Important Takeaways:
- U.S. senator warns scheme ‘represents a grave violation of religious liberty as protected under the First Amendment’
- In a day when the federal government sends grandmothers to jail for advocating for the lives of the unborn, insists it can coerce Christian companies to pay for abortion and promote an LGBT ideology that is out of mainstream, and more, a federal bureaucracy’s blast against religious freedom shouldn’t, perhaps, be a surprise.
- It is the U.S. Department of Energy that has begun tracking employees’ beliefs through a plan to monitor employment accommodations.
- And Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., is objecting.
- He wrote Ann Dunkin, a DOE official, to “express my strong opposition to the Department of Energy’s recent notice regarding the establishment of a new system of records…”
- He warned the agenda “represents a grave violation of religious liberty as protected under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
- …its policy that requires the agency “to collect and store detailed information regarding requests for religious exemptions to various mandates,” the report said.
- The DOE has claimed its accumulation of information about employees’ beliefs is needed to “collect, maintain, and disseminate records on employees and applicants for employment who seek and receive medical and non-medical accommodations.”
- The report said Lankford has concerns that “collecting detailed records on an individual’s sincerely held religious beliefs and practices — alongside other personal and sensitive information — poses a significant threat to the privacy and religious freedoms of federal employees.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Repairing electricity infrastructure after storms usually costs customers. So could strengthening it before the next weather event.
- Many times, thousands of Texans sit in the dark for days — in either the blistering heat or frigid cold — waiting for utility crews to survey and fix the damage so electricity can start flowing again.
- Such power outages are likely to continue.
- Texas had 210 weather-related power outages — more than any other state — from 2000 to 2023, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Climate Central that used power outage data from the U.S. Department of Energy.
- Texas is the only state to have its own power grid.
- Last year, the Legislature made it possible for utility companies to create plans to strengthen their systems. In many cases, those costs would be charged to power providers that sell power, which would then likely pass the costs to customers.
- The costs to make the system more resilient will likely be passed on to Texans. But, so, too might the costs to repair damage to utility companies’ infrastructure in the immediate aftermath of an extreme weather event.
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Important Takeaways:
- The United States has finalized contracts to purchase three million barrels of oil to help replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) after the largest sale in history last year, the U.S. Department of Energy said on Tuesday.
- The department said it bought the oil, for delivery to a site in Big Spring, Texas, for an average of $77.31 a barrel, below the average of $95 a barrel that oil sold for in 2022.
- The administration of President Joe Biden had conducted sales last year, including a record one of 180 million barrels, to help control oil prices after Russia, a large crude exporter, invaded Ukraine.
- The U.S has now purchased about 14 million barrels for replenishment after last year’s sales. About 4 million barrels are also coming back to the SPR by February as oil companies return oil that had been loaned to them through a swap.
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