May 11, 2022 | Washingtonian Magazine
RDP's Jeff Hauser Named One Of Washingtonian's 500 Most Influential People
Our founder and Executive Director Jeff Hauser has been named as one of Washingtonian Magazine’s 500 Most Influential People in Washington D.C.
May 11, 2022
House Oversight Hearing Shows Why Attacking Corporate Villainy Needs To Be A Priority
The hearing was a golden opportunity for Congress to actually hold a corporation to account for its objectively horrendous and potentially illegal behavior. On an ostensibly bipartisan issue like the opioid epidemic, one could be forgiven for thinking that the hearing would do just that.
May 05, 2022
Dunn's Latest White House Spin Makes A Mockery Of Ethics Law
The news today that Anita Dunn will return to the White House as a senior advisor makes clear that her involvement with this administration was never credibly temporary.
May 04, 2022 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
With SCOTUS In Flames, Something Is Wrong With The White House Fire Alarm
Monday’s wrenching news that the Supreme Court is set to overturn Roe v. Wade marks a final leg in Republicans’ long march to theocratic rule, bringing conservatives far closer to consolidating total power even before the reckoning of 2024, when the GOP is set to launch a barrage of anti-democratic incendiary balloons at an already scorched Constitution. The highest judicial body in the land has emerged from its terrifying chrysalis, emboldened by dark money groups and transformed into a bludgeon aimed at the most basic constitutional rights and federal agencies that regulate our air and water, our work and labor rights, and the vast public health apparatus of the United States government.
April 27, 2022 | The Lever
Will Biden's New COVID Czar Protect The World Or Big Pharma?
In his gig as a global health consultant at a powerful D.C. business strategy firm that has financial ties to one of the two major COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, Jha has kept his client roster under wraps despite publicly promising to release a client list.
April 25, 2022
Blog Post 2020 Election/TransitionClimateEthics in GovernmentExecutive BranchJeff ZientsRevolving Door
What You Need To Know About The Contenders For Biden’s Next Chief Of Staff
Nearly halfway through President Biden’s second year in office, with midterms on the horizon and senior staff either burning out or eager to sell out, “Transition 2.0” — the rapid departure of said senior staff with an influx of new personnel — is growing closer. One position we’re keeping a close eye on is Biden’s next Chief of Staff. Currently filled by Ron Klain, this is Biden’s de facto power broker. He helps the president make decisions and acts as a gatekeeper for the many, MANY forces, good and bad, who’d like to influence the president.
April 25, 2022
We All Know Elon Musk Is Buying Twitter To Help Him Get Away With Stock Fraud, Right?
Elon Musk is not just purchasing Twitter because, by all appearances, he is a very sad man who is desperate for other very sad men to think he is cool.
April 20, 2022 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
RDP Meets Its Evil Twin
Here at Revolving Door Project, we spend a significant portion of our time working to explain how and why executive branch positions matter. Our team members have collectively published tens of thousands of words detailing the tools executive agencies have to help regular people and insisting that this administration make full use of them.
April 14, 2022
Blog Post CryptocurrencyEthics in GovernmentFederal ReserveFinancial RegulationFintechRevolving Door
Michael Barr is the Wrong Man to Stop the Next Financial Crisis
Over a decade after the financial crisis, few would still dispute that the revolving door between financial regulators and the financial industry helped pave the way for economic disaster. In the years preceding the crash, regulators who came from the country’s largest banks and planned to promptly return to them, removed regulatory restraints and turned a blind eye to the predictably dangerous effects (see, e.g. Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan). In the next administration, different regulators drawn from the same well let the fraudsters off the hook and left the working people who had fallen victim to them out to dry.
April 13, 2022 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Conflict Is Key
If you’ve followed the Revolving Door Project for any length of time, you will be aware that we believe the Biden administration and the Democratic party need to fight harder for the public interest and do much more to ensure the public is aware of its efforts. Specifically, it is core to the project’s theory of politics that successful political leaders must not only govern effectively, but drive attention to their work by creating conflict. You can see this thread weaving through almost all of our work, but various members of our team have articulated it most clearly here, here, and here.
April 12, 2022 | The American Prospect
Biden Must Block Crypto’s Access to the Revolving Door
Fortunately, Biden has the means to stop at least one aspect of crypto’s campaign in its tracks. Through an executive order, he can cut off crypto’s access to the revolving door by barring the officials who are involved in developing regulations for the digital assets industry from working for it for at least four years. By rights, it should be a bare-minimum anti-corruption standard.
April 11, 2022
Letter to Senate Judiciary Committee: Scrutinize Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo's Refusal To Release Her Calendars
April 08, 2022
The Stakes Are High For The EPA’s Newly Appointed Chemical Review Director
Denise Keehner is expected to start on Monday as the Environmental Protection Agency’s new director of the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), Bloomberg Law reported last week. Keehner is a former EPA official currently employed by Maryland’s Department of the Environment.
April 06, 2022
Congress Should Heed the Lessons from the Federal Reserve's Ethics Scandals
After a stream of stories throughout the pandemic revealed seemingly rampant congressional insider trading, laughable disclosure practices, and nonexistent enforcement, Congress appears finally to be feeling the pressure to clean up its act. In recent weeks, lawmakers have introduced a flurry of new bills to limit conflicts of interest and help restore public trust in our governing institutions.
As they begin to forge a piece of consensus legislation, they should consider that members of Congress were not the only political leaders to violate public trust throughout the pandemic period. The trading scandals within the Federal Reserve system, for example, revealed material ethical deficiencies that have yet to be satisfactorily addressed. It’s important to recognize that these deficiencies are not unique to the Federal Reserve and that they represent an ongoing threat to public trust in other powerful corners of the executive branch as well. To rebuild that trust in government, lawmakers must learn the lessons of the Federal Reserve scandals and develop fixes for these deficiencies there and elsewhere.
April 04, 2022 | The American Prospect
The Corporate Past Of Jeffrey Zients
Over the span of two decades, the health care companies that Zients controlled, invested in, and helped oversee were forced to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle allegations of Medicare and Medicaid fraud. They have also been accused of surprise-billing practices and even medical malpractice.