Want a Big Tent? Use Congressional Oversight
Plus, a reconciliation rundown and early Corruption Calendar

Ahead of the 4th of July holiday weekend, Republicans are trying to ram through their One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which includes enough horrors to dampen any parade. As written, the bill will do untold harm to Americans across the country through devastating cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, and student loan forgiveness. Working people will suffer, but the Republican’s bill will be a boon for the wealthy, fossil fuel interests, and draconian immigration detention centers. Democrats will not be able to stop the destruction, but they can use every available tool to make sure the public knows who is to blame.
Even as the congressional negotiations take center stage, the Trump corruption machine continues to roll, enriching his family and inner circle. More on that in our early release of the 24th installment of the Corruption Calendar below.
Who Benefits from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act
Now that the reconciliation bill has passed the Senate, it’s worth doing a quick rundown of who stands to gain from a bill that will hurt a large majority of the country.
Fossil Fuel Interests
Earlier this year, proponents of the Abundance Agenda openly celebrated the Trump administration’s energy policies and appointments as a herald of clean energy abundance. Boy were they wrong! To the surprise of no one with a rudimentary understanding of the Republican party or the influence of fossil fuel interests, the administration’s “all of the above” approach prioritizes fossil fuel interests, placing the transition to clean energy on the chopping block. Abundant pollution is the likely result.
Tax breaks for renewable solar and wind energy will be phased out by 2027. The EV tax credit will expire in September. Meanwhile, the bill mandates four oil lease sales of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Coal used to make steel will be classified as a critical mineral in order to qualify for a tax credit, representing a $200-300 million tax break for the industry.
Millionaires and Billionaires
While working people will have their healthcare and food assistance stripped away, the bill will be a windfall for individuals in the highest income brackets. According to analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “the average tax filer earning $1 million or more a year would receive over $100,000 in tax breaks.” The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that “The richest 1 percent of Americans would receive a total of $114 billion in net tax cuts in 2026.”
ICE and Private Detention Centers
Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of the bill is the dramatic funding increase for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Masked ICE agents parade our streets with no oversight, kidnapping people and placing them in ICE detention centers where nine abductees have already died since Trump took office. The bill will only make it worse, appropriating a disturbing $150 billion towards fast tracking mass deportations, including $45 billion for expanding detention centers.
Private prisons—especially GEO Group (for whom Attorney General Bondi previously lobbied)—will likely see their government contract increase exponentially. After all, it wouldn’t be a Republican policy without a massive giveaway to corporate profiteers. This expansion, in conjunction with the administration stripping away birthright citizenship rights with the help of the Supreme Court, is extremely ominous for the rights and safety of immigrants and citizens alike.
Expand the Tent With Congressional Oversight
Though Democrats don’t have the votes to stop this horrific bill, they must make Republicans pay a political price commensurate with the harm it will cause. Importantly, the reconciliation bill is a continuation of a trend throughout Trump 2.0—Republicans are comfortable decimating the health, safety, and pocketbooks of the people and states they represent. Democrats should certainly focus extensively on this bill’s cruelty, but they shouldn’t let other issues fall by the wayside. In politics, there are no distractions—only multiple fronts in the war of public opinion.
As we’ve written here before, a key tool at Democrats’ disposal to shape public opinion is congressional oversight. Since Trump' s reelection, centrists have harped on the need to “expand the tent” of Democratic voters—mainly through abandoning trans rights, allowing crypto scams to run rampant, and deemphasizing opposition to Trump’s horrific immigration policies. There’s a better way. Rather than expand the tent by abandoning their principles, Democrats can appeal to the material interests of communities that traditionally vote Republican.
By using congressional oversight tactics, Democrats can speak directly to these communities and make clear which party is looking out for them. As we outlined previously, Democrats can request investigations from independent accountability offices like the GAO, call witnesses that have been materially affected to hearings to speak viscerally on their issue, hold informal hearings when Republicans ignore a problem, and force longshot votes on impeachments or subpoenas. And there are potentially more provocative communications strategies that members can develop on issues where their passion and the status of the issue merits.
Each committee has issues under their purview that can be utilized in this way. Here are some recommendations.
Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry
John Deere is an easy target for the Senate Agriculture Committee. In the final days of the Biden Administration, the FTC filed a lawsuit against John Deere for unlawful practices around the right to repair—a legal provision that compels manufacturers to share all the necessary information required for owners to fix their products and devices. Farmers lose an estimated $3 billion each year waiting for repairs and pay $1.2 billion more in repair costs when forced to rely on manufacturers’ repair services. While the FTC case is currently continuing under Trump, Democrats need to seize this issue as their own—after all, Biden’s FTC filed the lawsuit over the objections of the agency’s two Republican commissioners. Senate Democrats should raise the salience of the issue and force Republicans to pick a side between farmers and a hundred billion dollar corporation.
Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
When it comes to coal, it’s clear where Trump’s allegiance lies.. His administration is hellbent on propping up the coal industry—instituting tax credits for coal used in steel while slashing renewable subsidies and ordering coal-fired powered plants to remain open at immense cost to consumers—even as it dismantles health and safety protections for coal miners who toil in horrifying conditions.
Mine health and safety inspections have fallen 75% year over year to the lowest recorded level. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) paused enforcement of a rule requiring mines to cut levels of respirable silica, a dust particle that leads to black lung. As part of DOGE’s rampage through the administrative state, Trump’s Health and Human Services Department fired two-thirds of its employees that screen coal miners for black lung. This temporarily left some communities completely without screeners before the administration reversed some of the firings one day before a judge ordered reinstatement.
In the words of Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, “people are going to die” because of Trump’s policies.
Democrats on the Energy Committee should be holding hearings in these communities, elevating voices like Roberts and others coal workers who will be killed by Trump’s policies. This doesn’t mean jettisoning clean energy priorities, but there needs to be an alternative, positive vision for coal mining communities that helps them to make a living without artificially upholding the coal industry and killing workers.
Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
As part of its climate change denialism, the Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides critically important weather forecasting through its National Weather Service. FEMA has lost around a third of its full time staff thanks to DOGE cuts. NOAA is scrambling to hire “mission-critical” staff after DOGE’s gutting left the agency underprepared for hurricane season. DOGE also closed NOAA’s Navigation Response Team in Florida, which is responsible for reopening ports after storms. The top brass at FEMA isn’t doing much better—acting director David Richardson reportedly told staff he didn’t know the US had a hurricane season before later claiming it was a joke.
Reducing the capacity at these agencies will have wide ranging effects, but Republican-led states are especially vulnerable. States like Florida, Louisiana and Texas, are disproportionately dependent upon FEMA funding to provide relief after disasters. When hurricanes and other storms inevitably hit, Democrats cannot hesitate to “politicize” the disaster through hearings and investigations into the administration’s inept leadership. Trump has already politicized disaster relief, prioritizing payments to Missouri and Virginia while slow rolling and denying funds to states led by Democrats. The administration needs to be held accountable for leaving vulnerable communities more susceptible to devastating weather events.
(For more on Trump’s natural disaster policies, see this brand new tracker from our Kenny Stancil.)
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP)
Under the leadership of ranking member Bernie Sanders, Democrats on the HELP committee have been active in their oversight duties. In the last few weeks alone, Sanders has called for an investigation into Secretary Kennedy’s mass firing of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine committee and issued a report on the disastrous health care impacts of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”
Specifically ripe for oversight, as touched on in Sanders’ report, is the crisis of rural hospitals. According to an April report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, over 700 rural hospitals are at risk of closure, 300 of which are characterized as at “immediate risk.” This is partly due to hospitals losing money servicing Medicaid and uninsured patients, but also because some private insurance companies are not adequately reimbursing the hospitals for the services they provide. This will only be exacerbated with the impending passage of this bill, which will cause rural hospitals to lose 20% of their Medicaid funding. Republicans included a $25 billion fund to support rural hospitals, but that represents less than half the amount these hospitals need to offset other cuts, according to KFF Health News.
To their credit, Democrats have sounded the alarm on the issue, but it’s critical they maintain pressure even after the bill passes. Offices with investigative capacity should develop reports and conduct investigations on the private insurers that with low reimbursement percentages to rural hospitals. Senate Democrats should be communicating with rural hospitals in their states and be prepared to hold press conferences on the day any hospital closes because of these cuts. Democratic officials can be on the ground speaking to and trying to help these communities in contrast to the Republicans stripping their ability to receive health care.
CORRUPTION CALENDAR
Welcome to week twenty-four of the Revolving Door Project’s Corruption Calendar, where we highlight examples of corporate corruption shaping the Trump administration’s agenda and their material impact on everyday people. Read our first twenty-three issues here and follow us on Bluesky and X for updates.
In this week’s installment we take a look at a few stories showing how the administration and its allies are enriching themselves.
Killing Dogs, Cashing Checks. The Kristi Noem Experience. In its big story earlier this week, ProPublica revealed that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem secretly took a personal share of donations she raised for a dark money group that boosted her profile while she served as governor of South Dakota. Noem pocketed $80,000 from the American Resolve Policy Fund, supplementing her $130,000 salary as South Dakota’s chief executive, a likely ethics violation As DHS secretary, the crooked dog killer is now responsible for the turbocharged ICE budget, which will undoubtedly be used to cruelly target citizens and immigrants across the country.
Tech’s Shadow Of Influence In Our Armed Services. In another example of the administration's blatant disregard for ethical firewalls, four tech executives who were recently sworn in as commissioned officers will not be required to recuse themselves from the Department of Defense’s dealings with their previous employers. These executives who previously worked at Meta, Palantir, and Open AI (all beneficiaries of defense contracts) will be free to engage in contract discussions involving their previous employers, a departure from typical ethics rules and a sign of growing tech influence in the military.
In other words, if you feared the Trump Administration was just a mechanism through which BigTech oligarchs seek to level up from billionaires to trillionaires… Well, at least you have the solace of your concerns being well warranted!
CBS Blinked And Now Owes Trump $16 Million. Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump, in which his lawyers claimed our 79-year old president felt “mental anguish” over the allegedly “deceptively” edited 60 Minutes interview with former presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Paramount, who owns CBS (which airs 60 Minutes) claimed that the settlement will cover plaintiff’s fees and an allocation to Trump’s future presidential library. Paramount joins the likes of other companies and organizations that have capitulated to the president’s strong arm tactics. Just this week, the University of Pennsylvania agreed to strip Lia Thomas of her titles in exchange for $175 million in funding.
Follow the Revolving Door Project’s work on whatever platform works for you! You can find us on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Want more? Check out some of the pieces that we have published or contributed research or thoughts to in the last week:
Timeline: Trump's Attacks on Disaster Preparedness and Response
Map: Trump Has Often Delayed or Denied Disaster Aid
TRACKER: Trump's Disastrous Disaster Policy
RELEASE: Tracking Trump's Disastrous Disaster Policy
Abundance Praise for Trump Appointees
Release: Revolving Door Project Executive Director On New Abundance Publication
Week 23: Appointees Trade Power for Perks as Trump’s Financial Regulators Refuse to Do Their Jobs
Billionaires and the Trump Admin: Kelcy Warren
'Matter of Life and Death': New Tracker Exposes Trump Regime's Attack on Disaster Preparedness
American Kleptocracy Clearinghouse Weekly Update: June 23
Can the abundance movement save the Democrats?
Les milliardaires de la tech et Trump : retour sur un basculement
From Community Banker to Beltway "Insider": Blaine Luetkemeyer Cashes in on Congressional Tenure