When Guardrails Erode: An Anti‑Corruption Series

Unless Congress reasserts control over federal spending, the balance the framers designed could collapse into a self-financing presidency.

Patterns of state capture in South Africa, El Salvador, Sri Lanka and Guatemala offer a cautionary guide for the United States.

This Anti-Corruption Tracker focuses on the erosion or dismantling of oversight and accountability systems within the United States Executive Branch.

The deal circumvents the Appropriations Clause and congressional safeguards designed to enforce it, creating a system answerable only to the White House.

Almost immediately upon taking office for his second term, President Donald Trump unlawfully fired 17 inspectors general (IGs), and over the course of this year has taken actions…

When core functions of the state become warped into tools of personal enrichment or political control, ordinary people suffer. The poor and marginalized are hit hardest.

Weakening FOIA does not merely impair public knowledge — it also reduces the likelihood that abuses will be detected and deterred.

The global anti-corruption regime that the United States pioneered over many decades is bigger than any one country or regime

Bringing together expert analysis that traces this erosion, assesses the risks for democratic governance, and outlines pathways to rebuild or even reinvent these safeguards.

This series aims to document how erosion is happening, what it reveals, and what it demands from those committed to rebuilding and rethinking our systems of accountability.

Even amid domestic retrenchment of business regulation and oversight, corporations must adhere to internationally recognized human rights responsibilities.