With Daniel Lippman BROWNSTEIN LOBBYIST HANGS A SHINGLE: Travis Norton, a former co-chair of the financial services practice at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, is striking out on his own after more than seven years with the firm. — The name for his new shop, Acumen Strategies, stems from Norton’s belief that “there is special value in lobbying services that can synthesize legal and technical acumen with a deep, broad network of D.C. relationships,” he told PI. — That’s especially true for clients who may not have endless lobbying budgets but who Norton said “increasingly expect their representatives to know their businesses, to understand the laws and regulations affecting them, and to have hands-on experience with the legislative and regulatory processes” in order to be more nimble in a fast-moving environment. — Norton, a former aide for Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services and Judiciary committees, and an alum of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, will continue focusing on issues like banking, tax, technology, trade and national security. He’s already signed up several former clients, including student loan servicer Nelnet. CREDIT UNIONS SEND IN THE CALVARY: America’s Credit Unions will drop $3.6 million to boost the industry’s top congressional allies in the final weeks before next month’s election, the trade group announced today. — The association’s PAC plans to spend $1 million alone on independent expenditures boosting vulnerable Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), which will include direct mail, digital ads and texts. The seven-figure blitz will also include independent expenditures on backing Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) as well as a combination of member communications, direct mail and digital ads supporting front-line Reps. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.) and Angie Craig (D-Minn.). — The heavy spending from the second-largest trade association PAC comes as credit unions gear up to defend the industry’s prized federal income tax exemption as Washington dives into negotiations on a tax package next year. Happy Monday and welcome to PI. Thanks to Dana Nickel and Hailey Fuchs for pinch hitting for me last week. What’d I miss? coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko. DELOITTE DILEMMA: "Republicans backing Donald Trump are threatening Deloitte, a consulting firm that is one of the federal government’s largest business partners, with the loss of billions of dollars in contracts because an employee shared messages from 2020 in which JD Vance, now the GOP vice-presidential nominee, criticized the then-president’s record," per The Washington Post's Peter Jamison. — "Deloitte receives about $3 billion annually from federal agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Defense. Ethics experts said the episode is a potentially ominous preview of how a second Trump administration might use the enormous power the federal government wields over private industry to punish political acts by individual workers. Although federal contracting laws prohibit cutting off a business because of its workers’ private political views, such threats could have a chilling effect, they said." FIRST IN PI: Liberal judicial coalition United for Democracy has launched a new campaign in conjunction with the start of the Supreme Court’s new term today that aims to link the high court’s conservative majority to Project 2025, the controversial policy roadmap from the Heritage Foundation that Republicans have sought to distance themselves from. — The effort is backed by a six-figure ad buy from United for Democracy, whose members include top progressive advocacy groups and unions such as Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Giffords, the League of Conservation Voters, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. — They’re running digital ads and mobile billboards that will circle the Capitol, Supreme Court and Heritage Foundation. They’re also blanketing college campuses with branded foam fingers, condoms and chalk drawings to bring viewers to a site that breaks down Project 2025’s proposals and accuses the Supreme Court of “laying the groundwork” for the project with this summer’s ruling on presidential immunity and by overturning Roe v. Wade. THE IRA’S UNEXPECTED ALLIES: The Wall Street Journal’s Collin Eaton and Benoît Morenne report that “oil companies are conveying an unlikely message to the GOP and its presidential candidate: Spare President Biden’s signature climate law. At least the parts that benefit the oil industry.” — “In discussions with former President Trump’s campaign and his allies in Congress, oil giants including Exxon Mobil, Phillips 66 and Occidental Petroleum have extolled the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act. Many in the fossil-fuel industry opposed the law when it passed in 2022 but have come to love provisions that earmark billions of dollars for low-carbon energy projects they are betting on.” ANNALS OF FUNDRAISING: At the same time, Bloomberg’s Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Bill Allison and Mitchell Ferman write that some of the industry’s top executives “have emerged as an increasingly important source of funding” for Trump during his latest campaign. — Backers like Energy Transfer LP CEO Kelcy Warren, Continental Resources’ Harold Hamm and Hilcorp Energy CEO Jeff Hildebrand “have grown in significance for Trump as his fundraising base has narrowed. The industry is now his fourth-biggest source of cash, up six places from the 2020 election cycle, according to campaign data analyzed by OpenSecrets.” — But Trump’s increasing reliance on campaign contributions from business titans across a range of industries — and his transactional style of fundraising — has ethics hawks shooting off warning flares, per The Guardian’s Peter Stone. It’s “underscored by his intense efforts to corral backing and big checks from Elon Musk — the billionaire who owns the social media platform X and is worth $263bn — plus fossil-fuel and crypto currency moguls, while dangling favorable federal policies and perks, say critics.” NETCHOICE’S FIRST AMENDMENT PUSH: The New York Times’ Cecilia Kang is out today with a look at NetChoice, the Silicon Valley group leading the legal crusade against an array of state laws cracking down on the tech industry — and successfully stonewalling any such legislation at the federal level. — “To win on issues including privacy, child safety, e-commerce and taxes, the lobbying group has relied on a novel legal application of the First Amendment. NetChoice has effectively argued that the state laws amount in various ways to censorship. Though the statutes are intended to protect children, fight disinformation and bolster privacy, they restrict access to content and could undermine the free expression of individuals and social media companies, the group has claimed.” — “In these arguments, Big Tech is testing the bounds of the First Amendment, expanding interpretations of the amendment’s definition of freedom of religion, press and speech to provide protections in the internet era. The lobbyists say that Meta, Google, Snap and other social media companies are the modern-day soapboxes of the nation and that the content they host and transmit is protected speech.” GATES OPEN: “When Melinda French Gates was running the world’s biggest philanthropy with her husband, Bill Gates, she insisted on staying on the sidelines of politics. She was half of one of America’s most celebrated couples, and she did not want to invite backlash from governments around the globe, to say nothing of getting crosswise with Washington by endorsing someone who could lose,” the Times’ Teddy Schleifer writes. — “Then, in 2021, that well-ordered life blew up” when she divorced Bill Gates and came “into her own billions of dollars, with which she could do whatever she chose. This year, she decided to resign from her namesake foundation, which meant she could set her own agenda. And, after decades of carefully scripted neutrality, she did what she had wanted to do ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade: She dived headfirst into politics.”
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