A subcommittee hearing entitled “America Last: How Foreign Aid Undermined U.S. Interests Around the World.” Originally titled “How Foreign Aid Lost Its Way.”
USAID distributed $44 billion to over 160 countries in FY 2023. U.S. foreign aid has significant implications for global stability. DOGE has recently lawlessly hacked USAID.
Witnesses:
Tyler O’Neil, Managing Editor, The Daily Signal
Max Primorac, Senior Research Fellow / The Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, The Heritage Foundation
Gregg Roman, Executive Director, Middle East Forum
Noam Unger (Minority Witness), Director of the Sustainable Development and Resilience Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a nominations hearing for Michael Kratsios, nominee to be Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Mark Meador, nominee to be a Federal Trade Commissioner, at 10:00 AM EST on Tuesday, February 25, 2025.
Nominees:
Michael Kratsios, of South Carolina, to be Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy
Mark Meador, of Virginia, to be a Federal Trade Commissioner
Kratsios was a Trump technology advisor and is now managing director at Scale AI, Inc., which specializes in training data for AI. He met with Elon Musk in December.
Kratsios, 38, grew up in South Carolina and graduated magna cum laude in 2008 from Princeton with a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics. He has no other degrees. While in college, he was an intern for Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). After school, he was a Wall Street analyst before working in an investment fund run by Peter Thiel.
In 2024, the Pentagon chose Scale AI to aid its testing and evaluation of A.I. models that might one day help warfighters make decisions.
Meador’s confirmation would give the FTC a Republican majority.
Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee
On Wednesday, February 26, 2025, at 10:00 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries will hold an oversight hearing titled “Evaluating the Implementation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.”
A subcommittee hearing entitled “Leading the Charge: Opportunities to Strengthen America’s Energy Reliability.”
Power demand is increasing at a rapid rate, raising questions about how the environment and the economy will be affected by this projected growth. The hearing will examine regulatory and permitting processes with respect to reliable electricity generation infrastructure.
Alex Epstein, President and Founder, Center for Industrial Progress
Mandy Gunasekara, Project 2025 EPA chapter co-author, Former advisor, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Former Chief of Staff, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, first Trump administration;
Alex Herrgott, President and CEO, The Permitting Institute, Former chief of the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council under Donald Trump
On Tuesday, February 25, 2025, at 2:00 p.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs will hold an oversight hearing titled “Federal Indian Trust Asset Management: Progress Made But Improvement Needed.”