U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a full committee hearing titled “If I Could Turn Back Time: Should We Lock the Clock?” The hearing will examine the various issues around whether the country should continue “springing forward” and “falling back” each year with time.
Witnesses:
Scott Yates, Founder, Lock the Clock Movement
Jay Karen, Chief Executive Officer, National Golf Course Owners Association
Dr. Karin Johnson, Practicing Physician and Professor of Neurology at UMass Chan School of Medicine Baystate, on behalf of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine
Dr. David Harkey, President, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee
Andrew Hughes, to be Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
David Woll, to be General Counsel, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Michelle Bowman, to be Vice Chairman for Supervision, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
John Hurley, to be Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Crimes, Department of the Treasury
David Fogel, to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce for global markets and Director General of the United States and Foreign Commercial Service, Department of Commerce
Landon Heid, to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce for export administration, Department of Commerce
Andrew Hughes is the former Chief of Staff for Ben Carson at the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) and Executive Director of the American Cornerstone Institute. Hughes worked on Ben Carson’s presidential effort, and then served in a similar capacity for three months with Trump’s first presidential campaign.
John Hurley is currently the Managing Partner of Cavalry Asset Management and Managing Member of TGK Ventures. Hurley has also been a long-time Lecturer in Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), where he teaches the GSB Investment Course. From 2018-2021, Mr. Hurley served on President Trump’s Intelligence Advisory Board. He also serves on the Board of Governors of the Middle East Institute, the Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution, the Board of Trustees of the American Enterprise Institute, and the Board of Directors of America’s Frontier Fund. Hurley graduated with honors from Princeton, where he was Chairman of the Daily Princetonian, and now chairs the History Department Advisory Board. Upon graduation, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. During the First Gulf War, he served as a battalion fire direction officer for the First Cavalry Division, and was awarded the Bronze Star. After receiving his MBA from Stanford GSB, he was an analyst and portfolio manager at Fidelity Investments and Managing Partner of Bowman Capital Management before founding Cavalry in 2003.
David Fogel is currently CEO of North Country Collocation Services (NCCS), a crypto mining data center subsidiary of Coinmint in Massena, N.Y., and an Adjunct Professor in Entrepreneurship at Georgetown Law Center. Previously, Fogel was a two-time successful entrepreneur in the FinTech sector and a corporate attorney. From 2019-2021, Fogel served as Chief of Staff at The U.S. Export-Import Bank and then as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth in the U.S. State Department, where he was also nominated to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs.
Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee
William Kimmitt, of Virginia, to be Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade
Kenneth Kies, of Virginia, to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy
William Kimmitt is a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. During the first Trump administration, he served as Counselor to the United States Trade Representative, where he advised the U.S. Trade Representative on trade policy and legal matters.
Ken Kies, a tax lobbyist who has advocated for big corporations such as Microsoft and Hess, has advised Trump on his own taxes.
Preston Wells Griffith III to be Under Secretary of Energy
Dr. Dario Gil to be Under Secretary of Energy for Science
WITHDRAWN: Kathleen M. Sgamma to be Director of the Bureau of Land Management, Department of the Interior
During the first Trump term, Wells Griffith served as the Senior Advisor to the CEO of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, Senior Director for Energy and Environment on the National Security Council, as well as Acting Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the Department of Energy. Previously, he was executive director of the Mississippi Republican Party.
Gil currently chairs the National Science Board and is the director of IBM Research, and co-chairs the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. In its present form, the role of under secretary for science and innovation oversees DOE’s applied R&D programs and the Office of Science, which is the steward of 10 national labs.
Kathleen Sgamma has been the head of the Western Energy Alliance since 2006, working to protect the interests of oil and gas producers amid an international embrace of cleaner energies. Sgamma and the Western Energy Alliance have been a vocal critic of former President Joe Biden’s increased regulation of the oil and gas industry. Her nomination to helm a 10,000-person agency responsible for vast swaths of the country’s landscapes sent shockwaves through Western environmental groups. Sgamma was a contributor to the interior department section of Project 2025.
In 2009, after natural gas production caused a spike in smog in Wyoming’s Upper Green River Valley that exceeded air quality standards, Sgamma complained that proposed ozone regulations under consideration by the state “would create undue burdens and complexities for industry.” In the winter of the following year, the smog in Pinedale, Wyoming exceeded the worst air pollution in Los Angeles, and local residents were warned to stay indoors to protect their health.
Sgamma’s nomination was withdrawn at the last minute because she criticized the January 6th insurrection.
Elon Musk is destroying our democracy, and he’s using the fortune he built at Tesla to do it. We are taking nonviolent action against Musk’s illegal coup.
Dance Against DOGE will be outside the General Services Administration building, where DOGE workers are (illegally) sleeping. We thought we’d throw them a Slumber Party!
General Services Administration, 1800 F St., NW, Washington DC
We’ll be there in our PJs, with stuffed animals, as we dance the night away.
Tesla Takedown is a peaceful protest movement. We oppose violence, vandalism, and destruction of property. This protest is a lawful exercise of our First Amendment right to peaceful assembly.
Full committee hearing entitled “Reducing waste, fraud and abuse through innovation: how AI and data can improve government efficiency.”
Witnesses:
Dr. Brian J. Miller, Nonresident Fellow. American Enterprise Institute
Dr. Sterling Thomas, Chief Scientist, Government Accountability Office
Neil Chilson, Head of AI Policy, Abundance Institute
Andrew Cannarsa, Executive Director, Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency
Prior to joining GAO, Thomas was Chief Scientist at Noblis, a nonprofit research institute. He managed the institute’s applied research programs and conducted his own research projects, which included creating new methods for synthetic biology and methods for using artificial intelligence to detect sophisticated cyberattacks. Sterling also served as a principal investigator where his research was funded by the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, and other intelligence community partners.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a nominations hearing for Jared Isaacman, nominee to be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Olivia Trusty, nominee to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission, at 10:00 AM EST on Wednesday, April 9, 2025.
Nominees:
Jared Isaacman, of Pennsylvania, to be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Olivia Trusty, of Maryland, to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission
Jared Isaacman made his billions as CEO of the Shift4 payment processing firm and has flown to space twice on SpaceX missions he financed himself. He co-founded Draken International, which trains pilots for the U.S. military. Isaacman is a pal and an extreme admirer of Elon Musk.
According to a recent reporting by Ars Technica, the Trump administration is looking to slash the space agency’s science budget by as much as 50 percent, which could prove disastrous for the future of space research.
You’d think that would be top of mind for Isaacman, but his head is instead blissfully empty.
“I’m a humble nominee on the outside, hoping for a chance to contribute,” he tweeted, responding to a post that referenced the news. “I don’t know anything about those supposed cuts, but the President said he’s targeting fraud, waste & abuse w/ a scalpel — not a hatchet.”
Trusty is the policy director on the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and is a longtime aide to Sen. Roger Wicker. She was also a Verizon and Qwest lobbyist.
Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee
