Our Blog

April 20, 2023 | The American Prospect
Exxon’s Unethical Supreme Court Play
As the revelations of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s flagrant corruption continue to unspool, scrutiny of the weak ethics rules binding the Court has intensified. The Senate Judiciary Committee is supposed to oversee the Court, but it has proven itself not remotely up to the task of rooting out judicial corruption. And amid this disturbing situation, a Supreme Court conference this Friday provides an opening for Court conservatives to try to game their few ethical limits in plain sight.

April 19, 2023
Amid Reports of Block’s Alleged Criminality, How Does Board Member Larry Summers Manage His Multiple Corporate Engantlements?
It’s high time that members of the press who regularly turn to Summers for his views on the economy begin questioning him on how he is able to adequately perform his multiple advisory roles and moreover, why there is a pattern of illegality at firms he advises. Or they could simply toss him to the aether, and platform non-conflicted experts instead.

April 19, 2023
Biden's World Bank Nominee Oversaw An Anti-Competitive Price-Fixing Scandal
Mastercard has paid $3.2 billion since 2005 in fines and penalties for price-fixing, the fourth-highest total of any American company.

April 19, 2023
KJ Boyle Andrea Beaty Emma Marsano
Anti-MonopolyConsumer ProtectionDepartment of JusticeFTCGovernment CapacityIndependent Agencies
To Reverse Decades Of Neglect, Antitrust Agencies Need Robust Budgets
The FTC and the DOJ are still dealing with a deluge of corporate mergers, and still only have capabilities to challenge a handful of those actions each year. Restoring competition in the U.S. economy will require much more than slight increases in funding — these government agencies need monumental budgets to take on entrenched monopolies that have flourished with decades of lax enforcement.

April 18, 2023
How A Herbert Hoover Policy Got Wrapped Up In SVB And A Fed Opening
One of the flashing-red warning signs about SVB’s bad balance sheet was the huge cash advances it was taking out of the FHLBank system.
April 18, 2023 | The New Republic
2020 Election/TransitionClimate and EnvironmentDepartment of JusticeEthics in GovernmentGovernanceRevolving Door
The Ghost of a Trump Appointee Is Haunting Merrick Garland’s Justice Department
Tracing Clark’s lingering impact on ongoing litigation makes clear that the legacy of Trump’s Justice Department still haunts our governance and that failing to treat his cronies like the menace they are is worsening outcomes across the country. In some cases, Attorney General Merrick Garland is still carrying forward with the arguments Clark helped shape. In others, the Justice Department and its client agencies are at a critical juncture of having to decide whether to break from past positions or maintain continuity with positions they adopted during the Trump administration.
April 17, 2023 | RDP Newsletter
Is Larry Summers Exempt From Editors' Notes?

April 14, 2023
DOJ IN THE NEWS: Mid-April Trends
This is the latest installment of a new biweekly blog series from RDP. Every two weeks, we call out ongoing trends in media coverage of the Justice Department’s focus and priorities, giving context from our past DOJ oversight work as needed, with an eye to the impact of DOJ capacity and resources, as well as alignment with the Biden administration’s professed goals.
April 12, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
This Era of Elite Impunity Must End
What is it called when one of the nine most powerful judges in the U.S.—a man whose title is literally Justice—has routinely accepted secret private jet rides and luxury yacht vacations from a billionaire right-wing mega-donor for over two decades? What does it mean that this was not disclosed, in violation of the Ethics in Government Act? If the ruling class wants the public to believe that the rule of law means anything to them, then the answer must be “breaking the law,” necessitating investigations, trials, and professional consequences.

April 11, 2023
Progressive Groups Urge President Biden Not To Rush To Fill Republican FTC Vacancies
Demand Progress and the Revolving Door Project sent a letter to President Biden reminding him that neither the White House nor Senate Democrats “should feel compelled to expedite the nomination and/or confirmation of Republicans to independent agencies” particularly while Democratic nominees remain languishing in the Senate due to years of Senate Republicans’ malfeasance.

April 10, 2023 | The American Prospect
If The Law Is Legitimate, Clarence Thomas Must Stand Trial
There is no reasonable ambiguity about this. If the ProPublica reporting is accurate, Thomas has knowingly and brazenly violated federal ethics law for decades.


April 10, 2023
The Larry Summers-Linked Fintech Firm That Bought A Bank
By doing so, Jiko became one of the, if not the, first fintech company to buy a national bank.
April 07, 2023