Our Blog
April 02, 2021 | The American Prospect
Dorothy Slater Eleanor Eagan Max Moran
Op-Ed Climate and EnvironmentExecutive BranchFinancial RegulationLarry Summers
Janet Yellen's Blind Spot On Regulation
With so many competing priorities, it’s justifiable that Yellen has not given her full attention to every single crisis under her purview. But she can no longer dodge her other big duty: financial policy and Wall Street regulation.
April 02, 2021
Biden's Budget Must Strengthen OSHA
Faced with a monumental workplace safety crisis in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has largely failed to protect workers. Decades of declining staffing levels left this critical agency unable to adapt to extraordinary conditions and support workers across the country when they most needed it. During his campaign, Joe Biden vowed to be the “strongest labor president you’ve ever had.” As he prepares to release his budget proposal for his first full financial year in office, the opportunity is fast approaching for Biden to put federal money where his mouth is. Biden must follow through on his pro-worker promises by expanding funding and employment levels for OSHA and OSHA state affiliates (among a slate of other sorely needed pro-labor policies) so that they have the capacity to safeguard workplace safety in times of crisis and otherwise.
March 31, 2021
Facebook Strengthens Defenses Against Break Up By Hiring Another DOJ Antitrust Official
Another day, another former antitrust enforcer defecting for the corporate world. In the months since President Joe Biden promised to pursue more aggressive antitrust enforcement, former antitrust officials have become an even hotter commodity in the private sector. Douglas Rathbun is the latest official to jump ship from the increasingly central world of antitrust enforcement to the more lucrative world of defending the status quo. Rathbun is a former counsel for the Antitrust Division’s Office of Legal Policy and has advised the Division on administrative and regulatory matters as well as guided nominees to senior leadership positions. According to his LinkedIn, Rathbun elected to cut out the BigLaw middleman and join a corporation directly: this month he joined Facebook to work on public policy.
March 31, 2021
They’re Building Back Better; We Still Urge Faster!
Jockeying to shape the upcoming infrastructure package is well underway. Our attention, however, is on an important deadline this Sunday. April 4 is the last day for lawmakers to introduce Congressional Review Act resolutions to strike eligible Trump rules from the books. If they don’t meet this deadline, the Biden administration will have to undertake a lengthy administrative process to reverse those regulations. By forcing Biden to dedicate resources to these rollbacks and delaying the start of new rulemakings, failure to act now could set this administration back on everything from civil rights and financial regulation to housing and environmental regulation.
March 30, 2021 | Talking Points Memo
Dems Are Running Out Of Time To Quickly Strip Damaging Trump Rules From The Books.
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.
March 30, 2021
REVOLVING DOOR SPOTLIGHT 3/30/21
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.
March 29, 2021
White House Personal Financial Disclosures
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.
March 29, 2021
Pharma In The White House: Financial Disclosures Reveal Officials' Stake In Vaccine Manufacturers
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.
March 29, 2021 | The American Prospect
Toward a Conflict-of-Interest-Free West Wing
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.
March 23, 2021
Revolver Spotlight: Jonathan Su
His work for Latham & Watkins included representing a high-profile convicted sex offender, a Republican Senator who profitted off the COVID-19 pandemic while deceiving the public, and a pharmaceutical company that created an artificial shortage of life-saving medicine.
March 23, 2021
Revolver Spotlight: Abigail Seldin
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.
March 23, 2021
Revolver Spotlight: Elizabeth Rosenberg
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.
March 22, 2021
Keystone XL Investor Susan Rice Has Kept Up Her Fossil Fuel Investments — And Now Oversees Tribal Relations Across The Executive Branch
Having a pollution investor in charge of the DPC should set off alarm bells for anyone worried about climate change — in other words, everyone.
March 22, 2021
Jake Sullivan Advised Microsoft On Policy, And Now Coordinates With Microsoft On Policy. What Could Go Wrong?
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.
March 22, 2021 | Democracy Journal
Building Back Better (Than Expected)
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.