The Lunch Hour with Federal Newswire

Alex Adams serves as director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. He was appointed to lead the department by Gov. Brad Little in May 2024. The department has a staff of nearly 3,000 and an annual budget of $5.5 billion.

Taylor Barkley is the Director of Public Policy for the Abundance Institute. Previous to this position he was the Director of Technology and Innovation at the Center for Growth and Opportunity. He managed the research agenda, strategy, and represented the technology and innovation portfolio. His primary research and expertise are at the intersection of culture, technology, and innovation. His writing has been featured and published in outlets including IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Scientific American and USA Today. Fox Business, Marketplace, and various talk radio and podcasts have featured him as a commentator on technology issues. He has extensive experience working with state-based technology policy projects and partners and most major federal technology policy topics.

Rick Santorum is an American politician, attorney, author, and political commentator who represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate from 1995 to 2007. He was the Senate's third-ranking Republican during the final six years of his tenure.

Timothy Massad is an American lawyer and government official who served as the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President Barack Obama. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School and a consultant on financial regulatory and fintech issues.

Thomas Hochman is a Policy Manager at the Foundation for American Innovation, where he works on regulatory and infrastructure policy. His research and writing has appeared in American Affairs, The Hill, National Review, The New Atlantis, The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, and elsewhere. He holds a B.S. in Mathematical Sciences from the University of Vermont.

The podcast episode of the Federal Newswire Lunch Hour, hosted by Andrew Langer, features an in-depth discussion on regulatory issues at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and broader implications for the administrative state. Guests include Timothy Lee, Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs at the Center for Individual Freedom, with extensive experience in labor and commercial law, and Daniel Ikenson, founder of Ikensonomics Consulting and former Director of Trade and Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, specializing in trade policy and regulatory analysis.The conversation critiques the FTC's increasingly aggressive regulatory posture under Chair Lina Khan, highlighting concerns about overreach, economic consequences, and implications for constitutional governance. Both guests advocate for reducing regulatory burdens and restoring balance between legislative and executive powers, while also examining broader themes like the misuse of administrative courts and informal rule making. The episode offers expert perspectives on fostering accountability and curbing the unchecked expansion of federal regulatory authority.

Tony Abboud is a government relations expert and litigator with 25 years experience in grassroots organizing, politics, state lobbying and the courtroom. Tony has spent the past decade defending vapor companies and companies in other heavily regulated industries against government over-reach.

Kate Hudson has served at AAU since March 2022. As Deputy Vice President and Counsel for Government Relations and Public Policy, Kate assists in managing and directing the Government Relations and Public Policy department and developing and executing strategies to advance AAU’s advocacy and public policy priorities in the federal legislative and regulatory arenas. Her portfolio includes intellectual property, technology transfer, open and public access, export controls, sexual harassment, data privacy, and copyright issues. In addition, she supports AAU’s policy and federal relations work in areas that require legal expertise, such as tax issues related to research, labor and employment, research security policy, higher education Title IX issues, and other regulatory matters important to America’s leading research universities. Kate also leads AAU’s General Counsels (GC) constituent group and the CFR Tax Task Force.  Prior to joining AAU, Kate served in the U.S. federal government as a senior attorney-advisor in the legislative and executive branches, most recently with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Joe Allen served on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN) securing passage of the Bayh-Dole Act which fostered R&D partnerships between universities and U.S. industry.  The Economist Technology Quarterly called this law “possibly the most inspired piece of legislation to be enacted in America over the past half century.” On leaving the Senate staff, Joe was Executive Director of Intellectual Property Owners, Inc. (IPO) where he worked to create the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit before going to the U.S. Department of Commerce where he became the Director of the Office of Technology Commercialization. He was instrumental in the passage of major laws allowing U.S. industry to perform joint R&D with federal laboratories. Allen’s office oversaw Executive branch implementation of the Bayh-Dole and Federal Technology Transfer Acts and related presidential policy directives. He helped negotiate intellectual property rights provisions for major international science and technology agreements.Joe then became President of the National Technology Transfer Center established by Congress to promote industry/federal laboratory R&D partnerships. He is now the Executive Director of the Bayh-Dole Coalition, a non-profit organization composed of universities, companies, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and others who are committed to celebrating and protecting the landmark law. Joe writes a monthly column for IPWatchdog on Bayh-Dole related issues.

Tristan Leavitt is widely respected for his unrivaled inside knowledge of the federal whistleblower protection process. He has over a decade of experience investigating waste, fraud, abuse, and cronyism in the federal government.Leavitt began his investigative career working on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff of Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), where he helped whistleblowers expose schemes like Operation Fast and Furious, the gunwalking scandal that armed the murderers of a U.S. Border Patrol Agent. He also served as Senator Grassley’s chief whistleblower policy advisor, leading the introduction of the first Senate resolutions recognizing National Whistleblower Appreciation Day and the establishment of the Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus.