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April 04, 2025

Toni Aguilar Rosenthal

Newsletter Corruption CalendarEthics in Government

Week Eleven: Incomprehensible AI Number-Crunching Slop Sets The Scene Of Trump’s Global Tariff Shakedown

It’s week eleven of the Revolving Door Project’s Corruption Calendar, where we highlight the latest slate of corporate corruption that’s shaping the Trump Administration, its agenda, and the material impacts of that corruption on real people. Our first ten issues can be found here, and follow us on Bluesky and X for more updates on this work.

This week has been defined by yet more chaos, as the gaggle of incompetent buffoons that seemingly make up the policy infrastructure of this administration continue to play at political theater while doing all that they can to ruin the rest of our lives. From crashing the global economy to giving corporations free license to do whatever they want, they’re succeeding.

April 02, 2025 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter

Hannah Story Brown

Newsletter

Climate and EnvironmentCorporate CrackdownExecutive BranchGovernment Capacity

Polluters Get A Presidential Exemption From The Law

Are you a highly polluting industrial facility? Maybe a coal-fired power plant, or a coke oven, or a chemical manufacturer, or a commercial sterilizer? Do your neighbors complain about the eye-watering, throat-choking clouds that billow from your stacks? Are you tired of being the bad guy just because your operations emit arsenic, ethylene oxide, mercury, and lead into the air and water, which can cause cancer, brain defects, and other illnesses? Well, President Trump has got your back.

March 28, 2025

Blog Post DOGE

DOGE Agent: Brad Smith

Musk Connections: N/A

Other Corporate Connections: Founder of Russell Street Ventures, Co-founder of Aspire Health, Co-founder of CareBridge, Co-founder of Main Street Health. 

DOGE Deployments: HHS

March 28, 2025

Blog Post DOGEEthics in Government

DOGE Agent: Steve Davis

Musk Connections: SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), Boring Company

Other Corporate Connections: Board of Advisers, Atlas Society; Former owner, Mr. Yogato; Former owner, Thomas Foolery

DOGE Deployments: “Day-to-day leader.” SSA, GSA

March 27, 2025

Timi Iwayemi

Press Release

DOGEExecutive BranchTrump 2.0

Release: Resources for Tracking Trump Admin from Revolving Door Project

Here at the Revolving Door Project, we believe it’s critical to keep track of the myriad ways in which the Trumpian approach to governance will materially affect people’s lives. That’s why we have developed resources, which we will be updating continuously, to ensure interested parties can make sense of the breadth of Trump and Musk’s all-out assault on everyday people and the Constitution. 

March 27, 2025

Blog Post BigLawEthics in GovernmentExecutive BranchTrump 2.0

Obeying in Advance: Who's Capitulating to the Trump Administration’s Pressure Campaign?

On March 21, BigLaw firm Paul Weiss struck a deal with the Trump administration in exchange for an executive order targeting them to be lifted. This capitulation to Trump undermines the rule of law and will invite future authoritarian moves by the administration. As RDP’s Henry Burke wrote, “Appeasement will only lead to certain destruction.”

March 26, 2025 | The American Prospect

Hannah Story Brown

Op-Ed Climate and EnvironmentGovernment CapacityMedia AccountabilityTrump 2.0

An Abundance of Credulity

In the months before the re-election of Donald Trump precipitated our rapid descent into authoritarianism, two books were being written about the idea that progressivism went astray in the 1960s and 1970s. In Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson describe a drift into a “politics of scarcity,” and in Why Nothing Works, Marc Dunkelman calls it a “cultural aversion to power.” Both books ask a pertinent question: Why doesn’t the government do big, bold things, quickly, to address the pressing issues of our time? We have an abundance of viewpoints and veto points, they argue, but a shortage of affordable housing and transmission lines. Something’s got to give. The unstated question, of course, is who must give.

March 26, 2025

Emma Marsano

Newsletter Corporate Crackdown

IRS Cuts and the Signal Chat Scandal: The Latest Indicators of the Trump Administration’s Recklessness

While national security adviser Michael Waltz’s Signal chat security breach debacle has dominated headlines this week, it’s not the only act of reckless disregard for the safety and security of Americans in the news. This week also saw projections that Trump-Musk cuts to the IRS could lead to a $500 billion tax revenue shortfall this year, with a slump already in effect at this point in tax season.