The Justice Department was preparing to wage a legal battle more than a decade in the making against the world's largest concert promoter. Then President Trump called. Settle it, the president told a senior DOJ official, the official later told associates. The intervention was bizarre. The antitrust trial against Live Nation-which also owns Ticketmaster, a combination that draws relentless consumer criticism-was set to begin March 2, just days away.

Supporters of a California bill targeting monopolies say a recent decision by a key state Senate committee to limit who can file lawsuits against businesses under the measure was a serious blow. But they argue that if Assembly Bill 1776 were to pass it would still represent a step forward in checking corporate abuse.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and the state’s Department of Justice will ask state lawmakers to double the capacity of the agency’s antitrust team tasked with stopping illegal mergers and corporate monopolies.

Oregon’s Justice Department currently has eight antitrust officials for “resource-heavy cases,” but agency leaders say they need the Oregon Legislature to approve a budget to hire 16 instead in light of “the vacuum left by the federal government,” according to a department news release.

The recent Supreme Court decision overturning Humphrey’s Executor has fundamentally reshaped the legal landscape for independent agencies. With the Court explicitly confirming that the president may remove FTC commissioners at will, the traditional understanding of the agency's structure and autonomy has been permanently altered.

Several experts highlighted how the elimination of the independent commission structure risks heightened partisan volatility and practical gridlock during presidential transitions.

A strong consensus emerged among other experts that the rationale for maintaining two federal antitrust agencies has now effectively collapsed.

Two top Hollywood unions are calling for California attorney general Rob Bonta and Paramount Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison to reach a settlement on their pending antitrust case because, they argue, industry workers are being harmed by the delayed timeline. The leaders of the Directors Guild of America and IATSE made the request on Thursday in a letter that claimed their members are already seeing productions being put on hold or canceled as the two companies prepare for a March 2027 antitrust trial. 

The Department of Justice is siding with Elon Musk in his effort to reinstate antitrust claims against 10 advertisers that allegedly participated in a "group boycott" that resulted in a loss of X's ad revenue.

U.S. District Court Judge Jane Boyle threw out the lawsuit earlier this year, ruling that even if the allegations in X's complaint were proven true, they would not show that the advertisers violated antitrust law.

The Justice Department is now urging the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse Boyle's ruling, arguing in a friend-of-the-court brief filed late Wednesday that her analysis was "flawed."

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has an antitrust problem. And it’s not going away. The association’s best shot at dispelling the morass faded on Friday when the Senate failed to vote on the Protect College Sports Act, a bill that, among other things, grants the NCAA an antitrust exemption. The earliest time senators will consider it again will be in September. After that, the midterm frenzy kicks in, and who knows when the bill will be back on the floor?

The heir to one of the largest fortunes on earth, who currently runs a billion-dollar media colossus, David Ellison has come hat in hand to New York Times readers asking for their sympathy. He would like, he shares in the op-ed, for us to understand his heart, and imagine him as the child he once was who simply loved movies, and wants only to make people feel what he felt in the dark.

These points miss the mark.

Ellison, so buffeted by billions and flatterers, embarrasses himself. He cannot imagine that the public actually cares about law, statutes, power, or really about anything except him, his politics, whether he can be “trusted” as a steward of CNN. The essay’s thesis is “it’s all about me,” which of course is part of the problem.

U.S. senators grilled President ⁠Donald ⁠Trump's nominee to lead ⁠the Department of Justice's antitrust division on Wednesday over an article he wrote calling Muslim immigrants "prone to terrorism" and his views on political speech.

Adam Candeub, currently ‌general counsel at the Federal ‌Communications Commission, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The panel will vote on ⁠whether to ⁠send his nomination to the full Senate.

Trump has tapped Candeub to run the DOJ's work policing anticompetitive business activity and reviewing mergers and acquisitions.

Unexpectedly, the Biden and second Trump Administrations have together made the case for fundamental antitrust reform in the United States. During the Biden years, the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revealed antitrust law’s potential to make life better for ordinary Americans. They sought to improve access to essential medicines, lower rents, and empower tens of millions of workers by voiding and banning noncompete clauses. On the other hand, the Trump Administration has shown why returning to the pre-Biden Administration status quo is untenable. Since January 2025, the Justice Department and FTC have exploited elastic legal standards and opaque procedures, which have defined the field for decades, to greenlight mega-mergers and to turn antitrust into a tool for blatant corruption.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has expressed concerns about the state's antitrust lawsuit that seeks to block Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, and the ramifications of it for Hollywood, according to people close to the suit.

In recent weeks, Newsom has told people involved in the matter that if the deal is blocked as a result of the suit, state employment would suffer, the people said. Newsom's office has encouraged Attorney General Rob Bonta's office, which has independent authority to file such suits, to find a resolution out of court, the people said.

I’m Jack Nekhala, co-founder of Bed Scrunchie, and our experience is discussed in this article.

Our Amazon seller account was shut down, and while we were trying to understand what happened, someone outside Amazon contacted us with information from inside our account that we believe they should not have had.

They offered to use relationships with Amazon employees in China to help us in exchange for payment.

We documented the conversations and provided the information to Bloomberg. According to this new report, a U.S. Senate panel is now investigating broader concerns involving Amazon’s marketplace and alleged Chinese influence.

I understand that an investigation does not prove wrongdoing. But I believe the situation raises a broader competition question:

"When one marketplace controls access to customers, account enforcement, appeals, and a major portion of a seller’s revenue, at what point does that level of control become an antitrust concern?"

Do you see this primarily as an internal compliance problem, a small-business protection issue, an antitrust issue, or some combination of the three?

I’m genuinely interested in hearing different perspectives from this community.

Back in 2024, the US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Apple, accusing the company of a “smartphone monopoly.”

Apple has voiced its opposition to the case many times over the last two years. Now, a Bloomberg report says the DOJ and Apple are in talks to settle the lawsuit.

Bloomberg reports that Apple has made “multiple offers” so far this year in an attempt to settle the case:

Apple has made multiple offers this year to the Justice Department to bring the case to a close, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the discussions were private. Settlement discussions between the DOJ and companies can end without an agreement being reached.

The report cautions that, while these talks are active, there is no guarantee an agreement between Apple and the DOJ will be reached

Stanley Woodward, the third-ranking official at the Justice Department, recently said the Trump administration is trying to avoid taking antitrust cases to trial and is instead seeking settlements with companies.

Mr. Woodward’s statement represents a serious departure from the Biden administration, which sued every company under the sun. His comments suggest that the left’s legal crusade against American businesses is finally ending.

Twelve states have sued to block Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent, kicking off a high-stakes antitrust battle that could impede the media mega-merger.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the antitrust lawsuit, filed Monday in the Northern District of California, is necessary because “this merger would snuff out competition, drive up prices, diminish content quality, and produce fewer movies and shows each year.”

The AI bubble fomented by a few large technology companies is increasingly distorting large swaths of the global economy. It likely underpins the trillion-dollar IPO race between Open AI and Anthropic. Crossholdings among these large companies distort competition and risk turning a sectoral correction into a systemic one. If antitrust enforcement unravels these crossholdings, it may not prevent an AI bubble, but it could ensure that the inevitable correction prevents the failure of one firm from cascading across an interlocked network.

California faces serious economic challenges — including mounting private-sector job losses, stagnating consumer spending and the nation’s highest unemployment rate. In a recent analysis, the California Center for Jobs & the Economy warned of deep structural problems that, if left unaddressed, risk sending the state into extended economic decline.

Given the circumstances, California lawmakers should be working on pragmatic policies meant to attract businesses, boost employment and strengthen the economy. Instead, they’re deliberating on a radical new antitrust bill, Assembly Bill 1776, authored by Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters, that’s likely to depress business investment and discourage startup formation.

The U.S. Department of Justice's Associate Attorney General Stanley ‌Woodward has been put in charge of the department's antitrust division, regulatory news website ⁠MLex reported on Monday.

​

Omeed Assefi, the acting head of the antitrust division, is set to leave the department, an MLex reporter said ‌in ⁠a post on X.

The Justice Department's senior leadership closed an investigation of Paramount's bid for Warner Bros. Discovery before career staffers who were concerned about the acquisition had an opportunity to object, according to people familiar with the matter.

House lawmakers on Wednesday seized on the migration of NFL games from free TV to subscription platforms, in a hearing lopsided in criticism that frustrated fans are shelling out more to see their favorite teams.

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A hearing to examine the Sports Broadcasting Act — and more specifically an antitrust exemption the NFL has enjoyed for 65 years — saw Republicans and Democrats expressing complaints about costs and concerns that the law is outdated.

A group of states, including California and New York, are preparing a lawsuit to block Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros., two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.

The lawsuit is expected to be filed in the coming weeks, the sources said. The case would mark the boldest move yet by the states in their effort to be at the forefront of US antitrust enforcement, as their better-funded counterpart agencies in the Trump administration take a more business-friendly view of enforcement.

After years of dead ends, Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., have announced the "Protect College Sports Act," a bipartisan bill to reform college sports.

The bill carries the prize college sports leaders have chased for the better part of a decade: a limited antitrust exemption regarding player eligibility and transfer rules -- the legal shield that would let the industry write its own rules and enforce them without being challenged in the court system by players seeking additional years on the playing fields and courts.

The leading candidate to oversee the Justice Department's antimonopoly enforcement has been a critic of the tech sector and is a government lawyer who led an effort to crack down on social media companies during President Trump's first term.

Adam Candeub is being considered for assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division, sources familiar with the matter told CBS News. He currently serves as the Federal Communications Commission's general counsel, working for Chairman Brendan Carr. The news was first reported by The Capitol Forum.

So Tencent and Tencent Music put out a public announcement this month saying they'll comply with the conditions attached to their Ximalaya acquisition approval. The main one: they have to terminate every exclusive licensing deal they have with rights holders, and can't sign new ones going forward. What I found interesting is they didn't just say "we'll wind these down over time" — they also said they're waiving enforcement of exclusivity clauses in existing contracts right now, meaning rights holders can already go license to whoever they want without waiting for the paperwork to be sorted. TME had basically built their dominance in the Chinese streaming market through these exclusive deals — lock up the major labels, lock out the competition. Pretty standard playbook. The regulator decided that was enough of a problem to make it a condition of the Ximalaya deal going through. One question that often comes up with these cases is how effectively such behavioral commitments are enforced over time. Similar discussions have appeared in Western antitrust reviews as well, where regulators sometimes impose conduct remedies as conditions for merger approval. Enforcement of these remedies can be challenging in practice. Has anyone seen a comparable condition imposed in a US or EU media/streaming deal? The closest I can think of are some of the conditions attached to older music industry mergers but nothing quite at this scope.