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With Daniel Lippman

FARA FRIDAY: The Uzbek government has retained three of D.C.’s lobbying firms in recent months, as the Central Asian country looks to capitalize on the geopolitical turmoil in the region and make inroads with officials in Washington. Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Investments and Foreign Trade hired Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer in April, then brought on BGR Government Affairs and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld last month, according to documents filed with the Justice Department.

— “This is the way the world is changing, maybe there's an opportunity for us to accelerate where we want to be anyway, long term, and be on the side of U.S. investment, and economic growth in Uzbekistan,” is how a source familiar summed up the former Soviet state’s thinking in turning to K Street.

— Uzbekistan has won fans in D.C. since the fall of the Afghanistan government last year, and though the country has appeared wary of being too critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, its top diplomat in March called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict and said it would not recognize Russia’s claims of sovereignty over two eastern Ukrainian territories.

— “Russia’s still a big economic investor in the country,” the source told PI, so “they’re walking a very fine line.” At the same time, the country is looking “for more ways to interact with the U.S. government on every level and more ways to interact with U.S. business on every level,” and to boost its image as a “potential strategic partner.”

— “With Afghanistan in flux … they become even more important for companies and entities that want to do business in that part of the world, not just in that country, but around that area,” the source added.

— In all, Uzbekistan’s team of lobbyists in Washington has grown by two dozen in the past two months with the recent hires. Its representatives in the capital now include former House Foreign Affairs Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and a onetime chief of staff to the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to name a few, but that kind of influence doesn’t come cheap. Though Uzbekistan’s contracts with the firms vary in length, the country’s retainers between the three come out to $145,000 per month, according to copies filed with DOJ.

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THE ADVOCACY REVOLUTION WILL BE PODCASTED: As more and more of the D.C. crowd — including advocacy groups, lobbying firms, and even the federal government — turn to digital media like podcasts to get their message out, multimedia production studio Big Whig Media has teamed up with the podcast network Evergreen Podcasts to further broaden the reach of those products.

— “We have a lot of former Cabinet secretaries walk in our studio and say, ‘I want to start a podcast.’ And we're like, ‘Well, you can do that. Do you have a distribution plan?’” co-founder Keith Nahigian told PI. “Now we kind of finished the sentence for them,” he said of the new partnership.

— Not only will Evergreen serve as a hub for podcasts, vodcasts and the like, produced in Big Whig’s studios at the Willard InterContinental hotel, it will help package them more professionally and help with cross-promotion to get the products in front of their intended audiences, Nahigian, the president of consulting firm Nahigian Strategies, said.

GOP LAWMAKER TARGETS CHINA-LINKED UNIVERSITY ENDOWMENTS: “Congress first targeted U.S. universities’ Chinese state-backed Confucius Institutes, then their academic partnerships with China. Now, some in Congress are preparing to go after America’s top institutions of higher learning and their enormous endowments in potentially problematic Chinese companies,” POLITICO’s Phelim Kine reports.

— “Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) is drafting legislation — the Protecting Endowments from Our Adversaries Act — designed to cut U.S. university endowment investments that fund abusive or hostile Chinese entities. Murphy doesn’t yet have co-sponsors for the bill, but told POLITICO that he expects ‘a lot of interest from a lot of folks in both houses.’”

— “On Thursday, Murphy sent a letter to the 15 private universities with the largest endowments — Harvard, Yale, Duke and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among them — asking them to purge their investment portfolios of ‘entities that are supporting the imprisonment of Uyghur Muslims or aiding the Russian Federation’s horrific invasion of Ukraine.’ Murphy also wants those schools to vet their endowment portfolios for any ‘adversarial entities’ named on U.S. government sanction lists.”

— “A successful congressional push to sever U.S. university endowments from Chinese investments could provide a template for legislation requiring private sector investors, including private equity firms and hedge funds, to do likewise, downsizing the U.S. financial sector’s relationship with China.”

CONGRESS’ TO-DO LIST: Congress is facing down a lengthy to-do list and increasingly little time to check things off it, with midterms “threatening to swallow priorities,” government affairs shop Plurus Strategies told clients in a memo Thursday. “The President's agenda – and the legacies of many Democrats, including one retiring Senate committee chair and four retiring House committee chairs – are on the line this summer,” the firm added. The memo divides Congress’ “laundry list” into four buckets based on the probability of becoming law.

— Must-pass bills include appropriations, FDA’s user fee reauthorization and the NDAA. The next category ticks off “priorities with high-possibility of action,” which include the China competition package, the Water Resources Development Act, and bills dealing with behavioral health, retirement security, pandemic preparedness and the FCC’s spectrum auction authority.

— Next up are bills that Plurus deems “possible, but less-likely candidates for movement,” which include additional Ukraine and Covid funding, shipping reform and a slimmed-down reconciliation or bipartisan energy package. The final bucket contains agenda items “seeing lots of talk, but less likely action.” It’s in this category you’ll find gun control reform, immigration, and lawmakers’ privacy and antitrust bills, despite recent momentum on several of those fronts. “We anticipate Sen. [Amy] Klobuchar’s most recent draft will continue to be tweaked, although it is unlikely to be enough to get the bill across the finish line,” Plurus says of the antitrust bill in particular.

BUSINESS GROUPS EMPHASIZE TARIFF RELIEF TO EASE INFLATION: Trade associations today seized on another round of dire inflation numbers this morning, arguing that the 40-year high increase in the cost of consumer prices last month underscores the urgency of lifting the Trump administration’s tariffs on goods from China.

— ““Inflation is the number one problem facing families, employers, and our economy, yet elected policymakers are not doing what needs to be done,” said Neil Bradley, the chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has long opposed the tariffs. Bradley called for “immediate tariff relief” paired with support for domestic fossil fuel production and immigration reforms. The Chamber launched a new push on tariff relief last month, highlighting increased prices of summer products, which the organization said was the result of a “tax on summertime fun.”

— Earlier this week, the National Retail Federation launched the second phase of a seven-figure advocacy campaign with broadcast, digital and out-of-home advertising calling on the administration to lift tariffs on goods from China. The trade group says the levies have cost U.S. importers $136.5 billion since they were put in place in 2018, and cost the average family more than $1,200 in 2020. “Retailers have a plan to lower prices,” the group argues in one ad. “The first step is to repeal tariffs. It's time to act now.”

— “This report showing that rampant inflation continues is one more reason for the administration to move quickly to repeal tariffs,” Matthew Shay, the group’s president and chief executive said in a statement today.

— Annette Capretta has been named chief counsel of ICI Global. Capretta has served as an associate general counsel at the Investment Company Institute since 2020. She worked previously as deputy managing director of the Independent Directors Council, and was a senior risk adviser at the SEC.

— David Ross is now manager of government affairs at the American Forest and Paper Association. He previously was a legislative assistant for Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.).

— Dana O’Brien is now president of FocusMaine. He previously was chief sustainability officer at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization and is an Ike Skelton alum.

NH GA Victory Fund (Sens. Raphael Warnock, Maggie Hassan)

Courageous Leaders PAC, Inc. (Super PAC)
Magnolia MAGA PAC (Super PAC)
MS Conservative Action PAC (Super PAC)
Pine Trees PAC (Leadership PAC: Bruce Poliquin)

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld: Gobrands, Inc. D/B/A Gopuff
Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP: Blockfi
Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP: Prince Kuhio Plaza, LLC
Ballard Partners: Florida Transportation Builders' Association, Inc.
Ballard Partners: The Heat Group
Bose Public Affairs Group: Elanco Animal Health Incorporated
J.A. Green And Company (Formerly LLC): Expression Networks, LLC
J.A. Green And Company (Formerly LLC): Gecko Robotics
Kbk Consulting Group: National Collegiate Athletic Association (Ncaa)
Ml Strategies, LLC: Creare
Ms. Tami Wahl: Sky Marketing Corporation
Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough: Stericycle, Inc.
Putalastrategies: Nextera Energy Resources LLC
Taxbit: Taxbit
Ten Government Strategies, LLC: Auguste Escoffier School Of Culinary Arts
The Majority Group, LLC: The Amherst Group, LLC
Tonio Burgos & Associates, Inc.: 5107 Sky Tower - Propco, LLC

American Immigration Lawyers Association: American Immigration Lawyers Association
Communications Preferred LLC: Rer Solutions, Inc.
Fti Government Affairs: Humana Inc
Ikon Public Affairs: Museum Of The American Revolution
Ikon Public Affairs: Pamela & Ajay Raju Foundation
Ms. Tami Wahl: Association Of Cannabis Specialists