Gas prices across US states vary by as much as $2 a gallon, reports Steve Malanga at City Journal, with state taxes and regulations playing “a significant role” in determining the “burden consumers face.” The highest prices are mainly “in high-tax, heavily regulated Democratic states”: California’s at the top, at $5.78 a gallon, followed by Nevada, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Illinois, Connecticut and New York. “At the bottom sits Kansas, at $3.81 per gallon, followed by Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and Iowa.” The costs affect a state’s “competitiveness,” but for “the average consumer, it’s becoming a question of how much pain he can bear.”

A New York Times editorial on free speech has plunged “pundits, academics and politicians . . . into a days-long freakout,” notes TK News’ Matt Taibbi. The Times’ text is totally “meh,” yet many on the left find it “monstrous” to compare “Republicans banning speech by law” and Dems doing it via “backroom deals with unaccountable tech monopolies.” The complainers think “the correct message [must be] hammered out everywhere . . . in all caps by mental superiors.” Yet the Times editorial “drives two miles an hour down the middle of the middle of the middle of the road,” so “if this is anybody’s idea of a taboo, we really have lost it.”

National Review’s Nate Hochman flags “the drastic shift in public opinion on COVID-19 precautions”: In an Axios poll, 64% “favor federal, state and local governments lifting all COVID-19 restrictions, up 20 percentage points since early February,” with Democrats showing “the largest shift in views toward the pandemic” as only 17% still see COVID-19 as a “severe health risk.” But young, college-educated progressives are “the most COVID-hawkish demographic in America,” believing COVID “presents a great risk to their health,” and mask mandates “should continue for the foreseeable future.” They just don’t see that “things are rapidly moving in the opposite direction.”

It seems Team Biden “intends to keep this war going,” warns Bloomberg Opinion’s Niall Ferguson: Keep supplying Ukraine with weapons in hopes it can provoke regime change in Russia and deter Chinese aggression. This “combines cynicism and optimism.” The cynicism: “To allow the carnage in Ukraine to continue; to sit back and watch the heroic Ukrainians ‘bleed Russia dry’; to think of the conflict as a mere sub-plot in Cold War II, a struggle in which China is our real opponent.” The optimism: To assume “that allowing the war to keep going will necessarily undermine Putin’s position; and that his humiliation in turn will serve as a deterrent to China.” Yet “prolonging the war runs the risk not just” of vast Ukrainian suffering, “but also of handing Putin something that he can plausibly present at home as victory.” Coming days well may see Russian victories in the east and in the south. In short, “the Biden administration is making a colossal mistake.”

Although Americans “are wary of actions that could lead to a war with Russia,” President Biden and NATO allies must do more to help Ukrainians push back Vladimir Putin, argues Mark Penn at The Hill. “The killing of civilians is escalating rather than receding,” so “without actual military or diplomatic intervention, the end here can only be an even greater loss of life and a crushing of the Ukrainian people.” Washington “should honor all requests” by Kyiv “for military assistance on its land and in its skies.” Biden and other Western leaders need “to put the fear in Putin that no tyrant will be allowed to unleash unchecked aggression and pay only with his MasterCard,” despite his nuclear threats. “Preserving freedom is a risky business, but it is a risk worth taking.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board