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The crypto issues being litigated in federal courts are not only of critical significance to crypto developers and users, but also to Congress itself. The SEC's scorched‐​earth approach to crypto is incompatible with Congress's exclusive legislative authority, and Congress must bring it to an end.

[Note: This is the tenth and hopefully the last – at least for now; we won't promise that we won't ever write more on this topic! – in a series of essays responding to objections that have been made to enforcing Section Three of the Constitution. The first nine essays can be found here, here,…

Things are heating up on patent reform in Congress, but will it go the distance?
The post Inside Congress' Hot Patent Summer appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Das CCH wird bald wieder zum CCC. – CC-BY-SA 4.0 Hinnerk RümenapfDie Jahresendveranstaltung des CCC findet wieder physisch statt. Aber auch wer nicht analog dabei ist, kann im Livestream zuschauen. Ein Überblick, wo ihr uns auf der Bühne zu sehen bekommt - mit Gesundheitsdigitalisierung, Online-Werbeindustrie, digitaler Migrationskontrolle und vielem mehr.

Neither the House nor the Senate have fully embraced the spending limits agreed upon in the May debt limit deal, with the House seeking to spend less and the Senate seeking to spend more by abusing a budget deal loophole.

When it was founded eight years ago, few expected the House Freedom Caucus to be as influential in American politics as it turned out to be.

„Unlocked“ lautet das Motto beim diesjährigen Chaos Computer Congress. – CC-BY-SA 4.0 blinryUnter dem Motto "Unlocked" findet zwischen den Jahren der 37. Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg statt. Hier kommen die sicher unvollständigen Highlights der Redaktion. Es geht um KI, Killerroboter, Pushbacks, Link-Extremismus, spielerische Mindfucks, Chatkontrolle und das Hacken für die Zukunft.

Citizens' ability to be informed and engaged with their elected authorities requires tools that allow them to have accurate and updated information. New technologies and digitalization allow citizens to have quick, secure, and reliable access to information related to their representatives and their legislative work.  The International Republican Institute (IRI) and its Peruvian partners created […]
The post A Virtual Window to Peru's Congress appeared first on International Republican Institute.

The government of Saudi Arabia has gone to extraordinary lengths to silence its critics, including brutally murdering journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Now the Saudi monarchy is hoping to silence its most powerful critic yet: the U.S. Senate.Tuesday afternoon, fireworks flew in a Senate committee room as consultants for the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) — Boston Consulting Group, Teneo, McKinsey & Company, and M. Klein — were called to explain why they and the PIF had done remarkably little to comply with a Senate inquiry into PIF's influence efforts in the U.S. The hearing got heated almost as quickly as it began with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that was holding the hearing, exclaiming that, "It's outrageous the government of Saudi Arabia is threatening members of your companies with jail time if you provide the documents this Subcommittee has requested."The Ranking Member of the subcommittee, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) also expressed disdain for the lack of transparency afforded by the PIF. "I have no sympathy for Saudi Arabia's claims of sovereign immunity," he said. "Any foreign entity wanting to do business in the U.S. must abide by U.S. laws."Sens. Blumenthal and Johnson's ire with the witnesses stems from these firms' and PIF's stubborn refusal to comply with the subcommittee's investigation of PIF's influence activities in the U.S., most notably PIF's bid to effectively take over the international game of golf via the proposed merger of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour with the U.S.-based PGA Tour and the DP World Tour. Last Monday, the two senators sent PIF a sternly worded letter, noting that PIF has even filed legal actions against each of the PIF consultants in Saudi court seeking to prevent the firms from giving the subcommittee any information that isn't approved by the Saudi government, thus essentially trying to censor the congressional investigation. At the hearing, the witnesses expressed the chilling impact this has had, with one of the firm's representatives noting its employees could face, "as much as 20 years imprisonment as well as monetary fines" in Saudi Arabia, if they comply with the subcommittee's subpoena. Silencing critics is nothing new for a Saudi regime that jails activists at home and murders them abroad. But, in this case, it's not a single Saudi critic that finds itself under attack; it's U.S. law. As Sen. Blumenthal made clear repeatedly at the hearing and in a letter sent to his colleagues on the subcommittee last Thursday, "The PIF Consultants' refusal to comply with Congressional oversight at the behest of a foreign government presents an existential risk to U.S. law." As Blumenthal further elaborated in his letter, if these firms ignore the subcommittee's subpoenas with impunity, it could create a dangerous precedent — "that American companies can shield commercial interactions with foreign governments that are directed towards the United States from oversight simply by choosing to have their contracts governed by foreign law." At the hearing, Blumenthal made clear that this was not acceptable, adding, "We are not going to sell our legal system to the highest bidder or the biggest bully."Some of the witnesses at the hearing also faced tough questions about their firms' compliance with another foreign influence law — the Foreign Agents Registration Act. There are currently five firms registered under FARA as agents of the Saudi Public Investment fund — USSA International, RF Binder Partners, Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber, Schreck, Akin, Gump and Teneo. Notably, this list does not include the Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company, or M. Klein, whose representatives also testified at the hearing regarding work they had done for PIF. Asked to explain this, the witnesses argued they had sought outside counsel and were told that nothing they were doing required FARA registration. In that case, Blumenthal retorted, "One of the findings we're seeing from this inquiry is that FARA needs to be strengthened." While the Saudi PIF and its consultants have repeatedly tried to dismiss PIF's activities as being little more than economic investments — and thus not requiring FARA registration — there's ample evidence the kingdom's use of PIF and its larger sportswashing operations involve much more than money. PGA Tour officials, testifying before this same subcommittee last July, explained that the PIF-backed LIV Golf is "an irrational threat [to the PGA Tour] that's not concerned with a return on investment or true growth of the game." As I mentioned when I testified before the same subcommittee in September, and based on my extensive research into Saudi influence in the U.S., PIF's actions are "part of the Kingdom's much larger lobbying, public relations, and broader influence operation in the U.S." Just two weeks ago, women's tennis titans Chris Evert and Martina Navratalova raised alarms about Saudi Arabia's hosting of the Women's Tennis Association Finals given the country's human rights record. The pair questioned "whether staging a Saudi crown-jewel tournament would involve players in an act of sportswashing merely for the sake of a cash influx."What's perhaps most concerning about Saudi sportswashing and the kingdom's unprecedented attempts to stymie a congressional inquiry is that they're happening at the same time as the Biden administration is reportedly promoting a security pact with Riyadh as part of a larger agreement for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. In short, the Biden administration is considering asking U.S. troops to fight — and possibly even die — for a monarchy which, at the same time, is actively undermining U.S. law. Needless to say, this sends a deeply troubling message to America's enemies and even its so-called "friends," like Saudi Arabia, abroad: You can meddle in our domestic politics, and not only will you do so with impunity, but you can also be rewarded with U.S. military support.

The bill would grant permanent residency rights to many thousands of Ukrainians who have entered the US since 2014. But its exact scope is unclear.

In September 2021, the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen released a trove of internal Facebook documents. These documents showed, among other things, that Facebook knew that Instagram is toxic for teen girls. One slide summarizing internal company research said, "Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them…

Call for Papers for a Congress in Berlin on October 7–8, 2024. Deadline: February 18, 2024

Kamala Harris could be the first woman to ever serve as president or vice president. Why are women so underrepresented in our government?

We discuss a paper from Profs. Christopher Berry at the University of Chicago and Sarah Anzia at UC Berkeley that assesses discrimination against women in the electoral process by testing how women perform once in office.

Link to paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00512.x

Instead of eliminating Employee Retention Credit and banking the savings to reduce the deficit, members of Congress have simply redirected the money toward things donors from both parties want. Who loses out in this grand bargain? Everybody concerned about federal spending—that is, most Americans.
The post Please Congress: Make Fiscal Sanity a Priority appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Over the past five years, Congress has achieved a great deal for U.S. national security in its debate of and legislation on China, but there is a risk of overshooting a well-reasoned policy response and generating costly escalation.