Yesterday in a special veto override session, Louisiana’s legislature voted 75-23 (House) and 28-11 (Senate) to override Gov. John Bel Edwards’ veto of HB 648, the bill by Rep. Gabe Firment (R-Pollock) that would ban pediatric sex change surgeries and sterilizing “puberty-blocker’ drugs administered to sexually confused children.

That was a pretty sizable victory for Louisiana’s legislature over Edwards, and social conservatives were awfully happy about it. A press release from the Louisiana Family Forum made that clear…

Today, the Louisiana Legislature corrected the unforced error of Governor John Bel Edwards by overriding his veto of HB648. This measure protects children from harmful medical procedures and unscrupulous profiteers who seek to manipulate children suffering from anxiety. The Legislature sent a very clear message by a vote of 75-23 in the House and 28-11 in the Senate — Governor John Bel Edwards does not have the authority to allow harm to come to a child!

The STOP HARMING KIDS ACT protects kids from sexual politics and unscrupulous profiteers.

HB648 enjoyed overwhelming support in both houses of the 2023 Legislature. But Governor Edwards ignored Louisiana values and the will of the people as expressed by elected representatives.

HB648 by Rep. Gabe Firment protects minors from medical experimentation in the form of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries. By enacting this policy, Louisiana joins 20 other states which have approved similar legislation. State lawmakers recognized their duty to protect the health and safety of children. Minors who experience discomfort with their biological sex deserve to be treated with dignity and respect and need effective mental health care. Unfortunately, activists and profit-driven “gender clinics” have deceived some into believing that unnatural, sterilizing puberty blockers and life-altering surgeries would solve these mental health issues. These “treatments” are experimental, never medically necessary, and are done without proper “informed legal consent.“ The research demonstrates that “gender-affirming care” creates lasting bodily harm, a lifetime of regret, and a failure to deliver on the grandiose promise of a “new gender.”

The Legislature finally did what the Governor has refused to do – Protect children and restore sanity over Louisiana’s’ medical system and its care of children.

Gene Mills, President of Louisiana Family Forum, believes that“In most years, Legislators have treated veto override sessions as optional. This year, the Legislature agreed with LFF that an override was obligatory, especially with the health and welfare of children at stake. The Legislature sent a clear message to those who seek to harm children for profit – ‘Access denied…. to Louisiana children!’ We are deeply grateful to each lawmaker who moved toProtect Louisiana Children.Now, it’s time to move forward in providing safe and effective mental health treatments for children who struggle with gender dysphoria.”

Another press release, this one by the Louisiana Freedom Caucus…

The Louisiana Freedom Caucus (LAFC) applauds the override of several important bills vetoed by our lame duck governor. Thanks to the efforts of the caucus and conservatives in the House, there were enough votes to override three important bills.

HB 648 that prohibits surgery and use of puberty blockers solely for the purpose of attempting to change the sex of a minor child. The Senate also voted to override the governor’s veto. This bill becomes law.

HB 399 by LAFC member Rep. Kathy Edmonston to mandate that parents have to be informed about exemption options for vaccines required for attendance at Louisiana schools. The Senate failed to override this bill.

HB 125 that prohibits some ownership of agricultural land by foreign adversaries. This bill failed to get the votes to override in the Senate.

“Shamefully, House Speaker Clay Schexnayder worked tirelessly to prevent Republican members from bringing their vetoed bills up for reconsideration. Only after being informed that Louisiana Freedom Caucus members were prepared to bring a motion to remove him as Speaker did Schexnayder relent and allow the other bills to be heard,” said Louisiana Freedom Caucus Chairman, Alan Seabaugh.

Seabaugh continued, “Thankfully, House members were able to override the vetoes on three bills vetoed by liberal Governor John Bel Edwards. We are proud to have played a significant part in this historic process today. We wish a few more of our Republican colleagues would have taken their jobs more seriously and been here for the votes many of which came only one vote short.”

It’s the last couple of paragraphs in the Freedom Caucus’ press release which made yesterday’s events especially interesting. While everybody is taking credit, and perhaps rightfully so, for a landmark override on HB 648, which is a big deal and puts Louisiana in line with almost half the country in stopping the butchery of kids that our corrupt medical establishment is attempting to normalize out of an ugly profiteering motive, there was far more to this veto session beneath the surface.

It’s a real thing that the Freedom Caucus and other House members were actively contemplating pushing a motion to vacate the Speaker’s chair, and had they done so they would very likely have had 53 votes to make a majority to remove him.

That wasn’t really new. Schexnayder has spent most of his speakership with a majority of the House open to his ouster. He’s been a disastrous Speaker, probably the worst in modern memory. The problem has always been finding someone else who could gather 53 votes to succeed him. That wasn’t really fixed in the runup to the veto session, so it didn’t happen.

But Seabaugh bluffed Schexnayder. Seabaugh made him believe that he was going to get canned by his House colleagues unless he held a vote on all of the bills Edwards vetoed in the House. And Schexnayder folded, agreeing to hold those votes for fear that he would become the first Speaker in a very, very long time to be fired – just in time for him to crank up his campaign for Secretary of State.

It’s exceedingly unlikely he can win that race, but he wants to try. And getting fired would finish off any hopes of a political career at all for Clay Schexnayder.

Which plays into the last paragraph of the Freedom Caucus release. Because if the full Republican delegation had been in attendance for the veto session, there would have been more than the required 70 votes to overturn as many as 15 of Edwards’ vetoes. That would have been akin to a dam breaking from the standpoint of resetting the relationship between the Legislature and the Governor, even if the corresponding votes in the Senate wouldn’t have completed the overrides.

And they wouldn’t have, which we’ll get to shortly.

But the full House GOP delegation wasn’t on hand. Two members in particular, Paula Davis and Joe Stagni, skipped the veto session.

Stagni skipped it altogether for the specific reason that he didn’t want to get caught voting to sustain Edwards’ veto on the child mutilation bill. This almost assuredly will be a major negative for him as he runs for re-election. The veto was overridden anyway.

But as Seabaugh said in the Freedom Caucus release, his absence cost the house an opportunity to override vetoes on lots of other good bills.

That’s true of Davis as well, who said she missed the session to be with her daughter who had surgery this week. Whether that’s true or not we can’t say – there was a story going around the capitol that it isn’t true and that she went on vacation instead.

And therefore the House didn’t have the votes to override a veto of, for example, HB 646, a bill mandating that local voter registrars regularly scrub voter rolls of dead people and those who have moved away. That’s a crucial election integrity measure which Edwards naturally vetoed. Stagni and Davis skipping the session denied an opportunity to at least force the Senate to vote on that bill and give the voters an opportunity to weigh their senators based on their votes.

Or not, because of the bills the House did send over to the Senate HB 648 was the only one where a veto was overridden.

On several bills there were three senators – Louie Bernard, Fred Mills and J. Rogers Pope – who bucked the party and voted with Edwards. All three are either termed out or not running for re-election and thus totally unaccountable to the public.

Of course, their legacies are now complete – and they aren’t good legacies. Those three will be known as frauds and grifters, Democrats who put an “R” next to their name to fool the public.

The Senate has been a disaster for a very long time. The veto session simply proved what we already knew. All they did was the easy thing in overriding Edwards on HB 648 – they even adjourned sine die before the House was finished voting on overrides.

Which leads us to the best news, which is that Schexnayder and Senate President Page Cortez are more or less finished in their jobs. Even House Speaker Pro Tem Tanner Magee, who has not only been disastrous on key issues like the state budget but has openly attacked fellow members and specifically those in the Freedom Caucus over their disagreements, said yesterday that he was bailing out of re-election…

It was not my intention to announce this yesterday. I told a few key supporters but didn’t have the chance to tell my staff. Word travels fast and @LaPoliticsNow sniffed it out quick. https://t.co/is5pmg62Kh

— Tanner Magee (@TannerDMagee) July 19, 2023

Magee offered several justifications for ejecting, one of which was the “toxic stew” he said the Legislature has become, without accepting the hilarious irony of the remark. Magee has been one of the most obnoxious assailants of his fellow legislators over the past eight years.

That he’s leaving the Legislature might be the best news of all. For that reason alone we’ll call the veto session a success.