During his first term, the “resistance” to President Donald Trump’s agenda began on many different streets across American cities. But this time around, it’s still getting organized on one downtown DC street in particular: K Street.
“K Street” is real enough – a street of expensive office buildings just a couple blocks north of the White House – but it’s also the term for describing the city’s most powerful and connected lobbying firms. But where the resistance to Trump 45 began in a swarm of shivering “pussy hats” and bespectacled suburbanites on the pavement, Trump 47 resisters are hiring high-priced talent to try to dull the reforms from the 23rd floor of a K Street high-rise.
Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), takes note of the new lobbying blitz on the most recent episode of The Drill Down podcast.
Noting the administration’s efforts to cut government spending, Schweizer says this time, “the resistance will begin with the lobbyists.”
Among the first takers? Harvard University. Trump has made several suggestions recently that he might pursue a tax policy change that would tax massive, self-sustaining endowments such as Harvard’s. The school’s endowment is valued at $53.2 billion and continues to grow. As its student newspaper noted recently, Harvard’s lobbying spending rose 17% last year and is on pace to exceed that in 2025.
But the game changes when a new administration, with a very different agenda, comes to town. And for Harvard, that means hiring lobbyists who are on good terms with the new crowd. The school just hired Ballard Partners, a firm with close tie to several of Trump’s top advisers. The firm’s founder, Brian Ballard, was the campaign finance chairman for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Both incoming Attorney General Pam Bondi and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles were partners at Ballard earlier in their careers. It’s about access. Ballard also represents TikTok, among other needy clients.
The threatened endowment tax idea would cost Harvard an estimated $5 billion per year, a prospect the university’s president recently told university faculty, “keeps me up at night.”
At least Harvard is still an American (-ish) institution. But what about foreign governments?
GAI will be launching its own, ongoing “Lobbying Investigation,” which will monitor the reported spending on lobbying by foreign governments. Already, GAI has noticed sharp increases in spending by the governments of Panama, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and various Russian oligarchs who are ponying up big retainers to K Street influence vendors. In the wake of Trump’s victory and reform plans, they have a lot to fear.
Panama has retained the services of BGR, a white shoe “public affairs” firm run by former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour. So has the government of Somalia. Meanwhile, the Congo has hired Ballard’s firm.
“I don’t think that lobbying in and of itself is wrong,” Schweizer says. “The Constitution guarantees you a right to petition the government. But there is offensive lobbying and defensive lobbying. Defensive lobbying is trying to prevent the government from shaking you down. Offensive lobbying is trying to get favors from the government. So, that’s Harvard University,” he added.
GAI has been focusing on the spike of foreign government clients, such as Panama. “They’re doing business with China. letting China kind of take over the canal’s operations…Trump’s complaint is that we built the canal, and then in 1979, [President] Jimmy Carter decided to give it back,” Schweizer tells co-host Eric Eggers.
GAI is also looking at the flow of Trump loyalists flowing into DC’s big lobbying firms, and at the brand new firms that see an opportunity to do so. On of the newest players to open in DC is a North Carolina public affairs firm called Checkmate Government Relations, run by a man named Steve McDowell. His brother is just-elected Tar Heel congressman Addision McDowell (R-NC).
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