PRO-BIDEN DARK MONEY GROUP SHAKES UP LEADERSHIP: Danielle Melfi is stepping down as executive director of the White House-allied nonprofit group Building Back Together, Axios’ Hans Nichols reports. Mayra Macias, who is currently executive director of the Latino Victory Project, will be interim executive director of BBT, which raised more than $40 million in 2021 and spent more than $28 million on ads to highlight Biden’s agenda. Paulette Aniskoff, a partner at Bully Pulpit Interactive, will join as a senior adviser. ANNALS OF DARK MONEY: “A little-known conservative activist group led by Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, collected nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations to wage a cultural battle against the left over three years,” The Washington Post’s Shawn Boburg and Emma Brown report. — “The previously unreported donations to the fledgling group Crowdsourcers for Culture and Liberty were channeled through a right-wing think tank in Washington that agreed to serve as a funding conduit from 2019 until the start of last year, according to documents and interviews” — an arrangement that allowed Crowdsourcers’ activities and financial information to remain hidden from public view. — “The Post’s investigation sheds new light on the role money from donors who are not publicly identified has played in supporting Ginni Thomas’s political advocacy, long a source of controversy.” The funding is another instance of anonymous financial support of her activism since Ginni Thomas founded and then stepped away from a conservative nonprofit more than a decade ago over possible conflict of interest concerns, and it comes to light amid a heightened focus on ethics issues facing the highest court in the land. — Attorney Mark Paoletta told the Post on behalf of Ginni Thomas that she was “proud of the work she did with Crowdsourcers, which brought together conservative leaders to discuss amplifying conservative values with respect to the battle over culture.” He added that “in her work, she has complied with all reporting and disclosure requirements.” FLY-IN SZN: Food allergy patient advocates from Food Allergy Research & Education are headed to the Hill today to lobby on bills that would label medicine for allergens and gluten and expand mandatory food allergy training in schools and for increased federal funding for food allergy research. — More than 160 advocates with FARE were scheduled to meet with Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho), Judy Chu (D-Calif.), Jim Himes (D-Conn.), Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), according to the group, and more than 100 other offices. — The biofuel group Growth Energy is hosting fuel retailers Musket/Love’s, Kum & Go and NUVU Fuels for meetings with lawmakers on the Hill and the Biden administration in support of the industry’s push for an emergency E15 waiver ahead of the summer driving season and talk up higher blends of biofuels. — ISSA, the Worldwide Cleaning Industry Association, will be on the Hill this week as well. The trade group has brought dozens of cleaning industry leaders to town for its annual Washington summit and plans on meeting with more than 80 congressional offices to urge lawmakers for tariff relief, policies to address “period poverty,” and a new temporary visa program to address essential worker shortages. — Attendees will hear from Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) and Reps. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), and Carol Miller (R-W.Va.) and are set to meet with with Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Reps. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.), Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.), Sharice Davids (D-Kan.), Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), and Jake Ellzey (R-Texas). FIRST IN PI — YANG NONPROFIT LEADER LAUNCHES NEW GROUP: Two top staffers at the nonprofit advocacy group formed by former presidential candidate Andrew Yang are taking Yang’s ethos of transcending partisanship to a new venture in Washington. Liam deClive-Lowe, the executive director of Yang’s nonprofit Humanity Forward, and Paolo Mastrangelo, the group’s head of government affairs, are launching American Policy Ventures, which aims to foster bipartisanship in Congress in a way that results in actual progress on policy issues. — Neither Humanity Forward nor American Policy Adventures are affiliated with Yang’s new Forward Party, which the former Democrat launched in 2021 in protest of what he viewed as the failings of both major American political parties. The new group’s mission is not far off, though. — APV’s strategy will revolve around what Mastrangelo and deClive-Lowe call “de-risking bipartisanship” by countering partisan rhetoric and the notion that reaching across the aisle should be punished by a party’s voting base. APV will aim to do that with media engagement at the federal, state and local levels to amplify bipartisan efforts and “crowd out detractors that shame bipartisan compromise,” while engaging members themselves to condition additional interparty cooperation. — “APV will fill a void that currently exists in our politics by proactively engaging with key stakeholders across bipartisan policy initiatives and coordinating efforts into more unified campaigns,” said Mastrangelo, a former Hill aide and Holland & Knight lobbyist. “De-risking bipartisanship means changing the narrative and incentive structures and that is what APV’s primary mission will be.” HOW NATURAL GAS WOOS REGULATORS: Last November, as the natural gas industry found itself at a crossroads amid increased scrutiny of natural gas’ environmental impacts and surging fuel prices as a result of the war in Ukraine, the industry “sent a small army of missionaries” to the annual policy conference hosted by and for state utility commissioners to sing the praises of their offerings, Grist’s Emily Pontecorvo reports, in a look at how chummy the regulated community can be with those ultimately in charge of their bottom lines. — Sessions at the conference “covered a range of topics, from how to make sure funding from the Inflation Reduction Act benefits low-income customers to planning for the expansion of electric vehicle charging and clean energy storage systems … in addition to at least half a dozen sessions about natural gas. On the conference attendee list, commissioners were outnumbered by people from the gas and electric companies they regulate.” — “Industry executives sat on panels and threw parties. The four-day event’s theme was ‘Connecting the Dots: Innovative/Disruptive Technology and Regulation,’ and company representatives worked to convince regulators that they are innovating and disrupting — but that ultimately, the energy systems of the future should look a lot like the energy systems of today.”
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