Squire Patton Boggs signs Boeing, IFA hires Ice Miller

By Caitlin Oprysko

Presented by the Merchants Payments Coalition

With Daniel Lippman

NEW BUSINESS: Here’s a quick round up of new lobbying registrations that have caught our eye this week: Boeing has brought on a team at Squire Patton Boggs that includes former House Transportation Chair Bill Shuster and fellow former Rep. Jack Kingston to lobby on the FAA reauthorization, National Defense Authorization Act and appropriations.

— Crypto-focused venture capital firm Paradigm has retained Squire as well, bringing on a team of eight lobbyists, including former Congressional Black Caucus Executive Director Caren Street and former John Boehner aides Tommy Andrews, David Stewart and Dave Schnittger, to lobby on digital assets policy.

— Meanwhile the ​International Franchise Association has hired Indianapolis-based Ice Miller LLP as the trade group fights to overturn a new Biden administration joint employer rule and awaits new franchising regulations from the FTC. The firm will lobby Congress and executive branch agencies including the NLRB and FTC and provide legal advice on labor and franchising issues, according to a filing. Among those working on the account are former House Financial Services aide Jarrod Loadholt and John Pence, the nephew of former Vice President Mike Pence.

— And cloud sharing service Dropbox has picked up Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld as its second outside lobbying firm. Former Chuck Schumer staffer Reggie Babin and former Obama White House aide Ed Pagano will work on the account along with three others to lobby on intermediary liability for online platforms, content moderation and consumer privacy. Dropbox also retains Franklin Square Group.

EV LOBBYIST LAUNCHES A PAC: One of the top operatives involved in the push to hasten the transition to electric vehicles has launched a new PAC to help provide air cover for political candidates in favor of doing the same.

— “There are folks that you know, are desperately fighting to, you know, keep us in a carbon-intensive transportation sector, and those large oil and gas companies have got decades of experience on both political giving” and other forms of advocacy, said Joe Britton, who runs the environmental lobbying firm Pioneer Public Affairs. “We realized that we needed to also be on the playing field.”

— Britton was the founding executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association and will lead the new EV Battery PAC’s efforts to avoid ceding the political airwaves to EV critics by raising money from small donors. The committee is a hybrid PAC, meaning that it has separate accounts for donating to campaigns directly and for functioning like a super PAC.

— “We've got a stack of public interest benefits that electric vehicles provide, and if we're not there to present the other side of … those fear-driven attacks, then they're kind of taken for granted as being established or a norm,” Britton argued. And while there are plenty of advocacy groups doing that work, he added, “what I think was missing was our ability to have a political role, where we can actually go and help those candidates who are willing to stand up and set the record straight and fight on behalf of emissions reduction.”

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to PI. Send lobbying tips: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: @caitlinoprysko.

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A message from the Merchants Payments Coalition:

Big banks and credit card companies are gouging American consumers by charging them the highest swipe fees in the industrialized world – seven times what Europeans are paying and twice as much as in Canada. Wall Street’s swipe fees cost American consumers and small businesses $160 billion each year, and these hidden fees have increased by more than 50% since 2020. The Credit Card Competition Act would help bring swipe fees under control. Learn more: https://merchantspaymentscoalition.com/

BIO TAPS NEW CEO: “The Biotechnology Innovation Organization has chosen biotech executive John Crowley to helm the industry group and lead its 1,000 members, succeeding interim CEO Rachel King on March 4,” POLITICO’s Megan Wilson reports.

— “Crowley is the founder of Amicus Therapeutics, a company focused on treatments and therapies for rare diseases. His resume also includes serving as a Navy intelligence officer and he was once a Republican favorite to challenge the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.).”

— “BIO has been without a permanent CEO since last October when Michelle McMurry-Heath stepped down after clashes with its board. The prominent biotech trade group has spent $6.8 million on lobbying from January through September, according to disclosures,” championing an effort to make “tweaks to drug policies in the Inflation Reduction Act, including exempting medications that treat one or more rare diseases from Medicare drug price negotiations. Lawmakers recently introduced a bipartisan bill to make the fix, known as the ORPHAN Cures Act.”

JEWISH ADVOCACY GROUPS LAUNCH RAPID RESPONSE OPERATION: Some of the most prominent Jewish advocacy groups in the country are launching a new coordinated effort to counter what they see as misinformation about Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas. The 10/7 Project is named for the date of the attack by Hamas and is being led by the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

— The coalition will feature an “aggressive” rapid response effort “to combat misinformation and inaccurate reporting about the Israel-Hamas conflict and continue shining a light on the victims and hostages” of the Oct. 7 attacks, the Jewish Federations’ Eric Fingerhut said in a statement. That effort will also include a daily newsletter and a media campaign that will seek to elevate reporting the groups view as accurate and call out coverage of the war that they see as biased.

— A bipartisan group of public affairs firms will support the effort in order to give the coalition “eyes and ears everywhere,” a spokesperson affiliated with the project told PI: On the left, it has SKDK, the Democratic firm co-founded by President Joe Biden adviser Anita Dunn, and CKR Solutions, co-founded by former Hillary Clinton aide Philippe Reines, and on the right, it has GOP consultancy OnMessage. Josh Isay, SKDK’s former chief executive, will be executive director of the 10/7 Project.

TWO ROADS DIVERGED: “Tech leaders have been vocal proponents of the need to regulate artificial intelligence, but they’re also lobbying hard to make sure the new rules work in their favor. That’s not to say they all want the same thing,” The Associated Press’ Matt O’Brien reports.

— “Facebook parent Meta and IBM on Tuesday launched a new group called the AI Alliance that’s advocating for an ‘open science’ approach to AI development that puts them at odds with rivals Google, Microsoft and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. These two diverging camps — the open and the closed — disagree about whether to build AI in a way that makes the underlying technology widely accessible. Safety is at the heart of the debate, but so is who gets to profit from AI’s advances.”

— “The AI Alliance — led by IBM and Meta and including Dell, Sony, chipmakers AMD and Intel and several universities and AI startups — is ‘coming together to articulate, simply put, that the future of AI is going to be built fundamentally on top of the open scientific exchange of ideas and on open innovation, including open source and open technologies,’” IBM executive Darío Gil told the AP.

— Critics of the idea point to the threat of an AI system that eventually becomes so powerful that it would be dangerous for it to be accessible to the public, especially without regulatory guardrails, an argument that others dismiss as fearmongering.

ANTITRUST GROUPS PUSH FOR A STRONGER HAND ON AI: A coalition of tech and competition watchdog groups wants the Biden administration to do more when it comes to preventing the usual tech giants from extending their dominance and influence to the AI sector amid the global scramble to stand up a regulatory framework.

— “While we certainly welcome the Administration’s recent executive order on AI, we are concerned that the EO does not sufficiently address the competition concerns posed by these technologies,” the Tech Oversight Project, American Economic Liberties Project, Accountable Tech, Demand Progress, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and more said in a letter Monday to National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard. 

— Going forward, the groups added, “we urge you to issue further policy measures aimed at preventing AI from being wielded as a tool of monopolists.” From tech companies’ own AI ventures like Google’s Bard chatbot and investments in AI startups — like Microsoft’s minority stake in OpenAI — the groups called on the administration to issue additional guidance on competition in the AI space and to channel more investment toward public infrastructure and open source software or the use of other tools.

— “Though many initiatives included in the EO are laudable, we believe that it is critical for the Administration to combat the harms posed by AI by taking on the monopolists seeking to leverage these harms for their own gain,” the groups argued. “Time and time again, Big Tech has shown that it will fight even modest efforts to minimize harms caused by their dominance.”

AS WE WERE SAYING: “Google wants to make your cell phone a ‘doctor in your pocket’ that relies on the company’s artificial intelligence. But first, the tech giant will need to convince skeptical lawmakers and the Biden administration that its health AI isn’t a risk to patient privacy and safety — or a threat to its smaller competitors,” POLITICO’s Ruth Reader writes.

NARRATIVE ADDS CISA SPOX: Avery Monsees has left DHS, where she was press secretary and senior adviser for public affairs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, to join Narrative Strategies as a director. Prior to joining the Biden administration, Monsees was a comms and legislative aide for Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.).

— Monsees is one of four recent hires at Narrative, which has seen its staff double in the past year. Jack Turman is joining the firm as a strategic communications manager from CBS News, Evelyn Humphrey joined as operations manager from the Hill in October, and former interns Ben Bissen and Valeria Fernandez have joined the firm full-time as strategic communications associates.

A message from the Merchants Payments Coalition:

— Joe Maloney is joining the American Gaming Association as senior vice president for strategic communications. He most recently was vice president for public affairs and strategic comms for the Washington Commanders.

— Dylan Riddle has been promoted to head of communications for the Americas at Deutsche Bank. He was previously head of media relations in the region.

— Rachel Palermo is now an associate in Jenner & Block’s government controversies practice. She previously was deputy comms director and associate counsel to Vice President Kamala Harris.

— Prism Group has hired Kyle Marinelli as director of government relations and Shannon Deitzel as staff assistant. Marinelli was previously with the National Association of Workforce Boards and Deitzel was previously with Cottonwood Music Emporium.

— Tony Kreindler has joined Boundary Stone Partners as a senior adviser. He’s the founder and president of The Brookmont Group LLC and is an Environmental Defense Fund alum.

— Stephen Coffey is now a director at SMI. He previously was deputy chief of staff for Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.).

— Lexi Branson is now deputy vice president for advocacy and strategic alliances for PhRMA. She previously was executive director of federation programs and grassroots for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and is a Trump White House and Capitol Hill alum.

— NJI Media has promoted Nate Politi to chief operating officer. He was previously executive vice president of operations.

— Bert Lee has joined NTIA’s Office of Policy Analysis and Development, and will focus on AI and other emerging tech policy issues. Lee previously worked at the Future of Privacy Forum, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and Public Knowledge.

— Diego Rebollar is an associate at consulting firm PT Strategy. He was previously Northern Virginia Director for Secure Your Vote Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s early voting campaign, and is an NRSC alum.

— K&L Gates is adding Varu Chilakamarri and Michael Culhane Harper as partners. Chilakamarri most recently was deputy assistant attorney general for the DOJ Civil Division’s Torts Branch. Harper most recently was a trial attorney in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act unit of DOJ’s Criminal Fraud Section.

— Erin O’Malley is now a communications manager at GoFundMe. She most recently served as communications director for Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.).

— Johns Hopkins University announced that Cybele Bjorklund will be the inaugural executive director of the new Hopkins Bloomberg Center in D.C. and vice president for federal strategy for Johns Hopkins University and Medicine. Camille Johnston will be vice president of communications. Bjorklund previously was senior vice president of policy and government strategy at Virta Health and is a Hill alum. Johnston currently is senior vice president for corporate affairs at Siemens and is an Obama White House alum.

EMMER MAJORITY BUILDERS (Reps. Tom Emmer, David Schweikert, Juan Ciscomani, John Duarte, David Valadao, Mike Garcia, Young Kim, Ken Calvert, Michelle Steel, Carlos Gimenez, Maria Salazar, Ashley Hinson, Zach Nunn, John James, Ryan Zinke, Don Bacon, Tom Kean Jr., Nick LaLota, Anthony D’Esposito, Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro, Brandon Williams, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Brian Fitzpatrick, Monica De La Cruz, Jen Kiggans, Derrick Van Orden, Electing Majority Making Effective Republicans (EMMER PAC), NRCC, Congressional Leadership Fund, Craig Riedel for Ohio, Joe Teirab for Congress, Yvette4Congress, Rob for PA, Theriault for Congress)

EV Battery PAC (Hybrid PAC)

The School Board Project (Hybrid PAC)

SciTech PAC (PAC)

Will of the People PAC (PAC)

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Actum I, LLC: Ywca USa

Bluff Point Strategies LLC: Secure Identity, LLC

Capitol 6 Advisors: Tomahawk Strategic Solutions

Capitol Core Group, Inc.: Alberhill Development LLC (Lansing Companies)

Delany Advisory Group, LLC: Bai Connect

Ice Miller LLP: International Franchise Association

Patel Partners: Allegiant Air

Squire Patton Boggs: Edison S.P.A.

Squire Patton Boggs: The Boeing Company

The Angle: Red Lake Band Of Chippewa Indians

Whitmer & Worrall, LLC: Campaign For Sustainable Drug Pricing (Csrxp)

Actum I, LLC: Ymca USa

A message from the Merchants Payments Coalition:

Congress: Stop Wall Street from gouging American consumers and small businesses and pass the Credit Card Competition Act. America was built on competition. But because Visa and Mastercard dominate more than 80% of the credit card market and set the Wall Street megabanks’ prices, they have the power to inflate credit card fees at any time. And they’ve certainly taken advantage, with swipe fees increasing by more than 50% since 2020. Credit card swipe fees now cost American consumers and small businesses $160 billion each year at a rate that is seven times as much as Europe and double what consumers pay in Canada.

By allowing competition and promoting innovation, the Credit Card Competition Act would reduce the cost of fees now averaging over $1,000 a year for each U.S. household. Make Wall Street compete and pass the Credit Card Competition Act.

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