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The White House announced late last week that the Environmental Protection Agency is launching epa.gov/cancer as part of the Biden administration’s Cancer Moonshot efforts, and will share new information about the EPA’s role in leveraging its existing authorities to “accelerate the rate of progress to prevent cancer, including phase-outs of carcinogens, regulatory actions to protect children, workers and overburdened communities, and enforcement actions to ensure pollution is curbed.” 

Activists are pushing Fed vice chair Michael Barr and his deputy Kevin Stiroh to force the financial sector to take climate change seriously.

New revelations over Musk’s interference in Ukraine warrant Congressional oversight over the billionaire.

The Revolving Door Project released a new Industry Agenda report today examining the executive branch influence agenda of the rapidly growing “clean” hydrogen industry, which is poised to receive tens of billions of dollars under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. 

With Labor Day now behind us, Hot Labor Summer has come to a scorching end, but the labor movement is alive and well with several heavyweight bouts looming on the horizon. This transition time is the perfect moment to take stock of the Biden administration’s labor allyship — applauding recent rulemaking efforts, highlighting some shortcomings, and previewing some potential labor strikes coming this fall.

More problematically, conflicts of interest have plagued the USPTO, including at the highest levels. Trump-era USPTO director Andrei Iancu was far too cozy with patent law firms while he served in government. Iancu came in via the revolving door from patent litigation firm Irell & Manella, where he earned $4,733,748 as a managing partner in the year before he was nominated, and went out the door and back to the firm when his term was up. He is now a partner in Sullivan & Cromwell’s patent practice.

I am asking you for the hundredth time, please stop using the phrase “union boss.” No one in your local unions is a mobster, I promise.

Instead of cutting a fair deal with writers and actors, the AMPTP has hired new strike-busting comms consultants. Their spin campaign is off to a pathetic start.

While the Inflation Reduction Act might be a new approach to drug prices, Big Pharma’s strategy of suing to keep prices high is a years-old strategy.

The roughly 35,800 employees of the federal Forest Service, housed within the Department of Agriculture, are responsible for managing 193,000,000 acres of national forests. The mission of the Forest Service is to “sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.” Yet time and time again, the Forest Service has betrayed this mission in order to service the profit-driven ends of the timber industry, prioritizing commercial timber extraction over recreation and conservation, and ignoring the essential role intact forests play in mitigating our ongoing biodiversity and climate crises. 

Joe Biden has no interest in an Obama-style grand bargain to cut Social Security, but Republicans on Capitol Hill are still searching for neoliberal, ostensibly Democratic partners to force bipartisan cuts to the program. On Friday, August 18th, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) took time out of his August recess to tweet “The 2020 election was not stolen, but Social Security is going insolvent. That is what we should be talking about.” A Republican senator advocating Social Security cuts is nothing new, but in a reply to his first tweet, Cassidy attempted to start a conversation within the Beltway by tagging more than a dozen “wonks,” wannabe wonks, and opinion columnists. Among them were two purportedly nonpartisan hacks known for their influence over moderate Democrats — Maya MacGuineas and Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.