Our Blog
June 30, 2023 | Common Dreams
Right-Wing Activists, Not Asian Americans, Killed Affirmative Action
Conservative legal strategists leveraged the Asian American community into their fight against affirmative action. The media continues to let them hide and evade blame.
June 29, 2023
RDP Calls On Microsoft/Activision Judge Who Disclosed Son's Employment At Microsoft To Recuse
The Revolving Door Project sent a letter to Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, who is presiding over the FTC’s challenge of the Microsoft/Activision merger, after Judge Corley disclosed that her son is an employee of Microsoft but did not recuse. This relationship may violate the Code of Conduct for US Judges.
June 28, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Eighteen Months To Avoid Another X-Date
Earlier this month, Politico reported that after Biden secured his debt ceiling deal—a deal whose poison pills we’ll still be unpacking for some time to come—he went quiet on exploring options to permanently get rid of the debt ceiling.
This goes against what the president promised agitated members of his own party who urged him to take any manner of executive branch routes to resolve the crisis without capitulating to Republican demands: that it was his “hope and intention” to “find a rationale to take it to the courts to see whether or not the 14th Amendment is, in fact, something that would be able to stop it.” And it sets us up for another protracted, exhausting, damaging tête-à-tête at the edge of a fiscal cliff in just eighteen months.
June 23, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Treat Alito Like The Hack He Is
Let’s take a step back and consider what it means for a Supreme Court Justice to respond to questions for a news article by publishing an angry opinion piece in a (very) different publication than the one which contacted him, and apparently without informing the journalists ahead of time.
June 23, 2023 | The American Prospect
The Obscure NIH Official Blocking Lower Drug Prices
Mark Rohrbaugh, a mid-level staffer at the National Institutes of Health, has consistently blocked the use of march-in rights to seize patents on high-cost drugs.
June 21, 2023
In Case Of Emergency Spin Revolving Door
Despite venture capitalists, investment pundits, and other crypto firms alike all acknowledging that the jig is up, regulatory revolvers remain undeterred in their willingness to lend their reputations, expertise, credibility, and relationships to keep the crypto con alive.
June 16, 2023
Republican CFPB Opponents Are Crooked Corporate Shills
Every word from their mouths is paid for by Big Business. But the mainstream media won’t follow the money.
June 15, 2023
RELEASE: GOP Corporate Shills Say The Quiet Part Loud At CFPB Hearing
Republicans inadvertently expose their own corruption while attacking an upstanding public servant.
June 15, 2023 | The American Prospect
Pandemic Fraud Is Really, Truly, Not A Big Deal
By focusing on the (inflated) total defrauded, reporters are using big-sounding numbers without any context to try to scare the public.
June 14, 2023
Christine Varney Made A Career Out Of An Agency She Now Deems Unconstitutional
Implicit in the worldview of these revolvers is the idea that corporations should be free to operate and acquire competitors with near impunity, therefore antitrust enforcement should be as narrowly tailored as possible. This is obviously problematic — we need regulators that believe in the government’s ability to take on corporations with outsized market influence — but Cravath, Swaine & Moore’s Christine Varney recently took things many steps further in her representation of the biotech company Illumina in its case against the FTC. Varney doesn’t just attack specific enforcement actions as unwarranted, but calls into question the constitutionality of the FTC’s authority to issue enforcement actions in the first place.
June 09, 2023
Hack Watch: End Crypto’s Presumption Of Legitimacy and Other Quick Hits
It’s Time That The Media Accept What Even Wall Street And Venture Capitalists Have – Crypto Is One Massive Grift. Those Involved With It Should Be Treated Accordingly.
June 08, 2023
PRESS RELEASE: Revolving Door Lawyers Aim To Dismantle Antitrust Enforcement Authorities
Cravath, Swaine & Moore’s Christine Varney, a former head of the US Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, and other BigLaw lawyers representing Illumina and Grail filed a brief this week seeking to secure a merger which the FTC said would “diminish innovation in the U.S. market” for cancer detection tests. Revolving Door Project Research Director Andrea Beaty released the following statement concerning the brief and its authors.
June 07, 2023
Deadly Corporate Misconduct Can Be Boring. Biden Must Keep His Focus on Cracking Down, Anyway.
Corporate wrongdoing doesn’t always resemble the stories that tend to make headlines—the dramatic corruption scandals, bald-faced lies, and egregious instances of fraud. Sometimes, as we at Revolving Door Project strive to highlight, life-threatening corporate actions are enabled by quiet bureaucratic processes and decisions, ushered along by captured political appointees who refuse to hold profit-hungry corporations accountable.
June 06, 2023
Senate Must Get Net Neutrality Answers From Revolving Door FCC Nominee
Does former corporate lobbyist Anna Gomez stand for Big Telecom or a free and open internet?