Sunday, June 25, 2023
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This week was a shorter work week because Monday was Juneteenth, the federal holiday celebrating the emancipation of the last enslaved African Americans in 1865, two full years after the emancipation proclamation was issued. Juneteenth also had to wait a long time to get its recognition, and I can’t believe it’s only been one year since it was officially made a federal holiday. To celebrate our (completely incomparable) freedom from work and the fact that we had time to cook, all the interns decided to come together and host a potluck. It was so fun, everyone’s contributions were great, and it was just nice to spend the time together.
Tuesday was also pretty relaxed for me work wise – because Monday was Juneteenth, all the hearings and markups for the house were held on Wednesday and Thursday so members would have time to come back from their districts. This meant that all the events I had to take notes on and facilitate were jammed into the end of the week. This week also marked the last of seven straight weeks of the house being in session, an unthinkably long time. The House is usually in session for three weeks at a time, giving time for members to return to their home states and for staff to prepare for future legislation, but because of everything that happened with the debt ceiling showdown, the last week in May ended up connecting the May and June sessions, which contributed to the heightened level of craziness in the past few weeks. All this to say that this blog will be the last one that mentions hearings or markups until the second week in July, so enjoy!
Tuesday after I finished work at 6 I ate a quick dinner and then met up with some of the other interns and headed over to Tonic, where there was live Jazz! It was great to sit outside with everyone who came and listen to the music and get to be with people after a day of working remotely. Tuesday night also marked the long awaited Heartstopper watch party with MJ, Jenna, Julia, and Janessa (realizing I’m the only one without a J in their first name). I love that show so much and really could rewatch it at any moment, fully recommend. We watched the first three episodes and will hopefully reconvene at a later date :)
Wednesday was our first committee event of the week: a markup on three bills having to do with giving grants for fire-fighting teams and the development of new technologies to support them, and giving NIST the opportunity to investigate infrastructure issues. There were actually no amendments on the bills because of the way they were written, and so the markup was pretty short. After that I took notes on a House Energy and Commerce Hearing on the regulation of the Federal Communications Commission, specifically looking out for any space-related content so that our Space and Aeronautics staff could use it. The FCC is apparently trying to start combining land and satellite based broadband services to end the prevalence of huge areas without service. It’s been cool to hear about how broad the impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and CHIPS and Science are: the landmark pieces of this administration’s legislation are really making a huge difference. I also spent a bunch of time on Wednesday preparing for Thursday’s hearing on Artificial Intelligence. I made the binders and attended a briefing with the CEO of HuggingFace, an open-source AI platform and this man had the most French accent you’ve ever heard. He definitely was advocating for regulation that would positively impact his company’s business model, but he seemed very committed to advocating for AI regulation overall.
The final votes for the Wednesday markup rolled over to Thursday morning, so we ran straight from that into the hearing. This meant that there was some downtime while all the members were still there during the break while we got everything sorted, and I got to chat with Representative Andrea Salinas, one of our committee members, for a bit. She’s a representative from Oregon, and it’s her first term in the House. She definitely spoke to a lot of people, both experts and constituents, about AI before coming to the hearing, which was nice to know. The hearing touched on a lot of different topics, from algorithmic bias to competition with China. As an artist who’s pretty involved with the online art community, I especially respected Ranking Member Lofgren’s questions for the witnesses about how we can ensure that AIs aren’t being trained on data stolen from artists or other personal materials. The hearing was probably the most clearly bipartisan moment I’ve seen at all from the House, even before I started working here. Members were complimenting the questions of members from the opposite party and even continuing the lines of questioning of the person before them (hearings alternate questions from Republican to Democrat). I know, like I wrote about in Week 2, that it’s theater, but it’s nice to see the Committee members working together to help create the legislation we as a country need. I just wish that our government would create legislation proactively instead of reactively!
Because of the hearing I missed the intern lunch with John Mather, but Brad is hopefully helping me set up a chance to meet him! I felt torn about missing it, but figured that since being present for the hearing is one of the most important parts of my job, it was better that I stayed. While so many things are still online after Covid, members and staff really need to be present at events in order to contribute.
Friday was another day of remote work for me, and I was working from a bus up to New York to visit some friends I hadn’t seen in a while. We made dinner together Friday night, and just hung out for most of Friday and Saturday, enjoying each other’s company. Sunday was a different story because it was New York Pride! One of the friends I was visiting works for Brad Hoylman-Sigal, an openly gay member of the New York State Senate, and we marched with him in the parade. He was the co-sponsor of the Trans Safe Haven Bill, which the governor of New York Kathy Hochul signed into law at the opening of the parade. The now-law protects the families and doctors of trans children along with their privacy and access to gender-affirming care as attacks against trans people continue to rise across the country. As we marched through the city and past historic sites like the Stonewall Inn, people watching the march kept seeing the senator and our signs and saying ‘thank you’. It was an incredible moment to witness and be a part of.
This week, with Juneteenth, the AI Hearing, and marching in NYC Pride, I thought a lot about the timescales of change. One of the big throughlines of the hearing is that our technology is only as good as the people who train it. This especially applies to AI because the algorithms so clearly take on the biases of their creators. It’s been over 150 years since the original Juneteenth, and America is still unraveling slavery’s legacy of inequality. The movement for LGBTQ+ rights has been shorter, and while it’s made great strides there’s still so much discrimination against the community. The Supreme Court upheld part of the Voting Rights Act last week, but next week they might legalize anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. I’m reminded of the Martin Luther King quote “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Here’s hoping it does.
Ruthie Vogel