RDP Work Round-Up: 4th of July Edition
As Trump’s Big, Backwards Bill was passed into law, we experienced one of the most frustrating and depressing July 4th celebrations in recent memory. So, we at the Revolving Door Project figured now is as good a time as any to round-up our recent work chronicling the corruption that is spreading across the government and political establishment and wreaking havoc on everyday people.
Following Trump’s Assault on Everyday People
The Trump Admin is Increasing Our Vulnerability to Deadly Climate Disasters
As floods ripped through Texas, killing over 100 people, our Kenny Stancil deftly analyzed how Trump is accelerating the devastating pace of the climate crisis while undermining the ability of the government to effectively prepare for and respond to disasters. Alongside cuts to FEMA, Trump’s cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) left key positions unfilled, which may have undermined coordination between forecasters and local emergency managers . On top of that, Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” accelerated the expansion of fossil fuel extraction and combustion while eliminating climate research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This was salt rubbed in the wound inflicted when Texas lawmakers shot down a bill last year that would have improved disaster warning systems.
Kenny included a comprehensive list of the Trump administration’s attacks on FEMA, NOAA, and NWS. Elsewhere, he has compiled several highly useful resources for following Trump’s assault on disaster preparedness and response. An interactive timeline lays out Trump’s harmful disaster policy decisions, and an interactive map details Trump’s lethargic and incomplete provision of post-disaster aid.
No Reins for Corporate Crime
Our Emma Marsano has also been hard at work keeping track of the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal government's ability to enforce laws against corporate crime. Her tracker follows cuts to 14 different federal agencies, such as the CFPB, FTC, CFTC, EPA, DOJ, and more. Together, these agencies function as federal authorities’ key levers to improve constituents' well being. When defanged, everyday people become increasingly vulnerable to predatory financial practices. Moreover, weakened enforcement capacity frees corporations to introduce significant risk into the financial and economic system, threatening to plunge us all into socioeconomic crises.
Meat Industry Deregulation Is Killing Workers and Poisoning Our Food
Trump’s firings have also impacted the agencies responsible for keeping our food and drugs safe, with agencies such as the FDA and USDA suffering huge workforce reductions and dangerous policy rollbacks. I have been keeping track of these changes in a food safety tracker, and also wrote a detailed analysis for the American Prospect laying out how USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins is ruthlessly deregulating meat processing facilities. Rollins’ policy changes will worsen the already brutal working conditions inside meat plants while making it more likely that a range of dangerous contaminants will end up on our plates.
Public Data Is Being Removed To Obscure the Devastating Effects of Trump’s Policies
My colleague Xaver Clarke has developed a useful resource keeping track of the Trump administration’s removal of public data. Without this data, the public is less informed about the consequences of Trump’s policies—the perfect way to enable destruction that would otherwise elicit a powerful public condemnation. Xaver meticulously pieced together rollbacks to data programs across federal government agencies and programs. They affect policy areas as wide-ranging as health, safety, climate, labor, immigration, education, and more.
Mapping the Home Insurance Crisis
Back in late April, the Revolving Door Project and Public Citizen co-published “Mapping the Home Insurance Crisis,” a series of interactive maps and tables aimed at helping people better understand the scope of the climate change-fueled home insurance crisis, from soaring premiums to dwindling coverage and more.
Two weeks ago, our Kenny Stancil and Public Citizen’s Carly Fabian released two follow-up pieces. The first explains how state-level and congressional efforts to stymie or abolish the Federal Insurance Office (FIO) increase the likelihood of a climate-triggered foreclosure crisis and broader financial meltdown. The second takes a closer look at the home insurance crisis in North Carolina, where Republican insurance commissioner Mike Causey has been a leading proponent of axing FIO despite his state’s extensive exposure to climate risks.
RDP Goes After “Abundance Coachella”
When “WelcomeFest,” the “largest public gathering of centrist Democrats” launched in June with key speakers such as Derek Thompson and Matt Yglesias, our Henry Burke and Vishal Shankar covered the event’s central moments and looked into its funders, aptly labeling it “Abundance Coachella.”
The efforts of many WelcomeFest speakers and politicians to posture as progressive voices fighting for the public interest were betrayed by the words coming out of their own mouths. For example, Josh Barro blamed labor unions for creating scarcity, even though billionaire privatization schemes and corporate giveaways plausibly explain public scarcity, unlike some low paid workers struggling for a living wage amidst skyrocketing inflation.
The event’s funding largely explained the normal occurrence of conservative political positions. Henry and Vishal’s list included figures such as Reid Hoffman, Walmart’s Walton Family, Michael Bloomberg, and other billionaires—people who more comfortably belong in a certain deregulatory and pro-corporate political group known as the Republican Party than a meeting touting itself as the “opposition” to Trump’s ruthlessly draconian administration. Indeed, it seems that alignment of these pro-corporate elements of our two dominant political parties is a key goal of the abundance movement.
In fact, Abundists have regularly praised Republicans. Henry outlined the statements of several high-profile abundance advocates and funders, such as Open Philanthropy, Matthew Yglesias, Derek Kaufman, and others, who have voiced support for Trump appointed Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya.
Our Executive Director Jeffrey Hauser published a piece in the American Prospect in which he analyzed the kind of politics that are advanced by this billionaire-friendly movement. It is a kind of politics where a belief in the neoliberal status quo is hidden behind the guise of statistical reasoning, where a banal desire for focus-group tested optimization is unable to meet the call of the growing social and economic crisis, inevitably ceding ground to the cataclysmic advance of Trumpian fascism.
Hiding underneath the tightly calculated marketing, however, lies a strong anti-labor tendency– something our Dylan Gyauch-Lewis exposed in her piece for Common Dreams. While not all abundance advocates are anti-labor, many significant figures, such as the aforementioned Josh Barro, are. He has been joined by Inclusive Abundance, (one of the main Abundance organizing groups), several of the organizations in the Koch network, the Niskanen Institute, Matthew Yglesias, and Jared Polis in opposing much of the labor movement’s agenda while supporting Abundance.
Abundance and Revolvers Support Oil and Gas Expansion
In a piece for The Sling, our Kenny Stancil further analyzed the backers of the Abundance movement, explaining why Big Oil and Big Tech support it so enthusiastically. Erroneously arguing that somehow it would help develop renewable energy, Abundance advocates have been aligning with Republicans in their support for “cutting red tape” in the environmental review process for oil and gas extraction. This frenzied race to extract energy would fuel the legions of energy-hungry AI datacenters being built with government funding, and would make both Trump and the Abundance movement’s Big Tech and Big Oil backers wealthier in the process.
Our Hannah Story Brown wrote a piece for the American Prospect responding to a shallow criticism of progressive environmentalists made by oil and gas revolver Jody Freeman that included advocacy for increased fracking and expanding energy infrastructure. Hannah dissects Freeman’s background working for ConocoPhilip’s, a titan of the oil and gas industry, and the Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), Norway’s sovereign wealth fund that invests the oil nation’s wealth in oil and gas internationally. While NBIM pays lip service to the need to fight climate change, the fund consistently uses its voting stake in several companies to shoot down shareholder proposals that would otherwise help to strengthen the fight against climate change. Just like the Abundists, Jody Freeman poses as a reasonable liberal pundit while advancing what are objectively pro-corporate, pro-pollution policy viewpoints.
Crypto’s Infiltration of the Federal Government
Our Henry Burke steered the release of a new tracker of the cryptocurrency industry’s hijacking of the federal government to rewrite policy favorable to the wealthy speculators and swindlers that populate its ranks. He lays out an extensive list of revolvers who currently occupy high-ranking positions in the crypto industry and who previously worked for the agencies who directly regulate the industry, such as the SEC, CFTC, Treasury, and more.
100 Days Later: Elon Might Be Gone, But DOGE Lives On
Shortly after Elon Musk left the federal government in spectacular fashion, our Will Royce explained in the American Prospect that Musk’s influence over the department will continue so long as it is primarily staffed with his loyal allies and former employees.
Indeed, even without Musk at its helm, DOGE has only expanded its work. We have created a new tracker that lays out several state-level DOGE initiatives unfolding across the country, with at least 15 states having already set up their own DOGEs, and 26 states having established efforts that emulate DOGE but are not formally linked to it.
New In TAP Today:
Our Dylan Gyauch-Lewis has written a new piece for the American Prospect showing the link between AI data centers and declining public health. As the buildout of AI infrastructure intensifies, many Americans will pay with worse health outcomes. Fossil fuel-powered data centers are causing massive personal and public health costs through toxic, carcinogenic air pollution.
Check out the new trackers mentioned in this round-up! They will be updated regularly as new developments occur:
Trackers:
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