(The Center Square) – Energy policies included in the U.S. House budget reconciliation package represent a “significant shift in U.S. energy policy,” those in the Texas energy sector argue.

This is after the industry has expressed trepidation over Trump energy and tariff policies that created uncertainty in the market by driving up costs, reducing domestic output and dissuading domestic producers from investing in exploration and expanded production, The Center Square reported.

While the Texas oil and natural gas industry reported job gains in January and February, it reported losses in March for the first time in months as rig counts dropped, The Center Square reported. The industry slightly rebounded in April, according to the latest employment data, The Center Square reported.

Uncertainty in the industry remains due to federal energy policies and “numerous economic and geopolitical factors” that continue to impact domestic production and related investment decisions, the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association (TIPRO) said. This includes Trump administration tariffs on steel and aluminum and encouraging OPEC+ countries to increase production, driving down domestic production and profits, The Center Square reported.

However, a positive development is a commitment to reversing Biden administration-era policies, TIPRO notes. This includes Congress prioritizing pro-energy policies in its budget reconciliation bill, referred to by President Donald Trump as one “big, beautiful bill.” The policies include expanding federal fossil fuel leasing, reducing royalty rates, streamlining the permitting process, repealing so-called clean energy incentives, refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and delaying the Methane Emissions Reduction Program (MERP).

The proposals were included in the energy sections of the House Ways and Means Committee and House Natural Resources Committee packages, including prioritizing expanding fossil fuel production, TIPRO notes. The sections were included in the package before the House Budget Committee, which failed to advance it on Friday.

TIPRO and others have called for prioritizing domestic energy production, expanding critical infrastructure, including LNG ports and pipelines, protecting key tax provisions essential to the industry, among other priorities.

Included in the House package is a requirement for at least 30 oil and natural gas lease sales to be made on federal land and in the Gulf of America over the next 15 years. In Alaska, it requires six lease sales for Cook Inlet and authorizes leasing to begin in the National Petroleum Reserve and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It also reinstates quarterly onshore oil and gas lease sales, generating an estimated $12 billion in revenue, TIPRO notes.

House energy proposals also reduce royalty rates to 12.5% for onshore and offshore drilling, down from 16.67% and 18.75%, respectively, and put processes in place to increase permitting approvals for energy projects.

House Republicans also repealed provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, including clean energy incentives that provided tax credits for electric vehicles and renewable energy projects. They also curtailed the hydrogen production credit and expired “technology neutral” clean energy credits by 2031, TIPRO notes.

The House proposal also allocated $1.5 billion to replenish the SPR and delayed MERP by 10 years.

“With the exponential growth in energy demand forecasted in the coming years, oil and natural gas will continue to play a dominant role, but we must have the right strategy in place to provide regulatory and economic certainty to our members for the benefit of our country and allies,” TIPRO President Ed Longanecker said.

With Texas continuing to lead the U.S. in oil and natural gas production, emissions reductions and job growth, “sound policies that support fair business practices and laws that keep our state competitive are necessary if Texas is going to continue to benefit from oil and natural gas activity,” Texas Oil & Gas Association President Todd Staples said.

(The Center Square) – A Goldwater Institute report shows that a number of public Louisiana universities require the completion of diversity, equity, and inclusion-related courses to graduate from some degree programs.

“At least three public institutions – University of Louisiana at Lafayette, University of Louisiana at Monroe, and McNeese State University – require students in certain degree programs such as education to take DEI courses simply to graduate,” the Goldwater Institute report said.

The Goldwater Institute is a “free-market public policy research and litigation organization,” according to its website.

Goldwater Institute’s senior Constitutionalism fellow Tim Minella told The Center Square that “requiring these activist courses wastes time and tuition dollars while failing to develop the knowledge and skills that will serve students in their careers.”

“Even in red states, students in public universities are being forced to sit through courses intended to indoctrinate them in the radical tenets of DEI just to graduate,” Minella said.

“As this new report shows, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette requires students in the master’s of education program to take ‘Diversity for the Progressive Educator’  a course that focuses on ‘critical elements of race/ethnicity’ and seeks to enhance ‘the commitment to take action against [systems of inequality],’” Minella told the Center Square.

Likewise, as stated in the report, “at the University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM), Elementary Education majors are required to take ‘CURR 2001: Educational Foundations for Diverse Learning Environments,’ which ‘provides multicultural insight to support the educational needs of diverse students in their learning environment.’”

Additionally, “at McNeese State University, students seeking a B.A. in English Education Grades 6-12 must take ‘EDUC 204: Orientation to Multiculturalism and Diversity in Education,’” the report states.

When asked by The Center Square why it is inappropriate for public universities to require DEI-related courses to graduate, Minella said that “DEI course requirements force students to sit through lectures in the progressive agenda instead of gaining a real education that enhances knowledge and develops valuable skills.”

“As this report shows, Louisiana’s schools of education are focusing on training political activists instead of preparing students to be effective classroom teachers,” Minella said.

“Furthermore, DEI course requirements artificially inflate the enrollment of DEI courses,” Minella said. “Many students would decline to take these activist courses and opt to enroll in more valuable academic activities, if not for DEI course mandates.”

“This report demonstrates the pressing need for states to eliminate mandatory DEI courses in public universities by adopting Goldwater’s Freedom from Indoctrination Act reform,” Minella told The Center Square.

The Freedom from Indoctrination Act is a model legislation made up of three sections: “Prohibit Mandatory DEI / [Critical Race Theory] Based Course Requirements,” “Ensure Basic Instruction in American Institutions,” and “Ensure Freshman Orientation Programs Promote the Free Exchange of Ideas rather than Political Indoctrination.”

The Center Square reached out to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the University of Louisiana at Monroe, McNeese State University, and the University of Louisiana System for comment.

McNeese State said it would respond by next week. The other universities did not respond.

The Trump administration has been working to root out DEI with various executive orders by the president as well as the Education Department’s Dear Colleague letter that stated race-based decisions in education are unlawful, as The Center Square previously reported.

Tim Minella wrote in an article for the Goldwater Institute that “although President Donald Trump has dismantled federal support for DEI, his executive orders rightly exempted ‘academic instruction’ in higher education from these new federal protections, leaving oversight of academic standards to the states.”

“Louisiana must act to eliminate DEI indoctrination in the classroom,” Minella wrote.

(The Center Square) – The modern cartels in Mexico supply the illicit drug market in America, but they’ve also shifted to new criminal schemes, diversifying into kidnapping, extortion, illegal mining, petroleum theft and illegal fishing. 

President Donald Trump moved to classify the six Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations early in his term. Experts often call them transnational criminal organizations because their reach has expanded into other illegal markets. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and Treasury Department also are targeting cartels for moving black-market oil and gas across the Texas-Mexico border, The Center Square reported.

Cartels use other violent criminal activities to protect their drug operations and grow revenue, according to the DEA report. They also engage in money laundering, extortion, petroleum theft, theft of other natural resources, weapons trafficking, human smuggling, prostitution, and illegal wildlife trade.

The illicit profits from these peripheral activities make the cartels more resilient and increase their ability to expand, according to the DEA report. 

In November, the U.S. Treasury Department hit five members of the Gulf Cartel with sanctions over the group’s illegal fishing in the Gulf of America, which includes illicit trade in red snapper and shark species. For this, they use small, fast-boat operations called “lanchas.” The Gulf Cartel’s illegal fishing operations are based out of Playa Bagdad, also known as Playa Costa Azul, a beach several miles south of the U.S. border. Cartels use the same fast boats to smuggle drugs and people, as well. 

“Treasury, as part of a whole-of-government approach to combatting transnational criminal organizations, remains committed to disrupting these networks and restricting these groups’ ability to profit from these activities,” Treasury officials said at the time.

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing often involves forced labor and human rights abuses. Unregulated fishing practices further pose issues for ocean health and are one cause of global overfishing. They also contribute to the collapse or decline of fisheries that are critical to the economic growth, food systems, and ecosystems of countries worldwide, Treasury noted. 

Cartels began muscling in on illegal fishing years ago and have only grown bolder, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings.

The takeover started with criminal groups targeting fishers poaching protected species. Then they started extorting and regulating fishers harvesting low-value seafood. Cartels often only allowed fishers to sell solely to them.

“Large companies fishing high-value species, particularly for export, were the last to be targeted, but are increasingly under pressure too,” Felbab-Brown noted in a Brookings report.

Cartels sometimes demand that communities sell them their fish harvests under threat of death. Other times, they tell the locals what species they want and set quotas for delivery. Cartels “violently punish non-compliance with those demands,” Felbab-Brown noted. That’s not the only difference. Cartels sometimes only pay in illegal drugs, such as methamphetamine. 

It’s not just fishing; the cartels’ reach extends to processing and sales.

“Next, they establish halcones (spy) presence in communities and processing plants and demand that the processing plants process seafood brought in by the cartels and fake documents for it,” Felbab-Brown noted. 

DEA officials are targeting a Mexican transnational criminal organization, recently designated as a foreign terrorist organization, involved in smuggling methamphetamine, heroin, and black-market oil and gas across the Texas-Mexico border. The investigation has identified multiple cartel leaders who have ties to multiple cartels in Mexico. Officials said the ongoing investigation found the criminal groups were stealing and smuggling crude oil from PEMEX, Mexico’s state-owned petroleum company, into the United States. The groups then sell the stolen oil to U.S. oil and gas companies as part of a sophisticated trade-based money laundering scheme.

This could be pushing up prices at the pump for U.S. drivers. 

“It is estimated that Mexico is losing tens of billions in tax revenue annually, while simultaneously costing the U.S. oil and gas companies billions of dollars annually due to a decline in petroleum imports and exports during this same period,” the DEA report noted. “The focus will now shift to U.S. companies and members involved in facilitating this illicit Mexican petroleum smuggling operation.”