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1. Boy, Amazon is in a heap of trouble. Evidence made public today by California AG @AGRobBonta shows blatant price fixing. And there are so many examples. Here's Amazon scheming with a pet food supplier to get Chewy to raise its prices.
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Stacy Mitchell retweeted
According to US intelligence, the man who says we can’t regulate AI because China might win was sleeping with a suspected Chinese spy whose company was set to buy $2B in Nvidia chips.
Next time Big Tech says they’re the bulwark against Beijing, remember this.
Next time Big Tech says they’re the bulwark against Beijing, remember this.
NEW:
The US government believes Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang had a romantic relationship with a Chinese woman whom the US intelligence community believes was recruited to spy for China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s main intelligence agency.
Chinese oit a relationship with Huang to obtain sensitive information about Nvidia’s most advanced technology which could help China accelerate its military and intelligence capabilities while undermining the technological advantage the United States is trying to protect.
Full Story: bit.ly/4zpNQ7v
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This is a terrific resource for people looking to join the antitrust field.
The most common question I am asked is, “How do I break into the antitrust field?” I usually give a hodgepodge of advice. Today, to keep supporting the antimonopoly movement, I’m releasing a free document that covers everything you need to know.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
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Stacy Mitchell retweeted
Another day, another story about why prices are skyrocketing in a consolidated industry. Today it's beef prices in the WSJ.
The story drones on about losses to the big four meatpackers, as if they are the victims of some market forces beyond their control.
The story fails to and exploitative techniques used by the four big meatpackers--who collectively process about 85% of U.S. beef--to drive the input prices down for cattleman (third screen shot), despite soaring ground beef prices (fourth screen shot).
Part of how we got to lower input prices was a massive drawdown of plants by the four big meatpackers (second screen shot). If that drawdown was in any way coordinated--e.g., via signaling to rivals on earnings calls--there is a great monopsony case to brought. When ground beef prices are soaring, cattlemen should realize higher input prices, not lower prices. That the cattlemen's share of the beef bill is falling is consistent with monopsony behavior.
The story drones on about losses to the big four meatpackers, as if they are the victims of some market forces beyond their control.
The story fails to and exploitative techniques used by the four big meatpackers--who collectively process about 85% of U.S. beef--to drive the input prices down for cattleman (third screen shot), despite soaring ground beef prices (fourth screen shot).
Part of how we got to lower input prices was a massive drawdown of plants by the four big meatpackers (second screen shot). If that drawdown was in any way coordinated--e.g., via signaling to rivals on earnings calls--there is a great monopsony case to brought. When ground beef prices are soaring, cattlemen should realize higher input prices, not lower prices. That the cattlemen's share of the beef bill is falling is consistent with monopsony behavior.
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Stacy Mitchell retweeted
A lot of people have been bullied by this machine. Hoping sunlight does its thing…
Nvidia execs ran a smear campaign against proponents of chip export controls, bullied people on the Hill, they made so many enemies and now no one is afraid of them. I think we are still in the tip of the iceberg phase of what is going to come out.
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Look, Mom, I'm a super influencer! Peculiar analysis though: recognizing the push to dismantle corporate power while insisting that big corporations remain essential to the left's policy goals. Hardly. But I suppose that's what happens when your audience is corporate clients.
Baron identified @stacyfmitchell as an Antitrust Super Influencer in 2022; now, she has appeared on our latest list of Intellectual Super Influencers on the Left. Read the firm’s latest brief on the individuals most influential on the organizations that guide the Left’s policy agenda .
baronpa.com/library/the-de…
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Stacy Mitchell retweeted
1. Electricity keeps getting more expensive because we've given monopoly utilities enormous power to decide how it's produced. They've used that power to favor costly infrastructure over cheaper local solutions. ILSR's @johnffarrell makes the case for breaking them up in TIME.
John Farrell argues that America's electricity monopoly model is ultimately responsible for skyrocketing energy costs. time.com/article/2026/1…
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1. Electricity keeps getting more expensive because we've given monopoly utilities enormous power to decide how it's produced. They've used that power to favor costly infrastructure over cheaper local solutions. ILSR's @johnffarrell makes the case for breaking them up in TIME.
John Farrell argues that America's electricity monopoly model is ultimately responsible for skyrocketing energy costs. time.com/article/2026/1…
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4. There's a better way. Rooftop solar installed by California homes and businesses — over the objections of the state's utilities — saved customers more than $2 billion in 2024 alone. Modern technology makes decentralized electricity possible.
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5. But to create a future of cheap, decentralized, clean energy, we need to break up utilities by separating electricity production from distribution — and then make the latter publicly owned. Read the piece: time.com/article/2026/1…
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Stacy Mitchell retweeted
Your health insurer shouldn’t own your doctor’s office, pharmacy, and the middleman who decides which prescriptions are covered and how much they cost.
That gives one corporation at least 4 ways to squeeze every penny out of you when you get sick.
Let's break up Big Medicine.
That gives one corporation at least 4 ways to squeeze every penny out of you when you get sick.
Let's break up Big Medicine.
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Stacy Mitchell retweeted
This is insanely brazen. A railroad behemoth with the power to bully entire industries into shutting up and falling in line should not exist in this country.
(1/3) The video of Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena threatening to raise rates on shippers who do not support the UP-NS merger is now public. Watch it for yourself here. Vena made the remarks at the Southwest Association of Rail Shippers (SWARS) Annual Conference in Houston. He said:
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This is the right approach. If you go back to the pre-Gingrich Congressional Record, it's remarkable: the depth of investigation, learning & expertise Congress used to develop. It created the will to legislate. The House Big Tech investigation was a model of how to revive that.
Why should Congressional Democrats investigate corporate America if their mandate is to deliver real economic change? Because investigations are a key catalyst for securing reform and legislation. For much of the last century, Congress used to be the main institutional player working to secure an economy that serves working people. A key tool was oversight. Lawmakers routinely investigated complex markets and major corporations, identifying problems and exposing wrongdoing. A major goal of these investigations was to learn what was driving certain problems and figure out how to fix them.
After Democrats took back the House during the first Trump administration in 2019, I joined the House Judiciary Committee as a staffer on the Antitrust Subcommittee. Under the terrific leadership of @RepJerryNadler and then-Rep @davidcicilline, we pursued an 18-month investigation into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, securing key evidence of how their business practices were undermining competition and harming people, setting the basis for both lawsuits and proposed legislation.
A few lessons from that experience:
1. The quality of legislative oversight depends on the staff and the support of top members to confront power. Committee and Subcommittee Chairs that are focused on getting answers and unafraid to take on powerful corporate interests will make the difference between oversight that doesn’t surrender to their evasion tactics and oversight that aims low or flames out.
Even a relatively small number of dogged, talented lawyers ready to dive in can make a big impact. In the 1930s a single congressional lawyer, Ferdinand Pecora, helped reshape our entire banking system by subpoenaing records and interrogating top financiers, including J.P Morgan. The investigation exposed self-dealing, market manipulation, and tax avoidance, and laid the groundwork for foundational New Deal legislation, including the Glass-Steagall Act and the Securities Exchange Act.
2. Eliminating bottlenecks to moving investigations forward is key. For example, the House should make sure that Subcommittee Chairs can issue subpoenas rather than needing the sign-off of the full Committee or its Chair. A credible threat of sending subpoenas is critical for credible oversight.
3. Ensuring that members can develop the muscle to effectively interrogate CEOs requires investing in real preparation. In the lead up to the hearing with Bezos, Pichai, Cook, and Zuckerberg, the Antitrust Subcommittee spent months reviewing millions of documents collected from the firms, interviewing affected parties, briefing members on key evidence, and conducting practice hearings. Members came into the hearing deeply informed and able to rebut and call out CEO dissembling. The result was some of the most effective member questioning of executives we’ve seen in decades. @TheProspect wrote up a great overview: prospect.org/2020/07/30/tri…
4. For decades, institutional capacity in Congress has been extremely weak. Much of this traces back to the Gingrich Revolution, which was effectively the 1995 DOGE-ing of Congress. Republican leadership fired over 600 professional staffers, eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment, and gutted research capacity. None of that capacity was ever meaningfully restored.
As a result, members have way fewer resources to develop serious expertise or go deep on a new topic. Members should start rebuilding that capacity so the institution can fully play its Article I role, where Congress can again do serious policy development and legislating and serve as a real check on the executive and judicial branches.
5. AI markets should be high on the list of investigations. The business decisions of the major AI firms have huge public ramifications, yet the public is at a severe informational disadvantage when it comes to how these markets work and the choices these firms are making. A congressional investigation will help ensure future legislative action is based on a more complete view of what is going on rather than selective and partial corporate disclosures.
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Stacy Mitchell retweeted
CVS says it's going to break itself up. After more than a decade of calls to separate its retail pharmacies from its PBM/insurance business, that's big news. But here's the thing: CVS's breakup has two major loopholes. Both are designed to preserve its power.
First, CVS Health would keep its specialty pharmacy business. These pharmacies dispense expensive, often complex medications. They account for 40+% of the pharmacy market by revenue. They're a major site of anticompetitive practices that squeeze independent pharmacies.
Second, CVS says the ties between the two new companies will be "preserved in commercial agreements." In other words, separate ownership, but keep the arrangements that create conflicts of interest and enable anticompetitive practices. A real (government-led) breakup would sever those ties.
CVS didn't arrive here all on its own. Tennessee and Arkansas passed laws forcing a breakup of vertically integrated pharmacy giants like CVS. CVS is fighting the laws in court. Senators Warren and Hawley have a federal bill. Antitrust scrutiny has grown, both at the state level and when @linamkhan ran the FTC.
Trying to sidestep these efforts is one motivation here.
But CVS also has business reasons to jettison its struggling retail stores. Amazon's growing pharmacy business is one. The perils of running an overbuilt retail chain when you haven't invested in workers is another. Anyone who's been inside a CVS lately knows these stores suck.
For more than a decade, I've been working with independent pharmacies and my colleagues here at @ilsr to expose the anticompetitive structures and practices that have driven so many local pharmacies out of business, and calling for a breakup of CVS.
But CVS shouldn't get to decide what counts as an effective breakup. Policymakers need to ensure that it actually dismantles its power.
First, CVS Health would keep its specialty pharmacy business. These pharmacies dispense expensive, often complex medications. They account for 40+% of the pharmacy market by revenue. They're a major site of anticompetitive practices that squeeze independent pharmacies.
Second, CVS says the ties between the two new companies will be "preserved in commercial agreements." In other words, separate ownership, but keep the arrangements that create conflicts of interest and enable anticompetitive practices. A real (government-led) breakup would sever those ties.
CVS didn't arrive here all on its own. Tennessee and Arkansas passed laws forcing a breakup of vertically integrated pharmacy giants like CVS. CVS is fighting the laws in court. Senators Warren and Hawley have a federal bill. Antitrust scrutiny has grown, both at the state level and when @linamkhan ran the FTC.
Trying to sidestep these efforts is one motivation here.
But CVS also has business reasons to jettison its struggling retail stores. Amazon's growing pharmacy business is one. The perils of running an overbuilt retail chain when you haven't invested in workers is another. Anyone who's been inside a CVS lately knows these stores suck.
For more than a decade, I've been working with independent pharmacies and my colleagues here at @ilsr to expose the anticompetitive structures and practices that have driven so many local pharmacies out of business, and calling for a breakup of CVS.
But CVS shouldn't get to decide what counts as an effective breakup. Policymakers need to ensure that it actually dismantles its power.
CVS is splitting into two companies in a major reversal of the mergers that created its $117 billion healthcare empire cnn.it/4z45oWd
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Stacy Mitchell retweeted
This is a great analysis of the CVS breakup. And also, this >>
"Anyone who's been inside a CVS lately knows these stores suck."
Who's been in a CVS store recently that didn't have AC? 🙋♀️
"Anyone who's been inside a CVS lately knows these stores suck."
Who's been in a CVS store recently that didn't have AC? 🙋♀️
CVS says it's going to break itself up. After more than a decade of calls to separate its retail pharmacies from its PBM/insurance business, that's big news. But here's the thing: CVS's breakup has two major loopholes. Both are designed to preserve its power.
First, CVS Health would keep its specialty pharmacy business. These pharmacies dispense expensive, often complex medications. They account for 40+% of the pharmacy market by revenue. They're a major site of anticompetitive practices that squeeze independent pharmacies.
Second, CVS says the ties between the two new companies will be "preserved in commercial agreements." In other words, separate ownership, but keep the arrangements that create conflicts of interest and enable anticompetitive practices. A real (government-led) breakup would sever those ties.
CVS didn't arrive here all on its own. Tennessee and Arkansas passed laws forcing a breakup of vertically integrated pharmacy giants like CVS. CVS is fighting the laws in court. Senators Warren and Hawley have a federal bill. Antitrust scrutiny has grown, both at the state level and when @linamkhan ran the FTC.
Trying to sidestep these efforts is one motivation here.
But CVS also has business reasons to jettison its struggling retail stores. Amazon's growing pharmacy business is one. The perils of running an overbuilt retail chain when you haven't invested in workers is another. Anyone who's been inside a CVS lately knows these stores suck.
For more than a decade, I've been working with independent pharmacies and my colleagues here at @ilsr to expose the anticompetitive structures and practices that have driven so many local pharmacies out of business, and calling for a breakup of CVS.
But CVS shouldn't get to decide what counts as an effective breakup. Policymakers need to ensure that it actually dismantles its power.
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Stacy Mitchell retweeted
Bernie Sanders lost the fight in 2016. A decade later, he won the war. politi.co/4ekGIS5
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CVS says it's going to break itself up. After more than a decade of calls to separate its retail pharmacies from its PBM/insurance business, that's big news. But here's the thing: CVS's breakup has two major loopholes. Both are designed to preserve its power.
First, CVS Health would keep its specialty pharmacy business. These pharmacies dispense expensive, often complex medications. They account for 40+% of the pharmacy market by revenue. They're a major site of anticompetitive practices that squeeze independent pharmacies.
Second, CVS says the ties between the two new companies will be "preserved in commercial agreements." In other words, separate ownership, but keep the arrangements that create conflicts of interest and enable anticompetitive practices. A real (government-led) breakup would sever those ties.
CVS didn't arrive here all on its own. Tennessee and Arkansas passed laws forcing a breakup of vertically integrated pharmacy giants like CVS. CVS is fighting the laws in court. Senators Warren and Hawley have a federal bill. Antitrust scrutiny has grown, both at the state level and when @linamkhan ran the FTC.
Trying to sidestep these efforts is one motivation here.
But CVS also has business reasons to jettison its struggling retail stores. Amazon's growing pharmacy business is one. The perils of running an overbuilt retail chain when you haven't invested in workers is another. Anyone who's been inside a CVS lately knows these stores suck.
For more than a decade, I've been working with independent pharmacies and my colleagues here at @ilsr to expose the anticompetitive structures and practices that have driven so many local pharmacies out of business, and calling for a breakup of CVS.
But CVS shouldn't get to decide what counts as an effective breakup. Policymakers need to ensure that it actually dismantles its power.
First, CVS Health would keep its specialty pharmacy business. These pharmacies dispense expensive, often complex medications. They account for 40+% of the pharmacy market by revenue. They're a major site of anticompetitive practices that squeeze independent pharmacies.
Second, CVS says the ties between the two new companies will be "preserved in commercial agreements." In other words, separate ownership, but keep the arrangements that create conflicts of interest and enable anticompetitive practices. A real (government-led) breakup would sever those ties.
CVS didn't arrive here all on its own. Tennessee and Arkansas passed laws forcing a breakup of vertically integrated pharmacy giants like CVS. CVS is fighting the laws in court. Senators Warren and Hawley have a federal bill. Antitrust scrutiny has grown, both at the state level and when @linamkhan ran the FTC.
Trying to sidestep these efforts is one motivation here.
But CVS also has business reasons to jettison its struggling retail stores. Amazon's growing pharmacy business is one. The perils of running an overbuilt retail chain when you haven't invested in workers is another. Anyone who's been inside a CVS lately knows these stores suck.
For more than a decade, I've been working with independent pharmacies and my colleagues here at @ilsr to expose the anticompetitive structures and practices that have driven so many local pharmacies out of business, and calling for a breakup of CVS.
But CVS shouldn't get to decide what counts as an effective breakup. Policymakers need to ensure that it actually dismantles its power.
CVS is splitting into two companies in a major reversal of the mergers that created its $117 billion healthcare empire cnn.it/4z45oWd
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Stacy Mitchell retweeted
Donald Trump and the billionaires need to understand one thing very clearly: I don't owe them a damn thing. And I owe Mainers everything.
Thank you, Maine. I will never forget last night.
Thank you, Maine. I will never forget last night.
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