Search Results for
March 01, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Dylan Gyauch-Lewis Emma Marsano Ananya Kalahasti Julian Scoffield
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.

February 24, 2023 | Revolving Door Project newsletter
"Economic Science" Is Whatever Larry Summers Wants It To Be
In many cases, Summers refuses to distinguish between his personal ideology about economics and what he thinks are scientific laws of nature.
February 17, 2023 | RDP Newsletter
Hack Watch: Debtors And Lawyers And Trusts, Oh My!
February 15, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
The Value of a Human Life, According to Economists
Last week a shocking story from NPR largely slipped under the radar. The headline: “Why the EPA puts a higher value on rich lives lost to climate change.” Climate Correspondent Rebecca Hersher shared the “twisted tale of math, ethics and climate change” that is the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to decide what’s been called the most important number you’ve never heard of: the social cost of greenhouse gases.

February 10, 2023
Larry Summers, TV Star: Part 1
Uncovering what Summers argued, and how Westin framed it, offers a lot of insight into how the media trains us to think about the economy.
February 08, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Will the White House Let Covid Vaccine Prices Skyrocket?
Since the early days of the pandemic, the federal government has been pre-purchasing Covid vaccines at an average cost of around $20 per dose (around $29 per dose for the bivalent boosters) to ensure public access to vaccination at no cost. However, with Congress no longer willing to fund Covid treatment, the Biden administration has indicated that it intends to end the Covid public health emergency in May, and more or less hand over control of Covid prevention to the healthcare industry.

February 03, 2023
Media Helps Corporate Landlords Spin Biden’s Watered-Down Renter Protection Plan
Mainstream outlets are failing to tell the full story on the White House’s new tenant protection actions.

February 01, 2023
The State Of The Union, And The Year That Followed
President Joe Biden’s second State of the Union address is next Tuesday. Amid an uprising sparked by yet another horrific video of police violence, deep uncertainty about U.S. fiscal and monetary policy, and continuing wars and threats around the world, the nation — or at least, the politics junkies in the nation — will gather to hear the President lay out his agenda to a Congress absolutely no one reasonably expects will deliver on it, or likely even take it all that seriously.
January 25, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Hannah Story Brown Emma Marsano
Corporate CrackdownEthics in GovernmentExecutive BranchHealthRevolving Door
Biden’s Choice of Chief of Staff Threatens Populist Potential
Last Friday marked the exact midway point of Biden’s presidential term. With this newly divided Congress, there are scant possibilities for legislation in the next two years. By and large, this next stage of Biden’s presidency should be all about the executive branch: implementing recent laws, enforcing existing laws, and enacting much-needed regulation. (Biden should have been overseeing these things all along, of course—that’s what the Presidency is for!)

January 20, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Hack Watch: The Fairness Doctrine Strikes Again: Media Outlets are Calling Republicans’ Austerity Pushes a Debt Ceiling “Showdown”
However, in their ongoing quest to appear “neutral” and “balanced,” some media outlets are saying that the damage will be done by the deficit ceiling fight itself, not by the Republican push to default on our loans.
January 18, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
FDA Tobacco Scientist Joins Cigarette Company. Nothing To See Here!
We’ve barely begun wading into the troubled waters of the 118th Congress, and House Republicans are already out for the blood of their longtime nemesis: federal workers.

January 11, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Government Spending and its Discontents
We spent October highlighting the perpetual underfunding of most federal departments and agencies, and urging Congress and the Biden administration to use December’s omnibus bill to finally provide them with the money and resources they need. Sadly, while appropriations did increase for FY2023, budgets consistently fell short of what agencies requested. The most jarring example may be the Department of Housing and Development (HUD), whose budget is a whopping $16 billion shy of the requested $77.8 billion. Biden recently announced his goal to cut homelessness by 25 percent in the next two years, but it’s hard to see how even this meager goal will be achieved without a fully funded HUD.

January 04, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
These Airline Meltdowns Aren’t Inevitable
As 2022 ends and 2023 begins with record-breaking winter heat blanketing Europe and much of the south and north-eastern United States—68°F and humid in DC, in January!—climate change is in the air, if not on the legislative agenda. We expect that much of the hard-won climate progress in the next year will be in executive branch implementation and regulation, alongside state-level legislation and court cases.

December 21, 2022
Hannah Story Brown Andrea Beaty Dorothy Slater Dylan Gyauch-Lewis Julian Scoffield KJ Boyle Max Moran Timi Iwayemi Toni Aguilar Rosenthal
RDP’s 150th Newsletter: Our 2022 Revolving Door Superlatives
How better to mark the darkest day of the year than with a bit of dark humor? This winter solstice, we present our 2022 Revolving Door Superlatives, where we spotlight the most craven, captured, and corrupt personnel and policy debates of this past year. From Revolver of the Year to 2022’s Worst Look to our Biggest Personnel Nightmare Entering 2023, we have a positively ghoulish assemblage of honorees for your perverse reading pleasure. Take comfort, dear reader, in this at least: the days are only getting longer from here on out.
December 19, 2022 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Meet the former Biden Advisor Using “Climate Advocacy” as a Trojan Horse for Corporate Interests
With the Senate’s rejection of Senator Joe Manchin’s permitting reform legislation as a notable exception, last week was a bad one for fossil fuel disasters and corporate accountability. In Kansas, a Keystone pipeline leak caused the largest US crude oil spill in a decade. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, investigators found ongoing gas leaks in Equitrans’ pipeline storage facilities that released massive amounts of methane in November — enough to erase 50% of emission gains from US electric vehicles sales this year.