The Top Line
I feel a little like Robert Caro this week except his prose sparkled and he had a much better editor. This week we cover a bit of everything.
We look at efforts to weaken the discharge petition and let Member Moms vote. We dip our toes into continuity of Congress and reveal that the member back-pay lawsuit can go forward.
We go document diving and read what the Library of Congress had to say about what it’s doing on Congress’s behalf, and spend a fair amount of time quibbling over public access to historical CRS reports.
And we cover a legislative good idea – tracking nomination – and another that’s almost at the finish line – a journalist shield law.
This was way too much writing, but with six weeks off, you need something fun to read. As always, send me a note to let me know what you think.
Weakening the discharge petition
House Republicans are considering raising the threshold for a discharge petition, according to a POLITICO report.
What’s a discharge petition? CRS explains: “The House discharge rule, clause 2 of Rule XV, establishes a parliamentary mechanism whereby 218 Members of the House of Representatives—a majority of the chamber—can bring a bill or resolution to the floor for consideration even if the measure has not been reported by committee or is not supported by the majority party leadership.”
It’s a fairly time consuming process, but a discharge petition does in theory allow a majority of the House to work its will or at least put pressure on a committee chair or leadership to stop holding back legislation. The discharge petition was originally created in 1910 as part of the revolt against the dictatorship of Speaker Cannon, although the modern rule was created in the 1930s.
It is difficult to emphasize how centralized power was in the hands of Speaker Cannon and his two cronies who ruled the five-member Rules Committee, oversaw all appointments and patronage, and controlled pretty much everything in the chamber. That model seems to have a faint modern echo in how a handful of hardline Republicans are using the party-centric model of chamber governance to control the flow of legislation to the floor.
They’re being pretty clever about it. Hardliners are willing to bring down legislation, which gives their threats to oppose legislation some heft. They claim to do so for ideological reasons, painting those who disagree with them as RINOs, which makes defection harder because defecting members are afraid of primary challengers.
Making defection further harder is a party system. Legislation emerging from Republican party leadership already is pre-negotiated to try to buy off hardliners, although that rarely works. The result is legislation to the right of the center of the Republican party. A majority of Republicans are willing to support the bill even so. That means that defectors are in the minority of the party in a chamber that highly prioritizes party unity. Defecting from the party carries additional risk of punishment from party leaders.
Democrats are similarly disincentivized to join with Republicans for all the reasons identified above, including risking punishment for being disloyal to their party. This means it’s even harder for Republicans to defect.
While there may be a majority of Republicans who would be willing to support a less hardline policy position, a collective action problem means that it’s very hard to identify who those members might be – especially as they are afraid they have no partners.
It is only when Republican leadership interests diverge so much from the hardliners interest that you occasionally see a willingness to find common ground, whether in suspension votes or discharge petitions. But hardliners are likely to finish their takeover of the party next year and there will be little distinction between hardliners and leadership.
For now, what hardline Republicans fear most is what led to the end of Joe Cannon’s House: a bipartisan revolt where progressive Republicans and populist Democrats joined together to break Cannon’s power and allow a great opportunity for the majorities to work their will and for political minorities to have their say. This is not Republicans and Democrats joining together and becoming a party, but rather them joining together to recreate a political process that has results more in line with their policy preferences.
The overthrow of Cannon moved power from the hands of three people into the hands of the party caucus. “The caucus during [this] period was … employed to consider matters of legislative policy and to define the legislative program for the session,” per historian George Galloway. It called the shots.
The revival of the discharge petition in the 1930s initially set the threshold for discharge petitions at 145, which was increased to 218 in 1935. This was done to protect the Democratic party, which ruled the chamber through the Rules Committee. At the start of the decade, the Rules Committee had brought “almost all of the economic recovery measures of the New Deal” under closed rules restricting debate because “the Committee on Rules is the political and policy vehicle of the House of Representatives to effectuate the party program.” (See p. 179 of Galloway’s History of the House of Reps.) The discharge threshold was raised to strengthen party loyalty and protect members against pressure to sign onto discharge petitions.
Ironically, the southern caucus – an alliance of Dixiecrats and Republicans – gained control of the chamber in the latter 1930s, and their control of the Rules Committee and the higher threshold for discharge petitions undermined party control of the chamber and empowered the bipartisan racist and anti-labor coalition to run the chamber. (See chapter 4 of Rubin’s Building the Bloc.)
So why are Congressional Republicans thinking of raising the discharge petition above 218? Per POLITICO: “Enough Republicans and Democrats signed onto a bipartisan discharge petition to force a vote on the Social Security Fairness Act — a bill that eliminates two provisions that limit benefits for some Americans who also receive government pensions.” There’s a lot of behind the scenes drama, and lead Republican hardliners fear that trying to explain opposing it would be difficult. So they just want to make sure it doesn’t come up.
POLITICO also points out that hardliners were boxed in previously by the possibility of defections to bringing a Ukraine bill opposed by hardliners.
I should note that POLITICO possibly erred when it described discharge petitions as allowing centrists to move legislation. It allows majorities to move legislation. The realignment on issues such as antitrust and trade suggests that new majorities are emerging.
The discharge process is a safety release valve for when power gets lodged too narrowly. It could be used for when members are able to use their seniority to thwart the will of the majority, as was the case in civil rights; when the Speaker was able to run roughshod over the members, as was the case with Cannon; or perhaps when a narrow faction is able to force a party to take untenable policy positions, as is the case with Republicans and keeping the government open.
Letting New Moms Vote?
Another leadership discharge headache would empower new parents to vote by proxy.
As POLITICO reports, a handful of Republicans and Democrats started a discharge petition to allow lawmakers to vote by proxy for the six weeks following giving birth. Republican leadership is afraid to open the door to proxy voting after they effectively polarized a non-partisan issue into a partisan one. (I’m still annoyed by that.)
What’s more sympathetic, or family friendly, than making reasonable accommodations? Ideology and polarization may have to give way to common sense.
Where are the Rules Proposals?
Where’s the submitted testimony? I’m not usually confused when trying to find witness testimony submitted for a hearing, but I’m having a hard time for the House Rules Committee Member Day hearing on September 19th. As a general rule, House committees publish witness testimony in advance of the hearing, and it’s certainly available by the time the hearing occurs.
While I can find video from the proceedings on YouTube, there is no information on the Congress.gov hearing page, no records on docs.house.gov, and I can only find the hearing announcement and Dear Colleague on the Rules Committee website. Eventually there will be a committee report with a transcript – here’s the one from the last Congress – but I haven’t been able to find one on GovInfo.gov.
Members made written and oral statements and submitted legislative proposals. For now, I think the best summary of all that is my recap from last week.
If anyone can point me in the right direction, I’d appreciate it.
Member Pay Lawsuit
This is “breaking” news, lol: A federal district judge ruled that a lawsuit by current and former Members of Congress for back pay unconstitutionally withheld in violation of the 27th Amendment can go forward, with two caveats. First, they cannot sue for withheld retirement contributions until they bring claims before OPM and the Merit Systems Protection Board. Second, the statute of limitations allows them only to sue for relief for the last six years of underpayments.
This holding, ironically, makes me think it more likely a court would rule in their favor. All of the owed back pay amounts to somewhere around $1 Billion, based on my back of the envelope calculation. By reducing the amount of money that can be recovered, the claimants may become more sympathetic to a court making this determination.
Not only that, a favorable ruling may force Congress to stop using appropriations to prevent the automatic COLAs. What I don’t know is whether Congress would have to recalculate current member pay in light of the Court’s ruling.
Continuity of Congress
Katherine Tully McManus has an excellent look at the terrifying question of continuity of Congress and how the House of Representatives is not ready. Political leaders in both parties have failed to advance legislation to address the important continuity questions and post 9/11 legislation would not work. The ModCom held a hearing on continuity on September 18th that shed some light.
In my opinion, there’s two sets of solutions: legislative and constitutional.
Legislative solutions allow the chamber to operate in the wake of certain types of catastrophes. There’s long been the alternate Congress facility in Greenbriar, although a much better solution is to allow a fully remote Congress in an emergency, where members can Zoom in. It would require some rules changes and continuous upgrades of technology, and you’d need to make other accommodations, such as letting members use the SCIFs around the country, but it would work – at least when members cannot physically gather in one location. What it would not address is if a number of House members are incapacitated or killed.
In theory, it might be possible to hold elections quickly to find replacements, but as KTM’s reporting has shown, the states have not prepared to do this in accordance with post 9/11 laws, and I suspect in a real emergency elections would not happen or would fall apart. In addition, during the interim many decisions would need to be made, and the House might find itself either unable to operate or with a very different governing majority. There is a disappearing quorum rule in the House, where the number of members required to constitute a quorum shrinks over time in an emergency, but it’s constitutionally suspect and also – yikes.
In practice, what you need is an alternative appointment procedure, and that would require a Constitutional amendment. One proposal is to allow members to designate a temporary successor until elections are held. You could also imagine having someone capable of making an appointment, letting legislatures set rules or governors decide. I cannot imagine another Constitutional amendment passing the threshold to become law in my lifetime, but that’s what it would take. Reps. Kilmer, Wenstrup, Timmons, and Cleaver have a bipartisan amendment along these lines.
The Library of Congress
QFRs from the Librarian of Congress’s testimony before the House Administration Committee on July 10, 2024, are now publicly available, and they are 42 pages long. I’ve picked out what’s most interesting to me, but there’s a lot there.
CRS Attrition. I’m fascinated by the CRS attrition rates. In FY 2021, 36 employees (or 6% of workforce) left CRS; in FY 2022, it was 87 (14%); in FY 2023 it was 67 (12%). Two-in-five departures were due to resignation in FY22 and FY 23.
CRS Bill Summaries. Drafting bill summaries prior to their consideration on the floor continues to be a struggle. “Through April 2024, CRS’s success rate in publishing summaries prior to floor action was 77%. With competing priorities and lower staffing levels, the success rate has decreased to 56%. CRS would require additional staff to address this recommendation.” CRS also indicates it is looking into using GenAI for bill summaries.
Member Contributions to Legislation. The Library/CRS continues to work on ModCom Recommendation 120, providing a clearer accounting of member contribution to legislation. The Library points to the Clerk “making progress on the technical development and policy requirements necessary to provide the necessary data to Congress.gov.” It’s notable that section does not contain a discussion of the Text Analysis Program (TAP) used by LC/CRS that can identify when smaller bills are inserted into larger ones.
The LC elsewhere notes that TAP 2.0 was deployed in February 2024. TAP 2.0 “will enable CRS to better serve Congress by allowing further development, including by allowing the sharing of bill comparisons, and by potentially enabling CRS to expand its service with respect to providing information on related bills. CRS is currently looking to pilot TAP with select House and Senate users.”
When asked what additional resources would be necessary to provide a better picture of the legislative process, CRS said it is adding bill relationships when two bills are related or identical, and does identify when a bill is incorporated into a larger bill. Accomplishing this task requires two GS 7 Research Assistants.
What does not appear to be answered is whether the identifying of bills incorporates those bills reintroduced from prior Congress. It is unclear whether CRS is identifying all of these relationships and doing so in both directions for publication on Congress.gov.
When asked about whether the Library would work with outside stakeholders on the creation of a pilot program to test the functionality of incorporating bill text relationships, the Library’s response was that it would welcome the opportunity to meet with the committee to explore the recommendation. That sounds like bureaucratic speak for “not unless you make us,” but I’m hoping that I am misinterpreting it.
Constituent Opinions. The LC response to ModCom Rec 174 w/r/t the public providing feedback on legislation is to add a “give feedback on this bill” link, which directs users to a page where they can look up their Member and then use the contact link to visit the member webpage.
Ongoing significant technology projects include the use of USLM for all congressional products going forward, and using the Congressional Video Preservation and Access Technical Working Group to improve how congressional video is captured, preserved, and accessed. The LC is also working to better track requests from Congressional staff through a new CRM called Minerva and refreshing the CRS.gov website.
The Library of Congress Trust Fund, which has $216m in assets, is a significant topic of Q&A. It is notable that the LC Trust fund is not subject to the oversight of the Inspector General and there are no qualifications necessary to serve on the Board.
The LC and CRS Reports
There’s one more section of the QFR that I wanted to discuss, but it’s sufficiently involved that it deserved its own section, and it involves public access to historical Congressional Research Service reports. I’m going to assume that everyone understands that older reports remain valuable for current policymaking, and failing to make those reports available to the public or to congressional staff on CRS’s intranet (yes, CRS took the old reports off CRS.gov) essentially wastes the product of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and makes that work largely unfindable.
The Library of Congress makes a curious assertion in the QFR regarding efforts to bring the back catalog of CRS reports online. “The Library is in full compliance with the public release requirements and remains prohibited from making earlier reports available…. The public release mandate codified in 2 U.S.C. 166a, states that the term ‘CRS Report’ does not include products that are not available on CRS.gov as of the effective date of 2 U.S.C. 166a.”
Well yes, but 2 U.S.C. 166a(b)(6) states: “The CRS Director is encouraged to make additional CRS products that are not confidential products or services available to the Librarian of Congress for publication on the Website, and the Librarian of Congress is encouraged to publish such CRS products on the Website.” The term “CRS product” is more extensive than the term CRS report. It is “any final written work product of CRS containing research or analysis in any format that is available for general congressional access on the CRS Congressional Intranet.” It does not mean only CRS reports available as of the date of enactment of the legislation, but rather reports available on CRS’s intranet at any time. (The term CRS Report has the temporal restriction in the legislation, but the term CRS product does not.)
In addition, CRS has a long history of making its products available to the public. For example, in the 1980s and early 90s, CRS published the “CRS Review,”a digest of selected policy research and analysis. Here’s an issue from 1985. Here’s 1992.
But the real kicker is that CRS’s own analysis from 2009 cites a statutory prohibition in the appropriations bills. The reason why the prohibition was put in place in the 1950s was because Congress didn’t want to pay the mailing and printing costs of CRS reports to women’s groups. (Seriously, it’s pretty gross.) But more important for our purposes, the appropriations language has changed from that which CRS is citing. Let me cite the FY2024 Appropriations bill on this point – see page 84.
“Provided, That no part of such amount may be used to pay any salary or expense in connection with any publication, or preparation of material therefor (except the Digest of Public General Bills), to be issued by the Library of Congress unless such publication has obtained prior approval of either the Committee on House Administration of the House of Representatives or the Committee on Rules and Administration of the Senate: Provided further, That this prohibition does not apply to publication of non-confidential Congressional Research Service (CRS) products: Provided further, That a non- confidential CRS product includes any written product containing research or analysis that is currently available for general congressional access on the CRS Congressional Intranet, or that would be made available on the CRS Congressional Intranet in the normal course of business and does not include material prepared in response to Congressional requests for confidential analysis or research.”
Right, it’s a big block of text. Let me translate: the Library can’t publish publications without House Admin or Senate Rules approval. But the prohibition doesn’t apply to non-confidential CRS products. And CRS products include any written product currently available for general congressional access on CRS’s intranet.
Note, however, that the term “written product” is not limited to those currently available on the website. Rather, all those reports on the website at the time of enactment must be included, but it does not exclude others.
So, let’s recap.
(1) The statute encourages the Library/CRS to publish additional CRS products on its website beyond those available on CRS’s intranet at the time. CRS products would include historical CRS reports.
(2) CRS has a history of making some of its products directly available to the public.
(3) The Appropriations language allows the publication of non-confidential CRS reports. It defines those reports as including (but not limited to) those reports on CRS’s intranet and those that would be made available on the intranet in the normal course of business.
Did I mention that the House also included in its appropriations report language a directive for all the reports to be made publicly available? In FY 2018? Here’s what it said:
“The Committee directs the Library of Congress’s Congressional Research Service (CRS) to make available to the public, all non-confidential reports. The Committee has debated this issue for several years, and after considering debate and testimony from entities inside the legislative branch and beyond the Committee believes the publishing of CRS reports will not impede CRS’s core mission in any impactful way and is in keeping with the Committee’s priority of full transparency to the American people.”
I’m hoping that new leadership at CRS will end this pointless rearguard action. Even if CRS wishes to sustain these legal arguments and push aside requests from the relevant committees of jurisdiction to make this information publicly available, as a matter of policy this is no longer sensible. CRS reports are now routinely made publicly available. There are no longer any logical arguments for opposing making all non confidential CRS reports publicly available and there are many good arguments for doing so. The only remaining questions have to do with cost, process, and prioritization.
And, not to beat my head against the wall, if it is the Library’s position that these reports cannot be released to the public as a matter of law, why didn’t it say so at the Library of Congress Public Forum a few weeks back when this issue was specifically raised?
The PRESS Act
What’s going on with the Press Act? The bipartisan legislation that would create a federal privilege for journalists that already exists in 48 states is once again running into opposition from Sen. Cotton, whose opposition is based in part on anger over the release of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam war. The Pentagon Papers were a classified study for the Pentagon that provided a history of the Vietnam War to that point and showed the government had consistently lied about the purposes of the war and the U.S. role in that war. (Read them here.)
The leaking of that report to major newspapers, the attempt by the government to engage in prior restraint against the newspapers for publishing the documents, the prosecution of the leaker under the Espionage Act and government misconduct in surveilling him, and the publication of the papers in the Congressional Record led to a series of important Supreme Court decisions.
The legislation, sponsored by the Chair and RM of the Senate Judiciary Committee as well as Sens. Wyden and Lee, would prevent law enforcement from “secretly subpoenaing emails and phone records from reporters in order to determine their sources.” There’s a significant difference between prosecuting individuals who leak classified information and prosecuting reporters who write news articles and gather information from a variety of sources. In fact, any person can publish information that the Executive branch deems classified – the law restricts the leaker from leaking, not the publisher from publishing.
Sen. Cotton makes no such distinction. He writes: “Our laws have always made clear that journalists can be criminally liable for what they publish.” He continues: “if recent history has taught us anything, it’s that too many journalists are little more than left-wing activists who are, at best, ambivalent about America and who are cavalier about our security and the truth.” I would quote more from him, but I find the First Amendment more interesting: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” You can also read what the Supreme Court said about all this.
Should Sen. Cotton be able to derail a bill that passed the House and has strong support in the Senate? Should the White House be able to spy on the press to figure out their sources? (They do.) Should I have to write rhetorical questions about whether the bill will move in the lame duck? Join me next week: same bat time, same bat channel.
Tracking nominations
It didn’t come up at the Congress.gov Forum, but senators are pushing to create a dashboard to provide more granular tracking for the Senate’s 1,300 confirmed positions, according to Roll Call. The Improving Senate Confirmation and Vacancy Oversight Act of 2024, S 5133, would direct GAO to establish a public dashboard that lists whether a position has been filled and the status of nominations. It builds on legislation we’ve discussed before, namely the PLUM Act, and would likely mix that data with information coming from the committees themselves.
In theory, this would make the most logical sense to be hosted by the Library of Congress on Congress.gov. But I can think of several reasons, both structural (i.e. committee of jurisdiction) and operational (would Congress.gov be willing to pull in non Legislative data?) that may indicate why the legislation came out this way.
Regardless, the legislation should allow for the data to be published by GAO in such a way as to allow other websites, like Congress.gov and the Plum Reporting database, to incorporate that information.
The Foreign Relations Jam
I don’t usually follow the Foreign Relations Committee, but apparently the committee has been unable to hold a mark-up since April because RM Risch won’t agree to it unless Democrats agree to move forward with a bill sanctioning the International Criminal Court. More than 40 nominees are caught in the cross-fire. There must be more to this story.
Ethics
Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick. The Ethics Committee received an Office of Congressional Ethics Report on the Florida representative back on September 25, 2023, but a year later has not concluded its review of the referral. The House Rules require the Ethics Committee to release OCE’s report in part because Ethics historically had bottled up investigations. OCE found “substantial reason to believe that Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick made payments to a state political action committee which may have been in connection with her campaign for federal office and did not report these payments as contributions to her campaign.” Also ” there is substantial reason to believe that Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick’s congressional office received services related to franked communications and other official work from an individual who was not compensated with official funds.” And more.
Rep. Clay Higgins tweeted “Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the Western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters… but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP. All these thugs better get their mind right and their ass out of our country before January 20th.” He quote tweeted an AP article entitled “Haitian group in Springfield, Ohio, files citizen criminal charges against Trump and Vance.” Rep. Higgins has a history of dehumanizing and racist statements.
Florida man William Robert Braddock was indicted for threatening to injure or kill a competitor in the Republican primary, apparently now-Rep. Luna.
Oof. “A Congressman Had an Affair. Then He Put His Lover on the Payroll,” from the New York Times. Rep. D’Esposito is alleged to have hired his fiancee’s daughter and his affair partner. I took a quick look at the House Ethics Manual’s section on nepotism, page 282, and also House Rules XXIII(8). A member may not employ their relative, which includes: “parent, child, sibling, parent’s sibling, first cousin, sibling’s child, spouse, parent-in-law, child-in-law, sibling-in-law, stepparent, stepchild, stepsibling, half-sibling, or grand-child.”
Maybe he’s in the clear? There’s always the catch-all provision about casting disrepute on the House. Perhaps the House should amend the rules to cover girlfriends and boyfriends, affair partners, and fiancees.
Modernizing Congress Reports
The House Administration Committee released a series of progress reports on efforts to modernize Congress. They include: quarterly report 13 for standardized formats for legislative documents; quarterly report 14 for the comparative print suite; and quarter 13 report for committee votes and tools.
Odds and Ends
Who are the most notable staffers on Capitol Hill? The Hill identifies the top 25.
The USCP IG released the Independent Auditor’s Report for FY 2023 and 2022, dated December 2023, provided to the USCP for comment on December 8, 2023, and authorized for release by the USCP Board on September 22, 2024. The report’s executive summary appears to indicate a bill of health, but if you read onward, starting on page 5, it appears the purposes of the audit was limited and there are in fact significant deficiencies.
“Our FY 2023 audit identified deficiencies in USCP’s controls over property, plant, and equipment (PP&E); advances and prepayments; and information technology (IT) that represent significant deficiencies in USCP’s internal control over financial reporting. Material weaknesses or significant deficiencies may exist that have not been identified.” In addition, “we also identified other deficiencies in USCP’s internal control over financial reporting that we do not consider to be material weaknesses or significant deficiencies. Nonetheless, these deficiencies warrant USCP management’s attention.”
Don’t smoke pot and park illegally on Capitol grounds if you’re a felon. I didn’t entirely follow the chronology in the press release, but it appears the USCP has confiscated more than 20 guns this year.
Last week I didn’t have a chance to recap Congressional Hackathon 6.0, although there’s good coverage from Fedscoop and Civic Texts. I didn’t have a chance to write more this past week, either, nor flesh out the new modernization docs from House Admin, but that’s coming. Stay tuned.
AI Policy. As we reported last week, the Committee on House Administration and CAO announced a new AI policy on September 19th; see their fact sheet. The policy is not publicly available, but there’s a spate of news stories: in the Federal News Network, ExecutiveGov, and Digiphile.
Should Congress invest in itself? Ben Krauss answers the question in the affirmative in the Slow Boring newsletter. Just two quick corrections. It was Reps. Steny Hoyer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who rallied Democrats in support of the 21 percent pay increase in staff. And folks have long been pushing for a restoration of the Office of Technology Assessment, with Rep. Takano leading on that issue for a while, with recent testimony on establishing a House Office of Science and Technology. (Zach Graves and I have a series of reports, papers, and testimony on the topic, including this one.)
New GAO Restricted report: “Protected Satellite Communications: Amid Prototyping Progress, DOD Could Face Future Integration Challenges.” Contact GAO for access.
A correction: Chief Scientist Tim Persons last day at the GAO was in December 2022, not in early 2024. Sorry for any confusion.
Sen. Cardin was targeted in a sophisticated attempt to gather information involving deep fakes. From Punchbowl: “The impersonator was speaking in the voice of Kuleba, which sources said they believed was likely recreated using artificial intelligence. The notice stated that the impersonation effort had “technical sophistication and believability.””
A new Capitol ADA pick-up and drop-off zone is under construction.
Interested in learning more about the Johnny Cash statue? The AOC has more.
You guys aren’t ready for this. But your kids are gonna love it.
And we’ll end with the Pease Cactus. All we are saying, is give Pease a chance.
Jobs
Are you a technologist interested in helping the Senate Appropriations Committee develop their in-house tools? They’re hiring a technology lead who will “work closely with Senate staff and a team of engineers and designers to prototype, design, build a new modern Member request system that will streamline decision-making and unlock new opportunities for evidence-based analysis.” If I had the skills, I’d apply for the job. Read about it in the Senate Employment Bulletin: control+f for 230720.
Are you a journalist looking for a great gig covering federal employees and contractors? Tom Temin is retiring and somebody has to anchor the Federal Drive.
Are you an ethics watchdog? The House IG is looking for a senior auditor.
The Presidential Innovation Fellowship places mid-to-senior career technologists, designers, and strategists in a federal agency for a one year project as a senior advisor. Applicants should have experience in leading new technology initiatives or policy recommendations, deploying user-centered and iterative development methodologies, technical knowledge in fields including AI, data strategy, design, product, software engineering, cloud infrastructure, or digital transformation/strategy. Applications close soon on September 30, 2024.
