Executive Branch

The debt ceiling reprieve reached last year is quickly running its course. We need to start the work to keep it from derailing Democratic priorities again.

Since our last update on January 9, 2024, the rate of confirmations emerging from the Senate has (finally) picked up. While the majority of these confirmations involve nominees that have been pending for nearly nine months or more, their confirmations have put a sizable dent in the total number of expired seats and vacancies remaining across the independent agencies.

Coverage of presidential elections typically hones in on contestants’ competing legislative visions, which in truth, tend to morph considerably when hit by the reality of an intransigent Congress. This prompts an important question: are presidential elections overrated? Well, before drawing that conclusion, consider one of the underrated consequences of a federal election: the potential for a new administration to alter the management of the federal workforce and the operations of individual departments within the executive branch. Although journalists eschew reporting of these consequences in favor of (legislatively focused) policy platforms and rallies, there is a wide body of academic research which investigates the impact of presidential administrations on the federal executive branch’s ability and capacity to fulfill its roles and responsibilities. 

In response to Thursday’s reporting from E&E News on the Energy Department pushing the Treasury Department to align its clean hydrogen tax credit guidance with industrial polluters’ wishlist, the Revolving Door Project released the following statement: 

We’re staring down a familiar deadline this week: On Friday, if Congress doesn’t pass a spending bill, we’ll enter a partial government shutdown. And if they pass a short term continuing resolution… we’ll have just kicked the can a few weeks down the increasingly potholed (due to inadequate maintenance) road.

The former president made his name as an unscrupulous real estate magnate. So it’s no surprise that he pushed for ideas designed to take from the poor and give to the rich.

Cracking down on corporate abuses is what government should be for.

The regulatory authority of the executive branch is under attack, and BigLaw firms stacked with revolvers are on the front lines leading the assault. I’ve previously written about former FTC Commissioner Christine Varney challenging the legitimacy of her former employer on behalf of pharma company Illumina. Lawyers at Latham & Watkins, a firm stacked with revolvers from executive branch agencies, are before the Supreme Court challenging the Chevron Doctrine, which defers to executive agencies’ interpretations when legislative statutes are unclear. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s ability to hold administrative proceedings hangs in the balance as we await the Supreme Court’s decision in SEC v. Jarkesy, where the Fifth Circuit’s ruling decimated the agency’s authority. In a new attack, revolvers on the labor/management relations team at Morgan Lewis & Bockius have their sights set on the plutocrats’ latest target: the National Labor Relations Board.