With help from Benjamin Guggenheim, Megan R. Wilson and Daniel Lippman FIRST IN PI — EVERYTOWN ADDS FORMER BRADY LAWYER: Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group, Everytown for Gun Safety, has enlisted the former chief counsel for its peer gun control advocacy organization, Brady, Hailey reports. — Jonathan Lowy joined Everytown Law as special litigation advisor last month to assist with the group’s legal action against the gun industry. He left Brady in 2022 after decades with the group and has registered as an agent of the Mexican government with the Department of Justice, as part of a new group called Global Action on Gun Violence focused on gun trafficking across borders. — Eric Tirschwell, executive director for Everytown Law, said that Lowy’s hiring is part of a broader expansion of its litigation team, now up to about 25 lawyers. But the group does not have plans to merge with Lowy’s new organization, and Lowy will continue his work with GAGV. Brady, Lowy’s old employer, had expressed hesitation about diving into potential FARA work. — “There really is a growing recognition now that the gun industry plays a role in our gun violence problems, and a lot of gun violence in the U.S. could be prevented if gun companies simply chose to make and sell guns in a more responsible manner,” Lowy told PI. — But their advocacy faces an increasingly uphill fight. As Everytown moves to expand its litigation team, action on gun control in Washington has reached a standstill, amid mass shootings in Louisville, Ky., Nashville, Tenn., and elsewhere that have shed a new spotlight. In recent weeks, President Joe Biden has conceded that he had reached the “full extent of my executive authority” on guns. An increasingly conservative Supreme Court has also hindered the ambitions of gun control activists. — “With the increasingly conservative Supreme Court and view of the Second Amendment … that makes gun industry litigation even more important,” Lowy argued. Tirschwell maintained that the group has had success fighting arguments that its cases cannot go forward and the Supreme Court was unlikely to take up many of its issues. — Lowy, declining to criticize his former employer, pointed to Bloomberg’s leadership at Everytown and the growing size of its team as reasons for his move. Happy Wednesday and welcome to PI. Send tips: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on Twitter: @caitlinoprysko. KIND REGISTERS TO LOBBY: Former Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) has registered to lobby for the first time since leaving office at the beginning of this year. The 13-term congressmember, who sat on the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, joined Arnold & Porter in February as a senior policy adviser, and seems to have wasted no time picking up clients. — Kind, along with David Skillman, Sara Linder, Satya Thallam and Paul Waters, will lobby for the Employee-Owned S Corporations of America on issues related to Pillar II of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s global tax deal, according to a newly filed disclosure. Pillar II of the international agreement relates to its 15 percent global minimum tax on large multinational corporations with more than 750 million euros in revenue, but its implementation in the U.S. has been mired in opposition from Congress. — Kind is still subject to a one-year “cooling off” period that bars him from lobbying his former colleagues in Congress. But he’s free to lobby the Biden administration right away, and is arguing to Treasury that some of the language in the OECD tax deal “could inadvertently … capture some of the ESOP companies operating overseas,” the former congressman told PI. — Those businesses, which allow employee-owners to avoid paying taxes on their profits until they leave, could be double taxed under the OECD deal as-is, he argued. Arnold & Porter is also pressing the ESCA’s case with OECD itself, Kind said, contending that the ESOP model has an ally in White House economic aide Jared Bernstein and that the matter could be solved with minimal tweaks. — The minimum tax issue would impact a relatively small number of companies, so “the overall impact isn’t that large,” Kind argued. “But nonetheless, it’s a serious issue for these multinational ESOPs operating and creating jobs overseas.” — Kind isn’t the first of the more than a dozen lawmakers who’ve landed on K Street after leaving office earlier this year already registered to lobby. Former Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), who joined K&L Gates at the beginning of the year, began lobbying in March for Pittsburgh-based real estate management company Walnut Capital Management, disclosures show. IN MEMORIAM: “Richard Levick, a prominent Washington crisis communication consultant whose eponymous firm boasts of ‘fixing the impossible’ for foreign governments, companies and high-profile personalities threatened by lawsuits or other calamities, died April 11 at a hospice center in Bethesda, Md.,” The Washington Post’s Michael S. Rosenwald reports. He was 65. — “The cause was cancer, said Phil Elwood, a spokesman for his firm. … Levick Strategic Communications specializes in generating media coverage that casts troubled clients in a more favorable light — preparing executives for interviews, urging reporters to pursue more sympathetic angles and spreading complimentary facts through news releases and social media.” — “Billing at rates of $75,000 a month and higher, Mr. Levick’s firm has represented oil companies following catastrophic spills, the insurance company AIG during its collapse in 2008, foreign governments including those of Dubai and Qatar, and the Catholic Church during the clergy abuse scandal.” — “Mr. Levick’s work took him around the world, placing him alongside chief executives and heads of state in sometimes dangerous environments requiring heavy security. This was a more thrilling and meaningful side of public relations, he said, than shilling for shaving cream or other consumer products.” DRUG INDUSTRY SIGNS AMICUS IN MIFEPRISTONE SUIT: The Biotechnology Innovation Organization signed on to a brief that pushes back against a recent Texas federal court decision to rescind the regulatory approval of the nation’s most commonly used abortion pill, which they argue could have widespread implications for drugs unrelated to abortion or reproductive health, Megan reports. — The amicus brief, which was filed on Tuesday evening, attracted signatures from the biotech lobbying group as well as dozens of industry executives and investors and comes on the heels of the pivotal ruling to suspend the FDA approval of mifepristone — the drug that stops a pregnancy from progressing — that received approval from regulators more than two decades ago. — The brief lambasts the judge’s decision, arguing that “Congress intended the FDA, not the courts, to serve as the expert arbiter of the safety and effectiveness of drugs” and the agency’s decisions “should not be second-guessed by courts that lack similar expertise.” — “If allowed to take effect, the district court’s decision will result in a seismic shift in the clinical development and drug approval processes, erecting unnecessary and unscientific barriers to the approval of lifesaving medicines, chilling drug development and investment, threatening patient access, and destabilizing the pharmaceutical industry,” the brief reads. — BIO said in a statement that the decision “would set a dangerous precedent for undermining the FDA, has consequences that extend well beyond the single drug,” echoing concerns from other experts. — The drug industry’s other major trade group, PhRMA, didn’t sign on to the amicus brief but echoed those concerns in a blog post today. “At a time when medical innovation has never been more promising, it is vital we have a legal and policy environment that fosters the development of new treatments and cures and protects patients’ access to the medicines they need. We will continue to explore all policy and legal options to ensure the FDA’s approval authority is protected,” wrote Jim Stansel, who leads PhRMA’s legal and science and regulatory advocacy teams. ANNALS OF POLITICAL LAW: Democratic super lawyer Marc Elias has parted ways with the DNC after more than a decade, Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan and Heather Caygle report. “Elias has represented the DNC since 2009. His firm, the Elias Law Group, represents all of the major Democratic entities in Washington. Elias will continue to work for the DCCC, DSCC, DAGA and DLCC. And Elias counts a slew of senators and members as clients.” — Elias, who spun off from Perkins Coie several years ago to launch his firm, runs what he calls the “Democracy Docket,” which tracks and challenges voting rights and election laws nationwide. His firm “has pulled in roughly $100,000 this year already from the DNC, according to FEC filings,” and received nearly $2 million from the DNC last cycle. MITCHELL STRIKES OUT ON HER OWN: Democratic strategist Molly Mitchell has left Bully Pulpit Interactive to focus on her own PR firm, Mitchell Media. The firm will specialize in political and startup clients, a practice area Mitchell told PI she first “fell in love with” while doing PR for Axios when it was first getting off the ground. — After leaving Axios, Mitchell ran media affairs for the DCCC during the 2018 midterms, “and I realized there are so many similarities between successful campaigns and startups,” she said in an email. “You need to build an authentic story that adds value and reach your key audiences — all in an extremely quick timeframe.”
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