47 Former Lobbyists Run the Agencies They Used to Lobby. There Is No Ethics Rule Stopping Them.

47 Lobbyists. No Ethics Rules.

At least 47 former lobbyists serve as senior political appointees in the Trump administration as of April 2026. Sixteen of them now work at the agencies they directly lobbied. Under any of the three prior administrations, those 16 would have been barred from their positions.

47 former lobbyists in senior roles. 16 regulate the industries that paid them. $3.8 billion in lobbying spending in nine months. The ethics rules were rescinded on Day 1 and never replaced.

Trump rescinded Biden’s ethics executive order on his first day in office. Unlike his first term, he has not issued any ethics executive order for his second term. There is no formal ethics pledge for appointees, no restriction on former lobbyists working at agencies they lobbied, and no waiver process. The rules that would need to be circumvented simply do not exist.

Pesticide Lobbyists at the EPA

Kyle Kunkler lobbied for the American Soybean Association and the Biotech Innovation Organization. He is now the EPA’s Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pesticide Programs. After he joined, the EPA reversed its own pesticide policy.

Troy Lyons earned $120,000 per year lobbying for BP and $140,000 per year lobbying for Hess Corp. He is now the EPA’s Associate Administrator for Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations. Mandy Gunasekara, formerly Senior Director for Federal Affairs at the National Association of Chemical Distributors, is now an EPA Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator.

The people who were paid to weaken environmental regulation are now the ones writing it.

$3.8 Billion in Nine Months

Lobbying spending hit $3.8 billion in the first nine months of 2025, a 13.1% increase over 2024. The pharmaceutical industry alone spent $226.8 million in the first half of 2025, $22 million more than the same period the year before. Oil and gas companies spent $71 million. Nearly half of the 2,200 lobbyists representing energy companies are former government employees.

Ballard Partners, the firm where Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi both previously worked, posted $88 million in 2025 revenue. That is a 350% jump from the prior year. They were the first firm to exceed $20 million in a single quarter, and they did it three times. They gained 135 new clients, nearly doubling their roster. Mercury Public Affairs, also linked to Wiles, reported lobbying the White House for 26 different clients in 2025.

DOGE and the $22 Billion Conflict

Elon Musk’s companies hold $15.4 billion in government contracts. SpaceX has received $22 billion cumulative from NASA, Space Force, and national security agencies. In 2025 and 2026, SpaceX received new awards totaling billions more, including $845 million for national security launches, $714 million for FY2026 missions, approximately $2 billion for missile tracking, and $843 million for deorbiting the International Space Station.

ProPublica found that at least 23 of 100+ tracked DOGE staffers made cuts to agencies that regulated industries where they previously worked. DOGE installed a Starlink terminal at the White House. Thomas Shedd, a Tesla software engineer, was placed in charge of GSA’s Technology Transformation Services. Sam Corcos is leading the creation of an IRS data API using Palantir’s Foundry platform. ICE awarded Palantir a $30 million contract for real-time migrant tracking.

The people cutting government budgets are the same people whose companies receive government contracts. There is no separation.

The Commerce Secretary’s Tariff Problem

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s former firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, reportedly explored buying tariff refund rights while Lutnick was closely involved in tariff negotiations. His son is under investigation over alleged profits from tariff rulings. Senators Wyden and Warren opened a formal probe. Representative Jamie Raskin opened a House investigation.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche held at least $159,000 in cryptocurrency while overseeing decisions that halted investigations into crypto companies. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford held millions in Republic Airways stock for over 7 months after taking office despite pledging to divest within 90 days, while overseeing the airline industry he profited from.

281 Lobbyists. Four Times Obama.

ProPublica documented 281 lobbyists who worked in the first Trump administration. That is four times more than the Obama administration had six years into office. Trump’s first-term ethics executive order barring officials from lobbying was weakly enforced and then rescinded. His second-term ethics pledge, to the extent it exists, bans appointees from lobbying only their own agency for five years after leaving. Lobbying any other agency is permitted immediately.

Bloomberg Government reported a hiring rush on K Street as Trump’s aggressive policy moves created demand for former officials who could navigate the administration. Salaries for former administration officials at lobbying firms range from high six figures to over $1 million.

OpenSecrets tracks 600 people who have moved through the revolving door with the Trump administration.

The Inauguration Price Tag

Trump’s 2025 inauguration raised $251.4 million, a 142% increase from his 2017 inauguration. The donors who funded the inauguration are the same companies that lobbied the administration and received favorable policy decisions. This is not corruption in the legal sense. It is the system working as designed, which is the problem.

What You Can Do

Call your U.S. senators and demand they support the Ending DOGE Conflicts Act, which would block agencies from awarding contracts to companies where a special government employee holds 5% or more ownership.
Use OpenSecrets’ revolving door tracker and Public Citizen’s conflict tracker to see who regulates what, and who used to lobby for whom.
Support organizations tracking these conflicts, including CREW, Campaign Legal Center, and OpenSecrets.

Read more on the Ethics hub and the dark money brief.