I spoke Jasmine Wright for here Washington Sun piece on MAGA Inc.’s midterm spending plans:

The PAC’s contributions have started to flow. Last week, it spent $10 million to support Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his tight Senate race, a financial disclosure filed Saturday afternoon showed.

“I do think there’s a sense of relief now that they’re coming out of stealth mode with their plans, the division of labor with other groups and party entities is coming into focus, and campaigns and donors have a clearer picture of what to expect,” said Liam Donovan, a GOP strategist and former National Republican Senatorial Committee aide.

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to Ben Johansen, Adam Wren and Lisa Kashinsky for POLITICO on shutdown and GOP election losses.

“Republicans aren’t the ones asking for anything, so for them it’s a choice between changing the rules or helping Dems find an offramp,” Liam Donovan, a veteran GOP strategist, told POLITICO. “Last night’s result theoretically allows Democrats to declare victory and end this on their own terms, but success makes choreography of any resolution that much trickier.”

Read the full piece here.

Timothy Cama quoted me in POLITICO’s Power Switch, on reporting by Kelsey Brugger, about the wind and solar tax provision that appeared and vanished in the reconciliation bill.

“It was a perfect MacGuffin for the most frenzied point in the process,” said Liam Donovan, a political strategist at the firm Bracewell. He called it a “reminder to industry that things could get worse.”

Read the full piece here.

Adam Wren and Dasha Burns quoted me in POLITICO Playbook on Republican midterm strategy.

Fabrizio and LaCivita — who don’t have a formal partnership — are helping the GOP as a whole avoid messy primaries by getting the president to weigh in early in favor of his preferred candidates. In the process, the operation is consolidating support behind those candidates as they gear up to face flush Democrats who, as Republican strategist Liam Donovan notes, will “beat each other up on personal and ideological grounds for the ensuing year [in] an inversion of the dynamic that has plagued the GOP in competitive races for the better part of the past decade.”

Read the full piece here.

I sat down with Leigh Ann Caldwell for a Puck interview on how K Street was handled during the One Big Beautiful Bill — ignored in some respects, shut out entirely in others — and how different the process felt from the 2017 tax reform fight.

In a very candid chat, Donovan broke down how lobbyists were ignored in some respects, and completely shut out of the process in others. The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Leigh Ann Caldwell: How influential was K Street in crafting the BBB compared to eight years ago, when the first Trump administration passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act?

Liam Donovan: It’s been very, very different in terms of the level of open collaboration. Back then, you had a blank canvas. And the idea was, Okay, we can kind of do whatever we want in tax reform. It was very hand in glove — Republicans on Capitol Hill working with friendly industries to shape policies, take stakeholder input, and ultimately support the product. That’s really not been this experience.

Read the full Q&A here.