Corporate Crackdown

On Tuesday, as New Yorkers headed to the polls for the primaries—hours before Zohran Mamdani’s joyous triumph over Andrew Cuomo would be apparent—it was 100°F, the outdoor public pools were closed to the public, and my neighbors were barefoot in the spray of a fire hydrant. “Opening fire hydrants without spray caps is illegal, wasteful, and dangerous,” read the 12:34 pm email I received from the city. Also wasteful and dangerous was failing to open the city’s public pools in time for a record-breaking heat dome. 

The last two weeks saw the Trump administration continue to ramp up racist anti-immigrant rhetoric, raids, and deportation quotas, balancing the whims of industry with the demands of fascist political appointees.

Tracking Americans’ opinions on corruption and oligarchy in the Trump 2.0 era. Updated regularly with for organizers and activists.

This year’s Tax Day was particularly dreary. Headlines outlined the many ways the Trump-Musk administration is attacking the government’s ability to provide public services using tax revenue, while weaponizing the IRS’s access to taxpayer data to terrorize undocumented people, enrich Trump’s allies, and potentially attack Trump’s political enemies. Placed against the backdrop of nine states seeing extended tax filing deadlines due to the continuing impact of fossil-fueled climate disasters, a bleak image of our reality emerges. 

Are you a highly polluting industrial facility? Maybe a coal-fired power plant, or a coke oven, or a chemical manufacturer, or a commercial sterilizer? Do your neighbors complain about the eye-watering, throat-choking clouds that billow from your stacks? Are you tired of being the bad guy just because your operations emit arsenic, ethylene oxide, mercury, and lead into the air and water, which can cause cancer, brain defects, and other illnesses? Well, President Trump has got your back.

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.

The billionaire’s disregard of federal laws and constitutional powers did not arise out of nowhere when he began his work at “DOGE.” It is just the logical outgrowth of a career spent flouting rules and regulations without consequence. 

We’re excited to introduce the Corruption Calendar, a new project from Revolving Door Project consisting of a weekly newsletter (you’re reading the first edition) and dedicated social media channels (follow us on X and Bluesky).