Episodios

  • Cassidy vs. Letlow

    Cassidy vs. Letlow
    Jan 24 2026
    Hy and Christopher broadcast from Big Bend National Park. We ask why Trump has put his face on the new annual pass for the National Parks? We also examine Trump’s recent endorsement of Julia Letlow. Here is Christopher’s column in The Louisiana Weekly.GOP contenders unfazed by Trump endorsement of Julia LetlowBy Christopher Tidmore, Contributing WriterThree weeks ago, in a closed meeting of the Republican National Committee, Chairman Joe Gruters reportedly said that he had learned that Senator Bill Cassidy would be accepting a university position instead of qualifying for another term, and that Congresswoman Julia Letlow would soon be endorsed by President Trump, and subsequently run for the Senate. This news brought cheers to the hyper-partisan crowd, as Cassidy enjoys very little popularity in senior GOP circles after his vote to convict President Trump in the second impeachment five years ago. At least half of Gruters’ prediction came true last week.On Saturday, January 17, President Trump announced his endorsement of Julia Letlow in a TruthSocial posting that read, “Should she decide to enter this Race, Julia Letlow has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, JULIA, RUN!!!” She formally joined the United States Senate race the following Tuesday.State Rep. Mike Bayham, a Letlow supporter, speculated that an upcoming fundraiser the GOP Senate Majority Leader planned on hosting in Baton Rouge might have prompted President Trump to act sooner than he might have previously planned: “I think the Thune event for Cassidy triggered the late night Trump post [on Truth Social] for Julia for the U.S. Senate,” Bayham explained.Trump’s endorsement certainly came as a shock to the four candidates already challenging Bill Cassidy in the U.S. Senate race, which includes La. Treasurer John Fleming, 1st District PSC Commissioner Eric Skrmetta, 22nd District State Senator Blake Miguez and 39th District State Rep. Julie Emerson. All had been vying for Trump’s endorsement, and Skrmetta, in particular, had just attended a meeting at the White House on energy policy the previous week.Emerson dropped out on Friday, January 23, yet she is the only candidate to depart so far. In fact, Skrmetta doubled down by announcing a $3500 per person fundraiser on February 3, promoting his new book Conservatism: Endowed by Our Creator. In an interview with The Louisiana Weekly, Skrmetta pledged to remain in the contest, no matter what. He sees a lot of discontented conservatives eager for another choice. Partially, the reason is ideological. Louisiana’s rightwing intelligentsia is not thrilled with the President's choice of Letlow.As 1996 U.S. Senate candidate and former State Rep. Woody Jenkins put it, Cassidy and Letlow “ARE THE TWO MODERATE REPUBLICANS IN THE SENATE RACE coming up in Louisiana – not by any length the candidates most conservative Republicans will be looking at. We have strong conservatives running who have a good chance to win. Don’t let the media define the race as between these two moderate candidates because that is far from the case. FYI Cassidy and Letlow have voting records almost the same.”The critique is a tad unfair, as it is based on American Conservative Union ratings, which put both Cassidy and Letlow at roughly 75-percent pure conservative voting records. One of the main reasons both were discounted was the effort undertaken by both to convince FEMA to change its flood maps. In other words, the desire to keep the federal government subsidizing flood insurance for tens of thousands of Louisianans—a very critical need for their constituents to remain in their homes south of the flood protection walls—may have been popular locally, but national conservative organizations rated those votes as “liberal.”Still, Jenkins tapped into the anxiety that many local conservatives have about sending yet another moderate to D.C. Governor Landry’s motivation to reestablish the closed primary was to make it impossible for a comparative moderate like Cassidy to win renomination. Letlow, a candidate with a voting record on insurance and healthcare similar to Cassidy, doesn’t strike many conservatives as an improvement. She reminds many conservatives of how the White House parachuted former New Orleans Councilwoman and La. Elections Commissioner Suzie Terrell into the 2002 U.S. Senate race; Terrell entered the contest only due to the unabashed support of President George W. Bush, which propelled her into the runoff over more conservative candidates. Nevertheless, she ended up losing to Mary Landrieu.Terrell’s 2002 Senate GOP opponent, Tony Perkins, a protégé of Jenkins’ and currently the head of the conservative Family Research Council, argued at the time that a more conservative candidate would have had better turnout – and perhaps won.As an editorial by the Louisiana conservative website The Hayride argued, “Overall, [Letlow’s] scorecard numbers generally hover around 75 ...
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    54 m
  • It's A Hard Candy Christmas

    It's A Hard Candy Christmas
    Dec 19 2025
    Hy and Christopher talk about families coming together, Christmas, but the cynicism that kind of overrides our politics. We mention Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s ripping down of the banners on Gallier Hall placed there for inauguration of her successor Helena Moreno.Political cynicism threatens to take over the holidays, and we talk about President Trump’s address (in detail below and) on the radio show. We also talk about Rob Reiner’s murder, and the President’s reaction. Christopher shares some comments from James Woods, a strong Trump supporter, who also loved Reiner as a fellow patriot— even as they disagreed politically. https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1AGz4WFLFz/?mibextid=wwXIfrHowever, we also talk about the “threat” to Christmas. Santa may have been captured by the communists! We have secret footage of his interrogation! https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BtMfsQ7oA/?mibextid=wwXIfrHowever, our main topic centers around this theme, Christopher’s Column in The Louisiana Weekly.Lord, it's like a hard candy ChristmasBy Christopher TidmoreI'm barely getting through tomorrowBut still I won't letSorrow bring me downThe immortal Christmas ballad by Dolly Parton is a lament. It essentially says all of the ways that one’s life will be better in the coming year than the previous, yet the implication of the song – when she sings of the possibility of losing some weight, meeting someone, or moving away – reveals that the singer knows nothing much will change by the next Yuletide season. One wonders if that was the real truth of Donald Trump’s eighteen minute national address last Wednesday night. To tell us how good things will become – in the hopes that we don’t recognize how challenging life is right now – and will remain. For those that missed the president’s rant, all negative economic data and social problems were blamed on Joe Biden. Any upturn in the economy, fall in the jobless rates, or positive news came as a Christmas gift courtesy of Donald Trump. Of course, the president talked about tax cuts, and supply side stimulus does have an impact on the economy. The problem, however, is that most of his tax cuts have yet to take effect. The tax cuts on tips and Social Security will not manifest until returns are filed next April, and the president’s proposed healthcare savings accounts have not yet been enacted, and will likely face a hostile filibuster in the U.S. Senate due to the president’s own opposition to paying subsidies to insurance companies. Claiming that health insurance underwriters exist as whole-owned subsidiaries of the Democratic Party might come as a surprise to the gaggle of lobbyists who tend to give bigger contributions to Republicans, including Trump. Finally, the president’s proposal to give a $1,776 bonus to members of the military through tariff funds likely won’t come to pass if the Supreme Court outlaws the constitutionality of the White House unilaterally enacting tariffs without congressional support. In fact, many major companies have already pre-filed lawsuits to get the money refunded. Even if Trump does succeed in convincing the majority of the court that he can unilaterally put taxes on anything, he’s already promised tariff money to three other funding schemes. There’s not a lot left, unless he was lying previously.Hey, maybe I'll dye my hairMaybe I'll move somewhereMaybe I'll get a carMaybe I'll drive so farThey'll all lose trackMe, I'll bounce right backMaybe I'll sleep real lateMaybe I'll lose some weightMaybe I'll clear my junkMaybe I'll just get drunk on apple wineMe, I'll be justFine and dandyLord it's like a hard candy ChristmasI'm barely getting through tomorrowBut still I won't letSorrow bring me way downThe song presupposes that one’s hope in the promise of a new year is predicated on actions which really make a difference in one’s life, yet the audience (as well as the singer) both understand that no real will exists to undertake those self improvements.The president has blamed Joe Biden for all of his challenges because Trump finds it impossible to empathize with people who are hurting, or to offer solutions which might actually lower prices and improve the public’s well-being.True, gas prices have fallen as the president claimed, but some of Trump’s own political interventions in the petrochemical market have scared off investors just as quickly as deregulation has drawn them. Most other of the prices that he boasts about falling occurred mainly due to the same food offered in smaller-sized amounts, such as the frequently noted “Thanksgiving Dinner” package. Trump’s own success at deporting Hispanic migrants has driven up the cost of labor in multiple industries, harming the economy, though it has helped wage growth in some sectors.The desperate move (made the day after the speech by the president’s minions) to rename America’s main arts complex “the Trump Kennedy ...
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  • Hispanics, Infrequent Voters Won Nov 4 – And Could Be the Key to Congress in 2026

    Hispanics, Infrequent Voters Won Nov 4 – And Could Be the Key to Congress in 2026
    Nov 11 2025
    Hy and Christopher discussed the results from last Tuesday. It was a GOP slaughter, but Hy says the Democrats won in Democratic states, while Christopher offers a warning.
    Democrats in Mississippi broke the G.O.P.’s State House supermajority last Tuesday after a special election was forced by a court-ordered redistricting to offer Black voters a chance for more representation in the State Capital. Two Public Service Commission seats changed party hands in Georgia. For the first time ever, Democrats seized the District Attorney’s office and all nine school board seats in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a Republican stronghold as late as 2022 and the swing county which helped elect Donald Trump. Democrats similarly notched commanding victories in county executive races in Erie, Lehigh, and Northampton counties, all bellwether counties in recent presidential elections.
    A Democratic special election for an Iowa state Senate seat—in a district that had been held by Republicans—broke the GOP's supermajority in the 50-member Iowa Senate, giving Democrats 17 seats to 33, forcing Republicans to seek the support of at least one Democrat to confirm appointments to state agencies and commissions by Gov. Kim Reynolds. In a surprising upset in Virginia, Democrat Jay Jones defeated incumbent Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares despite a texting scandal where Jones made death threats against the Virginia House Speaker and subsequently lost 9 percent of the voters who cast a ballot for Abigail Spanberger, the victorious Democratic contender for Governor who was widely expected to win. Jones was still carried to victory by high Black turnout and thanks to Hispanics who voted for Donald Trump but switched back to the Democrats across the country.
    National attention focused on the New York Mayor’s race, the gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia, and the California ballot initiative to gerrymander five more congressional seats for the Democrats, yet only a few media sources focused on how, in the down-ticket races in GOP-majority states, key Republican constituencies abandoned the party of Trump in favor of the Democrats. Hispanics, with whom the President made huge inroads in 2024, switched back to the Democrats en masse. African Americans went to their polling precincts in numbers not seen since Barack Obama’s first election in 2008.
    “Is it any surprise that last night blue states voted blue?” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise quipped, claiming that last year’s presidential race was a better indication of the country’s political lean. Yet Trump’s former White House strategist Steve Bannon noted, “Modern politics now is about engaging low-propensity voters, and they clearly turned them out \[on Tuesday], and this is kind of the Trump model… This is very serious.”
    Stacey Abrams’ efforts in 2020 swung Georgia for Biden and two Democratic Senate victories by convincing inconsistent voters to go to the polls. Over issues like affordability and inflation, which carried the day in so many places across the country, voters who often eschew going to the polls actually voted on November 4. Hispanics swung against Trump last Tuesday because more Hispanics in key districts cast a ballot than in 2024. Many of the victories in GOP strongholds came because African Americans, who normally do not go to the polls, decided to vote.
    Turnout matters, Christopher concludes. The decision to vote can make all the difference, and as exit polls demonstrate, if voter turnout remains as high in the midterm congressional elections next year as it was on November 4, no amount of GOP gerrymandering will protect their U.S. House, or maybe even their Senate, majorities.
    Hy and Christopher go on to talk about tariffs, the Supreme Court, and a story about how a Louisiana Manifesto of rights may have influenced the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
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    54 m
  • Does New Orleans Need A Fiscal Administrator?

    Does New Orleans Need A Fiscal Administrator?
    Nov 1 2025
    Mayor-elect Helena Moreno declared last week, “The city of New Orleans should not, and I will not stand for, having a (state) fiscal administrator come in."Hy and Christopher discuss Gov. Jeff Landry’s proposal that he has the power to appoint a budgetary Tsar over local finances. Does it carry about as much legitimacy as his idea that President Trump should appoint the next LSU football coach?Both agree that the Governor’s opinion that a tribune of his should hold power over local finances might have carried a little more weight if he had done everything in his power to kill an emergency $125 million bond issue so that the City of New Orleans could pay its employees through Christmas. Due to his opposition, the city withdrew its request from the state bond commission.Politics operates by the golden rule; he has the gold makes the rule. The taxpayers of New Orleans will pay the price if their police and fire and critical city employees are laid off at the holidays. They have elected a new Mayor and Council. Should the new team have the right to make these decisions, as they will experience, the fallout of budget cuts or tax increases?Perhaps the Governor’s newfound interest in Orleans finances has more to do with the fact that his poll numbers have fallen into historic lows, way below the President’s. A new statewide poll finds Donald Trump’s favorable rating in Louisiana stands at 48%, but Governor Jeff Landry’s has fallen to only 39% JMC Analytics and Polling pollster John Couvillon says Landry had an aggressive legislative agenda during his first year in office and that might have turned off a few voters. Beating up on New Orleans always ranks as a great way to turn North Louisiana voter opinion back in one’s favor.Hy and Christopher also ponder if Gov. Jeff Landry led advocates of a second Black-majority district into a trap? By encouraging then-state Senator Cleo Fields to draw a serpentine-shaped district from Baton Rouge to Shreveport—almost impossible to drive across without transversing dirt roads through swamps—the Governor may have not only given the conservative-majority Supreme Court an excuse to strike the current LA 6th Congressional seat out of existence, but every other majority-minority US House district in the nation as well.In oral arguments one month ago, Justice Samuel Alito largely questioned the specifics of Louisiana’s case and whether the lower courts had faithfully applied the court’s existing Section 2 framework, which requires a minority group to show it is sufficiently large and geographically compact enough to form a majority in a new district.After lower courts ruled Louisiana’s map with only one majority-Black district violated Section 2, the state added a second one by creating a narrow path stretching from Baton Rouge in the southern part of the state to Shreveport, near its northwestern corner. This oddly redesigned 6th Congressional seat has drew objections ever since.“There’s a big difference, and there’s a serious question about whether the Black population within the district in question in the illustrative map was geographically compact,” Justice Alito noted.It is not as if Louisiana had not had a congressional seat struck down for exactly this reason, part of the reason Cleo Fields left Congress nearly three decades ago in the first place. Louisiana's 8th congressional district (which Fields represented from January 3, 1993, to January 3, 1997) was known for its unusual, "Z" shape. Created after the 1990 census, it connected a large and diverse geographic area of Louisiana, including a mix of urban and rural areas as well as stretching east and west of Baton Rouge and up the Mississippi River towards the Arkansas border. When Louisiana lost a congressional seat due to relative population declines following the next census, US Justice Department lawyers thought the 8th looked so odd that the state was allowed to drop this minority-majority seat rather than one of the Caucasian majority districts.When one adds to the fact that even prior to the current phase of Louisiana’s legal battle reaching the US supreme Court, some members of the conservative majority have long endorsed broad changes to the court’s Section 2 approach. If Louisiana had followed the recommendations of most civil rights lawyers to draw new 6th District from Baton Rouge to Monroe along the Mississippi river, linking geographically connected rural communities with a more “ natural” African-American majority, Louisiana’s case may have received a more skeptical reception by the Justices.Instead, in all likelihood, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority will use Louisiana’s salamander-shaped congressional seat— the very original definition of a gerrymander— as the justification to eliminate the mandate for all majority-minority seats, and then southern “red state” legislators will engage in a smorgasbord of redistricting to produce ...
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    54 m
  • Origins Of NOLA's Signature Foods - What Does "Creole" Actually Mean?

    Origins Of NOLA's Signature Foods - What Does "Creole" Actually Mean?
    Oct 25 2025
    October 30 at 6pm, The Garden District Book Shop on 2727 Prytania will welcome Theresa McCulla speaking about her new book Insatiable City. The event is free and open to the public.

    Hy and Christopher welcome Eric Williams to help interview Teresa on what food means to New Orleans. It’s a fascinating conversation.

    Insatiable City, a 2025 James Beard Foundation Book Award Nominee in Reference, History, and Scholarship and a Smithsonian Best Book of 2024, is a history of food in the Crescent City that explores race, power, social status, and labor.

    In Insatiable City, Theresa McCulla probes the overt and covert ways that the production of food and the discourse about it both created and reinforced many strains of inequality in New Orleans, a city significantly defined by its foodways. Tracking the city’s economy from nineteenth-century chattel slavery to twentieth-century tourism, McCulla uses menus, cookbooks, newspapers, postcards, photography, and other material culture to limn the interplay among the production and reception of food, the inscription and reiteration of racial hierarchies, and the constant diminishment and exploitation of working-class people. The consumption of food and people, she shows, was mutually reinforced and deeply intertwined. Yet she also details how enslaved and free people of color in New Orleans used food and drink to carve paths of mobility, stability, autonomy, freedom, profit, and joy. A story of pain and pleasure, labor and leisure, Insatiable City goes far beyond the task of tracing New Orleans's culinary history to focus on how food suffuses culture and our understandings and constructions of race and power.
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  • Too Low Turnout & Ongoing Government Shutdown

    Too Low Turnout & Ongoing Government Shutdown
    Oct 25 2025
    Hy and Christopher start talking about the turnout in the Mayoral election. Many have praised the 40.1 percent who went to the polls - we think it’s too low. Read more about it in our official editorial.

    Nearly four months ago, Hy and Christopher posed the question of whether Royce Duplessis could replicate the coalition that allowed him to best Democratic Rep. Mandie Landry in 2022. Would the state senator be able to build a biracial coalition of African-American Democrats as well as white Republicans and Independents to outflank a prominent Caucasian challenger? His Senate district, which has more than 75,000 registered voters in Orleans Parish, is a good microcosm of the city – 48 percent are Black, 40 percent are Caucasian and nine percent other. In fact, it’s a bit worse than the City of New Orleans for an African-American contender, which is 55 and 34 percent Black and white respectively. That Duplessis could carry a gentrified district, which under traditional political rules should have given a preference to a liberal white contender, spoke well of his chances in a citywide election.
    In the end, the answer was no. He only won one precinct of District 5 by over 50 percent in his mayoral bid. Her totals in the senatorial district are pretty closely tracked with her 55 percent victory citywide.That is not to say that Duplessis did not perform quite well for a candidate who jumped into the mayoral race just over three months before election day and ended up outspent 5-1. At 22 percent, Duplessis did win a plurality in the neighborhoods where he grew up – Pontchartrain Park and throughout Gentilly. He also did well in several Central City neighborhoods and prevailed in a few precincts in New Orleans East, though Oliver Thomas tended to match or edge past Duplessis narrowly in both overall.Essentially, Duplessis’ campaign might have replicated its previous success against a very similar candidate to Moreno, Rep. Mandie Landry, if an additional 12 percent of the city’s voters – i.e. registered Republicans – had universally backed his bid for mayor, as they had in his previous election. Mostly, they did not. Unlike Landry, Moreno won the majority of the GOP vote. The city councilperson appeared a more compelling moderate than Rep. Landry had. The conservative Caucasian remainder tended to support the Republican candidate Frank Janusa. Read more on the results in the Mayor's race.

    Then we end on a few comments and the government shutdown. Christopher and Hy disagree. Here is Christopher‘s take in The Louisiana Weekly.
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  • Impact of Government Shutdown on our National Parks

    Impact of Government Shutdown on our National Parks
    Oct 13 2025
    Hy and Christopher take on the impact of the government shut down on our national parks, talk about October 15 deadline to pay our federal employees, whether we can return to the decorum of Ronald Reagan in our politics, And looking forward to the November elections, where a controversial tax will be on the Orleans ballot for affordable housing. Should we pass another tax when the council keeps rolling forward our existing miliages after rolling them back?

    Christopher reports from the road, broadcasting from Santa Barbara, California, having just completed a trip across Glacier National Park just hours before the government shut down, into the Waterton Lakes, Banff, and across Canada, and then on a Holland American line to San Diego. Tidbits from that trip, and how the government shutdown is affecting our transport in America are on the agenda!
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    54 m
  • How To Improve Public Education In Louisiana

    How To Improve Public Education In Louisiana
    Oct 11 2025
    Hy and Christopher ponder how to improve public education in Louisiana, and one of the best opportunities that is going on is happening up in Monroe. The first International Baccalaureate school, with the IB educational program available for students from the very beginning opens its doors in Monroe.
    Educator Adam Ryland joins us to talk about the opportunities of multidisciplinary education and engagement with students. St. Frederick High School in Monroe is an IB World School offering the Middle Years Program (MYP) for grades 7-10, focusing on inquiry, international-mindedness, and holistic student development. While this is a prominent IB school in the area, other schools worldwide offer various IB programs, such as the Diploma Programme (DP) for the final years of high school. It offers hope for the Pelican State’s moribund educational system.
    Hy, then, embarks on a monologue on the impact of Charlie Kirk on free speech and the political environment.
    We also mentioned the Mayor’s race and the impact of turnout…
    Duplessis’ Fight for Black Votes
    By Christopher Tidmore
    The L.I.F.E. Ballot endorsed Councilwoman Helena Moreno for Mayor of New Orleans. The Louisiana Federation of independent Electors, an organization of which Dutch Morial co-founded and for which Marc Morial served as guiding force for decades, has advocated for a white candidate to become mayor. The organization most identified with the fight to elect the first Black mayor nearly nearly five decades ago now endorses a white candidate.
    This is just a glimpse of the climb that Sen. Royce Duplessis must accomplish by 8 PM on October 11. He must convince a supermajority of Black voters in Orleans Parish to cast for him in order to have a shot at a runoff slot and another month to fight. The state Senator’s original strategy of creating a biracial coalition, particularly with Republican support, has collapsed as 53% of GOP voters back Moreno and the remainder tend to support the Republican candidate Frank Janusa.
    Duplessis’ best hope would be to force a runoff by a narrow margin, and the chances of that are as narrow as electorally conceivable. Moreno commanded 49 percent in a University of New Orleans survey last week, followed by Duplessis with 15 percent and Councilman Oliver Thomas with 13 percent.
    However, one in five respondents remain undecided, with an overwhelming number of these African-American voters, and upon this Black electorate Duplessis has gambled. The state Senator runs on a strategy of African-American dissatisfaction with the fights between the city council and the mayor and anxiety of electing another Caucasian mayor of New Orleans in a Black majority city. Consequently, he seeks to drive up African-American turnout, with himself as the beneficiary. It is the only means for Duplessis’ gambel to pay off and earn a runoff slot— if Black voters respond to his message.
    The state Senator responded to a question in a recent forum that underlines his strategy. He subsequently broadcast this question on every social media platform, almost minute by minute. As Duplessis explains his campaign thesis, “The one thing we’re not gonna do is ignore race. Because race-bases issues cannot be solved by avoiding the conversation around race. Your question pointed out the stark racial disparities around economics in New Orleans. New Orleans is still a majority Black city, but we’re not just a majority Black city. We are one of the most culturally rich cities in the world where the contributions of Black people mean so much—not just a New Orleans culture—but to the entire world.”
    However, Helena Moreno has done a very good job in courting African-American voters, and their leaders, which could thwart the state Senator’s strategy. Congressman Troy Carter, heads the other political faction in Orleans Parish, and he endorsed the Councilwoman’s campaign, just like L.I.F.E. and a myriad other Black elected officials—leading to questions of whether higher turnout will even affect Moreno’s glide-path to 50.1 percent on October 11.
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