ANTI-ANTITRUST FIGHT GETS PERSONAL: “Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan has made no secret of her desire to take on what she sees as the excesses of big business. But something seemed to click for corporate America on Jan. 5, when her agency announced a proposed rule that would ban noncompete agreements, contracts that employers use to keep departing workers from taking other jobs in their industry,” Bloomberg’s Emily Birnbaum reports. — “Tech and business groups, as well as the powerful network of anti-regulation groups funded by prominent conservative donor Charles Koch” have “honed in on Khan, who is turning 34 in March, as the primary symbol of what they see as wrong with President Joe Biden’s agenda.” — “Since 2021, Khan has been mentioned in 43 editorials, op-eds and letters to the editor in the Wall Street Journal. Jonathan Kanter, who heads the US Department of Justice’s antitrust efforts, appears in five. Khan’s critics have gotten personal at times, and some people say it’s impossible to ignore their sexist tone.” — One ad from the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute targeting the FTC warns “about ‘unelected bureaucrats’ destroying the agency, while flashing images of Khan’s face. A separate ad from the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, which receives money from Koch as well as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Amazon.com Inc., accuses Khan of ‘weaponizing the FTC for her own political goals.’” — Sean Heather, an executive at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “acknowledges that Khan is a useful political foil. … One corporate lobbyist, speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly, says Khan has begun to inspire the nearly obsessive conservative ire previously directed at Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.” FLYING IN: PI spoke with former “Bachelor” lead Colton Underwood about his push to spotlight mental health issues among student athletes, for which he and several other current and former college athletes hit the Hill this week. — Underwood, whose foundation retains Invariant to lobby on the issue, was joined by lacrosse player Cailin Bracken and football players Sarah Fuller, Byron Perkins and Henry Miller for meetings with lawmakers, including Reps. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.), Bobby Scott (D-Va.), Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) and Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) as well as Rafael Campos, the deputy director of public engagement for the surgeon general’s office. — The group is calling for legislation that would allow schools to apply for grants to implement programs including mental health coaching and virtual mental health care services specifically geared toward student athletes. — “The athletic community is a microcosm that reflects the whole world,” Bracken told PI. Underwood added that “if we can find a group of people like athletes that are under high pressure, and if we find a system or a protocol that works,” that can potentially be replicated in other high-risk communities. “We can really help start to solve this mental health crisis that we're in by just focusing on one specific group and sort of chipping away.” — Underwood, who is a former college and pro football player, was on the Hill last year highlighting the issue but noted that having more recent student athletes share their stories with policymakers who are further removed from that world was a deliberate choice to help cut through the sea of statistics or headlines about suicides among student athletes. — “They're the ones who really hit this home for a lot of members of Congress yesterday,” he said. “I think a lot of members saw them and said, ‘Oh, that could be my son. That could be my nephew, that could be my daughter.’” — Fuller added that it was important for the group to come to Washington to represent their peers. “I feel like I'm here on behalf of my teammates, and on behalf of the ones that I saw struggling and didn't know what to do, and I think we're all here on behalf of those that … maybe don't feel like they have a voice.” FACEBOOK FRIENDS: The White House has recently tapped several former allies of Facebook parent company Meta for high-profile roles in the West Wing, a prospect that’s alarmed antitrust supporters, per West Wing Playbook. — “The administration’s new communications director, Ben LaBolt, was recently the personal spokesman for Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Chief of staff Jeff Zients, who came on last month, served on the company’s board. They join Louisa Terrell, who’s been Joe Biden’s legislative affairs director for the duration of his presidency and was Facebook’s public policy director and a registered lobbyist for the company a decade ago.” — “Biden’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for bipartisan legislation ‘to hold Big Tech accountable’ has reassured the antitrust class about the administration’s commitment on the issue, which the president also underlined in his State of the Union address last month.” — But the company “clearly has interests before the government, and — now — more former allies to whom they can turn. In 2021 and the first nine months of 2022, only Amazon spent more money on registered federal lobbying (Meta spent $4.6 million on lobbying in the last quarter of 2022).” — “And at a moment when the FTC is suing Facebook and the DOJ’s antitrust division is often out-gunned by industry lawyers, operatives pushing for stronger regulations worry the addition of high-level staffers potentially more sympathetic to the company could matter on the margins,” with some lawmakers involved in antitrust efforts privately conceding “an optics problem.” FLY-IN SZN: The National Photonics Initiative brought representatives from photonics and optics companies and research institutions to Washington this week, where they met with lawmakers and staff to push for investments in science agencies and STEM workforce development and emphasized the importance of the industry. — The group met with Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) and staff from 30 other offices including that of Congressional Optics and Photonics Caucus Co-Chair Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.). — The American Association of Orthodontists has also been on the Hill this week to talk oral health literacy, student loan reforms, care for patients with congenital anomalies and flexible spending accounts and to raise consumer protection issues associated with direct-to-consumer medical products. The trade group’s PAC held a fundraiser on Tuesday and met with members and staff from around 60 congressional offices. — Autos Drive America, which represents international automakers with U.S. operations, had its board meeting in D.C. this week. The trade group hosted the White House’s John Podesta and met with Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Katie Britt (R-Ala.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) to discuss trade and workforce issues, among others.
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