With help from Daniel Lippman PUT ‘EM IN, COACH: A trade group representing thousands of football coaches at all levels of the sport has turned to K Street for help squeezing into the congressional huddle on federal name, image and likeness legislation for college athletes. — The American Football Coaches Association, whose 11,000 members coach players from high school to the NFL, has tapped Capitol Counsel to give the profession a broad and unified voice as the debate in Washington plays out over the coming years. — Prominent college football coaches have hardly been absent from Capitol Hill on NIL issues, but such visits have typically been “one offs,” argued Craig Bohl, who recently retired as longtime head coach at the University of Wyoming and became executive director of the coaches association. — In an interview, Bohl said that football coaches have had a front seat to the “state of chaos” in the football world, with student athletes being sucked in by what he derided as predatory and opaque practices by agents whose work needs to be regulated. — “It’s a fraud, and these young men are being lied to, and they’re being manipulated. And as coaches we care about them, and that story is really not being heard,” he argued, adding that the association’s “primary focus here is helping these student athletes secure a degree while at the same time maximizing their potential on the football field and financially.” — While there’s near-unanimous agreement among stakeholders about the need to address the issues Bohl’s organization plans on raising with lawmakers with Capitol Counsel’s help, the urgency of doing so is something that coaches feel they’re better suited to convey to lawmakers than representatives from the NCAA or individual athletic conferences. “We live it every day, and we have some answers,” he told PI. “We need to come up with a message of clarity on how we can make this work for the betterment of football.” — “We believe that we have — not all the answers, and we don’t deserve a seat at the head of the table,” he added, “but we believe that we can help by having a seat at the table, and right now, we believe that we lack that.” — Football coaches are the latest faction of the sports world pushing to shape the conversation on NIL nearly four years after the Supreme Court ruling that opened the door for compensation for college athletes. — At the end of last year, advocacy groups representing youth and college coaches for more than half a dozen Olympic sports retained a lobbying firm to protect those less commercially lucrative sports from losing a vital source of funding. And representatives for less prominent athletics conferences have hired lobbyists in recent years to make sure their voices weren’t drowned out by larger conferences. In 2023, more than 30 conferences banded together for a joint push for federal NIL legislation. — Meanwhile, a coalition of donor collectives, which emerged as a key punching bag in the NIL debate, lobbied up in 2023 to defend the nascent cottage industry in an NIL bill, which Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said last week will be one of his “major priorities” as the new head of the Senate Commerce Committee. — The Capitol Counsel team working on the account includes David Jones, David Bridges, Nick Bouknight, John Martin, Luke Hatzis, George Sifakis, Monique Frazier, Jeff Carroll and Shannon Finley. Happy Thursday and welcome to PI. Heading to any good parties over the weekend? Send spotteds, overheard gossip, and regular ’ole lobbying tips: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko. C SUITES’ TURNAROUND: Donald Trump’s first White House victory caught corporate America flat-footed. This time around, industries that his administration will soon oversee are showering his inaugural committee with record-breaking donations — and making sure both the president-elect and the public notice their largesse, Alice Miranda Ollstein, Irie Sentner and your host write. — Not only are companies giving far larger amounts than they did to Trump’s first inauguration — when they didn’t have a firm grasp of how to handle misgivings about the mercurial politician — they’re doing so in a far more public fashion, announcing the donations months before they have to be reported to federal regulators. — “The stigma of a Trump donation, which was out there to some degree eight years ago, is no longer there,” said Brian Ballard, a longtime fundraiser for Trump who’s raised money for the Presidential Inaugural Committee. “Who knows what’s going to happen two months from now? But for today, up and down, corporate America is solidly pro-Trump.” — Between Trump’s inaugural committee, an allied super PAC and a 501(c)4 group set up to boost the incoming administration politically, Trump allies are expected to rake in as much as $250 million dollars. While it’s uncertain that the rush to curry favor with the incoming administration will even pay off, the influx of cash has sparked concern among watchdogs and lawmakers, given the lack of transparency around how much of that money will be spent. FIRST IN PI — AARP GOES TO BAT FOR CAREGIVERS: The AARP is pouring $1 million into a new ad blitz aimed at convincing lawmakers to include a tax break for family caregivers as part of any reconciliation package to extend tax cuts from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. — Over inauguration weekend, the organization will push out a new spot highlighting Trump’s campaign pledge to enact a tax credit that would help offset the costs of acting as a family member’s caregiver. The ad buy will feature video ads on broadcast and cable within the Beltway as well as radio spots, digital and print ads prodding Congress to make good on Trump’s promise. CANNABIS GROUPS JOIN FORCES: “Two of the largest cannabis industry organizations are merging as they prepare for total Republican control in Washington,” per our Natalie Fertig. “The US Cannabis Council and National Cannabis Roundtable will become a single organization: the U.S. Cannabis Roundtable.” — “Both are major spenders in a nascent industry still finding its footing on Capitol Hill: Combined they spent $1,076,000 on lobbying federal policymakers in 2024. … The cannabis industry is represented by a variety of different groups on Capitol Hill,” and it’s had trouble securing any major policy victories, despite broad bipartisan support for its top priority, cannabis banking legislation. IT’S A NEW DAWN: Some of the hottest tickets over the weekend are celebrations being thrown “by the Silicon Valley donors who are flush with power at the dawn of his second administration,” The New York Times’ Teddy Schleifer and Ken Vogel write. — “Across Washington, dozens of big-money events are planned at the city’s most exclusive hotels and restaurants, rooftops and ballrooms, on land and aboard yachts, mostly catering to the corporations and wealthy executives who will be in the capital to usher in a new term that they hope will unshackle American business.” — “But some of the president-elect’s newest supporters — those from Silicon Valley — are holding this year’s most novel inaugural events,” including tomorrow night’s Crypto Ball, complete with a VIP reception hosted by Trump’s super PAC; a party hosted by David Sacks and the co-hosts of his wildly popular “All-In” podcast; an indoor (read: heated) inauguration viewing party hosted by the upstart donor network Rockbridge Network; a Spotify brunch featuring conservative icons Joe Rogan, Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro; and a black tie reception whose hosts include Mark Zuckerberg and megadonor Miriam Adelson. CHAMBER PREPS FOR A TARIFF CLASH: “America’s top business lobby has a three-part wishlist for the incoming Trump administration: Roll back many Biden-era regulations, extend pro-growth tax provisions, and stay away from sweeping tariffs,” Axios’ Neil Irwin and Courtenay Brown write. — “There are targeted tariffs that have a good use in global trade negotiations and then there are blanket tariffs that we think would be bad for American families and communities,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Suzanne Clark told Axios in an interview ahead of her annual “State of American Business” address today. — The latter approach, Clark said in her address, “would worsen the cost-of-living crisis, forcing Americans to pay even more for daily essentials like groceries, gas, furniture, appliances, and clothing,” just as Trump is promising to renew key tax breaks and slash regulations. “Tariffs are a tax paid by Americans and their broad and indiscriminate use would stifle growth at the worst possible time,” Clark said. JUICING THE RESISTANCE: “Just when it seemed that the Dem resistance was tuned out, former Biden-Harris officials will help launch on Inauguration Day a new legal response center to bolster the fight against President-elect Donald Trump’s impending executive orders,” our Myah Ward reports. — “The new effort, funded by the national legal organization Democracy Forward — formed in 2017 during Trump’s first administration — will analyze the incoming president’s executive orders to support legal and political challenges to his agenda, according to plans first shared with POLITICO. The group, which announced the effort Thursday, has already identified more than 200 of what it classifies as emerging threats related to the incoming president’s expected executive orders.” TECHNET LAUNCHES LITIGATION HUB: TechNet is launching a new legal nerve center for the tech industry, per Punchbowl’s Ben Brody. The Innovation Legal Center will “advance the interests of American innovation in the courts and the broader legal community” through litigation, starting with a CFPB rule finalized last year targeting digital wallets and payment apps run by nonbanks. It’s “the latest industry effort to go on the policy offensive in court,” Ben writes, and “for tech, it’s become an increasingly effective tactic.”
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