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The initial series served as a reminder of the first Trump administration’s utter indifference to the public interest. This time around, the Revolving Door Project will be on hand to provide real time, clear-eyed analyses of the President-elect’s approach towards governance, staffing, ethics and critically, the material impact of his pro-corporate attitudes. 

Some Notes on Centrists Blaming Everyone but Themselves

Particularly given the stink that neoclassical economists made about evidence for sellers’ inflation, they should be held to a similar standard for their crediting of the Fed for lower inflation and implicitly putting the blame on consumers and workers. The data just don’t fit their model. 

The right’s climate denial means higher prices.

We cannot forget the fundamental wrongheadedness of the Court’s ruling in Bush v. Gore, which was possible only with the votes of at least two justices whose conflicts of interest merited recusal, one of whom reportedly “provided the early framework” for the decision before oral arguments were even presented to the Court.

Today, the Revolving Door Project published a new white paper, “Rebuilding Public Trust: Six Principles to Guide Reform,” which provides a blueprint for strengthening the federal government’s ethics programs across the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

We reviewed efforts at five agencies (DOL, NLRB, SEC, CFPB, and FTC) toward using existing enforcement powers to crack down on corporate wrongdoing, highlighting successful enforcement actions with real impact on our daily lives. Over the past four years, these critical (if not always public-facing) executive branch agencies have made significant strides toward reversing the deregulatory efforts of the Trump administration, while pushing protections for workers and consumers further. 

Under Director Rohit Chopra, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has facilitated a resurgence in consumer relief won through enforcement actions relative to the Trump years, which were marked by lax enforcement (see the chart below from the CFPB). This increase in relief came amidst industry-driven challenges to the agency’s constitutionality. The case stifled some potential action, but the agency’s enforcement actions have rebounded since the Supreme Court rejected the challenges to its existence.   

Under the Biden administration, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) achieved record levels of enforcement. It recovered record sums from imposing penalties, had a high count of enforcement actions, and significant numbers of white collar criminals were disbarred from executive board seats. The SEC has secured these accomplishments through effective litigation, emphatic rulemaking, and rigorous enforcement of the law.