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T u e s d ay, M a r c h 25, 2025
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Hyundai plans to build $5.8B steel mill in La.
State closes homeless shelter
Officials say 108 people moved from temporary N.O. facility to apartments
BY SOPHIE KASAKOVE Staff writer
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO
President Donald Trump, flanked by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Benton, left, and Gov. Jeff Landry, speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Monday.
Landry joins Trump at White House to announce project BY ALYSE PFEIL, STEPHANIE RIEGEL and DAVID MITCHELL
reported by The Advocate | The Times-Picayune in January, 190 will supply car parts via rail 12 Baton and truck to the company’s U.S. Staff writers Rouge auto factories — which include a Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Flanked by Gov. Jeff Landry 55 Site of Alabama, and a Kia Plant in West and U.S. House Speaker Mike 61 Lake Hyundai 10 Point, Georgia — and other U.S. Johnson, President Donald Maurepas 1 plant Lake automakers. Trump on Monday trumpeted Pontchartrain Ascension Hyundai Steel Company plans carmaker Hyundai’s announceSt. John Iber ville to import an estimated 3.6 milment that it will build its first U.S. 10 steel mill in Louisiana, bringing lion tons of iron ore and produce Donaldsonville New billions of dollars in investment 2.7 million metric tons of steel Orleans St. James and thousands of jobs. annually, according to the LED Mississippi Hyundai Motor Group, which news release. St. Charles Assumption River Jefferson also owns Kia Corp., will invest The Donaldsonville site atLafourche 90 $5.8 billion in a new manufacturtracted the carmaker because of Staff map the state’s cheap natural gas and ing facility on a 1,700-acre site in electricity, both of which could Donaldsonville at the RiverPlex MegaPark on the west bank of the Mis- 1,300 direct new jobs with an average sal- be used to power the plant, and because of easy access to shipping, rail lines and sissippi River in Ascension Parish, ac- ary of $95,000, the announcement says. “Money is pouring in, and we want to a state highway route that connects to Incording to a news release from Louisiana keep it that way,” Trump said during a terstate 10, sources have said previously. Economic Development. The “ultra-low carbon steel production news conference at the White House. ä See STEEL, page 4A The facility, plans for which were first plant” is expected to create more than East Baton Rouge
Livingston
Tangipahoa
St. Tammany
Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration closed its temporary homeless shelter in New Orleans on Friday, marking an end to the governor’s controversial effort to tackle homelessness in downtown New Orleans during the busy Super Bowl and Mardi Gras tourist seasons. Shelter leaders have rushed to place residents into permanent housing in recent weeks as the state moved to close down the 70,000-square-foot warehouse, which housed over 170 people at its peak. By Friday, 108 people had been moved into subsidized apartments and paired with case management services, said Mike Steele, communications director with the state’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. Another 59 people had left the 200-bed shelter on their own since it opened Jan. 15, Steele said. It is not clear whether all of the people who left on their own moved back onto the street, or why they left. Another 15 people were moved into New Orleans’ low-barrier homeless shelter. The unprecedented state intervention into the city’s homelessness crisis drew a mixed local response after it launched ahead of Super Bowl LIX. After state officials kicked off widespread sweeps of the city’s homeless encampments, some city officials said the effort — which came with a price tag of up to $17.5 million — was a poor use of resources and that it would threaten existing city housing initiatives. Homeless advocates also questioned whether an industrial warehouse on France Road could
ä See SHELTER, page 4A
Trump officials texted Yemen war plans to journalist Pete Hegseth, texted ter it was reported. Material contained Secretary The material war plans for upcoming military in Yemen to a group chat in the text chain operational details of instrikes a secure messaging app that in- “contained opforthcoming strikes cluded the editor-in-chief for The erational details
Atlantic, the magazine reported in a story posted online Monday. The National Security Council said the text chain “appears to be authenAssociated Press tic.” Trump told reporters he was not WASHINGTON — Top national security officials for President Don- aware that the sensitive informaald Trump, including Defense tion had been shared, 21/2 hours af-
BY TARA COPP, AAMER MADHANI and ERIC TUCKER
WEATHER HIGH 82 LOW 61 PAGE 6B
reported. It was not immediately clear if the specifics of the military operation were classified, but they often are and at the least are kept secure to protect service members and of forthcoming operational security. The U.S. has strikes on Iranconducted airstrikes against the backed Houthi- Hegseth Houthis since the militant group rebels in Yemen, including information about tar- began targeting commercial and gets, weapons the U.S. would be military vessels in the Red Sea in deploying, and attack sequencing,” November 2023. Just two hours after Goldberg editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg
Business ......................6A Commentary ................5B Nation-World ................2A Classified .....................7D Deaths .........................3B Opinion ........................4B Comics-Puzzles .....3D-6D Living............................1D Sports ..........................1C
received the details of the attack on March 15, the U.S. began launching a series of airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. The National Security Council said in a statement that it was looking into how a journalist’s number was added to the chain in the Signal group chat, which included Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence,
ä See PLANS, page 4A
12TH yEAR, NO. 225