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EDITORIALS
T
HOUGH HIS military has stum-
bled badly in Ukraine, President
Vladimir Putin of Russia has one
very powerful weapon in the
struggle. The European countries ar-
rayed against Moscow and in support of
Kyiv run their economies on fossil-fuel
energy that comes in large part from
Russia. Oil and gas revenue is the biggest
hole in the otherwise crippling sanctions
that the United States, Britain and Eu-
rope have imposed on the Russian econo-
my. U.S. imports have been m odest, but
the latter two paid Russia roughly $97 bil-
lion for oil exports in 2021, accounting for
about 40 percent of the Russian govern-
ment’s budget revenue.
This is a devastating contradiction,
which Mr. Putin has not hesitated to
exploit. Last week, he said that “un-
friendly countries” might have to trade
hard currency to Russia for rubles with
which to buy oil and gas, a way to evade
financial sanctions. And yet, with the
exception of the United States and Brit-
ain, which banned Russian oil, no coun-
try has blocked Russian fossil fuels —
though some key Western oil companies
have stopped working in Russia, and
Germany has suspended the Nord
Stream 2 pipeline.
Energy policy was front and center as
President Biden toured Europe last week,
rallying NATO and celebrating Ukrainian
resistance. The good news is that senti-
ment is growing within the 27-nation
European Union for barring Russian oil,
though countries such as Germany still
hesitate on the understandable grounds
that closing off such a huge market to
Russia would send global oil prices shoot-
ing upward, possibly sending Europe
itself into a recession.
What Mr. Biden and the Europeans did
achieve was a kind of second-best, inter-
im solution: a commitment to pursue
energy independence from Russia start-
ing with a U.S.-led effort to supply Europe
with an additional 15 billion cubic feet of
gas this year. This should help the conti-
nent meet its current needs and — cru-
cially — build up reserves for next winter,
when Mr. Putin’s leverage would be at its
maximum. Germany is expediting con-
struction of two liquefied natural gas
terminals in lieu of Nord Stream 2.
Western allies must be creative — and
aggressive — about curing their addiction
to Russian fossil fuels, which developed
over decades and looms in hindsight as
one of history’s great geopolitical miscal-
culations. One concept, suggested by for-
mer U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael
McFaul, would be to keep buying Russian
oil but put the payments for it in escrow,
until Mr. Putin ends his war. Another
idea, proposed by Sen. Patrick J. Toomey
(R-Pa.), would be for the United States to
prohibit banks around the world from
processing payments to the last Russian
banks not yet subject to such a stricture.
Chief among these so-far-unsanctioned
institutions is Gazprombank, which is
linked to Russia’s energy sector. Britain
alone has taken such a step, on Thursday.
Whatever Mr. Biden and fellow West-
ern leaders do, their goal should be to
maximize impact on Russia and mini-
mize harm to the nations supporting
Ukraine, while recognizing that no war
has ever been won without some sacri-
fice. It’s worth taking some time to get
that right — but not too much time. “My
point is: unity. Unity,” Mr. Biden declared
in Brussels on Thursday. On energy secu-
rity, he also needs to make a point about
urgency.
The next sanctions
Finding tougher ways to punish Russia requires some creativity.
P
ICKING UP the phone and placing
a call in the United States today
requires little planning, and not
much thought — unless you’re in
prison or jail, in which case the simple
action becomes a tremendous undertak-
ing. Congress now has an opportunity to
reduce this burden.
The cost to incarcerated people of com-
municating with the outside world is stag-
gering: A 15-minute conversation with a
loved one costs $5.74 on average; in some
jurisdictions, one minute costs more than
$1; and that is not counting hidden fees.
These are hefty figures even for the well-off,
but incarcerated individuals are dispro-
portionately low-income — and inmates’
families end up having to choose between
speaking with their fathers or daughters or
spouses, and buying, for example, lifesav-
ing medicine. This is an obvious free-mar-
ket failure: Prisons and jails contract with
the correction telecom industry based less
on getting the best service at the least cost
and more on raking in the most generous
kickbacks. The industry earns itself a
more-than-comfortable $1.4 billion per
year as a result, while the people it suppos-
edly serves struggle to afford human con-
nection.
The Federal Communications Commis-
sion in 2015 made some progress on cap-
ping rates and cutting some fees, but the
rapacious prison phone providers respon-
sible for driving prices so high in the first
place have managed to find ways around
many of the fee restrictions. Meanwhile, a
court struck down the rate restrictions in
2017, holding that the agency could regu-
late only interstate fees — which histori-
cally has pushed intrastate fees even high-
er. Though the FCC has found a clever
technical workaround involving calls in
“indeterminate jurisdictions” that allows
it some leeway, its authority has been in
limbo ever since. That’s where a biparti-
san bill introduced by Sens. Tammy Duck-
worth (D-Ill.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio)
comes in. The Martha Wright-Reed Just
and Reasonable Communications Act,
which passed committee last week, would
authorize the FCC to mandate that pris-
ons, jails and detention centers offer “just
and reasonable rates” for their occupants.
Better yet, the bill includes video calls,
which are increasingly common.
What counts as “just and reasonable”?
Many would say the only fair price is none
at all. Studies have shown that staying in
close touch with family members reduces
recidivism — so enabling these conversa-
tions could end up saving taxpayers mon-
ey. But such an outcome is unlikely, and an
amendment passed to allay opposition to
the bill from law enforcement groups
requiring the FCC to take security and
safety costs into consideration doesn’t
help. States have more room to drive
down rates to zero; Connecticut already
has done just that for phone calls, video
calls and emails, and New York is consid-
ering the same. The Senate shouldn’t hesi-
tate to approve Ms. Duckworth and Mr.
Portman’s bill, and should the bill pass,
the FCC should take the fullest advantage
of its expanded powers. Yet elected offi-
cials all over the country m ust also d o even
more.
An absurd cost of incarceration
The price of prison phone calls is staggering. Congress has a chance to change that.
I
T’S A safe bet that Texans who voted
by mail in the March 1 primary didn’t
think state election officials would
receive the ballots but then promptly
toss them out. But that is exactly what
happened to thousands of voters under
the controversial state law that created
new identification requirements. These
would-be voters are among the first
victims of the Republican Party’s cam-
paign to restrict voting, the scandalous
consequences of which are only now
becoming visible.
A Texas Tribune review found that
Texas election officials rejected
18,742 mail-in ballots cast in 16 of the
state’s 20 counties with the most regis-
tered voters. That translates into rejec-
tion rates from 6 percent to nearly
22 percent. An Associated Press survey
found a 13 percent rejection rate across
187 Texas counties, concluding that the
state trashed nearly 23,000 ballots. A
rejection rate of more than 2 percent is
generally considered high. Texas
scrapped less than 1 percent of absentee
ballots in 2020.
The Tribune found that the predomi-
nant issue was absentee voters’ failure to
comply with strict new mail-in ballot
voter-ID laws, which state negligence
and technical problems made nearly
impossible for many to meet. Perhaps
these numbers will plummet as more
people get used to the new rules. More
likely, mail-in ballot users — many of
them elderly or people with disabilities
— will continue to struggle.
Texas did not need to make voting any
harder. Its election rules already distin-
guished it as perhaps the toughest state in
the country in which to cast a ballot,
barring voters from casting absentee bal-
lots except in extremely limited circum-
stances. State Republican leaders crowed
about how secure Texas’s 2020 vote was.
But after former president Donald Trump
reacted to his 2020 loss by alleging
widespread election fraud, poisoning
GOP voters’ confidence in the U.S. elec-
tion system, Republican legislatures
sought to prove their red-state bona fides
by passing new voting restrictions, with-
out regard to the amount of fraud in their
states (virtually none) or the difficulties
these needless new rules would raise for
everyday voters (apparently substantial).
It surely dawned on Republican state
lawmakers that they also stood to benefit
politically. True, new restrictions hit both
Republican and Democratic voters to
some extent, but disproportionately the
latter. The Associated Press found that
the rejection rate in Democratic-leaning
counties in Texas was 15.1 percent — and
9.1 percent in Republican-leaning ones.
Mr. Trump carried Texas in 2020 by a
narrower margin than the state’s voting
history might have led one to expect.
Complex, unnecessary voting rules
might help Republicans maintain their
grip on the state, regardless of what
voters actually think.
This situation screams for Congress to
impose voting standards for federal elec-
tions that ensure free and fair access to
the ballot box. State after state, election
after election, absentee voting has
proved secure. There is no reason to limit
it so severely — and, as the covid- 19
pandemic has proved, many reasons to
offer all voters the convenience. The
story is similar on early voting, weekend
voting, provisional balloting, drop boxes
and other tools that enable democratic
participation.
Sadly, there are not 10 Republican
senators committed enough to the na-
tion’s democratic system that they are
willing to vote to impose such standards.
Instead, they counsel against rewriting
election rules as they wink and nod to
their state counterparts who are doing
just that, for partisan benefit. As Texas’s
woeful primary shows, the result will be
what Republicans claim their voting
restrictions are meant to combat: declin-
ing trust in U.S. democracy.
A democratic disaster
In Texas, thousands of ballots were thrown out for no good reason.
DENISE CATHEY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
People outside a polling location entrance in Brownsville, Tex., on March 1.
Regarding David Von Drehle’s March
20 op-ed, “Rain hell on Ukraine and it still
may not fall”:
One of the weaknesses of despots is
that they begin to believe their own
propaganda.
One of the great Soviet myths was that
all the various occupied nations were one
big, happy family. Russian President
Vladimir Putin might be barking up the
wrong tree if he thinks the Chechens are
all going to be loyal mercenaries in his war
on Ukraine. Not all Chechens are under
the thumb of the Russian-installed Chech-
en government, nor have they forgotten
the destruction of Grozny nor the assassi-
nation of journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
Ukrainian defense actions may have help
in their offensive role.
Natalie Mason Gawdiak, Columbia
Chechens haven’t forgotten
Regarding the March 24 news article
“Taliban reopens schools, but turns
older girls away”:
In Afghanistan, the beginning of the
school year fittingly coincides with the
beginning of spring — a time of hope
and renewal. I remember anticipating
the first day of school as an excited
teenage Afghan girl — all winter saving
chocolates and nuts to share, going
with my mom to buy new clothes,
packing my bags with shiny new school
supplies.
What was closed for girls was not just
school but also the possibility to exist
outside of their homes — to spend time
with classmates and explore identities
beyond daughter and sibling. Instead,
girls who have waited eight months for
the Taliban to fulfill its promise discov-
ered they were barred from their dream
of becoming a doctor, a lawyer or a
diplomat like me.
This is a defining moment for coun-
tries to come together and with one
voice insist that girls deserve the same
opportunities as boys. Pakistan, Tajiki-
stan and Iran, all conservative Muslim
countries, fully educate their girls. So
can the country in which women like me
have walked through the halls of the
world.
Asila Wardak, Washington
The promise of a future
laws (e.g., Brnovich v. DNC). Clearly, Mr.
Cornyn is for rights for some people but
not for others.
David Fallick, Rockville
In an appalling display of both rude-
ness and ignorance, many of the Repub-
lican members of the Senate Judiciary
Committee attempted (and failed) to
demonstrate how much cleverer and
more knowledgeable they are than
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Rather
than celebrate her accomplishments,
they chose to focus on crackpot interpre-
tations of her exemplary career as a
lawyer and jurist. It called to mind Curt
Flood’s lament about being a talented,
young, African American breaking into
baseball in the 1950s: “They called me
everything but child of God.”
Richard G. Little,
Williamsburg, Va.
Apparently, being elected senator
brings in its train self-importance and
the certainty of being excellent and wise.
Couple that with Senate hearings that
seem designed more for senatorial
preening and bloviating than for exami-
nation of a Supreme Court nominee.
And finally, broadcast and report those
hearings to the country and the world,
so all need no longer wonder why the
U.S. government has become ineffective.
Like making sausage, maybe we'd
rather not know how the Senate “func-
tions.”
Nicholas Carrera,
Frederick
Regarding the March 24 front-page
article “Senate’s high court hearing
takes turn toward bitterness”:
It is hard to find a politician more
craven than Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).
His choice to make child pornography
the centerpiece of his spurious critique
of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, and to
read aloud the lurid details of several
videos found in the possession of a man
the judge had sentenced transformed
the pain and suffering of child abuse
survivors into a self-serving dog whistle
for his acolytes. Mr. Hawley’s attack has
been characterized as highly mislead-
ing. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii)
pointed out that many Trump nominees
to the federal bench had similar sen-
tencing records on child pornography
cases, but that did not stop Republican
senators of the day, including Mr. Haw-
ley, from voting to approve them.
Americans have come to expect cri-
tiques of Supreme Court nominees from
the president's opposing party, but to
weaponize the stories of survivors of
child pornography, as Mr. Hawley chose
to do, is vile. Americans must demand
higher moral standards in the people
who represent us.
Shari Jacobson, Lewisburg, Pa.
Republicans’ hypocrisy was on prime
display Tuesday when Sen. John Cornyn
(R-Tex.) was questioning Judge Ketanji
Brown Jackson during her confirmation
hearing for the Supreme Court. He
expressed an appreciation of Brown
v. Board, yet he voted against advancing
the most crucial civil rights legislation of
our time: the Freedom to Vote Act and
the John Lewis Voting Rights Advance-
ment Act. He also voted to confirm
Supreme Court nominees who, once on
the court, have declared that it is
acceptable for Alabama to gerrymander
its maps in a way that discriminates
against and denies representation of
Black voters and who have ruled in favor
of other Republican voter suppression
Craven attacks in the Senate
Regarding the March 21 Metro article
“Degree is no longer a must for some Md.
jobs”:
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) an-
nounced that his state no longer requires
a college degree for many state jobs. That
is an idea whose time has come. After all,
before this new law was enacted, Apple’s
Steve Jobs and Steve “Woz” Wozniak,
Dell’s Michael Dell, Facebook’s Mark
Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey,
among others, would all have been
ineligible to apply for lack of a college
degree in Maryland and dozens of other
states.
George Beahm, Williamsburg, Va.
While policymakers debate student
loan forgiveness, many jurisdictions are
adding unnecessary and expensive edu-
cation requirements for low-income oc-
cupations. The credential inflation hit
D.C. in 2016 with the addition of degree
requirements for day-care providers.
Meanwhile, Georgia tried requiring col-
lege courses for lactation consultants
until March 3, when a court declared the
law unconstitutional in response to a suit
from my organization.
Education is a worthy investment for
many people. But forcing students into
debt to learn skills that a particular job
does not require, or to get credentialed
for skills they already possess, serves no
public purpose.
Government officials tend to be col-
lege graduates, which influences their
thinking. They are free to tout the
benefits of higher education, but they
shouldn’t assume that everyone needs or
wants to go to college.
Renée Flaherty, Arlington
The writer is a lawyer with
the Institute for Justice.
An idea whose time has come
