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With Labor Day now behind us, Hot Labor Summer has come to a scorching end, but the labor movement is alive and well with several heavyweight bouts looming on the horizon. This transition time is the perfect moment to take stock of the Biden administration’s labor allyship — applauding recent rulemaking efforts, highlighting some shortcomings, and previewing some potential labor strikes coming this fall.

If Biden wants to keep his nickname and the working class vote, he needs to start listening to the unions.

Rep Jim Jordan and company had already been eyeing Khan for an investigation because she had the audacity to enforce a consent decree that Twitter violated under Elon Musk’s leadership. Then, they eagerly seized on last month’s (conveniently timed) reporting from Bloomberg which published a previously unseen memo from an FTC ethics official and accused Chair Khan of ignoring the official’s recommendation. With that backdrop, the Republicans seemed poised to strike while the iron was hot, a culmination of their years-long project to undermine Khan’s leadership and reputation. The result was … much different. Thanks to some sleuthing on our part and the bipartisan support for taking on tech monopolies, yesterday’s hearing was less a damning inquisition and more a victory lap for Khan’s rejuvenation of the FTC.

It turns out that the ethics official who recommended that Khan recuse herself from a case involving Meta is an owner of Meta stock. This ethics judgment was music to the ears of the media organizations, Republicans, and antitrust hacks who have been attacking Lina Khan throughout her leadership. Beyond being wrong and selective in singling out FTC officials for ethics concerns, the problem with Pankey’s opinion is deeply ironic. Pankey herself has a legitimate conflict of interest in relation to Meta. 

Implicit in the worldview of these revolvers is the idea that corporations should be free to operate and acquire competitors with near impunity, therefore antitrust enforcement should be as narrowly tailored as possible. This is obviously problematic — we need regulators that believe in the government’s ability to take on corporations with outsized market influence — but Cravath, Swaine & Moore’s Christine Varney recently took things many steps further in her representation of the biotech company Illumina in its case against the FTC. Varney doesn’t just attack specific enforcement actions as unwarranted, but calls into question the constitutionality of the FTC’s authority to issue enforcement actions in the first place. 

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and DOJ Antitrust Division have long served as an essential stop for antitrust experts looking to maximize opportunities, influence, and compensation at BigLaw firms and monopolistic corporations. By spending some time learning the ins and outs of government investigations and enforcement efforts, revolvers are seen by potential corporate employers to be better equipped to assist corporations in antitrust lawsuits against their former government employers.

Christine Wilson leaving the FTC is good news for anyone who cares about effective antitrust enforcement. A quintessential revolving door figure, Wilson’s tenure was only useful to her job prospects once she decided it was time to leave the FTC.

Congressional Democrats managed to pass a few crucial measures during December’s lame duck session. One tiny fraction of the omnibus bill to fund the government was the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, a measure for which anti-monopoly advocates have long been pushing. And beyond the DOJ Antitrust and FTC’s edict to enforce competition, the FTC has another underfunded but crucial mission: consumer protection. 

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has a FOIA problem. It’s been a two year struggle for the Revolving Door Project to uncover the complete picture of Susan Davies and her employment with the DOJ, and we’ve hit yet another road block because apparently the Office of Legal Policy (OLP) does not maintain personnel records of its own employees. At least, not for Susan Davies. And apparently the Office of Information Policy’s FOIA office wasn’t aware of that.

Congress passed a $1.7 trillion omnibus bill, ensuring that our government is funded for Fiscal Year 2023. You probably haven’t seen the amount given to the most stellar agency: Space Force. Thankfully, Congress listened to the space advocates and appropriated the Space Force the money we’ve all been begging for – $26.29 billion. Americans can now sleep soundly knowing the Space Force has an overflowing pocketbook to protect us from aliens and whatnot.

We spent October highlighting the perpetual underfunding of most federal departments and agencies, and urging Congress and the Biden administration to use December’s omnibus bill to finally provide them with the money and resources they need. Sadly, while appropriations did increase for FY2023, budgets consistently fell short of what agencies requested. The most jarring example may be the Department of Housing and Development (HUD), whose budget is a whopping $16 billion shy of the requested $77.8 billion. Biden recently announced his goal to cut homelessness by 25 percent in the next two years, but it’s hard to see how even this meager goal will be achieved without a fully funded HUD.

How better to mark the darkest day of the year than with a bit of dark humor? This winter solstice, we present our 2022 Revolving Door Superlatives, where we spotlight the most craven, captured, and corrupt personnel and policy debates of this past year. From Revolver of the Year to 2022’s Worst Look to our Biggest Personnel Nightmare Entering 2023, we have a positively ghoulish assemblage of honorees for your perverse reading pleasure. Take comfort, dear reader, in this at least: the days are only getting longer from here on out. 

Last November, President Biden signed the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act, better known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The bill provides $1.2 trillion for infrastructure renovations nationwide, with $91 billion earmarked for various public transportation programs. At the time, Biden announced Mitch Landrieu would be the White House’s Senior Advisor and Infrastructure Coordinator in charge of implementing the landmark legislation, more colloquially known as the “Infrastructure Czar.” Landrieu now oversees a $1.2 trillion dollar bill, so he must be in constant communication with the administrators of key agencies to ensure it’s money well spent … right?