With Dana Nickel, Daniel Lippman KATZ JUMPS TO VSA: Emily Katz is leaving Prime Policy Group after four years to join Van Scoyoc Associates as a vice president and head of the firm’s health care team. Katz was previously a managing director at Prime Policy Group and chaired their health policy practice; before that, she spent five years at communications firm Burson Cohn & Wolfe (now known as Burson) and was an in-house lobbyist for pharmaceutical benefit manager Express Scripts. — She also spent more than a decade on the Hill as an aide to former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). At least two clients for whom Katz lobbied — the National Association Of Chain Drug Stores and Perspectum — are planning to re-sign her new firm, Katz told PI. IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY: Voters have only just begun to cast the first ballots of the 2024 elections, but firms are letting clients know that now’s the time to start plotting how to make inroads with the presidential transition team — no matter who comes out on top. — “It is time to begin strategizing for either scenario, because as soon as the winner is declared, it’s off to the races,” Ali Rubin, a co-founder of the strategic advisory firm Velocity Partners and former member of the Biden transition team, writes in a memo to clients shared first with PI. — “If you aren’t ready to engage, you’ll be left behind,” she warns, noting that the timeline of the transition is “extraordinarily compressed” and that “by the time Inauguration arrives, the first few months should be planned out, officials need to be nominated to key posts, and early and urgent Executive Orders should be in the works.” — Engagement should be strategic, involving identifying top priorities and making specific recommendations backed by “compelling data” and “political reasoning for their point of view,” Rubin advises, writing that “in many ways,” the transition “sets the tone for the next four years.” Happy Wednesday and welcome to PI. I’ll be off for the rest of the week, our Dana Nickel and Hailey Fuchs will be steering the ship tomorrow and Friday, respectively. Send them lobbying tips: dnickel@politico.com and hfuchs@politico.com. And be sure to follow them on X: @delizanickel and @Hailey_Fuchs. PRESIDENTIAL PLEA: More than 250 trade associations sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Wednesday asking him to end the dockworker strike in place at all U.S. container ports on the East and Gulf coasts. — The National Retail Federation said in a statement that a coalition of 272 trade groups that represent farmers, retailers, wholesalers, importers and exporters, restaurants, distributors and other supply chain stakeholders signed onto the letter. — “This has now become an issue of both economic and national security,” the groups wrote. “The strike will cost the economy billions of dollars a day, impacting businesses large and small that are not party to the negotiations, but rely upon the free flow of goods, both imports and exports, through these critical ports.” — The White House on Tuesday reiterated its stance that Biden won’t force striking dockworkers to return to the job, our Ry Rivard and Cassandra Dumay report. DEMAND JUSTICE ADDS 3: Liberal judicial reform group Demand Justice is staffing up as it looks ahead to tough judicial nomination fights on the horizon. Jen Ahearn is joining the group as counsel and senior director of engagement, along with Tishan Weerasooriya as director of government affairs and Tom Wright as director of courts policy and legal analysis. — Ahearn most recently was senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s judiciary program. Weerasooriya most recently was at Stand Up America. Wright most recently worked on nominations and vacancies for the American Constitution Society. — The additions are the latest in a series of moves by Demand Justice to serve as a progressive foil to judicial activists on the right while seizing on plummeting public trust in the Supreme Court following several justices’ ethics controversies and consequential rulings over the past few years. — Brian Fallon, who co-founded the group, stepped down as its executive director last year to join Vice President Kamala Harris’ office — and then her campaign — as a top spokesperson. Demand Justice has since hired Center for American Progress alum Maggie Jo Buchanan to succeed Fallon. — In July, Demand Justice unveiled plans to pour $10 million by the end of this year into elevating the judiciary as a mobilizing issue in next month’s elections and advocating for court reforms. Whoever wins the White House in November could have an outsized impact on the federal judiciary from the Supreme Court down, with a closely divided Senate poised to make any confirmation fights especially fierce. EVERYTHING’S BIGGER IN TEXAS, LIKE THE MONEY: The New York Times’ Ava Kofman chronicles the political rise of Texas oil magnates Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who in the past decade have “built the most powerful political machine in Texas — a network of think-tanks, media organizations, political-action committees and nonprofits that work in lock step to purge the Legislature of Republicans whose votes they can’t rely on.” — “Cycle after cycle, their relentless maneuvering has pushed the Statehouse so far to the right that consultants like to joke that Karl Rove couldn’t win a local race these days. Brandon Darby, the editor of Breitbart Texas, is one of several conservatives who has compared Dunn and Wilks to Russian oligarchs. ‘They go into other communities and unseat people unwilling to do their bidding,’ he says. ‘You kiss the ring or you’re out.’” — “Texas, which has few limits on campaign spending, is home to a formidable army of donors. Lately Dunn has outspent them all,” with Dunn or associated organizations accounting for two-thirds of the Texas GOP’s fundraising last year. And now, “the duo’s ambitions extend beyond Texas.” WHAT LINA KHAN’S UP TO: FTC Chair Lina Khan is set to pop up all over the campaign trail over the next few days, Punchbowl’s Ben Brody reports, which “suggests candidates think Khan has appeal on the trail.” — The divisive face of the Biden administration’s corporate crackdown is set to appear in Austin today with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), in Chicago and Wisconsin tomorrow with Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and then Phoenix on Friday to campaign with Democratic Arizona Senate nominee Rep. Ruben Gallego. — “Supporters of liberals like Sanders and Pocan love an anti-corporate pugilist. Gallego, on the other hand, is running more as a moderate Democrat in a purple state. That makes him the kind of candidate who might want to echo concerns about the FTC expressed by Silicon Valley figures who are key supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign. Instead, Gallego’s embracing Khan.” — “The FTC chair’s appearances on the road with Democrats come as her own future in Washington is in doubt. Khan’s term is up, and her hard-charging approach to the job seems to make the chances of a renomination slim no matter who holds the White House,” with several Republican senators telling Brody they regret voting to confirm her three years ago. REALTORS’ LEGAL CHIEF DEPARTS: The National Association of Realtors “confirmed Tuesday that its longtime chief legal officer Katherine ‘Katie’ Johnson will step down after 17 years with the Chicago-based organization,” per Bloomberg’s Brian Baxter. — Her “exit comes during a turbulent time for US home sales, where a 6% sales commission has until recently been considered a mainstay of the market. That system has been subject to antitrust scrutiny from the Justice Department and private plaintiffs, the latter of which a year ago won a $1.8 billion verdict at trial against NAR and several large residential real estate brokerages, who were accused of colluding with one another to keep agent commissions high.” — “NAR began implementing some changes in August after the trade group and its lawyers from Cooley and ArentFox Schiff agreed to a $418 million antitrust settlement in March with home sellers in a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Kansas City, Missouri.”
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