KOCH NETWORK TAKES AIM AT DEM FRONTLINERS: The Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity is launching a seven-figure ad blitz targeting vulnerable House Democrats who voted for the reconciliation bill this morning. The ad buy is part of an already extensive campaign opposing both the reconciliation bill and the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law by President Joe Biden earlier this week. According to AFP, the campaign has already resulted in more than 2.5 million letters and over 300,000 direct calls to lawmakers. — The group’s ad buys will target more than a dozen House Democrats facing tight reelection races next year, hammering the lawmakers over rising inflation. “Prices have skyrocketed,” says one ad targeting Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.). “Families feel it every day. Congresswoman Murphy just voted for the Biden Sanders plan that will make things worse. Trillions in government waste. Tell Congresswoman Murphy their vote will make life harder and more expensive.” — Similar ads will air in the districts of Reps. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Cindy Axne of Iowa, Lizzie Fletcher, Vicente Gonzalez, Filemón Vela and Henry Cuellar of Texas, Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, Abigail Spanberger and Elaine Luria of Virginia, Elissa Slotkin and Haley Stevens of Michigan, Tom O’Halleran of Arizona and Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania. The group is also targeting Rep. Conor Lamb, who is running for Senate in Pennsylvania. — “This is one of the most reckless and irresponsible bills of our lifetime,” Brent Gardner, the group’s chief government affairs officer, said in a statement. “We are committed to making sure every constituent in these districts know that their Representative put their Party ahead of what’s best for our country.” Gardner also made a direct appeal to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Manchin, crucial swing votes in the Senate. “We’re hopeful that Senators Manchin and Sinema will continue to stand up for their states, see through the gimmicks, and reject the most extreme voices on the left driving this partisan agenda,” he said, arguing the bill “would do generational damage to our country.” HOW AMAZON KILLS CONSUMER PRIVACY PROTECTIONS: Reuters is out with a lengthy investigation from Jeffrey Dastin, Chris Kirkham and Aditya Kalra on Amazon’s push to derail and gut privacy legislation in statehouses across the country, an effort spearheaded by former Obama spokesman Jay Carney. — “In recent years, Amazon.com Inc has killed or undermined privacy protections in more than three dozen bills across 25 states, as the e-commerce giant amassed a lucrative trove of personal data on millions of American consumers. Amazon executives and staffers detail these lobbying victories in confidential documents reviewed by Reuters.” — “In Virginia, the company boosted political donations tenfold over four years before persuading lawmakers this year to pass an industry-friendly privacy bill that Amazon itself drafted. In California, the company stifled proposed restrictions on the industry’s collection and sharing of consumer voice recordings gathered by tech devices. And in its home state of Washington, Amazon won so many exemptions and amendments to a bill regulating biometric data, such as voice recordings or facial scans, that the resulting 2017 law had ‘little, if any’ impact on its practices, according to an internal Amazon document.” — “Amazon’s lobbying against privacy protections aims to preserve the company’s access to detailed consumer data that has fueled its explosive online-retailing growth and provided an advantage in emerging technologies, according to the Amazon documents and former employees. The data Amazon amasses includes Alexa voice recordings; videos from home-camera systems; personal health data from fitness trackers; and data on consumers’ web-searching and buying habits from its e-commerce business.” CHAMBER TAKES AIM AT FTC’S KHAN, RECONCILIATION PROVISIONS: “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is challenging Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan, contending in a series of letters that she is overstepping the agency’s legal authority,” The Wall Street Journal’s Ryan Tracy reported this morning. — “In three letters to the FTC dated Friday, the Chamber cited potential breaches of administrative procedure that it said could be open to legal challenge. It also was set to file more than 30 requests with the FTC under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking documents that could include Ms. Khan’s personal communications and those of her staff” amounting to “what Chamber leaders described as a rare public challenge to a regulatory agency that is still in the early months of new leadership.” — “It feels to the business community that the FTC has gone to war against us, and we have to go to war back,” Suzanne Clark, the chamber’s president and CEO, told the Journal in an interview. — The Chamber followed up its letters to the agency with one to the leadership of the House and Senate committees with oversight of the FTC, protesting language in the reconciliation bill that would create a new privacy bureau within the FTC and expand the agency’s civil penalty authority. “This change would massively alter the role Congress has authorized the Commission to play as an enforcer in the market,” Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s top lobbyist, wrote. “Upending this balance would unfairly erode basic due process rights and would be ripe for abuse and misuse. Such concerns are not trivial given recent actions the Commission has taken to subvert long-standing procedures and norms.” WAXMAN STRATEGIES ADDS FORMER WAXMAN AIDE: Jacqueline Cohen has joined Waxman Strategies as a vice president in the firm’s environmental practice, where she’ll work on issues like climate change, toxics, environmental justice, waste and safe drinking water. Cohen spent the last dozen years as a staffer on the House Energy & Commerce Committee, most recently serving as chief environmental counsel. Prior to that, she served as senior counsel for the committee under former Rep. Henry Waxman, who’s now chair at the firm. | 
