State Level DOGE Inspired Task Forces Watchlist

Must be nice to know you have a governor that loves democracy, freedom, and the United States of America

Hundreds of New Orleans residents showed up to vote Saturday in the Crescent Soil and Water Conservation District election only to find all the available ballots had already been cast.

The race, between the incumbent, urban farmer Erica “Sage” Johnson of Orleans Parish, and Lloyd Landry IV, a commercial fishing captain from St. Charles Parish, will decide who represents the district covering Orleans, Jefferson and St. Charles parishes.

The district's five-member board works with landowners to manage resources, including water, soil, forests and wildlife. There are 44 districts across the state and they fall under the jurisdiction of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Interesting... 🤔

Yesterday my city held a very rare election, and most people didn't even know about until the last minute. I learned about it on Friday via this same subreddit, but the information posted only covered one of the two candidates in detail.

The brief description given for the other candidate, was also very oddly formatted and difficult to read.

It seemed odd to have such a rare and last minute election quietly scheduled the same day of the No Kings rally and Pride Festival, especially after the vote regarding the millage for the Orleans Parish Sheriff budget was criticized for being scheduled during Jazz fest.

Anyway, I got up early on Saturday a little before 6 am and found an article covering both candidates. I tried to post the article but as soon as I hit submit, the post was already removed.

Weird, I thought maybe somebody already posted the information and I must have missed it. I checked the subreddit and still didn't see it. Odd, so I tried to just post it as a text post with the information and link included, but again, it was removed as soon as I hit submit.

... Very weird, I figured I must have been temporarily suspended from posting or something, but I was still able to comment as usual, and a few hours later, when I posted something about the protest, I had no issues.

I was planning to go vote along with several other people after the No King protest. But by the time the protest was over, people were learning voters were being turned away because the voting locations were saying they ran out of ballots.

I thought that might be disinformation, so I went anyway. Confirmed that yep, I couldn't vote. The best they could offer was allowing me to add my name, phone number, and optionally who I would have voted for if I had been allowed to vote, to a list of names being collected on an unofficial sheet of spare printer paper.

New Orleans voters in rare conservation district election turned away in droves Saturday

Hundreds of New Orleans residents showed up to vote Saturday in the Crescent Soil and Water Conservation District election only to find all the available ballots had already been cast.

The race, between the incumbent, urban farmer Erica “Sage” Johnson of Orleans Parish, and Lloyd Landry IV, a commercial fishing captain from St. Charles Parish, will decide who represents the district covering Orleans, Jefferson and St. Charles parishes.

The district's five-member board works with landowners to manage resources, including water, soil, forests and wildlife. There are 44 districts across the state and they fall under the jurisdiction of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

The district said ahead of the election that only 300 ballots would be available at each of the eight polling places throughout the three parishes and urged voters to come early.

Still, many arriving at the three voting locations in New Orleans as early as 9 a.m. were surprised to find the available ballots there had already run out.

Nola.com Correction: This story was changed to reflect that the conservation district falls under the Department of Agriculture and Forestry.

This actually makes this even more suspicious because Louisiana just passed a bill to deregulate seafood safety and inspection, and hand oversight of seafood regulation over to this department.

The candidate who is suddenly challenging the incumbent for her seat is a commercial fishing captain.

The incumbent also released a statement last night, addressing the vote, and said she had actually requested more ballots be made available.

The head of city council, who is also one of the top candidates for the upcoming mayoral election (if we're allowed to vote by then) has called for a do-over.

Councilwoman Helena Moreno calls for redo Soil and Water Board election

I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Here are what the official ballots looked like if anyone is interested.

A. They literally could have just given people a laptop, printer access, and a pair of scissors to make more.

B. Using these seems like it creates the risk of people just creating new votes to add on to the total tally. Especially odd given the very sheisty recount that somebody paid for using an alias, after the vote for the sheriff budget, where an official suddenly remembered some extra ballots he had forgotten about in another room.

SB15 criminalizes the failure of local officials – including sheriffs and other law enforcement officers – to cooperate with federal immigration agencies, with penalties of up to 10 years in prison.

Up to 10 years in prison if you refuse to blindly follow orders? Seems reasonable /s

It also criminalizes acts by everyday Louisiana residents deemed to obstruct or “thwart” federal immigration enforcement efforts. It passed 71-30.

"Thwart" immigration efforts seems like it could be very loosely interpreted to mean anything from intentionally or even unintentionally obstructing or delaying efforts, peacefully protesting or expressing dissent, potentially interpreted to punish immigration lawyers for doing their job.

Also, just pointing out the city of New Orleans was already on that DHS list of jurisdictions in violation of Trump's sanctuary policy

Feels like it would have been less passive aggressive to just @ the city within the actual text of the bill.

“The Orleans Parish Sheriff, who should be trying to get out from under the handcuffs of the consent decree, [is] using that as a shield to avoid the possible implications of refusing to cooperate with ICE,” Morris told committee members.

Also, love this argument (especially as we're watching riots in L.A. and the city of Glendale canceling it's own contract with ICE) bc it essentially seems to be saying take off those old handcuffs, and put on these new much more restrictive handcuffs.

Durr we luv smol gubmint and freedum 🖕

One of Gov. Jeff Landry’s appointees to the LSU Board of Supervisors flew into a rage at LSU Health Shreveport when its staff would not perform a house call for her husband, threatening to fire multiple employees, according to a whistleblower complaint. She’s also the subject of other complaints that allege she harassed several employees and meddled in the day-to-day operations of the medical school.

Esperanza Moran, who openly rallied for the dismissal of former LSU Health Shreveport Chancellor David Guzick, is the subject of an anonymous whistleblower complaint, at least one Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint filed by top LSU Health Shreveport employees and a separate complaint filed to Landry by a top administrator.

According to an anonymous whistleblower complaint filed with LSU, Moran went to LSU Health Shreveport just days after being appointed to the board and “[caused] a public scene in outrage” that an employee was not permitted to treat her husband at Moran’s private residence.

“While causing the disturbance, Ms. Moran threatened to terminate staff and said she was the new chancellor and in charge of LSU Health Shreveport.”

Wow...

Heritage Foundation creator Paul Weyrich first saw Roe v. Wade as an opportunity to gain support for the religious right's school segregation policies. "School choice," remains a priority for the movement, but their power and control can be seen throughout state and federal government in 2025.

This is a very short post about the current Louisiana fiscal budget, LA DOGE, Landry, and how it relates to the early foundations of the religious right movement in the U.S.

Weyrich also created the Council for National Policy (CNP), a secretive group that is listed by on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch

Interestingly in 2019, CNP held a conference in New Orleans. Jeff Landry and Steve Scalise were both listed as speakers on the conference agenda.

For example, a candidate or elected official could use their campaign and PAC money to help pay off a portion of their home mortgage, as long as part of the property was used for campaign purposes and the candidate charged his campaign “fair market value,” under one provision of the legislation. 

The bill was largely written by two private attorneys who work for Gov. Jeff Landry and represented him in multiple legal disputes he has with the ethics board.

Most recently, lawyers Stephen Gelé and Charles Spies are working for Landry as the governor faces ethics charges for failing to disclose flights he took on a political donor’s plane in 2021. But Wright’s legislation would not affect the outcome of that case against Landry. 

Wright said his legislation is also meant to address frustrations elected officials have with ethics board fines and investigations into their spending.

What would be allowed

Should it pass, Wright’s legislation would explicitly let political candidates, elected officials and their PACs spend money on a long list of new services and expenses that aren’t laid out in the current law.

These proposed allowable expenses would include:

*Paying lobbyists at the State Capitol and in Washington D.C.

• Paying for an elected official or candidate’s spouse and children to accompany them to Washington Mardi Gras, a national political convention or any professional conference attended as an elected official.

*Covering any fines or penalties the ethics board has levied against a person for violating campaign finance or ethics laws.

• Paying for security measures such as cameras and fences to be installed in order to protect a candidate or elected official, including at their personal residence or office.

*Payments on a personal or business loan, including a home mortgage, on property owned by the candidate as long as the candidate is using a portion of that property for campaign purposes and is charging his campaign “fair market” value. For example, this could include storing campaign signs in the garage of an elected official’s house and then charging the campaign the market rate of a local storage locker.

*Paying dues, fees and gratuities to a social organization such as a country club, fitness center, Mardi Gras krewe or any other “nonpolitical organization” as long as the membership “facilitates” interaction with a constituent, another elected official or a former elected official.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/64862639

This still has to go to the Senate so please for the love of god if you care about your rights and privacy tell your senator to vote NO!

My city is currently in the midst of an AI facial recognition/predictive policing thanks to a secret city partnership with Palantir, dystopian nightmare

Frankly I would be happy to see my state ban facial recognition completely, but they definitely aren't going to, but take this as a warning.

We should have federal regulations and state regulations! There is absolutely no need for them to ban regulation at the state level other than the argument it will halt progress.

In reality they are invading your privacy and generating valuable data for these stupid AI data centers and they don't want you to be able to decide this sucks and I want it to stop in my state!

Not only would it ban laws for the next 10 years, it would remove existing laws. Some places already have a facial recognition ban, and this would repeal it!

It's nuts this seems to actually have some bipartisan support in the Senate, bc everyone is "so concerned" about America winning the AI race.

News flash, we probably won't win it. It was a dumb fucking idea in the first place, and yeah they put all of our eggs into the AI basket and it's probably going to tank the economy even more, but why TF should we be giving them even more control of our lives in the hopes that just maybe they can make a lot of money by further invading our privacy and doing some really evil shit with our data that will make the world an even worse place?

Here is an article about the May 8, 2025 hearing.

Altman, during the hearing, said that Texas had been “unbelievable” in incentivizing major AI projects. “I think that would be a good thing for other states to study,” Altman said. He predicted that the Abilene site would be the “largest AI training facility in the world.” But Altman also later cautioned against a patchwork regulatory framework for AI.

“It is very difficult to imagine us figuring out how to comply with 50 different sets of regulations,” said Altman. “One federal framework that is light touch, that we can understand, and it lets us move with the speed that this moment calls for, seems important and fine.”

Here is a quote from Peter Thiel protege, Michael Kratsios regarding AI regulation in 2019

“A patchwork of regulation of technology is not beneficial for the country. We want to avoid that. Facial recognition has important roles—for example, finding lost or displaced children. There are use cases, but they need to be underpinned by values.”

They have no values, I support a federal regulation too, but in case you haven't noticed, the people who want you to vote to remove state regulations in favor of a "light touch" federal regulation are also in charge deciding what that "light touch" federal regulation will be and if it gets enforced at all.

Most of what we attribute to Elon Musk/DOGE including using protected government data banks full of our private data to train AI, can actually be traced back to Thiel and Kratsios, as early as 2018!

Government deregulation has been in the works for a very long time. Do not let them keep taking our protections away!

Greg LaRose, KALB’s Political Analyst, shared, “I think you’re seeing Louisiana show up more in the ongoing immigration court battles because the Trump administration recognizes it’s a fairly friendly, conservative venue. Not only do you have the immigration judges themselves, but cases are going to have to go through district courts in Louisiana, which tend to be largely conservative. More importantly, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas and Louisiana, has a really conservative lean to it. So, the feeling is that if you’re going to put someone in custody, under ICE custody, that Louisiana is sort of where you want these court cases to play out if you’re the Trump administration.”

Come to Louisiana, but leave your rights and due process behind

The intensification includes 287(g) partnerships, which allow ICE to delegate its authorities to state and local law enforcement agencies, acting as a bridge between federal law enforcement and local law enforcement.

“The Kenner Police Department close to New Orleans has also reached an agreement where they’re willing to work alongside ICE,” LaRose said. “It’s one of the larger Hispanic immigrant, legal immigrant communities in the state. It’s been sort of a bridge between America and Central America for centuries, really. Clearly, there’s an interest there in the police department wanting to cooperate with federal authorities in the crackdown.”

The role Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry plays in all of this is crucial. Since his ascension to the top seat in Pelican State politics, Landry has focused his attention on fighting crime across the state as one top priority. Given his experience as former state attorney general, along with time served in the military and in law enforcement, LaRose feels Landry can get great mileage out of adhering to what President Trump’s policy is.

“I think he sees that clearly now there is an overwhelming conservative bend to politics in Louisiana and at the national level,” LaRose said. “Something I say a lot any time I’ve interviewed about Jeff Landry is that he’s basically never lost an election. I think you always have to look at what he’s doing from what political advantage he has to gain from it. Now, you can disagree with whether or not that’s a good goal or not. But, I think it’s hard to argue with how effective it’s been at helping him win elections and solidifying people around him.”

LaRose said it will be interesting to see how the governor continues, or if the governor continues, to play a “strict father role” when it comes to crime issues in major Louisiana cities, like New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport.

I believe you mean authoritarian.

A week after Gov. Jeff Landry signed Executive Order “Operation GEAUX,” which calls on Louisiana law enforcement agencies to partner with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), five state agencies have entered into agreements.

According to ICE, Alcohol & Tobacco Control, Wildlife and Fisheries, the National Guard, the State Fire Marshal, and the State Police have all joined ICE’s 287(g) program under the task force model.

The program allows participating agencies to exercise limited immigration enforcement authority under ICE supervision during routine police work.

"This is a big, great, beautiful executive order,” Gov. Landry said in a social media video after signing Operation GEAUX.

The immigrant rights group Union Migrante is concerned about the growing number of ICE agreements in Louisiana. Organizer Alfredo Salazar argues that Operation GEAUX ignores the state’s more pressing problems.

“This is a political show to distract people from the state’s real issues,” Salazar said. “They are putting those problems aside and putting immigrants front and center.”

Yeah, you right. Don't pay attention to how awful everything else is in Louisiana. No jobs, everybody is broke AF, can't afford groceries or rent, hurricane season is about to start and there is absolutely no plan for what we're going to do when Trump denies us emergency aid, but "look at all the right people we're hurting!"

The database combines information about a person’s immigration status and death records in an attempt to keep the Louisiana voter rolls accurate.

Sec. Landry visited Washington, D.C., where she met with White House staff, DOGE, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Social Security Administration to offer feedback on the new voter maintenance database.

“Since taking office, I have repeatedly requested this critical data from the federal government to check Louisiana’s voter registration list,” Sec. Landry said.

Fully expecting to show up to the polls on voting day, only to be informed I'm actually dead or an illegal immigrant.

Looks like this got deleted from the original community where I posted it, so re-posting what I can remember here.

This screenshot is from a post I made on my city's subreddit.

Monday the Washington Post revealed my city was using a first of its kind mass surveillance and facial recognition software that allows police to track individuals added to a watchlist via cameras installed around the city.

The ACLU is saying it is "the stuff of authoritarian surveillance states, and has no place in American policing.”

“Until now, no American police department has been willing to risk the massive public blowback from using such a brazen face recognition surveillance system,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “By adopting this system–in secret, without safeguards, and at tremendous threat to our privacy and security–the City of New Orleans has crossed a thick red line.

The NOPD has stopped using it since WaPo began investigating because it violated a city ordinance, but federal agents (ICE) and state police are still using the real time tracking app.

I realized after reading an Axios article about it on Wednesday that the ordinance was created after the mayor, suddenly asked the city to lift a blanket ban on the technology and other controversial predictive policing policies.

The city's mayor has been facing federal charges regarding a scandal for several years and is currently just running out the clock on her last term as mayor. She has also been accused of other corruption such as accepting gifts as bribes in the past

The ban on predictive policing policies was originally created following the end of a secret partnership between Palantir and the city of New Orleans from ~2012-2018.

Months after the city first abandoned it's contract with Palantir, Mayor Cantrell seemed to be looking for loopholes that would allow her to continue using controversial predictive policing

I have tried to avoid pile-on critique of the mayor, and I actually voted her the first time she ran. However, one of the most common questions people in my city ask, is "how has she not been arrested?" I want to stress this is my own speculation, but given the details that are emerging now, I do wonder if these charges may have been related to why she so willingly turned over the city's privacy to the federal government in 2022?

The proposed ordinance, if passed, would largely reverse the council’s blanket bans on the use facial recognition and characteristic tracking software, which is similar to facial recognition but for identifying race, gender, outfits, vehicles, walking gait and other attributes. One provision also appears to walk back the city’s ban on predictive policing and cell-site simulators — which intercept and spy on cell phone calls — to locate people suspected of certain serious crimes.

That provision could, for the first time, give the city explicit permission to use a whole host of surveillance technology in certain circumstances, including voice recognition, x-ray vans, “through the wall radar,” social media monitoring software, “tools used to gain unauthorized access to a computer,” and more.

Lastly the proposal would allow the city to use “social media or communications software or applications for the purpose of communicating with the public, provided such use does not include the affirmative use of any face surveillance.” The Lens asked Tidwell and Green why this was included and what it was meant to allow, but neither responded.

While she may not have realized it at the time, the removal of the ban, along with her oddly warm welcome of the Governor's own state police force, Troop Nola, has placed the entire city in danger as the 2025 Trump administration continues to remove protection for civil rights and liberties as well as oversight for potential abuse of NSA surveillance

Louisiana State Police (LSP) Troop Nola, are now permanently established in the city and cannot be regulated by city policy and regulations. This means that they can also not be regulated by the same city ordinance that compelled the NOPD to pause their use of the controversial surveillance and real time tracking notifications.

As of yesterday, the Justice Department decided to stop investigating civil rights accusations previously made against LSP, while Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and his long time friend Attorney General Liz Murrill, were reported to have celebrated the decision.

2015 article about Project Nola, an independent private company which got its start before NOPD and Palantir's partnership expired in 2018.

In recent years, wealthier residents have developed privatized systems to make New Orleans more liveable. For instance, one entrepreneur recently created an app to let people instantly summon up a local police force. Project NOLA follows suit: One wealthy resident created a system that, in many ways, is more efficient than anything the city government has created.

Earlier this year, New Orleans police launched its own program, SafeCam, to collect surveillance video. But unlike Project NOLA, the SafeCam initiative is merely a database of the locations of 2,500 registered cameras around the city. The footage is recorded by individuals or businesses and stored locally. According to Gamble, it’s a “growing” program and used by detectives so they “know who to contact if we need the footage.” “The way we see it, there is no competition between SafeCam NOLA and Project NOLA,” Gamble says.

Gamble says the New Orleans Police Department tried to get Lagarde to hand over his database of registered cameras, but Lagarde refused, citing privacy concerns. “Our first priority is actually not crime abatement,” Lagarde says. “It’s to protect the privacy of those who participate by giving us access to their camera.” That access, Lagarde says, costs users $10 per month, or $96 per year. He has registered Project NOLA as a nonprofit organization, and says the program earns less than $100,000 in revenue per year.

This is the first known time an American police department has relied on live facial recognition technology cameras at scale, and is a radical and dangerous escalation of the power to surveil people as we go about our daily lives.

According to The Washington Post, since 2023 the city has relied on face recognition-enabled surveillance cameras through the “Project NOLA” private camera network. These cameras scan every face that passes by and send real-time alerts directly to officers’ phones when they detect a purported match to someone on a secretive, privately maintained watchlist.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/64252755

Archive link without paywall: https://archive.is/Wod1E

New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said city police weren’t notified about the escape until 10:30 a.m., about two hours after the routine headcount turned up short. The department then set out to inform the public so people could protect themselves and help with the search.

“We wanted to immediately notify our public because we knew these escapees would be in our city,” she said before promising a “full court effort” to track down the escapees.

Kirkpatrick declined to criticize the sheriff’s office but said the delay in reporting the escape was “concerning.” When asked whether Hutson should have let her know about the escape sooner, the superintendent demurred.

“We’ll deal with that at another time,” she said.

The jailbreak is the latest in a series of oddly high profile incidents regarding the Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson over the last several weeks.

The current Governor of Louisiana has critiqued New Orleans sanctuary policy for handling immigration since at least 2017, when he was Attorney General for the state. The policy is the result of a federal consent decree handed down by the Department of Justice.

In 2024, the mayor of New Orleans, who has been under legal pressure due to her own corruption scandal, ignored concerns of many civil rights advocates, when she sided with the Governor to establish a permanent state police (Troop Nola) presence in the city.

Governor Landry claimed this was necessary to reverse damage to NOPD caused by the Federal decree.

The following has all seriously happened in New Orleans over the last 2.5 weeks:

•Sanctuary city trial. The current Louisiana AG filed charges against Hutson to force her to lift what the state argues is a sanctuary city policy, relating to a federal decree placed on NOPD by the DOJ.

The AG, a long time friend of Governor Landry, argued that New Orleans was in violation of state law created last year.

That law was written by Blake Miguez, a different long time friend of Landry and member of his Louisiana DOGE taskforce. Miguez has also been helping the Governor restructure the Louisiana board of ethics following claims of ethics board violation, which have allowed Landry the ability to appoint the majority of the members of the ethics board directly, with less oversight.

Ultimately, the federal judge ruled that she did not believe AG Murrill had the authority to make those claims against Hutson.

•A Trump EO about ending federal decrees and sanctuary cities was released on the Monday night, (less than 48 hrs) before the Wednesday trial

•The Saturday after the trial, the city held a vote to continue a millage, so that a small amount of property tax would fund the jail. Hutson said she needed the funds to make repairs to the jail, but faced a bizarre disinformation campaign falsely claiming voting yes would raise taxes. Nobody has ever taken credit for the signs placed around the city.

It just barely passed by 2 votes. A request for a recount was filed early the next week.

•The recount request was filed under an alias by somebody who had previously run for elected office in Louisiana, and was previously involved in revealing an astroturfing scandal against the city The recount ultimately increased the number of yes votes so the millage passed by 4 votes.

•This past Tuesday the city submitted a request to lift the consent decree. The request was filed right at the 5 pm deadline

•Thursday Governor Landry released an EO urging Louisiana law enforcement to partner with ICE

From the Office of the Governor news release Governor Jeff Landry Partners with President Donald Trump to Launch “Operation GEAUX”

•Late Thursday night/early Friday morning, 11 prisoners escape from Orleans Parish jail

•Hutson is up for re-election soon. Candidates running against her are now speaking to the press, claiming this should make her ineligible to run for re-election.

Governor of Louisiana was being charged with ethics violations, so he just decided to change the law so he wouldn't be.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) assured America he doesn't use encrypted messaging apps like signal.

"I get about 400 a day literally just from members," Johnson said at an Axios News Shapers event in Washington, DC. "A lot of them text. That's our main means of communication."

He added, jokingly: "Probably being monitored by the Russians, for all I know."

What a funny joke to make considering the previously confirmed Russian oligarch and Putin loyalist financial contributions to Johnson.😅

At the time the donations to Johnson's campaign were made by American Ethane, the majority of shares (88%) were owned by three Russian nationalists. Konstantin Nikolaev, Mikhail Yuriev, and Andrey Kunatbaev. As this Newsweek article points out, Nikolaev is a top ally of Putin.

The majority of Americans may not be aware that Mikhail Yuriev is also a famous Putin loyalist. So much so, Yuriev wrote a "fictional" novel about a Russian leader that shares a striking resemblance to Putin.

The novel is famous among far right Russian nationalists and Putin has called it his favorite book, The Third Empire: Russia as It Ought to Be.

The 2006 novel preemptively describes the strategy to invade Ukraine years before it actually began. The novel envisions Russia as a 3rd Rome, eventually conquering the entire globe. In the novel, Russia drops a nuclear bomb on the U.S. after conquering Europe. The U.S. surrenders to Russia, and a victory parade is held on May 9th in Red Square

representatives of the American elite: President [George] Bush III and former presidents Bill Clinton, Bush Junior, and Hillary Clinton; current and former members of the cabinet, the House, and the Senate; bankers and industrialists; newspaper commentators and television anchors; famous attorneys and top models; pop singers and Hollywood actresses. All of them passed through Red Square in shackles and with nameplates around their necks. … The Russian government was letting its own citizens and the whole world know that Russia had fought with and vanquished not only the American army but the American civilization.

Here is an archived copy of the Atlantic article about the Russian novel without a paywall

Updating this to include more information: It might be worth mentioning here that each year, Russia actually holds a giant military victory parade in Moscow's Red Square to commemorate the end of WWII. Putin usually uses the parade to show off Russia's military power, and invites foreign leaders to attend. G.W. Bush (Bush III) attended the parade in 2005 (the year before Yuriev's novel was published). However, in recent years, no western leaders have attended.

In January, Putin announced that the 2025 victory parade would include a mystery "big guest," from the U.S.

Interestingly, with the date of Putin's annual victory parade approaching, Kyiv has asked EU officials to visit on Kyiv on May 9th as a show of diplomatic force against Putin. Separately, Zelenskyy is meeting with members of the coalition of the willing, to determine security guarantees for Ukraine.

As of this morning, Russian state media announced Marco Rubio will be attending the upcoming parade.

Rubio's attendance has not been confirmed by U.S. officials, but if true, could potentially send a message about U.S. loyalties among ongoing tension between Russia and U.S. NATO allies.

Also, as of today (May 1, 2025), a Kremlin spokesperson seemed to issue an ominous threat, stating that Russia was capable of mobilizing it's army for a war on scale with WWII if necessary.

In a hearing Wednesday on Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill’s push to eliminate "sanctuary" policies for immigrants in the New Orleans jail, a federal judge peppered a state lawyer with questions over what she at one point called “insufficient” arguments for the attorney general to be allowed to intervene in the case.

Now, with President Donald Trump vowing to deport some 20 million people from the U.S., conservatives in state governments are pressing the issue. With support from Gov. Jeff Landry, Murrill argues that Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office policies should be erased, after a state law passed last year that effectively banned so-called “sanctuary cities" in Louisiana. The agreement for the New Orleans jail "now sits fundamentally at odds with state law," Murrill argues.

I didn't even know the state law banning sanctuary cities was authored by Senator Blake Miguez, but when I read that I wasn't even actually surprised, because of course it was. The same names are just constantly popping up in connection with this corrupt BS.

Miguez is also an official member of Landry's Louisiana DOGE taskforce. He accidentally revealed the taskforce was meeting in secret and violating transparency laws when he posted a picture of the meeting to Facebook.

After Landry was accused of an ethics violation, Miguez also sponsored an ethics board statute that granted Landry the ability to appoint the majority of the members of the board directly, with less oversight.

Which seems like such an odd move given that Landry and Miguez both love ethics, oversight, and government accountability so much.

The Club for Growth was founded in 1999 by Stephen Moore, Thomas L. Rhodes, and Richard Gilder. Stephen Moore worked at the Heritage Foundation from 1983 to 1987 and again since 2014.

Roe created the State Policy Network in 1992.

TIL that Krieble funded the first of its kind Russian corporation for cooperation between Russia and U.S. businesses in 1991

ITEP provides an 80% tax abatement for up to 10 years. This is supposed to be in exchange for job creation and economic investment in Louisiana. Except Landry removed the requirement for job creation back in Feb.

As Landry explains, "It is not about job creation. It is about capital investment."

To sweeten corporate welfare as an incentive to business, Landry is now giving businesses with existing ITEP contracts the ability to "opt-out" of previous requirements binding them in their current contracts.

So come to Louisiana, exploit whatever you need, benefit from corporate welfare and now you don't even have to create jobs to do it.

The Louisiana Comeback campaign created by GNO Inc. and the Pelican Institute, has been pushing this idea that Louisiana must be freed from over dependency on Federal aid for several years.

They want to incentivise big businesses to come to Louisiana by allowing them to take advantage of ITEP, and claim this will allow Louisiana to be less dependent on Federal aid. However, if there are no jobs being created, and no state taxes going towards state level benefits how would that possibly benefit any Louisiana resident and actually make them less dependent?

It doesn't offer any incentive to Louisiana residents to make them less dependent, it just makes wealthy individuals more wealthy.

Also, I've mentioned this before, but will keep mentioning it every time I come across more of this corrupt BS screwing over the state and telling us we should be happy about it:

The Pelican Institute is part of a nationwide network of think tanks (SPN). SPN is a Heritage Foundation affiliate and receives funding from some very wealthy individuals.

SPN is known for using these think tanks to push for state level policy that benefits their wealthy donors, and disguising the policy as representative of residents living in the state.

As in, these giant corporations are coming to Louisiana, not paying taxes, and not creating jobs because, we the people somehow believe it's in our best interest.