U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-Lafayette, we all know by now, traffics less in the policy details vital to governance than in bizarre bouts of paranoia and grievance.
Remember his rant about the millennial leftists and their “nonbinary fuss to save the world from intercontinental ballistic tweets?” Or how he claimed President Joe Biden’s inauguration would “mark the final hour of conspiracy to dismantle the American election process, and the first hour of conspiracy to dismantle America?” Or the time he talked of shooting armed protesters in a Facebook post that the company took down for violating its "violence and incitement" policy?
Well, last week brought more evidence that focusing on his southwest Louisiana district’s needs is beyond Higgins’ ken.
There’s a new affront in the land, he contended in a typically alarmist fundraising email. This time it’s the House’s passage of the Crown Act, which addresses discrimination in employment and education based on hair style or texture, and grew out of a movement rooted in the painful real-life experiences of some Black Americans.
Or, to hear Higgins tell it: “In my years representing South Louisiana in the D.C. Swamp, I’ve seen a lot of ridiculous left-wing antics, but this could be the worst … The socialist left is fiddling while Rome burns.”
Which got me thinking: What could be worse than a law to combat discrimination against people based on their natural hair?
Well, here are a few things that might ring a bell with Higgins’ constituents — not fire, but a long list of other afflictions.
The pandemic. Flooding, a harsh winter storm, and one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to strike the state, followed six weeks later by another hurricane.
So much bad faith from the insurance industry that rock-ribbed free marketers in the Legislature are talking about imposing tough new regulations.
And some of the worst population losses in the country, according to new estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau, which found that Calcasieu Parish, where Lake Charles sits, lost more than 5% of its residents between 2020 and 2021, and rural, coastal Cameron Parish shrank by nearly 10%. Those figures probably don’t surprise politicians more focused on conditions on the ground, who’ve been bemoaning the loss of habitable housing to disaster, and pleading with Congress to send enough money to create a housing recovery program to get people back and working.
Ironically, Higgins’ hair missive arrived just a day after the Lake Charles area got some genuinely great news out of Washington. Heading to Louisiana is $1.7 billion in block grants from the president — you know, the guy whose elevation to the office supposedly signaled the dismantling of America — out of disaster relief money previously approved by the same Congress that has delayed and shortchanged victims of Hurricanes Laura and Delta since the storms struck in 2020.
Some of the money will address recovery needs from last year’s Hurricane Ida, which matched Laura’s frightening strength but struck the southeastern part of the state. But $450 million will go to southwestern Louisiana, on top of a long-sought yet inadequate initial allotment of $600 million.
Higgins scurried to claim part of the credit, of course, but those in the know see scant evidence of his fingerprints. He wrote letters seeking funding, but also openly snubbed Biden when he visited Lake Charles last year and suggested that it was up to Louisiana’s Democrats in Washington to work the process.
That they did, along with Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards and Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, who has shown a distinct willingness to work with the administration on issues important to Louisiana. Others in the delegation participated too, although it’s hard to find anyone who singles out Higgins other than Higgins himself.
Here’s how Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter, a Republican, tactfully put it: "I thank our entire Louisiana congressional delegation's efforts, especially those who are willing to sit down with both sides of the aisle and do whatever it takes to help people … This was not achieved by writing and delivering letters. This was achieved by good, old-fashioned elbow grease."
Or to borrow a phrase, credit goes to the folks who weren’t fiddling while Lake Charles struggled.