Experts in the News

“I’d say this announcement by ExxonMobil is massive in the carbon capture space,” said Ken Medlock, the senior director of the Center for Energy Studies. He added that a major outcome of the establishment of this hub would be the reduction of barriers to entry for other carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects.

Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a nonresident scholar at the Baker Institute Center for the United States and Mexico, said the key for the new facilities will be the financing and the conditions they offer for the child migrants coming from Central America. “One thing is the rhetoric and the intentions, but the real funding for the minors and the length of the commitment is another thing,” she said.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne, the former mayor of Irving, Texas, has been called the political right’s answer to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Van Duyne is “just reflecting what the Republican base thinks about Donald Trump, and that is that they’re very supportive of him,” said political science fellow Mark Jones.

Though Gov. Greg Abbott urged the Biden administration to classify Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, a better approach is for the U.S. to help root out corruption in Mexico, said nonresident fellow Gary Hale. Greater cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico’s law enforcement — not military force against drug traffickers — is the best long-term solution for weakening cartels, he said. 

"My first question is: Why?" said fellow Kirstin Matthews. "I think the public is going to be concerned, and I am as well, that we're pushing forward with science without having a proper conversation about what we should or should not do." The embryos were created in part to try to find new ways to produce organs for people who need transplants, said the international team of scientists who collaborated in the work. Although the research raises a variety of concerns, it has its defenders.