MORE CLARK-MANIA: Thanks to the readers who flagged even more lawmakers throwing fundraisers during the Washington Mystics’ game against the Indiana Fever next week, which will feature basketball phenom (and Iowa native) Caitlin Clark. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who is in line to become the GOP whip next year, will host donors at the game on Sept. 19 as well, according to an invite shared with PI. — Tickets will run individual donors $1,000 (or $3,000 for a pair) and PACs $2,500 (or $5,000 for a pair), and are not included in the senator’s “season pass” bundle offered for certain donors, the invitation notes. In addition to seeing Barrasso, donors will also get to mingle with unnamed “Special Political Chief Guests” during some of Congress’ final days in town before the election. — “Every basketball fan wants a chance to see Caitlin Clark play,” Barrasso chief of staff Dan Kunsman told PI. “She’s the most electric player in the game right now. It's likely going to sell out.” Kunsman added, though, that there are still a few box seats at the Barrasso event available. — As PI noted yesterday, House frontliners Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) and Susie Lee (D-Nev.) are also using the game to raise money for their reelection bids. ALITO’S PORTFOLIO: “Justice Samuel Alito is the only U.S. Supreme Court member with a stake in more than two dozen individual companies, a distinction that threatens to sideline him from major business cases” in which he’s been a reliable industry vote, Bloomberg’s Emily Birnbaum reports. — “Alito or his wife own tens of thousands of dollars of stock in companies including Raytheon Co., ConocoPhillips and a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. The holdings may force him to recuse as oil companies challenge lawsuits blaming them for climate change and J&J tries to settle talc lawsuits by placing a subsidiary into bankruptcy.” — The justice’s 2023 financial disclosures, which were released last week, don’t specify whether stocks are owned by Alito or his wife. And while justices are allowed to hold individual stocks, ethics rules call for them to recuse from cases involving those companies. — “Alito has recused from 64 cases involving corporations he owns shares of since 2021, according to Fix the Court, an advocacy group that supports court reform, including judicial term limits. During the last term, he recused from 15 cases due to stock ownership, far outstripping the number of recusals from all of his colleagues, according to the group’s data. Justices are not required to say why they disqualified themselves from a particular case but the tally is based on the publicly available information.” — One other eyebrow raiser in the disclosures: During the conservative-led boycott of Bud Light last year, Alito or his wife sold $1,000 to $15,000 worth of stock in Bud Light-maker Anheuser Busch and purchased shares within that same price range of competitor Molson Coors. RE-UPPING: “Congressional Democrats are teaming up across chambers and continuing to press oil company executives for information and details on a request from former President Donald Trump for $1 billion to aid his reelection bid,” our Anthony Adragna writes. “‘We offer you another chance to cooperate with this bicameral, multi-Committee investigation,’ the letters, obtained by POLITICO, say to the oil executives.” — “The letters went to Occidental, ExxonMobil, Venture Global LNG, Cheniere, Continental, Chevron, Chesapeake Energy, EQT Corp., and the American Petroleum Institute,” and stem from Trump’s request to oil executives earlier this year for $1 billion for his reelection — after which he pledged to undo much of President Joe Biden’s climate agenda. INSIDE THE SOLAR RIFT OVER CHINA: “The Biden administration touts solar energy as one of its big success stories, a booming new industry that is curbing the effects of the climate crisis and creating high-paying jobs across the country,” The Guardian’s Andrew Gumbel and Adam Lowenstein report. — “But the more complicated truth is that the United States is mired in a long-running trade war with China, which is flooding the market with artificially cheap solar panels that carry an uncomfortably large carbon footprint and threaten to obliterate the domestic industry.” — “The international trade battle has been partly obscured by the rhetoric on the U.S. presidential campaign trail, where Democrats led by Kamala Harris generally tout the benefits of renewable energy and the Republican ticket, Donald Trump and JD Vance, denounce what they call the ‘green new scam.’” — “The reality, though, is that both the Trump administration in 2017-2021 and the Biden administration struggled to curb Chinese influence over the US solar market and were influenced by an energetic multimillion-dollar lobbying and public relations campaign to keep the cheap Chinese imports coming.” FOR YOUR RADAR: Reuters’ Luc Cohen reports that “the leader of a U.S. think tank who was indicted last year on charges of acting as an unregistered agent of China has been arrested and will be extradited in the coming weeks or months, prosecutors said Monday.” — “In July 2023, federal prosecutors in Manhattan accused Gal Luft of paying a former high-ranking U.S. government official on behalf of principals based in China in 2016, as well as seeking to broker the sale of weapons and Iranian oil. Luft, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, was arrested in Cyprus last February but fled while released on bail, prosecutors said in a court filing. He has since been re-arrested, prosecutors said, without specifying when or where.” — “Luft, the co-director of the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, said in posts on X last year that he had never been an arms dealer and that the charges were ‘politically motivated.’” Luft had been promoted by House Republicans as a key witness in their probe of Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings. SPOTTED at a kickoff reception on Monday for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference hosted by Microsoft and Black Men on the Hill, per a tipster: Anais Carmona of Microsoft, Morgan Bodenarain of the CBC, Nd Ubezonu and Earnestine E. Dawson of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ office, Feven Solomon of the White House, Sean Ryan of Rep. Barbara Lee’s (D-Calif.) office, Josh Delaney of Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D-Ga.) office, Chonya Davis Johnson of Rep. Troy Carter’s (D-La.) office, Didier Barjon of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office, Chris Cox of Rep. Yvette Clarke’s (D-N.Y.) office, Nate Robinson of Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester’s (D-Del.) office, Maalik Simmons of Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin’s office, Nick Johnson of the State Department, Marcus Robinson of the DNC, Toussaint Mitchell of the Senate Cloakroom, Mark Hamilton of Rep. Steny Hoyer’s (D-Md.) office, Paul Nicholas of HUD, Kyle Bligen of the Chamber of Progress and Trey Agee of Rep. Lizzie Fletcher’s (D-Texas) office.
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