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The absence of spending cuts in Speaker Johnson's budget proposal makes it possible for Democrats to join Johnson in passing a budget plan. Johnson, who is from Louisiana, has more flexibility to work with his hard right Freedom Caucus members than former Speaker McCarthy.

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Electing a Speaker for the US Congress from Louisiana has never been tried before. Last week after many attempts to fill this position Mike Johnson was elected Speaker. Making a conservative member of Congress from a deep Southern state risks losing the Republican majority, says this report in the WSJ.

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Europe is importing natural gas for heating homes and industry like never before as it shifts imports from Russia to the US, says this report in WSJ. Shown here is the import of LNG from tankers at the LNG terminal in Cherniere, France. Between 2021 and 2022 imports of US LNG to Europe more than doubled. The WSJ shows how drilling for gas takes place in Texas and Louisiana. That gas finds its way through pipelines to places where it is converted into LNG by freezing and transported by tankers across the high seas to European LNG terminals like Cherniere in France. The shale gas comes from the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico and a basin in Texas and Louisiana. Technological advances enable drilling 2 miles vertically and then two miles horizontally to reach into shale rock containing gas. Impurities are taken out to get gas that can be sent through pipelines to liquefied natural gas storage locations on the Gulf coast of America. Tankers take the LNG to LNG terminals in Europe that distribute the gas to homes. ...

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About 9% of the total taxes in Texas and Louisiana for fiscal 2013 are from severance taxes for extraction of oil and gas, according to Nelson Rockefeller Institute of Government. For Alaska this is 78% and for N. Dakota 46%. A prolonged oil slump will reduce growth in the oil producing states including Wyoming and Oklahoma. Rainy day funds in N. Dakota and Texas will help meet spending for the next 2 years.

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Share of US Counties where 95% of Kindergarteners are vaccinated against Measles drops to 28% from 50% in Washington Post Investigation of 44 states December 2025. 95% vaccination rate is what experts say is needed for "herd immunity" or overall protection in a class. Washington Post examination of data shows marked deterioration from 2018-2019 school year to 2024-2025 school year data and public records. That is 5.3 million children are exposed from lack of herd immunity from measles now compared to 3.5 million children earlier increase of 1.8 million children. This Wash. Post investigation shows 19,000 schools are exposed and one can go to this article to find on a map how your school district and country are doing in the 44 states. A big problem is emerging from public skepticism and politics in vaccination. For generations schools required vaccination proof- by 1980 all 50 states had laws covering students first entering school. And caught in vaccine politics legislatures are creating religious and other exemptions that have weakened laws. Wash. Post says it's examination shows not a single County in Idaho, Louisiana, Oregon Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin meet the 50% vaccinated requirement for measles required for herd immunity. This could mean more of these diseases will be brought back home including whooping cough to affect elderly and infants. Democratic districts such as in St Louis and Chicago also see drop in measles vaccination rates. In the sense that newly decolonized countries since 1950 such as China and India have emerged with good health systems and mandated vaccination , other public health action, there is a great need for the US to focus on bringing back the public awareness that existed after the 1940's in the US that resulted in significant advances in public health in the US in the FDR, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ and Reagan administrations. It shows there is no victory in public health. A lot of work needs to be done, as much of the gains can get undone by events and public awareness is necessary. As pharmaceuticals, chemicals and plastics and bad nutritional habits took over American lives there is an effort under Kennedy at HHS to tackle that health crisis, but it brings with it challenges that date from the pandemic and different responses in different parts of the US to mandatory vaccination which also have to be met through education not social media. ...

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Governor Jindal's efforts to change the educational system in Louisiana to give better opportunities for students at failing schools, increasing education spending, basing teacher incentives on quality of education delivered, and removing the "first-in-first-out" method for letting go teachers.

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Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio are candidates for the position of Speaker in the US House of Representatives. WSJ looks at the career and political positions taken by Steve Scalise who favors aid to Ukraine and working in incremental steps. Scalise has also come to agreement on raising the debt ceiling. Former Speaker McCarthy is said to favor Jim Jordan for the Speaker's position. Some Republicans who want a non traditional choice also favor Jordan.

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The Trump administration suspended all flights from Europe on March 13, about one month after suspending all flights from China. This report in the NYT says there were about 10,000 estimated undetected infections in New York on March 1 when only 1 case of coronavirus was confirmed. It also says that researchers have tracked the mutations of the virus in all American states and found that most of it came from New York. Could the Trump administration have acted earlier than March 13 to stop flights from Europe? The state and city authorites in New York did not take the threat seriously by March 13, making it not clear that they would have acted earlier.   In places like Michigan which has Italian Fiat owned Chrysler operations, and automotive connections with Munich, Germany, reports show the virus coming from Europe. Munich based auto companies have extensive operations in China. In Louisiana the Mardi Gras celebrations around Feb. 25, received large numbers of visitors from New York, with research showing the virus mutations in Louisiana originated in New York. There was little awareness of the seriousness of the virus because of lack of past experience as happened in Asian countries. So that these kinds of public events bringing huge numbers of people in close contact were allowed to happen, and people who were cautious were likely to be ridiculed or shoved aside. New York continued to hold public gatherings at Madison Square Gardens and sports stadiums well into March, with complete disregard of the dangers, a decision made by local authorites.   ...

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The US Supreme Court throws out a lawsuit that said the Biden administration unlawfully pressured social media platforms to remove content seen as disinformation. The ruling said the two states Louisiana and Missouri and five parties had no rights to bring their claims before a judge. Earlier lower courts had ruled against the government . The claims by the two states were shown through emails written by government officials to Facebook asking why it had not removed disinformation that said Covid vaccines were harmful. This issue of the usefulness of vaccines for Covid was a major issue in 2022.

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After stalling in summer 2021 US vaccination picks up in August to 865,000 on August 4, 2021. At one point vaccinations reached 3 million a day and stalled with younger people hesitating to get vaccinated. Some southern states Tennessee, Oklahoma and Georgia see a surge in vaccinations. This happens as US daily cases exceed 100,000 for the first time on August 4. Of this 50% are in 8 southern states including Florida, Texas, and Louisiana. Florida is the worst affected state. Hospitals are again being overwhelmed with new cases of delta variant among the unvaccinated in August. Southern states have lagged behind in vaccination.

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These lead cables are what is left of the old cables laid decades back by the Bell regional phone network. They are underwater, in the soil an d on poles overhead. As the lead erodes and disintegrates it contaminates the water and the soil. Unsafe levels of it are found in 44 of 130 underwater sample sites tested by independent labs for the WSJ. It has tainted spots such as popular fishing locations, in front of schools and in playgrounds. It was found in the Willamette River in Oregon, in the Mississippi river banks in Louisiana, in the Detroit River in Michigan and the Passaic river in New Jersey. 

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Three events made the US a continental democracy built out of the colonial Empires of the British, the French and the Spanish under four presidents- Jefferson with Louisiana Purchase, Polk settling the Mexican American War, Lincoln defending the Union, and his vice president buying Alaska from Russia. James Polk 1845-1849 was the 11th president of the US. At the time of the Missouri Compromise he deftly kept the Union together. A protege of president Andrew Jackson from Tennessee Polk also worked hard to create the bicoastal Nation the US is today by extending the work of president Jefferson who setup the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon, to bring the new Republic's frontiers in the West to the Pacific territories that were part of the Spanish and British colonial Empires. For the northern frontier he settled on the 49th parallel with the British instead of 54 degrees parallel 40 minutes or 54-40 that was the slogan for the Polk 1844 election campaign taking the border to the northern frontier of the Oregon Territory.  Polk was faced with settlers in Texas who had set up their own state in the south the Texas Republic under General Sam Houston in 1836. A situation Polk handled by integrating the new Texas Republic into the new Nation and faced with a military taking control of Mexico in 1846 under General Paredes and confrontation with the US, leading the US into the Mexican American War 1846-1848. The integration of Alaska was completed under president Andrew Johnson in 1867- Johnson was Vice president under Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War- when he had Seward negotiate the purchase of Alaska from Russia for 7.2 million dollars in 1867.   ...

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This Washington Post report shows elder cost where you live in the US. Out of 5.9 million Americans over 85 years 50% live with family, including spouses and adult children, 40% live alone including assisted living facilities, and only 8% live in nursing homes. A quarter live in multigenerational homes, and this is common among Asians, with Filipino families tending to live together. In Florida 57% of seniors over 85 years live with family and spouses, and in Texas 31% live in multigenerational households. Hawaii has the highest number of people over 85 years living with their families- 61%. 16% of seniors over 85 years live in nursing homes in South Dakota, highest in the US, and in Louisiana 44% of women seniors over 85 years live alone, according to Census.

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The efforts by the Republican Senator Lankford of Oklahoma with the help of Senator Graham of South Carolina, Senator Tillis of North Carolina, and other Republican senior senators, to get a immigration bill through the US Congress that president Biden supports to close the border with Mexico immediately after its passing, is the subject of this video in the WSJ. It says this is the only solution for the immigration crisis not waiting another 12 months to take action. The problem is the parole and asylum policies of the US which need fixing, says Senator Lindsay Graham, the senior Republican in the Senate. The bill would do just that, yet faces opposition from Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana in the House of Representatives who says the bill would be dead on arrival in the House, making it inexplicable.

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The Biden vaccination target of 70% of American adults at least partially vaccinated with one dose by July 4, 2021 remains elusive as vaccination rates have dropped. From a high of 2 million a day vaccinations have dropped to 400,000 a day during the first week of June 2021. Vaccination skepticism particularly in the south and western part of the US is making it harder to vaccinate the rest of the US population. This poses increasing risks as the new variants of the virus such as the Delta variant found in India, and now the most widely prevalent strain of virus in the UK, remain a serious problem. The unvaccinated population in the US is too large for any degree of safety in numbers vaccinated. Consider that at the press briefing given by the White House on June 3, 2021, only 28 states out of 51 states have fully vaccinated 50% or more of their population. There is a large variation between different states with states in the south such as Mississippi as low as 34% at least one dose and a similar situation in Alabama. In Arkansas, Georgia, Carolinas, and Louisiana  it is higher at about 50% with at least one dose. Even these figures are deceiving as in some parishes in Louisiana only 20% have even one dose. Studies show that only after the second dose are enough antibodies released to protect well against coronavirus. This is why vaccine experts at Baylor College of Medicine cited in NYT foresee a second wave in the southern US because of the South so underachieving in the case of vaccination.  ...

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Average US bills for electricity have gone up by over 10% in about 15 states with some rate hikes over 20%, reports the Washington Post. In New Jersey 21%, Virginai 15%. Higher prices in Utah where renewable energy projects cancellation have drawn criticism from Republican governor Spencer Cox. Higher rates also in Indiana, Ohio and Louisiana. Data centers put up by tech companies are taking up huge amounts of energy pushing up rates. Voters believe these tech companies are not paying their "fair share." There is also no clear idea on whether clean energy is pushing up prices of electricity or whether the cancellation of clean energy projects including the ones that make sense  are pushing up electricity prices, with voters going both ways in their perceptions. With a rapidly shrinking gap between India+ Japan and China, the US can finally put to rest the burdens of conflict such as the 1930's Japanese invasion of China, the war after pearl Harbor in the Pacific, the Korean conflict, and the Vietnam conflict in which America and its people shouldered huge burdens. ...

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The oil based economy of Louisiana is suffering from the 6 month moratorium on offshore oil exploration.

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States from Wyoming to New England, other than the states bordering the deepwaters where the oil rig was located such as Louisiana, are also affected.

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A new West Coast Model is emerging with ballot measures in the states of Washington, California and Oregon. The model is to make up for decades of faulty income distribution which favored tech communities in west coast states leaving behind people from minority communities and the working class outside tech hubs such as San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle. During this period budgets for education and healthcare, social services and essential infrastructure suffered as budgets were squeezed for local governments. Minimum wage also lagged behind and communities struggled to keep up. Washington votes for a ballot measure that raises the minimum wage to $13.25 statewide and mandate paid sick leave for workers. In California a ballot measure makes permanent an income tax surcharge on millionaires to use these funds for education. In Oregon measure 97 places a gross receipts tax on corporations with annual sales in Oregon over $25 million, raising $3 billion a year for schools, health care and other programs. The California and Washington measures are likely to pass, Oregon uncertain, say experts. And even in Oregon supporters have learned from the experience to put forward new proposals on the ballot. The Washington measure is supported by Nick Hanauer, and Zach Silk, president of Civic Ventures in Seattle, who say it is essential to put more money in workers wages to increase growth and to bring better lives outside the tech hub areas. Most of the tech booms of the last two decades have not touched the areas outside tech hub metropolitan areas. The conservative approach adopted in Louisiana and Kansas of reducing taxes first and then when holes in state budgets developed to cut education, health and other service expenditures has not worked, and it has led to the backlash in the form of the new West Coast Model, which is expected to be brought up in other states in the east and midwest. The tech hub areas have grown with the boom in tech but this has largely ignored the rural areas, communities just outside of the tech cities, and led to uneven and distorted growth shortchanging the working class and the middle class, and hurting investment in education and healthcare across each state. Bill Whalen, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution conservative think tank ,says that its hard to deny that the balanced growth for all communities across the state has lagged far behind as the tech booms boosted growth in the economies of California, Oregon and Washington. An article in the German online site Zeit on Silicon Valley described this vividly showing how this can happen in communities sitting side by side in the San Jose area, with minority Hispanic communities and working class communties seeing very little of the benefits of growth. ...

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It is a moment in the Senate that Majority leader Schumer says will be remembered years from now. A total of 65 Senators vote to support an aid bill for Ukraine, Israel, and humanitarian aid, all Democrats and 18 Republicans as a group led by Senator Mitch McConnell, the Minority Leader. The Republican Senators include Senator WIcker the senior member on the Armed Services Committee, military veterans, and centrists. Voicing strong support were Senator Tillis of North Carolina and Moran of Kansas on the Senate floor. Tillis said "there is a common conviction that if we fail on this vote, if we don't support Ukraine, this is not bluster, not hyperbole- bad things will happen." Tillis also said that after the earlier vote to break a filibuster by Republican colleagues -"I slept like a baby last night." The list includes senior Republican leaders Cronyn of Texas, both senators from Iowa including Grassley, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Mullin of Oklahoma, Rounds of South Dakota, Thune of South Dakota, Todd Young of Indiana. In terms of age and experience this may be the most senior and most experienced Republican leaders from over half of the traditionally Republican states. ...

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Thousands of jobs affected at Port Fourchon in Louisiana which services the oil rigs that are shut down as aresult of the 6 month ban on deepwater offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Hillary Clinton's presidential election strategy appears to be writing off core Republican states such as Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virgina, and focussing on parts of the midwest such as Ohio, Wisconsin, the East and the West. It would be different from the election strategy Hillary Clinton used in 2008 which made an appeal to white working class voters and worked to win votes nationwide, similiar to the two Bill Clinton campaigns which appealed to centrist voters. This may also be because Hillary Clinton is perceived in 2015 as a polarizing candidate by many voters in southern states, with little prospect of winning in these states, making the new strategy a safe fallback option based on Democratic strategies in 2008 and 2012. Jeb Bush's strategy as a candidate with positions that would attract some Hispanic voters, and working class voters, could pose risks to this Clinton election strategy.