Politics

K Street rakes in record cash thanks to Trump

Published

11 months ago

July 24, 2025

The first six months of President Donald Trump’s term have produced a cash cow of historic magnitude for the lobbying industry, with record-breaking demand for help navigating the administration’s constant stream of policy pronouncements — or trying to avoid becoming a pay-for in the GOP’s megabill.

The result is a new set of power brokers e in Trump’s swamp. Firms with strong ties to the White House have skyrocketed to the top of the pecking order of lobbying outfits in town, according to a Blue Light News analysis of the latest quarterly lobbying disclosures filed this week.

No firm has benefitted more than Ballard Partners, which is led by Trump fundraiser Brian Ballard. The firm previously employed White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Ballard brought in $20.6 million in lobbying revenues during the second quarter of the year from clients including Palantir, American Express, TikTok, Ripple Labs and UnitedHealth. Its haul is more than four times what the firm brought in during the second quarter of 2024.

But the gusher has benefited the entire lobbying industry, new firms and old, the analysis shows. Of the top 20 firms by revenue, only two saw their lobbying revenues decline last quarter compared to the same time a year ago. The lobbying figures reported this week don’t include revenue from public affairs or consulting work, or foreign agent work.

“The number of people who feel they need representation at this point is huge, and we’re really just getting into sort of the day-to-day of governing,” said Rich Gold, who heads up the public policy and regulation group at law and lobbying firm Holland & Knight. Gold’s firm, which ranked fifth among the top earners on K Street last quarter with $13.8 million in revenue, signed 57 new clients during the first half of the year, a record intake for the firm.

“The largest driver of business right now is the overarching trend of uncertainty and the need for C-suites to try to minimize uncertainty and political risk as much as possible,” he said. While specific legislation like the recently signed One Big Beautiful Bill Act has certainly drummed up lobbying business, “the number of people who needed political intelligence work and advocacy” in D.C. this year stretches far beyond that one law, Gold said.

As for Ballard, its blowout earnings were enough to dethrone Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which has topped the quarterly revenue rankings since 2021. Brownstein reported $18.5 million in lobbying revenues during Q2, setting the firm’s own quarterly record.

Ballard’s Trump-linked competitors are also cashing in. Miller Strategies, which is run by top GOP fundraiser Jeff Miller and employs several former Trump administration alumni, brought in nearly $13 million during the second quarter from clients like Zoom, OpenAI, Apple, Softbank, Crypto.com and Blackstone. That’s up almost 80 percent from the beginning of the year, and four times what it brought in during the second quarter of 2024.

Continental Strategy, whose staff includes former Trump appointee Carlos Trujillo as well as a former top aide to then Sen. Marco Rubio, reported $6.5 million in lobbying revenues last quarter, making it the 15th biggest firm by lobbying revenue in Q2. During the same time last year, Continental reported just $292,000 in lobbying fees.

Another firm that found itself knocking at the doorstep of D.C.’s most prestigious lobbying shops didn’t even exist in the nation’s capital a year ago.

North Carolina-based Checkmate Government Relations, which announced plans to open a D.C. office in December, brought in $4.5 million in lobbying fees in Q2, more than quadruple the $910,000 it reported at the beginning of 2025. Among its clients were Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, UNC Chapel Hill, General Dynamics and Juul.

Checkmate’s president, Ches McDowell, is a hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr. and the brother of freshman Rep. Addison McDowell (R-N.C.). The firm also employs the son of Trump’s co-campaign manager and the nephew of Trump’s HHS secretary.

BGR Group, a bipartisan but Republican-heavy firm whose alumni include Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, posted its best quarter in its 35-year existence, said Loren Monroe, the co-head of the firm’s lobbying group.

BGR’s lobbyists include Trump adviser David Urban as well as Florida powerbroker Nick Iarossi, and the firm reported $17.7 million in lobbying fees in Q2 — which was third overall and marked a nearly 60 percent increase from the same time last year.

Mercury Public Affairs also posted a banner quarter, raking in almost $6.5 million from April through June, compared to $3.2 million in Q2 of 2024. Wiles served as a co-chair at the K Street mainstay before joining the White House this year, and the bipartisan firm also employs former Trump adviser Bryan Lanza, who’s signed dozens of new clients since the election.

Elsewhere on K Street, the all-Republican firm CGCN Group doubled its lobbying revenues compared to a year ago, and Michael Best Strategies, whose leadership includes Trump’s first White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and Trump’s 2024 co-campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, more than tripled its Q2 lobbying earnings.

Lobbyists anticipate the good times will last, at least for the foreseeable future, even after the signing of the megabill this month — though not everyone believes the Trump-driven realignment will remain.

“We’ve had sort of personality-based firms in town before,” said Gold. “They kind of come and go. I expect that to be the case here.”

In addition to ongoing trade policy disruptions, multiple lobbyists pointed to the various executive orders and presidential memoranda the White House has been churning out since day one as another key driver of business this year.

“The beginning of any new administration is a very busy time,” added Karishma Page, a partner at K&L Gates. “This, I think, is a high watermark.”

K&L Gates saw its lobbying revenue last quarter surge by 25 percent from the same period a year ago thanks to the flurry of activity on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

“There seems to be an insatiable appetite” from clients for insight into the Trump administration, added Will Moschella, who co-leads the lobbying practice at Brownstein.

“A lot of those executive orders require departments and agencies to report back with policy proposals,” he said. “So they weren’t one time events — those are documents and directives that are going to drive further executive branch action.”

From an advocacy perspective, the fight over Republicans’ massive reconciliation package this spring and summer “is kind of like having your dessert,” Gold said. Those negotiations touched off lobbying by everyone from universities to business groups, hospitals, the renewable energy industry and beyond.

The day-to-day regulatory work at various agencies, which Gold compared to “eating your spinach,” is “really just gearing up,” he added.

There’s also the widespread uncertainty over Trump’s tariff policies, to say nothing of must-pass legislation to fund the government and reauthorize the nation’s farm and defense policies.

Those issues — while less sexy than things like crypto or AI policy — have been the focus of increased attention from clients, lobbyists said, thanks to Trump’s large-scale slashing of government funding across the country and the recissions bill passed by Congress this month.

“There is a need in the current moment to really be able to justify the work of an organization that may be a federal contractor or grantee,” Page argued.

That’s also the case for clients that have sought to avoid the president’s ire. “I think there was a sense at the beginning of the administration that maybe you could just duck and cover and just be left alone,” said Monroe. “The experience of the last six months suggests that the best defense is a strong offense … and telling your story, otherwise you risk it being told for you.”

Politics

Democratic socialists just dominated New York — and are coming for 2028

Published

4 hours ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Democratic socialists just caused a political earthquake. Now they’re coming for 2028.

Fresh off sweeping victories across New York City that showcased the growing power of the anti-establishment progressive left inside the Democratic Party, Democratic Socialists of America leaders, eager to capitalize on their momentum, are already plotting their next act: making sure one of their own is on the presidential primary debate stage, whether the party wants them or not.

“What DSA represents is a real contrast to Democrats who have run the last couple of elections on fear,” DSA national co-chair Megan Romer said. “You can’t run on that. You have to offer an alternative. And it’s really important that we be involved in that conversation in 2028. It’s important that we have somebody saying sensible things.”

Their search process is already underway. This summer, DSA is dispatching surveys to all 250 of its chapters, asking members to weigh who they want to back and why, and return their findings to national leadership by Sept. 15, details the group first shared with Blue Light News. DSA expects to receive a stack of 20-page to 40-page dossiers from chapters coast to coast weighing in on who should carry the democratic socialist banner into 2028.

The organization plans to hold national discussions, including with leaders like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is 84 and not expected to run in 2028, with a formal vote expected at the group’s 2027 convention next year — though leaders say they could move faster if the primary timeline demands it.

“We’re going to be talking about millions of hours knocking doors for 2028 — so when we decide to really run somebody, people have to feel like they had a say,” Romer said.

Mamdani-backed candidates swept three closely watched New York congressional primaries Tuesday, with Claire Valdez, Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier all defeating more establishment-aligned rivals — including two incumbents. It was a major show of force for Mamdani’s political operation, and fresh evidence of the left’s growing muscle heading into 2028. “They ask, ‘Who do you want to run in 2028?’ Then they ask, ‘When does the race for 2028 begin?’ It starts now. It starts on Tuesday,” Mamdani said at a Brooklyn rally last week.

The elephant in the room for the group, of course, is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The New York representative has yet to say whether she will run for president in 2028 — and has been rumored to be interested in running for the seat currently held by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Her name hangs over any serious conversations DSA leaders have about the race. But Romer made clear that one of the country’s best-known democratic socialists would need to go through the same process as any other candidates, and would not automatically be handed a rose.

“She will have to sell her campaign and why DSA should throw down behind it,” she said, noting that means going to the group’s roughly 110,000 members in 250 chapters. “We don’t do kingmakers.”

The relationship between DSA and Ocasio-Cortez has at times been complicated. After backing her insurgent 2018 bid, DSA national in 2024 briefly conditioned its reelection endorsement on several demands around her positions on Israel. That exposed a rift with NYC-DSA, which had already endorsed her and asked national leaders to withdraw their conditional backing.

When asked directly whether DSA wants Ocasio-Cortez to run, Romer was careful not to get ahead of rank-and-file members for or against.

“If it reveals that every chapter is like, ‘We want AOC, we want AOC’ — that’s something that could come out of this process,” she said. “And if that seems to be the overwhelming case, then that may be what we decide to do. We want to get in on the ground floor. It would be really great to be a day-one part of a campaign.”

And then there is Mamdani.

The New York City mayor went from a complete unknown to one of the most popular and influential progressives in the country, boosting democratic socialism’s political profile in a way not seen since Ocasio-Cortez’s rise and perhaps since Sanders’ first presidential run. But Mamdani wasn’t born in the United States, making him constitutionally ineligible for the presidency.

“Some people are like, let’s just run him — let’s just cause a constitutional crisis,” Romer said, describing it as a running joke, though she was “not sure everybody’s fully joking.”

Tuesday’s wins in New York were the latest in a string of DSA victories accumulating across the country, including Chris Rabb’s primary win in Pennsylvania’s 3rd District in Philadelphia, and mayoral races in Washington, D.C., last week and Seattle last fall.

The group is backing Melat Kiros — a first-time candidate taking on a 30-year incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado next week — as well as Oliver Larkin in Florida and former Rep. Cori Bush in her bid to reclaim the Missouri congressional seat she lost last cycle. It’s a packed primary calendar that reflects just how aggressively DSA is looking to expand its footprint heading into 2028.

“The sheer scale of what just happened in New York is historic,” said Bhaskar Sunkara, former DSA vice-chair and president of The Nation. “Nationally, this is a massive boon for the democratic socialist movement. The old institutional left is hollowed out — DSA has proven to be the only real mobilizational force left on the ground. “

But Sunkara noted the movement still had a lot to figure out ahead of 2028, especially if it is to translate its momentum beyond DSA’s urban, heavily lefty strongholds. Moderate Democrats have long argued that democratic socialist candidates are a liability in competitive battleground seats, too far left to win over the voters the party needs in purple districts and red-leaning states.

“A national map includes deep-red and rural districts where the left still has to figure out how to speak to working-class voters and compete,” Sunkara said. “Having national platforms through multiple members of Congress is a start there too.”

DSA’s leaders say the moment the group is having has been years in the making — and comes after some recent turbulent times that followed 2018’s emergence of the Squad as a high-water mark and then saw years of grinding setbacks: a pandemic that gutted in-person organizing, a Biden era that Romer described as a “wet blanket,” and a 2024 Kamala Harris campaign that didn’t listen when DSA tried to push the candidate left.

“The squad dropped off a bit,” Romer said. “2022 was a really, really tough year for left politics.”

The 2024 cycle also brought losses for both Bush and Jamaal Bowman, who was ousted in what was at the time the most expensive House primary in history, powered largely by AIPAC spending.

Now the tide appears to be turning again.

Looking ahead to 2028, the socialist wing of the Democratic Party wants to force a reckoning within the party it believes has spent years running from its own base while asking voters to settle for less.

“The best possible thing that could happen is having a string of victories in the midterms and forcibly reshaping the way the national Democratic Party approaches some of these issues, and having a much larger presence in the Democratic primary, and hopefully the presidential candidacy,” said Hasan Piker, a prominent progressive Twitch streamer and one of the most influential voices in the democratic socialist movement, who campaigned heavily in New York for the full DSA slate.

Tuesday’s wins, he said, are a way to bring the party further to their side, turning far-left politics more mainstream.

As for who he wants to see carry the socialist banner in 2028, Piker is still hoping for Ocasio-Cortez. “That could change, 2028 is far out,” he said. “But that’s what I got so far.”

Politics

Rep. April McClain Delaney wins bitter primary to keep her Maryland House seat

Published

9 hours ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. April McClain Delaney won her bitter and expensive Democratic primary for Maryland’s 6th District on Tuesday, denying her predecessor, former Rep. David Trone, from making a comeback.

The race drew $23 million in TV spending, with much of that coming from the candidates directly, and became a microcosm of the Democratic Party’s clashes over President Donald Trump, money in politics and immigration.

McClain Delaney, who is serving her first term in Congress, had the backing of the rest of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation, along with Gov. Wes Moore.

Trone announced he would challenge McClain Delaney in December, citing in part her vote for the Laken Riley Act, a Republican-led immigration bill. McClain Delaney later said she regretted the vote, saying she hadn’t imagined “the horror” of Trump’s immigration enforcement would come to pass.

Trone almost entirely self-funded his attempt to return to Congress. He previously represented the 6th District for three terms but gave up his seat to run for Senate in 2024, losing in the primary to now-Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.). McClain Delaney, who is married to former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), won an open primary and was elected to the seat that year.

The seat is considered safe for Democrats for the midterms. McClain Delaney won by a bit more than 6 points in 2024.

Politics

Hoyer alum Adrian Boafo wins Maryland House primary with help of crypto, pro-Israel money

Published

11 hours ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Maryland state Del. Adrian Boafo won the Democratic primary Tuesday to replace retiring Rep. Steny Hoyer in the 5th District, aided by $11 million from pro-crypto and pro-Israel groups.

Boafo was Hoyer’s preferred successor and his former campaign manager. The primary was marked by intraparty divisions over heavy outside spending and what may be the last intraparty fight between Hoyer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who endorsed a rival in the race.

United Democracy Project, a super PAC associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, pumped $5.7 million into the race to promote Boafo, becoming the single biggest spender on the airwaves. Protect Progress, a super PAC aligned with the crypto industry, poured $5.5 million into the race, largely to benefit Boafo, a former federal lobbyist for the tech firm Oracle.

This spending in the crowded 24-candidate field drew the ire of many of Boafo’s rivals. Three of them — Harry Dunn, Rushern Baker and Quincy Bareebe — took the unusual step of jointly denouncing the interest groups’ efforts to influence the primary outcome. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a potential 2028 presidential contender who did not endorse in the race, also accused the groups of trying to buy the seat.

Boafo’s victory now stands as a major win for the powerful arm of the pro-Israel lobby that’s drawn heavy scrutiny from some Democrats over its aggressive tactics in this year’s primary contests, as well as for Hoyer in getting his handpicked successor for his seat.