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May 11, 2022 | Washingtonian Magazine
RDP's Jeff Hauser Named One Of Washingtonian's 500 Most Influential People
Our founder and Executive Director Jeff Hauser has been named as one of Washingtonian Magazine’s 500 Most Influential People in Washington D.C.

May 11, 2022
House Oversight Hearing Shows Why Attacking Corporate Villainy Needs To Be A Priority
The hearing was a golden opportunity for Congress to actually hold a corporation to account for its objectively horrendous and potentially illegal behavior. On an ostensibly bipartisan issue like the opioid epidemic, one could be forgiven for thinking that the hearing would do just that.

May 10, 2022
The IRS Has Finally Been Given The Power to Rebuild. It’s Not Enough.
In March, six months after the start of Fiscal Year 2022, Congress finally passed an omnibus funding agreement that brought agencies out from under the shadow of Trump-era austerity (although still fell far short of enacting the funding levels that most agencies require to meet their responsibilities to the public). Critically, in the case of at least one agency, the omnibus did not just grant the money to hire new staff, but the means to do so much more quickly. At the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Congress greenlit the use of direct hiring authorities to empower the agency to temporarily forgo some of the more onerous aspects of the federal hiring process as well as to facilitate a quick rebuilding of the IRS’ notoriously depleted ranks. With this designation, Congress acknowledged that staff shortages at the IRS had reached a state of emergency and thus acted accordingly.

May 09, 2022
CORPORATE CRACKDOWN UPDATES: 5/9/22
Closing in on toxins, the EPA is ramping up its enforcement by banning the use of weedkiller diuron and increasing its detection of PFAS chemicals in public water. Plus, the SEC’s new ‘Cyber Unit’ and DOL officials are keeping a close eye on the inclusion of cryptocurrency in Fidelity’s 401k plan.

May 05, 2022
Dunn's Latest White House Spin Makes A Mockery Of Ethics Law
The news today that Anita Dunn will return to the White House as a senior advisor makes clear that her involvement with this administration was never credibly temporary.

April 28, 2022
Who Is The IRS’ Chief Counsel? Under Biden, No One.
enforcing the U.S. tax code. Much has been written regarding the IRS’ gutting over the years. The agency has been systematically defunded, deresourced, and attacked by political operatives for decades, at a grave cost to the basic functionality of our government, and to the benefit of only the richest Americans. These trends were only exacerbated under the Trump administration, which was hyper-focused on dismantling the tax system to benefit its corporate and billionaire cronies. Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s destructive influence remains pervasive throughout the IRS, with Trump’s Commissioner, Charles Rettig, still installed as the governing head of the agency while finishing a 5-year term (at the pleasure of the president) set to expire in 2022.

April 27, 2022
Biden’s USPS Nominees Seem Fine With Letting DeJoy Wreck The Post Office
Dan Tangherlini and Trump alum Derek Kan are unlikely to oust DeJoy if confirmed to the Postal Board.

April 27, 2022 | The Lever
Will Biden's New COVID Czar Protect The World Or Big Pharma?
In his gig as a global health consultant at a powerful D.C. business strategy firm that has financial ties to one of the two major COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, Jha has kept his client roster under wraps despite publicly promising to release a client list.

April 25, 2022
Corporate Crackdown Updates: 4/25/22
Every two weeks, we’ll be sending a summary of what the Biden administration has and hasn’t done to police and publicize white-collar crimes and big business abuses.

April 25, 2022
What You Need To Know About The Contenders For Biden’s Next Chief Of Staff
Nearly halfway through President Biden’s second year in office, with midterms on the horizon and senior staff either burning out or eager to sell out, “Transition 2.0” — the rapid departure of said senior staff with an influx of new personnel — is growing closer. One position we’re keeping a close eye on is Biden’s next Chief of Staff. Currently filled by Ron Klain, this is Biden’s de facto power broker. He helps the president make decisions and acts as a gatekeeper for the many, MANY forces, good and bad, who’d like to influence the president.

April 25, 2022
We All Know Elon Musk Is Buying Twitter To Help Him Get Away With Stock Fraud, Right?
Elon Musk is not just purchasing Twitter because, by all appearances, he is a very sad man who is desperate for other very sad men to think he is cool.

April 25, 2022 | The New Republic
How Biden Can Halt the U.S. Postal Service’s Gas-Guzzling Plan
Just days after his inauguration, President Biden promised to use the federal government’s procurement authority to achieve a zero-emission fleet of government vehicles. This spring, however, that’s led to a standoff with the United States Postal Service—an independent agency overseen by a Trump-aligned postmaster general who wants to replace 225,000 out-of-date mail delivery trucks with fresh gas-guzzlers, to the tune of $11.3 billion.

April 25, 2022 | The American Prospect
Where's The Congressional Champion On Pharma Patent Abuses?
But for all of this, neither party’s congressional leaders have directly challenged the main legal mechanism that accounts for those high costs—namely, intellectual property. You’d think members of Congress would recognize the political salience of picking a fight with one of the most hated industries in America. So why isn’t anyone on Capitol Hill even talking about intellectual property’s role in driving high drug prices, and taking the PTO to task to do something about it?

April 22, 2022
First Chapter of Multi-Part Climate Report Documents Executive Action Opportunities At Energy Department
This chapter focuses on the Department of Energy, while later chapters explore the opportunities available to the EPA, Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Justice and other executive branch agencies.

April 19, 2022
How The Department Of Commerce Can Combat Economic Malaise
Responsible for creating “conditions for economic growth and opportunity,” the full powers of the DOC must be leveraged to combat economic malaise. Since the modern department was established in 1913, the DOC’s powers have generally been neglected and poorly understood. That’s in part reflective of the DOC’s byzantine structure: it’s a seeming grab-bag of agencies that either don’t fit in neatly with any other department, or are located within the DOC as a result of 20th century political knife-fights.