Heritage Dark Money

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  Neither is the condition of the conservative movement.

Brendan Fischer and Ed Pilkington at The Guardian:

The advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, the powerful conservative thinktank based in Washington, spent more than $5m on lobbying in 2021 as it worked to block federal voting rights legislation and advance an ambitious plan to spread its far-right agenda calling for aggressive voter suppression measures in battleground states.

Previously unreported 2021 tax filings from Heritage Action for America, which operates as the foundation’s activist wing, shows that it spent $5.1m on contracting outside lobbying services. The outlay comes on top of $560,000 the group invested in its own in-house federal lobbying efforts that year, as well as registered lobbying by Heritage Action staffers in at least 24 states.

The 990 tax filing was obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with the Guardian. It points to the pivotal role that Heritage Action is increasingly playing in shaping the rules that govern US democracy.

The efforts help explain the unprecedented tidal wave of restrictive voting laws that spread across Republican-controlled states in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. The Brennan Center reported that more voter suppression laws were passed in 2021 than in any year since it began monitoring voting legislation more than a decade ago.

...Heritage Action, whose board includes the Republican mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, is set up as a 501(c)4 under the US tax code which exempts it from paying federal taxes. It operates as a “dark money” group, avoiding disclosing the sources of its total annual revenue of over $18m.

Network of Election Deniers

 Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie.  And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.  

Alexandra Berzon at NYT:

An extensive review of Ms. [Cleta] Mitchell’s effort, including documents and social media posts, interviews and attendance at the Harrisburg seminar, reveals a loose network of influential groups and fringe figures. They include election deniers as well as mainstream organizations such as the Heritage Foundation’s political affiliate, Tea Party Patriots and the R.N.C., which has participated in Ms. Mitchell’s seminars. The effort, called the Election Integrity Network, is a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a right-wing think tank with close ties and financial backing from Mr. Trump’s political operation.

Ms. Mitchell says she is creating “a volunteer army of citizens” who can counter what she describes as Democratic bias in election offices.

...

Ms. Mitchell’s trainings promote particularly aggressive methods — with a focus on surveillance — that appear intended to feed on activists’ distrust and create pressure on local officials, rather than ensure voters’ access to the ballot, they say. A test drive of the strategy in the Virginia governor’s race last year highlighted how quickly the work — when conducted by people convinced of falsehoods about fraud — can disrupt the process and spiral into bogus claims, even in a race Republicans won.

...

 The Republican National Committee’s involvement is part of a return to widespread election-work organizing. For nearly 30 years, the committee was limited in some operations by a consent decree after Democrats accused party officials in New Jersey of hiring off-duty police officers and posting signs intended to scare Black and Latino people away from voting. The committee was freed of restrictions in 2018.

This year, its multimillion-dollar investment includes hiring 18 state “election integrity” directors and 19 state “election integrity” lawyers. The party has so far recruited more than 5,000 poll watchers and nearly 12,000 poll workers, according to the committee. These efforts are separate from the Election Integrity Network, said Emma Vaughn, an R.N.C. spokeswoman.

But in multiple states, the R.N.C. election integrity directors have been involved in Ms. Mitchell’s events. Ms. Vaughn acknowledged that party officials participate in events hosted by other groups to recruit poll workers and poll watchers. She noted that in many states poll monitors must be authorized by the party. The R.N.C. is training its monitors to comply with laws protecting voting rights, she said.

Recall Money

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state elections. The biggest off-off-year election is the CA recall. 

 Phil Willon at LAT:

The campaign to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom has turned into a money magnet — for Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Newsom’s anti-recall campaign raked in more money in its first five months — $54 million — than the $50.2 million his 2018 gubernatorial campaign raised over four years.

Most of the money came in six- or seven-figure donations from longtime Democratic financial backers, including government employee and trade unions, as well as people and interest groups that stand to gain from a relationship with California’s governor. Even allies of the governor have expressed concern about the amount of money flooding in.

Netflix co-Chief Executive Reed Hastings, a major supporter of charter schools, topped the list of individual donors with $3 million. The California Teachers Assn., which has clashed with charter school advocates for years, gave $1.8 million.

The Service Employees International Union and its local affiliates, which together represent about 700,000 members, including government employees, donated a combined $5.5 million to Newsom’s anti-recall campaign. Others in the $1-million-and-up club include associations representing California Realtors, home builders and Democratic governors.

Republican political consultant Rob Stutzman said the political calculus for writing big checks to Newsom’s anti-recall committee is easy to understand.

Newsom still is favored to defeat the attempt to remove him from office and to be reelected to a second term in 2022. Even if he is ousted, the odds are slim that a GOP candidate who takes his place will last more than a year in office in such a heavily Democratic state, Stutzman said. No matter the outcome of the recall election, California will have a gubernatorial election next year.

GOP Cancel Culture

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties.

The state of the GOP is not good.  Consistency is not its strong suit.

Trump spotted with apparent Coke bottle on desk despite calling for boycott of the drink https://t.co/t7nYW4VrUV

— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) April 6, 2021

Start at 9:30:

A 2020 list of people and things that Trump tried to cancel.

Jennifer Rubin at WP:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is second to none in protecting First Amendment rights of corporations — at least when the subject is money. McConnell, a longtime opponent of limits on campaign donations as a form of speech, has often defended unlimited dark money in lofty terms.

In 2012, The Post reported on a speech he gave to the American Enterprise Institute:

“It is critically important for all conservatives — and indeed all Americans — to stand up and unite in defense of the freedom to organize around the causes we believe in, and against any effort that would constrain our ability to do so,” McConnell said in the speech at AEI, a Washington group that says it supports free enterprise.

McConnell, long an opponent of restrictions on political contributions, cited a Democratic proposal to require corporations and unions to disclose their spending on political advertising.

He said it would require “government-compelled disclosure of contributions to all grass-roots groups, which is far more dangerous than its proponents are willing to admit.”
“This is nothing less than an effort by the government itself to expose its critics to harassment and intimidation, either by government authorities or through third-party allies,” McConnell said.

McConnell has even filed multiple amicus curiae briefs in campaign cases insisting the rights of free speech and association implicit in corporate campaign donations are “fundamental” and “of central importance.”

But when it comes to actual speech from corporations — specifically, speech denouncing Republicans’ voter suppression efforts — McConnell becomes irate.

McConnell, in a written statement on Monday, deemed the exercise of such First Amendment rights as “bullying.” “It’s jaw-dropping to see powerful American institutions not just permit themselves to be bullied, but join in the bullying themselves. … Our private sector must stop taking cues from the Outrage-Industrial Complex. Americans do not need or want big business to amplify disinformation or react to every manufactured controversy with frantic left-wing signaling.” He is dismayed by consistent advocacy plainly protected by the First Amendment: “From election law to environmentalism to radical social agendas to the Second Amendment, parts of the private sector keep dabbling in behaving like a woke parallel government.” Worse, he threatens retribution: “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order.”

Anticorporate Republicans

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties.

The state of the GOP is not good.

Caitlin Opyrsko at Politico:

HOW GOP POPULISM COULD PLAY OUT FOR BIG BUSINESS: Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton today unloaded on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, blasting the business lobby in an interview on the “Hugh Hewitt Show” as a “a front service for woke corporations” while asserting that the business lobby had “purged … real Republicans” in its top leadership and lost its influence with the party by endorsing Democrats, per The Hill’s Alex Gangitano. (In a statement to The Hill, the Chamber called Washington “confused” and doubled down on its intention to back “pro-free enterprise, pro-business, pro-governing members of Congress in both parties.”)

— The interaction is emblematic an ongoing realignment in the GOP that signals “trouble ahead for the tried-and-true coalition of Republicans and corporate America,” particularly when combined with the recently announced retirements of lawmakers like Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), the Republican lobbying firm CGCN Group wrote in a memo to clients this morning.

— For corporate America, the shift means the party is “increasingly unwilling to listen simultaneously to corporate priorities on, say, tax and trade policy” when viewed alongside the type of “woke-ism” Cotton, a potential 2024 contender, targeted the Chamber over, according to the memo. The retirement of more business-minded lawmakers, it argues, paves the way for populist ones who have “tapped into the party’s anti-Big Business bent, which seems relatively indifferent to an increase in capital gains and corporate income taxes.”

— “It’s not clear what this tendency suggests over the long-term,” the memo reads. “But for now, the business community needs to rethink how it engages the GOP on issues they consider fundamental. Because their list of priorities and the GOP’s may not always overlap in the same way it once did.”

RNC for Sale

In  Defying the Odds, we discuss  Trump's record of scandal.  The update  -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

Renae Merle at WP:

Billing himself as one of President Trump’s top fundraisers, Michael Hodges told fellow payday lenders recently that industry contributions to the president’s reelection campaign could be leveraged to gain access to the Trump administration.

“Every dollar amount, no matter how small or large it is” is important, Hodges, founder of Advance Financial, one of the country’s largest payday lenders, said during a 48-minute webcast, obtained by The Washington Post.

“For example, I’ve gone to Ronna McDaniel and said, ‘Ronna, I need help on something,’ ” Hodges said, referring to the chair of the Republican National Committee.

“She’s been able to call over to the White House and say, ‘Hey, we have one of our large givers. They need an audience. … They need to be heard and you need to listen to them.’ So that’s why it’s important.”

Influence Update

 In  Defying the Odds, we discuss  Trump's record of ethical laxity.  The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

Dan Friedman at Mother Jones:

After four days of silence, the White House has finally addressed questions about Cindy Yang, the massage parlor owner who sold Chinese business executives access to President Donald Trump and his family at Mar-a-Lago.

“The President doesn’t know this woman,” Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, told Mother Jones on Tuesday.

Josh Kovensky at TPM:

The founder of a chain of massage and spa parlors that snagged Patriots owner Robert Kraft was apparently also hawking a different line of business: investment immigration.

Li “Cindy” Yang, a 45-year old Florida woman, has found herself in the headlines this past week for hobnobbing with some of the country’s most powerful politicians (including Trump) at Mar-a-Lago, and reportedly charging top Chinese execs for access to elected officials at the Palm Beach club.

TPM found that Yang, through a Florida-based company called GY US Investments LLC, was also using proximity to Trump and his properties to peddle so-called investor visas. Under the EB-5 visa program, foreign citizens can get a conditional two-year U.S. green card in exchange for making certain investments. Mother Jones first reported the existence of GY US Investments.

David Gelles et al. at NYT:

With more countries grounding Boeing jets and with lawmakers, aviation workers and consumers calling on the United States to do the same, the head of the aerospace giant on Tuesday made a personal appeal to President Trump.

Boeing’s chief executive, Dennis A. Muilenburg, called from Chicago and expressed to Mr. Trump his confidence in the safety of the 737 Max 8 jets, according to two people briefed on the conversation. Two of the planes flown by overseas carriers have crashed in recent months in similar accidents.

The brief call had been in the works since Monday, but it came shortly after Mr. Trump raised concerns that the increasing use of technology in airplanes was compromising passenger safety. “Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly,” he wrote on Twitter. “Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT.”

...
Boeing’s relationship with Mr. Trump has not always been smooth, however. Shortly after becoming president-elect, Mr. Trump assailed Boeing for the estimated cost of its program to build new Air Force One planes, which provide mobile command centers for the president.

The “costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter a month after winning the election, but before taking office. A couple of weeks later, Mr. Muilenburg visited Mr. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., to try to smooth things over.

“It was a terrific conversation,” Mr. Muilenburg told reporters after the meeting, explaining that he had given Mr. Trump “my personal commitment” that Boeing would build new Air Force One planes for less than the $4 billion estimate. Weeks after the conversation, Boeing donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee. The company had donated the same amount to help finance President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2013. 

Dan Diamond at Politico:

The White House's proposed budget includes funding for a small children's health program sought by one of President Donald Trump's golfing buddies: Jack Nicklaus.

Under the administration's fiscal 2020 funding plan released Monday, HHS would steer $20 million toward a mobile children's hospital project at Miami's Nicklaus Children's Hospital, named for the legendary golfer.

Nicklaus had lobbied Trump on the golf course in Florida, and he met with HHS Secretary Alex Azar and then-OMB Director Mick Mulvaney in Washington, D.C., to request funds, say two individuals with knowledge. Trump personally directed HHS to earmark the funds to help Nicklaus develop mobile children's hospitals, one individual said.

Chinese Deep Massage

 In  Defying the Odds, we discuss  Trump's record of scandal.  The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

David Corn, Dan Friedman, and Daniel Schulman at Mother Jones:

The latest Trump political donor to draw controversy is Li Yang, a 45-year-old Florida entrepreneur from China who founded a chain of spas and massage parlors that included the one where New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft was recently busted for soliciting prostitution. She made the news this week when the Miami Herald reported that last month she had attended a Super Bowl viewing party at Donald Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club and had snapped a selfie with the president during the event. Though Yang no longer owns the spa Kraft allegedly visited, the newspaper noted that other massage parlors her family runs have “gained a reputation for offering sexual services.” (She told the newspaper she has never violated the law.) Beyond this sordid tale, there is another angle to the strange story of Yang: She runs an investment business that has offered to sell Chinese clients access to Trump and his family. And a website for the business—which includes numerous photos of Yang and her purported clients hobnobbing at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach—suggests she had some success in doing so.

ndb, just Cindy Yang — founder of the sex spa where New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was busted for soliciting prostitutes — hanging out with Donald Trump, Don Jr, Eric Trump, Ron DeSantis, Matt Gaetz, and Rick Scott.

At Mar-a-Lago... where she is a member. 👀 pic.twitter.com/dToUZR5AeE

— Caroline Orr (@RVAwonk) March 8, 2019

Yang’s company is promoting an upcoming event at Mar-a-Lago featuring Trump’s sister, Elizabeth Trump Grau. The co. bills it as “a once-in-a-lifetime publicity opportunity” where "Chinese elites" will have the chance to mingle with Trump Grau and members of Congress pic.twitter.com/5iCxZXqkVA

— Daniel Schulman (@DanielSchulman) March 9, 2019

A blast from the past...On May 12, 2017   Javier C. Hernández reported at NYT:

The real estate company owned by the family of Jared Kushner, son-in-law and senior adviser to President Trump, said on Friday that its employees would no longer take part in a cross-country roadshow in China this month.

Executives from Kushner Companies, including Nicole Meyer, Mr. Kushner’s sister, were expected to appear in the southern cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou and the central city of Wuhan this month, according to ads for the events.

But after an uproar, the company and its Chinese partner said on Friday that Kushner Companies would no longer be present at those events, although it will continue to actively court investors.

The company is seeking $150 million in financing for a New Jersey housing development through a program that gives foreigners who invest at least $500,000 a shot at green cards, which allow permanent residence in the United States. The overall sum represents about 15 percent of the total cost of the property project.

But the effort to raise money in China drew widespread criticism, with ethics experts saying it presented a conflict of interest. Mr. Kushner continues to benefit from a stake in his family’s real estate business and other investments worth as much as $600 million.

Scandalabra, February 2019

In  Defying the Odds, we discuss  Trump's record of scandal. 

Megan R. Wilson at Bloomberg:

President Donald Trump’s businesses received nearly $3.8 million from political committees during the two-year 2018 campaign cycle, according to the latest disclosure reports. The top political customers: Trump’s re-election campaign and the Republican Party.

Trump’s campaign committee spent more than a million dollars at Trump businesses during the midterm elections, including renting space at the Trump Tower in New York City, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Throughout 2017 and 2018, Trump hotels in Chicago, Las Vegas, and Washington and golf clubs in Virginia, Los Angeles, Miami and Bedminster, N.J., cashed in as well, as venues for events by political groups large and small. Candidates and political operatives also billed hotel stays to Trump’s network of luxury resorts.

At Vanity Fair, Emily Jane Fox writes about the inaugural committee:

In December, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that prosecutors are examining the committee’s spending, and investigating whether foreign donors from nations including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates funneled money to the committee in an effort to influence U.S. policy. On Monday, the inaugural committee received a subpoena from the S.D.N.Y. requesting documents related to spending and donors, vendors, and benefits handed out, as well as documents related to a wealthy donor who had once registered as a foreign agent working on behalf of the Sri Lankan government. The Journal reported that prosecutors have asked Gates about the inaugural fund’s spending and its donors.

 Joshua Partlow, Nick Miroff and David A. Fahrenthold at WP: 

The Washington Post spoke with 16 men and women from Costa Rica and other Latin American countries, including six in Santa Teresa de Cajon, who said they were employed at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster. All of them said that they worked for Trump without legal status — and that their managers knew.

The former employees who still live in New Jersey provided pay slips documenting their work at the Bedminster club. They identified friends and relatives in Costa Rica who also were employed at the course. In Costa Rica, The Post located former workers in two regions who provided detailed accounts of their time at the Bedminster property and shared memorabilia they had kept, such as Trump-branded golf tees, as well as photos of themselves at the club.

Brad Heath at USA Today writes about the Mar-a-Lago connection:

Since he took office, Trump has appointed at least eight people who identified themselves as current or former members of his club to senior posts in his administration. USA TODAY identified five of those appointees in mid-2017, prompting criticism from ethics watchdogs that the selections blurred the boundary between his public duties and his private financial interests

Jonathan O'Connell, David A. Fahrenthold and Mike DeBonis at WP:

Executives from the telecom giant T-Mobile — which last year asked the Trump administration to approve its megamerger with Sprint — have booked at least 52 nights at President Trump’s hotel in the District since then, even more than previously reported, according to newly obtained records from the hotel.

The revelations come as political scrutiny of the proposed deal is mounting on Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) issued letters demanding information about the T-Mobile executives’ stays and whether Trump was informed of them. The issue is likely to come up at House subcommittee hearings on the merger next week.

Last month, The Washington Post reported that “VIP Arrivals” lists — issued by the Trump International Hotel daily to its staff — indicated that T-Mobile executives had stayed repeatedly at Trump’s hotel. On the day after the merger was announced, for instance, the lists showed nine T-Mobile executives were expected to check in.

Now, The Post has obtained VIP arrivals lists for additional days last year, which showed five more bookings at the hotel by T-Mobile executives, including chief executive John Legere. Those bookings — in October and December of last year — added 14 nights to the 38 previously reported.

In addition, another Trump hotel document gave the first indication of the rates that T-Mobile executives paid for their rooms.

This document showed that when Legere stayed at Trump’s hotel for two nights last month, his room had a rate of $2,246 per night.

Trump and California

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. The forthcoming update will include a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  California is an important part of the story.

At Fox and Hounds, Tony Quinn writes about the GOP's 2018 California collapse: 

[T]his disaster was Trump, all Trump and nothing but Trump.

This is apparent by examining one of the most interesting factoids about this election. Had Republican Congressional candidates ran as well as their party’s candidate for governor, John Cox, they would have saved four of the seven seats they lost.

That is because Cox actually carried the districts of defeated Reps. Jeff Denham (R-Modesto), GOP candidate Young Kim, (Northern Orange County), Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Laguna Niguel), and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach). Cox also outran two of the other three Republicans who lost Rep. Steve Knight (R-Antelope Valley) and Diane Harkey (Orange-San Diego counties).

The California Target Book has unearthed a few other interesting tidbits about the November election. The gas tax repealer (Proposition 6), on which Republicans placed such hope, actually carried every single GOP-held congressional district, including all seven districts that they lost. Steve Poizner, the former Republican insurance commissioner running for his old job as a no party preference, carried 20 Congressional districts, including all but one of the 14 GOP districts.

There is only one way to read these results: if you could be tied to Trump, you were a goner. Trump, rather than simply the party label, was the key to the Republican disaster.

Trump is a gift to progressive Democrats.  The election resulted a extra-large Democratic supermajorities in the legislature.  Jeremy White at Politico:

“We’re going to need more Democrats than Republicans to kill a bill,” said Adam Keigwin, a former chief of staff who’s now a lobbyist for Mercury. “It’s clearly a different dynamic that we haven’t had before that everybody has to adjust to.”

The new dynamics have national implications, given the size of California’s economy and the state’s national influence on a range of policy areas, including energy, health care and consumer regulation. And in the coming months they’re likely to shape the outcomes of leading issues like worker classification, housing production, clean energy goals and an ambitious health care coverage push.

As California has shaded ever-bluer in recent years, big business has adapted by shifting resources towards electing friendly Democrats rather than sidelined Republicans. The top-two primary system has accelerated that trend: it’s now common to see groups backed by real estate, pharmaceutical, oil and other industries spend millions on a chosen candidate when two Democrats are battling it out in the general election, in addition to spending to boost Democrats over Republicans in key districts.

Interest Groups Shift to Democrats

In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race.  Campaign finance is a big part of the story.

Interest groups like to go with winners.  The flow of money tells you which side seems to be winning.  This year, it is the Democrats.

Karl Evers-Hillstrom at OpenSecrets:

Stockbrokers and hedge fund managers continued to back Democrats through the first 21 months of the 2010 election cycle — giving Democrats 51 percent of contributions — but as it became clear Republicans would be storming both chambers, contributions shifted right before the election. The industry gave more than 69 percent of contributions to Republicans in the October 2010 pre-general FEC filing period, just in time for a GOP takeover.

During the 2018 election cycle, the 2010 swing is happening again, only this time in the direction of Democrats.

After giving 52 percent of funds to Democrats through the first 21 months of the election cycle, the industry gave 71 percent of its $7.86 million in campaign contributions to Democrats in the most recent pre-general election FEC filing period from Oct. 1 to Oct. 17.

Sixteen of the top 20 recipients of investment group affiliates are now Democrats, with Sen. Claire McCaskill taking the top spot at nearly $2 million.

Bizarro Campaign Strategy

In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race.  Campaign finance is a big part of the story.

Rebecca Robbins at STAT:

In 26 years in Congress, Rep. Anna Eshoo has always won reelection by at least 20 points. The Democrat is virtually certain to win big once again in November, buoyed largely by voters in her wealthy Silicon Valley district who do not struggle to pay for their prescription drugs.

So why is a political action committee focused on high drug prices bothering to sink $500,000 into attack ads against her?

The ad blitz from Patients for Affordable Drugs highlights the unorthodox tack the group is taking in the 2018 midterm elections: intervening in races in which there is no hope of altering the outcome.

Of the nine congressional and gubernatorial races in which P4AD has supported or opposed candidates to date, just three or four are competitive, according to STAT’s analysis of election forecasts from the website FiveThirtyEight.

And of the at least $8 million the group has spent in total, as much as $6 million has gone to the races in which the outcome has long been determined.

P4AD, which is funded mainly by the billionaire Houston couple John and Laura Arnold, says that where its money can’t help decide a race, it can still send a message: that politicians running campaigns funded by drug companies will face retribution. But that, too, is a dubious strategy, experts say.

If the goal is to make politicians hesitate before accepting a check, “pharma’s not at the stage of the NRA,” said Bob Blendon, a Harvard professor who studies the politics of health care. “It’s going to be years before somebody runs in this state or that with a major biotech presence [and says] they’re not going to accept [drug industry] funding. I’m not sure it’s a realistic goal.”

Kavanaugh and the Swamp

In Defying the Odds, we discuss how the issue of Supreme Court nominations affected the 2016 race.

In July, Scott Shane and colleagues wrote at NY Times:

When Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh introduced himself to the American people on Monday, with a beaming President Trump beside him, he had a lot to say about his mother, a former high school teacher and a Maryland judge. He accorded his father strikingly less attention — just 34 words, compared with 132 about his mother — mentioning his “unparalleled work ethic” while not saying exactly what work he did.

Yet Ed Kavanaugh’s career may shed light on his son’s hostility to government regulation, a major reason conservatives are so enthralled by his nomination to the Supreme Court. He spent more than two decades in Washington as a top lobbyist for the cosmetics industry, courting Congress and combating regulations from the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies. (Among his hires for legal work: John G. Roberts Jr., now the chief justice.)

Theodoric Meyer at Politico (h/t Jessie):

“I’ve known Brett for almost 18 years,” Colleen Litkenhaus, a lobbyist for Dow Chemical, wrote on Facebook less than an hour before Loper’s tweet. “He is extra extra smart, kind, warm, thoughtful and caring.”

She was speaking out, she added, “because, if you don’t know Brett personally, you may want to hear from those that do.”

The women rushing to Kavanaugh’s defense include Candi Wolff, the top lobbyist for Citigroup; Sara Fagen, a consultant at DDC Public Affairs; and Laura Cox Kaplan, a former lobbyist for PricewaterhouseCoopers who now hosts the “She Said/She Said” podcast.

Many of them belong to a class of connected Washingtonians who typically try to avoid upsetting their corporate clients by weighing in on Beltway scandals. But they decided to speak because of their friendships with Kavanaugh, who’s deeply integrated in the Republican social scene in Washington. Kaplan said in an interview that it was “physically painful” to watch the scandal unfold.

Eliana Johnson at Politico:

It turns out that the Keystone Cops detective work by conservative legal activist Ed Whelan — which set Washington abuzz with the promise of exonerating Brett Kavanaugh, only to be met by mockery and then partially retracted — was not his handiwork alone.

CRC Public Relations, the prominent Alexandria, Virginia-based P.R. firm, guided Whelan through his roller-coaster week of Twitter pronouncements that ended in embarrassment andv a potential setback for Kavanaugh’s hopes of landing on the high court, according to three sources familiar with their dealings.

After suggesting on Twitter on Tuesday that he had obtained information that would exculpate Kavanaugh from the sexual assault allegation made by Christine Blasey Ford, Whelan worked over the next 48 hours with CRC and its president, Greg Mueller, to stoke the anticipation. A longtime friend of Kavanaugh’s, Whelan teased his reveal — even as he refused to discuss it with other colleagues and close friends, a half dozen of them said. At the same time, he told them he was absolutely confident the information he had obtained would exculpate the judge.

The hype ping-ponged from Republicans on Capitol Hill to Kavanaugh’s team in the White House, evidence of an extraordinarily successful public relations campaign that ultimately backfired when Whelan’s theory — complete with architectural drawings and an alleged Kavanaugh doppelgänger — landed with a thud on Twitter Thursday evening.

And a Saturday morning update from Heidi Przybyla at NBC

A press adviser helping lead the Senate Judiciary Committee’s response to a sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has stepped down amid evidence he was fired from a previous political job in part because of a sexual harassment allegation against him.

Garrett Ventry, 29, who served as a communications aide to the committee chaired by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, had been helping coordinate the majority party's messaging in the wake of Christine Blasey Ford’s claim that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 36 years ago at a high school party. In a response to NBC News, Ventry denied any past "allegations of misconduct."

He had worked for North Carolina House Majority Leader John Bell

Sources familiar with the situation said Ventry was let go from Bell’s office after parts of his résumé were found to have been embellished, and because he faced an accusation of sexual harassment from a female employee of the North Carolina General Assembly's Republican staff.

 ...

 While doing work for the Judiciary Committee, Ventry was employed by CRC Public Relations, a prominent GOP firm helping to promote Kavanaugh’s nomination to the high court.

A company spokesman told NBC News, "Garrett was on a leave of absence from the company and as of this morning we have accepted his resignation."

Crooked Donny: An Update

Brad Heath,Fredreka Schouten,Steve Reilly,Nick Penzenstadler and Aamer Madhani report at USA Today:

Dozens of lobbyists, contractors and others who make their living influencing the government pay President Trump’s companies for membership in his private golf clubs, a status that can put them in close contact with the president, a USA TODAY investigation found.

Members of the clubs Trump has visited most often as president — in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia — include at least 50 executives whose companies hold federal contracts and 21 lobbyists and trade group officials. Two-thirds played on one of the 58 days the president was there, according to scores they posted online.

Because membership lists at Trump’s clubs are secret, the public has until now been unable to assess the conflicts they could create. USA TODAY found the names of 4,500 members by reviewing social media and a public website golfers use to track their handicaps, then researched and contacted hundreds to determine whether they had business with the government.

The review shows that, for the first time in U.S. history, wealthy people with interests before the government have a chance for close and confidential access to the president as a result of payments that enrich him personally. It is a view of the president available to few other Americans.

Among Trump club members are top executives of defense contractors, a lobbyist for the South Korean government, a lawyer helping Saudi Arabia fight claims over the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the leader of a pesticide trade group that sought successfully to persuade the Trump administration not to ban an insecticide government scientists linked to health risks.

Public Citizen reports: 

Before assuming the presidency, Trump himself held ownership stakes in hundreds of business entities. His most recent financial disclosure shows he transferred those ownership stakes to six core entities.

 But in the end, the transfer of ownership turned out to be a meaningless shell game. Under the new arrangement, each of the entities to which Trump transferred his assets ended up under the control of a revocable trust that operates for the benefit of Trump. [See Figure Below]

Trump’s Shell Game: All Roads Lead To Trump’s Revocable Trust*

Everybody Hates Trumpcare

Rep. Jim Cooper has a list of organizations opposing Trumpcare.  Add the American Nurses Association, too.

• AARP: This bill would weaken Medicare’s fiscal sustainability, dramatically increase health care costs for Americans aged 50-64, and put at risk the health care of millions of children and adults with disabilities, and poor seniors who depend on the Medicaid program for long-term services and supports and other benefits. 
• American Medical Association: …we cannot support the AHCA as drafted because of the expected decline in health insurance coverage and the potential harm it would cause to vulnerable patient populations. As you consider this legislation over the coming days and weeks, we hope that you will keep upmost in your mind the potentially life altering impact your decisions will have on millions of Americans who may see their public, individual or even employer-provided health care coverage changed or eliminated. 
• American Hospital Association: Any ability to evaluate The American Health Care Act, however, is severely hampered by the lack of coverage estimates by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Lacking that level of analysis and needed transparency, we urge that Congress should wait until an estimate is available before proceeding with formal consideration.
• Federation of American Hospitals: Based on our review of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) as currently drafted, and in the absence of a Congressional Budget Office analysis and estimate of the cost and coverage impacts that might allay our concerns, we have significant issues with this legislation.
• American Diabetes Association: On behalf of the nearly 30 million Americans living with diabetes and the 86 million more with prediabetes, the American Diabetes Association (Association) is writing to express our serious concerns with the American Health Care Act…we have serious reservations about many of the proposals in this bill. Our initial areas of concern include the tax credit proposal, proposed changes to Medicaid, potential disruption of coverage and repealing the prevention and public health fund.
• American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network:…reduced federal funding combined with state-specific eligibility and enrollment restrictions will likely result in fewer cancer patients accessing needed health care. For low-income individuals these changes could be the difference between an early diagnosis when outcomes are better and costs are less or a late diagnosis where costs are higher and survival less likely.
• American Health Care Association (AHCA)/National Center for Assisted Living (NCAL): The residents in long term care centers are uniquely vulnerable. More than one million individuals call nursing centers their home and most rely on Medicaid for their care. This bill will cut Medicaid funding for seniors and individuals with disabilities, jeopardizing access to the care they need. We strongly encourage Congress to protect Medicaid access for seniors and people with disabilities in the Obamacare repeal and replace effort.
• America’s Essential Hospitals: We are particularly disappointed lawmakers seem willing to consider this bill in committee without a Congressional Budget Office score and an estimate of how the bill might impact healthcare coverage. A score is crucial, as this legislation could place a heavy burden on the safety net by reducing federal support for Medicaid expansion over time and imposing per-capita caps on the program.
• America’s Hospitals and Health Systems: We are very concerned that the draft legislative proposal being considered by the House committees could lead to tremendous instability for those seeking affordable coverage. Furthermore, we are deeply concerned that the proposed Medicaid program restructuring will result in both the loss of coverage for current enrollees as well as cuts to a program that provides health care services for our most vulnerable populations, including children, the elderly and disabled.
• American Public Health Association: This proposal would jeopardize the health and lives of many millions of Americans…American lives are on the line…It is particularly troubling that legislators plan to consider this proposal without a score from the Congressional Budget Office. We urge House members to oppose this plan and instead strengthen our nation’s commitment to improving the health and safety of all Americans.
• National Disability Rights Network: The legislation revealed by House Republicans last night is a giant step backwards in the treatment and care of individuals with disabilities…It permits discrimination against people with disabilities in the insurance market for their pre-existing conditions…The National Disability Rights Network urges the House not to send people with disabilities back to a time when it was nearly impossible for us to obtain health insurance, live in the home of our choice or participate in community life. We will never go back to those days. Never.
• Consortium For Citizens with Disabilities: While many of the policy points are troubling, it is simply unconscionable to use the Medicaid program to pay for the repeal of the ACA, the repeal of corporate and provider taxes, and to provide new tax benefits for individuals. Medicaid provides services and supports that maintain the health, function, independence, and well-being of 10 million enrollees living with disabilities.
• Easterseals: Easterseals is greatly concerned that AHCA removes the federal funding guarantee that currently exists in Medicaid. People with disabilities rely on Medicaid-funded services such as attendant care, adult day and home health services to remain in their homes and communities and live productive lives.
• National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA): When people do not have access to the family planning care and education they need, they are more vulnerable to sexually transmitted disease and at a greater risk of unintended pregnancy and poor birth outcomes, all of which have high personal costs and translate into increased expense across the entire health care system. Lawmakers should block this dangerous measure and return to thoughtful, bipartisan deliberation on improving access to affordable, high-quality health care in this country. There is too much at stake.
• National Partnership Women and Families: The Republican repeal bill is an affront to women and families. It reflects its authors’ determination to deny women access to quality, affordable health care, including the comprehensive reproductive health care and abortion services that are essential to their health, equality and economic security… This bill takes us back to the days when there were few benefit standards or consumer protections in place – to a time when insurers were the ones who decided what and who they would cover, what doctors we could see, and where we could get care.
• National Physicians Alliance: The National Physicians Alliance opposes the draft Republican House bill revealed last night. We believe the drastic cuts it proposes to Medicaid, coupled with the substantial reductions in subsidies that helped millions afford healthcare would be extremely detrimental to our patients… All the while, the proposed legislation hands millionaires, billionaires and health insurance CEOs a massive new tax break.
• AFL-CIO: The reality is, this isn’t a healthcare plan at all. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from working people to Wall Street. For more than a century, the labor movement has fought to make health care a right for every American. The Republican plan contradicts this very idea by making care less affordable and accessible. It’s bad for healthcare, it’s bad for working families, it’s bad for our economy and we will fully oppose it.
• American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees: The replacement plan put forward by congressional leadership is no replacement at all for the tens of millions of Americans who rely on the Affordable Care Act to keep their families healthy without fear of bankruptcy. It is simply a tax cut for corporations and the wealthy, funded by gutting Medicaid and shifting health care costs onto states and working families.
• National Council of La Raza (NCLR): This bill is a threat to America’s well-being and represents a step back to the days when health insurance was financially out of reach for too many working Americans. Our nation’s future depends on healthy and hard-working families. The changes to Medicaid will devastate a program that is a lifeline for 74 million vulnerable Americans, including children, people with disabilities, and 18 million Latinos. This effort to radically change the financing structure of Medicaid will jeopardize their lives.
• Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum: Many things are clear from the bill, yet many unknowns remain. What we know is that millions of Americans, including Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (AAs and NHPIs) relying on coverage under the ACA will be worse off. Under the guise of flexibility, this plan would end Medicaid as we know it by phasing in per-capita caps.
• National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare: The ACA is a highly complex piece of legislation that includes many benefit increases for seniors on Medicare, contains many program improvements that help to drive the cost of health care down and extends the solvency of the Part A trust fund. For these reasons, we strongly believe that any replacement legislation should do no less than the ACA for our senior population.
• National Center for Transgender Equality: Under this bill, millions would lose coverage and millions more would pay more for their health care…President Trump and leaders in Congress don’t seem to understand that this is not a political exercise—they are playing with millions of Americans’ lives.
• United Methodist Church: This bill has been promoted as a “fix” to the health care system in the United States but will do nothing to improve access and affordability. Instead, it will harm many in the congregations and communities in which we live and serve. People will die because of efforts like this to roll back health care.
• The Episcopal Church: This current proposal falls woefully short of our spiritual calling to care for the ‘least of these,' as well as the noble values upon which our great nation was founded.
• Catholic Health Association of the United States: We strongly encourage the full House to reject this ‘replacement’ bill and work to craft legislation that addresses the real issues without creating unneeded chaos in the system and coverage loss for those who need health care.
• American Federation of Teachers (AFT): That Republicans are now trying to ram something through after keeping it under lock and key makes it clear that they want to hide the details and cost from the American people. If something sounds too good to be true, it is. They know that if their true intent were exposed, Americans would soundly reject their efforts.
• National Education Association: It’s time for the Republican leadership to come clean with the American people. Repealing the ACA will harm our students and their families by forcing cuts to critical programs, reducing financial support for lower-income Americans, and taxing the middle class. Bottom line, working Americans will pay more for less coverage while insurance executives and the wealthy get handouts.
• American Federation for Suicide Prevention: We must ensure the gains we have made in mental health and substance use disorder coverage remain in place so every American has a path to a more healthy and productive life.
• National Women’s Law Center: The House Republican ACA repeal bill would be devastating for women. Rather than protecting access to care and coverage, this bill undermines the infrastructure of our nation’s health system, targets low-income individuals, and restructures the system in favor of wealthier individuals. All of this comes at the expense of women, who will be particularly harmed by the repeal bill.
• Cystic Fibrosis Foundation: The bills released by the two House committees this week fail to adequately protect people living with cystic fibrosis and place the lives of millions of Americans living with serious and chronic diseases at risk.
• HIV Medicine Association: These proposals will not only harm individuals with HIV but will compromise our nation’s public health by leaving fewer with access to the antiretroviral treatment that keeps patients healthy and reduces their risk of transmitting HIV to near zero. We strongly urge the committees to reconsider the bill and the accelerated and non-transparent process with which these proposals have been advanced.
• Federal AIDS Policy Partnership: This is likely to result in a loss of coverage and services for individuals with HIV and millions of other low income individuals with chronic illnesses and diseases whose access to healthcare and lives depend on this vital program. Formal analysis and comment by the Congressional Budget Office, the Medicaid and CHIP Payment Access Commission and the Government Accountability Office is critical to evaluate how the 70 million Americans who rely on this program stand to be affected by the proposed changes.
• Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights: This proposal is truly disheartening. It doesn’t ensure that all Americans will continue to have health coverage, as its supporters claim. Rather, it drastically cuts financial assistance for low-income people living at or below the poverty line, undermines and places severe limitations on the Medicaid expansion, and proposes to defund Planned Parenthood centers from the Medicaid program.
• MomsRising: The American Health Care Act makes a mockery of every campaign promise Donald Trump made about health care. It sets the stage for deep, punitive, permanent cuts to Medicaid in just a few years, which would cause grave harm resulting in rationing care for some of the most vulnerable people in our country: low-income families, pregnant women, people with disabilities and the elderly. The Republican plan would allow insurance companies to raise premiums and out-of-pocket costs, especially for seniors. The only winners would be the wealthy.
• Children’s Defense Fund: The American Health Care Act would reverse progress and make children worse off by depriving them of the comprehensive and affordable child-appropriate coverage they are guaranteed today, jeopardizing their futures and also the nation’s future economic and national security.
• Families USA: The GOP health care proposal would be laughable if its consequences weren’t so devastating. This bill would strip coverage from millions of people and drive up consumer costs. It shreds the Medicaid social safety net that serves more than 72 million people, including many children, senior citizens and people with disabilities. And it once again leaves millions of people in America with chronic illness and disease at the mercy of insurance companies. 
• Consumers Union: The American Health Care Act would, as currently written, be a major step backwards for our nation’s children…marking up a bill that will impact millions of lives without a CBO score and without providing transparency and allowing for fair review is irresponsible and unfair to consumers.
• Sister Simone Campbell, NETWORK Advocates for Catholic Social Justice: Our test for any ACA replacement bill is simple: Does the bill protect access to quality, affordable, equitable healthcare for vulnerable communities? After reviewing the House GOP replacement bill, the answer is a resounding no. Instead of providing greater health security, the bill increases costs for older and sicker patients and drastically cuts the Medicaid program, all while providing huge tax cuts to wealthy corporations and individuals. This is not the faithful way forward and must be rejected. 
• Young Invincibles: House Republicans introduced a bill to repeal and replace the ACA, which would have devastating effects on millions of young adults, a group which has seen the greatest health care gains under the ACA: in the past six years, Millennial uninsurance rates have dropped from 29 percent to 16 percent.
• Planned Parenthood: One in five women in America has relied on Planned Parenthood, and their health care shouldn't get caught up in congressional Republicans' extreme agenda. This proposal would deny millions of women access to cancer screenings, birth control, and STD testing and treatment.