July 11, 2023
Revolving Door Project Sends Chair Khan Letter on FTC Ethics
In advance of the House Judiciary Committee holding a hearing on Thursday, July 13, 2023, at 10:00 a.m. ET on “Oversight of the Federal Trade Commission,” Revolving Door Project has sent a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan calling on her to take on the FTC’s considerable internal revolving door challenges.
July 11, 2023
Blog Post Consumer ProtectionFinancial RegulationIndependent AgenciesJudiciaryRevolving DoorSupreme Court
Trump’s CFPB Saboteurs Tell The Supreme Court To Finish The Job
Mick Mulvaney and Eric Blankenstein want to permanently cripple their former agency.
July 11, 2023
A Corporate-Led Trade Agenda Is the Wrong Path Forward
Yet despite these promises, email correspondence obtained through FOIA requests by Demand Progress show that senior officials across USTR, including Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Sarah Bianchi, actively seek input from executives at Big Tech firms such as Amazon and Google. Giving Big Tech a privileged ability to mold American trade policy undermines Biden’s commitment to a new era of trade deals.
June 21, 2023
In Case Of Emergency Spin Revolving Door
Despite venture capitalists, investment pundits, and other crypto firms alike all acknowledging that the jig is up, regulatory revolvers remain undeterred in their willingness to lend their reputations, expertise, credibility, and relationships to keep the crypto con alive.
June 14, 2023
Christine Varney Made A Career Out Of An Agency She Now Deems Unconstitutional
Implicit in the worldview of these revolvers is the idea that corporations should be free to operate and acquire competitors with near impunity, therefore antitrust enforcement should be as narrowly tailored as possible. This is obviously problematic — we need regulators that believe in the government’s ability to take on corporations with outsized market influence — but Cravath, Swaine & Moore’s Christine Varney recently took things many steps further in her representation of the biotech company Illumina in its case against the FTC. Varney doesn’t just attack specific enforcement actions as unwarranted, but calls into question the constitutionality of the FTC’s authority to issue enforcement actions in the first place.
June 08, 2023
PRESS RELEASE: Revolving Door Lawyers Aim To Dismantle Antitrust Enforcement Authorities
Cravath, Swaine & Moore’s Christine Varney, a former head of the US Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, and other BigLaw lawyers representing Illumina and Grail filed a brief this week seeking to secure a merger which the FTC said would “diminish innovation in the U.S. market” for cancer detection tests. Revolving Door Project Research Director Andrea Beaty released the following statement concerning the brief and its authors.
June 06, 2023
Senate Must Get Net Neutrality Answers From Revolving Door FCC Nominee
Does former corporate lobbyist Anna Gomez stand for Big Telecom or a free and open internet?
May 17, 2023
Coinbase Spins The Crypto Revolving Door
Coinbase’s establishment of a new advisory council comprising former members of Congress is the latest example of the crypto industry’s embrace of Washington’s revolving door.
May 12, 2023 | The American Prospect
Will Dem PR Flacks Help Studios Crush Striking Writers Again?
How two ‘Masters of Disaster’ helped Hollywood execs break the last writers strike
April 26, 2023
Memo To Reporters: What The Fed's Self-Investigation Must Explore To Be Credible
The Fed report is being written by Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr, whose own failures ought to be among the report’s focuses.
April 19, 2023
Amid Reports of Block’s Alleged Criminality, How Does Board Member Larry Summers Manage His Multiple Corporate Engantlements?
It’s high time that members of the press who regularly turn to Summers for his views on the economy begin questioning him on how he is able to adequately perform his multiple advisory roles and moreover, why there is a pattern of illegality at firms he advises. Or they could simply toss him to the aether, and platform non-conflicted experts instead.
April 19, 2023
Biden's World Bank Nominee Oversaw An Anti-Competitive Price-Fixing Scandal
Mastercard has paid $3.2 billion since 2005 in fines and penalties for price-fixing, the fourth-highest total of any American company.
April 18, 2023 | The New Republic
The Ghost of a Trump Appointee Is Haunting Merrick Garland’s Justice Department
Tracing Clark’s lingering impact on ongoing litigation makes clear that the legacy of Trump’s Justice Department still haunts our governance and that failing to treat his cronies like the menace they are is worsening outcomes across the country. In some cases, Attorney General Merrick Garland is still carrying forward with the arguments Clark helped shape. In others, the Justice Department and its client agencies are at a critical juncture of having to decide whether to break from past positions or maintain continuity with positions they adopted during the Trump administration.
April 05, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter
Dylan Gyauch-Lewis Hannah Story Brown
Department of JusticeDepartment of TransportationFinancial RegulationGovernanceIndependent AgenciesRevolving Door
Several Flavors of Regulatory Failures
Until the Biden administration learns that they need to draw a sharp contrast with their predecessors and, generally, do a full 180, they will keep getting egg on their faces. And when the blame genuinely belongs to both the Trump and Biden administrations, warranted criticism of disastrous Republican deregulation is undermined.
March 31, 2023
As We Say Good Riddance, Which Corporate-Funded Entity Will Give Christine Wilson A Warm And Lucrative Welcome?
Today marks Christine Wilson’s final day as a Commissioner for the Federal Trade Commission. The question on the top of our minds: Will Wilson follow in the footsteps of her former colleague, and RDP’s 2022 “Revolver of the Year,” Noah Phillips, and move to a cushy BigLaw job defending corporations from antitrust enforcement?