News & Insights

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.”

Ever since Apple opened its App Store on its iPhones in 2008 it has sought to control and curate its offerings. Apple stoutly maintains its curation creates a better user experience. Customers seem to agree, voting with their dollars to give Apple the largest market share in the global smartphone market (while still facing stiff competition from Samsung and others).

What a difference a trading day makes.

On Friday, Wall Street went to bed confident that the United States had a commanding lead in artificial intelligence. After all, Nvidia makes the world-leading chips on which to create cutting-edge AI, while the U.S. government has forbidden the export of such chips to America’s near-peer competitor, China.

Alvaro Bedoya, one of Biden’s remaining progressives on the Federal Trade Commission, argued recently in The New York Times that the agency should expand enforcement of the often ignored Robinson-Patman Act to protect small retailers and especially small, independent grocers.

It has come to light, thanks to The Information, that the Federal Trade Commission under Chain Lina Khan reached out to Temu to bolster that agency’s antitrust case against Amazon. This was asking the injurer to inflict more injuries on the injured.

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent recent column advising Speaker Mike Johnson to sidestep the budget trap that ensnares House Republicans in never-ending self-recrimination, resulting in hair-pulling, self-immolation and the destruction of one speaker after another.

Legislation has been reintroduced that would remove the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust enforcement authority and give it to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Days after BlackRock left Net-Zero Asset Managers, which was created to align asset management companies and global climate goals, the coalition said it was suspending operations.

In The Odyssey the witch Circe warns Odysseus what is ahead on his journey home – the Sirens who drive men mad and cause them founder on their shoals, “a great heap of dead men’s bones lying all around, the flesh still rotting off of them.” If Odysseus still insists on hearing the sweet song of the Sirens, Circe tells him to make sure his men have wax in their ears but for the gods’ sake, have those men lash you tightly to the mast! 

Margrethe Vestager, retiring after ten years as the European Union’s top antitrust regulator, managed to fire one more gut shot at a leading American company on the way out the door.

Andrew Stuttaford has a great piece in National Review today. He demonstrates the danger of outgoing Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan handing off the antitrust baton to “Khanservative” Republican enablers to cooperate with an anti-American, protectionist EU against America’s most competitive industries.

Robert H. Bork Jr., President of the Antitrust Education Project, reacts to President-elect Donald Trump’s’ selection of Federal Trade Commissioner Andrew Ferguson to serve as the agency’s next Chair

Jonathan Kanter, outgoing chief of the Justice Department Antitrust Division, proposes that federal Judge Amit Mehta strip the world’s number one search company of its number one web browser, Chrome. The rationale is that Google owns 90 percent of the market for search, a claim that prompted Judge Mehta to uncritically declare Google a “monopolist” in search.

For years economists praised the “Walmart Effect,” in which big box retailers’ everyday low prices had a measurable effect on restraining inflation. Walmart remains a fierce competitor in retail, demanding the lowest costs from suppliers, and passing the savings on to consumers.

Surveying what will soon be the post-Lina Khan Federal Trade Commission is a bit like being the hotel manager who walks into a room after a rock star has checked out. The mirrors are shattered, the bed is broken, jagged champaign bottle fragments are everywhere, and the television seemed to have been hurled out the window.

As antitrust policy goes, so does the national election … says absolutely no one. In a fair world, however, voters and the media would be agog at the economic and national security implications of a report released at the end of last week by the House Oversight and Accountability Commission on Chair Lina Khan’s stewardship of the Federal Trade Commission.

When it comes to border enforcement, taxes, and, more generally, “Woke vs. MAGA,” the choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris could not be clearer. But when it comes to how the next president will enforce antitrust policy, there are lot of — to borrow a phrase from the late Donald Rumsfeld — known unknowns.

The Biden-Harris Administration should stop wrongly blaming others for its own disastrous policies. For example, in 2023 the DOJ filed statements of interest in lawsuits in Atlantic City and Las Vegas which falsely alleged that hotel-casinos and their A.I. room pricing software vendors illegally fixed hotel room prices.

Imagine if Congress, for some odd reason, wanted to punish Chuck Norris. It might pass a tax bill that only pertains to “martial artists who are ranch owners retired from acting careers in film and television.” Not only would that be unwise (this is Chuck Norris we’re talking about), it also would be unconstitutional to use seemingly objective definitions meant to single out one person. The Constitution wisely forbids such bills of attainder.

October is proving to be a busy month for Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan. As she completes her term, Khan’s calendar has the feel of a political farewell tour.

In the late Middle Ages, artisans melted down florins, the Florentine coin of pure gold, to apply it as gold leaf for floating halos over the heads of the saints. Today, if you are Lina Khan, you just go to Leslie Stahl.

The Federal Trade Commission scored a PR victory with a report last week that accuses prominent social media and video streaming companies of lax privacy controls, especially in how they handle the data of children and teens.

On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission, under the direction of Chair Lina Khan, argued its case to block the merger between grocery chains Kroger and Albertsons before Judge Adrienne Nelson in a federal court in Portland.

Having failed to pass legislation that would force America’s leading digital companies to open their source codes to foreign competitors and dictatorial regimes, Sen. Amy Klobuchar now has a new brainchild – the Preventing Algorithmic Collusion Act.

By Robert H. Bork, Jr. September 3, 2024 Have you ever shopped for groceries at a Walmart, a Trader Joe’s, an…

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is always shopping for the right judge to validate her eccentric, extra-statutory theories of antitrust as a way to regulate everything. Yet in case after case, Khan keeps coming up snake eyes.

Vice President Kamala Harris doubled down today in her Raleigh, North Carolina, speech on the same strategy that gave Americans inflation. Her plan promises more inflation, only this time with food shortages. Harris would do that by putting the government in charge of approving food prices, while extending the Biden budget blowout.

Tim Wu took to the pages of The New York Times to suggest the punishments – I mean remedies – he wants Judge Amit Mehta to inflict on Google for monopolistic behavior. None of Wu’s punishments involve the Iron Maiden, but they are predictably extreme.

Winter is coming.

That’s the brutal message delivered on Friday – after an abysmal jobs report and the NASDAQ 100 plunging into correction territory. Maybe these chill winds are a warning and not an actual harbinger of an imminent recession. But one has to take note when Warren Buffett sells off his favorites to pile up mountains of cash.

August 5, 2024 It is ironic that on the very day the U.S. stock market melted down over concerns about…

A House Small Business Committee staff report released by Representative Nydia Velázquez (D., N.Y.) late last year alleged that powerful corporations are concentrating markets to crush small businesses across the land. Dominant firms, the Democrats’ report claims, “manipulate markets, exploit loopholes, and leverage their immense power to squeeze their smaller competitors. As a result, the American economy has seen decades of growing income and wealth inequality during a period of dwindling dynamism.”

Apple’s motion to dismiss the Department of Justice antitrust case is a total takedown.

When I worked with my father in the 1990s to support the government’s antitrust case against Microsoft, the situation was very different. Microsoft at that time maintained a stranglehold on 95 percent of the operating systems market. Microsoft strongarmed Apple, software developers, and internet access providers to exclude its competitors.

In 1933, Americans passed the 21st Amendment repealing the 18th Amendment, also known as Prohibition – aka, the stupidest law in American history. Three years later, Congress passed the Robinson-Patman Act, a reasonable contestant for the second-stupidest law in American history.

Is the rejection of developers’ claims in a class-action lawsuit against Google by a federal judge in Northern California a sign that the Department of Justice’s large, antitrust lawsuit against the high-tech company could be on shaky ground in federal court?

Donald Trump’s selection of Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate – and now, likely Vice President – has a heroic, almost Teddy Roosevelt aspect to it. After Trump himself gamely survived an assassination attempt in the T.R. mold, he selected a man whose rise through military, academic and literary fame is almost as meteoric as that of the original Rough Rider.

Robert Bork Jr. joins the Schilling Show.

Robert Bork Jr. joins Ed Martin on the Pro-America Report.

Judge Ada Brown, a federal judge in North Texas, on Wednesday slapped a preliminary injunction halting the Federal Trade Commission from enforcing a sweeping, nationwide ban on noncompete agreements.

Progressive antitrust has denounced, investigated or sued Big Chicken, Big Sandwich, Big Grocery, and Big Tech, of course. Now the FTC is suing to block Tempur Sealy’s acquisition of Mattress Firm, an American mattress store chain.

French antitrust authorities, after a dawn raid last year on Nvidia’s offices, is set to follow up with a big new antitrust lawsuit against this U.S. chipmaker. Nvidia is the manufacturer of graphic processing unit chips – GPUs – that have the massive computing power that enable increasingly robust artificial intelligence. French authorities have let it be known it will charge Nvidia for anti-competitive practices in this space.

The Khanservative movement – those on the right increasingly supportive of FTC Chair Lina Khan’s progressive, aggressive antitrust policies – is expanding within the MAGA movement and Republican politics. Some conservatives, like Sens. J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, are Khanservative adjacent, expressing reservations about corporate power, impacts on workers, and Big Tech content curation. Others, like Reps. Matt Gaetz, Ken Buck, and Sen. Josh Hawley, are all-in for Lina, gleefully supporting anything that brings a bad day to woke C-suites and the many mansions of the tech mogul kingdom.

Lina Khan as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission has blazed a path largely unobstructed by Congress, an adoring press, and a professional staff that she has isolated and intimidated. Only the courts have served as a bulwark, blocking her more exotic legal theories and kicking four of her big cases to the curb.

On Tuesday night at TechCrunch’s Strictly VC event in Washington, D.C., Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan described the administration’s antitrust lawsuits against Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta and (soon, it appears) NVidia and Microsoft as part of a larger strategy. She said that “being able to go after the ‘mob boss’ is going to be more effective than going after the henchman at the bottom.”

The news broke yesterday that the Federal Trade Commission under Lina Khan and the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division under Jonathan Kanter have divvied up the investigations of the nascent AI sector for monopolistic conduct. Khan will lead the examination of Microsoft’s investment in Open AI, maker of Chat GPT. Kanter will lead in the investigation of NVidia, which makes AI chips.

The antitrust power of the Federal Trade Commission includes the ability to suspend business deals while agency’s experts review it, sometimes to death. It must have come as shock today to Chair Lina Khan when federal judge Kenneth D. Bell denied the FTC’s injunction request to prevent the non-profit Novant Health in North Carolina from completing its $320 million bid to buy two hospitals.

The Department of Justice’s landmark antitrust case against Microsoft demonstrates the classic behavior that justifies an antitrust lawsuit. How does Jonathan Kanter’s DOJ Antitrust Division case against Apple stack up against that big precedential case of Microsoft?

In March, President Biden followed up on his State of the Union complaint about half-empty potato chip bags by launching an initiative to “fight corporate rip-offs” that drive inflation around the country.

A federal court in Houston made a good call that protects a sizable number of private investors and the economic growth they create.

In an antitrust case against U.S. Anesthesia Partners (USAP), Lina Khan’s ever-inventive FTC also targeted a private equity firm, Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe.

Though not as flashy as FTC Chair Lina Khan, Department of Justice antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter is just as anxious as his young colleague to use regulatory power and lawfare to expand antitrust law to control lawful businesses.

There is always a dramatic moment when an aspiring despot gets irritated by the niceties of tradition and law and just gets on with it. Caesar displayed his true colors – purple – when he refused to rise before the Roman Senate that had come to honor him. Napoleon grabbed his crown, as agreed to by a cowed Pope Pius VII, and crowned himself l’empereur.

Lina Khan went before the House Appropriations Committee this morning to appeal for about a 25-percent increase in the $425 million budget of the Federal Trade Commission that she chairs. The math is simple, she told the committee. For every dollar that FTC spends, it delivers $14 to the economy in consumer benefits.

When JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in a recent Wall Street Journal podcast that that “the consumer is in pretty good shape” because “housing prices are up, stock prices are up, jobs are plentiful,” he inherited the digital whirlwind.

J. Howard Beales III, former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, and Timothy J. Muris, former Federal Trade Commission chairman, take Lina Khan to task in The Wall Street Journal for bad management, poor strategy, and disregard for norms.

Jeffrey Oliver of Baker Botts LLP told Bloomberg that FTC’s bar on Scott Sheffield, founder of Pioneer, from serving on the board of its merged company with ExxonMobil is “avant garde antitrust.”

In a recent talk at Yale Law School, Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan noted: “I see the portrait of Robert Bork is still up there.” Note the word “still.” After that observation began an exchange with faculty and students that showed that in the minds of many Yale law scholars, Robert Bork is no longer there at all.

The move by the Democratic majority on the Federal Trade Commission to outlaw all noncompete agreements that forbid job switching is yet another example of Chair Lina Khan’s supreme confidence in her brand of medicine. Whenever delicate surgery is required she elbows the specialists aside and takes a meat cleaver to the problem.

Leave to economic historian Amity Shlaes to put our 21st century’s version of class warfare into historical context.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who presciently warned the Biden Administration that blowout bills like the Inflation Reduction Act would actually generate inflation, is now slapping his head about the strange, perverse war that same administration is waging on America’s most innovative tech companies.

Wildflowers are blooming, the sun lingers, and President Joe Biden believes the recent jump in employment means his economy is showing green shoots of renewal. But the American people are not buying it. A recent CBS News poll reveals that 59 percent of Americans believe the state of the economy under Biden is bad.

April 15, 2024 One of the most remarkable accomplishments of this administration is the keen sense of timing it brings…

What constitutes a market? Define it narrowly enough, and progressive antitrusters can find a monopoly anywhere. Draw lines around a market for “chicken sandwiches not sold on Sunday,” and you can charge Chick-fil-A with being a monopoly. Define a market for red-headed comedians who rely on props and you can charge Carrot Top … Okay, go ahead and charge Carrot Top. But you get the point.

Former Rep. Mimi Walters writes in The National Review: “The Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Apple is weak, it seeks to substitute central planning for consumer preference, and it will threaten innovation.”

This is rich, in every sense of the word.

BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink in his annual letter warned Baby Boomers that younger generations “believe my generation – the baby boomers – have focused on their own financial well-being to the detriment of who comes next. And in the case of retirement, they’re right.”

March 25, 2024 “Khanservatives” like Sen. Josh Hawley, Sen. J.D. Vance, and Rep. Matt Gaetz are throwing their lot in…

Sometimes, when I wonder if I am right on the issues, I simply go to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Twitter-feed to make sure she’s taking the opposing view. Then I know I am right. This morning, Sen. Warren wrote: “It’s time to break up Apple’s monopoly.”

Today’s announcement marks the capstone of the progressive attack on the last of our country’s most innovative tech companies. It also marks a return to the long-discredited antitrust era of “big must always be bad.”

The two Super Bowl ads run by Chinese retailer Temu got me to thinking: Will future historians one day wonder why Western regulators worked so hard to degrade their most competitive multinational companies just in time to hand global markets to a predatory China?

Most controversies in the ESG arena concern the E, for environment. At center stage is ExxonMobil’s lawsuit against shareholder activists Arjuna Capital and Follow This for their campaign to force the company “to change the nature of its ordinary business or to go out of business entirely.”

Riddle me this: Why have increases in food prices been in line with inflation from the 1980s until the Biden administration took over?

Critics of progressive antitrust have long wondered if Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan’s extraordinary losing streak in high-profile antitrust cases is the result of deliberate strategy rather than mere incompetence. Last summer, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) pointedly asked Lina Khan in a hearing: “Are you losing on purpose?”

The progressive antitrust regulators of the Biden Administration often warn their fellow C-Suite progressives that environmental, social and governance promises don’t compute in antitrust. Early in her tenure, Lina Khan took to the pages of the enemy, excuse me, I mean The Wall Street Journal, to warn companies that the Federal Trade Commission cannot use ESG to buy a little extra consideration for a merger or an acquisition.

The legendary coach John Heisman began each season by holding up a football and asking: “What is this? It is a prolate spheroid, an elongated sphere in which the outer leather casing is drawn tightly over a somewhat smaller rubber tubing. Better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football.”

Quick: What retreats and advances at the same time? Asset managers and ESG.

The Anglo-American business law firm Norton Rose Fulbright released an international survey of 200 senior executives that portrays the 2024 deal-making environment in hopeful terms, portraying it as having “green shoots of optimism amid uncertainty.”

There’s something rotten about the ease with which European antitrust regulators are nixing U.S. mergers and leveling fines against successful American companies. Case in point – the scuttling of the Amazon purchase of iRobot on Monday.

The stock market’s recent rise and gentle subsidence has been something of a January-effect cliché. While the market flirts with historic highs, and happy talk about a “soft landing” is shared over cocktails, the U.S. economy continues to struggle against the weight of high national and consumer debt, reduced but persistent inflation, geopolitical turbulence … and lower investor returns from ESG funds.

The most striking – and risible – feature of recent federal antitrust lawsuits is their paucity of economic logic. This is on display from the self-contradictory arguments of Lina Khan’s FTC antitrust case against Amazon, to DOJ’s illogical suit against the JetBlue-Spirit merger. Both would reduce consumer choices and raise prices in the name of protecting the consumer.

ExxonMobil is exercising its legal right to put the kibosh on an ESG effort to force the company out of its main business of producing oil and gas, which the last time I checked is a legal business. After being overrun in 2021 when activist-investment firm Engine No. 1 succeeded in placing three directors on Exxon’s board, the company is showing that it remains uncowed by the ESG movement and its Rube Goldberg approach to the environment.

Kudos to JetBlue and Spirit for their brave decision to appeal federal Judge William Young’s decision to block their $3.8 billion merger.

Bloomberg Law reports that investors are securing 25 percent returns or greater (up to hundreds of times) in funds that back litigation against major international corporations that are deemed to have failed in their E or their S or their G responsibilities.

The economic reasoning in the Department of Justice antitrust complaint against Google is weak. In the Federal Trade Commission complaint against Amazon, it is nonexistent. Lina Khan’s FTC has 80 economists on staff – but somehow the economic modeling typical of an FTC complaint are nowhere to be found in her filing.

A jury recently ruled against Google in the Fortnite case, granting all 11 antitrust claims leveled by Epic Games. This decision will certainly reshape the app market and force the transfer of monumental amounts of capital from Google to app developers.

When American Airlines and JetBlue created an alliance for service to Northeastern airports – aligning schedules, coordinating slots and gates, sharing codes – they justified this arrangement as pro-consumer.

Two recent developments ought to prompt a federal judge in Washington State to toss out the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.

For a long time, I have heard from senior people who have worked closely with Lina Khan in the Federal Trade Commission that she hates economics. As a discipline. As a restraint on her mission.

George Will has an entertaining piece on FTC’s and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s war on Big Sandwich.

He dissects the antitrust freakout over Roark Capital’s bid to acquire Subway. Between the barbs, Will notes that “Subway is basically a brand,” with sandwich stores that are small businesses owned by people who buy franchises, benefiting from the chain’s national advertising.

Early in her tenure, Lina Khan took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to pledge that good intentions would not protect corporate Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) proponents from antitrust scrutiny. At the same time, the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission has seen any merger or acquisition of size as a red flag for antitrust scrutiny and sometimes lawsuits. 

Food is the theme of this season, in antitrust as it is on dinner tables.

When Rep. Mike Johnson became speaker, it unleashed a furious search by the media, lobbyists, and political researchers to unearth every position the Louisiana Congressman has ever taken. What has been Rep. Johnson’s position on tax reform? On defense spending? On high school students who stick chewed bubble gum under their desks?

The Wall Street Journal reports that the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) reveals that companies hit the ISS-Glass Lewis duopoly with at least 64 complaints to the SEC about inaccurate proxy adviser recommendations.

On Friday, Lina Khan stepped into the lion’s den of the Federalist Society – and received a big wet kiss from the lion.

On Friday, 11:15 a.m. Eastern, Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan will appear before the Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention. I commend Chair Khan for speaking at the event and for her willingness to take questions. 

Robert Eccles asks in Forbes that if Jim Jordan can call As You Sow and other members of the ESG network a cartel that violates the Sherman Antitrust Act, why can’t the same be said for the American Petroleum Institute?

The ever-thought-provoking Joel Kotkin has penned a dark piece about America’s industrial decline – promoted by ESG – positioning us to lose in a global struggle for economic and strategic dominance with China.

Some headlines write themselves. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Wednesday subpoenaed As You Sow, one of the powerful NGOs at the heart of the spider’s web of non-profit activists, investment funds and asset managers that have been colluding behind the scenes to use ESG mandates for self-dealing and ideological domination.

Are Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and her minions being deliberately obtuse in an effort to puff up their antitrust lawsuit against Amazon?

The Department of Justice’s move against Google rests on some familiarly flawed logic.

Aswath Damodaran, professor of finance at the Stern School of Business at NYU, presents a brilliant dissection of the many contradictions and pitfalls of ESG in The Financial Times.

The media just cannot help but remain in the thrall of Lina Khan, even as the legacy the FTC chair is trying to establish fails to get traction. Case in point, CNN’s profile of Khan as she struggles to convince court after court to adopt her antitrust theories. The story by Brian Fung and Catherine Thorbecke has a quote (from a former Bush FTC chair no less, et tu?) that while “it’s a tough row to hoe” Khan is attempting, the “upholders of the status quo look old and tired.”

A short essay in the American Institute for Economic Research from Dr. Kimberlee Josephson, an associate professor of business, spells out in stark detail the oddity of the Federal Trade Commission trying to protect consumers from companies and services they continue to use.

The reviews are in on the Federal Trade Commission’s complaint against Amazon. If this were a movie on Rotten Tomatoes, FTC Chair Lina Khan’s signature antitrust case would be a big green splat.

The Federal Trade Commission ’s antitrust law against Amazon is cementing Chairwoman Lina Khan ’s reputation as someone who, when she sees big, sees red. Yet when Khan, who develops novel theories to launch antitrust actions against Big Tech companies, sees clear antitrust violations by big entities in other sectors, she fails to act.

Farhad Manjoo has an incisive piece in today’s New York Times on the disparities of FTC’s Amazon antitrust suit.

It’s amazing how compliantly The Washington Post spins for those it admires. In today’s Post, Will Oremus writes that Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan’s case against Amazon is “the case Khan was born to make.”

You’ve got to give credit to the FTC and its Chair Lina Khan – in their Tuesday filing of their blockbuster antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, this time they managed to round their argument to fully include the needs of consumers, not just the protection of other, less efficient competitors.

Two nominees for the Federal Trade Commission – Andrew Ferguson, Solicitor General of Virginia and former chief counsel to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Melissa Holyoak, Solicitor General of Utah – had a Senate confirmation hearing this week that, like the best of airplane flights, was uneventful.

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is by all accounts preparing to file her long-anticipated antitrust case against Amazon. There are rumors and reports of tail-chasing and internal angst within the FTC over the drafting of this complaint.

Ankush Khardori has a brilliant – and lacerating piece – in Politico about the Jonathan Kanter-Lina Khan progressive antitrust revolution, and the 13 merger guidelines the Department of Justice antitrust chief and Federal Trade Commission Chair released in July.

September is wishing well month for progressive antitrusters. Federal Trade Commissioner Lina Khan is expected to soon file her long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, Khan’s obsession since she was a law student and first made her case against the online retailer in a law review piece.

You’ve heard over the course of this day-and-a-half about the legal pitfalls of progressive antitrust, as well as the mounting costs ESG heaps on your state funds, your taxpayers, your state retirees, and all investors. I will reiterate some of those points. But I will do so to point to a larger concern – that this controversy is about more than the right application of the law, the best returns for funds, or the responsibilities of a fiduciary.

Mention progressive antitrust in Washington, and the discussion turns to Lina Khan – who rose in half a decade from Yale Law School student to become the most powerful, and controversial, Federal Trade Commission chair in history.

August 17, 2023 Andy Puzder takes to RealClearMarkets to neatly dissect BlackRock’s new Voting Choice as “an effective PR tool”…

The Wall Street Journal reports that Rep. Bill Huizenga, chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight, has fired off letters of inquiry to BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity and other firms before hearings scheduled for the fall on what it means to be a fiduciary. 

Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. is the world’s largest proxy advisory firm, with contractual relationships with mutual funds controlling $26.8 trillion in assets and at least a 48 percent market share of its market as of 2021.

One of the few joys of my inbox is the latest missive from Jonah Goldberg. In his most recent piece, Goldberg takes on the New Right Man

A few years back, a Nevada man made millions of dollars selling lots on the moon , complete with “lunar deeds” to be framed and displayed. It turned out to be a strong business plan. At $24 an acre, lunar lots were snapped up by many eager buyers, including A-list movie stars and former U.S. presidents.

FTC Chair Lina Khan is accusing House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of launching a “campaign to intimidate and harass” career agency staff. 

First impressions of the DOJ and FTC merger guidelines announced today.

AEP President Robert Bork Jr. on the First Right Podcast to discuss the “antitrust assault on our economy.”

Republicans in this morning’s House Judiciary Committee hearing raised the right questions but did not manage to penetrate Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan’s smooth and lawyerly shell.

In another stunning loss for Lina Khan and her radicalized FTC, a federal judge in Northern California played sheriff and threw Khan’s case against Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision through the saloon doors and out into the dusty street.

As the FTC chairwoman makes her first-ever appearance before a GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee, she has much to answer for.

In well-placed leaks to the media, Lina Khan is signaling that the depth and breadth of her long-anticipated antitrust lawsuit against Amazon will exceed anything the ambitious, ideology-driven Federal Trade Commission Chair has yet attempted.

The ESG cartel pushes liberal rhetoric in service of Democratic political success.

Like metal filings between magnets, issues today line up with the “blue/progressive” pole or the “red/conservative” pole. But ideological simplification can disguise underlying currents where the lines of force touch and many on the Left and Right agree.

Take the case of ESG , or environmental, social, and governance standards devised by non-governmental organizations and imposed by asset managers in proxy challenges and orders on how to vote on corporate boards.

May 16, 2023 The state attorneys general are exposing the iron fist inside the green glove of the ESG cartel….

Tim Wu, who worked from the White House to coordinate the antitrust agenda of the early Biden Administration, explains the role of the government regulator as the necessary “policeman at the elbow” to restrain corporations from unfairly squeezing out competition. President Biden’s enforcers, Lina Khan, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and Jonathan Kanter, head of the Department of Justice antitrust division, push progressive policing of the economy with enthusiasm.

New reports by the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE) show that many high-profile mergers have been highly criticized, saying they will do major harm to both competition and consumers.

According to the International Center for Law and Economics, critics like Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan said that Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017 would crush competitors in physical retail.

Lina Khan and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) she chairs are pursuing multiple cases against Google for alleged antitrust violations. Federal courts have ruled against the FTC and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in these types of cases much more often than not in recent months. However, while they have a track record of losing in court, these cases have fomented an atmosphere of regulatory uncertainty which some experts argue is by design.

Christine Wilson’s resignation from the Federal Trade Commission followed nearly two years of complaints about Chairman Lina Khan from her own staff and colleagues. Congress should investigate Ms. Khan’s leadership of the FTC.

The Department of Justice’s latest antitrust lawsuit against Google is predicated on correcting what many see as the damage that a few, big technology-based companies are inflicting on our country.

He touts ‘legislation to hold Big Tech accountable.’ But accountable to whom? Jan. 19, 2023 10:32 am ET Some 720…

COMMENTARY | By Robert H. Bork, Jr. | January 12, 2023 President Biden has blamed high energy prices on Saudi…

By Robert H. Bork, Jr. | December 20, 2022 Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a newly reelected senator, on Thursday issued a public plea…

COMMENTARY | By Robert H. Bork Jr. | November 22, 2022 The White House is urging the Senate to use the…

Using antitrust experts to regulate social-media content is like asking brain surgeons to build a rocket ship. Oct. 24, 2022…

October 6, 2022 The Republican Attorneys General Association will meet this week in Miami to debate if we should retain…

September 19, 2022 Today on the Doug Collins Podcast, I sit down with Robert Bork, Jr., who heads up The…

September 18, 2022 Tuesday afternoon, Sen. Amy Klobuchar will preside over a hearing of the antitrust subcommittee of the Senate…

August 30, 2022 INTERVIEW ON THE PRICE OF BUSINESS SHOW, MEDIA PARTNER OF THIS SITE. Recently Kevin Price, Host of the nationally…

August 27, 2022 Former President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, “the Secretary of Labor is in charge of finding you…

August 10, 2022 Republicans have embraced anti-trust legislation as a way to fight Big Tech censorship – but it will…

Baton Rouge Reporter | by Robert H. Bork, Jr. | published July 29, 2022 John Kennedy has quite made an impression…

Columbia Standard | by Robert H. Bork, Jr. | published July 29, 2022 Sen. Lindsey Graham voted with four Republican colleagues…

National Review | by Robert H. Bork, Jr. | published July 16, 2022 ​The hopelessly vague language of Amy Klobuchar’s bill…

Washington D.C. Business Daily | by Robert H. Bork, Jr. | published July 6, 2022 Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina…

National Review | by Robert H. Bork, Jr. | published July 6, 2022 Unless Congress intervenes, the Biden administration is…

National Review | by Robert H. Bork, Jr. | published June 17, 2022 Conservatives in Congress have good reason to…

RealClearPolitics | by Robert H. Bork, Jr. | published June 09, 2022 Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised Sen….

May 15, 2022 Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is a liberal no one should mistake for a Chicago-School economic conservative….

April 29, 2022 Some moderate and conservative legislators seem to be acting in the belief that their voters support the…

Real Clear Politics (Commentary) By Robert H. Bork Jr. March 16, 2022 Last summer, President Biden signed 72 executive orders to…

December 17, 2021 While national polls show President Biden’s approval rating slipping down into the 30s, boosters of his administration…

December 16, 2021 Some moderate and conservative legislators seem to be acting in the belief that their voters support the…

By Robert H. Bork Jr.Oct. 31, 2021 5:41 pm ET Teens are shifting from Instagram to TikTok even as critics claim…

October 14, 2021 China is investing $1.4 trillion to overtake the West in critical technologies by 2025. Beijing aims to…

October 7, 2021 Americans for Tax Reform and a coalition of 30 conservative and free market groups and activists joined a…

THE ANTITRUST EDUCATION PROJECT PRESENTS: THE FUTURE OF ANTITRUST WITH SENATOR CHUCK GRASSLEY September 28, 2021 Robert H. Bork, Jr.,…

September 22, 2021 On September 15, 2021, the Federalist Society presented this special day-long, in-person conference on Judge Robert Bork’s The Antitrust…

September 8, 2021 The Biden administration, finally beginning to worry about the political impact of the rising cost of food,…

August 25, 2021 There has never been a significant antitrust ruling against a company that offers a service at a…

August 19, 2021 Ever have the teacher tell you to redo your homework? What did you do? You probably made…

August 13, 2021 For decades, the prospect of a dream acquisition by a large company has driven startups to innovate…

July 17, 2021

Watch the latest video at foxbusiness.com July 13, 2021 Our President, Robert H. Bork, Jr., discussed on Fox Business’ Larry…

By Robert H. Bork Jr.July 12, 2021 1:20 pm ET His new competition policy is a power grab that will hurt…

AEP’s President, Robert H. Bork, Jr.:  July 7, 2021 What’s been needed all along is a way to protect conservative…

June 29, 2021 Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers tells Bloomberg that FTC Chair Lina Khan’s approach to antitrust “is the…

June 29, 2021 Elizabeth Nolan Brown has an insightful piece in Reason on Tim Wu, the “neo-Brandesian,” “big is bad” antitrust theorist now…

June 28, 2021 A federal judge granted Facebook’s request to dismiss the massive antitrust suit filed by the Federal Trade…

June 23, 2021 While the House focuses on five antitrust, anti-Big Tech bills supported by Democrats – with the help…

June 23, 2021 “The radical left sees antitrust law as its vehicle to fundamentally transform America,” declare Jim Jordan, ranking House…

May 5, 2021 On April 21, 2021, the Federalist Society’s Corporations, Securities, & Antitrust Practice Group hosted a teleforum titled “The Antitrust…

May 4, 2021 “The Left has long wanted to destroy the prevailing “consumer welfare standard,” a concept promulgated by conservative…

April 29, 2021 Regulators and jurists alike have come to accept – for decades now – that vertical mergers are…

April 27, 2021 In this era of antitrust overdrive, what strategies can overcome overzealous regulators and unsympathetic judges? Many of…

April 22, 2021 This morning, several Republican senators in the Senate Commerce Committee hearing sounded sympathetic to Lina Khan’s nomination…

April 13, 2021 Is Sen. Josh Hawley’s extreme lurch to the left the first sign that the Republican Party is…

April 6, 2021 Alden Abbott, senior research fellow of the Mercatus Center, advances four reasons in a detailed study on “neo-Brandeisian” legislation,…

April 2, 2021 It shouldn’t be news that The National Review came out in favor of the Consumer Welfare Standard in antitrust…

March 29, 2021 Hat tip to Matt Taibbi for pointing out that Columbia law professor Timothy Wu, now appointed to the National…

March 27, 2021 Kathleen S. O’Neill, senior director of investigations and litigation for the Antitrust Division, told Law 360 that merger filings…

March 16, 2021 Sen. Amy Klobuchar, chair of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, is honing legislation to recast antitrust…