Not so fast: Fresh off a landslide win over Democrat Foster Campbell, U.S. Sen.-elect John Kennedy tells The Associated Press he’ll head to Washington, D.C., this week for orientation, but he doesn’t plan to immediately relinquish his job as state treasurer. The Republican winner of this weekend’s runoff election says he wants to help craft ideas for stabilizing Louisiana’s state budget during his remaining tenure, adding he doesn’t believe Gov. John Bel Edwards or Louisiana’s legislative leaders know how to dig out of the state’s perpetual budget woes. “I’ve still got a lot of work left to do,” Kennedy says. “Our budget’s in a mess.” Read the full story.
Time to move on: After more than 25 years in politics, including the last dozen in the U.S. Senate, David Vitter has cast his last vote. One of the Louisiana Republican senator’s final votes Friday was for a spending bill that would send more than $1 billion to his home state to help victims devastated by recent flooding. “This whole year has been a bit of a transition year,”’ Vitter says in an interview with the USA Today Network of Louisiana. Vitter’s political career ends Jan. 3 when the new Congress is sworn in. Vitter, a lawyer, says he’s not sure what he will do next, but adds he won’t seek another elected office. “I’m looking forward to the private sector,” he says. “I wanted to have time for a whole new chapter in my professional life, and so I’m looking forward to that—that’s where my head is, my heart is.” Read the full story.
Out of this world: LSU Department of Physics and Astronomy Professor Gabriela González has been named one of the top 100 Leading Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, LSU announced this morning. In addition to her work at LSU, González has been the spokeswoman for the 1,000-member international LIGO Scientific Collaboration for the past five years. LIGO, which stands for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, detected the gravitational waves in 2015 that were predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Along with the honor from Foreign Policy, González was named the 2016 Scientist of the Year by Great Minds in STEM. Also this morning, LSU announced the LIGO Scientific Collaboration has been named the 2016 Breakthrough of the Year by Physics World magazine.
