The world’s richest man promised on Tuesday to invest $100 billion and create 10,000 new jobs as SpaceX announced its long-awaited plan to build a massive spaceport in Vermillion Parish. Stephanie Riegel has the details for The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate:
As part of an effort to launch thousands of satellites into orbit and a broader mission to someday reach Mars, SpaceX officials said Tuesday they will build five launch pads, a mission-control center, office buildings, power plants, a propellant factory and employee housing on a tract of coastal land abutted by wildlife refuges some 50 miles south of Lafayette. The facility, which will employ thousands of workers, will be larger than SpaceX’s three other launch sites, including its Starbase headquarters near Brownsville, Texas. And (Elon) Musk plans to move fast, with construction starting in 2027 and the first rocket taking off in three years.
The announcement followed months of secret negotiations where state leaders signed non-disclosure agreements that prevented them from updating their constituents. Jennifer Crockett of Fox8:
“Everybody who knows anything about this project, including elected officials who are supposed to represent their constituents, have been sworn to secrecy” (Invest in Louisiana CEO Jan Moller said). They’ve been asked to sign NDAs where they are not allowed under penalty of law to say anything about this project or its impact on this area.”
State lawmakers approved sweeping tax breaks and legal protections for the aerospace industry as they pursued the deal. Sharon Lacour, in a letter to The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate, pushes back on Louisiana’s “economic development at all costs” approach:
In an effort to bring big business and jobs to the state, our Legislature is once again willing to allow these companies to take whatever they want from our soil, our coast, our homes and our health for their economic gain. What happens when these companies create problems that they are exempt from fixing? Haven’t we sued the oil companies for their disregard of the issues and problems they’ve created? Will we never learn?
Food banks struggle with federal cuts
The Trump administration has terminated roughly $1 billion in federal aid to combat hunger in America. This move has put new pressures on food banks and other charities that operate on tight margins as they work to feed the hungry. The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate’s Violet Bucaro explains how those cuts have affected a local food bank:
Second Harvest, which serves south Louisiana communities from Lake Charles to the Mississippi line, received 18 million pounds of food from the Department of Agriculture’s emergency food program two years ago. But it received half that in 2025, and this year it expects even less, around 7 million pounds.
The funding reductions have also affected staffing levels:
Last summer, federal funding cuts led to a 14% staff layoffs across all of Second Harvest’s facilities, Toups said, the termination of an entire nutrition education team at Second Harvest and an organization program aiding local disadvantaged farmers.
The federal government’s retreat comes at a time when high grocery prices are increasing need:
Around 1 in 5 people across Second Harvest’s 23-parish service area need food assistance, and program participants have surged by nearly 40% in the past three years, from 344,000 to 481,000 people. Data shows that grocery prices have climbed 3% over the past 12 months, according to a U.S. Bureau of Labor July report.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program helps low-income families put food on the table and injects millions of dollars into local economies. But recent federal changes to the program have resulted in more than 170,000 Louisianans losing their crucial food assistance as grocery prices continue to climb.
The case for comprehensive resilience plans
More states are creating comprehensive resilience plans to navigate long-term risks posed from natural disasters. Pew’s Matthew Sanders explains why these efforts are important:
Recent state policy discussions have highlighted better resilience planning as a vehicle for addressing cross-sector challenges such as extreme heat, algal blooms, and vector-borne disease, which do not fit neatly within a traditional hazard mitigation frame. Statewide comprehensive resilience plans help close that gap by creating a shared framework for action across agencies and levels of government. The strongest plans also specifically lay out an implementation strategy.
Sanders examines South Carolina’s Strategic Statewide Resilience and Risk Reduction Plan:
The plan has served not just as a statement of priorities but also as a vehicle for linking statewide strategy to coordination, technical support, and on-the-ground implementation. The state produces annual progress reports, which point to concrete accomplishments, including full staffing of the South Carolina Office of Resilience Watershed Coordination Team across the state’s eight river basins to connect state objectives with basin-level work.
Did soda bans work?
Louisiana was among 23 states that received a waiver from the Trump administration that prevents Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients from using their benefits to buy soda. A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows those bans have only resulted in a modest decrease in soda purchases. Ben Blatt of the New York Times reports:
States with soda restrictions saw about a 13 percent drop in soda purchases among SNAP users, relative to states without the restrictions, in the initial rollout. Water purchases were unaffected over the same period. Per household, that equated to roughly 24 ounces less soda bought each month, or two standard soda cans.
It’s unclear if the soda-purchase decrease will last long term:
“I think an important question is, Will it be sustained over the course of a year? Two years?” [University of Iowa economist David Frisvold] said. “Or will traditional economic theory win out, and people will figure out ways to manage all their resources in such a way that they can purchase whatever it was they wanted?”
Some see the soda ban as part of a broader effort to dismantle SNAP:
If this was happening in isolation from a public health perspective, I’d be quite positive about it,” she said. “But it’s happening with a whole host of other changes that increase stigma and increase disenrollment from the program.”
Number of the Day
72% – Share of Americans who say it’s highly important that their health care provider tells them if they are using AI. (Source: Pew Research Center)