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April 16, 2021
The Brother Of A Pharma Lobbyist Advises Biden As He Weighs Vaccine IP Waiver
Despite pushback from progressives, Ricchetti has continued to hold a powerful advisory position in the Biden White House. His background in corporate lobbying and strong ties to the pharmaceutical industry are deeply troubling signs as the Biden Administration faces enormously consequential decisions about how to end the COVID-19 pandemic.
April 16, 2021
Break Big Pharma's Stranglehold On COVID-19 Vaccines With Existing Powers, 16 Groups Tell Biden Admin
A coalition of 16 organizations called on Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients to maximally use the executive branch’s existing powers to end the pharmaceutical industry’s stranglehold on supply on COVID-19 vaccines in an open letter today.
April 14, 2021
Big Pharma's Coils Around COVID-19 Vaccines Likely Protected By Raimondo, Zients, Ricchetti
The world deserves to know exactly who is responsible for the United States not yet supporting a waiver for intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccine production.
April 08, 2021
Secretary Raimondo Must Act Quickly to Support the TRIPS Waiver
As the Biden administration continues to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo holds one of the most critical but under-appreciated roles for ensuring vaccine distribution. Indeed, the Commerce Secretary is a key player determining more generally whether America and the planet prioritize Big Pharma’s wealth or public health.
March 18, 2021
Congress Must Examine Biden Admin Possibly Trading Vaccines For Anti-Migration Enforcement
The Revolving Door Project is outraged by yesterday’s news that the Biden administration has been pressuring the Mexican government into turning away migrants at the Mexico-Guatemala border. While this Trump style initiative would be appalling on its own, we are additionally concerned about the possibility that President Biden may have bartered millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to achieve his anti-migration goals.
March 15, 2021 | Independent Media Institute
When Public Officials Get Rented Out By Corporate Power, The People Lose
From Vivek Murthy’s lucrative consulting work with Netflix and Carnival Cruise Lines to Brian Deese’s “greenwashing” of fossil fuel investments at BlackRock, the revolving door between corporate industry and government continues to undermine public trust in the Biden Administration, writes our Elias Alsbergas.
March 01, 2021
Zients Must Open-Source Vaccines To Prove Independence And Seriousness
As the United States approaches a full year of COVID-19-induced lockdowns, the Revolving Door Project and the Center for Economic and Policy Research called on the White House’s COVID-19 task force director Jeffrey Zients to demand that Pfizer, Moderna, and other American pharmaceutical firms open-source their COVID-19 vaccines.
December 17, 2020 | The American Prospect
Does Jeffrey Zients Have the Private-Sector Experience We Want in Government?
In an age of financialization and monopoly, ‘private-sector experience’ too often translates into those who successfully plunder for profit. Jeffrey Zients epitomizes that trend.
December 02, 2020
How Does Any Decent Person Consider Gina Raimondo For A Cabinet Position?
It would be a disaster for Raimondo to receive any spot in the incoming Biden administration. (Term limits prevent her from running for re-election.) But it’s especially horrifying — and frankly, stupefying — to consider Raimondo for HHS in the year 2020.
November 09, 2020 | The American Prospect
Donna Shalala Encapsulated Pelosi’s Embrace of Passivity as a Strategy
Democrats were expected to expand their House majority, but instead saw many seats slip through their hands. With several races uncalled, the majority could be cut by as much as seven to ten seats.
That includes the seat of Nancy Pelosi’s close ally Rep. Donna Shalala (D-FL), whom Pelosi chose for the CARES Act’s Congressional Oversight Commission (which monitors the Federal Reserve bailout). Shalala’s course over the past two years, from part of the promising blue wave to low-energy oversight leader, is the story of Democratic leadership in the 116th Congress in a nutshell.
May 11, 2020
International Antitrust Response to Coronavirus
The Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act would preemptively stop harmful mergers that not only affect American consumers, but economies all over the world that rely on the same global supply chains. Undoubtedly, companies looking to acquire struggling businesses during the pandemic will try to take advantage of the “failing firm” argument to justify acquisitions. But what actions have lawmakers and antitrust enforcement officials in other countries undertaken to prevent predatory mergers while businesses struggle?
May 07, 2020
Why is Congress Ignoring EIDLs?
Over the past several weeks, the SBA has been criticized for its administration and oversight of its Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which offers forgivable loans designed to be spent on payroll expenses. But little attention has been paid to the SBA’s second COVID-response loan effort: the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program. EIDLs provide small businesses affected by disasters with emergency loans. Over the past few decades, the SBA has provided EIDLs after major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and 9/11.
March 20, 2020 | Center for Economic and Policy Research
Trump Stimulus Plan: Still Getting Everything Wrong
Donald Trump has consistently been failing the country in dealing with the coronavirus. Due to Trump’s failed public health response, even his treasury secretary acknowledges that we are facing the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. This is in addition to the prospect of tens of millions of people getting the coronavirus and hundreds of thousands, or even millions, dying.
March 16, 2020
Concrete Solutions to Mitigate the Health and Economic Impacts of the Pandemic
The sheer weight of executive branch incompetence, that has led to an entirely uncontained pandemic in the United States, borders on the incomprehensible. Yet, here we are. The question is whether the federal government has meaningful tools available to turn a terrible situation into one that is meaningfully less terrible. The good news is that many useful ideas exist. Here is a partial list of ideas to help inform the policy conversation as we move forward.