Federal lobbying under Trump's second term has hit records that no prior administration matched: $1.4 billion spent in the first quarter of 2026 alone, and a record $5 billion in fees collected by lobbying firms across 2025. The people most affected are anyone with business before a federal agency — companies, trade groups, foreign-owned firms, and the in-house compliance staff who now file more disclosures than ever, under a rulebook the White House and Justice Department have both loosened at one end and tightened at the other. Lobbying, in the legal sense, means contacting federal officials to influence legislation, rules, or executive decisions — activity that triggers registration and quarterly reporting under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. This page lays out what the disclosure data shows, which ethics rules changed and when, and the filing deadlines and exemption tests that matter for anyone doing the work.
Table of Contents
- What the disclosure numbers actually show
- Which firms captured the growth
- The ethics pledge that no longer exists
- FARA is moving in two directions at once
- Deadlines and the exemption test to run now
- Frequently Asked Questions
What the disclosure numbers actually show
The Q1 2026 total is the highest first-quarter figure on record. According to OpenSecrets' April 2026 analysis, 13,521 organizations reported $1.4 billion — roughly $115 million, or about 9%, above Q1 2025. The number of reporting organizations matters as much as the dollar figure: this is a broad expansion of who lobbies, not a handful of giants spending more. The annual picture is the same.
OpenSecrets reported in January 2026 that lobbying firms collected $5 billion in fees during 2025, the highest annual industry total ever recorded under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. Second-quarter 2026 spending eased slightly but stayed near record levels. That pattern is the most useful single data point here. A one-quarter spike around a new administration would be ordinary; two years of sustained near-record demand is a structural change in how much access is worth.
Which firms captured the growth
The gains concentrated sharply among firms with personal ties to the administration. Ballard Partners led K Street in 2025 with roughly $82 million. The firm employed White House chief of staff Susie Wiles until 2020 and Attorney General Pam Bondi until her January 2025 confirmation, and it signed more than 200 new clients after Trump's election — its average quarterly client count rose from 124 to 253, per OpenSecrets' November 2025 report on Trump-aligned firms. In Q1 2026, Ballard became the first lobbying firm ever to clear $30 million in a single quarter.
BGR Group followed at $20.8 million, led by former Trump campaign adviser David Urban, with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck at $20.3 million. For a reader deciding whether to hire representation, the practical read is narrow: the revenue leaderboard measures what clients paid for perceived access, not what those clients obtained. Disclosure filings record fees and issue areas. They do not record outcomes.
The ethics pledge that no longer exists
On January 20, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14148, revoking Biden's Executive Order 13989. The Biden order had required every executive-branch appointee to sign an ethics pledge with three specific bars: no gifts from lobbyists, a two-year cooling-off period before lobbying a former agency, and a one-year ban on "shadow lobbying" — influence work structured to stay below the registration threshold. Trump issued no replacement pledge. As the Crowell & Moring client alert on the revoked orders sets out, departing appointees now face no presidential lobbying ban at all.
Statutory restrictions still apply — the criminal post-employment rules in 18 U.S.C. § 207 were never touched by either order. But the pledge covered conduct the statute does not reach, and that layer is gone. This is the clearest mechanical explanation for why firms staffed with recent administration alumni grew fastest.
FARA is moving in two directions at once
The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires anyone representing a foreign principal in political or public-relations work to register and file detailed disclosures. Enforcement and scope are now diverging, which is the trap for anyone with foreign clients. On enforcement, Bondi's February 5, 2025 charging memorandum deprioritized FARA prosecutions. Skadden's analysis of the memo explains that criminal charges are now limited to conduct resembling traditional espionage by foreign government actors, with other cases routed to civil or administrative resolution.
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On scope, the opposite. DOJ's January 2, 2025 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking would narrow the commercial exemption — testing for any foreign nexus rather than a foreign-government or party nexus — and tighten the lawyers' exemption to non-political work within normal legal representation. Multinational companies that have never registered could be pulled in. A relaxed prosecution posture is a policy of one Justice Department; a final rule outlives it.
Deadlines and the exemption test to run now
Disclosure obligations have not loosened. The filing calendar under the Lobbying Disclosure Act is fixed and enforced by the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House.
If you have foreign clients, re-test your commercial- or legal-exemption position against the proposed FARA rule's standards rather than the current ones. Relying on the reduced criminal-enforcement posture is the wrong basis for that decision: it does not change whether you were required to register, only how likely a criminal charge is today. Civil and administrative resolution remains explicitly on the table under the same memo.
- LD-2 quarterly activity reports: due 20 days after each quarter ends, or the first business day after if the 20th falls on a weekend or holiday.
- LD-203 contribution reports: due January 30 and July 30 each year.
- Both are filed through the electronic system documented at the House and Senate LD-2 requirements page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the deprioritized FARA enforcement mean registration is optional now?
No. The February 2025 memo changes prosecution priorities, not the registration requirement, and it explicitly routes non-espionage cases to civil or administrative resolution.
Are former Trump appointees legally barred from lobbying their old agencies?
Not by any presidential ethics pledge — Executive Order 14148 revoked the Biden pledge and no replacement was issued. Statutory post-employment restrictions still apply.
Where can I see what a specific company spent on lobbying?
LD-2 quarterly reports are public through the congressional filing system, and OpenSecrets compiles them into searchable totals by client and firm.
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