From the Heritage Foundation, I'm Emily Vanderbush, and I'm Michelle Cordero, and this is Mass Ave.

It's been five months since Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico.

More than 400,000 Puerto Ricans still lack electricity.

This situation was made worse just last week when an explosion in San Juan caused power outages in 10 municipalities across the island.

Meanwhile, many still have little or no access to food supplies and drinkable water.

It's clear from the current situation that Puerto Rico doesn't just need relief, but long-term reforms to help get its infrastructure back up and running.

One area of reform that has been brought up since Hurricane Maria has been to repeal a law known as the Jones Act.

The Puerto Rican government is asking for additional federal aid to help the millions of people who are still struggling from the effects of Hurricane Maria. Now the Department of Homeland Security says the waiver for the Jones Act.

The president has authorized the Jones Act to be waived for Puerto Rico. The nearly 100-year-old

Jones Act is being debated locally. It's an amendment to modify the Jones Act.

But what exactly is the Jones Act? Emily and I sat down with Nick Lorris, Heritage's Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow

in Energy and Environmental Policy, to explain how the law might be holding Puerto Rico back from

full recovery.

Hey, Nick, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me.

I want to start out by talking about what the current situation is in Puerto Rico.

Can you explain that a little bit?

Yeah, about two-thirds to three-quarters of the population now have access to electricity,

although that dipped down about

from 75% to two-thirds as a result of an explosion that occurred. So in terms of getting reliable,

affordable power, which was a problem to Puerto Rico even before the hurricane, there's still a lot

of challenges into getting the grid up and running to the

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