Vox Sentences - Opening up the reserves

The US taps oil reserves to help bring down gas prices; a report labels America as a “backsliding democracy” for the first time.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Jariel Arvin.

Biden taps oil reserves to bring down gas prices

Joe Raedle/Newsmakers

• President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday the United States will release 50 million barrels of the nation’s oil reserves to ease global pressure on gas prices. [Washington Post / Annie Linskey]
• “Consumers are facing challenges at the pump right now, and we are trying to deal with that situation and to deal with it in a smart way, in a tailored way, in an aggressive way, so that’s what you’re seeing today,” a Biden administration official told reporters Tuesday. [NBC / Lauren Egan and Shannon Pettypiece]
• Averaging $3.40 a gallon, gas prices are now 50 percent higher than a year ago. Republicans have used rising fuel costs as a weapon against Biden, whose approval ratings have languished. [AP / Josh Boak and Colleen Long]
• Biden said Tuesday that it could take some time before drivers felt relief at the pumps. He stressed that releasing the oil was a short-term fix, but that he remains committed to a long-term goal of transitioning to clean energy. [CNN / Kate Sullivan, Betsy Klein, and Devan Cole]
• Other big energy consumers, including China, India, the UK, Japan, and South Korea, will also release oil from their reserves in hopes that through a coordinated effort, gas prices will fall globally. [NYT / Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Stanley Reed]

The US is a “backsliding democracy” for the first time

• The US has been named one of the world’s backsliding democracies for the first time in an annual report from a Stockholm-based think tank. [The Independent / John Bowden]
• The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’s report —which analyzed trends in authoritarianism from 2020-2021 — found that democracy is decaying for 25 percent of the world’s population. Brazil and India experienced some of the worst declines. [Washington Post / Miriam Berger]
• The report describes the decline in American democracy as part of a growing authoritarian trend in large countries. “Significantly, the United States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself, and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale,” the report said. [Business Insider/ John Haltiwanger]
• The Biden administration has made promoting democracy a cornerstone of its foreign policy; US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the world is in a “democratic recession” during a meeting with Kenyan leaders earlier this month. Blinken has said measures like fighting disinformation and voter intimidation could stop the back slide of democracy. [CBS]

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A federal jury found Walgreens, CVS, and Walmart responsible on Tuesday for failing to curb the flow of pain pills, perpetuating an opioid crisis that cost two Ohio counties $1 billion and many lives. [AP / John Seewer]

• Another federal jury found rally organizers liable for the deadly 2017 gathering of the far-right and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia; the jury awarded millions in damages to people affected by the violence. [Neil MacFarquhar / New York Times]
• Former NFL star turned TV host Michael Strahan will be the next celebrity to travel to space aboard Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin in December. [Variety / Jordan Moreau]
• Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai appeared in public weeks after making sexual assault allegations against a Communist Party official, but her interview with the International Olympic Committee has not alleviated concern for her safety. [Yahoo / Henry Bushnell]

“They don’t make money off a refusal to fill"

[In closing arguments in an opioid crisis trial, a lawyer accused CVS and other pharmacies of putting profits over customer safety]

Dylan talks to Chye-Ching Huang, the executive director of the Tax Law Center at NYU Law, about the many tax provisions in Democrats’ Build Back Better package.[Spotify]

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