Tech

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.

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.

Does former corporate lobbyist Anna Gomez stand for Big Telecom or a free and open internet?

For the past two years, former Treasury secretary Larry Summers has begged, berated, and bullied federal policy-makers to suck as much wealth as possible, as fast as possible, out of the economy. He just never meant, you know, his wealth or his friends’ wealth.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has a FOIA problem. It’s been a two year struggle for the Revolving Door Project to uncover the complete picture of Susan Davies and her employment with the DOJ, and we’ve hit yet another road block because apparently the Office of Legal Policy (OLP) does not maintain personnel records of its own employees. At least, not for Susan Davies. And apparently the Office of Information Policy’s FOIA office wasn’t aware of that.

Early into his administration, President Biden signed his Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, a key first move to rein in Big Tech and other corporate monopolies. But the White House and executive branch agencies cannot act alone to return economic power to consumers and small businesses. Congress must also act.

Staring down the barrel of a Republican-controlled House in 2023, Democrats are juggling a litany of legislative priorities during the current lame-duck session. In addition to Congress’s looming obligation to fund an omnibus spending bill to fund the government, the pressure is on to enshrine same-sex marriage rights into law, bolster federal electoral procedures, add protections for pregnant women on the job, overhaul the farmworker visa program, prevent future Schedules F, and much more.

“This lawsuit is simply about big business’ personal fear of and resentment toward Rohit Chopra.”

Outgoing FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips recused himself from a recent FTC vote involving Amazon and BigLaw firm Covington & Burling. Revolving Door Project filed a FOIA request seeking information on Phillips’ post-employment plans and looked back on Phillips’ corporate-friendly record.

The attempt to force Assistant Attorney General Kanter’s recusal has nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with the profit margins of Silicon Valley titans.

The Department of Commerce is currently conducting digital trade talks with nations from the Indo-Pacific and Europe, with negotiations led by its secretary, Gina Raimondo. Through her role as lead negotiator in President Biden’s newly established Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and one-year-old U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC), Raimondo is poised to influence global trade policies.

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.”