Our Blog

Lawmakers who wish to make use of the CRA to strike Trump’s rules have until April 4 to introduce their resolutions of disapproval, after which point they’ll have five to seven weeks more in which to consider and vote on them. Eleanor Eagan explains why Congress must invoke the CRA now before it’s too late.

Welcome to our supplemental newsletter, the Revolving Door Spotlight. Here, we review the open jobs in the Biden administration we have our eyes on, as well as the would-be revolvers vying for those jobs. To learn more about which agencies and positions specific industries are seeking to influence, as well as the industry-tied individuals who might seek to lead them, check out our Industry Agenda reports here and our Personnel Map here.

The Revolving Door Project has been requesting personal financial disclosures, or Form 278e’s, since the White House made them available. While we are still waiting to receive many requests back, we wanted to share the ones we have received with the public as quickly as possible by summarizing relevant findings for each White House appointee.

Financial disclosures revealed that numerous high level Biden White House officials have financial holdings in vaccine manufacturers, while some of them are involved in vaccine distribution talks.

The latest batch of White House financial disclosures revealed close ties between top Biden Administration officials and corporate titans in Big Tech, Big Oil, and Big Pharma. Eleanor Eagan and Elias Alsbergas explain why these disclosures reveal the need for the Biden White House to adopt stronger ethics disclosures and mandate total divestment from potential conflicts of interest.

Progressive groups successfully pressed Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to replace the acting head of the office that oversees the nation’s $1.5 trillion student loan portfolio in recent weeks. Now, Abigail Seldin, a former student loan company executive, is reportedly a candidate to lead that office.

Elizabeth Rosenberg, a lesser-known Obama-era official, is being considered to lead the Treasury Department’s Terrorism and Financial Intelligence unit. Her record designing painful economic sanctions, supporting fossil fuel industry-friendly policies, and helping powerful corporations gain close access to the highest levels of government is cause for alarm, writes Vishal Shankar.

Having a pollution investor in charge of the DPC should set off alarm bells for anyone worried about climate change — in other words, everyone.

ullivan, like Secretary of State Blinken and others in the Biden national security apparatus, spent the Trump years as a “consultant,” better termed as a shadow lobbyist, for Big Tech and other industries.

The nominations that President Biden has made thus far serve as a guidebook to the years ahead. By analyzing those picks, we see a vivid picture of where we can expect strong executive actions to take on the corporate monopolies and polluters choking the American economy—and where we can anticipate division between the progressive base and corporatist establishment actors.

With Haaland at its head, the DOI will have a real chance to reverse its role in exacerbating climate change and environmental racism. Yet, in order to fully realize this potential, the agency will need more funding, increased lower-level staff and much more diversity.

We have every reason to believe Kerry genuinely wants to save the Earth from climate devastation. His problem is that there is no neoliberal path to doing so.

The Revolving Door Project is outraged by yesterday’s news that the Biden administration has been pressuring the Mexican government into turning away migrants at the Mexico-Guatemala border. While this Trump style initiative would be appalling on its own, we are additionally concerned about the possibility that President Biden may have bartered millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to achieve his anti-migration goals.