Tag: louisiana

Louisiana Pastor Convicted of Stealing Over $340,000 from His Congregations to Fund Gambling, Meals and Lavish Living

A Louisiana pastor known for his social media presence and motivational messaging has been convicted of defrauding his own congregations out of more than $340,000, using church funds to bankroll gambling, dining, and other personal expenses.

Dale Sanders, 56, of Kenner, was found guilty Friday, July 17, 2026, of a 25-count superseding indictment charging him with wire fraud, access device fraud, and obstruction of a federal investigation following a five-day jury trial before U.S. District Judge Brandon S. Long. The conviction was announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

According to evidence presented at trial, Sanders defrauded two congregations he led, Second New Guide Missionary Baptist Church in Metairie (identified as Church A) and Fifth African Baptist Church in New Orleans (Church B), by withdrawing funds and transferring money from church bank accounts into accounts he controlled.

He also used a church debit card for unauthorized personal transactions, pocketing cash, goods and services totaling over $340,000 that he had no right to.

The money bankrolled his casino gambling, hotel stays, meals and living expenses. The scheme stretched from around 2020 to 2024.

Prosecutors detailed specific transactions in the superseding indictment, including a $5,000 check from the New Orleans church, a $1,172 charge at a Hard Rock Hotel in Florida, $1,300 in charges at a Mississippi casino, and even a $226 veterinary bill in Kenner, among many others, according to NOLA.com.

Sanders was also convicted of obstructing the federal investigation by providing a falsified record in response to a grand jury subpoena.

Keep reading

The Official Louisiana State Data Has No Other Explanation: US Childhood Vaccines Are Increasing Infant Mortality

Executive summary

This is it. This is the big one. Finally.

This is the story of the most damaging childhood vaccine study ever done.

I asked all four major AI engines to predict the outcome before showing them the results. All four said the same thing: the OR will be <1 and there will be minimal sex differences.

The actual result: OR >1 in 54/55 subgroup analyses and massive sex differences.

You would simply never see these results if the childhood vaccines were safe.

Nobody can explain the relatively higher deaths in the vaccinated cohorts if they were not caused by the vaccines. They all try to deceive you into believing the study methodology is subject to confounders and should be considered unreliable.

There are 3 biases that impact this study:

  1. Selection bias: The healthy vaccinee effect moves OR < 1 so that doesn’t explain the signal.
  2. Immortal time bias: This was caused by requiring everyone to be vaccinated before they die. Thus, if all kids are never vaccinated <60 days, then the unvaxxed group cannot die until they’ve been vaccinated. This was a big oversight in the paper. It might move OR > 1 depending on the data. If most all kids had their first vaccine < day 60 like their HepB vaccinate at birth, then this bias makes no difference. I’ve made the study authors aware of this. The limitation can be corrected by requiring a vaccination record match found prior to the landmark date (day 90).
  3. Right truncation bias: This affects only the Vaxelis group because Vaxelis was only available starting in 2021 so these recipients had less time to die than the unvaccinated group. This inflates the OR for the vaccinated group, but even after correction, it’s still a problem. I’ve made the study authors aware of this.

All Bradford Hill causality criteria are satisfied. So this isn’t just correlation. This is CAUSATION. The sex signal is not subject to any of the biases identified above.

This means that the recommended vaccines for 2 month old kids are unsafe.

There is no credible way to attack this study.

Keep reading

Is Louisiana Being Set Up for California-Style Mail-In Ballot Fraud?

Louisiana voters who think their state’s elections are fully secure need to look closer at what has been happening under the radar in Baton Rouge.

Since Secretary of State Nancy Landry took office following her 2023 election, a systematic dismantling of mail-in ballot safeguards has been quietly codified into law. If this trend continues, Louisiana could soon mirror states like California, where loose mail-in voting regulations open the door to massive vulnerabilities and days of post-election counting.

To understand the threat, one must understand how a mail-in ballot works. The ballot itself does not contain the voter’s name; once it is removed from the envelope, it is anonymous. Therefore, any fraud must be caught at the envelope verification stage. If a fraudulent envelope passes inspection, the illegal vote inside is counted, and the damage cannot be undone.

Yet, a look at the legislative track record since 2024 reveals a disturbing pattern of watering down these exact verifications.

2024: The Bait-and-Switch Routine

In 2024, the dismantling began with a classic bait-and-switch routine involving two major bills:

  • HB 581 (Act 712) by Polly Thomas: This bill ostensibly added a requirement for a witness’s mailing address to be included on the ballot envelope. Common sense, right? Except a loophole was quietly amended into R.S. 18:1315(B), stating: “Failure to include a witness’s mailing address on an absentee ballot certificate shall not be grounds to challenge an absentee by mail ballot.” The bill created a security requirement and immediately declared that violating it carries zero consequences. Why?
  • SB 226 (Act 321) by Heather Cloud: This was designed to automatically challenge ballots missing required information. However, another crucial carve-out was added to 18:1315(C): “However, an absentee by mail ballot shall not be deemed challenged solely because the voter indicates on the absentee by mail certificate that he does not know his mother’s maiden name.” By eliminating the requirement for this vital piece of identifying information, a primary layer of fraud prevention was neutralized. Why?

2025: Outsourcing Voter Roll Accuracy

ADVERTISEMENT

In 2025, Rep. Beau Beaullieu carried the Secretary of State’s Omnibus Election Bill, HB 592 (Act 386). Buried inside the 45-page document were significant changes to Louisiana law regarding eligibility to register to vote.

Prior to HB 592, the law relied heavily on the United States Postal Service (USPS) for address data verification during the annual canvass. The new law introduced language allowing the Secretary of State to enter into agreements with private vendors for voter registration eligibility and address data.

Because the new law uses flexible “and/or” language, the state is no longer strictly bound to federal or state agency verifications. Instead, a third-party private vendor could potentially become the sole gatekeeper of voter roll accuracy—raising serious questions about accountability, data privacy, and the potential for outsourced corruption.

2026: The Midnight Raid on the “Printed Name” Requirement

HB 842 by Rep. Beaullieu in 2026 perhaps best highlights the lengths to which some lawmakers will go to pass these changes. The bill provided that a witness’s failure to provide a printed name or address should not be considered a deficiency requiring a cure.

If a witness’s printed name is optional, the only remaining safeguards are the voter and witness signatures—both of which can easily be forged or scribbled, as signature matching is not routinely or rigorously enforced. There is simply nothing that stops a bad actor from posing, by way of forged signatures, as both the voter and the witness on a mail-in ballot. This should alarm every voter in Louisiana.

Responding to grassroots concerns, Rep. Beryl Amedee successfully passed an amendment to the bill to ensure the “printed name” requirement remained strictly mandatory for legibility.

ADVERTISEMENT

However, after the bill moved through the Senate and headed to a conference committee—consisting of Reps. Beaullieu, Thomas, and Wilder, alongside Sens. Kleinpeter, Miller, and Womack—the rules were suspended. The conference committee stripped Rep. Amedee’s security amendment out of the bill and rushed the final version through both chambers in the closing hours without notifying the House floor of the changes.

A Wake-Up Call for Louisiana Voters

All of this begs the question: Why does there appear to be a systematic, coordinated effort by Republican leadership to make it easier to cast unverified absentee ballots? Why the backroom maneuvers and rule-suspensions to remove simple, common-sense legibility and identity checks?

Not only must citizens be on the look-out for any new legislation in 2027 that further erodes existing guardrails regarding absentee voting, every legislator who reflexively did the bidding of our Secretary of State and either authored, co-authored, or voted for the legislation cited herein should be unfavorably remembered on these issues by their voters at re-election time.

Keep reading

Louisiana Governor Is ‘Tired’ Of ‘Being Inundated With The Smell Of Marijuana’ At Football Games, So He Signed A Bill To Jail People For It

Louisiana’s governor says he signed a bill that threatens to send people to jail for up to one year if they smoke marijuana within 2,000 feet of a school property—including a college campus— because he is “tired” of smelling cannabis at football games.

“Like most of you, I’m tired of going to our college and high school campuses and being inundated with the smell of marijuana,” he said in a video posted to social media. “And I’m tired of seeing drugs littering our high school and college campuses, hurting our students.”

“These drugs take away from the family-friendly environments that our colleges are supposed to be, especially on game days,” the governor said.

The legislation from Rep. Gabe Firment (R) that Landry signed last month applies to people who violate drug laws “while smoking, vaping, or otherwise abusing such controlled dangerous substance while on any property used for school purposes by any school, within two thousand feet of any such property, or while on a school bus.”

The bill “takes a massive step toward protecting our families and children in Louisiana on those campuses,” the governor argued in his new video that was posted on Friday.

Keep reading

Louisiana House Approves New Congressional Map that Eliminates Racially Gerrymandered District

The Louisiana House on Thursday approved a new Congressional map that eliminates a racially gerrymandered district, sending the bill to the Senate.

Louisiana delayed its House primaries late last month after a blockbuster Supreme Court ruling on a key Voting Rights Act provision.

The Supreme Court recently declared Louisiana’s previous Congressional map an unconstitutional gerrymander.

The high court issued the ruling 6-3.

Liberal justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson dissented.

The case, State of Louisiana v. Phillip Callais (and the related Press Robinson v. Phillip Callais), stems from Louisiana’s woke lawmakers caving to left-wing judges and creating a second “majority-minority” congressional district.

The Louisiana House voted 66-35 to approve the new map.

Keep reading

Supreme Court Denies Civil Rights Group’s Motion to Recall Louisiana Redistricting Judgment

The Supreme Court on Wednesday denied a civil rights group’s motion to recall the Louisiana redistricting judgment.

The Supreme Court last month declared Louisiana’s newly-drawn Congressional map an unconstitutional gerrymander.

The high court issued the ruling 6-3.

Liberal justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson dissented.

The case, State of Louisiana v. Phillip Callais (and the related Press Robinson v. Phillip Callais), stems from Louisiana’s woke lawmakers caving to left-wing judges and creating a second “majority-minority” congressional district.

Louisiana delayed its May 16 House primaries last Thursday after the Supreme Court’s blockbuster ruling.

“Yesterday’s historic Supreme Court victory for Louisiana has an immediate consequence for the State. The Supreme Court previously stayed an injunction against the State’s enforcement of the current Congressional map,” Governor Landry said last month.

“By the Court’s order, however, that stay automatically terminated with yesterday’s decision. Accordingly, the State is currently enjoined from carrying out congressional elections under the current map. We are working together with the Legislature and the Secretary of State’s office to develop a path forward,” he said.

Keep reading

Appeals Court Blocks Nationwide Access to Abortion Pills Via Mail

A federal appeals court on Friday blocked nationwide access to abortion pill prescriptions via telehealth and mail.

A three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that abortion pills such as Mifepristone must be distributed in person.

Louisiana filed the lawsuit after the FDA allowed Mifepristone to be distributed via telehealth and mail during the Covid pandemic.

In 2023, the ‘Covid’ change to how abortion pills were distributed became permanent.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lashed out at Louisiana’s ‘anti-abortion politicians’ after the ruling came down from the appeals court.

“Anti-abortion politicians have just made it much harder for people everywhere in the country to get a medication that abortion and miscarriage patients have been safely using for more than 25 years,” said Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney for the Reproductive Freedom Project of the ACLU.

“Louisiana’s legal attack on mifepristone shamelessly packaged lies and propaganda as an excuse to restrict abortion — and the Fifth Circuit rubber-stamped it,” they said.

“This decision defies clear science and settled law and advances an anti-abortion agenda that is deeply unpopular with the American people,” the ACLU said.

“For countless people, especially those who live in rural areas, face intimate partner violence, or live with disabilities, losing a telemedicine option will mean losing access to this vital medication altogether,” the ACLU added.

NBC News reported:

A federal appeals court on Friday granted the state of Louisiana’s request to reinstate a nationwide requirement that abortion pills be dispensed in person.

The ruling represents a victory for opponents of abortion rights, since it limits access by blocking people’s ability to obtain mifepristone — one of the two pills used in medication abortions — through telehealth and by mail.

Telehealth prescriptions have been key to maintaining abortion access in states that outlawed or restricted the practice after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

During the Covid pandemic, the Food and Drug Administration temporarily eliminated a requirement for mifepristone to be dispensed only in clinics, medical offices and hospitals. The change was then made permanent in 2023.

Louisiana challenged that FDA regulation in federal court last year, alleging that the data to support it was flawed or nonexistent. Multiple studies have shown that mifepristone is safe and effective when taken at home after a consultation with a clinician.

Keep reading

Barack Obama Weighs In On Supreme Court “Gutting” Voting Rights Act by Striking Down Louisiana’s Racially Gerrymandered Map and It Instantly Backfires

Former President Barack Obama lashed out at the United States Supreme Court for crippling the racial gerrymandering schemes practiced by his party, and Americans were quick to put him in his place.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling on Wednesday, correctly declaring Louisiana’s newly-drawn Democrat-friendly Congressional map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

The case, State of Louisiana v. Phillip Callais (and the related Press Robinson v. Phillip Callais), stems from Louisiana’s cowardly lawmakers caving to activist left-wing judges and creating a second “majority-minority” congressional district designed to elect a Democrat.

While the decision does not abolish the Voting Rights Act (VRA) or Section 2, ABC News notes that it raises the bar for challenges to election maps that liberal critics claim limit the ability of minority voters to elect candidates of their choosing, even if lawmakers did not intend to discriminate.

Leftist Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan whined in her dissent that the “gutting of Section 2 puts that achievement in peril.”

“If other states follow Louisiana’s lead,” Kagan added, “the minority citizens residing there will no longer have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.”

Obama agreed with Kagan that the VRA was gutted and slammed the Court for not only “weakening” minority voting power but “abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy.”

“Today’s Supreme Court decision effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, freeing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities – so long as they do it under the guise of ‘partisanship’ rather than explicit ‘racial bias,” Obama wrote.

“And it serves as just one more example of how a majority of the current Court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach,” he added.

“The good news is that such setbacks can be overcome. But that will only happen if citizens across the country who cherish our democratic ideals continue to mobilize and vote in record numbers – not just in the upcoming midterms or in high-profile races, but in every election and every level.”

Keep reading

Supreme Court Issues Landmark Ruling on Voting Rights Act: 4 Things to Know

The U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark decision on April 29 reinterpreted a provision of the Voting Rights Act and struck down a majority-black congressional district in Louisiana, opening the door for more redistricting across the United States.

In a 6–3 ruling, the high court found that the Louisiana district represented by Rep. Cleo Fields (D-La.) relied on race when the congressional map was drawn up.

Ruling Impacts Key Voting Rights Act Section

The ruling was authored by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Alito wrote that “allowing race to play any part in government decisionmaking represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context.”

He said Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is effectively limited to instances of intentional discrimination, a very high standard.

“Only when understood this way does (Section 2) of the Voting Rights Act properly fit within Congress’s 15th Amendment enforcement power,” Alito wrote.

The 15th Amendment, a Reconstruction-era amendment of the Constitution that was ratified in 1870 following the end of the Civil War, allows Congress to pass laws ensuring that the right to vote cannot be denied “on ​account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.”

Interpreting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which was signed into law in 1965, to “outlaw a map solely because it fails to provide a sufficient number of majority-minority districts would create a right that the amendment does not protect,” Alito argued, referring to the 15th Amendment.

Louisiana Map ‘Unconstitutional’

With the decision, the high court blocked an electoral map in Louisiana that would have given the state a second majority-black congressional district.

The Supreme Court’s ruling was issued amid a battle unfolding between Republican-led and Democratic-led states ​around the country involving the redrawing of electoral maps to change the composition of House of Representatives districts ahead of the November elections.

“That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander,” Alito wrote for the majority, adding that the Voting Rights Act doesn’t “require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district” and ruling that there is “no compelling interest” that justified Louisiana using race to create Fields’ district.

The U.S. Constitution, he added, “almost never permits a State to discriminate on the basis of race, and such discrimination triggers strict scrutiny.”

The decision was issued as other states have moved to implement new congressional districts ahead of the November 2026 midterm elections.

Florida legislators were debating a proposed redrawing of the state’s congressional lines, which was submitted this month by Gov. Ron DeSantis and was intended to give Republicans a chance to pick up as many as four seats in the House of Representatives.

Keep reading

Louisiana Lawmakers Pass Bill To Send People To Jail For Smoking Marijuana Near College Campuses

Louisiana lawmakers have approved a bill that threatens to send people to jail for up to one year if they smoke marijuana within 2,000 feet of a school property—including a college campus.

The legislation from Rep. Gabe Firment (R) was passed by the House of Representatives in a 59-34 vote last week.

HB 568, which now heads to the Senate for consideration, applies to people who violate drug laws “while smoking, vaping, or otherwise abusing such controlled dangerous substance while on any property used for school purposes by any school, within two thousand feet of any such property, or while on a school bus.”

The pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) said the “incredibly draconian penalties” in the legislation threaten to reverse cannabis reform progress made in the state in recent years.

In 2021, then-Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) signed a bill decriminalizing marijuana by removing the threat of jail time for possessing up to 14 grams.

“HB 568 would make cannabis use a felony in huge swaths of urban and suburban areas. Two thousand feet is a little over ⅓ of a mile,” Kevin Caldwell, MPP”s Southeast legislative manager, said in an action alert to supporters. “In addition to mandatory incarceration of up to a year, the bill includes a fine of up to $1,000.”

“This is an attempt to bring back the draconian penalties that Louisiana was infamous for in decades past. This bill seeks to undo years of hard work by advocates for ending jail time for minor cannabis offenses,” he said. “Under this legislation, a student could be incarcerated for a year for consuming in a college dorm room.”

Keep reading