Chevron CEO, lawmakers address rising gas prices, Spirit Airlines collapse on CBS

Gasoline at $4.39 a gallon and Spirit Airlines running out of cash set a stark backdrop for Sunday’s "Face the Nation," where Chevron CEO Mike Wirth, Rep. Jason Crow and Sen. Raphael Warnock each pointed to a different fault line in the country’s political agenda.

The CBS News program aired at 10:30 a.m. ET and streamed at 12:30 p.m. ET on CBSNews.com and Paramount+, with Kevin Hassett and Neel Kashkari also on the guest list. But the clearest through line came from the collision of consumer pain and national security, as oil prices briefly topped $126 a barrel and the average U.S. gas price climbed to $4.39 on May 1, up 9 cents from the day before and 34 cents from a week and month earlier.

Wirth’s central warning was that the world energy system has become less flexible at the very moment demand remains enormous. He said the global economy consumes about 100 million barrels of oil a day and that roughly 20% of that supply moves through the Strait of Hormuz. When disruptions hit that chokepoint, he said, supply comes out of the system and prices and volatility move higher. His message was less about short-term headlines than about a structural vulnerability that keeps showing up at the pump.

Crow, speaking from Sedona, Arizona, where he was attending the McCain Institute Forum, turned the conversation toward foreign policy and the legal limits on presidential power. He said the late-Friday decision by Secretary Hegseth and President Trump to pull a U.S. brigade from Germany was not just a policy preference but implicated bipartisan law that sets conditions for moving U.S. troops around Europe. Crow said Congress was checking whether the move was driven by Trump’s anger over a comment from the German chancellor, a dispute that raises questions about both oversight and alliance discipline.

Warnock took the program to the courts and the ballot box. He focused on the Supreme Court’s 6-3 April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which struck down Louisiana’s congressional map and narrowed the application of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The map had created a second majority-Black district, but the conservative majority said compliance with Section 2 could not justify the use of race in redrawing district lines. Warnock called the ruling a "massive and devastating blow," and said its impact would be felt most sharply by people of color in the South.

Taken together, the three interviews traced the fights that are likely to dominate the next stretch of the year: household costs driven by energy insecurity, a presidency testing the limits of military authority abroad, and a voting rights battle that could reshape redistricting ahead of the 2026 midterms. Spirit’s cash crunch, crude above $126 and the court’s Louisiana ruling all pointed to the same reality: economic stress, institutional strain and political power are moving together.