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October 06, 2025
Trump's Polluter Playground
President Donald Trump has spent the last nine months halting the growth of the American clean energy economy in its tracks, dragging the country into a vengeful, backward-leaning energy agenda that does the bidding of his fossil fuel allies and serves the interest of billionaire campaign donors. Consumers and the planet alike will suffer for it.
September 23, 2025 | The American Prospect
Op-Ed Artificial IntelligenceConsumer ProtectionExecutive BranchIndependent AgenciesRevolving DoorTech
Ted Cruz Attempts to Exempt Big Tech From the Law
The Texas senator has introduced a bill allowing any AI company a streamlined path around regulations.
September 10, 2025 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
A Portal into Pandemonium
Years ago, during the first Trump administration, our organization led a Swamp Tour of DC, taking a bus around the city and describing how various swamp monsters earned their spot on a tour of DC’s most corrupt and self-serving political operatives. Today, as our Jeff Hauser and Timi Iwayemi recently wrote in The American Prospect, the swamp runneth over: we are living through by far the most corrupt presidency in U.S. history.
August 22, 2025 | Watchdog Weekly
Corruption Calendar Week 31: The Crises Continue
We are almost through our first summer of what is sure to be a long and ruinous four years. This past week, while Trump tightened control of his invasion of Washington, D.C, gargantuan wildfires ravaged lands in Colorado and Florida. Over in Texas, state Republicans completed step one of their plot to distort the electoral map ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, sending the newly redrawn maps to the Texas State Senate. D.C. residents are far from the only victims of our ever growing police state, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to kidnap and terrorize community members across the country.
August 07, 2025
Uber Wrong
In his latest broadside against the left, Mattew Yglesias took aim at longtime critics of Uber’s blatant lawbreaking. In Yglesias’s view, these critics who range from anti-monopoly voices like Lina Khan to anti-corruption experts like our own Jeff Hauser and academics focused on financial regulation like Professor Hillary Allen, constitute a coterie of economics-hating zealots eager to make people’s lives worse.
June 26, 2025
Man Who Crashed The Economy, Called For Further Recessions Warns Potential Socialist Governance Will Lead To Economic Devastation.
Larry Summers is up in arms over Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York Mayoral Primary, worried that Mamdani’s “Trotskyite economic policies” will crash the economy.
June 20, 2025 | The American Prospect
Why Is a Former Obama Official Attacking the Left on Climate?
“We’ve lost the culture war on climate,” Harvard law professor and former Obama administration adviser Jody Freeman told Politico last Wednesday. The article amounts to a dry eulogy for efforts to combat climate change, with Freeman’s refrain that the climate movement failed to go mainstream in the background. What goes unmentioned: Freeman’s extracurricular work as oil industry whisperer.
June 18, 2025
How Crypto Is Buying DC One Revolver At A Time
How the cryptocurrency industry bought influence at the highest levels of government, one payoff at a time
June 11, 2025
The Abundance Mask Slips at WelcomeFest
A quick list of WelcomeFest’s most interesting moments, speakers and takeaways. Abundance Coachella really lived up to the hype.
June 05, 2025
Caring About Corporate Conflicts is Cool
The private sector rewards for public sector experience creates a conflict in which the public good and an employee’s own career prospects may be in tension. Not only does it incentivize public servants to consider the interests of the private sector (and how their decisions as a public servant might impact future employment prospects), but it erodes public confidence in civil servants.
May 30, 2025
Newsletter Climate and EnvironmentCorruption CalendarCriminal JusticeCryptocurrencyDOGEElon MuskExecutive BranchHousingImmigrationRevolving DoorTrump 2.0
Corruption Calendar Week 19: “We Reject Regulators.” Pardon Me?
This week the Trump administration deepened its wildly corrupt and lucrative crypto grift, sought to further enrich wealthy supporters at the direct expense of working households, and continued to pardon white-collar criminals who don the red MAGA cap.
May 23, 2025 | Watchdog Weekly
Corruption Calendar Week 18: Trump’s Independent Agency Power Grab
This week the Trump administration continued to dedicate itself to tearing down the safeguards that protect Americans from things like dangerous consumer products and predatory sales tactics, all while his officials and donors (often one and the same) enrich themselves.
May 15, 2025 | The American Prospect
Op-Ed Department of CommerceHoward LutnickIntellectual PropertyPatent and Trademark OfficePharmaRevolving Door
Trump Appointees Are Hijacking the Patent System
The PTAB’s inter partes review (IPR) process was designed to swiftly weed out low-quality patents—the kind that stifle competition, inflate consumer prices, and entrench monopolies. But since Trump and Lutnick’s arrival, a quiet bureaucratic coup at the USPTO has undermined this critical safeguard. Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart has moved to centralize power and gut accountability measures, opening the door to a flood of dubious patents.
May 14, 2025 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Newsletter Artificial IntelligenceClimate and EnvironmentEthics in GovernmentLaborRevolving DoorTech
Inside the Age of AI Anxiety
We’re trying something new for you today: a visual exploration of the political and personal consequences of the dawning “age of AI.” Let us know in the comments if you like this approach to storytelling. It was made by a human, so all experimentation, imperfection, and emotion is my own.
May 09, 2025 | Watchdog Weekly
Newsletter Consumer ProtectionCorruption CalendarCryptocurrencyDOGEElon MuskEthics in GovernmentRevolving DoorTechTrump 2.0
Corruption Calendar Week 16: The Grift That Keeps On Giving
This week, the Trump brothers Eric and Don Jr. embarked on a world tour to make real estate deals while the administration used the threat of tariffs to push Starlink into other countries. Trump allies engaged in price fixing and fraud were given a pass seemingly as a reward for their donations to the president, our retirement savings were placed under the eye of a greedy insurance executive, and consumer protections were targeted by House Republicans eager to find tax breaks for the rich.