On Wednesday, the House Committee on Accountability and Oversight held a subcommittee hearing on moving towards an AI-ready workforce and strengthening our economy. During the hearing, I took the opportunity to question Timi Harda, a Client Partner and Senior Executive for West Virginia IBM, and Dr. Richard Levin, the former President of Yale University and a Senior Advisor to Coursera, on the importance of workers who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs). This category of workers does not have a bachelor’s degree but have acquired valuable professional skills through other means such as apprenticeships, internships, and previous work experience. However, due to automated hiring systems, which many companies use to help screen job applicants, applications by qualified workers who do not have a four-year degree are being filtered out, even when a bachelor’s degree is irrelevant to the role.

This type of degree-based discrimination in hiring not only hurts skilled workers, but also businesses and our entire economy by preventing us from making the most of our workforce. I introduced my bipartisan Opportunity to Compete Act to end this and help ensure that Americans who have developed the skills necessary to succeed in a job don’t hit a ‘paper ceiling’ of being rejected simply because they lack a piece of paper in the form of a four-year degree. As we work to strengthen our middle class and our economy, it is critical that we expand apprenticeships and skills-based education while also ensuring that the workers benefiting from them can reach their full potential so our economy can do the same.

On Tuesday, I spoke on the House Floor about the importance of Congress not only addressing border security, but also passing emergency supplemental aid to support local governments and nonprofit organizations caring for newly arrived migrant families. These families, many of whom have been dropped off in new cities without their consent, are left without stable housing options during the dead of winter. While organizations including Catholic Charities of Chicago are making an enormous difference in helping to move these families out of police stations and into reliable housing, they cannot do it alone.

That’s why I urge Congress to pass emergency supplemental relief to help migrants like three-year-old Jose Urribarri, who is one of the many people who have been left without housing options amid freezing Chicago winter temperatures. I urge House and Senate leadership to pass emergency supplemental aid to cities to bring help and safety to the many families who need it so badly this winter.

On Saturday, Taiwan successfully held free and democratic elections despite attempted interference, coercion, and threats from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Beyond its significance as a single election, the stability of Taiwan’s democracy in the face of the machinations of the CCP is an important example for the world’s democracies as the CCP and similar totalitarian regimes continue their efforts to destabilize and weaken the free nations of the world, especially the United States. To address these issues and discuss my work on them as the Ranking Member of the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the CCP, I joined a Politico discussion panel last week with my colleague Congressman Andy Barr, Yun Fan, a legislator and member of the Taiwanese Democratic Progressive Party, and Jason Hsu, Harvard Kennedy School Fellow and a former Taiwanese legislator.

As our discussion emphasized, while the threats posed by the CCP to Taiwan are unique as a matter of its close physical proximity to the People’s Republic of China and their shared history, the CCP’s political and economic coercion against Taiwan are indicative of the threats posed by the regime to other U.S. partners and allies in the region, as well as to our own country. You can watch my full conversation with Politico by clicking here or here to read my recent article in Foreign Policy on the importance of fighting the CCP’s disinformation efforts in Taiwan and across the world.

The best way to stay up to date on these issues beyond our newsletter is through my social media accounts, which I update multiple times each day. You can follow my Twitter (X) here, my Facebook page here, my Instagram here, and my Threads here. Thank you for staying engaged in our community.