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TikTok names veteran government affairs executive Ziad Ojakli as its head of public policy for the Americas, replacing longtime policy lead Michael Beckerman (Sara Fischer/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/25/tiktok-public-policy-ziad-ojakli

Exclusive: TikTok hires Ziad Ojakli as new head of public policy for Americas
Ojakli will become the public face of TikTok's policy strategy as it looks to get sold and save itself from a ban.

A sheriff, a billionaire, a tinge of scandal. California governor's race packs drama, uncertainty (Michael R. Blood/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/california-governor-newsom-porter-scandal-tom-steyer-39abafa3e201d767b13f3db71c2fd0ed
http://www.memeorandum.com/251123/p20#a251123p20

What the White House is calling the
"Genesis Mission" is to speed research and scientific discovery
by analyzing massive science, engineering, energy and health care data sets in the federal government, university and private sector
with supercomputing technology.
It's an AI initiative the White House hopes will result in quicker breakthroughs in areas of research including disease therapies. 
Michael Krastios, science adviser to the president, t…

Trump signs executive order launching "Genesis" mission to expedite scientific discovery using AI
A White House official called Genesis "the largest marshaling of federal scientific resources since the Apollo program."

Trump fires another inspector general, raising fears about oversight independence (Sean Michael Newhouse/GovExec.com)
https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2025/10/trump-fires-another-inspector-general-raising-fears-about-oversight-independence/408950/
http://www.memeorandum.com/251021/p123#a251021p123

The government shutdown threatens US government cybersecurity, which is already in a weakened state due to budget cuts and layoffs. And threat actors are taking notes on the chaos.
Check out my latest CSO piece with thanks to Michael Daniel of the Cyber Threat Alliance, Max Shier at Amentum, and Jeffrey Wells of Sigma7 for their insight.
Government shutdown deepens US cyber risk, exposing networks to threat actors

Government shutdown deepens US cyber risk, exposing networks to threat actors
As Trump’s cyber spending cuts and CISA firings weaken defenses, the latest government shutdown leaves federal networks even more exposed to nation-state and criminal hackers looking to exploit thinned defenses.

A US district judge temporarily suspends the Trump administration's reduction-in-force plan to eliminate 532 jobs at USAGM, which oversees Voice of America (Michael Kunzelman/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/voice-of-america-trump-…

Judge suspends plan to cut hundreds of Voice of America jobs
A federal judge has agreed to temporarily suspend the Trump administration’s plan to eliminate hundreds of jobs at the agency that oversees Voice of America. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C., ruled Monday that the U.S. Agency for Global Media cannot implement a reduction in force eliminating 532 jobs for full-time government employees on Tuesday. Those employees represent the vast majority of its remaining staff. Voice of America is a government-funded broadcaster founde…

Responsible AI Adoption in the Public Sector: A Data-Centric Taxonomy of AI Adoption Challenges
Anastasija Nikiforova, Martin Lnenicka, Ulf Melin, David Valle-Cruz, Asif Gill, Cesar Casiano Flores, Emyana Sirait, Mariusz Luterek, Richard Michael Dreyling, Barbora Tesarova
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09634

Responsible AI Adoption in the Public Sector: A Data-Centric Taxonomy of AI Adoption Challenges
Despite Artificial Intelligence (AI) transformative potential for public sector services, decision-making, and administrative efficiency, adoption remains uneven due to complex technical, organizational, and institutional challenges. Responsible AI frameworks emphasize fairness, accountability, and transparency, aligning with principles of trustworthy AI and fair AI, yet remain largely aspirational, overlooking technical and institutional realities, especially foundational data and governance. …

Folks look at you like you’re crazy when you say we’re in the midst of the worst, most unprecedented Article I constitutional crisis in 🇺🇸 history, & then, well, here we are:
-- Mark Copelovitch
https://bsky.app/profile/mclem.org/post/3m27pjeavrs27

Michael Clemens (@mclem.org)
The US Congress created, mandated, and funded the agencies of the Executive Branch of the US government. No Liberal or Conservative president has any power, any authority, any right to amputate them at will. This lawless rampage is shredding our Constitutional order and poisoning our democracy. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

Beyond Revenue and Welfare: Counterfactual Analysis of Spectrum Auctions with Application to Canada's 3800MHz Allocation
Sara Jalili Shani, Kris Joseph, Michael B. McNally, James R. Wright
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08106 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.08106 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.08106
arXiv:2512.08106v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Spectrum auctions are the primary mechanism through which governments allocate scarce radio frequencies, with outcomes that shape competition, coverage, and innovation in telecommunications markets. While traditional models of spectrum auctions often rely on strong equilibrium assumptions, we take a more parsimonious approach by modeling bidders as myopic and straightforward: in each round, firms simply demand the bundle that maximizes their utility given current prices. Despite its simplicity, this model proves effective in predicting the outcomes of Canada's 2023 auction of 3800 MHz spectrum licenses. Using detailed round-by-round bidding data, we estimate bidders' valuations through a linear programming framework and validate that our model reproduces key features of the observed allocation and price evolution. We then use these estimated valuations to simulate a counterfactual auction under an alternative mechanism that incentivizes deployment in rural and remote regions, aligning with one of the key objectives set out in the Canadian Telecommunications Act. The results show that the proposed mechanism substantially improves population coverage in underserved areas. These findings demonstrate that a behavioral model with minimal assumptions is sufficient to generate reliable counterfactual predictions, making it a practical tool for policymakers to evaluate how alternative auction designs may influence future outcomes. In particular, our study demonstrates a method for counterfactual mechanism design, providing a framework to evaluate how alternative auction rules could advance policy goals such as equitable deployment across Canada.
toXiv_bot_toot

Robust Inference for Convex Pairwise Difference Estimators
Matias D. Cattaneo, Michael Jansson, Kenichi Nagasawa
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05991 https://a…

Robust Inference for Convex Pairwise Difference Estimators
This paper develops distribution theory and bootstrap-based inference methods for a broad class of convex pairwise difference estimators. These estimators minimize a kernel-weighted convex-in-parameter function over observation pairs that are similar in terms of certain covariates, where the similarity is governed by a localization (bandwidth) parameter. While classical results establish asymptotic normality under restrictive bandwidth conditions, we show that valid Gaussian and bootstrap-based…