Last Friday, the US House of Representatives elected the next Speaker of the US House for the 119th Congress. By the skin of his teeth, Mike Johnson was reelected as Speaker after receiving the exact amount of votes needed to become Speaker–218 out of 434 present Congressmen.

Going into the 2024 US elections, everyone knew that Republicans were going to have a slim majority at best in the US House of Representatives. I personally predicted that the Republican party would only hold a three-seat majority, and Republicans barely exceeded my expectations–finishing with a five seat majority. However, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz decided not to fill his seat for the 119th Congress. Therefore, Republicans currently control 219 out of the 434 seated members in the US House of Representatives.

Last Friday’s US House Speakership battle was anticipated to come down to the wire, and two last-minute vote changes by Republicans sealed Johnson’s victory as the next Speaker. But as Scott McKay pointed out in an article last Friday, Louisiana Republican politicians almost torpedoed the America First agenda in Congress within one week of 2025:

Fields got a made-to-order congressional district commissioned in large part by Landry. That district could have been drawn in ways much less advantageous to Fields, but because he opted to sit on the sidelines and not mobilize votes for Shawn Wilson in the 2023 gubernatorial primary, which opened the road for Landry to win that primary with 52 percent of the vote, he hit the redistricting jackpot in the first special session last year.

Garret Graves was a very popular congressman in the Sixth Congressional District. Graves and Johnson were anything but allies, but Graves would have been a vote for Johnson today. Landry wanted Graves gone, and so Fields has that seat after winning comfortably in November.

Yes, the open secret has been out for a while. Though a 4-2 partisan split disguised as racial justice having been ordered by a corrupt Obama judge in Baton Rouge provided the pretext for the new map, Landry nonetheless gifted a corrupt Democratic pol like Cleo Fields a racially-gerrymandered Congressional district to spite Graves. Even worse, if just three fewer Republican Congressional candidates won their elections last November, then America would have a Democratic majority in the US House…and it would have been Landry’s fault.

And that of a majority of Louisiana’s legislators, who would have absolutely blamed Landry for dragging them into that vote.

As I pointed out a few months ago here on The Hayride, Louisiana’s redistricting fiasco at the beginning of 2024 was shaping up to become a major cause of concern. As a consequence of Louisiana’s Congressional redistricting, Congressional Republicans nearly experienced a major political meltdown due in no small part to backroom dealing in Louisiana between a Republican Governor and an unscrupulous Democratic legislator now a Congressman.

In other words, Louisiana almost gave America a Democratic majority in the US House of Representatives and nearly gave us Hakeem Jeffries as the next Speaker of the US House. That total nightmare scenario was fairly close to becoming reality.

Now, my analysis is not to give the typical party line of “Republicans good, Democrats, bad” that we frequently hear. The recent H1B visa debate showed that many major Republicans–such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy–are not America First when it comes to the American worker.

Nevertheless, Louisiana’s redistricting debacle is just another reminder that Republican politicians often do not govern to the interests of their voters. Over the past three months, Governor Landry has invited the pro-censorship globalist corporation Facebook into north Louisiana, celebrated the fake black nationalist holiday Kwanzaa, and handpicked a Congressional seat for Cleo Fields.

Fortunately, the madness of Louisiana’s gerrymandered Congressional district map might go away pretty soon. Later this year, the US Supreme Court will weigh in on the momentous Callais v. Landry decision–giving Louisiana the chance to throw out the indefensible map that Governor Landry and the Louisiana Legislature approved in early 2024, and Fields along with it.

We don’t get a lot of mulligans in life, but the US Supreme Court might be giving us one if the Court throws out Louisiana’s current Congressional map. No Republican politicians in good conscience should support another redistricting session that gives us a Congressman Cleo Fields or another corrupt Democratic Congressman via another atrociously gerrymandered district.

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Nathan Koenig is a frequent contributor to RVIVR.com, a national conservative political site affiliated with The Hayride. Follow his writing on the Louisiana First Standard Substack, on Twitter (X) @LAFirstStandard, on Tik Tok @la.first.standard & on Instagram @lafirststandard. Email him here: louisianafirststandard@proton.me