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November 20, 2021 | The American Prospect
Gensler Punts In Fight Over Auditing Watchdog
Gensler appears to have backed down from a full fight with Republicans on the SEC and in Congress. This is likely because Gensler needs to pick his battles, of which there are many. But in times as dire as these, choosing to let certain grifts carry on as normal is an ominous call.

November 19, 2021
FOIA Response Suggests Fed's Powell Was Dishonest About Personal Ethics Signoff
An inquiry from the Revolving Door Project has revealed the absence of any records of any communications of any kind between Powell and the Office of Government Ethics,

November 18, 2021 | The American Prospect
How Biden Can Protect Students From Predatory For-Profit Colleges
The Biden administration inherited a morass of understaffed and undermined federal agencies, weakened by the Trump administration. It makes sense that building back the government’s capacity would be an uphill battle for the Biden administration, with so many years of policymaking undermined by his predecessor. What doesn’t make sense is the jarring number of cases in which the administration is going out of its way, at considerable cost, to uphold Trump-era policies that go against Biden’s stated agenda and the public interest.

November 17, 2021
After Infrastructure Week
Congressional selfies and self-congratulations inaugurated the week, but a lot of hard work remains to translate the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s (IIJA) policies into real-life results. Given that those policies are (generously) middling and that the most promising ones are underfunded, turning these into winning programs will demand energy, creativity, competence, and a strong commitment to the public interest.

November 17, 2021
Revolver Spotlight: Charles Yi
Yi is the latest BigLaw revolver and corporate ally to join the Biden Administration.

November 16, 2021
Powell Held No Meetings With Labor, But Plenty With Wall Street, Through Biden Term
Powell did not meet with any non-governmental individuals who are not members of or aligned with the financial industry. This stands in stark contrast to Powell’s predecessor, Janet Yellen, who is now the Secretary of the Treasury.

November 10, 2021
A Fossil Fuel-Aligned Investment Executive Is Biden's Final Nominee to Manage Federal Retirement Funds
Harvard President Larry Bacow announced mid-afternoon on September 9th that the Ivy League university — whose 53.2 billion endowment exceeds the GDP of over 100 countries — would officially end its investments in fossil fuels. That announcement set off a domino reaction of divestment announcements from Dartmouth, the California State University system, Boston University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Toronto, the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Netherlands’ largest pension fund, and hundreds of other groups. They appear to see the writing on the wall that fossil fuel investments, beyond being morally egregious, are also no longer profitable.

November 09, 2021
Brad Crabtree And The Dangerous Love Story Of Oil Production And Carbon Capture
The process of enhanced oil recovery that Crabtree champions is dangerous. Aside from the considerable economic and scientific barriers to scale, discussed below, the model of the CCT Crabtree supports rests on an unethical premise: that decarbonization should be profitable for Big Oil.

November 08, 2021
Quarles' Resignation Alone Won't Change The Fed's Regulatory Status Quo
There is no assurance whatsoever that Quarles’ successor will have anything close to Quarles’ own power, should Biden refuse to nominate a new Federal Reserve Chair.

November 05, 2021 | The American Prospect
A Missing Link in the Fight Against the Climate Crisis
With his legislative climate agenda hanging in the balance, President Biden turned to executive action this week in his attempt to “assert American leadership” at COP26 in Glasgow. On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced sweeping new rules to curb methane emissions. Those standards, which the agency estimates would eliminate a greater volume of emissions between 2023 and 2035 than those emitted from all U.S. passenger cars and commercial planes in 2019, were rightly applauded. For now, however, these are just estimates. Ensuring that they turn into real-life emissions reductions that meet or exceed expectations will require that agencies have the capacity to promptly write strong new rules and, then, enforce them.

November 04, 2021
When Republican Votes Advance Biden's Nominations
Rahm Emanuel’s nomination is not the first time a Biden pick advanced despite Democratic opposition.

November 03, 2021
Penn Law Should Require Faculty to Disclose Outside Funding Sources, Letter Argues
On November 2, the Revolving Door Project led a coalition of seven organizations in a letter to Penn Law Dean Theodore Ruger. The letter calls on the law school to require its faculty to “clearly disclose any compensation or funding they receive from companies, either direct or indirect (e.g., from a foundation or organization largely funded by a corporation or corporate officer associated with a specific corporation with a stake in the work in question).”

November 02, 2021
New Report Details How Reduced Staff Capacity Will Hamper Climate Action
This administration has consistently affirmed its commitment to rebuilding the federal workforce. But with only 98 months left until 2030, at which point we will need to have cut U.S. emissions in half to avoid climate catastrophe, it should be clear that there’s no time to waste turning words to action.

November 02, 2021
Climate Capacity Crisis: Attrition at Climate Agencies and Immediate Steps to Address It
It has been over nine months since President Donald Trump left office, but on climate policy the federal government continues to show the scars from his disastrous presidency. At a moment when we do not have even a second to waste to avoid catastrophic climate change, agencies are struggling to build back better after attacks on scientific integrity and agency budgets left them without sufficient staff capacity and expertise. While the Biden administration has consistently affirmed its support for the federal workforce through rhetoric and action, New York Times reporting from this summer makes clear that the rebuilding is still not happening fast enough.

October 29, 2021 | The American Prospect
Will Biden’s FDA Be Led by a Pharma Guy?
Dr. Robert Califf appears to be the clearest front-runner for the (somehow) still open position of commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. After floating his name in the press a few weeks ago, President Biden recently met with Califf in private. Such meetings tend to be the final step before a nominee is announced.
There’s just one problem: Califf is a longtime political consultant to Big Pharma and, more recently, to Big Tech. In fact, he’s so tied to those industries that he once earned the ire of a certain crucial senator from West Virginia.