NEW: We're shining a spotlight on a major way that right-wing billionaires influence SCOTUS: amicus briefs.
Our new website will connect the dots between justices, their powerful pals, and the groups who file amicus briefs before the court. ๐งต
NEW: Biden has nominated Jennifer Rearden โ a former Trump judicial nominee, GOP donor, and corporate lawyer who has helped Chevron-aligned law firm Gibson Dunn target human rights attorney
@SDonziger
โ to serve as a federal judge.
Jay Carney went directly from serving as Obama's White House Press Secretary to serving as one of Jeff Bezos' top advisors, becoming a chief architect of Amazon's corporate welfare deals and apologist for its aggressive union-busting.
He's a poster child for the revolving door.
1/2 With all due respect, Senator
@BernieSanders
, youโre wrong on this. We treat our employees with dignity and respect. We offer a $15 min wage, health care from day one, and a safe, inclusive workplace.
We called on Biden to remove ALL Trump holdovers who could legally be fired on day one. So howโd he do?
It was a good start but many more still need to be dismissed.
Letโs recap:
BREAKING: New financial disclosures reveal that top White House staff โ including Jen Psaki, Bruce Reed, and Steve Ricchetti โ consulted for Lyft, the Walton Family Foundation, AT&T, and facial recognition tech company AnyVision.
๐ฅ
@MondaireJones
EXPOSES BIG TECH-FUNDED THINK TANK๐ฅ
"With all due respect, sir, if we'd wanted to hear the views of Amazon, Google, or QualComm, we would have invited them."
NEW: Larry Summers advised the crypto conglomerate DCG for six years. Now its trading desk has been publicly accused of fraud, and is under DOJ and SEC investigation.
Summers quietly left DCG a few months ago.
Is anyone going to ask him about this?
"You come before us today as a wolf in sheep's clothing. For decades, institutes like [Scalia Global Antitrust Institute] have masked corporate money to protect monopoly power. The American people are paying the price." โ
@MondaireJones
to Scalia Law Professor Tad Lipsky
Another week has gone by and Louis DeJoy is still the Postmaster General.
The only way to end his tenure is for Biden to fill two Postal Board vacancies with the right nominees ASAP.
President Biden and Treasury Secretary Yellen have both called climate change an "existential threat" that necessitates a bold government response.
So why are they backing two ExxonMobil insiders for senior leadership roles at the Treasury Department?
RELEASE: Elon Muskโs purchase of Twitter is inseparable from his history of using the platform to commit stock fraud, and intimidating anyone who tries to hold him accountable for it, writes our
@MaxMoranHi
ALARMING: Biden DNI nominee Avril Haines earned $180,000 consulting for Peter Thiel's Palantir, a top contractor of ICE that has helped the agency build and maintain an intelligence system to facilitate the Trump administration's mass deportations of immigrants.
On New Years Eve, Biden team dumps a bunch of financial disclosures for nominees including SoS Tony Blinken and DNI Avril Haines
Haines lists Peter Thiel's Palantir.
She was a consultant there from July 2017 to June 2020 and lists 180k in income from the company
WATCH:
@SenOssoff
GRILLS Louis DeJoy on the massive mail delays in Atlanta caused by the Postmaster General's operational changes.
"36% of the mail is being delivered on time to my constituents."
๐งต
BREAKING:
@accountable_us
reveals that billionaire Paul Singer โ who gifted Justice Samuel Alito a luxury Alaska fishing trip โ holds at least $90 million in financial companies overseen by the CFPB.
Alito must recuse from the upcoming CFPB SCOTUS case!
Jen Psaki says she needs to โlook more closelyโ into whether a Facebook or Apple lawyer would need to recuse themselves if they were appointed by the Biden admin to run the DOJโs antitrust division
NEW ON THE BLOG: Pete Buttigieg is the likely pick for Transportation Secretary. His tendency to shift policy positions based on the preferences of large donors โ several of whom have lobbied DOT in the past year โ is a cause for concern.
Instead of firing Louis DeJoy, the Biden-majority Postal Board is silencing public criticism of the Postmaster General and his 10-year stealth privatization scheme.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court just struck down the federal ban on bump stocks.
At least three groups tied to Court benefactors like Paul Singer, Charles Koch, and Leonard Leo had filed amicus briefs in the case urging the Court to do so.
NEW: Despite what you may have heard, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is no clean energy ally.
In fact, heโs the single biggest roadblock to a fully electric and union-built postal fleet.
Our
@merryvishmas
examines DeJoyโs climate record ๐งต
We commend
@SenWarren
and
@RepJayapal
for their bill to ban members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, and other public servants from owning or trading individual stock.
It's long past time to close the government-to-lobbying revolving door.
NEW: The Kroger-Albertsons merger could result in mass layoffs, increased food prices for consumers, and unfair competition for local grocers.
The mainstream media is failing to convey these stakes to the public, writes our
@DylanGyauchL
.
Trumpโs Department of Education under Betsy Devos protected predatory colleges against vulnerable students. Now the Biden administration is defending that legacy
Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo, who has a history of slashing public pensions, steering state money into hedge funds, and mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic and school reopening in Rhode Island, has been chosen to serve as Commerce Secretary.
BREAKING: Financial disclosures reveal that many top Biden administration officials have financial stakes in or professional ties to Big Pharma companies that are now lobbying against vaccine patent waiver policies.
NEW:
@tyt
reports that Bruce Reed, a top Biden aide and former contender for OMB Director, ran a private foundation from 2013 to 2015 that gave more than a million dollars to groups run by Betsy DeVos and other anti-labor conservative billionaires.
WATCH: New Hampshire's
@SenatorHassan
sounds the alarm on Louis DeJoy's plan to shift mail distribution from Manchester to Boston.
"This new plan could lead to more delayed mail deliveries, delayed absentee ballots, and job losses for postal employees. That is unacceptable."
A new
@politico
investigation reveals that Leonard Leo's dark money judicial lobbying program is linked to amicus briefs that have shaped pivotal right-wing Supreme Court rulings.
The Senate must investigate Leo's secret amicus influence machine.
Our
@MaxMoranHi
writes in
@TheProspect
about the urgency of not letting McConnell's probable Senate control dictate Biden's personnel and policy agendas.
"So long as Biden frets about norms, he will always lose to McConnell and the Republican Party."
NEW:
@LHSummers
spent the last 2 years begging policymakers to suck money out of workers' pockets.
But when the SVB failure threatened his business partners' money at fintech startups, he raced to protect them.
@MaxMoranHi
digs in for
@thenation
.
ALARMING: Some White House aides are pushing for Abigail Seldin, a former executive at a debt collection company that fought the discharge of student loans in bankruptcy, to replace Trump holdover Mark Brown as head of Federal Student Aid.
Merrick Garlandโs indefensible decision to hide the OLC memo to Bill Barr on Trumpโs obstruction of the Mueller probe from public view was rebuked by the DC Circuit Court today. This win for transparency was a loss for Trump &, inexplicably, a loss for Garland. What an own goal!
STATEMENT: "Secretary Buttigieg should call out the brake rule repeal for the horrendous decision it was, start working to implement a new rule, take Norfolk-Southern to task, and push back on corporations deciding how the DOT regulates them."
@jeffhauser
"Ken Starr was probably the most powerful force behind Jeffrey Epsteinโs secret plea deal. Without him, it probably would not have happened the way it did, and Epstein would have ended up in prison for a very long time." -
@jkbjournalist
NEW:
@AOC
is right. If
@propublica
's reporting is accurate, Clarence Thomas must be impeached.
If Congress does nothing, it will be saying that certain people are simply above the lawโand therefore, that the law is illegitimate, our
@MaxMoranHi
argues.
In addition to working on the Chevron-Donziger case, Reardenโs other corporate clients have included Home Depot, Uber, Lehman Brothers, Barclays Capital, and Patriarch Partners.
Louis DeJoy's 10-year austerity plan is already making mail delays even worse.
But instead of firing him, the Biden-majority Postal Board is suppressing public criticism of DeJoy at its quarterly meetings.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court has just weakened the ability of the federal government to enforce the law against corporate criminals.
13 right wing amicus brief filers linked to court whisperers like Leo and Koch and urged such a ruling.
NEW: Former President Trump has recently sought to distance himself from Project 2025, but his administration's fingerprints are all over it.
An RDP review finds that former Trump officials authored 25 out of the 30 chapters in the Project 2025 playbook.
TOMORROW: SCOTUS hears arguments in CFPB v. CFSA, a lawsuit filed by payday lenders seeking to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Meet the rogues gallery of corporate predators and industry-funded right-wingers backing this extreme case. ๐งต
Rearden, who has also given $38,000 to Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand's campaigns (co-hosting several fundraisers for the senator at Gibson Dunnโs New York office), is the latest access-seeking BigLaw power attorney to swing through the revolving door.
THREAD: Dems have control of the executive branch. So why is Bidens Ed Department still following DeVos directives and failing to give borrowers loan assistance to which they are entitled? (1/x)
This morning, we called on Judge Rose to recuse himself from the Chamber of Commerce lawsuit seeking to block Medicare drug price negotiations due to his ownership of pharma stocks.
This afternoon, he recused himself.
THREAD:
@JoeBiden
โs choice to make Steve Ricchetti a counselor, if not surprising, is deeply disappointing and dangerous to healing the country. His history of lobbying for Big Pharma and against workers means K St has a direct conduit to POTUS-Elect. 1/x
ICYMI: Larry Summers advised crypto conglomerate DCG for the past six years.
Now, as the company faces fraud allegations and investigations from both the SEC and DOJ, Summers has quietly removed any mention of the company from his rรฉsumรฉ.
NEW:
@ddayen
&
@ryangrim
report that Susan Davies, a litigation partner at right-wing BigLaw giant Kirkland & Ellis who has helped Facebook fight back against antitrust lawsuits, is Merrick Garland's top choice to head the DOJ's Antitrust Division.
BREAKING: SCOTUS just weakened the powers of the National Labor Relations Board, handing a major victory to Starbucks and other union-busters.
At least 3 groups tied to Charles Koch and Leonard Leo filed amicus briefs in the case urging such a ruling.
๐จ๐จ๐จ๐จ
Bridget Dooling,
@JoeBiden
's agency review team member seemingly surveying OIRA, comes from a Koch-funded operation โto provide scholarly rationales against government regulation, focusing on measures that would affect the fossil fuel industry."
Discussing Big Tech's corrosive effect on democracy,
@RepMondaire
points to Facebook's platforming of far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Amazon's lawsuit against
@NewYorkStateAG
for investigating the company's treatment of its workers during the Covid-19 pandemic.
More tragic train derailments like the unfolding crisis in East Palestine, Ohio are inevitable unless companies upgrade their brake systems.
The Buttigieg DOT isn't requiring they do so, continuing a Trump-era deregulation. h/t
@jul1arock
&
@RebeccaJBurns_
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Charles Rettig, who was handpicked to help hide the Presidentโs tax returns (a job he excelled at)?
Not fired.
@david_dayen
Claims that Biden can't do anything to oust DeJoy are misleading.
"Presidents nominate and the Senate confirms the postal board members. So thereโs only one degree of separation between Biden and the end of the DeJoy era at USPS." -
@david_dayen
NEW ON THE BLOG: Despite recent changes, Louis DeJoy's contract with Oshkosh Defense for the next-generation USPS fleet is still an anti-union, gas-guzzling disaster.
Here's what needs to happen next. โฌ๏ธ
How about the 93 US Attorneys who sat by and watched all that the Trump administration did and were deemed loyal enough to Trump not to be dismissed?
Not fired.
President Biden and Treasury Secretary Yellen have both called climate change an "existential threat" that necessitates a bold government response.
So why are they backing two ExxonMobil insiders for senior leadership roles at the Treasury Department?
As soon as tomorrow,
#SCOTUS
could decide to hear Big Business's challenge to the CFPB's funding structure.
Corporate fraudsters are hoping the Court sides with them, gutting the Bureau and other vital regulators.
We must
#DefendCFPB
โ not defund it.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court denied the oil companies' petitions! Alito recused himself from consideration of all five petitions. (Coney Barrett did not.) This is a major milestone for these climate corporate accountability lawsuits.
NEW: Exxon has a play to evade accountability in dozens of state climate lawsuits, and it involves Alito and Coney Barrett gaming ethics rules in plain sight, as soon as this Friday.
Read this important story in
@TheProspect
from our
@HannahStoryB
here:
THREAD: We are alarmed that Biden's landing team for OIRA โ a vital regulatory agency that will make or break his executive policy agenda โ includes Bridget Dooling, a top researcher at the Koch and ExxonMobil-funded GWU Regulatory Studies Center.
(1/x)
The "economists"
@NPR
cites are the National Multifamily Housing Council โ a front group for corporate landlords and pandemic evictors that spent millions lobbying Congress and the White House to kill the CDC's eviction moratorium.
None of this is mentioned in the article.
Voters in several cities approved ballot measures for rent control. But economists warn that such rent caps can actually reduce overall affordable housing โ and may not help those who need it most.
NEW: Gov. Kathy Hochul nominated Adrienne Harris as New York's top Wall Street regulator. She's a fintech ally who's stated a belief that regulators should stop looking for "no-no's" and "icky things," as our
@_EYME
and
@MaxMoranHi
write for
@TheProspect
BREAKING: The Supreme Court has dealt another massive blow to the administrative state. Now, even decades-old regulatory protections are not safe.
At least 6 amicus filers tied to court-whisperers like Leonard Leo and Charles Koch urged such a ruling.
President Biden can nominate members to the Postal Board of Governors.
Of the 9 current Governors, 5 are Biden nominees. Yet the Board still refuses to fire DeJoy.
Two more spots opened up in December, and Biden has yet to name nominees for those seats.
BREAKING: The Department of Justice has backed a massive antitrust lawsuit filed by tenants against
@RealPage
, a software company that helped a national cartel of predatory corporate landlords collude on massive rent hikes.
(via
@propublica
)
If Democrats manage to win next month's Senate runoff in Georgia, Republicans would no longer be able to blockade several highly-qualified HUD nominees who have languished in confirmation purgatory for over a year.
We strongly oppose the appointment of Rahm Emanuel to any post in the Biden administration. At a time when our nation must address systemic racism and economic inequality, Rahm is the worst man for the moment.
NEW: If thereโs one thing that brings our divided nation together, itโs our hatred of junk fees.
@RBReich
explains why surprise surcharges in airlines, banking, concerts, and more have got to go.
BREAKING: SCOTUS just ruled that cities can enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outside, even if shelter space is lacking.
At least 6 amicus brief filers with ties to court-whisperers like Paul Singer and the Koch network had urged this cruel ruling.
NEW: Financial disclosures reveal that Rahm Emanuel was paid over $12 million in consulting fees by Centerview Partners, an investment bank that advises the same Big Pharma companies lobbying against Biden's legislative agenda. (via
@dailyposter
)
NEW: Postmaster DeJoy wants to make the USPS more efficient.
So his solution is to take mail from this rural Wyoming town, send it to be sorted in Denver, and then ship it back to Wyoming again.
It's not just absurd. It's also disastrous for postal workers and rural residents.
As soon as tomorrow, the Supreme Court could overturn Chevron deference.
21 right-wing groups linked to SCOTUS powerbrokers like Charles Koch, Leonard Leo, and Paul Singer are urging the Court to make its most dangerous regulatory power-grab yet.
Lone dissenter Clarence Thomas may have been taking a cue from his ultra-wealthy benefactors.
At least three amicus filers in US v. Rahimi have connections to the Koch Network and Leonard Leo.
Learn more:
The CFPB was given an independent funding structure to insulate it from political pressure so it could protect the American people.
Corporate America hated this.
Now, predatory lenders are challenging the agency's independent funding to SCOTUS.
This case could be disastrous.
STATEMENT: NEW SCOTUS "ETHICS CODE" IS A TOOTHLESS PR STUNT
Our
@jeffhauser
: "Beyond not being enforceable, this document reeks of a cover-up for Clarence Thomas."
@matthewstoller
Indeed, as our
@DRBoguslaw
&
@DylanGyauchL
wrote, Buttigieg is failing to use the DOT's sweeping powers to address worker misclassification in trucking, ease bottlenecks at the ports, or crack down on predatory pricing by the airline industry.
NEW: MSNBC keeps booking
@neal_katyal
, despite Katyal trying to make a wealth tax illegal and helping Nestle avoid accountability for abetting child slavery.
@merryvishmas
on why Katyal is a protector of oligarchy, not democracy. โฌ๏ธ
Susan Rice has been ordered by federal ethics regulators to divest her multimillion-dollar holdings in Enbridge, weeks after the Biden administration backed the fossil fuel company's Line 3 pipeline in court. (via
@andrewperezdc
&
@davidsirota
)
President Biden squandered an opportunity earlier this year to nominate Postal Board members who would fire Louis DeJoy.
Over 80 public interest groups are calling on him not to make the same mistake this December.
SCOTUS is dragging its feet on the Chevron doctrine cases, which could upend countless health, safety, and environmental regulations.
21 right-wing groups linked to court-whisperers want SCOTUS to make its most dangerous regulatory power grab yet.
Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Andrew Saul and Deputy Commissioner David Black who are undermining social security and union-busting the SSA workforce?
Not fired.
Sam Altman, who was fired on Friday from his role at ChatGPT maker OpenAI, will return to his post as chief executive, ending a boardroom drama that has transfixed Silicon Valley and exposed the power struggles over who has control over the future of AI.
Politico wrote that we object to Zientsโs record due to his โbusiness-oriented, hyper-efficient mentality.โ
False.
We object to Zients because as DPA czar, he didn't mass-produce N95s and tests ahead of Omicron. Doctors warned about this for MONTHS.
SCOOP: You may remember when the rosy promise of โ40 percent emissions reductions by 2030โ was plastered in the headlines of every major newspaper. But a closer look shows that the models projecting such emissions reductions are based on some faulty data.๐งต
The Supreme Court's overturning of Chevron doctrine is a victory for Big Business and right-wing activists.
At least 21 groups linked to SCOTUS powerbrokers like Charles Koch and Leonard Leo backed the petitioners in Loper Bright and Relentless.
๐จ๐จ๐จ
An acting Biden official is currently trying to PROTECT BETSY DEVOS.
Brian Boynton, acting head of DOJ Civil, is shielding DeVos from testifying about her refusal to forgive loans of students ripped off by predatory for-profit colleges.
SHAMEFUL!
THREAD: We commend Joe Biden for his plan to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline, which would be a disaster for the climate and Native land rights.
But we are dismayed to see that Anita Dunn, one of its chief promoters, is returning to the White House as a senior adviser.
Larry Summers has close financial ties to subprime lenders and Wall Street banks like Citi, which stand to financially benefit if the Fed triggers a recession to fight inflation.
"Buttigieg has done nothing to upset the system because heโs heavily corporate and heโs sympathetic to [the airlines]."
Our
@jeffhauser
on why Secretary Pete has failed to do his job and regulate the airlines.