KHANNA BILL WOULD RESTORE BIDEN ETHICS PLEDGE: Yesterday we wrote about the new bill set to be introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) targeting Trump’s repeal of former President Joe Biden’s ethics pledge for appointees and the lack of a new ethics pledge to supersede it. While the bill text has still yet to be released, Khanna’s office reached out to clarify that his legislation would reinstate the provisions included in the since-revoked Biden ethics rules. — As a refresher: Biden’s rules banned outgoing appointees from registering to lobby until the end of his administration or for two years — whichever is later. It extended an existing ban on officials communicating with their former agency to include communications with senior White House staff and lengthened the ban from one year to two. — Among other things, Biden’s order also imposed a one-year ban on so-called shadow lobbying for certain senior appointees, and barred appointees from working on issues related to former clients or employers for two years. For registered lobbyists or foreign agents, the order barred them from working for an agency they lobbied during the prior two years. SPEAKING OF THE REVOLVING DOOR: When EPA tried to clamp down on the carcinogenic chemical formaldehyde in 2021, “the chemicals industry fought back with an intensity that astonished even seasoned agency officials. Its campaign was led by Lynn Dekleva, then a lobbyist at the American Chemistry Council,” The New York Times’ Hiroko Tabuchi reports. — “Dr. Dekleva is now at the E.P.A. in a crucial job: She runs an office that has the authority to approve new chemicals for use. Earlier she spent 32 years at Dupont, the chemical maker, before joining the E.P.A. in the first Trump administration.” — “Her most recent employer, the chemicals lobbying group, has made reversing the Environmental Protection Agency’s course on formaldehyde a priority and is pushing to abolish a program under which the agency assess the risks of chemicals to human health.” — “The American Chemistry Council is also seeking to change the agency’s approval process for new chemicals and speed up E.P.A.’s safety reviews. That review process is a key part of Dr. Dekelva’s purview at the agency. Another former chemistry council lobbyist, Nancy Beck, is back alongside Dr. Dekleva at the E.P.A. in a role regulating existing chemicals.” ANOTHER NEW GIG FOR MCHENRY: Former Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), who chaired the House Financial Services Committee, has landed another new post in the private sector, joining venture capital firm and crypto giant a16z as a senior adviser. — In a series of posts on X, McHenry, who retired last month after 20 years in Congress, said he’d help startups and entrepreneurs navigate the policy landscape in Washington and work to “level the playing field” for “Little Tech” companies. Earlier this month, McHenry joined the payments platform Stripe, also as a senior adviser. AN APPLE A DAY: The president this morning hammered Apple after the tech giant’s shareholders voted against axing company diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that conservatives have railed against. — “APPLE SHOULD GET RID OF DEI RULES, NOT JUST MAKE ADJUSTMENTS TO THEM,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, going on to call such programs a “hoax” that have “BEEN VERY BAD FOR OUR COUNTRY.” — Apple is one of just a few major corporations that has not retreated from diversity programs — a trend that only accelerated after Trump took office and became a driving crusade of the first month of his administration. Apple had urged investors to oppose the anti-DEI proposal, though CEO Tim Cook said after the vote that the company may still need to make tweaks to those programs “as the legal landscape changes,” according to the Associated Press. FOLLOWING THE MONEY: “Elon Musk and his cost-cutting U.S. DOGE Service team have been on a mission to trim government largesse. Yet Musk is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the taxpayers’ coffers,” an analysis from The Washington Post’s Desmond Butler, Trisha Thadani, Emmanuel Martinez, Aaron Gregg, Luis Melgar, Jonathan O'Connell and Dan Keating found. — “Over the years, Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits, often at critical moments … helping seed the growth that has made him the world’s richest person.” ANNALS OF HAVING IT BOTH WAYS: Trump’s second administration is playing host to a handful of influential aides who are able to continue their work in the private sector on top of their White House roles — thanks to their designation as special government employees, The Wall Street Journal’s Josh Dawsey, C. Ryan Barber and Katherine Long write in a deep dive on the role, which watchdogs deride as a glaring ethics loophole. — The label has drawn criticism of Democratic and Republican administrations alike, and “has typically been used to allow subject matter experts to sit on advisory boards or serve in narrow, specialized roles without giving up their jobs, as regular government employees are required to do. But the Trump administration has used the status in a way never before seen, installing multiple people at top levels who are setting U.S. policy,” while shielding details about their private sector work from public disclosure. — The list of so-called SGE’s in Trump’s White House includes Katie Miller, who as the top DOGE aide “also spends time working for P2 Public Affairs, a major Republican consulting firm in Washington, which pays her full salary.” Miller has continued “offering public relations advice” and helped the firm’s leaders pitch it “to new clients for lucrative contracts, offering her guidance about Washington in this moment.” — “Others with the status include Steve Witkoff, who is handling peace talks between Ukraine and Russia and in the Middle East, Corey Lewandowski, now a top aide at the Department of Homeland Security, and Musk himself. Top officials such as Musk, Miller and Witkoff aren’t receiving government pay, and it wasn’t known if any SGEs are.” TRUMP GOES AFTER COVINGTON: Trump on Tuesday said he would revoke the security clearances of lawyers at the white shoe law firm Covington & Burling involved in the defense of Jack Smith, the former special counsel who sought to prosecute Trump while out of office — the latest escalation in Trump’s tour of vengeance against perceived foes. — “The president’s move followed a report in POLITICO earlier this month that Smith declared in a financial disclosure that he received a gift of $140,000-worth of legal services from the firm while in government service.” — “In a statement, Covington said the firm ‘recently agreed’ to represent Smith when it ‘became apparent that he would become the subject of a government investigation’ and suggested the relationship began around the time of the 2024 election.” The firm, which also employs high-profile Democratic lawyers like former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder and represented Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, added that it looks forward to defending Smith. FIRST IN PI: The U.S. Manufacturing Innovation Council, a coalition of nonprofits supporting the Manufacturing USA network of federally sponsored research institutes, is opening a D.C. office helmed by Franz Wuerfmannsdobler. — Wuerfmannsdobler is a longtime Senate Democratic staffer who’s now at Strategic Marketing Innovation. Before that, he worked at the Bipartisan Policy Center and at one of the 18 Manufacturing USA institutes, the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals.
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