KHANNA MOVES TO RESTORE ETHICS GUARDRAILS: A new bill from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) would restore some ethics restrictions on White House officials that Trump revoked on his first day in office, which freed appointees of former President Joe Biden to quickly land cushy lobbying jobs. — In a speech on the House floor this morning, Khanna said his bill — the Drain the Swamp Act — would bar White House officials from becoming lobbyists during Trump’s second term in addition to reviving a lobbyist gift ban for White House officials. — Trump “campaigned around the country to drain the swamp, yet one of the first things he did is reverse President Biden’s executive order that banned White House officials from accepting gifts from lobbyists,” Khanna said. — Trump has yet to issue an ethics pledge for his new administration, despite decrying the pipeline of government officials joining the influence industry during his latest campaign. Trump has also stocked his administration with around a dozen former lobbyists, all the while ousting agency inspectors general tasked with rooting out corruption as well as the government’s top ethics watchdog. — Khanna argued that his bill would help Trump “fulfill his promise” and maintained that it should draw support “not just from progressives, not just from independents, but from the MAGA movement.” — But the devil is in the details, and though further specifics about the revolving door restrictions in Khanna’s bill were unknown as of press time, as described, they still wouldn’t go as far as the Biden-era limitations repealed by Trump last month as well as the ethics pledge he required his appointees to sign during his first term. — Both of those would have barred at least some appointees from becoming lobbyists for a period of time after the end of the administration in which they worked, among other restrictions on so-called shadow lobbying and accepting gifts from lobbyists. Trump rescinded his first ethics pledge on the last day of his first administration. AND THE LUCKY WINNER IS: “Amid some Republican pushback against Sen. Ted Cruz’s efforts to gain unilateral subpoena power to haul Big Tech CEOs before his panel, the Senate Commerce chair now plans to compel testimony from an online service provider he argues has deplatformed conservatives,” our Ben Leonard writes. — Cruz “said in a social media post he intends to subpoena the communications firm Bonterra, which he investigated in his capacity as the committee ranking member in the previous Congress. He concluded the company stopped doing business with a conservative women’s group.” — “The announcement comes as Cruz is still trying to get committee Republicans to give him blanket authority to issue subpoenas without buy-in from members — a departure from the status quo, where chairs need sign-off from the ranking member or a vote by the full committee.” A GULF OVER THE GULF: “Environmental and conservation groups — like other organizations that work in or publicly refer to the Gulf — are now confronted with a choice” about how to label the Atlantic Ocean basin between the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean, per POLITICO’s E&E News’ Robin Bravender. — “They can follow Trump, who renamed the Gulf in an executive order and proclaimed the first-ever ‘Gulf of America Day,’ or snub the president’s directive and maintain their existing references to the Gulf of Mexico.” — But it’s not a low-stakes game of semantics: “The Trump administration banned the Associated Press from covering certain events in retaliation after the news organization refused to change its guidelines on how to refer to the Gulf of Mexico,” Robin writes. The AP subsequently sued administration officials in response to the ban, and the White House said today it will determine which outlets have access to the president, our Eli Stokols writes. — While some groups have indicated they’ll try to straddle the line, others, including the Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited, are following Trump’s lead. Meanwhile “the League of Conservation Voters will ‘absolutely not’ change its references to the Gulf of Mexico, said Tiernan Sittenfeld, the group’s senior vice president for government affairs,” joined by the Center for Biological Diversity. FRENCH TAKES THE HELM: Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies, the government affairs arm of the law firm Cozen O’Connor, has tapped Towner French as the head of its federal lobbying operation, giving the practice a dedicated lead akin to the structure of CPS’ growing slate of state and local government affairs and communications branches. — French joined Cozen in 2021 from Capitol Counsel and has been serving as managing director. Before that, he spent a decade and a half on the Hill, including as deputy staff director for the powerful House Rules Committee. — In his new role as the team’s dedicated lead, French will work to expand CPS’ federal lobbying practice and provide it with a dedicated strategic vision and focus, taking over from Howard Schweitzer, the chief executive of CPS who had also been de facto head of the federal lobbying shop. SPOTTED last night at Cranes for a fifth anniversary party for Autos Drive America, per a tipster: Autos Drive America’s Jennifer Safavian, BMW’s Astrid Schulte, Volkswagen’s Donald Davidson, Capitol Counsel’s Warren Tryon, Subaru’s Takuo Sato, Toyota’s Steve Ciccone, the Japanese Embassy’s Hideaki Fujisawa and the European Union Embassy’s Eike Klapper. — And in Longworth HOB on Monday for the American Sugar Alliance’s “Keep it Sweet in America” reception, per a tipster: Reps. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), Michelle Fischbach (R-Minn.), Herb Conaway (D-N.J.) and Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.), Nick Lunneborg of Rep. David Taylor’s (R-Ohio) office, Andrew Leppert of Rep. Brandon Gill’s (R-Texas) office, Tim Svoboda of Rep. Glenn Grothman’s (R-Wis.) office, Connor McNutt of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) office, Trevor White and Clark Ogilvie of the House Agriculture Committee, J.T. Jezierski of Sen. Shelley Moore Capito’s (R-W.Va.) office, Ken Clifford of Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ (R-Iowa) office and Thomas Liepold of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
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