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November 15, 2023 | RDP Newsletter
We Can’t Let Budget Negotiations Make A Punching Bag of Agency Capacity
As negotiations to prevent a government shutdown heat up once again, Democratic and Republican Representatives in the House are poised to make a play on agency resources.
October 26, 2023
RELEASE: Watchdog Group Requests Communications Between DOJ Officials And Google Defender Paul Weiss
Following news coverage that Yelp and the News/Media Alliance filed an unsuccessful motion to take BigLaw firm Paul Weiss off Google’s defense team in the adtech antitrust case brought by the DOJ, the Revolving Door Project submitted a Freedom of Information Act Request for communications between Paul Weiss and key Department of Justice officials. The American Prospect featured the request in their coverage of Google’s attempts to remove DOJ Antitrust Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter from the case, as well as Paul Weiss’ potential conflicts.
October 16, 2023
Letter To Judge Freeman Calling For Recusal
On October 16, the Revolving Door Project sent a letter to Judge Beth Labson Freeman calling for her recusal in NetChoice, LLC v. Bonta. Judge Freeman granted a preliminary injunction to prevent California from enforcing the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (CAADCA), which regulates platforms that target content to children.
October 13, 2023
Revolving Door Project Sends Letter To Rep. Correa On Big Tech Conflicts Of Interest
On Thursday, October 12, the HuffPost reported on the Revolving Door Project’s letter to Ranking Member of the House Antitrust Subcommittee Lou Correa.
October 13, 2023
RELEASE: JUDGE INVESTED IN BIG TECH SHOULD NOT DECIDE ON CONSTITUTIONALITY OF LAW THAT BIG TECH LOBBIED AGAINST

August 18, 2023
Kalimah Muhammad Vishal Shankar
Hack WatchNewsletter Anti-MonopolyDepartment of JusticeFTCHack WatchHousingMedia Accountability
Memo to the Media: Stop Quoting RealPage
A company under federal antitrust investigation for helping landlords jack up rents is not a reliable or independent source.

August 02, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Following Failed Hearing, Jim Jordan And Republicans Try New Tacks To Take Down Khan and Kanter
Two weeks ago, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan entered a House Judiciary Committee hearing with a target on her back. In the leadup to the hearing, Republicans readied their trumped-up attacks against Khan and the agency she leads: a barely relevant memo from a conflicted ethics officer, a list of unfounded grievances from bitter former Commissioner Christine Wilson, and absurd defenses of Elon Musk’s lazy privacy practices at Twitter. But Khan emerged unscathed, and by the end, the Republicans had lost all their fire.

July 17, 2023
Lina Khan Unscathed By Conflicted Ethics Officer and Pro-Monopoly Republicans
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.

July 17, 2023 | The American Prospect
The Climate Denialist Think Tank That Might Produce The Next FTC Commissioner
It turns out that radical ideology IS allowed at the FTC.
July 13, 2023
RELEASE: Via Baseless Attacks On Khan, House Republicans Continue to Serve their Monopolist Funders
“Today’s hearing further proved that Republican’s attacks on Lina Khan and her leadership are blatant attempts to weaken antitrust enforcement to the benefit of the corporations that fund the Republican Party. Members, including Jim Jordan, focused on baseless allegations in an attempt to delegitimize the work the FTC is doing to crack down on anti-competitive and harmful practices that monopolistic companies use to amass economic power and squeeze profits out of consumers and workers.”

July 11, 2023
Revolving Door Project Sends Chair Khan Letter on FTC Ethics
In advance of the House Judiciary Committee holding a hearing on Thursday, July 13, 2023, at 10:00 a.m. ET on “Oversight of the Federal Trade Commission,” Revolving Door Project has sent a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan calling on her to take on the FTC’s considerable internal revolving door challenges.

July 05, 2023 | The American Prospect
Lina Khan Haters Took A Premature Victory Lap
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.

June 30, 2023
RDP Asks FTC IG To Investigate Ethics Officer Who Pushed Khan To Recuse While Owning Meta Stock
The ethics officer who recommended Lina Khan recuse herself from the Meta/Within case owns between $15k and $50k in Meta stock.

June 29, 2023
RDP Calls On Microsoft/Activision Judge Who Disclosed Son's Employment At Microsoft To Recuse
The Revolving Door Project sent a letter to Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, who is presiding over the FTC’s challenge of the Microsoft/Activision merger, after Judge Corley disclosed that her son is an employee of Microsoft but did not recuse. This relationship may violate the Code of Conduct for US Judges.

June 14, 2023
Christine Varney Made A Career Out Of An Agency She Now Deems Unconstitutional
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.