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NEW BUSINESS: The Tzedek Association, a Jewish organization active on criminal justice issues, has hired one of former President Donald Trump’s top liaisons to the Black community as well as one of the chief architects of his administration’s criminal justice reform bill. Nicole Frazier, Trump’s director of African-American outreach while in the White House, and Ja’Ron Smith, a deputy assistant to Trump and deputy director of the White House Office of American Innovation, began working for the group back in April, according to a newly filed disclosure. — In addition to advocating for families of the incarcerated — the Tzedek Association pushed heavily for many of the pardons and grants of clemency doled out by Trump — Frazier and Smith will work for the organization on extending the Bureau of Prisons’ elderly and compassionate release policies and expanding insurance coverage for women with infertility. — Meanwhile the payment processor Stripe has added a new outside firm to its lobbying team after splitting with the two firms it previously had on retainer at the beginning of the year. Stripe retained a group of former staffers for the House Financial Services Committee at Mindset Advocacy to lobby on a general set of issues related to its business, including small business and entrepreneurship, payments and financial regulation. MANUFACTURERS LAUNCH ANTI-REG PUSH: The National Association of Manufacturers is launching a new coalition to push back on the Biden administration’s regulatory agenda, which the trade group argues is undermining some of the president’s key legislative achievements. — “President Biden and Congress have prioritized strengthening the manufacturing sector in America through historic legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, initial permitting reform actions in the Fiscal Responsibility Act and even some energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act,” NAM’s president and CEO Jay Timmons said in a statement. — “Unfortunately, the continued onslaught of regulations is having a chilling effect on investment, curtailing our ability to hire new workers and suppressing wage growth, especially for small and medium-sized manufacturers,” he added. — The trade group cited a recent survey it conducted that found many manufacturers are spending thousands of hours each year working to comply with federal regulations. The coalition, Manufacturers for Sensible Regulations, includes NAM as well as members of its Council of Manufacturing Associations — comprised of hundreds of trade groups — and Conference of State Manufacturers Associations. DOT WATERED DOWN REPORT AFTER TRUCK LOBBY INTERVENED: ProPublica and Frontline’s Kartikay Mehrotra and A.C. Thompson have a behind the scenes look at how lobbyists for the trucking industry were able to stave off recommendations from researchers with the Transportation Department about requiring trucks in the U.S. to be equipped with a safety device called side guards. — “Over the span of at least six months, DOT officials repeatedly discussed the ongoing research with representatives of the nation’s largest trade group for trucking companies, the American Trucking Associations. And the ATA repeatedly pressured them to alter the report.” — “The industry objections resulted in a remarkable concession from the department: It allowed trucking company lobbyists to review the researchers’ preliminary report and provide comments on it. By the time of its release in 2020, the report had been dramatically rewritten, stripped of its key conclusions — including the need to federally mandate side guards — and cut down by nearly 70 pages.” — DOT denied that the report’s conclusions had been affected by any outside influence, while Dan Horvath, ATA’s vice president of safety policy, “acknowledged that the group discussed side guards with the department. ‘ATA spends a great deal of time interacting with our regulators, including soliciting updates about their activities, providing feedback on research and potential rules so we can educate our members,’” he told the outlet. K&L GATES MARKS A HALF-CENTURY: K&L Gates' lobbying shop this month marked 50 years in business, a remarkable milestone for a town known for its crushingly short attention span. “We're talking about 10 presidents, we're talking about 24 Congresses, thousands of officials, thousands of pieces of legislation, regulations — changes in political party, changes in philosophy, changes in — certainly in media and technology more than anything else,” said Manny Rouvelas, who launched the one-man law and lobbying shop as the first East Coast outpost of the law firm Preston Thorgrimson Ellis Holman & Fletcher. — The practice focused primarily on maritime policy, and Rouvelas told PI the firm still represents subsidiaries of its first-ever client, the shipping company Moore-McCormack. While Rouvelas declined to take a stab at what K&L Gates might look like in 50 more years, Karishma Page, a partner at the firm, noted that its lobbying practice is “laser-focused” on looking toward future policy fights and as well as making sure its work withstands the ever-changing political tides and influence strategies. — “What we're seeing is continued — and with more frequency — change elections,” she said in an interview. “That means in order to have policy that is future-proofed, we need to be able to make sure that we can talk to everybody and really be able to put forward compelling policies.” — Andy Wright, who oversees the firm’s congressional investigations work, added that in the meantime, the firm is working to help clients navigate the business community’s rift with Republicans, who had previously served as a bulwark against Democrats’ antagonism of Wall Street and the private sector, in what Wright called a “fundamental shift.”
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