Following the Colonial Pipeline shutdown in early May, Colonial Pipeline CEO Joseph Blount faced two days of questioning June 8 and 9 before both the Senate Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee and the House Committee on Homeland Security. During the hearings, Blount defended his company’s decision to halt the pipeline’s operations and pay a $5 million ransom to DarkSide, the eastern European hacker group responsible for the ordeal.

The White House submitted a $6 trillion budget for the 2022 fiscal year to Congress on May 27, representing the most sustained spending in over 50 years. The budget proposed by the White House is the President' Biden’s initial offer to Congress in negotiations over the federal budget and is likely to change before becoming law. It calls for spending to jump to more than $8 trillion by 2031.

Following overwhelming bipartisan approval in late April of a $35 billion measure to clean up the nation’s water systems, and the unanimous Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approval on May 26 of a $311 billion highway bill, President Biden hopes to carry that spirit of cooperation to his ambitious multitrillion-dollar infrastructure package. Unfortunately for him, moments of cooperation in deeply divided Washington can be fleeting. 

The Colonial Pipeline outage came amid a wave of new cyberattacks, with several more sophisticated and far-reaching than ever before. Over the past year, roughly 2,400 ransomware attacks have hit corporate, local and federal offices.  

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center yesterday forecasted a more-active-than-normal hurricane season this year. Thankfully, the members of the International Liquid Terminal Association were already prepared with drills, emergency preparedness plans and ongoing communications with government, emergency response and industry partners. The Atlantic hurricane begins June 1 and extends through November 30.