Our Blog

February 06, 2023 | The American Prospect
Whatever Happened To 'Helping The Sh*t' Out Of People?
In all, these look like the moves of a White House trying to endear itself to big business, now that the Democratic trifecta is gone.

February 03, 2023
Media Helps Corporate Landlords Spin Biden’s Watered-Down Renter Protection Plan
Mainstream outlets are failing to tell the full story on the White House’s new tenant protection actions.
February 03, 2023
Revolving Door Project Reading List: The Justice Department
The Justice Department was deliberately weaponized under Trump to advance and defend his corrupt agenda. How successfully has Biden’s Justice Department, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, replaced Trump appointees and policies, and charted a new course towards a more just interpretation and application of the law? Below, we’ve compiled a non-comprehensive reading list of some of our work from the past year plus on the Justice Department, and its all-important, uneven progress out of Trump’s long shadow.

February 03, 2023
The Never-Ending Inquiry Into Susan Davies’ DOJ Employment
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has a FOIA problem. It’s been a two year struggle for the Revolving Door Project to uncover the complete picture of Susan Davies and her employment with the DOJ, and we’ve hit yet another road block because apparently the Office of Legal Policy (OLP) does not maintain personnel records of its own employees. At least, not for Susan Davies. And apparently the Office of Information Policy’s FOIA office wasn’t aware of that.

February 02, 2023
Biden Appears to Heed Advocates’ Demands, Seek New Nominee for US Attorney in Eastern District of Tennessee
In a Judiciary Committee hearing last Thursday, Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) seemed to assert that Casey T. Arrowood, President Biden’s initial pick for US Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, would not be renominated in the new session of Congress.

February 01, 2023 | Talking Points Memo
Biden Should Wed His Cancer Moonshot To The Energy Transition
But succeeding at his Cancer Moonshot’s goals will require more than funding research into cancer treatments. As the first day of February marks the beginning of National Cancer Prevention Month, it’s worth acknowledging that cancer prevention requires different approaches than treatment, and must include a reckoning with the carcinogens that pervade our environment. If Biden really wants to fight cancer in America, he’s going to have to challenge the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries. Among other things, this means confronting an Achilles heel of the Democratic Party: domestic fracking.

February 01, 2023
The State Of The Union, And The Year That Followed
President Joe Biden’s second State of the Union address is next Tuesday. Amid an uprising sparked by yet another horrific video of police violence, deep uncertainty about U.S. fiscal and monetary policy, and continuing wars and threats around the world, the nation — or at least, the politics junkies in the nation — will gather to hear the President lay out his agenda to a Congress absolutely no one reasonably expects will deliver on it, or likely even take it all that seriously.

February 01, 2023
The Rubinite In The Running For National Economic Council
It’s only natural to infer that Sylvia Burwell would bring Rubin’s values and vision back to the NEC, if given the job.

January 27, 2023 | The American Prospect
The Myth Of Jeffrey Zients
Zients owes his entire public-policy career to his corporate worldview and connections, which have remained strikingly consistent for over a decade—exactly in keeping with his pre-government history.

January 26, 2023
STATEMENT: Landlords Celebrate Biden’s Weak ‘Renter Protection’ Plan
Watered-down White House tenant protection measures are a victory for big real estate and private equity lobbyists.
January 25, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Hannah Story Brown Emma Marsano
Corporate CrackdownEthics in GovernmentExecutive BranchHealthRevolving Door
Biden’s Choice of Chief of Staff Threatens Populist Potential
Last Friday marked the exact midway point of Biden’s presidential term. With this newly divided Congress, there are scant possibilities for legislation in the next two years. By and large, this next stage of Biden’s presidency should be all about the executive branch: implementing recent laws, enforcing existing laws, and enacting much-needed regulation. (Biden should have been overseeing these things all along, of course—that’s what the Presidency is for!)

January 23, 2023
The White House Must Heed Tenants, Not Corporate Profiteers, To Enact New Tenant Protection Measures
The White House should not succumb to the real estate industry’s cynical lobbying efforts to block new federal tenant protections. These same developers and corporate landlords fueled the rental housing crisis in the first place by spiking rents and exploiting families, and now they are looking to defend their ill-gotten gains.

January 23, 2023
Independent Agency Spotlight Update January 2023
It was a slow fall for independent agency nominations as Senators left chambers for their campaigns and the Biden administration stood paralyzed in anticipation of the midterm Red Wave That Wasn’t.

January 22, 2023
Biden Risks Legacy by Choosing Zients as Chief of Staff
As a businessman, Jeffrey Zients embodied much of the corporate misconduct the executive branch ought to be cracking down on.

January 20, 2023
Biden's Second Chance Not To Nominate Casey T. Arrowood
President Biden drew outrage and forceful opposition last fall after nominating Casey T. Arrowood to the position of United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, based on Arrowood’s role in the baseless prosecution of a Chinese-Canadian professor under the Trump DOJ’s “China initiative.” Fortunately, with the new year and the convening of a new Congress, all pending nominees must be renominated, providing Biden another chance to do the right thing and drop Arrowood from consideration.