This article was originally published on our Substack. Read it here.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a work round up edition of this newsletter. We at RDP have been incredibly busy keeping up with the daily deluge of corruption, cuts to government capacity, and corporate interests vying for influence within the administration. It’s simply too much to fit into our two posts a week on Substack. With the long Memorial Day Weekend coming up, this is the perfect time for our newsletter audience to add any of our work you have missed to their reading list.
Trump Appointees Corrupting the Patent System
Writing in The American Prospect last week, RDP Assistant Director Timi Iwayemi and Alex Moss, executive director of the Public Interest Patent Law Institute, detailed the Trump administration’s attacks on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).
Created in 2011, the PTAB serves to clean up a patent system filled with low quality patents that serve to entrench monopolies to the detriment of innovation and competition. Now, however, Acting Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Coke Morgan Stewart is leading the charge to dismantle the PTAB’s ability to throw out junk patents. As with most Trump administration attacks on the administrative state, Stewart’s efforts will primarily benefit corporate interests—especially, in this case, Big Pharma and hedge funds (and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick).
Read the full piece here for more details on Stewart’s actions, who stands to benefit, and what’s at stake.
Americorps Falls Victim to DOGE to Devastating Effect
Last month, under the leadership of the world’s richest man, DOGE cut $400 million in Americorps grant funding. Americorps, the national service program that connects volunteers to underserved communities, lost nearly a third of its budget and 30,000 volunteers as a result. As our Research Intern Xaver Clarke explained on our blog, the cuts will be felt in schools, food banks, and disaster recovery projects across the country. Read the full piece for more on how the destructive cuts are affecting different states.
Bipartisan Support for Crypto Scams
Two weeks ago, our Executive Director Jeff Hauser testified before the Democrats’ House Financial Services Committee hearing on Trump’s crypto corruption and conflicts of interest. The shadow hearing was led by Maxine Waters in hopes of drawing attention to Trump’s use of a memecoin to enrich himself and his family amid congressional negotiations of a stablecoin bill.
Unfortunately, while Democrats temporarily stalled the bill, 16 Senate Democrats caved and joined Republicans on Monday to advance the legislation despite unaddressed concerns about corruption, consumer protections, and national security.
It’s disappointing that so many Democrats have sold out to the influence of crypto cash. Members on both sides of the aisle have been captured by the industry, and not just current members. Perhaps the worst offender is Patrick McHenry, former Republican Chair of the House Financial Services Committee. As my colleague Henry Burke laid out in The American Prospect, McHenry has quickly enriched himself in the financial sector after leaving Congress in January. His fealty to the industry while in Congress was rewarded with six (!) cushy jobs, including with fintech firm Stripe, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and crypto firm Ondo Finance.
If you want to know more about how the crypto bill will hurt Americans and how the crypto industry has captured legislators, listen to Jeff’s testimony here and read Henry’s piece here.
Why are Democrats Still at Law Firms that Caved to Trump?
Trump is using executive orders to target law firms that he deems to be his political enemies. Though the orders are likely illegal and unenforceable, several firms caved to his demands anyway. These firms are filled with former members of the Biden and Obama administrations. Rather than stand up against Trump, many former officials chose to remain at the Big Law firms that have acquiesced to unlawful strong-arming.
We’ve compiled a list of these officials, which includes former US Attorney Loretta Lynch, former Obama Administration Associate White House Counsel Karen Dunn, and Kamala Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff, among others. Future non-MAGA administrations should take note of who failed to stand up for democratic values during this critical juncture.
Turmoil at Airports and the FAA
The deferred resignations program has taken a toll on the FAA, including the agency’s most senior positions. Tim Arel, FAA’s head of Air Traffic Organization, and Kelvin Coleman, FAA’s head of Commercial Space Transportation, accepted the second round of deferred resignation offers that went out in April. With their departures, the entire top brass of the agency will be serving in an Acting capacity, not to mention the vacancy in the Administrator for Airports position.
As I wrote on our blog, the chaos atop the agency leaves the administration unprepared to deal with the ongoing crisis at Newark Airport, where a technology issue caused multiple air traffic control blackouts where they could not see or hear flights. A similar incident happened at Denver Airport last week. Thankfully, no one was hurt in either incident, but controllers at Newark took trauma leave to process the stress of the blackout.
Aviation safety needs serious leaders to address the air traffic controller shortage and transition away from outdated technology. Those leaders are nowhere to be found in this administration. In fact, they seem intent on further cuts to make a “leaner” FAA.
Insurance Crisis Visualizer
Households across the country are already feeling the impact of the increased frequency and power of extreme weather events due to climate change. Home insurance premiums are skyrocketing—not just in coastal, hurricane-prone areas, but also in the Midwest and so called “climate havens.”
In collaboration with Carly Fabian at Public Citizen, RDP Senior Researcher Kenny Stancil created zip-code and county-level visualizers to show how this insurance crisis is impacting communities across the country. The resource maps out seven metrics of insurance availability and affordability using data from 2018-2022. This work will only become more important as climate change continues to wreak havoc on vulnerable communities—and as insurance regulators fail to get the situation under control. Read the full report here.
Evergreen Resources: RDP Trackers
It’s impossible to keep up with all of the chaos and destruction of Trump 2.0. Each new instance of malfeasance buries the previous weeks’ stories deeper into the recesses of our collective memory, but it’s important to track the administration’s actions and the material harm they cause. In order to make sense of it all, and to have Trump’s record easily accessible when Democrats have power to hold him and his lackeys accountable, RDP is maintaining a litany of trackers that are regularly updated to keep the public informed.
I encourage everyone to check out our Trump-Musk Watch page and bookmark and share any trackers that interest them. Our goal is to provide the public, activists, and reporters the resources they need to challenge the Trump regime’s illegal and detrimental actions. To that end, we have trackers of:
- The Trump administration disobeying court orders
- Nongovernmental institutions obeying in advance to pressure from the Trump administration
- DOGE personnel, DOGE agent profiles, DOGE’s hit list of agencies they’ve visited, and DOGE victims
- Attacks on aviation safety agencies and aviation disasters
- Public health crises, including measles and bird flu outbreaks and attacks on food and drug safety
- Rollbacks of environmental protections and the communities harmed
- Trump 2.0 personnel including: Inspectors General, US Attorneys, and billionaires in Trump world
- And more!
Follow the Revolving Door Project’s work on whatever platform works for you! You can find us on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, and FacebookSubscribed
Want more? Check out some of the pieces that we have published or contributed research or thoughts to in the last week:
Are Some Dems About to Cave to Crypto? It Wouldn’t Be the First Time
A home insurance crisis is building in the Mountain West. State leaders are struggling to respond
Seeking Clear, Common Sense Stablecoin Regs
Behind Trump and DOGE’s Reckless Destruction Is a Determination to Crush Workers
US headed wrong way on property insurance; how you can protect yourself
Image Credit: President Donald Trump signs Executive Orders in the Oval Office, Thursday, April 24, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Abe McNatt)