February 23, 2022 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
To Scare Monopolies, DOJ Antitrust Division Needs Reinforcements
The Department of Justice Antitrust Division is once again stepping up its efforts to tackle the corporate greed that is helping to drive the recent spike in inflation. On Thursday, the Department announced that it would be bringing new scrutiny to supply chain profiteers. This is the latest indication that Jonathan Kanter’s Antitrust division is serious about tackling corporate consolidation and its ill-effects across the breadth of the economy. In recent months, the division has also set its sights on BigTech, shipping and rail, and meat, among other industries. It has simultaneously promised to change its approach to enforcement by bringing lawsuits instead of seeking settlements and begun the process of updating the guidelines it uses to review mergers. Altogether, that’s a big agenda.

February 22, 2022
Making The Antitrust Division Competitive: A Look At Capacity As Biden Revitalizes Enforcement
The Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (ATR) is, along with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the primary regulator of antitrust law and is responsible for ensuring markets’ competitiveness. In that capacity, it investigates corporate consolidation and allegations of collusion and anticompetitive practices that undermine the free market. ATR is also responsible for supervising mergers and acquisitions to ensure that companies cannot establish monopolies. While both ATR and the FTC share this objective, the two divide jurisdiction based on industry. ATR also investigates and prosecutes criminal antitrust violations.

February 01, 2022
Coalition Calls On Secretary Raimondo to Release Calendars
We write to express our concern about your refusal to release your calendars and its implications for public trust in your department and this administration. As a public servant, the American people have a right to know who you meet with, when you meet with them, and what you discuss. In the absence of proactive disclosure, and with other routes to obtaining this information subject to extensive delays, the public is being left in the dark about who may be influencing the country’s trade and economic policy, and how. This is all the more alarming in light of your recent comments that favored Big Tech and contradicted Biden administration policy. We ask that you immediately address this grave threat to public trust by releasing your calendars, retroactively and at regular intervals moving forward.

January 27, 2022
Letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland Highlights Urgent Need for Resources in the Antitrust Division
The Justice Department plays a key role in President Biden’s vision of promoting “the interests of American workers, businesses, and consumers” through increasing competition, a plan which stands to be one the most enduring legacies of this administration. Your commitment to promote “competition by fairly and vigorously enforcing the antitrust laws,” along with the confirmation of Jonathan Kanter to Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division, are crucial steps forward in this vision.

January 24, 2022
Corporate Capture’s Circle of Life: The Copyright Office’s New Disney Lawyer
Since the Copyright Office provides expert recommendations and advice to Congress, the executive branch, and the courts, Disney’s recent employees may soon be advising government officials about copyright policy.

January 06, 2022 | The American Prospect
Merrick Garland Is Undermining The Biden Antitrust Strategy
In theory, nothing prevents Biden from hiring whomever Kanter personally trusts to help execute their shared agenda. So what’s causing the chaos?

January 04, 2022
Amidst a Record Supply Chain Crisis, What is the Federal Maritime Commission’s Capacity?
One tiny federal agency with 116 full-time employees and a $28.9 million dollar budget is in charge of regulating the global marine economy, which contributes $397 billion to the US GDP annually and accounts for 80 percent of goods shipped worldwide. That’s not just an apples and oranges discrepancy—that’s like an apple versus Apple. The budget for the military’s marching bands is fifteen times greater than the Federal Maritime Commission’s budget; the Marines alone have five times more musicians than the Commission has staff.

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).”

October 20, 2021 | The American Prospect
Who’s Really Running Justice?
It was never a secret that Attorney General Merrick Garland was among the key Biden administration figures opposing Jonathan Kanter’s nomination as assistant attorney general for antitrust. Ultimately, however, Garland did not get his way; the appointment went to Kanter rather than to one of the many Big Tech–allied BigLaw partners whom Garland favored. In view of Kanter’s career as a plaintiff’s lawyer, his nomination was rightly celebrated as a decisive victory by antitrust reformers and BigLaw opponents alike. But it was just one battle in a broader war for renewed anti-monopoly enforcement and a DOJ eager to build back better in every policy area.

October 15, 2021 | Talking Points Memo
The Jan. 6 Committee Has The Right Idea: Now Congress Should Subpoena Zuckerberg
Facebook continues to lie to the public with abandon. That is one of the main takeaways from the Facebook whistleblower’s testimony last week. Even now, having been called out, Facebook is frantically working to obscure and underplay its own dishonesty.

September 30, 2021
Coalition Calls on DOJ to Give Kanter "Sufficient Independence and Discretion"
We write to you as a broad coalition of organizations committed to holding corporations that engage in anti-competitive behavior accountable. For far too long, Washington has sat by as technology industry giants have accumulated monopoly power at the expense of consumers and competitors alike. The nomination of Jonathan Kanter to serve as Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice Antitrust Division is a strong step toward turning President Joe Biden’s vision of an open economy into reality.

September 16, 2021 | The American Prospect
Closing the Revolving Door in Antitrust
Economic consulting firms hire former officials to undermine antitrust efforts. Here’s how to stop that.

September 09, 2021
Northwestern University Must Change Ethics Regime To Disclose Professors' Big Tech Ties, Letter Argues
The letter calls on the university to implement fair disclosure requirements for its faculty and condemn the unethical practices of former Pritzker Dean Dr. Daniel Rodriguez.

September 01, 2021 | The New Republic
Big Tech’s Attacks on Biden’s Anti-Monopoly Regulators Are a Joke
In a move cheered by progressives and antitrust reformers, President Biden has nominated Jonathan Kanter to serve as assistant attorney general for antitrust. Kanter’s nomination, alongside that of Lina Khan to lead the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year, is the latest sign that this administration is, for the first time in generations, fiercely committed to enforcing antitrust laws. However, this generation’s most notorious monopolies—Amazon, Facebook, and Google—are making it vividly clear that they will try anything to retain their power. That apparently includes lobbing poorly reasoned, transparently bad faith calls for their newly anointed foes to recuse themselves from relevant cases.

August 16, 2021
Pharma’s Revolving Door Jeopardizes Biden’s Promise To Lower Drug Costs
Personnel vacancies and Big Pharma allies in the Biden administration threaten a landmark executive order on competition.