
May 24, 2022
10 Things Biden Can Do About Inflation Without Congress
ome of the approaches can provide immediate relief, but many of them involve fixing broken incentive systems through increasing competition and corporate oversight. Inflation is not just a flash-in-the-pan issue, it is a consequence baked into our market structure and regulatory regime.

May 18, 2022
Will The New Postal Board Fire Louis DeJoy?
Probably not, thanks in part to some of Biden’s own board nominees.

May 17, 2022
One Weird Trick To Prevent the TVA From Building New Gas Plants
The Tennessee Valley Authority, an independent agency of the federal government which acts as a public utility for over 10 million residents in and around Tennessee, announced in March that it would replace two aging coal-fired power plants with gas-powered plants. As the nation’s largest public utility company, the move goes against Biden’s goal to achieve a clean energy grid by 2035. TVA could be leading the charge for renewables, but its fossil fuel CEO Jeff Lyash, who comes out of fossil fuels, is instead choosing to lock in polluting gas for decades. This does not have to be the case.

May 17, 2022
Coalition Tells DOJ: Don’t Bend to Google’s Bullying, Grant Kanter a Recusal Waiver Now
The Revolving Door Project and 27 groups sent a letter to Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta Friday, urging her to promptly issue a recusal waiver for Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter to work on the Department’s case against Google. The groups, including the American Economic Liberties Project, Demand Progress, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, emphasized that ethics law does not require Jonathan Kanter to recuse and that Google’s attempts to insist otherwise is an effort to “bully regulators into submission.”

May 10, 2022
The IRS Has Finally Been Given The Power to Rebuild. It’s Not Enough.
In March, six months after the start of Fiscal Year 2022, Congress finally passed an omnibus funding agreement that brought agencies out from under the shadow of Trump-era austerity (although still fell far short of enacting the funding levels that most agencies require to meet their responsibilities to the public). Critically, in the case of at least one agency, the omnibus did not just grant the money to hire new staff, but the means to do so much more quickly. At the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Congress greenlit the use of direct hiring authorities to empower the agency to temporarily forgo some of the more onerous aspects of the federal hiring process as well as to facilitate a quick rebuilding of the IRS’ notoriously depleted ranks. With this designation, Congress acknowledged that staff shortages at the IRS had reached a state of emergency and thus acted accordingly.

April 28, 2022
Who Is The IRS’ Chief Counsel? Under Biden, No One.
enforcing the U.S. tax code. Much has been written regarding the IRS’ gutting over the years. The agency has been systematically defunded, deresourced, and attacked by political operatives for decades, at a grave cost to the basic functionality of our government, and to the benefit of only the richest Americans. These trends were only exacerbated under the Trump administration, which was hyper-focused on dismantling the tax system to benefit its corporate and billionaire cronies. Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s destructive influence remains pervasive throughout the IRS, with Trump’s Commissioner, Charles Rettig, still installed as the governing head of the agency while finishing a 5-year term (at the pleasure of the president) set to expire in 2022.

April 27, 2022
Biden’s USPS Nominees Seem Fine With Letting DeJoy Wreck The Post Office
Dan Tangherlini and Trump alum Derek Kan are unlikely to oust DeJoy if confirmed to the Postal Board.

April 25, 2022 | The New Republic
How Biden Can Halt the U.S. Postal Service’s Gas-Guzzling Plan
Just days after his inauguration, President Biden promised to use the federal government’s procurement authority to achieve a zero-emission fleet of government vehicles. This spring, however, that’s led to a standoff with the United States Postal Service—an independent agency overseen by a Trump-aligned postmaster general who wants to replace 225,000 out-of-date mail delivery trucks with fresh gas-guzzlers, to the tune of $11.3 billion.

April 22, 2022
First Chapter of Multi-Part Climate Report Documents Executive Action Opportunities At Energy Department
This chapter focuses on the Department of Energy, while later chapters explore the opportunities available to the EPA, Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Justice and other executive branch agencies.

March 29, 2022
Biden Gave Most Corporate Crimes A Pass This Winter, New Analysis Shows
The Biden administration pursued at least 24 prosecutions and rulemakings to crack down on white-collar crime this winter, but took no action against at least 48 crimes or abuses, a new data set from the Revolving Door Project shows

March 28, 2022
Dylan Gyauch-Lewis Mekedas Belayneh
Anti-MonopolyCongressional OversightCorporate CrackdownExecutive BranchIndependent Agencies
Shipping Cartels Are Spiraling Out Of Control. The Agency Set To Regulate Them Doesn’t See The Problem.
The Federal Maritime Commission’s leaders have no interest in breaking up the shipping conglomerates’ price-gouging which Biden promised the nation.

March 28, 2022
Biden’s Weak Record On White-Collar Crime Is (Partly) Thanks To Congress
When Republicans blockade confirmation hearings, they handcuff the government’s ability to handcuff lawbreaking executives.

March 21, 2022
This Federally Owned Public Utility Company Is Run by a Former Fossil Fuel Executive Who Makes $10 Million
The Tennessee Valley Authority could be leading the country toward renewables. Instead, it gets huge chunks of its power generation from coal and methane.

March 15, 2022 | The American Prospect
ClimateCorporate CrackdownDepartment of JusticeEthics in GovernmentExecutive BranchIndependent Agencies
Where the Government’s Environmental Lawyers Stand
Joe Biden pledged that as president he would hold polluters accountable. But in 2021, the number of criminal cases against polluters referred to the Justice Department dropped even lower than the year before. At best, DOJ officials have set their sights on bringing environmental crime enforcement back up to Obama-era levels—but not exceeding them. That’s a decidedly muted goal; environmental crimes enforcement was higher under George W. Bush than Obama, and has always been underfunded.

March 11, 2022
Hannah Story Brown Dylan Gyauch-Lewis
ClimateExecutive BranchFinancial RegulationIndependent AgenciesRevolving Door
Carbon Offset Legitimization Would Undermine Climate Progress, New Report Argues
The Revolving Door Project released a new “Industry Agenda” report today breaking down the systemic flaws and increasing relevance of the carbon offset industry as the favored greenwashing strategy for big industries and high-polluting nations. The report highlights the policies and executive branch agencies of interest to players in both voluntary and compliance carbon markets in the United States.