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Climate lessons from faltering Texas power grid

It’s not even summer yet, but Texans are already being asked to turn up our thermostats and leave appliances off each afternoon amid a heatwave that has driven power demand to springtime records. Meanwhile, our aging coal and gas power plants continue to falter. The largest coal plant near Houston caught fire just days before six gas plants tripped offline.

So far, the lights have stayed on, thanks largely to solar output that doubled yet again this year. But the close calls in May bode poorly for what is forecast to be a hotter than normal summer.

Other Americans may dismiss these woes as a uniquely Texan problem. Texas alone operates its power grid as an island, isolated from the two main grids that span other states. That lets the state skirt federal oversight and prevents us from importing power when we need it most.

But the lessons from this spring’s heatwave extend far beyond our borders. Climate change is straining both supply and demand of electricity not just in Texas but globally. Only by transitioning away from the fossil fuel plants that exacerbate warming can we build back better grids and achieve a more affordable, reliable and resilient power supply than ever before.

Power plants rank just behind transportation as our nation’s biggest source of climate-warming emissions, and rank first globally. Thus, we can’t tackle global warming without cleaning up electricity.

In fact, as I explain in my new book “Confronting Climate Gridlock: How Diplomacy, Technology, and Policy Can Unlock a Clean Energy Future,” clean electricity is the most crucial pillar for building a clean energy future. That’s because we’ll need clean electricity not only to power the uses of today, but also to electrify vehicles, heating and industry. Even plans to capture carbon from the air or split hydrogen from water depend on clean and affordable electricity.

Fossil fuels still provide more than 60 percent of our nation’s electricity, belching out more than 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. President Biden issued an executive order to eliminate power plant emissions by 2035, but Congress has yet to pass legislation to achieve that.

Fossil fueled electricity isn’t just damaging our climate, water and air. It’s failing us financially, with prices spiking as natural gas prices soar. And it’s failing to stay reliable, as gas and coal outages drove most of the blackouts in the February 2021 Texas freeze, in which at least 246 people died.

Won’t wind and solar make power even less reliable? As skeptics often remind me, it’s not windy and sunny all the time.

But as research by our group and others has shown, it’s usually windy or sunny somewhere in Texas or beyond. Winds tend to blow most strongly at night across the plains, and with afternoon sea breezes near the coasts or offshore. Pairing wind farms from a variety of locations with solar farms can cover power demand most of the time.

Of course, “most of the time” isn’t good enough when it comes to electricity. Reliable electricity requires balancing supply and demand every second of every day.

Fortunately, there are lots of options to fill in the gaps left by wind and solar — keeping our existing nuclear plants and hydroelectric dams; adding batteries and other storage; making demand more efficient and flexible; as well as developing new sources of power such as enhanced geothermal technologies.

We must also expand transmission, building high-voltage lines within and across our nation’s three grids to better blend wind, solar and other clean sources nationwide. Last week, wholesale power prices in Houston spiked over 100 times as high as in neighboring regions, after a local coal plant failed and transmission was insufficient to bring in wind power from our south. Connections to national grids could let Texas import power when we need it most, and export power when it’s windy, sunny and mild here.

Done right, the United States can achieve 90 percent clean electricity by 2035 without adding costs to consumers or impairing reliability, as research by the University of California at Berkeley has shown. That’s because the costs of new transmission lines as well as wind and solar farms can be offset by averting costs for fuel and maintenance at aging coal and gas plants. We can also ease our reliance on coal and gas plants that keep failing when we need them most amid frozen or flooded coal piles, drought-stricken water supplies, gas shortages, fires and various other causes. A warmer climate will only exacerbate the risk of droughts, floods and wildfires to which fossil power plants are so vulnerable.

Aging power plants also require far more downtime for maintenance than wind and solar farms, in addition to using tremendous amounts of water. As heatwaves expand into the spring and fall months, it will grow increasingly difficult to schedule needed maintenance and maintain water supplies. Over 40 percent of Texas power plants are over 30 years old, yet the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the state’s electricity grid, has repeatedly asked them to defer maintenance amid extreme heat and cold.

Recent woes in Texas are just our latest reminder that fossil-dominated power supplies have failed to be affordable, reliable or resilient to extreme weather, even as they pollute our air and water as well as warm our climate. Built right, a cleaner power supply will be more resilient to heatwaves, floods and droughts and help slow the warming that is making those events more common.

Daniel Cohan is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University and author of the book “Confronting Climate Gridlock: How Diplomacy, Technology, and Policy Can Unlock a Clean Energy Future.”

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Lobbying world

Muftiah McCartin joined the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation as vice president for government and corporate relations. McCartin most recently was co-chair of Covington & Burling LLP’s public policy practice and previously served as staff director of the House Committee on Rules. 

The Brunswick Group hired Mitch Bainwol as a senior adviser. Bainwol most recently was chief government relations officer at Ford Motor Co. and previously served as chief of staff to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). 

Jason Kanter joined IBM as government and regulatory affairs executive. Kanter most recently served as Democratic professional staffer for the House Ways and Means committee. 

Nuclear reactor manufacturer BWX Technologies Inc. hired Ryan Colvert as a senior director for government relations. Colvert most recently served as senior defense policy adviser to Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and is a Marine Corps veteran. 

Timothy Strafford joined Steptoe & Johnson LLP as a partner in the firm’s D.C. office. Strafford previously served as chief of staff at the U.S. Surface Transportation Board and most recently was associate general counsel at the Association of American Railroads.

Covington & Burling LLP named Brian Smith and Michele Pearce co-chairs of the firm’s D.C. public policy practice. Smith joined the firm in 1999 as a law clerk and legislative specialist. Pearce joined last year after serving as acting general counsel to the U.S. Army.

Autonomous vehicle company Applied Intuition hired Elizabeth Down as a policy analyst in its newly launched D.C. office. Down previously was a research associate at Tiber Creek Group. 

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Tale of two trials: How Sussmann is receiving every consideration denied to Flynn

The criminal trial of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann began this week with a telling warning from prosecutors to the D.C. jury: “Whatever your political views might be, they cannot be brought to your decisions.” The opening statement by Deborah Brittain Shaw reflected the curious profile of the Sussmann case. Prosecutors ordinarily have a massive advantage with juries despite the presumption of innocence. When pleas are counted, federal prosecutors can report as high as 95 percent conviction rates. However, with Sussmann, prosecutors clearly have concerns over whether they, rather than the defendant, will get a fair trial.

Sussman’s trial for allegedly lying to the FBI is being heard in the same District of Columbia federal courthouse where former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and others faced the very same charge brought by another special counsel.  

The cases, however, could not be more different. 

Whereas Flynn’s prosecution was a no-holds-barred affair, Sussmann’s prosecution has been undermined by a series of unfavorable rulings by the court. Special prosecutor John Durham still may be able to eke out a conviction, but the difference in the treatment of Trump and Clinton associates is striking. 

Sussmann is charged under 18 U.S.C. 1001 with lying to the FBI during a meeting with then-FBI general counsel James Baker when he came forward with what he claimed was evidence of possible covert communications between the Trump organization and Alfa, a Russian bank. Sussmann allegedly concealed that he was representing the Clinton campaign, which he billed for his efforts. 

Shaw told the jury that the FBI “should not be used as a political tool for anyone – not Republicans. Not Democrats. Not anyone.” She then added that the jurors themselves should not use this trial for their own political judgments.  

Looking at the jury box, one can understand Shaw’s unease. During jury selection, one juror admitted he was a Clinton donor and could only promise to “strive for impartiality as best I can.” Prosecutors objected to his being seated, but Judge Christopher Cooper overruled them. 

In another exchange, a former bartender and donor to far-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was told by a Sussmann defense lawyer that neither Clinton nor Trump were on trial and then asked if she could be impartial. She responded, “Yes, knowing that” — which might suggest she would not be impartial if the campaigns were part of the trial. 

Other jurors include a woman who said she thought she was a Clinton donor but could not remember; a juror whose husband worked for the Clinton 2008 campaign; and a juror who believes the legal system is racist and police departments should be defunded. 

To be sure, D.C. voters chose Clinton over Trump in 2016 by a breathtaking margin: 90.9 percent to 4.1 percent. While liberal and Democratic jurors still can be fair and impartial, Judge Cooper has seated a couple jurors who seemed to struggle with the concept of impartiality. 

The most notable aspect of the trial is what will be missing: context. Durham contends that Sussmann was no rogue lawyer. After the Mueller investigation, Durham’s team revealed information about how people affiliated with the Clinton campaign allegedly funded, developed and spread the false collusion claim. 

On July 28, 2016, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s alleged plan to tie Donald Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” Obama reportedly was told how Clinton allegedly approved “a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.” That was three days before the FBI’s collusion investigation was initiated. 

This appears to have been an all-Washington effort assisted by key figures associated with a liberal think tank, Democratic members of Congress, and allies in the media. However, it was the role of lawyers like Sussmann that attracted Durham’s interest.  

Durham contends that, in addition to allegedly lying to Baker during their meeting, Sussmann sent a text message to Baker the night before the meeting, reading: “Jim — it’s Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss. Do you have availability for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own — not on behalf of a client or company — want to help the Bureau. Thanks.” 

Notably, the campaign’s law firm was accused by some journalists of hiding the campaign’s role in financing the infamous Steele dossier, which provided the basis for the collusion story. (The Federal Election Commission recently fined the campaign for using the firm to hide those payments.) The Durham team argued that Sussmann’s alleged lying to the FBI was not just some passing omission but a knowing pattern of deceit. That is why one of the first witnesses expected to be called by the prosecution was Marc Elias, Sussmann’s former law partner and the Clinton campaign’s general counsel. Elias is not charged with any crime, but at least one reporter has claimed Elias denied the campaign’s connection to the Steele dossier.  

Judge Cooper has stressed that this trial cannot be about the Clinton campaign per se, but the specific lie that was told. He specifically barred Durham from arguing that there was a “joint venture” in deception with the Clinton campaign. The judge sharply limited the evidence that Durham can present which, in the words of Politico, “spares the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee … potential embarrassment.”  

Without the broader context, the prosecution could sound like a play without a plot — just characters and insular acts. The first witnesses included FBI agents who told the jury that the claims passed along by Sussmann “didn’t make sense” and that the collusion theory was rejected within days of looking at the underlying data. However, Cooper warned that he will keep a tight rein on prosecutors delving into how the underlying data was produced or managed through the campaign.

That is not the only blow delivered to the prosecution by the court. The judge refused prosecution access to some evidence and, while allowing access to some emails between the campaign and an opposition-research firm, he barred their introduction at trial due to the late request from the prosecutors.  

The treatment given to Sussmann is in stark contrast to how Trump associates were treated in this same court. In the Flynn trial, Judge Cooper’s colleague, Judge Emmet Sullivan, conducted a series of bizarre hearings, including one in which he used the courtroom flag as a prop to accuse Flynn of being an “unregistered agent of a foreign country while serving as the national security adviser” and to suggest that Flynn could be charged with treason — crimes not brought against him. Sullivan then declared: “I cannot assure you that if you proceed today, you will not receive a sentence of incarceration. I am not hiding my disgust and my disdain.” 

Likewise, another judicial colleague, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, refused to grant Trump associate Roger Stone a new trial despite disturbing reports of juror bias. 

While the judge in Flynn’s case was eager to remove obstacles from the prosecution’s path, the judge in Sussmann’s case seems to have created a virtual obstacle course for Durham. Durham may be able to jump the legal hurdles, but he will do so without much of his evidence. To paraphrase Charles Dickens in “A Tale of Two Cities,” for a prosecutor D.C. can be the best of venues or it can be the worst of venues.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

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Rural white-majority geographies have a criminal justice problem, too

The nation just concluded observing Second Chance Month to raise awareness of the consequences of criminal convictions. One of the most significant ramifications of their criminal records is their inability to obtain employment.

According to research from the Society for Human Research Management, 9 out of every 10 employers use background checks. Upon discovering prospective employees’ prior incarceration histories, many of them automatically decline their applications, even when they served for a minor, nonviolent offense. As a result, the unemployment rate for nonviolent offenders, currently at approximately 38-percent, is far higher than that of the general populace.

This problem is far from a small one; it affects millions of Americans every year. Over 70 million Americans have a criminal record, 9 million have received a felony conviction and 113 million have an immediate family member who has spent time in jail or prison.

While the world has known of this issue’s scope for decades, the demographics behind who it affects have remained largely a mystery. Historically, low-income urban communities have received most of the attention on issues relating to incarceration and unemployment, and few if any have inspected whether low-income rural communities experience the same negative correlative effects. As our contribution to Second Chance Month, we pooled together the collective insights and resources of Texas Southern University — a historically Black university — and Utah State University — which primarily serves a white, rural student body — to produce a study that answers this question.

After compiling and utilizing databases on demographics, sentencing, crime, rurality, and child poverty rates, we found that rates of incarceration differ little between rural white-majority geographies and urban Black-majority geographies. Residents of both are imprisoned at nearly identical proportions at both the state and congressional district levels. Predictably, those with criminal records in rural white majority geographies and urban black majority geographies also experience increased risk of recidivism and the same rates of unemployment.

Given the results of our study, it is no longer a surprise why the majority of the country supports criminal justice reform, including across party lines and within the 100 wealthiest and 100 poorest congressional districts. They know that it will have sizable benefits for their local communities.

The current practice of shutting former prisoners out of the workforce reduces annual GDP $78 to $87 billion. This reality is far more than a mere statistic for many areas of the country. They feel the effects of its consequences every day.

Businesses everywhere, large and small, are experiencing labor shortages. These worker shortfalls are fueling inflationary and supply chain pressures that affect the price and availability of goods across the country. Making it easier for a large segment of the population — rehabilitated nonviolent offenders — to enter the workforce can put considerable downward pressure on this nationwide problem.

It would also benefit law enforcement and public safety. Our study showed that criminal records correlate with an increased risk of recidivism across all geographies, which makes intuitive sense given that for years, the data has demonstrated that having a job reduces the likelihood that one will commit crime. That is because employment gives ex-offenders purpose and hope and allows them to feel like part of their communities again.

Evidence suggests that society also receives downstream benefits from former nonviolent offenders receiving employment. For example, new research from the RAND Corporation found that more than half of American men in their 30s have criminal records. That is a problem when present and non-abusive fathers have been found to reduce violent behavior among adolescent males in particular. As such, investing in programs that increase employment opportunities for former nonviolent offenders — thereby increasing the prevalence of involved fathers — appears to present a clear societal good.

The federal government, along with many states, counties, and municipalities, have already proposed and enacted many initiatives to make it easier for individuals with criminal records to find work, including but not limited to work training, work release, vocational training, and initiatives to “Ban the Box,” which would remove questions about one’s criminal record from hiring applications. These initiatives have proven to work well at rectifying this crisis, and policymakers should continue implementing them whenever appropriate.

Congress should also consider passing the Clean Slate Act, which would create an automatic sealing process for nonviolent drug-related crimes and create a brand-new streamlined petition process for sealing other qualifying, nonviolent crimes.

This bill, which already has the support of the chairs of the Republican Study Committee and Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime, appears to be the most comprehensive and tailored solution to addressing the negative relationship between one’s criminal past and employment prospects. It is modeled off similar bills passed in a consortium of other states, including red Utah and blue New Jersey, which have proven effective. Congress should consider it without delay.

It is now abundantly clear that the issue of criminal justice reform in general and employment for non-violent offenders in particular is not merely a white or black — or blue or red — issue. It affects every demographic and region of the country equally and is worthy of every member of Congress’ attention. The sooner they come to terms with remedial solutions to this problem, the better off we all will be.

Howard Henderson, PhD is the founding director of the Center for Justice Research and Professor of Justice Administration at Texas Southern University. His research focuses on structural and cultural predictors of criminal justice system disparities. Stephen G. Van Geem, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Utah State University.

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Before we can rebuild Ukraine, we need a security plan for Europe

Talk of a “Marshall Plan” for Ukraine is getting louder and more concrete, after economists recently came together to offer a blueprint for the reconstruction of Ukraine. But these plans and promises of aid overlook the first necessary condition: security. You can only build on solid ground. Not only does Ukraine first need to win the war with Russia, the authors of a reconstruction plan for Ukraine will need a clear, credible vision for securing Ukraine — and this will require a bold new security plan for Europe. Call it a “European Responsibility Act.”

The original Marshall Plan, officially the European Recovery Act, was not only a monumentally generous aid program but also a keystone of U.S. containment strategy and Washington’s European integration project. The strategy envisioned Germany’s integration into a supranational Europe as the answer to centuries of conflict and war. At the same time, a united Western Europe would be a stronger partner for Washington to confront the Soviet threat. As a result, the generous aid was conditioned on Europeans working together and integrating their economies. 

This coerced cooperation and trust-building rested on the firm ground of the U.S. security guarantee for Western Europe — from the Soviets, but also from each other.

In this regard, too little has changed. The Marshall Plan did help Western Europe resist the Soviet threat. It launched the process of integration, which transformed bitter adversaries into partners and resulted in a European Union (EU) that supported the democratic transitions and integration of former Warsaw Pact countries. Competition between European powers is no longer a source of global conflict and instability. That’s quite a triumph. Yet the supranational continental power that policymakers in post-World War II Washington envisioned never emerged, and Europe remains unable to be the central provider of its own security or to deter aggression in its neighborhood. 

What is worse, neither Washington nor Brussels seems even close to a plan to change this, despite decades of near-unanimous choruses that the EU needs to be made “a stronger and more capable security provider” — as is again noted in the forward to the 2022 Strategic Compass, the EU’s strategic action plan.

The newly released Strategic Compass argues that the EU needs to “make a quantum leap forward” to face a more hostile environment and geopolitical shifts. But the action plan lays out, at most, a few solid steps. While it notes that more investment is needed — “and not in a fragmented, national manner” — it does not set out a plan to do so, nor are the capabilities outlined a large enough leap. As in 2014, Russia’s aggression in 2022 could risk being, in Josep Borell’s words, “yet another unheeded wake-up call.” A geopolitically slumbering EU cannot help Ukraine, even if it spends generously.

How can we assure that Europe wakes up this time? It will need a jolt stronger than Russia, it seems; perhaps again it requires push and protection from Washington. Yes, European capitals have been complacent, happy to save costs and take a free ride on U.S. capabilities. But fear is also at play. 

For too many EU capitals, the risk of losing the U.S. security guarantee has seemed higher than the potential of EU security sovereignty, and the Trump presidency only slightly changed the calculation. At a recent workshop in Berlin, held under Chatham House rule, one European official expressed this insecurity perfectly, asking a U.S. national security official: “We just want to know if you will leave if we invest [in more defense capabilities] or leave if we don’t.” The Biden administration needs to give a clear answer to this question.

Luckily, we can return to history for a blueprint and use the Marshall Plan model for Europe to create the conditions necessary to rebuild Ukraine. Washington must commit to stay on as a significant European security actor — which it also appears to want — while slowly transferring more and more of the burden in a jointly devised plan. In fact, as happened in 1947, the EU and the United Kingdom should be tasked to lead the planning. Then, they agreed on how to divvy up the spoils; now they will divvy up capabilities.

What should such a plan look like? Well, that will be up to the final drafters. But the framework is straightforward. To keep the United States engaged as a central, if no longer dominant, partner in European security, it must be a NATO plan and the European capabilities envisioned must be coordinated among EU and non-EU NATO member states, especially the U.K. The supposed conflict between EU and NATO capabilities has been a hollow excuse for years. 

Washington likely would commit to stay and help secure Europe — and help Europeans learn to depend on each other more — on the condition that European partners working together with the U.K. agree on 5-year, 10-year and 15-year plans to provide 30 percent, 40 percent and, finally, at least 60 percent, respectively, of the capabilities needed to secure Europe, including its eastern neighborhood, against an aggression from Russia and other potential threats. Regular mandatory benchmarks could lock in commitments. And from year one, these plans would need to include a credible vision for protecting and integrating Ukraine, in some manner, as well as rebuilding it.

This could work for the Biden administration, which knows that the United States needs to withdraw from the European theater but wants to protect the transatlantic relationship. A clear and measurable plan to shift the security burden to European pockets also would help the alliance survive if someone less amicable moves into the White House in 2024.

Obviously, some will consider this an outlandish idea. But outlandish ideas are what the EU and the transatlantic alliance were founded on.

Rachel Tausendfreund is editorial director at the German Marshall Fund Berlin office, overseeing research output and publication planning. She previously worked as editorial director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Follow her on Twitter @thousandfriend.

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Watch live: White House COVID-19 response team briefing

The White House COVID-19 response team along and other public health officials are slated to hold a news briefing Wednesday morning.

The event is scheduled to begin at 10:45 a.m. ET.

Watch the live video above.

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Senators announce bipartisan deal to aid veterans exposed to burn pits

The top members of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs committee announced a deal on Wednesday to provide care to veterans who were exposed to toxic burn pits.

Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) introduced the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our PACT Act of 2022, which they hailed as “the most comprehensive toxic exposure package the Senate has ever delivered to veterans in this country’s history.”

“For far too long, our nation’s veterans have been living with chronic illness as a result of exposure during their time in uniform,” the senators said in a joint statement.

“Today, we’re taking necessary steps to right this wrong with our proposal that’ll provide veterans and their families with the health care and benefits they have earned and deserved.”

The announcement comes after nearly a year of bipartisan negotiations between the Senate and House Veterans’ Affairs Committees.

President Biden has prioritized helping veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, saying in mid-April that he would sign legislation on the topic immediately.

Burn pits were used for open-air combustion of trash and other solid waste in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan. It’s estimated that 3.5 million veterans were exposed to burn pits and qualify for care through the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.  

The House and the Senate have separately passed legislation addressing toxic exposures. Most recently, the lower chamber passed legislation in early March that would establish a presumption of service connections for two dozen types of respiratory illnesses and cancers.  

Tester and Moran’s legislation is named for Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson, who deployed to Kosovo and Iraq with the Ohio National Guard. He died in 2020 from toxic exposure.

The legislation would expand the Department of Veterans’ Affairs healthcare eligibility to veterans who served after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and create a framework to establish a presumption of service connection for 23 conditions related to toxic exposures.

The bill would also expand presumptions of connections related to Agent Orange, a mix of herbicides most notoriously used during the Vietnam war.

Further, it aims to strengthen research on toxic exposure and improve resources and training for toxic-exposed veterans. It also aims to improve claims processing for these veterans.

Source: TEST FEED1

Dear FTC: Blame the real culprits of high gas prices

With Alvaro Bedoya’s confirmation as a third and tiebreaking vote at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), various initiatives will soon roar to life. Among Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) motivations for bringing a vote on Bedoya’s nomination is reenergizing a pending FTC investigation into “price gouging” by oil companies.

What the commission’s new majority needs to recognize, however, is that price gouging is not the issue at the heart of high gas prices. The Biden administration’s new regulatory disincentives to oil production and refining deserve some blame, as does its failure to call for the waiver of the longstanding, anticompetitive Jones Act.

The Jones Act eliminates all foreign competition in the domestic, water-borne shipping market, allowing U.S. shipping companies to legally monopolize the shipping industry without any threat of competitive recourse.

Passed in 1920, it requires any cargo shipped by water between two domestic ports to be ferried by ships that are U.S.-built, owned, operated, flagged and crewed. With these restrictions in place, the price of shipping gas to many parts of the country is significantly higher than it should be, leading many states in the northeast and territories like Puerto Rico to get their oil from abroad.

The price of shipping a barrel of oil from the Gulf Coast to the east coast of Canada is around $2. It costs about the same amount to ship that barrel to Europe. However, it costs over triple the amount ($6) to ship a barrel of oil to the northeastern United States. Even though the distance to Canada and Europe is greater, Jones Act requirements jack up the price significantly, leading to higher prices at the pump.

Ferrying oil directly between Alaska and California on a Jones Act ship can cost up to six times as much as the same journey on a foreign flagged ship, but the latter is illegal. Additionally, shipping oil between the Alaska’s oil-rich North Slope and the Gulf Coast is over three times as expensive as shipping oil between the North Slope and the Virgin Islands, even though the trip to the Gulf takes half as long.

In other cases, it’s impossible for certain consumers to get their gas from the United States. There currently exist no Jones Act compliant ships able to ferry natural gas by water. This means that places like Puerto Rico are required to purchase foreign natural gas, regardless of the abundance of U.S.-produced natural gas on the mainland.

This is becoming a pattern. Gas stations up and down the East Coast were left empty or with rapidly inflated prices last year after the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline. In response, European ships were provisionally chartered. While the administration claimed an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to solving the short-lived crisis, oil from Europe was more readily available and less expensive than American oil because of Jones Act restrictions.

While the Jones Act’s original purpose was to create a robust, thriving maritime industry, the 100 years since have proven otherwise. Jones Act ships are significantly more expensive, less innovative and less efficient. The cost of building a Jones Act ship is four times that of a comparable ship from Norway, Korea or China. Thanks to Jones Act monopolies in the domestic manufacturing and shipping industries, there is little incentive to reduce costs or improve technological standards.

This leads to a disconnect in Biden administration and FTC policy. In a July 2021 executive order, President Biden tasked the federal government with increasing competition in the U.S. economy. FTC Chair Lina Khan has also vowed to take on “any illegal conduct” leading to higher gas prices. The problem is that monopolization is a perfectly legal byproduct of the Jones Act, and no mention is made of the federal government’s own role in distorted energy markets.

The administration and FTC’s blind spot for competition-distorting federal regulations is causing serious harm to the nation’s pocketbook. Blaming and investigating the oil companies for high gas prices thus is a political red herring. Calling for suspension of the gas tax, proposals to send money directly to consumers and releasing oil from the strategic reserves are only temporary measures to ease the pain. As long as supply chains for oil remain distorted, American consumers will perpetually face weak supply and high prices at the pump.

The current high prices will pass, but the underlying pressures on the economy will probably remain, and the likelihood of an economic shock sending prices skyrocketing again is high. At the very least, waiving Jones Act requirements for oil and gas products will bring more competition to shipping markets, lowering prices for consumers. Better yet, doing away with a bad policy in its entirety will unlock and make permanent cost-reducing supply chain efficiencies, just as President Biden has said that he wants.

Alden Abbott is a senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a former general counsel with the Federal Trade Commission. Andrew Mercado is an adjunct professor with the Antonin Scalia Law School. They are coauthors of an upcoming study on international shipping markets and the Jones Act.

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‘Kasich Effect’ propping up Trump, but for how long?

The public and punditry forget that the GOP nomination for Trump was a close-run thing in 2016. As much as Trump tapped into a latent populist fervor, the fractured field handed him critical victories. Hopeless candidates John Kasich and Jeb Bush said they wanted to stop Trump, but their refusal to quit revealed that their real priority was their own desperate need to be in the public spotlight.

The combined vote of Kasich and Bush was the difference for Trump in critical South Carolina. At least Bush got the hint. Kasich stayed in the primaries for weeks in a self-indulgent, ego-driven campaign where his vote totals were the difference between Trump winning and losing in nine states, including Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and Virginia.

For Trump, 2022 has been a repeat, with his candidates eking out wins in crowded fields where the Trump imprimatur pushes a critical slice of votes. But the May 17 primaries are showing more cracks in the Trump façade and are storing up trouble for the fall.

The spotlight was on Pennsylvania, with Trump putting a lot on the line for TV doctor Mehmet Oz. Before the Trump endorsement, Oz was running behind David McCormick at 21 percent to McCormick’s 27 percent. With mail-in ballots yet to be counted, Oz leads McCormick by a razor-thin 31.3 percent to 31.1 percent. Unlike Ohio, where Trump was mostly positive toward J.D. Vance, Trump went on the attack against McCormick and third-place finisher Kathy Barnette. Yet Trump only moved the vote 10-points.

A win is a win, but an Oz win is hardly a ringing endorsement of Trump.

The Pennsylvania governor’s race was a clearer — if qualified — victory for Trump. State Sen. Doug Mastriano was running well ahead of the field with a 29 percent to 17 percent advantage in the Fox News poll and a 42 percent to 24 percent lead in the Emerson poll over former Congressman Lou Barletta just before Trump jumped on the bandwagon. But in the weeks leading up to Trump’s endorsement, Democratic nominee Josh Shapiro was running ads promoting Mastriano as the Trump candidate — which is the one great skill the Democrats have, gaming Republican primaries.

Meanwhile the rest of the GOP field was a weak squabbling mass of Kasichs. Barletta fundraised next to nothing and ran a directionless campaign. Former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain was the best-funded candidate, with millions from investor Jeff Yass. Why Yass chose to put his checkbook behind a man who had never been on the ballot and was polling at 1 percent is inexplicable.

In the last week, with GOP leaders panicked at the prospect of Mastriano; there were late and mostly futile efforts toward Barletta, but it was far too little and far too late to prevent the Democrats’ preferred Republican to get the nod.

Storm clouds gathering for Trump

Away from Pennsylvania, Trump had a harder time. North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn lost to State Senator Chuck Edwards in spite of a late Trump endorsement and a seven-challenger field. With a final total of just under 32 percent, it looks like Trump had zero effect — except to anger both the potential new Congressman and the state’s senior U.S. Senator Thom Tillis. Trump’s other wins in North Carolina were not much. Bo Hines sneaked through a crowded field with 31 percent of the vote for the GOP nomination to a U.S. House seat. Ted Budd did win a solid victory for the nomination to U.S. Senate, but Pat McCrory’s candidacy had been imploding for months.

Dangerously for Trump, his candidates are having a difficult time in competitive races getting over a third of the vote. Ominously, in the only primary with just two legitimate candidates, incumbent Idaho Gov. Brad Little crushed Trump-endorsed Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin by over 20 points.

The scorecard for Trump in high-profile, competitive races is not good. Trump’s best total was Mastriano at 44 percent, and he was just jumping on the bandwagon. His other totals are 32.2 percent for J.D. Vance in Ohio, 31.3 percent (but perhaps not the win) for Oz, 32.9 percent for Hines, 31.9 percent for Cawthorn (lost) and 30.2 percent for Herbster in Nebraska (also lost).

But what makes the Pennsylvania primary a severe problem for Trump is the future. Trump has a lot riding on Mastriano and Oz (should he win). The consensus is that Mastriano will require a huge Republican tsunami to make it through. And Oz will not have an easy time with his 46 percent negative rating just among Republicans.

Trump’s own behavior in the race is damaging. Trump would not even give the most MAGA of candidates, Kathy Barnette, the time of day. After a rude onslaught of attacks by Trump and his surrogates, Barnette declared she would not back Oz in the general and threw a few barbs at Trump. The McCormick team, which includes former Trump White House general counsel Jim Schultz and uber-Trump insider David Urban, cannot be pleased he kicked them to the curb for a New Jersey TV personality.

The Trump mystique and power is built on winning. For Trump, he has to win every day, and he does not think about future consequences. He has been able to clean up when factionalism and ego rule the day. But November will feature one-on-one races, not multi-way fields. Based on history, current polling, and Biden administration fumbling, Republicans are likely to have a good election day. However, high profile Senate and governor races have a habit of going their own way. Trump’s picks need to work out in the fall — or he will be in for a fall of his own.

Keith Naughton, Ph.D., is co-founder of Silent Majority Strategies, a public and regulatory affairs consulting firm. Naughton is a former Pennsylvania political campaign consultant. Follow him on Twitter @KNaughton711.

Source: TEST FEED1