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February 28, 2025 | Watchdog Weekly
Newsletter Climate and EnvironmentConsumer ProtectionCorruption CalendarEthics in GovernmentJudiciaryTechTrump 2.0
Corruption Calendar Week Six: A dying CFPB, Musk’s business boom, conflicts of interest, and blatant favoritism.
This week, the Trump administration is moving fast to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), abandoning several active enforcement cases against financiers ripping off consumers. The SEC paused its case against Trump ally Justin Sun and handed the crypto industry another victory. Elon Musk continues to have field day after field day, slashing agencies he doesn’t like and watching his businesses balloon in value since the election. Several Trump appointees (like CFTC Chair Nominee Brian Quintenz and acting administrator of the PHMSA Ben Kochman) have major conflicts of interests which will likely skew agency action towards the interests of corporations at the expense of the public. We also witnessed an instance of blatant bias in how legal actions are handled, with leniency toward Republicans.
February 28, 2025
Why We’re Skeptical About The “Energy Abundance” Agenda
Over the past few years, a cohort of neoliberal pundits from Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson to Matt Yglesias and Eric Levitz have increasingly problematized the modern regulatory state, framing the government’s many environmental and labor standards as an impediment to “abundance.” Multiple books advancing this argument are slated to be published in the first months of 2025, from Marc Dunkelman’s Why Nothing Works to Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.
February 26, 2025 | No Corporate Cabinet
No Corporate Cabinet: Doug Burgum
Oil Man Tapped for “Energy Czar”
February 25, 2025
Yglesias' Fourth Bad Permitting Argument: Blocking Pipelines Is Bad Because LNG Exports Are Good for the Climate
This is the fourth installment in a four-part series critiquing Matt Yglesias’ support for deregulating the permitting process.
February 25, 2025
Yglesias' Third Bad Permitting Argument: Expanding Clean Energy Is More Important Than Curtailing Dirty Energy
This is the third installment in a four-part series critiquing Matt Yglesias’ support for deregulating the permitting process.
February 25, 2025
Yglesias' Second Bad Permitting Argument: Permitting Reform Would Help Renewables More Than Fossil Fuels
This is the second installment in a four-part series critiquing Matt Yglesias’ support for deregulating the permitting process.
February 25, 2025
Yglesias' First Bad Permitting Argument: NEPA Is Hurting the Green Transition
This is the first installment in a four-part series critiquing Matt Yglesias’ support for deregulating the permitting process.
February 25, 2025
Like Doug Burgum, Matt Yglesias Erroneously Opposes Environmental Review
“Abundance agenda” apostle Matt Yglesias’ affinity for Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s deregulatory plans makes clear that this agenda is, at its heart, a neoliberal-approved version of Trumpian plunder.
February 07, 2025 | The American Prospect
Trump’s Energy Czar Is All In on AI
When Donald Trump nominated North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to be his interior secretary, centrist to right-of-center “abundance agenda” advocates were jubilant. Politico reported, with typically amoral zeal, that Interior would be led by an “overnight rock star in the tech and energy worlds.” Burgum has a foot in both camps, as a former governor from fracking country with deep ties to fossil fuel executives like fracking magnate Harold Hamm, and a venture capitalist invested in software companies who sold his own software company to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in 2001.
January 29, 2025 | The American Prospect
The Texas Model
Trump’s inner circle is stacked with corporate lackeys, far-right influencers, and as Public Citizen described it, “Self-Enriching Grifters.” Many of them, though (somewhat) new to the national political spotlight, are all too familiar to observers of one state: Texas.
January 28, 2025
The Attack on FEMA Begins
Trump’s call to review FEMA’s efficiency is straight out of Project 2025, and doesn’t bode well for an agency he’s threatened to “terminate.”
January 15, 2025 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Tough Questions For Trump Nominees: The Lee Zeldin and Scott Turner Edition
We urged a more aggressive and justifiably confrontational approach in our recommended questions for Doug Burgum, Chris Wright, Russell Vought, Pam Bondi, and Scott Bessent, which you can read here and here. Today we’ll get into questions for Lee Zeldin, nominee for the Environmental Protection Agency, and Scott Turner, nominee for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
January 13, 2025 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Democrats Need To Ask Trump Nominees The Tough Questions
Trump’s nominees need to be asked hard questions about their records of harming the public. So we did the work ourselves and wrote some!
January 09, 2025 | The American Prospect
Op-Ed 2024 Election/TransitionBudgetClimate and EnvironmentExecutive BranchGovernment CapacityHousing
Trump’s Attack on Government Capacity Will Fan the Flames of the Home Insurance Crisis
The U.S. Forest Service is already underfunded and understaffed. Slashing its resources further is likely to unleash more severe wildfires.
January 08, 2025 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Who Bought The Presidency?
With less than two weeks until Trump’s inauguration, the Senate confirmation process for his roster of loyalists will be underway before we know it. The confirmation hearings for Trump’s energy picks are already set, with hearings for Interior nominee Doug Burgum, Energy nominee Chris Wright, and EPA nominee Lee Zeldin scheduled for January 14, January 15, and Wednesday or Thursday of next week respectively. This newsletter series will highlight the ties between Trump’s personnel picks and the exploitative industries and their billionaire CEOs who will be enriched by their appointments.