What’s New?

Sphere is working with over 200 mayors and local elected officials on a national effort to address the opioid crisis that is crippling their communities. From San Diego to Montgomery we have dispatched our grassroots and media teams to challenge those who have profited from this epidemic that has destroyed so many families in every corner of the country.

• Good Morning! President Trump joked at the Gridiron dinner that he loves chaos, but inside the White House aides say “these are the darkest days in at least half a year … and they worry just how much farther President Trump and his administration may plunge into unrest and malaise before they start to recover,” The Washington Post reports. Even if Trump isn’t as angry and isolated as media reports say, he has zigzagged on policy in a way that has baffled and dismayed congressional leaders, the financial markets and many in his own administration. • Just a couple of months ago, the stock market seemed unstoppable. No more. By launching a trade war with aggressive new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, President Trump has paved the way for “a broader protectionist trade policy that cou ...

• Good morning! Congress returns to town today facing intense pressure to solve their decades-long failure to institute any gun-control measures. Governors gathered in Washington last week warned of the perils of inaction. And President Trump claimed that he told the National Rifle Association that it needs to get busy helping to craft some gun-control legislation, including considering raising the age for purchase of semiautomatic weapons to 21. “If past is prologue,” the New York Times reports, “Congress will do nothing.” • President Trump’s lawyers are examining ways that he might testify before Special Counsel Robert Mueller, including limiting questions to specified topics that won’t test his at-times-limited memory or lure him into a perjury trap, the Wall Street Journal reports. But ...

JIM COURTOVICH has inked a deal to represent Qatar as a lobbying client, according to a recent FARA filing. SPHERE GOVERNMENT RELATIONS will get paid $40,000 a month, and the firm will “provide government and public relations services for Qatar with regard to bilateral issues pertaining to the relationship between Qatar and the United States. Such services may include outreach to the United States Congress, the federal government, and the media.”

SGR Government Relations and Lobbying represents Catalonia, the northeast region of Spain that yesterday voted overwhelmingly to declare independence from Spain despite fierce opposition from the central government in Madrid and a brutal crackdown by Spanish police that injured more than 750 people. The Catalan parliament, which is based in Barcelona, is expected to declare a formal separation from Spain by the end of the week. SGR Government Relations Lobbying Spain’s prime minister Mariano Rajoy and the European Commission have declared the election illegal. Catalonia is one of the richest parts of Spain. Its 7.5M people generate 20 percent of Spanish GDP and attract 25 percent of the country’s foreign investment. SGR, which is sister company of Sphere Consulting, began work in August fo ...