Jamie Dimon didn’t just say the quiet part out loud. He said the quiet part loudly.

For years, CEOs complained in private but minced around in public about the outrageous business model of Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, the duopoly that has a stranglehold on the proxy advisory business.

Why is the Federal Trade Commission under Trump-appointed Chair Andrew Ferguson seeking public comments on “technology platform censorship”? Not, as they say on Seinfeld, that there is anything wrong with that. But the FTC probably wouldn’t take such a step without an idea of where it is going.

Did Jonathan Kanter and Lina Khan actually leave the Justice Department Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission? Or are they in tiny offices on the roofs of each building, quietly directing the policies of the Trump Administration below?

Although I’ve never heard him use the precise term, President Trump’s every statement and action as a free-market advocate leads me to mark him down as an intuitive believer in the consumer welfare standard. This is the doctrine that courts should judge deals and business operations under antitrust laws not according to vague, ever-shifting standards but by their measurable impacts on price, quality, and innovation for the consumer.

Last week, we asked the Trump Administration to challenge the EU’s new antitrust chief Teresa Ribera, demanding that she reveal how she intends to enforce Europe’s new Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act. On Friday, President Trump signed a memorandum warning Europe that the United States would “scrutinize” EU measures “that dictate how American companies interact with consumers in the European Union.”

In an interview Tuesday with Reuters, Teresa Ribera, the second-most powerful official in the European Commission, made it clear that the EU is digging in its heels against demands by the White House for fairer treatment of American companies facing colossal fines.

The Senate Judiciary Committee soon will hold confirmation hearings for Gail Slater for assistant attorney general, antitrust division. Slater’s antitrust understanding is broad and deep; she previously worked in the Trump 45 administration, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the private sector. She already has support from several senators and Attorney General Pam Bondi; she ought to be confirmed easily. 

A lot of commentary about the lifting of the prosecution of New York Mayor Eric Adams has unfavorably compared the protest resignations of DOJ prosecutors to Robert Bork’s actions during Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” in 1973.

J.D. Vance did his audience a favor by delivering a blunt message bluntly. At the AI summit meeting in Paris of European and Asian leaders, the vice president told Europeans to back off regulating artificial intelligence before it can be developed and properly understood.

Is DeepSeek the result of American AI being too consolidated? Lina Khan makes the case in today’s New York Times that the Chinese AI upstart’s disruption of America’s largest firms is a “canary in the coal mine.” DeepSeek is telling us that our businesses are plagued by the sluggish, bureaucratic, inertial habits of American big tech “monopolies.”