. earnings back home; on average, remittances are around 15% of earnings, with the majority (85%) staying in the U.S. to support local economies, buy goods and cover living expenses, though percentages vary by individual and country.

While remittances are crucial for families abroad, most money earned stays in the U.S., and undocumented workers pay significant state and local taxes, contributing to local economies.

Undocumented immigrants pay billions of dollars in taxes annually, even though they are generally ineligible for most public benefits funded by those taxes.

LeBlanc’s letter is, at best, misinformed, at worst, an appeal to emotion rather than logic, aiming to create fear or hatred toward a group by substituting facts with emotional triggers, often through biased assertions or half-truths to sway public opinion without real evidence, in other words, propaganda.

I have some questions.

Speaker Mike Johnson tells us that we do not have a king because if we did, there would be no Congress. If one man tells Congress what to do, how to do it and when to do it and they do it, is there really a Congress?

The president tells us food prices are going down. When is the last time, if ever, he went grocery shopping?

Are any of the “great patriots” from Jan. 6 (who were convicted and pardoned) employed as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents?

Just asking.

JOYCE TRACEY Mandeville

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COMMENTARY The diversity overcorrection employers started discriminating Everyone in media, academia and against them to make their institutions entertainment knew it was happening. “look like America.”

A number of them had qualms.

If you want to understand the Almost none spoke up. And now backlash to diversity, equity and that someone has said someinclusion, you need to underthing, many are pretending they didn’t see it happen with stand how bad that math was their own eyes. This is incredfor a certain class of educated millennial men. You also need to ible, in every sense of the word.

Megan ega recognize that a lot of this math I am talking about how for McArdle was bad, period. years, at many institutions, For some mysterious reason, there was a hiring preference for anyone but White, straight men. As people consistently overestimate the minority share of the population, which Jacob Savage argues convincingly in made the Whiteness of newsrooms, a recent essay for Compact magazine, Hollywood studios and academic dethis most affected one group: younger White men who hadn’t had time to gain partments look more unfair than it the skills and experience that might was. To be clear, there was plenty of have compensated for their melanin unfairness — Black people and women deficiency. were less likely to be hired in past eras Savage cites data that suggest exthan White men, regardless of qualitreme declines in the number of White fications, and that discrimination is males getting entry-level jobs at some reflected in those organizations today. elite institutions — junior screenwritBut even if that hadn’t been the case, ers going from 48% White male to 12%, newsrooms, writer’s rooms and classfrom 39% of tenure-track humanities rooms would have been very White positions at Harvard University to 18%. because most Americans born in the This happened over the last decade.

1960s, 1970s and 1980s were White.

You may be tempted to argue that I suspect people forgot about these this reflects demographic shifts in the cohort effects because so much of the hiring pool, but no, demographics don’t DEI discourse came up around college change that fast. It took 50 years after admissions, where diversity can be the immigration reforms of 1965 for achieved relatively speedily: admit a the White share of the population to go racially balanced class four years in a from 84% to 62%. And while for obvirow, and voilà, you “look like America.”

But a large corporate employer often ous reasons that change is more prohas a workforce spanning 40 years, not nounced in younger generations (peofour. Rebalancing that through repreple who were White in 1965 are still White today), in 2020, White Americans sentative hiring would take decades. remained over half the population of The DEI champions didn’t want to wait early-career workers. that long.

Young White males were about a So the correction turned into an quarter of college graduates in 2022, overcorrection. Upper management so we’d have expected them to avertoo White and male? Offset that with new hires who are neither. But of age about a quarter of new hires for course, offsetting a few decades worth various elite professions. They didn’t drop to 12% of junior television writers of employees with a few years’ worth of hiring meant the share of young because of demographics, or because studios stopped discriminating against White males had to fall by a lot. It’s not that literally none of them got jobs as other groups. They dropped because

screenwriters or journalists. But in many fields and companies, their odds dropped significantly.

And so what, one might argue. For too long White men were the beneficiaries of discrimination against other groups. Turnabout is fair play. Or, a little more charitably, one could say of course it’s unfair, but repairing the legacy of slavery and sexism is a hard problem, and sometimes hard problems have unfair solutions. It wasn’t fair to round up huge numbers of men born between 1914 and 1927 and send them off to fight the Nazis, but that was the only way to win.

One might argue that, but I haven’t seen anyone do so. No one seems brave enough to state baldly that we should penalize White men born in 1988 for hiring decisions that were made in 1985 by another White guy who was born in 1930. Instead what I’ve seen is a lot of deflection.

People who know how hiring decisions were made during the “Great Awokening” nonetheless imply that this is all the fantasy of mediocre White men who can’t admit they didn’t measure up or entitled White men who can’t stand to compete on an even playing field. And sure, in some cases, that’s undoubtedly true.

But it’s also true that as a group, young White men weren’t competing on an even playing field with the rest of us. They were forced to play a much harder game that offered many fewer prizes. It’s one thing to ask them nicely to do this, as an unfortunately necessary sacrifice for the greater good. It’s quite another to make fun of them because they failed to win a contest that was rigged against them. And if you choose the latter course, don’t be surprised if they curse out the referees or decline to keep playing by your rules.

Megan McArdle is on X, @asymmetricinfo.

How old is too old in Maine?

PORTLAND, Maine — An entrenched senator distrusted by both parties. A governor born just six months after 79-year-old Donald Trump. An oyster farmer who for years walked around with a Nazi symbol tattoo. Anti-gay remarks in a state generally regarded as welcoming to LGBTQ+ people. Pockets of deep Trump loyalty in a state that he lost three times. Traditional resistance to outsiders and the likelihood of a flood of out-of-state spending.

Maine is about to hold one of the hardest-fought, David dramatic, gripShribman colorful, ping, emotional, bitter, idiosyncratic, thesaurusbusting Senate races of the age. Also maybe the most consequential.

Welcome to Susan Collins versus Janet Mills. Or maybe Susan Collins versus Graham Platner. Surely Susan Collins versus a cascade of campaign spending. Maybe a dash of Susan Collins versus Donald Trump. Pretty much Susan Collins against the world.

Collins, who is now 73, is the only incumbent Republican senator running for reelection in a state that Trump lost in 2024. The longest-serving woman in the Senate, she is the lawmaker disdained by almost everyone. She entered the chamber in 1997, a year before Bill Clinton was impeached — the political equivalent of the Paleozoic age.

Since then, she’s disappointed conservatives (by resisting multiple Republican initiatives and entreaties by GOP presidents) and infuriated liberals (by providing part of the confirmation victories to judicial and Cabinet nominations from Brett Kavanaugh to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.).

She’s challenging the gray seal — reviled by mariners as threats to the fish harvest and to their livelihood, beloved by naturalists and sentimentalists — as the most controversial mammal in Maine.

Now enter, from stage left, both Mills and Platner.

She’s the two-term governor who sparked praise for standing up to Trump on gender issues. He is the oyster farmer who wants a more vigorous attack on the president and who, unburdened by any political experience, has some explaining to do when it comes to gender issues. She’s supported by the Democratic establishment, he by the sort of insurgent forces that made

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, departs the chamber at the Capitol in Washington, on July 24.

Zohran Mamdani mayor-elect in New York.

Of course, both Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont are involved. Of course, they back different Democrats for the nomination against Collins, who has a gift for survival — making her, from one point of view, the equivalent of a shark (they can survive for 400 years) and, from another viewpoint, a cockroach (they survived the asteroid attack that wiped out the dinosaurs). Neither species is beloved.

Both women are well-known in this state. Neither offers much potential for surprise. The senator raises hopes and fears she will buck Mr. Trump only to back his priorities at crucial junctures.

The governor is a standard-issue establishment politician with the standardissue reputation for competence that Maine leaders from Edmund Muskie (governor, senator, secretary of state) and George Mitchell (judge, Senate majority leader) to Bill Cohen (House member, senator, Secretary of State) and Angus King (Independent governor, college professor, senator) have possessed.

Platner is the campaign’s outsider — he’s outside the political world with positions outside the usual fare.

He’s younger (41), feistier (more prone to views just short of extreme), more unconventional (conducting an insurgency as much as a candidacy).

Connecticut may consider itself the

Land of Steady Habits, but that description also applies to the Pine Tree State, the pine being able to resist climate, drought, and insect infestation (though admittedly it can be regarded as a bit top-heavy).

The biggest outsiders in Maine in the past three-quarters of a century haven’t been its two Independent governors (Jim Langley and King) but conventional figures like Muskie (who had the temerity to be only the second Democrat to win the governor’s office in more than three decades) and Paul LePage (a businessman-governor who boasted of being Donald Trump before Donald Trump). As for real rebels, there was Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican who spent 33 years in the House (1940-49) and Senate (1949-73) and took on red-baiting Joseph McCarthy and, well, no one else.

“There’s a huge hankering to be rid of Susan Collins,” said G. Calvin Mackenzie, an emeritus political scientist at Colby College, in Waterville, Maine.

“Democrats may like Janet Mills just fine, but at her age, it doesn’t make sense. There’s a sprawling discomfort with old political figures.

Mackenzie is the author of an important book titled “The Liberal Hour.” Can a liberal hour be dawning in the place where dawn comes first in the United States?

Australia acts to protect children online Australia’s approach to protecting children from the potential dangers of popular social media platforms — blocking access to kids younger than 16 — may seem ham-fisted to critics, but it sure beats what some elected leaders in D.C. are doing, which is slightly north of nothing.

The ban, which went into effect recently, was partly prompted by the suicide of 14-year-old Ollie Hughes, who was bullied on social media.

Algorithms, which are programmed to engage children for as long as possible including by providing increasingly toxic material, flooded his feed with body-shaming videos and tips on extreme dieting. Ollie’s weight dropped significantly.

He was diagnosed with anorexia just before Christmas in 2023 and took his life on Jan. 9, 2024. His mom, Mia Bannister, Kathleen launched a crusade, testifying before Australia’s lawmakers.

Parker Mia’s mission is familiar to thousands of American parents waging the same war. In California, hundreds of personal injury lawsuits have been consolidated against companies such as ByteDance, Google, Meta and Snap. Most have been filed on behalf of children who developed addiction, anxiety or eating disorders, or who attempted or died by suicide. Lawsuits are also popping up from school districts and state attorneys general in what is seen as one of the most important mass tort cases of the decade.

As fast as these cases stack up, Big Tech companies continue to drop millions of dollars into campaign coffers and congressional committees, while lawmakers considering solutions argue about potential privacy violations and impact on industry innovation. Two of the top lobbying spenders so far this year are Meta at just shy of $20 million and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, at roughly $12 million, according to the research group OpenSecrets.

Surely there’s a way to protect children without sending tech billionaires to the bread line.

Ample scientific research shows social media, mobile phones and video games can lead to childhood addictions. The consequences for mental health range from low self-esteem and depression to self-harm and suicide. A study published in June by JAMA followed more than 4,000 children for four years. It found that addictive social media and phone use was associated with higher risks of suicidal thoughts.

Nevertheless, a House subcommittee gutted the duty-of-care clause in the proposed Kids Online Safety Act that would have held platforms liable for addictive algorithms that can encourage cyberbullying, sexual behavior, drugs and suicide. The Senate passed the measure in a 91-3 vote in July 2024.

Maurine Molak’s son, David, died by suicide in 2016 in San Antonio at age 16 after brutal cyberbullying. Maurine is in D.C. on her 16th trip to speak to legislators and told me David’s heartbreaking story. An Eagle Scout who loved to hunt and fish, he turned to online gaming while recovering from an injury and became addicted. When a classmate posted insults online, a mob quickly formed. Hundreds of people David didn’t know piled on, his mother said, telling him he looked like a monkey and should be in a coffin. Despite the pain these hits caused, David couldn’t look away. “He knew he had a problem, but he was addicted,” his mom said. Even after changing schools, the mob pursued him. Finally, David sought refuge in death.

Since finding her lifeless son in her backyard, Maurine has relentlessly pursued legislative action in Texas and D.C. to protect young children and teens. A self-described conservative Republican, she said she can’t understand what’s going on in Congress. “What they’re doing doesn’t align with my values,” she said about the legislative inaction.

And President Donald Trump? Nada. But he did take time to sign an executive order placing a moratorium on state regulation of artificial intelligence — a big, beautiful Christmas gift for the tech industry.

Meanwhile, Congress has an opportunity to do something important and hugely popular.

Pew Research Center found in October that 81% of American adults support requiring parental consent for kids under 18 to create social media accounts. Fifty-eight percent support an Australia-style ban, according to a survey by the Family Online Safety Institute.

Given public sentiment, it’s a wonder Republicans aren’t galloping en masse to the White House for the president’s signature on the online safety bill, which Democrats support. If they don’t do it soon, House Republicans will pay dearly when parents hit the polls next fall.

What a tragedy, meanwhile, that more children may die because of their dereliction of duty — to care.

Email Kathleen Parker at kathleenparker@ washpost.com.

Email David Shribman at dshribman@ post-gazette.com.

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writer’s city of residence. The Advocate | The Times-Picayune require a street address and phone number for verification purposes, but that information is not published. Letters are not to exceed 300 words. Letters to the Editor, The Advocate, P.O. Box 588, Baton Rouge, LA 70821-0588, or email letters@theadvocate.com.

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Aymond to meet with abuse survivors Sessions with N.O. archbishop part of $230M settlement

BY STEPHANIE RIEGEL Staff writer

The Archdiocese of New Orleans has announced a schedule of 10 group meetings for survivors of clergy sexual abuse hosted by Archbishop Gregory Aymond.

The purpose of the meetings, which will be held over several days in February at parishes throughout the archdiocese, is to give abuse survivors an opportunity to listen, question and freely share their experiences with Aymond, according to a statement from the archdiocese issued Monday.

The meetings with Aymond are among several nonmonetary provisions that are part of the $230 million settlement that the archdiocese finalized last month with hundreds of clergy abuse survivors, ending a contentious and costly bankruptcy case after more than 51/2 years.

The meetings are open to anyone who experienced sexual abuse by a person in ministry in the Archdiocese of New Orleans only, not another archdiocese elsewhere in the country,

spokesperson Sarah McDonald said. The meetings will not be open to the media, members of the public or family and friends of survivors.

The announcement of the meeting schedule follows a public, written apology from Aymond to abuse survivors that the archdiocese released over the weekend. In the apology, which also was a provision of the bankruptcy settlement, Aymond said the archdiocese takes responsibility for the abuse suffered by victims and “pledges to keep children and all vulnerable people safe in our ministry.”

Gag order ruling U.S. bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill confirmed the bankruptcy settlement on Dec. 8 after a nearly three-week hearing, bringing to a close one of the most sordid and painful chapters in the nearly 230-year history of the nation’s second-oldest Roman Catholic diocese.

The plan went into effect Dec. 26. More than 600 survivors who filed claims in the case could begin receiving a portion of their share of the settlement trust as soon as this spring.

While the case is now behind the archdiocese, much work rebuilding trust — and parish coffers — remains.

In a related development last week, the U.S. 5th Cir-

cuit Court of Appeals upheld a $400,000 judgment against one of the key attorneys in the case, Richard Trahant, who was accused by Grabill of violating a protective order early in the case, sanctioned and fined.

Trahant, who represented dozens of abuse survivors and had access to sealed information about abusive clergy, notified the principal at Brother Martin High School about abuse claims against the school’s chaplain at the time, the Rev. Paul Hart.

He also allegedly tipped off a news reporter about the situation with Hart, a claim he denied.

Trahant appealed Grabill’s sanctions to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District, which upheld the ruling. The 5th Circuit concurred with the lower courts, saying, “Trahant’s failure to come forward ‘created waste, disrupted the progress in this case, and delayed resolution of this particular matter for months.’ ” Trahant did not respond to a request seeking comment Monday. But last week, he told WWL-TV that “I did what I had to do to keep a child predator away from children.”

He added he would “go to my grave knowing I didn’t violate the protective order.”

The archdiocese declined to comment on the ruling.

RADIO

Continued from page 1B “Our hearts are broken over this news, and we are in complete shock,” said Johnette Cochran, general manager and vice president of Delta Media Corporation.

“Stephanie loved her listeners and was incredibly passionate about being on air. She added immeasurable value to our team and our community. She will never be replaced.”

While many remembered her for her engaging on-air personality and her connection with the community, others recalled her as a mentor and a guiding influence in their radio careers.

“Her kindness and dedication were truly inspiring. She wasn’t just a mentor — she was family. Her spirit will live on. I’m so grateful for the time we shared and thankful for the invaluable lessons,” DJ

BLOTTER

Continued from page 1B two homes.

Jrevon Anderson was booked on three counts of attempted first-degree murder and aggravated arson.

Fire crews responded to a vehicle fire about 11:21 p.m.

Dec. 27 in the 600 block of Robert Street in Franklin that quickly spread to two nearby homes.

The fire was determined

PROVIDED PHOTO

Stephanie Smallwood died early Sunday morning after being ill for several months.

Carl Thibodeaux shared on Facebook.

According to Milton Arceneaux, who is on the board of directors at AOC Community Media, “Stephanie was one of the most powerful people you could meet — not because she demanded attention, but because her presence carried

weight.”

On Monday, Sam Nelson hosted a special on-air tribute in her memory, where listeners could tune in for a day of remembrance, love and celebration of Smallwood’s life.

Details of funeral arrangements have not yet been made available.

to be “incendiary in nature,” investigators say.

The Louisiana State Fire Marshal’s Office was contacted for assistance with the investigation.

Investigators later determined the fire was intentionally set, prompting a joint investigation by the Franklin Fire Department, Franklin Police Department and the Louisiana State Fire Marshal’s Office. Authorities identified Anderson as the suspect and issued warrants charging him with three counts

of attempted first-degree murder and aggravated arson.

On Saturday, Anderson was taken into custody. No injuries were reported in the fire.

LOTTERY

SUNDAY, JAN. 4, 2026 PICK 3: 2-3-2 PICK 4: 8-4-7-1 PICK 5: 1-3-1-5-5

Unofficial notification, keep your tickets.

STAFF PHOTOS By JAN RISHER

Women create vision boards at Jan Risher’s annual new year’s vision board brunch in Baton Rouge on Saturday.

RISHER

Continued from page 1B Lori Rushing Petrie, who is originally from Baton Rouge but lives in Opelousas now, said she found it very meditative to be in her thoughts but surrounded by people. She described the process as a “good mind reset.”

Petrie sat on the edge of our deck, surrounded by fallen bad lemons from the little lemon tree in the backyard that grew from below the graft, creating the worst-tasting lemons I’ve ever met.

Annette Sisco, of New Orleans, sat near Petrie among the bad lemons.

“It was freeing to pay attention to images and words that simply tugged at my heart or made me curious,” Sisco said. “The vision board was a simple and intuitive way to pause and hear that inner voice

Peggy Giglio, left, and daughter Kellen Giglio, both of Lafayette, show off their completed vision boards. that is nudging us to move in the right direction.

What better time to listen than the new year?”

By late afternoon, the floor was freckled with scraps and the house had gone quiet again. A few vision boards leaned against walls and chairs, waiting to be carried home.

What has stayed with

me most wasn’t what anyone cut out or glued down, but the generosity of showing up — sitting with other women, working with our hands and giving ourselves permission, together, to imagine what might come next.

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

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T u e s d ay, J a n u a ry 6, 2026

1Cn

LSU turns attention to new QB portal target

BY WILSON ALEXANDER

Staff writer

STAFF PHOTO By DAVID GRUNFELD

Saints defensive end Chase young, center, is congratulated after recovering a fumble during the second half against the New york Jets at the Caesars Superdome on Dec. 21.

Chasing greatness Saints pass rusher young emerges from ‘dark’ as bright light

BY LUKE JOHNSON

Staff writer

The sack that cemented his bona fides as a premier pass rusher got the attention, but it was the very next play that better illustrates this fully realized version of Chase Young with the New Orleans Saints.

Young just had beaten left tackle Jake Matthews like a drum to drop quarterback Kirk Cousins for an 8-yard loss — a massive play on first down with the Saints trailing the Falcons by six in the fourth quarter Sunday. On the next play, Atlanta tried to recoup some of the yardage by dialing up a screen to star running back Bijan Robinson.

The problem was the Falcons threw the screen in Young’s direction. He diagnosed the play, beat Matthews’ block, then mirrored Robinson’s movements before dropping him for a 5-yard loss.

Two plays resulted in a net loss of 13 yards for the Falcons in a crucial situation, with Young on the delivering end of both. That is the game-wrecking stuff everyone thought Young was capable of

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By DANNy KARNIK

Saints defensive end Chase young wraps up Atlanta Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins ä See SAINTS, page 3C in the first half on Sunday in Atlanta.

LSU has to continue searching for a starting quarterback in the transfer portal after former Cincinnati quarterback Brendan Sorsby committed Sunday night to Texas Tech, and the Tigers quickly scheduled a visit from another top target.

Sorsby was considered one of the best available players in the transfer portal regardless of position, and LSU made him a priority. He visited Baton Rouge over the weekend, but after taking his first trip to Texas Tech when the transfer portal opened Friday, he chose to play for the Red Raiders with his last season of eligibility.

LSU then hosted Arizona State transfer Sam Leavitt for a visit that began Monday afternoon, sources told The Advocate. Leavitt, another one of the top players on the market, also has gone to Kentucky as he looks for a new school.

He reportedly did not take a planned trip Sunday to Texas Tech.

LSU does not have a scholarship quarterback set to return next year, so it is trying to add multiple transfers before the first season under new head coach Lane Kiffin. It was expected to pursue Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss if he entered the transfer portal, but Chambliss agreed to a new deal with Ole Miss contingent upon him receiving an additional sixth year of eligibility, according to Yahoo Sports.

Leavitt, an Oregon native, spent one season at Michigan State before transferring to Arizona State. Along with star running back Cam Skattebo, he led the Sun Devils to the 2024 Big 12 championship and a spot in the College Football Playoff in his first year as a starter, throwing for 2,885 yards with 24 touchdowns and six interceptions. He also ran for 443 yards and five scores, showing mobility that would make him an ideal fit for LSU’s offensive scheme.

Leavitt was viewed as one of the top quarterbacks in the country entering his redshirt sophomore season this past year, but he suffered a foot injury early in September and eventually underwent

ä See LSU FOOTBALL, page 3C

Rebounding, Thomas’ health keys for LSU men’s hoops

BY TOYLOY BROWN III Staff writer

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By CAMDEN HALL

LSU forward Zakiyah Johnson, right, and Vanderbilt guard Jada Brown battle for the ball on Sunday in Nashville, Tenn.

Mulkey questions her squad’s ‘toughness’

BY REED DARCEY Staff writer

The first offensive rebound set up an open 3-pointer. The second led to a ä LSU at Georgia, driving 5:30 P.M. THURSDAy, SECN+ l a y u p .

B o t h shots originated from errant free throws — the kind of misses the LSU women’s basketball

team normally cleans up.

But not on Sunday against Vanderbilt. Late in the fourth quarter of their 65-61 road loss, the Tigers let two more crucial boards slip away, leaving coach Kim Mulkey questioning their “toughness” and wondering how she can instill more fight into her team before it’s too late.

ä See LSU WOMEN, page 3C

Dwelling on Southeastern Conference losses is not a habit the LSU basketball team wants to develop.

Coach Matt McMahon was disappointed by the three-point road loss to Texas A&M on Saturday but felt encouraged by the competitive spirit LSU (12-2, 0-1 SEC) displayed, esä South Carolina pecially with the absence of at LSU, 6 P.M. TUESDAy, ESPNU injured point guard Dedan Thomas.

Now LSU is preparing to play South Carolina (9-5, 0-1) at 6 p.m.

Tuesday at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. The Gamecocks are the lowest-rated SEC team on KenPom, sitting 88th in the country. LSU is ninth in the conference and 37th overall.

Thomas is day-to-day with a foot injury and was seen wearing a boot on his left foot on the bench Saturday.

With or without the junior, LSU has to focus on three areas to prevent an 0-2 start in SEC play.

STAFF PHOTO By SOPHIA GERMER

LSU forwards Pablo Tamba, left, Robert Miller, center, and Marquel Sutton play defense as SMU guard Jaron Pierre jumps to score at the Smoothie King Center on Dec. 13.

especially was displeased with after the Texas A&M game.

“The one disappointing stat to me,” the fourth-year coach said, “(was) the offensive rebounding.

You know, we knew coming in, in A&M’s five Power Five games to date, they’ve averaged 15 (offensive) boards a game, and we wanted to limit that. They got 15 again today. I thought it was a big Rebounding difference in the game.”

LSU lost the rebounding battle This was the one area McMahon

by eight, which was the exact differential on the offensive glass.

The Tigers played hard on defense, but there were several moments when players were out of position for long rebounds after missed 3-pointers. Other times, they were outmuscled.

LSU cannot afford to give teams extra possessions. The team has preached that it wants to have an

ä See LSU MEN, page 3C

2C ● Tuesday, January 6, 2026 ● theadvocate.com ● The Acadiana Advocate

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LSU women fall out of AP top 10 Staff and wire reports Kentucky and Vanderbilt made major jumps in The Associated Press women’s basketball Top 25 on Monday after four of the top 10 teams lost last week, causing a shakeup in the poll.

This was the first week since the end of November that a new school had entered the top 10 this season.

The first four remained unchanged with UConn still No. 1, receiving 28 first-place votes and No. 2 Texas getting the other four.

South Carolina and UCLA followed while Oklahoma moved up to fifth, the Sooners’ highest ranking since they were fourth in the final poll of 2009.

Kentucky and Vanderbilt each rose five spots to sixth and seventh, respectively, after each knocked off then-No. 5 LSU in consecutive games. The Wildcats edged LSU 80-78 on a last-second shot.

The Tigers, one of seven unbeaten teams to lose over the past week, plummeted to 12th after the two losses.

LSU’s loss to Vanderbilt marked the first time a Kim Mulkey-coached team has started 0-2 in conference play. The Tigers have dropped back-toback games just four times since Mulkey’s tenure began in 2021.

Vanderbilt had not been in the top 10 since it was seventh on March 12, 2007. Vandy’s 65-61 win over LSU on Sunday was its first against a top five team in 17 years.

Maryland fell one spot to eighth after losing to Illinois, its first defeat of the season. Michigan dropped two places to ninth after a loss at Washington, which reentered the Top 25 at No. 23.

Louisville moved up three spots to 10th. TCU dropped to 13th after losing its first game of the season to Utah in overtime.

There are only four undefeated teams left: UConn, Texas, Vanderbilt and No. 17 Texas Tech.

Unbeaten no more

HENDERSON, Nev. — The Las Vegas Raiders fired Pete Carroll on Monday after just one year, meaning they will enter their third consecutive season with a new coach in charge.

Carroll expressed high hopes upon taking over, saying he was used to doubledigit victories and expected the same in Las Vegas. But the Raiders went 3-14, going on a 10game losing streak before finishing with a 14-12 vic- Carroll tory over Kansas City on Sunday.

Now the question is where the Raiders head next under the direction of owner Mark Davis, minority owner Tom Brady and general manager John Spytek. Davis said in a statement that Spytek would work with Brady to find the next coach.

The Raiders own the first pick in this year’s draft and are projected to have the third-most cap space at more than $100 million, according to overthecap.com.

Browns fire Stefanski, a two-time coach of the year

STAFF PHOTO By MICHAEL JOHNSON

LSU forward Amiya Joyner taps her fist to her forehead in the fourth quarter against Kentucky on Thursday at the PMAC.

AP WOMEN’S TOP 25 POLL Rec.

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By CAMDEN HALL

Vanderbilt guard Mikayla Blakes celebrates after making a 3-point shot against LSU on Sunday in Nashville, Tenn.

Falling Irish

Notre Dame’s run of 85 straight Besides LSU, Maryland and appearances in the Top 25 ended TCU losing for the first time this after the Irish (10-4) lost to Georseason, No. 11 Iowa State, Ari- gia Tech and Duke. It was the zona State, Alabama and Geor- third-longest active streak, trailing gia also all suffered their first UConn (615) and South Carolina (257) going back to Nov. 29, 2021. losses.

Milestone wins Louisville coach Jeff Walz and Miami coach Tricia Cullop recorded twin milestones. Both coaches earned their 500th career victories last week, doing so in back-to-back games against Virginia Tech.

Pts.

Prv.

1. UConn (28) 15-0 796 1 2. Texas (4) 17-0 772 2 3. South Carolina 15-1 725 3 4. UCLA 14-1 715 4 5. Oklahoma 14-1 654 8 6. Kentucky 15-1 625 11 7. Vanderbilt 15-0 621 12 8. Maryland 15-1 537 7 9. Michigan 11-2 517 6 10. Louisville 14-3 485 13 11. Iowa St. 14-1 462 10 12. LSU 14-2 456 5 13. TCU 14-1 454 8 14. Iowa 12-2 403 14 15. Michigan St. 14-1 280 24 16. Baylor 13-3 278 22 17. Texas Tech 16-0 263 21 18. Mississippi 14-3 243 15 19. Ohio St. 13-2 237 19 20. Tennessee 10-3 162 23 21. Southern Cal 10-4 150 17 22. North Carolina 13-4 129 16 23. Washington 12-2 117 24. Princeton 13-1 91 25 25. Nebraska 13-2 65 20 Others receiving votes: Illinois 58, Notre Dame 27, Stanford 25, NC State 22, Alabama 13, West Virginia 9, Georgia 5, Duke 3, Oklahoma St. 1.

Game of the week

No. 2 Texas at No. 12 LSU, Sunday. The Tigers will have a chance to rebound from the tough week with a game against the Longhorns. A victory would get LSU back in the SEC regular-season title race.

Arizona stays at No. 1 over Michigan by a hair AP MEN’S TOP 25

BY DAVE SKRETTA

Associated Press

Arizona held on to No. 1 by a single point over fast-closing Michigan in the AP Top 25 on Monday, making it one of the closest races for the top spot in the 78-year history of the men’s college basketball poll.

The Wildcats received 32 of 61 first-place votes and had 1,494 points, while the Wolverines scooped up the other 29 first-place votes from the national media panel.

The one-point difference kept the first poll of 2026 from becoming the second ever with a tie for No. 1; Oregon State and Virginia shared the top spot on Jan. 26, 1981.

Arizona has been on top for the past five polls, but the Wolverines have been able to make up ground, thanks in part to becoming the first team in the poll era to win three consecutive games against ranked opponents by at least 30 points apiece. Michigan was 20 points behind Arizona in the last poll.

The top six remained unchanged Monday from the final poll of 2025: Arizona and Michigan were followed by undefeated Iowa State, UConn, Purdue and Duke, while Houston jumped Gonzaga and BYU and Nebraska rounded out the top 10.

The Huskers, who are riding a nation-best 18-game winning streak dating to last season and are off to the best start in school

Carroll out after dismal 3-14 season with Raiders

Rec.

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By TyLER TATE

Arizona guard Brayden Burries passes during a game against Utah on Saturday in Salt Lake City. history, are in the top 10 for the first time since climbing to No. 9 on Feb. 28, 1966. Their latest win was a 58-56 slugfest with then-No. 9 Michigan State.

Vanderbilt, another program with scant men’s basketball success, remained right behind the Huskers at No. 11. That is the highest the unbeaten Commodores have been since they were No. 7 in the preseason poll for the 2011-12 season.

Michigan State fell three spots to No. 12 following its loss to Nebraska, while No. 13 Alabama was followed by Texas Tech and Arkansas in this week’s poll. Illinois, North Carolina, Georgia, Iowa and Louisville rounded out the top 20, while Tennessee, Kansas, Virginia, SMU and UCF completed the

initial top 25 of the new year.

LSU continued to receive votes, earning 14 this week.

Rising and sliding Iowa made the biggest move by climbing six spots to No. 19 following its win over UCLA on Saturday, while Georgia jumped five spots to No. 18. Kansas and North Carolina, which lost to SMU on Saturday, each fell five spots but remained in the poll.

In and out No. 24 SMU is ranked for the first time since finishing No. 11 in the final poll of the 2016-17 season.

The Mustangs and UCF joined the Top 25 at the expense of USC and Florida, which lost 76-74 to Missouri on Saturday night.

Pts.

Prv.

1. Arizona (32) 14-0 1494 1 2. Michigan (29) 13-0 1493 2 3. Iowa St. 14-0 1390 3 4. UConn 14-1 1343 4 5. Purdue 13-1 1254 5 6. Duke 13-1 1206 6 7. Houston 13-1 1113 8 8. Gonzaga 16-1 1101 7 9. BYU 13-1 1039 10 10. Nebraska 14-0 998 13 11. Vanderbilt 14-0 936 11 12. Michigan St. 12-2 834 9 13. Alabama 11-3 782 14 14. Texas Tech 11-3 676 15 15. Arkansas 11-3 659 18 16. Illinois 11-3 602 20 17. North Carolina 13-2 557 12 18. Georgia 13-1 378 23 19. Iowa 12-2 340 25 20. Louisville 11-3 336 16 21. Tennessee 10-4 277 19 22. Kansas 10-4 208 17 23. Virginia 12-2 183 21 24. SMU 12-2 142 25. UCF 12-1 132 Others receiving votes: Villanova 127, Seton Hall 31, Southern Cal 28, Utah St. 27, Miami (Ohio) 22, Clemson 21, St. Louis 14, LSU 14, Texas 12, Florida 11, St. Mary’s 10, Kentucky 9, California 8, Miami 5, Indiana 4, Auburn 3, TCU 2, UCLA 2, Virginia Tech 2.

On the doorstep Villanova was the first team outside the Top 25, five points back of UCF. Also on the rise are Utah State and Miami (Ohio), which at 15-0 is the only unbeaten still outside the poll.

Conference watch The Big 12 led the way with seven ranked teams, including four in the top 10, while the Big Ten had six in the Top 25 and three in the top 10. The ACC and SEC had five ranked teams apiece, and the West Coast and Big East each had one.

BEREA, Ohio — Kevin Stefanski led the Cleveland Browns to two playoff appearances in his first four seasons as head coach.

However, with only eight wins the past two seasons, owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam will be making their sixth coaching hire since purchasing the franchise in 2012.

Stefanski was dismissed Monday morning after six seasons. The Browns won their final two games to finish 5-12.

The Haslams are not doing a total housecleaning, announcing that Andrew Berry will remain as general manager. Berry joined the Browns in 2019 and was named GM the following year. Stefanski and Berry signed multiyear contract extensions in June 2024.

The 43-year-old Stefanski, a twotime AP NFL Coach of the Year, went 46-58. He guided Cleveland to playoff berths in 2020 and 2023.

The Browns’ 48-37 wild-card win over Pittsburgh in the 2020 season was the franchise’s first since 1994.

Cardinals fire Gannon after three losing seasons TEMPE, Ariz. — Jonathan Gannon’s once-promising head coaching tenure with the Arizona Cardinals is done following a dismal third season that started with high expectations but quickly collapsed thanks to injuries, embarrassing gaffes and a long string of losses that became increasingly noncompetitive.

Now the franchise is preparing for a rebuild — again.

The Cardinals parted ways with Gannon on Monday, one day after a 37-20 loss to the Los Angeles Rams.

It was the team’s ninth straight loss and 14th setback in 15 games.

N o w a n e w Gannon coaching staff gets the chance to rebuild a franchise that will have the No. 3 overall pick in April, but has been to the playoffs just once since 2016.

Gannon, 43, finished his tenure with a 15-36 record, including 3-14 this season. Gannon expressed optimism in recent weeks that he would return for a fourth season, but Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill had other ideas, opting to look for the franchise’s 13th head coach since moving to Arizona in 1988.

Schoen returning as GM of New York Giants EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Joe Schoen is returning as general manager of the New York Giants, owners John Mara and Steve Tisch announced Monday, giving the executive they hired four years ago another chance to turn around the beleaguered franchise.

The team is 22-45-1 since Schoen took over, making the playoffs in the first year at 9-7-1 and missing the following three. Assembling talent by drafting receiver and former LSU standout Malik Nabers, running back Cam Skattebo, pass rusher Abdul Carter and, most importantly, potential franchise quarterback Jaxson Dart paved the way for Schoen to keep his job and oversee the search for the next coach.

Mara and Tisch gave Schoen a vote of confidence in November when firing coach Brian Daboll.

The Giants were 2-8 at that time, then lost five of their final seven games under interim coach Mike Kafka to finish with a 4-13 record.

The Acadiana Advocate ● theadvocate.com ● Tuesday, January 6, 2026 ● 3C

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LSU adds three players from portal

BY WILSON ALEXANDER

Staff writer

LSU added three transfers Monday, and two players entered the portal.

The Tigers gained commitments from Utah running back Raycine Guillory, Pittsburgh tight end Malachi Thomas and Old Dominion wide receiver Tre Brown. As the roster continues to take shape, freshman defensive tackle Zion Williams and sophomore kicker Aeron Burrell entered the transfer portal.

After beginning his career at a junior college, Brown caught 38 passes for 762 yards and four touchdowns in his one season at Old Dominion. He averaged 20.1 yards

per catch, which ranked seventh in the country. He has two more years of eligibility and also received interest from Ohio State.

LSU has to rebuild its wide receiver room after all but two of the Tigers’ scholarship wide receivers — redshirt junior Nic Anderson and freshman Phillip Wright — exhausted their eligibility, declared for the NFL draft or entered the transfer portal. LSU signed three incoming freshmen, and Brown became the second transfer wide receiver to commit to the Tigers.

Guillory was a three-star recruit and the No. 478 overall player in the 2025 class, according to the 247Sports composite rankings. He redshirted during his freshman

season at Utah, giving him four more years of eligibility.

Coming out of Aledo High School in Texas, Guillory took a visit to Ole Miss when new LSU coach Lane Kiffin and running backs coach Kevin Smith were still with the Rebels. Guillory, who’s listed at 5-foot-9 and 190 pounds, had one carry for 4 yards this past season.

LSU has only one scholarship running back, freshman Harlem Berry, who has remained with the team during the coaching change.

As it looks for multiple transfer running backs to rebuild the position, it recently hosted former UC Davis running back Carter Vargas.

Thomas joined the Panthers in 2024 as a three-star recruit, ac-

cording to the 247Sports composite rankings. He played primarily on special teams as a freshman before he caught 13 passes for 192 yards and two touchdowns this past season.

At LSU, Thomas will work alongside Trey’Dez Green, the star tight end who has reportedly agreed to return for his junior season.

Thomas is a 6-4, 225-pound native of Thomasville, Georgia. LSU also has redshirt freshman JD LaFleur and incoming four-star recruit JC Anderson at tight end.

LSU now has added four transfers since the portal opened Friday with Brown, Guillory, Thomas and Hawaii wide receiver Jackson Harris. They are the first additions to

SAINTS

thinking at the time.

“When he came in, the first thing I noticed was his hunger for greatness,” Davis said.

What Young was missing in the early phase of his career was an example to follow. After arriving in New Orleans, he began to watch what Davis and Jordan did to stay productive into their mid-30s. Young joked that he has a 36-year-old cousin who “can’t do nothing,” and yet here were Davis and Jordan playing at a high level in a young man’s game.

So he began to take notes, watching Jordan arrive at the facility at the same time every day to go through the same routine. And he began to ask questions.

“He was somebody that just kind of came to me right away and was just like, ‘Man, whatever you got, I want it. However you train in the offseason, I want to know. However you take care of your body, I want to know about it,’ ” Davis said. “And that stood out. It was just like, you know, he got it. He got it.”

Young said Davis told him he needed “a stamina for greatness,” meaning a willingness to do all the difficult and often boring things greatness requires — and to do it relentlessly. He saw them doing it in their mid-30s, and he thought, “I’m 26. If they can do this, like, what am I doing?”

That’s what informed Young he’d found a home with the Saints.

“God put me in a place with two veteran players that could kind of teach me the ways, you know? I came into the league, I didn’t really have that,” Young said. “... When you got people like that leading the way, you have to hold yourself to a certain standard, because you see it every day.”

Davis and Jordan both said they saw things start to click into place for Young last year, before it all fully came together in 2025. They watched him setting the standard and demanding more out of himself, and they heard him demanding to be held accountable.

What happened in 2025 was a byproduct of the small battles won on a day-to-day basis when the cameras weren’t rolling.

“Man, he won all those battles in the dark,” Davis said. “I think everybody is seeing the type of player that Chase Young is capable of being, but it’s because of what he’s done in the dark.”

Continued from page 1C

STAFF PHOTO By SOPHIA GERMER

LSU center Mike Nwoko scores against SMU during the second half at the Smoothie King Center on Dec. 13.

LSU will host South Carolina on Tuesday night.

LSU MEN

Continued from page 1C identity centered on physicality in the paint. This includes interior scoring and glass cleaning.

South Carolina is averaging seven offensive rebounds in its five high-major games.

Offensive execution LSU’s overhauled roster only can be fully actualized with a topnotch facilitator.

Thomas, who leads the SEC with 7.1 assists per game while averaging 16.2 points, is the centerpiece of the offense. Without him against Texas A&M, LSU had an uptick in stalled possessions and a season-high 16 turnovers against constant full-court pressure.

If LSU wants to beat South Carolina, it has to manufacture more

LSU WOMEN Continued from page 1C

“Some of that I can attribute to inexperience,” Mulkey said. “But that’s making an excuse, honestly.

If you’re a baller, you gotta have it internally that, ‘I’m gonna do my job, and if I do my job, my teammate will do her job, and that snowballs.’

“We’re not there yet. We’re not there yet.”

Suddenly, the No. 12 Tigers (14-2, 0-2 SEC) are in a precarious position. They’ve lost to the first two ranked opponents they’ve played, and two of their next three contests are against top-10 teams. No LSU player has faced a situation quite like this one. Neither has Mulkey, who in 26 years as a head coach never has had a team lose its first two conference matchups. Until now.

“We’re not tough enough,” Mulkey said. “And toughness is, you either have it or you don’t.

And we’re not tough enough, and that’s all (the) players in that locker room tonight. You’re not tough enough to make a play when you need it. You’re not tough enough to get that rebound when we need it.

“It’s not just one or two. It’s the whole locker room at different times.”

easy shots. If it doesn’t have the dribble penetration provided by Thomas, LSU will need someone else to carry that load.

Jalen Reece is the backup point guard who will have to create opportunities and limit mistakes.

The freshman finished with four points, a career-high seven assists and three turnovers in 36 minutes against the Aggies. The most playing time he had previously was 23 minutes against Prairie View.

McMahon appreciated the effort of Reece in his first career start, but avoiding late-game turnovers will be paramount against South Carolina.

Mike Nwoko, a hyper-efficient center, and Max Mackinnon, a dead-eye 3-point shooter, combined for 41 of LSU’s 72 points against Texas A&M. While they excelled, LSU didn’t

get enough from fifth-year senior Marquel Sutton, who is averaging 13.4 points and 9.3 rebounds on the season. He had just three points on 0-of-4 shooting and five rebounds in 29 minutes Saturday.

While his three steals and one block were positives, LSU needs scoring and rebounding from him.

McMahon said Sutton will learn from the experience against a heavy-pressure defense and will be called on for a stronger performance vs. South Carolina.

“Marquel has done an incredible job making this transition from a post player to the wing, but that’s the first time in his life he’s ever faced something like that,” McMahon said on the LSU sports radio network Saturday. “I thought it disrupted his rhythm a little bit, but he’ll learn from it and get better. It’s going to be a big part of winning on Tuesday.”

The Tigers allowed Kentucky to pull down 17 offensive rebounds on Thursday. On Sunday, they turned the ball over 22 times and missed 12 layups against the Commodores.

The No. 6 Wildcats outscored LSU 11-3 in the last four minutes of the game. The same stretch of the game against the No. 7 Commodores was more even, featuring two ties and five lead changes. The Tigers’ turnover issues just kept getting in the way.

MiLaysia Fulwiley ran into a defender and lost possession. Then Mikaylah Williams dribbled the ball off of her knee, sending it bouncing out of bounds and into the LSU bench.

Mulkey kicked out her leg in frustration.

“I’m telling you,” Mulkey said, “the majority of (the turnovers) were done from upperclassmen who just, for whatever reason, turned it over.”

Vanderbilt shot 35% from the field Sunday. LSU ordinarily wins when it forces that many misses. Before Sunday, the Tigers were 31-3 in Mulkey-era regular-season league games in which their opponent converted less than 40% of its shots.

Before it faced the Commodores, LSU was 32-1 when its SEC opponent scored 65 points or fewer.

The Tigers couldn’t overcome

that mark Sunday, even though they recently completed their most dominant nonconference slate of the last five years. LSU scored more than 100 points in 11 of 14 nonconference games and finished that stretch of the season averaging 108 points per game on 55% shooting. Both marks led Division I. Now the Tigers aren’t cleaning the glass, taking care of the ball or finding ways to win close games — and the season’s most challenging games haven’t arrived yet.

LSU still must play its homeand-home series with No. 2 Texas, its Jan. 18 road game against No. 5 Oklahoma and its annual showdown with No. 3 South Carolina, which is set to tip off Feb. 14 in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

The Tigers won at least 12 SEC games in each of Mulkey’s first four seasons, but now they’re in danger of falling below that mark — and possibly losing out on a top-four NCAA Tournament seed as a result.

“I think we can make it better,” Mulkey said. “But I don’t know if you can just all of a sudden run a bunch of drills or do a bunch of stuff in practice and go, ‘OK, we fixed that. They’re now tough.’

“Toughness is mental. You’ve got mental toughness, you’ve got physical toughness. It’s just who you are. It’s your demeanor.”

Third scorer

an offense that has to be rebuilt by Kiffin and offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. Burrell, a Bossier City native, entered the transfer portal after two years as LSU’s kickoff specialist.

He earned second-team All-SEC honors as a freshman when he ranked third in the country with an 89.19 touchback percentage, but that dropped to 63.8% this past season. Burrell never attempted a field goal for LSU. Williams was one of four defensive linemen who signed with LSU in the 2025 class. He appeared in five games this past season. He did not record a tackle.

Staff writer Reed Darcey contributed to this report.

supplying. To get there, Young had to emerge from the “dark place” he said he’d occupied earlier in his career.

He found the light in New Orleans.

“It’s like he always just wanted to have a home, and now he’s got a home, and he’s made it his own,” veteran Cam Jordan said. “This year, he’s coming to his own, and he’s lived up to every piece of hype that he’s ever had around him.”

After signing a team-friendly three-year extension this offseason, Young delivered his finest season as a professional. Still just 26 years old, Young is a central component of the Saints’ rebuild, a player everyone else gets built around.

For the first time in his career, Young recorded double-digit sacks this season — a feat he managed despite missing the first five games with a calf injury. The milestone clearly meant something to Young, who counted to 10 with his fingers after dropping Cousins in Sunday’s season finale.

But his contributions as a pass rusher were not the full measure of his impact on the defense, and that’s where his stop of Robinson on the screen comes in. Not only did Young have a career year in terms of sacks but he also was a plus player at the point of attack in the run game.

“He jokes around, like, ‘Yeah, I’m getting off the stack. I’m stopping the run,’ ” Jordan said.

“And you can see he’s starting to get excited. I said, ‘Now you set a standard for yourself.’ And he’s met that standard each game this year.”

For years, Young’s story could not be told without the word potential. Sometimes he delivered, as was the case during his Defensive Rookie of the Year season in 2020.

Often, it was about unrealized potential. There were injuries, a lack of production and questions about his effort — the reasons he was available for the Saints in free agency and signed an incentiveladen one-year deal prior to the start of the 2024 season.

But when Saints linebacker Demario Davis heard the team was recruiting Young in free agency, there was no hesitation in his mind that the team should bring him in. Email Luke Johnson at “Just go get him,” Davis recalled ljohnson@theadvocate.com.

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO By ROSS D. FRANKLIN

Arizona State quarterback Sam Leavitt warms up prior to a game against Northern Arizona on Aug. 30 in Tempe, Ariz.

LSU FOOTBALL Continued from page 1C

season-ending surgery. Leavitt finished with 1,628 yards passing, 10 touchdowns and three interceptions. He added another 306 yards and five touchdowns on the ground. He has two years of eligibility remaining.

LSU has to find a new starting quarterback after fifth-year senior Garrett Nussmeier exhausted his eligibility. Nussmeier started for most of the past two seasons before he sat out the last four games because of an abdominal injury that first occurred during preseason camp.

Michael Van Buren replaced

Nussmeier as the starter, burning his redshirt in the process. Though Van Buren said twice he wanted to return amid the coaching change, he plans to enter the transfer portal with two years of eligibility remaining. Redshirt freshman Colin Hurley also entered the transfer portal, temporarily leaving LSU without a scholarship quarterback.

Kiffin and his staff are in the process of rebuilding the offense, which averaged 22.8 points per game this past season. Only a handful of offensive starters have not left for the NFL draft or entered the transfer portal, so LSU will sign a large transfer class.

It needs to almost completely restock at quarterback, running back, wide receiver and offensive line.

4C ● Tuesday, January 6, 2026 ● theadvocate.com ● The Acadiana Advocate

lll

Ex-Tulane O-lineman commits to Cajuns

BY KEVIN FOOTE Staff writer

When offensive tackle Jayce Mitchell came out of Destrehan two years ago, the UL Ragin’ Cajuns recruited and built a relationship with him.

At the time, Mitchell chose Tulane and spent two seasons with the Green Wave.

Once Mitchell decided to enter the transfer portal after redshirting this season, his visit to Lafayette didn’t require a lot of introductions.

“Yeah, I liked the coaches there when they recruited me in high school,” said Mitchell, who committed to the Cajuns after visiting campus Sunday. “It was fun seeing them again. So once I visited, it was kind of a no-brainer for me.”

Mitchell soon will make the short move to Lafayette and plans to be there for the first team meeting of the spring semester.

“It just seems like a nice place to be,” the 6-foot-3 Mitchell said.

“The facilities are nice, and I was familiar with the coaching staff. I got to watch some tape with (offensive line) coach (Steve) Farmer, and it was good to see the schemes they were running.”

Mitchell said the Cajuns are getting a different player than the one who arrived at Tulane two years ago.

For starters, he was 285 pounds in those days but weighed in at 320 over the weekend. He credits former UL strength coach Rusty Whitt for his progress.

PROVIDED PHOTO

Former Tulane offensive tackle Jayce Mitchell of Destrehan has committed to the UL Ragin’ Cajuns after a weekend visit.

“I appreciate everything he taught me, all the care he took in teaching us how to lift the proper way,” Mitchell said. “I had a nice time learning a bunch of things from him. He helped me a lot.”

Despite not playing, Mitchell said he learned a lot about the game.

“I had a good time at Tulane,” Mitchell said. “I was coached very well. I did have a nice experience. I guess it just wasn’t a fit for me, but I do appreciate all the lessons I learned.

“I’m definitely better as far as playing faster and just having certain tools that I learned from the coaches. I’m a better student of the game and understand football at a different level than through a smaller lens like you do in high school.”

Mitchell said he’s played both tackle and guard in his career, but he

was recruited by UL as a tackle two years ago and plans on competing for a starting spot at tackle in the spring.

“That’s a big reason I made this decision,” he said.

Mitchell is UL’s first transfer portal signee. So far, seven former Cajuns have entered the portal: running backs Zylan Perry and Bill Davis, cornerback Lorenzell Dubose, offensive tackle Bryant Williams, linebacker Drenon Fite, defensive tackle Fitzgerald West and deep snapper Carter Milliron.

Williams committed to Florida State and Davis to Virginia Tech.

The others have yet to announce their decisions.

On Monday, UL quarterback Lunch Winfield announced on social media that he’s returning to UL.

Southside claims Greg Lavergne wrestling event

BY KEVIN FOOTE Staff writer

Southside wrestling coach Mike Stelly knew what the deal was after his Sharks claimed the team title at the Greg Lavergne Parish Duals last weekend at Carencro High.

Much of the competition was elsewhere at the Louisiana Duals State Tournament in New Orleans. The Sharks intended to be there as well, but a rash of illnesses convinced Stelly to keep his team closer to home.

The result was a solid effort in winning the Greg Lavergne title.

“We were at the right place at the right time, I guess you could say,” Stelly said.

Stelly said no one knows whether the compact wrestling calendar will continue to haunt such events as the once-popular Greg Lavergne Parish Duals.

“It was a little less crowded last year, but it seems like there’s always something that falls on this week,” Stelly said.

“We’re kind of married to the schedule. It all starts with Mardi Gras. From those dates, we set the state tournament and everything kind of back fills from there. This year, the state tournament is on Feb. 7.”

Despite such teams as Acadiana and Lafayette High not competing at all and other area powers such as Teurlings Catholic and St. Thomas More sending “B” rosters, Stelly felt the experience helped his squad.

“Those younger kids got to wrestle a match that helped us

GREG LAVERGNE DUALS (at Carencro High) TEAM STANDINGS 1. Southside, 2. Carencro, 3. Teurlings Catholic, 4. Comeaux, 5. St. Thomas More, 6, Westgate, 7. Carencro B. INDIVIDUAL LEADERS 106 – 1. Luke Hoffpauir, Teurlings; 2. Dominick Mouton, St. Thomas More.

113 – 1. Cody Hypolite, Carencro; 2. Clay Dutil, Southside.

120 – 1. Finn Folse, St. Thomas More; 3.

Zane Clement, Carencro.

126 – 1. Evan Peck, Teurlings; 2. Bradley Chastant, St. Thomas More.

132 – 1. Hayden Boudreaux, Southside; 2.

Cale Lasseigne, Teurlings.

138 – 1. Roman Foster, Southside; 2. Lleyton Doucet, Comeaux.

144 – 1. Poet Wells, Southside; 2. Holden Linck, Carencro.

150 – 1. Roland Bruno, Carencro; 2. Landon Collins, Southside.

157 – 1. Dominic Ruggiere, Southside; 2.

Frankie Rideaux, Carencro.

165 – 1. Jamyrick Chaisson, Carencro; 2.

Jase Ledet, Westgate.

175 – 1. Andre Doucet, Southside; 2. Aamir Dauzart, Carencro; (tie) Atticus Loupe, Southside.

190 – 1. Dolandos Johnson, Comeaux; 2.

Haiden Theriot, Southside.

215 – 1. Dylan Talbot, Southside; 2. Gaven Joseph, Carencro.

285 – 1. Thomas Cramer, Teurlings; 2. Joel Saucedo-Parra, Comeaux.

win a duals title,” Stelly said.

“That’s a bunch of kids that got to compete, so that’s a positive.”

Beginning with this weekend’s Ken Cole at Comeaux High, the Sharks will be counting heavily on four leaders: Zane Blanchard at 120 pounds, Hayden Boudreaux at 132, Dominic Ruggiere at 157 and Dylan Talbot at 215.

“Those are my guys that we’ll be looking at to really compete and hopefully place at state,” Stelly said.

Other Southside wrestlers claiming top honors in their weight class Saturday were Roman Foster at 132, Poet Wells at 144 and Andre Doucet at 175.

SCOREBOARD High schools

Vegas at EDMONTON Columbus Boston

Tuesday’s prep schedules Boys basketball Acadiana at GEO Next Generation, Southside at David Thibodaux, Breaux Bridge at Northwest, Cecilia at Rayne, Church Point at North Vermilion, JS Clark at Abbeville, Grand Lake at Iota, Hanson at Kaplan, Catholic-NI at Liberty, Vandebilt Catholic at Lafayette Christian, Northwood-Shrev at Lafayette Renaissance, Loreauville at Vermilion Catholic, Hathaway at Midland, Sacred Heart at Notre Dame, Highland Baptist at Gueydan, St. Edmund at St. Joseph’s, Rapides at Westminster, Erath at ESA, Crowley at Northside Christian.

Girls basketball

Acadiana at GEO Next Generation, Carencro at Opelousas, Northside at New Iberia, Kaplan at Southside, Beau Chene at Ville Platte, Breaux Bridge at Northwest, Cecilia at Rayne, David Thibodaux at Highland Baptist, Church Point at North Vermilion, Central Catholic at St. Thomas More, Catholic-NI at Westgate, Vermilion Catholic at Erath, Grand Lake at Iota, Vandebilt Catholic at Lafayette Christian, Northwood-Shrev at Lafayette Renaissance, Hathaway at Midland, Gueydan at Centerville, St. Edmund at St. Joseph’s, Rapides at Westminster, Crowley at Northside Christian.

-112 -172 -125 -126

at WINNIPEG Nashville at SAN JOSE at SEATTLE

-108 +144 +105 +106

Pro basketball NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE Atlantic Division New York Boston Toronto Philadelphia Brooklyn

W 23 22 21 19 11

L 12 12 15 14 22

Pct .657 .647 .583 .576 .333

GB — ½ 2½ 3 11

Orlando Miami Atlanta Charlotte Washington

W 20 20 17 12 9

L 16 16 20 23 25

Pct .556 .556 .459 .343 .265

GB — — 3½ 7½ 10

Detroit Cleveland Chicago Milwaukee Indiana

W 26 20 17 16 6

L 9 17 18 20 30

Pct GB .743 — .541 7 .486 9 .444 10½ .167 20½

Southeast Division

Central Division

WESTERN CONFERENCE

Boys soccer

Southwest Division

Southside at Teurlings, Lafayette Renaissance at Lafayette Christian, University Lab at Acadiana Renaissance, Dunham at Cecilia, Kaplan at Erath, St. Martinville at Comeaux, Rapides at Beau Chene, Highland Baptist at Westgate.

San Antonio Houston Memphis Dallas New Orleans

L 10 11 20 23 29

Pct GB .714 — .656 2½ .429 10 .361 12½ .216 18

Comeaux at Lafayette Christian, Plaquemine at Lafayette Renaissance, University Lab at Acadiana Renaissance, David Thibodaux at St. Martinville, Kaplan at Erath, Teurlings at Alexandria, Barbe at Acadiana, Cecilia at Highland Baptist.

Oklahoma City Denver Minnesota Portland Utah

W 30 23 23 16 12

L 6 12 13 20 22

Pct .833 .657 .639 .444 .353

Odds

L.A. Lakers Phoenix Golden State L.A. Clippers Sacramento

W 22 21 19 12 8

L 11 14 17 22 28

Pct GB .667 — .600 2 .528 4½ .353 10½ .222 15½

Sports Betting Line NFL FAVORITE OPEN TODAY O/U UNDERDOG LA Rams 10½ 10½ (46½) at CAR at CHICAGO 1½ 1 (46) Green Bay FAVORITE Buffalo at PHILA at NE

Monday

FAVORITE Houston

OPEN TODAY O/U UNDERDOG 1½ 1½ (51½) at JAX 3½ 3½ (45½) San Fran 3½ 3½ (46) Chargers OPEN TODAY O/U UNDERDOG 3 3½ (39½) at PIT

College Football Thursday

Fiesta Bowl FAVORITE OPEN TODAY Miami (FL) 3 3

Friday

O/U UNDERDOG (52) Ole Miss

Peach Bowl FAVORITE OPEN TODAY O/U UNDERDOG Indiana 4 3½ (46½) Oregon

COLLEGE BASKETBALL Tuesday

FAVORITE at OHIO at MIAMI (OH) Duke St. John’s Michigan at W. VIRGINIA at FLORIDA at LSU at BALL STATE at KENT STATE Syracuse Iowa at DAYTON at OKLAHOMA ST Toledo at DEPAUL Lindenwood at KANSAS at WISCONSIN at HOUSTON at COLORADO ST at AUBURN NC State at TENNESSEE at WYOMING at NEVADA

NHL

Tuesday

Pacific Division

Sunday’s Games

Saturday

Sunday

Northwest Division

LINE UNDERDOG 3½ UMass 12½ W. Michigan 1½ at LOUISVILLE 3½ at BUTLER 24½ at PENN ST 3½ Cincinnati 7½ Georgia 7 South Carolina 1½ E. Michigan 1½ Bowling Green 3½ at GA TECH 6½ at MINNESOTA 3½ G. Washington 3½ UCF 6½ at N. ILLINOIS 2½ Georgetown 1½ at S.EDWRDVLLE 7½ TCU 2½ UCLA 6½ Texas Tech 2½ New Mexico 6½ Texas A&M 11½ at B. COLLEGE 10½ Texas 3½ UNLV 1½ San Diego St.

FAVORITE LINE UNDERDOG at BUFFALO -187 Vancouver -125 at TAMPA BAY Colorado at PHILADELPHIA -154 Anaheim at CAROLINA -132 Dallas Florida -126 at TORONTO New Jersey -120at N.Y ISLANDERS

LINE +155 +105 +129 +110 +106 +100

GB — 6½ 7 14 17

Detroit 114, Cleveland 110 Orlando 135, Indiana 127 Brooklyn 127, Denver 115 Miami 125, New Orleans 106 Minnesota 141, Washington 115 Phoenix 108, Oklahoma City 105 Milwaukee 115, Sacramento 98 L.A. Lakers 120, Memphis 114

PA 336 295 412 478

y-Pittsburgh e-Baltimore e-Cincinnati e-Cleveland

W L T Pct PF 10 7 0 .588 397 8 9 0 .471 424 6 11 0 .353 414 5 12 0 .294 279

PA 387 398 492 379

*-Denver x-L.A. Chargers e-Kansas City e-Las Vegas

W L T Pct PF 14 3 0 .824 401 11 6 0 .647 368 6 11 0 .353 362 3 14 0 .176 241

PA 311 340 328 432

North

West

Min M-A M-A O-T A PF PTS

Matkvic 24:18 2-5 0-0 2-6 1 1 4 Willmsn 26:13 6-10 0-0 2-5 2 2 12 Queen 29:37 5-11 3-4 0-6 4 2 13 Fears 26:07 8-13 1-2 0-3 2 2 21 Mrphy III 38:1210-19 0-0 0-8 5 1 27 Poole 24:36 3-11 0-0 0-1 8 4 8 Alvardo 19:44 2-7 0-0 0-6 3 1 6 Missi 17:04 3-5 0-0 1-5 1 1 6 McGwns 15:34 1-3 2-2 1-2 0 0 5 Peavy 13:47 2-5 0-0 0-1 1 0 4 Alexndr 2:24 0-0 0-0 0-0 1 0 0 Hawkins 2:24 0-1 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 Totals 240 42-90 6-8 6-43 28 14 106 Percentages: FG .467, FT .750.

3-Point Goals: 16-40, .400 (Murphy III 7-15, Fears 4-6, Alvarado 2-6, Poole 2-6, McGowens 1-2, Hawkins 0-1, Queen 0-1, Matkovic 0-3).

Team Rebounds: 15. Team Turnovers: 2.

Blocked Shots: 8 (Matkovic 2, Poole 2, Fears, Missi, Murphy III, Queen).

Turnovers: 24 (Queen 5, Fears 4, Alvarado 3, Poole 3, Matkovic 2, McGowens 2, Murphy III 2, Williamson 2, Missi).

Steals: 8 (McGowens 2, Alvarado, Fears, Murphy III, Peavy, Poole, Queen).

Technical Fouls: None.

FG FT Reb

Min M-A M-A O-T A PF PTS 6 3 1

1 1 2

12 10 16

Pit_FG Boswell 57, 8:52.

Third Quarter Pit_Co.Heyward 1 run (Boswell kick), 8:23.

Pit_FG Boswell 25, 4:28.

Fourth Quarter Bal_Z.Flowers 50 pass from L.Jackson (Loop kick), 8:42.

Pit_Gainwell 2 run (Boswell kick), 3:49.

Bal_Z.Flowers 64 pass from L.Jackson (Loop kick), 2:20.

Pit_Austin 26 pass from Rodgers (kick blocked), :55.

A_65,400.

Bal Pit First downs 12 24 Total Net Yards 359 390 Rushes-yards 27-137 24-100 Passing 222 290 Punt Returns 0-0 2-11 Kickoff Returns 5-130 3-91 Interceptions Ret. 0-0 1-0 Comp-Att-Int 11-18-1 31-47-0 Sacked-Yards Lost 3-16 2-4 Punts 4-47.75 3-39.667 Fumbles-Lost 0-0 0-0 Penalties-Yards 9-78 5-45 Time of Possession 25:49 34:11 INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS RUSHING_Baltimore, Henry 20-126, L.Jackson 4-9, Mitchell 2-2, Ali 1-0. Pittsburgh, Warren 14-66, Rodgers 1-20, Gainwell 5-10, Smith 1-2, Co.Heyward 3-2.

PASSING_Baltimore, L.Jackson 11-18-1-238.

Pittsburgh, Rodgers 31-47-0-294.

RECEIVING_Baltimore, Flowers 4-138, Walker 2-46, Likely 2-32, Andrews 2-14, Ricard 1-8.

Pittsburgh, Gainwell 8-64, Valdes-Scantling 5-34, Warren 5-33, Austin 3-55, Freiermuth 3-51, Thielen 3-43, Miller 2-9, Co.Heyward 1-3, Smith 1-2.

MISSED FIELD GOALS_Baltimore, Loop 44.

Wild-card Playoffs

Saturday’s games

L.A Rams at Carolina, 3:30 p.m. (FOX) Green Bay at Chicago, 7 p.m. (AMAZON PRIME VIDEO)

Sunday’s games

Buffalo at Jacksonville, noon (CBS) San Francisco at Philadelphia, 3:30 p.m.

(FOX) L.A Chargers at New England, 7 p.m. (NBC/ Peacock)

Monday’s games

Houston at Pittsburgh, 7 p.m. (ESPN/ABC)

Divisional Playoffs

Saturday, Jan. 17 and Sunday, Jan. 18

AFC lowest remaining seed at Denver, TBD NFC lowest remaining seed at Seattle, TBD AFC two remaining seeds at higher seed, TBD NFC two remaining seeds at higher seed, TBD

y-Philadelphia e-Dallas e-Washington e-N.Y. Giants

W L T Pct PF 11 6 0 .647 379 7 9 1 .441 471 5 12 0 .294 356 4 13 0 .235 381

PA 325 511 451 439

y-Carolina e-Tampa Bay e-Atlanta e-New Orleans

W L T Pct PF 8 9 0 .471 311 8 9 0 .471 380 8 9 0 .471 353 6 11 0 .353 306

PA 380 411 401 383

y-Chicago x-Green Bay e-Minnesota e-Detroit

W L T Pct PF 11 6 0 .647 441 9 7 1 .559 391 9 8 0 .529 344 9 8 0 .529 481

PA 415 360 333 413

Super Bowl LIX Sunday, Feb. 8 At Santa Clara.

W L T Pct PF 14 3 0 .824 483 12 5 0 .706 518 12 5 0 .706 437 3 14 0 .176 355

PA 292 346 371 488

College football

*-Seattle x-L.A. Rams x-San Francisco e-Arizona

Reb

28:47 5-14 1-1 1-6 28:21 4-9 2-2 0-2 24:38 7-13 1-2 6-12

W L T Pct PF 13 4 0 .765 474 12 5 0 .706 404 8 9 0 .471 466 3 14 0 .176 284

West

Late Sunday Miami 125, New Orleans 106

Adebayo Wiggins Ware

y-Jacksonville x-Houston e-Indianapolis e-Tennessee

South

North

Cleveland at Indiana, 6 p.m.

Orlando at Washington, 6 p.m.

L.A. Lakers at New Orleans, 7 p.m.

Miami at Minnesota, 7 p.m.

San Antonio at Memphis, 7 p.m.

Dallas at Sacramento, 10 p.m.

MIA

PA 320 365 424 503

South

Tuesday’s Games

NOLA

y-New England x-Buffalo e-Miami e-N.Y. Jets

W L T Pct PF 14 3 0 .824 490 12 5 0 .706 481 7 10 0 .412 347 3 14 0 .176 300

East

New York at Detroit, n Atlanta at Toronto, n Chicago at Boston, n Charlotte at Oklahoma City, n Phoenix at Houston, n Denver at Philadelphia, n Golden State at L.A. Clippers, n Utah at Portland, n

FT

NFL AMERICAN CONFERENCE

NATIONAL CONFERENCE

Monday’s Games

FG

Pro football

East

W 25 21 15 13 8

Girls soccer

Mitchell 29:19 3-10 0-0 0-3 6 3 9 Powell 28:4711-15 3-4 0-3 3 3 34 Jovic 25:47 7-16 3-4 2-6 3 0 19 Larsson 25:35 7-15 1-3 1-3 6 0 16 Smith 18:41 1-1 0-0 0-4 1 1 2 Jakucionis 16:16 1-4 0-0 0-1 1 1 3 Gardner 12:48 1-5 2-2 2-3 0 2 4 Fontecchio 1:01 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 Totals 240 47-10213-1812-43 30 14 125 Percentages: FG .461, FT .722.

3-Point Goals: 18-44, .409 (Powell 9-12, Mitchell 3-6, Jovic 2-8, Jakucionis 1-2, Adebayo 1-3, Ware 1-4, Larsson 1-5, Gardner 0-2, Wiggins 0-2).

Team Rebounds: 9. Team Turnovers: 1.

Blocked Shots: 7 (Wiggins 3, Jovic 2, Adebayo, Ware).

Turnovers: 14 (Smith 3, Jovic 2, Larsson 2, Mitchell 2, Wiggins 2, Adebayo, Gardner, Ware).

Steals: 19 (Jovic 3, Larsson 3, Smith 3, Gardner 2, Jakucionis 2, Mitchell 2, Powell 2, Adebayo, Wiggins).

Technical Fouls: None.

New Orleans 39 23 15 29 — 106 Miami 43 27 23 32 — 125 A_19,600 (19,600). T_2:04.

e-Eliminated from playoffs x-clinched playoff spot y-clinched division *-clinched home-field advantage Saturday’s Games Tampa Bay 16, Carolina 14 Seattle 13, San Francisco 3

Sunday’s Games

Atlanta 19, New Orleans 17 Cleveland 20, Cincinnati 18 Houston 38, Indianapolis 30 Jacksonville 41, Tennessee 7 Minnesota 16, Green Bay 3 N.Y. Giants 34, Dallas 17 Buffalo 35, N.Y. Jets 8 Denver 19, L.A. Chargers 3 Detroit 19, Chicago 16 L.A. Rams 37, Arizona 20 Las Vegas 14, Kansas City 12 New England 38, Miami 10 Washington 24, Philadelphia 17 Pittsburgh 26, Baltimore 24

Late Sunday

Pittsburgh 26, Baltimore 24

Baltimore 7 3 0 14 — 24 Pittsburgh 0 3 10 13 — 26 First Quarter Bal_Walker 38 pass from L.Jackson (Loop kick), 10:54.

Second Quarter Bal_FG Loop 40, 13:33.

Conference Championships Sunday, Jan. 25 AFC

AFC lowest remaining seed at AFC highest remaining seed

NFC

NFC lowest remaining seed at NFC highest remaining seed

Conference Championships winners, 5:30 p.m. (NBC/Peacock)

Bowl glance College Football Playoff

Quarterfinals Wednesday At Cotton Bowl, Arlington, Texas No. 10 Miami 24, No. 3 Ohio St. 14 Thursday At Orange Bowl, Miami Gardens, Fla. No. 5 Oregon 23, No. 4 Texas Tech 0 At Rose Bowl, Pasadena, Calif.

No. 1 Indiana 38, No. 11 Alabama 3 At Sugar Bowl, New Orleans No. 6 Ole Miss 39, No. 2 Georgia 34

FCS glance Final

Monday Frisco, Texas Illinois State (12-4) vs. Montana State (13-2), n

College basketball Men’s state scores, schedule Friday’s games

McNeese 82, Lamar 70 Middle Tennessee 88, Louisiana Tech 51

Saturday’s games

Southern Miss 74, UL 67 Texas State 84, UL-Monroe 79 Texas A&M 75, LSU 72 Nicholls 80, East Texas A&M 58 Stephen F. Austin 73, Southeastern 63

Northwestern State 74, UNO 68 Grambling 76, Prairie View A&M 72 Southern 84, Texas Southern 73

Sunday’s games

Tulane 69, Florida Atlantic 66 Western Kentucky 66, Louisiana Tech 61

Monday’s games

Lamar at Southeastern, n Prairie View A&M at Southern, n Stephen F. Austin at McNeese, n NW State at Nicholls, n Texas Southern at Grambling, n East Texas A&M at UNO, n

Tuesday’s game

South Carolina at LSU, 6 p.m.

Women’s state scores, schedule Saturday’s games

Arkansas State 89, UL-Monroe 71 McNeese 65, Lamar 57 Northwestern State 50, Nicholls 46 Stephen F. Austin 87, Southeastern 72.

Grambling 85, Prairie View 60 Tulane 70, Wichita State 60 Southern 64, Texas Southern 45 East Texas A&M 72, UNO 63 South Alabama 81, UL 56

Sunday’s game

Vanderbilt 65, LSU 61

Monday’s games None scheduled.

Tuesday’s game

Tulsa at Tulane, 6:30 p.m.

Hockey NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE Atlantic Division Tampa Bay Montreal Detroit Florida Buffalo Boston Ottawa Toronto

GP W L OT Pts GF 41 25 13 3 53 142 42 23 13 6 52 141 43 24 15 4 52 131 41 22 16 3 47 129 40 21 15 4 46 125 42 22 18 2 46 133 40 20 15 5 45 133 41 19 15 7 45 137

GA 110 141 138 130 126 136 129 138

Carolina N.Y. Islanders Philadelphia Pittsburgh Washington New Jersey N.Y. Rangers Columbus

GP W L OT Pts GF 42 25 14 3 53 141 42 23 15 4 50 120 40 21 12 7 49 124 41 20 12 9 49 135 42 21 15 6 48 135 42 22 18 2 46 114 43 20 18 5 45 114 41 18 16 7 43 127

GA 128 120 116 131 121 124 117 137

Metropolitan Division

WESTERN CONFERENCE Central Division Colorado Dallas Minnesota Nashville St. Louis Utah Chicago Winnipeg

GP W L OT Pts GF 41 31 3 7 69 165 42 25 9 8 58 146 43 25 10 8 58 138 41 19 18 4 42 118 43 17 18 8 42 107 42 19 20 3 41 127 42 17 18 7 41 118 40 15 21 4 34 115

Pacific Division

GA 93 117 115 136 146 122 134 126

GP W L OT Pts GF GA Vegas 40 17 11 12 46 124 126 Edmonton 42 20 16 6 46 139 143 Anaheim 41 21 17 3 45 139 146 Seattle 39 18 14 7 43 103 115 Los Angeles 40 17 14 9 43 107 111 San Jose 41 20 18 3 43 127 146 Calgary 41 18 19 4 40 111 121 Vancouver 41 16 20 5 37 117 143 NOTE: Two points for a win, one point for overtime loss. Top three teams in each division and two wild cards per conference advance to playoffs.

Sunday’s Games

Montreal 4, Dallas 3, OT Pittsburgh 5, Columbus 4, OT Florida 2, Colorado 1 Chicago 3, Vegas 2, OT Carolina 3, New Jersey 1

Monday’s Games

Anaheim at Washington, 6 p.m.

Utah at N.Y. Rangers, 6 p.m.

Detroit at Ottawa, 6:30 p.m.

Seattle at Calgary, 8:30 p.m.

Minnesota at Los Angeles, 9:30 p.m.

Tuesday’s Games

Anaheim at Philadelphia, 6 p.m.

Colorado at Tampa Bay, 6 p.m.

Dallas at Carolina, 6 p.m.

Vancouver at Buffalo, 6 p.m.

Florida at Toronto, 6:30 p.m.

New Jersey at N.Y. Islanders, 6:30 p.m.

Vegas at Winnipeg, 7 p.m.

Nashville at Edmonton, 8 p.m.

Boston at Seattle, 9 p.m.

Transactions Major League Baseball

American League BALTIMORE ORIOLES — Claimed OF Jhonkensy Noel off waivers from Cleveland. Designated RHP George Soriano for assignment.

LIVING

T H E A D V O C AT E.C O M

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T u e s d ay, J a n u a ry 6, 2026

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BEAUTIFUL, EVERGREEN SASANQUAS

Give overlooked camellia species a chance With the old year behind us and a new one just begun, it’s a good time to think about making some changes in the garden.

While you’re pondering your 2026 landscape GARDEN upgrades, NEWS LSU AgCenter horticulturist Jason Stagg hopes you’ll give consideration to one of his favorite plants: the sasanqua, a species of camellia.

“I don’t believe that this shrub gets enough attention,” Stagg said. “It really deserves to be recognized and planted more.”

So, what makes this plant so great? Native to southern Japan, sasanquas (Camellia sasanqua) have long been an element of gardens in the southern United States. With their year-round, glossy, green foliage, they’re useful building blocks of landscapes.

STAFF PHOTO By MADDIE SCOTT

The Blackwater Conservation Area is home to 58 acres, including this manmade lake initially carved for gravel mining.

A MOMENT OF ZEN

Visit peaceful places, parks in the area for reflection into the new year

LSU AGCENTER PHOTO

By OLIVIA McCLURE

Sasanquas provide important winter forage for pollinators.

Each fall and early winter, these shrubs treat us to a dazzling display of fragrant flowers that usually are 2 to 3 inches across. Depending on the cultivar, sasanquas can start blooming as early as late October. They often peak in December and can continue pushing blooms through January, when their better-known Camellia japonica cousins begin to flower.

“These plants are great for the landscape because they are tough, look beautiful and they’re evergreen,” Stagg said.

“But to me, most importantly, they provide valuable winter forage for bees and other pollinators at a time when we simply don’t have a lot available for them.”

Winter provides the ideal conditions for planting shrubs like sasanquas. If you want to add some to your landscape, you’ll find a good selection at your local garden center this time of year.

You can take your pick from the huge variety of bloom colors on the market today. Sasanquas can be found in numerous shades of white, pink and red.

Stagg is partial to a red-flowered cultivar called Yuletide.

Setsugekka is a popular cultivar with white blooms. If you prefer pink flowers, try Pink Snow. Sparkling Burgundy sports darker pink to rose pink double flowers, and Leslie Ann, which features bicolored white and pink flowers, is a Louisiana Super Plant selection.

There’s a wide range of shapes and sizes to choose from, too. Some sasanqua cultivars are upright and columnlike while others have a looser, more spreading growth habit.

“Some cultivars, especially some of the older ones, can get up to 8, 10, even 12 feet tall and can be used as wonderful evergreen hedges,” Stagg said.

ä See SASANQUAS, page 6C

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BY MADDIE SCOTT Staff writer

he new year — a time when annual recaps plaster publications from all over and loved ones inquire about each others’ resolutions.

Reflection is key to new discoveries, growth and balance. Where else better to ponder new beginnings other than Mother Nature herself? Out with the old and in with the new.

Baton Rouge has a plethora of beautiful scenes making the perfect backdrop to your meditations and goal-planning for 2026. Here are five places in the area to check out.

STAFF FILE PHOTO By MICHAEL DUNLAP

Perkins Road Community Park

Katherine King places plants on a cart at PlantFest! at the LSU Hilltop Arboretum on Oct. 1. The annual celebration features over 3,000 plants and more than 300 species of native and traditional trees, shrubs, Perkins Road Community Park is a good spot for a scene with perennials, vines, ferns, succulents, and grasses.

increased foot traffic. In late November, I sat at one of many red picnic tables next to the skate rink where skaters surfed on wheels, children sped on scooters and rollerbladers were one with the wind.

The lot also holds a rock wall, indoor basketball court, playground,

BMX and bike tracks and much Year’s resolution is. more.

Since it was buzzing with activity, the park chimed with happy ambience. My favorite sound Across 14 acres, this LSU-owned came from one man belting a love botanical garden offers a few song as he walked off into the ä See REFLECTION, page 6C distance. I wonder what his New

Hilltop Arboretum

Coveted Dong Phuong king cakes make return A king cake from New Orleans bakery Dong Phuong is a prized find at Carnival time. This one is filled with cream cheese.

STAFF FILE PHOTO By IAN McNULTy

BY MADDIE SCOTT

Staff writer

Carnival season is back, baby, and so are Dong Phuong king cakes. That is, if you can get your hands on one.

The legendary New Orleans Vietnamese bakery, Dong Phuong, started selling the cakes in 2008, and 10 years later, was awarded the James Beard American Classic Award, given to restaurants “distinguished by their timeless

MARDI GRAS 2026

FOR MORE,

THEADVOCATE.COM appeal, quality eats, and local character,” according to the James Beard Foundation.

The cake is made of brioche dough, and the top is coated

ä See KING CAKE, page 6C

6C ● Tuesday, January 6, 2026 ● theadvocate.com ● The Acadiana Advocate

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The lamentations of the January baby accept that e-cards or emails with Dear Miss Manners: My birthday “happy birthday” messages are is a few days after the new year. here to stay.

It’s a very easy date to miss alIn the past year, a few together in the shadow of people who used to schedDecember and New Year’s celebrations. Growing up, ule e-cards for delivery I often received “combo” on my birthday are now holiday and birthday presscheduling them for delivents. I was taught to thank ery on New Year’s Day. relatives and friends I am an adult, not a Judith and not complain that it 5-year-old, but is there a Martin way to remind friends of “wasn’t fair.”

MISS Nowadays, an e-card my actual birthday withMANNERS can be scheduled for out coming across as petty auto-delivery to someone’s or ungrateful that they inbox months in advance, so it’s “remembered” me at all? not even necessary to remember Last year, I waited the few days someone’s birthday. A birthday after New Year’s to send thankcard with a brief handwritten you’s on my actual birthday, with note that I can display on a living a note that my birthday plans got room table for a few days to look washed out “today” (it usually at would be my preference, but I rains on my birthday), but I still

enjoyed myself, and then I mention what I did to celebrate.

Apparently that was too subtle, because this year I continued to receive e-cards and emails on New Year’s Day (and even one on New Year’s Eve), some with notes that they hoped my birthday “today” is a good one. Any suggestions, or should I just let it go?

Gentle reader: Shortchanging a child on holidays is mean, and Miss Manners finds it sad that it has left you dissatisfied with the birthday acknowledgments you get now.

But you are grown up, and well aware that these are now generated mechanically. It is not as though your well-wishers — and they are well-wishers — are freshly moved each year to con-

gratulate you. Somehow a mixup has occurred, perhaps even without their realizing it. Nor are they scrutinizing your response enough to make the change.

These are the most casual of gestures, not comparable to relatives hurting a child. If someone very close to you forgets your birthday, you can mention that you are sensitive about this because of your childhood experience.

But to those who only send ecards — please do let it go.

Dear Miss Manners: My mother just earned her Ph.D. She holds many other professional titles, as well.

I would like to give her a desk nameplate, but I’m unsure how to approach it.

Should the first line on the plate read her name only, with all cre-

dentials underneath? Or should the first line contain her name and “Ph.D.,” then the other credentials underneath? There are four titles to include.

Gentle reader: You can use the title “Dr.” and put the others below — but please assure Miss Manners that this is intended for your mother’s home desk, and not an office, where her colleagues might find all that alphabet soup laughable — if not arrogant.

Send questions to Miss Manners at her website, www. missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.

TODAY IN HISTORY

By The Associated Press

STAFF PHOTO By MADDIE SCOTT

The William Bartram Trail in the Hilltop Arboretum runs a little less than half a mile long.

REFLECTION

Continued from page 5C short hiking trails around a footbridge-enclosed pond. A wildflower meadow adds to the tranquil scene, pollinated by the on-site bee farm.

Just to the left of the parking lot is an outdoor market of plants for sale, including flowers, herbs, trees and bulbs. Maybe start the new year with a new plant that will grow with you! Behind the nursery are a couple of buildings, one of which houses a gift shop.

This spot is great because the trails are pretty short but packed with lots of scenic views, so it’s the perfect walk with little ones.

I hiked one of the trails in heels during my lunch break while sipping on some coffee. It was a nice pick-me-up.

Blackwater Conservation Area After being bedridden for days from the flu, this was the first place I visited after regaining the ability to breathe through both nostrils. On Dec. 12, it had just rained, and smelling the earthy, post-rain aroma had never been so joyous.

Owned by BREC, the Blackwater Conservation Area opened in 2002 and is home to almost 58 acres, containing hiking trails and two man-made lakes initially carved for gravel mining.

Though located in Central, the serene views make the drive worth it.

I hiked halfway around the lake and stood on a little

KING CAKE

Continued from page 5C in cream cheese icing and Mardi Gras-colored sugar.

Flavors include original cinnamon, cream cheese, pecan, strawberry, coconut, almond and durian.

Loyal followers of Dong Phuong king cakes have been known to wrap lines around buildings for a taste, and it’s no different this year. Online orders are booked for the 2026 Carnival season, but

dent Theodore Roosevelt died in Oyster Bay, New York, at age 60.

Today is Tuesday, In 1941, President FrankJan. 6, the sixth day of 2026. There are 359 days lin D. Roosevelt, in his left in the year.

State of the Union address, Today in history: outlined a goal of “Four On Jan. 6, 2021, supportFreedoms” — human rights worthy of defending ers of President Donald universally: freedom of Trump, fueled by his speech and expression, the false claims of a stolen freedom to worship God election, assaulted police in one’s own way, freedom and stormed into the U.S. from want and freedom Capitol to interrupt the from fear. certification of Democrat In 1974, year-round dayJoe Biden’s victory, forcing lawmakers into hiding. A light saving time began Trump supporter, Ashli Bab- in the United States on a trial basis as a fuel-saving bitt, was shot and killed by police as she tried to breach measure in response to the a barricaded doorway inside OPEC oil embargo. The country, however, returned the Capitol. Capitol Police to standard time in OctoOfficer Brian Sicknick, injured while confronting the ber, effectively ending the rioters, suffered a stroke experiment. the next day and died from In 1982, truck driver natural causes. Congress William G. Bonin was conreconvened hours later to victed in Los Angeles of finish certifying Biden’s vic- 10 of the “Freeway Killer” slayings of young men tory. In January 2025 — on and boys. (Bonin was later the first day of his second convicted of four other term — Trump granted killings; he was executed blanket clemency to more than 1,500 people convicted in 1996.)

In 1994, figure skater or awaiting trial or sentencNancy Kerrigan was ing for Jan. 6 offenses. clubbed on the leg by an Also on this date: assailant at Detroit’s Cobo In 1919, former Presi-

Arena; four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan’s rival, Tonya Harding, went to prison for their roles in the attack.

(Harding pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution but denied any advance knowledge about the assault.)

In 2005, former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was indicted on murder charges 41 years after three civil rights workers were killed in Mississippi.

(Killen was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison; he died in prison in 2018.)

Today’s birthdays: Actorcomedian Rowan Atkinson is 71. Golf Hall of Famer Nancy Lopez is 69. TV chef Nigella Lawson is 66. Football Hall of Famer Howie Long is 66. Football Hall of Famer Charles Haley is 62. Actor Norman Reedus is 57. TV personality Julie Chen Moonves is 56. Actor Eddie Redmayne is 44. Actor-comedian Kate McKinnon is 42. Businessman Eric Trump is 42.

Entrepreneur and yoga instructor Hilaria Baldwin is 42.

SASANQUAS

Continued from page 5C

STAFF FILE PHOTO By HILARy SCHEINUK

Vibrant, colorful tulips are in full bloom at the LSU Botanic Gardens in Baton Rouge.

dock where I met two lizards restoration project, lots of who I admired the water- construction has been unfront view with. derway here. But the new year is all about development and improvement, so I decided to include this spot that’s near and dear to my My best friend was visit- heart.

The Milford Wampold ing from out of town, and our two-mile trek at the LSU Bo- Memorial Park is a place tanic Gardens was the per- I frequented in college for fect site for a much-needed picnics, strolls and reflecbestie debrief. Clutching our tions. Before construction, coffees, we began our trek there was a small dock that on the lot spanning a 440 stretched out onto the water, whopping acres. benches and a playground There’s a lot to see here. for littles. The area was also We passed fruit trees, walked riddled with geese, so it was through a rose garden, almost fun to watch them waddle tripped on a snake and had too around. much fun on the playground But don’t let the heavy seesaw. Are two 22-year-old machinery and temporary women too old for seesaws? fences deter a trip here. The Probably, but not on this day. area is still walkable, and I If you’re someone who en- saw plenty of joggers and joys stopping and reading dogwalkers around on New plaques, there are several Year’s Eve. The restoration aims to here for the random inforfinish at the end of 2026, mation admirers. assuming there are no setbacks. So as we work toward our resolution objectives, this quaint park will With the University Lakes grow alongside us.

LSU AgCenter Botanic Gardens

Looking for something shorter? Go for one of the newer dwarf cultivars, which top out at just 2 to 3 feet tall and wide.

Growing sasanquas is pretty easy. They can thrive in almost any soil type, preferring a neutral or slightly acidic pH. “The main thing you want to remember is to provide them with good drainage,” Stagg said, adding that sasanquas are notorious for disliking “wet feet.”

Unlike shade-loving camellia japonicas, sasanquas can handle full sun.

They can be planted in partially shaded locations as well.

“But you’ll get the best bloom in full sun,” Stagg said.

LSU AGCENTER PHOTO By OLIVIA MCCLURE

Different sasanqua cultivars have different growth habits.

Pink Snow, foreground, has a more open form while yuletide is more upright.

YEARS

Milford Wampold Memorial Park

some customers are able to find the delicacy if they arrive early enough at specific retail locations around Louisiana and two locations in Mississippi.

Customers can also visit the storefront at 14207 Chef Menteur Highway, New Orleans, to pick up a king cake starting at 8 a.m. every day except Tuesday. Patrons are limited to three king cakes per person.

In and around Baton Rouge, Dong Phuong king cakes are available for purchase at the following locations:

n Saigon Hong Kong Seafood Market: 1295 N. Sherwood Forest Drive, Suite J, Baton Rouge n Pho Café: 3851 S. Sherwood Forest Blvd., Baton Rouge n Sweet Society: 4957 Essen Lane, Baton Rouge n John and Anna Coffee Bean: 8080 Bluebonnet Blvd., No. 1300, Baton Rouge n Bao Asian Market & Deli: 17316 Airline Hwy, Prairieville.

For a full list of authorized resellers, visit kingcake. dpbakery.com.

BEGINS TONIGHT•7PM

KLPB 24

www.lpb.org

The Acadiana Advocate ● theadvocate.com ● Tuesday, January 6, 2026 ● 7C

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FrAnK And erneSt

bIG nAte

zItS

zodIAC CAPRICoRn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) Take pride in what you do. Sticking to the basics and setting a budget are necessary if you want to get ahead. Challenge yourself first before questioning others.

AQuARIus (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) Dream on, but when it comes to enforcing change, you're best off taking a wait-and-see approach. Your gestures will buy favors when you are in need yourself.

PIsCEs (Feb. 20-March 20) Spontaneity can lead to trouble. Don't make promises you cannot deliver. Participate in groups or events that allow you to promote your beliefs or skills, and something good will come of it.

ARIEs (March 21-April 19) Authenticity will help you bring about much-needed change. An opportunity is within reach, but it's up to you to set things off. Stop talking and start doing. tAuRus (April 20-May 20) Keep up with technology and the latest upgrades in your field of service. Whether you are pursuing knowledge, working hard to earn a living or are retired, it's important not to lose sight of your advancement.

GEMInI (May 21-June 20) You may crave change, but before making a bold move, consider the consequences. Emotions will lead you down the wrong path, offering less than you anticipate with little recourse.

CAnCER (June 21-July 22) Take the plunge and adjust whatever isn't living up to your expectations. Set standards that

make you feel proud and can help you reach your target.

LEo (July 23-Aug. 22) Be a leader and put your energy and effort into something that will benefit you. Refuse to get wrapped up in someone else's dreams or be talked into something you don't want or need.

VIRGo (Aug. 23-sept. 22) Step up and make a difference. Your insight and ability to find solutions will give you the edge you need in competitive situations. Someone you encounter will pique your interest.

LIBRA (sept. 23-oct. 23) Keep a close watch, note what others are doing and put your energy where it matters most.

Consider what you need to know or learn in order to do your best. sCoRPIo (oct. 24-nov. 22) A level head and an open mind will help you navigate your way through sticky situations. Time and money are essential; wasting either will put you in a precarious position. sAGIttARIus (nov. 23-Dec. 21) Trust yourself, not what others tell you. Say no to people offering the impossible or making empty promises. Taking on a minimalist lifestyle will ease your mind and give you more time to do what you enjoy most.

The horoscope, an entertainment feature, is not based on scientific fact. © 2026 by NEA, Inc., dist. By Andrews McMeel Syndication

For better or For WorSe WonderWord

peAnUtS

SALLY Forth

beetLe bAILeY CeLebrItY CIpher Celebrity Cipher cryptograms are created from quotations by famous people, past and present. Each letter in the cipher stands for another.

toDAy's CLuE: I EQuALs V

Mother GooSe And GrIMM

SherMAn’S LAGoon FAMILY CIrCUS

dooneSbUrY

8C ● Tuesday, January 6, 2026 ● theadvocate.com ● The Acadiana Advocate

CurTiS

Hi and LoiS

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Sudoku InstructIons: Sudoku is a number-placing puzzle based on a 9x9 grid with several given numbers.

The object is to place the numbers 1 to 9 in the empty squares so that each row, each column and each 3x3 box contains the same number only once. The difficulty level of the Sudoku increases from Monday to Sunday.

Yesterday’s Puzzle Answer

BaBY BLueS

BLondie

THe wiZard oF id

nea CroSSwordS

La TimeS CroSSword

The Acadiana Advocate ● theadvocate.com ● Tuesday, January 6, 2026 ● 9C

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B.C.

Bridge

By PHILLIP ALDER Hosea Ballou, a clergyman and theological writer who died in 1852, said, “Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within the hearing of little children tends towards the formation of character.”

We bridge players were all weaned on our mother’s or grandmother’s knee to count losers in a suit contract. If she was a taskmaster, she would have told us also to count winners. Sometimes, the right direction is clearer when we check winners.

In this deal, for example, South is in four spades. West cashes two top diamonds, then shifts to the heart king. How should declarer proceed?

North’s redouble promised at least 10 points and denied four or more spades.

East, with a definite preference among the unbid suits, was allowed to advance with two diamonds, even holding no points. From the logic of the auction, his hand had to be weak. Then, when North rebid three spades, South bid game, hoping for the best.

Declarer has four losers: two hearts and two diamonds. He has only seven top tricks: five spades, one heart and one club. To make his contract, he must win four club tricks. But that might require taking three club finesses. And to do that, South needs three hand entries. After

garfield

Pearls Before swiNe

hagar the horriBle

taking the third trick with his heart ace, he must take an immediate club finesse — there is no time to lose.

When the finesse wins, declarer cashes dummy’s spade queen, plays a spade to his king, and takes a second club finesse.

After a spade to the ace, South takes the third club finesse and claims. © 2026 by NEA, Inc., dist. By Andrews McMeel Syndication

wuzzles Each Wuzzle is a word riddle which creates a disguised word, phrase, name, place, saying, etc. For example: NOON GOOD = GOOD AFTERNOON

PiCKles

Previous answers:

mallard fillmore

word game InstRuCtIons: 1. Words must be of four or more letters. 2. Words that acquire four letters 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 words are not allowed.

toDAy’s WoRD — sERIAL: SERE-ee-ul: Appearing in successive parts or

Bizarro

marmaduKe

numbers.

Average mark 16 words Time limit 20 minutes Can you find 20 or more words in SERIAL? yEstERDAy’s WoRD — PEttIER peer

tier

retie

pert

tire

ripe

peter

titer

rite

petite

tree

petter

trip

pier

tripe

pitter

trite

loCKhorNs hidato Yesterday’s Puzzle Answer

today’s thought “For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.”

2 Corinthians 4:16 It is amazing what the grace of God can do for the human soul. Praise the Lord! — G.E. Dean

10C ● Tuesday, January 6, 2026 ● theadvocate.com ● The Acadiana Advocate

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BUSINESS T H E A D V O C AT E.C O M/news/business

DOW 48,977.18 594.79 1.23%

NASDAQ 23,395.82 160.19 0.69%

BRIEFS

FROM WIRE REPORTS

U.S.-based companies to be exempt from deal

WASHINGTON — U.S. multinational corporations will be exempted from paying more corporate taxes overseas in a deal finalized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The OECD announced Monday that nearly 150 countries have agreed on the plan, initially crafted in 2021, to stop large global companies from shifting profits to low-tax countries, no matter where they operate in the world.

The amended version excludes large U.S.-based multinational corporations from the 15% global minimum tax after negotiations between President Donald Trump’s administration and other members of the Group of Seven wealthy nations.

OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said in a statement that the agreement is a “landmark decision in international tax co-operation” and “enhances tax certainty, reduces complexity, and protects tax bases.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the agreement “a historic victory in preserving U.S. sovereignty and protecting American workers and businesses from extraterritorial overreach.”

The most recent version of the deal waters down a landmark 2021 agreement that set a minimum global corporate tax of 15%.

S&P 500 6,902.05 43.58 0.64%

EURO 1.1721 0.0000 0.00%

CRUDE OIL 58.32 1.00 1.74%

GOLD 4,436.90 122.50 2.84%

6-MO T-BILLS 3.59 -0.02 -0.55%

30-YR T-BONDS 4.84 -0.03 -0.62%

Oil stocks see sharp increase

BY MICHELLE CHAPMAN

Associated Press

Shares of major U.S. companies in the energy sector were sharply higher Monday after President Donald Trump announced plans to take control of Venezuela’s oil industry, saying that it would be American companies helping to revitalize it following the capture of President Nicolás Maduro.

While the U.S. action is unlikely to have an immediate impact on crude prices given the current glut in the market, it could upend en-

ergy markets and have an impact on the geopolitical landscape.

The shale oil revolution made the U.S. the world’s largest crude producer. Recent, massive oil finds off the coast of Guyana are largely controlled by ExxonMobil and Chevron. U.S. control of the Venezuelan energy industry, which sits on the world’s largest oil reserves, could “reshape the balance of power in international energy markets,” analysts with JP Morgan wrote Monday.

“The combined total could position the US as a leading holder

of global oil reserves, potentially accounting for about 30% of the world’s total if these figures are consolidated under US influence,” JP Morgan wrote. “This would mark a notable shift in global energy dynamics.”

Venezuela’s oil industry is in disrepair after years of neglect and international sanctions. Yet some oil industry analysts believe that Venezuela could double or triple its current output of about 1.1 million barrels of oil a day and return the nation to historic production levels relatively quickly.

“With greater access to and influence over a substantial portion of global reserves, the US could potentially exert more control over oil market trends, helping to stabilize prices and keep them within historically lower ranges,” according to JP Morgan. “This increased leverage would not only enhance U.S. energy security but could also reshape the balance of power in international energy markets.”

If or when that would happen, however, is more complex. Many energy analysts see a longer and more difficult road ahead.

FAA picks 2 firms to replace radar systems The federal government has picked two companies to replace 612 radar systems nationwide that date back to the 1980s as part of a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the nation’s air traffic control system.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and the Federal Aviation Administration said Monday that contractors RTX and Spanish firm Indra will replace the radar systems by the summer of 2028. The administration set an ambitious goal of completing the overhaul by the end of 2028 near the conclusion of President Donald Trump’s current term in office.

“Our radar network is outdated and long overdue for replacement. Many of the units have exceeded their intended service life, making them increasingly expensive to maintain and difficult to support,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said.

The FAA has been spending most of its $3 billion equipment budget just maintaining the fragile old system that still relies on floppy disks in places. Some of the equipment is old and isn’t manufactured anymore, so the FAA sometimes has to search for spare parts on eBay. Technical failures twice knocked out the radar for air traffic controllers managing planes around Newark Liberty International Airport last spring, and those problems led to thousands of cancellations and delays at the major hub airport.

Comcast spins off E!, CNBC and MS NOW Comcast has officially spun off its cable channels, including CNBC and MS NOW, into a separate company, Versant Media Group.

The transaction was completed late Friday. On Monday, Versant took a major tumble in its stock market debut — providing a key test of investors’ willingness to hold onto legacy cable channels.

The initial outlook wasn’t pretty, providing awkward moments for CNBC anchors reporting the story.

Comcast opted to cast off the still-profitable cable channels, except for the perennially popular Bravo!, as Wall Street has soured on the business, which has been contracting amid a consumer shift to streaming.

Versant’s market performance will be closely watched as Warner Bros. Discovery attempts to separate its cable channels from the Warner Bros. studios and HBO later this year.

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL PHOTO By MADELINE CARTER

Marissa Steingold shows off a Tombot dog Sunday during CES Unveiled at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

Robotic puppy, AI, wearable tech on display at CES media preview

BY RICHARD N. VELOTTA

Las Vegas Review-Journal (TNS) Hundreds of the roughly 4,000 media members attending CES 2026 got an early look Sunday at some of the thousands of consumer electronics gadgets that will dominate multiple trade show floors across the city this week.

The annual Consumer Electronics Show, sponsored by the Virginia-based Consumer Technology Association opens Tuesday, but media members got a preview at CES Unveiled Sunday at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

The four-day trade show, annually Las Vegas’ second-largest convention event with an estimated attendance of 140,000 people, runs through Friday and is open only to technology professionals and not the public.

“CES 2026 is where innovators show up — to connect, forge partnerships, and do business on a global scale,” said Gary Shapiro, executive chair and CEO of the 1,200-member association.

“All signs point to a phenomenal CES with thousands of exhibitors, a record 3,600-plus

Innovation Award submissions, and innovation across 13 venues and 2.6 million net square feet. This is an exciting time for innovation and CES 2026 will have the latest tech in AI, robotics, digital health, mobility, enterprise, energy, immersive entertainment, accessibility and more.”

Shapiro will join Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority President and CEO Steve Hill, Clark County Commissioner Jim Gibson, who chairs the LVCVA board of directors, and CTA President Kinsey Fabrizio on Monday to formally open the newly renovated Las Vegas Convention Center.

CES 2026 will be the first trade show to take advantage of the $600 million renovations that include bringing the convention center’s North, Central and South halls up to the same standards as the $1 billion West Hall.

While the convention center, The Venetian Expo and the Aria convention halls are the largest venues for CES, the show will introduce its first-ever CES Foundry at Fontainebleau uniting innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, government officials and media to explore how artificial intelligence and quantum technologies are defining the next

era of innovation.

Among the more than 100 companies participating at CES Unveiled was Santa Clarita, California-based Tombot, which drew large crowds gathering to meet Jennie, a lifelike robotic Labrador puppy.

Jennie was designed to comfort seniors and individuals living with dementia, anxiety, loneliness, autism and PTSD. The robotic dog responds to voice commands and responds like an 8- to 10-week-old puppy.

Company representatives said there already more than 18,000 global preorders for Jennie.

Wearable technology is expected to be popular at this year’s show and health-tech company Fourth Frontier of Austin, Texas, was showing its new line of heart-monitoring devices.

The company’s lightweight Frontier X monitor straps across the chest and synchronizes via Bluetooth to Apple Health and Garmin devices, producing a continuous electrocardiogram.

The monitor also produces an alarm when it detects the user is pushing too hard during an activity.

Wall Street gains ground as energy, bank stocks rise

BY DAMIAN J. TROISE Associated Press

NEW YORK — Stocks gained ground on Wall Street on Monday to kick off their first full week of the new year.

The gains were broad, with particularly big jumps for energy companies and banks. Elsewhere, industrial companies and retailers joined in to help boost major indexes.

The S&P 500 rose 43.58 points, or 0.6%, to 6,902.05. The benchmark index is just below its record set in late December. The Dow Jones Industrial Average set a record, rising 594.79 points, or

1.2%, to 48,977.18.

The Nasdaq composite rose 160.19 points, or 0.7%, to 23,395.82.

Smaller company stocks had a particularly strong day, outpacing other indexes, in a sign of broader investor confidence. The Russell 2000 rose 1.6%.

Markets in Europe also gained ground.

Big banks also made solid gains.

JPMorgan Chase rose 2.6% and Bank of America jumped 1.7%.

Wall Street is also watching the technology sector as the industry kicks off its annual CES trade show in Las Vegas. Nvidia fell 0.4% and Applied Materials jumped 5.7%.

Investors are particularly focused on advancements in artificial intelligence.

The sector led the broader market to a series of records in 2025 on expectations that AI will continue to drive advancements and profits for a wide range of technology companies.

The latest updates on AI from influential technology companies could help shed more light on whether the big investments are worth the potential financial risks.

Companies like Nvidia have been heavily investing in the technology, while investors on Wall Street have made those companies among the most valuable

in the world. Their outsized valuations now drive much of the movement for major indexes, including the record run for major indexes in 2025.

The broader market is poised to gain even more ground as last year’s momentum continues with growing corporate earnings and several other factors, according to Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide.

“The market’s broad, confident and consistent march upward, and the absence of emotion-based selling, tells you we’re starting the year on pretty solid footing,” Hackett wrote, in a note to investors.