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Why in the hell are we giving our sensitive voting data and private Social Security numbers to the Department of Justice?
That is not a rhetorical question. Our Secretary of State, Nancy Landry, is voluntarily handing over names, home addresses, birthdates, party registration, driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers to the DOJ. This was not required by a court order, and under existing privacy laws, driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers are not required to be disclosed at all. Other states were asked and declined. Louisiana said yes.
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This is highly unusual in modern election administration and without clear precedent in Louisiana. It makes no sense on its face, and it should alarm people across the political spectrum.
It’s especially alarming in light of what’s happening nationally. Just days ago, Donald Trump told The New York Times that he regrets not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines [ [link removed] ] after the 2020 election. Wednesday, he openly mused in a media interview that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election [ [link removed] ]” in the coming midterms. These are not slips of the tongue. They are statements of intent.
Against that backdrop, Louisiana’s decision to hand over some of the most sensitive personal data it holds is not abstract or technical. It is reckless. And it raises a simple, unavoidable point: nothing about this decision can be explained by Louisiana’s needs.
Elections are run by the states. Protecting voter data has always been treated as a basic responsibility of state government. This decision didn’t make voting safer. It didn’t make elections more transparent. It didn’t rebuild trust at a moment when trust is already fragile. What it did was align Louisiana’s election apparatus with a national political movement that has spent years attacking election legitimacy and now openly questions whether elections should happen at all.
That alone should have stopped everything else.
Instead, we got Greenland.
President Trump announced he is appointing Gov. Jeff Landry as the U.S. special envoy to Greenland—an assignment tied not to any Louisiana priority, but to Trump’s long-running fixation on acquiring the territory. Landry leaned into it publicly, comparing the idea to the Louisiana Purchase and talking about using Cajun food as cultural diplomacy. Greenland has repeatedly said it does not want this. Denmark, a NATO ally, has said the same.
The Louisiana Constitution does not allow [ [link removed] ] the governor to hold another office or role, yet Landry accepted the assignment anyway—injecting a state governor into a reckless national obsession that directly implicates NATO alliances and risks destabilizing the very framework that has kept large-scale war at bay since World War II. None of this has anything to do with insurance rates in Lake Charles, hospital closures in rural parishes, or storm recovery along the coast.
If Jeff Landry were merely incompetent, this might be written off as a joke. But incompetence combined with ambition is how disasters start. Landry is so bad at politics that letting him play at being an international negotiator feels less like a punchline and more like a liability—especially when he’s playing with alliances that have prevented another world war for generations.
This is the point where confusion gives way to recognition.
These actions are not isolated mistakes or eccentric distractions. They reflect corruption—not the petty, transactional kind, but structural corruption. Louisiana’s state government has been altered. It is no longer primarily oriented toward governing Louisiana. It is increasingly oriented toward protecting Donald Trump, enforcing loyalty to him, and aligning state power with his interests, even when doing so actively harms the people who live here.
Once you see it that way, the rest starts to make sense.
Louisiana’s leadership convened special sessions, spent millions of state dollars, and upended the structure of the election calendar in an aggressive effort to redraw congressional districts in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court weakening—or outright dismantling—the Voting Rights Act. This was not a speculative gamble. It is a coordinated attempt to weaken and potentially dismantle one of the central pillars of American democracy and fairness, all to help Donald Trump secure a compliant Congress in 2026. Attorney General Liz Murrill personally led this effort, despite the chaos it caused inside the state.
Primaries were delayed. Election schedules were rewritten. Administrative costs ballooned. All of it was done on the assumption that the Court would move quickly enough for Louisiana to steal seats for Trump. Whether or not the Court ultimately rules the way they want, the damage to Louisiana’s election system has already been done—and it was done knowingly.
This came after another major shift. The loyalty test had already been written into the rules.
Following Senator Bill Cassidy’s vote to impeach Donald Trump, the state moved to rewrite its primary system altogether. The Independent Party was eliminated. Paths for non-compliant Republicans were narrowed. The message was unmistakable: crossing Trump would not be tolerated. Today, Cassidy and his challengers are largely running on the same promise—loyalty to Trump. Louisiana’s interests barely factor into the conversation.
Secretary of State Nancy Landry, who ran on “election integrity,” has been central to these changes, even as the practical effect has been less integrity, less stability, and more political manipulation.
And while all of this is happening, Louisiana’s Republican leaders fall silent when Trump-backed national policies threaten real harm here. Cuts to Medicaid. Higher healthcare costs. Hospital closures. A weakened FEMA response in a state that depends on it. Silence.
The same silence applies to energy and other resources. Massive data centers are poised to drive up utility costs. Republican voters across Louisiana are openly revolting against carbon capture projects that seize land and inject waste underground. But Trump gutted clean energy investments while preserving subsidies for fossil fuel interests and carbon capture, and Louisiana’s GOP leadership followed along, ignoring its own voters.
This is how a protection racket works in politics. Not through envelopes of cash, but through priorities, silence, and choices that make no sense unless pleasing one man has become the overriding goal. Privacy is treated casually. Elections are engineered. Real needs are deferred.
A legitimate government exists to serve the people who live under it—to protect their rights, safeguard their privacy, and respond to their needs, especially when those needs are urgent. Louisiana’s state government is no longer doing that.
It has become a Trump protection racket.
Louisiana does not need envoys to Greenland.
It does not need loyalty tests or engineered elections.
Louisiana needs a government.
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