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As pressure mounts on the United States government to support waiving intellectual property (IP) protections on the COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization, progressives are closely monitoring the Biden administration’s appointments to agencies that impact intellectual property matters such as the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

The prolonged confirmation fights for top Biden nominees proved one thing: Republicans will gleefully and cynically exploit anti-corruption critiques of Biden’s Cabinet for their own political purposes. The President must deny them this potent political weapon by closing corporate America’s revolving door for good.

After over two months in office, President Joe Biden has a Cabinet. And his administration continues to announce names for the nearly 4000 other positions it will need to fill. With only a few exceptions, however, picks for one class of appointment — to independent agency boards — have been slow to emerge. The Biden administration undoubtedly faces many competing priorities, but these nominations must rise to the top.

Financial disclosures reveal over a dozen senior White House officials’ financial and career ties to fossil fuel companies, pipelines, and natural gas industries.

Faced with a monumental workplace safety crisis in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has largely failed to protect workers. Decades of declining staffing levels left this critical agency unable to adapt to extraordinary conditions and support workers across the country when they most needed it. During his campaign, Joe Biden vowed to be the “strongest labor president you’ve ever had.” As he prepares to release his budget proposal for his first full financial year in office, the opportunity is fast approaching for Biden to put federal money where his mouth is. Biden must follow through on his pro-worker promises by expanding funding and employment levels for OSHA and OSHA state affiliates (among a slate of other sorely needed pro-labor policies) so that they have the capacity to safeguard workplace safety in times of crisis and otherwise.

Another day, another former antitrust enforcer defecting for the corporate world. In the months since President Joe Biden promised to pursue more aggressive antitrust enforcement, former antitrust officials have become an even hotter commodity in the private sector. Douglas Rathbun is the latest official to jump ship from the increasingly central world of antitrust enforcement to the more lucrative world of defending the status quo. Rathbun is a former counsel for the Antitrust Division’s Office of Legal Policy and has advised the Division on administrative and regulatory matters as well as guided nominees to senior leadership positions. According to his LinkedIn, Rathbun elected to cut out the BigLaw middleman and join a corporation directly: this month he joined Facebook to work on public policy.

The Revolving Door Project has been requesting personal financial disclosures, or Form 278e’s, since the White House made them available. While we are still waiting to receive many requests back, we wanted to share the ones we have received with the public as quickly as possible by summarizing relevant findings for each White House appointee.

Financial disclosures revealed that numerous high level Biden White House officials have financial holdings in vaccine manufacturers, while some of them are involved in vaccine distribution talks.

Progressive groups successfully pressed Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to replace the acting head of the office that oversees the nation’s $1.5 trillion student loan portfolio in recent weeks. Now, Abigail Seldin, a former student loan company executive, is reportedly a candidate to lead that office.

Elizabeth Rosenberg, a lesser-known Obama-era official, is being considered to lead the Treasury Department’s Terrorism and Financial Intelligence unit. Her record designing painful economic sanctions, supporting fossil fuel industry-friendly policies, and helping powerful corporations gain close access to the highest levels of government is cause for alarm, writes Vishal Shankar.

Having a pollution investor in charge of the DPC should set off alarm bells for anyone worried about climate change — in other words, everyone.

ullivan, like Secretary of State Blinken and others in the Biden national security apparatus, spent the Trump years as a “consultant,” better termed as a shadow lobbyist, for Big Tech and other industries.

Alvarez only re-entered the regulatory world after six years at Affirm, a fintech e-lender that offers loans up to 30 percent APR under sometimes confusing terms at the point of sale, so consumers rarely have the opportunity to shop around or read the fine print for an informed decision.

What is the spirit of a revolver? Perhaps it’s best described as someone who advances “the increasingly influential private-sector approach to world-changing.” That, after all, is how Anand Giridharadas, in his essential book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing The World, once described Sonal Shah’s current work.