November, 11 2020, 11:00pm EDT

50+ Organizations Demand President-Elect Biden and Senate Democrats Reject Corporate Nominees for Cabinet Positions
Today, Demand Progress and the Revolving Door Project - joined by more than fifty prominent progressive and good government organizations - called on President-elect Joe Biden as well as Democratic Senators and Senators-elect to reject corporate executives, lobbyists, and prominent corporate consultants for cabinet positions.
WASHINGTON
Today, Demand Progress and the Revolving Door Project - joined by more than fifty prominent progressive and good government organizations - called on President-elect Joe Biden as well as Democratic Senators and Senators-elect to reject corporate executives, lobbyists, and prominent corporate consultants for cabinet positions. The letters, which come just days after Biden announced a list of transition advisors riddled with corporate lobbyists and special interest executives, call on Biden and Senate Democrats to align with the vast majority of Americans and commit to elevating individuals with unquestionable track records prioritizing everyday Americans and improving lives.
David Segal, Executive Director of Demand Progress said: "The best way to bring the country together and ensure that a government is put in place that's capable of meeting the extraordinary needs of this moment is to build an administration staffed with people who care about the public interest and the general welfare - and not with corporate elites and lobbyists who are going to be doing the bidding of the major corporations they came."
Jeff Hauser, Executive Director of the Revolving Door Project said: "We're urging President-elect Biden to not only embrace a populist economic message, but embody it by deploying all the tools of the executive branch to deliver for regular people. To make it happen, Biden will need to appoint high-energy, creative officials who wake up every morning determined to do all they can to advance the public interest, not those who remain beholden to corporations and private profit."
The letters also urge these elected officials to use the tools necessary to achieve these objectives - such as the Vacancy Act and recess appointments - given the almost-certain obstructionism by Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans.
- The letter to President-Elect Joe Biden can be found in full here.
- The letter to Democratic Senators and Senators-Elect can be found in full here.
The full text of the letter to President-Elect Biden follows:
Dear President-elect Biden:
After four years of Donald Trump's unfettered governance in service of powerful corporations -- and at the expense of everyday Americans -- you are in the process of organizing a new administration.
We urge you to build out an administration that is structured so as to be able to meet the historic needs of this moment -- and to uphold the highest values of the Democratic Party by operating in service of the wellbeing of the general public.
In particular, we urge you to decline to nominate or hire corporate executives, lobbyists, and prominent corporate consultants to serve in high office. Moreover, we urge you to join our organizations in seeking to elevate to such office people who have proven track records of prioritizing the general welfare. We also believe that representation of the broad diversity of our country is imperative -- but diversity alone is not enough: All personnel must have demonstrated that they prioritize the needs of communities of color and service in the public interest. If necessary, we urge you to accomplish this by using tools like the Vacancy Act and recess appointments to overcome any obstruction by Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans.
Executive branch personnel have sweeping authority over interpreting and enforcing the law. They also will play key roles in helping to develop and implement a legislative agenda. While the Trump administration has embodied extremes of self-dealing, incompetence, and subservience to corporations, sadly the revolving door between big corporations and government pre-dated the Trump administration. The revolving door has generated far too many conflicts of interest and policy outcomes diverging from the public interest under both Republican and Democratic presidents.
As several members of the House of Representatives wrote to the Senate a few weeks ago, "If we are to maintain the trust of the American people, neither party can credibly accuse the other of putting the demands of allied special interests before the public good and then do the same thing when elected to govern."
Moreover, the House members rightly noted that Democrats opposed numerous Trump appointees on the ground that their histories of work prioritizing the wants of corporations and drives towards personal enrichment likely put them at odds with the interests of the American people. To cite just a few examples, Democrats appealed to such concerns as they opposed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Ensuring governance that prioritizes the public interest is always imperative -- but this is especially evident as our country faces a multilayered crisis, borne of the pandemic and the attendant economic collapse, which demands immediate and forceful action. Moreover, if your administration cares to remedy longstanding ills -- like corporate concentration and structural economic inequities, systemic racism, the climate crisis, endless wars, and more -- it must be run by people who care foremost about working in service of the general welfare.
The revolving door limits the trust Americans have in government and has time and again led to bad policy outcomes. We urge you to take advantage of this historic and unique moment in American history to shut the revolving door closed and rebuild that trust: The nation is depending on you to ensure the executive branch is led by the right people for this critical moment.
Many of the organizations that have signed this letter have also written to Senator Schumer and to Democratic senators and senators-elect to urge them to wield their power in the advice-and-consent process towards the ends described herein.
Sincerely,
Action Center on Race and the Economy
ALIGN : The Alliance for a Greater New York Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain Americans for Democratic Action (ADA)
American Economic Liberties Project
Americans for Financial Reform
Athena Coalition
Bend the Arc Jewish Action
Center for Constitutional Rights
Center for Digital Democracy
Center for Disability Rights
Center for Popular Democracy
Children's Haven:A Place of Healing & Hope, Inc.
The Climate Mobilization
Consumer Action
Courage California
Daily Kos
Demand Justice
Demand Progress
Democracy For America
Demos
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
Faithful America
Food & Water Action
Friends of the Earth U.S.
Groundwork Collaborative
Indivisible
Jobs with Justice
Just Foreign Policy
Liberation in a Generation
MoveOn
MPower Change
National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights New York Communities For Change
Oil Change U.S.
Open Markets Institute
Open MIC (Open Media & Information Companies Initiative) Organic Consumers Association
Our Revolution
Partnership for Working Families
People's Parity Project
Presente.org
Progress America
Public Citizen
Revolving Door Project
RootsAction.org
Social Security Works
Strong Economy For All Coalition
SumOfUs
Sunrise Movement
Take on Wall Street
Ultraviolet
Voices for Progress
Win Without War
Working Families Party
X-Lab
The full text of the letter to Democratic Senators and Senators-elect follows:
Dear Democratic Senators and Senators-elect:
After four years of Donald Trump's unfettered governance in service of powerful corporations -- and at the expense of everyday Americans -- a new administration is beginning to take shape. You will of course play a critical part in this, as you undertake the solemn advice and consent responsibilities delegated to you by the Constitution.
We urge you to wield your considerable power in this process to ensure that the incoming Biden Administration is structured so as to be able to meet the historic needs of this moment -- and to uphold the highest values of the Democratic Party by operating in service of the wellbeing of the general public.
In particular, we urge you to decline to confirm -- and to urge President-Elect Biden not to nominate -- corporate executives, lobbyists, and prominent corporate consultants to high office. Moreover, we urge you to join our organizations in seeking to elevate to such office people who have proven track records of prioritizing the general welfare. We also believe representation of the broad diversity of our country is imperative -- but diversity alone is not enough: All personnel must have demonstrated that they prioritize the needs of communities of color and service in the public interest. If necessary, we ask you to urge Biden to use tools like the Vacancy Act and recess appointments to overcome any obstruction by Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans.
Executive branch personnel have sweeping authority over interpreting and enforcing the law. They also will play key roles in helping to develop and implement Congress's legislative agenda. While the Trump administration has embodied extremes of self-dealing, incompetence, and subservience to corporations, sadly the revolving door between big corporations and government pre-dated the Trump administration. The revolving door has generated far too many conflicts of interest and policy outcomes diverging from the public interest under both Republican and Democratic presidents.
As several members of the House of Representatives wrote to you a few weeks ago, "If we are to maintain the trust of the American people, neither party can credibly accuse the other of putting the demands of allied special interests before the public good and then do the same thing when elected to govern."
Moreover, the House members rightly noted that Senator Schumer (alongside the bulk of the Senate Democratic Caucus), opposed numerous Trump appointees on the ground that their histories of work prioritizing the wants of corporations and drives towards personal enrichment likely put them at odds with the interests of the American people. To cite just a few examples, Democrats appealed to such concerns as they opposed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Ensuring governance that prioritizes the public interest is always imperative -- but this is especially evident as our country faces a multilayered crisis, borne of the pandemic and the attendant economic collapse, which demands immediate and forceful action. Moreover, if the Biden administration cares to remedy longstanding and intertwining ills -- like corporate concentration and structural economic inequities, systemic racism, the climate crisis, endless wars, and more -- it must be run by people who care foremost about working in service of the general welfare.
The revolving door limits the trust Americans have in government and has time and again led to bad policy outcomes. We urge you to use your voices and your votes to take advantage of this historic and unique moment in American history to shut the revolving door closed and rebuild that trust. Your constituents are depending on you to fulfill your constitutional obligations to ensure the executive branch is led by the right people for this critical moment.
Many of the organizations that have signed this letter have also written to President-Elect Biden to urge him to nominate and hire people in accord with the principles articulated herein.
Sincerely,
Action Center on Race and the Economy
ALIGN : The Alliance for a Greater New York
Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain
Americans for Democratic Action (ADA)
American Economic Liberties Project
Americans for Financial Reform
Athena Coalition
Bend the Arc Jewish Action
Center for Constitutional Rights
Center for Digital Democracy
Center for Disability Rights
Center for Popular Democracy
Children's Haven:A Place of Healing & Hope, Inc.
The Climate Mobilization
Consumer Action
Courage California
Daily Kos
Demand Justice
Demand Progress
Democracy For America
Demos
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
Faithful America
Food & Water Action
Friends of the Earth U.S.
Groundwork Collaborative
Indivisible
Jobs with Justice
Just Foreign Policy
Liberation in a Generation
MPower Change
National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights
New York Communities For Change
Oil Change U.S.
Open Markets Institute
Open MIC (Open Media & Information Companies Initiative)
Organic Consumers Association
Our Revolution
Partnership for Working Families
People's Parity Project
Presente.org
Progress America
Public Citizen
Revolving Door Project
RootsAction.org
Social Security Works
Strong Economy For All Coalition
SumOfUs
Sunrise Movement
Take on Wall Street
Ultraviolet
Voices for Progress
Win Without War
Working Families Party
X-Lab
Demand Progress amplifies the voice of the people -- and wields it to make government accountable and contest concentrated corporate power. Our mission is to protect the democratic character of the internet -- and wield it to contest concentrated corporate power and hold government accountable.
LATEST NEWS
'Shut Up... You Should Be Fired': RFK Jr. Sparks Backlash With CDC Purge, School Shooting Remarks
"He is a dangerous man who is determined to abuse his authority to act on truly terrifying conspiracy theories and disinformation," said Democratic Sen. Patty Murray.
Aug 28, 2025
Some US elected officials are now calling for the firing of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. amid mass resignations at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and comments he made about Wednesday's mass shooting at a Catholic school.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) was the first Democratic lawmaker to call for Kennedy's firing on Wednesday night, shortly after news broke that he had ousted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez, who had just been confirmed by the US Senate weeks ago. Monarez's firing subsequently triggered several other high-profile resignations at the agency.
"If there are any adults left in the White House, it's well past time they face reality and fire RFK Jr.," she said. "He is a dangerous man who is determined to abuse his authority to act on truly terrifying conspiracy theories and disinformation—leaving us unprepared for the next deadly pandemic and snuffing out potential cures while he's at it."
Kennedy further angered his critics when he appeared on Fox News Thursday morning and not only defended the purge of the CDC, but also baselessly linked this week's mass shooting at the Annunciation Church in Minneapolis with the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a class of drugs commonly used to treat clinical depression.
While speaking with the hosts of "Fox & Friends," Kennedy said that "we're launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence" such as the shooting in Minneapolis on Wednesday that left two children dead and 17 other people wounded.
This drew the ire of Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who profanely called out Kennedy for peddling misinformation.
"I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don't kill kids, antidepressants do," she wrote in a social media post. "Just shut up. Stop peddling bullshit. You should be fired."
She then wrote a follow-up post in which she noted that "there are 400 million guns in this country," which is larger than the entire population of the US.
"In America, we are 10 times more likely to be shot in a school or playground than any other developed nation," she said.
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) didn't explicitly call for Kennedy to be fired, although he labeled the HHS secretary's actions "disgraceful."
"What is happening at the CDC is truly a five-alarm fire and not receiving nearly enough attention," he wrote. "RFK Jr.'s undermining of our public health institutions will have disastrous consequences for generations."
Democratic lawmakers weren't the only ones calling for Kennedy's firing. Pradheep Shanker, a radiologist who regularly writes for the conservative National Review, also said he'd seen enough of US President Donald Trump's HHS Chief.
"RFK is a complete failure, and is making Trump's health policy look like a complete circus," he said. "If Trump has any credibility, he'll fire RFK."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Clear Majority of US Voters, Including 3 in 4 Democrats, Want to End Weapons Support to Israel: Poll
"Democratic politicians who continue to support sending weapons to Israel are acting in direct defiance of their own constituents' wishes," said one progressive commentator.
Aug 28, 2025
As its genocidal actions in Gaza become more brazen by the day, support for Israel among Americans has reached a record low.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, 60% of voters across all parties now say they oppose the United States sending more military aid to Israel, while just 32% say they support it. The pollster said it was the greatest amount of opposition it has recorded for the US-Israel alliance since it first asked the question in November 2023.
Opposition is even stronger among Democratic voters: 75% of them now oppose sending military aid to Israel, compared with just 18% who still support it.
Also for the first time ever in a Quinnipiac poll, more voters, 37%, said they sympathized with the Palestinians—an all-time high—compared with just 36% who said they sympathized with the Israelis—an all-time low.
In recent months, Israeli politicians have begun moving forward with a plan to fully occupy the Gaza Strip and permanently empty it of its inhabitants, which international humanitarian organizations have described as an "ethnic cleansing."
On Wednesday, every member of the United Nations Security Council, with the exception of the United States, joined in a statement backing the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification's declaration that Israel was creating a "man-made" famine in Gaza.
Meanwhile, even Israel's leaders have found it impossible to defend its "double-tap" strike on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on Monday, in which the Israel Defense Forces launched a strike on the medical facility before launching another attack shortly afterward on the journalists and medical personnel who came to respond to the destruction.
That attack killed at least 20 people, adding to the potentially well over 100,000 Palestinians who experts estimate have been killed over the course of the nearly two-year military onslaught.
According to the Quinnipiac poll, 50% of Americans now agree with the international community's assessment that Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza. This includes 77% of Democrats and 51% of independents.
When Democrats were polled last month by Gallup, just 8% of them said they supported Israel's military actions in the Gaza Strip, a dramatic decline from October 2023, when 36% expressed support.
In recent weeks, as the images of death and starvation coming out of Gaza have grown increasingly heinous and ubiquitous, some Democratic politicians have begun to take a harsher stance against Israel.
Last month, a majority of Democrats in the Senate, for the first time, voted in favor of resolutions introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to suspend US assault weapons and 1,000-pound bombs to Israel.
Twenty-seven Democrats voted for the resolution halting assault rifles, and 24 voted for the resolution to stop the sale of bombs. Notably, the top Senate Democrat, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), voted against both resolutions.
Despite overwhelming support from their voters, the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday voted down a resolution calling for the US to suspend military aid to Israel.
"Democratic politicians who continue to support sending weapons to Israel are acting in direct defiance of their own constituents' wishes," said Nathan J. Robinson, the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine, in response to news of the latest polling numbers.
Previous polls have indicated that opposition to former President Joe Biden's arming of Israel was a primary reason why Democratic voters chose to abandon the Democratic Party in 2024, potentially costing then-Vice President Kamala Harris the election.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said the poll showed that "Democrats continuing to ignore their base on the Palestine issue is insane," adding that if they continue down this path, "they will continue to lose."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Gaza Children Without 'Strength to Speak or Even Cry,' Says Aid Group Chief
"When there is not enough food, children become acutely malnourished, and then they die slowly and painfully," the CEO of Save the Children told a United Nations Security Council meeting this week.
Aug 28, 2025
Inger Ashing, the CEO of Save the Children, delivered an urgent plea for action to end the Israeli-created humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, which she described in graphic terms.
Ashing told a United Nations Security Council meeting on Wednesday that there can be no doubt that Gaza is facing a full-blown famine that will result in mass starvation unless the international community steps in to end it.
"When there is not enough food, children become acutely malnourished, and then they die slowly and painfully," she said. "This, in simple terms, is what famine is."
Ashing then described how Palestinian children's bodies are eating their own muscles and organs just to stay alive amid systemic hunger imposed by Israel's military blockade.
"Children do not have the strength to speak or even cry out in agony," she said. "They lie there, emaciated, quite literally wasting away."
Cindy McCain, the executive director of the United Nations World Food Program, put out a video statement Thursday morning in which she said that Gaza was "at a breaking point" due to mass hunger.
"Half a million people here in Gaza are starving, and many more are on the edge," she said. "Famine is expected in the coming weeks if food doesn't reach the thousands of starving families here fast enough. The desperation is overwhelming."
McCain emphasized that the World Food Programme can reach these starving civilians and save lives, but added that it first needed "safe routes and sustained access" to Gaza to make it happen.
"We must deliver at the scale this crisis demands," she said.
Ashing and McCain's pleas for action came less than a week after the United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) declared a famine in Gaza that it warned was projected to get even worse in the coming weeks.
"Between mid-August and the end of September 2025, conditions are expected to further worsen with famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis," the IPC stated. "Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5), while those in emergency (IPC Phase 4) will likely rise to 1.14 million (58%). Acute malnutrition is projected to continue worsening rapidly."
The Gaza Health Ministry has estimated that 317 people in Gaza, including 121 children, have so far died from severe hunger as a result of the Israeli blockade.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular