Virginia utility regulator nominated for federal commission

By The Associated Press
July 28, 2020 | 9:31 AM

RICHMOND, Va. — The chairman of the Virginia State Corporation Commission has been nominated to fill a seat on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Monday that President Donald Trump is nominating Mark Christie for the seat.

The White House called Christie “one of the nation’s longest-serving utility regulators.” He has served on the commission for 16 years.

Christie’s departure will allow Democrats to have their candidates to hold a majority on the commission.

Christie is a former president of the Virginia Board of Education. He previously served as counsel to Gov. George Allen. He is also the former president of the Organization of PJM States, a collective of 14 regional utility regulators.

Analysis: The world Washington built is fraying. What comes next?

By J.J. Green
August 20, 2026 | 8:57 PM

The United States is confronting a global security environment that increasingly resembles the outcome its Cold War adversaries once hoped to produce: a divided West, weakened alliances, economic exhaustion, multiple simultaneous wars and declining confidence in American leadership. That does not mean today’s crises were orchestrated according to some surviving Soviet master plan. The Soviet Union is gone, and the threats facing Washington now come from several different states with different interests. But the strategic effect is strikingly familiar. Early NATO assessments of Soviet intentions warned that Moscow sought to weaken the democratic powers, deny the West a secure European base and ultimately exhaust North America economically. Now, NATO says Russia is again trying to reconfigure the Euro-Atlantic security order through military force, sabotage, cyberattacks, coercion and disinformation. The difference is that much of the pressure now confronting the West is occurring simultaneously — and some of the damage to alliance cohesion is self-inflicted.

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