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Ostensibly prestigious universities are partnering with online programs that offer non-degree courses to the tune of more than $10,000. Prominent names like Caltech, USC, and Georgetown have lent credibility to the programs, but they are little more than a scam facilitated by Obama-era deregulation.

On Lina Khan’s 60 Minutes interview with CBS’s Lesley Stahl, the FTC Chair told the nation about the agency’s many successes during the Biden administration. They discussed successful FTC’s actions to bring down inhaler, insulin and other drug costs, pending lawsuits against Amazon and other Big Tech giants, and Khan’s chilling effect on corporate willingness to pursue anti-competitive mergers. While Stahl espoused corporate America’s ‘fear’ of Khan’s leadership, the FTC Chair proudly stood by the agency’s actions to protect Americans from corporate monopolies.

With a divided Congress and an election fast approaching, congressional Democrats have little opportunity to enact any landmark legislation, but they need not sit on their hands. Congressional committees have the power to conduct hearings, investigations, and issue subpoenas. As the majority party in the Senate, Democrats should be using this authority to aggressively critique corporations that harm the public’s health and pocketbooks.

Jonathan Chait has been using his column in New York Mag’s Intelligencer to criticize the Biden administration’s populist modifications of Obamaism and warn Vice President Harris against continuing Biden’s domestic economic agenda. In Chait’s piece Kamala Harris’s Economic Plan: Good Politics, Meh Policy, he joined the chorus of pundits lambasting Harris’ policies to take on corporate power.

Matt Yglesias has joined the ranks of critics misrepresenting Lina Khan and the FTC’s record during the Biden administration.

Trump now holds the unique honor of being the first United States president convicted of a felony. This is a golden opportunity for the Biden campaign to highlight the glaring distinction between the candidates: Trump is a corporate criminal hellbent on using the presidency to further the interests of himself and other corporate criminals. President Biden has leveraged executive branch power to dismantle criminal practices that pad the pockets of corporations. After some initial hesitancy to touch on Trump’s conviction, Biden rightly appears poised to make this a forefront issue in the campaign.

Montana’s top legal officer is flying under the national radar, but his scandals and policy agenda mirror his more infamous peers.

In 2022, Biden’s EPA opened an investigation into Louisiana’s Departments of Health (LDH) and Environmental Quality (LDQ) for failing to sufficiently protect residents of “Cancer Alley”—a strip of predominantly poor, Black communities suffering the dire effects of pollutants spewed from nearby petrochemical plants. To their credit, LDH and LDQ cooperated with the investigation and worked to craft more stringent standards and oversight protocols. Former Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, however, had other ideas. His office filed a lawsuit challenging the EPA’s (clear) authority to pursue its investigation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which allows the government to terminate federal funding for an agency found to have engaged in discrimination. Liz Murrill, Landry’s successor, is picking up the torch to carry on his malevolent agenda. 

In October of 2021, the Federal Reserve was embroiled in scandal. The heads of the Boston and Dallas Feds resigned following personal trading scandals that raised concerns about conflicts of interest and lax ethics guidelines. Further reports of potentially inappropriate trading by Chair Jerome Powell and Vice Chair Clarida rocketed across the business media due to these officials’ immense access to sensitive financial information and influence on monetary policy. Despite their decidedly questionable profiteering off pandemic panic, Powell and Clarida have since had their reputations effectively laundered by the media in a whitewashing effort that has attempted to clear them of all wrongdoing. To make matters worse, the Fed’s FOIA office is doing everything in its power to prevent internal documents relating to the scandals from reaching the light of day.

The regulatory authority of the executive branch is under attack, and BigLaw firms stacked with revolvers are on the front lines leading the assault. I’ve previously written about former FTC Commissioner Christine Varney challenging the legitimacy of her former employer on behalf of pharma company Illumina. Lawyers at Latham & Watkins, a firm stacked with revolvers from executive branch agencies, are before the Supreme Court challenging the Chevron Doctrine, which defers to executive agencies’ interpretations when legislative statutes are unclear. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s ability to hold administrative proceedings hangs in the balance as we await the Supreme Court’s decision in SEC v. Jarkesy, where the Fifth Circuit’s ruling decimated the agency’s authority. In a new attack, revolvers on the labor/management relations team at Morgan Lewis & Bockius have their sights set on the plutocrats’ latest target: the National Labor Relations Board.

The FTC has won its lawsuit against Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical executive infamous for jacking up the price of the antiparasitic drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 overnight in 2015 and later using his ill-gotten fortune to buy an exclusive Wu-Tang Clan album for $2 million. Shkreli is the quintessential corporate ghoul, having already racked up convictions for securities fraud—which resulted in an indefinite ban from the securities industries—and failure to pay $1.26 million in New York state taxes. Now, his price gouging has finally caught up with him, as the FTC successfully argued that he spearheaded an anti-competitive scheme to monopolize the drug. The presiding judge found Shkreli’s conduct to be “egregious, deliberate, repetitive, long-running, and ultimately dangerous,” issuing a $64.6 million fine and imposing a lifetime ban from the pharmaceutical industry.