Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Congress has a tech problem. This fellowship wants to change that.

Maurice Turner

Maurice Turner was a 2017 fellow of TechCongress, which sends technologists and computer scientists to help the Hill understand how the world works in the 21st century.

Sara Swann/The Fulcrum

Technological expertise has always been a rare, if not seemingly nonexistent, commodity on Capitol Hill.

This legislative branch's limitations were famously underscored for the country last year, when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress (and on national TV) and several members made plain they needed a crash course in Internet 101. Among the most memorable moment was when GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah asked Zuckerberg how Facebook sustains its business since it's free to use. "Senator, we run ads," was the social media titan's understated reply.

The Zuckerberg hearing is just one example of how Congress lacks the tech proficiency it needs — a shortcoming that, in the eyes of many working to improve democracy, is hobbling the legislative branch's functionality and ability to stand up to the president in balance-of-power tussles.

There's a technology policy fellowship, though, that's working to change this.

TechCongress offers stipends for a year to mid-career professionals in the tech industry willing to take a break from their regular work and bring more technological and computer science savvy to Capitol Hill.


Travis Moore created the fellowship program in 2015 after six years as the top legislative advisor to a powerful House member, Democrat Henry Waxman of California, a time when he says he learned how desperately staffers with tech backgrounds were needed.

"Health is well-represented. Education is well-represented. Technology is not," he said. "So we set out to address this with a fellowship program."

Applications for the next class of fellows are being accepted until Sept. 3, the day after Labor Day.

This year's eight fellows are working for both Republicans and Democrats, in member offices and on the staffs of committees with tech jurisdiction:

  • Aaron Barruga — GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arizona
  • Leisel Bogan — Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia
  • Allison Hutchings — Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii
  • Eric Mill — Senate Rules Committee Democratic staff and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota
  • Emily Paul — Democratic Rep. Mark Takano of California
  • Maggi Molina — GOP Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota
  • Frank Reyes — House Homeland Security Committee Democratic staff
  • Nate Wilkins — House Energy & Commerce Committee Republican staff

The goal is to help lawmakers who have a hand in shaping technology polices — from cybersecurity and artificial intelligence to election security and weapons systems — to understand how the world of tech is reshaping society and to explain the nitty-gritty details of tech operations to the people writing legislation to regulate that world.

The fellows are also intentionally involved in oversight, because too many offices lack on-staff experts who can ask probing and technically sophisticated questions of corporate officials, government contractors and agency officials under investigation.

"You don't know what you don't know," Moore said is the situation facing too many lawmakers on oversight panels. "Without this technical expertise, it's hard to know when you're being stonewalled. In this oversight function, we find the fellows to be really effective."

As a fellow two years ago, Maurice Turner worked on cybersecurity policy on the Republican majority staff of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — an experience directly translated to his current work on election security at the nonprofit left-leaning advocacy group the Center for Democracy and Technology.

The most important change wrought by TechCongress is normalizing the idea of tech experts working in government, Turner said, which is crucial at a time when understanding some of the biggest issues before Congress requires some form of tech savvy.

But rather than rely on such outside programs bringing in a handful of experts, he said, the legislative branch needs to cultivate its own stable of talent.

"It's definitely time for Congress to recognize that there should be a more formalized role in understanding new technology issues," Turner said. "It really needs to be institutionalized."

That message appears to have been partly heard by the special House Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which voted unanimously last month to recommend resurrecting an Office of Technology Assessment to help lawmakers comprehend the fast-changing world — part of a package mainly focused on upgrading the antiquated computer systems and other technologies operating on the Hill.

Some TechCongress alumni have been hired to stay at the end of their fellowships. The bigger challenge, though, is expanding this sort of tech expertise pipeline so it can get more technologists and computer scientists working at all levels of government nationwide, Moore said.

"Tech isn't a slice of the policy making pie, it's the crust of all those issues. It's baked into every piece," he said. "Independent government requires this expertise in house."

Read More

Ingrassia Exit Highlights Rare GOP Pushback to Trump’s Personnel Picks

President Donald Trump speaks at a White House press briefing on Jan. 30, 2025.

Credit: Jonah Elkowitz/Medill News Service

Ingrassia Exit Highlights Rare GOP Pushback to Trump’s Personnel Picks

WASHINGTON — Paul Ingrassia withdrew his nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel on Tuesday night after facing Republican pushback over past controversial statements.

While Ingrassia joins a growing list of President Donald Trump’s nominees who have withdrawn from consideration, many who have aired controversial beliefs or lack requisite qualifications have still been appointed or are still in the nomination process.

Keep ReadingShow less
A Revolution in Congressional Decision-Making
low light photography of armchairs in front of desk

A Revolution in Congressional Decision-Making

The dysfunction of today’s federal government is not simply the product of political division or individual leaders; it is rooted in the internal rules of Congress itself. The Founders, in one of their few major oversights, granted Congress the authority to make its own procedural rules (Article I, Section 5) without establishing any framework for how it should operate. Over time, this blank check has produced a legislative process built to serve partisan power, not public representation.

The result is a Congress that often rewards obstruction and gridlock over compromise and action. The Founders imagined representatives closely tied to their constituents—one member for every 30,000 to 50,000 citizens. Today, that ratio has ballooned to one for every 765,000 in the House, and in the Senate, each member can represent tens of millions (e.g., California). As the population has grown, representation has become distant and impersonal, while procedural rules have tightened the grip of party leadership. Major issues can no longer reach the floor unless the majority party permits it. The link between citizens and decisions has nearly vanished.

Keep ReadingShow less
Lasting peace requires accepting Israel’s right to exist

US President Donald Trump hailed a "tremendous day for the Middle East" as he and regional leaders signed a declaration on Oct. 13, 2025, meant to cement a ceasefire in Gaza, hours after Israel and Hamas exchanged hostages and prisoners. (TNS)

Lasting peace requires accepting Israel’s right to exist

President Trump took a rhetorical victory lap in front of the Israeli parliament Monday. Ignoring his patented departures from the teleprompter, which violated all sorts of valuable norms, it was a speech Trump deserved to give. The ending of the war — even if it’s just a ceasefire — and the release of Israel’s last living hostages is, by itself, a monumental diplomatic accomplishment, and Trump deserves to take a bow.

Much of Trump’s prepared text was forward-looking, calling for a new “golden age” for the Middle East to mirror the one allegedly unfolding here in America. I’m generally skeptical about “golden ages,” here or abroad, and especially leery about any talk about “everlasting peace” in a region that has known “peace” for only a handful of years since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Keep ReadingShow less
A child looks into an empty fridge-freezer in a domestic kitchen.

The Trump administration’s suspension of the USDA’s Household Food Security Report halts decades of hunger data tracking.

Getty Images, Catherine Falls Commercial

Trump Gives Up the Fight Against Hunger

A Vanishing Measure of Hunger

Consider a hunger policy director at a state Department of Social Services studying food insecurity data across the state. For years, she has relied on the USDA’s annual Household Food Security Report to identify where hunger is rising, how many families are skipping meals, and how many children go to bed hungry. Those numbers help her target resources and advocate for stronger programs.

Now there is no new data. The survey has been “suspended for review,” officially to allow for a “methodological reassessment” and cost analysis. Critics say the timing and language suggest political motives. It is one of many federal data programs quietly dropped under a Trump executive order on so-called “nonessential statistics,” a phrase that almost parodies itself. Labeling hunger data “nonessential” is like turning off a fire alarm because it makes too much noise; it implies that acknowledging food insecurity is optional and reveals more about the administration’s priorities than reality.

Keep ReadingShow less