Liz Peek had zero sympathy for Gavin Newsom’s sudden outrage over California gas prices. When Newsom took to X to complain about $6-a-gallon gas, Peek pointed out the obvious — prices were already $5 before the Strait of Hormuz situation escalated, and California slaps a 90-cent-per-gallon tax on every fill-up. Her take was blunt: Newsom and California Democrats spent years waging war on fossil fuels and trying to get people out of their cars. They got what they wanted. The irony is that California is one of the most car-dependent states in the country, with virtually no functioning mass transit in most major cities.
On the broader economic hit, Peek put a number on it — consumers are absorbing roughly $140 billion a year in extra costs from the dollar-per-gallon price spike, and that’s before freight and shipping costs ripple through the rest of the economy. She does think it’s temporary. Her position mirrors Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s: she can’t imagine the entire global economy allowing a group of terrorists in speedboats to shut down the Strait of Hormuz indefinitely and drag every major nation into recession. States floating temporary gas tax rollbacks of a month or two? She’s for it — smart short-term relief while the situation resolves.
On Delta pulling VIP escort service for members of Congress during the DHS shutdown, Peek called it absolutely the right move — for two reasons. First, the optics of whisking a congressperson past a four-hour security line with exhausted families and kids in tow would be an atrocity. Second, she raised something nobody else is discussing: planes are flying two-thirds empty right now because so many passengers are missing their flights. Airlines are getting hammered from both ends — higher fuel costs and gutted load factors. If cutting Congress’s airport perks is their way of sending a message to Washington, Peek says go for it.
She spread blame evenly on the shutdown itself — both parties should have fixed this before it became a national travel crisis. But she saved her sharpest words for the congressional perk culture, noting that escort-through-security has quietly existed as a courtesy for years. With fake videos of lawmakers like Debbie Wasserman Schultz being guided past lines already circulating online, and real incidents like Nancy Mace’s airport meltdown fresh in people’s minds, Peek’s verdict was simple: time to let that courtesy go.
