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'Decades in the Making': Antitrust Advocates Celebrate as Jury Rules Against Live Nation-Ticketmaster
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called the verdict "a win for everyone who thinks concert tickets are too damn expensive."
Apr 15, 2026
Antitrust advocates celebrated on Wednesday after a jury found that Live Nation and is subsidiary Ticketmaster were illegal monopolies who for decades systematically overcharged customers for concert tickets.
As reported by The Associated Press, the verdict against Live Nation and Ticketmaster could cost the two entities "hundreds of millions of dollars, just for the $1.72 per ticket that the jury found Ticketmaster had overcharged consumers in 22 states," and they could be forced to sell off some of the venues they own.
The case against Live Nation, which was brought by 33 states and the District of Columbia, was initially led by the US Department of Justice. However, under President Donald Trump, the DOJ last month reached a last-minute settlement with the company that would not require it to be broken up.
The state attorneys general, however, vowed to see the case through and were rewarded with a big verdict in their favor.
New York Attorney General Letitia James celebrated the verdict, describing it as "a landmark victory to protect New Yorkers from harmful monopolies."
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called the verdict "a win for everyone who thinks concert tickets are too damn expensive," and declared himself "proud to have brought this lawsuit."
District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb noted Live Nation "has raked in billions in profits from an illegal monopoly that coerces venues, restricts artists, and exploits fans," and called the verdict "a massive win in the fight for fairness for local venues, artists, and fans."
Lina Khan, former chair of the Federal Trade Commission under President Joe Biden, hailed the verdict, but said it was just "a key first step towards ending Live Nation’s monopolistic control and securing real relief for those it harmed."
Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, said the verdict was "decades in the making," and he cited iconic Seattle band Pearl Jam's fight against Ticketmaster in the 1990s to illustrate just how long it's taken to hold the company accountable.
"Pour one out for Pearl Jam, who testified before Congress in 1993 about Ticketmaster's abuse of the live concert industry," he commented.
The Roosevelt Institute took a shot at the Trump DOJ for bailing on the case, and noted the verdict against Live Nation "only happened because state AGs kept pushing after a federal settlement that let the companies off the hook."
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Trump AI Framework Would Deliver 'Big Tech's Top Policy Priority': A Ban on State Regulations
"Written by Big Tech, for Big Tech," said Rep. Yvette Clarke of the Trump administration proposal.
Mar 20, 2026
The Trump administration on Friday released its national policy framework for regulating artificial intelligence, and critics said it gave Silicon Valley a massive gift by coming out in favor of barring state regulation of the technology.
Specifically, Big Tech critics pointed to the framework's recommendation that the federal government preempt state laws regulating AI that could otherwise "act contrary to the United States’ national strategy to achieve global AI dominance."
"States should not be permitted to regulate AI development," the framework stated, "because it is an inherently interstate phenomenon with key foreign policy and national security implications."
The Trump administration's paper also argued that states "should not unduly burden Americans’ use of AI for activity that would be lawful if performed without AI" and "should not be permitted to penalize AI developers for a third party’s unlawful conduct involving their models."
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, slammed the AI policy framework, which he said appeared designed "to protect Big Tech at the expense of everyday Americans."
"Trump’s AI framework is a hollow document with only one tough and meaningfully binding provision, delivering Big Tech’s top policy priority: It aims to preempt all state laws and rules dealing with AI," said Weissman. "Preemption would effectively mean no US regulation of AI at all, with the narrow exception of rules to deal with nonconsensual intimate deepfakes, because there are no national rules in place—and this framework would impose no additional standards of consequence."
Weissman added that while states' actions to regulate AI are inadequate, they are at least "trying to meet the novel and enormous challenges of the moment," which "is exactly why Big Tech wants to shut down their efforts."
Brad Carson, president of Americans for Responsible Innovation, called the White House's preemption of state AI laws a mistake, predicting that it would lead to even worse problems than the ones created by unregulated social media over the past two decades.
"I think it's like this: if you think the current state of play in social media guardrails are A-OK, then you'll be fine with the framework," he wrote. "If—like most—you believe we made catastrophic mistakes re social media, then you should fervently oppose this vacuous 'framework.'"
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) singled out the proposed ban on state AI regulations as a particularly troubling aspect of the framework.
"The White House National AI Policy Framework reinforces the Trump administration’s commitment to preempting state-level AI laws without the establishment of clear, enforceable federal guardrails to address the urgent risks posed by AI systems," he wrote. "It even seeks to limit congressional regulatory action. But until federal action ensures safe and responsible AI development, deployment, and use, states must retain the ability to implement policies to protect the American public."
Matt Stoller, an antitrust researcher and author of the BIG newsletter, argued that the Trump AI framework should be one of the first things a future Democratic president throws in the garbage after taking office.
Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) delivered a pithy analysis of the White House framework, describing it as being "written by Big Tech, for Big Tech."
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Trump’s Lax Approach to Antitrust Helps Spur Banner Year for Corporate Mergers
"Trump’s new antitrust enforcers have demonstrated a willingness to facilitate dealmaking through an uptick in early terminations and settlements," said the American Economic Liberties Project.
Dec 26, 2025
Global corporate mergers surged to near-record highs in 2025, driven in part by US President Donald Trump's lax approach to antitrust enforcement.
The Financial Times reported on Friday that global dealmaking in 2025 topped $4 trillion, including 68 mergers worth $10 billion or more, highlighted by Netflix's $72 billion bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery and a proposed $85 billion mega-merger between railway giants Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern.
The US alone accounted for $2.3 trillion worth of mergers and acquisitions, which the Financial Times said highlighted the Trump administration's role in green-lighting corporate consolidation.
"Top dealmakers said that the Trump administration’s push to loosen regulation had encouraged companies to explore tie-ups that they might otherwise have been hesitant to pursue," the Financial Times explained.
Andrew Nussbaum, co-chair of the executive committee at law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, told the Financial Times that corporate leaders "see a willingness of the regulators to engage in constructive dialogue" under the second Trump administration, which has given them "a willingness to take on regulatory risk for transactions that are strategic."
The American Economic Liberties Project has also taken note of the Trump administration's role in shepherding through big mergers, and created a Trump Merger Boom tracker earlier this year to document the massive wave of corporate consolidation.
In its analysis of the administration's lax approach to antitrust enforcement, the American Economic Liberties Project said that "Trump’s new antitrust enforcers have demonstrated a willingness to facilitate dealmaking through an uptick in early terminations and settlements."
"Despite pro-enforcement rhetoric early on from Trump’s heads of the FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division," the American Economic Liberties Project added, "it’s becoming increasingly clear that agency leadership is having trouble making their decisions in a vacuum—with a quiet tide of deals granted to companies that have been friendly to the White House."
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