(WASHINGTON) — Lobbying firms with ties to President Joe Biden and his administration are thriving, with some doubling and quadrupling their lobbying revenues from last year, disclosure filings show — but overall lobbying revenues haven’t increased much over the last year.

Earlier this year, three firms led by former Biden aides and others with close ties to key members of the Biden White House kicked off 2021 with a slew of new big-name clients and an early jump in their lobbying revenues, lobbying disclosure filings at that time showed.

Fast-forward nine months, and these firms have brought in far more in lobbying revenues in just the first three quarters of 2021 than the amount they brought in during the entire previous year.

The jump showcases how lobbyists with connections to Biden, the Biden administration, and Biden’s key advisers have been prospering under the new — and at the same time, familiar — presidency.

The lobbying firm run by the brother of Biden White House Counselor Steve Ricchetti nearly quadrupled its lobbying revenues in the first three quarters of this year from what it brought in during the same period last year. The firm reported more than $2.4 million in revenues from January through September of 2021, compared to just $635,000 through September of last year, filings show.

Ricchetti Inc, the firm that Jeff Ricchetti previously shared with his brother Steve, had reported a relatively quiet lobbying operation over the last few years, until late 2020 when the firm began picking up several new clients and reported a major spike in lobbying revenues.

Now, with major clients like Amazon and TC Energy Corporation, as well as several pharmaceutical and health care companies, Ricchetti Inc is enjoying its most lucrative year since Steve Ricchetti sold his stake in the firm and left in 2012 to joined the then-Obama White House as Biden’s adviser.

Ricchetti Inc earlier this year reported lobbying the office of president on behalf of health care companies, and the National Security Council on behalf of General Motors — but otherwise has mostly focused its efforts on lobbying Congress.

Jeff Ricchetti, who is now the only registered lobbyist for Ricchetti Inc, did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment. Earlier this year, a source close to Steve Ricchetti told ABC News that Jeff Ricchetti “has never and will never lobby his brother on behalf of any of his clients” and that “Steve and Jeff keep their professional activities distinctly separate.”

Entering the White House earlier this year, Biden committed himself and his administration to a set of ethics rules that some experts have described as more stringent than those of the Trump administration, including extending bans on so-called revolving-door and shadow lobbying.

“President Biden has established the highest ethical standards of any Administration in history, and his team has put in place stringent safeguards to protect against any potential conflicts of interest,” White House spokesperson Michael Gwin told ABC News.

Although many firms with connections to the Biden White House have been thriving, lobbying revenues overall are relatively flat compared to last year. Overall spending on lobbying has only increased by 3% so far this year compared to the same period in 2020, the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency.

“Under the last administration we saw firms with links to President Trump prosper, and now we are seeing a similar windfall for firms that hire lobbyists with connections to President Biden,” Dan Auble, a senior researcher at OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan research organization that tracks campaign finance and lobbying data, told ABC News. “It is clearly evidence that connections matter in Washington.”

Despite the rapid growth of several Biden administration-connected firms, Auble says that none of them top the way Ballard Partners took off during the Trump presidency.

“None of these have come from nowhere to become one of the biggest grossing firms like Ballard Partners did under Trump,” Auble said of the firm headed by Trump confidant and fundraiser Brian Ballard, which quickly became one of the leading K Street shops in Washington after it was launched in 2017. The firm reported nearly $19 million in lobbying revenues during the first three quarters of Trump’s last year in office.

Top-grossing firms so far this year include TheGROUP DC, which reported $5.2 million in lobbying revenues from a Rolodex of big name clients that includes Facebook, Lyft, BP, Pfizer, Lockheed Martin and JPMorgan Chase. Putala Strategies reported bringing in $2.8 million in lobbying revenues through work that includes lobbying on behalf of major clients like TransCanada Pipelines, Comcast, T-Mobile, and several other pharmaceutical and energy companies.

Neither Putala Strategies or TheGROUP DC responded to ABC News’ requests for comment.

In a sign of evolving influence, the American Health Care Association is now one of TheGroup DC’s highest-paying clients since signing on in December of last year — after previously being a top client of Ballard Partners. After several years of billing the AHCA $320,000 a year for its services, Ballard Partners’ filings for April through September of this year list “No Activity” for the AHCA.

The firm, however, isn’t standing pat; since Biden’s victory it’s been transitioning into a more bipartisan enterprise, adding some big Democratic names to its team over the last few months, including Courtney Whitney, a top Democratic fundraiser who was a consultant for the pro-Biden super PAC Priorities USA.

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(WASHINGTON) — A group of New York gun owners on Wednesday will ask the Supreme Court to establish a fundamental right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home, an expansive view of the Second Amendment that could reshape gun laws nationwide if a majority of justices agree.

The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association and two individual gun owners are challenging a century-old New York statute that requires applicants for concealed carry permits to show “proper cause,” or a specific special need, for possessing a firearm in public places.

Gun rights advocates say the standard is so tough to meet that it violates the Second Amendment. The state argues that gun rights are not unlimited and that reasonable barriers to concealed carry are in the public interest.

The case is the biggest test on gun rights at the high court in more than a decade, and its reach could extend far beyond New York. Roughly a quarter of Americans live in 29 states that require concealed carry permits. Eight of those, including New York, give authorities discretion to deny permits to anyone who can’t show a special need.

“If the law gets struck down in New York, it would have ripple effects across other places that have similar regimes,” said Eric Ruben, a Second Amendment law scholar at Southern Methodist University Law School. “It would mean that you could expect more people to be carrying handguns in places like New York City, Boston and Los Angeles.”

In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that Americans have an individual right to possess a handgun inside their homes but said nothing about that right in public places.

“The Second Amendment does not end at your doorstep,” said Tom King, president of NYSRPA, an affiliate of the National Rifle Association. “‘Proper cause’ is a restriction. It’s something the ‘anti-gunners’ put in there to keep guns out of the hands of lawful citizens in New York state.”

Gun control advocates warn that if the court rolls back restrictions on the carrying of handguns, American streets could become even more dangerous at a time when gun violence deaths are already surging.

“Even people who are well trained, who are prepared and carry a gun, oftentimes have to make split-second decisions that they then regret,” said Albany, New York’s Mayor Kathy Sheehan, who had to declare a state of emergency in the city last summer because of an outbreak of gun violence.

“The fewer guns, the fewer gun deaths. That’s what the data shows us. The more guardrails that you have in place with respect to gun ownership, the lower the number of gun deaths,” Sheehan said.

New York State Police, the agency defending the state’s permitting law in court, argues in court documents that, historically, no state has “allowed the right to carry a handgun everywhere… based on speculation that a confrontation warranting the use of deadly force might suddenly arise.”

“This case is going to present a lot of opportunity for the defenders of the law to present evidence on the special risks that guns can present in public and also evidence that limits on concealed carry in public can, on the whole, lead to less crime, less deaths and less injuries,” Ruben said.

Nationwide, gun sales and gun violence deaths have been climbing to near-record levels. More than 35,000 U.S. deaths from guns have been reported so far this year, according to the nonpartisan Gun Violence Archive.

“The uptick in violence has just been astronomical. The gun violence — just violence alone,” said Cheryl Apple, a small business owner and mother of five from Albany, who obtained her first handgun this year. “I just felt that I needed to be able to protect myself.”

Late last year, Apple applied for an unrestricted license to carry her 9-mm pistol almost anywhere she goes, a process that took her 10 months to complete and included a background check, a safety seminar and an interview with a judge.

“I explained to the judge that I am a woman-owned business, and that I traveled to and from my job at night, sometimes late, sometimes early in the morning, and that I just felt that it would make me feel safe,” she said.

The judge approved Apple’s request, but other gun-owners say the standard is overly discretionary and unfair.

“We don’t feel we should have to show a special reason that if you’ve been deemed eligible to own a firearm you should have the ability to have concealed carry,” said Shawn Lamouree, vice president of the Liberty Group, which operates a chain of gun stores and shooting ranges in upstate New York.

Lamouree said fear of rising crime should be sufficient cause for any law-abiding citizen to arm themselves if they so choose.

“The bottom line: If a criminal wants a gun, there’s a very good chance the criminal is going to find a way to get a gun,” said Lamouree, who is a former sheriff.

Gun rights groups are optimistic that the Supreme Court’s six-member conservative majority will be sympathetic to arguments in favor of broad concealed carry rights.

“There are indications the new justices on the court share a broader view of Second Amendment rights than what currently exists as a consensus view within the lower courts,” said Ruben.

King, who helped bring the case on behalf of New York gun owners, said he’s optimistic but not certain about the outcome.

“This could change everything,” he said.

In the meantime, gun safety groups and local leaders like the mayor of Albany are watching the case with a wary eye.

“We will enforce the law as the Supreme Court finds it,” Sheehan said. “But I think that New York State should have the right to put into place common-sense guardrails that it believes help to keep our state and the residents of our state safe.”

The court’s decision is expected by the end of June 2022.

ABC News’ “Rethinking Gun Violence,” is examining the level of gun violence in the U.S. — and what can be done about it.

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(WASHINGTON) — It’s likely to become President Joe Biden’s most hotly contested COVID policy yet: a sweeping new nationwide safety standard for the American workplace that demands large businesses require their employees to either get the vaccine or test regularly.

The temporary emergency rule would apply to every U.S. private business that employs 100 workers or more — from grocery clerks to meatpacking plant employees — impacting some 80 million Americans.

It would be the first time Washington has set a federal standard that regards a respiratory virus as an occupational hazard outside of the health care sector, essentially putting COVID in the same category as other workplace safety concerns as asbestos and dangerous machinery.

Details were expected to be released as early as Wednesday or Thursday on the rule, drafted by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA.

“It’s the biggest thing OSHA has ever done in terms of the number of workers it will cover,” said Jordan Barab, a longtime top official at the agency during the Obama administration.

Union and industry groups say they have yet to see a draft of the new rule. Among the most pressing questions is when employers would have to comply, with Republicans warning that mandates ahead of the holidays might exacerbate the nation’s worker shortage.

It’s also unclear how long the temporary standard would be in place and if it would apply to short-term “gig” workers, like freelancers and Uber drivers, or smaller franchises that are part of nationwide chains, like small restaurants or gyms.

How employers will be expected to enforce the standard is another question mark.

“We don’t know what they’re looking it. It’s a black box,” said one industry official involved in recent discussions with the administration.

Since taking office, the Biden administration had avoided imposing nationwide vaccine mandates, focusing instead on incentives for businesses and individuals. But with the arrival of the delta variant, a surge in pediatric cases and pockets of the country remaining hesitant to get a shot, Biden’s COVID strategy shifted in recent weeks.

“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us,” Biden said of unvaccinated Americans on Sept. 9 when announcing his plan to draft the rule.

Federal contractors now have until Nov. 22 to become fully vaccinated, while contractors that work with the government have until Dec. 8.

Testing for these workers is not an option.

Biden also has required that health facilities like hospitals and nursing homes that accept federal dollars mandate vaccines for their workers, a total estimated at 17 million workers.

The latest OSHA rule would significantly expand that pool of Americans, putting two-thirds of the nation’s workforce under a kind of mandate.

Once divided on how to address the pandemic, Republican governors have united against the plan, insisting it represents dangerous federal overreach and would cripple business owners already dealing with worker shortages.

“Rest assured, we will fight them to the gates of hell to protect the liberty and livelihood of every South Carolinian,” tweeted the South Carolina GOP Gov. Henry McMaster when Biden on Sept. 9 promised to draft the rule.

Supporters counter that many large businesses have already embraced vaccine mandates to both entice employees who want a safe workplace and end a pandemic that has hobbled the economy. They argue too that whenever employees are

“This is not a vaccine mandate. It’s a safe workplace mandate — getting vaccinated or tested,” said Barab, the former deputy assistant secretary of labor for OSHA.

“You want to do it as soon as you can to protect as many people as you can,” he added.

A Labor Department spokesperson and the White House declined to discuss the specifics of the rule ahead of its release, other than to confirm that the White House’s Office of Management and Budget completed its regulatory review on Monday.

“The Federal Register will publish the emergency temporary standard in the coming days,” a Labor Department spokesperson said.

As an emergency standard, the rule would take effect immediately. But the administration was widely expected to give businesses at least some time to comply, although it’s not clear how long. Several industry groups were pushing for a 60-day implementation period that would push any enforcement into 2022.

The rule was expected to call on employers to give workers time off to get the shot and recover from any side effects.

It’s unlikely that workers would be required to get booster shots — at least as of now. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers a person “fully immunized” as one shot of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine or two shots of Moderna or Pfizer. CDC officials warn, however, that definition could change as new research develops.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that the rule also would allow employers to force workers who refuse to get the COVID shot to pay for any weekly tests and masks.

ABC News producer Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.

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