LegiStorm

Rep. Mac Thornberry's (R-Texas) chief of staff has taken his first job off the Hill.

Michael Seeds is now director of government affairs at Twilio, a cloud-communications group. The San Francisco company lobbies on the Communications Decency Act, privacy and artificial intelligence, among other issues.

Seeds spent the last 12 years with Thornberry, who is ranking member of the powerful House Armed Services Committee. He previously worked for another Texas Republican, retired Rep. Joe Barton.

As protests continue over police brutality toward black Americans, pay disparities between white and black congressional staffers are at a 20-year high.

Based on the latest salary records, the average white staffer will make $55,348 this year, according to LegiStorm data - 9.2 percent more than the average black staffer, who will make $50,694. That's the highest disparity since at least the year 2000, when LegiStorm's salary data begins.

Disparities are higher in the Senate than the House, with the upper chamber on track to pay white staffers 19.3 percent more than black staffers, or $59,519 versus $49,876. In the House, white staffers will make 3.8 percent more this year, a difference of $54,148 versus $52,142.

This analysis did not look at whether there are differences in pay based on the same job held by black and white staffers. That is, the differences may have occurred because white staffers have, on average, more senior jobs.

Facebook has added a new face to its D.C. team.

Ryan Daniels comes from the office of House Democratic Whip James Clyburn, where he was deputy communications director. Before that, he was a director at the Raben Group public-policy and lobbying firm and worked in comms positions for the Obama White House and the Treasury Department.

Daniels is now policy communications manager for the social-media giant, which, like much of big tech, has recently faced increased anti-trust scrutiny. Last year, Facebook disclosed that it dropped more than $16.7 million on federal lobbying, making it the tenth biggest lobbying spender of 2019, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Thirteen representatives are on pace to overspend their 2020 budgets if they keep up their spending - one by nearly 60 percent.

Rep. Jim Hagedorn (R-Minn.) dropped 39.8 percent of his office's expense allowances in the first quarter, according to LegiStorm data. The average representative spent only 19.5 percent during that time. Hagedorn's expenses include 19.0 percent of his entire annual budget already spent on printing costs and franked mail to constituents, the highest of any representative. The average member has spent 0.8 percent of their budgets on mass mailings.

If Hagedorn continues his spending spree, he will end the year having spent 159.1 percent. In the event that a member overspends, he or she is personally responsible for re-paying that money. Any unspent office funds, meanwhile, are returned to the U.S. Treasury.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the next highest spender, used up 27.7 percent of his budget in Q1, including 6.8 percent on mailings.

Other top spenders included Reps. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Anthony Brown (D-Md.), Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Steve Watkins (R-Kan.), Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) and Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), all of whom spent more than 25 percent of their budgets.

The lowest spender was Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) at 11.7 percent. However, congressional offices usually report some expenses after the year is over, with Waters reporting more than 17 percent of her 2019 expenses in 2020.

As protests break out across the country, Democrats in Congress are far more likely than their GOP counterparts to hire non-white staffers and assign them to their civil rights and law enforcement portfolios. But staffers for both parties are still disproportionately white compared to the country they represent.

Among Democrats in both chambers, over one-third staffers handling those sensitive issues are non-white, according to LegiStorm data. One in three Democratic staffers in the House and one in four in the Senate is non-white.

Only seven percent of Republican staffers are non-white in each chamber. However, minorities are assigned even more infrequently to civil rights and law enforcement issues than their overall numbers would suggest. Among Republicans, 7 percent handling those portfolios in the House and 4 percent in the Senate are non-white. 

Non-Hispanic or Latino white people make up 60 percent of the country's population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.