By CAITLIN OPRYSKO | Click here to read more.
12/16/2024 06:13 PM EST
With help from Daniel Lippman
DEFENSE TECH LOBBYIST JUMPS TO ALPINE GROUP: The Alpine Group has hired a veteran of the defense tech policy world as the sector anticipates a boom under President-elect Donald Trump. Abbey Overland will join the firm next month from rocket propulsion startup Ursa Major, where she served as senior vice president of Washington operations. She’ll be a vice president at Alpine Group, advising clients on “all things national security and defense.”
— Before that, Overland spent two years as an in-house lobbyist at defense software company Palantir, an Alpine Group client, and nuclear components manufacturer BWX. She’s also worked on defense tech issues from within government, first as a military legislative assistant for Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and then as an aide in the Pentagon’s research and engineering office.
— Silicon Valley defense investors had already been juiced up by Trump’s win last month. Since then, the president-elect has seemingly been joined at the hip with SpaceX’s Elon Musk — who’s been tapped to gut the federal bureaucracy at the center of defense startups’ gripes — and named top industry players to key administration roles.
— “There is a real desire to ensure that the Pentagon is able to get best in class tech to the war fighter at a relevant pace,” Overland said, adding that she expects there to be “a continued emphasis on that as we look to a new administration.”
— She told PI she’ll be looking to harness her experience in the legislative branch as well as on the implementation side of things and as a lobbying client in the private sector to eke out wins against that backdrop. In addition, she noted, “the D.C. defense ecosystem is a small world.”
— Palantir in particular has fingerprints throughout Trump’s burgeoning administration: Vice President-elect JD Vance is an acolyte of Palantir Chair Peter Thiel, Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg has been tapped for a role at the State Department, and Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar is in the running for the Pentagon’s top research and engineering job.
— The firm has also promoted Hannah Schmidt to senior director of public policy and Travis Fruhling to director of public policy and named former intern Madison Gordon a staff assistant.
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RFK JR. DIGEST: “Opponents of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to lead HHS are buying tens of thousands of dollars in ads across the states of key Republican senators as he plans to meet with them this week,” our Daniel Payne reports.
— “Protect Our Care, which has launched a Stop RFK War Room, has bought advertising slots — from digital ads to billboards — calling on constituents to urge their senators to oppose Kennedy’s nomination.”
— The ads, which will initially target nine Republican senators they view as swing votes, “connect Kennedy’s unsupported claims about the danger of vaccines to the deaths of more than 80 children during a measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019 — and argue that health professionals, scientists and the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board oppose his confirmation, making it a safe position for Republicans.”
— Meanwhile, the Washington Post’s Michael Scherer and Rachel Roubein have a readout from last week’s Mar–A-Lago summit between Kennedy, Trump and top drug industry leaders, including from vaccinemakers Pfizer and Eli Lilly and the industry group PhRMA.
— “Trump directed the conversation to the role pharmacy benefit managers play in the costs of prescription drugs — a major sore point for drug manufacturers who have launched a lobbying crusade accusing the middlemen of driving up prices,” according to the Post, with Trump making “clear that he wanted to do something to help drugmakers.”
— “When the topic turned to vaccines, the discussion was not about banning the products,” with Kennedy reiterating his desire for more research on vaccines’ impacts on children, which Trump backed up. Kennedy also highlighted his concerns about chronic disease, and the meeting “ended by all accounts with surprising warmth on all sides.”
DRUG LOBBYIST TAPPED AS TOP E&C STAFFER: Incoming House Energy & Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) has picked Megan Jackson, a former top aide-turned-lobbyist, to serve as staff director for the committee next year.
— Jackson has spent the past eight years as a lobbyist for Alkermes, the maker of the opioid addiction treatment Vivitrol. Before that, she worked for Guthrie for nearly a decade and a half, rising up to become his deputy chief of staff and legislative director.
— In 2017, then-Sen. Kamala Harris decried what she said was an aggressive and misleading lobbying and marketing campaign to boost Alkermes’ more expensive opioid treatment over cheaper options, and the FDA hit the company in 2019 for underselling Vivitrol’s risks. A 2018 package aimed at addressing the opioid epidemic, meanwhile, included language co-authored by Guthrie that would address a key market restraint for the drug after Alkermes’ lobbying skyrocketed.
— More recently, Jackson reported lobbying for Alkermes on implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act’s drug pricing provisions, which Guthrie has criticized, and for changes to the 340B drug discount program, which lawmakers and the drug industry have been pushing to reform. Alkermes has also reported lobbying this year on a tax credit aimed at incentivizing development of drugs for rare disorders, which was slashed in Republicans’ 2017 tax bill.
A HOLIDAY TAX APPETIZER: A business coalition pushing to make permanent the so-called 199A tax deduction for pass-through entities is launching an ad blitz to rally support for the tax break, which will sunset at the end of next year without action from Congress.
— The digital ad spend from the PROTECT Coalition is in the low-five figures for now, and will initially target the districts of five House members: Republicans Jodey Arrington and Chip Roy of Texas, David Schweikert of Arizona, and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and Democrat Susie Lee of Nevada.
— A spokesperson told PI that the districts were selected for a number of reasons, including their committee memberships (Arrington chairs the budget panel), their positions on deficit spending (Roy is a budget hawk) and how swingy the district is.
DEPARTMENT OF ODD BEDFELLOWS: Manufacturers of home breathing and respiratory equipment have “failed in myriad ways the million-plus Americans who struggle to breathe,” ProPublica’s Peter Elkind reports, but now oxygen patient advocates have teamed up with the industry for “a final push for legislation that, among other things, would pay the scandal-scarred industry hundreds of millions of dollars more than it currently receives.”
— “The patients, many aged and infirm, have been besieging lawmakers with meetings, calls and emails, pressing them to pass the Supplemental Oxygen Access Reform, or SOAR, Act by the end of the year.” The bill “would protect companies from additional reductions in their billings by removing oxygen from Medicare’s competitive bidding program, which has saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. And it would make it far more difficult for the government to challenge those billings.”
— “The patient groups, in turn, have their own goals: improving the industry’s notoriously poor service and assuring access to costly liquid oxygen for a relatively small group of the sickest patients. That form of oxygen is coveted by patients with advanced lung disease because it provides the high flows they need in easy-to-carry cylinders that last for hours. Emotional accounts of stricken patients, unable to obtain the equipment they need, have been prominent in the lobbying campaign to pass the measure.”
CAN K STREET STAVE OFF TARIFFS?: The Wall Street Journal’s Brian Schwartz reports that, thus far, the answer seems to be no: “So far, executives are facing setbacks as they canvass Trump’s aides for advice on how to influence the president-elect’s next steps. Trump is largely acting on his own, leaving his incoming team of advisers with few opportunities to shape his thinking.”
— “His recent late-night social-media statements about tariffs have come with little warning even to some of his closest allies, according to people familiar with the matter. Trump’s team has told corporate consultants there is no waving the president-elect off his plans to make liberal use of tariffs once he gets into office, the people said.”
— “With Inauguration Day less than two months away, companies based in the U.S. and around the world are weighing the possibility that Trump will follow through on many of his campaign-trail warnings, potentially triggering a multifront trade war that economists warn could increase prices for consumers.”
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