Good afternoon and welcome to PI. Send tips: coprysko@politico.com. You can also follow me on Twitter: @caitlinoprysko. THEGROUP ADDS MORE WHITE HOUSE TIES: Kwabena Nsiah , who most recently served as chief of staff to former congressman and current White House director of public engagement Cedric Richmond, has joined TheGROUP as a principal, giving the firm even more cachet with the new administration. — TheGROUP, which was founded by a former political strategist on the Obama campaign, already counts as a partner Sudafi Henry, who served as President Joe Biden’s legislative affairs director when Biden was vice president, and Darrel Thompson, who was an aide to Barack Obama and Harry Reid in the Senate. — Nsiah also has close ties to the Congressional Black Caucus, previously serving as its policy director, and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, whom he worked with back when Becerra was in the House. Nsiah “brings a depth of experience and current relationships that will provide immediate value to our clients," Art Collins, TheGROUP’s managing partner, said in a statement. — The firm saw its lobbying revenues nearly double last quarter compared with the same period last year and has picked up clients since the election, including Lyft, Charter Communications, Abbott Labs and Dataminr, according to lobbying disclosures. ELECTION GROUPS MAKE PUSH FOR INFRASTRUCTURE INFUSION: “Two elections-focused nonprofits and a group of election administrators” are “asking Congress to include billions of dollars to fund ‘secure election infrastructure’ in the upcoming infrastructure bill,” POLITICO’s Zach Montellaro reports. — The Center for Tech and Civic Life, which received hundreds of millions from Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan last year for pandemic-crunched elections officials, and the Center for Secure and Modern Elections are making the case that, yes, election infrastructure is infrastructure. The groups are asking for $20 billion to improve the country’s election infrastructure, “which could be used on everything from replacing outdated voting machines, upgrading voter registration databases, buying and maintaining buildings for election officials and improving cybersecurity.” MORE ON FACEBOOK’S WORSENING POLITICAL NIGHTMARE: “Irate over Trump's latest muzzling on social media, Republicans flashed signs on Wednesday of warming to legal changes once thought off-limits for the traditionally business-friendly party, all to curtail Facebook’s conduct,” POLITICO’s Cristiano Lima notes. On the other side of the aisle, Facebook’s critics on the left “seized on the ruling Wednesday to call for more sweeping government action against the platform.” HOW TRUMP GOT A NEW CROP OF MEGADONORS OFF THE SIDELINES: ProPublica’s Isaac Arnsdorf (a PI alum) “identified 29 people and couples who increased their political contributions at least tenfold” since Donald Trump entered the 2016 campaign. — “Some of the donors appear to share the more extreme views of many Trump supporters, based on social media posts promoting falsehoods about election fraud or masks and vaccines. Whether they will deepen their involvement or step back, and whether their giving will extend to candidates beyond Trump, will have an outsized role in steering the future of the Republican Party and even American democracy.” — The new big spenders include “banking scion Timothy Mellon and his wife, Patricia” — who went from donating $305,000 to contributing more than $70 million since 2015 — “Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter and his wife, Laura; and Dallas pipeline billionaire Kelcy Warren and his wife, Amy.” Now, they all “rank among such better-known, longer-running donors as Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, professional wrestling founders Linda and Vince McMahon, and casino mogul Steve Wynn.” NEW YORK AG SAYS BROADBAND BANKROLLED MILLIONS OF PHONY NET NEUTRALITY COMMENTS: “In a new report, New York Attorney General Letitia James found that of the more than 22 million public comments the Federal Communications Commission received in 2017 regarding the repeal of net neutrality protections, a whopping 18 million were fake,” Protocol’s Issie Lapowsky reports. “Millions of those comments, the report says, were funded by the broadband industry.” — “The investigators behind the report found that nearly 80% of the comments funded by the broadband industry were collected by lead generation companies that offered consumers various rewards in exchange for their information. ‘Marketing offers varied widely, and included everything from discounted children's movies to free trials of male enhancement products,’ the report reads.” — “The broadband industry would then run additional solicitations alongside those promotions, asking consumers to join the anti-net neutrality campaign, according to the report,” which notes those solicitations were not always run. “‘Instead, they copied names and addresses they had purchased or collected months or years earlier through unrelated lead generation efforts, and passed it off as information submitted by consumers who had agreed to join the broadband industry's campaign,’ it reads.” GREEN WAVE ON K STREET: Several Hill veterans today launched a new consulting firm, Pioneer Public Affairs, aimed at capitalizing on the new emphasis on clean energy and other progressive climate priorities by the Biden administration. The new venture will be led by Joe Britton, a former chief of staff to Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), joined by Charlie Ellsworth, a former budget staffer for Majority Leader Chuck Schumer who led his reconciliation efforts; Eric Washburn, a top environmental aide to Democratic Senate leaders Tom Daschle and Harry Reid; and Jake Jackson, an energy and environment aide to former Rep. Xochitl Torres Small. — Sweta Chakraborty, the U.S. representative for “We Don’t Have Time” and founder of Adapt to Thrive; Brian Willis, a former press secretary for Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign; and Sofya Olenicheva are also part of the firm, which will advocate for new clean energy technologies on the Hill, like carbon sequestration with bio-oils. HUSCH BLACKWELL LAUNCHES PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT ARM: Husch Blackwell Strategies today launched HBS+, an affiliated public engagement firm that will work on grassroots advocacy, digital and public opinion campaigns support its traditional lobbying efforts. Meghan Cox, who was formerly a principal at Lincoln Strategy Group , will head up the new firm as its chief executive and told PI in an interview that HBS+ will work to bring major issues to the attention of voters in an effort to break through gridlock on the Hill. | 
