United States Maritime Administration

There were 18 cases over 30 years that Mariners had reported sexual assault which tells you that it was there was no mechanism for people to do anything and And so on top of that, I think that sort of was a catalyst.

And fortunately, the Maritime Administration, when I was TJAG, was led by Acting Administrator Lucinda Leslie, who used to work on Congressman Cummings' staff, and she was amazing so she was working on embark and then she talked about hey maybe we should do safer seas and she didn't call it that but how how we can encourage reporting because the statute does require reporting but that's it it doesn't say anything so safer seas was a collaboration uh between uh her uh leadership in the coast guard i worked a lot with john mauger who's an incredible leader um and uh And then we worked with industry.

We worked with offshore women.

We got a lot of input.

He was a smart guy.

So recently Marad recently did some changes into the CCF and actually had someone new from Marad that, that called and, you know, we had a meeting.

It's like, I'm surprised to see that the offshore industry just has so many people that are involved in the CCF more than any other segment of the industry.

Why is that a problem area? Like, Without a hesitation or a beat, it was just Bob Lario.

I don't think we know the full scope of the problem.

It came to light a couple of months ago in press reporting that there were a substantial number of vessels that were engaged in voyages under the waiver, which had not complied with the law to report on the completion of their voyage to the U.S. Maritime Administration.

Now, if you can't be bothered to basically do to the government that says, yep, I moved cargo from here to there.

I've got zero confidence that you're paying your taxes, that you've got properly credentialed crew members on your vessel and not basically illegal aliens who are operating on visas that do not qualify them to work in domestic trade.

It's actually it was developed or established in 1943.

You know, we've had the Merchant Marine since the 1600s, but they're staffed by captains and admirals from the U.S. Maritime Administration, which almost no one's heard of.

But they're pretty effective and they work with the military well, but they're not there to staff the military.

They're there to establish the commercial maritime industry, either afloat or ashore.

Another big energy bit out today.

The Center Square says that Trump's Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, announced this week that the U.S. Maritime Administration has approved a deepwater port license for STLNG.

It's the quickest regulatory review period for an offshore project in more than two decades.

They're building a deepwater port About 10.5 miles off the Gulf, off the coast of Matagorda County.