Jeff Zients

As a businessman, Jeffrey Zients embodied much of the corporate misconduct the executive branch ought to be cracking down on.

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.

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.

Biden’s COVID czar has gone from ‘Mr. Fix-It’ to grim reaper, steering the administration’s pandemic response to catastrophic lows.

The Covid-19 threat will not simply go away—especially when addressed with half measures. The administration must use its authority under the Defense Production Act much more wisely and aggressively.

When United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced this past May that the U.S. would support the TRIPS waiver on COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization (WTO), we at the Revolving Door Project celebrated the administration’s decision as “a transformative, hopeful event.” The waiver proposal calls on the WTO’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council to suspend intellectual-property protections on COVID-19 therapeutics, diagnostics, and vaccines to ensure materials necessary for combating the pandemic are “available promptly, in sufficient quantities and at affordable price to meet global demand.”

“Over four months after announcing its support for the COVID-19 TRIPS Waiver, the Biden administration’s once promising step towards achieving vaccine equity is proving to be little more than an empty promise. Officials across the administration are cowering in the face of Big Pharma’s insatiable appetite for profit rather than pursuing one of many paths to rapidly ensure equitable access to vaccines worldwide.”

A coalition of 16 organizations called on Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients to maximally use the executive branch’s existing powers to end the pharmaceutical industry’s stranglehold on supply on COVID-19 vaccines in an open letter today.

The world deserves to know exactly who is responsible for the United States not yet supporting a waiver for intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccine production.

As the United States approaches a full year of COVID-19-induced lockdowns, the Revolving Door Project and the Center for Economic and Policy Research called on the White House’s COVID-19 task force director Jeffrey Zients to demand that Pfizer, Moderna, and other American pharmaceutical firms open-source their COVID-19 vaccines.

In an age of financialization and monopoly, ‘private-sector experience’ too often translates into those who successfully plunder for profit. Jeffrey Zients epitomizes that trend.