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S u n d ay, J u ly 19, 2026
Landry’s jabs deepen tensions with N.O. leaders
The Gulf is warming twice as fast as the world’s oceans, and Louisiana is at ground zero
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WATER BY ALEX LUBBEN | Staff writer Batting away snakes, Wilkie Declouet trudged through chest-deep water to reach his front door. Hurricane Ida had flooded Ironton, a small historic Black community down the Mississippi River from New Orleans, only 10 miles outside the levee system that protects the city. Declouet, a 61-year-old father of four, was the first to return. His house, raised on piers, had held. Almost nothing else had. A weathered white casket was stuck upright in the tangle the flood left behind. Inside it was a man Declouet had known. At least a dozen caskets lay scattered around Ironton for weeks after the storm. “Ida was a storm that came up fast,” Declouet said recently as he sat under his rehabbed house. “And it was one of these things where they couldn’t decide whether it was going to be a Category 3, 4 or 5. They couldn’t decide.” Ida’s supercharged winds were not a fluke. The sudden First in a series force of the 2021 storm signaled much more. The Gulf of Mexico, which the Trump administration has renamed the Gulf of America, is in the throes of a turbulent new era that holds enormous consequences for Louisiana and the other states along its coast. It has become one of the fastest-warming bodies of water in the world, new research is showing. Humancaused climate change is fusing with cyclical weather patterns to create the new reality. From sea levels to fisheries, deepwater drilling and storms, every vestige of life in the Gulf will change as the water heats. Hot Gulf waters juiced Ida’s winds from 80 to 150 mph in the day before landfall, leaving people like Declouet and his neighbors less time to prepare. But the changes will not be limited to hurricanes. “This is a dramatic wake-up call,” said Donald Boesch, a professor of marine science at the University of Maryland who previously served as the first director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. “The people of the Gulf have long lived with the risks of living on this marginal ocean. But in recent years, it’s become obvious that it’s heating dramatically. That has huge implications for the rapid intensification of hurricanes as well as for accelerated sea-level rise.”
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ä See WATERS, page 4A
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Not ‘special’? Governor downgrades city, shuns Moreno, rattles business leaders
BY TYLER BRIDGES Staff writer
Warming in the Gulf Since 1970, the surface of the Gulf has warmed twice as fast as the world's oceans. The Gulf
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For decades, one thing held true, no matter who occupied the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge: The city of New Orleans held a special place in Louisiana. Gov. Jeff Landry is sounding as if he no longer holds that belief. The governor has targeted the city with a series of actions aimed at bringing, in his view, New Orleans down to size. On Monday, he also publicly downgrad- Landry ed the city’s importance. “Used to be, the saying was, ‘Where goes New Orleans, where goes the state,’” Landry said while announcing that Meta is dramatically expanding its footprint for a data center in northeast Louisiana. “Let me tell you what happened today: That has changed. ‘Where goes Louisiana will determine the fate of New Orleans.’”
Staff graphic
ä See TENSIONS, page 8A
Entergy plans $30B expansion of power grid
STAFF PHOTOS By SOPHIA GErMEr
‘Ida was a storm that came up fast,’ says Wilkie Declouet, a resident of Ironton who trudged through waist-deep water to reach his home after the 2021 storm.
“The people of the Gulf have long lived with the risks of living on this marginal ocean. But in recent years, it’s become obvious that it’s heating dramatically.” DONALD BOESCH, professor of marine science at the University of Maryland
CEO says industrial users will offset much of cost, but plans face skepticism BY SAM KARLIN Staff writer
Entergy Louisiana’s plans to spend an extraordinary $30 billion to expand and improve its infrastructure are drawing new scrutiny from elected officials, regulators and advocacy groups concerned about the potential impact on ratepayers. If all of what Entergy wants to do is approved, the average residential customer’s
ä See ENTERGY, page 6A
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102ND yEAr, NO. 19