Our Blog
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?
June 02, 2023
Hack Watch: Larry Summers Thinks Starving Older Americans Serves A "Useful Function"
Summers’ evaluation of the deal President Biden struck with House Speaker McCarthy includes tepid support for work requirements.
June 01, 2023 | The American Prospect
How to Cover a Presidential Campaign
As the past six years have clearly illuminated, hollowing out government capacity and rewarding loyalists is at the heart of the Trump gospel, and leveraging power is DeSantis’s modus operandi as well. As coverage of the Republican primaries ramps up, the press must focus on how this style of executive branch mismanagement endangers democracy and the public interest. That’s more important than trying to figure out if DeSantis has the personality to sell this anti-democratic vision.
May 31, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Tracing the Impact of Sackett v. EPA On Beloved Waters
There is a ripe poetic injustice to the fact that this long Memorial Day weekend in late May—a lush time of year when the generosity of this planet is so apparent—was book-ended by attacks on two of this country’s most important environmental laws.
May 30, 2023
Being A Board Member Is Hard, Just Ask Larry Summers
Former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers recently learned that making business decisions can be hard even if you’re an economist. Or, alternatively, Summers has again proven to be a real-life embodiment of an economic “rational individual;” willing to do whatever maximizes his personal interests, regardless of broader consequences. If true, this further demonstrates why the press needs to end their reliance on Summers for economic speculation – because his judgment is for sale.
May 27, 2023 | Common Dreams
Three Things the Media Misses When Discussing the Debt Ceiling
Spending cuts aren’t minor, caps ignore inflation, and President Biden isn’t helpless.
May 26, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Hack Watch: Everyone’s So Worried About The President Getting Sued About the Debt Ceiling, No One Seems to Have Noticed He Already Was
May 26, 2023
RELEASE: Revolving Door Project Reacts to Biden’s Debt Ceiling Cave & the Media’s Incompetent Coverage
In response to the emergence of the structure of a potential deal between President Biden and Speaker McCarthy, Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser issued the following statement:
“There are three aspects to the substance and coverage of this debate that have been infuriating.”
May 24, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Who’s Going To Keep Corporations Honest?
The Washington Post last week ran a delightful little synopsis of Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) true passion: congressional oversight. Bernie is revered for his willingness to hold corporations and their CEOs accountable for their villainy, and how he does so with extraordinary dexterity. Be it by ruthlessly interrogating Big Pharma executives for their murderous price gouging of lifesaving treatments or humiliating Howard Schultz for being a whiny billionaire union-buster, Bernie Sanders makes congressional oversight hearings fun. The fun he makes for himself and for the public he strives to give real voice to through speaking truth to power is not just gratifying; it also helps sharpen congressional oversight into a tool to actually achieve something.
May 22, 2023
RELEASE: The Justice Department Should Not Defend The Legal Incoherence That Is The Debt Ceiling
On Friday, May 19, the National Association of Government Employees filed an emergency motion in their lawsuit against President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. NAGE urged the Massachusetts District Court to issue a preliminary injunction holding that the debt ceiling violates the separation of powers and Presentment Clause set forth in Articles I and II of the U.S. Constitution.
May 19, 2023
It’s Time To Discuss The Real Stakes Of Negotiating The Debt Ceiling
May 19, 2023
98 Organizations and Individuals Call on the IPCC to Uplift Settled Science and to Reject the Influence of the Global Meat Industry
This morning, 98 organizations and individuals sent a letter to calling on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to affirm its independence from private and corporate interests, to maintain a strict ethics regime that avoids even the appearance of interference or impropriety, and to boldly uplift the huge body of existing climate science that affirms the devastating climate consequences of animal agriculture and the global meat industry. Read their letter to Dr. Hoesung Lee, Chairman of the IPCC here.
May 17, 2023 | The Sling
Biden Should Relieve Martin Oberman from His Chairmanship at the Surface Transportation Board
Just weeks after a series of high profile train derailments headlined by the disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) decided to double down on the current railroad oligopoly. The STB approved a merger between Canadian Pacific Railway and Kansas City Southern Railway Company, cutting the number of major “Class I” rail companies in the United States from seven down to six. This decision is diametrically opposed to the public interest and seriously undermines trust in rail regulators.