LegiStorm

A former defense lobbyist has traded the House Armed Services Committee for a buzzworthy defense-technology startup.

Jeff Bozman is now a senior director at Anduril Industries. Anduril, which focuses on artificial intelligence and software development, raised close to $1.5 billion in its latest funding round - "one of the largest this year by a U.S. company," Crunchbase reported on Friday. The defense company disclosed spending $900,000 on its federal lobbying program in the last year.

Bozman was most recently HASC counsel working on Department of Defense acquisition policy for committee Democrats. He previously worked at Covington & Burling, where his big-name lobbying clients included BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman and Elbit Systems of America.

A House Administration Committee staffer has left the Hill for K Street.

Hannah Carr recently joined CONSILIO Group as a government-affairs associate. The lobbying firm works mainly on defense, homeland security and biotech issues.

At the House Administration Committee, Carr was a professional staff member under Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.).

Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter prompted speculation that many liberals would leave the platform. But among Congress's incoming freshman class, Democrats are more active than Republicans.

Incoming Republican members have averaged 42 tweets since Election Day, according to a LegiStorm review. Democrats have averaged 53 - 26% more.

Even excluding the four Republicans who haven't tweeted since November 9 - Reps.-elect Josh Brecheen (Okla.), Morgan Luttrell (Texas), Andy Ogles (Tenn.) and Dale Strong (Ala.) - Republicans averaged 46 tweets apiece from their campaign and other Twitter accounts.

At 300 tweets in under three weeks, Rep.-elect Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) is the freshman class's most prolific tweeter. Rep.-elect Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.) and Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) are the next highest, each with more than 150 tweets during that time.

A Senate Judiciary attorney and ex-civil rights lobbyist has moved to Meta's public-policy team amid a renewed push for Congress to regulate Big Tech.

Sonia Gil is now a public-policy director working on the executive branch. The Biden administration is reportedly pushing Congress to act on Big Tech antitrust reforms before the year's end.

Gil was most recently senior counsel to Senate Judiciary Democrats. She's also worked as a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Citizen and as an attorney to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee and the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.

It's not even Thanksgiving, and interest groups have already spent more on private congressional travel than in any election year since 2004.

Since January, members and staff have accepted 1,649 trips worth more than $5.6 million, according to a LegiStorm review of official trip disclosures. About half of those travel expenses went toward courting members, who accepted 257 trips worth almost $2.8 million.

That makes 2022 already the highest in election-year travel spending since 2004, when interest groups dropped nearly $10.4 million on member and staff travel. Privately sponsored travel is typically much lower in election years.

Congressional travel halted as the pandemic hit in March 2020 and began to rebound in 2021.

Since then, sponsors have opted to send members and staff on a smaller number of more expensive trips compared to years past. This year, Congress has accepted 1,649 trips at an average cost of $3,400 this year. In 2018, sponsors averaged $2,100 each across 2,079 trips.

That trend is even more pronounced among Democrats, who accepted half the number of trips as Republicans. Democrats' travel averaged nearly $5,000 a piece; Republicans' travel averaged $2,700.

The American Israel Education Foundation ($1.87 million), Former Members of Congress ($460,000) and the Aspen Institute ($330,000) are the year's top spenders.