With James Bikales, Josh Siegel, Daniel Lippman GOING WEST: Lance West has left the American Petroleum Institute to join Comcast as head of the telecom giant’s D.C. office. West has headed up API’s federal lobbying team since last January. Before that, he spent roughly a decade working on and off for Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), most recently as Manchin’s chief of staff. — During West’s most recent stint in Manchin’s office, the senator was one of the key decisionmakers in determining the scope of President Joe Biden’s domestic policy agenda, which contained historic amounts of funding to increase broadband accessibility and affordability — including a landmark initiative that internet service providers including Comcast have been working to water down. — West succeeds Mitch Rose, who retired earlier this year, at the helm of one of D.C.’s largest lobbying operations. Comcast spent more than $13.5 million on federal lobbying last year, and was on track to surpass that through the first half of 2024. EBAY ADDS EX-HARRIS AIDE, HOUSE CHIEF: eBay is expanding its lobbying operations, adding a former adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris as well as a former House chief of staff as Congress embarks on addressing a number of tech issues impacting the e-commerce world, including data privacy and artificial intelligence. — Danielle Decker joined eBay earlier this month as a senior manager of state government relations. She was most recently director of intergovernmental affairs at the Commerce Department and before that, Decker was an intergovernmental and public affairs adviser to the vice president. — Earlier this summer, eBay brought on Casey Fitzpatrick as a senior manager of federal government relations focused on judiciary issues like counterfeits and organized retail crime. Fitzpatrick previously served as chief of staff to Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), the vice chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a member of the House Judiciary Committee. — The online seller also added Justin Wilson, a former manager of federal affairs for self-driving electric car company Cruise, as a senior manager of federal affairs focused on issues like privacy, AI and consumer protection. Happy Tuesday and welcome to PI. The House may be gone until September, but we’re still pumping out newsletters over here, so keep your lobbying tips coming: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko. COMING ATTRACTIONS: With today’s Senate passage legislation aimed at protecting kids online, “opponents are gearing up to lobby hard in the House to forestall further action and to pursue challenges on constitutional grounds,” per Roll Call’s Gopal Ratnam. — “Backers say the package is narrowly tailored and intended to curb social media companies’ conduct rather than curtail content, insulating them from First Amendment challenges.” But “tech industry groups, nonpartisan organizations and free-speech advocates opposing the package will challenge it in the courts, said Chris Marchese, director of the litigation center at NetChoice,” whose members include Meta, Amazon and Google. — The Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act — a combination of the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act — will have to make it that far first, and though the Senate voted 91 to 3 to pass the package this afternoon, its fate remains up in the air in the lower chamber, where NetChoice has also pledged to try and tank it. A NEW PROJECT FOR PROJECT 2025 CHIEF: “Donald Trump's campaign has forced an architect of the ultra-conservative Project 2025 manifesto out of his job at the Heritage Foundation,” the Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger reports. — “Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita ‘put the screws’ to Project 2025 mastermind Paul Dans in an effort to force him out and shut down the right-wing shop behind a sprawling blueprint that sought to overhaul the federal government and implement an array of far-right policies for a potential second Trump administration, a well-placed source told the Daily Beast.” — “Dans confirmed in an email to colleagues Tuesday that he is stepping down from his role at Heritage, where he directed Project 2025. Dans said in the email he was leaving in order to focus his energy on ‘winning bigly’ for conservatives candidates this election cycle.” — His departure comes “more than a year after Project 2025 produced its cornerstone 900-page policy mandate that came to define the MAGA movement.” But Trump and his campaign have sought to distance themselves from the effort as it increasingly attracted negative attention in recent weeks. (Trump advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement today that "reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed.") MICROSOFT PRESSES HILL ON DEEPFAKES: “Microsoft Corp. is calling on Congress to pass a comprehensive law to crack down on images and audio created with artificial intelligence — known as deepfakes — that aim to interfere in elections or maliciously target individuals,” Bloomberg’s Jeff Stone reports. — “Noting that the tech sector and nonprofit groups have taken steps to address the problem, Microsoft President Brad Smith on Tuesday said, ‘It has become apparent that our laws will also need to evolve to combat deepfake fraud.’ He urged lawmakers to pass a ‘deepfake fraud statute to prevent cybercriminals from using this technology to steal from everyday Americans.’” — “The company also is pushing for Congress to label AI-generated content as synthetic and for federal and state laws that penalize the creation and distribution of sexually exploitive deepfakes. The goal, Smith said, is to safeguard elections, thwart scams and protect women and children from online abuses.” NEW PERMITTING GROUP LAUNCHED: Boundary Stone Partners’ Emily Domenech, a former senior policy adviser to House Speaker Mike Johnson and his predecessor Kevin McCarthy, has launched a new coalition of companies to advocate for policies to ease the federal permitting process. — Domenech will co-chair America Builds with Boundary Stone’s Tony Kreindler, who was formerly an executive at the Environmental Defense Fund. Domenech told Josh her goal is to pull together companies and NGOs across different sectors, including fossil fuels, renewables, heavy manufacturing and mining, to agree to a set of policies building off the recent permitting proposal from Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Manchin. She expects to announce members in the coming months. DOT ALUMS HANG A SHINGLE: Three recent alums of the Transportation Department have launched Lincoln Room Strategies, an advisory services firm working at the intersection of transportation and climate. The firm is led by Lynda Tran, who until last year served as DOT’s director of public engagement and senior adviser to Secretary Pete Buttigieg. — She’s joined by Emily Schweninger, who served as senior policy adviser for transportation health and safety, and Bryson Hughes, who was Buttigieg’s deputy director for advance. The firm’s name comes from the executive conference room at DOT, where all three were involved in implementation of the bipartisan infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act. ANNALS OF FUNDRAISING: Our Hailey Fuchs and Jessica Piper report that the reason “major Democratic donors are already flocking” to Harris is pretty simple: She’s not Biden. “The wave of big-dollar donors, which is defying predictions that the vice president would not be able to appeal to the party’s fundraising class, has been particularly noticeable because of some donors’ previous aversion to giving to a president they saw as a doomed candidate.” — “Donors told POLITICO that with Harris assuming Biden’s spot at the top of the ticket, they are now more willing to support a Democratic presidential candidate again. Some were also motivated by their desire to beat GOP nominee Donald Trump.” And though it’s still early, “so far the stream of money has been so strong that one donor adviser has even cautioned some donors to slow down until the dynamics of the race make it clearer where money is most needed.”
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