Department of Justice

If you search for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Google, you’ll find an overwhelming majority of search results are for the Civil Rights Division. That’s unsurprising — the average person is typically more aware of the Civil Rights Division’s work. And it makes sense: As the “crown jewel” of the DOJ, the division performs the crucial work of enforcing the laws that prohibit discrimination.

In theory, nothing prevents Biden from hiring whomever Kanter personally trusts to help execute their shared agenda. So what’s causing the chaos?

When the government’s lawyers defend fossil fuel interests, people and the planet pay the price.

Being correct, it turns out, isn’t enough. A dry blog post full of economic statistics and analysis simply isn’t how best to message the President’s position to the public.

We are rapidly approaching the one-year anniversary of January 6, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has yet to give any sign that his Justice Department is independently investigating former President Trump and his fellow instigators. This is, by far, Garland’s most high-profile failure when it comes to accountability for the prior administration, one that more observers have begun to notice. But it is not the only one.

Progressives, prison workers and prisoners are in agreement: the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Michael Carvajal, should be fired. The Bureau of Prisons is in a crisis several layers deep, and new leadership will be key to its reformation. 

Today, the Revolving Door Project issued Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for records reflecting any ethics advice given to any Senate-confirmed Department of Justice (DOJ) officials. The Project also requested any ethics advice given to Chief of Staff to the Deputy Attorney General Anita Singh, whose husband is a member of Google’s antitrust defense team at law firm Vinson & Elkins. The Project is interested in which potential conflicts of interest do or don’t trigger ethics concerns within the Department, particularly as Big Tech companies engage in a cynical and specious campaign to use ethics rules to tie the hands of antitrust enforcers.  

70 percent of Republicans, 70 percent of Independents, and 70 percent of Democrats surveyed believe the Biden administration should do more to hold lawbreaking corporations accountable.

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.

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.

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.

President Biden has failed to live up to his promise to progressives to be a climate president. U.S. emissions continue to rise. Last week, 23 unique plant and animal species were declared extinct. A catastrophic pipeline oil spill in California is actively killing fish, birds, and wetland ecosystems. And in violation of treaty rights that are constitutionally the supreme law of the land, Biden allowed Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline to become operational on October 1, which will add emissions equivalent to 50 new coal-fired power plants and will inevitably spill. Biden is standing in support while water protectors are violently arrested and the Anishinaabe peoples living in the path of the project are terrorized and abused.

Alumni of Gibson Dunn, the law firm that helped Chevron go after Steven Donziger, have influential executive branch jobs under Biden.