The Fifth Risk, Biden's Gas Problem, and the Golden Globes Saga Takes Yet Another (Another!) Turn

Good afternoon, and welcome back to The Daily Courant, our members-only email highlighting the latest and most noteworthy journalism at Puck. 
 
Today, Peter Hamby catches up with Secretary Jennifer Granholm, the straight-talking, occasionally gaffe-prone green energy ambassador tasked with selling the Biden climate agenda to an inflation-weary populace.

Plus, below the fold, Matt Belloni provides an update on the endlessly engaging Golden Globes boycott and Teddy Schleifer tries not to play favorites in the miraculous case of Elon Musk vs. the U.N.

Is the Fifth Risk Over?

The Department of Energy, now in the capable hands of Jennifer Granholm, has recovered from the Trump-era crises memorably documented by Michael Lewis. But as global supply chain disruptions become an energy crunch, Granholm faces a new emergency: convincing inflation-weary Americans that the president’s green agenda isn’t a high-priced pipe dream.

Unlike her predecessor Rick Perry, the Texas Republican who famously thought the job of Energy Secretary was to be a global ambassador for American oil and gas, Jennifer Granholm came into Joe Biden’s cabinet with a clear understanding of the role. The Energy Department has jurisdiction over the nation’s energy resources—particularly its nuclear energy capabilities—but also its energy goals. And Biden has made abundantly clear, with the recently-passed infrastructure bill and his proposed Build Back Better agenda, that a greener and more energy efficient economy is a cornerstone of it’s vision. It’s up to Granholm to bring many of those goals to life.

A former two-term Michigan governor and a CNN political pundit, Granholm has her own kind of excitable energy that sets her apart from the nerdy bureaucrats who serve with her in Biden’s cabinet. It’s charming, but her shoot-from-the-hip manner sometimes has the effect of generating not-so-great headlines for the administration, like when she recently laughed off a reporter’s “hilarious” question about rising gas prices and growing the nation’s oil supply. She was mostly right on the facts, but right-wing media had a field day with her laughter nevertheless.

Granholm, who was just in Glasgow for the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit, appeared on my Snapchat show Good Luck America soon after. I asked her about high gas prices, whether climate negotiations even matter if big coal-producing counties don’t scale back their carbon footprint, why a Trump voter would purchase an electric car, and more. The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity...

FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT