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August 23, 2024
Hannah Story Brown Ananya Kalahasti Andrea Beaty Eleanor Eagan Nika Hajikhodaverdikhan Sion Bell
Blog Post 2020 Election/TransitionAdministrative LawDepartment of Justice
The Trump Administration Made a Mockery of the Law. Why Hasn't Biden Tossed its Cases?
Donald Trump and his Department of Justice consistently made a mockery of the law throughout his four years in power. And while their laughable reasoning and indefensible positions were struck down at a historic rate, many cases were still waiting for Biden. The new administration tossed out a handful immediately but an alarming number remain, either in some form of pause or advancing forward with the Biden administration adopting Trump’s position.
August 08, 2024
Lessons from Trump’s Record on Health Care
Mismanagement across health agencies in the first Trump administration was only the beginning. Project 2025 is laying out a far more sinister vision of warping our health agencies.
May 23, 2024
Independent Agency Spotlight Update May 2024
Since our last update on January 9, 2024, the rate of confirmations emerging from the Senate has (finally) picked up. While the majority of these confirmations involve nominees that have been pending for nearly nine months or more, their confirmations have put a sizable dent in the total number of expired seats and vacancies remaining across the independent agencies.
April 15, 2024
Unpacking The Federal Executive Branch, A Conversation With Vanderbilt University Professor David Lewis
Coverage of presidential elections typically hones in on contestants’ competing legislative visions, which in truth, tend to morph considerably when hit by the reality of an intransigent Congress. This prompts an important question: are presidential elections overrated? Well, before drawing that conclusion, consider one of the underrated consequences of a federal election: the potential for a new administration to alter the management of the federal workforce and the operations of individual departments within the executive branch. Although journalists eschew reporting of these consequences in favor of (legislatively focused) policy platforms and rallies, there is a wide body of academic research which investigates the impact of presidential administrations on the federal executive branch’s ability and capacity to fulfill its roles and responsibilities.
March 01, 2024
Republican Attorney Generals Letter Is A Clear Attempt To Misconstrue Biden’s Good Actions on Climate Change
The letter released by several Republican Attorneys General, in response to Biden’s LNG pause, is deeply problematic and entirely baseless.
January 09, 2024
Independent Agency Spotlight Update January 2024
This summer saw an extremely slow rate of independent agency nominations coming from the White House, and witnessed also a similarly glacial pace of confirmations emerging from the Senate. While this trend got slightly better over the course of the fall, with the Senate finally making significant movement on the nominations already presented before it, few new nominations have emerged from the White House since July 18, 2023.
December 05, 2023 | The American Prospect
The Department of Justice’s Legal Love Letter to Moderna
This story has been retracted.
October 09, 2023 | The American Prospect
America's Pipelines Are a Disaster Waiting to Happen
The underfunded agency overseeing tens of thousands of miles of dangerous pipelines has not had an official leadership for years.
September 01, 2023
Big Pharma Sues To Keep Drug Prices Sky High
While the Inflation Reduction Act might be a new approach to drug prices, Big Pharma’s strategy of suing to keep prices high is a years-old strategy.
August 29, 2023 | The American Prospect
Who’s Running Big Pharma’s Last Stand Against Slightly Fairer Drug Pricing
One year after IRA passage, bad actors try to thwart drug price negotiation, and Biden’s efforts to defend it fall short.
July 18, 2023
Toni Aguilar Rosenthal Ananya Kalahasti
Blog Post Confirmations CrisisExecutive BranchIndependent Agencies
Independent Agency Spotlight Update: Summer 2023
This past spring gave us a slow rate of nominations from the White House and a similarly glacial pace of confirmations from a Senate that has been plagued with an utterly dysfunctional confirmations system.
July 16, 2023 | Common Dreams
Biden’s CMS Continues Holdout on Voter Registration Accessibility
Several states have attempted to implement automatic voter registration based on Medicare enrollment—but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is still stalling.
June 30, 2023 | Common Dreams
Right-Wing Activists, Not Asian Americans, Killed Affirmative Action
Conservative legal strategists leveraged the Asian American community into their fight against affirmative action. The media continues to let them hide and evade blame.
June 23, 2023 | The American Prospect
The Obscure NIH Official Blocking Lower Drug Prices
Mark Rohrbaugh, a mid-level staffer at the National Institutes of Health, has consistently blocked the use of march-in rights to seize patents on high-cost drugs.
March 01, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Dylan Gyauch-Lewis Emma Marsano Ananya Kalahasti Julian Scoffield
Newsletter Congressional OversightConsumer ProtectionExecutive BranchFintechHealth
What Makes a Good Executive Branch Official?
If we had to make one overarching argument about what makes a good executive branch official, whether at a massive cabinet-level department, a medium-sized agency, or a tiny commission, it is this: a habit of skepticism about corporate claims.