support for louisiana the state we're in is provided by every day i go to work for entergy i know customers are counting on me so entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen together together together we power life additional support provided by the fred b and ruth b zigler foundation and the zigler art museum located in jennings city hall the museum focuses on emerging louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for southwest louisiana and the foundation for excellence in louisiana public broadcasting with support from viewers like you this was about being able to stop the forward movement of african-american voice and power in the state of louisiana more updates on redistricting it's that people don't understand that hiv ain't gone it's not gone even though the focus has been on covid hiv rates are increasing the wolf is away from the door for those tens of thousands of policy holders from these failed companies louisiana struggle with insurance so it's just the idea that cities are warmer due to all the asphalt as well as waste heat from things like air conditioners and just kind of all the industrial activity that can occur in our cities are people creating more storms in south louisiana hi everyone i'm Kara St. Cyr.

Andre Moreau is off tonight but we still have a packed show you'll see two reports from him from earlier this week starting us off tonight the supreme court overturned roe v wade this morning ending 50 years of abortion protections in the u.s the conservative stat court voted to give states the power to determine their own legality around abortion the ruling sets into motion a law governor john bel edwards signed just this week making abortions largely illegal in louisiana this only permits abortion for ectopic pregnancy and if two doctors agree that the fetus will not survive there are no exceptions for rape or incest also doctors who perform abortions after the 15-week mark are subject to criminal charges a fine of up to 200 thousand dollars and up to 15 years in prison in other news lawmakers did get together for a special session to redraw the congressional map now this session ultimately ended without any new districts drawn the u.s district judge who ruled that the map was unconstitutional in february will now redraw the map herself the supreme court will have the final say on whether it's approved or disproved we'll have more on that later in this broadcast and now to news making headlines across the state the supreme court struck down a new york state law yesterday that made it difficult to obtain a permit to carry a handgun outside the home this was the justice's first significant ruling on the second amendment rights in over a decade great lakes dredge and dock company was sentenced a one million dollar fine for violating the clean water act violation occurred when the company cut through an oil pipeline during barrier island restoration work off louisiana in 2016. the spill released an estimated 5 300 gallons which is about 20 000 liters of crude oil it also oiled about 200 birds members of congress from louisiana are calling for federal officials to extend deadlines for spending 2 billion in hurricane katrina recovery funds for new orleans road and water infrastructure projects the funds are currently set to expire by august 2023 new orleans mayor latoya cantrell's administration stated that they can't meet the deadline which was established under a 2015 settlement with fema made during former mayor mitch landrieu's administration the house committee investigating the capital insurrection heard from election workers and state officials on tuesday the panel will hold at least two more hearings in july the baton rouge metro council will revisit a proposed ordinance to ban camping in public spaces the ordinance would penalize anyone who sets up temporary shelter for more than 12 hours within a public right-of-way finding them up to 200 or jailing them for up to 15 days the push to redraw the congressional map failed in the special session last weekend with some lawmakers insisting that june 15th to june 20th was not enough time to come up with a new map if you can remember back to last week both governor john bel edwards and u.s district judge shelly dick said that five days was more than enough here to discuss where we go from here as president and ceo of the power coalition ashley shelton thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me all right so let's just jump into our question so the congressional map was not redrawn where do we go from here what does that mean for louisiana what it means is in judge shelly dick's order she did order the legislature to draw a two-district majority minority map they did not do that and so she said if they were unable to do that that she would draw the map and so both sides have been given the opportunity to submit potential maps which will be interesting since we couldn't do it we couldn't produce it for the session but i don't know how they're going to produce it for the for the judge but again they can't submit anything to her that does not meet the qualifications of the order which is a two district two majority minority district map and so um on the 29th she will be she will be you know convening court to hear both sides and to talk about the map that she is has chosen and or is considering for the state of louisiana so a lot of people are arguing that including the judge that this map violated the voting rights act how was it able to get this far in the first place um it's unfortunate i think um you know i sat through the entire special redistricting special special session and in the process of sitting through that session i mean there was just a there was just a lack of will to do the right thing i mean we testified over and over again hundreds of folks from across the state of louisiana that they wanted a fair and equitable process and that they wanted a second majority minority district and our legislature refused to do that and um and even furthermore i think that they said that they felt like their map was legal and we knew it was not legal we know it did not meet the parameters of the voting rights act testified to that so many ways in fact our partner the legal defense fund they drew it seven different ways to prove that it not only could it be done but it can be done seven different ways and so the idea that they refuse to do the right thing is totally by choice and um and unfortunate for the people of louisiana especially having the second largest black population in the country so now that judge dick has said i'm going to be drawing this map is her decision final so her in terms of her order to what what you know what we brought to her was a preliminary injunction so to stop the the forward movement of the map that the legislature did approve and so yes so once her map is you know once she decides on her map and rules that map will stand now we do go to court on july 8th to hear the merits of the state's case on july 8th in the fifth circuit and so that certainly um you know they certainly can come to a different decision um and also too the state has also um you know they've also applied well the attorney general has also applied to the supreme court for a stay on any decisions and so there are lots of uh there's lots of work left to be done but again if the fifth circuit rules in our favor then her mat will stand and it will be the map that we use in the midterm elections in the fall is it likely that the fifth circuit will rule in favor with the judge um i think it's interest you know i think we have a solid chance i mean i think we've made our case i think that there was unprecedented you know participation the redistricting process by black and brown people from across the state i think that the fifth circuit already um did not you know initially they had given them their stay and then turned right back around and said actually you know given what we've read and reviewed in this case um we actually don't believe that you know like you need to stay and so i think that it's up and you know like a judge you know that those judges will be impaneled and we'll know more on july 8th but i do feel like we have done the work um we have engaged thousands of louisianans in this process we've built a strong record that proves that it's not we are we are absolutely not post-racial um you know we talked about you know one of my good friends devonte lewis with the louisiana budget project you know he made one of the most powerful points which is there is no right that african-americans have that has not been given to them by federal court from the right to be free all the way to you know being able to um integrate schools all the way to being able to have the right to vote and so forth and so on and so this idea that um we're post-racial and somehow this isn't just this isn't about race is outrageous to me and you know and so many of the legislators kept saying they were offended but i don't know how you could be more offended than african american members of this community who um you know who just want fair representation and the opportunity to elect a candidate of choice and when the veto happened the you know the fact that they were able to undo the veto the moment they knew they had the votes they clapped they cheered they were high-fiving each other and it was the vote broke down along racial lines and so how is that not race what were you clapping about if it was if it was just about winning or just no like this was about being able to stop um the ford movement of african-american voice and power in the state of louisiana well it's certainly been a journey from beginning to end trying to get this congressional map finished but again ashley shelton is the president and ceo of the power coalition so thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me there doesn't seem to be one positive to insurance companies going out of business and bailing on customers but tonight is there some hope on the horizon andre morrow talks with a lake charles woman forced to look for a new carrier and to insurance commissioner jim donald who says a better opportunity for people could develop all of the hurricane claims of the past several years have caused seven insurance companies to go under which means homeowners have lost insurance or some have simply moved out of the region and liz traha from lake charles uh this is what happened to you your company has left louisiana because of all the claims tell me about your situation and when did you learn of this right we received a non-renewal notice um may 20th i believe and yes yes our renewal will be in august and so that's whenever we will no longer have insurance with our insurance company giovera is that company they insured the home of liz trahan and her husband for two and a half years what was your reaction when you opened this were you expecting it i was not surprised i thought that they would at least wait till we were through with our process with them we are still undergoing claims supplemental claims with our contractor things that were not covered were partially covered life has been in limbo ever since laura blew in august 27 2020 and the subsequent hurricanes only made it worse for us it was mainly um water damage that came in through losing the roof uh the shingles it was down to the bare wood on i guess it would be the east side of our roof the trohons lived in a camper parked in their driveway they were out of their home for a year and a half i was claustrophobic i'd had enough of the camper it was time to go home and as soon as we had floors i said i'm going home i don't care if the workers can just work around me we are the target if you will the bullseye of hurricane alley state insurance commissioner jim donald has surely had his work cut out for him that's included getting deadlines of failed companies extended to give people more time and making sure state law protections remained solid the wolf is away from the door for those tens of thousands of policyholders from these failed companies who are looking for coverage they always now have at with ready access the right to get a policy from citizens you don't want to have to do that that's the market of last resort in every state there's a wind pool or a citizen's property like in florida like in louisiana that prices itself above the private sector so as to not become a market of choice but rather stay as a market of last resort the good news he says is that stronger companies have come in and picked up policies of many homeowners left hanging even donald himself has not been exempt from the carnage i now am in the same boat i'm looking for a policy to replace my my failed southern southern fidelity policy that failed because of not only their losses in louisiana but even more so their losses in the dysfunctional florida uh property insurance market as to the future we are unique we have a law going back to 1992 then senator jim cox of lake charles pastor and the companies hate it but it's the only one in america and it is a great protection for homeowners uh insurance consumers in our state i call it the three-year rule if you've been with your homeowner's insurer for three or more years you and they are married for as long as they do business in homeowners business in the state of louisiana it kept eighty percent of our market in place after katrina and rita and will do so again after the last two hurricane seasons this has truly been sort of a low as me louisiana is on its way out headline but it does not sound in any realm that that's really the case so people have much more hope than that certainly and insurers have much to gain by insuring these people positively and they see that this company from miami safe point i looked at their year-end statement when they came in and took over those 55 000 policies they had 40 million dollars in assets in their in their company at year end companies that know what they're doing and can do it and do it prudently can operate efficiently and profitably in coastal louisiana no question about it yet the anxiety the discomfort and the cost will cause many to simply exit the state or threaten to thank you for that report andre we'll keep an eye on that story hiv and aids cases in louisiana have shot up 33 in the past year a recently discovered variant of hiv in the netherlands has no link to covet despite false reports but the variant responds to treatment there's still no cure for aids and this is a major setback andre talked with joyce keller williams from baton rouge one of the nation's premier educators of the aids virus dr joyce turner keller living with hiv aids for 21 years now living and thriving that's right that's right known worldwide as an educator correct but now also known as a hepatitis educator correct you work the streets of baton rouge you work under the bridges you hand out things that people who don't have them need right and you're talking about hiv again it might surprise people but it's it's up cases are up our cases are up because you know since colvig people have become complacent statewide they stayed wide well nationwide yeah and one of the things that that's really frightening is that people don't understand that hiv ain't gone right it's not gone even though the focus has been on kovic you know kovic you know vaccine is you know keeps you from going to the hospital right sure but uh hiv if you wrap it up you know hey it's still not a cure but people sort of feel like truvada and that is they think they think that taking one pill a day is going to fix it uh the only problem with people using truvada is that they don't understand that you need to have take that pill at least 28 days in advance before actually having uh sex it has still been miraculous in a sense that there is something that is uh like this but however the cure is not there yet so that's still um looking for it but uh true case is 33 percent up uh yeah statewide and um this is surprise this wasn't expected uh but people were in isolation maybe not in isolation fully during coverage they were not that's why just like people were not wearing a mask yep they weren't wearing condoms right right just like they took their mask off because it was their right undetectable means that you're unable to transmit the disease and we need to talk about you equals you and then hiv needs to be a kind of conversation that you have at the table we need to stop being ashamed of of hiv that is this this demon in the room and and and we need to erase the sin and the shame and the blame that's attached to it i will not be stigmatized i am strong i am black i am beautiful i mean i bring more to the table than just the hiv because i was somebody before you've always been beating the drum though all during this time about hiv and so you are more loudly again to make people aware you were also your drum was was celebrated on the floor of the senate dr bill cassidy this past december speak about that just a little bit oh i mean it was just amazing i am so grateful to senator cassidy and this is for the second time because the first time he honored aspirations and me was on the floor of the united states congress this time with him being a senator he did this for me in december and this is your non-profit my non-profit aspirations and to to be recognized for the work that we're doing and no we're not out you know i'm not on tv all the time flashing to be a boy saying what i'm doing but sometimes the best storm is a quiet storm and you do what you need to do on the ground because you're doing it for all the right reasons i don't do it for the accolades i do it for my community because i am concerned i love my people period and somebody has to step out you've done it and be the face of hiv i want people to know that this is what hiv looks like you're not hiding that's right no never really we're here and it's good and it's it's a blessing that you're out there yeah educating people and of course covet is still not gone but it's it's better but there are people who haven't been vaccinated and they can be helped and you're also pushing for people's i'm doing that you'll get vaccinated yeah i am a consultant with uh the national black leadership commission on asia on our own health and it's called black help now and what we have been critical in doing was going out into the street educating people providing uh wellness packages the gloves the masks the hand sanitizers and the fascinations and and what's so good about it we host concert backyard concerts well we have somebody come in and they play jazz and we feed and we educate and it's just like being at home and people are getting vaccinated and once you're vaccinated fascinations help to eliminate some of the hospitalizations yes so this is what we're doing so it's hiv and kovic good good so we're going to try to prevent one and help heal the other your work continues and it's a blessing that it does it needs to be done but we wouldn't be able to be as productive as we are if there were not people like you and you know the lpb station who actually gives us a platform to promote our health and wellness and for that i'm grateful i thank you we're grateful you do thank you thank you all right june 27th is national hiv testing day experts encourage everyone to get a test even if you think you don't need one everyone in louisiana knows that the weather is sometimes fickle it can rain or thunderstorm at the drop of a hat or so it seems one coastal meteorologist at lsu worked on a study suggesting that we might be contributing to excess thunderstorms in the area but it's not in the way you might think take a look when it rains in louisiana it can send some people into a panic the weather seems so out of everyone's control but what if some of it was our doing anyone who's walked around on a parking lot on a hot summer day especially these last couple weeks recognizes this but when you're over a dark surface especially one that's what we would call an impervious surface those just typically tend to be warmer paul miller is a coastal meteorologist he was part of a nasa-funded study to uncover how frequently thunderstorms form across the u.s there's a very kind of well-established idea in climate science but it's this idea that we call the urban heat island so it's just the idea that cities are warmer due to all the asphalt as well as waste heat from things like air conditioners and just kind of all the industrial activity that can occur near cities the increased heat from our infrastructure creates the right conditions for a perfect storm multiple storms actually we would take kind of what the expected number of thunderstorms would be for a city we would compare that to how many we were actually seeing and then we would say oh that's 10 percent more that's a that's a 15 boost uh so something like that instead of looking at raw numbers usually bigger cities with more infrastructure generate the most storms that's why initially miller's study focused on cities like atlanta and miami but through continued research they found that new orleans actually topped the list for man-made storms and so once we accounted for the normal amount of thunderstorms in new orleans and then calculated a percent increase and compared that to how many thunderstorms we actually were seeing near new orleans we found that there was a 15 boost in thunderstorm activity within 20 kilometers of the city now generating 15 percent more storms may sound daunting but miller says a thunderstorm doesn't mean a hurricane or even a severe weather event it just means rain these aren't necessarily tornado producers or you know things that are really going to cause widespread damage however as we've seen in new orleans even this summer just having a few of those thunderstorms occur over the city can lead to flash flooding and so those are maybe more the types of uh kind of consequences that you would expect of something like uh what we often call the urban rainfall effect there isn't a clear-cut solution to excess storms but we can work around them miller says some cities are using the data to figure out where to build certain structures but until then the rain is just something we'll have around for a while miller studies will continue to investigate thunderstorms and their frequency but he'll also be taking a look at how cities can work around the rain now when you think of a stressful job agricultural ones probably don't come to mind but studies are showing that farmers are coping with high levels of stress especially here in louisiana they deal with debt problems hard working conditions and unpredictable weather it's leading some farmers down a path of depression and suicide the louisiana department of agriculture and forestry is trying to fight against these suicide rates with a stay rooted program we're at the louisiana women in ag conference 2022 this is the kickoff of the stay rooted louisiana program that is a program that falls underneath the louisiana department of agriculture and forestry and it's our initiative to spotlight farm stresses and it can range anywhere from farm finances farm airship cultivation practices and just as well as your farm mental health and wellness we have had a fabulous turnout of people at the louisiana women in ag conference and we are thrilled to have so many in-depth conversations dealing with farm and ranch stress and the other initiatives of this program to learn more about mental health tune in june 27th and 28th for a two-part series by ken burns and pbs hiding in plain sight and that wraps up our show tonight remember you can watch anything lpb anytime wherever you are with our lpb pbs app you can catch lpb news and public affairs shows as well as other louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years and please like us on facebook twitter tick tock and instagram for everyone at louisiana public broadcasting i'm Kara St. Cyr until next time that's the state we're in support for louisiana the state we're in is provided by every day i go to work for entergy i know customers are counting on me so entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen together together together we power life additional support provided by the fred b and ruth b zigler foundation and the zigler art museum located in jennings city hall the museum focuses on emerging louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for southwest louisiana and the foundation for excellence in louisiana public broadcasting with support from viewers like you