| Today President Biden announced a huge release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The goal is to temper gas prices, which are at a 14-year high, driven in part by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. ban on Russian oil as a response. Inflation was also driving gas prices higher before the invasion ever occurred (although Biden is trying to redirect consumer anger by calling this "Putin's gas hike"). But some analysts warn releasing reserve oil won't work. Also, what are oil reserves? Here's a primer. What are oil reserves? The reserves are what they sound like: Hundreds of millions of barrels of oil tucked away — most of them in salt caverns in Louisiana — for when there's a crisis that raises oil prices. We have roughly 568 million barrels in the reserve right now, report The Post's Tyler Pager and Jeff Stein. The idea came about in the 1970s after an energy crisis. The United States at the time depended on the Middle East to deliver an influx of oil, and some foreign leaders tried to demand U.S. support for regional conflicts in exchange. The United States didn't want to be beholden to other nations in times of crisis, so it started stockpiling crude oil. The goal is to tap the reserves only in a true crisis — a natural disaster or a war — not every time prices go up.  An oil pump in California. (Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg News) | What's Biden proposing? He is going to release 1 million barrels a day, for the next six months. That means about 180 million barrels of oil will enter the economy. We're talking a historic amount of oil here — about a third of the strategic reserves. The last time he dipped into oil reserves, it was 50 million barrels. Will it lower prices? That's debatable. On paper, more oil on the market would mean lower prices. But the United States uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day, and Biden is temporarily injecting 1 million more. "It's hard to have any kind of release make a serious dent, because our consumption is so high," Meg Jacobs, an energy expert and author of "Panic at the Pump," told me. I go into more detail about all this here. What's up with the drama around Madison Cawthorn?  Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.). (Saul Loeb/Pool/AP) | A conservative firebrand in Congress has finally gone too far for the Republican Party. Here's what happened. Who is Cawthorn? At 26, he is the youngest member of Congress. He got elected last year to a very conservative seat in North Carolina after emulating a lot of former president Donald Trump's politics. Why is he so controversial? He's known for making stuff up. He has repeatedly lied about his personal history, saying he was accepted into the U.S. Naval Academy when he was not and misrepresenting details of the car accident that left him in a wheelchair. During his campaign, he traveled to the Mexican border and said that children were being sold "on a sex slave market," which there is no evidence of. He also spoke at the rally that preceded the Jan. 6 riot and has endorsed Trump's false voter-fraud claims. Multiple women have accused him of sexual misconduct. But none of that was what did him in with the GOP. What happened? Cawthorn recently called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "a thug," and then last week he said that people he "looked up to" in Washington used cocaine and invited him to orgies. Those two things were too much for Republicans. Especially the last one. Now, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is publicly lecturing him: "This is unacceptable," McCarthy said, calling Cawthorn's drug/sex claims a lie. And some top North Carolina Republicans are supporting his primary opponent. "Members were hearing about it from their constituents," said Doug Heye, a Republican consultant. Some Republicans in Congress said they were getting calls, asking what lawmaker participated in this. It feeds into a narrative that Washington politicians are corrupt in particularly scandalous ways, and Republican politicians understandably want to forcefully push back on that. What does Anthony Fauci have to say about a second booster shot?  Biden gets his second booster shot Wednesday. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post) | This is a reader question (keep 'em coming) asking for guidance from the nation's top infectious-disease expert about the new government recommendation that Americans 50 and older, and those who are immunocompromised, should go get another booster shot to stave off covid-19. "The protection you get from a third shot is a good protection," Fauci told ABC News, "however, it wanes over time." So, he said, it's a good idea to go get that booster shot. When asked if he got his? "Yeah, I'm 81." | 
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