Jerry Loeser is of counsel in the Chicago office of Winston & Strawn, and his practice focuses on banking regulation. He has extensive experience in counseling financial services clients on, among other things, bank acquisitions, privacy, financial modernization, the USA PATRIOT Act, Basel II and III, lending limits, capital, trust, affiliate transactions, and Federal Reserve, OCC, FDIC, and CFPB regulations.

Prior to working at large corporate law firms, Jerry was chief regulatory and compliance counsel for Comerica Bank, where he also served as senior vice president and deputy general counsel and as general counsel of its retail bank division. Before that, he served as chief regulatory in-house counsel at Wells Fargo & Co. Jerry began his legal career advising the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C.

View Full Profile

Contributor Information

Hans A. Von Spakovsky

Senior Legal Fellow, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom

Biography

Hans A. von Spakovsky is a leading national expert on a wide range of legal and constitutional issues, including civil rights, elections, the First Amendment, immigration, executive authority, the rule of law, and government reform.

He is the former Senior Legal Fellow and Manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

He is a former member of President Donald Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. From 2006 to 2007, von Spakovsky was a member of the Federal Election Commission. He served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2002 to 2005. Prior to entering public service, Hans von Spakovsky worked for 17 years as a government affairs consultant, in a corporate legal department, and in private practice.

He is a 1984 graduate of the Vanderbilt University School of Law and received a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981, which he attended on a National Merit Scholarship. He is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

He is the 2016 winner of the Drs. W. Glenn and Rita Ricardo Campbell Award from the Heritage Foundation and received Meritorious Service Awards from the U.S. Department of Justice in 2003, 2004, and 2005.

von Spakovsky is the coauthor of “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk” (Encounter 2012) and “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department” (HarperCollins/Broadside 2014). His 2011 series “Every Single One” at PJ Media was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and his articles have appeared in Fox News, National Review Online, and the Wall Street Journal.

View Full Profile

Contributor Information

Robert M. McDowell

Partner, Cooley

Biography

Rob McDowell advises telecommunications, media and technology clients on their most significant regulatory, legal and business matters. As a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and a highly regarded industry leader, Rob has been at the forefront of the most complex and groundbreaking issues facing telecommunications.

Mr. McDowell was first appointed to the FCC by President George W. Bush in 2006 and again by President Obama in 2009. He was unanimously confirmed both times by the US Senate. During his tenure, Mr. McDowell led efforts to expand consumer access to spectrum through his work on the two largest wireless auctions in US history at the time, played a key role in the 2009 digital television transition and led efforts to establish the first federal civil rights rule in a generation by creating a ban on racially discriminatory practices in broadcast advertising. He also worked extensively on several large and complex mergers, including Sirius/XM and Comcast/NBC-Universal.

He is an advocate for internet freedom, serving on the US delegation to the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications and exposing an international bid to regulate vital aspects of the Internet through multilateral treaty-based organizations. Mr. McDowell authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal opposing multilateral internet regulation that led to a resolution passed unanimously in the House and Senate, as well as the ultimate defeat of the international bid at a treaty negation in Dubai later that year.

Prior to the FCC, Mr. McDowell was senior vice president for CompTel, the Competitive Telecommunications Association, where he led advocacy efforts before several government agencies, the White House and Congress.

Mr. McDowell is often called upon for speaking engagements and frequently appears on TV and radio. He has written opinion pieces for many high-profile publications, including the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.

View Full Profile

Contributor Information

Margaret D. Stock

Counsel to the Firm, Cascadia Cross-Border Law

Biography

Margaret Stock focuses her practice on immigration and citizenship law. She is a nationally known expert on immigration and national security laws, and has testified regularly before Congressional committees on immigration, homeland security, and military matters. As a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Military Police, U.S. Army Reserve, Margaret has extensive experience with U.S. military issues. She has also worked as a professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and she has served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Alaska. Margaret served as a member of the American Bar Association Commission on Immigration from 2008-2012. She regularly authors articles on military-related immigration issues, and is well-versed on “parole in place” for military family members and the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (“MAVNI”) Program. Margaret authored the book Immigration Law & the Military, which was published by the American Immigration Lawyers Association in 2012.

U.S. Army War College (Masters of Strategic Studies, 2006)
Harvard Kennedy School of Government (M.P.A., 2001)
Harvard Law School (J.D., with honors, 1992)
Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges (A.B., with honors in Government, 1985)

View Full Profile

Contributor Information

Matthew J. Glavin

Biography

View Full Profile

Contributor Information

Mitch McConnell

United States Senator, Kentucky

Biography

Mitch McConnell is the Senate Majority Leader. Elected to that position unanimously by his Republican colleagues first in 2014 and again in 2016, he is only the second Kentuckian to ever serve as Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate. The first, Senator Alben Barkley, led the Democrats from 1937 to 1949.

Senator McConnell has served, again by the unanimous vote of his colleagues, as the Republican Leader since the 110th Congress. He is the longest-serving Senate Republican Leader in the history of the United States. McConnell previously served in leadership as the Majority Whip in the 108th and 109th Congresses and as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 1998 and 2000 election cycles.

McConnell has been called “the most conservative leader of either party in the history of the Senate.” He has also earned a reputation as a “master tactician” for permanently locking in critical tax relief for working families and small businesses, and putting in place the most significant spending reduction legislation in a generation.

He has received praise from numerous media outlets for his work as Senate Majority Leader, and in 2015 TIME Magazine named McConnell one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.

First elected to the Senate in 1984, McConnell is Kentucky’s longest-serving senator. He made history that year as the only Republican challenger in the country to defeat an incumbent Democrat and as the first Republican to win a statewide Kentucky race since 1968. On November 4, 2014, he was elected to a record sixth term by receiving broad support across Kentucky, winning 110 of the Commonwealth’s 120 counties.

McConnell graduated with honors from the University of Louisville College of Arts and Sciences, where he served as student body president. He also is a graduate of the University of Kentucky College of Law, where he was elected president of the Student Bar Association.

McConnell worked as an intern on Capitol Hill for Senator John Sherman Cooper before serving as chief legislative assistant to Senator Marlow Cook and as Deputy Assistant Attorney General to President Gerald Ford.

Before his election to the Senate, he served as judge-executive of Jefferson County, Kentucky, from 1978 until he commenced his Senate term on January 3, 1985.

McConnell currently serves as a senior member of the Appropriations, Agriculture and Rules Committees. He is the proud father of three daughters.

McConnell is married to Secretary Elaine L. Chao, the 18th U.S. Secretary of Transportation. Previously, Secretary Chao served for eight years as President George W. Bush’s U.S. Secretary of Labor. She is also a former president of the United Way of America and director of the Peace Corps.

View Full Profile

Speaker Information

John S. Baker

Professor Emeritus, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University

Biography

In memoriam

Dr. John Baker is Professor Emeritus of Law, and previously the Dale E. Bennett Professor of Law, at Louisiana State University Law School. He is currently Visiting Professor at Peking University School of Transnational Law (via Zoom) and has been Visiting Professor at The Center for the Constitution, Georgetown Law School (2013-2020). He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Oriel College, the University of Oxford (2012-2014) and taught at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford in 2014. Dr. Baker has also been an adjunct Fellow at the Heritage Foundation (Spring, 2008) and a Distinguished Scholar at the Catholic University of America Law School (2011-12). He has taught at Tulane Law School, George Mason Law School, Pepperdine Law School, New York Law School, Hong Kong University, and the University of Dallas, School of Management and also taught and/or lectured in 17 foreign countries. Notable among his foreign visits are the

following: Visiting Professor at the University of Lyon III (France) (1999-2011); Visiting Professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Chile (2012), as a Fulbright Specialist (2006); and a Fulbright Scholar at various universities in the Philippines. Dr. Baker received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Michigan Law School and his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Dallas. He also earned a Ph.D. in Political Thought from the University of London. Baker has taught over a dozen different subjects, mostly courses in public law. His main areas of interest are Constitutional Law (particularly federalism and separation of powers), Criminal Law, Anti-Terrorism Law, International Law, Health Care Law, Mediation, and Comparative Law.

In addition to law review articles and book chapters, Dr. Baker’s academic publications include Hall's Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (with Benson, Force and George; 5th ed. Michie, 1993); An Introduction to the Law of the United States (ed. with Levasseur; University Press of America, 1992). He has also published on Forbes.com, FoxNews.com, in The Washington Times, and a number of times in The Wall Street Journal. He argues in federal court, including two oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court. For many years, he co-taught courses for the Federalist Society on separation of powers with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In September 2016, he co-taught a Supreme Court seminar in China with Justice Samuel Alito. Following law school, he served as a law clerk in federal district court and as an assistant district attorney in New Orleans before joining LSU in 1975. While a professor, he has been as a consultant to USAID, USIA (since rolled into the State Department), the Justice Department, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, and the Office of Planning in the White House. He served on an ABA Task Force which issued the report, The Federalization of Crime (1998) and later as a consultant to the “Bi-Partisan Task Force on the Over- federalization of Crime” (2012-2014) created by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Dr. Baker was a co-founder of the first iteration (1995) of Stratfor Inc., a global intelligence agency. He co-authored its first book: The Intelligence Edge (with Friedman, Friedman and Chapman; Crown Books/Random House 1997). In 2022, he began a short, weekly video podcast available on YouTube and Rumble, The Baker Brief.

View Full Profile