LegiStorm

A government relations firm has snagged a longtime chief of staff from the House.

Mike Smullen has been named partner at Alignment Government Strategies. The firm's lobbying clients have included Navistar Inc., TTX Co. and AARP Inc.

Smullen has over 25 years of experience on Capitol Hill, including 13 years of experience as a chief of staff. He served as chief of staff to Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), Rep. Steve Austria (R-Ohio) and Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio). Johnson recently resigned to become president of Youngstown State University.

A House Ethics Committee attorney has answered the call, accepting a position with T-Mobile.

Janet Foster is now senior corporate counsel for T-Mobile USA Inc. Foster worked for the House Ethics Committee since April 2018. She held the position of senior investigative counsel prior to her departure.

T-Mobile has lobbied on a range of issues, including intelligence and surveillance and taxation. Foster has not filed lobbying papers or indicated that she will lobby for T-Mobile within her new position. 

After coming to a practical standstill following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, privately funded congressional travel to Israel has seen a significant upturn in 2024.

Members of Congress and their staff have taken 34 trips to Israel in the past four months, approved by 18 Republican offices and 16 Democratic offices. While not yet reaching the 159 trips taken between January and September 2023, with only one trip taken in 2023 after the start of the war, this marks a notable rise in recent travel to Israel. 

Since the start of 2024, privately funded travel to Israel has reached nearly $1 million. Privately sponsored travel to Israel surpassed $2.9 million in 2023. 

Top sponsors include the American Israel Education Foundation, U.S. Israel Education Association and J Street Education Fund Inc.

The privately funded trips consisted of educational meetings with government officials that focused on the impact of the Israel-Hamas war.

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) has three legislative assistants in his office, all of whom have advanced degrees. Two of them have two law degrees each.

Suozzi's office stands out as unusually educated. The congressman's office ranks first among all offices in the House and Senate as the most educated, based on a metric that LegiStorm has devised.

Suozzi, a lawyer himself, is followed by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.).

Rep. Mike Ezell's (R-Miss.) office ranks last for most-educated staff.

The most-educated offices list is dominated by liberals, with Democrats holding all 10 of the top positions. Meanwhile, Republican offices tend to focus more on hiring staff with military and other experience over elite college degrees.

LegiStorm ranks best-educated offices by calculating an average education score for each office's current staff. The score is based on a combination of the level of education attained and the U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rank of the institutions attended.

LegiStorm's education index uses publicly available formal education records that can be skewed by numerous factors, including geographic distribution of high-ranked schools and composition of entry-level and senior-level staff.

A Republican House staffer has landed a position at Southwest Airlines.

Rachel Black is now federal affairs director at Southwest Airlines Co. She was most recently legislative director for Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas). Black previously worked for Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) and Rep. Mayra Flores (R-Texas).

Southwest Airlines spent nearly $2 million on federal lobbying in 2023.