Public Policy

Although I typically try to offer just one thought of the week to open the blog, this week will be a little different. I’ll briefly touch on four issues that came across my desk.

Immediately following the two-week long Easter/Passover recess, and preceding a Congressional session that will take official Washington all the way to the July 4 recess, would seem to be the perfect time to host a rooftop open house…that’s also exactly what Delta Airlines thought as they celebrated the opening of their new Government Affairs office.

Today is the last day of Passover. I know this because mine is a mixed marriage. My wife is Jewish, and I was raised Catholic. While Easter is a Christian celebration of resurrection, new beginnings, and rebirth, Passover tells the story of the Jewish people’s flight from Egypt, and their freedom from bondage. Both celebrations are steeped in tradition and history. In fact, the story of Passover begins with a simple line, “A new king rose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” Without delving too deep into the meaning of Passover, which is told in Exodus, the second book of the Old Testament, that single line portends a cautionary tale about those who fail to learn from history are the same who may one day be condemned to repeat it.

On the same day I had lunch with one of Delta Airlines’ federal lobbyists and dinner with a small group of energy analysts, which included several former Trump administration EPA officials, President Trump was indicted. The indictment and subsequent arraignment made political history—Donald Trump became the first of America’s 46 presidents to be charged with a crime and forced to surrender to authorities.

Earlier this week, my father was inducted, posthumously, into the George Washington University Hall of Fame; I accepted the award on his behalf and said a few words about his love of family, “dad jokes,” and being a professor.

Over the past two weeks, the Washington office received scholars from the TOMODACHI Sumitomo Corporation Scholarship Program. If you’re not familiar with the program, it began in 2014 to support exchange between the U.S. and Japan. More specifically, the TOMODACHI Sumitomo Corporation Scholarship Program provides assistance to high-achieving university students with financial need to enable them to study abroad for one year.

Last week, the White House released President Biden’s fiscal year 2024 budget proposal (FY 2024 budget proposal), outlining the administration’s priorities over the coming decade…

You’ve just won the award for greatest ____ in your field of all time. As you approach the stage to accept your trophy, what’s your “walk up song?”…As you may know, a walk up song is the anthem played in a baseball stadium as the player walks from the on-deck circle to home plate, getting ready to bat, or from the bullpen to the pitching mound. The idea is to create swagger, an identity for the player, and to personally connect players to fans.

Last week, we looked into generative AI and its potential to impact the lobbying industry. While I was supremely impressed by the speed and accuracy with which OpenAI’s ChatGPT could regurgitate information in the form of what one might expect from a university student answering an essay question, if you remember, the chatbot’s responses lacked imagination, did not include persuasive arguments, and provided no story-telling elements to place issues in context.

To me, the mention of “artificial intelligence” (AI) still conjures up images of Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator or Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. Yet, generative AI is already a presence on social media and in the news.