With help from Daniel Lippman
HOW K STREET SEES THE SHUTDOWN: Lobbying shops across D.C. continue to field questions from clients about just how long this shutdown thing might last and how it will impact their various organizations.
— “For some clients, it’s disruptive and for others it’s a non event, so far,” Ballard Partners’ Justin Sayfie said in a text. That’s always subject to change, of course.
— “The true implications of a shutdown are determined by its length,” the Vogel Group wrote in a memo to clients last night. And while administrations typically exercise their own discretion in terms of what constitutes “essential government activity,” this White House “differentiated this year’s shutdown threat last week when the Office of Management and Budget told federal agencies to consider and prepare for mass layoffs for discretionary programs or projects in the event of a shutdown.”
— While the memo chalked OMB’s threat up to being largely a pressure tactic against Democrats, it nevertheless “complicated the understanding of operation plans for federal agencies.” And as K Street tries to puzzle out when lawmakers might be able to break their impasse, lobbyists are warning that there’s been much reason for optimism.
— “Significant disagreements — specifically over ACA extensions and presidential authority over congressionally appropriated spending — make the path to an agreement uncertain,” Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck told clients in a memo.
— Business groups, meanwhile, are hammering lawmakers on the economic ramifications of a shutdown. “When the government partially shut down from December 2018 to January 2019, analysts estimate it reduced economic output by $11 billion in the following two quarters, including $3 billion the U.S. economy never regained,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce chief policy officer Neil Bradley wrote in a letter to the Hill last night.
— The U.S. Travel Association ramped up the pressure even more today, unveiling a tracker at the top of its website estimating the economic hit to the travel industry since the shutdown began.
CHARTWELL SPLITS WITH NSO GROUP: Chartwell Strategy Group has parted ways with the embattled Israeli spyware firm NSO Group. The split includes both lobbying and comms work, Chartwell’s David Tamasi told PI.
— Chartwell began working for the NSO Group in 2022, shortly after the Biden administration placed the spyware company on a Commerce Department blacklist. The company’s products have been used by foreign governments to spy on dissidents, human rights activists, journalists and more.
— NSO Group enlisted a small lobbying army to help it fight for removal from the Commerce blacklist, including the white shoe law firms Paul Hastings, Steptoe & Johnson and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman.
— But according to disclosure filings, as of this month, NSO Group’s only remaining lobbyists are a team at Vogel Group, which reported no lobbying activity on the company’s behalf in the second quarter.
— In May, The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration turned down NSO Group’s entreaties to be removed from the Commerce blacklist. Weeks earlier, a federal court ordered NSO Group to pay almost $170 million to WhatsApp and parent company Meta in a lawsuit over the use of its products to hack WhatsApp accounts.
RAISE A GLASS: Article III Project, the conservative legal group led by Mike Davis, is feting departing DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle tonight.
— “The Article III Project and the Article III Foundation are proud to host this evening our third gathering since President Trump reclaimed the White House,” Davis said in a statement. “We will toast Chad Mizelle on his departure as the hugely impactful chief of staff at the Trump Justice Department, the imminent Senate confirmations of Trump’s Justice Department team including Stanley Woodward and Patrick Davis, and President Trump’s successful start to his judicial nominations in his second term.”
— Mizelle, an ally of White House adviser Stephen Miller, also served as acting associate attorney general, making him a top deputy to Attorney General Pam Bondi and giving him a key role in implementing Trump’s agenda. Axios reported last week that Mizelle is returning to Tampa, Florida, where his wife is a federal district judge.
— But his departure comes amid tensions among antitrust enforcers that were serious enough to elicit a demand by White House chief of staff Susie Wiles that DOJ rein in the infighting, The Free Press reported this week.
— Former DOJ antitrust official Roger Alford alleged in August that Trump’s antitrust policy had been subverted by influence peddling. According to Alford, he and another top attorney were fired after objecting to political appointees — Mizelle among them — overruling the Antitrust Division in key merger cases after lobbying by well-connected hired guns like Davis.
Happy Wednesday and welcome to PI. What’s your prognosis for the shutdown? Let Caitlin know on Signal at caitlinoprysko.17 and email her at [email protected]. Daniel is on Signal at danielbarnes.13 and email at [email protected]. Also follow us on X: @caitlinoprysko and @dnlbrns.
MEET THE NEW GUY: Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck hosted a meet and greet at its D.C. office last night with new RNC Chair Joe Gruters. Among those spotted, per a tipster: Kevin Comerer and Michael Burley of Rubin Turnbull & Associates and Will Moschella, Melissa Kuipers Blake, Jim Nicholson, Marc Lampkin, Trent Morse, Bart Reising, Greta Joynes, Brandt Anderson, Ed Royce, David Cohen, Adam Steinmetz, Leah Dempsey, Beth Beacham White, Aaron Cummings, Brian McGuire and Lauren Flynn of Brownstein.
MURTHY JOINS KIDS’ ONLINE SAFETY GROUP: “Vivek Murthy, the former U.S. surgeon general under Joe Biden, has joined the San Francisco-based nonprofit Common Sense Media in a role that aims to vault him back into the limelight on one of his signature issues: youth online safety,” per POLITICO’s Tyler Katzenberger.
PARAGON RISING: “One small think tank is driving health policy within the GOP. It has also created friction on Capitol Hill and in the White House as Republicans clash over the future of Obamacare,” POLITICO’s Benjamin Guggenheim, Robert King and Meredith Lee Hill write in a deep dive on the young but increasingly influential Paragon Health Institute.
— The think tank “was established in 2021 and has only 11 full-time staffers,” with a vast network of alumni scattered throughout Washington. Paragon’s founder, Brian Blase, “is credited with formulating many of the proposals that became the basis for nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts enacted as part of the GOP megabill.”
— “Now Blase is looking to exert his clout again, mounting a fierce campaign to convince lawmakers to let enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits expire at the end of the year. … Republicans need to figure out if they’re willing to deal — and Paragon doesn’t want them to bend at all.”
— “Though conservatives are largely complimentary of the think tank, a swath of House Republicans, including some of the conference’s most vulnerable incumbents, privately say Paragon is dead-set on notching conservative policy wins irrespective of the damage they might do to the GOP’s fragile majority in the midterms.”
A WINKLEVOSS WRINKLE: “A pair of the cryptocurrency industry’s best-known billionaires is going full MAGA. President Donald Trump is thrilled. The rest of the $4 trillion industry? Not so much,” POLITICO’s Declan Harty, Jasper Goodman and Jessica Piper report.
— “Over the past year, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss — the Facebook-famous brothers who turned an early bet on bitcoin into a crypto empire — have emerged as Trump’s fiercest allies in the digital assets world and major Republican donors.” The transformation has come with an increase in clout, as evidenced by the twins’ successful lobbying campaign against Trump’s nominee to lead the CFTC, which regulates the industry.
— “But the brothers’ outright embrace of Trump is also beginning to stoke concern within the industry, which has sought to keep its political activity bipartisan. For some, the Winklevoss’ rise within the MAGA movement is undermining that effort, threatening to make crypto toxic to Democrats. That could put the industry on shaky ground if and when Democrats take back control in Washington.”
THE NEW FRONTIER: “An ad that appeared in thousands of Facebook feeds this summer featured an altered video of the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, at a regular press briefing. In it, she appeared to say Americans could claim a $5,000 relief check on an official government site. An arrow that then appeared instead led to an advertiser called Get Covered Today,” according to The New York Times’ Steven Lee Myers.
— “Similar ads showed fabricated videos of Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts promising similar rebates that did not exist. ‘This is not a gimmick,’ the impersonation of Ms. Warren says. In fact, it was.”
— “Even so, the company behind the ads and others like it were among the top political advertisers on Facebook,” according to an analysis by the watchdog group Tech Transparency Project. “The ads are a lucrative part of Facebook’s advertising revenue that, the project’s researchers and others say, has led the company to turn a blind eye to a flood of low-quality or deceptive content, spam and in some cases outright fraud on the platform.”
BALLARD IN PARIS: Ballard Partners is setting up shop in Paris and Brussels thanks to a new strategic partnership with Forward Global. The partnership is the latest evolution of the Ballard Global Alliance launched last year, which has seen the firm team up with government affairs and consulting firms in Canada, Latin America, Italy, Japan, South Korea and the U.K.
— But in a new twist, Mike Rubino, a partner at Forward Global, will take on an additional role as a Ballard partner to help oversee the joint endeavor.
SPOTTED at a congressional briefing hosted by United Way Worldwide on Monday, per a tipster: Richard Burr, Karina Lynch and Michael Sorensen of DLA Piper; Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.); and Angela Williams, Josh Dickson, Barbara Saverino and Kelsey Mellette of United Way.
— Q Chaghtai is joining Americans for Responsible Innovation as digital director. Chaghtai previously served as head of marketing and public affairs at Legislogiq, and before that as senior marketing manager at Accountable Tech.
— Kimberly Hamm has joined Morrison Foerster’s Congressional Investigations Group as co-chair of the practice. She previously was partner and head of congressional investigations at Mayer Brown, and is a Kevin McCarthy and SEC alum.
— Danny Jativa is now director of government affairs for the Brunswick Corporation. He previously was communications director for Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.).
— Adam Rose is now deputy director of the advocacy team at Freedom of the Press Foundation. He previously was COO at Starling Lab for Data Integrity.
— Emily Balon is now media relations manager at Pacific Legal Foundation. She previously worked at the Cato Institute.
— Paul Haut will be president of the Children’s Hospital Association. He previously has worked at PRHaut Leadership.
— The Consumer Brands Association has added Laura Rich as vice president of regulatory affairs, Ayani Momin as director of state regulatory affairs, Liz Grier as director of meetings and events and Holly Riley as manager of member programs.
— Capital One has added Liam Cardon as director of federal government relations and Beth Gross as director of government affairs. Cardon most recently executive director, public policy and government affairs at Nomura Holding America and Gross most recently was director of government relations at Discover.
— Tanya Stockdale-Morineau is now membership development manager at Ned’s Club. She’s a State Department and Vital Voices alum.
— Claudia Hernandez will be national press secretary and senior writer at the AFL-CIO. She most recently was associate director of communications at the Immigration Hub.
— Daniel Kliman is joining GMF as senior vice president for global power shifts. He previously was special initiatives lead for global partnerships in the DOD’s Defense Innovation Unit.
— Michelle Villegas Tapia has joined Deliver Strategies as a principal. She previously worked on the Harris-Walz campaign and is a DNC alum.
— Richard Goldberg is joining the Foundation for Defense of Democracies as a senior adviser. Goldberg previously was a senior counselor for the White House National Energy Dominance Council.
None.
INDEMED COLLECTIVE INC POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (INDEMEDPAC)
SelectQuote Political Action Committee, LLC (SQ PAC, LLC) (PAC)
Ballard Partners: Oishii
Ballard Partners: Solonian Resources, LLC
Cornerstone Government Affairs, Inc.: Case Western Reserve University
Cornerstone Government Affairs, Inc.: The Lemoine Company, LLC
Fgs Global (US) LLC (Fka Fgh Holdings LLC): Arm Limited
Jlf Consulting Co: Droneup
Lot Sixteen LLC: North Slope Borough
Mckinnon Group, LLC: Griffon Aerospace
Mercury Public Affairs, LLC: Bayer U.S. LLC
Uptown Strategies Inc. (Fka Uptown Solutions LLC): Reform Action Fund
Venable LLP: Auradine
Winning Strategies Washington: Ekotrope
Park Government Relations, LLC: Somnology, Inc.
Spinnaker Government Relations Fka C.H. Fisher LLC: Concerned Citizens Of Montauk
