In GOP Speaker Mike Johnson's district, the political mood is mixed for the party in power

SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) — The GOP's “Big Beautiful Bill” is rolling out in different ways across U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s home district — from steakhouse servers getting a tax break on tips to a community center where people line up for a free hot lunch as SNAP benefits are being cut.

In this rough-and-tumble corner of northwest Louisiana, where booms and busts have defined the oil rich region’s history, the legislation can be a bit of a mystery to voters going about their days ahead of the November election.

This is President Donald Trump country, and Johnson, who rode into office on the 2016 wave that elected the president the first time, is in no apparent danger as he seeks a sixth term in Congress.

But the tenor of conversations — at a candidate forum, at a data center open house, outside a grocery store — provides a snapshot of the grim outlook for the party in power. High gas and grocery prices, the war in Iran and the lingering sense of an uneasy new economic normal are all on voters’ minds.

“I remember when Trump said, ‘This Christmas, you’ll have one doll’ — I didn’t get it,” said Katherine Ferguson, an attorney in Shreveport and mother of a teenager, after a recent community meeting downtown. “Now I get it.”

Republicans are campaigning on the big bill, what Johnson calls the largest tax cuts in American history. He hauled the package over the finish line last summer, a remarkable political achievement given the slim House majority.

“This is real money for real people,” Johnson said in Washington, as lawmakers headed home to campaign.

Louisianans on average saw an estimated $2,900 tax deduction this year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, largely because the bill preserved existing rates and brackets that would have otherwise expired. The boost in actual tax refunds was much less, about $350 on average nationwide.

The numbers, in many ways, speak for themselves. The bill tallied some $4 trillion in tax breaks, including new deductions for tips and overtime pay, and enhanced benefits for many seniors and families with children. It also cut more than $1 trillion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, and Medicaid healthcare by imposing administrative changes and additional work requirements that are expected to lead to fewer people on the programs.

Overall, the bill is projected to boost economic growth, but it also adds more than $3 trillion to the federal deficit over a decade.

Johnson said the GOP is “cutting wasteful government spending” and “enacting the policies to bring about economic growth.”

Voters appear to be struggling to add it all up, especially as gas hits $4 a gallon and diesel has almost doubled from last year in Louisiana, topping $6.

“I don’t understand the high prices,” said Dodie Horton, a state representative in Johnson’s district, who is supportive of Trump and the speaker but has trouble making sense of the price spikes.

“I know it’s not the president,” she said. “My people want to know why. I don’t have an answer.”

Madison McDonald, in between working the bar area at the Silver Star Smokehouse & Tavern, said she’s saved about $3,000 on state and federal taxes combined this year, thanks to the tipped income deduction.

The restaurant is popular with the oil and gas industry workers, and she said she once landed a $1,100 tip from a busy table — an appreciated supplement to her $2.13 hourly wage, the federal minimum.

“It definitely helps,” she said. “People are generous.”

Up the road in Bossier Parish, where Johnson lives, Sheriff Julian C. Whittington had his staff run the numbers and found that more than 180 deputies had their taxable income reduced by an average of $1,100 thanks to the overtime deduction.

“That’s good for them, and it’s good for the department,” he said. “Our folks are getting more money, and it doesn’t cost us any more.”

Yet across the river that divides the city, with its riverfront casinos on one side and aging civic infrastructure on the other, the food aid cuts are also taking shape.

Al Moore keeps the door locked as the line begins to form hours before the daily hot lunch is served at the nonprofit Christian Service, where he is executive director.

Once the noon hour strikes, he begins to let people file in, about 10 or so at a time, as they take their seats.

Calvin Ray Marshall, 59, said he was receiving about $294 per month in SNAP benefits until May, when he said he was unable to meet the new 80-hours-a-month work requirements, which now apply to those through age 64 who are able-bodied and do not have young children.

“That’s why I’m here,” he said, finishing up a plate of chicken, rice and gravy, with mixed vegetables.

He said he used to stock shelves at a mini-market and recently sought work at a new gas station. Sometimes he picks up odd jobs, cutting a yard, and he lives out of a tire repair shop where he used to help out, but that closed as business dried up during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.

“For some reason, the government has always been trying to cut people off food stamps because they think people are abusing it,” said Marshall. “It seems like they think jobs are just falling out of the sky.”

Johnson's district now encompasses this area, part of a majority-Black congressional district that was eliminated after the Supreme Court ruled in a landmark voting rights case this summer.

After lunch, Kenny “KeKe” Heads pulls out a resume listing past work experience — sandwich artist, janitor, housekeeper at a local hotel — on a tidy one-sheet document. For now, Heads receives about $100 a month in SNAP benefits but is worried that the three-month window available to jobseekers will lapse before he finds work.

“It’s rough,” Heads said, hopeful one day of opening a beauty salon and boutique. “Getting a chance is like one in a million.”

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Louisiana is behind only Arizona and on par with Nevada in the decline in SNAP recipients during the year since the bill passed, a 21% reduction. The Medicaid work requirements are set to begin in most states in January.

One of Johnson’s Democratic opponents, Conrad Cable, an English major turned vegetable farmer, said he decided to run for Congress because “enough is enough.”

“If you talk to people at the gas pumps — people are pissed,” he said.

He said he hears from voters about the war, affordability, the SNAP cuts — “there was never any conversation about cutting people's food benefits,” he said.

Outside a Shreveport grocery store, Norman Summers, 70, a Marine and retired construction worker, supported Trump but is warily watching the war in Iran and the president's rising wealth.

“Trump’s the one who’s bothering me,” he said.

As the afternoon sun glared, attorney Scott Bowie stopped his cart of bottled waters to assess the political mood.

A believer in small government, he wishes the big Republican bill had done more to reduce the federal deficit.

When he looks to Democrats, “They don't seem to want what I want," he said. "But I’m not saying I'm happy with the Republicans either.”

Madison McDonald stops to discuss the "no tax on tips" deduction in between serving tables at the Silver Star Smokehouse & Tavern, Tuesday, Aug. 25 in Bossier City, La. (AP Photo/Lisa Mascaro)

Hot lunch trays with chicken, gravy, rice and vegetables are ready to be served at Christian Service, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, in Shreveport, La. (AP Photo/Lisa Mascaro)

Bossier Parish Sheriff Julian C. Whittington steps outside his office, Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026, in Benton, La. (AP Photo/Lisa Mascaro)

Calvin Ray Marshall, 59, discusses SNAP benefits after a free hot lunch at Christian Service, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, in Shreveport, La. (AP Photo/Lisa Mascaro)

A campaign sign in support of House Speaker Mike Johnson is pictured Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026, in Benton, La. (AP Photo/Lisa Mascaro)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s round-the-clock bombardment of targets in Ukraine killed at least six civilians and wounded 53 others, officials said Monday, while Ukraine’s army claimed more successes in a recent push on the front line.

The attacks followed a week of diplomatic efforts at the United Nations to get traction for negotiations on ending Moscow’s invasion that began 4½ years ago.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov indicated Monday that the chances of making speedy headway on forging a peace settlement were bleak after recent Ukrainian attacks, including during recent parliamentary elections in Russia.

“Ukraine will have to pay a price for the actions that have taken place in recent months,” Peskov told reporters. “That is happening right now.”

Battlefield positions have changed little since last year, in part because swarms of drones severely restrict troop movements, but Kyiv’s forces launched a recent offensive, code-named Operation Vivaldi, on part of the 1,250-kilometer (800-mile) front line.

Ukraine’s Third Army Corps said Monday it had recaptured another 51 square kilometers (20 square miles) from the Russians, bringing the total to 176 square kilometers (68 square miles) since the offensive began several months ago.

The corps said that in order to break through Russian defenses, it converted Soviet-era BTR-60 armored personnel carriers into kamikaze vehicles that blew up the strongest Russian fortifications. The operation has also used ground robots to attack Russian positions.

The claimed breakthroughs came in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, which the bigger Russian army has been trying in vain to conquer.

Russian officials made no immediate comment on the Ukrainian claim.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said Russian troops captured the villages of Novovodiane in the Donetsk region and Ulanove in the northern Sumy region.

It was not possible to independently verify the claims.

The ceaseless Russian drone attacks on cities and towns aim to wear down Ukraine’s resistance and cripple the Ukrainian economy.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces struck two data centers in Kyiv, as well as gas stations in the Ukrainian capital. A distribution hub belonging to the Nova Poshta postal service was struck in the southern city of Odesa, it said.

The Russian military also hit a cargo ship in the Black Sea and another one in the Ukrainian port of Chornomorsk, the ministry said. The strikes aim to curb Ukraine’s grain exports, though they may also create food shortages in countries that rely on Ukrainian imports.

The Russian aerial attacks regularly hit civilian areas. Moscow claims it targets only military-related sites.

Russian drone attacks on the Kyiv region killed three people and wounded eight, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of the regional military administration.

One drone struck an office center in central Dnipro during working hours Monday, killing three people and wounding at least 12, local authorities said.

A Russian strike on a nine-story apartment building in the northeastern city of Kharkiv wounded 38 people, including 10 children, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

Four people, including two teenage girls, were hurt when a Russian drone struck a residential area in northern Ukraine’s Chernihiv region on Sunday evening, said Viacheslav Chaus, head of the regional military administration.

Zelenskyy said long-range strikes on Russian soil hit two defense plants in the Tula and Voronezh regions and oil facilities in the Krasnodar region, all in southern and western Russia.

Ukraine's long-range drones have repeatedly targeted Russian fuel depots and industrial plants that are a mainstay of Moscow’s economy and war effort.

Ukrainian drone attacks overnight started fires at three infrastructure facilities in Russia’s Krasnodar region, local emergency officials said Monday, without identifying the locations.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses downed 254 Ukrainian drones overnight.

Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

A man walks at the central market damaged in a Russian strike on Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Saturday, Sept.26, 2026. (AP Photo/Kateryna Klochko)