With Daniel Lippman THE FIRMS SEEING A TRUMP BUMP: A handful of firms with ties to President-elect Donald Trump are still raking in new clients as inauguration day draws closer. Ballard Partners, run by Trump ally and fundraiser Brian Ballard and the K Street home of Attorney General-designate Pam Bondi, has added seven new clients since the election last month, according to PI’s analysis of disclosure filings. — The slate of new clients includes the Toy Association, which brought the firm on this month to provide “guidance and advocacy related to tariffs;” the AI drone image processor Safe Pro Group, which retained Ballard to work on issues related to land mine detection; and Texas child welfare group Compass Connections, for which Ballard will lobby on undocumented migrant children’s safety while in federal custody. — Mercury Public Affairs, the former K Street home of incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles, signed five new clients since the election, disclosures show, with all but one of the new registrations listing Trump adviser Bryan Lanza as working on the accounts. Among Lanza’s new clients are the tech giant HP and Flock Safety, which sells drones for first responders and is facing a privacy lawsuit over its AI-powered license plate recognition cameras. — As PI wrote last week, Continental Strategy, led by Trump adviser Carlos Trujillo, has also seen a surge in federal lobbying business. The firm has added six new clients since the election, including three disclosed this week: the Recording Industry Association of America, tech conference eMerge Americas and Arizona State University. OURA RING LOBBIES UP: Biometric smart ring company and newly minted defense contractor Oura Ring has hired its first federal lobbyists. J.A. Green and Company, which specializes in defense lobbying, began working for the Finnish company in October, according to a newly filed disclosure. — The Pentagon’s Defense Health Agency in October awarded Oura Ring a $96 million contract for smart rings for personnel. The health tech company is also being tasked with providing data analysis to monitor “physiological stress, recovery, resilience, and wellbeing indicators” gathered by the rings, and “workforce wellbeing services including high-performance medicine, mindfulness training, leadership coaching, protective factors, and peer-to-peer support training,” according to an announcement. TGIF and welcome to PI. Send tips: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko. READY TO MAKE NICE, PART I: “Top executives in the technology industry have long been a target of Donald Trump’s vitriol. As he prepares to return to the White House, they’re lining up to gain favor with the president-elect. Some come bearing checkbooks,” The Washington Post’s Caroline O'Donovan, Josh Dawsey, Leo Sands and Pranshu Verma report. — “Google CEO Sundar Pichai was scheduled for a sit-down with him on Thursday. Salesforce CEO and Time magazine owner Marc Benioff celebrated his publication naming of Trump ‘person of the year.’” — Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, meanwhile, aims to meet with Trump next week and has pledged to donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee through Amazon and is planning to stream the ceremony online as an in-kind donation. The check will be joined by $1 million from the personal bank account of OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman, who has criticized Trump in the past, and another $1 million from Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who dined with Trump last month. — “The corporate giants appear to be hoping for a fresh start with Trump, who has lambasted the industry as biased and anticompetitive” — and has announced plans to fill several key roles in his administration with officials who feel similarly — “and targeted some of the biggest tech companies with threats of punitive action.” READY TO MAKE NICE, PART II: Republicans are about to assume control of Washington, and after four years of being on the outs with the GOP, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s hopes of mending ties have been placed on the shoulders of former Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), who sat down with our Rachael Bade this week to discuss how that project is going. — Davis, who took the reins of the Chamber’s Hill lobbying operation this summer, repeatedly downplayed the notion of a falling out between Washington’s top business lobby and its future ruling class. He did concede there may be “some lingering frustrations” from “things that happened in the years past” — such as endorsing nearly two dozen vulnerable Democrats in 2020 and opposing Trump on issues like tariffs and the Paris climate accord. — “But I have not witnessed that myself, with my interactions with my former colleagues,” he told Rachael. “What I have witnessed has been an outpouring of, ‘Hey, we want to continue — we want to work with you. We want to work with the Chamber.’” — He pointed out that the Chamber endorsed more Republicans than Democrats this year and added that he remains close with and even discussed his new role with House leadership prior to it being announced. Davis also touted his campaign trail travel on behalf of House Republicans throughout the fall. — Davis also told Rachael that he hadn’t spoken personally with Trump since Davis lost reelection in 2022 to a Trump-backed primary challenger and said he is “excited to be able to work with the Trump administration again” — even as one member of Trump world accused the Chamber of a tendency to “stab us in the back [with] one hand and shake our hand with the other.” RELATED READ: “A Wish List From CEOs for the Trump Administration,” from The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council. THE CHIPS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE ACT: “Over the past year, an intense struggle has played out in Washington between companies that sell machinery to make semiconductors and Biden officials who are bent on slowing China’s technological progress,” per The New York Times’ Ana Swanson. — The industry has pushed back against national security concerns and fought to narrow new rules restricting the sales of U.S. technology to China in order to “preserve a critical source of revenue, more than a dozen current and former U.S. officials said.” — “The U.S. chip equipment companies argue that they do not oppose stronger rules as long as they also apply to international competitors. … Over the course of this year, the chip equipment companies deployed lobbyists to Capitol Hill and the White House, set up advocacy organizations and funded supportive research by think tanks to make their argument.” — “They put in dozens of calls to officials and leaned on vulnerable Democrats in Congress, warning of job losses in their districts and asking them to reach out to the Biden administration.” Beyond the recent campaign, “some officials have had longer-running concerns about industry influence.” SPRAY FOAM COMPANIES FLY THE COOP: The makers of spray foam insulation are forming a new independent trade group, breaking away from the American Chemistry Council and its Center for Polyurethanes Industry, which housed the Spray Foam Coalition for a decade and a half. — Stephen Wieroniey, an in-house lobbyist for Huntsman Corporation, will be the standalone coalition’s first president and executive director, and Jim Perkins, the owner of spray foam company SWD Urethane and chair of the coalition’s leadership committee under the ACC, will serve as the independent group’s board chair. — The spinoff will allow the Spray Foam Coalition to “more readily advocate on issues related to building codes, energy efficiency tax credits, and promote the multifaceted benefits of spray foam insulation,” said Matt Gorman, a spokesperson for the group. — The more aggressive campaign will come as the industry begins to phase out high global warming potential hydrofluorocarbons according to an EPA rule that goes into effect on Jan. 1. Certain states are moving to crack down on the planet-warming refrigerants as well, prompting industry pushback, and quality concerns over homes retrofitted with spray foam insulation have plagued the U.K. housing market. GET YOUR (AIR-POPPED, LIGHTLY SEASONED) POPCORN: “One of the toughest tension points in the incoming GOP trifecta could be the Republican identity crisis when it comes to food,” NOTUS’ Evan McMorris-Santoro and Ben T.N. Mause write, as “a growing number of Republicans who for decades have been staunch allies of the corporations who create and market what we eat are starting to feel like it’s up to them to regulate what those corporations sell.” — HHS Secretary-designate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a central piece of that puzzle, but how long a leash he’ll get “inside a Republican trifecta remains an open question. The answer will likely come from how the GOP navigates the fight between conservatives convinced that corporations have conspired to make the nation less healthy and need to be constrained and Republicans who hate to restrain corporate power. Call it the battle between the granola conservatives and the Lunchables kind.” SPOTTED last night at The Salt Line for the National Confectioners Association and Senate Press Secretaries Association’s annual “Cocktails and Candy Canes” reception, per a tipster: John Downs, Christopher Gindlesperger, Brian McKeon, Elise Fennig, Dan Shorts and Carly Schildhaus of NCA, Brennan Sullivan of SPSA, Grant Colvin of GWC Public Affairs, Kate Balcerzak and Jackson Spivey of the White House, Ellie Warner of the State Department, Wayne Skinner of the Harris campaign, Ben Jenkins, Tara Rush and Erin Billings of LSG, Brad Bosserman of NOTUS, Gary Nuzzi of CVS Health, Ellie Portillo and Meredith Connor of Ferrero, Ken Johnson of Mars, Jason Tuber of PIM Brands, Courtney Clark of Hershey, Emily DiMiero of Cargill, Megan Whittemore of Penta Group, Josh Sorbe of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Stephen Lewerenz of the Senate HELP Committee. — And at the CyberNext DC conference hosted by the Cybersecurity Coalition and Cyber Threat Alliance, per a tipster: Ari Schwartz of the Cybersecurity Coalition, Gary Steele of Splunk, Jeff Greene of CISA, Alex Botting and Inés Jordan-Zoob of Venable, Nick Leiserson and Drenan Dudley of the White House and Michael Daniel and Chelsea Conard of the Cyber Threat Alliance. — And at Yardbird for a holiday party hosted by ROKK Solutions, per a tipster: Talisha Holmes of Adtalem, Emily Mellencamp Smith of McKinsey, Lisa Hanna of Delta Air Lines, Camden Stuebe of Free the Facts, Amy Simmons and Vacheria Keys of the National Association of Community Health Care Centers, Shannon McGahn of the National Association of Realtors, Mollie O’Dell of the American Petroleum Institute, Colin Allen of the American Property Owners Alliance, Stephanie Strategos Polis and Anthony DiGrado of the Plastics Industry Association, Amy Grappone of the McCain Institute, Steve Rochlin of Impact ROI, Brian Sansoni of American Cleaning Institute, Simon Behrmann of Red Cedar Global, Brandon Pollak of Agora Global Advisory, Jeremy Thompson of Live Nation, Drew Pusateri of Chase, Matt Gorman of Targeted Victory, Mallika Vastare of PMI, Doug Heye of Steward Redqueen, Don McGahn of Jones Day and more.
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