Experts in the News

“The anti-immigrant rhetoric needs to stop. It has done so much damage to these communities. They have been portrayed as a burden to the system, as a threat to society ... You can imagine what that does to a person,” said Baker Institute Rice Faculty Scholar Luz Garcini.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's stay in Europe represents a “highly symbolic move past his post-Khashoggi isolation,” said Middle East fellow Kristian Coates Ulrichsen. “While there has not been any formal coordination of policy in the ‘West’ against Mohammed bin Salman since 2018, the fact is that he has not visited any European or North American country since Khashoggi’s killing."

“Gazprom and Russia, they like disruption,” said Anna Mikulska, a nonresident fellow in energy studies. “When disruption happens, that’s when prices go up all over Europe. That means not only does the European market become more destabilized and the economy will suffer, but Russia gets more money for its gas exports even if the nominations are much smaller than before.”

The Biden administration recently proposed two wind farms off the Texas and Louisiana coasts, but it’s too early to tell how quickly they will be built and how much they will cost. “The commercial appetite is there — it really is about the regulatory hurdles that exist,” said Kenneth B. Medlock III, the James A. Baker, III, and Susan G. Baker Fellow in Energy and Resource Economics and the senior director of the Center for Energy Studies. “There’s a lot of interest, without a doubt. Companies are actively lobbying to try to get these projects done.”

Although the government tends to increase Social Security benefits when inflation rises, “the inflation rate currently exceeds the increase in benefits,” said public finance fellow Jorge Barro.