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Jay Parsons, the economist and price-setting software cheerleader who left RealPage right before it started getting sued by tenants and state AGs across the country for allegedly colluding with landlords to raise rents, joined JPI last week. If JPI rings a bell, perhaps it is because it is the development company that Scott Turner just left before his improbable nomination and confirmation as Secretary of HUD.

Outgoing Biden officials, members of Congress, and political staffers are all up for grabs by industries looking for their own roster of influence peddlers.

On January 27 the Trump administration issued a memo ordering a freeze of federal grants and loans, which crippled critical services across the country. Judge Loren L. AliKhan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and Judge John McConnell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island have since blocked the spending pause from going into effect, but there are still numerous examples of shuttered programs and services. We are tracking notable examples.

When Donald Trump nominated North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to be his interior secretary, centrist to right-of-center “abundance agenda” advocates were jubilant. Politico reported, with typically amoral zeal, that Interior would be led by an “overnight rock star in the tech and energy worlds.” Burgum has a foot in both camps, as a former governor from fracking country with deep ties to fossil fuel executives like fracking magnate Harold Hamm, and a venture capitalist invested in software companies who sold his own software company to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in 2001.

While members of Congress try to obtain an official list of personnel working for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the media have been keeping tabs on Musk and his team as they sweep through the federal government. Along with our list of individuals reportedly affiliated with DOGE, we’ve compiled a list of the agencies reportedly visited by DOGE in the first weeks of the Trump administration.

Scott Bessent’s appointment to CFPB acting director will undermine the agency’s mission.

On January 20 2025, President Trump issued a memorandum ordering a 90-day freeze on the hiring of federal civilian employees. This blog post will break down the memorandum, compare it to the 2017 hiring freeze and discuss implications for government capacity, corporate crackdown, and the American public.

We won’t know the full scope of what went wrong to cause the horrific in-air collision at DCA until the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) completes its investigation. That could take up to two years. Oh, and that’s assuming the investigation is independent–which didn’t previously need to be specified, but, well… look around. Given all of that, the opposition to Musk and Trump, including but not limited to Democrats, must not wait to assign blame.

Things don’t look good

Bessent’s decision to hand the unelected Musk and his covert, unaccountable DOGE wrecking crew the keys to the federal money spigot is a blatant attack on democracy that will harm working people.

Elon Musk isn’t the only billionaire puppetting the federal government. Sam Altman also has staff in his pocket. All it cost was $100,000