A federal judge in Louisiana on Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction to block President Joe Biden’s national COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers, which had been set to go into effect next week. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in Monroe, Louisiana, issued the injunction (pdf) to expand a separate order issued on Monday by a Missouri federal court, which applied to just 10 states. In doing so, the judge ruled in favor of a request from state Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican, to block an emergency regulation issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on Nov. 4. The president’s vaccine mandate requires all health care workers—full-time, part-time, volunteers, and contractors working at health care facilities receiving Medicaid or Medicaid funding—to receive their first COVID-19 vaccine dose by Dec. 6, and their second dose by Jan. 4. Doughty argued in his ruling that the CMS lacked …