Updated: 2017-09-28

For a week after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the Trump administration declined to waive a set of shipping regulations in order to help speed food, gasoline, and other supplies to the island.

Just weeks earlier, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security waived the restrictions under the Jones Act—a 1920 law that limits shipping between U.S. coasts to U.S.–flagged vessels—in order to get aid to the victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida. Th…