So FTC rubber stamped a $13.5 billion ad agency deal because one of the merging parties folded to Elon Musk's threat to increase its ad spend on X - "or else." Turns out the merger itself is really about - you guessed it - surveillance pricing.

There is a hearing today in the MA legislature on a proposed antitrust bill. It has a number of good provisions. 👇 malegislature.gov/Bills/194/S1038

This whole situation concerning the DOJ antitrust division is getting quite charged. Advocates are now leaning on a judge to review the Hewlett Packard Enterprise merger for evidence of political corruption under the Tunney Act. Here's David Dayen in The American Prospect:

Many small businesses face common struggles: unfavorable contract terms, unavoidable junk fees, unequal access to credit, complex rules skewed to favor big business, and markets increasingly dominated by giant gatekeepers. New The New York Times piece explains why winning back small

The Iowa farmer who can’t start his combine because John Deere locked its software has a hell of a lot in common with the driver in Queens who can’t work because Uber and Lyft locked him out of their apps. We used to have these coalitions. Lina Khan says let’s bring them back

NEW: UnitedHealth has long used noncompete agreements to keep physicians from leaving when it buys practices. But states are ramping up bans on noncompetes for doctors—experts told me about the risks those laws could pose to UnitedHealth's expansion strategy.

A classy move not to link the post, which proceeds to explain why Uber's rise represents a cautionary tale. Here's the post, so you can decide for yourself whether there are reasons to worry about the widespread use of regulatory arbitrage: lpeproject.org/blog/why-we-ne…

I cannot fucking believe what a liar Derek is. He wrote he presented Basel's piece to an economist who "told me that his theories had been misapplied" and to a housing analyst who said he "distorted their points and reached dubious, or even flatly wrong, conclusions." BOTH of

This week, I urged Massachusetts lawmakers to pass a bill that would help protect workers, small businesses and shoppers from corporate abuse. Massachusetts passed the country's first anti-monopoly law in 1641. It is once again leading the antimonopoly movement! Link below.

Our coalition partners Cambridge Local First and Institute for Local Self-Reliance are leading the fight w/ Massachusetts lawmakers on a proposed bill to strengthen the state's antitrust laws. If passed, the bill will be a huge win for small businesses, working people, and consumers! Drop us a line to get involved.

We're really starting to see the outlines of what a fair and competitive digital ecosystem for the future looks like. If you combined Apple's App Store steering rules as implemented under the US court (not maliciously as in the EU, with scare screens and the Apple Tax) and

NEW ANNOUNCEMENT: Today, we’re unveiling our “Fair Game Plan for Farmers and Us: Main Street Over Monopolies.” 📄 Read our full farm & food plan → scholtenforiowa.com/issues/issue-1

Google has unique leverage over content owners thanks to its search monopoly. While content owners can block other chatbots' crawlers, they can't afford to block Google's because Google then removes them from search results entirely: a digital death sentence.

1. ILSR has filed a motion in federal court to unseal the FTC’s antitrust complaint against PepsiCo. The case bears directly on high grocery prices & food deserts—and would've marked a crucial revival of the neglected Robinson-Patman Act. But the public may never get to see it.

Oh goodie, another critical industry that’s been monopolized, this time for fire retardants. Over the last four years, Perimeter has hiked its prices to various agencies by 20 to 30 percent. nytimes.com/2025/08/06/bus…

I just finished reading the complaint. It is sad that the FTC has to waste its time litigating this case. Mergers to monopoly are clear violations of Section 7. Probably the clearest test case for a violation of the "tend to create a monopoly" prong I've seen in a while.

This slick video reformulates what is at bottom a local deindustrialization problem that we should solve with industrial policy, into a fake “red tape” problem that we should (allegedly) solve with ever-more deregulation. New York State apparently no longer has anyone who can

Settlements: 1) Hamper the enforcement of the law & dampen its development 2) Muddy waters for parties & the public about what the law is (b/c they have no precedential value). 3) Are ripe for corruption (hence the Tunney Act). Enforcement is the directive, not settlement.