WASHINGTON For six years, Brandon Belford worked as an economic policy adviser to President Barack Obama in the White House and federal agencies. He moved to the Bay Area when Donald Trump became president, part of a massive flight of Obama officials from Washington to Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Hollywood. He took high-ranking positions with Apple and then Lyft, where he is currently the ride-sharing companys chief of staff.
Now Belford is back, as part of one of the transition teams named by President-elect Joe Biden to restock a federal government that has been battered after four years of Trump by hiring new officials and advising the incoming administration on what its first governing steps should be.
Those steps could be timid, judging by the composition of those teams, where Obama-era centrism prevails. That has some progressives worried that Biden represents nothing more than a return to normal, at a time when many of them believe the nation is ready to embrace policy ideas well to the left of center.
The status quo is killing us, says former Bernie Sanders press secretary Briahna Joy Gray, who now hosts a podcast called Bad Faith.
Belford is joined by dozens of other Democratic operatives who have spent the past four years working at prestigious law firms and think tanks. On these agency review teams are high-ranking executives from Amazon, partners at white-shoe law firms like Covington & Burling and enough experts from D.C. center-left think tanks including six from the Brookings Institution alone to fill a center-left think tank.
Progressives knew this was coming. I am very concerned about the role Uber executives would play in this administration, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez D-N.Y., told Yahoo News. Even though she also effusively praised the appointment of Ron Klain asthe incoming White House chief of staff, Ocasio-Cortez vowed that corporate America would not pull the wool over our eyes when it came to crafting the Biden presidency.
Story continues
Some have put it less bluntly. Bidens transition team is full of wealthy corporate executives who are completely disconnected from the struggles of the working class, complains left-leaning activist Ryan Knight, whose Twitter handle is @ProudSocialist.
He was presumably referring to the two dozen agency review team officials who come from law firms like Arnold & Porter.Or to the 40 or so members of the Biden transition who are current or recent lobbyists.
The agency review teams are not exactly settling into their cubicles just yet. For one, President Trump has not yet conceded the election, and the transition has been hindered in part by Republican operatives at the General Services Administration. And agency review is an enormously complex process, one that actually began months ago. The transition teams are supposed to ensure a smooth transfer of power, in large part by making sure that capable officials are ready to get to work in their respective agencies the moment Biden lifts his hand from the Lincoln Bible.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one member of the Biden campaign working on agency-related matters says teams were primarily tasked with surveying the landscape of the federal bureaucracy. She says that the transition teams would make some hiring recommendations, but only as a secondary function.
With a single exception, the agency review team members mentioned in this article did not respond to requests for comment.
One with a typically impressive biography is that of Aneesh Chopra, who served as the U.S. chief technology officer for Obama before starting his own medical data logistics company, CareJourney. Now he is on the transition team for the U.S. Postal Service, where he will presumably work to undo the alleged damage by another logistics maven: Trump appointee Louis DeJoy.
Of course, most progressives are glad that theres a Biden transition to speak of, instead of a second Trump term. But they also recognize their own role in the Democratic candidates victory.
Everyone fell into line and did everything they could to get Joe Biden elected, says Max Berger, a progressive activist who worked for Elizabeth Warrens presidential campaign and Justice Democrats, the group that helped elect Ocasio-Cortez to the House in 2018.
Berger recognizes that progressives will be a junior partner to the establishment Democrats with whom Biden has been ideologically and temperamentally aligned for a good half-century. They want to be partners all the same, not just the loyal opposition.
Many are cheered by some of the agency review teams. For one, they are notably more diverse, a stark contrast to Trumps reliance on white males for so much of his advice. On the transition team for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is Jedidah Isler, the Dartmouth professor who in 2014 became the first Black woman to earn a doctorate in astrophysics from Yale. The transition team for the Small Business Administration includes Jorge Silva Puras, a political leader in Puerto Rico who also teaches entrepreneurship at a community college in the Bronx.
The presence of labor officials throughout many of the groups is notable, says David Dayen, executive editor of the American Prospect. In the Department of Education team, for example, are several executives from the American Federation of Teachers.
He called the Federal Reserve and Treasury teams all-stars, a sentiment shared by other progressives interviewed for this article. On the Treasury team is Mehrsa Baradaran, a progressive economist who has written on the racial wealth gap. She is also on the Federal Reserve team, along with Reena Aggarwal, a corporate governance expert.
Progressive strategist Elizabeth Spiers says the finance-related teams are not not quite Elizabeth Warren levels of aggressiveness but also not stuffed with finance people. Bidens advisers appear to have learned the lessons of his former boss. During Obamas first year, he relied on banking executives to help quell the financial crisis. They did so in ways that steered the new president away from progressive proposals, such as nationalizing those very same banks.
There is not a single current executive from Citibank or Goldman Sachs on any of the transition teams. Bank of America has also been shut out. JPMorgan can boast a single toehold in the agency review process: Lisa Sawyer of the Pentagon team. A spokesman for JPMorgan told Yahoo News that the bank was following the appropriate election laws and that Sawyer was not on an agency review team that will touch any banking issues.
I think the Biden administration is going to be surprising to progressives in some ways and disappointing in others, and the agency review teams reflect that, Dayen says. During the summer, the American Prospect published a lengthy expos about Bidens foreign policy advisers lucrative foray into corporate America. Many are set to return to the highest echelons of official Washington.
I have to be cautiously optimistic, says Waleed Shahid, communications director for the Justice Democrats.
Relatively young progressives like Shahid are less likely to wax romantic about the way things were in Washington. They are less interested in experience than conviction. But for many in Bidens camp, a lack of experience was among the several fatal flaws of the Trump years.
Everyone right or left has made the mistaken assumption for years that governing is easy, says The Death of Expertise author Tom Nichols, who teaches at the Naval War College and is an ardently anti-Trump Republican.
After having a bunch of nitwits and cronies loose in the government, Nichols wrote in an email, I think a lot of people on the left are really giving in to the assumption that as long as youre not Trump, or not a complete idiot, anyone can do it.
Given the title and theme of his book, Nicholas cautioned against that approach. Its a childish and silly approach to government, but its a bipartisan problem, he told Yahoo News.
While progressive may not see their stars like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren occupying the Treasury Department, they do very much hope that a Biden presidency amounts to more than a third Obama term. It was unaddressed economic inequality, they believe, that bred the populist resentment that gave Trump an opening in 2016. The coronavirus has only made that inequality worse. That will only increase populist resentment, they worry, to be exploited by a Trump acolyte or perhaps Trump himself, again in 2024.
Addressing that inequality, for now, falls to transition team officials like Mark Schwartz of Amazon and Ted Dean of Dropbox, as well as Arun Venkataraman of Visa and David Holmes of defense contractor Rebellion Defense, in which Eric Schmidt of Google is an investor. Many of these officials are veterans of the Obama administration or Democratic offices on the Hill.
There is a lot of corporate influencethere, says Maurice Weeks, co-founder of the Action Center on Race and the Economy. And that is troubling. But he is encouraged by the presence of hard-core progressives like Sarah Miller, a former Treasury deputy who is both an anti-Facebook activist and the executive of the American Economic Liberties Project, which seeks to curb corporate power. She is now on the Treasury transition team.
In some ways, the difference is between former Obama officials who, like Miller, went on to become activists and those who moved on to become rich. The latter did only what many government officials had done before them. But at a time of mass unemployment, a stint at the corporate law firm Latham & Watkins (three transition team members) may not seem as impressive as it may have when Obama was president.
We dont just want to rewind the clock by four years, Weeks says.
For many progressives, Trump was a singular threat to important institutions of the federal government, but rebuilding those institutions is simply not as important as rebuilding entire communities shattered by economic, social and racial inequalities.
It doesnt help matters that, today, tech giants are distrusted by conservatives and progressives alike. Firms that were run out of Palo Alto garages now chafe at antitrust laws like the railroad companies of a century ago.
And like those companies, they know how to use their influence. In 2019 alone, two of the biggest and most influential technology firms Amazon and Facebook each spent $17 million on government affairs, better known as lobbying.
Ocasio-Cortezs reference to Uber may have been a subtle warning to the incoming administration: The brother-in-law of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is Tony West, who worked for the Department of Justice under President Bill Clinton and is now the chief counsel at Uber.Jake Sullivan, another top Biden adviser, also worked for Uber.
The company recently won a major victory in California with Proposition 22, a successful response to legal efforts to make Uber drivers and other gig workers employees, not contractors. Thats exactly the kind of labor policy, Ocasio-Cortez says, the Biden administration must avoid.
Many top Obama staffers went to Silicon Valley in 2017. They could be returning to Washington with a new appreciation for free market capitalism at a time when socialism is no longer a dirty word.
Joe Bidens transition is absolutely stacked with tech industry players, noted Protocol, an online publication that covers technology.
Thats exactly what worries Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, which tracks what Trump has called, without much affection, the swamp. He notes that the transition team for the Office of Management and Budget appears to have borrowed rather avidly from Silicon Valley, with team members hailing from Lyft, Airbnb and Amazon.
The budget office wields an enormous amount of power, says Hauser, including in both how congressionally appropriated money is doled out and how certain rules are implemented. Though it had a supporting role in Trumps impeachment drama over foreign aid, OMB is otherwise obscure, making it a perfect site for covert exercises of federal power.
Hauser also didnt like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors.
Watching the transition, Gray, the former Sanders adviser, recalled an old saying: The fish rots from the head. The head, in this case, is Joe Biden, of whom Gray has long been a skeptic.
Hes a fundamentally conservative man, Gray says. She reasons that if Biden was unmoved by the largest protest movement in American history to endorse Medicare for All, he cant be trusted to do much for conservative causes like a $15 minimum wage and the Green New Deal.
Still, she believes that Biden can be made to hear the voices of progressives if, Gray says, they are loud enough. She points out that there is widespread support for progressive legislation like the $15 minimum wage in Florida, even though Trump won the state.
Biden easily won Oregon, but a push to legalize small amounts of drugs, known as Measure 110, was even more popular than he was.
She sees that as evidence that progressive ideas are more popular than Biden himself. Progressives should never stop screaming that reality from the rooftops, Gray told Yahoo News. And she vowed to keep fighting, even with Trump gone and a Democratic president in the Oval Office once again.
I dont accept resignation, she said.
Cover thumbnail photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
_____
Read more from Yahoo News:
Continue reading here:
Big Tech and Big Law dominate Biden transition teams, tempering progressive hopes - Yahoo News
- Report Sounds Alarm Over Growing Role of Big Tech in US Military-Industrial Complex - Common Dreams - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Big Tech's ad transparency tools especially X's are failing at their jobs, report finds - Mashable - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Big Tech Taps AI Agents to Drive Revenue Growth - PYMNTS.com - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- National privacy standard eyed by Congress for data harvested by big tech companies Nebraska Examiner - Nebraska Examiner - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Big Tech is on a generative AI hiring spree - Fast Company - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Disruptive Innovation in the Era of Big Tech - HBR.org Daily - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Betting on US Big Tech? Top Earnings Reports to Watch in the Coming Week - FX Empire - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Big Tech Earnings Are Just Around the Corner - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) - Benzinga - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- WATCH LIVE: Will Cain holds panel to discuss Big Tech and Trump trial - Fox News - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Google fires 28 workers in aftermath of protests over big tech deal with Israeli government - The Bakersfield Californian - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Big Tech offices are getting smaller and that spells trouble for landlords - Quartz - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Asking Big Tech to police AI is like turning to 'oil companies to solve climate change,' AI researcher says - Fortune - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Big Tech Comes to Small Town: A Bitcoin Mining Story in Spur - CoinDesk - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Big Tech loses its appetite for office space, adding to landlords woes - Inman - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Google restructure leads to job cuts - Mobile World Live - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- FTC's Lina Khan talks big tech monopolies on The Daily Show - The Ticker - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Digital public infrastructure will drive the future, not big tech: Amitabh Kant - BusinessLine - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Big tech is downsizing work space in another blow to office real estate | Mint - Mint - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- UK Plans Talks With Big Tech to Limit Online Harm for Teens - Bloomberg - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Canada to Start Taxing Tech Giants in 2024 Despite US Complaints - Bloomberg - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- US quarterly earnings to feature big growth in tech-related companies - Reuters - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Our View: Big Tech: Google continues to harm news groups for its own profit - Mankato Free Press - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Deepfake victims must punish Big Tech because Congress wont - The Hill - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Big tech kneecaps anyone researching it. The online harms bill needs to remove barriers to analysis - Policy Options - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Global future will not be driven by big tech but by India's DPI: Amitabh Kant - Moneycontrol - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Kids Code bills prompt epic showdown between regulators, activists and big tech firms - Biometric Update - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Tech Firms Retreating From Office Market - The Real Deal - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- UKs antitrust enforcer sounds the alarm over Big Techs grip on GenAI - TechCrunch - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- Time for government to regulate big tech - ACS - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- UK Markets Authority Warns of AI Market Capture by Big Tech - BankInfoSecurity.com - April 18th, 2024 [April 18th, 2024]
- 2023 Boosts Big Techs AI monopoly? Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and others wield money power - HT Tech - January 2nd, 2024 [January 2nd, 2024]
- Alphabet (GOOGL) and Meta Shows Power of Ads Over Subscriptions - Bloomberg - January 2nd, 2024 [January 2nd, 2024]
- Looking Beyond The 'Magnificent 7' Analysts Just Upgraded These Three Large-Cap Stocks - Anheuser-Busch - Benzinga - January 2nd, 2024 [January 2nd, 2024]
- Mapping the Biggest Tech Talent Hubs in the U.S. and Canada - Visual Capitalist - January 2nd, 2024 [January 2nd, 2024]
- Google, Meta, other tech giants slash DEI-related jobs, resource groups in 2023: Report - Fox Business - January 2nd, 2024 [January 2nd, 2024]
- South Koreas proposed tech regulations would be a gift to China - The Hill - January 2nd, 2024 [January 2nd, 2024]
- Outlook 2024: Big changes to expect in personal tech - The Indian Express - January 2nd, 2024 [January 2nd, 2024]
- Big Tech Dumped $17 Billion Into AI Companies in 2023 Despite Frozen Market - The Messenger - January 2nd, 2024 [January 2nd, 2024]
- Why OpenAI signals the start of the post-Christensen startup world - Tech.eu - January 2nd, 2024 [January 2nd, 2024]
- Opinion | Lindsey Graham and Elizabeth Warren: When It Comes to Big Tech, Enough Is Enough - The New York Times - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- Globe editorial: Canada can't tackle Big Tech on its own - The Globe and Mail - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- July jobs report and more Big Tech earnings are in the week ahead after markets notch historic run for Dow - CNBC - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- A Setback in the F.T.C.'s Fight Against Big Tech - The New Yorker - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- Be strong in the fight against Big Tech, Canada - Canada's National Observer - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- Decoding volatility: Are big tech stocks as stable as we think? - CryptoSlate - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- Patients think their health data will be leaked and don't trust big tech ... - Contemporary Pediatrics - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Big Tech Earnings Season - Fagen wasanni - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- The problem with Big Tech's voluntary AI safety commitments - Emerging Tech Brew - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- How the Crypto Market Prepares Ahead of Big Tech Earnings ... - BeInCrypto - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- Tony Anscombe: It's Misleading to Ask if Big Tech Wants to Read ... - BroadbandBreakfast.com - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- The Week Ahead: Fed, ECB and BoJ set rates, and Big Tech ... - Financial Times - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- China's Big Tech making a comeback with Beijing offering fresh ... - The Straits Times - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- Montgomery County school district sues Big Tech over youth mental ... - Washington Times - June 18th, 2023 [June 18th, 2023]
- Big Tech knows most Brits don't know how to protect their online ... - TechRadar - June 18th, 2023 [June 18th, 2023]
- The time for talk is over is time for action on data privacy - The Hill - June 18th, 2023 [June 18th, 2023]
- Meet the man calling out Big Techs climate hypocrisy - Corporate Knights Magazine - June 18th, 2023 [June 18th, 2023]
- Letter: UK watchdog's tough stance on Big Tech should reassure MPs - Financial Times - June 18th, 2023 [June 18th, 2023]
- Peter Thiel on Big Tech: A Throwback Lecture - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence - June 18th, 2023 [June 18th, 2023]
- Big Tech Is Big Tobacco - The Lever - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Graham fires warning shot at Big Tech: Were going to unleash the courtrooms of America on you - Fox News - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Experts weigh the current cost of anticompetitive behavior in Big ... - NYU Law - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Big Tech lobbying on AI regulation as industry races to harness ... - Center for Responsive Politics - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- 'Big Tech is knowingly fueling a mental-health crisis in this country ... - Morningstar - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- EY's Abandoned Split Exposes Obstacles to Big Tech Consulting - Bloomberg Tax - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Apple CEO Tim Cook calls mass layoffs a last resort, as the company avoids the giant job cuts of its Big Tech peers - Yahoo Finance - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Big Tech stocks are flying! Which ones are the best buys today? - Motley Fool UK - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Why Indian start-ups have accused the Internet and Mobile Association of India of spreading Big Tech propaganda - The Indian Express - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Intimate Images Protection Update Big Tech Warned To Be Ready ... - BC INJURY LAW - May 6th, 2023 [May 6th, 2023]
- Apple Stock and Big Tech Are Winners. Why Cathie Wood's ARK Is Still a Loser. - Barron's - May 4th, 2023 [May 4th, 2023]
- White House officials will meet Big Tech CEOs as President Biden looks to tackle AI safety concerns - Yahoo Canada Finance - May 4th, 2023 [May 4th, 2023]
- The top 10 buzziest companies Gen Z wants to work fornone of them are in Big Tech, says new report - CNBC - May 4th, 2023 [May 4th, 2023]
- Apple Reports Earnings Today. What to Expect. - Barron's - May 4th, 2023 [May 4th, 2023]
- Big Tech Earnings: Time to Take Another Bite of Apple? - Yahoo Finance - May 4th, 2023 [May 4th, 2023]
- Vibe Check: Big Tech Is Losing Its 'Luster' For The Class Of 2023 Amid Mounting Layoffs And An Uncertain Economy - Forbes - May 4th, 2023 [May 4th, 2023]
- Lindsey Graham says Big Tech will kill online child safety bill, teases plan with Elizabeth Warren - Washington Times - May 4th, 2023 [May 4th, 2023]
- 'Break them open' new EU rules coming for Big Tech - TNW - May 4th, 2023 [May 4th, 2023]
- EY's Abandoned Split Exposes Obstacles to Big Tech Consulting - Bloomberg Law - May 4th, 2023 [May 4th, 2023]
- Open Source Communities Need More Than Funding From Big Tech - DevOps.com - May 4th, 2023 [May 4th, 2023]
- Night School, Class 3: Big Tech vs the insurgents - Financial Times - May 4th, 2023 [May 4th, 2023]
- MM View: The Big Tech monster is coming for you - but only if you let it - Money Marketing - May 4th, 2023 [May 4th, 2023]