LegiStorm

A policy adviser to Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) isn't horsing around at her new job.

Lauren Tavar is now the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals' director for farm-animal legislation. The ASPCA maintains a small but active in-house D.C. lobbying team.

Tavar had worked with Booker's office since 2018. Booker sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee and has introduced a number of ASPCA-approved bills.

More and more congressional staffers are openly identifying as nonbinary, LegiStorm data shows.

For over a decade, LegiStorm collected data on staffer gender without needing any option other than female or male. That changed in June 2019, when LegiStorm received its first confirmation of a nonbinary staffer using they/them pronouns.

Since then, LegiStorm has seen a steady rise in those who identify as nonbinary and now lists two dozen current and former congressional and state staffers as nonbinary. While these individuals occasionally self-report their gender to LegiStorm, the data is collected mainly on the basis of any they/them pronouns that staffers list on their social media accounts or in other biographies.

It's unclear how much of the increase is due to more nonbinary individuals being hired in political offices and how much is due to staffers feeling increasingly safe to openly identify as nonbinary at work and on social media.

In 2020, Oklahoma State Rep. Mauree Turner (D) made history as the first openly nonbinary state legislator in U.S. history. A handful of lobbyists also list they/they pronouns on social media or biographies.

No members of U.S. Congress have been openly nonbinary.

A Chinese surveillance-video manufacturer's U.S. subsidiary has enlisted a former Senate sergeant at arms to help overturn the U.S. government's ban on its products.

Drew Willison is lobbying for Hikvision USA on "prohibitions on certain video surveillance equipment in the National Defense Authorization Act and other potential legislation," according to a recent disclosure. The 2019 NDAA banned the federal government from purchasing Hikvision telecommunications and video-surveillance products.

Hikvision USA's parents company, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., is owned by CETHIK Group, a subsidiary of the Chinese-government-owned China Electronics Technology Group.

Since the 2019 NDAA ban, the federal government has come down hard on Hikvision: Near the end of his presidency, Donald Trump banned investments in the company. Last fall, Biden signed into law the bipartisan Secure Equipment Act, which banned the importation and sale of new Hikvision products. Now, for Hikvision's alleged role in Uyghur repression, the Biden administration is weighing adding the company to the U.S. Treasury's Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List - a designation "usually reserved for countries like North Korea or Iran," according to MIT Technology Review.

Willison began his Hikvision lobbying work in mid-May and is working through his new one-man shop, Elevation Association. Willison served as Senate sergeant at arms from 2014 t0 2015 and later became chief of staff to then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

This isn't Hikvision's first time hiring Washington's well connected. The company has previously shelled out for lobbying work from former Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and David Vitter (R-La.), as well as Peter Kucik, a former senior sanctions-policy adviser at the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

After leading communications for several Democratic offices, a House staffer has moved to Signal Consulting Group.

Marcus Frias joined the lobbying group from the office of Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), where he was communications director. He's now a senior manager for the bipartisan public-affairs firm. Signal brought in $4 million in federal lobbying income last year, according to LegiStorm data.

Frias has also worked as national press secretary to Rep. Maxine Waters' (D-Calif.) Financial Services Committee and communications director in Waters' personal office, as well as working as the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's digital director.

Intel Corp. has snagged a Republican staffer for its government-affairs team, just as Congress renews focus on addressing the semiconductor-chip shortage.

Pat Arlantico is now a senior manager for government affairs at Intel. Intel, which spent just under $4.5 million on federal lobbying in the last year, is the world's biggest chip maker by revenue.

Arlantico was most recently deputy chief of staff to Rep. Rogers Williams (R-Texas), vice ranking member of the House Small Business Committee, and has also worked for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Intel's PAC gave $10,000 to Williams' campaign last cycle, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Amid an ongoing chip shortage, Congress is reportedly working to pass a funding deal that would provide $52 billion for domestic production. The Senate passed a version of the funding package last summer, though progress has since stagnated. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) expressed hopes yesterday that the final bill would be passed next month.