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March 26, 2025 | The American Prospect

Hannah Story Brown

Op-Ed Climate and EnvironmentGovernment CapacityMedia AccountabilityTrump 2.0

An Abundance of Credulity

In the months before the re-election of Donald Trump precipitated our rapid descent into authoritarianism, two books were being written about the idea that progressivism went astray in the 1960s and 1970s. In Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson describe a drift into a “politics of scarcity,” and in Why Nothing Works, Marc Dunkelman calls it a “cultural aversion to power.” Both books ask a pertinent question: Why doesn’t the government do big, bold things, quickly, to address the pressing issues of our time? We have an abundance of viewpoints and veto points, they argue, but a shortage of affordable housing and transmission lines. Something’s got to give. The unstated question, of course, is who must give.

March 21, 2025

Emma Marsano

Blog PostMemo Department of Veterans AffairsTrump 2.0

Not Even Veterans Are Exempt From The Trump Firing Line

Over the past couple months, the Trump administration has fired approximately 2500 people at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which provides lifelong healthcare services and non-healthcare benefits such as disability compensation, home loans and life insurance to veterans. There has been widespread outrage among veterans in response to the administration’s actions thus far, but Trump and VA Secretary Doug Collins remain set on tightening the screws. 

March 19, 2025 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter

Hannah Story Brown

Newsletter Ethics in GovernmentExecutive BranchGovernanceJudiciaryTrump 2.0

Trump Officials Are Openly Defying Judges’ Orders

“We’re not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think.” 

These were the words of Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan after the Trump administration violated multiple court orders and deported people without due process. Are we in a constitutional crisis yet? (Yes, and this is not the first time Trump officials have refused to obey the courts; we are tracking these violations here.)

March 14, 2025 | Watchdog Weekly

KJ Boyle

Newsletter Corruption CalendarCryptocurrencyElon MuskTrump 2.0

Corruption Calendar Week Eight: The White House Clown Car Dealership

While the lion’s share of this weeks’ news cycle surrounds a potential partial government shutdown (readers of this newsletter know that the government already is substantially shut down by DOGE), Trump and his lackeys continue churning the corruption machine for their own benefit. Trump, Musk, and their underlings shamelessly use the government to get even richer while decimating the government’s capacity to help poor people, farmers, students, women, and well, all of us.

March 05, 2025 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter

Hannah Story Brown

Newsletter Congressional OversightEthics in GovernmentGovernment CapacityTrump 2.0

The Government Shutdown is Already Here. Congressional Democrats need to act like it.

There’s a lot of back-and-forth right now about whether Congressional Democrats should, effectively, negotiate with terrorists. It goes like this: Congress has until March 14 to pass a bill funding the government to avoid a government shutdown. Republicans need some Democrats to vote in favor of the bill in order to get it past the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Democrats don’t want to see millions of federal workers furloughed. But supporting the Republicans’ bill amounts to agreeing that business as usual can continue despite the coup; despite the illegal shutdown of agencies and unconstitutional impoundment of appropriated money and the flaunting of court orders. Despite, in other words, the five-alarm-fire that is our political reality.