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T H E A D V O C AT E.C O M
BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA
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M o n d ay, J a n u a ry 26, 2026
THEsomeCHILL IS ON of Louisiana to see below-freezing temps for several days
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Cassidy calls for Minn. shooting probe second fatality is ‘incredibly disturbing,’ senator says BY MATTHEW ALBRIGHT and ALYSE PFEIL
staff writers
Cones block off the entrance to an elevated section of road in Bossier City on sunday.
staFF PHotos By JILL PICKett
As a massive winter storm dumped sleet, freezing rain and snow across much of the U.S. and Louisiana on Sunday, the Baton Rouge area was expecting very little, if any, ice accumulation into Monday, according to the National Weather Service. Although a little lingering ice is expected, the NWS said it would only affect bridges or elevated surfaces and would melt very quickly. Monday is predicted to have a low temperature of 22 degrees and a wind chill of 10. The NWS expects temperatures in the Baton Rouge area to warm up to 38 degrees by noon. For more on forecasts and school closures, see page 6A.
a child sleds on a wintry mix in shreveport on sunday.
After federal immigration enforcement agents fatally shot a second person in Minneapolis, stirring mass protests, U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy called the events “incredibly disturbing” and said there should be “a full joint federal and state investigation.” “The credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake,” the Louisiana Republican wrote on X, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cassidy and the Department of Homeland Security. “We can trust the American ä LEGAL people with the truth.” On Saturday, a U.S. FIGHT Border Patrol agent shot ERUPTS and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen OVER and intensive care unit LATEST nurse. Federal officials said SHOOTING. officers shot Pretti PaGe 3a defensively as he approached them with a gun. But videos from the scene contradict that account: They show him holding a phone, not a gun, and appear to show the officer shooting him after he had already been wrestled to the ground. The shooting, which is the second since President Donald Trump’s administration launched a sweeping immigration
ä see PROBE, page 5A
As sports gambling thrives, LSU intensifies research rankings point-shaving scandal emerges reorganization More than a third of implicated athletes have Louisiana ties
BY JOSEPH CRANNEY
staff writer
Louisiana’s sports gambling industry has come under fire in the wake of a college basketball point-shaving scheme unveiled this month by federal prosecutors, with more than a third of the implicated athletes having played for colleges in the state. For a state where legal sports gambling has exploded into a $440 million industry, the indictments have prompted a round of questions as to why the alleged Mizell sprawling conspiracy all but centered in Louisiana, and whether the state’s era of legalization played a factor. Basketball players from Tulane University, Nicholls State and the University of New Orleans were indicted, accused of attempting to rig eight games between 2024 and 2025. Two others from Northwestern State were implicated in the indictment,
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but not named. Sen. Beth Mizell, a Franklinton Republican and opponent of legalizing sports betting, said in an interview that Louisiana’s “gambling culture” where sports betting is advertised on billboards and gambling promotions are distributed to freshmen on college campuses, is part of the problem. “My immediate reaction is we need to do more in every direction on gambling, because young people are getting pulled into situations, sometimes innocently, sometimes with bad intentions,” Mizell said. “And there needs to be consequences.” Most of the bets involving Louisiana teams were not actually placed in Louisiana, according to prosecutors. The scheme’s ringleaders were based in Philadelphia and Mississippi. And the conspiracy also involved college athletes in at least three states — Alabama, Georgia and Texas — where sports gambling remains illegal. While no one involved has said why so many players from Louisiana were allegedly recruited into
ä see GAMBLING, page 4A
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seeks top 50 distinction
BY HALEY MILLER staff writer
In a play to climb over 30 places in a national ranking of higher education’s top research spenders, major organizational change is sweeping through LSU. In December, the Board of Supervisors approved a reorganization at the highest levels. It reinstated the position of chancellor at the Baton Rouge campus and brought the LSU AgCenter, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, LSU Health New Orleans and LSU Health Shreveport under his authority. LSU System Executive Vice President and Chancellor James Dalton called the unfolding transition a “merger.” “How do we start viewing ourselves as one and start acting more in concert?” Dalton said. “I think it’s a whole gamut of things that we’ve got to consider, starting with titles and then down into the weeds and
into the details.” not only from the philosophiThe need for the university cal promise of the “statewide system, which maintains eight university” but also from a campuses across Louisiana, ä see RANKINGS, page 4A to start acting as one derives
Classified ..................6C Comics............... 3C-5C Deaths ......................7A Living.........................1C
Metro ........................6A Nation-World.............2A opinion .....................8A sports .......................1B
staFF FILe PHoto By HILary sCHeINUK
students walk through the quad on LsU’s campus in Baton rouge. LsU has embarked on an ambitious mission to become one of U.s. higher education’s biggest research spenders, driving major organizational and cultural changes.
101st year, No. 210